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Give Them Free Rum

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My wife and I just returned from St Martin in the Caribbean.  We were staying on the French side (there's also a Dutch side to the island) in the town of Grand Case.  Yes, it was a vacation, but I'm always on the lookout for new and unique marketing ideas.  Sometimes, like on this trip, I get whacked over the head with how effective "the basics" are, and how time-tested techniques can – and should – be used.

Grand Case is the culinary capitol of the Caribbean.  I don't know who first bestowed that sobriquet, but I'd say it fits.  The Boulevard is narrow, with cars parked haphazardly on either side of the street, tourists walking along it and other cars and motorbikes zipping between them.  The Boulevard, at less than a mile long, is also home to 20 or more restaurants.  While some of these are barbecue joints, serving things like pork ribs, chicken and other "home cooked" specialties, most of the restaurants serve fancy French cuisine, mostly in open-air establishments.  Half of these. the ones on the north side of the Boulevard, are right on the beach, and offer spectacular views.

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Discrimination is a Good Thing

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When it comes to marketing and sales, discrimination can be a good thing.  Of course, I'm not talking about discriminating against someone based on their ethnicity, their religion, or any other negative reason.

What I'm talking about is taking a pool of "all potential clients" and making (sometimes difficult) marketing decisions based on demographics or other factors that will aid you in your promotional efforts.

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Amateur Portrait

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Scott in Niagara FallsWhat happens when you turn your new camera over to a curious high school student?  Sometimes, you get some really good photos.  And sometimes the subject of the photo could be better.

I recently accompanied a client to Niagara Falls to shoot stills and video for them.  His 15 year old son was curious about my camera, so I turned it over to him for a while.  As you might think, some of his photos turned out poorly.  And some turned out okay.  A couple (out of maybe 50 or so shots) turned out pretty good – surprising for someone who’d never used a DSLR before.

One of the “okay” ones was yours truly, taken near the building on the American side that leads down to the Maid of the Mist boat tour.

Speaking of the tour. . . I had a number of people look at me like I was crazy for taking my DSLR on the boat and into the heavy spray from the falls.  The didn’t believe me when I said my Pentax K30 was weather sealed.  I’ve been using Pentax cameras for 30 years, and I’m happier with them now than ever before.  I highly recommend their DSLRs.

Advice For Authors

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You’ve written your book.  It’s published – print, ebook, audio, maybe all three.  You wrote a first draft, then a second, third and forth.  Then there was the editing.  Sometimes you changed a line, or a paragraph.  Sometimes it was a word, or just a punctuation mark.  But you’re tired of the damned thing, and it doesn’t matter anymore because it’s published.  You can forget about it.

Well. . . no.  You can’t.  Novel or non-fiction, in order for people to stumble on it by chance, loving every word and telling all their friends to buy a copy, the book must be promoted.

Here’s a sad (perhaps) fact for you: all that effort to write your book is just the tip of the iceberg.  In order for you to become the next shining literary beacon, the bottom 90% of your iceberg needs to be completed.  You need to be interviewed, to be quoted, to do readings for rooms small and even smaller.  You need to remain completely upbeat when getting up early and staying up late for phone interviews, saying the same things over and over again.  Blogs and magazines won’t go out and find your book on a store shelf, rushing home to read it and gush over it to their myriad readers.  It needs to be put into their hands.

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Learn & Practice The Basics

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I’ll be 50 years old in a few months.  Next week, the karate school where I train – CNY Karate – is hosting masters from our home dojo in Okinawa City, Okinawa, Japan.  Some of these people have been training in karate longer than I’ve been alive.  As I was talking with one of the classes a couple nights ago, they asked me what the Okinawan karate-ka would be going over with us.  Advanced techniques?  Spinning jump kicks?  Breaking boards while flying through the air?

No.  They’ll be drilling us on the basics.  In karate, that’s a small handful of blocks, punches and kicks.  These basic building blocks can be put together in nearly endless combinations to achieve a martial artist’s goals.  These can range from simple protection, repelling an opponent, causing limited physical damage, serious damage, or even death.  Overall, the practice of the physical aspects of karate are really about learning to control your own body, mind and spirit.

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Please Comment & Share

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Ladies and gents:

If you’re reading our posts – and our stats indicate that at least a few people are visiting our blog – please take a moment to post a comment.  If you agree with something I’ve said, that’s great.  If you disagree with something in a post, that’s great too!  While I write the posts to provide insight into Agile’ and myself, and to offer education and instruction, I also want to inspire people to think, and to consider.

If a post makes you think, if a post inspires you to come up with your own ideas, please take a moment and share them with us and the other readers.  Yes, we do have anti-spam measures in place, but if you’ve got a real comment related to a post, it’ll be put through.  If we post something and you disagree, we welcome all rational and reasoned responses.  Tell us why you don’t like it, where we went wrong, and what life’s really all about.  And hey, if it’s interesting and on topic, we welcome irrational and unreasoned responses too.

And while we’re on the topic, the individual page for each post has a selection of clickable “share” icons on top.  You can share our posts on Facebook, LinkedIn, Google+, and a few more places.  We’d appreciate it if you’d take the time to actually share a post.  That way, it will open a wider audience to experience our brilliance or stupidity – occasionally both in the same post.

Thanks for reading!

Restaurant Rants – Part 2

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I used to have lunch at a chain sandwich shop near my office a few times a month.  When they first opened, they were doing a good business.  I enjoyed the place enough that I signed up for the corporate emails, which sometimes included coupons.  I’d print them off and use them in the restaurant.

Granted, the town where I had my office has slid far, far downhill in the last 15 years.  Three major factories closed around 1998, and a lot of the people left in town don’t make anywhere near as much money as they used to.  So any business there is kind of hard.

There was (and still is) another franchised sandwich shop in town.  For years, that chain had been my favorite.  But they’d begun raising their prices to what I consider a ridiculous level, and I was really enjoying the new place anyway.

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