GBTA 2011-Denver, CO

Topaz attended the annual GBTA conference in Denver, CO August 21st-24th. We set up a booth where current and potential clients could visit us to learn more about what we do and how we can help them. My favorite part about GBTA is getting to meet some of the clients I’ve been e-mailing with for months. It’s so nice to put a name to a face and connect in person. It really reminds me of the value of personal communication face to face and reminds me why I love visiting clients for client reviews.

One of the challenges we face at GBTA is that we are a very small fish in a very big pond. Our booth is much smaller than many of the other participants, mostly very large companies in the travel industry. This year we tried to fly blue balloons with our logo high above our booth to help people find us, but I think even those may have gotten lost in the mix.

Some of you know our CEO Brad Seitz; he is known for being outgoing and always being himself. He walked around the convention floor for much of the time we exhibited in a Loud Mouth Golf Sport coat. (See photos) This is probably the thing that attracted the most attention to our booth. Even the people who thought it was crazy still seemed to like it.

As we looked back and reflected on GBTA this past week we are thinking of some new ideas for next year. The convention is in Boston. Brad lives in Maine and I live in NH, so it’s kind of our “home turf.” We may not even do a booth next year. We love walking around and meeting people and thinking, “outside the box.” We hate to confine ourselves to a tiny space where you have to find us. We may just walk around as suppliers next year or maybe host a unique event. We’d love to hear from all of you and hear your opinions on where you’d like to see us or what you’d like to see us do.

I’d like to thank all of the clients who visited our booth. It was a great meeting with you and learning more about what you do and letting you know where Topaz fits in. I’d also like to thank our friends (Especially those at T&T) for all of your hospitality. Thank you everyone for your time and energy.

So, here’s to new opportunities, new beginnings and Bean town; where we hope you can find a place to Pawhk your renta Cawh and we show you a wicked good time.

PS: This is ahr yeahr, Red Sawx aull the wahy.

Cheers,

MySUPERMe

For those of you reading this 20 years old or older you remember the days of flashlight tag, red light/green light, pickup basketball games, wiffle ball, freeze tag, chalk, hula hooping, skate boarding, sledding, running through sprinklers, hide and seek, and capture the flag. You remember coming home from school and changing out of your “school clothes” as fast as possible so you could put on the clothes you didn’t mind getting “grass stained.” On Friday night all the neighborhood kids gathered to play one of the above mentioned games. We all begged our parents to stay out later and later. When it was time to come home our parents yelled our names or rang a cowbell. We walked back through the woods to where we all lived only to wake up to next morning to go swimming in someone’s pool.

So what’s happened? Ask someone 10 years old about the games above or what they do for fun nowadays and you’ll hear a much different synopsis. It’s 3pm and you’ve just gotten home from school. Your fingers hurt from texting all day, but you run right to the computer to sign onto Facebook. After an hour of browsing people’s statuses you decide to head to your room to play Xbox 360. That lasts a few hours before you decide you’ve had enough and you pick up your cell phone to chat with your friend who tells you she just tweeted something hysterical that you have to see. You log into Twitter and begin reading the latest tweet from Charlie Sheen. You look up, it’s dark out, and you head to bed; but not without bringing you computer and cell phone with you into bed; after all, you haven’t played Words With Friends yet today.

As many of you know, I am actually a big proponent of social media and technology, especially for business. I’m part of all of the social media sites I just mentioned. However, what most of you may not know is that I also see the negative affect it is having on young children all over the world. For all the good it brings, we can’t forget the bad. Children are no longer being active and staying healthy, they’re barely seeing sunlight! The affect this can have on them is disastrous.

Take for example, an article I read this week; “Playing Video Games Without a Break Can Kill You.” Chris Staniforth died this may after staying up all night playing Xbox 360.

