DVD Your Memories....How to Grow a Business

Guide to Google Wave For Business

2009-11-25T18:09:00.000-08:00

I love when new technology comes out. And I especially love it when that new technology makes my life easier or more efficient. Google Wave is a new technology that is destined to take it's rightful place right alongside email. (Update: Google Wave can now be integrated with the Thunderbird email client). To get a sense of what Wave is, please watch this short video:

Currently, Wave is useful for collaboration purposes such as planning for projects because of the way multiple people can develop the wave in real-time. In the future Wave will be used for all sorts of things. One of the great things about Wave is that programmers can develop "gadgets" for Wave that can perform all different types of functions from simple surveys to complex games.

How Google Wave is affecting my business:

I use Google Wave to get input from my employees on certain projects I'm working on. Say, for instance, we are looking at adding a 3000DPI slide and negative scanning option. I will ask that question in the wave. Then I will add my image scanning technician into that particular wave, so he can see everything that was written. He will then be able to reply in-line with my question. I can then either leave it at that, or if I want more clarification I can reply back to him right there underneath his reply. This makes a wave sort of like a forum.

Of course projects sometimes have hundreds of questions that are asked to multiple people. Google Wave can handle this no problem. You can even add a group of people at a time for added convenience.

Even though Wave is still in preview mode (not even Beta yet), it is still an extremely powerful tool. If you are wondering how Google Wave can help you in your work or personal life, Lifehacker recently asked its users what uses they have found for Google Wave. See some great examples on their blog. Here is one of my favorites:

Google Wave will be enormously useful to reporters collaborating on stories. Currently a colleague and I are working on a story involving safety issues at Arizona prisons. This involves a lot of digging through records, interviewing people and transcribing the tapes, and writing up what we've found. Because we work in different offices, it can be hard to keep track of where each of us is in our reporting. Wave could help us organize our reporting and collaborate on the writing by making the process transparent in real time. With a couple more invitations, editors could follow our progress and insert questions into our stories. Lastly, there's great potential here for crowdsourcing. We could start waves seeking public input on our stories, and incorporate those questions and answers into our reporting. Because we could supplement our questions with documents and a variety of links, I see the potential for crowdsourcing much greater on Wave than it is (so far, anyway) on Twitter and Facebook.

Resources:

For those of you who do have some time to check out Google Wave further, go to The Complete Guide to Google Wave.

And let me know if you need an invite, I've got a few left.

Astak EZ Reader Review (Device Review)

2009-09-06T19:57:00.000-07:00

Now I've actually owned the Astak EZ Reader for about 6 weeks... long enough for a thorough review. Overall I would give this device 4 out of 5 stars. There are just one thing that prevents me from giving it a full 5/5 rating.

Speed of the unit. It does take a little time to load books, navigate folders and turn pages. I can understand there might be some load-time for opening up larger documents (over 5mb). But even going into a folder to see what files are there take about 2-3 seconds. Opening up larger files can take between 6-9 seconds. Not a lot, but this day and age I would expect it to be faster. The most annoying is when you are turning a page in a book. I would have hoped that it would be just as fast as turning a page in a normal, paper book. Well, unfortunately, the paper still holds this over my e-book reader. The page turns in about 5 seconds. It doesn't sound like a lot, but when you've got the book open with large text, you are turning the pages quite often and the 5 seconds adds up.

Well, enogh of the bad stuff, lets get to the good points. From what I hear, this is one of the few readers around that actually maintains your file and folder structure. I hear that some of the other readers aggregate all the books together and then use their own sorting system to display the books. I have over 300 books on my e-book reader and they are in about 8 different folders. So it is really nice to go into my "business" folder, or my "traveling" folder.

The screen continues to impress as well. High contrast, easy on the eyes (see previous post about e-ink screen technology) and doesn't use power once the page has been loaded. I continue to leave my e-book reader on almost all the time and I've only lost about 3/4 bars -- in 6 weeks!!! Amazing!

