Archive for the 'Inspiration' Category

In his best selling book Predictably Irrational, Dan Ariely asks a simple question, “What is the cost of no cost?” Dan and his team of social scientists did some experiments on a group of potential customers to find out how much they prized different types of chocolate.

On a table in a large building they offered two types of chocolate. The prized Lindt truffle was offered along side the common Hershey’s kiss. The truffle was priced at 15 cents and the Hershey kiss was priced at a penny. Both of these prices were less than half the usual cost. There was a large sign at the table that said “One Chocolate Per Customer.”

As you would probably expect, the Lindt Truffle was a runaway hit at 15 cents. Over 73% of the respondents chose the higher priced truffle over the generic Hersheys kiss. But what happened in the next test was very interesting.

Dan and his testers then lowered the price of each Chocolate by a penny and ran the test again? This time the Truffle was priced at 14 cents and the Hershey’s kiss was given away free.

The results were startling. Now the Hershey’s kiss was the favorite by a wide margin. Over 69% of the respondents now chose the kiss over the truffle and the difference in the test was one red cent.

The difference was the word free. Free made all the difference, especially when compared to an item with a cost associated with it.

As Dan alludes to in the book, this comparison of a free item to an item that we have to pay for can lead us to make irrational or poor decisions. How many times have you chosen the buy one, get one free item only to get home and find it was not the quality you expected.

Let’s say you went to Walmart to buy tee shirts. You usually buy the national brand that doesn’t shrink and holds up well wash after wash. On the same rack is an inferior brand, but the large size package is priced buy one-get one free. Your mind instantly picks up on the deal even though you have to buy two and end up spending more for the large package of shirts.

You get home and after one washing, the inferior shirts shrink 20%. Now you have two packages of shirts that you cant wear but once. The power of free caused you to make a poor decision.

The word free can drive traffic but often relegates the item to something of little or no value. On this blog for example, I provide many free MS Word based templates for a variety of uses. I don’t use the word free but instead use words that explain the benefits.

Instead of Free Flowchart Template, I refer to my flowchart cards as a Five Minute Flowchart, letting the reader know that the flowchart can be created on their desk in under five minutes.

Given the premise that the word free is a powerful motivator, would people be more interested in a free offer or the benefits of a product or service?

Here is a question: What offer would you choose below?

A Free Flowchart Template emphasizing the value of “Free“

A Five Minute Flowchart emphasizing the benefit of “Speed“

Both of these links and graphics point to the same flowchart page. Which graphic would make you click first? The one with the free option, or the one with the time saving benefit?

I would like to hear your comments on this.

I’m going to track this in my stats and see which one is more popular. If you have a minute click on the graphic you would choose. I’ll post the results in an upcoming post in a few days. It will be interesting to see how predictable this choice is.

Have you ever had a dream where you could fly or glide through the air? In my dream it’s almost effortless. You just point where you want to go and you zoom off in that direction. Flying through the air with the wind blowing past your face.

Sometimes dreams come true.

My wife and I were in Santa Barbara this week for a short vacation. We stayed in one of our favorite places, the Cheshire Cat Bed and Breakfast. This is a wonderful Victorian residence, designed around an Alice in Wonderland motif. It’s one block off of State street, and a great place to discover the city.

One of the packages they offered this year was a two hour Segway tour of Santa Barbara. We had booked our stay with a restaurant package including dinner at Downy’s and lunch at Louie’s Bistro (delicious mesquite broiled meatloaf), but the Segway tour sounded intriguing. On the second day of our stay we called up Segway of Santa Barbara and signed up for their 2 and a half hour Old Santa Barbara Tour.

We arrived to find a small business across the street from the Santa Barbara pier. they signed us up, provided helmets and took two Segways outside to start our tour and Segway lesson.

Bill was our tour guide and he took a few minutes to familiarize us with the Segway i2 personal transport. He showed us how to power it up with the wireless controller and how to step on the self balancing device. At first my wife and I were both a bit wobbly, but we soon caught on to the controls.

The Segway is very intuitive. You lean forward to go forward, you lean back to stop. You use the handle bars to turn. The built-in gyroscope keeps you magically upright and balanced.

Within minutes we were zipping around the parking lot and doing a quick slalom around some cones. We practiced entering driveways and going up and down hills. The Segway soon became almost second nature. This is one amazing machine.

