A Pocketful of Change

Real Estate and Digital Media – Version 1

admin — Wed, 09 Jan 2013 17:13:42 +0000

Greater Philadelphia Association Of Realtors®

Presents:

New Year. New Strategy. New Level of Success.

Start the New Year learning Digital strategy tips and tricks including:

Search engine Optimization
Website design tips
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIN tactics

3 Dates:

January 7^th, 2013 – 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Greater Philadelphia Association Of Realtors®

1341 N. Delaware Ave., Suite 200 | Philadelphia PA, 19125 | PH: (215) 423-9381

January 17^th, 2013 – 10:00AM – 11:30AM

Greater Philadelphia Association Of Realtors®

1341 N. Delaware Ave., Suite 200 | Philadelphia PA, 19125 | PH: (215) 423-9381

January 21st, 2013 – 6:30PM – 8:30PM

Uno Chicago Grill

2803 New Jersey 73 | Maple Shade NJ, 08052 | PH: (856) 722-5577

Guest Speaker:

Nate Nichols, President of Digital Strategy at Teal Orbit. Nate Helps develop integrated digital strategies to expand customer sales, increase brand awareness and maximize net sales. Prior to joining Teal Orbit, Nate Partnered with SEO Expert, Brian Ruther to develop “Do it yourself “ website design site, “Create a Website HQ.” Nate, also served as a social media consultant and respondent for Harte-Hanks on the National, Award winning Hyundai Veloster Launch campaign. As well as local projects like Keys to the Estate, Stephanie Churchill, DLG Branding and many more.

For more details on Nate Nichols check out:

Teal Orbit – http://www.TealOrbit.com

A Pocketful of Change group – Http://www.apocketfulofchange.com

Create a Website HQ – http://www.createawebsitehq.com

The call will also be streamed live on the web via conference call:

Dial In: 213-416-1560 Pin: 938 069 685

URL: http://anymeeting.com/tealorbit1

The Bionic Man & Woman

admin — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 18:45:28 +0000

The day of artificial intelligence is upon us. We’ve seen it in movies for years from the “Do Gooder,” Robo Cop to the cold blooded, Terminator.

WTF are you talking about, Nate?

Stop tapping that artificially flavored sugar packet in your artificially flavored coffee for a second and hear me out. I recently stumbled upon one of the dopest products I have seen in 2011.

Drum roll, please…

Jawbone UP – Bracelet and Mobile App

The Bluetooth reached it’s pique years ago and has plateaued, however Jawbone is a prime example of what a Corporation should set out become. This innovative company is dead set on providing intrinsic value to the world one product at a time.

I personally never liked the aesthetics of wearing a BlueTooth on your ear, it not only feels asymmetrical but it looks it too. But this damn Bracelet idea, literally has me jacked out of my “F*ckin’ mind” though.

Lets break it down.

Jawbone, has developed a bracelet,($99, Multiple sizes) the wrist band syncs with an iOS(iPhone) mobile application. Creating a mobile extension of your body to your phone; this window into your body does the following :

Tracks your activity – “Use the UP wristband and iPhone® app to track your steps, distance, calories burned, pace, intensity level, active vs inactive time, GPS routes and more.”
Tracks your sleep patterns – “Put your wristband in sleep mode to automatically track your hours slept, deep vs. light sleep, awake time and overall sleep quality.”
Tracks your diet & meals – “Say hello to your new food journal. It’s as easy snapping a photo and responding to prompts about how each meal makes you feel.”

This new technology is more then ergonomically gorgeous, but the branding and marketing is quite excellent too. Jawbone did an excellent job social proofing the website and mobile app, the mobile application UI(User interface) looks excellent. I haven’t gotten one yet, so sadly I cannot play with the app to see what the UX (User experience) is like. Another cool feature with the mobile application is the Challenge aspect; Up App has a social network inside of it. You can jump into all types of challenges (I.E. weight loss, running, etc.) without even leaving the app. (Nike+ should take note of that)

Using a lot of bright colors and happy everyday people, Jawbone did a great job giving the feeling of how one not only wants this in their life but NEEDS the product in their life.

Creating videos of White collar workers sitting at a desk and gently getting a vibration as a reminder to get up and move.

