Photo By: Striatic

There are times in life when you just need to stand up and do something manually. Nothing wrong with using the computer to send an email or type a report for school. It should make such a task easier — identifying misspelling and grammatical errors that you might otherwise miss. But when you have to pick up your computer to do everything, you’ve reached a new low in life.

Right now, it’s back to school time at our house. The kids are just getting all their books and binders organized. Yesterday, my son asked if I would use my computer to make labels for his binder tabs. One for math, social studies, etc. All that was required was to visit a website, download a template for MS Word, type the words in the blanks, turn on the printer, print a few mock-prints to make sure it lined up, and then the final print. After which, he would break the little tabs out of the perforation and apply them to his five binder partitions. All this would probably end up taking about fifteen to twenty minutes.

“Why don’t you just hand write them? Should only take a minute, right?” I asked.

“But it wouldn’t look as good,” he replied.

Maybe he will have some level of satisfaction knowing it took nearly a half-hour to accomplish a task that could have taken two minutes. But, the binder was for him, and short of his teacher seeing it maybe once all year, nobody would even know it was there.

So far, the aforementioned is unresolved, but I think it provides an excellent point. Your computer isn’t always going to make your life easier. In fact, many times I catch myself doing something on the computer that I could more easily have done by hand. Here’s what I’m taking away from this experience:

1. Ask yourself how much time you’re saving by using a computer for the task at hand.
2. Can you do it manually and it take the same amount of time, or less?
3. Does using a computer add value, or take it away? (like a note of thanks, or an invitation for a small get together).

by Thomas Hawk

Have you ever visited a website to find the ubiquitous “Coming Soon” page? I’m not talking about the standard “under construction” or placeholder homepage, I mean in either browsing the site, or typing in a URL directly, you stumble upon an “Under Construction” or “Coming Soon” page on an otherwise completed site. “Junk everywhere” is exactly what the users and search engines are thinking.

I used to make this mistake, and finally realized that there are consequences – SEO consequences. Obviously the ’404 not found’ page standard was created for a reason. So, we can safely assume that having 404 pages isn’t always a bad thing. Take that a step further, we can further assume that NOT having 404 pages isn’t necessarily a good thing. This is especially true on a database driven site where inventories are constantly changing.

Imagine clicking a link to a car for sale only to find a “coming soon” page. From a user interface standpoint, if the car is sold, it should really say it’s sold. From a SEO standpoint, though, that same page should provide a proper 404 header so search engines know it’s gone. This ensures the page is not recorded and held against you by diluting your site’s true content. After all, you aren’t trying to get optimized for the key phrase “coming soon” are you?

Photo by AndYaDontStop

In my last post, I told you all about great reasons to consider banner advertising to increase your brand recognition in the local area. Some of the ideas, like partnering with a local blogger, can be pretty inexpensive. Others, however, can get costly fast. Here are some questions you’ll want to know the answer to for each category I mentioned last time. Of course, they might try to smokescreen you with terms and numbers – so I’ll try to cover most of that as well.

To get things started, below is a list of some very basic terminology that you should know before you get too involved with banner ads. It will help you differentiate the good from the bad. I’ve broken it down into two separate categories, advertising and website. The website stuff is pretty universal and will cover your independent blogger and a really big news website equally. The advertising terms might vary depending on how big the site is that you’re negotiating with.

These should be provided as monthly numbers. You might get an average number or a specific number for the last calendar month. Of the two, I prefer last month’s numbers because an “average” could be an indication that the site owner is trying to conceal sliding performance. Best case scenario, ask for a twelve-month history broken down by month so you can really judge for yourself how they’re doing.

• Page views (good). The number of times a page is delivered to a website visitor. This is a valid and important metric. Not to be confused with “hits,” which is neither valuable or important.

  What they won’t tell you: many sites use pagination (breaking a story up, across multiple pages with one or more “read more” links) to increase page views. They might also have photo galleries with a “previous” and “next” button that loads the respective photo in a new page view. This is a pretty sneaky way to increase page views, but isn’t always bad. You can book it that a site that doesn’t do this has much more valuable page views.

