Monthly Archives: July 2008

Computer Entry: Hard Drives

I have been in the computer industry for over 15 years now. I have been to almost every Comdex and CES that you could go to. I have been spending many hours over the last decade thinking about technology and studying it. This will be the first of many blog entries with the name Computer Entry in front, in these entries I will talk about the world of the computer. It may be interesting or very boring depending on where you sit. My target audience is the business owner, not the techie. I will share what I have told hundreds of clients, in an easy to understand format. It will start basic and get more complex as the blog goes along.

THE HARD DRIVE

The hard drive is a small disk that is inside your computer, it is used to hold data for long term storage. (Contrary to what many customers think the hard drive is NOT the tower that you see.) The hard drive is also not your RAM even thought it has random access. Your computer has two main types of memory. First is your RAM, RAM is fairly fast, directly connected to the motherboard, and requires power at all times, even it is the working, short term memory. Your hard drive is about 1% the speed of RAM, it only uses power to read or write data and is MUCH larger than your RAM. You hard drive is where all of your files and programs are stored. The hard drive stores data on metal disks called platters. These work much like you would imagine a record player working with a read/write head on the end of an arm that swings back and forth, it is moved by changing a magnetic field at its other end. On each disk there are thousands of tracks, these are not viable but only magnetic. Along each track the metal is charged by a small magnet on the tip of the write head, the charge will stand for either a 1 or 0.

The first hard drive I used in my first computer was 4 inches tall and 6 inches wide, it was about 10 inches deep. It had 4 platters, each side of each platter was used and contained a whole 4MB of data, for a total of 32MB. The year was 1988. There were a hand full of companies that constantly worked to make the drives smaller, faster, cheaper, quieter, more robust, and most importantly contain more data. Every month a new drive was released that would set a new standard, a trend that is still true today. By 1995 I purchased a drive that was only 3.5 inches wide and 1 inch tall, the same size standard for most of todays drives. It was much faster than my old drive and held 540MB of data. It also used the new IDE interface. Every few years a new standard would come out for communicating the data from the hard drive to the motherboard, but by far IDE was the longest serving, most widely used standard. Not until 2006 was it surpassed in usage by SATA. Sata2 is now the main standard, it is faster, uses less power and has a very small wire which is nice for airflow. We put this type in all of the computers we build.

When it comes to hard drives people really like to focus on speed. Unfortunately the total speed of a hard drive is a complex formula that is very hard for most people to understand, so many people look at just part of the formula and often get misled. The interface used to matter for speed but for now SATA2 is so fast that it is faster than all drives that exist so the interface no longer matters. Lets think about it in easy to understand terms. It is made up of three basic things. First you need to know how fast the arm can move the read/write head. Because you are always moving to and from different locations they take the average and give you that rateing. Usually it is from 3-10ms. The faster the better. Once you have moved the head to the right location you need to wait for the disk to spin and the data you need to move under the head. It could be 1% away or 99% away or anything in between, so most people use the number for the disk to spin half a rotation. The faster the disk spins the shorter this time will be, and also the faster the data will go under the head.

Many people stop here when they shop. They only look at RPM and Random Access Time and think that will tell them how fast their hard drive is BUT they are VERY VERY mistaken. Even high level tech people are fooled by the most important part of a hard drive. That is how dense the data is that is on each track. If you are dealing with very small bits of data it does not matter much, but today most people deal with very large files, you may have to spend a second or two reading one file. There is a drive out there called a Raptor, it has a very fast arm and it spins at 15,000 RPM BUT it only holds 74GB of data on two sides of two platters, the data density is very small by todays standards at 18GB per side of a platter. Now we can take the standard 320GB hard drive that our company uses on our basic computers, it has a slower random access time and spins at only 7200RPM, BUT it uses only one platter, with 160MB on each side. So the Raptor will find the data much faster but the “Slower” hard drive I use reads it 5 times faster once it is found, it only takes a few 100k of data and my drive is now faster. For a large file, or files that are stored in the same order they are accessed my drive smokes the Raptor every time. For many small files the Raptor wins. The Raptor is much louder, much hotter and for 1/4th the space it costs 3 times the price, not a good deal for anyone I know, but their marketing sure sells hard drives.

