Erich Stauffer

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  • Review of a Self-Help Dropout

    It’s as if Chris Hardwick asked WIRED, “Is there anything I can do to re-inspire confidence in your magazine with Jason Cobb?  He’s been reading your magazine since your covers featured tight-fisted EFF logos, even before Marc Andreesen launched Netscape. He’s the rebellious teenage hacker whose grown up to work in an office everyday, but still yearns for the fancifulness that only WIRED can bring.  Let me bring it to him.  Let me be the one.”  And so, we get “Diary of a Self-Help Dropout” by Chris Hardwick, freelance writer, comedian, and musician.

    Its a review of three self-help books including Allen’s Getting things Done, a feature favorite and life changer for Jason Cobb and millions of others around the globe.  I busted out laughing on page 75 when he summarized Allen’s system for prioritization, “Explode my individual tasks into a philosophical framework incorporating my life’s ultimate purpose.  Oh, OK. That’s all I have to do.”  I’ve often felt the same way.  One more quote that just reeks of Jason is on page 77 when Hardwick says of menial tasks, “You might as well write a check to ‘Failure’.”  I think that if Jason just gives this issue a chance he might come to love WIRED again.

    Best “Crash” Ever?

    Jan 2009’s WIRED magazine sees more bells and whistles than ever before.  There are more things going on, each page filled with sub-boxes, clues to guide you through the choose-your-own adventure that editor Chris Anderson wants every issue to be.  The first article to stick out to me was by Scott Brown on page 66 entitled “Best Crash Ever.” What caught my eye was a reference to “The Great Facebook Panic!”. Okay, Scott, you have my attention.  Go on.  He does.  The premise of the story is to imagine what the new depression, which starts in 2008 will look like now that we are in the digital age, but around half-way through the article, something started sounding familiar.  The dystopian mix of technology and hard-times sounded like a sequel to Snow Crash and then it hit me.  Why not have a sequel to Snow Crash set in today’s “metaverse” and economic slowdown. When the only thing we are good at as a nation is programming and pizza delivery, it pays to have tight wheels, friends you can trust, and a fast connection – even if it means living in a U-Stor-It.

    I emailed Scott Brown this message:

    Great story in the Jan 2009 issue.  Wondered if “Crash” was a wink to Stephenson’s Snow Crash? I didn’t think about this until about half-way through when I realized how your article could be construed as a premise for a sequel to Neal’s epic.

    And he replied a little over a month later:

    Oh dude. I wish!

  • Television Re-Defined

    Snuffaluffagus ProofThe lines between television and the Internet have been blurring so long I hereby no longer define television as a device which sits in your living room, but as a medium that can be played anywhere. I can play television on any device I choose. I have come not to be thankful that the shows I see on traditional television networks are available online, but to expect it – and when they are not, I am shocked, then angry.

    I can view television on my LG cellphone, my Apple iPhone, my HP netbook, my Dell Desktop. I can play TV on the Internet through a network’s website such as ABC.com, NBC.com, or CBS.com, or through aggregate networks like Hulu.com. My favorite, by far though is on Netflix using their instant viewing feature. My wife now watches more shows on Netflix than on our XP Media Center PC, which saves shows from cable television.

    Wired Magazine ran an article April 2007 entitled, “The TV Is Dead. Long Live the TV”. The gist is that, “TV is evolving into something new and hardly recognizable to generations raised on its earlier incarnations.” This evolution is more of a time-and-space separation. Where and what we watch is no longer coupled with a specific device, location, or time of day. But what does this do to the previous culture we had whereby office cooler or dinner table talk revolved around the happenings of a popular show? The term “popular” is now somewhat irrelevant. You might even go as far to say that going forward, markets won’t exist, only niches and micro-niches.

