I love Tom Peters. He’s gotten me in trouble for years. Well, his books have. I finally got to have lunch with him, and then see him keynote. The affair just grows and grows. And now, Tom’s done the whole “compile some good blog posts into a better book” thing. It’s awesome. His new book, The Little Big Things: 163 Ways to Pursue EXCELLENCE (amazon affiliate link), is just outright wonderfully STUFFED full of Tom Peters-ish things about pursuing excellence. Some of it is so simple you’ll kick yourself for not doing it already. The rest of it is thought-provoking and heart-felt. You’ll get something out of this book. And it’s HUGE. Almost 400 pages. Just a big giant helping of the man himself. Thanks, Tom.

Direct link to the video

People always ask which camera I used to shoot my video. I use the Panasonic Lumix DMC-LX3 (that’s a review of the camera).

My friend, Chris Hall, has told me about Batten Disease, an illness that strikes down children, most often in the 4-10 year-old age range. Chris’s son, Matthew, passed away from the disease a short while ago. They’ve set up a Facebook group about their son, and about Batten Disease, to raise awareness.

Chris told me, “Our first aim is to significantly increase numbers (for awareness). Once we have done this we’re going to look at creating a charity to help stop this terrible condition and also help children who get it.”

So, the only ask at this time from Chris and his family, is that you consider joining the group.

My ask, to add to this is that you look at the symptoms (according to Wikipedia) and consider requesting a screening if this raises a flag:

“Early symptoms of the disorder usually appear around ages 4-10, with gradual onset of vision problems, or seizures. Early signs may be subtle personality and behavior changes, slow learning or regression, repetitive speech or echolalia, clumsiness, or stumbling. There may be slowing head growth in the infantile form, poor circulation in lower extremities (legs and feet), decreased body fat and muscle mass, curvature of the spine, hyperventilation and/or breath-holding spells, teeth grinding, and constipation.” – source, Wikipedia.

Peace to you, Chris and Mel, and I’m sorry I never got to meet Matthew in person.

I just read a study produced by the Crittenton Women’s Union that shows that a single parent in Massachusetts needs approximately $68,000 a year to raise a toddler and a school-age kid. (Hat tip WBUR Morning Edition). Most single parents (primarily women) aren’t earning even half that in Massachusetts. It’s a tough challenge, and also hard to understand how to help.

By simply sending money, the problem is softened a bit. But there has to be more.

According to Crittenton, we can help by:

• Donating money.
• Giving other goods.
• Mentoring
• Internships
• Outreach

Some of the opportunities I was thinking about when I wrote when this all gets cool is the opportunity to do more in the form of mentoring, internship, and outreach. When I think about all the moms I met at the DisneySMMoms event, I realize that there are some really hard working women out there figuring out new ways to earn money for their family.

Lori Falcon is one. Erika Lehmann is one. Melissa the Consumer Queen is another. They’ve all found ways to make money for their families using the web. (There are obviously non-web ways to make money, too.)

I wonder what we can do. I wonder how we’ll continue to help. What ways will YOU help? What can you give to the cause in the way of mentorship and outreach?

Simon is marketing director for Bar B-Ria, an upscale barber shop experience for gentlemen in Bogota, Colombia. They offer everything from massages to haircuts to manicures and pedicures, and a bar full of top shelf liquor, including a new favorite rum, Zacapa from Guatemala. I’ll tell you what advice I had for the place upon appreciating their services and their commitment to guest experience. This is mostly tactical. There’s still something to learn from it.

Turn The Revenue Measure From “Dollars Per Day” into ” Dollars Per Guest”

Because the entire plan of Bar B-Ria is hinged around delivering excellent guest experiences, it dawned on me that measuring revenue by day instead of dollars-per-guest means that opportunities get lost. For instance, I love Zacapa rum. When I walk in the door, it should be one goal of the Bar B’Ria team to pour me a glass (and add to my bill). This is how places like Disney think. They work on delivering maximum guest experience, but they calculate on dollar-per-guest, as do cruise ships, as do many other hospitality experiences.

Build Relationship Databases

I recommended that Simon have each guest in a database that tells them my preferences all the way through. Do I like gel in my hair after the haircut? Do I want my massage hard or soft? Why shouldn’t everyone in the place know that upon my arrival? It’s going to benefit my experience, and it’s going to improve my perception of the service. You can do this easily with Google Docs, better with BatchBook.

