I’ve learned a great deal about running a business from my clients. These are sharp people who in many cases have already “been there” and “done that”. One of the most valuable concepts imparted upon me by our client, and my friend, Dave Larsen was “The Value of Distraction“.

Simply stated, what’s it worth to you to pursue a particular opportunity? What’s it worth to you to be distracted from your own goals to help others achieve theirs?

A short time ago, I ran into a situation where I learned exactly what it’s worth to us – and what it’s not.

Podomani was recently approached to help out on a very large marketing/design/development and Ecommerce project. I was pitched that it would mean lots of work to us, and lots and lots of money with a super-mega-potential client. They said we’d get big exposure, and even though their budget on this deal was limited, there was big potential  for more lucrative work down the road.

It took me all of 24 hours to dive into the details, think about it, weigh the potential outcomes, and then promptly turn it down.

What? Turn down a potential huge job? You bet. And we couldn’t be happier about it.

First of all, it was easy to see the client had unreasonable expectations. What they wanted was the internet equivalent of us buying and developing a square block of down town Manhattan – for the price of about four fully decked-out Hummers. They also demanded that a large part of the site be built to integrate with some third party software that was yet to be developed – at no additional cost. Frankly, the project looked to be a fantastic train wreck just waiting to happen.

But more distracting for us was this project was to utilize a whole slew of dead, or dying technologies. So for a year or more, we would be focusing our skills on tools we would never choose to use again. And no where in the project would we be helping a client “make the cultural shift to a world of instantaneous, on-demand information” which we’ve set out to do.

Even if we put an outrageously high bid on it and the accepted – the value of the distraction would have been too steep of a price to pay.

Then there is the matter of the 24 hours I spent on the project to turn it down. That’s three full business days I could have spent in many other ways… but I chose to pay the price of this distraction. While I mourn the loss of the time, I’m comfortable knowing it could have been much worse.

John G. Miller, has a new book hitting the store shelves this month! Outstanding! 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional. The book is inspirational as well as a guide-book that individuals and organizations can use to set your organization apart from the pack, making customers and stakeholders get more involved and wanting to “stick” with the organization.

From my last post, you may recognize John as the winner of Sarah Palin’s jacket she wore for the photo of her best-selling book “Going Rogue”. All the proceeds went to benefit two organizations that support our U.S. troops, and the jacket made it home to John’s house. John’s lovely and gracious wife Karen modeled it briefly.

We’re just impressed that John was this generous in helping the people that are out there laying their lives on the line for all of us.

We’ve also been fascinated by the level of angst or joy that the mere mention of Sarah Palin generates. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one person garner so much of a positive response – or raise the level of hatred towards an individual so high in the negative responses.

But whatever your take on Mrs. Palin is, it was nice of her to donate the jacket, and even cooler that they made sure the profits went to support two important groups like Wounded Warrior Project and the Fisher House.

Politics must end when we are talking about the care of wounded soldiers. And for that, John, Sarah and all those involved at the very least deserve a thank you.

One of our favorite clients just won an online auction for Sarah Palin’s jacket she wore for the cover over her best selling book “Going Rogue”. The winning bid was $57,000 and all the proceeds go to support the Wounded Warrior Project and the Fisher House. Both are organizations to help our veterans and their families.

The winner of the auction was John G. Miller, best selling author of the books QBQ! The Question Behind the Question, Flipping the Switch and the new OUTSTANDING! 47 Ways to Make Your Organization Exceptional!.

We here at Podomani are very proud to have been helping John with his websites (qbq.com and outstandingorganizations.com) for the last year.

John was only mildly interested in Sarah’s jacket, but he was very very interested in supporting the troops, since his family has personal experience with veterans issues. We just thought this was a great gesture on John’s part, as well as Sarah Palin’s and Laura Ingraham’s.

John’s donation should go a long way to making this Christmas season better for our vets and their familes!

We don’t have any sales people here. Zero, Zip, Nada. When you call or email, your connected to a person who can discuss what you need for your website. I know to many this may sound like a strange way to run a business, but it works.

For several years I worked in an business environment that believed it must grow a sales force in order to grow. This is common for a growing business. It’s the path the vast majority take and I’m sure it does work when selling commodity items.

With every sales person we hired, we ran into the same problem: Since they had never worked in design, development marketing or hosting of a website, they could not discuss anything with a client without saying a phrase I came to dread: “I’ll get back to you on that.”

Translation? “I have no clue. I will have to take the information you gave me, talk to someone smarter than me, then bring it back to you, and hopefully, I will not screw it up in between. Please be patient with me while I totally waste your valuable time.”

The result was often a phone call from a customer I had spent years developing a relationship with who would say “please don’t make me talk to that person again.”

So that former business environment just kept right on firing and hiring sales people, beating their heads against a wall, and hoping for a different outcome.

When I started Podomani, one of the ideas I wanted to try was not having any sales people. It’s working better than I could have ever imagined. We’ve cut tons of time off of lead times and sales processes, lowering costs. When you call Podomani, you get a live voice that can help you now. That has lead to better long term relationships with our clients, and faster turn-arounds on projects.

