I’ve officially launched another blog. It’s called “Bye Bye Ink!” and it’s designed to blog the demise of the ink based newspaper, as we know it. It’s inevitable. The daily newspapers will be going bye, bye, sooner than you think. I’m going to be right there, chronicling it every step of the way.

I was minding my own business, driving home this afternoon from the post office and I noticed a huge pick-up truck next to me. It was obvious he was an artist from the text on the side of his truck and the big website URL emblazoned on the tailgate. But what was really remarkable and what actually caught my eye was that he had what appeared to be crossbars over the bed of the truck and on these cross bars he had mounted 3 of his huge sculptures. They were cinched down on the cross bars so as to be level with the sides walls of the bed of the truck and thereby visible by everyone driving by.

One of the sculptures was a huge eagle. I don’t much care for that “old west” type of art work, but boy, it sure caught your eye and you can tell he was very talented. He had a couple other ones visible as well, but the eagle got my attention and then he turned and I couldn’t keep looking because I was going straight. Here’s a picture of one of his sculptures.

But I went to his site when I got home. Turns out he lives in my town (population 16,000). His name is Lorenzo Ghiglieri and he’s quite the artist. He does paintings as well.

The point is what could you be doing with your own marketing efforts that you’re not currently doing just in your everyday lives. You could wear a nametag like Scott does. Or you could do like this Lorenzo guy is doing and displaying what he does in an unorthodox way. I would put money on the fact that Lorenzo is getting business from such a bold marketing manuever. It meets my litmus test of being “remarkable.”

What could you do to put a little “remarkable” into your business?

I’ve got a “remarkable” idea for those of you that have a retail store location or some other type of situation that relies on people to come to you. It’ll be in my next post.

I don’t have any new news about this project but I talked to my contact the other day and so I wanted to revisit this post from back in July of last year for those that might not be familiar with what I wrote. If Amazon is indeed planning to use tunnels to ship goods through, it’s going to be the single biggest development in business history.

Read about Amazon’s alleged tunnel project.

With China growing at breakneck speed, oil is going to become an even hotter commodity. I think it’s just a foregone conclusion that you should invest in solid companies having to do with the oil business.

But that’s not the reason for my post.

This is just guess work on my part, but with the tensions heightening between Iran and the sane nations of the world (and France), there’s going to be a steep increase in crude prices. But perhaps not for the reasons one would assume. (Futures markets… etc.)

Maybe because the US and her allies (and France) are perhaps preparing for future conflict now by stocking up on oil in our respective national reserves. Think about this. Iran has said that if they are attacked in any way, they will cut off oil supplies to the world and create massive havoc on the oil markets. If we stock up for such a crisis, we can even out the supply with our own reserves (plus the rest of the oil nations kicking up production which would be inevitable if Iran shuts off her supply) and we can commence to kicking some mullah ass without being held hostage to oil supplies. By the time our reserve is depleted to the point of affecting world oil supplies again because of Iran’s lack of supply, we’d have set-up our first McDonalds in Tehran.

If the US and certain allies were hoarding oil right now, it would reflect in prices as demand increases. I’m not sure how these numbers can be camouflaged on the world markets, but I’m sure the US/allies don’t want Iran seeing this happen.

I’m not a commodities expert, but this seems to be a logical move given the tensions that could arise at any moment in the Syria/Iraq/Iran shooting range.

From an investment standpoint, there’s some short term gains to be made by investing in oil firms in other countries that would benefit greatly from an increased demand due to conflict in Iran and the increase in prices as a result. Russian companies in particular. They are sightly undervalued right now because of the state/private turmoil going on there.

Anyway, just a hunch.

If you aren’t using a personal video recorder (PVR), you’re either too poor to buy one (which is fine, just keep reading my blog and perhaps we can get your income up) or you are purposely living in the stone age, for whatever reason.

As you may or may not know, TiVo has become synonymous with the PVR industry. You’re not recording something with your digital video recorder, you’re “TiVo-ing” it. Regardless of whether you own a ReplayTV unit or some other unit.

