Spending any amount of time or money for your appearance will do nothing if your product or service is not offering value. It’s like wanting to tap into the trading and marketing industry so you spend $1,200 on a suit and another $600 on a briefcase and stand on Wall Street and hope you bump into a trading executive that will give you a foot in the door. Doesn’t make sense, does it? Sure, you may look professional but more than likely you are going to just look like your someone standing around in an expensive suit doing nothing.

This is fresh on my mind because I recently developed an identity package and website for a home builder that is having trouble finding new business. Never-mind the residential housing market is in the toilet and most people already know a homebuilder they like and trust. They have been in the area for more than 25 years and have no significant stream of business, no referrals. Absolutely no word of mouth. Odd right? Something isn’t adding up. Either they are not offering a product that people want or their processes are just too complex or painful to hold interest. Want to know how to kill your business? Be complicated, be painful and don’t worry about finding that one thing that people are interested in.

Save your money for fueling momentum instead of trying to create a spark.  You will know when your product or service is solid — you won’t be asking for help to drum up business, you will be asking for help in improving it or fueling it. Also, with the money that you saved, buy the book Rework by Jason Fried & David Heinemeier Hansson. It will probably save you thousands.

Know anyone who had to learn this lesson the hard way or is about to? Feedback

Who or what are you investing in? Google’s employees have done well since the company went public six years ago. Excellent article here at Business Week. Investing in people and ideas is something I am really digging right now. I can think of ten people right now who are interested in starting a company, three of them have a business plan and two of them are actually making it happen.

My little brother is down from Michigan for a couple of weeks. He is studying to be a chef and has some great experience. He has two years to go and is working towards his degree in culinary arts but it sounds like he is leaning towards traveling to experience different cultures and cuisine. It’s amazing to see when people come alive and passionate about something. He and I brainstormed for a couple of hours and he may test out a mobile cuisine service for their local Cherry Festival or Film Festival in Traverse City.

If he moves forward with it I will post updates and hopefully some video clips of his Journey. I believe in him – yes because he is my brother but also because he has experience, passion and is an excellent cook. The question is when the rubber meets the road. Would I invest in his journey? What could I do to help propel his efforts? I have a few ideas. It’s fun.

Fun topic. Just the start of it hopefully. =)

Clicked onto Expedia.com to see how much it would be to visit family in New Zea-land next year.  Looks like we can get the tickets for round-trip with 3 week car rental for about $1600 per person. Not bad actually. Then I stumbled on to their new Trend Tracker Tool – it tells you the trends on best time of year to travel (for cost). Digging it. So I know I was thinking initially about New Zea-land but I have been curious about the best possible time to visit Cozumel, Mexico and it looks like January is the best time to get out of town – around $360.00.

Love travel, love good deals. Love Expedia.com, still.

Auto dealership photo from wired.

Revolutionary Change and Brilliance for $1
What if we all pitched in $1 each and hired Seth Godin and Malcom Gladwell to speak at a live stream “tv, radio, internet” event in Chicago reviewing the next 3-5 year strategy and business plan for The Big Three automakers. I say yes. It is time for GM, Chrysler and Ford to hire the best. Or better yet we can “lease” them for a 2-day summit. Leasing is always better, except when it’s not.

Or we can save our money if they will just empower some of the visionary minds and hearts already in their organizations to help them re-invent.  Your thoughts?

Just in case your in for $1

While we are at it. Let’s apply the same concept to the church.

Myra and I had an amazing time last night at The Living Water International Gayla. A friend from church invited us to attend and learn more about what Living Water is doing for people around the world. These guys have been around since 1998 and have completed over 7,300 projects. They have impacted conservatively hundreds of thousands of people in 26 countries. It was truly amazing to see people give so sacrificially to help those in need. We are praying about funding one water well project and one pump project for 2008-2009. We will see where we go from here. I have never seen a better process for helping people. 83% of funds received go directly to projects with the other 17% going towards administrative and research.

Recently Completed Water Well in El Salvador

Link: http://www.water.cc
Mission Trip Schedule: http://water.cc/living-water/get-involved/trips/
Training Schedule: http://water.cc/living-water/get-involved/training/
Facebook: http://apps.new.facebook.com/causes/5398?m=a9688&recruiter_id=14335667

What are you involved in that will outlast you?

Seriously.

“Sethisms” are now posted:

“You are either the best in the world or invisible.”

“When times are good buying is a sport.”

“When times are not so good we buy somethings because things will never be this cheap again.”

Link here: http://www.businessweek.com/innovate/NussbaumOnDesign/
Posted by: Bruce Nussbaum on September 25

Domain Registrars are offering a really helpful feature called domain recovery. Instead of deleting your domain like in the old days, they hold on to your domain for a period of days as a service and all you have to do is pay the small fee to have it recovered. I had four domains that were set for auto-renewal and somehow the domains were not “auto-renewed”. So “Steve” kindly asked me to take out my wallet and hand it over (he did say please).  $80 x 4 plus regular annual domain registration fees. Sorry, bro but I work for a living. I canceled the domains and purchased some comparable names for the client. We will see if that will fly for now.

After a quick search at Google.com I found that registrar recovery fees compare from $150 and $260 dollars per domain.  What in the world? Is everyone smoking crack out of heavy-duty Tupperware? ICANN has recognized a Redemption Grace Period or RGP probably with good intentions (grace) and registrars took it a ran with it.

“Registrar-level ‘grace’ periods differ from registrar to registrar. It could be 0 (yes, zero) days or up to 45 -1 days (usually 30 – 40 days). Registry-level (ICANN endorsed) RGP (Redemption Grace Periods) last exactly 30 calendar days, during which BOTH the registry AND the registrar are entitled to charge extra ‘recovery fees’.”

Whew-we! That sounds like a solid way to make all kinds of extra cash. Who wants to go in with me a start a Domain Wreckovery Service. I’ll get DWS airbrushed on the new Mac Book Pro and hang some fuzzy dice on the desk lamp and we are in business. It’s all about the money.

So the short version is as soon as we are free from OPEC, ICANN steps in. Ah si, comprendo. Gracias. I  would seriously be interested to hear who has stumbled on to this already and how much did it co$t you?

(ICANN; Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers; www.icann.org)
(OPEX; Organization of the Petroleum Exporting Countries; www.opec.org)

Link here: http://www.twitterfone.com/
Oh and if you don’t have twitter yet, it’s never too late to start =) http://www.twitter.com

“Hurricane Ike will be entered into the record books for the severe damage it inflicted in and around Galveston, Texas, experts say. “This one’s going to be famous for a long time, if for no other reason than it hit Texas, which hadn’t gotten a strike by a damaging hurricane in 25 years,” said Jeff Masters, director of Weather Underground, a private commercial forecasting service.”

The shot above is from the video “Giant Waves Crash Over Buildings” in Cuba.

link here: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2008/09/080915-hurricane-ike.html

Check it out here: http://www.rfpdb.com/view/home/category/Creative