Radio Free Enterprise

Just two weeks ago I was listening to one of my favorite podcasts, This Week In Tech with Leo Laporte.

Leo was interviewing a young man named Justin Kan, star of his own lifelong version of The Truman Show on Justin.tv. Justin’s claim to fame? He’s made a commitment to LifeStreaming - providing live Internet video of everything that happens in his life 24/7 from a camera mounted on his head. Sound like fun?

Beyond the obvious privacy and logistical issues, the technology Justin had to cobble together was nothing short of daunting - and expensive. But that was two weeks ago, an ice age in Internet time. Today anyone can do the same thing Justin is (if they care to), with no hassle, at no charge and in no time.

UStream.tv allows anyone with a digital video camera (webcam on up) and a high-speed Internet connection to stream their images live to hundreds of viewers worldwide at no charge.

Just like YouTube and other sites which allow the free posting of pre-recorded videos, UStream.tv will no doubt be filled without a great deal of dubious content. But the opportunity for business owners, sales professionals and business groups to broadcast their live events to the world via streaming video is profound.

And the potential to leverage UStream.tv as an Education-Based Marketing medium is also enormous. I’ll be very interested to see where this new channel takes us in the coming months and years.

Here’s a sweet business model for you: a cereal bar - and cafe.

Cereality is a Chicago-based company that offers a Starbucks-like experience for lovers of name-brand hot and cold cereals.

Nice tag line!

Though they only have five locations open so far, this is a company with plans for large-scale expansion through franchising and licensing agreements with universities, airports, theme parks and convenience stores. They also offer catering and an online store!

Cereality locations serve name-brand cereals like Cheerios and Cocoa Puffs in waxboard containers of the kind the local Chinese restaurant sends your Kung Pao chicken home in. You add the liquid of your choice from a dispenser and commence to crunch.

I can’t say whether Cereality is profitable or if the concept has the potential for long-term growth and sustainability. But, if the nearly century-long success of breakfast cereals is any indicator, you can expect to see one of their locations opening on a streetcorner near you sometime very soon.

Ted Turner’s father made his fortune in billboards - the widely despised and widely dispersed giant canvasses of commercialism dotting the highways and bi-ways of this fair land.

Ted took over the firm - then worth approximately $1 million - upon his father’s suicide in 1963. The rest, as they say, is history.

To this day, Turner Outdoor is still a huge cash cow, churning out millions of profits for Time Warner every year - and getting progressively more profitable due to the latest in digital signage technology which allows a single billboard to display multiple ad images every minute.

But that ain’t all. Through wired and wireless Internet connections, hundreds of signs of all sizes in locations ranging from roadsides to retail points of sale, can be controlled and monitored from a single location. Awesome!

This article explains how an advertising medium which had been written off for dead just ten years ago is making a huge comeback thanks to the creative application of digital technology.

I’m not sure whether Jott is revolutionary or evolutionary but I do know that I will be using this amazing new service from this day forward.

Jott combines telephony, voice messaging, voice recognition, email and an online-accessible database to create an amazingly simple yet powerful communication medium that every business owner can put to immediate use.

Here’s how this free service works: You call a toll free number and a robotic female voice asks, “Who do you want to Jott?” You respond “Me.” After a tone, you dictate your message to yourself, then pause to indicate you are finished. In a few seconds the voice says “Got it!” and then you hang up. Shortly thereafter you receive an email with a text transcription of your message along with a link to play the original recording.

You can Jott messages to yourself, to individuals and to groups. For example, in less than 30 seconds with a single toll-free call to Jott, a sales manager can inform his entire team that the sales meeting has been rescheduled.

The Jott web site does a great job of explaining how the system works and the ways that people are using it. It’s easy to register and import your entire contact database.

I’m going to be using Jott to send myself reminders, email customers and vendors, schedule meetings - and a thousand other things - every time it occurs to me, even when I’m on the road.

Just came across this comprehensive list of terms used in private equity and venture capital transactions.

It covers everything from Accredited Investor to Weighted Average Antidilution.

This document is another excellent example of Education-Based Marketing from a site called VCExperts.com You can download the glossary as a Word or html document or refer to it online.

VCExperts.com makes their money by providing information, training and publications targeting people on every side of a private equity transaction. They claim to have over 50,000 users per month.

I can tell you from my own experience that being able to speak the language of private equity is critical for anyone “venturing” into the world of venture capital. You don’t want to find yourself across the table from a Type A investment banker or VC, not being able to track what they are saying. With that having been said, understanding their lexicon is only your first challenge!

Nonetheless, this glossary and VCExperts.com appear to be great resources for you to tap into.

Two sisters, who started Native Angels Home Care and Hospice in 2000 with just two patients, are now serving 760 patients per day and generating over $9 million annually.

Bobbie Jacobs-Ghaffar and Lesa Jacobs can now add another accomplishment to their list: the two members of the Lumbee Indian Tribe have been named National Small Business Persons of the Year by the SBA at the Small Business Week 2007 conference held April 23-24 in Washington, DC.

Among the reasons cited by the SBA in selecting Native Angels were the North Carolina company’s record of stability, employment and sales growth.

