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Constitution Day and the Federal Reserve

John — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 21:04:56 +0000

Although you wouldn’t know it from watching the news, today is Constitution Day. 222 years ago, on September 17, 1787, forty-two of the 55 delegates to the Constitutional Convention held their final meeting at Independence Hall in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The only item of the agenda that day was to sign the Constitution of the united States of America.

Today, on Constitution Day 2009, Dr. Ron Paul announced that HR 1207 has reached 290 cosponsors and is now eligible for consideration under suspension of House rules.

Here is Dr. Paul explaining what HR 1207 is, and why it’s important.

Contact the person who is supposed to represent you in Washington and tell them to support HR-1207 and to bring it to the floor for a vote.

United Breaks Guitars or A Quick Lesson in Bad Customer Service

John — Wed, 08 Jul 2009 16:05:01 +0000

This video, called United Breaks Guitars, is a quick lesson in how NOT to treat your customers. I’ll let Dave Maxwell of the group Sons of Maxwell tell his story.

In the spring of 2008, Sons of Maxwell were traveling to Nebraska for a one-week tour and my Taylor guitar was witnessed being thrown by United Airlines baggage handlers in Chicago. I discovered later that the $3500 guitar was severely damaged.

They didnt deny the experience occurred but for nine months the various people I communicated with put the responsibility for dealing with the damage on everyone other than themselves and finally said they would do nothing to compensate me for my loss. So I promised the last person to finally say no to compensation (Ms. Irlweg) that I would write and produce three songs about my experience with United Airlines and make videos for each to be viewed online by anyone in the world.

If you think you can provide the same old customer service as you did even 5 years ago in the age of YouTube and Twitter, you are just asking for trouble. The below video was posted to YouTube on July 6. Today, July 8, it’s been view 131,526 times. Google the term “United Breaks Guitars” and there are 4,460 results.

How would you like that to your business that someone is making a video about? So many small business owners don’t think about the consequences of their actions. After all, it’s just one customer right? How much business United is going to lose because of this video, not to mention the general bad feeling that people are going to have toward them.

Think about this next time you deal with a customer, and next time you fly, remember that United breaks guitars.

A Tired Old Dog

John — Fri, 20 Feb 2009 04:28:01 +0000

An older, tired-looking dog wandered into my yard.

I could tell from his collar and well-fed belly that he had a home and was well taken care of.

He calmly came over to me, I gave him a few pats on his head; he then followed me into my house, slowly walked down the hall, curled up in the corner and fell asleep.

An hour later, he went to the door, and I let him out.

The next day he was back, greeted me in my yard, walked inside and resumed his spot in the hall and again slept for about an hour.

This continued off and on for several weeks.

Curious, I pinned a note to his collar: ‘I would like to find out who the owner of this wonderful sweet dog is and ask if you are aware that almost every afternoon your dog comes to my house for a nap.’

The next day he arrived for his nap, with a different note pinned to his collar:

‘He lives in a home with 6 children, 2 under the age of 3 – he’s trying to catch up on his sleep.

Can I come with him tomorrow?’

Sometimes when you are busy trying to make money, you forget the reason you are working so hard. Of course you have bills to pay, we all do. But you need to get out of the hectic life and long hours sometimes just to recharge.

Take a break, take a nap, take a walk, spend some quiet time with those you love.

You’ll come back refreshed and ready to go.

Data Miners know WHAT about me!

John — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 20:03:47 +0000

It may not be Big Brother from George Orwells 1984 but you might just be amazed at the information data miners know about you. As you travel around the internet you leave hundreds of clues about yourself, many of them so tiny that you wouldn’t think anything of them. But every one of them holds a clue to you and your lifestyle.

Author Stephen Baker takes a look into the the world of the men and women who take the seemingly random information and make sense out of it in his new book The Numerati.

What can be done with this information? An incredible amount. Who are the most likely people to click on an ad for a rental car? Believe it or not they are the same people who have recently read an online obituary. Why? Maybe they need to rent a car to go to the funeral. If you run a car rental agency you may never consider advertising on the local newspapers obituary page without that info.

It’s not just online that we leave a thousand footprints. Got a credit card? Nearly all, if not all, credit card companies sell the information they receive on your purchases. They don’t sell specifics but will sell a mailing list of people who bought a specific item.

Do you use a store courtesy card? Many stores, especially grocery but it’s moved well beyond just them, require a store card to receive the sale price on items. Ever wonder what happens to all that information? Do they really keep track of how much milk or bread you buy? Of course they do. And then they sell that info to other companies. If you buy 2 or more gallons of milk a week, it’s a pretty good bet you have children living with you. By knowing that, if I have a product to market to parents, you are a good choice.

Are you 50 or over? Then within a month of your turning 50 you probably got an invitation to join AARP. How did they know? They probably bought your information from your states drivers license bureau. The information is all out there, just waiting for someone to tie it all together for you.

Don’t use credit cards and store courtesy cards? It doesn’t really matter. A recent article in New Scientist claims that

US firm Acxiom keeps shopping and lifestyle data on some 200 million Americans.

They know how much we paid for our house, what magazines we subscribe to, which books we buy and what vacations we take. The company purchases just about every bit of data about us that can be bought, and then sells selections of it to anyone out to target us in, say, political campaigns.

It may be that we don’t have to worry about the Big Brother from 1984, we may need to worry about The Numerati of 2009. It’s not the government who will know everything, it’s the data miners.

If you think that’s a little drastic, consider this. A recent study by Carnegie Mellon University showed that simply by knowing gender, birth date and postal zip code, 87% of people in the United States could be pinpointed by name.

Think about that next time some cash register clerk asks you for your zip code for their demographics.