After Jenny & I got our butts kicked in June (tough month), we decided to turn off the iphones,  blackberries, and anything with a wi-fi connection and head out for some R&R in the Rocky Mountains, Estes Park to be exact.  After a few margaritas at the Tiki Bar, we took a stroll through downtown to find some dinner a came across what looked like a boulder climbing Toyota YJ and a stretch limo's love child in a parking lot of a small strip mall in front of some open doors of a small office.

jenny and i enjoying those drinks i was talking about

So I drag Jenny inside with me and come face to face with the owner of Rocky Mountain Rush, Neal. Rocky Mountain Rush gives off-road tours through Rocky Mountain National Park.  I ask for a pamphlet and walk out 5 minutes later with 2 seats to the 1pm tour the next day.  You know that you're dealing with an owner that has everything into his business when they won't let anyone with even the smallest of interest go without pushing for a sale. 

Don't take that wrong, I'm not talking a used car salesman approach, but a personalized one where he took a quick read of us and what tour would work best for us and then left us with no question that the 1pm ride was something that we would regret if we were to miss out on...or maybe it was the margaritas.  We were looking forward to the next day and went back to the Tiki Bar to celebrate.

Yep, the tour was great, but there were 3 things that Neal did that stood out and I feel that everyone could be applying in our careers & personal lives to...well, just to make life better

1. GIVE THEM AN EXPERIENCE

He took pictures of us on our camera (because it's tough to take couple pics on your own), he made sure everyone was comfortable at all times, constantly asked for feedback, kept everyone on the ride engaged throughout the tour.  At one point the guy even grabbed my sunglasses off of my seat and cleaned them for me.  How could our lives changed if we paid attention to these details with costumers, clients and even loved ones in our lives?

one of the pics neal took of jenny & I

I then noticed that Neal had taken down everyone's names and jotted them down on a small piece of paper in order of where everyone was sitting.  He stuck that piece of paper in the window of the truck and was constantly utilizing it to make sure and call everyone by name.  Even a small detail like that brought more warmth and personalization to the entire experience.  How can you personalize the experience you give to everyone on a daily basis?

When I asked why, Neal said that the structure of his business was built around the simple idea of a 1950's full service gas station.

 "At the old gas stations, you always got more than you paid for.  You came there because you were running low on gas, but you kept coming back for 10 years because of the experience.  They'd clean your windows, pump your gas and even share some local gossip, all with a smile.  They truly appreciated your business."

2.  HAVE A GOOD STORY

As we drove up a long pass towards the summit of our tour nearly 14,000 ft above seal level, Neal stopped pointing out wildlife and geological details and told us his story.  He actually told the entire 16 passenger vehicle why he stopped everything to pursue a dream, become an entrepreneur and begin an off-road tour company in Estes Park, CO.  

Turns out that Neal left a job that he was good at.  He sold wine and he sold the hell of it for almost 16 years.  The problem was that he was burning more than 3000 minutes a month on his cell phone closing deals and he began suffering horrible headaches anytime he'd get a cell phone anywhere close to his head.

 This on top of being burnt out, he made the big decision while out in Rocky Mountain National Park rock climbing in an old Toyota built for the extreme environment, a passion of his and something he'd been doing since he was a kid.  He was at a turning point, but he didn't exactly know what to do.  He then told us that a song came on over the radio at that exact time and it was that song that acted as the large switch and threw him into his current vocation.  Then he turned off the mic and played that song as we drove up the mountain pass looking over miles of some of the most beautiful panoramics you've ever seen.  The song was John Denver's "Rocky Mountain High"

Cheesy?  Hell yes.  Did it make a personal impact for me?  Damn straight.  

If you can make me almost shed a tear while listening to John Denver, you've either drugged me or you're one hell of a storyteller.

People relate to people, not businesses.  People have stories. Interesting people have good stories. Tell your story well and change your world.

3.  DO WHAT YOU'RE GOOD AT

I asked Neal what his secret was and he simply said, "I've always done what I'm good at and hired other people do all of the stuff that I don't do well."

So much good stuff in that sentence! 

We constantly feel the need to stive to get better at the things that we weren't wired to do in the beginning.  We even feel guilt or shame for what we cannot do and so we strive so hard to be Jacks of all trades but masters of none.

To get REALLY good at something (to be an expert), you may need 10,000 hours of practice.  Take the things that come natural to you and become perfect them.  Find a way to offload  the other stuff and the momentum may surprise you.

