In March I was approached to redesign the website for the Kapaa High School Foundation. The Foundation was started in 1995 to provide financial support for students and programs at Kapaa High School (my alma mater).  Despite the size of the group, which is just a handful of individuals, the foundation has been able to do tremendous things for the school, creating scholarships, awards for outstanding educators, and field donations for athletic programs and events like project grad.

The tragedy about the foundation is that despite all that they do, their acts often go unrecognized. I felt that a new website would be the key to shine the light on what these people are actually doing.

Their website at that point had not been updated in over a year and was very outdated in both design and content. With no content management system in place, everything on the site was hand coded html and uploaded one at a time with an ftp client.

Their new website is powered by Wordpress and is now easy to update. Hopefully this new website can serve as the showcase of their efforts and get them the recognition that they deserve.

Kapaahighschoolfoundation.org

Being that today is Mother’s day, I came up with an idea for a way for a flower shop business to increase their yearly revenues.

Offer a subscription service targeted at men that reserve flowers for them for all important dates. Standard package would include, Valentines Day, Mothers Day, for additional fees birthdays, anniversaries, etc. The payment is a yearly subscription and will guarantee that there will be a flower arrangement available for each subscriber at a significant discount on these dates. The customer can either set the service to pickup or delivery (additional costs) and will automatically be sent an e-mail notification on or prior to these dates.

This is beneficial to the customer because a large number of men forget about these dates and are usually scrambling last minute to get flowers or hate buying flowers because it makes them feel unmanly. This way, it removes the duty of remembering the flowers for these dates and removes the unmanliness  of have to call the flower shop 3-4 times a year.

For the shop owner, this is cash on hand at the beginning of the year which can be used to budget recurring expenses. Also because flowers are a perishable inventory, this lets them know that at least a portion of the inventory will move regularly because of  these dates. Also, by offering different packages you may be able to upsell flowers for holidays that these men would not normally buy flowers for. Easter, Girl’s day, etc.

For a flower business to make this work however, would require a few things. 1. Their flower arrangements must exceed expectations of the customer. 2. The owner must make sure that the have those flowers available for their subscribers. This requires excellent record keeping and will probably need to find or create a software to track subscriptions and dates. 3. The shop owner must treat the subscription money accordingly and keep reserves to order flowers for the subscribers at each of their days.

Flowers are an experience product. As the flower shop owners, you are presenting an experience to your customer that they can in turn present to their loved one.  What determines a positive or negative experience is success or failure to exceed expectations.

On Wednesday, March 11 2009 I lost one of my few business heroes. Charles “Mask” Lewis Jr, founder of the Mixed Martial Arts lifestyle brand TapouT passed away in an early morning car accident. While some may feel it necessary to critique the way of his passing, I choose to remember the life Charles chose to live and why he will always serve as a huge source of inspiration to me.

TapouT was founded in 1997 by Charles with an initial start up capital of just a few thousand dollars. Launched out of a small unfurnished San Bernadino “apartment” (a room in the back of someone’s house), he would drive a borrowed car to small regional MMA shows and sell the few t-shirts he had in the parking lot out of his car trunk.

The landscape of Mixed Martial Arts was very different back then. Senator John McCain strongly opposed the sport calling it “Human Cockfighting”. He championed the cause of outlawing MMA and sent letters to the governors of all 50 states asking that legislation be put into place banning the promotion of these events. McCain was successful in 37 state and almost all pay-per-view providers pulled the UFC, from their programming. Because of this, many of these local shows Charles, later accompanied by Dan aka Punkass and Tim aka SkySkrape would attend with their TapouT apparel were hosted in Native American reservations.

There was no reason to believe that MMA would become as huge as it is today, but Charles, Dan, and Tim, believed in their hearts that the sport would overcome it’s opposition at the time. They had a passion for the sport and what they were doing. They felt it was something that was needed. People would call them dreamers, idiots and retards for essentially banking their futures on a sport which would most likely be gone in a few years.

The three forged on with Charles as their leader. They worked hard getting their brand out there, Dan fulfilled online orders as Charles and Tim drove to local shows selling their inventory by any means necessary. With no marketing budget, Charles, a lifelong comic book fan created alter egos for the crew and thus he became “Mask”, Dan became “Punkass”, and Tim became “SkySkrape”. They would go to shows dressed in outlandish costumes emblazoned with the TapouT logo and became the center of attention wherever they went. They began sponsoring fighters when no one was sponsoring fighters. With so little money this was difficult for them to do in the beginning, but they did whatever they could. Jeff Sherwood from sherdog.com tells a story about how Charles asked him to take a huge duffel bag of TapouT gear to a UFC show with one of their sponsored fighters Scott Adams. Before the show started, Scott went into the crowd and sold every t-shirt in the bag. The few hundred dollars from those sales was his sponsorship money.

