A Businessman’s View of the First Christmas

Anyone in business tends to look at historical events with a business eye. Since this is Christmas, I’d like to add my views on what may have happened in the events that led up to the birth of Christ. And since theologians nowadays seem to speculate all over the place about the events of the life of Christ, I will use some literary license.

The Gospel of Luke tells us that Mary traveled to the hill country of Judah to visit her cousin Elizabeth, who was six months pregnant. Since the distance from Nazareth to Judah was about 120 miles in those days, due to winding mountain roads, Joseph most likely traveled with her. A man can walk 20 miles in a day, so now we’re talking two weeks minimum round-trip travel time. Enough for a life-changing experience.

Joseph was called a carpenter, but at the beginning of his career may have worked only in stone, a more primitive working material. Coming from the small town of Nazareth, he was perhaps unaware of a technological revolution taking place in construction methods. Woodworking, especially using geometric measurements, was a new development from the Greeks, the high technology of the day. It could be that Joseph, in meeting and networking with others along the journey to Judah, was exposed to this new technology. He likely saw the uses of geometric wood cuts in animal-drawn carts and fine homes.

Expanding His Knowledge Base

I can just see this foster-father of Jesus saying, “Look, Mary, we can take this woodworking back to Nazareth and my customers will love it!” If this is the route he took, Joseph would have to expand his knowledge base to learn more math to accommodate angles and the rudimentary form of trigonometry of its day to make his wood cuts. Many months after their trip to Judah, Joseph could have taken the gold from one of the three wise men who visited Christ and invested it in new saws, hammers, nails and various types of wood. (Since the gold was a gift and not earned income, it would have escaped the hands of the tax collectors.)

It could be that Joseph hired other tradesmen and expanded his business. But people being who they are, his workers may have demanded higher wages and better working conditions. Since not one word of Joseph’s was recorded in the Bible, we can speculate that Joseph was not a good communicator, and could not solve his company problems. Maybe the stress of his new business led to heart failure, and that is why he died before Jesus was 30, as tradition says.

Yet, the Bible says that Joseph was a “just man,” and we can assume that he died with a clear conscience, and that is why he is the patron saint of the dying.

All this from a journey to Judah to visit a relative.

Take an Ad for “Here I Am Lord” Youth Conference, St. Charles IL

Now is the time for Catholic religious communities to reach youth with a message about their communities. Three thousand young persons will be coming to the Here I Am Lord (HIAL) vocations conference in St. Charles, IL, March 4 - 7, 2010.

You can take out an attractive ad, such as the one shown at left, on the HIAL website at www.HereIAmLord.net. Your ad will be seen by youth, parents, and young adult ministry organizers who come to learn and sign up for the conference. This is your target audience.

Last year the HIAL website enjoyed 1,793 visits between December and March, which is nearly 450 visits per month and more than 100 visits per week. This year, some 3,000 teens and young adults will participate in the conference. Furthermore, your ad will cost the same as last year - and the cost of $175 for December through March 31 has been reduced to $150 if you contact Kevin Banet at Kevin@treefrogclick.com. We can also design an attractive ad for you like the ones shown on this page for only $60.

Limited Number of Ads

Our company, TreeFrogClick, works closely with conference organizers each year, and your ad will be attractively displayed on the www.HereIAmLord.net home page. Ads are placed from top down, on a first-come, first-served basis. In order to maximize visibility, we allow only 12 ads on this website. As of today, the ad space is mostly filled up, so it’s important to act now to get good placement, high up on the page.

Read more about it at TreeFrogClick-HIAL. Our ad is only one-seventh the cost of a major Catholic online publisher. And our ads are targeted. We can bill you. Simply email Kevin J. Banet, or call 708-393-4098 to ensure your ad will be placed. Time is limited - remember, only 12 ads will be allowed. Call or email us today.

Sure, there’s lots to be thankful for this Thanksgiving week. But don’t get mashed like a sweet potato when putting up a website. Here are five guidelines to follow to avoid getting roasted in your next internet advertising venture.

What basics do you look for in finding a company to design a new website? Over the years, we at TreeFrogClick have made some crucial realizations. Here are five top qualities of a good website design firm.

A Good Website Firm

1. Good communication. Will the firm be responsive to you and return phone calls and emails? Or are they too big to be concerned with you? Will you be talking with offshore developers who have an accent and are difficult to get ahold of?
2. Appealing portfolio. Are the websites designed by the firm attractive? Do they have link navigation that is intuitive? Can you find all pages easily? Are the websites designed to be easily indexed by search engines? For searches, important words and links should be done in text rather than graphics.
3. Ease of use. Will you have the ability to make basic text and picture changes on your website from any computer with the use of a password? Or will you have to pay a high hourly fee to do so? What is their minimum hourly charge? $75 is a lot to pay to change a phone number.
4. Access to website. Will you have full administrative server rights to your website? Will you be given the passwords for FTP and the website itself? Will you have the ability to completely change your website, or is that right reserved by the design company?
5. Honesty and integrity. Will the domain be registered in your and your company’s name, and will you be able to verify this? Does the firm’s contract ensure this? Will you be paying unnecessary ongoing administrative fees after the website is built? Is a contract provided? Can you understand it?

