Radio Free Enterprise

I recently attended an unusual presentation at the Ritz-Carlton hotel in Tysons Corner, Virginia.

Amid an amazing spread of oysters on the half shell, fresh fruits and berries, belgian waffles, baked chicken, bloody marys and mimosas, an Executive Vice President from the Ritz-Carlton corporate offices explained that it was now possible to own a luxury home in a truly “Ritzy” neighborhood.

Presenting to the Washington, DC area’s top residential real estate agents, the executive laid out the Ritz’s plans to build a community of luxury homes ($3 million to $7 million) around a Jack Nicklaus signature golf course in Loudoun Country, Virginia.

Harkening back to the days when the super-wealthy would live in an apartment in New York’s Waldorf-Astoria hotel, this opulent community will offer owners all the comforts of home plus the luxury of having their every need served by experienced Ritz-Carlton concierges, chefs, groundskeepers and security personnel.

Targeting what the presenter called “The Newly Rich,” this neighborhood is intended to be inhabited by families with young children who can enjoy the recreational facilities which include a large, luxurious club house and equestrian center.

It’s unlikely I’ll ever live in this community but I found their business model and marketing presentation fascinating. Lots are available immediately if you’re interested. Just click on the headline above for more information.

Google has announced a partnership with Intuit, publisher of Quicken and QuickBooks accounting software for small business, whereby certain Google software applications will be included on QuickBooks 2007 installation disks.

Quoting from their joint press release:

For the first time, small businesses can use QuickBooks to market themselves online by listing their businesses on Google Maps(TM), creating and managing advertising campaigns with Google AdWords(TM) and posting their products for sale on Google through Google Base(TM) — a free product listing service. Integrated into QuickBooks 2007, available this fall, QuickBooks customers will have the ability to attract new customers using Google, the world’s leading search engine.

The bottom line: most small business owners don’t know how to use these Google services - which causes both the business owners and Google to lose revenue. Google’s strategy in partnering with Intuit is to reach out to the software company’s 3.2 million small business customers and persuade some large percentage to take the time to learn.

If they really want more of us to use their systems, they need to do a much better job of showing us how. As I heard Alex Mandossian say on a podcast today, they need to “teach us how to consume” their services.

I have said and will continue to say that Google does a lousy job of showing us all how to use their systems. I simply cannot understand why they don’t produce online training videos which demonstrate the correct use of AdWords, AdSense, Google Analytics, etc., etc.

They have the money, the knowhow and the manpower.

If more people knew how to use their systems - and use them to their greatest capability - both Google and their customers would benefit. As smart and gifted as they are, Google seems to be completely blind to both the need and the opportunity in teaching us how to consume.

I’ve never been a big fan of Guy Kawasaki - the master self-promoter and former “Chief Evangelist” for Apple Computer.

He has always struck me as being “All hat and no cattle,” meaning that he’s great at stringing together pleasant sounding words into apparently meaningful sentences that actually say nothing.

He admits as much here when he states “I am living proof that you can fool some of the people most of the time,” when describing how Apple first hired him in 1983 in spite of the fact that he was a diamond salesman with a Psych degree who knew almost nothing about computers.

But this video has me turned around a bit on him, and I recommend that you spend a least a couple of minutes listening to what he has to say about what it takes to successfully launch a new company. While he appears to be speaking to a room full of start-ups hoping to secure venture capital, he makes a number of great points that apply to any company and with which I heartily agree.

Please post comments to let me know what you think.

I’m pleased to announce that I will be presenting at the Business Building Trade Show being held at the Hilton Springfield (Virginia), Friday September 22, 2006. The trade show runs from 9:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. and my 45-minute presentation starts at 3:00 p.m.

I’ll be teaching The Customer Factory marketing model, explaining my Four Simple Steps to Lasting Business Success to Northern Virginia entrepreneurs and showing them how they can apply this powerful formula to their own businesses to create dependable sales growth for years to come.

The Customer Factory uses the illustration of an assembly-line factory to describe the fundamentals of marketing success in just four easily comprehended steps.

Those Four Simple Steps to Lasting Business Success are:

1. Design Your Customer

2. Pick Your Production Line

3. Tool It Up

4. Turn It On

I hope to see you in Springfield on the 22nd. If you have any questions about the presentation please call me at 703-401-3170.

Click on the headline at the top of this posting for directions to the Business Building Trade Show.

I have recently completed a very interesting video production project for J. Burkhardt Beale, a local criminal defense attorney who is also CEO of the law firm Boone, Beale, Crosby & Long.

The presentation consists of 41 individual short videos on various facets of the defense of a charge of Driving Under The Influence / Driving While Intoxicated (DUI / DWI) as well as a variety of ways to successfully defend such a charge.

The videos are intended to be viewed by individuals who have recently been charged but whom have not yet decided how or whether to defend themselves.

This application of marketing through education is brilliant (no, it wasn’t my idea) and I am convinced that these videos will help a lot of people who have gotten themselves in deep trouble while simultaneously increasing the revenue at Boone, Beale.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.

I recently came upon this video of a presentation given by marketing guru Seth Godin (author of Permission Marketing) to a group of folks at Google.

In it he explains to Google why they have been so successful to date and how to avoid losing their magic touch.

Godin’s insights are excellent and his speaking style is very enjoyable. But perhaps most profound about this video are the questions asked by the Google product managers.

In spite of Google’s apparently overwhelming success in nearly every category they have entered, these folks are very concerned about why certain offerings (such as Google Maps and the Google Mini search appliance) have not done better.

Godin’s answers, like “I didn’t wake up this morning with a search appliance problem,” are profound and applicable to every business and business owner.

I highly recommend this video and look forward to reading your feedback after you have viewed it. Please click the “Comments” link below to post your thoughts.

I found a fascinating article by Janet Adamy in today’s online version of the Wall Street Journal. What appears below are a few tidbits from that piece along with my take on what it all means for business owners.

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While most fast food chains are pulling back on their expansion plans, Subway is continuing to open restaurants at a rapid clip and in fact is now the largest such firm in the U.S. with over 20,000 locations. McDonald’s, for camparison, has approximately 13,700 stores.

One of the ways that Subway has succeeded where their competitors have faltered is in the area of “non-traditional” locations - defined by Subway as any place you wouldn’t normally find a restaurant.

Such as?

Such as inside a German car dealership, at 110 hospitals, in a Goodwill Industries store, a downtrodden church in upstate New York and The Jewish Community Center of Cleveland. At the JCC the menu was altered to provide only kosher fare and an Orthodox Jew is on hand at all times to oversee food preparation.

Sound crazy? That location is #5 in sales out of all Cleveland locations in spite of only being open half a day on Fridays and closed all day on Saturdays in observation of the sabbath. Cleveland’s top selling Subway is inside a hosptal.

I guess this is sort of a “think outside of the box” or “think outside of the bun” success story. Subway didn’t let the fact that they started out much smaller than McDonald’s or other burger chains limit their vision of what they could become. And their willingness to be flexible in altering the basic store layout to meet the needs of as many non-traditional locations as possible has paid off big time.

How big?

Right now 22% of their locations are non-traditional, up from 13% ten years ago.

Food for thought.