Cargo Pants

Recently in life I have discovered that Cargo pants are no longer cool.  This would also include Cargo shorts as well.  Needless to say I was completely bummed at the prospect of tackling the day without my needed pockets.  Not that I use the pockets that are so strategically placed on the side of my pants legs on a daily basis, but you never know when you are going to need an extra pocket.  It is a safety net for my mind.

So what to do now?  If I stop wearing cargo pants then essentially I need a new wardrobe! This is not good. Also, where will I find these pants with no side pockets?  The other day I was in Kohl’s and every pair of shorts in the whole joint were a cargo style short.  It confused me something terrible because I have a shopping method that I thought was full proof.  The method is that all clothes shopping starts at Walmart.  This is where you can purchase your every day attire.  Then when really nice stuff is required to make me look like something out of a magazine, I travel across the road to Kohl’s for some upscale clothing because I trust that they know whats up and what is in style. Wrong!!!  Now what do I do?  Everything that I rested my fashion sense on has been blown away with a cannon.  Next, someone will tell me that turtle necks and dickies are no longer in style!

Here is another one for you!  Hooded sweat shirts are also not in style.  Here’s looking at you Robert.  This man has a hoodie for everyday of the week.  At one time he was the coolest kid on the block, but over time he has faded to the weird dude down the street who wears to many hooded sweat shirts.  I understand though.  I don’t have the time to make sure I am in style either.  Who really does?  Not Cargo guy, and not weird Hoddie guy.

Here’s another one for you.  T shirts with random logo’s on them.  Hell, there was a time when I had a different t shirt for everyday of the week.  They all had random shit on them.  One was a Ghostbusters t shirt!  Who the hell wears that stuff?  I did, and it included my cargo shorts to go with it.  I thought I was the stuff that dreams were made of.  Who ya gonna call? I should have called the fashion police..

So does this mean that I need to shop at some place like Abercrombie? Hell No! Have you been there?  First of all it would cost me 50 dollars for a new Ghostbusters shirt and second of all, it is the only store that you can smell from 100 feet away!  That store pukes dueche bags!  They all roll out in there shirts that are made for my nine year old.  You know the shirt.  It is like they are all members of a team or something.  The shirt is a white polo that is two times two tight for them and on the upper left chest there is always a number sown on to it.  Dueche bag # 97!!!  Then they all wear plaid shorts and have secret hand shakes that take an uncomfortable amount of time to finish.  I am telling you there is a movement to take over the world and it starts at Abercrombie and Fitch.  There slogan should be, Abercrombie and Fitch, creating a generation of Dueche Bags!

Anyway, back to Walmart.  I am generally a poor person other then when I find a 20 dollar bill on the ground and I splurge on some beef jerky for the ride home. So I need to shop at the low income store of Walmart or Kmart , and according to Ray from Rainman, Kmart sucks!  So I stick to Walmart.  Plus it gives me a good feeling that by shopping there I am helping to create jobs for all of the small Chinese kids across the ocean.

Moral to this story is really the fact that I guess I need to step out of the young men department and step into the grown man’s department to buy my clothes.  The lure of that Ironman and Ford Mustang shirt are going to be really hard to fight!

Cargo Pants for Life !!!!!!!!!!!!

Cargo Pants

The real life way to lose weight

If you have ever tried to lose weight via any program you have more than likely failed. Very few people lose weight and maintain that weight loss over time, the damn fine print on all of the weight loss programs even says “Result NOT typical”!!!! Americans are so gullible that we hope for the best even when it’s right in front of us that it won’t work out, and neither will we!

You wanna know the real honest truth that provides 100% results?? Stop eating junk food and workout! That’s it!

So how do you get there? If that’s so easy how does a person muster enough give a shit to change their behavior? It’s actually more than changing behavior, it’s changing cultures! The culture of over consuming in everyday life, not just food but everything! Ever since the 1950′s America has developed this extremely unhealthy culture of consumption! You are consuming right now! Hoping that I have a magic answer to weight loss! I don’t! There isn’t one!! Just like there is no easy way to pay off debt or get rich quick! They don’t exist!!

Hard work is the sure fire way to actually do anything in life. You either work hard at working smart or you don’t have the mental capacity to work smart so you physically must work hard to make things happen for yourself. No book, speech, conference or tv show will ever change the physics of success and accomplishment!

Forget self help bullshit. No one is coming to rescue you and you aren’t winning the lottery! That being said, remember what I said about working smarter? When it comes to weight loss, using an appetite suppressant is working smarter! Curb the cravings, and eat smaller portions. Eat the same foods as always, at first, just don’t eat two double cheeseburgers and fries, eat one. Then add in exercise! For me that meant I had to get up at 0500 every morning, even weekends to make this life change! This is the not working smarter piece, the physics won’t allow me to fit it in my day any other way! So I physically have to get up early, have to drive to work where the gym is and have to get my fat ass on the machine and do the actual work!

