The holidays are coming. Are you ready??!?

You: A merchant that sells services or other products that aren’t easily purchased over the Internet (i.e. pizzas).

The problem: How can you take advantage of the Internet to monetize web-based traffic, sell more of your services or products, and increase cash flow, especially during the holidays?

The answer: Use BoomTime to sell Instant Gift Certificates on your website!

Yes, I do feel a bit guilty for the shameless plug to one of my businesses. I lose the guilt though, when I think about the results. Let me explain: We went after spas and salons with our SpaBoom brand, and have almost 2,000 spas and salons signed up. (Don’t believe me? Check out our aggregating website, Spa Emergency!) We’ve learned something: That almost 50% of gift buyers wait until the last 48 hours of a holiday or event to make their gift purchase. These buyers are rushed, in a hurry and either don’t trust the mail service (i.e. US Post Office, FedEx, etc) or they have just plain run out of time and cannot mail it even if they wanted to.

So, our spa and salon customers are nearly doubling their gift certificate sales using our Instant Gift Certificate technology during the holidays. Over the span of a year, the results are pretty dramatic. They are seeing a 15% to 30% in overall gift certificate revenues.

So, check it out! If you’re a spa or salon, go to www.spaboom.com, otherwise check out www.boomtime.com and consider using us to drive Instant Gift Certificate sales. We use a “pay for performance” model, which is a fancy way of saying commission of 5% or less, depending on your volume of sales in a given month. The good news about this is it doesn’t cost you anything unless you start making money.

Good luck to you and have a happy (and prosperous) holiday season!

Radio Free David

Internet radio listening has never been more fun!

Radio Free David brings you the best music for your internet radio listening pleasure, from classic internet radio and the solid beats of yesterday to today’s cutting edge songs. He has assembled an awesome collection of songs, and although you might know the tune, you probably haven’t heard these versions before. Give them a listen on the Internet and you just might be surprised at the selection and variety of music they offer from their deep radio playlist. You can easily connect to them and listen to the music using your favorite player. You can also listen to them on your cell phone!

The Radio Free David Playlist

The Radio Free David playlist brings you the best possible songs and cuts of your favorite songs. Each and every tune has been hand-selected, considered, and placed into the rotation for your listening pleasure. They feature the less heard versions of songs, including live, acoustic and unplugged versions. They are very particular about what they play and they have to like it! Sit back, turn up the volume, and enjoy!

Request your favorite music

You can request and dedicate songs! Just visit the playlist and find your favorite tune, then click the “Request” link next to each song. You will even have the chance to dedicate the tune!

Objective, transparent decision making …

As an executive and consultant, I’ve run into many points in my life where I’ve had to make a complicated decision based on a number of competing objectives. In most instances, I can make a decision fairly quickly after doing my research or evaluating my options.

In some situations, a quick decision isn’t practical, possible or best. Have you ever had situations where:

• It’s not clear which option would be best?
• A decision is politically charged (i.e. Transparency is essential, because the stakes are high and everyone concerned wants to know the decision is fair)?
• Someone important — perhaps a family member or client — wants to know you’re being professional and being through in your decision (or recommendation)?

Well, I have just the thing! I call it a “Comparison-based Decision Matrix”. It’s a simple, great looking, spreadsheet that enables you to compare competing options on an apples-to-apples basis. The spreadsheet takes the difficulty out of making a decision, although creates a new difficulty: figuring out what the factors in your decision really are, and assigning weights to those factors.

Download the spreadsheet. It contains a simple decision as an example: “How should we process Credit Cards today?” It compares three possibilities.

How to use the Comparison-based Decision Matrix

1. What is the issue to be decided? Put this in B6. In my example, I have “How should we process Credit Cards today?”
2. What are the decision factors that influence your decision? Nothing is too small or unimportant. Put it all down. Insert additional lines, as you need them. In my example, I have “Best for Customer Satisfaction,” “Cheapest Long-Term” and “Cheapest Short-Term” amongst others.
3. Now comes the hard part: assign weights to each of your factors. Some are more important than others, so you need to weigh each factor against the others. Give each a weight, so that all your weights total up to 100. The spreadsheet will help you. If one factor is weighted 20 and another 10, the one weighted 20 is twice as important as the one weighing 10.
4. Put in the options. In my example, I have three. Replace those with your options. If you one have two options, ignore the third column of options. If you have more than three options, I’ve put instructions in the spreadsheet on how you can increase the number of options. (It requires you to insert a couple of columns and copy some formulas).
5. Rate each option against each other for each factor, with 3 being the best and 1 being the worst. In my example, let’s look at “Best for Customer Satisfaction”. Option A is the worst option, so it gets a “1″. Option C is the best options, so it gets a “3″.
6. Finally, look at the final score for each option. The one with the highest score wins!

