URL

Bought my URL today; everylastmorsel.com has been claimed.

Beta Release

Spoke with friend Kathy Spiess today. She provided me with a tremendously useful itinerary for creating a digital presence on behalf of my business. The list is as follows:

• Publish your website! Your logo can be developed later.
• Will take approx. 3 months for Google Search to find website.
• Write a mission statement! It will serve as a useful tool for directing your efforts.
• Print 1000 business cards, distribute them often. Finding new customers is a game of numbers.
• Webdesign resources: wix.com otherpeoplespixels.com
• Google Search Engine Optimization (SEO) resources: http://www.google.com/sktool/# http://www.google.com/insights/search/#
• Consider secondary terms as well as locally and regionally relevant terms.
• (Acronym) elm.com is not an important consideration at this time.

To do list:

• Chose name for business; buy appropriate URL
• Write mission statement
• Write business description using SEO
• Find or create 3 good images for website

Thanks, Kathy!

There's an app for that

I have thought obsessively about my imagined web service lately. I called my friend Cherry to ask for her insight unto my endeavor. She is a former employee of Morningstar; while employed there she led the development of their Morningstar app.


These are the ideas I was able to glean from our conversation:

• To develop the app they began by examining user data from the Morningstar website
• Users often view their portfolios and market indices
• They then considered ways to make that experience mobile-friendly
• She organized focus groups to learn more about the ways in which customers use apps: What apps do you use and why do you use them? Do you use them frequently? What would make them better?
• Used Craigslist to find participants; inexpensive, however, inaccurate -- wrong demographic
• Posed question: Should we use app to maintain old customers or attain new customers?

Our discussion was interesting and I hope it proves to be useful, but it was not immediately actionable.

Homestead

I spoke with my friend Kelli today. She and her boyfriend will move to Idaho in a few month's time to inhabit a homestead they've recently purchased. I get the impression that they intend to create an off-the-grid bed and breakfast where people can escape the modern world to reconnect with a part of themselves that has long been dormant.

Coincidentally, when I asked her if she had recently read any good books she told me that her boyfriend had been engrossed by Michael Pollan's 'The Omnivore's Dilemma' -- a book I gave to her as a gift when we parted ways in Connecticut. I was glad to know it had made an impact.

The conversation drifted to and fro. She is excited for my entrepreneurial adventure, and I am excited for hers. She suggested I distribute weekly recipes to clients as a means of adding value to my service and creating a medium to distribute my brand more widely. I agreed.

Kelli also suggested I investigate Mother Earth News. She has been using their garden planner to design the plot of land the will use to produce food at the homestead. I found this particularly intriguing since I had thought to create such a program as part of my imagined web service. I will need to examine this product in greater detail.