The payoff…without changing diet with the exception of an appetite suppressant, I’ve lost 30 lbs, from 235 to 203 in the last two months. I still eat shit food. It’s horrible for me! Cheese burgers, pulled pork sandwiches and pizza! But, the physical movement I do every stinking morning with appetite control throughout the day has changed me.

Now that I have the habit, I see tremendous results and feel awesome, I am coming off the appetite suppressant. At the same time I am introducing healthy food. I feel confident I can do both at the same time and if I can’t after a week, then I will go back on the appetite suppressant until I form the habit of healthy eating.

Nothing magical about this process at all!! They are very minor changes as compared to buying P90x and changing your whole eating habits and routine to try to look like Tony Horton! He is a professional people and so is everyone in the series!!! And they sweat it out because that is what real working out is!! If you don’t want to go to a gym fine, buy P90x or whatever series, I like ShaunT as well, and do it at home, but with the controls we already talked about.

It won’t happen over night or over a week or two, but it will happen. Your mind needs something else to do when you have more time now in your schedule not eating or thinking about food. I recommend a hobby or going back to school online. After making this tiny change that seems so big now, in two months you will be amazed at the difference in your mind body and spirit.

I’ve tried it all, all of the pills, keto gold, hgh pills and some of that shit dr oz says, NONE of it replaces physics of having to move your body, reduce the quantity of what you consume or mentally makes you ready to change. You have to do that!! The product I specifically use for appetite control, fastin. It works great. You can get a prescription from your dr for phentermine, and it works great!

I will report back with any changes!!

The real life way to lose weight

Need for Speed movie review!

Breakdown of rating system:

5 categories You either get a 1 or 0 in each category. That’s it, simple!

1. Keeps my attention

2. Video quality

3. Sound quality

4. Great acting

5. Would watch it again

Overall Rating: 4. -1 for acting, except by Aaron!

Action packed from the beginning! The storyline was ok, nothing earth shattering but the cars make up for it!! Best of all…Michael Keaton!! Where the hell have you been Keaton you son of a bitch?! Casting directors need to cast him in more roles, not leading roles lets not get crazy, but he is a great supporting actor!

Need for Speed movie review!

The Old Man and His Lost Remote

Over the last 15 Years my Dad has become more and more senile.  I started to notice his steep decline while I was living with him during my freshman year of College.

BANG BANG BANG BANG BANG. What in the world is going on, I said to myself as I tried to wake up from the night’s sleep. BANG BANG BANG BANG. Holy Shit, what is going on, is there a fire or something? That is when my Dad yelled, where is my remote?!?!?!?!

A little back story here. The truth was that I had hidden the remote! I did this to help the old man out. You see, every time he would start to watch TV he would use the wrong remote and cause the T.V. to stay on channel 3 and make it to where he could not figure out how to get the picture back on the T.V. So because I am a proactive person, I decided to hide it in the drawer of a cabinet in the T.V. room. Honestly, I did this for his own good.

What I didn’t account for was his persistence to be a moron. That morning he had turned on the TV, and when it didn’t respond the way he thought it should, he proceeded to walk up to the TV and start pushing buttons. All this did was make the problem a lot worse!  Now he is confused and pissed.

BANG BANG BANG BANG. What do you want? I want my gosh damn remote son. I know you hid it from me and I want it back.  Mad as a one legged dancer, I stomped to the door and slung it open. Get the F#$% out of the way old man. I walked to the cabinet and retrieved the remote. I then proceeded to set the TV up so he could watch his shows that morning.

Then that crazy old man decided that he wasn’t going to watch TV anymore, and that he was going to go ahead and go to bed for the day. A rage shot through me like a burrito from taco bell, and I cussed him up one side and down the other for waking me up at 6:30 in the morning, only to go to bed and not watch the TV he was so concerned with. He then proclaimed that I would not talk to my elders in this manner, and that is when I told him that if he would stop acting like a spoiled 10 year old I would treat him like the old man that he was. As I walked away from this situation back to my room, I offered to change his diaper if he so needed.  He grunted some obscenity in my direction and went to bed.

Don’t take any of this the wrong way. My Dad and I have a great relationship. Sometimes the old man has a few issues, and this time I was there to set him straight.

The Old Man and His Lost Remote

My New Theory

I am getting a MBA and MS in Marketing and have had the privilege of attending one of the nations finest institution for such an education. In the course of my studies I have read a considerable amount about business as it relates to the interaction between consumers and any entity that is selling stuff. As an undergrad I studied Geography, the study of people and places, why they live where they live and the world around them that shapes them and the environment. Both of these subjects go hand in hand through a vast majority of the topics covered.