It’s actually a lot easier than it sounds. Try it out, and see how it works.

Ideas for the Comparison-based Decision Matrix

This can be a tool for a number of really interesting decisions:

• Selecting the best candidate for an open employment position.
• Selecting the best political candidate, when trying to determine who to vote for.
• My personal favorite: I’d love, love, love to see a political figure (i.e. such as a senator, member of congress, or other legislator) use such a tool in determine what bills, statutes and other laws they vote on. If nothing else, to specifically enumerate what they stand for (i.e. what’s on the list of factors), and how those factors weighed into their decision on whether to support or reject a certain piece of legislation. Could you imagine such a world??!?
• Selecting whether to buy or lease your next vehicle, as well as what vehicle to select.
• Any decision you feel you run the risk of making a decision based on emotions.
• A career move.
• Selecting which university you wish to obtain your degree.
• And thousands of other decisions, when you have more than one or two factors, with multiple options.

Good luck to you and your decisions! If you hear of any politicians, whether they be Republican, Democrat or independent; conservative or liberal; at the federal, state or local level; that uses such a method to introduce transparency into their decision making, PLEASE let me know about it!

Getting angry … it’s all a matter of perspective …

It’s sort of interesting, how your world view can change when you have a near-death experience … and your life flashes before your eyes.

I had just that sort of event, on the highway, earlier today.

You see, I had a semi-truck decide to cut across two lanes of traffic, and run me off the highway. And it got me thinking … how we get angry as individuals, because of the stories we tell ourselves … making outrageous assumptions about someone else’s behavior. Let me explain …

I was traveling about 70mph on a six-lane highway in Albuquerque, NM. I was in the far right-hand lane, and the semi was traveling as fast as I was, in the far left-hand lane. I saw out of the corner of my eye, a big wall changing lanes … coming towards me. I looked, and noticed he had his turn signal on. I naturally assumed he was changing lanes, to take the middle lane that sat between us.

Well, without so much as a one-second pause, the semi kept on coming … over into my lane. I had nowhere to go. A concrete wall was approximately 6 feet from my car on the right. I had only a second to react, and decided to jam on my brakes. The semi crossed into my lane, missing me car by inches and kept going on his way.

Luckily, no one was behind me, so I didn’t have anyone crash into my rear. No other cars nearby, so no other accidents to avoid.

I was really, really angry at that truck driver. How could he intentionally run me off the road like that??!?

I sped up, overtook him on his left, pulled in front of him, rolled down my window and gave him a long, hard look at my bird. Then, I sped away to get to my final destination.

My heart raced. My mind full of doubt. Should I have slammed on my brakes in front of the semi, to show him the extent of my displeasure? Was it impolite to give him the bird? What would have happened, if the semi crashed into me? Should I have kept my ground, because the semi would have veered back into the middle lane at that last minute, in a high-stakes game of chicken??!?

It slowly occurred to me that I was really angry, because I assumed he intentionally tried to run me off the road. That’s the story I told myself. He intentionally did it. By thinking his behavior was intentional, it opened the door to all sorts of angry feelings and rude behavior on my part.

However, what really is the truth? Did a truck driver set out this morning to run some random freak off the road??!? Or, is it more likely that I wasn’t actually going the same speed as the semi, but in fact going a bit faster, so that the trucker didn’t see me when changing lanes? Sure, he was wrong for changing two lanes of traffic at the same time, but I imagine he felt it was his only opportunity to get over in time to take advantage of an exit some miles ahead.

So, my point here is, I can get angry at a trucker for changing two lanes at the same time, and putting my life in danger. But, that anger is very different than the anger I might feel, if I believe someone did it intentionally. Anger is a matter of perspective.

It seems to me, folks who frequently get angry at others, have a hard time empathizing and putting themselves in the shoes of others. I’m going to bet a psychologist might say this is because such individuals long for this treatment themselves and their anger is a form of fear at not getting what they really desire. Sure, that might be true, but “do unto others” goes a long way. Understand that anger is a matter of perspective, and seek to understand the perspective of the object of your ire.