What's The Point

Lately I've been noticing some really strange signs telling me things that quite frankly, I don't care at all about! It makes me wonder, why even bother..... What's the point?

Why would a company waste time and resources, mainly money in setting up protocols, or "rules" for people to follow if they aren't going to enforce them. Or even worse if they aren't going to serve a purpose!?



This is a great example of what I'm talking about. I saw this one at the end of the row we parked in at the Cleveland Zoo this week. I just don't understand how they ever intended to uphold a policy like this?! What's worse they painted the parking spaces in this row green instead of white. Needless to say, we parked here in a car that I would feel more than safe saying does not meet the required criteria.... And nothing happened!

What I'm getting at here is if you aren't going to uphold the policy you thought up.... don't waste the time putting it into action in the first place! It's a waste.....

And besides that, this is just a goofy concept. Why put the cars which get better fuel mileage in the front section of the parking lot.... it's going to cost them less gas to go park in the back! Do our environment a favor and put up a sign that reads:


If your vehicle sucks gas: Park here, Turn off your engine, And stop killing our environment! You're at a Zoo, seriously!




I'm going to step off my soapbox now..... just keep an eye open for more of these signs....

25 Things My Generation Has Labeled Obsolete

The Milennials have done a great many things since laying claim to the world.... (ok that sounded a little strong....)

But one place we've succeeded in is sending a LONG list of things to the graveyard.
Here's the first 25 things that came to my mind:
1.) The 3 1/2 Inch Floppy Disk
2.) Rotary Telephones (I guarantee someone under the age of 25 will read this and say, "What's that?!")
3.) Cassette Tapes
4.) Adding Machines
5.) Watches (Why own one when my phone tells me the time?!)
6.) Personal Pagers (Unless you're expecting a baby or work in the medical field)
7.) The Fanny Pack
8.) Suspenders
9.) Typewriters
10.) Door to Door Salesmen
11.) Home Encyclopedia Sets
12.) Perforated Printer Paper
13.) Home Phone Lines
14.) The Toaster Oven
15.) (How To Read) A Traditional Map (Google Maps would never lead us wrong would it?! It would never tell us to walk down a highway or anything right!?!)
16.) The Compass
17.) Globes
18.) Dial Up Internet
19.) Non-Digital Cameras
20.) Slide Show Projectors
21.) VHS Technology
22.) Formal Letter Writing
23.) Answering Machines
24.) AM Radio
25.) Myspace :D

So there you have it..... what can we create a better iPhone App for next?!?! Give me something technological to kill.....

How Did We Get Here?

I just want to invite you to take a look back with me and see where we were, and where we are now. Then think about how the heck we got here!

50 or so years ago the Philco was on the cutting edge of personal music technology. It was the best way to take music with you on the go! Now we have the iPod. with the ability to carry thousands of songs in a device the size of credit card..... that's a quantum leap!
Looking at where we are now you might say, "Well it's not that unbelievable..... It's just logical! We were bound to get there someday!"

If my grandfather were alive today and you showed him those two devices pictured above.... he would first of all, smack you.... then tell you to go get your head checked by a doctor. And then he would smash your iPhone and say something along the lines of, "How great can it be? It breaks easy enough!"

But take it back another generation to my great grandfather, show him how you can pull a Christmas tree out of a box, plug it straight into the wall (pre-light tree!), and then turn it on and off with your iPhone. And he would probably accuse you being a magician or the devil..... depends on what his mood would be.

Looking at why: The cell phone didn't exist in his day & age, Christmas trees had to be cut down by hand, they sure didn't come out of the woods pre-light, and somehow you just managed to turn the Christmas tree on and off without touching it!

NONE of those things would seem logical to him. So who's idea was all of this!? And how do I get their job?

The Birth Of A Movement - The "i Factor"

Last week I wrote a post in a hurry late one night about something I could only think of calling the "i Factor" and it turned into something altogether different!

(Back round) At work I am a member of a whole new type of team. We specialize in Social Media and are carving out a brand new methodology in the contact center world. Where we're taking our insane amount of skill, knowledge, creativity, and drive for success is still a bit of a secret! (I mean seriously, I can't just give away all of our secrets!) But one thing's for sure, we will not let anything stand in our way.

(Now moving forward again) Enter Tim..... Tim is what I would call a lead by example power player. He dives straight into a pile of work and doesn't let up until all expectations have been blown out of the water. Tim's become a good friend of mine and he FLIPPED when he read the post I put up about what I just started calling The "i Factor" and what I thought it meant for Incept.

