SiteCrafting, Inc.

I have a seven year old who loves boxes. He loves building playhouses, cars, and hideouts using as many raw materials and all the imagination he has, and he does it everyday. He has faith in me and depends on me.

 I have a five year old, who loves her daddy more than just about anything and who loves princesses and dress up. She is learning to read and is getting better at it every day. She counts on me to be there, to support her and to love her.

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Leave it to Disney to get it right. We've all heard the stories. We all know about the legendary service, cleanliness, and fun. This story is a bit different as it is about all of those things, but more in my area of interest.

Here's the set up. I spent a week at Disneyland with my family. Fun was had by all. I enjoyed seeing my kids enjoy the rides, the characters and the fun that is Disneyland. All in all, I took over a thousand photos and a lot of video. Where the story gets interesting is in the photos I didn't take.

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So I have a new car. Well three months old and I've been taking advantage of the FREE installed satellite radio. I have to say I was pretty certain that I'd let the system expire once the trial was over, but after commercial free radio with good music, I have to say I'm hooked.

So, when the extend your service email arrived in my Inbox Saturday, you bet I clicked to extend my service.

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Changing the way an entire industry works is never easy. It can take a lot of time to get people used to doing things in a new way. Fortunately, during the past few years we have witnessed entire industries become disrupted by innovation. The Internet has changed the rules in so many industries - digital music, travel, banking - the list goes on and on. So one of our customers asked, why not Letterman jackets?

We all remember (at least those of us that were jocks) receiving our letter and going to the nearest sporting goods store and ordering our jackets. Typically, we chose from a limited set of styles, got measured, paid some money, and then waited 4-6 weeks for delivery. It's a process that still plays itself out in most of the country. Enter Lettermansclub.com...
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So I came across a great blog post on innovation posted by Peter Dixon - When Super is Just Plain Superfluous and I have to say he just nailed it.

So much has been made of the need for innovation that people have lost track of what the word even means, they just know they need to do it. Which I guess is good if you are in the business of providing solutions that help people "innovate". 

Unfortunately, every day people are "selling" innovations that ultimately serve no purpose or are just enormous time wasters.
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I am amazed how many people are willing to ignore email solicitations from some mysterious contact in Nigeria that needs your help to get access to $15,000.000. All they need from you is for you to help. Your reward, you may keep two-thirds of the money. Yet these same people receive an email or phone call from someone they've never met promising search engine nirvana and they take it, hook line and sinker. Do these same people buy the stock picks recommended when they get an unsolicited FAX or email?

Look, we all want to be noticed. If we didn't we'd never buy flashy car rims that spin, add exhaust pipes that sound like F-16s, or wear perfume. Your website is no different, it wants to be seen and you want it be seen. Which is exactly what most Search Engine Optimization firms are counting on.
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I was honored to be asked to present at Jay Ray's Think Lab earlier this month. The day long event was focused on marketing / technology solutions for regional health care providers and was held at The Inn at Gig Harbor.

The program included practical tips and discussion on a variety of topics, including my presentation, How to Wow! Website Innovation. Other presenters included Andrew Fry and JayRay staff.

My presentation,  of course begged the question...How does one wow with the web?
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What an honor and at the same time, what a challenge. SiteCrafting is thrilled to be named by The Business Examiner as the Top Place to Work in the category of Employee Appreciation, but --- and here's the big but --- it means we have to live up that honor. A challenge I am glad to take on, given the dedication, commitment, and selflessness shown on a daily basis by our people who truly make SiteCrafting a top place to work.

Sure, we have a lot of very smart, technically minded people working here, but what's more important and worthy of recognition is the fact that we have incredible human beings working here. We have individuals committed to our customers, to our vision, to our community and to each other.

So how did this happen?  And how do I live up to the challenge?
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So this is a post I've been working on in my mind for a very long time. I only recently realized that it needed to be written. You see, small business is anything but small. The services and products that businesses like SiteCrafting provide add value to their customers in such a way that small business has become, essentially, everything.

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So, I'm pretty much online all the time. I'm constantly looking for innovative applications and web services. I thought, "I'm going to have a look at what the 'big guys' are doing."

We all know Google is creating some pretty great web applications like their maps or spreadsheet apps. Seems decision makers at the big "G" have squarely set their sites on building innovative tools for web users. Surely, I thought, Microsoft has its plan and it's called Windows Live.

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We want to stay connected with our customers. We want customers to meet other customers.  We want our potential customers to see just how easy it is to take control of their website and make it more successful. We want to give you the chance to meet others that are using our tools, that is why we have created "Interact".

We realize that people are busy. In fact, most people, when they get to the office, don't have time to even think about much of anything other than the hottest potato that has been thrown in their lap on that particular day. Rarely do they have time to get a few minutes to update their websites, even more rare, the time to strategize ways to make their website make their lives easier.  That is why we believe Interact is so important.

