#those were just the first 3 things i saw on sale in their flyer this week.

[sarpedon]

the cheapest place to get produce in my city is the giant international supermarket thats like 8min walk from me which is great! but it does lead to me standing there in the store googling "what is yu choy miu" "what is gailan" "how do you cook snow pea sprouts" cuz god really put so many beautiful green things on this earth and i have learned how to cook only a fraction of them thus far.

#those were just the first 3 things i saw on sale in their flyer this week.

[hotchkiss-and-tell]

Dates or Time of Year for Each Nancy Drew Game

whatamagicalplace made one of these charts last year. Those efforts gave me a starting point but I wanted to tweak it after doing my own research. I decided to share my final result since my version differs from hers in several ways. My reasoning for each game is discussed below; but if you have any evidence to add, feel free.

SCK: Nancy says in the opening letter she took a semester off school to visit Eloise in Florida. The banners for Senior Prom are still prominent throughout the school and the event is scheduled for May 23. Game takes place in a single day but that day could be any time in late spring semester prior to May 23.

SCK2: Homecoming banners are prominent and the event is scheduled for Sept 23. A flyer with Jake’s secret messages has a date of Sept 05, so let’s assume Jake was still alive then. The game says Nancy is there to investigate after Jake was murdered “last week.” That could mean three to seven days after the murder since it happened on a Thurs. Thus Remastered takes place in a single day but that day could be anywhere from Sept 08 to 22.

STFD: Nov 13 (confirmed with calendar). Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MHM: “Winter Festival” and Charlie studying for finals indicates late Nov to early Dec. Newspaper about the lost gold at the end is dated Mar 03; it could’ve been published after money settlement and the renovations completed though. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

TRT: December. The Spanish letter from Lisa’s friend is dated Nov 30 and acknowledges that Lisa is already in Wisconsin. By now, time should be well into Dec. 

FIN: Possibly Nov (game’s release) but there are no confirmed dates on anything. It’s likely during the school year since Maya is doing the interview for the student newspaper. Game takes place over three days.

SSH: Calendar on Henrik’s desk is for the month of April. The book version takes place during the DC Cherry Blossom parade which usually occurs last week of March or early April. Game takes place for as many days as player needs. (Early April timeline would match with end of game trailer and dates for DOG.)

DOG: Jeff’s calendar is open to April. Culprit’s log book says Sally is due to move in to the cabin on April 19. Sally says she spent four weeks at Moon Lake, implying the game starts May 18. But I really don’t see Jeff’s character forgetting to change the calendar, so either Sally moved in early or she means four weeks total including seeing the property, bidding, and the final sale plus moving in. And let’s remember there’s no safe water source, so it’s unlikely Sally could live there for four weeks straight. Sally says the dogs howled a full week before they attacked the house and then they appeared every night since; maybe Sally lasted 9-14 days with the ghost dogs. The game could likely begin anywhere between Apr 28 and May 18. Then continue for as many days and nights as the player needs.

CAR: Culprit’s emails with black market dealer date from May 23 through June 04. Harlan’s appt book opens to June 09-13 with the significant clue on June 10. Game is a single day, likely on June 10, but could be as early as June 05.

DDI: June 17 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

SHA: Sept 15 to 17. Nancy’s airline ticket confirms arrival date in AZ. Timeline of the game takes place in three days. (Tex’s b-day is Sept 16!)

CUR: This is anybody’s guess. Hugh and Linda were married Aug 22. The lawyer’s letter to Mrs. Drake states Linda must live at the manor for another three months to fulfill the “six-month-habitation-clause” and those six months must be consecutive in the first year of marriage. Game could be late Nov at the earliest. However, frogs are chirping when Nancy arrives at the manor which is a spring thing and Bess and George say they are attending sailing camp. The fact that no one is suggesting that Linda can leave due to health reasons and start the six months over when she’s well again makes me think the year is half gone already. So the game could also be taking place in April or May at the latest.

CLK: May 07 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

TRN: We see snow in Copper Gorge, but it’s in Colorado and snow can be any time of year there. Frank and Lori are wearing the puffy vests and everyone else has jackets and sweaters. Fatima says it’s the off-season now and summer is the busy season. Makes me think winter is my best guess.

DAN: Game takes place for as many days as player needs. The newspaper on Day 1 is dated Aug 28. Newspapers continue to appear through Sept 06, which publishes that the journalists are negotiating for raises and the sounds of the impending strike are occurring outside JJ’s apartment. Day 11 (Sept 07) and onward have no more newspapers appear on the kitchen table. Let’s say Aug 28 to Sept 07 for simplicity.

CRE: Mike’s calendar is set to March. Quigley’s tape recorder log updates as of Mar 28. Craven’s shipping records say his latest sample was sent to Aikens Biotech on Apr 09. Game takes place in a single day, probably Apr 09 or 10. (Mike just hasn’t turned over the calendar yet)

ICE: Newspaper in the lodge is dated Jan 13. Elsa’s resignation letter is dated Jan 15. Lodge computer says Lupe checked in on Jan 15 and she noticed the lack of maid services for days. Game likely takes place that same week, starting maybe Jan 18 at the earliest, and lasts over several days and nights.

CRY: May 31 (confirmed with calendar). Single day of gameplay.

VEN: Newspaper in the Ca’ terrace says chalice was stolen “this morning” and the police records say the theft happened Jan 25. When Nancy nabs Nico on the stakeout, the next day’s newspaper is dated Feb 03. Since game takes place over several days, it likely plays from Jan 25 to Feb 03.

HAU: Night of May 28. The wedding is set for June 01. The end dialogue says Kyler and Matt couldn’t stop saying “I love you” from when the rocket launched to four days later, which was their wedding day.

RAN: The float plane pilot says resorts like Dread Isle shut down in the summer for “hurricane season” in the Bahamas. And the game was released in July. Since we see the map that charts all of Nancy’s past cases (including HAU) so the game is after the wedding on Jun 01. But there is no reference to the current date aside from “summer.” Single day of gameplay.

WAC: The essay Mel receives from her teacher with the plagiarist comments is dated Nov 21. Since two more nights of sleep are required to trigger events in the game, we can figure that the game takes place from Nov 21 to 23.

TOT: Scott’s calendar is open to May and filled in with code until the 19th. The log book of precipitation is filled out until May 24. Game likely takes place from May 20 to 25.

SAW: The TE-Japan brochure in Nancy’s teacher tote says her exchange program runs from Jun 01 to Sept 15 with different durations of 2 weeks, 3-4 weeks, and 5-8 weeks. With no specific date in the game and the player taking as many days and nights as needed to solve the mystery, we have to settle for saying it takes place in “summer.”

CAP: Karl’s daily calendar is on page March 12. When Nancy finds the final forged email from “Markus” she remarks that it has tomorrow’s date, which is Mar 13. Game is a single night of play on Mar 12.

ASH: Newspaper and police report of Nancy’s arrest say the game is done in a single day of August 18. The fire took place on Aug 17.

TMB: It’s the desert and there are no dates on any clue in the game. Since Lily is a student and Abdullah and Jon are professors, perhaps the game takes place in summer between any busy semester/class schedules.

DED: Ellie’s notepad in the control booth says she gave the coil demo to Nancy on Oct 29. Nancy arrived in daylight hours but since Ellie is on the night shift, the demo could have taken place on either side of midnight which means the game could start on either Oct 28 or 29. (Nancy arrived 10/28, night fell and midnight passed, then Ellie gives demo 10/29 OR Nancy arrives 10/29, night fell and it’s not midnight yet, then Ellie gives the demo still on 10/29.) Game continues for as many days and nights as the player needs.

GTH: Jessalyn’s phone recorded her bachelorette party antics from the night of Oct 27 to early morning of Oct 28. Addison says Jess had vanished for the second time after sun-up. It is unclear how many days Jessalyn has been missing before Nancy arrives on the island. Nancy was deep asleep when Savannah calls her for help, which means Jess has been gone at least a full day. Then Nancy arrives on the island at night which either means it’s evening on the same day of Savannah’s call or another day has passed by the time Nancy gets there. Oct 29 is the earliest possibility. Game takes place over three nights. Likely set between Oct 29 and Nov 01.

SPY: The newspaper reports that July 14 is near and it will be the eighth anniversary of Revenant’s first attack. Alec’s letter documents that his sister was kidnapped on the first of the month and has not been seen since. Game takes place between Jul 02 and 14. While Nancy cannot sleep or change the time of day, it is hard to believe that traveling back and forth throughout Scotland’s towns and the different phases of the spy operation all take place in a single day.

MED: Summer in the southern hemisphere, so datewise it’s set between Dec and Feb. Again there’s no sleep or time of day transitions but the elimination rounds likely take place over several days.

LIE: Employee timecards are recorded through July 05, the artifact exchange log is filled out through July 06, and the packing slip on the open crate says received July 06. Game is a single day of play, likely on July 06 or 07.

SEA: Soren’s winter guest log says Nancy is visiting in January. Game takes place for as many days and nights as player needs.

MID: Minion’s plane ticket TO Austria where the game begins is dated Oct 26 and the game goes into Halloween.

#all games #chart #Nancy Drew #look what i made

[chibalein]

Kalafina Live Report: 9+ONE @Kitakyushu - REVISITED

So, this is something I wanted to do for a long time now (almost 3 years to be exact). Back in 2017, when Kalafina was still a thing and times were good, I was lucky enough to live in Japan and able to attend various of Kalafina activities. My first proper concert was their final live of the 9+ONE tour in the city of Kitakyushu/Fukuoka prefecture, in June 2017.

My first live report was certainly different than all the others that followed, less detailed, less emotional so to say. I always wanted to update the whole thing because looking back, there were so many moments during the concert that I - for whatever reason - did not write about enough or not at all. Well, since I have been working at home for quite a while now, I feel like now is the perfect time, as this gives me an amazing reason to be lazy and productive at the same time. Here is my original live report: PART 1  /  PART 2

So, a lot of things will certainly stay the same because I just don’t remember enough of the concert, especially about the vocal performance or things the girls have said during the MCs. I will add some other details that I still remember (hopefully correctly), and describe everything a bit nicer too :)

Let’s do it! Long ass report ahead! again

Back then, I was living in Kanagawa prefecture, but I was too late for tickets of the Yokohama or Tokyo lives. I was planning to visit a friend who lived in Fukuoka city at the time and Kalafina’s Kitakyushu concert perfectly fit into my schedule. Luckily, I was able to buy a ticket via convenience store. As I was pretty late, I got a kinda bad seat in the almost very back of the upper floor.

The morning of the live I arrived in the city of Kitakyushu, which is a rather famous port city at the northern tip of Fukuoka prefecture. The historic town Kokura has a beautiful castle, which I visited as well as Moji port. (After reading Hikaru’s blog post where she said that she also went to see the castle, I was a bit disappointed that I didn’t meet her xD). There’s also TOTO Museum, a museum dedicated to the TOTO company, which is famous for inventing those high-tech toilets that Japan is so known for.

I was kind of warned beforehand that the Kalafina good’s sale would attract a ton of people, so I wanted to be there as early as possible. About two hours too early I arrived at Kitakyushu’s Harmony Cinq Soleil Hall and waited along with a handful of other people. Slowly but steadily more and more people would gather, forming an absurdly long line. Not as extreme as the 10th Anniversary good’s line, but still impressive. Luckily, I was standing in some shade, because it was so damn hot and sunny the entire weekend. When the doors finally opened, I am sure there were like 200-300 people waiting to receive those sweet sweet popcorn buckets that were sold as venue exclusive merchandise. In the end, I bought the T-shirt, the key holder, the popcorn and the clear files, but looking back I do regret not buying the notebook. I wanted the popcorn mainly because of the Kitakyushu exclusive sticker - the popcorn itself had the flavor chocolate + soda (I think?), which I remember thinking was the shittiest combo of all flavors they had. It didn’t taste as bad as I thought but I still think it was overpriced. Together with the ticket itself, I ended up spending about 100€, which I thought was a lot, especially as there were people buying the entire collection and even more... hahahaha, oh innocent, naive past me, I didn’t know what was coming to me yet.

(Photo: in front of the venue)

I do love my merch though. I still wear all my Kalafina T-shirts at home, and while in Japan I had the key holder... hold my keys, making it all dirty and bent now lol The popcorn cup is decorating my shelf to this day.

Anyway, after getting my stuff, I went on to walk around, grab something to eat and even made friends with a Japanese girl, sharing our Kalafina love. Later, when people were admitted, probably around 800-900 people were there, quite a view! I saw some foreigners as well, and even made friends with a Philippine girl as well :D

(Photo: merch table at the venue)

(Photo: the stuff I bought)

While entering, staff was handing out little goodie bags, mostly with flyers and ads for other events or the obligatory concert questionnaire. However, that bag included our very own 9+ONE Lights! I took my seat which wasn’t as far from the stage as I thought, but I still would not be able to see the girls’ expressions.

When the concert finally started, a black but transparent screen was lowered (you know it from the 9+ONE DVD) and they started to play an overture version of “Samidare ga sugita koro ni”. Meanwhile we got see a collection of Kalafina’s entire discography, where each title of their songs, even in their respective font if available, was shown and merged into a white cloud, revealing our ladies.

(Photo: stage before the concert started)

They started with “Samidare ga sugita koro ni”. I remember it being good and nice, but I was never really fond of that song, even though it has grown on me a bit. We all clapped along and had our fun.

It continued with “misterioso”, also a song that has grown on me over time. While everyone was staying seated and enjoying themselves before, all the dudes in the arena seats jumped to their feet, being an upbeat song and stuff. I was grateful for the upper floor to have stayed seated almost the entire time, because being so far away was shitty enough and I didn’t want to spend 2 hours standing.

Anyhow, this song revealed some flaws in either the acoustics of the hall or the mixing of the sound technicians (I guess the latter?). Wakana was uncomfortably loud most of the time, drowning out the other two, but especially Hikaru - in some songs more than in others and more often than not when she wasn’t in the lead too. Some of her notes simply made me cringe. Hikaru on the other hand seemed to be feeling the exhaustion of the tour. On many occasions, she sounded tired, especially when it came to hit those high or long notes. The band didn’t help either, they also drowned out many parts of the singing... Maybe it was just this venue though and luckily, the 10th Anniversary wasn’t like this. Then again, I only attended acoustic lives or lives without band after that, so who knows how they sound when there is no DVD recording going on XD

Next was “Lacrimosa”, and this time Wakana wasn’t being as cringy as before. Poor Hikaru doing nothing for most of the time. One cool moment was that short pause after their “LA-CRI-MO-SA” part, right before the final chorus. The stage turned deep red with the girls reaching out to the audience. When you don’t know that this is coming, it’s an incredibly powerful move.

I don’t remember what they said during MC#1, other than greeting the audience and the usual “We hope you have fun” stuff. I do remember Hikaru welcoming us to the Harmony Cinq Kitakyushu Soleil Hall, by saying the entire name of the hall, and then saying something along the lines of “Thank god I didn’t trip over my tongue” (it’s a lot harder to say that name in Japanese, I give it to her lol).

They proceeded to introduce “Ashita no Keshiki”, a song that is not performed often, also because it’s a song that is mainly sung by Wakana. It was a beautiful performance, which was a little bit ruined by Hikaru. If you thought that she sounds strained and tired in the 9+ONE DVD version, well, imagine her like 5 concerts after that performance. Still great though, I came to love that song a lot.

“Hikaru no senritsu” was equally ok, but Hikaru again kind of screwed up her short “ashita wo kanadete” towards the end of the song. She probably just didn’t hit the note correctly, but to me it sounded as if she screwed up the timing, because I didn’t even her the first word or so.

With “Mirai”, Kalafina finally started to move around, so far they had stayed glued to their positions. They waved and interacted with the audience, cheering us on to cheer them on. I did enjoy the performance and the overall atmosphere, although “Mirai” belongs to my most disliked of all Kalafina songs.

In MC#2, they talked about “Ashita no Keshiki” a bit, together with their first album and how this is the first time performing in Kitakyushu (and not Fukuoka city). Since this is Wakana’s home prefecture, she proceeded to talk about her favorite Udon and Ramen restaurants (I think it was also about the restaurant chain West) and other specialties of Fukuoka.

The next song was “Oblivious”, also a song I was really looking forward to. As you know, this time Hikaru decided to sing her first lines in her high head voice (probably because she just can’t do it “regularly” anymore). I thought and still think it’s lovely, as it gives the song a much more mysterious opening and it’s also quite closer to the original to be honest. Wakana and the band drowned out Keiko for most of the time, with Hikaru and her high voice coming to the party later too. The acoustics were really weird that day...

