Ever wish you could buy a GPS device for your business just like the one you’ve got for your car?

Now you can -- watch the video for details:

Here’s the link I mention in the video.

I was doing a little research and ran across this little gem that I just couldn’t resist sharing on the topic of logos – found it on a website for a web development firm:

“In fact, your logo is often the difference between a new customer and a missed opportunity.”

How many buying decisions have you made in the past year based on the company’s logo (not brand, that’s different)?

Any?

I actually thought about this myself, racking my brain to think of any business that lured me in and made me a customer because of a logo.  I came up with zero.  None.  Zilch.  Nada.

I know, I know – all the big Fortune 500 companies have fancy logos that everybody knows, and you need a logo too, right?

I didn’t want to take the time to go down the entire list of Fortune 500 companies so I just went with the top 10.   Let’s talk about their logos.

1) Walmart – biggest company in the world… here’s their logo, I can type it for you – WAL*MART (replace my little star thing with an actual star and their you have it, their logo)

2) How about Exxon Mobil – number 2 on the list.
Mobil’s logo – how about this – a Mobil with all letters in blue and a red “o.”  Impressed yet?

3) Chevron – number 3
They do have an actual logo beyond just the letters in their name.  I’ts blue and red, you probably even recognize it.  However, does their logo make you want to work with them?

4) General Motors – number 4
GM – For those who like at least we’re making some progress here.  Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, Saturn, Saab (and others).  They all likely have logos you recognize, but I’m going to bet when you decide to buy a car you care a lot more about the brand than you do about the logo.  Then again, they’re on the verge of bankruptcy…

I’ll stop here.  You can go look the rest of them up if you like, but here’s the point.  Your logo is not a primary reason people choose to do business with you.  It’s NOT a secondary reason people do business with you.  In fact, your logo is pretty much irrelevant.  For most companies a logo is simply their company name in a special font or color anyway.

Don’t let some graphic designer tell you different.  They’re designers.  Of course, they’re going to say your logo is important.  They’ll tell you stories of the iconic Coca-Cola logo.  Perhaps they’ll even mention that Pepsi is spending $100 million to drill their new logo into peoples’ heads (which is reason enough for me to never invest a dollar in that company).

Invest your dollars in something that will have a return.  Better train your salespeople.  Bring in more leads.  Forget about logos and other b.s. and focus on the things that make your business money.

Is It Always Good To Be Well Informed?

We’ve all heard the saying “knowledge is power.”

But is it really?

Okay, let me tell you how I came to pondering this idea.  Last night I was talking to one of my friends who owns a local business in Lincoln.  She was telling me about about all the time she spends going to networking events and how they frequently talk about the economy and politics and all that jazz.

If the economy is down, does it really matter to what extent?  Does having that knowledge really help your business?

My take on this is no, it doesn’t.

There are plenty of stories (I’ll give a couple examples later) of people succeeding when they market conditions or they economy would have said they shouldn’t have been able to.  But because they didn’t know any better, they succeeded anyway.

I remember back from my mlm days when my upline would say that December is a terrible month to be sponsoring people (i.e. bringing them into the cult).  Then in January you’d hear from people who had record months because somebody failed to mention that little fact to them.

Here’s an example from Fordon Segal, founder of Crate and Barrel

Maybe your discussions about the economy are solutions oriented, and perhaps it has you thinking creatively about how to make this year even better.  But if you’re not, then you’re better off not knowing at all.  Stick your head in the sand, and get to work making making sure your marketing and sales team are the best they can be.

Let me tell you a story from around Christmas time, but first a little background you may not know about me.

Anyone who knows me knows very well that I don’t watch the news. I don’t read the newspaper either. If I’m visiting an online news site like CNN, I’ll skim the headlines to make sure the world didn’t end, but that’s about it with regard to “mainstream” news. I couldn’t tell you the first thing about the economic stimulus package they just passed in Congress other than it’s about $780 billion (was I close?).

Why?

Simply because watching that shit will make you want to jump off a bridge.
So back to this story I promised. Over the holidays I went back to my hometown to visit family and we were all at my grandparent’s house for dinner. My grandpa was working on a puzzle so I decided to go help him – puzzles are fun. The evening news was on in the background and they were reporting about how busy the stores were. Yes, there were people out there actually spending money.

Fortunately, they quickly put a negative slant on the story by saying that some stores were going out of business… whew, it was a close one.