Currently I am taking a very interesting class in Emerging Markets and also reading Thomas Piketty’s book “Capital in the 21st Century.”  In this book his main topic is the division of wealth or capital between nations from the historical perspective as an economist.  He is not just any economist however, he does not go off on long discussions, so far at least, on complex math problems trying to overstate simple ideas, instead he presents his data in a clear concise way that anyone can understand.  Although he is French, but I won’t hold that against him…yet.  The first part of this book details the historical data we have on markets, their size, how long they have been around, how we have measured them in terms of GDP, GNP and so on.  A very intelligent stance is presented on leveling the playing field for determining what is capital or wealth and the differences with exchange rates, setting up the analysis case for what later I am guessing at this point will be demonstrating the inequality of wealth across all nations.

A thought crept into my mind this morning while working out and listening to the book, it centers around Clay Christiansens idea of disruptive innovation in industries.  The very basic idea here is that companies hire the best and brightest they can from the best business schools, these men and women take to the business and develop it as much as they can to increase profits for their Stockholders.  At the same time their industry in ‘disrupted’ by a new comer, who takes a small portion of market share from the biggest company with all the MBA’s.  Then the higher company relinquishes that market share entirely for higher profits in their up chain products, thereby increasing profit margin for their share holders and wasting less on the low grade products that the new comer is now producing.  This cycle continues as it did in the steel manufacturing industry until the big company is overtaken by the little company on the last high end product it produces and then goes out of business, all the while profits had been steadily increasing and the company was doing great.  They never saw the disruption as the eventual killer because they were blind by the job they were doing, which they had been taught was right, increasing profits, getting rid of waste and leaning out operations.

Combining these two thoughts, one from Picketty that emerging market countries like China have seen such insane GDP and GNP growth and a surge in the size of their middle class, we in the “developed” world are sitting here gaining our own GDP growth by producing more from our american companies who do all of their manufacturing overseas in these emerging markets.  This is the same scenario that Christiansen is saying, except that, we are seeing it on a global scale which will lead to cliff when all of the Western European countries and America fall off because we no long produce anything.  To add to this madness, our populations are declining, while theirs are increasing.  In America we have some 400 million people and of the indigenous population that has been here for 5 or more generations, we are seeing a decline in birth rates due to choices we have to not farm or have  a large family to carve out a subsistence living.  We are only growing because of the immigrants coming into the country.  The same can be said for Western Europe and Japan.  When and where is the cliff?  How much more can we afford to move overseas?  Don’t get me wrong I am not an isolationist from this view point of world economics, but we need to wake up and recapture our own real manufacturing industries.  Currently all we are making are financial blunders after financial blunders and kids with ADD.

Our continued voting of more and more social programs is also a major concern not openly addressed.  We are voting ourselves into debt and into a false sense of entitlement.  We vote in people like Obama who take it upon himself with a few other professional politicians to cram down our throats this idea of universal healthcare.  Social welfares of programs of this nature in a capitalist republic cannot coexist wholly.  I am speaking from vast experience with living in a communist society, the US Military believe it or not, and it is great to have a free house, free healthcare as much and as often as we need, and to have a retirement for the rest of my life when I retire to go along with healthcare, all paid for by tax dollars.  If we were going to a model, that should be it.  Many issues arise with this model because from an economic or business sense, it is not profitable.  There are some benefits to a great deal of these entitlements.  We get preventative healthcare via having to stay in shape, which means we tend not to each huge amounts of junk that would pack on the pounds.  We get free smoking cessation classes and drinking and drug counseling to stop any problems we might have had before joining the service.  In return for all of these benefits, we have to be willing to give our lives for our countries leaders to have us go out and kill people, places and things.  Would all of our countrymen and women want this regimented lifestyle?  Hell no!  Yet they keep voting for people who are moving us in that direction.