"A coroner has discovered that Chris — who had studied to become a game designer — suffered from deep vein thrombosis (DVT). That is, a blood clot formed in his left calf and then moved to his lungs, which caused a pulmonary embolism. He was on his way to an IT job interview when he collapsed and died.
DVT is the same condition they warn you about when you're going to be stuck on a long-haul flight.
The man's father — David Staniforth — told BBC News that his son was an avid "Halo" fan who would often spend up to 12 hours straight playing games on Xbox Live.
"Sitting still is literally the danger zone," David Staniforth said. "Chris loved to play and would stay up all night. Millions of people worldwide are playing these games for hours, and there is a risk."

While this may seem like a far fetch the risk is there!! This is what not moving can do to our bodies!!

So what can we do about it? How can we encourage children to get away from technology and get active?

One thing we can do is what my friend and entrepreneur Caitlin Fenn has put her energy into! “Fenn” has decided enough is enough when it comes to children not being active. She is the founder and president of the startup company “My SUPER Me.” My SUPER Me is the next generation movement based video game that can be played anywhere. My SUPER Me is the first platform built for kids 6-10 years old which encourages, verifies, and rewards real world play! Caitlin has found a way to reach out to children in the technologically savvy environment they’re used to, while encouraging them to leave that environment, try something fun and active and get rewarded for it!

My SUPER Me is just getting underway so if you have kids or know kids who would benefit from trying it (which is like…umm…every kid) ask them to visit the website and give their parents e-mail address to sign up!

You can also visit the MySuperMe Facebook page and read all of the favorite childhood games and outdoor activities fans are posting. You may even be able to give your own kids some ideas of what they could do tonight!

Caitlin is making a difference and is contributing to making our next generation of children become active again. There’s nothing more important than our health. What can you do to help?

St. Jude's/ Fitness for a Cure Part 2....

A little over 6 months ago I wrote a post about the upcoming St. Jude's fundraiser I was attending in Massachusetts. The fundraiser turned out to be just as amazing as I expected it to be. That night the Fitness for a Cure Gala raised $300,000 and became the biggest fundraiser in New England. It’s no secret as to why when you consider Sherri Sarrouf and the people who are part of Fitness for a Cure. The thing that is really special about the group is that they don’t just organize a fundraiser a few months out of the year, they are involved with St. Jude’s year round and are always working to help make each child’s life a little better. One of the events Fitness for a Cure participates in is traveling from New England to St. Jude’s in Memphis, TN and performing dance routines for the patients and families. While they are there they interact with many of the families and learn about many of the children’s’ battles with their illnesses and their stories. One of the best parts about this group is that they take these stories home with them and not only share them with others (such as myself) but make an effort to stay in contact with many of the children they meet. Yesterday I received an e-mail about one of the patients they met while at St. Jude’s a few weeks ago and the story about their interaction. I’d like to share this story with you. While the Fitness for a Cure group was at St. Jude’s they met a 10 year old boy named Evan who is currently fighting stage 4 high risk neuroblastoma. One day while they were there, the members of the Fitness for a Cure dance team were able to show off some of their dance moves to Evan and his mom. Later on in the day his mom confessed it was the first time she’d seen Evan laugh and smile in weeks. They were able to attend the Fitness for a Cure performance the next day and spent the whole day with the team. As Sherri said, “It was one of those times where the family just wanted to stay with our team.” Eventually the Fitness for a Cure team had to leave Memphis but was committed to staying in touch with Evan. When they got back they heard he wasn’t doing well so they sent him a video. Evan responded and sent this video back. (If that doesn’t make you smile, I don’t know what will.) Last night the Fitness for a Cure team sent Evan a video back, a bad dancing competition for him to judge.(You know he’ll have fun with that!) Sherri and her team are the perfect example of what I was trying to convey in my previous post; what is truly means to build relationships with people. That is why Fitness for a Cure is so special. The relationships they build with children at St. Jude’s and the lives they touch are invaluable. I think that as business professionals, but more importantly as people we can only hope to build relationships as simple and special as the ones Fitness for a Cure does. If you want to follow Evan on his journey please visit his Caring Bridge site and say a prayer for him. The Thomason family greatly appreciates all of the prayer and support they receive.