Do you know of other companies that practice the “no-saleperson” philosophy? If so, I would love to hear about it.

You may have noticed a new look on the Podomani.com website. Today we launched a new version of the site and I first of all wanted to say thanks to J.D. Hendrickson and Brandon Johnson for all the help on getting it done and looking fantastic!

This is about the fourth version of the website since Podomani got started. I also think it’s the best looking of the sites we’ve done for ourselves so far. Working on this also gave us some sneaky ideas on what to do for the next version.

Building a website for yourself after spending a day working on them for others can be difficult at times. Much the same as I imagine it is for a butcher to go out for a steak dinner after a long day at work – but this one was different. We had a good time with it.

I hope it shows.

I confess I just started tweeting recently. I had been watching Twitter out of curiosity for a long time before I decided to jump in.

The more I looked at it the more I found it to be … well, random bragging about your unexceptional life. As best described in this SuperNews cartoon.

Slowly but surely I find myself replacing my daily blog reading habits with Twitter. I have a bunch of RSS feeds and a long list of bookmarked blogs. But I find myself just checking in on my Twitter page. Almost everyone I am following on Twitter is someone who has a blog I was checking almost daily.

Some of the blogs I followed are done be exceptionally good writers and story tellers. I would much rather read a full blog posting or story from these people than just a Tweet – and many of these people have already effectively figured out how to Tweet and get my attention – and then I’m off to their blog to read the full story.

For the other blogs I check out… Twitter helps me avoid wasting time scanning through their blogs. Twitter forces them to get to the point – thank God.

So has Twitter killed blogging? Not yet. But with our ever shorter attention spans … it’s got a shot.

Yet another useless phone book left for me to throw out.

So I posted my thoughts last week on how useless phone books are, and wondering why any are still printed. That very afternoon, I came home to find some trash a new phone book laying in my yard.

Notice they just threw it in the grass as though they expect it to be thrown out.

Is there a law against throwing trash in some one else’s yard? Can I send the phone company a bill for a portion of my trash bill this month?

As I was walking into the office this morning, a man was fumbling through a large and heavy tote, about to pull out a big slab of dead tree and leave it in front of my office door. I could tell by the girth of the thing that it was a phone book.

A phone book? I haven’t opened one for at least 5 years, maybe more. I’m annoyed to keep finding them on my home and office doorstep. Trying not to sound annoyed, I asked the gentleman “do I have to take one of those?”

“No” he exclaimed. He sounded relieved to not burden me with it. “But would you mind signing that you took it anyway?” he asked.

“Will you throw it out for me?” I responded. “Sure!” he said, letting the book fall back in the tote.

So I signed his electronic receipt as “Stuart Smalley” and he scurried off. Walking past our trash bin outside, I saw him toss not one, but several of the heavy books.

This got me to thinking. Does anyone use a phone book anymore? Why to they keep publishing them?

I could not help but wonder what the Phone Company will do with that signature from Stuart Smalley. Most likely they use it to proclaim how many thousands of people still use the phone book. Thus the reason they keep publishing it.

Don’t fall for it. Especially in a slow economy, accountable web marketing from dedicated professionals is your best bet.

Even better,  we can show you just exactly how it is working. We won’t have to collect signatures from Saturday Night Live characters turned politicians to convince you.

Ashley at the 2008 Comic Con Convention

We’ve brought Ashley Hay into the mix here at Podomani to help out with site design. Ashely is a graduate of the Minneapolis School of Art and Design, and an avid online gamer.

Recently Ashley made a big splash on the web as one of the  “Girls of Comic Con” with her punk rock Jedi Knight outfit she wore to the convention. One such list listed her as “Girl20″. I think the name might stick.

Ashley does blogging for the Girls Entertainment Network and also podcasts for Fancy Pants Gangsters.com.

Even though we really, really like the design work she’s been doing her and the fact that she’s fun to work with, we decided we really liked her on her first day when she brought in a box of massive cookies.

We should have Ashley’s first design up very soon.

My first blog was a little website I did for fun way back in the late 1990’s before the word “blog” existed. I mused about web development, my guitar and studio gear collection, some other hobbies, and life in general. To my surprise, the traffic on the site climbed with every post.

I split off the most popular part of that first site and since then I have blogged almost every day (or at least every week) on it. It’s been a pretty amazing experience. While 98% of the experience has been positive, the 2% negative was tough – at first.

All things considered, I wouldn’t trade that experience for anything. We’ll talk more about that website in posts to come.

If you’ve been thinking about getting your company or yourself into blogging, I can highly recommend “Blog Rules – A Business Guide to Managing Policy, Public Relations, and Legal Issues” by Nancy Flynn. The book will guide you through many of the issues and give you a firm footing to start blogging from.

We’ll be talking about the various aspects of blogging here in the days to come, as well as many other aspects of life on the web. Enjoy.

Larry Preston