Moving to New Real Estate!

So you came here looking for the next greatest thing I have written, right. Well you won't find it here...you will have to go to my new home. I've also dropped the "Marty the Economic Developer" moniker. It was too long and frankly who really understands what an economic developer really is. So from now on you can find me at:

www.martyvanags.com

P. S. I also have a prettier more recent picture of me on the site.

Can We Copy Nature?

Almost every morning lately I have been taking a walk. Often the sun is just peeking out of the eastern sky and providing dappled light through the numerous trees that dominate the landscape in my neighborhood. Those crisp clear morning's are so inspiring. Taking my morning walk sets the day straight and get my juices going.

Along the way, I find it amazing the amount of nature I encounter. I don't the difference between slugs and snails, or when snails get their shell, but I keep seeing these big speckled slug like creatures crawling across the sidewalk. There is always the usual amount of birds plying the sky making a racket, Blue-jays, and Crows, the loudest among them. I don't think I have seen as many rabbits as I have seen this year. Is the increase in the number of rabbits some type of biological marker or sign?

Evey morning I cross a bridge over a small stream called Sugar Creek. The bridge has a chain link fence on the creek side and concrete barrier on the street side. Every morning, I walk through a phalanx of spider web strings that had been shot across the sidewalk between the fence and the concrete overnight. Every morning I ruin the hard work of perhaps dozen spiders. They will have to build a stronger set of Gulliverian type webs to hold my huge body of inertia back.

The other morning, after a thick fog had lain in, I noticed the fence which rises to height of about 6 feet, was decorated like a Christmas tree with round geometrically perfect webs. There had to be at least fifty of them. The looked like ornaments as they had captured the moisture of the fog as it was lifting and the each web glistened in the morning light as if light up by electricity.

Nature is amazing. I had heard of scientists working to develop a string, fiber or chord as strong as a spider web, and of other experiments. This process is called Biomimicry . In other words copying what we see (that works) in nature. One of the leading proponents of this field is Janine Benyus. Benyus is the president of the Biomimicry Institute and thinking like hers can open whole new economies and industries that can help our environment and the way we live. Watch this TED video of Janine Benyus:



What do you think? Is this an economic development strategy?

Across the Fruited Plain

In an earlier post I mentioned I had met a woman earlier this year whose goal was to go to all fifty states at some point in her life. I have had the same goal. It never really materialized until I counted some years back, how many states I had visited, and thought maybe this might be fun goal to have. So I put it on my list of things to do.
I don’t call my list, a “bucket list” like in the recent movie. It’s just a bunch of things that are of interest to me. Things I would like to do. I like to keep lists like that. I recently started one called, “Things never to wear in public” or privately to be honest. Back to the states. As of today, I have to visit only six more states to finish the list. They are North Dakota, Oklahoma, Arkansas, West Virginia, Alaska, and Hawaii.

At the end of August plan to reduce the number by three. I have planned an exciting trip to North Dakota, Oklahoma, and Arkansas. Yes, this road trip will cover these three states in six days. It will consist of a lot of driving, not much sightseeing, and plenty of sleep. I have planned stops in Barron Wisconsin, Fargo, Omaha, Tulsa, and Springfield, Missouri.

I don’t take many vacations, and if I do they are usually planned around work or conferences. This trip will be just me and my car, and my computer. I will be blogging as I go, giving some astute observations about these romantic, exciting locations. I hope to provide pictures, use our flip camera and give you my thoughts on each of these locations, and my view of the upper Midwest and Plains states as I go.

I know I should rent a cabin and take it easy, but I am finding it difficult to imagine when I will be in any of these states in the near future. I need to take some time, so I thought that last week of August would be great time. September always seems to be busy and this is the perfect week to squeeze it in.

The rest of my schedule is up in the air. I am thinking Fall would be a good time to cut through Indiana, Ohio and hit West Virginia on some cool weekend. That would be an easy three days. Then I would be substantially finished. I could say I have been in the 48 continental states. Hawaii and Alaska would be last and I haven’t made a plan for that.