“storia” was as usual, nothing special and not a song that really stands out to me anymore.

I was more looking forward to “Gogatsu no Mahou”, which is also a song I came to appreciate more over time. I adore the bridge section after the chorus, especially Wakana’s “habataku kotori no” and that one super high moment, so I really tried to focus on that particular part of the song. It was great!

With “consolation”, finally a darker and fiercer song made its debut and while I don’t really remember the performance itself anymore, I do remember the stage production. Basically, they packed out those lights and illuminations that they have been hiding so far and blasted us with them. Hikaru was pretty quiet though. Keiko on the hand appeared to have problems with her earpiece, and at some point she was frantically waving to the technicians backstage.

Wakana took it upon herself to dominate “To the beginning” as well, but we got some action on stage at least, since the girls stayed glued to their positions most of the timea again.

In MC#3, Keiko talked about how every live performance as well as their unique harmony is important to them (quite ironic after Wakana was actively trying to make Keiko NOT be heard lol). The following song was special in a sense that there would be NO harmony. Back then, when Kalafina received the song for the first time (or before recording, not sure), they even asked Kajiura Yuki whether this is correct or even intentional.

With “Haru wo matsu” we got our obligatory ballad. While I was never really fond of the song, I think it’s sweet and yes, their missing harmony gives it quite a refreshing vibe. Keiko sounded pretty much like in the 9+ONE DVD, but it was so strange to hear her cutesy voice live and so clearly... she sounded like an entirely different person XD Hikaru, for the first time actually, could finally shine, as we could HEAR her. She didn’t deliver as good as she probably could have, but still it was a very pretty performance.

Now, we were reaching the spot on their setlist that would differ at each venue. Before the concert, I checked out all setlists from the previous lives to see whether there were any patterns or which songs were most likely to be performed (again). It seemed like they took 4-5 songs and repeated them over the course of the tour, which is why I had my hopes high for “Hikaru furu” or “Kimi no gin no niwa”. But interestingly they chose a song they hadn’t performed yet (please correct if I’m wrong here), which was “Ring your bell”.

“Ring your bell” is very high on my list of all-time disliked Kalafina songs (I just can’t seem to escape that song...). But I was pleasantly surprised to hear that they started the song as an acoustic version, very much like the performance during their Arena Live. It stayed acoustic until after the first chorus, then the band joined too. I like this half-half version over the “normal” version, because it’s an amazing moment when you don’t expect the loud and cheerful opening of “Ring your bell” to suddenly fill the stage. The overall harmony of band and singers came together again and the acoustics were finally so much cleaner and nicer. The audience rose to their feet and even some dedicated dudes on my loser floor stood up to cheer them on. However, Wakana’s final high-pitched “ring your BELL” was incredibly cringy and breathy, one of the main reasons I hate the song so much.

Anyway, Kalafina got their break to change costumes and we got an AMAZING performance by the band that played some BGM of the anime “Kubikiri Cycle”. To this day, I don’t know what exact song they played and for the love of god, please SOMEONE TELL ME. I know it was fairly uptempo and rather dark... help pls XD

So far, the stage production was pretty much boring and simple. Other than some light effects, nothing really happened, we just had that huge curtain as background. Now, we finally got ACTION. Well, at least for the eye. They lifted the curtain and revealed those huge, impressing statues of Kalafina’s silhouettes, mostly made out of their past live outfits. I could have spent a long time checking out every part of this artwork, trying to recognize what dresses from which live they used and what not. Now that I watched the DVD, I know where Kalafina was standing, but at the time I didn’t see them AT ALL. The music played the overture and suddenly Keiko was on stage with the other two following her. To me it looked like they stepped THROUGH the middle silhouette, but turns out they were just standing in front of it - they were so far away, I couldn’t differ between them and the clothes behind them lol

(Photo: Hikaru’s “silhouette” with her outfits)

Well, I think I already gave you my opinion on those new dresses... At the time, both Keiko and Wakana looked kinda cool and pretty shiny, but even though I could see jack shit from so far away, I knew that Hikaru’s outfit was a disappointment. Her fucking pants and skirt or whatever that is... XD

I was incredibly looking forward to “Märchen”, as now it became one of my all-time favorite songs. But back then I was especially amazed by the song during their release event of the single in April. I wanted to hear this live again so badly and well... I did, but it wasn’t as good as the release event. Again, Hikaru sounded tired and Keiko and Wakana were fighting about who could be louder than the band. Keiko drowned out Hikaru most of the time... During the middle section we saw their Kala-dance, which I already got to witness during the release event. However, I was pleased to see that they decided to spice things up by showing background animations. It looked like they danced in sinc with themselves, it was truly impressive and such a refreshing use of video. This, as well as the later “Magia” performance made this concert/tour truly stand out and I am glad that they could take their creativity to a new level. I wish they would have continued to do so much more later on.

So, let’s talk about “Magia”. Holy shit, what a performance. The screen from the very beginning was lowered, intro was played, forest was shown, you know it guys. In sync with their live singing, they showed this fucking amazing pre-recorded bits of Kalafina and as I didn’t see this coming, it absolutely blew my mind. It was a psychedelic wtf show with cinema feeling all over the place and for once, the acoustics were actually good. Especially the instrumental part was... I don’t know what it was, but HOLY. SHIT. Truly guys, it was so cool. If there ever was an interview on that particurly performance I would love to read it to how Kalafina thought about this one and how the creation process went. When Keiko stepped in front of the screen it just added to her overall cool demeanor. When the screen was lifted again, we got a little sneak peak of the microphone stands in back.

(Photo: Keiko’s “silhouette” with her costumes)

Which were of course used for “Kyrie”. The DVD version is truly one of my favorite performances of that song and in Kitakyushu it was pretty cool too, especially with their small but effective arm movements. Keiko’s final long-ass “kyrie” was amazing and fairly unexpected from my side. Also some fat light show and big bass sounds, which I am always appreciating.

Next up was “heavenly blue” and here they tried to interact with the crowd once more. I like this song mostly for the kajiurago bridge and I always focus especially on Wakana’s super high “so na” (or whatever), while Keiko is going low at the same time. Wakana was too loud again though, but by now their overall performance and acoustics improved quite a lot.

“One Light” once again activated the crowd, especially Hikaru went crazy here. The atmosphere was amazing and you could just feel that everyone was fired up, singing along and having fun. Everyone just screamed when Hikaru sang “boku wa yukeru”, so cool.

MC#4 was about band introduction. Konno Hitoshi and Sakurada weren’t present if I remember correctly, which was a shame... but then again, I wouldn’t know the difference lol

The last song of the block was their new single at the time, “Into the world”. It was really beautiful, Hikaru finally sang more clearly. A good performance, very similar to the ones I would see from that point on.

We got a little break again, as Kalafina traditionally fake-ended the concert. While the audience was clapping, it took about 5 minutes or so for them to return. But first, the screen was lowered again, and some text, together with the intro for “Ongaku” finally told us to switch on our 9+ONE Lights. Everyone did so and boy, what a sight! Even from so far in the back, the lights in the dark hall looked so great! While of course hundreds and hundreds of people were present, you don’t really get a sense of that sheer number when you focus on the stage the entire time. I looked around and with so many lights illuminating the hall, you truly get a feeling of how many people actually are here with you.

Kalafina returned with their plain, but nevertheless cool black outfits, wearing the little lights themselves and standing on a mini-stage. The song played out as usual, but this time, as Konno Hitoshi wasn’t present and the other violin guy played his solo different than usual. Don’t ask me how it differed, I really don’t remember, but I liked that version a lot more. We got a new cool background too.

“blaze” pretty much business as usual.

(Photo: Wakana’s “silhouette” with her outfits, sorry for the bad quality)

MC#5 was about Hikaru and her beloved sales corner, where she mainly introduced the Kalafina produced goods like Keiko’s pink dumbbell and her bath salt (I think). She talked about the 9+ONE Lights and that they do not produce new lights for each concert, but re-use them every time. That was supposed to increase to sense of unity and connection between them and the fans as well as among the fans themselves, “carrying the fire of every fan and concert to the next” or something like this. As Kalafina had upcoming concerts in Taiwan and Hong Kong, Hikaru said that they would bring the lights to international fans too, so “don’t take them home!”. Well... I guess my ten years of studying Japanese at this point must have failed me in that particular instance because I truly don’t know what she said or meant. I unfortunately ended up taking the ring home. #guiltybutnotguilty #sue me

I think this is also where they talked about the big silhouettes we have seen in the earlier block and that they used dresses from previous performances to decorate them. They then turned around, facing the wall and imitated the poses of the silhouettes - it was super funny and crowd laughed and cheered. I think they lifted the screen of this stained glass pattern to show the silhouettes for direct comparison. (Correct me if I am wrong, but I think they cut out this conversation from the DVD? Not sure, too lazy to check).

We sadly arrived the final song of the setlist, which again should differ at each venue. What song would it be? I hoped for songs like “sprinter” or “Yume no daichi”, as those were among the songs they had already performed during the tour.

Well, back then, they had announced their new single “Hyakka Ryouran”, but it wasn’t released yet (I think we only knew some bits of the chorus at the time). Funnily, I talked about that with the girls I had met prior to admittance, something like “Hey, wouldn’t it be cool if Kalafina performed Hyakka Ryouran as surprise encore?”. I mean, they were no strangers to performing songs that haven’t been officially released yet, see “Into the World” during the Arena Live. But, you know... I thought that would be unlikely, because why should they?

BUT NOT THEY ACTUALLY DID IT! Keiko was like: “Ah, which song will be the final song... Well, how about our new single?”, and the crowd LOST IT. I lost it too XD Seriously, no one could handle that. Anyway, now that I know the full version by heart, it’s hard to describe how I felt back then. Listening to a song for the first time is always an experience, but it makes it hard to remember when you can’t listen to it again and again. I tried to focus on every aspect of the song, and remember it as being “dark”, due to Keiko’s deep intro, “fast” and “rock-like”, fitting into the samurai setting of the anime with its flute elements. I still couldn’t believe my luck though and afterwards, the crowd cheered and cheered.

Now the concert should have been over, but instead they entered MC#6. They talked about the first sing of the night “Samidare ga sugita koro ni”. Apparently, they pretty much have never performed this one live, except once during a fanclub-only event. For this tour they wanted to sing this song “for everyone”, as it is such a bright and warm piece.

So, for whatever reason, Kalafina decided to perform “Samidare ga sugita koro ni” AGAIN. However, this time they emphazised that bright feeling of connected hearts and unity by making us turn on our One Lights and wave along with the rhythm. Everyone loudly sang with them, especially during the “lalala” part towards the end. It was so much fun to listen to Kalafina, to the audience around me and singing along too, all while watching this amazing light show that we were creating ourselves. It was even better and much more carefree than the first performance. Still can’t believe my luck that of all venues of the 9+ONE tour, I got to attend to most unique one.

After that, the band was introduced again, they all held hands and thanked the audience for coming. But just before they wanted to bow, Wakana suddenly sobbed (so loud that I actually heard it lol), trying to wipe away tears. Being in her home prefecture, I figured she was just so overwhelmed by her emotions. Each of the three said some final words and with that the concert and the domestic 9+ONE tour ended.

I proceeded to take photos of the stage, as we were still able to see the big silhouettes. However, staff members appeared and told everyone to stop taking pictures and get the fuck out, probably to stop people from “spoiling” the concert before the DVD release or copyright or whatever. Well, thankfully I already took like 3 photos and managed to sneakily take another one, in order to have a close shot of each silhouette (which is why the third photo of Wakana’s statue is not a close-up like the other too). I left the building, returned to Fukuoka city and 2 days later back to Kanagawa.

-------------------------------------------------

Despite the sound issues, it was truly a great live experience. 9+ONE would be, along with the 10th Anni, my only “real” Kalafina concert experience, as all the other concerts I attended would either be acoustic or without live band. I am so thankful that I managed to seize the opportunity and attend this live, especially in Wakana’s home. Writing this report again made me remember all those feelings I had back then, now they make me both happy and sad.

Anyway, I hoped you like my updated report!

#kalafina #9+ONE #live #live report #revisited #a bit more details #talk about overdue #fukuoka #never forget

[sweetcheol]

sunflowers, sometimes

exo-l revival; week #3 — exo + flowers

— prompt: your co-worker and you have been competing on who can make the most impressive flower bouquet for a while now. little did you know that the person he wants to impress is you.

— au: flower shop, friends to lovers

— pairing: oh sehun x reader

— genre: fluff

— word count: 1.8k

— warnings: some curse words? 

— note: this was so much fun to write! i was looking up for participating in the challenge and i’m so excited that i finally had the chance to do it 💘 hope you like it just as much as i did! a chanyeol one might be coming either on tuesday or wednesday too! 

— songs to listen to while reading: sunflower, vol.6 — harry styles; you make loving fun — fleetwood mac; tupelo honey — van morrison

sunflower, my eyes want you more than a melody

you became friends with sehun quite quickly when you first started working at the shop

he had gotten there way before you did because the shop was his aunt’s, and working there had been his way of saving up a bit before college began

but somewhere along the many bouquets he had spent countless hours setting up, he actually started liking flowers

so he just kept working with them

but when his college schedule got a bit messed up, his aunt was forced to look for someone that could help and ease sehun’s schedule for a bit

and so in came you

you had, quite literally, ran into the flower shop’s flyer when walking home from class

some guy on a skateboard lost control and bumped in you, making you trip on the sidewalk 

and as you were getting up, your eyes locked on a bright-pink piece of paper that read “help needed !!!!!” in bold, capital letters

you were kind of discouraged at first when you saw it was about a flower shop

because you knew nothing about flowers

but after thinking about it for a bit, you decided the best way to learn about flowers was actually working with them

so you went to the shop and asked about the job

and sehun’s aunt practcially hired you on the spot

low-key because she had been trying to play match-maker with him for a while and knew, the second she saw you, that you’d make a nice couple

she literally didn’t care you didn’t know a thing about flowers

“don’t worry, my nephew can teach you”

and she told you to come back the next day

now, you wanted to make a good impression on your first day of work

given that you were kind of clue-less about the work you were going to do

so you dressed up quite nicely and showed up five minutes before your shift was supposed to begin

and no one was there

you kept looking at your watch and the “be right back!” sign on the door

until you were, once again, knocked off your feet by a moving figure before you even had the time to process it

“fuck, are you okay?”

you heard as a pair of white sneakers appeared in your field of vision

you merely nodded before you were offered a hand, and quickly got up as a thousand apologies rained on you

“shut up chanyeol, you did enough already”

turning to find the source of the voice, you encountered two tall guys, one that was looking at you in concern, and another, staring at you with eyes wide open while still muttering endless i’m sorry’s

and you mumbled an i’m fine, hoping that would make him stop

because as he kept apologizing to you, the other one grew anxious

and if they kept you on the street with their bickering, you weren’t going to notice the shop opening, and you would be late

or so you thought

“you sure you’re alright?”

the shorter of the two asked, fiddling with a key set and looking down at the time on his phone

“yeah, it’s not a big deal,”

and just before the taller one could go on another apology streak, the other one spoke

“listen, i can open the shop and you can sit down for a bit until your knee stops bleeding,”

and to be honest, you hadn’t even noticed you had actually gotten hurt, and it didn’t matter much to you, because had he said the shop? as in, the flower shop you were supposed to start working at?

you didn’t say anything as he unlocked the door and stepped inside, the scent of fresh flowers invading your nose

you walked in right after him and stopped at the counter as he made his way toward the back, leaving you in the front alongside his friend

“listen, i’m sorry, i’m still getting the hang of the board because i broke my bike and getting it fixed was way more expensive than buying the board, but i had never been able to skate and even when i’ve been practicing it’s still kind of hard for me, it’s probably because i’m so tall but -” 

“jesus fuck chanyeol, stop,”

he said as he returned with a stool in one hand and a water bottle in the other, handing them to you

“here, it’s not ice cold but you can use it to clean the wound,”

“do you work here?” you asked as you took the bottle from him

he answered with only a nod, tying up a black apron around his torso, protecting his clothes

“i’m supposed to start working here today, too,”

the taller one gasped, looking at you in surpirse

“i ... ran your co-worker over? fuck, your aunt is going to kill me”

“well ... more like skated me over, huh?”

and that had been the reason why you had spent your first day limping around the shop while sehun showed you around

he was surprisingly patient when teaching you about flowers

after all, he had once been in your place, clueless and learning as much as he could from his aunt

and so during the days when you shared a shift, you’d talk not only about flowers, but you’d start getting to know each other

and so you became friends

you even got along with chanyeol, the delivery boy

which was kind of weird because he kept on making deliveries in his skate board

but then sehun told you it was an extra job his aunt offered him so he could save up a bit of money

because the two of them had been friends since they were kids

and once chanyeol was able to put the incident behind and stop apologizing every time he saw you, you became friends as well

by then you’d already spent quite some time talking about movies and songs while sehun and you came up with arrangements

with chanyeol snacking on gummies or chips while he watched the two of you work

and it was during one of those ... sessions ? that your little competition began

you had been working on some bouquets for the shop’s displays when chanyeol started teasing sehun about how your bouquet was better than his even if you’d only been working at the shop for a little over a month

and it’s not that sehun minded

because it’s not like he hadn’t been crushing on you ever since he saw you fall down right in front of the shop

and it’s not like he wasn’t proud of how better you’ve become with flowers

but ... it was chanyeol ... teasing him

and so he made up his mind

he’d prove chanyeol he was the best florist

and if he could, impress you with the bouquets he could create

and so ever since that day you’d walk into the shop and find another one of sehun’s creation resting on the counter

he’d always include a card

some days he’d write something along the lines of top this or please tell chanyeol you liked it even if you didn’t

and you’d leave one of yours in return when your shift ended

you wouldn’t leave a note every time

but when you did, he always kept them

it didn’t matter how mundane and friendly they were

because sometimes they only consisted of you saying hi

other times you’d compliment his bouquet of the day

and those were the ones sehun really took to heart

because hey, that had been for you

even if you didn’t know

and to be honest ... he was fine with you not knowing

being your friend was enough for him, right?

until you were on a shift together

and a guy had walked into the shop, looking at the sunflower bouquet sehun had arranged for you

he had been working on an order for a wedding and didn’t notice at first how persistent the guy was with his questions

or how tense you looked when answering him

until she asked for the price of it

“it’s - it’s not up for sale, sorry,”

and you knew it was probably just because he thought you were cute

which ... who didn’t

and sehun was pretty sure he’d seen the guy around the shop before

but the way in which you were so hellbent in defending the bouquet ... 

that was something else

“it’s hers,”

he spoke up from the back, wiping his hands on his apron as he approached you

“it’s not on sale because it’s hers,”

“and how do you know?”

