No story too bland to write about

This website is nearing completion now. The last major part to be finished should be loaded this week, and that is the Groups section. After that it will be tidying up any parts of the site that need sorting.

When I look at the site I ask myself how it can have taken so long to get it all done and finished. It was actually designed and uploaded in 2006 but left alone and not advertised or upgraded until this year. The problem is, of course, money. It takes quite a lot of cash to design and put together a website like this. Plus we have another, much larger site that has also been redesigned twice in that period and keeps us active.

It’s when you offer options that things can go wrong and have to be thought through very clearly. Even then, sometimes it’s only when users have been working the site for some time that something quite obvious comes up and I have to wonder how I could have missed it in the first place! That’s why feedback is so important.

If I were much younger I would have learned how to program and that would have made it much easier. In the 90s when the web first came into being I used to design and write everything in html, it was easy then, but now web design and programming has become complex and require a lot of skill and a constant updating of those skills, as well as learning new ones that keep appearing.

MyBestFive is unlike most social media sites, as it does not concentrate on the immediacy of a site like facebook, or twitter. It is meant to have a more leisurely, long-time appeal, where you can read and re-read articles you have written; look through your photo albums over a long period of time and chart a course of your life over a period of years.

That sounds like a lofty ambition but it’s designed for an older audience, certainly it’s unlikely to have much appeal for teenagers. The truth is though; you never know who is likely to want to write about their life.

I was speaking quite casually to a chap a couple of weeks ago and he mentioned that his Dad was writing, in longhand, about his experiences with long expeditions in the arctic, for TV documentaries. He hopes to get it published but that may not be possible; it would be possible to write extracts on this site and publish it as an eBook. In his case it’s not about making money but he wants to get his story out there while he can.

Books very often don’t tell the whole story because they get edited by publishers and a great deal of material can be taken out of a manuscript as it’s not interesting, a publisher might say. Or it's too controversial.

A lot of our servicemen and women have spent time in Iraq and Afghanistan, fighting and doing other things in dangerous conditions; it would be great to get them to write their stories and for us to read about life in those conditions. Doctors, nurses and fire fighters will all have exciting stories to tell but let’s not get the idea that everything has to be exciting. Everyday life is full of the unexpected and no story is so bland that it doesn’t resonate with someone, somewhere.

Bringing up children, being unemployed; getting your first job or even a new job can be a big event in someone’s life. We all have a host of stories to write about and they may be trivial to many people, but it’s not trivial for the person that lived those times and experienced the events. Their families and friends would often be amazed at what a seemingly ‘ordinary’ person has done with their life.

We all have these stories to write. All life stories are worth writing about.

A small change but a big result

In a previous blog I mentioned, really as a throw away line, that a small change in a business plan can sometimes make a huge change to the end result.

I am mentioning this because I’ve just seen such a thing happen.

I, along with my partner, produce a website called www.positivehealth.com. It was originally a printed magazine and published 150 issues but in 2008 with the downturn in advertising and magazine sales we turned it into a web site only and will be publishing issue 200 this month.

Last month – September 2012 - I redesigned the Index page and made it more of a call for action as opposed to an information page. The site is not commercial in that we don’t sell products but do have over 3,000 articles commissioned during the past almost 20 years. It is an information site with paid-for advertising.

The new page was implemented in September and our page views for the month shot up to almost 1.2 million views; up from 540,000 the previous month. Advert click-throughs in the launch week topped 10,000 up from 4,700 clicks the week before. What an astonishing turn-round for us! Page views have remained high since the launch at around 250,000 a week. Ad clicks have dropped but remain in excess of 5,000 a week.

The problem for me now is how to get visitors and content for MyBestFive. I know how to do it but lack the funds to put it all in place. So it’s going to be the long haul, I guess. I believe we have a site with huge potential and would ask those of you, who read this, to Register and then to write content.

I have written quite a lot of content on the site and because I’m quite long in the tooth I have not forgotten stuff that happened some decades ago but sometimes the details get a bit mixed up. However, when I re-read some of it I get memories that come back and I can then re-write a more accurate version. That’s what happens with age! Don’t wait for that to happen to you; write it down, now, then it will never be forgotten.

I have been wanting to buy a tablet for some time now. I would like an iPad from Apple, the trouble is, I don't like Apple as a company!