Neal's really good with people, but Neal sucked at paperwork.  "People kept telling me that paperwork was a necessary evil, but all I saw was that it kept me from making more sales".  So Neal hired someone that organization came natural for.  After that, there was no stopping him.

 neal and i taking a breather on the summit

Needless to say, I had a great time learning about Neal's Business and what drives him first hand.  By the end of the trip he was more of a friend than a business transaction.  I think he can teach us all a lot and if you find your way up near Estes, CO, do yourself a favor and take a tour on Rocky Mountain Rush and tell Neal I sent ya.

Anyone can sell you ice cream, but its the experience that will make you buy from this guy.  When you are trying to sell consumers a product that they can get anywhere else, from anyone else, it's the experience you give them that will be the difference.

Ok, the title may be a bit overkill, but I am working on blog titles that grab attention and hey, it's at least partially true.

Last weekend I went out to get some crab legs from Costco and walked back in the house with a $400 blender, a half ton of mixed fruits and...ummm some crab legs. 

This is going in my marketing blog because the story of how I came to making this seemingly "out of the blue" purchase started becoming more clear as I walked myself through the last few weeks.  It becomes a great example of how brands can enter your life from nowhere and make you a believer and more importantly a buyer in a very short amount of time.

The story starts with the viral video meme of "Will It Blend" videos that feature powerful industrial blenders with an attitude from Blendtec.  Turns out that the guy that blends everything from ipads to golfballs to the amusement of millions of youtube viewers is the CEO & inventor of BlendTec Blenders.  We've all seen the videos and if you've read "Groundswell" you know that all of these video views turned into a lot of profits for the Blendtec company going down as a very early case study of the power of social media.

I didn't ever have a lot of interest in watching an iphone get vaporized in a blender, but the important part is that even if I didn't go online and watch every video and purchase one imeediately, it still served a purpose. 

1. I now know what Blendtec is.

2. I know that Blendtec blenders aren't to be messed with.  Anything that is powerful enough to pulverize a rake that goes in my kitchen, I have some interest in.

I see this as a sort of sleeper cell.  A seed that was implanted in my head for a couple of years that just stayed there waiting for the right opportunity.

This takes us to a couple of weeks ago when my co-worker tells me about a $500 blender that she just bought.  I would usually question her sanity, but she has a good track record of good purchases and the tales that she spun of smoothies, hot soups and making her own peanutbutter were captivating.  However, I still had no interest in a blender of my own.

Then last weekend we were visiting my parents and my mom had DVR'd a blender commercial.  Yes, the blender commercial was so awe inspiring for my mother that she recorded it and wanted to share it with Jenny and I.  There it was again, hot soups, peanut butter, ice-cream. 

At this point, I'm not calling the 800 number to purchase, and I'm not even thinking about Blendtec yet but I am thinking that maybe this would be a good Christmas gift.

Now we go full circle to the Costco trip for crab legs.  There I am in Costco, wondering around the store, sniffing out some free samples when I run smack into a huge Blendtec presentation.  I've entered the eye of the storm.  There is a Blendtec representative showing off the product in real life.  A small crowd had gathered.  I stayed for the hot soup, the ice cream and was sold before he could get to the peanut butter.

So social media didn't really make me buy a Blendtec Blender, but it did plant the seed.  Word of mouth and some tv advertising put some dents in my armor for the product itself, and the demo at Costco was the killshot.  In the words of Hannibal from A-Team, "I love it when a plan comes together."

The Costco demo is a genius way to bring a face to face experience to the online branding that they've touched so many possible customers with. 

Will it blend?  Absolutely!

In case you don't get past the first paragraph, let me sum it up.  This strange and wonderful book is a must read.  Buy it today, no matter who you are or where you are in your life, this book will change the way you look at life.

I recently drove to Minneapolis from Kansas City for a work event.  It gave me an opportunity to listen to a couple of books while I was hopping from travel centers, gas stations and random truck stops through Iowa.

I was catching up on Chris Brogan's blog when i ran into his book review of Donald Miller's: A Million Miles in a Thousand Years: What I Learned While Editing My Life.  A few clicks later, the book was on my iPhone and I was heading north on 35 hwy.

This was my first Don Miller book, so I didn't know the background story that had gotten him to the spot in his life where he wrote A Million Miles.  Don had written a best seller "Blue Like Jazz" years prior and hadn't had the same luck with his next few books.  The guy was suffering from writers block when a couple of film makers came to him with a plan to start writing the film adaptation of "Blue Like Jazz". 

