Erich Stauffer

Blog

  • The Top 10 Comedy Movies of All Time

    As you can see, 1980 and 1994 were very good years for comedy movies. The following is a list of the top 10 comedy movies of all time:

    • Airplane – 1980 – Paramount
    • Animal House – 1978 – Universal Studios
    • Borat – 2006 – 20th Century Fox
    • Caddyshack – 1980 – Warner Home Video
    • Clerks – 1994 – Miramax
    • Dumb and Dumber – 1994 – Warner Bros.
    • Groundhog Day – 1993 – Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
    • Monty Python and the Holy Grail – 1975 – Sony Pictures Home Entertainment
    • The Big Lebowski – 1998 – Universal Studios
    • The Hangover – 2009 – Warner Home Video

    (more…)

  • Android Smartphone Training in Indianapolis

    Get more out of your Android cell phone from Verizon, Sprint, or AT&T with custom, one-on-one training from Erich Stauffer

    Learn how to best utilize your powerful new smartphone with a one-on-one, personal lesson to teach you how to use your mobile device. There are many things your phone can do that you may not even realize. Today’s smartphones are capable of so much more than most people use them for.

    We will help you learn to use the programs that already exist on your phone and help you download programs you may find useful in everyday life.

    Lessons include, but are not limited to:

    • basic usage tips on how to use the market and voice recognition
    • troubleshooting common problems
    • recording audio and video
    • extending battery life and managing open programs
    • and apps

    I have direct experience with the Motorola Droid, HTC EVO, and the HTC Hero, but I can help you with any Android phone.

    My name is Erich Stauffer and I have experience helping people with computers and their cell phones. Ask about our exciting referral discounts.

    Services start at $75/hour, but right now we are running a sale for one hour of training for $100.

    We accept all major credit cards, paypal, and cash. Call 317-572-7521 or contact us for an appointment.

  • Pac-Management

    Most people are familiar with the game of Pac-Man where the player guides Pac-Man through a maze, eating dots. And when all the dots are eaten, Pac-Man is taken to the next stage of the game. What most people are not familiar with is that this is exactly how they work throughout the day, which is what I call pac-management.

    What is Pac-Management?

    Like in Pac-Man, if an email, phone call, or a person stopping by contacts the Pac-Manager, everything stops. Because of this “life or death” situation, everything is an emergency. These “contactees” are known variously as “ghosts” or “monsters” and all of their moves are deterministic: a red contactee chases the Pac-Manager, the orange contactee is seemingly random, and the pink and blue contactees try to position themselves in front of the Pac-Mananager’s mouth. Near the corners of the Pac Manager’s office are four larger, flashing dots known as power pellets that provide the Pac-Manager with the temporary ability to eat the contactees. This pent up rage can happen at any time and will cause contactees to turn deep blue, reverse direction, and usually move more slowly. When all lives have been lost, the game ends. (more…)

  • Big Rocks

    In The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People, when Stephen Covey is going over Habit 3, “Put First Things First,” he tells a story about “big rocks,” which I wanted to share:

    In the middle of a seminar on time management, recalls Covey in his book First Things First, the lecturer said, “Okay, it’s time for a quiz.” Reaching under the table, he pulled out a wide-mouthed gallon jar and set it on the table next to a platter covered with fist-sized rocks. “How many of these rocks do you think we can get in the jar?” he asked the audience.

    After the students made their guesses, the seminar leader said, “Okay, let’s find out.” He put one rock in the jar, then another, then another–until no more rocks would fit. Then he asked, “Is the jar full?”

    Everybody could see that not one more of the rocks would fit, so they said, “Yes.”

    “Not so fast,” he cautioned. From under the table he lifted out a bucket of gravel, dumped it in the jar, and shook it. The gravel slid into all the little spaces left by the big rocks. Grinning, the seminar leader asked once more, “Is the jar full?”

    A little wiser by now, the students responded, “Probably not.”

    “Good,” the teacher said. Then he reached under the table to bring up a bucket of sand. He started dumping the sand in the jar. While the students watched, the sand filled in the little spaces left by the rocks and gravel. Once more he looked at the class and said, “Now, is the jar full?”