The flip side to the social welfare problem is the right side, who thought that the Patriot Act was a great way to protect America.  No it is not, to protect America as the Commander and Chief, you have to actually fucking listen to the agencies who are giving you briefings, and then have actionable items from those briefs to preclude attacks.  The Patriot Act singly created the most invasive and overt practices we see today on just about every companies website via their terms and conditions.  Via terms and conditions we are essentially wide open for people to use our info anytime they want for whatever purpose they want.  All of this was the outcome from the Patriot Act spying program.  We need to have that Act repealed and forgotten about.  We need online companies to go back to pre9/11 rules for using their websites.  Un-trackable and non-correlatable for gathering info on me and my family and friends, that is what I want.  There are many examples from the movie that shows the FBI interrogating a 7th grader.  Why?  Have you lost your goddamned mind FBI?  You knew enough about the 7th grader to go to his school and harass him, yet you didn’t know that it would be wrong for you to go there in the first place?  What evidence did you use to get permission to execute such a fascist act?  Why would anyone or a supervisor in the government authorize you to do that anyway?  How could a young man of his age even possibly come close to public enemy number one?  I have a better idea for what you can do with your time since you don’t actually want to do the cop research and execute the enforcement of law.  You should go down to the border and clean up the shit mess your leaders are allowing to take place for failure to act.  Or even better why don’t you track down the hundreds probably thousands of Afghani and Iraqi military members brought here for military training who just walked off the base?!  No, but you keep going after the regular citizens of this country who are doing what they are supposed to, yeah this has turned into a fascist state under extreme oppression, through the idea that more invasion is better to track the enemy within.  Why don’t you call a spade a spade then, stop wasting our money and time on searching through Facebook and twitter posts from people with last names like Smith.  Take every smith off the list until you have clear all of the al-muhammads.  Forget PC and equal rights, a Smith never flew a plane into a building or harbored terrorist training camps.

We are heading to a cliff at some point people, you need to wake up and see this.  Trading with countries is great, until you have traded all of you real property for fiat currency in hopes of charging more on your credit card, so you can buy the Chinese made laptop.   More to follow on this series of topics.  As I read more, I will share with you my ideas on this disruptive innovation that we are promoting by moving our businesses overseas.

My New Theory

Pintrest...why do people think this is just for women?!

Pintrest is a website created in March 2010 by Ben Silbermann, Evan Sharp, and Paul Sciarri.  The Pintrest website describes itself as “is a tool for discovering things you love, and doing those things in real life.”  The question for this post is, how the heck does Pintrest generate a revenue stream to support 70 Millions users³?

The costs of supporting the database, technical staff, legal staff, and so on have to be that of any other social media website, such as Twitter which spent $1.3B⁴ to run the company.  Twitter has 560M users according to mediabistro.com⁵.  That being the case, since Pintrest is just 12.5% the size of Twitter in users, figure, $162.5M to run the company annually.

In 2012 Pintrest was exposed for embedding code on some of the pins that lead to sales of online merchandise linked through their site with an affiliate company called Skimlink².  Both Skimlink and Pintrest said it was not a dirty underhand intention but that it was a beta test that had already stopped before the article was even released.  No facts or figures were published on the amount Pintrest generated during its time with Slimlink, although I find it funny that Slimlink doesn’t have a Pintrest share button on their page…

Pintrest has mainly used venture capital to run as a viable business since inception.  In 2010 it started with an Angel investment of $500K, followed by $37M in 2011, $100M in 2012, $425M in 2013 and $200M in 2014 so far.  A grand total of $762.5M has been given to Pintrest.  They have also acquired 4 companies in that timeframe, VisualGraph(2014), Hackermeter(2013), Livestar(2013) and Punchfork(2013), cost to acquire is unknown.  These companies revolve around creating and sustaining online searches and databases for showing people pins as they search through Pintrest.

According to the New York Times⁷ the valuation for investors is $5B for Pintrest.  How could this be for a startup that has yet to open the “flood gate” of revenue?  In May of this year, Pintrest began an initial test of Promoted Pins with Kraft, Gap, General Mills, Ziploc, Nestle, Lululemon, ABC Family and Expedia.  Adage.com reports that the new test market will be more like a consultancy setup in which Pintrest essentially gives one of these companies a team to help with targeting which pins show up where.  The thing with online advertising is that no one trusts it, no one needs it and no one uses it to the extent that it makes sense to keep spending money with Google to spam users with ads they don’t want to see for vacation when they are looking up cold medicine.

The conclusion about the business model I draw is that Pintrest is going to use precision and time to pinpoint the trust issue people have with online ads, then dig deep into the psychology of how to get around that, at the same time court large companies hand in hand through test processes, hopefully demonstrating meaningful and measurable revenue generation for that company, which in turn means more money for Pintrest.  I see Pintrest as a Facebook social business wrapped in Ernst & Young marketing clothing, both servicing two sides of the business.  Boil it down, it just a new way to sell old ideas, now the trick is to find out where the psychology of consumers is, gain their trust and expand on it.

