Alan Gutierrez

Don’t Fear Starbucks is an article about how Starbucks drives the sales in independent coffee shops by introducing more customers to blended coffee beverages. I thought that I might shoot this off into an email to Robert Thompson of Fair Grinds, but I thought it would be more interesting to see how long it takes him to find this post and comment. The article does describe Starbucks’ predatory monopolistic practices. (Personally, I think that Starbucks is an embarrassingly pasty white aberration of American culture.)

Culling my feeds of business success blogs. Out of them comes Troy Worman with a punchy post that sums it up nicely.

I’m fed up with life-long self improvement evangelists and their seven steps to happiness. I’m tired of Jack Welch and Donald Trump preaching from the pulpit of unimaginable success. I’m sick of the management gurus and their how-to be what I see doctrines

Pity his insight is destined for Change This, where manifesto is the unit of measure, a commodified revolution.

Breathless, world-changing vision positied daily.

What is the issue with Google Ads really. When I look at what John T. Unger is doing for Six Apart with this TypePad Hacks blog, when I think of how he’s helping a community of users, why should he not be compensated for his time?

AdSense is a way to pay his wage, that’s all.

Drucker gave us Knowledge Workers, I give you Google Workers.

In this economy, we need to simply pull up a blog, put out our banners and skyscrapers, and get to work, conversing, facilitating, making the connections, making the world a better place.

The notion that advertising makes the speech commercial to the point of untrustworthy is for those who are comfortably attached to some corporate or government teat. They don’t have to shill, what with the division of labor and all.

The rest of us are out here in the wilderness, getting smacked around by that invisible hand.

The Web Enabled Business Card

I’m talking to folks in New Orleans about blogging. I’d like to make a business of helping business reach new customers through blogging.

I have to start from a strange position, however. People are talking to be because they want a web site, not a blog.

When folks around here think web site, they think business card. To them, a web site is a business card, but on the web. They want a web site so they have a web address to put on their business card.

I’ve noted before that New Orleans has little use for social networking software, since they have so much social networking hardware, the cafes, bars, restauraunts, churches, corkboards, etc.

People here don’t use the web much. They tend to expect a brochure, or if they’ve been sold flashy gew-gaws in the past, splash screens and animations.

Before I can help them with creating a content based web site that will help their business, I have a lot of explaining to do.

A Special Kind of Web Site

You’ve got to start with Google. Blogs are because of Google. Google begat blogging.

I ask a fellow New Orleanian, “what search engine do you use to find something on the web?”

They will say “Google.”

I’ll reply, “So, you don’t type http://plinkityplinkityplonkplinketyplonkplonk.com/ do you? You go straight to Google and type in the first words that come to your head, right? That’s what most people do these days.”

Then we look at were they sit in the Google rankings. Given the web sites most folks have around here, it is usually quite low.

The genernal explaination of the value of blogging is as follows.

Once your web site is attracting Google, it’s going to attract people who might never visit New Orleans, who might never visit your shop, or meet you personally. Google searches information you see, so it needs to search text not pictures and flashy gew-gaws. You need to place more and ever changing text on your web site and you’ll attract new customers, and keep in touch with visitors to New Orleans.

I’ll explain that a blog is a special kind of web site that lets you attract Google. It’s not a diary, although they look like a diary. It’s a format that is easy to update for the author. You choose a subject and write an open letter. It’s an open letter to the people that may stumble across your web site. It’s an open letter to Google.

Over time, if you keep writing these open letters, you’ve got a lot of information out there. People will keep finding that information though Google. With comments in place, they can respond to your open letter.

Then it’s a quick run down of the basics of what Google likes and why.

1. Ever changing text means something going on here.
2. What the links say about you is more important than what you say about yourself.

Google Juice is another word for links, of course.

Here are points that I make in the course of the explaination.

• If Google can’t read you, then Google can’t find you.
• If Google can’t find you, no one can find you.
• Google can’t watch a flashy gew-gaw and say, oh that’s a cartoon hammer, this must be a web site about roofing.
• Google likes what people like, information.

A blog is a special kind of web site. One that is easy to update frequently. One that attracts customers and retains the interest of existing customers.

Life Outside The Conferences

You all know this isn’t shinola. It’s all old hat to you, the blogosphere.

Tell me California, how do you preach when there is no choir?

An ongoing blog post.

I posted this idea on the asterisk-biz mailing list, and was laughed off the list. Share our business plan? That’s trade secret information. That’s not how business works.

I was a bit surprised. The software is open source. The hardware is commodity. And the secret is?

There are plenty of us technical guys and gals who would like to set up a business doing Asterisk install and service. These are (rather, will be) the details of the business research I’ve performed, open so that other guys and gals can start here to find a friendly, mutually supportive small business community around Asterisk.

I’m going to post my business plan here, as I write it. But here’s the crux.

• Target Market – Any small business with an office environment that needs more that four phones and less that 15.
• Product – An Asterisk PBX with four copper lines and VOIP for expansion, along with the peripherals, that is, the phones.
• Service – Installation of the Asterisk PBX and phones, adding extensions.

That’s it. The simplest Asterisk business that could possibly turn a profit.