Through the process of writing the screenplay, Miller was struck by the fact that his own story didn't have what it took to create a movie that anyone would watch. 

He then takes us through his personal quest of story, told through his experiences with the screenplay as a guide through building story into his own life.  He sees himself as the protagonist in his own movie and uses the same age old rules of story building to put himself into situations that gives his character more strength and more value in their given plot line.

He goes after the girl, rides his bike across country & takes a journey to find his biological father, all with the filter of "the story".  Building on the concept in a gradual, natural and non methodical way that gives this book a very personal and real feel.

This book is really tough to put into a bucket.  I guess I could call it the strangest self help book that I've ever read.  Through the first few chapters, I found myself enjoying the life of Donald Miller, but the book takes a leisurely turn and very quickly I was reflecting on my own life.  Once the idea of "personal story" gets into your head, you're going to have a hell of a time getting it out.

 As an audio book, this just had to be told by the author, so I was very happy to here Don's voice behind the narration.  He's not a professional, but his own words wouldn't sound nearly as honest coming from someone else.

This is the kind of book that you'll find yourself constantly telling people about.  You'll begin to see things through a filter of "story", but not in the judgmental way that you may think. 

 The narration of Don's life may not be memorable in a few weeks, but the idea of creating "story" within your life will be with me always.  It's sticky, simple and smart. 

Found this video on Lifehacker tonight from 37Signals' Jason Fried.  He really jumps out quickly and starts making some very smart and simple observations about how broken modern workspaces are and how his company is working on fixing that model.

Although his company's workspace solutions may not work for everyone, this video really makes you start to break down the fundemental flaws of productivity occuring at work.

Looks like Jason also authored Rework which I'll add to my Audible cue.  The video has also gotten me to look into the 37Signals product line.

Take 7 minutes out of your day today and see if what Fried says hits close to home!

The happy hour will be held at Two West this Thursday, April 1 from 5:30-7:30pm.

We'll have discussions about their podcast, The Brand Show, as well as a conversation about their new anthropology project ESP from their Chief Anthroplogist, Gavin Johnston.

It's a great opportunity to meet some of the people in KC with a passion for Social Media.  We'll have complimentary Boulevard Wheat beer, some wine and even some Sangria made by the staff over at Two West.  Brooke Beason from Two West is also putting together some gift bags for the event.   It should be a good time, and make sure and find me and say HI!

Opening the windows and giving your living space a deep cleanse isn't just for our physical house anymore.  There's no time but the present to take the scrub brushes and oxi-clean to our social networks and make those streams of data sparkle with relevant content.

I recently devoted a Saturday to cleaning out my virtual attic.  I went through my Twitter, Facebook, & LinkedIn with a fine toothed comb and really thought about who's on the streams of info that I check multiple times a day.  This is becoming more and more important with the growth of my networks, especially in Twitter.  The cleaner and more valuable information that your feeds contains, the more you get out of it...period. 

TWITTER

My mantra for this exercise is, "relevance, relevance, relevance".  Is this person posting valuable content?  Is it entertaining, informative, thought provoking, or is it sending me to valuable content all around the web?  If the answer is no, it's nothing personal, but you gotta go.  My stream is just too important to me to muck up with content that doesn't make sense to me and my life.

Another thing that this task made me confront was the popular question, "do I follow you, if you aren't following me?"  Go to Friend or Follow right now and see for yourself.  Friend or Follow allows you to put in your twitter handle and instantly find out the people that you follow that aren't following you back as well as who is following you that you aren't following back.

You'll probably be surprised who's streams your not currently on ,and being a human, it's a little tough not to take this a bit more personally than you should.  Don't let it get to you, like I said before, it's nothing personal and it's all about relevancy. You will also be surprised of the people that fell through the cracks and you aren't currently following. 

So, do I follow people that aren't following me?  Of course I do.  I stick with my mantra and go with who gives me valuable content.  However, if you are running into a lot of people that you think should be following you, that aren't, you can either start questioning your content or better target them.  You could even reach out to them with a reply, next time they post something interesting or include them on a follow Friday post.

FACEBOOK & LINKEDIN

These streams are a bit different in my life.  They aren't constantly streaming on my second monitor like my twitter feeds.  I check both streams probably twice a day on my laptop and two more times by mobile.  My Facebook to catch up with what my friends are doing and LinkedIn to see what people in my professional network are up to. 