If the name of your company is synonymous with your industry, you should be ashamed of yourself for bankrupting it.

TiVo has gone through more cash than the UN made from illegally selling Iraqi oil under cover of the “oil for food” program. I mean, GOBS of cash. And they aren’t even close to profitable. Yikes!

I recently wrote a letter to the company, with an idea that if implemented, would save their company from utter financial ruin and bring it way north of profitable within 2 years, if not much sooner.

But will they listen? My guess is no. Why? Because my idea is too unorthodox and not glamorous enough for a company, again, synonymous with their own industry.

I’ve touched on door to door selling many times in my blog. There’s a reason. It’s a much maligned way of selling, but it sure is effective if you have the right product.

TiVo is the right product.

Here’s why:

1) Brand recognition. There are VERY FEW doors you can knock on in an average neighborhood in America and not find at least someone that’s heard of TiVo.

2) Highly demonstrative. Once you’ve experienced watching your favorite programs when YOU want to watch them, without commercials, and without much technical know how, you will start referring to your past as pre-TiVo and post-TiVo. Colors become more vibrant, taste more lively. You will love harder, hate less, sex is better… okay, you get my point. Experience it for a bit, you’re hooked. (Kind of like crack cocaine I would imagine, without the financial ruin and premature aging.)

3) Relative low cost. This lends itself to an easier close for the sales person. I mean, heck, millions and millions of dollars were made by vacuum sales people selling their suck machines door to door for years and years. You were asking someone to write you a check for a good chunk of change on those sales calls. Now THAT was hard.

4) One call close. In the sales biz, the “one call close” is what separates the super stars from the “also mentions.” If you can’t sell someone during your first meeting/visit/consultation, you’re toast. Period. Sure, you might get the sale on a subsequent meeting or call, but if you plan on taking on a mortgage, you better master the one call close. (In general… I’m not talking about multi billion dollar deals or real estate… etc.)

5) Proactive sale. You are GOING TO YOUR CUSTOMER and not waiting for the sale to be “clerked.” There’s a difference between clerking and selling. Clerking is when you have 1 million TiVo units in 100,000 stores across the USA along with a thousand other electronic items. Then you sit there and wait for someone to mosey into the store to buy one of your boxes. If you’re lucky, you get a store employee who has a TiVo and can say something other than, “I don’t know, let’s read the manual” when queried about your product. In other words, you wait for someone to pick up your product and purchase it. Most products are FORCED to operate this way, assisted with a butt load of advertising, if your smart (or rich.)

But selling is a different animal. Sure, you can sell in stores. You can have your manufacture rep in stores, talking up your product. But you’re still waiting for people to come into the store looking for a solution. If you go door-to-door, and you know that a vast majority of the doors you’re going to knock on can use your product… now THAT is selling, folks. You’re going out and proactively looking for customers. People that weren’t even thinking of you and your product 30 minutes ago are now allowing your sales person to hook up a trial TiVo unit and their not only allowing you, but because of your expertly trained sales person, they are actually giddy with excitement over this new magical box that has just arrived out of the blue, to bring joy to the entertainment center. They’ve heard all the hype about it, but just haven’t done anything about it yet, or they’ve been intimidated by the setup… etc.

6) Controlled growth. If you want to sell X number of units next month, recruit and train X number of sales people this month. When you’re selling in stores, you can’t just ship 2,000,000 units more next month and expect to sell them. You have absolutely no control over your growth, other than advertising which is a shot in the dark. With door-to-door sales, you can EXACTLY predict what you are going to sell, based on the number of people you have on the ground selling and the average sell you have experienced for each placement in a home… etc. It’s just a matter of doing the math and executing.

7) Company profits. Right now, a large portion of TiVo’s income is from agreements with satellite companies and the TiVo licensed units they have sold or rent to their customer base. But those agreements are going by the wayside. So, they are going to lose that revenue stream because of another company’s decision. All door-to-door sales will be company owned customers. Way more profit. (I mean WAY more profit, per customer.)