Creating Content That Builds; Not Sells

One of the things I’ve always tried to focus on when putting together marketing materials for Topaz is not wasting anyone’s time. We send one e-mail a week, always on the same day (Tuesday) to our database. My goal is always to make it something relevant, something that could be potentially useful to the receiver and something I believe in. Being in a sales and marketing role sometimes you’re perceived as someone who will spew any information and hope someone grabs a hold of it and you can create a sale out of it.

One of the best ways I’ve learned about how useless “sales pieces” can come off is by receiving many of them in my own e-mail in-box and telephone voice mail. Every day I receive at least one sales e-mail or call from a representative at a company asking me to buy something or tell me more about it. These are a few of the things I notice from these calls and e-mails and a few mistakes I try not to make when marketing to our clients.

•Don’t e-mail or call me if I’m not part of the cliental that would ever do business with you. You have to at least do a little research to have a target audience. Don’t call me and ask me to buy a pool float when I audit corporate travel. I never fully blind e-mail or call anyone. I only contact those who are in our database from doing business with us, those who have contacted us or those who have a large corporate travel volume and who I think will genuinely benefit from our services. I also never call anyone before I’ve researched what they do and their previous business history with us. If you are going to blind call me, know something about me that is relevent to the call. I’m telling you, this extra quick research can make all the difference.

•Please make the subject line and at least the first couple sentences of your e-mail or phone call interesting. “Dir sir/madam,” “To whom this may concern” “Are you looking for any of the following….” DELETE. Use my name, ask me a relevant question specific to me, have a top 10 list….just something that at least makes me read the first paragraph of what you have to say! I try to focus on engaging our clients from the moment they see the subject line of the e-mail. There are many people that delete e-mails without opening them, so at least give yourself a chance by making the subject line worth opening.

•Don’t always ask me or tell me something, GIVE me something. I love getting free content, white papers, research, survey answers…..anything that I can use and learn from is clutch. I don’t have free content to send in every e-mail, but I at least send something of high value to my clients for free every couple of weeks. The weeks in between I try to at least ask them important questions, and communicate items of interest to them that they may not have known before.

•Let me unsubscribe! Don’t make me e-mail you and ask you to stop e-mailing me. Don’t waste your time e-mailing people every week that just delete your e-mails. Have an unsubscribe button so those not interested can do so in a quick and easy manner!

•Always have a call to action and multiple ways to reach you! If someone is interested in what you have to say they want to know what to do next. I always try to direct our clients of what to do next if they like what they see. I also list every possible way to reach us including e-mail, phone number, website, and all of our social media sites. The easier you make it for people to reach you, the quicker they will.


•Believability: If I think you believe in something and are sincere about it, I’m much more likely to believe in it also! It’s the language you use, the way you write, the way you format your e-mail…it all affects believability. Focus on this, even if it takes a little extra time!

I always want my clients to know that I am sending them something because I believe they may be truly interested in it, I’ve retrieved their contact information from a reliable source and think they are a good target for what I am sending. I want to grab their attention from the moment they see it and hope to creatively ask them the right questions. I genuinely enjoy giving them free content they can use because that is how you build relationships. Not by selling, but by gaining trust from those in your target market that what you do is valuable, the service you provide is superior, and that you genuinely believe your product or service can help them. I don’t want to waste anyone’s time. If they don’t want to read our content, I will not be offended if they unsubscribe. It saves us both time and money! I actually appreciate it. The one thing I would add to an unsubscribe button is a “reason box” which asks why the client unsubscribed. I’m all for learning from your own clients! Listening to the negative to create positive change! I want all of our clients to find contacting us extremely simple. I want them to know I will always pick up a phone, return a voicemail, respond to an e-mail, respond to a question on Facebook or our website…whatever it is; I always try to respond as promptly and as informatively as possible. I believe in what Topaz does. I believe what we do genuinely helps our clients and is something that no one else can do as well as us. I hope that comes across in every piece of “marketing material” I send out. In the end, most importantly, I want to build relationships with our clients, not just sell. I think building those relationships eventually creates sales, as opposed to trying to sell someone and then have a surface level relationship to complete the transaction. I look forward to meeting new people, working with them, gaining their trust, and allowing them to see what I see in Topaz.