[vsw id="d78_lds6bqw" source="youtube" width="425" height="344" autoplay="no"]

Jawbone is leading the way for a new tech trend, bionic technology for the masses. When you think of bionic technology one normally thinks of smart prosthetic limbs for the handicapped or injured. However, there are a ton of solutions for the everyday person as well. Basic everyday problems that every human faces; the UP creates a window into your body that only a trained doctor could see before.

Imagine that… A person pays hundreds of thousands of dollars to become a doctor, to make hundreds of thousands of dollars. Jawbone has created a bracelet that costs $100, a bracelet that allows you to track your health, sleep and eating habits. Giving you the ability to make the conscious decision to change your lifestyle.

My personal opinion is the UP technology coupled with AR (Augmented reality) will help to create a whole new market for mobile applications and change the health care industry.

Lets just say I have a few ideas up my sleeve too :]

Jawbone UP was released but recalled because of issues with the bracelet malfunctioning, they’ll get it right the second time, I am sure of it. Check out this Amazon review, quite hilar:

“By ************(Essexville, MI United States) -

This review is from: Jawbone UP Band (Electronics)

It was so cool the first couple of weeks! I like the activity tracking, the reminders to get off your butt and walk around, and the sleep monitor was awesome!

Then it started taking a couple of tries to get it to sync.

Then it wouldn’t sync at all.

Then it died.

I’m not too ashamed to admit that a piece of me died with it!

I woke up this morning, not to gentle vibrations on my wrist from my UP; but to the sounds of my dog licking her butt.

Right next to my face.

I’ll miss you UP.”

Check out more details on UP, here: www.Jawbone.com/up

written by Nate Nichols, @thenichols

Demand Creators

admin — Thu, 08 Sep 2011 02:50:55 +0000

The Six Secrets Of Demand Creation

BY FC EXPERT BLOGGER ADRIAN SLYWOTZKY Tue Aug 30, 2011

This blog is written by a member of our expert blogging community and expresses that expert’s views alone.

We live in a time of two economies. In the first, mired in recession since 2008, millions are unemployed and underemployed, companies are reluctant to invest, and factories have fallen silent. Consumer demand is stagnant.

In the second, in the same time and space, demand is gushing. A handful of companies are doing exponentially better than their competitors. They enjoy runaway growth, premium pricing, and extraordinary customer loyalty. Here, companies are growing, profits are robust, and customers are loyal.

What’s going on? Some portion of weak demand is a function of shrinking consumer pocketbooks. But structural issues don’t explain why consumers disproportionately demand one product over a seemingly comparable one–think Kindle vs. Sony Reader, or Zipcar vs. Hertz Connect–by margins of five or 10 to one.

These differences are not accidental. “Demand creators,” a special breed who design truly exciting products, recognize the huge gaps between what people buy and what they really want–and use those gaps as a springboard to see differently.

As they create products and services, demand creators are obsessed with sticking to just a few principles that make all the difference:

1. Make It Magnetic

Demand creators understand that very good isn’t good enough. Most products fail to create an emotional connection with customers. Products must be magnetic, because when it comes to creating demand, it’s not the first mover that wins; it’s the first to create and capture the emotional space (ergonomics, aesthetics, message, feel, story) in the market. Think of Zipcar, the rental car a five-minute walk from your urban apartment with free gas and insurance, and a rate of $8 an hour. In a recent survey, 88% of Zipsters said they had recommended Zipcar to a friend in the last month, and 80% said they “loved” Zipcar. “Loving” the product: that’s magnetic.

2. Fix Our Hassles

Think about the products you use, and think about how many of them annoy you–or that you even hate. Most of the products we buy are flawed, generating hassles that include time- or money-wasters–unclear instructions, needless risks, and other annoying bugs. The best demand creators map the hassles that dominate so much of daily life, and then figure out how to connect the dots to fix them. That process leads to explosive demand.

To draw the hassle map for phone users in India, for example, Nokia sends anthropologists to study usage patterns, and uses those findings to design phones. The Nokia 1100 offers multiple contact lists, an essential feature in a phone that might be shared; it allows a user to enter a price limit for a call, to make minutes last longer; and the 1100 screen display offers visual symbols for illiterate customers. For countries where electricity is unreliable or totally lacking, the phone includes a flashlight, radio, and alarm clock. In the last five years, Nokia has sold 250 million phones in the developing world, more units than iPod and Wii combined!