Through their hard work and dedication, TapouT generated $30,000 in revenues in 1999. The three were ecstatic. In 2008, TapouT generated over $100,000,000 in revenues.

With Ukulele Underground, I frequently looked to Charles’ story for inspiration. No one gave a crap about MMA or TapouT but they pressed forward because of the passion they had. People called them idiots, dreamers, and they were able to prove all the doubters wrong. More than the money, I looked up to these guys because they were able to provide for themselves by doing something positive for something they really loved.  When looking at their story, it made me feel like we could do it too.

A month or so ago I had the idea of somehow getting in touch with Charles to tell him how much he inspired me. I knew he would know more than anyone what it feels like to do what we are trying to do. With Ukulele Underground, there is no doubt that it will be something huge. It’s never a question of if this is the right thing that I should be doing, the feeling is just there. I know he would understand the elation we feel after each victory no matter how small, and the excitement of inching your way towards a goal.  Somehow I convinced myself not to try yet because Ukulele Underground is still so tiny and it would be a waste of his time. That telling someone like him about an Ukulele website is something he would laugh at. I told myself that I would contact him when it wouldn’t be a waste of his time.  I wish I had sent that email or placed that call anyways. Now I’ll never have that chance.

Tapout.com has a mini-documentary and Charles last interview up and I would recommend everyone to watch it. Also, sherdog.com has a tribute radio show to Charles which, although it is heartbreaking to listen to, it will truly give you insight to how great person he was. His was a life that is worth celebrating. Rest in Peace Charles Lewis Jr.

Them: So what do you do again?

Me: My partners and I run a website where we teach people how to play the ukulele online. We have around 7500 registered members now and get like 20k uniques a month. Not great but it’s a pretty good start considering we started with $300 and spent no money on advertising.

Them: Oh wow, so all those people pay to use your site?

Me: No, we give away all the content for free

Them: … How do you make money then?

Me: Well there’s a lot of ways, we sell ads, we have an online store… We focus on diversifying our income streams so we’re not dependent on one area of our business.  Right now we’re mainly focused on building our brand equity though.

Them: Why don’t you charge your members?

Me: Because that’s not how you do it online anymore.

Them: I don’t get it…

I think I go through some version of this conversation monthly when someone who is not familiar with the internet asks me what I do. Every once in a while,  a guy or girl will just come out and tell me, “You know, you should be charging for your content on Ukulele Underground.”  I usually just agree with them rather than objecting. The truth is, I don’t believe in that method of monitizing content online, I believe that business model is outdated and a thing of the 90s. When I say that method, I’m talking about locking down content in a paid subscription sort of way. In today’s market, especially when dealing with smart, younger, savvy users, you simply can’t do it. Here are my reasons.

1. People my age and younger who have grown up with the internet grew up with the concept that content on the internet is free. We grew up with the original Napster, these younger kids are pros at bitTorrent and file sharing services like mediafile. The technology and the services available today make sharing content easier than ever. If there is something these kids want to find online they will be able to find it. So why even attempt to charge them, they’re going to pirate it anyways. What makes it even worse is that there will be people who will pay for your content, and when they find out that others are obtaining it for free, they will feel slighted and cheated even if they did things the  right way. Just knowing that, I wouldn’t be able to sleep well at night.

2. Free content leads to faster growth. By leaving your content free and unlocked, you facilitate word of mouth marketing and your users will do your advertising for you. Now, for this method to work, your content will need to be legit but if you pump out good quality stuff regularly, they’ll keep coming back and they will bring their friends. If you instead decided to lock down your content from the start, you create a barrier of entry to your content that most visitors will not bother breaking. This goes back to my previous post about how online trust must be earned. If you give visitors no reason to trust you, chances are they won’t and won’t come back.

3. If your stuff is good, people will still buy it later anyways if it’s packaged correctly. On paper doesn’t make any sense at all. Why would anyone buy something that you can easily get online for free? Well the truth is, people do buy it.  They buy it because they think your content is awesome and want to support you, they buy it for gifts for their friends and family, they buy it as collectors items. Whatever their reasoning, people do buy content that they have access to online, even if they’ve already read or watched it. I’ve done so myself in the past.  The idea that if you give something away for free, noone will pay for it later just simply isnt true. We get tons of e-mails asking us if we’re ever going to put our lessons on DVD because people want to buy them. We probably will do this sometime in the near future.