The device comes in actually a pretty nice little case that holds the unit in well. It also comes with an AC adapter and MiniUSB to go to the computer. It comes with a wrist strap (haven't used that yet) and the 2 gigabyte SD memory card*. I really enjoy being able to take out the SD card, throw it into my laptop, drap and drop a file onto the card, and then pop it right back in the reader ready to read. Takes about 40 seconds all-in-all to get the books on there. A lot of people really like the Kindle because it uses wireless technology to download books, but how often are you really downloading new books? Maybe once a week if you are a fast reader. The Kindle is nice if you wanted to download daily newspapers or blogs, but for reading books, I think it is superfluous.

This unit also has the ability to play music through the headphone jack. I apologize for not having tried this function yet. But from everything I can surmise, don't think that this will serve as an MP3 player because it is not that advanced.

This device also shines in that it can handle every type of file that I've thrown at it. Go ahead and try this little gem out, you won't be disappointed.

Update
After reading some comments and other posts, it has come to my attention that:
The memory card is not always 2 gigabytes. I have heard reports that it is only 256mb or 1 gigabyte. The model I bought was from Fry's Electronics in San Diego, CA and it did come with the 2 gigabyte stick. Don't worry too much about the storage capacity as many books are between 30-100k in size and you can purchase a larger card for very cheap.

Astak EZ Reader 6" Review (for Business)

2009-08-10T18:04:00.001-07:00

Today, I want to do a review of the e-book reader that I just bought, the Aztak EZ Reader 6". I have been playing around with the idea of getting an e-book reader ever since the first edition Kindle came out. Then the Kindle II came out as well as the Kindle DX, and all of a sudden they are everywhere. And if they aren't everywhere in your city, they will be soon. There are just so many advantages to using e-book readers.

One huge breakthrough that led to the rise in popularity of these devices is e-ink or Electronic Paper Displays (EPD) technology.

No refresh rate -- that means your eyes will not strain while looking at the screen
Screen is easily viewable in bright light environments
Text on screen is high contrast like books or newspapers
Battery is only used to change the screen -- almost no battery is used when page is "on"
Screen is viewable from many angles

For a businessperson like myself I tend to read many books at one time. Currently I'm reading just three books, but I have many more that I really want to get into. The inherent problem is that sometimes I'm in the mood for one book and sometimes I'm in the mood for another. This may sound trivial, but I'm not going to be carrying around three different books with me wherever I go. With an e-book reader, I can read any book I want at any time. What's more, e-book readers allow you to store literally thousands of titles on the device at one time, so if you want to re-read a chapter from "The 22 Immutable Laws of Branding" during your next project, you don't have to hunt down the book; you can just click on the title. Finally, every businessperson that works as hard as I do needs to take vacations to relax and get some perspective. I'm planning an extended trip to southeast Asia in the next month and I really want to travel light. I'm not even going to bring my laptop. But I will be packing my new e-book reader because I can catch up on all my reading and even download new books while I'm traveling. Not to mention if I get stuck on one of those planes that don't have the personal in-flight movies, the e-book reader will be my savior.

And speaking of books, almost every book imaginable is available for download online. Many older books are free and my Astak EZ Reader 6" came with 200 of them preloaded on the 2 gigabyte memory card the unit shipped with. I've also heard that public libraries will allow you to download e-book readers from the web. Amazon and other booksellers are making it easier all the time to download books. And, there are easy ways to download some of the newest books online for free, but I am not condoning that behavior. Imagine being able to read any book you ever wanted, any time you desired, and all in one place. I really think that e-book readers are going to follow the same model as MP3s. Within 10 years the sales of e-book readers will overtake paperbacks. And did I mention the environmental impact of e-book readers. Imagine all the paper that will be saved.

Okay, so I know that I haven't actually reviewed the Aztak EZ Reader 6" yet. I just couldn't help suppress my enthusiasm for this promising technology that is going to revolutionize books, magazines and newspapers within the next 10 years. I'll do the specific review for this product later this week.

Save Your Internet Work as You Go

2009-07-18T17:42:00.001-07:00

It took me a while, but I learned a great lesson today. The teachers were Google Profiles and my friend Ben Elias.