• Hits (bad). Don’t be duped by this metric. Many small websites will use it to make themselves look bigger than they really are. Basically, it’s how many items were loaded and can include pages, images, style sheets, etc. That list really can be endless. For example, most news sites have anywhere from 50 to 90 things that have to be loaded just to display their homepage! When you visit just one page on their site, you have received one pageview, but 50 to 90 hits.

  The person controlling the website can arbitrarily adjust this number simply by adding more elements to each page – turning a thousand page views into ninety-thousand hits.

• Unique Visitors (good). The number of unique computers that visited a site. You might hear all kinds of goofy interpretations of this number including “readership,” etc. Generally speaking, though, the unique visitor is the hard number that you really want. Basically, unique visitors is another great metric that tells you how well a website is doing. Any site you advertise on should have thousands of unique visitors – even tens of thousands.

  What they won’t tell you: when you visit a website on your computer, you are counted as a unique visitor. If you go to the same website on your mobile phone, you’re counted again. If you visit it from your home computer, you’re counted again. Get the idea? It’s browser specific, not people specific. Also, if someone clears their cookies, they’re counted again, too. The other side of this coin is when multiple people visit the site from one computer, they are usually only counted as one visitor.

• Page views per unique visitor (okay). Basically, it’s the number of page views divided by the number of unique visitors. Depending on the site this average could vary dramatically. A good number is around 20, anything over 30 is excellent.

  What they won’t tell you: depending on how they’re counted, search crawlers (like google, yahoo, bing, etc.) might still be counted in the page views number. The unique visitor count isn’t usually affected, though, causing the pages per visitor number to be artificially high. This should be relatively rare, but you never know. If the pages per visitor number seems high to you – this might be why.

This is a short list of online advertising terminology you should know a little about. It’s not all inclusive, but if you’re negotiating with a website on rates, you’ll likely hear a few of these.

• Impressions refers to the number of times your ad is called for. Many websites will use this number as the number of times your ad is delivered. More on that in a minute.
• CPM, Cost Per Thousand impressions (M is the roman numeral for thousand). This is in my “okay” category — or “it is what it is.” It’s what you’ll end up with on any major website. Basically, it means you will pay by the number of times your ad is displayed. Generally $10 CPM ($10 per thousand ad displays, or about a penny each) is pretty common for a standard banner – but some ad types and targeting options will get more expensive.

  What they won’t tell you: that your ad is counted when called for (impressions), not when it’s actually displayed. This happens when, while the the page is still loading, the visitor clicks a link to go somewhere else. In this case, the ad was called for, but never delivered. When you get your ad impressions report, ask for the very different ad delivery report. You might be surprised with the difference (which averages 10% nationally.) Some sites even give a 10% impression over-run. Ask if they do this as policy – if not by policy, they may do it for you because you asked. Every major advertising agency knows this trick, and they use it to get that extra 10%.

• Sponsorship (good) guarantees that your ad will show up in a specific position each and every time someone visits a certain section or page on the website. Smaller websites usually offer sponsorship opportunities pretty inexpensively.
• Shared position (okay), or share-of-voice is kind of self explanatory. One thing you want to know here is how many other advertisers are sharing the position with your ad. If you’re given a share-of-voice, it’s usually a percentage guarantee.
• ZAG Targeted ad (okay to bad). ZAG stands for Zip code, Age, and Gender. Most small websites don’t offer this, but some of the bigger ones do. It’s okay for those who have a very specific demographic they’re trying to reach. Maybe it’s a mammogram ad and you want to only reach 40 year old women. Great – it might work.

  What they won’t tell you: ZAG targeted ads depend upon the site visitor telling the website their zip, age, and gender. I know a few twenty-something guys who always answer this question that they’re a 65 year old woman. Oh, and you’ll probably pay a higher CPM ($25 to $50 or more) but you won’t deliver as many ads. I say pay the cheaper rate and just blanket it to everyone – it’ll probably end up the same price anyway.

• Behavioral Targeted ad (good). These are pretty complicated and not usually offered on any but the largest of websites. Basically, they take all kinds of stuff into account such as what articles a particular user typically reads to determine interest.