“because he made it for me,”

and he would’ve probably scream if he was alone

you ... you knew?

or were you only saying it because you were nervous?

“and he’s your ...”

“not that it’s any of your business but ... he’s my boyfriend”

and sehun didn’t know if it was your words, or the way your hand had found his almost as if they belonged together

because maybe they did

and it wasn’t only him who felt that

“it didn’t make you uncomfortable, did it? what i said?” 

you asked just as the guy had left the shop

and if sehun had blushed before, that didn’t compare to how much he was blushing then

“no - no, of course not”

and you knew

maybe it was in the way his fingers were still clutching his

and he knew

maybe it was in the way you were still pulling him towards you

softly and little by little

just the way you’d fallen in love

just the way your lips had found each other under the flower shop’s delicate lightning

professing your love for each other. softly and little by little.

right in front of the sunflower bouquet

the one that reminded him of you the most

because sunflowers ... they were you

bright and beautiful

and always searching for the sun

keep it sweet in your memory i'm still tongue-tied sunflower, sunflower

#exolrevival #exosnet #sehun scenario #exo scenarios #sehun fluff #exo fluff #sehun fanfiction #exo fanfiction #type: [bulletpoints] #marwrites

[freewheelen]

DEMO RIDE: 2019 Royal Enfield Himalayan

The tach needle bounced off the red line. The motor screeched. My hands clenched the grips. An 18-wheeler barreled by with a gust of displaced air, pushing the bike - and me - to the side of the highway.

In my quest to find the perfect second motorcycle, I’ve rented an FZ-07. I’ve test ridden Zero’s naked bike, the SR/F, and demoed their dual-sport, the FX. While all of those bikes were great in their own respects, none of them met my criteria: light, dirt-capable, and cheap. So when I heard that Royal Enfield was launching a nationwide tour featuring some of their newest models, I knew there was strong potential to find my scrambling side piece. 

Titled Pick Your Play, Royal Enfield’s demo ride event brought me to the highly revered Southern California Motorcycles in Orange County, CA. If you should know anything about Royal Enfield, it’s that the Indian company relies on classic styling with no-frills engineering. You won’t find traction control or TFT displays on their motorcycles. Liquid-cooling and heated grips aren’t featured on any Royals. Shoot, most of the models don’t even have gear indicators.

It’s this unabashed appeal to the “purist” that differentiates the brand from its competitors while keeping their prices low and their “cool” factor high. However, harkening back to yesteryear not only attracts hipsters it also attracts the riders that were around for the original Cafe-styled bikes: old dudes! And if you’re looking to attract aging gentlemen, you’d be smart to host your demo rides in the bastion of affluent retirees - The OC. 

 Aside from the 3-4 participants that were in my age group, I’d estimate that the majority of the attendees were collecting Social Security. Let’s just say that there was an abundance of high-viz gear and modular helmets. One of my favorite guys was even sporting a shirt with the term “Air-cooled” emblazoned across the chest. Now, please don’t read any of the previous statements as ageism. I LOVE old dude shit (I mean, I ride a Harley). I only point out the age discrepancy because Royal Enfield specifically cast the spotlight on the INT 650 and GT 650 for the Pick Your Play event, two models aimed at a younger rider. 

Though attendance was strong, I’m not sure if Royal Enfield expected this turn out when they pushed off on their 8-city tour. To the company, these retro-cool, city-dwelling models cater to a younger demographic. If I can’t convince you of that fact, maybe the event flyer can...

With all of that in mind, when I approached the sign-in desk to reserve my first demo ride, I did the most “old dude” thing possible, I asked to test out Royal Enfield’s adventure bike: the Himalayan.

The Himalayan was dirt-capable. Check! The Himalayan was light (well, lighter than my Harley). Check! The Himalayan was cheap. Check!  So when I threw my leg over the 31.5 inch-high seat, I couldn’t help but have high hopes for Royal’s compact off-roader.

As the instructor hollered liability terms and the obligatory sales pitch, I looked over the bike. The simplistic, classic lines spoke to my minimalist preferences. The lack of gadgets and rider aids made the model feel immediately approachable. 

With its metal tank, bare-bones instrument cluster, and halogen headlight, the vintage-styled dual-sport looks like it could have been a contestant in the original Dakar Rally of ‘79. Based on looks alone, it would be understandable if you confused the Himalayan for BMW’s iconic R80G/S. But Royal Enfield isn’t sharing market space with Beemer’s first GS, it���s up against a much more advanced generation.

Unlike the leader of the adventure class, BMW’s R 1250 GS, the Himalayan doesn’t boast a navigation system with Bluetooth connectivity, you won’t find a quick-shifter on it, there isn’t an Electronic Suspension Adjustment system, it doesn’t need Hill Start Control (does anybody?). But also unlike the GS, Royal’s ADV isn’t ugly as sin, and that may be the bikes biggest appeal, its aesthetics.

From the exposed sub-frame to the fork gaiters, from the skid plate to the ‘HIMALAYAN’ branded side panels, from the cafe-esque gas tank to the aluminum panniers, Royal Enfield’s thumper is easy on the eyes (as far as adventure bikes go...). The single-cylinder engine, tank guard, and high front fender complete a very tasteful package. But once I finished ogling the thing, I wondered to myself, ‘would function live up to form?’

I settled into the ultra-comfortable seat, grasped the handlebars, and retracted the kickstand. With my right boot resting on the peg, I jammed the shifter into first gear, revved the engine, and slowly released the clutch. To my surprise, the friction zone didn’t engage until I was about 3 quarters of the way out. I’m sure this was a result of tens of thousands of miles racked up on a nationwide demo tour, but it certainly brought back a long lost feeling, as memories of stalling out flashed before my eyes. I thought of the time I bogged the engined and dropped the bike in an intersection. I cringed as the sound of honking horns came rushing back. Thankfully the power kicked in just in time, relieving me of that dreaded “novice” embarrassment (especially in front of these seasoned riders). 

Once I got up to speed, I repositioned my feet, a necessary adjustment on the Himalayan. With the pegs residing directly under the rider and the pedals at a level angle, I couldn’t decide whether I wanted to scoot fore or aft on the saddle. I eventually sided with a forward-leaning posture, but that left me feeling as if I was mounting a rocking horse. 

Luckily, I was able to work myself into a passable position as we approached our first light. At a slow roll and with the relatively low seat height (for an ADV), I could duck walk the bike, a comforting attribute when you’re new to adventure riding, even if it makes you feel like a toddler on a pushbike. But it’s when you twist the throttle on the Himalayan that it makes you feel like you’re actually on training wheels.

Touting 25 HP and 20 ft-lb of torque, Royal Enfields little 400 felt like it was running through mud, despite the fact that we were rolling over fresh pavement. Though I didn’t record the time any of my 0-60 mph pulls on the single-cylinder scoot, the combination of the stocky frame and the anemic motor allows me to comfortably hypothesize that it was well into the double digits (in seconds). 

The inherent sluggishness of the Himalayan was most evident in one of the worst places possible: the freeway onramp. As the group merged into the congested lanes of Highway 57, I cranked on the throttle. The tach needle bounced off the red line. The motor screeched. My hands clenched the grips. An 18-wheeler barreled by with a gust of displaced air, pushing the bike - and me - to the side of the highway. 

Luckily our freeway run only lasted a quarter-mile, as the fleet of Royals exited at the very next turnoff. Re-entering the comfortable confines of surface streets allowed me to re-gather my wits and put the Himalayan back where it belonged, on roads with speed limits below 65 mph. At this point in the demo, I saw RE’s little adventurer as a glorified moped with taller suspension and better ergos. It didn’t help that in addition to the unenthused acceleration, the bike didn’t receive any help from the clumsy gearbox. 

At only 5-gears, the transmission felt like an accurate reflection of the Himalayan’s $4,499 MSRP. I found myself unintentionally shifting into neutral several times throughout the ride. It was quite amazing that I could find neutral not only during my upshifts but also during downshifts. The problem is, I was trying to find 1st and 2nd, not neutral. On the other hand, I’m grateful that Royal Enfield outfitted the dash with a gear indicator so I could quickly identify any hiccups with the shifting. That feature was certainly handy when I rolled to a stoplight in 3rd gear, but that’s where the bike really performed - while braking.

Though the engine was more worthy of a golf cart, the brakes felt like they came off a Mack Truck. Sporting a 2-piston caliper up front and a single-pot caliper out back, the braking system of the Himalayan may have been the most impressive aspect of the mini-ADV. While the braking components don’t sound powerful on paper, in concert, they performed with a high level of efficiency and effectiveness, bringing the bike to a halt with immediacy. At times, it felt like the braking power was almost too effective, especially given the bike’s suspension.

Fork dive never results in a good feeling, but with such powerful brakes and flimsy 41mm fork legs, the sensation was inevitable on the Himalayan. Coupling two incongruent systems usually highlights the deficiencies of the pairing rather than the benefits of the exceptional component. Yes, the brakes of Royal’s ADV stood out, but the collapsable front suspension only turned that positive into a negative. 

At the rear, the monoshock exhibited stiffer, more responsive reactions to braking/acceleration and road irregularities, but the inconsistency of the unit also plagued the ride. For a model that’s supposed to spend a good portion of its life in the dirt, I doubt the combination of the underpowered motor, 420lb+ curb weight, and remedial suspension would be helpful off the pavement. I wouldn’t feel comfortable tackling anything more challenging than a fire road on the Royal. That’s especially sad for a bike named the Himalayan. 

On that note, I was relieved that we never rode the bike in the brown. Although you don’t need all the power in the world when you’re riding off-road (in some cases it can be a detriment), you do need to be able to get yourself out of tight spots and over obstacles, two things that seemed daunting to me while riding atop the overweight/underpowered ADV.

The sub-500cc dual-sport market is dominated by motocross-inspired machines originally designed in the ‘90s (& unchanged since) and the Himalayan is a breath of fresh air - even if its design plays on a past era. With retro styling and fuel injection, it’s ironic to say that the Royal Enfield is enlivening the segment. But with most of the models in the category approaching 3 decades of continuous production, it’s nice to see someone trying something different. Even if the dual-sport consumer focuses more on specs than looks, the Himalayan may attract an audience due to the simple fact that it is different.

For me, I don’t think the concessions made in function are worth the nominal boost in form. Weight to power ratios reign supreme in the dual-sport world and RE’s thumper resides at the losing end of both spectrums. Weighing in with the 600s and generating the power of a 250, the only saving grace for the Himalayan is its aesthetics and price. 

I’m not a rider that needs (or wants) Bluetooth connectivity. I’m happy to go without traction control. However, opting for the “purist” route shouldn’t mean sacrificing the performance of the machine. There should be a mean between maximal and minimal, a median between overpriced and underperforming, a middle ground of handsome and hideous. If BMW’s R 1200 GS is the thesis of the Adventure market, the Himalayan is the antithesis, and what I’m looking for is the synthesis of those two ideas.

With that, my search for a perfect second bike will continue. What I thought was an easy feat, seems to be more elusive than I anticipated. Along with light, dirt-capable, and cheap, I’ll need to add a few other attributes to my criteria, and of course, that means I’ll have to test out more motorcycles... 

Poor me ;)

#motorcycle #motorcycles #motorcyclediaries #photography #photoset #retro #vintage #hipster #adventure #ride #writer #photo series #motoblog #classic #ride review #test ride #demoride #royalenfield #royal enfield #motorbike #motorbikes #adventurebike #adventures #adv #advbike #dualsport #dual sport #bmwmotorcycle

[nitemice]

Hey, here's my latest post over on my main blog:

In May each year, comic book shops around the world participate in a one day event called Free Comic Book Day. For me, this year was my eighth year of going into the city to take part, and the first time I’d been on my own.

Free Comic Book Day happens on the first Saturday in May each year, and comic book shops offer a selection of free comics to patrons, usually without even making a purchase! Often it’s accompanied by a bit of a festival or celebration which the stores throw to try and encourage visitors to lay down some cash, and get involved in the day in various ways, such as by dressing up (cosplaying), or getting a caricature drawn of themselves.

Like last year, I was feeling pretty disillusioned by the whole thing this year due to various factors: having been to so many now, and visiting comic book stores on a regular basis. Also, the lineup of free comics announced for this year didn’t really contain many that got me excited. So I wasn’t too enthusiastic about going, plus none of my friends were interested this year. So I took it easy, and decided to go in a bit later and get out earlier.

It’s also worth mentioning that since last FCBD, one of the four comic book stores in Melbourne’s CBD has closed down: Classic Comics. This was a pretty big shock when it was announced in mid-2018 and has left a pretty big impact in a number of ways. For one, Classic Comics was the most competitively priced of Melbourne’s comic book shops. It was a small, family run business and always had a good spread for FCBD. It will be missed.

So I headed into the city for just after 9am, knowing that it usually quietens down by around then, so I wouldn’t need to line up for too long. Boy, was I wrong.

Minotaur

As I arrived at about 9:20am, I could see people walking away with Minotaur bags full of comics. There was no one outside, but the line inside snaked through pretty much the whole store and seemed to move extremely slowly. It ended up taking just under an hour to reach the front of the line.

Minotaur’s setup was essentially the same as every other year. The first 30 people in line got a bundle of all of this year’s FCBD comics, and the first 150 got a goodie bag with their selection of comics. Each person could pick 5 comics from the available range, which seemed to include most comics on this year’s FCBD list, with family-friendly comics marked as such. However, on the board where they displayed all the free comics available, a few were missing this year. Initially I just assumed that those comics weren’t available, but I heard a woman after me ask about one of them, and it turned out that they were just in boxes still. This was especially disappointing as the missing comics seemed to all be indie titles, which many people wouldn’t realise weren’t there. Given one of the main purposes of FCBD is to promote the art, in all its variety and diversity to people who wouldn’t otherwise be exposed to it, this was a pretty unfortunate and disappointing occurrence.

Minotaur also had 15% off full price sale over the course of the day.

Comics-R-Us

After wandering around Minotaur for far too long, I decided to give Comics-R-Us a go, as they almost never have a long line. I got there just after 11am, and was through the line in 5 minutes or less.