3. Build on the Backstory

It’s often the unseen backstory elements that make or break a product. Demand creators obsess about infrastructure (can I get it to the customer cheaply and efficiently?), ecosystem and alliances (can I engage others so I don’t reinvent the wheel?), and business design (how do I structure my organization to serve and learn from customers?). Then they connect all the dots needed to fix the hassle map of the customer. Think of Netflix, which spent a year figuring out how to work with the U.S. Post Office, went through 150 iterations of its mailing envelope to shave three seconds off the opening time, and opened 56 distribution centers across the U.S. and Canada–all to get DVDs into consumers’ hands as quickly as possible. No wonder Netflix has 20 million subscribers and a market cap of $12 billion.

4. Find the Trigger

Most people who hear about a product remain fence-sitters, unwilling to try or buy until a trigger moves them to act. Some great products, like Volkwagen’s Phaeton, or tap-and-go credit cards, failed to take off because their creators didn’t figure out how to overcome consumer inertia. Great demand creators constantly search for the right triggers, always experimenting until they get a response.

Nespresso, for example, increased uptake six-fold when it opened mini boutiques that offered trial samples of its pod coffees, turning Nespresso into Europe’s leading coffee brand. And Eurostar uncorked demand when it cut the London-Paris travel time from three hours to two hours and 15 minutes, making a one-day there-and-back-home-for-dinner trip a reality.

5. Build a Steep Trajectory of Improvement

A product’s launch is merely the first step in a series of attacks upon the indifference of the market. On launch day, great demand creators jump into the next phase by asking themselves: How fast can we get better? While rivals might focus on technical improvements, demand creators know that there are at least four dimensions of improvement that matter: Technical (performance, design, capacity), emotional (see “Magnetic,” above), affordability (productivity enhancements, lower price, better value), and content (new add-ons, plug-ins, deeper library). Every improvement they make will unlock new layers of demand, and leave less open space for imitative competitors.

Think of Amazon, which not only increases the content available on the Kindle, but makes the device better and more affordable with each new version. In addition, Amazon focuses intently on the emotional dimension, advertising the joy and convenience of reading, anytime, anywhere.

6. “De-Average” the Customer

“One size fits all” is an idea that great demand creators have discarded–because it doesn’t work. Instead, they “de-average” complex markets, recognizing that the “average customer” is a myth, and that different customers (and even the same customers at different times) have widely varying hassle maps. The magic is not just in segmenting by hassle map, but in providing highly efficient, cost-effective ways to create product variations that more perfectly match the varying needs of customers.

Think about Zipcar, which uncovered different hassle maps for urbanites, students, city fleet managers–as well as for small businesses, big businesses, city rail systems, universities and apartment complexes. And Apple offers seven variations of the iPod, ranging in price from $49 to $349. It did a terrible job of variation with the iPhone, however, not segmenting down soon enough, thus leaving market opportunities for multiple Android competitors.

The Vibrant Economy

There are two economies. You can play in the vibrant one with gushers of demand by identifying and solving consumer. As a bonus, products that generate demand turn out to generate good economic returns for their creators. The very act of designing a simple solution cuts out inefficiencies, driving both top-level and bottom-line results.

There’s a huge gap between what customers buy and what customers really want. Sharp-eyed and persistent master demand creators discern that gap and fill it. Demand creation is a discipline with the micro mechanisms described here; like any other discipline, it can be learned and applied by any leader and by any team.

Adrian Slywotzky is a partner at the global management consulting firm Oliver Wyman and a best-selling author. This article is based on material from his new book, Demand: Creating What People Love Before They Know They Want It (Crown Business), to be released on October 4, 2011. Follow the Demand blog at www.demandthebook.com.

Original Article: http://www.fastcompany.com/1777201/the-six-secrets-of-demand-creation

Uber reflecting

admin — Tue, 23 Aug 2011 19:36:00 +0000

I haven’t blogged in a while, so this is essentially me committing to blog at least once a week again. Reflection is important in life, especially when you take in the type of information I take in on a daily basis.

“By three methods we may learn wisdom: First, by reflection, which is noblest; Second, by imitation, which is easiest; and third by experience, which is the bitterest.”
-Confucius

Life has been like a whirlwind recently, I have been meeting incredible people some good some bad. These people have tasted my faith in good ways and bad ways; however nothing but great lessons have been learned.

