The grey-bearded man holding the sign at the street corner figured out a way to compete against other homeless people begging on one of Austin’s busy street corners. I watched in my rearview mirror as person after person handed bills out the window.

He gave a contagious ear-to-ear grin as he held up his carefully lettered blue words on a white background. His competitors with their downcast looks using black letters on a brown cardboard box interior looked on in envy.

He was monetarily rewarded for finding a creative way to stand out in the crowd and get his desired cash results.

Are you finding innovative ways to differentiate your business? If not, I can send you to a street corner where there's a successful idea man that'll probably trade a conversation for a great meal.

If you can’t get to Austin to speak with him in person, you can always choose to call or email one of the Wizard of Ads partners whose names you see on this site!

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Let’s say you’ve got the airport ramp job of guiding planes in and out of the gates using those lengthy fluorescent orange lit wands. You might only need to use them 12 minutes out of every hour. What do you do with them the other 48?

• They’re too long to stay put in a pocket
• Carrying them around is annoying
• Storing them inside the terminal when you’re doing other outside work isn’t convenient
• Tossing them on the ground isn’t acceptable with luggage trailers and tankers and unidentified vehicles zipping in and out

You notice that the flat-bed taxi that pushes the plane out to the runway stays at the gate. That seems to be the perfect place to store the wands as they remain accessible in the vicinity of where they’re used. But there isn’t a storage container built-in to the vehicle. It’s all open air. You know your boss’s boss’s boss won’t approve anything costly to implement on all vehicles.

Think! You need something to put the wands in that is long enough, weather-proof, convenient to open and close, doesn’t take up much space, readily purchased, and easily attaches to a deck. Did you figure out an inexpensive solution yet?

No? You get home, walk out to get your mail, and find the solution is staring you straight in the face……

I watched out the window yesterday, waiting for my daughter’s Southwest airplane to be pushed out to the runway. I noticed that the taxi attached to the plane had a regular silvery-metal mailbox attached at the rear. I thought, “What’s a mailbox doing there?” My question was answered when a guy opened its door, pulled out the wands, closed the door, and used them for their intended purpose. When finished, he put them back into the dry darkness of the mailbox.

Ingenious. Inexpensive. Innovative. Impressive in that someone found such a simple solution. So much better than making you wear a goofy-looking tool belt to hold them in or nailing a plastic bin onto the deck with an annoying top you have to snap on and off. (And if I was the manufacturer of those taxi vehicles, I’d notice this solution to a need and add a similarly designed mailbox component on future models as a differentiator to my competitors.)

What simple solutions are you missing? The answer may be as easy as something you use every day!

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The magic of automatic spell check is that it does just that. The illusion is that no further proofreading is required. Don’t be fooled!

About 12 years ago, I worked on a massive telecommunications proposal that involved the use of a staker (one who stakes out the cable right-of-way). Under deadline pressure, I typed skater more than once—as in the majority of the time. I scanned for red underlined words pointing out my spelling flaws and seeing none, submitted the $1,000,000+ document.

The potential customer requested additional clarification, including, “Define the meaning of skater in regards to fiber optics.” I didn’t live that down for many years. I also religiously proofread as a result ever since!

I was just now reminded of that incidence while reading page 60 of the January 29, 2007 issue of Time magazine and found the following in an article about consciousness.

“The major religions locate it in a soul that survives the body’s death to receive its just deserts or to meld into a global mind.”

I’m thinking the soul had something sweet and chocolately in mind as a reward (dessert), rather than arid sand (desert)!

Can you relate to this story? Would you like to read more stories about writing? If so, please give this one a hearty thumbs up and a comment!

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Have you ever bit off more than you can chew in an effort to grow your business? If you’re under-capitalized and under-employeeized, scrambling to meet multiple deadlines that seemed doable at the time you made the commitment begin to feel weighty.

Combat the pressure of the herd pressing in by imagining each project is an elephant. Recognize which is the matriarch that demands immediate attention and can inflict larger consequences. Now identify which are mid-sized adults that are basically interchangeable. There may be an adolescent project that needs further development. Perhaps a baby that requires smaller yet critical units of feeding time to grow properly.

After looking at the projects in respect to each other, now assess each individually. Just as elephants have many connected parts, so do projects. There are bigger and smaller chunks; pieces that are critical and those that are more peripheral. Viewed in that manner, it’s easy to objectively see which part contains the heart of the project, and which is that fuzz at the end of the tail. Now you have a manageable, trackable, logical daily diet.

Every project has that bit at the end of the digestive tract; the thing you least want to deal with. The sooner you get that part off your plate, the easier the rest will seem.

Cross each bite taken off the list. You’ll begin to notice a quarter of the elephant is gone; then half, then three-quarters, until what’s left is just a stray nose hair or two that may even flit away.

As each elephant begins to get smaller, you’ll feel stronger and more confident. The projects seem more manageable and bites more palatable. And when you’ve stuffed yourself and have the time to sit and digest, remember how emotionally, mentally, and physically difficult consuming multiple elephants can be. Resolve to not purposely place yourself there again; knowing that sometimes it's necessary to do so.

Bon Appétit!!

In case you haven’t heard any good elephant jokes lately, what time is it when a dozen elephants are chasing you?

Twelve after one!

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There’s a story about a shoe company who in the 1800s sent two salesmen to Africa . The first salesman, after observing nothing but bare feet, immediately telegraphed, “Coming home. No market for shoes; nobody wears them.” The second salesman, observing the same shoeless peds, telegraphed, “Hurry! Send shoes and my belongings! The market’s wide open!

On a recent conference call, the discussion was centered on whether the fact that nobody was doing what we were discussing meant that we were brilliant to be there first or bozos to consider the idea.