Sources:

¹http://about.pinterest.com/en/press

²http://blog.skimlinks.com/2012/02/08/it’s-not-a-secret/

³http://expandedramblings.com/index.php/pinterest-stats/#.U8sLplZJZqs

⁴http://quote.morningstar.com/stock-filing/Annual-Report/2013/12/31/t.aspx?t=XNYS:TWTR&ft=10-K&d=67bf5306f82ab4accb10c0670af8811e

⁵http://www.mediabistro.com/alltwitter/social-media-stats-2014_b54243

⁶http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/pinterest

⁷http://dealbook.nytimes.com/2014/05/15/pinterest-raises-more-money-fetching-a-valuation-of-5-billion/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_r=0

Pintrest...why do people think this is just for women?!

I think this says it all...

I think this says it all...

Dyson Animal vs Roomba 770!

5 kids, 2 adults, one dog, hardwood, area rugs, and carpet…welcome to our home!  Since before we had kids we have owned the Dyson Animal vacuum cleaner and have used it for 8 years now, originally purchased in Jacksonville, FL and it has seen a few moves in its day.  That being said, it has not stood up to the test of time.  When you really need to deep clean the animal you need to take it apart completely to get all of the caked on dirt and dust our of the cyclones and to do that you have to unscrew the canister parts.  The last time I did this, about 3 months ago, most of the holders for each of the 8 screws were broken, and now only about 3-4 screws hold the canister together.  I think, for 8 years, this is early failure of a very expensive item.  The Dyson has worked, not any better than the Kirby or Rainbow my grandmothers had and certainly not better than the electralux my mom had but it worked.

Now, imagine you are home alone with 5 kids, 6 years old to new-born, and you have to feed the big one breakfast lunch and dinner plus snacks, naps and so on, AND take care of a new-born, dog and stubborn husband.  Well, welcome to the wonderful world of my wife!  Add that to the list of near OCD over having a clean floor…thanks motherinlaw for that little nugget you burnt into the brain of your lovely princess, and you can see why floor cleaning in this house is a top priority!  “I don’t want anything for my birthday this year, just a Roomba…”  I almost fell over, I have been trying to get this woman to agree to buy one of these things for years now, I guess all my tech nerdness is wearing off on her!  Work smarter not harder is what I always say!

The Roomba 770 was the robot of choice, simply because it was local to purchase and I didn’t have to do 35 hours of research to figure out if it would be worth the investment.  One stop at Best Buy and it was in hand!  I brought it home, wrapped it in last years christmas wrapping paper…I’m really a horrible husband…and gave my bride the present she so desperately needs!

Later that day, my 3-year-old said “What is that?”  I said “Its a robot that will clean all of our floors!”  “Will it hurt us?  Will it transform into a talking robot?”  On and on with the questions about robots…I’m kicking Michael Bay in the leg if I see him on the street!  I unboxed it, set it up in about 2 minutes…mostly due to reading the 3 step setup guide and off it went!

Everyone of these little terrorists that live here ran around the house picking up all of their toys and shoes and then jumping up on the benches we have to watch Roomba work its magic!  The robot zooms around back and forth finding its way around the room all the while picking up every spec of dust, hair, dirt, crayon, Lego and more with ease as it navigates between hardwood and area rug, never once getting caught on anything that it encounters.  It truly is the best piece of home technology a family needs!

It has lived with us for 2 weeks now, and runs just about every morning.  The kids still run around the house and pick up the major items on the floor and still are in amazement that a robot is cleaning our house!  The wife is the critical judge of the quality of the sweeping and she has not said a word once in 2 whole weeks about having to clean the floors!!!  That may seem like nothing to most people, but she would constantly be sweeping with a broom or complaining about the children and their crumbs, for good reason.  Now she doesn’t say anything about it, and it blows me away that this little vacuum can have such a positive and healthy impact on our home, I can’t thank the people responsible for the innovation to develop this little giant enough!!  Here’s to you Roomba Robot Engineer/Software developer guy/gal!

Forget Shark, Dyson, Hoover…forget them all…the future is here and it means more time with your 5 kids and a healthy happy home!!

 

Dyson Animal vs Roomba 770!

Advertising Online...why it is failing!

I just read an article about why online advertising is failing and how it will all shrink away to nothing.  It was a very interesting point of view, one that I think we all have about the stupid banner ads that pop-up next to or even right square in the middle of the page we are reading, that is to say, I don’t trust it, I don’t need it, I don’t want it and if I am going to need a product, I will do my own damned research and find what I want!!  Honestly, has anyone…ever…really clicked on a sponsor link, been whisked away to another site that offered you exactly what you were needing at that moment?  Really, right in the middle of reading about how to cook a chicken, the ad for buying hardware to the left side of the screen didn’t grab hold of you and trigger some back of the head thought, like “I do need new hinges for my vanity…vanityhinges.com knows what I need!”  No?  Anyone?  I didn’t think so!