  Behavioral targeting is like “big brother” because many of the big remnant advertising companies like doubleclick, rubicon, etc. are paying attention to what you read on all the websites you visit and are delivering ads based on that. Want to see it in action? Go poke around http://www.allenedmonds.com or http://www.franklincovey.com then browse the internet. Suddenly, you’ll notice ads appearing all over the place trying to entice you back to those sites — especially if you put something in your shopping cart.

• Section Targeted ad (okay). Large news sites have “sections.” Like the sports section, or lifestyle section. They’ll tell you about the demographic that section caters to, and you can choose one that best fits with what you’re offering in your ad. This can be a pretty good deal for you if you get it right, because you can reduce the number of ads you need to display and reduce costs.

  There’s a flip-side, though. Women don’t ever go to sports sections, right? Wrong! Many sports sections are 55% to 65% women visitors. Say what? That’s right. Either sports players all have moms who keep up with them or their team, or all the 20-something guys said they were 65 year old women. Either way, the odds aren’t as good as you might think.

• High Creative is a term I use to identify any ad that doesn’t really fit in a standard banner space. You’ve probably seen these crawling across your screen, or taking over your screen, or stuck over content (like a sticky note), or an ad that pushes the page down (sliding billboard). Most of these will run you $25 CPM (two and a half cents each) or more, but they can be very effective short-term campaigns.

  If you want clicks, but all the site offers is CPM, this is certainly the way to go.

• Animated usually means animated GIF. These are pretty simple ads that have a few slides that snap from one to another. Simple, and should be included in the price of your advertising campaign.

  Animated ads are better than static (non-animated) ads.

• Flash or “rich media” ads = are usually smooth animations (like a slide show with transitions), video, or even interactive ads. These can be a little more if they’re intended for standard ad positions. Depending on the ad, you might have to pay a creative fee to have the ad built, or you might have to pay a higher CPM. It’s not always important, but sometimes you want to consider is how such an ad will display on non-computer devices, such as an iOS (Apple iPhone, iPad, etc) or Android device.

  Flash ads are better than simple animated ads – but won’t show up on iPhone, iPad, etc.

Got all that? To Recap:

• When talking to a website sales rep about advertising, basically you’ll want to know how much traffic their site receives. The right answer will include page views or unique visitors.
• Their target readership is another good question to determine if their site is a good match for your target market.

After you’ve figured out if the site is a good fit, you’ll want to get pricing.

• The most desirable ad placement is right next to the editorial content. Those ads are usually more expensive than a banner at the top or bottom of the page – but they’re worth it.
• While you’re negotiating, get them to provide a free, animated (at least) spec ad.
• CPM? Don’t forget to ask for your 10% over run.

So, what do you think? Have you tried banner advertising yet? Still think banner ads aren’t for you, or want to ask a specific question about your industry? Drop a comment below and I’ll be sure to get right back to you.

Where search engine marketing will help people who are really looking for you to find you, banner ads will help connect people to you that aren’t specifically searching for you. Think of it this way. If someone wants to buy a certain brand of handbag, but have no idea who in the area sells them, they will likely use a search engine to find out. However, all the people reading the online version of a style magazine aren’t searching for anything – but they’re engaged in a message you should be a part of. These readers may not even know your product exists, it’s name, or even what it looks like. Enter the banner ad. Placed right next to that online style article can give you more visibility than all that search engine work you’ve been doing. Local jewelry stores, boutique stores, salon & spas, and even cosmetic surgery companies can be right here, too.

Another big area local businesses might overlook for banner advertising in the real estate world. If you’re a home builder – you could be advertising next to empty lot listings. If you’re a home inspector, next to home listings. Real Estate Attorneys can be all over this one as well. Home improvement companies can advertise their ability to increase the value of your home before a planned sale, home stagers, decorators, the list goes on and on. Stocks and business news? Banks for sure, financial planners, insurance companies, business attorneys — you get the point, right? What about career counselors? Local job board websites that offer banner ads might be a great place to start.

Online banner ads get the word out about your product to potential clients who are not necessarily searching for it.

Now that you know why banner ads are a good thing, here are a few things to think about as you get started.