Once we were able to do the test course with ease, Bill had us follow him as we set off for the city tour. We headed out on State Street and rode down the sidewalks with ease. Since the Segway is classified as a pedestrian instead of a vehicle, we could go almost anywhere on the unit that we could walk.

We were soon zipping past the train station and soon found ourselves under one of the largest trees in Santa Barbara. Bill was an amazing tour guide. He reminded me of a laid-back Indiana Jones. Someone who was incredibly knowledgeable of the history of Santa Barbara and always up for adventure.

And adventure we had… over the next 2 hours we saw more of Santa Barbara than we could have by any other means. We toured many of the downtown streets and drove through a couple of parks. We went down a dirt path to view a Koi pond alive with fish and turtles. We parked the units outside a downtown museum, and Bill gave us a locals-tour of the museum.

Bill had so much trivia and local knowledge it made the history of city come alive. From the early Spanish influence through the Chinese settlers, up to a modern multi-cultural city, Santa Barbara is fascinating.

As the tour wound down, we headed back to the pier at a quick 12 mph pace. The Segways maneuvered through the streets with ease and as we pulled up to the shop after two hours on the machines, we found they still had almost a full charge.

I was blown away by the Segway experience. I haven’t had so much fun in years and now I really would like to own one. With gas over $4.25 a gallon here in California, the electric powered Segway would be a great alternative for short trips around town.

Priced around $5000 and very reliable, this may be the future of urban transportation. It’s certainly the most fun you’ll have commuting!

Ever since I was a kid, I dreamed of creating an electric car. One that you could plug in and drive to work or school. One that would let you bypass the high prices for gasoline (26 cents a gallon when I was a kid!). Over the years this dream has come closer to reality but with unfulfilled promises by manufacturers every decade or so.

It has always been a problem with batteries. The lead-acid units we have used for so many years in our cars, just don’t have the capacity to make an electric car feasible for most people. The range is too short and the weight of the batteries too high.

Technology has changed in the last few years and we are now seeing a wide variety of gasoline-electric hybrid cars on the market. These cars use a medium sized battery and a gasoline engine to provide power and charging capacity. Electric power is used at low speed and the gasoline engine comes in seamlessly at higher speeds. It is a marvel of modern technology that they actually work, given the complexity of the hybrid gasoline-electric power plant.

Many hybrids are currently using Sealed Nickel-Metal Hydride battery technology which is an improvement over lead-acid technology. Battery manufactures are now pointing to Lithium-ion technology (Like the new batteries used in laptops and digital cameras) as the next wave of power storage. There are many variations, but the main hurdle to mass production is overheating and fire (remember the laptop batteries that caught on fire).

One of the current battery technologies that is available that has overcome this problem is Lithium-phosphate batteries. These offer extended capacity without the danger of overheating. Once the Lithium-Ion technology is refined we’ll see even greater capacity.

With the advent of these newer batteries, inventors and entrepreneurs are scrambling to bring electric vehicles to market. I went online and found two companies that are coming out with vehicles that may actually live up to the promise.

The first is an electric motorcycle from Brammo Motorsports. The bike is called the Enertia Bike and is powered by multiple lithium-phosphate batteries mounted to a low weight aluminum frame. The bike has no transmission and is simply a computer controlled battery power supply and an electric motor. This simple setup results in low weight and a slim design.

The bike has a range of about 40 miles and a top speed of 50 miles per hour. A two hour charge time will have you back on the road. Given it’s limitations it is being marketed to urban inter-city commuters that don’t have to travel on freeways to work.

With a price tag of over $11,000, the market for this bike will be somewhat limited but there are some people that may want to be the first to actually own a plug and go motorcycle.

As battery technology improves, the range and speed of this motorcycle will increase, but for now it actually works and you can pre-order one today.

The second is one of the coolest cars I have ever seen. It’s a cross between My Favorite Martian’s Spaceship and a Cessna airplane. It’s called the Aptera and is based on a unique three wheel design with an all electric or hybrid power plant.

When production begins in late 2008, the unit will be powered by the latest battery technology. Currently the prototypes are powered by Lithium Phosphate batteries which give an all electric range of about 100 miles. The hybrid gas-electric model has a small gasoline engine to recharge the batteries and will provide fuel economy of over 200 miles per gallon.