I was working on my Google Profile (one for myself and I created one for the business). (I really don't know if this is going to help with curing my SEO obsession.) For some reason, Chrome (my previous browser of choice - I recently switched back to Firefox. But back to the story... I was inputting tons of text with hyperlinks. More specifically, I was copying paragraphs of text from different pages from the DVD Your Memories website. For some reason, every time I went to look at the preview of my profile, or even if I saved my profile, many of the sections would be lost and I would have to start all over again. Each time I wasted about 30 minutes. Obviously this was becoming highly frustrating (not to mention that at one point Ben brought me over a beer and as I opened it, it somehow exploded all over the desk and my new laptop).

If you know me, I'm all about efficiency. I devoted two months of my life to learning the GTD (Getting Things Done) systems and "life hacking." I hate to waste time. Now, whenever I'm filling out a web form, I will type it up first in Microsoft Word, and then copy and paste it into the web form. I can't tell you what a time-saver this is. I don't recommend adding the hyperlinks inside of word because it usually won't carry over into the web form.

All Things Being Equal - Why do Larger Orders Come Over Time?

2009-07-13T18:32:00.000-07:00

I tend to think of the general public (meaning everyone outside of DVD Your Memories) is like one customer that has an almost unlimited number of orders. When a new business creeps up that fills a need for this customer, then the customer will place some small, tester orders. As time goes on and the business proves that it can successfully handle all the smaller orders, the customer will place larger ones.

That is how business has been for DVD Your Memories. In 2006 we never took an order that was more than about $1000 dollars. Then in 2007, we would get orders around that size all the time. And so on and so on. The size of the orders is getting exponentially larger. Now we are at the point where businesses are taking notice and when they want to get a ton of Video to DVD transfers completed or have some photo scanning, we are getting the phone call. My question is, why now, why not two years ago?

But what doesn't make sense to me is that we've always had an above-average looking website and advertised using the same methods for the last couple of years. Why didn't we get some of these larger orders earlier on in the game? And it's not like all of our previous customers are talking to all the newer ones (well some of them might), but for the most part, our larger orders are coming from the same type of advertising we have always been doing.

Maybe the fact that we now have 2 stores, one in Orange County and one in San Diego. Maybe people think that with two stores the business much be good due to the simple fact that they have more than one location. In our case this may be true but it doesn't necessarily mean that it is true. Don't get me wrong, I am not complaining, just wondering why sequentially larger orders are always happening. I am most grateful, not only for our clients, but to all of our loyal technicians who faithfully complete their work to nearly 100% accuracy and on-time.

I think that the best answer to this question relys on one word, "trust." Trust isn't gained by looking the best or by having the most flashy website. I think trust is gained most efficiently by a very inefficient means, and that is by being consistent.

One More Year, Many Successes

2009-07-08T00:15:00.000-07:00

Ha ha. Almost another year went by without me checking in and writing in this blog. Well, now I know better and it's about time I caught up with the SEO.

I guess I better fill in on what has happened over the last year. DVD Your Memories has continued its success. Of course by the end of the summer of 2008, the economy went down, but it wasn't until the day I left for Thailand (September 14, 2008) that the shit really hit the fan. It was a very weird coincidence that this happened at the same time. I remember being at a diving resort in Ko Tao and finally getting the chance to see the news. It seemed like as soon as I left the country, WWIII happened. But enough about that.

Needless to say, September and October were scary months because no one knew how bad the economy was and when it was going to rebound. We ended up having a fine holiday season. The last week I was in Thailand, I spent by myself contemplating what to do with my life. Go back to school, go travel, work another job, sell the business, or grow the business. Well, I decided during that week to grow the business. I felt like DVD Your Memories has an enormous potential and I have a matching enormous ambition.

So I decided to open up another store in Orange County. It was close to home and I though it would be a good market for family media transfer services. So I ended up purchasing most of what I needed by the end of 2008, which not only helped to lower my taxes, but it also allowed me to focus on starting up the office after the holiday season.

DVD Your Memories Orange County opened in March of 2009 in Costa Mesa, CA. Richard became the manager up there and I moved up with him to help start up that store. On June 30th, the store was successfully and profitably running on its own!

Furthermore, we ended up landing a huge (for us) contract with the City of Irvine to convert all of their city council meetings for the last 40 or so years. We all worked very hard on our proposal (Brandi, Bryan, Richard and myself) and with some great references that really sealed the deal.