• The smaller, the better. You really can’t experiment (inexpensively) with a huge website with millions of page views and hundreds of thousands of unique visitors. The best place to start is a small niche blogger. Failing that, you can at least target your banner ad to a niche section of a larger website. Just remember to really think about where on their site your potential clients are likely to be.
• Find a local blogger. If someone in your local community has a following with good potential clients for you, sponsor their blog! Most bloggers write for fun, so sponsoring it might be really inexpensive. A good rule of thumb is to ask them for a price, don’t offer one.
• Local business sites. If you’re a home inspector, I bet you know a few real estate agents, title attorneys, home builders, or mortgage brokers that have a website. Offer to trade some ad space on your site with theirs and cross-promote. You’ve seen cross-promotion at work for other businesses – now you just need to make it work for you.
• Don’t expect a mad rush of customers. Banner ads are traditionally more for brand recognition. Certainly a decent offer might bring in more potential customers, but just be aware that, like SEO, this isn’t going to empty your store’s shelves overnight. It’s just one more way to get your name out there.
• If you’re paying for it, it’s trackable (or should be). You can know how may times your ad was displayed and how many visitors that ad brought to your website. If you’re paying by the number of ad displays (CPM) and your ad doesn’t get shown as much as it should have, you can ask for a make-good and potentially run the next month for free.

Image by gdesigneralex

So what is RSS? It stands for “Really Simple Syndication” and just about every blogger and news outlet uses it. Basically, it’s a way to get notified that a website’s content has updated without having to visit. I follow 32 different websites with RSS because it’s easier than visiting 32 websites every day (several times a day) just to find out when one or two update their content. There are more than twenty other websites I would follow but they don’t haven an RSS feed. Some of them I wanted to follow so badly, I even called and asked them to create a feed! So far? Yeah, still no feed.

Maybe I’m off base, here, but I’ve been frustrated today in my search for RSS feeds on local websites. I just can’t believe that only three of twenty sites I looked at actually had an RSS feed. And none of them had multiple feeds. RSS isn’t hard stuff – any modern content management system worth its salt will have it built right in. Why not use it? Maybe it’s just a local phenomenon, but on the off-chance that it isn’t, here’s why I believe RSS is important.

Sure, I could sign up for their email newsletter. But I’ll inevitably sign up for an email list that doesn’t take my privacy seriously and it won’t take long for the SPAM to start rolling in. As a side note on this, for those sites I do provide an email address to, they each get their own unique email address. That way I know where all the SPAM started from.

What else can a person do?  Well, instead of signing up for email, just follow their RSS feed! On my Mac, I can add an RSS feed right to my Email program and have new content flow right into my inbox just like it was an email. If I don’t want a certain site’s news anymore, I just turn the feed off and it’s gone. There is no unsubscribe feature that emails me a removal verification (that usually goes to junk mail, preventing me from being removed), there’s no extra SPAM from unscrupulous websites selling my address to whoever. It’s just easy.

There are some other cool benefits to RSS for the web user. Want to read the news and not see all the obnoxious ads? Check out RSS. Want to keep up with your favorite blogger? RSS. Want to know what’s going on at the local non-profit? RSS. The best part is you can put all of these feeds into an RSS application and see who’s updating without actually having to visit dozens of websites.

As a business, have you ever wanted to notify your visitors, the press, or search engines when you have new content? Guess who checks RSS feeds? Yep, anyone who gets paid to keep up with content is very likely to appreciate a good RSS feed.

If you have a website, here are some reasons I think you should create a feed for your site.

• You have a “press release” page.
• You have a calender of events page.
• You publish job openings to your site.
• You have other regularly updated information (news, blogs, photo galleries, client testimonials, etc.)

Don’t just make one big feed, though. Each of the reasons above is valid enough for its own, unique RSS feed that’s tied to it’s own audience. If someone wants to follow them all, they can. But if they’re only interested to know when a new job opening is posted, they can do that, too.

Give me your thoughts on RSS feeds. Do you use them to keep up with content?

photo by arquera

Content building. I’ve heard it for a long time. You want to get the search engine’s attention, you must have fresh content — you must have a blog! Okay, but you’re busy doing what you do best — building your business. Who has time to blog? (If you do have a blog, don’t shut down here – there’s some good stuff for you, too.)

