Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: Science Commons
Why It’s a Gem: Eliminating red tape and developing new protocols makes sharing research easier than ever – which puts all cures within closer reach

Researchers around the world are hard at work on cures for most every ailment and disease. But until now, there was no system – let alone incentive – for sharing their discoveries, leaving researchers working independently in their own silos, possibly duplicating the same mistakes as their colleagues around the globe. It wasn’t unusual for decades to pass before any significant progress was made on a study.

But that’s all changing. Just as parent organization Creative Commons has made sharing artistic endeavors both easy and profitable, Science Commons is using that same open-access model to enable the scientific research community to both find and share their studies, thereby enabling an approach to sharing data that just might revolutionize the scientific world. My interview with John Wilbanks was a fitting way to cap off Open Access Week. (more…)

Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: Ning
Why It’s a Gem: Creating an online community used to cost a small fortune; now it’s affordable for businesses of all sizes

Value. Unique selling proposition. Community/transparency. I refer to these three concepts as the Three Gems, the pillars on which any business must be built if it hopes to grow and survive.

When most people think of the third gem, the first brands that spring to mind are Twitter and Facebook – both wonderful tools, but they comprise only two pieces of the social-networking puzzle. Ning brings the picture one step closer to completion, with an affordable solution that has helped millions of small businesses build social networks that are big on community and small on cost. (more…)

Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: K9 Cuisine
Why It’s a Gem: Learning from competitors’ customer-service mistakes has helped this pet food supplier leave the others in the dust

When Anthony Holloway experienced lackluster customer service while buying specialty dog food, he didn’t gripe. Instead, he saw the experience for the opportunity it was.  Holloway used other companies’ mistakes as a blueprint for what not to do, a strategy that saw his company become top dog, with a 50-percent growth each month in its first year. (more…)

Ruby Tuesday Pick of the Week: Get Satisfaction
Why It’s a Gem: One website helps both companies and their customers with an improved customer-service experience

Many small businesses put customer service on the back burner not because they don’t believe in it, but because it’s just too darn time consuming. But one website is changing that. Get Satisfaction is using technology to build communities that save both companies and customers time, money, and a whole lot of hair-pulling.

Any entrepreneur who has ever lamented the time spent performing redundant customer-service tasks needs to examine Get Satisfaction’s wide range of tools – or stop calling himself an entrepreneur. (more…)

Today, I appeared on The Advertising Show, the country’s only weekly show of its kind, to discuss Rubies in the Orchard with hosts Brad Forsythe and Ray Schilens. In addition to chatting about my upcoming book and some of the secrets and stories therein, the three of us also talked about other key book topics, such as business transparency, unique selling propositions, interacting with your customers, and the newly leveled playing field created by the current economy.

If you missed the show, you can still tune in to hear about a topic I didn’t cover in my book: why I decided açai wasn’t as good for my customers as pomegranates are. (The answer just might make you kick that açai habit and switch to POM.) You’ll also get a taste for (more…)

One of my favorite parts of the 21st century is that for the first time in more than 2,000 years, since Julius Caesar addressed the citizens of Rome (sans women and slaves, of course) there is a two-way conversation between government and its citizens, corporations and their customers, and people around the globe, all talking to each other in real time. Thank G-d Al Gore invented the Internet.

I run several businesses, and it is through this kind of direct conversation that I can “hear” what my consumers have to say about my goods and services. It is a way that I can answer their concerns and give them more information about my brands

But blogging is actually more than that to me; it is a way to (more…)