The real question in my mind is where are the advertising budgets going these days and what for?  Everyday apparently newspapers and magazines are falling off the earth at an alarming rate due to ad revenue losses and digital content.  So are these companies who used to advertise with Life magazine now just throwing hundreds of millions of dollars at google for banner placements in the hopes that it will drive traffic to their site, so that maybe someone will want to buy a New Holland tractor?  I don’t think this is the case either!  Maybe, ad budgets are going away, as they should, for a more social media presence, just like Tesla uses with its ad campaigns.  Elon Musk is brilliant!

Who knows what the future holds but this is for sure, online ad campaigns aimed at the side bar of my search for the new star wars movies probably aren’t going to generate revenue, except Google!

 

 

Advertising Online...why it is failing!

How to Build a Business Model using Canvas

One of the most rewarding experiences in business school is actually learning to use business creation tools like Canvas.  It goes hand in hand with the class textbook Business Model Generation, which I highly recommend to anyone who wants to learn about creating business models in a very methodical way.  The business model discussed in this post is the basic one we are using for Ashlee Lynn Designs, or rather our startup sign business.  We started the business almost 2 years ago now, first using free pallet wood and some weird “use an inkjet printer on wax paper to transfer texts and images to wood” tricks…it did not work if you were wondering.  However, after a few tries we worked out all of the kinks in our sign making operation and now we can make a sign out of any type of wood, rough or smooth in texture.

The video below shows the Canvas explained.

Our model is a simple one, we provide 2 different products, hand made wood signs and hand made pillows, both with various sayings.  Since starting the business a business model has never been generated to understand the full potential of our startup.  Last semester I took Operations Management and we had to create a process improvement paper (see below) for a process at our current job or another of our choosing, I choose to improve the process of making signs.  The Business Model Canvas takes that a step further by analyzing the steps needed to see the full picture of the business.

You are supposed to start with the customer segments and define the segments in which you have customers, for us that would be divided into groups like home decor, wedding presents or anniversary presents, but I found that to be a little bit of a broad topic, so I broke it down to several products we make and estimates of general numbers if we were to produce signs and pillows full time.  The rest of the canvas model was configured as the book and video demonstrates.

Taking a break from this project allowed me to develop some ideas about the market share problem.  I researched the market share of the home decor industry, which we would fit into more so than the sign manufacturing industry due to the type of products we make.  Using IBISWorld.com I was able to find information about the total market revenue, $52.4B and share of that market for home decor items, 15.1%.

 

 

 

We have a share of that market in the 200 products sold range per year, assuming we would be doing this more than part time but n full time.  Our percent of the $52.4B is a mere 0.000101%, giving us a revenue generation of $8,000.  Our costs total $2689, leaving $5311 for profit.  Manpower has not been taken out of the profit.  All numbers are based on selling 200 items with an average sales price of $40 per item.

Process Improvement Paper

How to Build a Business Model using Canvas

Interesting article...Brand yo'self fooouu!

Why You Should Brand Yourself

BRANDING

By Michael Cohn, Published July 3, 2014

Personal branding is about honing your skills, narrowing your focus, and clearly understanding what you’re passionate about. Branding is not just about you being better than your competition. It’s about getting your prospects to choose you as the only solution to their problem. Of course, you can only do that if you have an edge that nobody else has. An edge that is unique enough to be irresistible to others.

Your personal brand affects other people’s decisions about your intelligence, character and ability and determines whether the other person wants to do business with you. The way you act and present yourself has a remarkable impact on the people you meet professionally and socially. This will have a great effect on how others treat you. If your personal brand is not professional and cohesive, attractive, and attracting, you will be passed over; that is a guarantee. In order to stay in the game, to have a great influence on others, to attract more business and be more successful, it is essential that you develop a well-thought-out personal brand. Before you sell anything — your product, company or service — you must sell yourself first. This will allow you to shift the balance of power in your favor. When you brand yourself correctly, you are seen as more desirable and in demand.

Benefits of creating a strong personal brand

• 
  

  Stand out – One of the greatest benefits of your having a strong brand is that it creates a sense of individuality and “separateness” in the marketplace. In that case, your clients are able to easily differentiate your company from your competitors.

  
  


• 
  

  Make yourself known – The goal of personal branding is to be known for who you are as a person and what you stand for. Your brand is a reflection of who you are, your opinions, values, and beliefs. Those are visibly expressed by what you say and do as well as your approach to expressing yourself.

  
  


• 
  

  Control the process – The branding process allows you to take control of your identity and influence the perception that others will have about you and the services you offer.

  
  


• 
  

  Attract clients – A strong personal brand will enable you to attract clients and opportunities. You will position yourself in the mind of your marketplace as the service provider of choice, which will enable you to dominate your market and command higher fees – work less and make more!