Partner With Hotels

Simon needs my dollars. I’m a US guy in Colombia and the service he offers is premium-but-inexpensive by American standards. If I hadn’t had friends from Colombia, I’d have never heard of Bar B’Ria. The people of Colombia in general don’t know much about it yet, and the men here aren’t yet convinced that a $30 haircut is somehow better than a $4 haircut.

Hotels that cater to people from other countries or vacationers would be a great place to build a relationship with concierges, maybe even to sponsor/advertise. Simon could earn much more by building bridges between the places where people who can afford the experience are and into his establishment.

Until more folks come and see the value for themselves and use it to treat themselves.

Word of Mouth Referral Program

Simon would do well to give me a card upon leaving that offers someone a free drink or a scalp massage or something else. He should give me 3-5 per visit. Imagine the experience: I’m done with my massage and my haircut and my delicious rum, and I am about to leave the venue. Aren’t I going to go forth and spread the word? It’s the perfect opportunity. Should 3 of those people come in with my referral, I’d maybe get a small benefit back: my own free scalp massage, perhaps.

Little Things Add Up

Over all the various ideas I gave Simon, they weren’t immediate millions-makers. They are all experience-enhancing and tactical. They all relate to giving guest value that results in improved revenue and guest acquisition. None of what I talked about had to do with the web. That’s almost the easy part, right?

Your Ideas

What would you add to this, oh social media friends. Give a few ideas in the comments on what you’d do to amp up the social elements, and tell me how they’d help Simon. (I’ll share my ideas in the comments a day or so later.)

Good?

(Oh, and I found this video in Spanish about the venue, if you want more inspiration.

VERY special thanks to Carlos Pardo for help finding the link to the place, and for the hospitality he (and his amazing parents) showed me at their family home for dinner while in Bogota. (And ladies of Colombia: he’s single.)

Blogging is such an opportunity. I’m sad to see people abandoning the chance to express, to connect, to build relationships. For me, the love of blogging (and what it means to me) is why I’ve been in the game so long. It’s how I’ve met most of my current friends. It’s how I’ve stayed sane when I was an employee, and how I center myself today as a creator.

So today, I wanted to write about my love for blogging, and hopefully, you’ll pull from this some ideas or affirmations for what you’re doing.

I go way back, but the tech is new

I’ve blogged in one form or another since 1998. I haven’t owned my own domain for that long, and my early blogs were on WYSIWYG technology (Trellix, invented by Dan Bricklin, actually), and yes, I had a Geocities account (Area 51, baby) ,and a Tripod account, and all that old stuff before I finally got a blogspot blog, then some other tech I can’t remember, and then finally WordPress. I use WordPress because it’s got a strong developer community, because it has a lot of plugins that are useful, and because I liked the themes I could get for it. I use the Thesis theme (affiliate link) and sell it because I love it so much.

My home on the web

Blogging is like my house, or in most modern times, it’s my showplace. It’s not as messy as my mental house. I keep my blog focused on helping others do human business. If I want to write about my kids, I can do that at Dad-o-Matic. If I want to complain about air travel, I have Twitter. I keep my Facebook account as a personal-ish account.

So blogging, as it were, becomes my showplace, my storefront, my “here’s where to get the best of me” site.

Relationship Building

I love the relationships I have with the people who comment on my blog. It took me 8 years to get my first 100 readers. I cherished every one of them. I even take the occasional screenshot of how many RSS subscribers I have because I’m humble and proud each time I hit a new milestone.

And the number in and of itself isn’t interesting. What’s interesting is that so many of you are wonderful contributors to my community, to my education, and to the great pursuits that we all share.

Lead Generation

I went from a blog that only 100 folks read to being a blog in the Top 5 of Advertising Age’s Power150. It was a total lark that I joined. I forget who was kind enough to tell me there was a list. Well, the few times I’ve spent time at number 1 were fun, but to be honest, that’s only a little bit of social proof. Here’s how I get business leads from my blog.