At the end of the day, the fact that the vast majority of the people I interact with don’t get what we’re doing is great. Let them think I’m clueless and an idiot for giving away this stuff for free. My partners and I get it, and we’ll have the advantage and head start while they try to figure it out.

January 25. One year older. I’m officially in my late 20s. My 26th year of life was an exciting one.  Here are some highlights

1. Grew ukuleleunderground.com with Aldrine and Aaron from an idea to something pretty special
2. Quit my job as New Media Director at a web / software development firm in Honolulu
3. Helped Aldrine produce his debut album Suite 409
4. Moved back to Kauai from Oahu
5. Started playing music again
6. Went on tour to California
7. Made more new friends this year than I ever have in my life
8. Helped Aldrine put out a Christmas EP

Most importantly to me, I had an epiphany of sorts sometime in the last year that money and happiness are both things you can’t actively pursue. They’re presence or lack there of in your life is the byproduct of your actions. I feel tremendously blessed that I was able to realize this and still be only 27. I know some people spend their whole lives toiling for personal gains only to realize on their deathbed that they blew it.  We all have only one shot at this. Our lives are incredibly short when you look at the big picture. Let’s all do what we can to make the largest positive impact in what little time we have here.

Ukuleleunderground.com has given me the opportunity to meet and befriend so many amazing people throughout the world. I always take some time everyday to think about just how fortunate I am to have made so many new friends within the past year. One of these new friends is a man named Mike Hater from Nashville Indiana. Mike is an amazingly interesting person. He has described himself to me on more than one occasion as a hillbilly.  His youtube channel is filled with videos of him tending to his bee hives, or sitting on old tractors drinking moonshine and strumming an ukulele.

Mike recently found himself out of work and decided it was time to start his own Ukulele Company which he named Mainland Ukes.  Having worked in the industry and been an avid player of the ukulele, it seems like a logical progression. For all I know this is his first foray into entrepreneurialism but he has done so many things right so far it seems as if he has been launching businesses his whole life. Crazy thing is, I don’t think much of it is pre-meditated or planned at all. He just does these things because it makes sense to him.  He’s doing things that so many larger companies who are stuck in their ways will never understand. Mike is 42 years old and does not even own a cell phone, yet he understands how to use the internet for business better than 99% of the people I’ve ever personally talked to. Whether he knows it or not, his business should be studied on how to launch a business with limited capital in the 21st century using the internet.  Let me break down what he’s doing and why he is bound to succeed.

1. He is a part of his business’s community - Mike is an avid ukulele player. He’s worked in the industry helping put them together. He loves playing them. Because of the fact that he already has a passion for the ukulele, he joins internet forums about ukuleles and talks to any other enthusiasts all over the world. He joined the UU forums over 1 year ago, way before starting an ukulele company was even a thought in his mind.  Because of this, Mike, or Hoosierhiver as he’s known everywhere online already has some personal brand equity. People know him and when they found out he started a uke company, they checked it out.

Why is this important? There are billions of websites online. Billions of people trying to convince you to give them your hard earned money on the internet. Who do you trust? How do you know if it’s a scam or not? These days a website is simply not enough. So many people make the mistake of thinking that launching a website is the end all be all of web marketing. You could not be more off the mark. Getting in the trenches, interacting with your potential customers, is the fastest way to gain trust online. You need to give your customers as many ways to reach you as possible. They don’t want to talk to an answering machine or a secretary, they want you.  Trust is not something that should be expected, it needs to be earned.  Because Mike was in the trenches, sharing info, befriending other uke players from around the world, when he announced that he started his new company, he already had a few people that were willing to give his ukulels a shot sight unseen.

2. He has a great product - New ukulele companies seem to be popping up all over the place. Not only that, guitar makers like Fender are now seeing an opportunity to cash in on a growing niche market and are putting out ukuleles of their own. One might look at the marketplace and see oversaturation. So many of these ukuleles are being made overseas, why create another line that is just going to get lost in the crowd?

Mike has an advantage. Because he is a part of the ukulele community, he knows what a good ukulele should sound like and what features ukulele players are impressed by. His ukuleles feature things like high quality covered geared tuners, and real bone nut and saddle. He strings them stock with a more expensive brand of strings. Theses are features that help make his ukulele look and sound better than most other ukes at his price points. When those early adopters who purchased his ukes got them in the mail, they were all blown away by the quality of what they had just purchased. What happens when expectations are exceeded? They all came back into the forum singing praises for these Mainland Ukes  they got from Mike. This lead to more sales from more members. Word of mouth marketing is the most powerful form of marketing, it’s free and spreads like wildfire.  To start that fire, you need to have a solid quality product that exceeds expectations.

