finite speck

Questions are powerful. A question represents a search for an answer or imparting of knowledge to someone who doesn't have the answer. What if we lived in a world without questions? We only had statements. There would be no... Did you know? What do you think? Why does that happen? Where are you going? How did that come about? Only statements. Ask someone a question today. Share something you know. Ask someone about something you don't know. Better yet, ask someone a question about themselves and get to know someone better. Google was built on the power of the question as well. Why do we use Google? To search for something that we want to know more about. To answer a question.

It's 5:48 am and I got up a little late today and my son got up early. So, that means he's sitting next to me this morning on the couch as I write. And I wouldn't trade it for anything. I probably wouldn't be writing about him if he wouldn't have woke up and had me get me out of his bed, but I'm thankful he did. He's two years old now. He likes to sit in the big chair when we eat. Likes to pick out his own clothes. Likes trying to take off his shoes and coat. He's starting to want to do some things on his own that we have done for him. He's also trying to put words together in sentences and doing well at it. He's not always easy to understand, but he wants to be and he'll repeat himself until we understand. He also likes to have some sort of stuffed animal with him in bed, but the favorite changes on an almost daily basis. He also has really been into repositionable stickers that go on different background scenes. This "toy" mig

I'm thankful that we live in a country where we can go to the hospital and be seen if there is an urgent need. But I don't understand why we wait for such a long time when we go to the Emergency Room. My wife was having chills and temperature last night and she's about 6 months pregnant right now. So, we wanted to make sure all was ok with her and the baby. We're thankful that as far as the doctor could tell she was doing good. But one test they did came back as indeterminate for the flu which baffled the doctor since you should be able to tell if you either have the flu or you don't. The other thing that is frustrating is that it took 5 hours for us to be told basically that you're fine. Why 5 hours? Is it because we didn't schedule an appointment? The healthcare Emergency Room seems like a very inefficient system in my experiences. You never know for sure how long you will wait, but you typically will wait for a while which is the exact opposite of eme

What will you do this week? Will you do something different? Will it be the same as any other week? Do you have big plans? Will you start a new habit? Do you have something you've been waiting to start and you just haven't done it? Why do we wait? Why do we procrastinate? For us, we really need to just get as much moved from our current house to our new house. This requires planning ahead each day so that I can pack up our van and drop things off on my way to work. We're trying to get ourselves ready to physically be moved in 2 weeks and if I don't do this I'm not sure it will happen.

My daughter and I went to the Daddy Daughter Dance yesterday and both created some good memories. I think this is going to be an annual event for us. It's the second year we've done it. What I've noticed in observing the event for the second time is that the daughters, for the most part, love everything about it. And the Dads all look like fish out of the water. There are only a few Dads that look like they're in their element. But I really think it's a good thing. It's not about trying to make guys not be guys at all. It's really about young girls being honored, treated lovingly and building memories with their Dad's doing something that many of these men might not do very often if at all otherwise. I mean, how many Dad's would go stuff a stuffed animal, get dressed up and take a "pretty picture" with their daughter or dance for a few hours with their little girl on their own? But put on an event with these things and a bunch of other

The Ritz Carlton? Kimpton? The Peninsula? Nope. It's not what you would think. The #1 ranked hotel in Los Angeles is the Magic Castle Hotel and it's all because of the experience and service they provide. It's built around the customer. Need some laundry done? They'll do it for free. Need a snack? They're free too. How about a popsicle at the pool? Just pick up the red phone and they'll bring you some on a silver platter. Everything is about service for the customer and it's at no extra cost to the customer. Once you have a customer take care of them like they're your customer. Magic Castle Hotel

How many people actually floss every day? I didn't. I didn't even floss once a month. I don't think I'd even floss every couple of months. I usually didn't even think about flossing until I was going to the dentist. And the only reason I would do it before I went to the dentist is that I knew they would ask me if I'd been flossing. That all changed when I married a hygienist. And she thought it was absolutely disgusting that I didn't floss every day. She would ask me every night before we went to bed if I flossed. If I hadn't she would basically make me go floss my teeth. That asking has turned my extremely infrequent flossing into a pretty much every single day flossing. I still don't like it, but I'm told it's good for me and my health and so I do it. Flossing is a pretty small thing, but it's just an example of how doing something daily, every day with the help of others that are around you encouraging you to do can turn somethin

There's something about being the one that accomplished something that is rewarding. Winning an individual sport. Coming up with a big idea that generated income. Creating something on your own. But, there's something even bigger about being part of a team that accomplishes something great. Being part of a family that does something together. Being part of an organization, church, group that works together and accomplishes something that no one individual could have done on their own. I tend to like to be the lone ranger. To think that I can do some really good work, come up with really good ideas on my own, but as I look back on a lot of my best work there were a lot of people that made it my best work and those people weren't all me. I'm thankful for the others that I have gotten to work with and get to work with today. People, I can ask questions. Those that challenge me. Those that bring new ideas. Those that push me. I want to keep learning. I want to do th