So, you pay some service to write a canned blog for you. Problem is, search engines don’t like the same canned content they see on a dozen (or a thousand) other websites. You have to be “fresh” and different to get their attention. So, do you have to provide a whole new angle to have something to write about? What if you sell insurance or real estate or cars or any other prepackaged solution to someone’s problem? What do YOU write about something that’s different and actually adds value to a very broad field like automotive? Even if you drill down to something specific like “Ford Mustang,” can you really write something new and original and actually compete in an overcrowded and loud space?

This question has haunted me this last year. So, since the “small guy” probably isn’t going to be able to compete in a crowded field, could he maybe have fresh content without having a blog? More importantly, what is a blog, anyway? To a search engine, a blog is really just your keywords wrapped in, that’s right, “fresh content.” So, can we do “fresh content” (read blog) effectively without a “blog?” Sure we can!

Even if you are a blogger, don’t miss this. What fresh information do you have that is specific to your small business? Did you help a client move into a new home? Quick picture and a paragraph. If they’re shy, just a pic of the house is fine. For the paragraph, you can just tell the story of what happened: how they found you, what they wanted, and that you came through. Look at what web developers and SEO experts are doing. When they launch a new site, they post a “case study” and a photo related to the project. It’s not (always) a blog post.

What other information do you have at your fingertips? If you’re Mustang Mike, I bet you know where all the for-sale Mustangs in town are (even if it’s not in your dealership’s inventory). Can you get an automated feed of Mustangs in the area with a picture and a paragraph on the car? I bet you could at least get that for your dealership. Work on the others. You don’t have to say where the car is – just that it’s available for sale. Make sure the dealerships you’re getting data from will work with you, though I’m sure most will be glad to move their inventory.

On the back-end of all this, make sure:

1. the content hosted on your own website
   • Don’t link to twitter posts, or facebook shares, or a page on your dealer or broker’s site.
2. each “post” has its own, unique page and photo
   • Each item (Ford Mustang) should have a separate html page dedicated to it.
   • Each page should have a unique photo (of that property, or car, or whatever). This is more for your readers than for search engines – and it will really help.
3. you have an RSS feed
   • The RSS feed should include the photo (from above) in the short description field.
   • The feed needs to be properly linked to from your homepage. This is important. You’ll use an html code to embed it the RSS feed on the page itself, not tied to an RSS logo – in the actual header code of your page.
4. you setup automated links coming back to you
   • Setup a tool like dlvr.it or twitterfeed.com and link your RSS feed to your Twitter and Facebook business accounts. Quick and easy linkbuilding – and both sites have a Google PageRank of 10!
   • Look for other important partnerships you can forge. Trulia and Zillow are great places to send real estate, Google Base is another one (and not just for real estate). I bet there are industry specific sites for any industry out there you could partner with. The important thing is that they will provide a link back to your site.

Keep in mind these are just a few tips for a relatively untapped area of content generation. There are certainly other, very powerful SEO skills you’ll need to tackle on your quest for SEO dominance. Things like your website being written in valid html (type your URL in here and see how you stack up: http://validator.w3.org, using the proper tags to highlight content (like heading and page title tags), as well as using keywords in your URLs.

by DanBrady

The other day I was engrossed in a Twitter conversation about the best way to communicate with prospects. Even though we were communicating via Twitter, virtually everyone said “email” or “phone call” was the best way to communicate (and none of them had my email address or phone number).

Phone calls are so demanding. Stephen Covey puts them in quadrant-three: high priority, low importance. Phone calls just scream “pay attention to me – I’m more important than anything you happen to be working on.” With his low-information-diet idea, Tim Ferriss recommends that you never call or “drop in” on anyone. It throws off their concentration, which can take a considerable amount of time to recover from. If you want to be courteous, email is certainly preferred to a phone call. The recipient will simply reply at their convenience, instead of stopping their day for yours. It shows respect and courtesy while still allowing you to get a timely response. Email, then is the best way to communicate, right?

Well, not necessarily – and here’s where the Twitterverse started to disagree. I’ve met people who tell me “I get a hundred emails a day.” Wow! Then, there’s always that nasty SPAM filter, too. Don’t think you’re special – that nasty thing might just shoot your email for spite. Some folks I’ve sent email to say they never received it – and it’s not even in their junk folder. I know I didn’t get their email back, so their SPAM filter just ate it. When you are sending information someone needs to get their job done, you will have to follow-up with another email or phone call to make sure they received it.