    “No,” everyone shouted back.

    “Good!” said the seminar leader, who then grabbed a pitcher of water and began to pour it into the jar. He got something like a quart of water into that jar before he said, “Ladies and gentlemen, the jar is now full. Can anybody tell me the lesson you can learn from this? What’s my point?”

    An eager participant spoke up: “Well, there are gaps in your schedule. And if you really work at it, you can always fit more into your life.”

    “No,” the leader said. “That’s not the point. The point is this: if I hadn’t put those big rocks in first, I would never have gotten them in.”

    In both our business and personal lives, we have big rocks, gravel, sand and water. The natural tendency seems to favor the latter three elements, leaving little space for the big rocks. In an effort to respond to the urgent, the important is sometimes set aside.

  • 13 Books Every Entrepreneur Can Benefit From Reading

    A lot of times I find myself referencing a book or two that I’ve read and people will ask me for a list of books that I recommend on business startups, business growth, personal development, or about being an entrepreneur in general so I compiled this list of books with links where you can purchase them on Amazon.

    UPDATE: I’ve recently added 13 more books every entrepreneur should read!

    Here is the short list:

    1. The Art of the Start – Mantras and milestones
    2. Getting Things Done – Work when appropriate
    3. Good to Great – Kill the cash cow and sell the mills
    4. The E-Myth Revisited – Organize and appoint
    5. The 4 Hour Workweek – Outsource and diversify
    6. Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us – Use the crowd
    7. Think and Grow Rich – The secret to everything
    8. The Richest Man in Babylon – Pay yourself first
    9. Cashflow Quadrant – Ownership pays dividends
    10. Made to Stick – Stories stick
    11. The Tipping Point – Little things don’t always stay so small
    12. Freakonomics – Question “common sense”
    13. Multiple Streams of Income – Tim Ferriss + Robert Kiyosaki

    And here is more detailed descriptions: (more…)

  • 3×300 Sale on Social Media Management

    For a limited time, Erich Stauffer is offering Social Media Management for $300 a month for 3 months to boost your online presence and increase business

    Call 317-572-7521 or email us using the contact form – just be sure to mention “3×300” to get this package deal, which is normally priced at $600 a month. Save 50% by acting now.

    For $300 a month your company will get these business-booster services:

    • Daily Facebook Updates
    • Daily Twitter Updates
    • A blog entry (post) once a week
    • Online classified ad entries once a month
    • A 5-minute video shot and posted on Youtube once a month
    • Brand monitoring to discover feedback on the web
    • One hour of one-on-one business consulting from Erich Stauffer

    Erich Stauffer will “ghost” as you or update, post, and blog right alongside you. We’ll take the time to learn your writing and posting habits; and the services, products, and culture of your business before representing your brand online.

    Call 317-572-7521 or email using the term “3×300” to get this package deal, which is normally priced at $600 a month. Act now to save 50%.

  • My First Day of Work After Quitting My Day Job

    I’m on a boat!

    While I started my own business in 2007, I have been working full time since 2001 doing various things for banks and other institutions. However, my heart was almost never in the work I was doing. I was doing it, but without joy. Eventually, I didn’t feel right thinking about my ‘other life’ for most of the time while I was at my day job and so on August 1, 2011 I quit my day job.

    There were various reasons for doing this, but none of them involved having a plan or saving up an emergency fund. I had trained and outsourced every function of my job until there was nothing left of my own job to do – and nobody noticed – so I left to grow my side business into my full-time business.

    This is a story of how I spent my first day after quitting my day job

    The first thing I did was to make a schedule of tasks. I came up with a rough outline for how I thought I would spend my days. It didn’t include time for service calls or meetings with clients, but since everything I do is modular, I can just pick back up after going to do one of those things: (more…)

  • Email Pitches

    I wanted to share with you some things I learned at the Blog Indiana 2011 conference about email pitches. I think it will be helpful for you in the future. I learned them from Casey Mullins, who is a successful mommy blogger in Indiana.

    First, tell them what you can do for them, then how it will benefit them. Be humble and concise. Explain what you wish to get out of the communication and how they can contact you. This is kind of like the old saying, “people don’t care how much you know until they know how much you care.” Today for them, tomorrow for you.