3. He Sponsors the Longtail - Advertising online is still a mystery for many businesses. Many fail to see the value in it especially if they are coming from traditional media outlets. The numbers for online viewership are almost always smaller than TV and Radio. Conventional wisdom would say, why even bother?

Before he even launched his company, Mike was e-mailing us saying he wanted to purchase advertising on ukuleleunderground.com. He understood that for his market, there was no better way to reach his potential customers and that ROI for his advertising dollar was highest sponsoring a site like ours. When you sponsor the longtail in your industry, you’re essentially piggybacking on existing brand equity. You create brand awareness and in most cases online, if you sponsor a company that has a strong connection to their visitors, people who see your ad will at least check out what you have to offer. It’s why I personally have tried Sweet Leaf Tea, why I’ve used godaddy to register my domains even though there are cheaper alternatives, why I tried netflix, why I signed up for Raffstar, the list goes on and on. Sponsoring the longtail is a shortcut to building your own company’s brand equity.

4. He didn’t give up - When Mike decided he was going for it and was going to start his ukulele company, he e-mailed us to ask if he could advertise with us and that he wanted to work with us to create a signature ukulele model. His e-mail was ignored. At UU we have a strict policy on who we let advertise on our website. We feel that if we vouch for these companies, then they better bring straight thunder to our visitors and members. We turn down many advertising solicitations because we feel their company would not benefit our members, most usually never get back to us.

Mike was different. He e-mailed again asking the same thing, in fact I think he e-mailed a few times before we finally got back to him.  Always polite but on point. We told him that we were working with another company to create our signature ukulele. He left the door open for us if we ever wanted to take him up on that offer. We eventually allowed him to purchased some advertising and he sent us an ukulele to give away and for us to take a look at what his company was producing.  When we got the ukulele, we were blown away by all the features he was offering. Once again his product exceeded the customers expectations. After a quick meeting it was decided that we needed to be selling his ukuleles in our store and that Mainland Ukes was the company to make our signature ukulele as our previous deal had fallen through.  We added Mike’s ukuleles to our store today and will begin marketing them heavily in the weeks to come. He’s happy and we’re extremely happy with the arrangement as well.  All this because he refused to take ‘No’ for an answer and was professional about it. In business, especially when you first get started, you’ll face rejection a LOT. It can be soul crushing but never giving up is more than half the battle.

Where does Mike stand now? Well he officially been in business for less than a month and he’s already having to place a reorder for his instruments because he is starting to run low. If he continues to create quality products and deliver quality service, there is no doubt in my mind his company will only become bigger and more profitable as time goes on.

Links:

Check out Mainland Ukes and say hi to Mike

Understanding your website analytics and statistics is a key component in developing an online web strategy. INC magazine had a great article on this in November. Here’s the link. If you are a business owner looking to develop or grow your online presence this is important info.

http://www.inc.com/magazine/20081101/improving-your-sense-of-site.html

When people hear Wordpress, majority of them (if they even know what it is) think blogging software. I love Wordpress. Blogging to me is the best way to serve up daily, weekly or any kind of regular content. But, I love Wordpress for more than that, it is quickly becoming a very powerful content management system or CMS. In fact, almost all sites I build for clients today are built on Wordpress.

Here are just some of the advantages to using Wordpress other than a traditional CMS

1. Quick and Easy install
2. W3C valid css and xhtml
3. Open Source with no licensing fees (savings passed on to clients)
4. Modular feature design via plugins
5. Best spamblocking utilitiy ever (Akismet)
6. Can be used on almost any hosting plan
7. Easy to use Administration

I could go on and on forever, but to majority of the people reading this blog, that list doesn’t mean much so let me explain it is more accessible way. Wordpress is free to use, there are no licensing fees, you’re not tied to any one hosting plan, it’s built correctly and will help you in search engine rank, and it’s easy to use.

The biggest gripe about using wordpress as a CMS is that the site will still look like a blog. I just have the laugh when I hear this. Here are some examples of websites built on Wordpress either by me, or someone who has stated it was built on wordpress.

Derekkawakami.com - I built this site for Derek this year with Wordpress.