Read testimonies of the firm’s happy clients and ask questions about the above points.

If you think you have it rough, remember that the pilgrims celebrated the first Thanksgiving feast in 1621, after nearly half their members died in their first New England winter. Count your blessings and have a great celebration.

Read our free PDF fact sheet, “Seven Proven Ways to Drive Visitors to Your Website.”

Anyone running a business or non-profit knows how important are one’s personal drive and skills if he wants to survive. Christopher Columbus, a man who overcame overwhelming obstacles, is often forgotten by today’s cultural elite, which often denies achievements key to Western civilization.

Columbus wouldn't quit.

Called by some the greatest navigator of his day, Columbus combined the qualities of long-suffering and smart network connections to achieve the discovery of the Americas (whoops, “European awareness of the American continents,” as Wikipedia says).

He was probably only 19 when he became a mariner, and got his idea of sailing west to reach the Far East when he was only 20 or 23. Some say the idea was suggested by his brother Bartholomeo, who was maker of sea maps. It took Columbus twenty long years to get the financial backing of King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella of Spain in 1492 for his historic voyage.

After appealing to royalty and nobility through a network of friends in Portugal, Spain, France and England, he was traveling away from the court in Spain, where his idea had been again rejected. At a poverty level, he stopped at a Dominican friary with his son and asked the porter to allow his son to rest overnight there. The head of the friary, Friar Perez, overheard the conversation and questioned Columbus.  The Dominican priest, who was the queen’s confessor, liked Columbus’ plan and went quickly to the Spanish court.

An important fact here is that the Moors, who had occupied Spain for some eight hundred years, lost their last battle to the Christian forces at Granada, perhaps a few weeks before Columbus’s visit to the friary, thus freeing up the attention of King Ferdinand. Friar Perez then persuaded the queen to support the enterprise. Columbus was then called to court (he received some money up front for clothes since he was dressed almost like a beggar), and the rest is history.

Columbus was persevering. He kept trying, even after many rebuffs. It all shows what networking, perseverance and - how important here - good timing will do. Oh, and if we’re talking success here, he never reached his goal of finding a trade route to the Indies. He just achieved something entirely different, but certainly good.

Facebook has gained a lot of attention lately as a marketing tool. It was recently announced that 300 million people worldwide now use this social media tool. That’s the entire population of the United States.

The Chicago Tribune last week recounted the story of Tim Ireland, a Chicago area real estate agent who uses Facebook to attract new clients. The agent is happy with social media and says he cannot afford a website (whoops - since I’m a web designer, I guess I shouldn’t say that).

“For me, Facebook works,” Ireland said. “I don’t post listings [of homes] there, but I do talk to 60 to 70 percent of my clients there.” He gets to know people there and builds a relationship of trust.

Another person interviewed, Patrick Shaver, a builder of custom homes, was invited to a Ferrari unveiling through his LinkedIn account and met several people there who became clients. The article talked about other real estate professionals and builders who use these two sites, as well as Twitter.

Another realtor, Kim Kerbis, says her monthly postcard mailings are still worth the expense, but her website is still her deal clincher. “I tell enough about my background so a client might see that we share an interest such as film,” Kerbis said of her site. “That starts a relationship.”

Website Decision

If you had to choose only one, is a social media presence more important than a website? It depends on your industry and your resources. Which do you have more of - money or time? If you have money, you can afford a website. If you have more time, then spend it with social media.

Most businesses need a website because they must display a large amount of information about their product or service in an organized manner. Real estate agents often do not have their own website, since they usually have a profile as part of their franchise’s website. Other businesses, however, would leave a bad impression if they didn’t have a site.

We at TreeFrogClick can help you with your social media and website needs.

How can you make your blog jump off the page and make readers’ eyeballs pop out? After all, lots of other people are saying just what you are, so what’s different about your stuff?

This problem was addressed by Paul Roberts, a 1950’s college English teacher who no doubt kept Folgers stock high due to efforts keeping awake while reading students’ lackluster essays.

Roberts wrote the famous essay, “How to Say Nothing in 500 Words,” and said, “Can you be expected to make a dull subject interesting? As a matter of fact, this is precisely what you are expected to do. This is the writer’s essential task.”

He says that all subjects are dull until somebody makes them interesting. “The writer’s job is to find the argument, the approach, the angle, the wording that will take the reader with him,” he says. Thus, instead of writing an essay about why college football is bad, and lapsing into a lot of tired old arguments, Roberts suggests zeroing in on a concrete image to give the idea some legs:

Picture poor old Alfy coming home from football practice every evening, bruised and aching, agonizingly tired, scarcely able to shovel the mashed potatoes into his mouth.  … What will he look back on when he graduates from college? Toil and torn ligaments. And what will be his future? He is not good enough for pro football, and he is too obscure and weak in econ to succeed in stocks and bonds.

This is what grips the reader — how to begin with a general argument and give it flesh with specific details. In the essay, Roberts offers a lot of good writing advice as well, such as how to avoid “padding” your essay with non-essential words, how to avoid trite expressions, and how to get right to the point.