So now here we are, working on the City of Irvine project and growing the company. The immediate growth of our company will rely heavily on SEM. We have always worked on PPC and have become very good at that, but SEO has been always lacking. That is my next big project.

The Business is a Sucess

2008-08-03T19:32:00.000-07:00

Many apologies for not writing here in over a year... actually about a year and a half. You will notice the dates from the previous post that I have been busy.

DVD-Photo-Memories.com morphed into DVD Your Memories (www.dvdyourmemories.com) around February of 2007. From the end of April 2007 through the rest of the year and all the way until March of 2008, business grew like a wildfire (regretably, the San Diego Wildfires of '07 did provide a lot of business). By late October 2007 there were about 7-8 regular employees of the company.

Currently there is one employee for each department (video production, image scanning, video transfer and film transfer) plus a full-time manager, a part-time bookkeeper, a part-time graphic designer, and myself. It is a lot to handle. But thankfully, everything is running very smoothly. The growth subsided in congruence with the economy and invesly proportional to gas prices around March of this year. Still, there have been some good months and some not so good months, but overall the business is strong and profitable. But most of all, it is a great system that works... and even without myself.

I promise to keep up the blogging.

Warning: Growing Exremely Fast!!!

2006-11-14T23:47:00.000-08:00

Ahhhh..... It's a weird feeling to be doing well, yet so tired out that you can't really enjoy it to the fullest. But never fear, a little time off is on the way. I now understand the importance of keeping a balanced lifestyle. You can't do one thing and focus on that because your brain will get tired of the same neurons firing over and over.

Today is my roommates birthday and we watched some fun television. And a customer picked something up at the house and gave me a CD of his band. The website for his band is http://jeffbloommusic.com/

I'm in the process of hiring someone and I want to be comfortable being dependant on that person for the day-to-day orders which have been coming in rapidly.

Business is Going Well!

2006-11-05T22:01:00.000-08:00

I can't believe how well DVD-Photo-Memories.Com is doing. We have many orders and new ones are coming in every day. I am becoming more and more optimistic every day. The big decision these days is whether to hire someone to help me with sales or with processing of orders. I enjoy processing the orders so I initially thought that I should hire someone to handle the promotions for me. Then as I was reading a book on marketing, I learned that the manufacturing aspect of business comes second to marketing since if there are no customers, there will be no manufacturing to do. So now I am looking for someone to help fill the orders and I will have to keep doing the promotions and sales. Plus, I have gotten a lot of interest in promotional videos after showing off the video I did for Vine Ripe Market. So I am on the lookout to hire someone for around $10 per hour that has some film experience. Maybe a student that is willing to work part-time while going to school for film.

Joe is going to be a huge help for the next month, since he can not only sell, but he has a film degree and we can work on some promotional videos while he is still in town.

Flying High!

2006-10-29T19:45:00.000-08:00

DVD-Photo-Memories.com now has a new office and a new address. 4565 Ruffner St. #107, San Diego, CA 92111. We share an office with an attorney who has generously loaned a bunch of office furniture and important electronics to us. This has been enormously helpful since it gives us much more time to focus on the more important matters, such as getting up to speed on orders.

DVD-Photo-Memories.com is now fully operational within the confines of its new Ruffner St. office. Enough orders to hire a new employee. The new employee seems to be multi-talented with skills in both order processing and sales. This is such a great benefit for DVD-Photo-Memories.com because now Chuck pass off some of the work.

So It's Time To Take A Break....Sigh...

2006-10-14T21:03:00.000-07:00

How many things have changed in the last week or so? My partner, Ben, and I have gone our separate ways. Ben needs a more stable job in a field that he has more experience in. So he is no longer my partner.

I, however, am still moving forward with DVD-Photo-Memories.Com. And things with the company are going very fast. After the initial success with the farmers market DVD-Photo-Memories.Com has gotten a lot of business. More than I can handle myself. The first step I took to handle the increased business is hired a new employee to work at the farmers markets. The only problem (anyone please provide helpful comments about this) is that the TV I use to show my seven minute promotional video is about 100 lbs. I can barely carry it from my car and onto the table at the booth, so I know that the girl I hired will not be able to. The only reasonable solution I can think of is to buy a lighter TV, but those start around $1000. I'm thinking that if I could entice a TV store (Bestbuy, Tweeter, ETC.,) to lend me the TV in exchange for making a one-minute promotional video that I would incorporate into my regular seven minute video that I already play during the farmers market. That way they could advertise their TV's on one of their TV's.