Comics-R-Us too used their typical setup, where people pick the comics they want from a display board, with one staff member serving them, and another staff member picking the comics out and bagging them. This double-staff situation is mainly only necessary because there are so many comics with the same or similar names on the board that need clarification. This year, they had returned to letting people choose 3 comics each. The selection was dominated by older FCBD comics, along with various ‘true believer’ editions which are supposed to sell for a dollar, so it’s always nice to see them as an option.

It was noticeably subdued in Comics-R-Us, with less decorations or festivities than other years. I overheard one of the staff mention that this was a conscious decision, although I didn’t catch why, and they even recommended visiting All-Star Comics for their costume competition.

All-Star Comics

Although I didn’t actually visit All-Star Comics, this year was the first time I’d checked out their Artists Alley, which they put on each year on FCBD. And the name is fairly apt; it was literally an alley full of artists doing caricatures or drawing requests, and I think a few were signing art. Located in the alley inside 333 Collins, it was a bit cramped, with queues taking up all the walking space in spots. Although, it was good to be in an enclosed space, out of the rain and wind.

I also observed All-Star from the outside, and the line looked a little shorter than about the same time of day last year. It looked like they were using the same queueing system as last year too, with 3 phases of queue, although they seemed to be moving relatively quickly. I also saw they again employed the use of little flyers listing all the comics on offer, so people could make their decision while in the line. I like this system, and it has interesting ramifications for the other comic book shops around the city. Once someone has visited All-Star, they have a list of comics they want and that should be available. In theory, this allows these people to move through the other stores more quickly and decisively as well. When a store’s offerings differ from this, this difference is made obvious, for better or worse.

In the end, I managed to pick up 9 new comics, with no duplicates this year. However, of the 6 or so comics I was interested in, I only picked up 4.

If you want to see what I thought of the comics I grabbed, or other comics I read, you can follow along on the League of Comic Geeks or on Goodreads.

As I’ve said many times before, I highly recommend visiting a few comic book shops on Free Comic Book Day. It’s a fun time, and you end up with free comics! What more could you want!

To Infinity and Beyond, Nitemice

#IFTTT #WordPress #Books & Comics #Leisure & Hobbies #Comic book #comics #FCBD #Free Comic Book Day

[attract-mode-collective]

An Arcade Grows in Brooklyn (Or At Least Is Trying To)

Perhaps it's still the case... perhaps it has always been the case.... all I know with absolute certainty is how, during a certain point, circa the early 2010s, a decent number of people were very much interested in opening and operating their very own arcade around these parts. These parts being New York City and surrounds areas.

Said individuals would, understandably, seek advice from an expert. And for reasons that may seem obvious to some, one person who was often enlisted was Kotaku's editor in chief, Stephen Totilo. And cuz it ain't quite his domain, Steve would then pass everyone along to someone more knowledgeable, that being me.

I spoke to a variety of individuals, each with their own unique vision...or so they thought. In reality, they were all essentially identical: everyone just wanted a place to hang out and play video games with their friends. They also figured that there would be enough other people wanting to same, enough to quit their day jobs and make a living off of them. To each and every one I said the same basic thing: don't do it.

Hey, I love arcades, I really do, and wish there was more of them. But I also don't like the idea of someone completely wasting away his life savings, just for a place for him and his buds to play Halo 3 or Rock Band 2 all night long. To be more exact, I don't like the idea of being someone who could have prevented such a thing from happening.

Just the other week, My Life In Gaming was in town; before swinging by Connecticut for some retro gaming con, there was a pit stop in NYC. Am assuming Coury wanted to catch up with family, being a Brooklyn native and all; perhaps to maximize his time, a meet-up was also planned. At an arcade. One that I had never heard of before.

The oddly named I Fix Machine Arcade was located in my old stomping grounds of Sunset Park, around three of four blocks away from a former residence; when I left in 2007, that part of Brooklyn was just starting to become gentrified, so I was hardly shocked to discover that the location was inside some freshly erected and ultra-trendy office loft space.

Once inside the front door, I was immediately lost; as with similar spaces, you’ve got an ultra-chic decor with zero signage, cuz that would either clash or something. A guy then walked in after me, saw that I was clueless, and pointed towards the fourth floor. Where there was no arcade. This led me to going up and down the entire building (via stairs since I feared the lack of security codes would impede my search), until I finally came across it on the first floor. The door was manned by the proprietor... the same guy who led me astray. Guess I didn't look like an arcade goer or something.

Anyhow, once again: it's an arcade! In an office space! Most of the games are running off of Japanese candy cabs, Versus City machines to be exact. You also have a Neo Geo MVS, an exposed NAOMI 2 attached to a Raspberry Pi (supplying the roms) and a Sega Saturn (doing what I have no idea), a high-end PC running Steam, plus more. There's even an area for live-streaming... quite the impressive set-up.

And near the entrance is a table, where the aforementioned proprietor had an open PC in front of him. Christopher is an energetic, buoyant fellow, whom I had a hard time understanding, though his enthusiasm clearly came across. I asked quite a few things and received many answers. Kinda, sorta.

My first question, of course: what's this arcade about? Christopher immediately went into his sales pitch, about it being a home for gamers, hearkening back to a time in which arcades ruled supreme, before the internet & online gaming, where you breathed the same air space with other players, yada yada yada, the same thing I've heard legit a hundred times before. I then asked, seriously, what's the deal here.

First, a bit about Christopher: I was surprised to learn that he was in his mid-to-late 30s, given his youthful appearance, though even more impressive is how he taught himself to repair computers in the late 90s, before the advent of YouTube.  I'm not sure what came first, the computer repair business or the arcade, but I did discover out that he owes everything to a guy named Jose Cruz. The way Christopher reverentially addressed Jose, it was like hearing the Pope refer to Jesus Christ Himself.

At the very least, Christopher acted like I should have known who Jose was... cuz I guess he's kind of a big deal? A combination of clues and blind guesses led to the assumption that the legend of Jose Cruz was somehow connected to local fight game scene and associated territories. Specifically the original Chinatown Fair crew, which later made a home for themselves at Next Level. Speaking of, I asked if there was any competition between I Fix Machine Arcade and Next Level Arcade, and the response was a somewhat sheepish "no... not anymore”.

Not long after my visit, I would discover that I Fix Machine and Next Level are in the same neighborhood, just a block away (the latter had initially chosen Brooklyn’s Chinatown as its new home-base). Again, no idea who came to the area first, but after some unspecified turf warfare, it would appear that everyone is friendly for now. I get the impression that one will go to whichever Arcade depending on one’s interest in a particular fame and the associated community built around it. I got the impression that I Fix Machine was the place for Tekken devotees.

Back to Jose: I would also discover that much of his fame... from what I was able to discover after the fact myself... is due his technical prowess. He knows his way around the back of an arcade machine and has produced a number of noteworthy mods. As such, Jose also taught Christopher everything he knows about servicing arcade cabs. I asked if, in addition to PCs, arcade games could also be repaired, since I know a few owners who might appreciate such a resource… didn’t get a straight answer. I then asked what the hours were: “2am to midnight”. I assumed he meant 2pm to midnight. Days of operation? Wednesday through Sunday. Cost of playing games? $10.

While asking questions I noticed a steady stream of patrons trickling into I Fix Machine Arcade, all clearly regulars. It then hit me, the similarities between this place and all the others that had been proposed to me, which I had nixed: these customers all seemed to know each other... they were all friends, friends who were paying to hang out with each other. I suppose seeing it in action made me realize that such a business model wasn't that insidious after all. Or entirely unique; it's no different than a club house or lodge, where the members pay dues to help keep the lights on. It just so happens that the doors are opened to the general public.

Yet the question remains: how many more friends can such a place attract? I was also reminded of my initial visit to Next Level several years ago, when Henry Cen had just begun operations. Someone close to Cen at the time divulged to me plans for a Next Level in Queens after the Brooklyn location. Then another one in the Bronx. Of course there would be one in Manhattan, with NJ to follow. I wondered back then if Cen had enough friends to fulfill such a master plan. Last I heard, the move from Brooklyn Chinatown to Sunset Park resulted in a reduction of square footage.

Back to Christopher: I asked how long I Fix Machine Arcade had been in business: about 6 months. I then asked how promotions were handled, and Christopher explained that he had been extolling the virtues of his haven for hardcore gamers “everywhere”: Twitter, Facebook, Twitch, Discord, etc. It’s at this point in which any objectivity as an investigative journalist began to wash away and my years as a promoter for events began to take over. I explained that online forums can only go so far… to really get the word out, especially on a local level, one had to do it the old fashioned way. And that’s the plaster the city with stickers and flyers, as well as make appearances at events. In the flesh. Places like Penny Arcade Expo, New York Comic Con, AnimeNYC, and especially MAGFest.

Christopher admitted to me that he had heard of those places, but never been to them (at least to conduct business). At that exact moment, a person who had just put down his $10 for the entrance fee also noted that he had just put down money for a MAGFest hotel room, which had just become available to the pubic earlier that afternoon. This unidentified individual told Christopher, “Hey man, it’s hype; you need to go there, tell everyone about IFM!” Christopher smiled and nodded in agreement.

I figured it was time to ask the hardball questions. First… any trouble with the neighbors? Not surprisingly, other offices in the building have called the cops to complain, resulting in several visits. But Christopher glossed over the details and offered a positive spin, by saying that each visit ends with cops hanging out and playing games. Quite the positive outcome, far more so than similar visits by the fuzz to other DIY venues I’ve been at or associated with.

I asked other questions, like what was the age range of his customers (Christopher claimed between 6 to 60, which I found a bit hard to swallow) and what was the average number of customers on a given day (he stated about 10, and given the number of regulars present, I found that to be a tad bit more plausible). Eventually, it was time for the hardest question of them all: is I Fix Machine Arcade making any money?

The answer was surprisingly honest and to the point, given the numerous canned responses I had been give: no. Yet... he and Jose (who I believe is the co-owner) know that it takes a year or two for any business to get its footing... or so they say. And I was told that they were ready for the road ahead. Now, given the surprise response to my inquiry about MAGFest, I have to wonder about that. Then again, I suppose things are truly only getting started.

Objectively speaking, the pieces are all there: I Fix Machine Arcade has the space, one that’s fairly accessible (it’s close by a major subway hub in South Brooklyn), it definitely has the gear (I honestly can't recall a larger assortment of Japanese arcade hardware in the Big Apple), and thus far, it has a loyal legion of customers. I hope I Fix Machine Arcade, I want it to survive, but do I believe it will when all is said and done? Well…

I almost forgot: the meet-up. It was actually a combination My Life In Gaming/RetroRGB gathering. Which is also when RetroRGB sat down with Jose Cruz himself for an hour long chat, for those interested...

... I was expecting an Antiques Roadshow-type gathering, but with modded retro gaming hardware, and that's basically what I got. Here's my buddy Jessen showing off some wacky RGB mod for the Super Famicom that sends its signal via the cart?

Eventually, when the party was officially in full swing of course, I remember how long my subway ride back home to the Bronx would be, so it was time to head out...

[acidicbaby]

I firmly believe that the window washing business has a tremendous amount of advantages over other businesses.

I've been in a number of businesses as many of you probably have, and when making the comparisons between window washing and some of the other lame businesses out there, you have to admit that window washing comes up smelling like roses.

BUT...us window washers will still face challenges.

And I'm not talking about the challenge of cleaning a window. Anybody can get a window clean with a little elbow grease and the proper tools.

No, I'm referring to the ability to clean windows and market your business at the same time. This is the ultimate juggling act.

If you stop marketing your business for any length of time, it's only a matter of time before calls from interested prospects dry up, and consequently, so does your calender.

I saw it happen very recently with a guy who had a good 3 weeks of window cleaning jobs lined up. He used every marketing technique outlined in my manual How to Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business. He lined up all kinds of jobs. But then he decided to focus his attention only to window cleaning, not to marketing. Oops.

To make a long story short, after that 3 week spurt of business, he woke up one day to find no customers on his calender, so he essentially had to start over. Now of course, he'll have those customers to come back to again and again on a repeat basis, but I'm talking about right now having gaps on the schedule which really shouldn't be there.

And it's harder and more time consuming to start over then it is to just keep the gravy train rolling.

Let me explain with a couple of stories.

--Master motivator Zig Zigler talked about "starting over" in one of his speeches I heard recently. He used the analogy of one of those old fashioned Wells you may be familiar with.

These types of Wells have big 'ole handles you need to crank in order to draw water from the Well.

When first wanting water, you have to really pump fast and furious. But once you have a constant stream of water coming out, then it just takes a little pressure on the pump handle to keep it going. The hard work was already done at the beginning. BUT...don't stop. Because the water will go all the way to the bottom if you do, and you'd have to start all over again with serious pumping action.

--The people who I've helped get into the window washing business have heard me talk about when I was in the Insurance business. One of the things I used to do at the beginning of my insurance career was actually shut down my marketing efforts during Thanksgiving week and not crank it up again until after the last college football bowl game was played at the beginning of January.

I just sat around for six or seven weeks or so getting fat on all the Holiday goodies, and alhough it was great just kicking back on my little mini-vacation, come the beginning of January, I had to start all over again generating interest, making phone calls, following up, setting appointments, etc.

Which means that I didn't see the fruits of January's labor until March or so as far as having a full calender of appointments again and banking commissions.

I mention the above couple of stories just to illustrate a point, and that is simply that we can't back off or let up. Because if we do, we could find ourselves with some unwanted vacancies on our schedule. And this is especially true if you're relatively new to the window cleaning biz.

But that's the challenge. Like the person above who had 3 weeks of window washing jobs. How in the world do you wash windows and still market your biz?

The short answer to this is that we need to learn to prioritize and incorporate effective time management principles.

I know, I know. Pretty elementary stuff here, but it really is critical to master them.

One of my most successful students is a guy that plans his entire day around a 2 hour marketing window where he'll distribute flyers, coordinate a postcard campaign, talk to other service businesses, talk to realtors, talk to property managers, talk to builders, visit commercial storefronts, or any number of other things on the marketing agenda.

Time doesn't permit everything above to be done within that two hour time frame obviously, but he'll pick one, maybe two strategies he wants to use that day, and then do 'em.

The 2 hours may be at the beginning of the day or the end of the day, or it may be one hour in the morning and one hour in the afternoon. That doesn't matter. What does matter is that he'll take ACTION and expose his marketing message for 2 hours each day to prospects.

Mike truly understands that we have no business without customers, so he sits down at night and jots down the next day's marketing goals on a "to do" list. This is as basic as it gets, but hey...it works.

And this is confirmed when he calls and we talk about the fact that prospects are calling (many times as we're talking, we'll be interrupted a couple of times by his phone ringing) and his calender is filled up with window washing jobs.

By doing this, and committing to it on paper, the challenge of finding prospects is null and void. Like my 'ole sales manager used to say, "if you talk to enough people, you've got to make sales".

In my case, I used to take one whole day and part of another to do what Mike does every day.

I generally preferred to do my window washing estimating on Friday, and Friday morning was when my business breakfast was held where business owners got together and supported each other with leads and referrals.

Since I figured I was already dressed up in nice company clothes (polo shirt/dockers) instead of my window washing work clothes, I figured I may as well make that my main marketing day, so I mapped out a schedule on Thursday night of who to see and talk to on Friday in addition to the estimates I was scheduled to do.

That doesn't mean I didn't do any marketing during the week. Postcards were a big part of my biz, so if I was ready for a mailing, there was always time during the week to place a 5 minute phone call to my direct mail house and tell Dick to send out a mailing to zone such and such.

And Saturday morning was pretty much reserved for me to go out with 2 to 4 neighborhood kids and blanket subdivisions with flyers.

As an example of what you could do, if you're scheduling a job, schedule it at 10 or 11 and then head out at 9:00 to:

--introduce yourself to 5 realtors and give them your business card. --quickly drop off 25 flyers to commercial storefronts. In/out/next. --visit 3 other service businesses to see if they would be interested in getting together to promote each of your businesses. (I know of one guy who formed his own leads type of organization since there were none in his town)

And then the next day, jot down other things you can do, or repeat the above. At the end of the week, you'll not only feel like you accomplished something, but more importantly, you'll be creating tremendous awareness for your company, which of course, leads to more phone calls, more business, and more moolah in your pocket!

The above is not hard, and when looked at daily, they're just little things, but it's the little things you do every single day that will determine your ultimate success, not the one big thing that we might do every 2 or 3 weeks.