Hawaiiskindiver.com - This site was built by Giddymachine for HSD using wordpress

Revision3.com - This site was built by their team on wordpress.

As you can see these don’t look or function like blog sites, yet they are all running on a “blogging software”.  Wordpress will get the job done for 90% of clients. There will always be a few who require custom applications, but the plugin database is growing daily and I wouldn’t be surprised within the next 5 years that Wordpress is the king of content management.

Ron Richards gave an awesome presentation about the future of internet television and what they are working towards at revision3.com. I’ve been watching rev3 stuff for a while and I agree with him that the convergence of the computer and the television is inevitable. Being able to watch high quality niche content on a HD tv is a dream that is going to be realized before we know it though there is still a debate on the best way to get there. I personally believe that the best way to get that content to the TV is not through a set top box distribution model that we have now with Apple TV, slingbox, Tivo, etc but fully integrated wifi tv and a built in video podcast subscribing system similar to what iTunes has now. Apple TV is not the future; just a bridge to that until a large television company realizes what a HUGE opportunity is currently being untapped. I think wireless keyboards in a living room setting is going to be commonplace within the next 10-20 years an a whole wave of new market for web enabled “TV apps” are going to emerge.

To me this is very exciting because when this happens, it will be a game changer. Of course we’ll always have network TV, but it will be possible for someone with a great idea, to create their own sustainable show and have it broadcasted to million as opposed to thousands a week like it is now with podcasts. It’s going to change the advertising game as well, creating a much  longer longtail with higher ROI the more niche the program becomes. We’ve already seen game systems turn into very powerful computers, I think it’s only logical for televisions to evolve in a similar fashion.

Anyways, here’s Ron’s presentation. Good stuff.

I get a kick out of hearing local businesses complaining about negative reviews on blogs or sites like yelp.com. The game has changed my friends. The internet is like a megaphone for word of mouth marketing. It’s word of mouth marketing on steroids, or on HGH, or both. Good or bad, your customers now have a voice and the power to let others know if you suck or if their experience with your company was phenomenal.

This get’s me so excited every time I think about it. Why? Because maybe, just maybe the good guys have a chance now. It’s going to be impossible, even for the largest companies to cover up crooked business practices when information is so readily available and easily distributed to the masses via the internet. There are no more information bottlenecks. If your company is getting negative reviews on the internet, maybe it’s because your company deserves it. On the flipside, when a customer has an experience with a business that exceeds his or her expectations, the opposite happens. They will happily tell everyone they know about their experience. Guess what? These companies deserve it too! In the web 2.0 world, you get what you deserve.

“What if those reviews are unwarranted!? I had a bad employee that did that, it’s not my fault!” You can make all the excuses you want, but at the end of the day it is still your company. Luckily for most cases, it’s not that difficult to remedy these situations. When people post negative reviews about things, they generally assume the company they are complaining about is not listening.

Step one, read the criticism, and ask yourself what you can change to prevent this in the future.

Step two, contact that person who wrote the review. Simply contacting the person who wrote the review says a lot. It shows that you care about your company and your customers.

Step three, give that person something unexpected. A free gift, a free exchange for the product they bought, a gift certificate, something that will make them want to tell others about their new experience with your company. A positive experience can more often than not erase memories of a negative one (to a certain degree, there are some experiences that create permanent views of a company).

Do all you can within reason to change that person’s perception of your company. Chances are if you did your job of creating a new positive experience, they’ll go ahead and and edit their review, or post an update, glowing about the exceptional customer service provided by your company. Now take into account there will be times that no matter what you do, you won’t be able to change that persons mind. I personally have had some experiences that I will never do business with certain companies again. Sometimes you’ll encounter a customer with an experience like that, it’s inevitable, but if you begin to see a lot of those customers, maybe you need to take a long hard look at your business.

“But that’s too much work! That’s too expensive! If word gets out that I do that, people will take advantage of it and it’ll cost me a lot of money!”  There is nothing more valuable than a satisfied customer. At the same time, there is nothing more detrimental than a dissatisfied customer. How much does a dissatisfied customer cost? How much in lost potential revenue will you never see because of a negative review? Is it more than a $100 gift certificate? More than an upgraded replacement product? What is the cost of that lost revenue of one dissatisfied customer? It’s not just a nice idea to keep tabs on what others are saying about your business, it’s imperative. If you don’t believe that contacting dissatisfied customers is worth the time and energy, I wish you all the luck in your business, chances are it won’t be around for too much longer. Who’s ultimately going to win is the consumer and the businesses who do good by their customer. Did I say how excited this makes me????