Time for change

This is the new year and a time when change occurs and no one worries why, it just happens. And it happens every time a new year comes around.

I need to change my blog and go in a direction that will produce new opportunities and further ideas for myself and others. Look for changes and if you have any ideas pass them along.

So Many Ideas - So Little Time

For a Million Bucks Could I Play ?

With the Olympics in full swing (I do love the Olympics) I had an idea to offer an opportunity to be part of the Olympics. How you may ask? Well there are about 100 countries that are invited to the Games that have only a few (like 5 or 6) competitors. One could offer a country a sum of money, (a lot) that money going towards helping in training some of their own citizens to be part of the Games. In turn one could become a citizen of that country and then train anywhere they want for the next 4 years, to be on that countries team. Yes this is commercializing the Games, but that happened when we let pros in the games like the NBA. Think of the fun it would be to go to London and race with the best in the world (not win by a long shot) and hang out to say, “Yes I was an Olympian”. Who knows one could also make some big bucks or even do a movie or TV show about it. Watch for my add “ Be part of the Olympics for only $19.99 plus training and other expenses, not to exceed one million dollars per person.

Face it

I had to publish this great photo I only wish it would have been my idea to take this picture. I have a poster from a Japanese advertisement that has just the face of a girl, the detail are so vivid you can almost touch her skin. Ideas like this are original each one, you may disagree with me but lets look at the idea of the parachute…. Leonardo Da Vinci had an idea for one later in the late 17th century someone made one that worked, later in the 20th century the par-a-foil worked much better each idea is original yet they all are parachutes. The same with the photograph it might look like some other work you may have seen; yet it is original. All ideas are original because even if they are copied they come from a new place (may a bad one), you; your history, your views, your frame, your thought etc.

Jaws 4?

“Just when you thought it was safe to go back in the water…” I have been working on a screenplay for a play on Jaws, called Chum. It would not be a comedy like all the spin-offs have been lately; it is a true horror movie. It would have all the fun little references to the Jaws movies, such as “That’s some bad hat. . .” and “We’ve got to get a bigger boat”, etc. The idea is to make a movie about sharks that would be scary but would help people understand about how important sharks are to sea life and the environment and not just man-eating killers that they are made out to be in Hollywood. The evil killer would be …. (You will have to see the movie) …

Pride

I remember when I was a young man I went into business with a friend to clean yards. (Evergreen Gardening) It was hard work because we really cleaned the yard up so it would be easy to be maintained. We took pride in our work and we knew that if we did a great job we could do more jobs and spend less time doing it. I work now in a manufacturing environment and I saw a team of production workers have their pride taken away from them just for the sake of production. They were complaining about the quality of the product and that they were not up to standard, yet they were told to just do the job and keep the line running. How does quality stack up to quantity? Does quality outweigh quantity in the long run or does quantity out rank quality?
Sometimes I wonder about the shops in China that produce tons of stuff. Do their employees have pride in what they do, or is it just about the numbers? The question is, as people in general couldn’t we all just take pride in our work and what we do? I know if the goal is to produce the cheapest thing there is, I would want to take pride in the fact that I could produce the cheapest thing. So how does this pride thing work? Is it pride in the quantity that can be produced, or is it in the quality of what is produced? Is it apples or oranges? Can’t it be both quality and quantity? I am sure it can be because people who have a stake in the product (their pride) will do the extra to always have the best, not just the most. The real goal should be to keep pride in the work place and our homes. Teach it to the next generation, as the great generation taught us.

What is the world coming to?
Is gas going to be $6 a gallon? Maybe we would come up with other ideas for fuel or maybe we would start to use what we have in our own country. On the other hand, change is going to happen with us or to us.
As my best friend Bob said to me many times, “Just find a way to make money by yourself, then you do not have to worry about what happens." If more of us would think about that, more innovation would take place. The rise in fuel cost impacts everything, and so does the weather. Just ask the folks in Iowa. We can't do much about either one. So maybe we could be innovation explorers. Space does not need to be the last frontier.

The adoption of new employees is what they need to call the recruiting process. Yes, adoption. You know buying someone for your family that you do not produce yourself. It is cheaper to get employees than to adopt. (My neighbor just adopted two children and it was much more expensive than the cost of recruiting an employee) It sounds crude when you look at it as a family, yet in business it makes real good sense. To adopt someone and not recruit, is to say you want that person to be part of the corporate family.

When I was a hospital administrator in California I had to find a new Director of Nurses for the hospital. This was going to be the most important person on our team to assure the best care for our patients and the best success for our hospital. I interviewed way too many people, and it was very hard to find the right fit (the supply of good nurses was short and the cost to find a good director was very high.) When I found the right one out of Nevada, I treated her as family. In return, she was a great Director of Nursing and she sent me a magnificent Grandfather clock, which I still have in my home, as a gift for the kindness I showed her in the hiring process. Now, I did nothing extraordinary. I just made sure she was happy in her new home, our hospital. The same you would do for a child if you adopted them.