Now the good news is that over time, we can all drastically decrease our marketing "to do" lists.

The first two years of my business was hustle, bustle, hustle bustle. Every form of marketing that could be used was used. After about two years though, guess what? The pump was primed hard enough during the early stages, I then just had to apply a tiny bit of continuous marketing (it never can stop completely), kick back, get the phone calls, fill up the calender, and coordinate my window washing crews. All the fun stuff.

Just remember that this is a marathon, not a sprint. An initial burst of massive action is excellent because it generates immediate dollars and gets you entrenched into the biz, but mark- eting needs to be sustained over time if you're looking for long term success.

Experts have said that once we do something for 21 days, it becomes a habit. I don't know about the 21 days part, but I do know if we do something long enough, it'll simply become second nature to us.

So...there are many challenging pieces to the window washing business. Prioritize the implementation of those pieces by creating yourself a simple "to do" list (Hint-place marketing at the top), incorporate time management into making that list work, and repeat on a regular basis.

Lather

Rinse

Repeat

If you do that, then the snowball of window washing customers that I refer to in my manual will gather up speed. And when that starts to happen, you may as well get out of the way because there ain't nothing you can do to stop it. :o)

To your window washing success,

Steve

256-546-2446

Steve Wright is the author of How to Start Your Own Residential Window Washing Business, and has started hundreds of individuals on the path to success in their own window washing business. Mr. Wright has also developed a revolutionary online web-based system called The Customer Factor to assist all window washing business owners in maintaining and growing a successful business. Using both of these resources provides the one-two punch needed to catapult anyone from zero to six figures per year in the window washing business. For more information, give Mr. Wright a call at 256-546-2446 or visit either of the websites posted.

Article Source: https://EzineArticles.com/expert/Steve_Wright/6268

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/75407

[podcastcoach]

What Podcasters Can Learn From Eddie Van Halen

This week rock guitar God Eddie Van Halen died after a long battle with throat cancer. As a guitar who was 13 when Van Halen's first album was released, and whose band provided the soundtrack to my adolescent years this hit me hard. With this in mind, I wanted to talk about things podcasters can learn from Eddie Van Halen.

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Van Halen Took Years to Build Their Audience

The band was formed in 1972. Some of the top songs in 1972 were Saturday in the park in Chicago, Brandy (You're a fine girl), I'll take you there (the staple singers). Not exactly a thriving time of high energy, guitar-oriented hard rock. They played clubs for years.

In 1976 (four years later) Gene Simmons of Kiss financed a demo tape, and arranged a performance in front of Kiss's management and was told that "they had no chance of making it" and that they wouldn't take them. Gene then removed himself from further involvement.

A year later when they were playing the famed "Starwood: club Ted Templeman of Warner Brother saw the band and they were offered a contract.

Good Planning Leads to Less Editing

As they had been playing clubs for years, the band was well-rehearsed and ready to go. Their first album was recorded in three weeks with almost no overdubs.

You Don't Need to Spend a Ton of Cash

There are two popular guitars in rock music. A Stratocaster has a thin sound and used by blues players and it had a whammy bar. A Les Paul has a thicker, chunkier sound. Eddie took the guts of a Less Paul and put them into the Stratocaster (called the Frankencaster). He made the guitar himself using a guitar body that cost fifty dollars and a guitar neck that cost eighty. He ended up with a thicker, chunkier guitar tone that had a whammy bar. The guitar that cost $130 to make has a replica that now goes for thousands of dollars.

He stated that because he was poor he had to find ways to make the noises on the guitar.

He Learned Through Trial And Error

In the process of creating his own guitar, Eddie states, "I ruined a bunch of stuff." The bottom line he never stopped experimenting. In the song intruder, you hear Eddie creating bizarre sounds on his guitar. It turns out that some of those sounds were Eddie Swiping a Schlitz beer can up and down the neck. In the song poundcake, Eddie uses an electric drill. The bizarre noise on Automic Punk is Eddie running the side of his hands up and down the strings. He was always looking for ways to make different noises (like an elephant) with his guitar. The strange wooshing noise in the middle of the song Panama is Eddie's Lamborgini.

He had an endless curiosity and was constantly experimenting.

He Never Learned How To Read Music

He would watch his teacher's fingers and then play whatever he just saw. His parents forced him to play the piano and won contests when he was ages 9-11. After using the Beatles and the Dave Clark Five he picked up the guitar. Because he never learned guitars lessons "by the book" he believes he wouldn't play the way he does if he had done "Traditional" guitar studies.

Inventions Around Van Halen

I mentioned how he created his own guitar. He holds a patent for a device that allows you to stand and hold the guitar flat. He perfected a style of playing called "tapping" where he play notes with both hands. This lead to the invention of guitar tablature as people couldn't figure out how to put down on paper what he was doing on the fretboard.

Enjoy Your Soup

How did Van Halen get their sound? Drummer Alex Van Halen prefers straight forward rock. Eddie liked progressive rock, and David Lee Roth like disco at the time. Eddie referred to this as ingredients in your soup.

I like singer Gary Cherone from the band Extreme. He joined Van Halen and recorded Van Halen III. On that album bassist Michael Anthony has stated that Eddie told him what and how to play, Gary stated that Eddie was playing bass and drums, making it more or less an Eddie Van Halen Solo album. One point here is this album came out in 1998, and was not sober until 2008. This was the first album to not go platinum (it did achieve Gold status). I was also the longest studio album. 

Embrace Who You Are

When they were in the clubs, they were playing covers. As Eddie put it, no matter how hard I tried I couldn't play what was on the record. I could only be me. Consequently, when you hear a Van Halen record, it sounds like a Van Halen record.

Go To Where Your Audience is and Promote Nonstop

When they couldn't get a record deal they started throwing their own parties and concerts. They toured for 11 months straight to promote their first album including 23 shows in 25 days in the UK. When he got home Warner Brothers alerted the band that they owed the record label three million dollars and a new album. They wouldn't take no for an answer. They stuffed flyers in lockers of high schools. If you liked them or not, you were at least going to know about the band. Slowly they built an audience of 3-5000 people which attracted the attention of Warner Brothers.

He Was Always Nervous Going On Stage

In the early days, he asked his Dad how he dealy with stage fright. His father gave him alcohol and cigarettes (and would later die from Alcohol-related issues). After Eddie got sober, his son was in the band and Eddie said, "If my sixteen-year-old son can be out there kicking butt, then I guess I better get out there."

You Don't Have To Release Everything

Eddie built himself a studio and was always recording, experimenting, but it is assumed that there is quite a bit of music that was not released.

Have Fun

One of the things you can hear in a Van Halen record is fun. Watch Eddie play guitar and you will see one thing that never changes. He smiles. Why? Because he came to this country from Holland with his parents who brought a piano and what amounted to $50. He didn't speak the language and got bullied as he was considered a minority.

Money Changes Everything

In the book Runnin' wit the Devil" he states that the Van Halen brothers (along with David Lee Roth) gave Michael Anthony an ultimatum right around the time the “1984” album came out. In a nutshell, they did not believe Michael’s contributions to the band’s music entitled him to an equal 1/4 split of the profits, so they drew-up a contract that stipulated that he would no longer share in any royalties from Van Halen recordings from the “1984” album on, and I believe it also limited what he would receive from the previous records, touring, and merchandise sales as well. In effect, while Michael would technically still be in the band, he would essentially become a paid employee from that point on.

Most die-hard fans found this offensive. We want to believe you all get along and are best buddies.

Put Your Family First

In 2006 Eddie Van Halen replaced Michael Anthony with his son Wolfgang. He knew this was not going to be a popular choice, but he put his family first. What father wouldn't want to play with his son?

Communication is the Lubrication

Eddie Van Halen wasn't on social media. The website as I write this now does not even have a notice that Eddie has died. For years his audience had no idea what he was up to. Michael Anthony found out he had been replaced via the Internet. He could have kept that connection stronger by keeping people in the loop. 

Why? Eddie was a nice guy, but an introvert. He just wanted to make music. Upon his cancer diagnosis, he retreated even further. 

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Mentioned in This Episode

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#podcasting #podcast #coaching #new media

[thepageloot]

5 Easy Hacks to Boost Marketing – The Online QR Code Generator

Looking for shortcuts and easy hacks to crush your marketing goals this year?

If you are serious about marketing your product and making sales, then you should look into QR Codes to keep up with the times. This year, all the big brands are taking advantage of these 5 simple hacks you need to know about.

What is this one big secret with the Online QR Code Generator that has led to their success?

Clever product marketing with QR Codes

Back in the day, QR Codes were used for tracking product inventory as an upgrade to the even older barcodes. They can conatin quite a bit of information. Although the initial use was tracking products, nowadays there are so many more opportunities. Everybody is using them in marketing & sales. Let’s dive in to see how the experts are doing it.

QR Codes are back in business, yeah baby!

#1 Build a new target group with QR Codes

You want to start focusing on Dynamic QR Codes. There are so many benefits to these types of codes. Please avoid plain old static QR Codes like the plague. Your bank account will thank you later.

The first and main one is that you can always edit your content later. Maybe you already printed out all your ads, but now you have a new landing page. How much would that cost to replace?

Secondly – this trick is mostly used by the most successful online marketers. Did you know you can actually retarget and create lookalike audiences from physical leads? All you need for this is to get them to an online page you control and Although not many offer this, only the best QR Code generator will allow you to add a Facebook pixel and Google Analytics tags.

This last one is so powerful, yet not too many entrepreneurs or businesses are taking advantage of this clever hack.

#2 Use a custom QR design to drive conversions

Please stop using the black on white QR Codes! We are not living in 1994 (yes, QR Codes were already available then).

It is always sad to see a nice brand with good design that just slaps an ugly boxy QR Code on their products that doesn’t match at all. Nowadays you can customize the colors and shape of QR codes, even add a custom frame with a CTA.

A well designed Custom QR Code that blends with the brand

If the codes blend seamlessly with your brands image, the scanning and conversion rate will be through the roof. An average study shows a shopping 34.6% increase only based on design and CTA alone. You need to sart Calling The People to Action!

Note: Please always take the QR Code size into consideration. It should be big enough, but not horrifyingly humungous. You can learn about the industry’s best QR Code size standards here.

#3 QR Codes are not just for websites and links

Mostly people just use QR Generators online for creating website and URL link QR codes. Boy, are they missing out though (seriously, BIG TIME!).

Did you know you can get people to send e-mails, connect on Facebook Messenger, Whatsapp – even share business cards? All this, only using QR Codes. It’s rather fascinating really how much engagement you can drive with these little bad boys.

How about getting people to sign up for an e-mail list? Not a problem, Maui Moisture here did just that:

Forming a killer marketing strategy to slay your competitors this season

Epic marketing hacks from Maui with QR Codes

Attention is the main currency nowadays. It doesn’t matter whether it is online or offline. The key to success is to create noise for your product and to target your leads in a way that speaks to them. Follow these steps and prepare to bank big!

#4 Market research comes first – ALWAYS

We know that usually marketing begins before the actual launch. But where people usually fail is to start research before marketing. Kind of like driving blindfolded into a brick wall – why would you do that?

The first goal is to determine your audience. What do they respond to? What gets them going? What are they passionate about? Where do they congregate? The second part is mostly about competitor research. How are they doing things? What could you be doing a lot better than them? Where will you probably suck a whole lot more? How can you compensate for that?

Once we have gotten over our procrastination and dealt with this boring part, we can now start the fun part that all digital marketers live and die for.

#5 Sell the story, not the product

Unless you are selling toilet paper and masks amid the coronavirus rage, chances are the consumer will not care about your product because there is just too much noise.

People don’t want what they need, they want what they desire. (Please go read Seth Godin if you already haven’t). Now, to do this, we need to create a story around your product and brand. How can your product make the customer feel? What kind of consumer emotions are you able to trigger? Why should I care enough to scan your QR Code?

At the end of the process, if you did your storytelling correctly – the customers will sell the product to themselves. And that is the best kind of marketing for those epic high conversion sales.

The problem is however, people are always stuck up their phones. Even in the physical world. True story, I saw this girl walk into a street pole just yesterday. Giving the consumer QR Codes to scan, we can connect with them on a digital level. Because that’s where all the attention is nowadays. Why swim against the river when you can take advantage of your physical locations and start engaging with your customers at the heart of their attention spans.

The best way to grab their attention is to follow AIDA. Grab the customers’ attention, pique their interest, create desire, and follow up with a super sweet looking custom QR Code that has a mindblowing CTA frame around it. Get them triggered and angry if you must, as long as you’re able to get a reaction out of them, you are already halfway there.

Putting it all together

QR Codes on Flyers – We are going live!

Now that you are familiar with the benefits of QR Codes and how to properly implement them, I think it’s time to take this theory for a spin. I’ts time to take things to the next level and start planning to go live with our new viral marketing hacks.

You can Google around for some of the best QR Code Generators online. Many of them will be paid and many of them will suck (you out of your time and your money). We’re not the ones to toot our own horn, so don’t take our word for it. Do your research, look around, see what you can find. We imply you to take ours for a spin as well and let us know how you think it compares. May the sales be with you!

If you need to create QR Codes online, be sure to check out this Free QR Code Generator.

Original Source: https://bit.ly/3dR5zvY

#online qr code generator #best qr code generator #qr generator online

[melvinfellerstuff]

Melvin Feller MA Looks at the Key to Success with Real Estate

Melvin Feller MA Looks at the Key to Success with Real Estate  

Melvin Feller is known as “The Entrepreneur’s Mentor” because Melvin walks his talk. Melvin Feller has been there and done that and more importantly, Melvin Feller knows how to transfer the skillset for success.  This is main reason that he has been the sought after coach to hundreds of small business owners, entrepreneurs, Realtors, Real estate investors and service professional internationally. Melvin Feller’s main talent is to show you how the step by step process to build and enjoy a successful 6-figure plus business while having a balanced life.  Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree as an MBA.

 How did you get into real estate investing? Did you read a book on it? Was it a seminar? A meeting of some sort with speakers selling courses? Did you get really, really jazzed and pumped up by these simple ("not easy") concepts that were delivered to you in parable form from the stage by a charismatic speaker? Did you find yourself levitating to the back of the room, powerless but to slap down your plastic to buy the kits that were being sold there?

  I discovered this thing called creative real estate. Control without ownership, solving people problems, use your brain to buy property - not your cash. I had an acute appreciation for it, given my (expensive and painful) landlording odyssey, but it seemed even with all this wonderful knowledge, I was still in very much the same position I had been in when I first got started. The same position I stayed in, until I wised up, and the same position most real estate investors struggle with year after year because they do not know any better.

 That is "I know all this stuff inside and out. I know 100 different creative ways to buy a property. However, I have to suffer through things like lackluster advertising results, cold calling, talking to hundreds of testy uninterested people, and dead ends, before I even get the chance to talk to someone who is half way motivated to sell. This is a crossroads. The proverbial "brick wall" for most of us.

   Moreover, this brings up an important point. Possibly the most important point to really "get" here. Knowing how to find motivated sellers is far more important than knowing 100 different ways to buy a house. You see, your business (and therefore your life) is going to be frustrating, stressful and unfulfilling unless you find a way to create a non-stop flow of motivated sellers calling you, every day. Now, that is obvious isn't it? Well it cannot be that obvious because not many people actually do it. You see, what I am trying to point out here that there is a mental shift that needs to occur in your mind, a paradigm shift if you will, before you are going to make any serious money as a Real Estate Entrepreneur.

  Moreover, what is This Paradigm Shift?

  Instead of being a real estate entrepreneur, you must become a marketer of your real estate entrepreneurial business. That is what it comes down to. If you are in business, you need to make this shift in your thinking. Because no business is going to prosper, or be successful without many customers.

 Making this shift in thinking, in orientation, about who you are, focuses you on the singularly most important and financially rewarding aspect of business: marketing. The money is in marketing the business, not in doing the business. It may take a while before you really absorb this. You may have to think about it for a while before it really sinks in. Read it again. Take a minute. Once you change your thinking to accept that you are a marketer first and a Real Estate Entrepreneur second, you will finally be able to start making the kind of money you really want to make.

  Accepting your role as a marketer is the thing that will move you out of the rut of occasional mediocre deals and up into a level of sustained success that would not otherwise be possible for you. In addition, this is true of anyone in any other business or industry. The person or company who is most on top of their marketing, makes all the money, and dominates their market.

