I am excited to share my wife’s audition video for Food Network Challenge. This was not an open casting call. A Food Network associate producer recently contacted Peggy to ask if she is interested in competing on Food Network Challenge. Of course, she was brought to tears with the excitement of competing in this prestigious cake decorating competition.

Food Network found our company, Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections on the Internet. As a marketing guy, it is my job to be sure opportunities like this come to my clients. This client is one which is very dear to me.

Peggy tells the story of “Rocker Girl and Buttercream Boy” and what brought her to opening Mad Eliza’s Cakes and Confections. It is not all glitz and glamor, but it is a real story of how she found herself in the cake business, and how her passion led her to master the art of cakes.

Car dealers are infamous for their marketing short-sightedness, so they make a great social media example. New and used car sales organizations live or die in short bursts of business. Their inventory is usually financed using a “floor plan”, and if the inventory is not selling, the bank will make it very uncomfortable for them. This creates a challenge that is not so unlike the urgency felt in other businesses. It causes a lot of companies to focus more on an eight percent increase in new business and overlook the eighty percent increase they could achieve if they look ahead [...]

This was just such an absurdity that I had to share it with you. It is a particularly disturbing instance of ignoring good business principles of using the right tool for the job. It is also a perfect instance of gross underestimation of the value and cost of proper Website development and secure Web hosting, especially where it relates to the medical profession.
Let us say that you have a medical consulting business and you need a Website. You provide your medical consulting services with an emphasis on electronic delivery and hosting of the doctors’ Policy and Procedure Manuals. This is a [...]

Perhaps you have seen ads with headlines like “Increase Business Online in 60 Seconds” and you know in an instant that it is another scam (at least I do). That sounds silly, right? They are usually pushing some miracle cure for your business, but those of us participating in the real world know that nothing comes from nothing.
I belong to a face-to-face business networking group in my hometown of Topeka, Kansas. I will attend our weekly meeting in about three hours, and visit with 25 area business people and their guests. The group is a chapter of BNI, and it [...]