These feeling go back to the beginning of the company. In the 1980s I owned and ran a substantial typesetting company in London. We used the old typesetting kit from Linotype and it was the bees knees at the time.

A man from somewhere came along with a new thing called an Apple Mac; a horrible looking box with a screen on the top half. I tried it for a couple of weeks and decided that we would keep to the Linotype. A couple of years later we did buy Apple computers when they came out with proper screens and separate keyboard. We used Linotype then as a back-end only. For booksetting and everything else we used Microsoft.

There was never a doubt that Apple are innovative and produce the most beautiful looking products that also work very well. They produce the goods almost every time. The trouble has always been that they are a closed shop and control freaks!

Just a few days ago we learn from Bruce Willis the actor that he does not own the £40,000 of music downloads he has paid for. Apple won't even let go of that. They have always been the same and are not likely to change. They want total control of everything they do.

The question then for me is whether or not to switch over to Apple rather than buy an Android tablet. With new products coming out this month it is just as well to wait and see what happens; but it's unlikely that I will give way to the Apple product even though my heart tells me I want to.

Strange business anomalies

Anomalies may not be the correct word to use but I cannot think of another, more appropriate word.

In 1979 I think it was, my brother and I started the first video dating service in the UK. It was based in London. It got off to a slow start and we decided to give it a boost by having a mass get-together of strangers.

We placed an advert in Time Out, telling singles that if they wished to meet new people then we were throwing a party on such and such a day. We set everything in place, got lots of food in and really put a huge effort into presentation.

Nobody turned up. Not a single soul knocked on the door. What to do?

We placed another advert in Time Out the following week, apologizing for having to turn people away from last week’s event. But to accommodate all those who had made the effort, and at great expense, we were going to repeat the event this week and made a special plea for those who had been to last week’s do, please don’t turn up this week and thereby give others a chance to join in!

This time we packed the house out and really did have to turn people away!

Some years ago when the web was in its infancy our website had a forum for people to air their views. It was not as sophisticated as today’s forums but worked well enough. It was exceedingly slow to take off.

One day a lady posted a message saying she had been ripped off by a scam that was going the rounds – I cannot remember what it was. Almost overnight we were flooded with hundreds of replies to this message about the same or similar scams. In the end and over the next couple of years we had over 10,000 entries.

Due to the advent of broadband we implemented a new design, a new messaging system and have had about 2 entries during the past 10 years. Frustrating or what!! I don’t have a smart answer for this one.

Another thing. We published a magazine called Positive Health and had a sales staff selling adverts. When an ad was placed you could be sure that if you made a spelling mistake, or any other kind of error, the ad’s owner would be on the phone telling you how you were ruining their business and they would not pay for the advert. We usually placed another advert the following month, for free.

Today, the adverts are online, for the same publication. Most of the advertisers never even look at their adverts! They will pay hundreds of pounds for ads that run all year long but they never go in and check them.

How do I know? Sometime when we speak to them on the phone they tell us they’d forgotten about it. Or they were so busy they had no time to check it out. Sometimes as I go through the listings I can see some are out of date, or the website no longer works because they have changed it, etc. I make the changes for them but they never seem to know.

Why is it that business people will pay quite substantial sums for adverts on the internet and never look at them? Unlike the past, and probably the present day as well, when these adverts are in paper format they check every word, every comma. It's very strange and must be a feature of the medium. I think!

In the mid sixties I used to hang out at a store that specialized in selling pool or snooker tables. Because of my past experience with the game I was still sharp and the owner let me play about on the tables from time to time.

One day he told me he was going to close the store, as sales were slow. He had hired a couple of guys to improve his marketing and sales and they had implemented a large mail-out to the more affluent parts of the city but two salesmen were unable to get a single sale out of the program. I asked him if I could make a couple of calls that night. He agreed and I made two calls. And got two sales.

On the first visit the guy said he liked the product and would call into the shop sometime and have a more detailed look. Of course, they never did so no sales were made as a result of a house call. I said we would put a table into his basement that Friday, for free, and I would call him on Monday. He had to give me a post-dated check for the Monday. If he wanted to go ahead we would cash the check, if not we’d collect the table and give him back his check. When I told the shop owner what I'd promised he was unhappy because he thought they would return the tables and he would be out of pocket.

In fact, it worked a treat and I ended up making $1,000 a week in commission that winter just working in the evenings as I already had a day job.

