Des Moines Business Record Piece on createWOWmedia
June 21, 2010 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I was very happy when I started receiving calls, emails, and tweets about an article that just hit the Des Moines Business Record titled “createWOWmedia Nurtures Online Findability“. I think author Joe Gardyasz did a great job synthesizing 1.5 hours of interview in a piece that highlighted how we leverage social and interactive tools…and more importantly how our clients use them and thrive with them.
The word “nuture” is something we take very seriously. Anyone who’s heard me speak knows that I represent a firm’s online efforts with a picture of cupped hands, holding a seedling in a mound of soil. That seedling represents your online world…and you must provide the proper elements like fresh content, participation in online community, multimedia, etc. to thrive and grow.
I’m also humbled by the comments from our clients highlight in the article Boesen the Florist and Nutrisport – Full Potential Training. Tom Boesen and Ryan Irwin said some very nice things about our work and I am sincerely humbled and grateful.
Take look for yourself if you’d like and thank you for making our work a sincere pleasure. http://bit.ly/bizrecord
Immigrant Entrepreneur Summit Drake University
November 14, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I had the pleasure today of speaking at the Immigrant Entrepreneur Summit at Drake University. It was a powerful day filled with the entrepreneurial spirit and rugged individualism that makes this country great.
I connected again with the conference organize Ying Sa and her magical company Community CPA that is the driving force and creative vision behind IES.
I also got to connect with Igor Dobrosavljevic and his smart girlfriend (she attended my session 
Suzana. I finally met Justin Volrath too. There was ample opportunity to chat Lori Bosley too from Mojo’s (you have to have their fish tacos!) and Foxboro Business Center. Toni Lampley was here too among others from NAWBO Central Iowa that I met recently when I spoke to their group.
So the bottom line is that I spent the day absorbing the power and spirit of Central Iowa’s rich immigrant community and participating in the awesome collision of the ON and OFFLINE worlds. What a day! I hope I can come back again next year and have stories to tell about how many immigrant entrepreneurs we guided into online findability bliss. Thanks so much for asking me to participate. Videos below. It seems the recordings broke into 2 pieces on their own. Sorry for the quality and the walking off camera…I just set up the Mac book on a whim to provide a record of this talk for my guests. No paper!
Cheers
First day in new Remax Studios on the Skywalk
September 17, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
The team at create WOW media has been working for about 8 months with MacsWorldLive.com. In a very short period of time, Mac and the team has created a “local-live talk radio station” that is 100% web based. There is more local content on this web based station than any other AM or FM talk station I’ve heard anywhere in the nation. Now, MacsWorldLive is located in beautiful new studios on the Sky Walk level in the Kaleidoscope building in downtown Des Moines. We’re inside the Remax Real Estate Concepts office…which is now fully deployed as the MacsWorldLive.com studios. We have a production studio and a very nice “Living Room” studio where you’ll see us doing Managing the Edge and BizTactical.
Shows run daily from 7am-8pm and there’s plenty of shows on the weekend now. Here’s the kicker, it’s free for the show hosts! All it takes is passion and a tiny bit of skill to run the computer/audio board, etc…and you’re off and running.
We’re very proud of this project and continue to build on the technology which until recently leveraged 100% free online content/audio/streaming solutions.
If you think Des Moines Local Live can work in your community, we’d love to talk about it with you.
We are so proud to welcome Boesen the Florist to the createWOWmedia family
August 17, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
I am so proud to be working with Tom and Frank Boesen at Boesen the Florist…a fixture in Beaverdale, (Des Moines) IA since 1923. It’s such a pleasure to work with great companies and great personalities. We’re guiding them down a clear web strategy and execution plan that will let everyone share in the magic they create every day. Please welcome the Boesen’s as they stretch their online muscles and start leveraging tools to amplify their online brand.
Des Moines Executives Discover Social Media Networks
May 20, 2009 by paulgratton · Leave a Comment
The Business Record recently did an article called “Leaders Log In” on Des Moines area executives that are discovering the power of social networking tools. The article reviews J. Barry Griswell, Todd Senne, J. Marc Ward, Dave Campbell, Jim Langin, and Mary Lawyer, an impressive group indeed! Of course, we applaud these efforts; it’s amazing when top-flight people allow public access to their thoughts and lives.
One aspect that wasn’t mentioned in the article was the strategic use of social media; it seemed each person interviewed had “stumbled” into social media and were struggling with how to best wrap their minds around the most effective use of Blogs, Twitter, Facebook, and Linked-In. It’s not an uncommon problem, but as many of these busy executives are finding, without a strong social media strategy it’s easy to lose time down the rabbit hole.
Todd Senne says, “It’s not nearly as hard and daunting as I thought it might be. It’s a little intimidating to learn all this, but it’s pretty simple to do. The hardest thing is content, staying up with it and making sure that you provide value.”
The leaders of the future will need able to implement content generation and filtering strategies that save time and don’t cost a ton; we hope our Des Moines executives are able to lead the way in developing social media decision-making systems, making Central Iowa a leader in relational business building.
Become Findable on the Web Class Provides Amazing Reality Check
April 27, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
So we do the “go around the room and tell us who you are and why you’re here” routine at opening night of the 5th iteration of my class (formerly known as Blogging for Business)…and I’m absolutely blown away. Let me set the stage.