My LinkedIn was clean as a whistle.  This is due to a rule that I setup from the beginning, only reaching out to people that I had worked with in the past and only accepting invitations from people that I know and who I have worked with in someway on a physical project.  For now, this is making sense and keeping my LinkedIn very valuable.

My Facebook was a different story.  I hadn't cleaned out my Friends since I signed up over 3 years ago.  Since we were just figuring things out, I found that my bar to accept people into my network has really raised over the past few years.  Before it was a lot about collecting and spying on old highschool friends and girls you had crushes on when you were 18.  It was new and shiny and I certainly wanted to play with it. 

 Now, I can have a look through my relevancy filter, and find out who really needs to be there.  That old high school buddy that I haven't physically talked to or even exchanged an email for 10 years that fills my stream with Farmville and Gangsters requests all day...You gotta go dude.

A rule of thumb that I'm starting to use is if I haven't shared a personal message with you for over a year.  We probably shouldn't be following each other on Facebook.

Now with my feeds and streams sparkling clean and fully optimized to be most interesting and helpful for me, I feel like a new man!  Getting more good content, sharing more and catching things that I may have missed before due to someone updating me on their ham sandwich eating or saying nighty night to twitter.  Take my word for it, get this done sooner than later and put it on your calendar at least 2 times a year. 

The Last Advertising Agency On Earth from FITC on Vimeo.

The Good:  A well read audio book by the author himself, and a subject that mixes study backed information with a writing style with an understanding and passion easily illustrating how big these ideas are.

The Bad:  There's so many big pointsthat you want to write down in this book that the audio form may not be the best way to read this.  I'll be buying the print version for better note keeping.

The Ugly:  Seeing how people are stil managed in 2010 and realizing that most of the social science behind this book was done in the 60's.  Pretty sad.

Daniel Pink's book was one of those reads that don't come very often, but when they do you want to read it slow and really enjoy it.  The ideas put out on the table on motivation may not have been as surprising as the title hints at, but more like someone fortifying opinions that you've always had in the back of your head with more intelligent words and actual facts.

It's like when I was in 3rd grade and as I looked at a map of the world, I told my teacher that it seemed like all of the continents fit together like a big puzzle and that maybe everything was one big piece of land at one time.  My 3rd grade teacher must not have been a geological history major, so I got the run around and didn't learn about Pangea until a decade later.  I think I may have stood up in class and yelled, "i knew that man...I totally knew that!"  Yeah...this book is kinda like that.

Getting to the core of the book lies what Pink calls our motivations operating system.  At the beginning of man we ran on motivation 1.0.  Basically, we were motivated by survival.  Don't get eaten, and make little caveman babies.  This did us VERY well for thousands of years until we no longer needed to worry about being eaten and our lives were beginning to get a bit better as our basic needs became less of a worry.

With the industrialization of work came motivation 2.0.  Basically "carrots & sticks" or rewards for wanted behavior and punishment for unwanted behavior.  This also did extremely well with the mundane tasks of the assembly line type jobs of the time.  Not a ton of passion for people's work so bonuses and write-ups made a lot of sense.

Now in the time of jobs that require more creative thought 2.0 not only has trouble keeping up, but completely starts to break down, opening the door for Pink's motivation 3.0.  Driven by autonomy, mastery and purpose.  We are now motivated not by a big raise or a bonus at the end of the year, but by the betterment of ourselves. 

Chris Brogan's video review of this book is right on the money when he says that as he read it, he was thinking more of how these concepts apply to his own life than merely just the content itself.  I was constantly thinking of occurances with outcomes that now become much clearer. 

Once you read this book, you won't be able to unread it.  If you're stuck in a job that motivates people with business practices from the 50's, you're not going to be going back to work a happy camper.

If you're looking for your next jump or a manager or business owner yourself, this is a must read.  People are people and partners in making your business win, they aren't human rescources anymore.

Great book and Great read!  Thanks Dan, "I knew that..I totally knew that!!!"

I stepped outside the newly opened Crossroads Coffeeshop yesterday to take a call and when I looked up, this sign was staring me in the face.

Although I've passed by it a thousand times, today it decided to make some sense.

It may get a lot of inspiration from Seth Godin, but it's a nice thought to share with your town.  Thanks Sullivan, Higdon & Sink!  I know it was probably tempting to go with, "Everything and the sink".  Thanks for fighting the urge...