Also, with the expected increased business I am going forward and leasing an office. The big decisions are the location, square footage, and price. I want the office to be in a central location with freeways nearby. I was thinking Mission Valley, Northpark, Hillcrest, Kearny Mesa, Clairemont Mesa. And my Grandpa Wayne is helping me figure out the correct amount of square footage I need for the time being. We are thinking anywhere from 169 sq. ft. to 400. So if you have any helpful hints please let me know. Thanks in advance.

The next two weeks are going to very exciting. If my numbers are correct I should be able to finance this whole operation and even make a profit. I'll let you know it goes.

A Jack of All Trades and a Master of None

2006-10-07T15:51:00.000-07:00

Now that I am getting many different types of jobs, I need to decide which ones to take myself and which ones to outsource or pass on. I've gotten offers for many promotional videos and even some wedding videography. Both are lucrative options, however I think that unless I can clone myself there is no way that I can get my fingers into too many different areas right now. My dad once told me that you can do a few things really well, or many different things not very well. I subscribe to the former.

Any ideas? Feel free to post comments if you have any.

I Think Maybe We'll Buy The Farm!

2006-10-02T00:17:00.000-07:00

Can you believe Ben and I worked at three different farmer's markets this week? We made it to the Ocean Beach, Clairemont Mesa, and Scripps Ranch. I think that all of them were sucessful, but I suppose we won't really know until we see how many orders we get from them. For the money however, this seems to be the most cost effective marketing strategy so far.

We've Bet the Farm!

2006-09-25T21:23:00.000-07:00

Okay, the title is a bit misleading. We didn't really bet the farm, but we decided to take a run at the local farmers markets.

Our advertising strategy isn't producing as much as we expected. So Ben and I decided to think of something new. Our goal is to produce at least six new customers each during the next two weeks. I started looking on the internet for ideas and came across the different historical societies in San Diego. The first one I called was the Ocean Beach Historical Society. I talked to a gentleman for about 20 minutes about some ideas. I want to make a 30 minute documentary about some piece of Ocean Beach, possibly about their ties to the Theosophical Society. Once that film is produced I can use it to promote the business. Some possible sources of promotion would be KPBS, presentations to the historical society as well as other community and senior groups throughout San Diego.

As I was searching through websites on Ocean Beach, I came across the page that mentions the farmers market. Now I know that most farmers markets sell produce and crafts, but I thought that becoming a vendor at this farmers market would allow us to show many people (maybe not our prime demographic) about what we do. So we are going to be there on Wednesday from 3-8PM. By the end of the day today, I confirmed our vendorship with two other farmers markets: the Clairmont Mesa Farmers Market on Friday and the Scripps Ranch Farmers Market on Saturday. I'll make sure to write in with info on how those went.

So now I need to get going and make a demo video for the markets. We also need to get a canopy, extension cord, TV and tablecloth for these events. It should be an exciting week!

Two Good decisions

2006-09-21T20:39:00.000-07:00

The first good decision: Doing a postcard mailing campain. By far the most money spent to date on any one thing for the business has been mailing 6000 postcards into La Jolla, CA. Today at least a good amount of postcards reached their destination. We recieved three calls from this source! And one sale was made. I think that's pretty good. Hopefully more people will call from the postcard during the next week or so.

Second good decision: Figuring out what me and partner are good at. I think that people are naturally good at some things and not so good at others. When Ben and I started this business, neither of us had any real experience with a business on this scale before. So finding out what we are good at is something that has taken a while. We are learning which part of business operations we like and are good at. Something seems to be catching on...

One Fine Day

2006-09-19T14:51:00.000-07:00

DVD-Photo-Memories.com has just started its real marketing campain. Today our postcards were mailed from Postcardmania.com. They are a great online company. Also, Ben is starting to give out our brochures in La Jolla. I was thinking of getting our foot in the door by offering a promotional video for businesses. If they turned that big offer down, we should be able to step it down a notch and at least get them to let us put some brochures with a holder in their business. We'll see how that idea works out.

