BMA Marketing’s blog

Tips, stories and news to grow your business 

Pocket laser projector

 
Awesome!

http://www.microvision.com/showwx/experience.html

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How to Tie the Perfect Tie... Every Time

 
Great short "how to" video clip from Tim Ferriss...

Click here

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Promote Your Business With Coupons and Contests


Find out why offering customers coupons or giving them free products is beneficial for your business.

While the name guerrilla marketing was conceived in 1980 with the first guerrilla marketing book, there is evidence of guerrilla marketers way before that. In 1895, C. W. Post, the cereal manufacturer, offered the first money-off coupon ever issued in the United States. The one-cent off coupon came with Grape Nuts cereal. By turn of the century standards, this was very guerrilla-ish, and a lot of money. Today the use of coupons has grown so much that consumers have saved over $4 billion dollars since coupons were invented. Not bad for just a little clipping and redemption. Coupons bring a consumer to a business to spend more than the incentive cost of the coupon. That's the basic concept of using coupons. That's guerrilla marketing.

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Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring

There’s a non-zero chance that you’re reading this because you were thinking:  “What the heck is he talking about?  Shouldn't startups be hiring the best people possible?  What's this about compromising?”

And, if you were thinking that, you’d be right.  Startups should hire the best people possible.  But, if you re-read the title, you’ll notice that I’m saying you should always compromise.  Why?  Because there’s no such thing as the absolutely perfect hire along every possible dimension.  If you recruit people that you think were a “no-compromise” hire, you’re deluding yourself with unrealistic expectations.  Nobody’s perfect (and if they are, you probably couldn’t recruit or afford them anyways).





Everyone you bring on is a compromise.  The trick is to compromise on the right things.

Let me explain.  Here are several different attributes or “dimensions of awesomeness” you might seek for your startup recruit:

1.  Passion:  Are they fired-up?

2.  Experience:  Have they done this particular job before?  Did they succeed at it?

3.  Intelligence:  Are they smart?

4.  Academics:  Do they have the right degree?  From the right place?

5.  Hunger:  Are they motivated?  Are they ambitious?

6.  Risk-Tolerance:  Can they share the risk?  Or, are they looking to make fair market value?

7.  Scrappiness:  Can they get by with little?  Are they resourceful?

8.  Loyalty:  Can you get them to commit to your cause?  Will they be fiercely loyal?

Those are just a few I thought of off the top of my head.  It’s by no means a complete list.  I intentionally left out things like “integrity”, because it’s hard to argue in favor of compromising on integrity.  That’s just plain stupid.

But just about all of the attributes listed above could be compromised a little in exchange for something else.  For example, if you were somehow able to grade a recruit along all these dimensions, you might find that someone scores “average” in the academics dimension — but is off-the-charts smart (happens all the time).  So, you might decide that it’s OK for them not to have an ivy league degree.  Or, someone might be so smart, passionate and entrepreneurial — but lacking in experience.  Perhaps that’s OK too.  Or, maybe you really do have to have the absolutely perfect person along every possible dimension, but they’re so good, you’re just not sure you’re going to be able to keep them engaged.  Perhaps you’ll have to compromise on the loyalty front.

The point is, like with just about everything related to startups (and lots of things in life), there are tradeoffs.  You need to figure out which dimensions are absolutely critical (where you will not give), and which ones you’re willing to compromise a little on.  There’s no right answer — it depends on your business, your culture, your values and your instincts. 

What do you think?  Which attributes of people do you value the most?  What would you be willing to compromise on, if you could get almost everything else?  What things do you hold inviolate — that you would never compromise on?  Please leave a comment.

From OnStartUps.com

 

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Automatic Money Flow

 
(From Tim Ferris' blog)

Case study: Michelle’s Automation System

To see how this will work, let’s use Michelle as an example:

automation-overview

Michelle gets paid once a month. Her employer deducts 5 percent of her pay automatically and puts it in her 401(k). The rest of Michelle’s paycheck goes to her checking account by direct deposit.

About a day later, her Automatic Money Flow begins transferring money out of her checking account. Her Roth IRA retirement account will pull 5 percent of her salary for itself. Her savings account will pull 5 percent, automatically breaking that money into chunks: 2 percent for a wedding sub-account, 2 percent to a house down-payment sub-account, and 1% for an upcoming vacation. (That takes care of her monthly savings goals.)

