I’m reading productivity guru David Allen’s latest book “Making it all Work” and have encountered an eye opening and insightful quote about life and the wants and needs we have at various life stages, particularly from the perspective of getting organized. Hope it’s as useful for you as it is for me…
“For the first 25 years of my life I wanted Freedom. For the next 25 years I wanted order. For the next 25 years, I realized that Order is Freedom.”
-Winston Churchill
Invent a proof positive document shredding company. Hate the idea of leaving my old confidential documents in someone elses hands. Love the idea of handing a bag of papers to someone behind a counter and watching them shred it right in front of me. Call me paranoid, but I bet there is a market for this sort of thing. Especially if it’s 50% or more as cheap as buying a basic paper shredder for home.
One interesting development from the Haiti earthquake crisis with marketing implications is the use of text messaging to trigger a payment. Text ‘Haiti
to 90999 to donate $10 to the American Red Cross. Text ‘yele’ to 501501 to donate $5 to help with relief in Haiti via Wyclef Jeans’ Yele Haiti foundation.
What these two organizations quickly figured out is that many people will give if you make it super simple & easy. They also were astute enough to look at cell phone companies as more than just providers of a wireless signal – in this case they are a billing vehicle. Brilliant.
I’d be surprised if this form of mobile payment didn’t become wildly popular in the not so distant future with any company that is looking to sell something. What’s more, putting a wireless carrier in the middle of a customer and corporation could breathe a new life giving revenue stream the wireless industry. For the Haiti crisis, the telcos will pass along nothing short of 100% of donations to the relief organizations. However, given the approach of intermediary in moving money from one party to another based on a consumers credit, it’s inevitable the telcos start collecting a merchant processing fee for each transaction, or even interest payments for immediate distribution of funds (ahead of consumers paying their bills). This could turn wireless telcos from commoditized dumb pipes into banks.
What do you think: will texting of payments grow wildly popular? Will telcos start acting (and collecting) like banks or credit card companies?
Happy New Years Eve!
I just spent a few minutes perusing David Allen’s latest ‘Productive Living’ newsletter and felt compelled to share a very thoughtful and interesting portion of it with you. For those of you who know about David’s Getting Things Done system, it should come as no surprise that he is recommending (and guiding you on) a year-end review in an effort to put closure to 2009 and providing some goal oriented questions that allow you to move into 2010 with focus. To check out his newsletter in full go here. To walk through his process of mentally closing out ‘09 and moving into ‘10, set aside a half hour and answer the below questions. It’s a fun exercise that’s somehow confidence building and motivating too. Enjoy….
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This post is about how businesses today need to think hard about their customer experiences, before, during and after the sale. It’s based on a not so positive recent experience I had.
Recently, while shopping for a Halloween costume for my 3 year old son, we made a special stop at one of those seasonal Halloween specialty stores that seemingly appear overnight in empty mall/strip mall retail space. Excited by the idea of getting this annual task out of the way early in October, and finding a great costume, we walked briskly from parking lot to store, which was a massive retail space formerly the home of CompUSA.
Entering the first set of double doors we were greeted by a life-size Dracula, Frankenstein and Mummy in a dark and cob- webbed environment. This was a great start to the shoping experience! My son was relishing the sight of the spooky creatures.
Then it happened. Read the rest of this entry »
An interesting thought stemming from Chris Anderson’s book FREE is that while we cognitively understand the concept of abundance, our psyches and primordial instincts are only really programmerd to respond to scarcity. In other words, we are motivated by the things we don’t have, not by the things we do. So. how would wants originate in a world where everything was plentiful and free? As always, thoughts on this topic are welcome (and free)…
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Pete Cashmore at Mashable published a post yesterday that highlighted something very cool about the current President of the United States – his belief in ‘new media’.
As the name of the post suggests “Obama Speech To School Children: Be Like Founders of Google, Twitter and Facebook” this is a snippit from a forthcoming speech meant to inspire and motivate a future generation of leaders, currently grade school kids, in the face of a rapidly changing business and communications landscape.
As a parent, this post really struck a chord with me because it’s the same idea that I have in mind for how I wish to raise and educate my almost 3-year-old son. Read the rest of this entry »
This will probably fall on deaf ears, but what the heck.
To supermarket GM’s and Regional Managers who are looking to acquire new customers and retain existing customers: there are two areas where you should not be cutting corners.
1) Freshness of Produce: Past ripe produce shouldn’t be on the shelves, period. The cardinal error in produce handler judgment is leaving it on shelf “just a day” longer than it should be. And, hiding soft spots from view. This may get it in someones cart initially, but will inevitably be discovered at home and you will have a very angry customer.
2) (and this is just ever so slightly less important than fresh food…) Read the rest of this entry »
If you’re one of the few remaining that hasn’t ventured into the world of social media yet, this post is for you. Here’s a ranked list of the easiest to most time consuming methods of getting involved with social media, based on my experience.