Back in this Twitter conversation, a few folks said “text message” was the best way to get in touch. That is, of course, if you have their cell number. Another thing: does your intended recipient have to pay for each and every text message you send them? It’s easy to think that everyone has unlimited text, but this is simply not the case. In fact, I know some folks who have opted out of SMS altogether. If I send them a message, it doesn’t even come back as undeliverable (like that nasty SPAM filter).

I brought up Twitter and Facebook as powerful communication tools, but it was not taken seriously. Think about it, though. Just because you prefer a phone call, or an email, or a text message, doesn’t mean everyone else prefers the same method of communication. The funny thing is you can’t always ask what their preferred method is, because they may not even realize it themselves! I have some clients who never respond to email, but will always get right back to a Twitter DM or Facebook message. But if you ask them  how they prefer to get in touch, they’ll tell you “oh, email, absolutely.” So if you haven’t even experimented with tapping into these new medium, then you might be missing out!

Here’s another way to look at it. Way back in the day, Tom Hopkins used to talk about “Money Calls.” It’s simply any phone call you received where the person on the other end was interested in your expertise. Some calls are more obvious than others. A call to your office where the person says they want to buy something and a call to your home asking for your advice can both be “Money Calls.” I bet you’ve received a “Money Message” on Facebook or Twitter without even realizing it. It could be an acquaintance that heard you were an expert in something. It could be a friend trying to refer business to you. It could be an old business contact who lost your email address, but searched you out and got in touch on a social media platform.

So, here are a few things you can do to experiment with the business potential of your personal social media accounts:

1. For each client, notice how they connect with you. If they always contact you via one method over another – just keep using that method.
2. Selling is about relationships, and you can really build that relationship better with more touch-points. So, don’t be afraid to connect on more than one level. Just because they email you all the time doesn’t mean you throw away the phone, cell phone, and fax numbers in their client file, right? So connect with them on Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIN. If nothing else, you have a way to stay in touch if they move from one company to another. Best case scenario, you’ll engage them in their everyday conversations on these medium and build a stronger business relationship as a result.
3. Listen up! I’d recommend installing a few desktop applications to notify you immediately when someone tries to get in touch. Facebook Notifier is a great notifier for Mac (I’m sure there’s an equivalent for you Windoze folks). Also, Nambu or Twitterrific are great Twitter applications that will notify you when someone sends you a private or public message. While we’re on the subject, if you haven’t checked out Growl, now is a great time.
4. Pay it forward! When you need some advice or a service, reach out to your Twitter and Facebook friends!

What do you think about using Facebook and Twitter for business? Have you ever received a “Money Message?”

The Sticky Note

The standard online sticky note – everyone hates them, because they “get all up on your way.” But if you are an advertiser who’s looking to get your message seen, they are absolutely fantastic.

About three years ago a large state-wide newspaper had a new, really small ad position it couldn’t sell. At the time other newspapers around the nation were using it as a logo-only branding position, but 95% of them were just using it for in-house advertisements. It was in this environment that I began experimenting with how we could convert that unpopular and unused ad space into something super popular and cool for advertisers. Enter, the online sticky note.

The position went from zero utilization to about 70% utilization very quickly. Certain popular days of the year like “Black Friday” were scheduled 12 months in advance! This is fantastic news for a previously unmonetizable ad position.

Today I’m announcing a new variation of that sticky note that no longer needs an ad position to function. It can be tied to any fixed position on the page. The example image below shows the bottom-left corner option.

In addition to this tweak, some cross-browser issues with the previous version have also been addressed. The previous sticky note required the artist creating the ad to place a small “close” button on the image in a very particular space. Because not all browsers render positions exactly the same way, and graphic artists don’t always put the close “X” in the same place every time, the close button on the image didn’t always line up with the close action area the browser expected. So, when the visitor clicked the close box, sometimes the ad was activated instead. The fix removes that “close” button from the image and makes it a free-floating box that is always easily distinguishable by the visitors, and always clickable regardless of browser.

So, tell me what you think of the new sticky note!

