Sage and her BOALT Frisbee

BOALT would like to take the time to introduce our newest fan, Sage. She couldn’t contain herself when she got the Frisbee from our BOALT schwag package.

Sage, the Boxer, belongs to our friend Jason Tracy of Fresh Input Web Solutions. As we are breaking into the automotive industry with our top-secret project, Jason has been a tremendous asset to our team.

Want to know more about Sage and Jason?
Follow them on Twitter: @Boxerlicious @Freshinput

Howard Johnson Hotel in Flagstaff, AZ

Remember when that used to mean something? In today’s world of business customer service seems to get lost.

I recently took a road trip from Texas to California. On the way I made a reservation at the Howard Johnson in Flagstaff. (It was inexpensive and at the half way point so don’t judge me too much. I’m not rich.) I broke down in Albuquerque, spent the night and had to cancel my room in Flagstaff.

The hotel was very friendly. They canceled the room and told me that I wouldn’t be charged. A few days later I was charged. I called the hotel and after a quiet discussion, that became very heated, I was told that it had been too busy that night and the hotel clerk didn’t cancel the room and didn’t remember that I called.

I was asked why I didn’t get a cancellation number. Many of you reading this are probably asking the same thing. The answer is I trusted the guy on the other end of the phone. Now you’re shaking your head again because that was my second mistake. Me, the customer, didn’t take down a number. It of course is my fault. It has nothing to do with a hotel clerk not doing his job.

So I’m at a standstill with them. Howard Johnson corporate won’t do anything because of their franchise agreement they are protected from any responsibility and don’t seem to care really.

In the end it’s less than $75 but during all of my conversations I was the one who was blamed. It’s times like this that I wish I was a songwriter and that Hojo had broken my guitar. Then I could write a catchy tune like Dave Carroll.

There are a lot of businesses who still provide great customer service but for the most part the adage “The Customer is Always Right” is a dusty old relic of a world long gone when businesses took pride in the services they provided.

This blog has talked about how social media can be a great way to get your brand noticed and also warned about the power of social media in the hands of a disgruntled customer but the thing that we forget about and what most people talk about is customer service. There’s no better advertising than word of mouth.

Social media and amazing interactive websites can only carry your business so far. You have to remember that customers are the life-blood of your business. So take a little extra time and ensure that your customers leave happy even if you happen to lose a little money.

In the end that customer will remember and they will say good things about your business. If you treat them poorly they write blogs about it.

I’m not saying to avoid the Howard Johnson hotel on Lucky Lane in Flagstaff, AZ, I’m just saying if you happen to be in Flagstaff and you’re looking for a place to stay, remember this blog.

Tell us about some of the bad customer service experiences you’ve had in the comments below.

Embracing the green space in today’s eco-friendly world has proven to be an overwhelming success for my client and friend, Shawn Burst of Jeriko House.  Every bit of this story is like a marketing fairy tale.  Hug a tree, test the waters and find yourself in a forest of greenies lining up at your door for what could be the next, most revolutionary home to hit the housing market.

It all begins in the wake of hurricane Katrina when Shawn had just lost his family’s dream home.  Determined to build a new home and not willing to wait years, he set out on a mission to find a new high-end housing alternative overseas.  After visiting engineering firms in Germany and exotic finishing manufacturers in Bali, Shawn came home with the most incredible vision which he named Jeriko House.  He called BOALT to design and develop a new alternative home brand literally from scratch.

After investing a significant budget in developing his website, he left faith and one press release to do the rest.  It was only a matter of days before the website started to received hundreds of visitors a day from blogs such as InHabitat, TreeHugger, JetsonGreen, Luxist and Architect Magazine to name a few.  Some reviews better than others but you know what they say, all press is good press.
To date, Shawn has received approximately 30-50 leads a day consistently from customers all over the world with budgets exceeding over $500k to build a new Jeriko House.  Consider how many more leads would come in if the economy and housing market were better.

So what does the future hold?  Shawn continues to meet with prospect builders who want to build Jeriko Houses in different parts of the world.  He’s also getting ready to release the first online prefab builder which will allow you to price and design your custom home in real-time.  The word custom is probably an understatement when you get to choose interior finishes such as: coconut weave, palm fiber, crushed seashell along with many other exotic woods, bamboos and stones from Malaysia.

This is definitely one of the coolest projects I have ever worked on and I wake up everyday still in awe at the amount of leads that the website generates without ever spending a dollar on online marketing.

Yesterday, I had the pleasure to meet with Mike Subelsky over a cup of coffee in Dupont Circle.  Mike, who goes by “Hacker & Improvisor” in his email signature, has has been involved in quite a few interesting start ups including OtherInbox.com, Subelsky.com, IgniteBaltimore.com and BigImprov.org. The purpose of our meeting was just to kickback and discuss different entrepreneur stories and strategies.  After the meeting, I felt real good about some of my contributions to the conversation and thought I should share them.

Some of these points, I’ve learned from mistakes on my own, some from industry colleagues and some just from being in the industry over 10 years.