Another thing you need to think about is gyroscopic forces. You have a metal platter spinning at a rate over 140 times per SECOND. Anyone that has played with a gyroscope will tell you that when you move a spinning object in one direction it will push in another. If the head is over the part that bends the platter could crash into the head and scratch the platter, this what they mean when a drive crashes. To avoid you need to avoid moving a spinning hard drive. Now this is harder than it sounds when you consider many people have a laptop as their main computer. Because of this laptop platters are smaller and spin much slower and they also have a lot of shock absorbing. Some even have features that sense a fall or too much movement and quickly move the head off of the drive to prevent a crash. Even with all of this I am still very careful with moving a laptop too much, and I always back up data from a laptop.

Now everyone has heard about defragmenting your hard drive. What is this all about? Well sometimes, in order to fit the data on the drive the hard drive spits up the file into separate pieces. It is still one file to your os but it is stored in many different fragments, this really hurts speed because for you to read that file you have to read ever piece. If there are 100 fragments it could take a few seconds. Back in the days of DOS and Windows 3.1 it would write the data in the first open slot and was always fragmenting the drive. Each newer OS puts more and more safeguards in place to try to keep this from happening. Now with Vista this problem is almost gone.

I will leave you with the info on the my newest hard drive. It is the first Terrabyte hard drive to only use 3 platters, each with 160MB per side, the highest you can buy. It is 7200 RPM, very quiet and HUGE. Samsung really did a great job on this drive. This drive cost only half the price of that drive I told you about from back in 1995. Impressive how far we have come.

Thanks for reading. For more tech stuff on hard drives go here.

I am torn between all that is possible

Right now I feel that I am at a cross roads. I know so much, I know so much that I could never hold down a job, I know what it out there, and working for someone else is not an option. I am a true entrepreneur. Now that being said there is so much out there that I can do but I have limited time and limited focus. I choose to spend a good deal of time with my family because that is a priority. Let me tell you, my readers, what I am thinking about right now.
My main company for over a decade has been Emerald Computers. It was a great business from 1997 until about 2003 but then the industry changed, and got much more cutthroat and less fun. Also the profits dropped out. I lost my passion for it. Passion is a subject I have been thinking about a lot recently. If you do not live your life doing what you have have passion for you are living a wasted life. 80% of people can not stand their job, they can not stand what they now do for a living. 20% of the people their work is their passion, and they love to do it. For years I loved computers, not because of the technology but mostly because I could open peoples eyes up to what is possible and I loved that. But my business did less and less of that and more and more of the grinding out work that was not fun. When the passion left so did the profits. I went from averaging 70 hours a week working my company in 2002 to about 30 in 2005 to almost less than 5 in 2007.

I always was thinking about Real Estate, how it is a business where you make real things that stand there for many years. I know people that drive around a city and point out buildings they had a hand in making a decade before. Also I LOVE the art of the deal, where you negotiate price and terms and come up with a deal. It is like a huge game, trying to get the best for your side in every deal, nothing in business is more fun for me. Real Estate is the land of the largest deals, and the fastest way to make real big money. You can be creative and make transactions by bringing parties and ideas together in unique ways.

Now the problem with real estate is that you need knowledge or you need money. I don’t have this type of money because my computer company took it all, and my knowledge is all theory. I think I know at least 90% of what I know, but every time I think I have it all figured out I find out more I don’t know. Because of this a fear has set in so I do nothing, which is the worst thing of all to do. When you do real estate with no money to invest you will find the deal every now and then but it is far from steady, so I wanted to have something that was more steady.

