Leese Internet Technology

In this book, The Millionaire Next Door the Surprising Secrets of America’s Wealthy there is a formula for determining whether someone is exceptionally productive in their wealth building.  Take your age and multiply it by your income divided by 10.  If you have more than this amount of money in assets you are doing well.

This is definitely hard to apply.  It involves saving, budgeting and being thrifty.  I can tell you, it isn’t easy.  Although, if it was easy – everyone would do it.

These terms used to have a positive association for me. But lately, they seem to imply pop-ups and annoying alerts and other things that get in the way. If you are so interested in increasing order size, then try offering supplemental products that are actually relevant and actually useful to your buyer. There is an integrity issue at play here, and I guess it is sort of transparent, but I never try to sell something to my prospective buyers that is something that I would not be interested in buying for myself. Sure, you can say that it is a disservice not to show them something that might benefit them (even if it is outside the realm of what I would want) but some websites have taken it to the point of ridiculous and obtrusive and I know for a fact that they are turning away customers. How do I know, because my wife tried to buy something online and was completely repelled and put-off by the upselling that was attempted. A word to the wise, back-off trying to get people’s money, and being greedy, and get back to serving the customer. In that way, you stand to be profitable, gain loyalty, and product momentum.

I haven’t been hunting very many times but I have family members who hunt regularly and they have shared with me a certain phenomenon. 

When a deer is shot at, occasionally it will run away – but frequently, it takes a few leaps, and then stops.  In other words, it gets frightened, but it doesn’t know enough to vacate the area completely.  Even if a nearby deer is shot and drops dead right next to it – it won’t move too much.  

Why am I bringing this up?  Well – a few weeks ago my company laid off 50% of it’s staff.  50% is huge.  Walking around today, I see people watching YouTube and “playing” around while at work.  Our boss just told us that corporate is investigating all “moonlighters” – that is, people who have side businesses.  

It seems to me that people are acting like those deer.  They are not paying attention to the real source of the problems, they are not heeding the warning shots that are going on around them.  It is time to see the dead carcuses around you and rise above it – but first – self preserve!

I heard recently on the news that there are currently 10 million unemployed people in our country.  And there are something like 7 million working illegal immigrants.  Wow.  So basically we could really solve our employment problem if we got rid of those illegal workers.  Well, if that is how we want to solve it, then I guess we just need to depend on our trusty, handy, always there and diligently detail oriented government. But wait, maybe we don’t hold out for government to take action – because, let’s just say, sometimes they don’t come through the way we would hope they would.  Well, what about this solution:

What if 7 million of the 10 million unemployed people started working harder than their illegal counterparts.  Yeah, what if, instead of waiting for the government to solve the problem, people took responsibility and action for themselves and started working very hard.  Then, perhaps, the illegal immigrants would go back home because a) there wouldn’t be any work left and b) they wouldn’t be able to out-work us.  Wow – that still leaves 3 million unemployed, but most of them, I would guess, if we couldn’t get them to work before, we won’t be able to with this plan anyway.  And with 7 million more taxpaying, legal, legitimate workers, we can probably afford 3 million freeloaders.

It’s kind of crazy but I think it is the old style thinking that made this country great, and if we lose it, will be our demise.

Okay – maybe “sold out” is a little extreme. But I never thought they would change the Corn Pops. So why would they change now? I have a guess – it could be way off base, but I have a guess. Corn pops are probably made from Corn. Which happens to be a valuable commodity these days with ethanol being a (seemingly) huge part of our change in energy plan going forward. So what do you do if your product is made from corn? Well, you either raise your prices or you find an alternative supplement.

Enter: Peanut Butter Chocolate Corn Pops.

I have heard that some cocoa can be very cheap to import – so it probably makes alot of business sense to offer an alternative and undoubtedly if they can offer it at a cheap price, or an equivalent price to their current offering but have a cheaper cost, viola – profits go up. I am not happy about them changing my corn pops – but I get it. And I’ll probably try them. Now, if only I wasn’t allergic to Peanuts …

This blog has been a long time coming.  Well, the blog hasn’t, but a good place for me to discuss my ideas and vision for the future of our businesses has.  I am just a regular guy out here trying to make a living doing things I enjoy.

I have a family, a dog, a house, a couple cars and I regularly attend church.  These things seem irrelevant for someone trying to start a business, perhaps, but for me they are integral.  Everything the business does is simply an extension of what I am and do, therefore, if it doesn’t have the backbone and integrity of the way I live my life – it has no chance of being successful.  I have no expectation of creating the next “pet rock”.  I believe that working hard and being diligent and fair are the only ways to grow a legitamate business from the ground up.

So, without any more ado, welcome.  This blog will serve to be my outpost for all ideas.  No holds barred.  We’ll see how it goes.