I am currently starting a mobile tech company from scratch, this by far has been one of the toughest tasks I have faced to date. I love and savor every second of it, have you ever had an idea, a single idea, an idea that derived from some random stimuli in your mind? Of Course! wtf? One of the advisers on my board is Chief Marketing Officer, Bruce Marable of Defined Clarity. He introduced me to start up video blogging website www.Thisweekinstartups.com (also known as TWiST), I am officially addicted. This site isn’t for the weak minded, easily distracted individual, TWiST is for people who strategize and execute. Jason (Follow him on twitter), the host of the show is an animal, he is no holds bar and rest assure he gets valuable content for anyone who watches.

He recently interviewed Travis Kalanick, successful entrepreneur in the Tech world. He recently co-founded Uber. It reminds me so much of my start up Dine & Ditch, basically what Travis has done is created a mobile application for you to push a button(or SMS) on your phone and a town car will come pick you up in 15 minutes. The application has your credit card info in side of the application so you don’t have to worry about paying on exit. Uber is essentially negating the concept of a dispatching office.

Genius idea, the price is a bit more expensive that yellow cabs and less than town car pick ups. Uber is currently in Seattle, San Francisco and New York City, during the interview a deposition was brought up about NYC. Travis’s answer was eloquent and practical and any entrepreneur could learn from his response. [Video below]

Jason: Why do they feel like Uber is failing in NYC?

Travis: They feel like there are taxis everywhere.

Jason: But if you ride in a Town car you don’t ride in a taxi.

Travis: I mean, maybe. You can get into a Liberty car and have a pretty crappy experience too.

Jason: Thats true too, but its generally not going to suck.

Travis: Fair enough, Here is the bottom line. I talk to folks and their like I have options for back up. Everything from Yellow cab, to black car, to subway to bus to what ever, right. Here is the thing, I say, “No, there are taxis everywhere in New York, I know there are taxi’s everywhere in New York. I get there defenses down 1st.

I would say, “but tell me about those times when it is difficult to get a taxi in New York, you talk to a New York and you say it to them like that. The next thing you hear is, 7th avenue between 28th and 35th from 7:15 am to 8:45 am, YOUR SCREWED.”

“Tribeca, early afternoon, gameover!”

etc.

“What you have is you have pin points spread across the city at different times, that if you if you added those pin points. Your talking about a half a BILLION dollar market, that is where you start, but than you talk about shift change in NY. …. Each of these problems are like $100 million dollar problems.

He continues to talk about patches and niches in different cities. Here a gentleman is talking about a business model that has been around for decades, with zero supply issues and zero demand issues. He digs deep into this business model reading between the lines and talks of places where supply is low. Creating value that you cannot question if you are living the lifestyle that his market lives.

There is no question of what his value proposition is and why there is a void that needs to be filled. He is sure to add value you for all parties in his business model, the consumers and the drivers. Now your value in the market, across the board.

Just as you look at yourself in the mirror and reflect upon where you should probably work harder in the gym; reflect on your business so you know it all too well and know where to work.

“There is a trend in society, towards an On Demand lifestyle.” – Travis Kalanick
yup, Dine and Ditch will help drive it!

written by Nate Nichols
@thenichols

Corp ID

admin — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:39:14 +0000

Invite Design

admin — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:20:01 +0000

Wedding Invite design

Editorial Design

admin — Sun, 14 Aug 2011 23:00:13 +0000

Not Like the Others

admin — Wed, 08 Dec 2010 21:40:52 +0000

Diony Elias, Real Estate developer in the Philadelphia Region posted this on Facebook. I just had to steal it, we are all champions and don’t even know it.

I Twitch my head back and forth

admin — Fri, 03 Dec 2010 14:22:53 +0000

I was walking down Chestnut Street in downtown Philly as I am walking discussing a new business venture with my buddy Jon. I was distracted by a magazine cover on a news stand; of all the million things my senses are taking in, this magazine immediately grabs all of my attention. So much so that I had to tell Jon to, “hold on” because I wanted to get the full effect of the cover.

It was Philadelphia Magazine Cover Story was : “Is it Just Us, or Are Kids Getting Really Stupid?”

My immediate thought was smart, they piqued my interest. I understand it is a periodicals job to pique our interest with great cover stories; so I applaud them in that manner. Now lets get to the nitty gritty, the article itself had some very bold statements that definitely lit my eyes up.

A Few to highlight:

“We live in interesting times. In the past decade, the number of college grads who can interpret a food label has fallen from 40 percent to 30 percent.”