  
  


• 
  

  Establish yourself as an expert and become a celebrity in your area of specialty – Gain name recognition in your area of expertise where it counts the most – in your customer’s mind. Make a lasting impression and be greatly rewarded for your individuality. Trust, respect, and admiration will follow when your name and message are embossed repeatedly on the consciousness of your target market. The more visible you are to your target audience, the more likely you will be perceived as an expert . Your brand will propel you to the top in your marketplace.

  
  

Steps for branding yourself

Branding is much more than just a clever, creative logo or slogan and it’s more than just a unique color scheme. Below are the initial steps that you will want to take in order to start your successful brand image.

• 
  

  Examine the competition – One of the keys to creating a successful brand image is to separate yourself from your competition. You will need to know how consumers view your competition. You need to recognize how your competitors differentiate themselves from their competition. Also, you need to understand your competitors’ strengths and weaknesses. Your business will benefit from possessing this information because you will learn from their weaknesses and learn how to differentiate your company from the competition.

  
  


• 
  

  Identify your strengths – Now that you are aware of your competition’s weaknesses, you can begin to focus on your company’s strengths. Perform a target market analysis, learn from it, and use it to your advantage. This is a useful tool to enable you to confirm that your company’s strengths are, in fact, important to your target market. Once you’ve identified your strengths and which strengths are important to your customers, you can discover ways to successfully market those to the public and integrate them into your branding campaign.

  
  


• 
  

  Know your customer – Learn more about the customer. Know their purchasing habits. How often do they buy? Do they buy only during sales or promotions? Do they buy an array of products or services or just a select few? These are questions you should ask in order to market more effectively to your customers. Also, know your customers’ lifestyles, needs, mindsets, and attitudes. Knowing and working with these personality traits are also key to your marketing success.

  
  


• 
  

  Be your brand – Make sure that your company truly represents how your brand identifies with you. For example, if one of the traits your brand identifies your company with is politeness, be polite. This means that every one of your employees, from the receptionist all the way up to the CEO, needs to live your brand.

  
  


• 
  

  Develop a likable personality – One important part of branding is the image that you yourself portray. Developing a likeable personal brand is critical to success. If you want to rise to the top of your particular arena, you need to first be able to sell yourself to your potential customers. Think about it. Would you rather do business with a person who smiles and comes across as friendly or with one who snarls and ignores you? The first impression a potential customer receives is from you. Make it a good one.

  
  


• 
  

  Become a great communicator – Research shows that communication skills are the top determinant for upward social and professional mobility.

  
  


• 
  

  Become active on social networking websites – By joining social networking websites, especially those that are popular and have a large number of members, you should be able to generate interest in your business, including the products or services that you sell. The interest that you generate mau turn into sales, which will make your social networking experience more than worth it.

  
  

Conclusion

For a minute, think of yourself as a company with one employee — you. How much time, money, and energy have you spent on developing a “personal brand” that is unique enough to sell to your market? An individual who has a well-defined personal brand has more status and a tremendous advantage over the competition in the market place. With a great personal brand, you are already half sold and thus, far above the competition. Your personal brand is one of your greatest business assets. Put as much time and effort into it as you do into branding your product. In the end, if you can’t sell yourself, you’ll find it nearly impossible to sell your product.

 

Interesting article...Brand yo'self fooouu!

Being someone else...

So the assignment I am currently working on is one of the personal brand.  Basically we have to discover our own online presence and evaluate who we are in the online world and if it is important to manage that image.  Well, of course it’s important, unless you don’t care about your image, which some people say they don’t but that’s horse shit, everyone cares.

We are also supposed to find someone we want to be and find out what their personal brand is all about.  This has proven to be more difficult than I originally thought it would be.  The more I think about it, the more I don’t want to be like anyone or have someone else’s position in life.  After being in the military my entire adult life, I have zero desire to work for another company and play politics, I want to own my own company making simple furniture.  I wonder if I will get a bad grade writing that in the paper??

 

 

Being someone else...

The Mall of America

When did the mall become a dumpster fire?  Seriously!  Last weekend the wife talked me into taking my three kids and herself to the Fayette Mall in Lexington KY.  This was an enormous mistake of epic proportions.

The mall has become a place where you go if you want to see every nationality that your local population has to offer.  It is also the place to go if you are between the ages of 15 and 22 and need a place to hang out on the weekend.  There is also category for the scantly clad underage girls and the ever growing gay community. Lets just say this is not where you want to take your children on a Saturday afternoon.