Today I had a Facebook Marketplace sale to make and was hoping to sell four old doors. I responded back and forth to at least 10 inquiries and finally landed on one that committed to come and take a look at them. It was a wife I had been corresponding back and forth with, but she was sending her husband to pick up the doors. After showing him what I had. He asked some questions about the doors, got some measurements and then mentioned that his wife had gotten a little ahead of him on the remodeling project and he wasn't sure if they were going to work. He said he needed to call her to talk about the doors. So I waited... He came back and apologized, but said they weren't going to get them, but he offered to help me carry them back in the garage. I felt defeated. I was hoping for a sale. So, trying to stay positive I said it was fine, that there were tons of people that had inquired about the door, which I think made him feel worse about not buying them. Then I threw in th

I was in Louisville, Kentucky a couple days ago and ate dinner at a place called Jack Fry's. The restaurant was started back in 1933. About 15 minutes after we got there all the lights went out. Evidently, there was a car accident down the street that knocked out power in the building. So the emergency light kicked on and they lit some candles and continued to serve drinks. Then the general manager came out and addressed everyone apologizing that the power was out and saying they couldn't cook anything right now, but they would continue to serve drinks and could do salads for now. About 5 or 10 minutes later the power came back on and they started taking orders. Besides the excellent food there, they just did a great job of handling the situation. Mainly, by just going on as usual. They didn't know when the power would come back on, but they just did there best to accommodate their customers until it did. We hardly even knew there was a power outage because of the way

I'm getting ready to travel to Louisville for a day to attend a large agriculture trade show. So, why am I going? What am I looking for? If I go looking to see a lot of new visual marketing ideas I think I'll be disappointed. Agriculture isn't known for being on the bleeding edge of marketing. But, if I go looking for experiences and conversations, trying to get the feeling that a farmer may get from different exhibits I think it's a win for me. Asking myself normal things like. How much time did this exercise take that the company wanted me to participate in? Why did they want me to do it? What kind of questions are they asking me? Do I know who to talk to if I have questions? Is there anything unique here? Why do I care? Are employees engaging with me or ignoring me? Why? What's my first impression when walking up to a booth space? Hoping to learn.

Think about anything that you see. How did it come to be? The seat your sitting in right now. The cup you're holding or the light you just turned on. The socks you have on. Words. Everything that has come to be, came to be with someone talking to someone else using words. Words make things happen. I was struck by this again yesterday as I was driving back and forth from St. Louis. Words are free. You just have to be able to write. You can change them as often as you want in a marketing message and measure them. I was challenged to work harder at not just writing messages, but measuring the impact of messages using tools I have to see what creates action and what doesn't. How is it that one person can say something and it's total mind glaze and someone else can say something really similar and you're riveted? It's all in the words we use. Choose your words carefully, but remember when you write them you can still change them.

I got a little surprise this morning once I got my coffee and got ready to sit down and read. I heard the sound of little feet coming down the stairs. At 5:30 am, my daughter was ready to join me for my morning routine. The sweet part of this is that I probably wouldn't get to see her today at all since I'm traveling today and won't get home until after she's in bed. I've come to embrace the unpredictableness of being a parent. It's great to have a routine, but it's better to have these little human beings that disrupt my schedule and help me remember that this life is not all about me. It's easier for me to say this when she's just sitting next to me snuggling though. Getting my daughter snuggle-fix this morning.

CNP - As Close as Necessary to Perfect BGE - Barely Good Enough This morning Seth Godin challenged marketers to always be looking at whether what they are working on is CNP (as Close as Necessary to Perfect) for the customer. Is the customer demanding that it be even closer to perfect? Does the budget allow for what you're working on to be closer to perfect? It doesn't necessarily feel good to settle to call something CNP, but it's the right thing unless it's the only thing you have to do. I'm guessing that what you're working on isn't the only thing you have to work on though. The other side of the spectrum is Barely Good Enough. Seth says, "BGE rarely is." So the challenge is getting that thing you're working on to CNP and then to move on. Realizing that the more put in after that point probably won't drive more customers to action.