“An American child is six times more likely to know who won American Idol than the name of the Speaker of the House.”

“THE INTERNET WORLD is big and brash and colorful and infinitely engaging, and books are black and white and just sit there. If you were a kid, which would you rather hang out with? And yet the history of human civilization, our history, has been a process of learning to tune out precisely what attracts us to the Internet. Watch a bird at a feeder, and you’ll see what nature instills in living creatures: a constant awareness of any flicker of change that might spell doom. Scientists call this “bottom-up attention,” according to Anjan Chatterjee, a neurologist at Penn’s Center for Cognitive Neuroscience. “Everyone has had it happen,” he says. “You’re crossing the street, you see something in your peripheral vision, and you orient toward it before you’re even conscious that it’s happened. That’s important for survival.” What humans have developed that differentiates us is “top-down attention,” where we actively choose what we’ll pay attention to.

Both kinds of attention are needed, and we naturally switch back and forth between them. But Western civilization is built on literacy, which is a top-down model. The shift from oral tradition to writing that took place sometime around 4,000 B.C. literally changed the way we think. Over the centuries, reading evolved from a group activity — heroic tales shared around the hearth on cold nights — to a solitary one, and writing from a practical reckoning of laws and items of trade to an exploration of the human condition. As Maggie Jackson explains in Distracted, her treatise on our current “erosion of attention,” writing created a “pause -button” for the avalanche of spoken language: When we could take time to study the words on a page — when we could read deeply — we began to think more deeply.” -From Sandy Hingston of Phillymag.com

Humans are just like Birds in there natural instinct to be distracted by anything, hence this magazine jumping off the news stand and smacking me in the face. The internet is a double edge sword though; yes we are distracted and cannot focus but doesn’t that come with discipline. I personally feel there is a lack of self control and discipline being taught in America; in Asia children speak multiple languages by the age of 10. In Morocco, Africa in certain cities you must learn Arabic, Spanish and French at the same time. Sure, they MAY be a lack in technology in Morocco; but in China they’re technology is more advanced and children are a lot brighter.

In my opinion Technology is being exploited in the wrong ways in America, too many people are trying to create income from technology. If anything the internet is more informative than distracting, your reading this blog post right now and thinking based on a Facebook update, or Tweet. It is more of a selected distraction with the internet; TV is slightly different you are fed what each station wants to feed you. Until DVR come to become what it is today, you had to watch the commercials and be forced to see and feel the brands of the world. I think the internet is still in its infancy and will become something more educational and more helpful than our silly classrooms of the world.

I once sat in a class where the teach played his Youtube Video of him walking through the process of using a program. So I payed $2,500 to pay someone to play a pre-recorded video. This teacher has no instructional, or speech skills, his etiquette in class is horrible. I would never introduce him to one of my business peers; people shouldn’t be worrying about the students or the children. Our focus should be on the teachers, and adults of the world setting the example for the children. We do not spend as much time with our children because we work all day, trying to impress our boss and make a living.

See we lack to realize that we start this crazy perpetuated system because we bought into a system that our parents sold us, that we need to go to college and get a good job. No one has the gusto to think bigger, all we know is we need to make money to provide for our soon to come family. Not realizing life is not about the money, it is about the Time.

The more time we focus on anything, the more likely we are to be good at it. So why not focus your energy on something in which you own fully, so your leveraging your time through the efforts of other people and creating a stream of revenue that works on its own. Now you have time to focus on your children, creating habits in them as a child that you can groom and develop as they grow old. Don’t blame the children for being dumb, blame yourselves. It is human nature to be distract, so how will you use this fact to progress?

Read the Full Article Here.

Nice & Short [Video]

admin — Thu, 02 Dec 2010 17:46:35 +0000

Nice and Short, Just like me… Sometime shorter is better, what are you saying, Nate?

Some of us talk, and talk some more trying to get our points across when most of the time the person standing across from us could careless. They are staring at your mouth waiting for you to stop talking so they can talk about what ever thought they had. Most people want to talk, it is human nature. So feed their ego and lower your ego; I once read in “Why we want you to to be Rich;” that we must ‘Commit Ego Suicide.’ I read that chapter and it changed my life, I began to listen more than I spoke, and people gave me everything I could possibly need to set a course of action. This video inspired me, hopefully it inspires you too.

Kurz und Schön opener from errorone on Vimeo.