1. I consider myself to be a dreamer and visionary.  My main problem is that I am always trying to solve problems Google hasn’t even solved.  I’m not saying you shouldn’t set high goals or achievements but just remember, sometimes a few singles and doubles can make you just as much money as a grand slam.
2. The perfectionist in you, might be the end of you.  In the past, I’ve struggled with launching web applications because I get so focused on perfecting it, I end up loosing market share due to a later release.  I learned this while working with another agency on one of my start ups, SmoothStart.com.  Get your product to market as quickly as possible and then make improvements as you go. You’ll also realize that maybe your vision changes along the way based on customer feedback.
3. Something I preach, stay away from sexy businesses.  Go after the less desirable business opportunities.  There is less competition and greater chance of success. (i.e. RushMyPassport.com)
4. As a technology enthusiast and guru, I occasionally find myself pondering over forming a joint venture with a brick and mortar outfit to serve as their marketing arm for a larger piece of the pie.  It’s natural to think that’s the long sighted approach.  Well, brace yourself, the other side will eventually have a change of heart when success comes and they’ll try to figure out how to do it themselves so they can eat the whole pie. Greed is unfortunately an inherit human trait. Make sure you have an iron clad agreement and understand the operations end of things too.
5. Partners – if you don’t absolutely need one, do it yourself.  It’s difficult as it is to start a business – why complicate things even further?  There’s a  natural desire to share success but there’s a price you have to pay for that.  My most recent partnership has been great but I’ve had partnerships in the past that haven’t gone so great.  Looking back, I don’t hold any grudges and everybody that I have ever done business with has been great on a personal level but it’s about it’s all about corporate culture.  You and your partner might have the same end goal, but getting there… that’s a whole different animal.  The only advice that I can give you is to clearly define your roles and objectives.  And lastly, treat your operations agreement as a prenuptial agreement because the only time you’ll ever see that document again is when you run into problems.
6. Lastly, bootstrap as much as you can and no matter how great your business is doing, always be prepared for the worst. Every business, every industry can have a turn for the worst.

I hope these tips can be of help. If you have any other tips please comment below, I would love to hear your thoughts!

Sexy creative is not enough to generate leads and orders through the web.  There are many different attributes that can ultimately affect your bottom line. The concept is not too hard to understand but most of our clients don’t want to spend money on multivariate or A/B testing.

Take a look at our startup, RushMyPassport.com.  We average approximately 100 orders a day and a redesign of our homepage increased our sales by almost $4k per day. Yep, that’s right, over $100k a month.

So, what’s the secret formula.  It’s not rocket science, the trick is get over yourself, it’s not about what you want. It’s about what the masses want. Once you understand this, you’ll attain more than desirable results.

Last month, Boalt launched a new website for Palmdale Oil Company.  Palmdale Oil, which is family-owned and operated, is one of South Florida’s oldest fuel distributors.

Palmdale Oil’s main objectives were to strengthen their overall brand online and achieve better natural placement within the search engines.  BOALT was able execute their objectives rapidly which allowed Palmdale Oil to see a quick return on investment.

I’ve been asked on several occasions to recount my most memorable experience in interactive advertising.  Since the start of my career in 1997, I’ve seen a lot of crazy things happen, however, nothing tops the experience I had just shortly after Hurricane Katrina.  My client and good friend now, Shawn Burst, asked me to help out a friend of his, Dolph Frederico.  When I called Dolph, he told me about this crazy t-shirt idea he had regarding Ray Nagin subsequent to his speech on rebuilding New Orleans.

In case you don’t remember he wanted to rebuild a “chocolate New Orleans” and said, “you can’t have New Orleans no other way.”  As you can imagine, it caused a public uproar.

Skeptical about the idea, I decided to help him out anyways in order build my relationship with Shawn’s company.  We built him a 1 page website and wrote a press release to submit over the wire.  We use a service called EReleases.com.  I highly recommend them, they have a very good reach especially in the blogsphere.

Two hours after submitting the press release and launching the website, our hosting company called to inform us that we had a received a surge of traffic like they had never seen before.  It was like one of those pre-dot-com bomb commercials you used  to see on t.v.  Orders started to pour in by the thousands and we received over 1 million uniques in just under 48 hours. It was quite the spectical.  It all started with a article on the homepage of CNN, following a call from Saturday Night Live who used the shirt in their opening skit and finally us having to tell Jay Leno’s office when they called that we were out of t-shirts.  I’d never seen anything like it and the calls were flooding our office since I had listed myself as the press contact.

To this date, I always tell people, if you come up with the right idea, it will sell itself. You don’t have to do very much.

This summer we celebrated our 1st year anniversary for RushMyPassport.com.  RushMyPassport.com was BOALT’s first startup and we are extremely excited with the year-end financials.  We set, what I thought, was a pretty ambitious sales goal of $5 mil in our first year and we reached it with a few days left in the fiscal year.

After being featured on the home page of Forbes, MSNBC and CNN as “the passport pros”, we’ve quickly become a disrupter in our industry.  In the past year, I’ve also been interviewed by two talk radio stations.

We’ve helped over 25k people in 1 year receive their passport in 24 hours and we work with over 400 of the Fortune 500 companies. 

Stay tuned, we have a lot in store for our 2nd fiscal year.