 Look at Domino's

 A marketing machine! Average pizza. However, aggressive marketers, and they virtually own their market. Look at Bill Gates (yes, I know, everyone cites BG). If you saw Accidental Empires though, a PBS documentary by Robert Cringley, you would know that Gates was just one of hundreds of fanatical "techies" who were trying to make this computer thing work somehow. With his astute positioning and relentless marketing, he rode Microsoft up over IBM.

   Of course, this does not mean you just market better and let your buying, negotiating and selling skills go to pot. You have to be the very best property buyer you can be and run your office well too. After all, your sellers and buyers deserve the very best treatment from you. However, more importantly, doing what you do so well that people cannot resist telling others about you, is the purest type of marketing in and of itself. Remember, it does not matter how good you are if you have no Motivated Sellers to talk to. Buying houses from Motivated Sellers with little or no money out of your pocket is the name of the game, and marketing is the thing that brings in the Motivated Sellers.

  OK, so, marketing. Fabulous! However, what does it mean? So far, it is just a word I have said 10 or twenty times, right. Well, there are two types of marketing people typically use.

   The traditional approach which, for want of any better way to go, usually involves just going out after randomly selected sellers. They have not been screened or qualified in any way. We just know they have a house to sell. We run up big phone and classified ad bills to get to talk to them. In communicating with them we usually talk to them about our financing, and how great it is, and if they will just sell to us their "problems" will go away. We do it manually; call by call, door by door. We talk about us, rather than inquire about them. We chase, they run. When we stop, the marketing stops. The cost per deal is very high, both financially and emotionally.

 The second approach is the targeted, low-cost, systemized, response-oriented approach that, through a variety of media (such as direct mail, lead generating classified ads, flyers, signs, radio, cable TV) states or implies a benefit for the seller, calls for a response from them, and positions you as "the solution" for the sellers who want that. The sellers step forward and select you. The marketing is automated, and it is an operating system that works whether you are there or not.

  I do not want to shock you, but we are not going with the first choice here. Pick up just about any book or course about real estate investing or creative real estate and you will find the choice #1 approach to finding motivated sellers, if any. What you won't find anywhere in those books or courses is the choice #2 approach, which is direct response marketing. Direct response marketing targets a specific group of most-desired prospects that you have defined as those most likely to respond to your offer (e.g. out-of-state homeowners, or expired listings), then it advertises for or delivers a message to only those people via a media (e.g. personal-looking hand-addressed #10 envelope mailed first class) that will reach them and get their attention. Once in front of the target, direct response delivers the following:

 1) benefit-telegraphic headline

 2) true marketing message

 3) offer, or offers

 4) reason to respond immediately

 5) precise response instructions and mechanisms

   With these five elements in place, you set yourself up to be called only by motivated, partially pre-sold sellers, continually, day after day! So now, you can be freed to do the most productive thing possible for you as an investor does: make offers to motivated sellers!

 I hope that you can see the picture here. Direct response marketing cuts your advertising expense in half. It shifts, sorts and screens your prospects so that only the most qualified and most motivated respond and get to talk to you.  In short, it allows you to make more while working less, with more predictability, consistency and control than anything else you could do to find deals. Is that something you want? Think about it. Is there anyone you know of who is buying and selling a boatload of houses every month?

 They are still doing a ton of business. Now, why is that? They do not offer sellers anything more outstanding than you do, do they? They certainly do not offer sellers anything more creative than you are capable of offering. They do not have any better phone manner than you do. Not at all. The only thing that very successful Real Estate Entrepreneurs do better than anyone else is create a reliable, consistent flow of motivated sellers calling in each day! That is it! That is the difference. So did you get the message here? I hope so. If you want to change your experience in real estate investing from one of anxiety, frustration and disappointment to working less and making more, you will make the change.

  Melvin Feller MA Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Group and Melvin Feller Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes and a positive outreach with grace and as a ministries. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.

#real estate investing #investing in real estate #money in real estate #the key to success in real estate #real estate investor #melvin feller in real estate #melvin feller #melvin feller business ministries group #business Group of Melvin Feller #Melvin feller in texas #melvin feller in Oklahoma #melvin feller ma #melvin feller ministries #melvin feller business group #entrepreneur #entreprenuership #entreprenuerial #success as an entrepreuner

[seeyouwednesdayrecords]

Anxiety Tripping at the Gates of the Merriweather Post Pavilion

A Guide to Going to Shows Alone

Leila Escandar

The conversation tends to follow this format:

Person A: “Who'd you go with?”

Me: “Uh, it was just me.”

Person A: “So, you went by yourself?”

Me: *Mentally* “That’s exactly what I just said.”  

Me: *Aloud* “Well, I booked my ticket when I saw they'd be here. When I found someone who'd want to go, too, it was already sold out. So, yeah, I went by myself.”

Maybe if I was having this conversation a few years ago, I would have been Person A. I’d react in mild surprise that someone would go to an event that involves a lot of waiting around in some form of a crowd- be it a door line, bar line, bathroom line, or general admission crowd-without company. Wouldn’t that be lonely or-even worse(!)- boring? Wouldn’t you feel uncomfortable standing around while groups of friends or couples chatted mindlessly around you in between sets? Wouldn’t you be aware that people might notice you standing there alone for so long you must not have come with anyone else?

                                                 ~~~

It was a deceivingly spring day circa mid-April in New York. I debated bringing a jacket for almost half an hour before leaving my apartment. I was going to a show at a venue that just opened in Greenpoint. If you don't know where that is, it's the a little east of Williamsburg, Brooklyn. An extension of the hip, but where trains don't go. Living in Florida for over a decade gave me the deviced notion that not everywhere offers coat check. Upon walking out of the door of my building, I knew skipping on a light spring jacket was a grave mistake, but I went with it & continued on my way to the train.

I got there late, hoping to not wait through the first band, but the line indicated it was the actual time of the doors opening (regardless of the advertised time on the ticket sale). I felt a combination of frustration that I'd have to watch the opener & contentedness that this new venue was already off schedule while I waited for the ID checkpoint, with the confusing April breeze under the sunshine trying to throw off my body temperature.

There was a massive line at the entrance bar I dreaded waiting in en route to the ladies room, noting the irony of passing coat check before entering the restroom. On my way out, I contemplated the line for the bar before forfeiting and pulling the door open to the performance area. There was already a large crowd in the general admission section, but the opener hadn't even started sound check.

I made my way to the line-lacking bar (ha-those suckers needing a drink upon entry), yards beyond the stage, and ordered my first of two overpriced craft beers before working my way stage right through the crowd, finding myself in notable visibility. I was surrounded by people well beyond my age (doubled even), a father & underage son, a mass of drunken couples, & one other solo flyer to show who I’d later find out was lost from his friend due to a dead phone, and would eventually let me score front row access due to my lack of height. When we talked after the encore, he asked if I came alone, and when I answered yes, his response was something along the lines of being impressed.

That’s the word he used: impressive. I’m forced to question that diction. Impressive is a word used to describe something that takes more of a skill level or a relentless amount of hard work, like being able to type 120 wpm or graduating from law school while working full time. Not something as easy as drinking a couple of beers and seeing a band you love.

                                                   ~~~

There is a subtle stigma about doing things, though, that are perceived as a social activity by yourself, that perhaps only exists as a projection onto others because of our own egos. As if humans weren’t already inherently vulnerable to the need of seeking approval for centuries upon millenniums, the invention of social media has only amplified that need to a crippling extent. Realistically, I can’t comment on if it was more of a social norm to attend a concert alone thirty years ago, but I can comment on the reactions I get now whenever I go see a band I like solo (see above).

My first experience of going to a concert alone was Cinco de Mayo 2015. We do Secret Santa in my family for the past 6 or so years, yet it never remains confidential. That year, one of my sisters had gotten me, and I told her all I wanted was a ticket to the Neutral Milk Hotel show in Orlando. It was allegedly  their last tour as a band (I say allegedly because to this day, July 1st, 2017, they have yet to perform together again, but you know how final tours go). I luckily got the ticket, expecting she'd buy herself one too. For whatever reason, she hadn't. No worry, Amanda would just go with me, but she waited just long enough to buy her ticket that it was already sold out by the time she took the initiative.

I remember the day of and my mom telling me to skip the two hour drive to Orlando, it wasn't worth it. Naturally I didn't take her advice, and shortly after was on 1-4, blaring “In An Aeroplane Over The Sea” in anticipation of my soon to be role of Jeff Mangum Fangirl Extraordinaire.

They did a Broadway-esque performance, i.e. no photography beyond authorized press or you’re getting kicked it out. It’s a unique protocol to enforce, and makes for an experience nothing short of spectacular.  It was an amazing night where nobody was attached to their phones. There was no video evidence we had attended. We were all living in the present and experiencing the music. It felt somewhat isolated without familiar company, but I made show friends. Leaving the venue with chills, I couldn’t imagine having missed that for the fear of going by myself.  

A few months later, I was living in Brooklyn, and if you didn’t already know, there is one major benefit of living in the city for any music lover: no musician skips it, despite the length of their tour. The uninhibited need to go see bands I love even though I had no friends here that had my music taste started slowly. First it was The Dig. I’d bought a ticket for myself, and on my way there, found a who friend decided to tag along with me.

Planning on going alone to that show, though, sparked a new level of comfort in going to see whoever I wanted to, because I wanted to. First it was Andrew Bird at Terminal 5, & shortly thereafter Peter, Bjorn,& John at Baby’s All Right. Then Conor Oberst for my (6th?) time. Then Beirut at Celebrate Brooklyn, & I already had a Ticketmaster gift card through work that'd cover the ticket.

It started feeling normal. A good friend’s brother’s band,The Fritz, at Arlene’s Grocery in September. A friend suggested Explosions in the Sky, & of course I was going, even if they hadn't asked. The Good Life announced their first tour in years. Conor Oberst released Ruminations and would be playing at Carnegie Hall a month later. Tickets were pricey, but I was going. The pattern is clearly becoming visible. It wasn’t as though I was forming the habit of going to see live music, but breaking the bad habit of believing I needed someone to go with me if I wanted to go.  It went from feeling normal to just being natural, and once something starts feeling familiar, you have a much better understanding of why.

Let’s  break down the three (most likely) reasons people attends concerts:

They want to  hang out with their friends under the influence of one/multiple substances and have an excuse to be loud/listen to loud music.

They want the bragging right’s of seeing a particular band, even though they only song they know by that band. (For instance, in 2015 a friend and I overheard a girl at a Modest Mouse concert in Florida saying she “drove all the way from North Carolina to see Modest Mice. I really hope they play ‘Floating Away’”). Alternatively, they are trying to see as many bands as possibly (again, mostly for bragging rights). This second tier of bragging rights is mostly those fest-people, you know, the hoopers, the fire-spinners, the burners, the wookies. The people who brag about seeing Kendrick and Alabama Shakes, but only saw 10 minutes of each of their sets at Bonnaroo.

They want to experience their favorite music live. They want a genuine experience that brings them closer to the music that has gotten them through the best and worst time of their lives.

If you are like me, you go to concerts for reason number 3 (although sometimes 1 & 2 can be fun, supporting perks of reason number 3). If you are going for reason number 3, the first few shows you go to alone do make you experience that unspoken judgement of attending them by yourself. The reason you keep going to shows alone is because of how you feel afterward.

I recently read an article that may have been pop psychology, but speculated that people who go see live music are overall happier than those who don’t. We are all just trudging through our days wondering what the meaning of it all is, searching for happiness, so why not take action toward doing things that  foster some form of joy. Even if that means going to shows alone...

#indiemusic

[simplemlmsponsoring]

New Post has been published on https://simplemlmsponsoring.com/attraction-marketing-formula/copywriting/are-your-free-trial-emails-making-you-look-desperate-heres-how-to-fix-that/

Are Your Free Trial Emails Making You Look Desperate? Here’s How to Fix That

A SaaS free trial starts like any relationship – full of hope, dreams and possibilities.

Your prospect starts a trial and gladly opens your welcome email.

She wonders what marvellous, mind-reading revelations she’ll find in your onboarding sequence. (“Please let this be the product that gets me!”)

But then… she takes a moment or two away from you. Other commitments take priority. Although she likes your product, she’s forgetting about you – she’s not sure you’re The One. Plus, her friend just started seeing this other SaaS product, and she’s all “It’s sooooo beautiful” and why should she get a beautiful UI? Suddenly your “rich with utility” app isn’t quite so appealing. I mean, it’s a nice product, but it doesn’t make her eyes all

.

She’s losing interest in you.

She hopes you’ll just kinda go away. In a week or two, communication will cease. It’ll be like you never even met.

But you’re not gonna let her go so easily. After all, she was into you, like, two weeks ago. Maybe she just needs to hear from you more. So you start:

Internet-stalking her with retargeting ads Pushing messages at her friends and social network followers Sending her passive-aggressive don’t-leave-me emails like this:

Desperate, right?

The two of you only saw each other briefly. What’s all this “fall in love” talk?

The 2 Act-of-Desperation Mistakes SaaS Teams Are Making with Free Trial Emails

SaaS teams believe a trial signup equals a storybook romance.

They want to solve your problems and encourage you to date them take the right step to grow your business. SaaS businesses aim to win your love and affection by giving giving giving giving. Because giving is good, right? Users like it. They keep saying they like it.

Nobody stays with you because you’re a big ol’ giver. Yet SaaS teams do all this giving. And 90% of their trial users dump them.

Without a word of explanation. Just… dumped. 

After working with dozens of startups on their email copy, here’s what I’ve identified as the core of what SaaS marketers are getting wrong.

1. Interest ≠ Infatuation

For some reason, SaaS teams are counting on the idea that a new user went into a sealed room with their free trial for 15, 30 or 60 days, and in that time they fell madly in love with the product. 

If The Bachelor taught us anything, it’s that even a sealed room can’t create love.

Except real life is not a sealed room.

The reality is your free-trial user signs up for a trial… and then heads back into a massive, endlessly explorable digital and physical world, filled with rock-climbing classes and sangria-on-patios and deadlines and Facebook and existing processes and people and shiny distractions and shitty distractions. Within minutes of signing up for a free trial, everyone but the most insanely passionate trial users (who require almost no work to convert anyway) will go off and do something else. That’s a problem.

2. And the solution isn’t in your data

Startups look to the data! Growth-stage businesses look to the data! Everyone looks to the data!

But when you do, you don’t find answers. You find that your funnel is, depressingly, more of an inverted pyramid than a wide-mouthed funnel. Your cohort analyses are… sad. All the data sliced all the ways leaves SaaS marketers like you scratching ye olde head, wondering what’s wrong and how to fix what’s wrong.

Because here’s the thing: your trial users are interested.

But here’s the problem: SaaS companies have yet to crack the nut on how to convert interest into 1) activation, 2) revenue and 3) retention.

And while you could try other things, emails are your least expensive and most reliable option. I’ve seen them in action. And the fixes are simple enough that you should address your emails immediately.

So here’s how to make your free trial emails turn interest into infatuation into income.

First: Accept that your free trial emails, as they are today, are almost certainly chasing away money

When I first started consulting, I considered using a CRM to keep track of my leads. So I signed up for a free trial of Pipedrive to see what it could offer me vs. using email.

And the welcome email wasn’t the best I’ve ever received, but I was hopeful Pipedrive could help me organize who was in my client pipeline.

(Sidenote: Pipedrive is just an example. Nothing but love for their team!)

Check out the welcome email they sent me:

The webinar sounded good.

Was it actually good? I dunno – I didn’t end up going to it.

Life got in the way. Plus, I couldn’t get Pipedrive to work with my inbox without upgrading to a paid plan. So before I knew it, I hadn’t learned a thing about Pipedrive, I hadn’t started using it, and my free trial was ending. As my free trial came to a close, they sent me the email I mentioned above. Here it is again:

Let me pause for a moment to scratch the surface of the problems with that email:

Can we get a name in there? You know my name. I used it to create my account. You should use it to talk with me. That’s your opening line? Really? “This is just to remind you.” Ugh. Q: “Want to continue with Pipedrive?” A: Nope. Only using voice at the bitter end of the email…

So, sure, something like 50,000 people are in love with Pipedrive. Those folks converted in spite of that email. Congrats to Pipedrive.

But because you and I care a great deal about converting more trial users, let’s work on writing a better email.

And let’s start by stepping back a bit…

Behind the scenes of selling software (before the cloud)

Before the Internet, you had 2 ways to buy software.

If you were a consumer, it came in an unwieldy box from an electronics superstore like Circuit City (RIP!). Not much salesmanship there. If you were a corporation, you had a designated sales person who got you to sign a multi-year contract. Meaning an individual could assess a company’s particular situation and use various tactics to get the sale.