    In the photo you can see me pointing out “proof” that Snuffaluffagus exists.  This is a sort of inside-joke between peers of my generation who grew up watching Sesame Street back when Big Bird was the only one who could see “Snuffy.”  This was also back when the Cookie Monster actually was allowed to eat cookies, but both have changed.  Nowadays, are there enough children watching Sesame Street to allow for such inside-jokes? This isn’t a problem, per se, but just a reflection of our times.  You might even say, “The Market is Dead. Long Live the Market.”

  • Mind your manners and mix your metaphors

    During a rain storm last week, I saw a caterpillar scooting across the sidewalk.  He was trying to get from one rain soaked area of grass, to another.  It seemed like he was going in a new direction to a better, drier place, but he was really going to end up in a location much like where he started from.  Since I was walking there, it was not exactly the safest place for him to be.  But, I happened to be looking down, and he was spared the weight of my 200 lbs on his back.

    Someday, if he makes it, he will become a butterfly.  You usually don’t see butterflies moving about in the rain.  Rather, we often see them on a bright sunny day when times are carefree and relaxed.  The butterfly can see where he is going from his view up high, and he has the wings to get him there.  If the wind blows the right way, he doesn’t really have to work much at all to get where he wants to be.  Being a butterfly is pretty sweet.

    Maybe you can see the life metaphor within the caterpillar/butterfly example.  It’s not all that subtle, but it is something that might encourage you in the right moment, the next time you feel stuck and see a caterpillar struggling around on its belly like the cursed serpent of the Garden of Eden.  Perhaps the sight of a butterfly will raise your spirits and put a song in your heart when you realize how free you are, just like your winged friend.

    It’s lovely and touching.

    The only problem is… it’s not always the case with life as we know it.

    There are times at the beginning of an endeavor when everything comes fast and easy.  The rails of life are greased with opportunity butter, and you’re coasting at a comfortable speed.  The grasshopper flies around and eats whenever he feels like it, not seeing the need to store up food for a drought or a literal rainy day.  The tiny ant works hard and saves food up for those hard times.  He doesn’t enjoy the beginning of the season when much time is spent searching and gathering, but he does live to eat and survive through the winter.

    I promise that I didn’t just watch “A Bug’s Life”.  But my mind was taken to these fables and metaphors because of the stories I have heard and the movies that I have seen.  We are still dealing with bugs, but these stories seem to be painting different pictures of life and experience.

    Or are they?

    Metaphor, like beauty, is often in the eye of the beholder.

    If you are moved to tears by a song that reminds you of a romantic relationship, and you later learn that the artist was singing about her dog, does that change the authenticity of your feelings?  Individual interpretation happens at nearly every experience of life.  You may even feel differently about an experience in the past just by remembering it now, based on your current knowledge, understanding, and feelings.  Its difficult to say if we can be truly objective about anything.

    If a friend’s death causes you to slow down and smell the roses, or get busy with some task that you were delaying, both are constructive and positive.

    Very little of life is either/or.  It’s not always black and white.  Some principles are not foolproof and will fail when applied liberally to all of your dilemmas.  There is often an exception that proves the rule.

    So as you enjoy today, and experience a metaphor for life, pay attention to how your actions follow your understanding of that metaphor.  If there is a disconnect, then I would guess there to be another stronger principle in your life that is overlapping and overriding what you observed today.  Keep seeking.  Find the principles that are truly guiding your life and your actions.

    And remember…. mind your manners and mix your metaphors.

  • PillowTalk Offers More than Lingerie in Carmel, Indiana

    PillowTalk, a Carmel, Indiana based lingerie retail outlet, is a unique lingerie boutique that sells couture lingerie and other fine accessories for women. PillowTalk came to Erich Stauffer with the desire to redesign their site in order to better represent their brand. Erich Stauffer helped them do this by picking a color scheme and font that better matched the stores look and feel. The result was a website that better reflected the core image and brand the business was trying to represent in downtown Carmel. How can Erich Stauffer help you do the same? Contact Erich Stauffer to find out.