During my mother’s illness in the period leading up to her death last July, my family was blessed to have found a local company which provides the same type of service. Very few businesses engage so intimately with people’s lives as these folks do, and they are truly angels bringing blessings at perhaps the most difficult point in any person’s life.

Congratulations to these two sisters and all the angels out there.

I’m always fascinated by innovative model. Even when the idea is simply to apply an existing marketing method to a different industry.

That’s what I found when I discovered 1-800-CAB-RIDE.com. Basically it’s an online (and/or telephone) taxi reservation system. Kind of like what Expedia offers to airline passengers combined with a memorable phone number/web address like 1-800-FLOWERS.com.

The concept is simple, but powerful. And the combination seems obvious. Don’t know if they’re making any money but do know that they can now get you a cab in in more than 25 cities 24/7.

Read more about them in this article in USA Today.

Several years ago I had an idea about posting educational videos on the Internet on arcane but interesting topics like, how to build a roaring fire in your fireplace, how to parallel park, the basic rules of football and baseball, how to bake bread, change a diaper, set a table, make a bed, plant a flower garden, etc.

Each video would be only five minutes or shorter, offering just the essential information you needed along with links to resources for more details. Kind of like a video instruction manual for life. My idea was that users would generate the content and vote on each video’s value. The best videos and producers would rise to the top, attracting the most eyeballs and creating the most advertising revenue. I registered the domain name FiveMinutesOn.com but did nothing further.

Over the past couple of years, multiple companies have come forward with various flavors of this same concept, with greater or lesser degrees of marketplace success. The most recent one I am aware of, is being created nearby to me in Great Falls, Virginia.

Knowlera Media’s approach is to locate subject matter experts of every stripe and then send professional videographers to do 2-camera shoots of them in HD (high definition video). Knowlera pays for the production and editing and posts the video online. The expert gets free video exposure and the ability to post the content on their web site. But Knowlera owns the rights to the content and receives all revenue derived from it.

Their site has not yet gone live but they are already shooting and editing content. My friend Wes Crawford, who is a master musician and music teacher, has contributed his knowledge to a couple of drum instructional videos for Knowlera.

If you are a coach, consultant or other type of subject matter expert who would like to share your knowledge with the world under the terms outlined above, drop by MonkeySee.com and fill-out the form on the Experts page. Then stop back here and let us know what you think.

This is a great way for any business person with specialized knowledge which brings unique value to an engaged audience to do some high-quality Education-Based Marketing - at no charge!

It’s how much you keep.

Just ask David Hayden. At one time this serial entrepreneur’s net worth (on paper) exceeded $200 million. Today his stock portfolio has evaporated, he is having a hard time finding V.C. funding for his latest start-up, he’s selling many of his most prized possessions and is being sued for $24 million by Bank of America.

Like many “idea guys” in the late 1990s, Hayden created multiple business concepts which were embraced passionately by the investment community, but less so by the marketplace at large. During those go-go days, he would have been well served to take some of his profits of the table. Liquify as it were. But he didn’t. Nor did he pay close enough attention to the fine print of many of the contracts he was signing.

He also made the common mistake of accumulating possessions which were way out of line with his true needs, or actual cash flow. Now, the 52 year-old Hayden is licking his wounds and banking on his next big deal.

I recommend every entrepreneur read this cautionary tale at CNET (originally published in the New York Times) and then come back and post a comment with your reactions. What should Hayden have done differently? What would you have done differently?

Give it a read and give it some thought. Then come back here and share with the crowd.

When Dr. Ivan Misner founded BNI in 1985, he may have never dreamed that it would one day grow into the world’s largest business networking organization. Today, with nearly 100,000 members in 37 countries around the world, it has become exactly that.

With that level of success come many challenges, not the least of which is communication between a single founder and tens of thousands of members and directors across the globe.

As a new member to BNI, it occurred to me that the production of a weekly podcast could go a long way to solve that problem. And when I approached Dr. Misner with the idea, he saw the potential and quickly gave the go-ahead.

The result is The Official BNI Podcast, a weekly 5-10 minute audio message from Dr. Misner to the world of BNI, which I produce and co-host from my home studio.

Just as important as his regular outbound communication is the opportunity for his audience to respond through comments, questions and suggestions they can post on the podcast’s web site. From my perspective, this is the essential power of what is being called Web 2.0: the creation of a community through 2-way communication.

The production format allows Dr. Misner and his guests to call-in from anywhere in the world, which is an important consideration for a man with a packed calendar and a global travel itinerary. Nonetheless, I congratulate Dr. Misner for making the commitment of adding this project to his weekly agenda. I don’t believe he would do it if he didn’t see the overwhelming value in it.

Rather than spend too much time explaining what The Official BNI Podcast is all about, I invite you to listen to the first episode where Dr. Misner explains it himself.

I am very pleased and proud to be a part of this new production and I encourage anyone with a far-flung base of offices, employees, salespeople, franchisees, customers, members, readers - you name it - to consider adding a weekly podcast to your communication menu. It’s easier and less expensive than you might think. Give me a call if you’d like to discuss the possibilites.