Risk

I believe that taking risks is a good thing. Of course, I should specify calculated risks. I’ve taken many different risks throughout my life involving many different things. I think I got this instinct from my parents. However, it’s funny looking back comparing my own risks to those of my parents. When my parents were 25 and 32 they were taking risks that I’m not sure I would have the guts to take now or in 10 years.
When my mom was 25 she and my dad decided to build and open a restaurant in south Nashua, NH. Both my dad and mom had a background in the restaurant business, working in them and managing them for many years. My parents made good money at what they did. However, to continue their dream of opening their own restaurant they had to be willing to give up everything to finance their project.

In 1984 my mom’s father and grandfather both died unexpectedly within a month of each other; she had a pre-mature baby (my older sister) and lived in an apartment with my dad and his two sons,with frequent visits from my grandmother and my great grandmother. Her and my dad had one car between them. As my dad would say, “They didn’t have two sticks to rub together.” They financed the opening of the restaurant and were almost at their breaking point when they opened the doors. However, it was their dream and a risk they knew they wanted and had to take at that point.

The restaurant was a huge success. My parents went on to build their own home, have their second child (me), stay in business 18 years, (Before selling to Hooter's) and help put four kids through college. There were definitely years at the restaurant that were better than others, but my parents always kept working hard and persevered until better times and continued to take calculated risks.

After my parents sold the restaurant they went on to find careers as a realtor and a mortgage broker. Both of their salaries are based entirely on commission and they are doing just fine. There is something about risk that I think keeps flowing through your blood. Once you take your first big risk and succeed it's like you're no longer scared to fail. You're ready for the next one, the next one, and the next one. The combination of not being scared to fail and being a hard worker are deadly, unstoppable.

I think at the end of the day if we really want to do something worth doing, it’s probably going to take some significant risk. If you look at some of the most successful people or the people who brought some of the most significant technology to the world; they all took significant risks. How would YOU like to stand outside with a kite and a metal key in your hand during a thunder and lightning storm? I'm glad someone did.

We all have passions we will want to pursue and struggles we will face trying to pursue them. We will all have risks we’ll have to decide to take throughout the process. At the end of the day, you’ll most likely regret not going after the things you dream about. Don’t be scared to not have “Two sticks to rub together,” for a while; It’s a common part of a great risk.

Learning Lessons from The King

Through all of his debauchery there are a few things we can learn from King James.

James came into the NBA straight out of high school. While his basketball skills proved more than ready, it seems he was missing out on some of the maturity he needed. Whether that be his “decision” making skills, communication skills, PR skills, Hiring the correct people who can help you in these areas skills...Lebron was obviously greatly lacking many skills he needed to be truly respected in the NBA. The first thing LBJ taught us: Know when you’re ready for something and know when you’re not. Know what the “entire package” entails and be ready for every aspect of what you commit to, not just one. You can be the most talented player in the NBA, but with the worst attitude, not a lot of people are going to be buying your jersey.

When Lebron asked ESPN to give him an hour to make “the decision,” some think that was his worst career move yet. I mean, it can’t get much worse? Or can it? Not to mention he tried to say the entire production was to raise money for children. I think he has enough money to simply hand it to the Boys & Girls club and doesn't need an hour on ESPN to do it. Just sayin'. How does he explain the charade of him, Bosh, and Wade at the American Airlines arena strutting down a platform last July to show off the “new trio?” If you’re going to be good at something, be humble about it. With anything you do, no matter how good you are, you have to be humble. The humble professionals always win the hearts of those around them. Thanks for reminding us the hot heads usually lose the fans, Lebron. You never saw Jordan or Bird pulling these kind of shenanigans.