  • Studying Success

    Successes can motivate you and give you ideas on what to do differently.  My wife has pushed me to use my personality and blend it with what I enjoy doing.  Find something to do that you would normally do for free and start charging others for your services.  Then you will succeed, at least that is what my brother taught me.  This blog post shares a little bit about my family and what my brother has shared with me about how he decided to start his own business.

    Most people don’t like to mow their lawns.  My brother has never complained about mowing.  He finds it peaceful and rewarding when he turns around and sees the straight lines and clean cut grass.  Then he started noticing all the horribly installed fences.  He wanted to install straight, neat and top-quality wooden privacy fences.  He then built his first privacy fence on his property and have critiqued it over and over again in his own mind.  Through those trials he learned what works and started his own fencing contractor business.

    Here is a story my brother tells about learning how to sell:

    I knocked on the door next to a new mowing customer I got two weeks ago because their lawn was worse than the one I was mowing.  When the lady answered she was not prepared to talk to me.  I asked her if I could give her a quote for mowing and she said she had a 13 year old.  Ok I left a business card anyways and said if she changed her mind to call me.  3 days later I got an e-mail from them.  No phone call, just an email.  I was driving to St. Louis on Wednesday when they wrote the email.  I did not check my email until Friday morning while waiting for a colleague in the hotel lobby on a free computer.  Shocked that they even responded and I was now 3 days later to respond, I quickly gave them a call, scheduled a time to meet.  emailed them the estimate at night, they next day they called with the good news that we got the bid and 50% down.

    A Delay is Not a Denial

    Just because someone does not return your message right away or come to a conclusion right away, it doesn’t mean they aren’t interested.  A delay is not a denial.

  • The Law of Focus

    The Law of Focus: Management, Measurement, and Value

    Management, Measurement, and Value

    There are many variations of the Law of Focus, but they all stem around a singleness of thought.  In Jeremiah 32:39 The LORD says, “I will give them singleness of heart and action, so that they will always fear me for their own good and the good of their children after them.”  It seems that God supports the idea of focus in order to achieve a desired outcome.  Six Sigma mixes the Law of Focus in with Pareto’s Law stating that 20% of a process causes 80% of the waste.  Six Sigma is about increasing efficiency, but I would like to introduce a Law of Focus that is based on three things: management, measurement, and value.

    Management

    Every manager managing a department worth his salt collects data of some sort.  This data is usually associated with a predetermined metric of some sort.  A metric is simply a measurement that can reliably compared to another measurement to allow for analysis.  Analysis is in of itself the act of comparing one metric to another.  The manager then uses these measurements to make decisions.  How many errors were there last month versus this month? Why? Production was higher this month than last month? Why? What happened? How can we do this again?

    Measurement

    The manager can only manage what he or she is measuring.  If you’ve ever had a boss that cracks down hard on dress code or attendance, he or she is probably not busy actually managing what Peter Drucker calls “social technology”.  They are not innovating, they are only keeping the status quot.  Innovating managers will look for differences in their analysis of the metrics, but they can only create an analysis if they have measurements to begin with.  What you are not measuring you are not managing. Period.

    Value

    The last leg of this three-legged stool is the glue that holds it all together.  For unless the manager cares about the measurement, he would not ask for it.  And by default, what he or she is not asking to be measured, they are saying that they do not value it.  Regardless or not if this is true, this is how your staff will perceive it.  Have you ever noticed that once a metric begins to be measured, that metric naturally begins to improve over time? This is because the manager is bestowing value on the measurement by asking for it.

    Summary

    Measurement changes things. What you care about you will focus on. What you focus on, you will measure. And because you are measuring it, it will improve. This is the Law of Focus.  I like the way Karl Moore put it, “Intention sets direction.” What you focus your intentions on will grow.  These are universal truths that can help you in your business, your life, or both.