It actually got worse. They got to the weather. You’d think you’d be safe with the weather especially when the forecast calls for a very nice day for December in Wisconsin.

But you’d be wrong.

They decided to talk about how the warm temperatures were going to melt the snow and how there was a significant risk of flooding rather than talk about how it was going to be a welcome relief from the sub zero temperatures we’d been having. (There was NO flooding whatsoever, none, btw.)

At that point I decided to go help in the kitchen rather than work on the puzzle.

What’s my point? (I’ll say it again)

My point is that watching the news will make you want to down a bottle of oxycodone and go stand in front of a train.

So with this whole recession it’s pretty easy to believe that it’s the great depression all over again if you listen to the media.

Here are a few recent headlines from Google News- took me all of 60 seconds to compile these:

• GM, Chrysler Push for More US Aid After Mistakes
• Smithfield Foods To Cut 1800 Jobs, Close 6 Plants
• Delphi To Slash 775 Jobs
• California Budget Crisis Jeopardizes 20,000 Jobs
• 600,000 Jobs Lost in January

This is the garbage the media is pushing on you… for ratings!

They’ve done studies on this – happy people don’t watch as much TV so it’s in their best
interest to keep you feeling like you might be better off getting hit by a truck than to report hopeful and happy news.

What’s the reality? Some businesses are in trouble. They got fat and lazy during an unprecedented economic expansion. But that’s certainly not everyone.

Here are some news stories that you probably haven’t seen (took me a lot longer to dig these up):

• Google Earnings Up 28%
• Wal-Mart Profit Beats Estimates
• Coca-Cola Shares Rise As Profit Beats Estimates
• Condoms Sales Stimulated During Soft Economy

Wait, not every company is about to go under?

No, not even close.

Some people are making a fortune right now.

It happens during every recession without fail.

For example, during the Great Depression, Joseph Kennedy saw his personal fortune skyrocket by a factor of 40! And it was a lot worse back then than it is now.

I know plenty of business owners just like you and me claiming that they’d be doing okay if it weren’t for this recession but people just aren’t buying things.

Bull Shit!

Chris Mcneeney sold 3,000 copies of his ebook, Google Shadow in 24 hours. (about $200,000 in one day)
Four weeks ago, Stompernet did over seven figures with their Formula Five Launch.
Two weeks ago Frank Kern took in over 4 million with his Mass Control 2.0 launch selling a $2,000 product!

I could go on… and on. People are still buying stuff. They’re buying it online. They’re buying it from stores. They’re buying services. There is still plenty of money out there, but if you watch keep listening to the media (or your friends who do) you’re going to give up before you even get started.

The solution…

Turn off the damn TV!

Read a book.  Spend some quality time with the kids.  Go to the gym.  Hell, go have a beer down at the bar (Sam Adams White Ale is my recommended seasonal).

Then go out and sell something!

I’m pretty sure that there are not regular readers to this blog seeing as how I haven’t posted anything since April of 2008, however, I wanted to explain why I stopped making blog posts here and how that’s going to be changing.

It was last April when I was doing a search for how well one of my blog posts was ranking in Google when I saw that my website had been marked as a “this site may harm your computer” site.

To say the least I was surprised, there’s never been any “funny business” going on around here so I thought it must be a mistake and that Google will fix it in a day or two. I even contacted Google through their recommended form to take care of the issue.

Needless to say, I was not immediately removed. My hosting company checked the server and couldn’t find any type of malicious software or viruses that would have caused Google to flag this site.

To make matters worse, when Firefox released version 3, they started automatically blocking pages marked by Google as “may harm your computer” so this website was completely inaccessible to Firefox users entirely… so I quit posting since it seemed unlikely anybody would be reading.

But yesterday I finally noticed that the notice had been removed from my site so I’m going to start posting again.

I’m going to be making some changes around here. First, I’ll be getting up a brand new blog design in the next day or two.

I’ll start making posts geared towards business owners again. It seems like a lot has happened since my last post and this whole recession thing is on a lot of peoples’ minds. I won’t beat a dead horse there, but I will give you some tips on how to come out better because of it in the end.

I’ll still be making occasional product review for products that I think are well done and worth your time and for products that need to be avoided like the plague.

Anyway, that’s all I’ve got today. I’ll have a new post before the end of the week. Thanks for reading my ramblings here. Please come again soon… oh, and tell your friends