Because of this I started looking for a MLM, because before Emerald Computers, and even during it I made some good money in the world of MLM business. With all the tools I have for online marketing and communications I figured I would have a huge advantage at any MLM that I would join. So I spent a good deal of time looking into everything that I could do. After looking for months almost all of the major MLM businesses that I saw were promoting a health product that they produced for $5 and sold for $50. I figured out that I really don’t have a passion for doing a MLM that is based on a health product, I think deep down that many of these don’t work, and that even if they do I don’t want to spend my life selling them, I have more important things to do.

So after a while I decided to work with a company called Nouveau Riche. What they do is have a college right down the street from my house. For 1 week every two months they teach a full week of really high quality classes about Real Estate. I bought the CD version of these classes, they were good. Next they provide a community of investors. It all sounded really great, just what I wanted to do. Then I really pushed it hard, trying to find people to invest with, trying to find people to pay to go to the college. They had an event where you could invite people to and they would have a 6 hour sample of classes that were taught by the school. I had been to them in the past, and they were great. At the end they would have a short 30 minute sales pitch for the college. This time there was new leadership and they promised it would be even bigger and better than before. I was really excited. I invited over 100 people. I got 40 people to say they would be there. It was all going well. Then on the day it was backwards, it started out with over two hours of hard sales, worse than if you went to a timeshare. That was followed by even more sales, and then an hour of decent education, followed by 2 more hours of hard sales. The people I had there all felt screwed, and lied to. They wanted education and what they got was this junk. After that day I have not gone to any meetings and have not talked to any leaders in the company, it was a bust for me.

So then I started looking a MLM that was for something that I could stand behind. I set down some rules. First it had to be something that was a good value, it had to save people money or make them money. Next it had to be something that was product driven, I wanted to product to sell the company. (One of my best friends Fred Coit is a big leader in Monavie and they have a great product driven company.) But next I wanted to do something that I would have a passion for. Last I wanted something with no marketing restrictions. You many not know that most MLM companies have many restrictions on how and where you can market, and I wanted something I could hit heavy online, and be creative with my marketing.

After about 2 months of looking I finally decided on SendOutCards, they offered a product that was only 1/3rd the cost of the competition with better service, it was product driven meaning that most people in it only really promote the product. I think that they are the BEST MLM for my style.

Now I am torn. What do I do with my days, I have a computer company, I have a ton of time, energy and passion devoted to getting into the real estate business, which is my true passion. And now I have this new business that is really fun and has a great product. For the last two month I have been floating. I have been like my 10 month old son, I focus on whatever seems the best at the time, but I may change on a whim. Last week a typical day was for me to wake up and talk to a few computer customers, then talk to a real estate agent about some houses then call a few people and tell them about SendOutCards. For the last few months when people ask me what I do for a living I really don’t have a good answer for them. I was at a meeting last Wednesday where I stood up and talked about Emerald Computers and SendOutCards, handed out flyers for SendOutCards and business cards for Capital Active (The Real Estate Company). I must have seemed very confused to some of these people.

So this is where I sit now. Emerald is the business that is putting food on my table, it is what I live on but every time I want to make money I have to trade large amounts of time for it. Sometimes it is easy and I get a call and make $500 in 2 hours, other times I make calls all day and make nothing. SendOutCards could be a huge business and with two months of good effort I could have a team large enough that I could pay all my bills from the money it makes. And Real Estate could make millions with ease and joy if I could get all the pieces to the puzzle together.

So my question for my readers, is this multitasking normal for someone who is a serial entrepreneur, and what would you do? This is interactive so please leave a comment, I will reply to them.

Follow-up is the key to customer growth and retention

Follow-up is the key to getting a new customer.
Sales Statistics
•    48% of sales people never follow up with a prospect
•    25% of sales people make a second contact and stop
•    12% of sales people only make three contacts and stop
•    Only 10% of sales people make more than three contacts
•    2% of sales are made on the first contact
•    3% of sales are made on the second contact
•    5% of sales are made on the third contact
•    10% of sales are made on the fourth contact
•    80% of sales are made on the fifth to twelfth contact
WHEN ARE YOU GIVING UP ON YOUR PROSPECT?


Follow-up is the key to keeping customers.