The business owner, whom I sincerely admire, sees a wide-open market and invited me along on the adventure. The shoe fits so I’m wearing it. Would you?

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If you’ve ever had one of those days when your business seems to be collapsing around you, stop for a moment and consider the expansiveness of our universe. Sometimes we need a reminder that life is so much more than the problem we're facing today.

Clicking on this photo of the Ant Nebula, which lies within our galaxy between 3,000 and 6,000 light years from Earth, will take you to the other nine photos voted by astronomers as being the top ten most amazing pictures taken in the last 16 years by the Hubble Space Telescope. I think Michael Hanlon, a reporter for the Daily Mail where these are posted, said it best: "they illustrate that our universe is not only deeply strange, but also almost impossibly beautiful."  

Enjoy this moment of awe and reverence to God’s magnificent artistry!

As an FYI, according to heavens-above.com , a light-year is the equivalent to 5,878,625,000,000 miles (9,460,730,000,000 kilometers).

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Have you ever been frustrated with trying to get to a business you can see but can’t easily reach? When looking for a location, it’s easy to get sold on one that has 92,000 cars whizzing by each day. But if your site is on a divided highway or expressway that requires passing you, flipping around, and then wandering up additional roads, you’re most likely going to have customer frequency issues.

I used to drive by what appeared to be the best restaurant site in Columbus, Ohio. It sat King of the Hill to both an expressway and a divided highway. I’m sure the car count was incredible. The problem was no visible way to drive there. The hidden access road was limited to a small ground sign due to community restrictions. If you saw it, you then drove through a neighborhood and then onto another access road. Even though highly-respected chains were sold on the location, the site was bad and as a result, the building changed names quite frequently as each business tried and failed. The hassle, even to locals, wasn’t worth it.

Cracker Barrel restaurants are notorious for building on highly visible locations that are bad sites in terms of access. But they have brand notoriety that allows them to do that whether it’s a store in Nebraska or one in West Virginia. Their customers are looking to take a driving break and will spend that extra time to get there. Will yours?

A local BBQ restaurant on a divided highway with a distance between lights solved the problem by purchasing an abandoned road to give customers coming in the opposite direction alternate access from the previous light. It wasn’t apparent to me the first time I went there but now it’s what I consistently use and I show my appreciation with my dollars.

Unless you’ve got a large enough advertising budget and the time to overcome getting-to-you issues, don’t forget to take accessibility into serious consideration—as well as visibility and car count—when choosing a business location.

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I learned about creating rooting interest in a movie context at David Freeman’s “Beyond Structure” screenwriting course. His research showed that kind treatment of an animal subliminally affects your impression of the associated human. I believe that the same principle also applies to web sites (and the associated business) as well.

For example, to promote Heartgard Plus Real-Beef Chewables to help protect your pooch against heartworms, Merial Ltd. created an interactive site, I Do Dog Tricks, to win the hearts and pocketbooks of dog owners. (This interactive site will seem familiar to those who remember Burger King’s Subservient Chicken campaign a few years ago.)

At the site, homey folk music fills the air as you type in typical dog behavior commands such as roll over, lie down, bark, dance, jump, shake, fetch, sneeze, and play dead. The pre-taped video creates the impression that the adorable lap dog with the expressive eyes is directly responding to you. Commands not programmed (there are no atypical behaviors such as what the subservient chicken performs) are met with messages such as “I don’t understand because I am an obedience school drop-out.”

Clicking on the PROTECT ME button shows a hand removing one of the chewables from the container and offering it. The canine eagerly approaches and eats it. Easily protected dog = happy owner. A printable coupon is then presented so you can protect your best friend as well.

The site also managed to catch the December 3, 2006 web journal at the Washington Times.

Type in KISS as the last command for a sweet ending. Everybody say “Ahhhhhh!”

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“The Disney Difference” is one of the many pins my daughter and I traded for at Disney World just before Christmas. Nobody in the world is more meticulous about customer service than the happiest place on earth!

All kiosks, carts, and stores are fully staffed. Name tags list the languages spoken by that individual to help those for whom English is not a primary language. The alabaster-white uniformed clean-up crew is ever present. A stray napkin blowing on the ground was picked up by a passing manager who then barked his location into a walkie-talkie.

After ten minutes at a solid pace and our destination not in sight, we stopped and asked Stephanie from Sweden. She smiled as well and pointed in the same direction. The difference is she added, “Walk until you find the teacups, turn left, go under the banner, and pass Minnie’s house. Sleeping Beauty should be in the next building, about ten minutes from here.”

Objectively, both employees were well-groomed, articulate, and friendly customer service ambassadors. Subjectively, the difference was immense. It was after dark, we already had been at the park eleven hours, and our tennis shoes were pressing blisters. Had Roberto offered that we were looking at a brisk twenty-minute walk, we’d have passed until the next day. Given that Stephanie told us precise directions and how long it would take to get there, we evaluated that we’d already come that far and might as well continue.

Although gone for the evening by the time we arrived, we had a nice chat with Princess Aurora the next day. Caroline from Perrysburg, Ohio told us exactly where to find her!

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In my previous post on instantly reviewing the blogs here at ASB, I mentioned that readers can also click on the del.icio.us logo in the bar under each blog. Never heard of del.icio.us?

A member of the Yahoo! family, del.icio.us is a social bookmarking website. This means that rather than having your bookmarks stored on a single computer accessible only to you, you store your favorite links online. You can access your bookmarks from any computer as well as share them publicly with others. You can search through other's bookmarks to see if anything interests you.

Tags, one-word descriptors, make it easy to define how you personally remember or relate the links versus how someone else identifies them.

Besides being a convenience, it’s also a social commentary on the ways your business is being tracked and shared with others known and unknown by you.

Access del.icio.us here to learn more.

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