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So I mentioned earlier that I was reading the book Now Discover Your Strengths, and I have discovered mine, or at least mine as are determined by a 30 minute profile. What's strange is I never do well on these tests, I always find myself answering the questions the way I think they want me to and I wonder what that says about me...

Anyway, this is what my profile tells me. I am adaptable, have strong beliefs, believe everything is connected, thrive on coming up with ideas, and value action. My strengths are below:

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OK, so I promised myself that I would wait until the second generation iPhone so I could let them work out the bugs and lower the price. Then I played with one and realized I had to retire my RAZR for one of these. Aesthetically, it is a knock out, but I can assure you it's beauty is way more than skin deep.

I have a hectic life, kids, business, and homebrew. All add up to a lot of demands and juggling. I've tried organizational tricks, Palm Pilot, Windows CE, Blackberry, and nothing, I mean nothing is even close to this. I'll stop gushing so that I can give you some practical examples.  

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So, some people are interested in what others are reading at the current moment. So I thought I'd give you a view into the sorts of things that I focus on when I'm not working on conquering the web universe.

The fact is, I am always looking for new books and new things to learn. I recently finished a book that was recommended by a client called Indomitable Spirit by Chuck Ferguson which calls itself "The essential guidebook for a lifelong journey of leadership  and the rewards of meeting them".

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I know, I know. We all know how great Les Schwab is (which is ultimately the point of this entry). Where else do you pull into a parking lot and have a guy (or girl) throw their tools down and sprint to your car to see how they can help you?

Before I begin, I should set the stage. I get home from work Wednesday, and my wife tells me that the check tire pressure light is still on in the car. I've been "solving" this problem by continually adding air to the tire - not a great long term solution, I'll admit. It's kinda like adding water to a lake with a leaking dam. Anyway, we are scheduled for a vacation tomorrow that involves driving, so I decide it's better to take care of it for real at this point.
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The gauntlet has been thrown down. We can't hide now...we must be exceptional.

While it is nice that we were recently recognized for dependabilty, I see it as more of a challenge. A challenge for us to do more, perform better, and have more satisfied customers.
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Got up at 3:11 to drive through the ice to Sea-Tac for an early flight to Boise, Idaho. I was asked to present to the Idaho Pest Control Environmental Care Association at their annual conference on the need or non-need of a website for their businesses. The group was welcoming, the bagels fresh and the coffee warm. I think the presentation a success.

Now I'm off to the Boise Airport for my return trip to Seattle. As promised to the group...the pdf of the presentation and a copy of the handout.

It begins with a letter or maybe even an "invoice". It ends with the transfer of your domain to another registrar and in some cases even the loss of your domain entirely.  The term for this is Domain Slamming.

The practice preys upon unsuspecting people who want to pay their bills and keep their domain names current. After all, we have our domain name printed on every invoice, business cards, painted on our trucks, and we advertise with Google Adwords, we don't want our domain to expire. This is exactly what they count on. 

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Give a man a fish he eats for a day, teach a man to fish he eats for a lifetime. - Chinese Proverb

As a flyfisherman, I can say this proverb does not mean a lot to me. I've been taught, but rarely catch fish, and those I do catch, I release. However, this entry is not so much about fishing or learning to fish,  it is about sharing knowledge and giving customers tools for success.
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I had an interesting conversation with a potential client last Friday and it prompted me to think or at least explain our development rational.  He was looking to hire SiteCrafting to assemble a robust application for his client consisting of a design he came up with as well as some "open-source" technologies, and a few custom scripts generated by us. Long and the short of it...it seemed a disaster in the making.

I mentioned to him that SiteCrafting builds our Web applications from the ground up, for each customer as an individual. We do not offer one-size fits all solutions, because just like anything one-size fits all it never fits anyone quite right.
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It's not often that I use the stuff we build. It's not that I don't support the businesses we do business with, it's more that I spend so much time online thinking of how we build things for our customers that I don't generally get a chance to actually use the websites we build in the way a customer would.
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So last Friday was a great afternoon. After visiting our customer  Primo Grill for a celebration lunch, we proceeded to Chalet Bowl for a couple games of bowling.

It was good to get out of the office for a bit to celebrate the upcoming birth of Hiromi's baby (no, we don't know if it is a boy or a girl yet, but will soon). We all pitched in and purchased a Baby Bjorn and a baby wipe warmer. Kevin claims that a happy baby is a baby with warm wipes. Speaking from experience, I'm not so sure. Sometimes nothing, not even promises of hundred dollar bills will silence a crying newborn.

We had a fantastic time, complete with an out of body bowling experience by SiteCrafting's own David Poole. Dave's penchant for turkeys (three strikes in a row) allowed our team to coast to victory in both games.

To view more pics, have a look at Kevin's blog