    Next, it’s best to greet each contact personally, but if you do send out a mass email, use the BCC line instead to protect the privacy of your email list. Also, attachments may cause your email to get filtered out as spam so its best to send those in a follow up email or send links instead.

    If you are just starting out, you might find Guy Kawasaki’s book, The Art of the Start, useful. If you buy the book through that link, I’ll get a percent of the purchase price of that and anything else you buy at Amazon.com as a commission, but another good resource is Startup Marketing or Seth Godin’s Blog.

  • 10 Ways Businesses Can Use Analytics to Expand their Business

    Businesses have more information stored on their customers and their business processes than ever before, which adds complexity in trying to collect, manage and interpret data into information that can help guide a business to success. Here are ten ways to use analytics to handle this complexity.

    1. Get organized and get feedback.

    The first step to any goal is to get organized. This could be an entire post in itself, but put simply, get rid of clutter in your computer and on your desk. Obstacles like bad file management (on your desk and in your computer) can eat up valuable brain cycles and time. Second, know what your resources are. This includes people, places, and things. Third, know where you want to end up. Begin with the end in mind. And four, which related so the first, have a place to store the plan once you create it. If you’ve done this before and have templates, use them. If you’re comfortable with a specific type of software that can help you, fine – use it. But don’t mistake learning a new process for moving forward on a project. Only tasks that move the project forward can be considered ‘working on the project’. If you have no idea what business analytic tools to use or where to start, go on to idea 2.

    Web resources like Google Analytics can show you how far you’ve come in many customizable ways–number of visitors, sales goals, conversions, traffic sources, and top content. It can also tell you were your visitors are located, how long they stay on the site, which pages they enter and exit, and what day of the week they tend to visit. All of this information helps you know your visitors so you can improve their experience and improve your sales. Social places like Facebook, Twitter, & Youtube are also great places to get feedback from visitors on the products and services you offer. The more information you collect, the better your business will be. It’s true – content is king, but what you do with that content can make all the difference in the world.

    2. Look for business analytics tools that are easy to use, flexible, and support a wide range of roles.

    Usability and functionality—that is, business capabilities—stand out as manufacturing organizations’ most important considerations in selecting business analytics regardless of company size, individual role or functional area. These should be central focuses in evaluating tools. To be usable and functional, analytics systems must provide a range of options for how to include the information in presentations, which are increasing; participants indicated an interest most often in the standard charts, reports and tables. However, documents, visualizations such as gauges and sliders, text, Web pages and maps were also identified as important by one-third to one half of these companies. Determine which of these are important to your organization today and may be tomorrow.

    The most important capability for an analytics system is to make it possible to search for specific existing answers. Because anomalies are common in business, individuals need to be able to drill down to find underlying causes. The second-most frequently chosen capability is exploring data underlying analytics, also deemed important or very important by nearly three-fourths. The participants rated similarly (22 percent to 28 percent deemed them very important) four other capabilities: to publish analytics and metrics; to explore data by working with maps, charts and tables; to set alerts and thresholds; and to collaborate in the review of analytics. The most important capability is being able to source data for the analytics. Without this capability it’s difficult to compile meaningful analytics. Equally important is the ability to take action based on the outcome of the analytics.

    3. Prepare for growth by analyzing personnel.

    Most people who have primary responsibility for designing and deploying analytics have experience with sophisticated tools. About half the time, analytics are designed and deployed by the business intelligence department, a data warehouse team, or by general IT resources. Line-of-business (LOB) analysts are involved the least, but in some cases collaborate. It helps when IT and the (LOB) work together on analytics. One example is to document tasks and documentation for each item in a ‘process map’ so that you are prepared for if you need to split a role, hire, or outsource some or all of those tasks due to volume or an influx of new tasks. The LOB analyst can then begin building a ‘staffing model’ which multiplies task volume by average task times to anticipate future personnel needs and analyze current business practices.