The following winter he asked me to open a shop in Victoria, on Vancouver Island. I did that and we had a good winter selling from the shop. In the spring the idea was to close the shop, as he did in Vancouver every year, since nobody bought pool tables in the summer.

I had an idea and asked if I could try it out. He said okay so I went ahead with the following.

I placed an advert in the local paper and said we would swap anything of value for a pool table. I could have sold all 20 tables the day the advert came out. In the end I did get rid of the lot, for cars, boats, furniture and much more. I had a friend who knew about cars and boats and formed an alliance with a small auction house to view furniture and so on.

It worked on the basis that as long as I got cash to cover the cost of the table and overheads, I got the other items for free! All the tables (about 20) were gone within a week but I was not able to get any more since the owner in Vancouver had shut down the production line at the end of the winter.

I can only recount my own experiences but it shows that sometimes when all seems to be lost, a slight change can make the difference between success and failure.

This started off as business anomalies but veered off into something else. That’s what happens with anomalies!

Radionics, it’s a load of Baloney!

Some time ago we had a very mini cyber attack about an article on Radionics that we published many years ago.  I say attack, but this is an overstatement simply because I wanted to write about it. It was, in fact, a series of comments made by the same person using different names, sometimes male sometimes female. The writer thought it a load of nonsense and kept telling us in so many different ways.

As has been said by others, “Radionics, it’s a load of Baloney!” and I tend to agree, except…

About 25 years ago I rented a house in the country; it was a small cottage, beautifully located and a separate part of a farm. The lady that rented it to me had a large Alsatian dog, a real beauty of a beast and very healthy. I told her I loved dogs and this breed in particular.

In reply she said that another farmer had shot, a year or so ago, the dog in the legs because he, the dog, had attacked and killed one of the farmer’s sheep.

Trips to the vet, home medication, nothing helped and it seemed the dog was about to die, until, that is, a friend of hers took a few of the dog’s hairs and said he might be able to save the dog using Radionics.

And perhaps he did, because a few days later the dog was in recovery and beginning to stand and even limp about. He was fully recovered within a couple of months. The lady who owned the dog was a farmer who got up in the morning at 4am to milk the cows; she said that alternative medicine and Radionics was as alien to her then as it was now.

Coincidence? Nonsense! Could be, but maybe not. I don’t understand Radionics, or how it can send a healing signal thousands of miles away, but then I don’t understand how a radio program broadcast thousands of miles away can make a sound in a box in my bedroom.

Who Dares, Wins! Hmmm.

I am in the process of trying to raise money for the web site, a substantial amount. This got me to thinking about past efforts to raise money.

When you talk to a company they have a committee – I call them that even though there may only be 2 or 3 of them  – and the dreaded accountant usually heads this. Accountants have a way of prefacing their remarks with an Hmmm. Like:

“Hmmm, instead of us lending you money you should probably pay us to take this on” - followed by a grin. I smile back politely.

“Hmmm, your bottom line is non-existent.” That’s because we have not started trading yet.

“Hmmm, why don’t you come back when you’ve made a success of your business?” I won’t need your money once I have made a pile of my own!

We published a health magazine for 18 years; still do although now it’s online only. One year our accountant suggested that to increase sales we should “Put a picture of Labrador dogs on the cover. Everyone loves dogs.” Hmmm, was he serious? Yep, he was grinning, like a great white!

As a race I expect that accountants are very nice people; well educated, serious and well intentioned. But when it comes to deciding whether or not a business is any good I doubt they would know that even if it jumped up and bit them on the nose! They know about accounts; profit and loss; balance sheets and so forth but that is not what defines a business. A business is about an idea, a concept that you wish to construct into a business. An accountant might be able to tell you about pricing and question your expectation, but not much else.

A couple of years ago we had a meeting with a team of large and well-established investors, about our project. We received a call a few days later and were asked to go to London and meet with a very successful entrepreneur - one of their own people, he stressed - who had looked at our web site (NOT mybestfive.com) and had advice that would help us a great deal.

At the meeting we were told that our site was rubbish even though we got 20,000 page views a day. The reason being that we did not monetize all the options and links. We explained that the site was not there to sell products but to provide information. If it doesn’t make money with every option, he said, then it’s rubbish. He was not an accountant, just part of ‘The Team’.