If you read this and you live in any of the states I plan to visit at the end of this month, contact me by commenting on this blog, email me (mvanags@bnbiz.org), or direct message me on Twitter. My handle is @bnedguy.

230 Miles to the Gallon!

So we are walking out of a restaurant today and I see a Chevy/GEO Metro. A little two-door car and one of the finest ever built. I am not a car manufacturing historian, however as I recall this was a joint project between GM and Toyota. I am probably wrong and someone can correct me. The point is these little cars seem to never fail. I drove one for a couple months several years ago. I borrowed it from my sister and it was a tough little car that lasted them well over 100,000 miles. My older daughter just got rid of one that she drove for a long long time. They always need little repairs but they seem to be little tanks.

Right away our discussion went to the new Chevy Volt that is being touted and promoted with great fanfare in just the past several days. I mentioned the claim that the care gets 230 miles to the gallon. Of course, I should have known that co-worker Ken has already looked into this claim and was ready to deconstruct it. Ken is a car industry watcher and follows many of the changes going on. This is helpful, as w e have our own car manufacturing facility here in BN, Mitsubishi. Later, Ken sent me this to confirm his parking lot argument that the 230 miles per gallon is advertising spin:

“EPA has not tested a Chevy Volt and therefore cannot confirm the fuel economy values claimed by GM. EPA does applaud GM’s commitment to designing and building the car of the future—an American-made car that will save families… [blah blah blah]”
The real beauty is how GM came up with its ludicrous mileage estimate:
1) According to GM, the average person drives about 30-40 miles per day.
2) According to GM, the volt can go 40 miles on a full-charge before it activates the ICE (internal combustion engine).
3) Therefore, the average person will only rarely use the ICE in their volt. With the minimal gas used for occasional trips that push the volt past the 40-mile electric-only range, a person can expect to drive 230 city miles [with nightly battery re-charges] only burning a single gallon of gas. Thus, the volt gets 230 miles to a gallon.

You know what? My car gets 380,000 miles to the gallon. All I have to do is hitch my vehicle to a Saturn rocket and have it launched to the moon. Then, carefully aiming, I point my Mazda towards the earth and let gravity do the work. As my vehicle becomes superheated during re-entry, I turn on my A/C and burn exactly one gallon of gas keeping myself from burning to a crisp, high in Earth’s upper-atmosphere. According to GM’s logic, my car has traveled 380,000 miles using only one gallon of gas and therefore gets 380,000 miles to the gallon.”

I love it when Ken gets on a role. Your thoughts?

A Little Customer Service would be Nice.

I really think about how I am treated in the places I shop these days. There are so many choices when it comes to shopping, eating or getting services, that when I go, I want to be treated right. A local restaurant I like to frequent recently had a new hostess working the front who did everything she could to make my seating arrangement for me and my guest difficult. We just wanted to sit outside on a beautiful night. How hard was that to accommodate? Yet, it is likely this young lady was following some directions somebody gave her without thinking about how she might have some flexibility in letting the customer make a choice.

She probably had no idea that I would get on the internet and blog about this. And that is the point, isn't it. With today's technology, crappy customer service can spread like wildfire, and wreak havoc with what might otherwise be a nice place. I won't mention the name today, because I keep going to this restaurant, and I don't know why. I guess I like the bartenders and their beer selection, but they have a long way to go on making the customer feel good.

On my radio show, were we feature local business people and entrepreneurs (it's not really my radio show, it is Beth Whisman's radio show on WJBC, she just lets me sit there for an hour and tag along), almost everyone has talked about customer service as a way to survive the recession. The smart ones understand that if you can keep your customers happy, they will keep coming back. I am very loyal to the places that treat me right. I will always go back even if they charge a little more.

So, if you are struggling in this recession to make a go of it, have you zeroed in on your best customers? Have you called them, emailed them, sent them a letter asking them to stop by and buy something? Why don't you call them and merely thank them. When they do come in, treat them like kings and queens. That is why they like you in the first place. Like them back, in a big way.

This is authentic strategy and it provides the greatest return for your investment. Try it and let me know how it went.