Why Customers Stop doing business with you.
•    1% Death
•    3% Move Away
•    5% Buy from a friend
•    9% Sold by a Competitor
•    14% Product Price
•    68% Perceived Indifference


The easy Follow-Up and appreciation solution

So what is an easy way to do both.  You want to keep your image and your marketing message in front of as many customers as possible.  One of the best way to do that is to send out greeting cards.  If you were to send out thank you cards and other marketing to your top 25% of customers you could add as much as 50% to your sales revenue.  If you send follow up marketing messages and cards to your prospective customers you will gain many more customers, and explode your sales volume.

So most people know this, but they don’t do it, because to most people sending out greeting cards is HARD.  They have to shop for them, buy them, write them, stamp them and then mail them.  They have to keep track of what was sent to who and when it was sent.  What if we used the power of the internet to do ALL of this for you.  All you do is log on, select the card, customize it if you wish and click send.  The rest is all done for you.  That is exactly what a great new company called Send Out Cards will do for you.  They have over 8,000 different cards to choose from, organized so that they are easy to find.

Because you are a reader of this blog you have access to a special account where you can get 2 free cards.  All you need to do is go to http://www.sendoutcards.com/az and click on the big red button in the middle.  If you have any questions about this process or if you are ready to take your business to the next level right now email us at dragon@capitalactive.com or call us at 602-579-4919.

Thanks and I hope you act on the message, and take your business to the next level.

The best MLM for me, and why

I finally did it, after about 3 months of research, investigating, going to meetings and trying to figure out what I wanted I finally selected the BEST MLM that I could find.

I have been in many MLM / network marketing companies, I have been to hundreds of meetings over the last 15 years, I have built teams, I have sold products, I have marketed many things but this is the first time that I stood back, and researched the pros and cons of different MLM concepts. You may remember back in April I wrote a series of blogs about the idea of a MLM. You can read them HERE, HERE, and HERE. I never wrote the last two in the series because I was still doing my research. In the process I actually joined 4 other MLM companies even before I was sold on them and all of them did not pan out. But now I finally found the best MLM company I have ever seen, more on that later.

So what makes this company better than anything else I have ever seen. There are so many reasons why. Read these reasons and compair them to any MLM that you are looking at.

Well first it is a product that EVERYONE can use, it is easy to understand, and everyone has a need for it. It also is something that you can easily prove, too many MLM promote a product that you just have to have faith that it works. (Most nutritional companies.) But for me the MOST important reason I think that this is the best MLM is because it is a great value, cheaper than normal way of doing things, and the reward of using this product is measurable and instant. You can sign up and start making money the same day, and with only three sales you are already in the black, in MOST MLM companies it is very hard to become profitable, in this it is easy. There is no other company doing anything even close to what they are doing. They are old enough to have their act together but not too young to be saturated. They are in a multi-billion dollar industry and with a radical new way of doing things will take huge market share from the two companies that have over 80% of the market share. Another thing I really love, is that everyone who hears about this product says something like “Of course that is a better way to do it, sign me up.”

If you are in a MLM now, or are thinking of joining one read that list and objectively think about how the company you are with stands up to all of these things.

The name of the company is something you probably never heard before. It is Send Out Cards. What they do is print and mail physical greeting cards that you select, customize and order online. It is a great business tool, allowing you to follow up and keep in contact with all of your co-workers, customers and business contacts. It is also a great personal tool, helping you make the people around you feel good. If you would like to try it out right now I have set up a special offer for all of my blog readers, you can CLICK HERE and you will receive a free account where you can send out two cards to anyone you like, you can play with all the features and see how it works.

Even if you are already busy building your own business you need to look at Send Out Cards as a marketing tool for that business. What would happen if you were able to follow up with EVERY prospect 2-3 times? What would happen if you sent a thank you note to each of the top 20% of your customers, how much extra business would they bring in. Think about it, try out a demo now.

I hope this blog shows some light on your journey to success. If you are looking for the best network marketing company around this one may be for you, it may not.