I read in the paper today that 3i is likely to make significant job losses due to shareholder battles. I believe they have lots of accountants. I also read that one of the Dragon’s Den tribe had said to a potential client “I would rather stick pins in my eyes” than back an invention the client was exhibiting. The invention is now sold in 16 countries and they have done a deal with Marks & Spencer to expand the range. The Dragon is very successful; not sure if he is an accountant.

Placing money in start-up companies should be done by entrepreneurs or by people who are willing to risk a sum of money, not to make a few percentage points profit gain but to make huge profits. Massive profits. If you want to make a few percentage points there are safe ways to do this. Start-ups may not be one of them. A few will do well but most will probably fail.

If you want to make a lot of money, bet on people. People with ideas, people you think you can trust and have great expectations and seem to know what they are doing. Be willing to take a loss if it goes wrong but hope to treble your investment if it wins.

Hmmm, I don’t think accountants work that way.

A friend is... ?

The MyBestFive web pages are about many different subjects but have two main themes: personal or shared experiences; friendships, past, present and future.

I was called up for military service in 1955 and served for 3 years in the RAF. I had a lot of pals, young men my own age; we went out together at weekends doing the things young men do. They were pals but not real friends.

It was probably in mid 1956 when stationed in Germany that a pal and I started to hook-up sometimes. His name was Tommy Tighe, a Scot from Glasgow. After a while we went out together more often and then there was a point when neither of us went anywhere or did anything without the other, or at the least telling each other what we were doing.

Tommy was a friend in the full sense and meaning of the word. We went for meals together; went out at night and weekends, almost always drinking and trying to pick-up women. We shared our money, got into trouble together, shared many experiences over an 18 month period; we looked out for each other. We also worked together during the day; slept in the same billet with 10 other guys so there was hardly any time during the day or night that we were not together.

So why do I mention all of this? What’s the point? I guess it’s just a personal viewpoint about friendship. In the real world, outside of the military, Tommy and I would not have been friends. We were totally different people with a different outlook to life and even if we’d met it would have been nothing more than a Hi, how are you type of thing. Yet, in a lifetime he was the best friend I ever had and we had a closeness that is hard to replicate. We never met again once we left the RAF

In the real world women are almost always the divider that comes between men. It’s not to say a man cannot have a good friend but it’s very difficult to form these powerful bonds during ordinary day-to-day life. Growing-up, wives, girl friends and children make that impossible.

I miss having a friend like Tommy.

When it comes to blogging I am something of a retard!

From the minimal number of blogs I have read it seems to me that as a blogger you need to have a philosophy. Most are self-promotion; they have a course to sell or a book or something to talk about. Nothing wrong with that, but sometimes it gets out of hand.

We have a twitter account, this is for another website we have. I followed a guy who does nutrition. I got about 150 tweets, so I said “Hang about, chum. Can you give me a rest for 10 minutes?” He then sent me another 39 (I counted). He went to the bin straight away.

That sums up my philosophy; I don’t bombard people with all sorts of advertising stuff so I don’t want hassle in return. Comment and criticism is fine but all the self-promotion is annoying. And since you asked that brings me to the reason for this website.

Being quite ancient myself, in 2006 I was thinking about an uncle of my then wife – c1961!!! He was an exceptional guy and lived in California although I first met him in Montreal. I have written about him somewhere on this site so I will try not to contradict myself.

During World War II he was a gunner in a Lancaster Bomber and the experience left him white-haired. He would seldom talk about these experiences but on a couple of occasions, after a few drinks, he told me about the exhilaration of the fighting; the fear and loneliness during the waiting period while flying to their target for the night.

He was also an ex boxer, and that had quite a history. Raconteur; travelled across the States in a trailer many times, with his wife, children and dogs; mainly worked as a manager for garages; well-known in Oregon (I think) for his radio interviews and so forth.

What I am clumsily trying to say is that he was a good family guy, well liked and full of stories he had lived. Then he died through a tragic accident and to my knowledge apart from a daughter, his life-story has disappeared.

That doesn’t matter much, if at all, to most people. But it matters to those who knew him and probably never realized much of what he had lived through. I thought about my own life, tried to recollect experiences and found that sometimes I got my years mixed up, zones confused, names forgotten and much more.

So in 2006 I put together a format for the site, had it built and then left it for 5 years! But it’s here now, not perfect but with the help of readers it can only get better.

When thinking about my own life I realized just how fragile recollections can be, particularly when they go back several decades. I hope that people will use this site to record their own experiences before they too, become ancient, extinct even!