Sticky Screen Grab

Jeff Fisher - photo by Ray Montgomery

I don’t have a photo of him, but he looked a whole lot like Jeff Fisher (the coach of the Tennessee Titans NFL team). Todd carried two cell phones: one was for business and the other for his x-wives — if that wasn’t an indicator then there never was such a thing. He was not know for his personable demeanor — he was known for grit, hell, fire, and brimstone. If  you blew it, forgot something, didn’t call a customer back, or missed any detail that caught his attention, you knew you were going to get both ears full. And nobody, but nobody, was brave enough to wait for him to inevitably find out something, anything, they went straight to him and just got it over with.

My favorite story about Todd Miller was one he told about himself. On some random weekend afternoon, the next door neighbor was entertaining some friends when suddenly gunfire broke out next door at Todd’s house. The visitors were startled and afraid. They wanted to call the police. “No, no,” said Todd’s neighbor. “He always does that before he mows the lawn.” “You’re nuts! Call the Police!” was their reply. A few more shots went off, and the demands continued. The stalemate went on for a while, but inevitably Todd’s lawnmower starting up. “See? I told you. Todd always does that before he cuts the grass,” the neighbor said casually. The company was dumbfounded.

Todd was, as he himself called it, “deathly afraid of snakes,” and for whatever reason, he decided to live on the river. Well, where there’s water, there’s snakes, and Todd didn’t want any of them jumping out at him while he was cutting the grass. So, as a precaution, he shot all the bushes in his back yard before he started cutting the grass.

I guess Todd was pretty eccentric, and sometimes he came across as just plain mean. Back then, there were always a few folks threatening to quit (none in front of Todd, of course). I remember pulling several good people back from just walking out by explaining the whole “it’s just business” philosophy that Todd embraced. When he’d chew you out he wouldn’t actually form the words “never do that again.” But, you knew — OH, how you knew! And it really was just business, because he’d always come check on you later. Sometimes, he’d even put his arm around you and take you to lunch — where he’d order a steak. “How’d you like that cooked?” He’d motion for the waitress to come closer; he’d lean in, blink hard, and almost whisper, “Listen, darlin, I want the vet to have a fighting chance.”

Anyone in management would (or should) be jealous of Todd Miller because every single member of his team would have literally killed for him; and he would have done the exact same for each individual one of them.

Now, rumor had it that the company only called once. If you didn’t take the call, they’d never call again. So, when Todd got that call offering fame, fortune, and whatever else, he knew he had to go. For the announcement, he called everyone into the meeting room, and he cried.

Photo by Simon Varwell

I’ve never been in an offshore crew boat, but I’ve been told it’s quite an experience. Those who know say the trip isn’t always smooth. On a bad day the seas are high and the ride is very rough. On a good day, it still takes forever to get that boat the mile or more out to sea.

Many men who work offshore in the Louisiana Gulf Coast take these crew boats out to the oil rigs, stay a week or two, then take them back in. Rocking back and forth through the hours the trip can take surely can’t be all that pleasant. A few men probably get sea sick, especially if they’re new to the experience. For me, reading or doing any kind of paperwork in a moving car is enough to get me motion sick — I can only imagine that the motion in a crew boat would make it impossible.

Back in the 1950′s, my grandfather worked for a company named Totco in Houma, Louisiana. Instead of once every few weeks, it was his job to take a crew boat every day to some oil rig offshore and help them determine if the rig was drilling correctly. When the tests were done, he took the crew boat back to Houma. The next day, he repeated the process. Day in and day out, the process continued until all of the rigs were visited. Then, when all that was done, he got the distinct pleasure of starting all over again.

This was the business he was in, and it’s the way it had always been done. But, one day he had an idea; an idea on how he could do more in less time (and maybe make it a little more pleasant to boot). He went to the company he worked for and sold them on the idea that if they would buy a sea plane, he could visit so many more rigs in a day that it would pay for itself in no time. The company agreed, and after learning to fly, my grandfather’s efficiencies went through the roof, and he and the company served more customers faster and made more money as a result.

Like my grandfather, I know you too must be looking for ways to streamline processes, increase efficiencies or just find the quickest route to work. So, what’s your favorite “change” story? Do you have one of your own?