In that one post I managed to turn the tables in a sense and just put out there that not only did we (the Incept Social Media Team) know that we were on the right track, but much more, we weren't afraid to let it show. We found a winning combination and with all the creativity in our team we are going to change the face of our industry.

Now all of that might seem a little bit, well..... arrogant? But that wasn't how I had meant for it to come across. An interesting result is that people latched onto the idea of the "i Factor" and it now has the capacity to become a movement.

That's a completely different purpose than what I had intended my blog post to create. But sometimes you have to know when to go with the flow and play the hands you're dealt when the good cards come up!

So make sure you're staying tuned into the following.....

the Incept Blog

@InceptSaves on Twitter
@InceptResults on Twitter

and the Incept Page on Facebook

"Ready, Steady, Go" get out of our way or pay the price of being left in our dust. The Millennials are here, and we only know two speeds, stop and FAST FREAKING FORWARD!!!!

The "i Factor" (What Incept Is Doing Right On Social Media)

I just created in my head an equation. It goes a little something like this:

The "i Factor" + (Company Facebook Page + Employees Engaging Company On Their Own Time) + Unique Company Culture = Recipe For Social Media Success

The "i Factor" is what I'm calling the "Incept Factor" which basically means to me the actions we take as social media specialists (or in Incept terms, an Online Conversational Marketing Expert) to make our social media interactions special.

I can't fully explain it, but there's just something about how we interact with our employees and the fans on our facebook page that build a strong relationship! This week alone we've seen a burst of activity on our page from people who literally just started working with us this week. New trainees who only know a dozen or so people in the company (most of them are in the new hire training class with them) are commenting on our facebook page.

It's amazing to see how people are taking their free time to engage in conversations online with us. And even more amazing how quickly people want to feel like they belong to our family.

This Post Is Worth 4000 Words (Well Kind Of)

They say that a picture is worth a thousand words..... then that means that this post is worth about 4000 words. I just had this collection of pictures in my phone and had to share them with you guys! Here they are.....

Quaker Steak & Lube bathroom wall poster, read the line on the bottom..... if you can't manage to read because it's too small, it says: "WARNING: ATOMIC WING EATERS SHOULD WASH HANDS BEFORE USING THE RESTROOM" Great idea!

Next up, the "Ghost Market" this one is a true sign of the times. A local grocery store closed because of poor sales stands with it's empty shelves, abandoned checkout lines, and lights on 24-7 (wonder who's flipping the bill for that!?) What's best, there's still jazzy elevator music playing all along the concourse outside all day and all night long! (Great site on a related topic - deadmalls.com)

Now we have the wall in the training room at Incept. I love how the first thing our new trainees see when they walk in their first day of work is what our values are. And therefore, what we stand for! (Three part post from the Incept Blog where I talk about our values in a different light. 1 2 3 )

And to finish off with, the best of the best..... what I am calling, "The Semi-Scare." This one's great, I saw this "coming at me" on the highway one evening. In reality I was driving at it faster than it was moving away from me..... I'll leave this one up to your imagination to figure out just what's happening!

So there it is, four pictures worth a thousand words each! What a post folks, what a post! :D

Where Did You Think You Would Be 5 Years Later?

A few years ago this month I walked across the stage at the Canton Memorial Civic Center as a part of the GlenOak High School 500+ student graduating class of 2005. At the time it seemed like an end to one story and the beginning of the rest of my life. Now I look back and see it as more of an end to the preface of my story......

If you would have asked me where I planned on being in 5 years my response would have been something like, "Graduating from The University of Akron with a degree in Music Education and looking for a teaching job at a local high school." Today I stumbled across my diploma in a box buried in the back of my closet. I thought to myself, "I wonder what that kid all those years ago was thinking?! Was he nuts?!" Because I have checked off none of the above yet.... and I won't be checking them off.... well, ever. I quickly realized that music education wasn't for me, that I wanted to add a high priority item to my goal (getting engaged) and found out what kind of person I really wanted to become.

Now I think to myself, where do I want to be in 5 years? And my answer is kind of complicated..... I want to be married to the love of my life. I want to have a house. I want to start back to school to get a degree in Organizational Communication. I want to continue working for Incept. (hopefully making a huge success of our social media team!) And I want to start a family.

It's strange how a few years can change ones priorities. Maybe, conditions willing I will still be writing on this blog (or some blog for that matter) in 5 years. And when that day comes, I'll make sure to revisit this list before I attend my 10 year class reunion and see just how much my priorities have changed again.

Who knows where a decade can lead you, but I'm right in the middle of that trip. And I don't really know where my "life's GPS unit" is taking me. "How do I get this darn thing to stop giving me directions in French!?!?" :P