Then web-hosted apps became a thing. And companies realized they could make more money if they charged customers on a subscription basis. Now users could access apps anywhere, as long as there was a browser and an Internet connection. Meaning companies could cut down on the costs associated with packaging and commissions to retail stores. And take home at least 60% of the gross margins. The venture capitalists showed up in droves.

But even before the cloud and free trials, the practice of giving away software for free has always been very popular. The only difference is the delivery mechanism. Remember the days of AOL CDs in your mailbox?

Seriously, how much did AOL spend on direct mail?

The marketing strategy for software has stayed constant, unfortunately. And here it is:

Hook users with a free sample, with the hope they like it so much they buy the full version.

Drug dealers have a similar marketing strategy. There’s just one difference. Drug dealers don’t hope you’ll like their product. They know.

The SaaS marketer’s strategy is filled with hope.

Hope is what you defer to when you can’t science the shit out of something. Hope is what you defer to when you don’t know what you’re doing. Hope kills businesses, ends sales, frustrates marketers – and frustrates prospects. Hope isn’t for closers. Yet it’s at the core of your acquisition strategy.

SaaS marketing isn’t hope marketing – those free trial emails have gotta close the sale

Consultant Alan Weiss describes four reasons someone might NOT buy your product:

No need – “It’s a neat tool, but it’s not necessary for what I’m trying to accomplish.” No money – “I can’t afford it because I’m a startup” or “I have too many other financial commitments more pressing than yours.” No urgency – “This problem you’re solving for me is necessary, but it’s not my top priority right now.” No trust – “I don’t believe you have my best interests in mind.”

No need, no money, no urgency – what’s the 4th reason people don’t buy? via @copyhackersClick To Tweet

Weiss is talking about winning six-figure management consulting contracts, but he claims it works for any product or service you’re selling. And he admits to flying halfway across the world to close a deal if it means overcoming one of these objections. Few SaaS startups are in a place to fly eight time zones over just to close a deal. I mean, you’re selling an app for $25/month.

Instead of frequent flyer miles to solve your conversion problems, you’ve got basically 2 things: a name and an email address. You’ve gotta work with those 2 resources – and not much more.

So here’s a killer opportunity you may not be leveraging as much as you could.

It’s the Trial Ending email, and here’s how you can make it rock.

Here are 3 easy steps to close better with your free-trial-ending emails

To persuade trial users to pay for your SaaS product, you should use the trial-ending emails to:

Emphasize what the user will miss out on by not upgrading to paid. Contrast the outcomes of upgrading vs. not upgrading. Provide a single call-to-action.

Here’s what I mean…

1: Emphasize what the user will miss out on by not upgrading to paid

There’s nothing that motivates people more than telling someone what they’ll miss out on. In psychology, it’s called loss aversion.

So ask yourself:

What will users miss out on if they don’t upgrade to a paid plan?

To give you a few ideas, think of the key features in your product. But instead of naming them off in the email, turn them into benefits that change the way the user was doing something before.

The benefits of the feature should outweigh the cost of the product. And be painful enough that a user has to stop and think, “Will I miss out if I don’t grab my credit card?”

To demonstrate, let’s look at this email promoting Sumo Pro. Although a cart abandonment email, Sumo does a good job of telling me what I’ll lose if I don’t buy Sumo Pro soon.

Notice how Sumo stacks the benefits of upgrading to the Pro plan. They could have just said I’ll miss out on the heat map features. Instead, they point out that without Pro, I won’t know how engaged visitors are on my website.

And if a prospect is using their website as a way to capture leads…they’re likely to believe Sumo is THE solution to their conversion problems.

Plus, there’s nothing like a 10% discount to entice on-the-fence users to sign up in the next 24 hours. Not necessary, but it’s something extra for the user to lose out on.

2: Contrast the outcomes of upgrading vs not upgrading

Mid-century ad executive Rosser Reeves (creator of the value prop!) was finishing up lunch in Central Park with a friend. They came across a homeless man sitting on a bench with a sign. The sign read:

“I am blind.”

Reeves bet his friend that he could make the homeless fellow more money by changing the words on his sign. With his revisions, the sign now read:

“It is springtime, and I am blind.”

The result? The homeless man’s panhandling success increased and Reeves won his bet.

But why?

Sometimes missing out on benefits isn’t enough. It might be a proven fact that your product’s feature has helped others. But sometimes it’s not enough to persuade the skeptical trial user. So you need to change their mindset. You need to illustrate what would happen to the user if they choose to pay for your product… and how life would be if they didn’t.

It wasn’t enough for prospects to know that the homeless man was blind. After all, only a few of them dropped coins into his bowl.

But because Reeves mentioned springtime, prospects suddenly realized the homeless man couldn’t see the blue skies, the sunshine and blooming flowers in Central Park. And for that reason, they were compelled to give him money when they would have ignored him.

Here’s how to use contrast in your trial-ending email

To apply this in your trial ending email, consider how your product can transform your user’s outlook on business… or how terrible their life would be without your product.

Or in the words of Aaron Orendorff, ask yourself one of the following questions:

What heaven will this email deliver my subscriber unto?

OR

What hell will this email save my subscriber from?

For example, here’s a trial ending email from Honeybadger, an error monitoring service for Ruby apps.

It’s cool that Honeybadger logged 220 error notices. But think about why engineering teams bother with error monitoring in the first place.

Plus, reminding the user that they now have to pay to track bugs? Come on. There’s so much hell this app could save a user from! Though the majority of software errors are a nuisance, there are ones that are downright catastrophic.

 Let’s look at the version I rewrote below.

Any software developer worth a damn would do their best to avoid writing buggy software. Plus, an unscheduled meeting with high-level managers to discuss how your work caused weekend profits to plummet? If that’s not your idea of hell, I don’t know what is.

3: Provide a single call-to-action to upgrade

What’s the next step a user needs to take to upgrade from trial to paid?

Dan Pink calls this an off-ramp. You may recall Pink’s study of a college food drive: explicit directions prompted more donations from groups of individuals who had never donated to a food drive than groups of people who had a history of giving.

Translation? You can convince the most resistant people to do something if you make it clear what it is that you want them to do.

You can convince the most resistant people to do X if you make it clear HOW to do X, via…Click To Tweet

Mulesoft’s trial-ending email doesn’t make it clear what I should do next. Take a look:

Problems:

My trial is over. If I wanted to watch a webinar, I should have seen it before this email. Now you want me to read a case study? I have to talk to a human being to extend my free trial? Pass…

Compare this with DocuSign’s email, where it’s obvious what they want me to do: Upgrade my account.

And they do an excellent job of reminding the user what they’ll miss out on, which is making it easy for others to do business with them.

Think about the number of steps your prospect has to go through to convert / actually pay for your SaaS. If you add six links to your email asking the user to do different things, they’re going to get confused. And maybe start to wonder if paying for the product is the right thing to do. And while gaining Likes on Facebook or Follows on Twitter might be a nice-to-have… your goal is to move that trial user into a paying customer – so don’t lose sight of that.

Two Ways To Get a Response From Passive Trial Users

What about those trial users who don’t convert even after you’ve optimized your trial-ending email copy?

Keep in mind that these non-converters have already spent time interacting with your app in some way. They have an opinion. If you’ve written the most persuasive trial ending email and they STILL haven’t converted, send them a trial expired email.

Here are two ways to go about it:

Ask for advice. Get them to do something (that doesn’t require money)

Lemme show you now.

1: Ask for advice

If you never ask, you’ll never know what keeps your prospect from buying, and you’ll never figure out their level of interest.

According to Robert Cialdini, if you ask a person for advice on what you could do better, it puts them in:

“A merging state of mind, stimulating a linking of one’s own identity with another party.”

Translation: If you can get a person to think about the ways they would improve their business, it creates a bond. The bond may not result in becoming a paying customer, but you could possibly win them over by other means.

When free trial users finish up with Autopilot, Autopilot initiates a customer feedback survey that is explicit about how long it takes to complete: 60 seconds.

Thanks to this study, Autopilot found out:

“27% of our expired trialists don’t buy because they’re still evaluating their options. Us asking both nudges them back into the product and gives us insight into conversion barriers. It’s a win-win.”

A 60-second survey might not solve your business problems, but it can give you the motivation to undertake more in-depth customer research. If you want a technique for that, take a look at the Jobs-to-Be-Done framework.

2: Get them to do something (that doesn’t require money)

So what if they didn’t buy right now? It doesn’t mean they will never buy it. There are plenty of no-cost ways for them to engage with you, too. Neil Patel suggests other forms of action, like reading a blog post or replying to an email.

The call-to-action doesn’t always need to be Upgrade Now. But it’s important to get the prospect to commit to taking smaller steps that could lead to an eventual purchase.

Ruben from Bidsketch does this by sending blog content to his free trial users who don’t end up converting:

Bidsketch might not be the proposal software solution for you right now, but they want you to become a better entrepreneur. So go on, read their blog post on emotional intelligence. The more you read from them, the more you might grow to like them – and people ultimately do business with people (and businesses) they like.

How to fix your 90% free trial failure rate

You could have all the ad money in the world and still trying to figure out your trial-to-paying conversion rate – when all you may need to do is rewrite your trial ending emails.

It’s a no-brainer task that you can knock out within a few hours of reading this. To recap, here’s what to add to your writing to-do list…

In your trial-ending email, be sure to:

Emphasize the benefits the user would miss out on. Contrast the outcomes. Provide a single call-to-action.

For your trial-expired email, you can:

Ask them for advice. Get them to do something else (that doesn’t require money).

And keep this in mind: If users sign up for your trial, there is a little part of them that wants to make your product work.

So choose your (email) words wisely. Because it could be the thing keeping your SaaS product from turning interest to infatuation to income.

~Sophia

The post Are Your Free Trial Emails Making You Look Desperate? Here’s How to Fix That appeared first on Copywriting for startups and marketers.

Read more: copyhackers.com

#copywriting #COPYWRITING

[lifesinterest]

How to Start a Journal for Cheapos

I’ve always wanted to write this little (life changing) tip.

I’ve been looking at journals/bullet journals/planners on tumblr, instagram and pinterest for quite a while because they’re so aesthetically pleasing! I follow like 20+ blogs because they are sooo nice to look at. The color schemes, the handwriting, the stickers, the washi tape, their clean white backgrounds - it makes everyone so jealous. BUT AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!

Respect to those who make their journals/notes and their edits so pretty because they’re honestly eye candy. But their community is so small, you know? Not everyone can post pretty pics of their notes and actually have time for other important stuff (like actually study and not take 50 pics and spend 10+ minutes on each pic to edit, in addition to liking everything from other studyblrs). 

That’s why I’m gonna give you some life hacks(?) for those who want to start a journal that's aesthetically pleasing without having to empty your wallet to buy the exact same materials they use. Please note, this is more of a Canadian hack because the US dollar is killing us.

The Book

The most important part of this hack is the book. Many people use the Happy Planner, Moleskine, Leuchtturm1917 (I had to Google the spelling), or any journal that’s dotted/grid. That’s too expensive for me ($20-30+) and other dotted journals are like…$15 CAD for 60 pages. Where’s the bargain there? I mean, sure dotted journals are cool but do you really need the dotted journal? I went down that route at first so I printed out my own dotted journal using my computer and printer. At first I was pretty excited, but when I started to write across the page, I just felt like the dots were confining me to where and how big I could write. I placed my dots so that it matched the measurements of any regular dotted notebook (so I could feel cool) but it didn’t work out like I wanted to. Keep in mind that there are days where my handwriting is excellent and others times where it just looks like my younger brother decided to scribble in it. You need small handwriting and if you write outside the dotted box, your inner perfectionist comes out and you just feel like your whole life is ruined because you couldn’t keep yourself inside the line dot. 

I’ve made my own notebooks (which I still use) and bought a couple others to find which works for me. I find that a blank pages work best. I have two DIY notebooks and the one without the any lines/dots is basically at the end of its use. I can sketch, write notes - basically anything and it doesn’t look bad. The other one on the other hand, I have to keep myself inside the box and it just drives me crazy when one stroke goes over the line. I also bought a Muji 2017 planner at the end of December. It was ~$12 + tax and it was on sale. It was a smart buy for a simple weekly planner but you know what would be a smarter buy? The same planner layout from Dollarama for $4+tax. Why did I buy something from Muji you ask? Because the pens are cheapish and good quality and there was a sale on planners (duh). I think Muji stores have sales at the end of the year or around a large holiday where notebooks are on sale. I haven’t bought one so I can’t say for sure about the quality but I know for sure the quantity does not match with the expensive price (for Canadians). The planner I bought is not recycled paper and is of good quality.

(http://empfire.info/my-favourite-planner-from-muji/)

My other notebook is one I just bought and I’m in love. Guess where I bought it from? Dollarama! For $3.50 + tax. I’ve been eyeing it for a month and when I tried to look for it at a different Dollarama, it wasn’t there! I freaked out so I went back where I first saw it and there was only one left (phew)! It’s labeled as a sketchbook but I originally planned for it to be a journal. Also, if you do decide to buy a blank journal, I recommend sketchbooks because they come in different color, thickness and texture of paper; it all depends on what you want. 

This is what it looks like. And obviously, I didn’t edit it because AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT (with my dusty ass table). I don’t know if the paper is recycled or not because it doesn’t say but it sure is recyclable! There’s no coils or anything, just a piece of fabric and a wad of glue that basically holds everything together. The cover is chipboard. And I love it! It’s got that recyclable paper look so I can be cool and say I’m saving the world. The paper quality is pretty thick. I tested the paper with a Sharpie and it didn’t bleed through though you could see it from the other side. I’m not too sure it will hold a watercolor portrait but it does feel like it won’t bleed through if you use it sparsely. So for those in Canada, I highly recommend this book as something on your To Buy list - good quality and quantity for a cheap price. 

Writing Utensils

The second most important must have for a journal because what’s the point of a notebook if you can’t write in it? There are many out there that your favorite studyblrs use: Mildliners, Muji pens, Staedler Fineliners, Microns, etc… But hey, guess what? You don’t need any of those! Those are all just over hyped. You can totally go old school and use Crayola!. I recently bought a pack of 25 Crayola Supertips for $3 + tax. And that my friends, is a steal. They usually retail for ~$7. I once saw a pack of 50 for $3 in a flyer which is twice the deal. And honestly, with Mildliners, I don’t understand what the hype is all about except for the fact that everyone uses them…because everyone else uses them (y’know what I’m sayin’?). It’s basically a double ended marker retailing for $7-8 for a pack of 5. Where’s the bargain? As for Muji pens…I have no complaints. I’m lucky enough to discover it and live close to a Muji store. Their gel pens are the only ones that don’t stop writing in the middle of a word. Don’t you hate that? I only go for the dark blue color though because I feel like regular ballpoint pens do such an amazing job at…you know…writing! I go to college, and as all you college students know, there are free pens everywhere and some of them are really good with pigment and the smooth flow. ATM, I’m using a Paper Mate pen I got from Tylenol (I swear). The only complaint I have for Muji Pens is that it smudges real easily. I currently use a dark blue color in 0.7 if you were wondering. I feel like that smaller the size of the pen is, the more unstable my hand writing is. I write quite big. 

I also see the Pilot erasable highlighter around in pastel. I was tricked into buying these suckers and honestly…I may or may not regret it. I regret it because they don’t function very well. I looked into reviews and everything and they all say they’re amazing with a 5 star rating but I would say so otherwise. I bought it for the functionality of it during school instead of just journal use. I highlight a sentence I wrote but then I go a bit too far and when I do this cool pen twirl thing to use the other end to erase it…the ink smudges. It freaking smudges and guess what? The ink is NOT erasable. The highlighter basically erases its pigment but leaves a nasty ink smudge on my paper. Why…did nobody talk about this? I’m pretty darn sure it’s not only me. The only reason I bought it was because I don’t like the neon colors (I also bought it because it looked cute). This highlighter didn’t work very well (it died on me the first month) so I started looking at other highlighters and found something called a gel highlighter usually sold and on sale by Sharpie. When I did some research though, I found that it had the exact same look as a pencil crayon or even a crayon. It was just a neon color. So, I pulled out my 64 pack of Crayola crayons I didn’t use since grade 5 and used it to highlight my notes and can I tell you how pretty it looks? Since your paper have different grains, the crayon looks different when drawn on the paper (how much white space is covered). So my recommendations are Crayola Supertips and crayons. I don’t have a recommendation for fineliners but there are many alternatives that do not cost $7-10. 