    More > If you liked this post, be sure and check out > 4 Steps from Wanting to Receiving…

  • The Confidence-Success Loop

    confidence-success-loopThe “con” in con-man is short for confidence.  Con-men are successful because they are confident.  They “fake it until they make it” one might say.  This same confidence can and is used by successful law-abiding citizens every day.  What I am suggesting is that there is such a strong connection between success and confidence that once one enters the loop through solid work, the loop begins to feed itself.

    Lets talk for a moment about what I have identified as the entry point, “solid work”.  This is the preparation, the due diligence, the hard data gathering that backs up the confidence.  Yes, you can “fake it until you make it”, but those who make it eventually create solid work to back up their confidence.  Without it, the faking can only last so long.

    Now, if you’ve heard or read Jim Collins talk about “the flywheel concept”, you can see how this kind of applies here.  In the beginning, it takes more solid work to get your confidence up, but once you have it, the past successes will make you more confident.  Confidence will then lead to more success, but if you don’t keep backing it up with solid work, the flywheel will eventually stop spinning.

    Danielle Franklin of ForexExplore.com says that “Once you earn new experience, the confidence increases,” and I would have to agree. Whether you are in stocks, sales, teaching, politics, or management, managing your confidence-success loop is critical.

  • Getting the Right Marketing Mix Using Social Media

    Currently there are many social websites that have created a platform for you to speak directly to and with your current and future customers.  There are also many tools that help manage this relationship, pushing the same content out to all platforms at once, or changing it slightly using built in rules.  There are no hard and fast rules for the Web 2.0 landscape because it is all still so new, but what we can do is look to those businesses who are having success in these new areas.Know, trust, buy. Erich Stauffer Marketing Consulting.

    We measure success by the three methods, “know, trust, buy.”:

    1. Brand awareness. (Does the customer know you?)
    2. Brand favorableness. (Does the client trust you?)
    3. Increased sales. (Does the client buy from you?)

    Blasting your message out to one or as many social media sites as you can will help get your brand more noticed, and so achieve more awareness, but you also need to be genuine.  The best Internet marketers make sure to engage with the customer and not just try to sell them something at every turn.  The medium lends itself to this sort of engagement and turning down the opportunity to do so may break the trust, or the brand favorableness.  Once you have established both the know and the trust, then the customer feels free to buy from you, but there is value to both brand awareness and brand favorableness even if the one who you are impressing does not buy.  Once the goodwill is out there, the person you engaged with may refer you to someone else.  Like the butterfly flapping it’s wings, even the smallest twit on Twitter may lead to a hurricane sale on the other side of the world.

  • ROI on Traditional Mail Marketing Campaigns

    Peter K. Francese, President of American Demographics, is famous for his rule of thumb, “If you get more than two replies for every hundred pieces of mail you send out, you’re doing great.”  This is because in the old days, a 1% return on a direct mail marketing campaign was considered successful and eventually became the standard.  Recently, some email marketing companies have touted returns as high as 1 in 57, but once you convert that to a percentage, it is still in line with the overall average of 1-2%.  So is direct mail or email the best route for your business?

    Gary Christensen, who has been writing about making profit through the mail since 1973, recommends a “2-Step Method”.  The first step is mailing as many small ads as you can in order to draw inquiries.  These ads should contain something for the reader in exchange for contacting you.  The second step is to process the iquierers by contacting them by phone or another round of mail.  The same could also apply to email.  In this way, you are spending more money only on those who may actually be interested in what you have to offer, rather than sending out more information to more people first, which is more costly.

    However now that we have discussed both the traditional ROI and the 2-Step Method, you can see that there may be a better way to gain more customers or clients for your business.  The more targeted the ad, the less money you need to spend, and the more the return on investment.  This is how Google, Bing, Amazon, and other online advertisement companies have changed the marketing landscape in the last decade.  Instead of blasting out your message to 99% of the wrong audience, you can pay to only speak to the people already searching for your product or service.

    If you have more questions about promoting, advertising, or marketing your business, services, or products online, please contact Erich Stauffer at http://erichstauffer.com.