    4. Assess the maturity of your business analytics.

    While the Ventana Research Maturity Index placed 12 percent of respondents at the highest Innovative level in their use of analytics, 60 percent are in the bottom half of the maturity hierarchy. In people-related issues, the index identified lack of skilled resources and lack of executive support. Process-related issues included taking longer than a week to provide metrics from analytics, formally reviewing metrics no more often than quarterly or annually and low prioritization and lack of budget. In information-related issues that negatively impacted business analytics use, the research identified stale, outdated and inaccurate information as well as failing to prioritize basic informational needs. In the category of technology, the research found immature technology that is not working, unsophisticated technology known to be ineffective and a failure to prioritize forward-looking and predictive analytics. These shortcomings all impede a manufacturing organization’s effectiveness and performance and all need to be addressed.

    5. Ensure business analytics are widely accessible.

    In Ventana’s overall research on business analytics, only one-third of senior executives and one-fourth of vice presidents, directors and managers have analytics always available. While it is true that a large majority of executives have most of what they need, this is insufficient for optimally effective performance. Almost nine in 10 manufacturing organizations regard making it simpler to provide analytics and metrics to those who need them as important or very important. Also keep in mind that doing this from mobile devices such as smart phones and tablet computers will only increase in demand; already more than one-third of participants said this is important or very important.

    6. Don’t let inferior data undermine use of business analytics and metrics.

    Business analytics should be about determining what is happening and will happen to an organization. Most time is spent waiting for data, preparing data, and reviewing it for quality and consistency. Conversely, only a fraction of time is actually spent on true analysis processes such as assembling scenarios, searching for causes, and determining how changes will impact current business. If these preparation obstacles could be addressed, the amount of time people work with analytics could be reduced. Take steps to ensure your source data for analytics is both fresh and correct; if it isn’t, you risk undermining the use of metrics and KPIs as business improvement tools.

    7. Replace spreadsheets as tools for business analytics.

    Spreadsheets are well established as a tool for analysis in organizations of all kinds and sizes, but they are ineffective for repetitive analyses shared by more than a few people. Spreadsheets are the tools companies most commonly use to generate analytics, business intelligence technologies (for querying, reporting and performing analysis), and analytic warehouses and databases, but while they may be familiar, organizations using spreadsheets least have more accurate, timely data—and they deliver periodic reports about 40 percent sooner. Organizations should limit the use of spreadsheets as data stores and for repetitive analyses, particularly in cases where the results are reported to and used by more than a few people. Their failings, limitations and necessary work-arounds undermine the needs identified by participants to simplify analytics and metrics and ensure technology usability in the process of producing business analytics.

    8. Understand the value of predictive and forward-looking analytics.

    Predictive analytics can give a business glimpses of what may happen, the consequences of actions and scenarios for how to respond to change. Technology has advanced to a stage where it is feasible to provide them to a variety of users in manufacturing businesses. Yet the research shows predictive analytics are not yet high-priority analyst capabilities for the lines of business (LOB) nor are what-if and planning-based analytics; each is deemed very important by less than 30 in the LOBs. Exceptions were contact centers, in which predictive analytics ranked second-most important, and supply chains, where they are third-most important. Finance departments are the least likely to use predictive analytics even though they could be widely applicable within this function.

    9. Resources must be adequate to enable investment in technology to make analytics easy to access and use.

    Driving change and addressing barriers require understanding the benefits of investments. Demand that vendors show how their products deliver clear benefits such as these and address issues such as total cost of ownership and return on investment that can help lower the barriers in your organization. Consider cloud computing for deploying for business analytics. Slightly more than half of manufacturing organizations still prefer on-premises deployment for business analytics, but the research found a significant preference for software as a service, or cloud computing. Consider evaluating if your organization is looking to avoid the effort and expense of having in-house technology resources manage your business analytics.

    10. Address barriers standing in the way of improving business analytics and performance.

    The most significant barriers to making changes in analytics are fundamental:

    • Lack of resources
    • No budget
    • A business case that is not strong enough
    • Too low a priority assigned to the effort

    To make matters worse, these barriers are interrelated. Failure to provide a compelling business case results in a project receiving a low priority and therefore not being allocated the resources or budget sufficient to implement the changes. And a failure to properly organize, begin with the end in mind, and forging on without gathering feedback, will all be obstacles in the way of having a successful project or business.