Her system also automatically pays her fixed costs like Netflix, cable, and insurance. She’s set it up so that most of her subscriptions and bills are paid by her credit card. Some of her bills can’t be put on credit cards—for example, utilities and loans—so they’re automatically paid out of her checking account. Finally, she’s automatically e-mailed a copy of her credit card bill for a monthly five-minute review. After she’s reviewed it, the bill is also paid from her checking account.

The money that remains in her account is used for guilt-free spending money.

To make sure she doesn’t overspend, she’s focused on two big wins: eating out and spending money on clothes.

She sets alerts in her Mint account if she goes over her spending goals, and she keeps a reserve of $500 in her checking account just in case. (The couple of times she went over her spending, she paid herself back using her “unexpected expenses” money from her sub-savings account.) To track spending more easily, she uses her credit card as much as possible to pay for all of her fun stuff. If she uses cash for cabs or coffee, she keeps the receipts and tries to enter them into Mint as often as possible.

In the middle of the month, Michelle’s calendar reminds her to check her Mint account to make sure she’s within her limits for her spending money. If she’s doing fine, she gets on with her life. If she’s over her limit, she decides what she needs to cut back on to stay on track for the month. Luckily, she has fifteen days to get it right, and by politely passing on an invitation to dine out she gets back on track.

By the end of the month, she’s spent less than two hours monitoring her finances, yet she’s invested 10 percent, saved 5 percent (in sub-buckets for her wedding and down payment), paid all of her bills on time, paid off her credit card in full, and spent exactly what she wanted to spend. She had to say “no” only once, and it was no big deal. In fact, none of it was.

(complete
article..)

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WHY YOU NEVER QUESTION A DRUNK


I was shopping at the local supermarket where I selected:

A half-gallon of 2% milk
A carton of eggs
A quart of orange juice
A head of lettuce
A 2 lb. can of coffee
A 1 lb. package of bacon

As I was unloading my items on the conveyor belt to check out, a drunk standing behind me watched as I placed the items in front of the cashier.

While the cashier was ringing up the purchases, the drunk calmly stated, 'You must be single.'

I was a bit startled by this proclamation, but I was intrigued by the derelict's intuition, since I was  indeed single. I looked at the six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly unusual about my  selections that could have tipped off the drunk to my marital status.

Curiosity getting the better of me, I said: 'Well, you know what, you're absolutely right. But how  on earth did you know that?'

The drunk replied, 'Cause you're ugly."

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1981 TV Report On Birth Of Internet News

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I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.

Lucky people persevere in the face of failure. You've all seen that Nike commercial from Michael Jordan, right? "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."

 

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doing nothing will get you nowhere

(copied from somewhere)

You have control over your own actions and how you think about the events that impact your life. None us can control the outcomes, but your actions can increase the probability that desired outcomes will occur. There are no guarantees in life. The only guarantee is that doing nothing will get you nowhere.

 

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Finding the Perfect Office Chair

 
Hello fellow desk - bound entrepreneurs! Getting a high quality chair is on my to-do list.  

From the blog of Tim Ferris...

 


Finding the Perfect Office Chair: Aeron vs. Swiss Ball vs. the FBI’s Pick…

 


The wrong chair = real health problems. (Photo: watz)

(Total read time: 8 minutes)

In this post I’ll cover how I identified the best high-end chairs in the world, which I ultimately chose, and the tangible results that followed.

In January of 2005, I found myself on a veranda in Panama after the usual afternoon rain, dreaming of the upcoming year and reflecting on lessons learned since leaving the US. Maria Elena, the matriarch of the Panamanian family that had adopted me, sipped her iced tea and pointed at my bruised feet:

“Tim, let me share some advice I was once given. Buy the most comfortable bed and pair of shoes you can afford. If you’re not in one, you’ll be in the other.”

I followed her advice upon returning to CA and the results were sudden: Plantar Fasciitis disappeared, as did shoulder impingement after switching from coil-spring to foam-layered mattresses.

But what about chairs? On January 4th, 2009, I tweeted out the following:

“Is the Aeron chair worth it? http://tr.im/2uxd Do you have any fave chairs for extended sitting and writing?”

Even though I’m financially comfortable now, I didn’t grow up spending a lot of money, which I’m thankful for. To this day, I’ve never paid for first-class airfare for myself. Not that it isn’t worth it — I just can’t do it. Similarly, I had trouble believing a chair could possibly be worth $850-$1,200, but my back pain led me to pose the question to the omniscient Interweb.

How did others feel?

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