How do you spread the word when you want to win a sweepstake? Especially when it's complicated to do and you're not a large community? This is the challenge one of my co-workers is facing right now over the next few weeks as a "rally" is going on to win $150,000 from Kraft for a hockey rink upgrade. His thought was to produce a short video that could hopefully go viral and get more people involved to vote for the Pekin Memorial Arena. The challenge here is the rules. There are limits on everything and you have to enter a lot of information personally to be a user. It looks like each user could get a maximum of 46 rally points. Add a story (get 10 rally points for each approved story) Limit 1 per user per rink. Add photos or videos (get 3 rally points for each approved upload) Limit 5 per user per rink. React to a photo, video, or story (get 1 rally point for each reaction) Limit 15 per user per rink. Share via Twitter (get 5 rally points for each share) Limi

What would you do if you could give yourself one more hour every day? Is that even possible? I wrote a blog post a while back about sleeping. How the recommended amount is 8 hours. I typically get about that much sleep. I wonder if I could get by with one less hour. But if I slept one less hour and gave myself 7 more hours per week what would I do with it. Even if it was 30 more minutes a day... that's 3.5 (I'm really good at math). Would you just watch one more show on Netflix or scroll for another 30 minutes on your favorite social media app? Would you consume or would you create? I'm not sure what I would do with a little more time. Right now I feel like by the time I'm able to do something, i.e. the kids are sleeping, I'm ready to do the same. And with getting ready to move to a new house there's plenty going on with that to stay busy. A few things I am interested in pursuing though are writing and illustrating a kids book, getting an exercise routin

At work, what drives what you do? Is it process? Is it about doing things a certain way so that you're efficient and the business makes money? Or is it about people? Is it about making where you work a place where everyone enjoys going to work? Can these two things both be yes? I would say yes. But, companies tend to go one way or the other. I know someone that works at a place that's heavy on process. Rules need to be followed because that's what you do. Not, rules need to be followed but because that's what's best for the employees. It's not that these people that are enforcing "rules" want the company to fail, they want the exact the opposite, they want the company to grow, to be more profitable. But, they're not thinking about how these things impact their co-workers. They're not thinking about the moral of their team. They're not asking for feedback and if they receive it doesn't change anything. Their decisions are not being m

Sipping my coffee this morning made me think about the amount of time that it takes to create a cup of coffee. Not the time that it took me to make my cup of coffee this morning, which was maybe a minute or two. But the amount of time that it takes to grow the beans and get them ready to consume. Although some of the processes have become automated in places like Brazil where they have huge flat areas of coffee farms, most areas of the world still do much of the process by hand picking, sorting, etc. The entire process consists of picking, processing, milling, and finally roasting. I take this whole operation for granted every day. I just pick out my coffee cup, pour some coffee into a pod, hit the button on the Keurig and within a minute I have a hot cup of coffee. Every morning. Thankful for all the people that work hard every day to harvest coffee.

I'm not happy right now. It is is 6 am and my son decided to get up at 3 am and not go back to sleep. I maybe got 30 minutes of sleep on the couch after he got in our bed and then he decided to come downstairs at 5 am. For the last hour, he has pulled all of the toys out and they are now all over the floor. I'm guessing the high of being up so early is going to wear off soon and he will crash. I just hope he's good for my wife this morning when I leave for work. Less sleep is not usually a good thing for our kids. But why do they wake at these weird times and just won't go back to sleep? I guess it happens to us adults too, it's just that I don't cry because I need my doggie or decide to pull all the toys out of the toy boxes when I can't sleep. I need to be thankful because right now at least he's being quiet... I'm not sure if that's a good thing or a bad thing. I better go check on him!

5.2 million. That's all it cost to air a Super Bowl commercial last night. I watched about 10 minutes of the game and commercials and got caught up a little this morning seeing the 5 best and worst according to a writer for the Chicago Tribune. I can't say there were any that really made me say, "Wow, now that's a great commercial!" At least of the 10, I watched. Trying to create something that is short and appeals to approximately 100 million people is tough.

The right tool can save you time, pain, and get the job done. There are many ways to get a job done, but not all of them are as efficient. Depending on what tool you choose to use and how good you are at using it the job may take you a day or a few days. Also, depending on if you have the right tool for the job you may end up actually physically hurting yourself as I did yesterday. I had a good tool, but I should have had someone else helping me hold the cabinets as I was taking them down in the garage. I lost my balance and one come down on me. No serious injuries, just smashed a finger a little. How do you know though if you have the right tool? Just assume? I would say ask someone you think is an expert. Or in the age we live in ask YouTube (the expert). There are so many resources out there now there's really not an excuse for wasting a lot of time using the wrong tool when the right one exists and there are people and ways to get answers on how to use the tools that are ea

Terrible 2s. My son just turned 2 back on December 15th and so far I can't say it's been that terrible. In fact, I just commented to my wife that he's really at a fun age right now where he's beginning to put words together to make actual sentences. He's also started showing different emotions and expressions with his voice and face which is really comical. Like a very emotional "Why?" when he's told he's done something that he knows he shouldn't have done. It's just a reminder this morning to enjoy my kids at these ages right now because they won't be this little for long at all.