The moment that we walk in the door of the mall we are greeted with three teenagers that looked like 1986 puked them out of a time machine. One even had purple hair to match her Madonna fishnet stockings.  I am fine with this, no big deal but it did cause my 5 year old to ask what was wrong with the girl with the purple hair.  Hard questions get good answers.  She got her finger caught in an electrical outlet son, and that is why we don’t play with electrical cords!  Oh, okay daddy.

But it does not end there.  Within 15 seconds after the electrical cord save we are walking down the main isle when two gay men dressed in rainbow striped tank tops and wearing Tom Cruise’s sun glasses from Top Gun come skipping right at us as if they are on the yellow brick road headed to see the Wizard of OZ. Thank God no questions were asked about that one but my oldest son did take a double look to make sure he was not dreaming and that he had actually seen the two Rainbow warriors skipping down the isle.  He then looked up at me as if he was going to comment and I just said, You don’t want to know Son!

So here we are and for some reason every time I go to the mall I must go to a store called Lidz.  It is a hat store.  They must have 1000 different hats all in one place, and hats for me used to be like shoes for woman.  I was not that guy that had a hat to go with different outfits but I was constantly on the search for the perfect hat.  So this is a store that I must go and check out every time I visit the mall.  Upon walking in the cramped store with every inch of the walls covered in a variety of hat I hear a loud man in the corner talking to two of the employees of the store.  One of the employees was behind the checkout counter and the other was in front of the check out counter and both were listening to this pudgy guy that was wearing a backwards hat, a baggy t-shirt and shorts that were so long that they could have passed for women Capri pants.  This guy was cussing and causing a scene with the volume at which he was talking, and I noticed that I was the only customer in the store. This guy had basically been so obnoxious that he had run all of the customers out of the store.  I had pretty much had enough of the mall at this point and decided that I was going to ask this guy to calm down and be quit because I had my family with me and he was being very inconsiderate. So I proceed to approach the man and the closer I got to the individual I started to notice that he was wearing a necklace with a badge on it.  At first I thought it was some kind of giant jewelry that would have been completely appropriate for the outfit that he had on, but I was wrong.  In fact it was a name tag, with his name on it I assume, and it was titled Lidz Manager.  Seriously, this is the guy that you hire to run your store?  What is the world coming to when the manager of a retail chain dresses and acts like this.  What example are we setting for our children when we say that this is okay behavior?  So I see the badge and immediately turn and walk out of the store buying nothing.  Truth is that I saw the hat that I wanted on the shelf and was willing and ready to buy until all of this happened.

Well, I had had enough of the mall for the day and 30 minutes after ariving at the mall, I loaded the family up and we left the mall.  I have a feeling it will be a cold day in hell before I return to the Fayette mall to do any of my shopping.  They can keep their purple hair, Rainbows, and Thug Life for themselves because I want no part of it.

On the flip note, I did discover where they all hang out and I will be avoiding them in the future.

The Mall of America

Why Chicago officials are lost...

Dozens shot in Chicago

http://www.cnn.com/2014/07/07/justice/chicago-shootings/index.html

If you read this article you will see how much our elected/appointed “officials” want to move more and more to a controlled society of subjects not citizens! Chicago…the home of the lawless because average people are t allowed to own a fire arm! On the high horses to be speaking from any official in Chicago should only get on a midget horse because obviously it’s not about gun control, yet that’s the party line they keep toting! I blame the elected officials of the city, they have been bought an paid for since the gangsters of yesteryear started robbing banks! I’m sure with about five minutes worth of data searching you could find out that other major cities have reduced violent crime while Chicago has done nothing! Big surprise? Not at all! Good luck trying to pry my gun from my cold dead hands Nazis!!

Why Chicago officials are lost...

Dollar Shave Club F***kers!

This commercial is f***king sweet!  I don’t know about the product but I can say that I personally moved away from the 15 bladed $45 disposable a few years ago, bought an old fashion safety razor and a 100 single blades, and will never look back!  If you are into saving money, want a better shave and be a man, you should switch to the shit that works!

 

 

Dollar Shave Club F***kers!

Business Models on the Web...

Business Models on the Web...

4th of July

I am honestly not sure how many people understand the importance of this day in the history of the United States. It is the ultimate celebration of more then the independence that we as Americans gained, but also the celebration of all the current and former military that have protected our country on a yearly basis to maintain our independence and freedom.

I realize that we have Memorial day and Veterans day, but in general those holidays are meet with a touch of sadness for everyone involved.  I view the 4th of July as a celebration filled with explosions and light shows as a great big massive party in celebration of the American Bad Asses that defend, or have defended our country.  It is a showing to the rest of the world that we will blow your ass up, one match stick at a time!

So to all you patriotic match stick warriors out there, lets put a boot in the rest of the worlds ass and blow some shit up….

4th of July