I write about the way I see things, bits about how I might implement it, and ideas that companies can see themselves considering. Companies then reach out to me to either speak or bring New Marketing Labs in and do work for them. The blog got me the book deals for Trust Agents and Social Media 101. So, it’s really paid off well, my time in blogging mixed with my ideas on new ways to do business.

Homebases and Outposts

My blog is my home base. It’s where I want you to go when you find me on Twitter/Facebook/LinkedIn/wherever. Because it’s the biggest part of understanding who I am and what I know how to do. I give you a “Best Of” page so you can find some of the meat of what I believe in an easy-instead-of-chronological way.

My outposts are things like Twitter, Google Wave, Facebook. Those are places where I connect and do something, but it’s not to replace the homebase. I think all these posterous and tumblr side projects can be cool, but rest assured that they detract from the value of growing a solid community. Outposts are where you meet people in the commons. The homebase is where you derive most value.

The Blogging Practice

I write all the time. Blogging helps me with this. I wrote about the writing practice not to long ago, and I write about writing often. It’s not that blogging is hard. It’s that blogging is a lot like going to the gym and it requires a constant practice, like playing the horn, like drawing, like dating. Meaning, it’s a verb. The more you do it, the better it can get.

Blogging as a Storefront

I sell things via this blog sometimes. For instance (and much of this is affiliate links):

Thesis WordPress theme
Third Tribe Marketing (our members-only marketing forum).
Beyond Blogging, an ebook I participated in.
Trust Agents, my book with Julien.
Social Media 101, my own book.
Countless books on Amazon.com, as I read and review quite often.

You don’t have to sell on your blog. It’s just an option that’s there if you want. Those projects above have helped me go to events that I otherwise couldn’t attend, and they’re helping me save for a new home for my family. Blogging gave me that, too.

My Own Magazine/Show/Media Empire

Growing up, none of us had the opportunity to “really” make our own media. We could do magazines by photocopying stuff. We could waste all the ink in our deskjet printers and pretend we were doing desktop publishing. We could record wav files and email them to our friends if we had a week.

But these days, you can be a podcaster, a videoblogger, a blogger, and you can make your own media. You maybe didn’t think of it this way, but the Huffington Post is what “feels” like a mainstream newspaper put together with blogging technology. It’s grown to be bigger than lots of newspapers, a top blog for years running, and yet, it’s just what we’re doing, done bigger.

Meaning, you can be whatever you want. You win on a huge mix of things, but you CAN do it. Distribution is free. Opportunity is nearly free. It just takes a powerful plan and a lot of execution and refinement.

I Love Blogging

And I hope you continue to do what you’re doing. We don’t need fewer blogs. We need more passionate blogs. We need more blogs that educate and inform and instruct and give us what we want. We need more Copyblogger and more Jon Swanson and more The Oatmeal.

And we need you.

You in?

I’m looking over at you, Dave Winer, because you probably wrote about this years ago or something.

I’m sitting here at Zemoga’s offices in Colombia. I realized that I wanted to be able to find a “Team Zemoga” list, click on it, and then dump the entire team into a list on my Seesmic Desktop. I realize that I can follow other people’s public lists, but the functionality is just a bit too clunky still.

I want the ability to take a Twitter list and share it as a new “team” list, with the ability to quickly manage the “follow/followback” as well as the ability to DM them almost like they’re IM users.

Make sense? Is this just me?

I’m in Bogota, Colombia, visiting with Zemoga, run by DJ Edgerton and Alejandro Gomez, and over 100 talented men and women. I’m here partly because DJ wants to work with me in the future, but that’s probably the smallest part of the story. I’m here because DJ is so wildly passionate about Colombia and its people, and he really just wanted me to meet the smart men and women who drive all the cool projects Zemoga executes.

People and passion are what makes anything work. When DJ or Alejandro talk about Zemoga, they talk about the culture, they talk about “bleeding Zemoga green.” They talk about service excellence. They talk about the brilliant artists and creators and technologists who power their projects. Seeing this passion in person is why I’m here. I can get projects anywhere. I came to see the passion.

Most everything you know about Bogota is outdated. It’s a city on the rise. The streets are filled with people pursuing their dreams, who are graduating from top schools and making career moves very much in line with where the new economies are going. There’s all the things you expect from a big city in an old land: a blend of poverty and prosperity, a history so old I can’t understand it colored over by the hope and dreams of what comes next, a people working hard while you remember the stereotypes and the past. They know what you think. They’re just too busy making the future happen that they can’t be bothered to be offended.