Given its three wheel design and size, it is actually characterized as a three wheeled motorcycle. This puts it in a range of vehicles that don’t have to meet the stringent safety and environmental challenges of automobile manufacturers. This allows the company to actually produce a viable electric vehicle at a price point that most people can afford.

The company hasn’t scrimped on safety features though. They have included airbags and have crash tested the prototypes. The Aptera has fared very well in the tests.

This vehicle will be produced just for the California market right now and is designed as a super commuter car. With a target price of under $30,000 there will be a huge interest in the Aptera. The factory is in Carlsbad California and soon we will be seeing them on the road throughout Southern California.

I can’t wait to test drive one of these. The hybrid model would be wonderful for the long commutes that many of us have and being able to plug it in and go would fulfill a dream I’ve had for a long time. Aptera means wingless bird in Greek. Even without wings, this unit will fly off of the showroom floors!

Check out the pre-production video here.

In the meantime, this car makes a great wallpaper on my computer!

Out of the box, most Powerpoint templates are pretty cookie-cutter and boring. Powerpoint 2007 raises the bar, but the basic page layout is still heavy on bullet points and weak on effectiveness.

If you want to completely reach your audience you need to create effective slides for the three main learning styles. They are…

1. Audio learners: Receive information audibly or by reading to themselves
2. Visual Learners: Receive information with their eyes
3. Kinesthetic learners: Receive information by touch or feel (hands-on)

Here are three common slide types and their overall effectiveness.

1. Basic Powerpoint Slide

Lets take a look at the common Powerpoint slide and see how we can improve it

You have probably seen this type of Powerpoint slide many times. It features the built-in Narrow Arial font in black with rounded bullets and a standard MS Office template background. If you’ve seen one, you have seen them all.

Unfortunately this slide will do nothing for your visual or kinesthetic learners in your audience. Very few visual people find a lot of text interesting. And it will only be helpful to your audio learners if you read it to them or they read it to themselves. This will take their focus off of you and have them reading the slide. The more information, the longer their attention will be focused on the slide.

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2. Enhanced Powerpoint Slide

Let’s modify our font, customize our bullets, and add a photo to spice things up.

Notice in this slide we have added a bold title font with shadow, we have limited our bullets to main points only, and used custom graphics for the bullets. We added a photo that is large enough to see easily and added a custom frame to have it dissolve into the background. The template background features a custom gradient for added visual interest.

This type of slide is certain to draw the attention of your visual learners. The photo adds visual interest along with a colorful background and graphical bullets. The strong title font gets your message across quickly, and limiting your bullet points to just main points get your message across much quicker for the audio learners (they will be able to read it much faster) and returns the focus to you.

The only group generally left out with a slide like this is your kinesthetic learners (hands-on). If you tie this in with a hands-on worksheet, you’ll have a slide that works well for all groups.

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3. Emotional Picture Slide

The final type of slide is one that can be effective for all learning styles. The power is in its simplicity. In just a matter of seconds you message is presented.

The text is generally one or two words in bold text. The emotional picture takes up the entire slide. The bold text is quickly read by your audio people, while the bold picture is a delight to your visual learners, and your kinesthetic people will feel the emotion of the photograph.

This type of slide tells a story without distracting from you, the presenter. Your audience can quickly figure out what is going on, and the slide reinforces what you are saying. You tell the story and the slide adds the emotion.

In figure 3 above, the gentleman in the front is frustrated that his football team just lost. His co-workers who were for the other team, hoot and holler in the background. We’ve all been there, but the picture quickly brings back the emotion! They say a picture is worth a thousand words. For a slide like this pick one that tells a story!

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In conclusion, you can create a much more effective presentation by using the enhanced slides to cover your facts and figures and the emotional slides to tell your story. Use both to create your next masterpiece!

Additional References:

Presentation Zen: Simple Ideas on Presentation Design and Delivery (Voices That Matter) by Garr Reynolds Read more about this book…

Beyond Bullet Points: Using Microsoft® Office PowerPoint® 2007 to Create Presentations That Inform, Motivate, and Inspire by Cliff Atkinson Read more about this book…

Blogging is an interesting endeavor. You put a blog up, customize your template, and start writing about stuff. At first it is fun, and the ideas come quickly. But soon the realization hits that to be a blogger means posting on a regular basis.