I'm going to make a promotional video for Vine Ripe Market in La Mesa. This will also serve as a sample DVD to show other prospective clients.

Live and Learn

2006-09-18T23:20:00.000-07:00

I haven't had caffeine in a while and I had almost forgotten how much I can get done after a large frappucino. I just got back from Borders in Mission Valley. Borders has the largest selection of computer magazines anywhere. I just wish I could have gotten there ealier in order to have more time to explore.

So about the business. We printed 500 copies of the brochure last friday. And tomorrow we will start figuring out where to put them. This really is a big experiment for us, since neither me nor Ben has any marketing experience. Heck, I was a psychology major. Today we met with a couple guys who work with insurance and annuities. They were impressed with the sampler DVD that I made last night. It is only a two minute video, but it took me four hours to produce it. I think it will go on the website soon.

Speaking of the website, we only had one visitor today. That does not make me very excited about the marketing we've already done. The ad in Senior Life magazine has been out for about 10 days now, and we have yet to get one call from that ad. Hmmm..... live and learn I guess....

I guess we'll see how next week goes

2006-09-09T01:18:00.000-07:00

So it's Friday night and I just got back from working out at Bally's. It makes a lot of sense to work out on a regular basis. Good for the body, good for the mind, good for your co-workers.

On the business front, we haven't gotten any calls from anywhere. So it's a bit discouraging. Ben just finished our new brochure today. So I can't wait to get some printed at anybudget.com. They have great prices! So on Monday we'll get our brochures printed and start giving them out.

Somewhat Productive

2006-09-06T18:19:00.000-07:00

So today was somewhat productive. Ben got another order from our most consistent customer. And he met a new physical therapist who has a bunch of old film to scan.

I did some internet advertising on craigslist and merchantamerica. We are in four categories on merchantamerica and we've got the best looking ad on craigslist.

I went around PB all day today to find a Senior Life Magazine, but I could not. Our contact at the magazine told me that I could find them all over, especially around banks. I went to every bank on Garnet Ave. and did not have any luck. Hmmmm.... We better get some good business from this publication.

The brochure is almost complete and then we need to decide on a printer. Oh, and yesterday I fanangled ourselves an office on Garnet Ave for a great price!!! Just a couple more orders and we'll be ready for our first office!

What perspective to take?

2006-09-06T10:06:00.000-07:00

Our new business, DVD-Photo-Memories.com, is about to cross a few different paths.

One path is whether or not the business will take off and flourish or just wither and die. We have invested all that we are really able to into advertising. The first ad should have come out yesterday. It runs continuosly for 6 months and there is supposed to be a story on us during the third month, November, perfect timing for holiday shopping.

So that is the financial, business path. The other path is what perspective to take on the business in general. Everyone does things for a reason. At first my reason to start a business was because it just seemed like the right thing to do at the time. I loved to do this type of work, I was curious about the business world, and I had a business partner and friend that was as stoked as me on the idea.

But after putting more and more work into it, I started to feel invested in its sucess. I spent all my energy on making the business suceed and lost sight of the other things in life that are important.

Luckily after just realizing all of this I now can make my focus something other than the business suceeding. Now it is time to focus on having fun creating a company. I have a good friend that just happens to be my business partner. We have so much fun creating something together. But, we have to not take the projects we work on personally. It is so easy to work on something for so long and then have someone rip it apart because they don't like something about it.

Lesson of the Day: "Do not rely on your projects in life for happiness. Your projects do not become happy or sad based upon their approval rating, so why should you?"

Just Got A New Blog

2006-07-09T01:41:00.000-07:00

So I decided to make a blog. The main reason is so that everyone that wants to keep track of me can do so. My goal here is to write about once a week or whenever something important happens.

I am still planning on going to Thailand on September 21st 2006. I know that many people in my family want to make sure that I don't end up as roadkill in Thailand or wake up without some important organ in my body.

So this is pretty exciting. Google really has it going on. First google maps, then gmail account, then the calendar that sends text messages to my phone, and now the blogger. Okay, so I'm done. I need to start working on my new business venture with Ben. Adios.