Visiting other countries is a privilege. I just got back from a beautiful trip to the UK, where I got to see what’s brewing under their hoods. I got to see their passion. From there, I headed home for a few days with the family, and then scooted off to Colombia with DJ and his team. The difference in those three settings: Exeter, Boston, Bogota – is like the difference in textures and materials, but not passion nor intent.

The people of Bogota, most especially those I’ve spent time with at Zemoga, show me the importance of passion in building business. The employees here are part of something. They are strong in their beliefs. They are moving towards a shared future.

That passion drives me. Some days, I just have to find better ways to channel it into my business relationships. My 2010 plan is ecosystems/owners/kings, and I need to do better at the “owners” part. Because watching Zemoga do what they do, I know that I have much more to learn about driving excellence with passion.

More photos from Bogota? Here they are

Someone else took your idea. You’ve been talking about it for years. That’s your thing. I can’t believe she said what I’ve been saying for years, and now she’s got a book. I could totally do that.

You probably had this idea, too:

Can’t see it? Click click here.

Direct link to the video

The difference between you having an idea and what they’ve done is that they’ve executed. If you’re not executing, you’re talking about doing something. Big difference. If you’ve missed over 20 years of Tom Peters in any format, that’s what he says. He’s been totally saying it for 20 years.

I just deleted my request for a free intern, but not because of the great comments. My contact form got flooded by wonderful people offering their time. For that, I’m grateful. I’ve selected a few people and will proceed.

Now, to the other comments/concerns/accusations.

1.) 94 people responded they were interested. Know why? Because they thought it’d be an interesting project that they were into doing, and because they thought it might show them another aspect of what I’m doing.

2.) Free because it’s more of a quick little thing, not because I can’t pay. I guess I could price it out. It’s mostly something that I think will turn into a public project. I was offering my ideas and insights on what we (the interns and I) will do with the info, and then it will open up to others.

3.) Get over the 22K price tag. It’s amazing what this has brought out of people. I’m seeing a lot about you from how the negative folks responded. I have lots of other price tags, too. 10K-30K for a whole month of New Marketing Labs time. See that? You can get plenty more value if you buy my team instead of just a day of me. I could do this all day. It’s what I’ve chosen to charge, not what you have to pay. Pay what you want. It’s called a marketplace. It’s part of MARKETing. Right?

Years and years and years of free stuff shared all the time and folks get a bit worked up over rates. How do you think I afford to do what I do? How do you think I can afford to flit around and visit everyone face to face and spend time at free and inexpensive events, and why do you think I travel away from my family so often? I earn my living. I earn every hour of it. Begrudge me that and I don’t really know what to say.

My last post on price for at least March. : )

I spend a lot of time in Twitter search. I do it for several purposes. One is for my client partners. For instance, if I’m thinking of ways to do things for MolsonCoors, I might start up searches on various beer brands to get some competitive analysis. I might start figuring out if there are location-specific tweets about Molson products. For instance, during the Vancouver Olympics, I might have found several people tweeting about their beers while out and about enjoying the events. I could do something with that.

But there are lots of ways to use it. Do you need to find more case studies? Here’s a simple search for case studies: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”case+study”+filter:links

Do you want to know who’s talking about burgers near San Francisco? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=burger+near:SF+filter:links”

Want some negative proof? I sniffed around for “site sucks” – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”site+sucks” – to see who’s saying what about bad websites (note: don’t forget to speak the way your tweeters would speak).

Maybe you’re in pharma? I checked out “allergies plus meds OR medication – http://search.twitter.com/search?q=allergies+medication+OR+meds”

There are lots more opportunities to consider. One of my favorites? http://search.twitter.com/search?q=”looking+for”. It’s like permission to sell. Right there. (If you’re not a jerk.)

Oh that Twitter. Such a silly tool. Why even bother? (Keep telling yourself that.)

Bonus Round

Save your searches. Cook them up and put them in your Google Reader or your Seesmic Desktop or your Tweetdeck. Build STATIONS around these kinds of searches. Build response protocols for them. (I’ve barely scratched the surface, but wanted to start somewhere).

And you? Success stories?