March 28, 2013 AsktheBuilder Newsletter & Tips
I've had a crazy past ten days or so. How about you? And now Easter is only days away! My youngest turns 21 on Easter, so that's a cool double holiday. I'm told she and I will be doing an Easter egg hunt ourselves.
Kathy will hide those foil wrapped chocolate eggs in the yard, and we have to go find them. I hid the chocolate eggs for years when all my kids were small. It's loads of fun.
A FUN STORY - SIT BACK AND RELAX FOR THIS ONE
I had a fascinating thing happen this morning. It all started two days ago.
I was on my way to Nashua, NH on Tuesday afternoon to be on a live TV show. On the way, I stopped at the Winnesquam, NH post office to mail about ten of the cool small white boxes of the new size of Stain Solver.
The postmistress was there talking with two other women. I thought they were in line, but they were already done with their business.
One of the women saw the Stain Solver logo on the return address label and said, "What's Stain Solver?"
I proceeded to give my short elevator speech about it, and the second woman, after about 30 seconds of me talking, exclaimed, "You need to sell that in my store right now!"
"Where's your store?" I asked.
"Winnisquam Trading Post right there at Mosquito Bridge. My name's Jackie, and I'm in there everyday until 11 a.m.," she replied.
I couldn't go yesterday, so I went this morning.
At 10:35 a.m. I crossed the threshold at the Trading Post, and there was Jackie, another employee and Mike the meat cutter.
"I've been talking about you the past two days. I was hoping you'd stop in today," Jackie announced.
I had brought a case of the cute little bottles with me. Jackie asked me to go over again for her other two team members what Stain Solver was.
About two minutes into the presentation, I opened the case to show off the gorgeous bottles with the new label design that sports the much-needed UPC bar code.
Jackie takes it from my hand as I'm talking and asks, "What should I sell this for?"
"Well, it retails for $9.97 online, so I'd price it at $10.00," I declared.
As I'm talking to Mike and the other woman, Jackie proceeds to get out her pricing gun and started putting price tags on all the bottles! Realize I had not yet asked her if she wanted to stock the Stain Solver. She had already decided before I walked into the door!
She then asked if I could demonstrate the product on their grease-coated commercial ceramic tile in their kitchen-deli area. "We've tried everything to get these tiles back to their original state and nothing has worked. If Stain Solver can do it, I'll be a believer," Jackie stated.
I mixed some up, added a little extra liquid dish soap to boost its ability to cut through grease and poured it on about six very dirty tiles. We talked for a few minutes and then I lightly scrubbed the tile.
Alakazam! The jaws of all three were on the ground in amazement. The tile looked like night vs. day. It was as clean as the day it was installed.
Moments later a customer came through the door. Sitting on the counter by the cash register was one of the new Stain Solver bottles.
"What's this?" he asked. Jackie said, "Come look at this tile!"
Two minutes later, he walked out the door with his potato chips and a bottle of Stain Solver.
I'm not making this up, but I just had to share this story. I so wish I had it all on video.
TIP OF THE WEEK - WET BASEMENTS AND CRAWL SPACES
Spring is when tens of thousands of homeowners suffer. Snowmelt, heavy rains, etc. cause lots of water to leak into basements and crawlspaces.
You can often easily solve these water problems by ensuring that all roof water is captured and piped away from the house. You can do this with gutters, downspouts and solid piping.
To capture and divert underground water from getting into your basement, you need one of my linear french drains.
I'm going to do an amazing video series showing how to install one of these systems here at my house in about six weeks. Watch for that announcement!
BOSCH PB120 COMPACT RADIO
Yesterday I opened a new Bosch PB120 portable jobsite AM/FM radio. It also accepts an audio input from an iPhone, iPod or other MP3 player.
It runs on the triangular 12-volt battery you find in the Bosch cordless tool line, or you can plug in a 12-volt adapter that is connected to a regular transformer that you plug into a 120-volt wall outlet.
This radio has got great audio quality, it's light, it has a sound equalizer and I absolutely love the channel search feature on it. You just have to hold down a button for a second and it hunts for a radio signal in the area.
It has a mute button, you can adjust the treble and bass, and it comes with five preset buttons for your favorite stations.
This would be a perfect Mothers or Fathers Day gift. For that matter, it makes an excellent gift for anyone at anytime allowing you to say how much you appreciate them.
This radio gets two hammers up from me!
INTERNET CONFERENCE - CHECK THIS OUT!
Online Revealed is an online marketing conference geared towards teaching those in the travel and tourism trade the most up to date and effective ways to promote their websites, online presence and social media channels such as Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, Pinterest, blogs and more.
While this conference has been a little known secret to travel industry professionals, it's a great place for anyone with a business wanting to learn some tricks of the trade when it comes to online promotion ... and who knows better how to do it than the travel industry. With access to people from Google, Facebook, Expedia, Tripadvisor, SEO experts and marketing department professionals, you'll walk away with a whole new game plan on promoting yourself through the web.
More tips and tricks next week.
Have a great Easter or whatever religious holiday you celebrate this time of year. It's tough to name them all, but realize that I do hope you have a great time with friends and family.
Tim Carter
Do It Right, Not Over!