May 4, 2007
Client Spotlight: Yingling's Auto Service
George's Going to Market: 7 Hot Tips to Spice Up Your Internet Searches
Mindbender: How to Make Your Own Heads-Up Navigation System
Todd's Tidbits: Thinking Outside of the Box
Greetings!
Every once in a while we all have a brush with greatness. This past week, through my Entrepreneurs Organization, I was able to have more than a just a brush. And with whom?
He was a fierce competitor, captaining his football and cricket teams at school. Unfortunately, or fortunately for him as history reveals, he suffered from dyslexia, resulting in poor academic performance. He left school at 16 and moved to London on his own, but even before that he had already started and failed at two businesses–growing Christmas trees and raising parrots. It wasn’t long before he hit a winner with Student magazine, and by 17 he started his first charity, the “Student Valley Centre”.
Well, if you haven’t guessed already, I’m talking about Sir Richard Charles Nicholas Branson. Do you know why his dynasty is called Virgin? Trading under the name “Virgin” he sold records for considerably less than the so-called “High Street” outlets. The name ‘Virgin’ was a selling point because records were sold in a new condition (unlike in other shops where records were being handled when listened to in record booths).
His Virgin brand crosses over 30 companies these days. I even heard that at one time he was contemplating buying Chicago’s own Bally’s Fitness Clubs. Would they then be called Virgin Clubs?
Sir Richard hasn’t hit a home run in every venture, but he’s done well enough to amass an estimated personal fortune of $8 billion. One of his more successful forays is his Virgin Atlantic airlines. He was in town to help relaunch their flights in and out of O’Hare, and to make a little announcement about ordering a bunch of jets from Boeing. Thro
ugh our Chicago chapter of the Entrepreneurs Organization, we were all invited to the private invite-only launch party.
So, how did my brush turn out? Well, when a self-made billionaire and world record-breaking adventurer walks into a room, you walk over to him and just put up your hand for a high-five and say “Dude, you’re one of my idols!” And if you’re lucky, the little feller will reciprocate with a high-five, a big smile and a “Thoink You,” as he quickly moves on to the smokin’ hot models behind you.
Tim Padgett
tim@peppergroup.com
“Achievement is largely the product of steadily raising one's levels of aspiration and expectation.”
—Jack Nicklaus
“A celebrity is one who is known to many persons he is glad he doesn't know.”
—H. L. Mencken
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Client Spotlight: Yingling's Auto Service
At Pepper Group, we love creativity and challenges. That’s why just last month, Pepper Group teamed up with long distance client Yingling's Auto Service of Topeka, Kansas, to help run their 1st Annual Art Contest from almost 600 miles away. When we received nearly 50 entries, we couldn’t wait to see what the talented artists of tomorrow were able to dream up!
Beginning March 12th, Yingling’s invited students from three local
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Best in Show |
Once collected, the entries were shipped off to Illinois where they were judged by a group of professional artists right here at Pepper Group! Our designers had a great time choosing winners from each grade level (K-6), as well as one Best in Show winner—which went to Ellie Walker, a 6th grader at Rochester Elementary. To view a list of all winning entries, please visit Yingling's website in the Kids' Corner section.
All winners were awarded $50 prizes, and were invited to attend an award presentation on May 2nd where they were handed their awards by Topeka's local WIBW TV personality, Ralph Hipp. The honored artists will also be featured on television tonight at 10pm when the award presentation airs in Topeka on WIBW TV channel 13. Winning entries were professionally framed and will be displayed in the Yingling's Auto Service reception area for a year.
Yingling’s was very excited to give these young students the chance to not only win great prizes, but also be recognized for their creativity.
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George's Going to Market: 7 Hot Tips to Spice Up Your Internet Searches
Want to find the exact answer you’re looking for? Want to be able to search any site, even if it doesn’t have its own search tool? With more than 3 billion pages indexed on Google, being a smarter searcher can make a huge difference. Here are seven hot tips that are sure you help you improve your results.
- Did you know that you can search any particular website, even if the site doesn’t have its own search tool? Just add “site:” and the website URL to your query. For example, searching the term “site:www.peppergroup.com video” will link you to all the videos and references to videos on the Pepper Group’s website.
- Want to narrow your search to a specific type of website? For example, say you’re looking for a scholarly paper, adding "site:edu" to your search will show you only the .edu websites.
- Ever wish you could exclude certain types of results? Just use a hyphen before the word or phrase you want to exclude. For example, you’re searching Hawaii, but don’t want to get a bunch of hotels, just type in “Hawaii –hotels”.
- Looking for a specific PDF or other file type? Just add "filetype:PDF" to your search.
- Need a phone number or directions? Just enter the name, city and state of the person or business you’re looking for and, if it is listed, Google will show you the phone number along with a handy map.
- Want to find the answer to a technical problem, or other issue that might be addressed in one of millions of user discussion threads over the years? Instead of a regular Internet search, try Google Groups at "groups.google.com".
- Want more? If you haven’t used it, try clicking on “advanced search”. There are all sorts of ways to narrow your search and improve your results.
These are a just a few of our favorite search tricks. I hope you’ve been able to learn something new here to help pump up your own search results. And, by the way, if you search Google for “spicy marketing by seasoned professionals” you’ll find a great way to pump up your business results as well!
George Couris
george@peppergroup.com
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Mindbender: How to Make Your Own Heads-Up Navigation System
Don't have a Tom Tom or GPS in your car?
Here's how to make your own heads-up display navigation system.
Step 1. Google your destination and take a screen capture of the map.
Step 2. In Photoshop, flip the image vertically and print.
Step 3. Place the printout on your dashboard, the map will be perfectly
reflected on your windshield.
Have fun not getting lost.
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Todd's Tidbits: Thinking Outside of the Box
Imagine being a child and getting led, along with a few friends, into a room containing several adults wearing wacky hats and a table covered with odd items that don’t seem to belong together. Then imagine that one of the adults reads you an intricate set of rules that define a challenge that you and your friends need to create a solution to… in the next five minutes! Sound terrifying? It might be, but it’s also a challenge that more and more kids are thriving on.
The ability to creatively solve problems is a treasured skill in today’s work place and there’s one non-profit organization especially devoted to developing that skill in children and young adults. It is called Destination Imagination (D.I.) and has existed in one form or another since 1978.
D.I. involves teams made up of two to seven kids working together to apply creativity, critical thinking and their own particular talents to solve a Team Challenge. While each Team Challenge integrates a variety of chances to learn by doing, Challenges usually feature one prominent task, such as building a load-bearing structure, creating a vehicle, writing a performance piece or exploring history. Every aspect of their solution has to be created by the team members themselves and they are prohibited from using any external suggestions.
Last year, I filled you all in on the progress of the team that my 13-year-old daughter and four friends had formed called Liquid Chaos. Recently, in only their second year of competition, they won first place in their regional tournament, and then took first place at the state tournament (for their age group and challenge)! They're now looking forward to the competition of a lifetime at the DI Global Finals, May 23-26, 2007 at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, TN. As a parent and their team manager, I couldn’t be more proud!
At the Global Finals, they will be competing against students from across the U.S. and more than 10 countries and provinces, including teams from Turkey, Brazil, Poland, China, Mexico and Guatemala. The 8,000 participants that proceed to Global Finals emerge from a field of 350,000 participants in more than 56 countries.
If you’re interested in learning more about D.I., please drop me an email. I joined the board of the Far North Illinois Region last year and am enthusiastically promoting this wonderful program. Our team also has a web page at www.liquidchaos.org that will be kept up to date with our latest activities.
Todd Underwood
todd@peppergroup.com
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