Stickers and Washi Tape Decoration

Ohh the glory. Don’t they look so nice when they’re color coordinated? Well, honestly though, AIN’T NOBODY GOT TIME FOR THAT!!!! How do you find the time in your schedule to sit down for an hour (or more?) and plan your week with stickers and washi tape? And I’ve seen videos of planners who “switch” to the bullet journal because they don’t have time to plan their life with stickers and washi tape anymore. I mean, for sure it’s nice to look at but do you really want to spend your time doing it? For you creative people out there, could you plan your week in one day and not touch your stickers again for the entire week? I don’t think so. I know I would be rearranging stickers, and adding additional ones throughout the week because my hands won’t sit still. Plus, the nice stickers are expensive (especially from Etsy). Sorry but I don’t have any sticker alternatives. If I did, I wouldn’t share them because I wouldn’t even use it anyway. I’m a sticker hoarder so there is no way I’m using any stickers in my books. As for washi tape, you can’t go wrong especially if you buy it on ebay. The only thing that can go wrong is being a washi tape hoarder. Some have drawers and drawers of washi tape and I’m like…really, girl? Really? I only have 2 tubes from Michaels because it was BOGO free and I feel that it’s plenty. So, as for decoration, I recommend you skip the stickers and just use the washi tape. The tape can go a long way and it has multiple creative uses. 

The Cheapest Alternative

Almost everyone has a phone or tablet. Well, guess what? There are a bunch of free apps that allow you to write down journal entries. If you just want to look at a bunch studyblrs, studygrams and Pinterest posts like me, just write your entry on your phone before you decide whether or not you’ll actually be able to continuously write in your journal. Again, this is a beginner’s guide to journaling, planning, etc. So, there is no need to go expensive right away - you may never know if you like it or not and if you’ve found your own writing style. Just buy a cheap notebook first before heading out to buy a $30 notebook from Moleskine. You have all the time in the world, so be patient and find out what works for you!

#studyblr #journals #bullet journal #cheap monday #guide for cheapos #stationary review #journaling for beginners #mypost

[topicprinter]

Starts in 2011. I went to a shopping center which had a food court for lunch and as I was walking in I saw a older man at a Kiosk selling a Jewelry cleaner. He dragged me in and he had this whole nifty little sales pitch.I'm a sucker for a good sales person, and he was good. You ever seen videos of that famous potato peeler sales man in NYC? This was the same type of system but with a liquid jewelry cleaner. Anyway I bought a bottle of this stuff and off I went.I took it home to my then girlfriend soon to be wife and showed it to her. She liked it, and it worked really well on her jewelry.A week or so passes I go back for lunch to the area again, same man is there. We chit chat for a bit. He seemed like a nice guy. This repeats the following week, this time he invites himself to lunch with me. We get to talking, he mentions how he has some bills and wants to a bulk sale.At the time I was trying to get my girlfriend to do something productive. Long story short as I feel this might be a long post I bought out his supply for $750. This included the solution, the bottles, the stuff he used, and a sunday of learning how to mix/sell/etc.Lets go to retailI did some thinking and some looking. I didn't really want to sign up for a Kiosk somewhere as I didn't want to commit that hard to this product. We had 3 sizes 100 ml, 250 ml, 500 ml. So we found some flea markets and you just had to pay for the table and setup and sell.So we started doing the flea market scene, and we sold product. We made money, but it was a lot of work for what we made. Also another thing dawned on me.This shit lasted forever. The 500 ml bottle was $14.99 the 250 ml was $9.99 and the 100 mll was $4.99. The issue being if you bought a 500 ml bottle you'd basically spend years going through that bottle. So as we'd sell the product we were basically eliminating customers.After talking to the old man, his trick to success was traveling. But that wasn't on the table.So we shelved the idea, by this point we had basically recouped the $750 (I actually don't know if we did...but it would have been close)6 months passesLife goes on, 6 months (or so passes) when one day my friend invites me out to dinner and drinks with a friend. Guys night out.Turns out his friend is a general manager at a local privately owned jewelry store. We get to talking about business and he talks about how he's frustrated by customers wanting discounts and how often times the only way he can close the deal is by offering a discount.This sparks an idea in my head, but its not really fleshed out and I don't want to pitch it right now so I ask him "If I had a way for you to give out less discounts would you be interested in hearing me out?" he said "Yea sure I'd hear you out" we exchanged info.Flesh out the ideaSo I have a background in sales and marketing and have been through quite a bit of sales training and one thing I learned at one point was that gift giving can be a way to head off discounting a product. A $5-$10-$25-$50 gift can sometimes present more value to a customer then say a $500 discount.So I have this jewelry cleaner, that honestly I'm not interested in retailing. The fact is this cleaner...is not that special so its not like I have some protect-able product here. However what if repackage this product as a gift for Jewerly stores to give to customers?I find some cute 30 ml bottles, I find some nice microfiber clothes. small ones. I also find a little package I can put all of this into.All told I can buy enough (minimum order which could make 200 sets) bottles, microfibers, and containers and my cost per package would be right around $2.50So I buy everything and I produce 50 little "Gift Packages" of a Jewelry cleaner, a microfiber cloth, all in a nice little bag. I print up some labels and title them "Jewelry Cleaner"I then do some googling, pull up some articles talking about gift giving in sales basically dig for proof that my idea WORKS.I call up my new friend the general manager and tell him I got a way and an idea for him to get higher margins by offering less discounts and I want to show him.The MeetingGoing into the meeting I had a targeted price point of $5 with a min purchase of 50.I go into the meeting I start by showing him the cleaner. I show him how it works, how shiny and pretty it makes everything. I then show him my evidence how gift giving can be used to counter discount requests. And I walk him through a situation.Customer comes in, $3,000 piece of jewelry. Customer says he's going pay $2,500 you counter with "I'm sorry sir we are quite firm on the price, however what can provide you is this free jewelry cleaning kit so you can keep your investment pristine" (Pitch was better then this)If a customer doesn't ask for a discount, give it away as a gift as a thank you.He asked me how much I said min order is 50, $5 a kit. He counters saying $3 (I'm not about to make .50 cents a package) I counter with $5 and I'm firm he goes "$4" I go "lets slip the difference at $4.50"We shake hands he pays me $225 and I hand over 50 kits.3 Weeks laterGeneral manager calls me, says he loves the kits his sales rep have almost given them all away and he believes they are working. He works another 150 kits and wants to know how fast I can get them to him. I say sweet, need a week to deliver.He then tells me he doesn't want my crappy art work on the bottle, but his own brand. I know a graphic artist (the one I used the first time) can take his logo/print it on stickers and we will put his brand on the bottles. We get his logos printed, and it was basically a straight pass through (whatever the cost for the stickers was he paid)2 weeks later (it took awhile to get the stickers) we deliver 150 kits.RestockI see a real business here. I got a product, I got a customer, I got a system setup. I do some more research buy spending about $1,000 on bottles, packages, and microfibers I can get my cost of a package down to about $1.65 if I remember correctly.I do the order, I then put together a little outline of a power point with stats and examples and research on a one pager (back and front) with my contact info on why my product is a great product for jewelry stores to give away for free.Time to hit the streetsI took a week off from work, I loaded up my car with 500 packages, I had another 1,000 packages ready/in production at home. With more capacity available.I map out all my jewerly stores in my area and go door knocking, after a week of busting my ass I have a bunch of contacts.I cold call those contacts until I can get meetings. I scheduled about 14 meetings. Most of them happened, most stores bulked at my offering however I picked up 3 clients all who purchased around 100 kits each. At an avg price of $4.50-$5.50. (I Had created a price sheet, encouraging larger orders)Lets reviewI had 4 different stores ordering from me, each spending around $500 (at the time I was guessing) a month with me. With an avg margin of 65%-70% (not factoring in my labor of course) Basically a really solid side hustle for me, I was bringing anywhere from $1,000-$2,000 a month and my then girlfriend was doing most of the production and I was handling the business side of things + delivery.5 months passesI had added another store on my client list, I was now bringing in about $2k a month when my first client called me up. Told me every year all the jewelry stores in the region would come together for a little conference and they would also have vendors come show of their products and pitch their ideas. It was $5,000 for a table.$5,000 was a serious chunk of change to consider, but the way I figured it the business had funded it and it was worth the risk.PrepI had flyers with my research (basically my one pager) I had created before and after pictures of dirty jewelry/after cleaning and I had gone to 3 of my clients and got them to agree to record a quick testimonial on what my product had meant for their bottom line I also got them to agree to be a reference for any store that wanted to pick their brain on my product, how they used it, and what it meant to their sales. (In return I bribed them with 50 free packages)ConferenceConference comes around, never had any clue we had so many jewelry dealers show up. I actually got quite a bit of interest in my product. One guy in particular wanted to retail my product online but wanted slightly larger bottles. I also had a grand total of 20+ stores tell me they wanted to sit down and see if my product would be a good fit.ResultsOne very large order from a guy who wanted 5000 100 ml bottles he plan was to retail my cleaner (I'm fine with this) I agreed to sell him the bottle whole sale for $2.25 (my cost was just under $1)11 stores agreed to buy my packages, this was a grand total of 1,500 packages.All in all I had a $2,000 monthly steady stream from my clients before this. I had one large order for just over $11k and 11 smaller orders for a combined business of $7,125.Time to get a shop and an employee and legitimize this businessI worked with a lawyer and we created an LLC to protect myself, I then rented out a small shop and I hired one of my wifes friend to help us out with production. We setup a system of production and started knocking out orders. It took us some time to deal with the influx of orders but we eventually got it under control. We also had logistical issues with printing of labels/getting them on which I worked with my printer I used to solve.Basically we would charge a one time $500 fee if they wanted order their own logo and we'd print up 1,000~ labels for them. We'd then charge an extra .15 cents a package for every package after that for packages with their own branding on it. Very rarely did we even have to reprint the brand labels.A year inI had a "factory" about $6k in income per month, and a reliable "employee" we could call in to work for us when we needed it. After every thing was said and done were clearing anywhere from $2k-$2.5k a month.Growth planMy now wife and I sat down and we talked about growth, we had some fixed costs that weren't changing for the foreseeable future and honestly we would like to one day grow this business to something we could support ourselves on very comfortably and had a goal of about $15k-$20k a month in profit.Our big hope was the guy who ordered 5k orders. The issue was our product didn't sell that well for him and he told us he had no intentions of repurchasing from us. However what was working was the jewelry stores giving away our product for free (and we later found out a FEW of them were retailing our product but not many) so the direction the company had to take was to focus on what worked, get jewelry stores on board to give our product away for free.We created a referral program where every min order a jewelry store referred us to resulted in us giving them a courtesy 25 free packages on their next delivery. Over time we grew our network to 20~ stores.Another year passes, conference time againConference came up, we signed up again. This time we had an even more powerful presence. Long story short we ended up with about 35-40 stores ordering from us monthly. After doing a lot of digging. I felt we had reached a point where our current logistics limited us.LogisticsWe were in a funny space, we were bringing between $10k-$15k in revenue with a net profit of somewhere around $6k-$7k. In order for us to grow we had to get out of the region. The challenge was I made a really good living at my day job and would have to leave that job to really grow the business. However we were having the conversation about possibly having kids, and so forth the stablity of 9 to 5 was attractive and at the end of the day putting $6k-$7k which was partly a part time job was an attractive offering.So we made the choice to sit on the business, add clients where we could but maintain our customer base.Part of me wishes I'd have quit my job and gone into this full time...but decisions are decisions.Relationship goes on the rocksKeep this section breif, after about 2 yrs our relationship was on the rocks. My job was sucking. I was in a bad head space. This affected our business, we lost some clients because of poor service on our part. It didn't take losing many clients to have our fixed costs to have a huge negative impact on our margins.I wish I could tell you things improved but they didn't. We ended up getting divorced and through neglect the business fell apart. My ex wife had a lot of influence in the area, and I made the decision to pack my bags and move.That was the end of that.Details that I can remember on the businessI sourced my bottles, microfiber, and bags (that I put everything in) on alibaba or whatever that site is called (you guys know what I'm talking)The cleaner that I used was a mixture of something called purple something (It's been a few years, and honestly we bought it like twice) that was the base concentrate we would then mix it with water and window cleaner, now windex cause I believe we needed window cleaner with ammonia/or other scents in it.The cleaning solution itself...honestly wasn't all that impressive all things said. I mean it worked, but it wasn't revolutionary by any means of the imagination. And the cleaning solution itself was "almost free" a small amount of the purple cleaner with a couple bottles of window cleaner would make like 5 gallons. Per bottle cost came in at like 1-2 cents for the solution. Most expensive part of the package was as followsI also found it very cost effective to order the window cleaner in bulk, at first we were buying straight up from the store but we saved a pretty penny by buying in bulk.BottlePackage (bag, which we would change at store request/etc)microfiberSolution was a non-cost consideration (basically it was so minor I didn't even think about it)

#/r/entrepreneur #reddit

[goldeagleprice]

Letters to the Editor: January 21, 2020

In Defense of the U.S. Mint

I just finished reading the letters in the Dec. 17 issue of Numismatic News and all the bashing of the mint once again.  I do not always agree with what the mint does all the time but it seems like it is a business no different from any other. I may be wrong but a business can choose to do what it likes and produce as many of an item as it wants.

I have been collecting since I was about 15 when my grandpa would put a quarter in my hand after school and I would take it home and put it in my collection. I got out of collecting for a time when times got tough but never lost my interest in the hobby.  Beginning in 1998, I decided to start collecting again and have since attained all the collection I had before and everything since. I love the hobby but, unfortunately, I cannot collect everything I would like to. This is the case of such coins as the 2019 Reverse Proof or the 1995-W silver eagle. Not everyone will be able to own it.  Not everyone has a 1955 double die cent either.  Get over it.

By the way, I told my son of the sale of the 2019s and we were both logged in at noon when it went on sale. We both had it in our cart. We had to refresh over six times before entering our payment and, yes, we both received one. We do not work for or buy for these premium sellers people talk about. Mine will be in my possession until after I am gone and I doubt if my wife will ever sell because she loves the design more than anything.

Jeff Sims Fenton, Mo.

  W-Quarter Find

I just had to share this. I’m a long-time collector and a long-time reader of your publication. Anyway, my wife brought home a roll of Idaho quarters and when I started going through them, I was surprised to see they were all P’s. Living in Montana we get nothing but D’s. As I was going through them I was really surprised to find three W’s. I read the article about the finds in the last issue and figured all were sent east of the Mississippi. Anyway, thanks for letting me vent my excitement.

B. Mock Address Withheld

  U.S. Mint Fail

I have ordered mint and proof sets for over 50 years. I was sending in orders by mail up until a couple of years ago. They only take orders by phone or computer now so I had my daughter order me three mint sets that come with free pennies according to the flyer they mailed me. She ordered them online in August to be sent to me. After more than a month, I never received the mint sets or pennies. She checked the order and saw that it was never sent to shipping. She called the mint and they told her they would have to fill out a form for never receiving an order.

After not hearing anything from them or receiving the order, she called them again and received no real explanation. They just sent money back to her account. Needless to say, I will not be ordering anything from the Mint again.

Robert Guenther Chicago, Ill.

  Double Date 1992 Lincoln Cent

While looking through a jar of pennies that my sister-in-law accumulated, I came across a 1992 Lincoln cent with a doubled date. I’m wondering if there are others out there.

Randy Wolf Pennsylvania

  JFK Medal

I just received the 3 in. bronze JFK medal that I ordered from the U.S. Mint. The designer’s last name and the date at the bottom of the bust are strongly doubled. This may be of interest to others who own an example. The Mint’s 3 in. bronze medals are beautiful works of art.

Dan Bubalo Jr. Brainerd, Minn.

  Error Find

I found an error cent about a month ago. I have a good friend that is the CEO of the San Diego Air and Space Museum, (Jim Kidrick). I was at his office a few months ago and they had a large bag of foreign coins that they get from a couple of different places in the museum. One for donations and one of those things that you put a coin in and it circles around while going down the drain.

As I was sorting them out for the museum, I found the error cent featured below. My only guess is that someone from around the world knew that they were going to the states and thought they’d take this with them, and then donated it to the museum.

It’s a weak strike different planchet cent. I guess the Philadelphia mint was minting coins for another country and it somehow got mixed up in there. I’m not sure what to do with it. I suppose I could submit it to a grading service.

Norm Walker San Diego, Calif.

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