Paul Roberts never saw a blog, but he’d be able to pen a whopping good one today.

A new study says that Americans’ trust of the media is the lowest it’s been since at least 1985, and that’s not surprising considering what happened this past weekend.

The large grass-roots conservative groups that marched on Washington, D.C. on Saturday went underreported. The Chicago Tribune said that “tens of thousands” came to the protest, which consisted of people unhappy with threats of a growth in socialism, spending and left-wing policies in the government.

WLS Radio’s Don and Roma, conservative talk show hosts in Chicago, however, said today that hundreds of thousands had come to the demonstration.

People have a sense that their news is sometimes pitched in a certain way. A Pew Research Center survey released Monday, reported in TechNewsWorld on media credibility, shows that now just 29 percent of Americans surveyed believe the media gets the facts right, the lowest since 1985.

“Those downward trends may intersect with rising chart lines for the use of Web sites and blogs as news sources,” TechNewsWorld said.

It’s all the more reasons why small businesses and non-profits should utilize even more their websites, blogs and videos.

Videos Watched More, Too

Also, Americans are watching internet videos more than ever, according to a recent report. Time spent watching these videos increased 46% in the second quarter, compared to a year ago, according to a Nielsen report, as reported in the Chicago Tribune Sept. 11.

Another recent report found that people are using the internet to relax and get their minds off the recession. “This fits within a broader trend of the internet increasingly becoming a go-to source for people to relax, take it easy and have fun,” said Aaron Smith, of the Pew Internet & American Life project.

Check out the solemn, prayerful scenes in the new video produced by TreeFrogClick about the Poor Clares of Santa Barbara, CA. They’ve gotten 88 views in less than a week.

Or listen to the grand-sounding Bach in the background of the video we just made for the Benedictines of South Texas.

Daniel Gutierrez was a young manager working late at night to prepare for the grand opening of a huge Best Buy store in south Los Angeles. His newly-hired staff, many of them recruited from that poor neighborhood, were hustling in a mad rush to open. But many of them were so stressed from the pressure that they rebelled in an angry manner and threatened to leave.

Gutierrez, not knowing what to do, hopped up on a sales counter and told them in a loud voice that they could go but if they did they shouldn’t bother to come back. Then he calmed down and said that they would work for two more hours. He also gave them a preacher-like sermon on how, if they worked together they would accomplish something monumental. The employees walked back to their work.

Difficult Family Life

This example of leadership is one of the exciting moments of the life of a popular motivational speaker whose roots were that of a difficult family life that included divorce and drug use, but who grew into a successful leader who now gives back to his community. As President and CEO of Pinnacle Achievement Group, Gutierrez calls himself “the world’s #1 Latino motivator,” and is a consultant to Fortune 500 companies, providing inspirational management coaching.

“I refuse to give up,” he says in his book, Stepping Into Greatness. “Not because I’m proud, but because I believe in my dreams, and I know that what God has begun in me, He will finish.”

This Texas native is another example of an entrepreneur and motivational speaker who has overcome personal adversity through an outgoing personality and incredible drive. What impressed me was his wide swings between his religious experience as a preacher-in-training to drug use and other immoral behavior.  And yet the good in his life triumphed.

His life shows how the use of one’s God-given talents for the good can lift a person above temptation of any kind. His website is at danielgutierrez.com.

Is social media really all that it’s cut out to be? I have to admit, I am skeptical when I read about the promises of tremendous success in selling a product or service just by chatting now and then with people you have never met. Who has the time to do all this?

I’m going to review several ways that I use social media and what kind of results I get. And I’ll try to be honest.

First of all, this column is sent out both to a newsletter list, and it is posted on my blog at SpunkyBiz.com, so I get double results for a single effort. Most of our clients at TreeFrogClick are on the newsletter list, so it’s a good way to keep my services on their mind, as well as to inform them on how to use the internet. It takes me about an hour and a half to both post the article on the blog, get the artwork, and send it via email. Occasionally I post it on one of the free press release sites.

I also have a profile on FaceBook, which for me has put me in touch with a lot of old friends and school chums. With most of these people, I have to admit, the renewed relationship really doesn’t go anywhere, but I did get a message from a friend recently who is putting me in touch with a potential client whom I’d like to serve.

Another popular approach, Twitter, is a very fast-moving message board, and the advantage here, so far, is that I find good business writers that I follow that provide an education in my field of online promotion.

In our YouTube channel, at GodCalls, which is for single persons looking for a religious vocation, our  seven videos have been viewed 1,100 times in about four months, which is a lot of exposure.

Yes, It Takes Time

The big difference between social media and paid advertising is of course, social media takes a lot of time. It means building relationships with people rather than simply paying a fee for a static ad somewhere.

“Social media is all about sharing, opening up, being transparent, providing real value to our customers. It’s about long-term relationships, not short-term campaigns,” says marketing expert Mark Ivey.

Since many small businesses and non-profits don’t have a lot of time to converse with others, or the time to learn it all, this is where our services at TreeFrogClick come into play.

Advertising is changing. Social media is worth it  — and it may help to hire an expert.