Later, as Director of Sales for a large corporation, part of my responsibility was to recruit the sales staff for jobs that were commission only, a very hard sell. I always looked at the as to how they would fit in the family, so to speak. Many times my superiors would say just bring in a dozen or so and let the fall-out do the work. That was the way they had done it in the past.

Would you do that to your family if you were thinking about adopting a child?
“Yea, I would like five kids and have them live with me, but I only want one. I want to see which one fits our family best and then I will send the rest back.”

So why don’t corporations look at the same process of recruiting as adoption? Is it the cost? Or the investment if the fit is not just-right, or the time involved in making the right choice? I am sure there are lots of good companies that do view the process as adoption. Many more need to take a look at the process and see if they want to adopt, or just hire?

( The boys in the picture are my twins. If you want to adopt one let me know I have two... and in three more years they will be teenagers and you might get both of them for free)

Time and money, that is what the world runs on most days and it seems that there is never enough time or money, so why does the world run on something there is never enough of? Maybe it is like gas, we know there is a better way to do things but right now we will pay $4.00 or more a gallon to do it. And we know it will run out some day. Idea, view the time money thing as it really is, there is always the same amount of time every day and money is just a thing you print if needed so it can not be that important. Yea right... money is very important, but it should not be the key focus of all decisons.

Keep Your Room Clean

I clean my house up when my Mom comes to vist. (She is coming in two weeks) Not that it is a mess when she is not visting, it is just nice to have it extra clean for company. Or maybe it is I don’t want her to say, "Hey, clean up your room!" like when I was a child.

The CEO of the company I work for is coming to our plant this week and it is funny - the same thing is going on . The company is cleaning up the junk sprucing up the place with new paint, etc. Are they afraid Mom might say "clean up your room"? In the business world you would hope that operations would be the same on every day.

When I was a Hospital Administrator we never knew when the State would come in to inspect us. Had we known, would we have cleaned up for the visit? That would mean we were not doing our job the best we could on all the other days. So would you want to be a patient on those days, or just when the State was visiting?

In the manufacturing world one would hope that the plant looked good and ran well every day . Yes, maybe a few extra things could be done, but shouldn’t they be done already for the sake of the employees that work there now? What does this action say to them? That they are not worth the effort; only the CEO is? Would it be nice to say we cleaned up and painted just for Susie who is in production or that we restriped the parking lot for the night shift so it would be easyer and safer for them. One could even celebrate that it was done for them. Wow! retention and job satisfactin might go up!!!!

AND I WAS ASKED WHERE DID ALL THIS EXTRA BUGET MONEY COME FROM TO DO ALL THIS.

Maybe my idea is to do what you should do every day whether Mom is coming over or not.

Spay breath freshener with vitamens

Inhale for wealth

Inhale exhale…we do that every day or we don’t have another day. The trouble is some of us exhale out air that is foul, nasty, discussing, pungent, and just bad breath. The world has made a good living off of this from mints, sprays, mouthwash, etc. I am not here to say that is wrong making money and stopping bad breath is great. My idea is just a little more out there and adds a new twist.
Each of us works hard at looking and being our best even our children are taught this. So what if we could help our children and ourselves, not just keep their breath fresh and teeth clean maybe we could even provide some antioxidants? Yes breath spray with vitamins etc. to help the body. Simple yes just, think little Johnny is running down the soccer field and needs a quick boost (canned air might be nice) a sports drink could help but no time for that a quick blast and score!!! The body can take in those needed vitamins trough the month faster then trough the stomach. So Vitablast away. And yes I do have other names. (There are vitamin strips out there now and they have not caught on.)

I won't talk to my brother anymore

The world of marketing is changing so fast that even my ideas are showing up before I have them. Well not all of them.
I was reading the IBM report The End of Advertising As We Know It ( I am sure everyone reads these things when they are published) and recalled what my good friend Bob Pruitt( http://infohorse.com/ ) and I used to talk about that non-interruptive advertising was the future. Now I wonder if my brother Mark, who works for IBM, gave away any of my ideas to this group who published this paper? Well, back to my point…. marketing is changing and I need to get some more of my ideas out there soon!!!
This is one that goes along with the report from IBM in that people want information to make his or her own minds up. I have said that what marketers need to do is to help people understand that what they want is what you have. Part of that is belonging to the brand. Like a chessehead from Greenbay, they are part of the brand of the Packers. My idea is to make up an infomercial/reality show of what a company is and what they do. This would be like how a team makes Dryers Ice-cream. (Another pitch for Nestle). Not just the how the why and who is on the line what they do at break time etc. This would give the viewer more of an insight to the brand. And it could have more than just better brand identification, it could help in recruiting employees who might not see the fun of making ice-cream as a career. And it could provide intellectual R&D from the world. Who knows? Some mom who makes ice-cream at home might have an idea that could save millions or produce the next great flavor. The same idea could work for any company even Nike.....How do they make those cool shoes????