Once Lebron had committed to the Miami Heat he guaranteed an NBA championship. (Actually, more than one..) I don’t think I need to describe what happened next. This one is simple….don’t overpromise. I mean, really.

LBJ’s quote of the year came last night when asked by the media what he thought about the people who wanted him to fail:

"At the end of the day, all the people that were rooting on me to fail, at the end of the day, they have to wake up tomorrow and have the same life that they had before they woke up today, They have the same personal problems they had today. I'm going to continue to live the way I want to live and continue to do the things that I want to do with me and my family and be happy with that."

So basically your response to “fans” after not winning an NBA championship you guaranteed, “Oh well, I’m still rich, and you’re still poor compared to me.” YIKES. Talk about a communications blunder; one of about a million this year for James. I think we can all learn two simple things from yet another awful interview for Lebron: 1. Think before you speak. 2: Don’t drastically insult or mock those that support you and pay your salary on national television.

It’s sad, really, when you think about it. A phenomenal basketball player, but in so many ways, doesn’t know what it takes to truly be a professional. Oh well, at the end of the day, he had to wake up a loser today, not me; Looks like he needed to bring a little more talent to South Beach.

Big VS Small Companies

It is interesting to think of people’s perceptions of big vs small companies. I think most of the time people get worried about working with smaller companies that may not have the best or most advanced websites. What will the service be like? Can I rely on them? What if they do not meet my expectations, is their any liability?
Many people often stick with larger companies whose brand they recognize, whose website is advanced, and whose policies are set in place.

What I’ve learned over the last year is that often times I end up receiving better customer service, a better product or service, and relability with small companies then I have with larger companies.

This year at Topaz we’ve taken some time to search out a few suppliers whom we had never done business with and who only had a few employees each. Some we found through their websites, and some through referrals.
Here are a few examples of small companies we’ve worked with over the last year who have really impressed us:

Nils Myers-152 West Productions: We hired Nils from across the country on a website search, without a referral. Yes, most people would call us crazy, but after looking through his website and speaking with him on the phone I just had a good feeling. Our CEO Brad was going to be giving a presentation in California and we needed a videographer in that area. We hired Nils to film Brad and then edit the videos so we could use them on our Youtube channel and for other marketing purposes. Nils was professional from the beginning of the transaction until the end. He was timely throughout the entire project and presented us with great video footage.

Kim-Seven Thirty Three Custom Blog Design: I needed an up-grade to my blog design and I needed it bad and quick. Kim to the rescue! I heard of Kim through a friend’s blog who had her blog re-designed by Kim. I quickly browsed through Kim’s website and portfolio and knew she was the designer for me. Within 48 hours Kim had my blog re-designed exactly the way I wanted it. Her operationally efficency from deposit, to design, to final payment was flawless. She is talented and knows how to run a business, a deadly combination for success.

Jim Meegan-Jim Meegan Video Productions: So full disclosure here: Jim is my brother-In-law. However, that is not why I chose to have him do our videos. I would never suggest someone to my boss who I didn’t think would do a phenominal job. Jim is a videographer in the Boston area who does a variety of videogprahy work from weddings, businesses, events, education, etc. He is also a videographer for every Boston Red Sox home game. I knew from seeing Jim’s work that he would produce something amazing at a great price. He rented a studio and filmed segment videos of Brad and I to use as marketing pieces on our website. He even showed up with a teleprompter. Jim comes highly recommended, not from a family member, but from a satisfied client. Check out his work for yourself on his blog.

Amber Singleton Riviere-Give Back Project Amber is in charge of a really neat project that offers marketing, website analysis and design services to small businesses and entrepreneurs at a low cost. Her goal is for the entrepreneur to eventually be able to be self reliant and up-date the site themselves. She has a great portfolio and great testimonials. We had her analyze our website to get her professional opinions on possible revisions. She responded promptly and with insightful ideas. Amber has a great mission and continually succeeds at fulfilling it.


To all of the small businesses above, thank you for all of your great work. You are the true definition of how sometimes small companies do better work than big companies and are just as, if not more reliable.