I’ve seen so many blogs pop up and then slowly fade away as writing becomes a chore and the writers lose interest.

Set Godin has an interesting post today about Have To vs Get To. He was asked if blogging everyday is intimidating or a chore, he replied…

I view it as something I get to do. I spend most of my blogging time deciding what not to post.

The best work, at least for me, is the stuff you get to do. If you are really good at that, you’re lucky enough to have very little of the have to stuff left.

When blogging becomes a Have To pastime, it’s not to long until the posting stops, and the blog is one of the millions in a frozen state of attrition.

As I near my three year mark in this phenomenon of online journalism, I am thankful that like Seth, I get to blog today.

I had an experience earlier in the week, where my web host had a network problem all day. I couldn’t login and my blog was offline for hours. It’s funny how you take things for granted until they don’t work.

I am thankful to be back online and to be able to write again. There are so many things to explore, people to communicate with, and ideas to share.

Thanks for joining in this thing we call blogging!

I picked up an interesting book the other day at the bookstore. It’s entitled Take The Risk by Dr. Ben Carson M.D. This book is written from a doctor’s perspective about taking risks in life.

The thing I found really interesting was Dr. Carson’s easy to use four step questionnaire for evaluating risk. He takes the risk in question and asks four things…

1. What is the worst thing that could happen if I take this risk?
2. What is the best thing that could happen if I take this risk?
3. What is the worst thing that could happen if I don’t take this risk?
4. What is the best thing that could happen if I don’t take this risk?

This is a best/worse case scenario with a twist because he asks the same questions in the negative… what will happen if I DON’T take this risk.

I have found these questions work very well from a goal setting perspective, especially the negative ramifications of not taking action on a goal.

Ben is a master story teller and he has a great story about growing up as a child in Detroit. His Dad left the family when Ben was a child and his mother was forced to move in with family in Boston for a few years. Ben and his brother attended a church school but the curriculum was quite a few years behind what he had experienced in Detroit.

When the family moved back to Detroit a few years later, Ben found himself way behind in school. He gives a striking example of just how tough it was. One day in the fifth grade the students were given a math test and they had to pass their tests to the kid behind them to be graded. The tests were marked and then handed back to the students. Then the teacher then went around the room and had everybody yell out what the scores were.

Ben tells of waiting in dread for his name to be called. The teacher called out “Benjamin” and he reported that he got nine out of 30 questions right… unfortunately he had misread the grade and the girl behind him corrected him… “Not Nine!,” she yelled, “He got none!”

As the classroom erupted in laughter, Ben felt really intimidated. He laughed it off but it really hurt. His mother soon found that Ben and his brother were doing very poorly in school back in Detroit. She gathered them together one afternoon and told them she was very unhappy with their performance. She announced that she was going to stay up that night and ask God what she should do about their sorry performance in school.

Ben and his brother had a hard time sleeping that night, and in the morning she announced that God had impressed on her that they were spending too much time watching TV.

She said “We’re going to turn off the TV, and from now on you can choose only three television shows each week… and every week you are going to read two books–you get to choose which books–and write me a report on each one.”

Ben and his brother protested loudly, but they didn’t want to disappoint their mother. So each week they went to the library and read two books as she requested. Ben read books about things he liked. First it was animals, then plants and then on to rocks.

One day in science class the teacher held up a black shiny rock and asked what type it was. None of the kids in the class had an answer… but then Ben, having just read a book about it, held up his hand and told the teacher it was obsidian. And then he went on to describe it in scientific detail.

Everyone in the class was surprised. The kid they referred to as “the dummy” was spouting off words as if he was a scientist.

That day Ben Carson realized he wasn’t a dummy after all, he thought…

What if I read books about all my subjects? Then I’d know more than all these students who have laughed at me and called me “dummy.”

Starting that day that is just what Ben did. He set himself a goal to be a lifelong reader. Within months his grades improved and his dream of someday becoming a doctor slowly came to fruition.

Today Ben Carson is a world renown Neurosurgeon performing complex surgeries on the brain and spinal cord. All because his mother was willing to take a risk.

She turned off the TV and sent her kids to the library. She found that the risk was too high to leave the TV on… and she was right.

Be sure to pick up Take The Risk and be inspired. This is one powerful book that can help you take the risk necessary to achieve your dreams.