- Most in the class are 40+ with a good portion over 50 (sorry team I’ve got to make assumptions
- Most are in business or have been recently furloughed, fired, downsized or whatever the term is these days.
- Most know quite a bit about blogging, technology, and most importantly…”The reasons why becoming findable is so important.”
More and more, people are getting that becoming findable online is probably the most important thing they can do for their business. Additionally, they’re realizing that they must do this FIRST…and small businesses/startups can use rapidly deployed web findability sites to test their ideas and their business concepts.
I’m doing a webinar tonight with UNI on that exact topic in fact. Don’t discount the ability of the web to save yourself time and money by DISPROVING your concept!
Are you still advertising in the newspaper?
January 21, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 4 Comments
I was chatting with a friend today. He put a nice sized ad in the only paper in town here in the Des Moines metro area, the Des Moines Register. One person called because of it. Did it reach more people? Likely. Will he ever know or do it again? Not likely.
No measurement. No results. No future.
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Client launch: Fredsolomon.net
January 17, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · 3 Comments
The create WOW team is proud to release www.fredsolomon.net. This site is a wonderful example of what you can do with a membership site. We’ve leveraged video heavily in this Interactive Learning Environment. Fred had a wonderful 3 hour workshop that he puts on video taped for us.
The next step was to release the video editing wizard Paul Gratton on the project to chop up that 3 hour seminar into 30 manageable chunks for use online. We’ve also taken some recorded audio calls done in our podcast recording studio and created some training calls for Fred’s online subscribers.
Additionally, we’ve integrated video chat into the site in protected page so Fred can connect daily with his clients and partners around the USA.
You’ll probably also notice the “walk on” video that we’ve done here. Walk on videos pack quite a punch. I don’t know about you, but I’m pretty intrigued when I see an owner walk onto a screen and deliver a great marketing message to me. We’re very pleased with the results on this video. Fred flew into Des Moines for a day (quite a change from Newport Beach, CA huh?) to shoot this piece. If you live in Des Moines of course…no flight necessary.
Fred Solomon is taking his incredible message, products, and talents online by leveraging the create WOW media membership software platform. Our platform is getting more refined every day and our deployment times are coming way down too.
Please take a look at www.FredSolomon.net and let us know what you think. You may also want to sign up for Fred’s Free 15 day trial as well. Now the blogging and marketing of the site will really pick up speed. I can’t wait to share the results with you down the road.
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Do what you’re good at and please leave the rest to us
January 6, 2009 by Doug Mitchell · Leave a Comment
We practice what we preach at create WOW media. “Do what you’re good at and use insourced (local Iowa or USA based) resources to do the other stuff.” This can be translated into many versions like:
- Focus on profitable tasks and don’t waste time on the chaff.
- Always consider the opportunity cost of “Doug doing coding” when it takes him 50x longer than having someone better/stronger/faster do it.
- To client: “It’s better for you to do X and Y with referral company Z, and we’ll leverage our expertise to bring X and Y together.
We send this clear message to our clients as well. “If you are into doing everything yourself…no matter the opportunity cost, then we’re probably not your huckleberry.”
create WOW offers clients the opportunity to focus on their core business, their strengths, their…mojo. While we fill in the wizardry part. Let me emphasize:
Possibly the number one reason why businesses fail is that the owners/management spend time doing that which does not positively effect the business.
There are many reasons for this:
- Owner gets pleasure from doing “comfort tasks” like coding.
- Top level managers don’t want to expose their weaknesses in certain functional areas so they ignore/put aside important issues to avoid confrontation.
The team here is frequently quoted as saying, “We don’t have ‘hosting’ which you can find for $4/month. We offer a full service concierge service that allows you to work ON your business instead of being immersed IN the tasks that don’t make you money (web technology, video, multimedia, etc.)
Sure for some who dabble with their own sites, we often fill in the blanks with video and audio specialization. We don’t make the decisions for you about what matters in your business…but we do try and preach the virtues of doing what matters FIRST.
We are a small business at createWOWmedia….yet we have a killer team assembled that lets us focus.
We use:
- The great accounting services of Ron Stallman at Short & Company
- The shining star Kelly Moore for Public Relations
- The legal and advisory services of super Attorney Rush Nigut
- The web wizardy and strategy work of 48Web and WebboyConsulting
- The non-linear connective thinking of Adam Steen at 25 Connections
Our team of experts that ensures we’re doing profitable tasks is larger than our firm. That’s leverage and doing what you’re good at while leaving the rest to the pros.
Ryan Wade lays out building a scalable membership business (and uses personal trainers as the example)
December 29, 2008 by Doug Mitchell · 3 Comments
I really like that Ryan Wade is telling his audience in plain English…how to scale a web based membership solution. So many people begin “businesses” that are really “stressful time for money swaps”. Ryan simply says that you need scale to grow and truly have a profitable business that will leverage your time vs. make you a slave to it. Sound good? Don’t take my word for it. Invest a few moments. Watch and grasp how leveraging web video and a great site to deliver content you create ONCE to MANY can work for you.
Now, you personal trainers out there…maybe a few personal trainers in Des Moines, Iowa especially.
Listen to Ryan’s example and do the math yourself. I love this stuff. It’s what keeps me pumped up to build our base of successful membership site clients. By the way, we have a few more of those going LIVE soon so stay tuned and sign up for RSS or email updates (top right or bottom of this post). Be well and prosper.
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