Fresh air, Viking sprits, Nordic Blast, O2U, Breeze, Vitair, O2high, Mountain Air, O2lympus, Fresh-up, Airhigh, BLO (Breath of Life), Iced Air, Dragons Breath, Power O2, Xtrao2, Wind,
Sport-shot, Quick blast, Q Air, Spike, RenewO2, WOG (wind of the gods) Alps, Crisp, B2O2, Gatorair , Clean, Pure, QO2, Gust of Health.

I hope you might have a hint of what my idea is. Yes, canned air, bottle air, you laugh now, yet who laughs now at bottled water??? I have been working on this for almost a year. I would hope that someone could stop long enough to catch his or her breath and run with this. (I have over 60 names) I have some designs for containers and packaging but I cannot hold my breath for too long before others let the wind out of the bag. http://www.geekologie.com/2007/12/16-week/ Yes there are some canned air out there now and I am sure others will follow. I just want to blow my own horn with my air.

I am teeing off at Pebble Beach for the first time. The drive looks way better than I could have ever have prayed for. I get out my six iron and hope that I might make it farther down the fairway. Wow! It looks like it is right on. I come up to find out that I have managed to get close to the green on a par 5 in two. But wouldn’t you know it, the ball is sunk deep into the sand trap just on the rim of the green. Now what? Oh, I’ll ask Tiger Woods for some advice; he knows this course. I give him a call and ask. He shows me three different techniques for getting the ball out of a sand trap. I hit replay to make sure I can do that swing the right way. Oh, I didn’t tell you that I subscribe to a cell phone service that shows me all this information for the courses I like to play, and that Tiger is just one of the pros that I can turn to if I need advice or to see the lay of the course. I chip the ball out of the trap…….
This is just one of my ideas so I don’t know the outcome.

This concept could apply to workouts at the gym where you have your personal trainer review machines and workouts for you or cooking in the kitchen and checking how Rachel Ray made that great dinner in thirty minutes. Now if I could just get an idea to work where I could get someone to tell me where to get the money to get this idea off the ground it would be even a better idea.

Ideas are fun; to see them grow is even more fun. It is kind of like kids, to start them it’s lots of fun!!!! And when they are small it is amazing. When they are growing and grown that’s when you really feel great. I can say if none of my ideas ever come to pass I have great children and they bring me more joy than any idea could ever. Yet it would be nice to see some of my ideas take off.

Doesn't the company I work for have a great sense of humor? This new product was introduced on April 1st.

It's great to work for a company with a sense of humor.

More of outside

In the quest for ideas, people limit their minds to what they know, when they should think of things they do not know. That's whats makes them ideas, good or bad.

I have a list of many great ideas and it gets longer as I reach for ideas outside of what I do and what I know. When I was younger I thought of putting ads on the front and back of videos, and I was told that it would be illegal because a video could last longer then the ad. ( yet Top Gun when it was released on video had adds on it a few years after I pushed for that idea.) As I found out the hard way good ideas are just that ," IDEAS" to bring them to light you must have lots of other things in line. It is like the definition of luck , it is when opportunity meets preparedness.

I had a lot of great pirate designs for tee shirts just before the first POC movie came out. Yet I did not have the funds or contacts to print and sell the shirts ( I was not willing to trade time and money from my family, btdt) I also made up clever bar signs that could be put together from old scrap lumber and painted to look like the classic English tavern sign. The names like "Sparrows' Nest Inn" " "Bountiful Chest Tavern " " Quick Drop Short Stop Inn " Captain Jacks Tavern" and about twenty more. Good ideas yet T&M not willing to trade. I still write down new ideas that I come up with or hear about all the time like, a green bakery that would use zero carbons to make bread, or a new sub the "torpedo" that could sink Subway. There is chocolate lasagna and having your discount coupons on your cell phone along with canned air ( I have about twenty names for that too.). So I as blog along I will post my ideas and talk about "whatever.." ( that is a quote from Nikita my 17 year old daughter.)

Start and Start Over

Yes it is time to start my blog. I have preached about blogs forever and know how powerful of a tool they can be. So here is a blog about me and who and what I think... Not that anybody is going to be real impressed (I do think some might be) about my blog and my ideas. I just thought that I needed to put into words (most of them spelled right, I hope) all my ideas and thoughts.

To start I must give credit to my best friend Bob Pruitt (http://infohorse.com/ ) telling me about Seth Godin ( http://sethgodin.typepad.com/) that has started me reading Seth's books and reading his blog all the time. This has giving me the push to go ahead and step outside of my box. Like the blog title, zero box ideas, most of my ideas fall outside the norm or way outside the standard box. Just a hint about things to know "Canned Air" and " Cell Shopping Coupons".

In the words of Curly Bill from the movie Tombstone, "Bye!".