I’ve sold insurance door-to-door, folks. I know, without a shadow of a doubt, that if I had the opportunity to sell TiVo back then, instead of insurance, I would have done back flips and said, “where do I sign.” I can’t think of ONE commonly used product today, that is better suited for selling door-to-door than a PVR. You give the customer a free week trial and install it for them right then and there. If they don’t like it after a week, call and you’ll come back out to remove it. If they do like it, keep it and billing will automatically start. It’s the classic puppy dog approach. You give someone a puppy dog to take care of for a week, they fall in love with it, and don’t want to give it back.

TiVo… please take my advise. Do a test using this concept. See that it works and then make a splash by putting out a press release saying all TiVo units will cease being sold through retail outlets as of X date. After that date, customers will only be able to get TiVo through your website or through your independent neighborhood sales reps. This would do several things.

First, there would be a run on machines in the stores. So, there would be a boost in sales, right off.

Second, it would provide a huge surge in press coverage. It’s an odd tact for a major company to do, so that is valuable exposure, right there. Almost everyone would know that you’re now selling them door-to-door and so this would create a receptive atmosphere when your reps actually do start knocking on doors. You may even get people who are WAITING to be knocked on so they can get a free install… etc.

Third, you would set yourself up to do like Dell does and sell directly to the customer. Cutting out the retail store in your case is about the smartest thing you can do. (Remember, you have great brand recognition… heck, stores should be paying YOU to carry your product, actually.)

There’s an old saying… “If you continue to do what you’re doing, you’ll continue to get the results you’re getting.” It’s time for TiVo to create a Purple Cow. Seth Godin, if you’re reading this, back me up. TiVo needs to break out of the standard retail mold. Make a splash. Do something remarkable. I wanna see them around for a long time to come.

Well… maybe.

I’ve been taking a look at this Iraqi dinar investment talk that’s being discussed here and there. Most people (investment advisers) are down on the prospects that it’ll actually pay off.

Essentially, because the Iraqi economy is most likely at it’s lowest point going into the future, it’s worth maybe speculating a little on its currency. They just issued brand new Iraqi dinars and got rid of the old currency that had Uncle Saddam’s picture on it. They’re saying that it’s one of the most secure currencies against counterfieting since it was designed using the very latest in anti-counterfieting technologies.

Anyway, 1 dinar (IRQ) is worth .0007 cents. Or, to quote it the other way around… 1460 dinars to one US$1. So the exciting part about this is that once the economy starts to get on its feet and the nation starts to come out of the influence and specter of war, the terrorists are defeated and their oil reserve can be tapped (2nd largest oil reserves in the world) the tinar will start to increase in value.

I’m of the opinion that 15 or 20 years from now, we might just be looking back and wondering why we didn’t hawk our grandma’s teeth to buy Iraqi dinars. However, it is a very risky investment because we never know how the international markets will handle the trading and value of the dinar. It’s actually not even traded as of yet and no international banks will even buy or sell them. Plus, the value is fixed at the current level indefinitely. I’m assuming because if they didn’t set it, each bomb blast will send the value plummeting lower and lower until you’d have to bring a pickup load of paper bills to buy a glass of water.

But the speculator part of me (located right around the left butt cheek) says that if I just buy 1 million dinars and sat on them for a LONG time, I might just have sealed my retirement in spades. If not, I’ll have a million dinars to take a trip to Iraq and hopefully pay for my stay. (Post suicide bomber era!)

I’ve done a lot of research on where to buy them and the best place is actually ebay. Here is a link to all the dinar auctions. To give you an example, you can buy 500,000 Iraqi dinars for $480. If the value of the dinar gets back up to the Saddam imposed artificial value it was set at before the first gulf war of $3.30 per dinar… well, you don’t have to be a math genuis to figure that you’ve got yourself a nice return. From $480 to $1.6 million. Yowza.

There is a bit of precedent here. There were a lot of currency speculators that were buying up Kuwaiti money right after the first gulf war when it had plummeted in price. But they had a good economy prior to the invasion and assets invested overseas… etc. They didn’t have a national debt such as the likes as Iraq has.

Anyway, caveat emptor. But boy, it sure would be cool to be on the gravy side of that train if it comes in, huh?