Not if you’re a Sea Turtle anyway.

Here is what the ocean in Cocoa Beach looked like yesterday.

———

———-

Here is what it looks like today.

• Pay attention to the guys trying to paddle out, I think one of them may have drowned
• The girl on the boggy board took a beating like a ragdoll
• The Kite Boarder is pretty crazy

———-

———-

The baby Sea Turtle at the end was a loner.

No brothers or sisters around, they all left without him. I had to drop the camera suddenly because 6 seagulls were getting ready to dive at him.

I know you are not supposed to intervene and handle them. Maybe nature says I should have let him be a snack, but I couldn’t do it. So I picked him up and waded out as far as I could to let him go.

But what if the only reason the seagulls saw him was because they saw me looking at him. Then I had to intervene. Good, now I feel OK about it.

I am supposed to go to Marsh Harbor, Abacos Bahamas, next Wednesday, to sail on a catamaran for a week for my 50th birthday. However some bitch name Irene is about to pounce right on top of where my boat is waiting for me.

———-

———-

I guess it is a good thing I am not there NOW, that my vacation was planned for next week not this week.

Maybe there is something to that “timing is everything” cliché.

But I saw it this morning.

It is that time of year in Florida, the lovebugs are everywhere. Those pesky little, acid-rich, car paint-destroying, sex maniacs. For those of you who have not experienced it , we are swarmed down here in Florida twice a year in numbers so huge it is incomprehensible. They only live 3 – 4 days, but they maintain huge numbers for almost a month. When 10 million die another 10 million are born.

How many are there really? No one is sure.

Riding my bike on the beach this morning, there were an incredible amount of dead lovebugs painted in wave-like patterns on the beach sand,  left high on the beach from the ocean’s tide.

I rode my bike from Coconuts to the Jetty which is 7 miles. The wave of dead bugs ran the entire stretch of the beach and the concentration of bugs was pretty consistent the entire way.

So I stopped and counted them.

There were between 250 and 300 bugs for every 12 inches of beach.

275 bugs per foot X 5280 feet per mile X 7 miles =

10 Millions bugs.

How many lovebugs do you think there are in the entire state of Florida?

I guess it would suck if we lived only 3 – 4 days on average, so can you blame them for how they spend there time?

“Sure, you head North and at the 4th or 5th stop light, it is on the west side.”

This is the 1st women I had ever met that used magnetic directions. I nearly burst from excitement. This had been a life-long dream.  It was going to be a good night.

As she was telling me to head North, she was pointing directly East. Not a big deal, I know, but I was already a little dizzy since this woman was giving me directions using North, South, East and West instead of the typical feminine “Left  – Right.” It was a long drive and I just wasn’t prepared for this kind of revelation.

So I politely said, “Um you are pointing East…so when you say it is on the West Side, do you mean North Side….urr…the left side?”

She said “NO, That way is North (Still pointing East after simulating a major league baseball throw)”

“I just spent 10 hours on I-95 heading South, I know which way North is.”

With a small dose on Ron White sarcasm….

“Well I have lived here all my life and I sure as hell know where North is!”

I should have dropped it but the “sure as hell” put me over the edge.

So I did it. Yep I went and got my compass out of the balloon trailer.

“Look, this is a compass. It is a newfangled thingy that tells you where North is. Actually we’re in luck because this is the deluxe model, so it tells us not only where North is, but South, West, and yes, even East . So as you can see the direction you have been pointing is East.”

“Well your copasse must be broken because I have lived here my whole life. I’LL PROVE IT TO YOU!, FOLLOW ME!”

So we walked out of the hotel lobby and started to head East down the road. We got to this sign:

 
Following a celebration dance reminiscent of the 1980 U.S Hockey team she declared: “See you dumb ass, the sign right there says North is that way. Now say you’re sorry!”

You gotta be shittin’ me.

“Yes ….. I-95 South to the right is correct. It is telling you to turn right and you will be heading South. It is one of those freaky laws of Nature that if you are facing East, South is to the right.

The North I-95 Sign is pointing directly East telling you to keep going East, under the bridge. That arrow is pointing where you need to go to get to the North ramp.

I am going to go out on a limb here, but I’ll bet once you go under the bridge there will be a sign that has an arrow pointing left, which if you turn left there, you will merge on to I-95 North.”

“The highway people can’t be wrong, it says “North” that way!!”

Really.

“These signs have been her my whole life, they are not wrong.”“

“Did it ever occur to you that the North and South arrows on this sign are only 90 degrees apart instead of a 180?”

“What the hell does temperature have to do with it!!?

Uncle…… you win.

“I’ll find MacPhersons on my own. Thanks”

The next day this episode started me thing about business and relationships. Everyone lives in their own world and no two worlds are the same. I wonder how many disagreements stem from a lack of common definitions. Both sides probably think they are making a logical argument,  but they are doing it from an uncommon ground. The assumptions are so far apart they can’t possible see eye to eye. What is interesting is they don’t know they are looking at it from a different foundation. They don’t know what they don’t know.

This reminds me of a quote from Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveria:

“Our perception does not identify the outside world as it really is, but the way that we are allowed to recognize it, as a consequence of transformations performed by our senses.  We experience electromagnetic waves, not as waves, but as images and colors. We experience vibrating objects, not as vibrations, but as sounds. We experience chemical compounds dissolved in air or water, not as chemicals, but as specific smells and tastes. Colors, sounds, smells and tastes are products of our minds, built from sensory experiences. They do not exist, as such, outside our brain.

Actually, the universe is colorless, odorless, insipid and silent.

Although you and I share the same biological architecture and function, perhaps what I perceive as a distinct color and smell is not exactly equal to the color and smell you perceive. We may give the same name to similar perceptions, but we cannot know how they relate to the reality of the outside world. Perhaps we never will.”

– Dr. Jorge Martins de Oliveira

Maybe I was wrong.

Perhaps directions are a relative thing in Richmond Hill, Georgia.

My wife said “You don’t need Public Speaking 101, you have been speaking for 30 years now!

I’ll be shocked if you learn anything you don’t already know.”

But I knew better, this is the Wizard Academy.

I could only stay for ½ the class before catching a flight, but I already had 12 pages of notes. Steve Rae presented all the basic blocking and tackling a new speaker needs to know. Objective, preparation, content, sleep, practice, equipment issues, eye contact, body language, gestures, and the like. It was a great refresher course for a seasoned speaker and an absolute must for a beginner.

My main interest was to learn some new tactics to take it to a whole new level. After reviewing my notes, I boiled it down to 10 things. I plan to use them now as a checklist for any speech.  You should too.

I am giving a keynote presentation at TRIZCON 2010 in Cincinnati in 2 weeks. I had already prepared my speech prior to the class, but gave it a major overhaul based on these 10 Wow factors.

#1 – Open Big –Toastmasters and most conventional training will tell you to:

1- Tell them what you are going to tell them
2- Tell them
3- Tell them what you told them

You have heard it a 1000 times. This is dead wrong.

Pick something that is radically different as an opener. It is the same rationale as a good advertising headline, you have to get their attention first. Choose any statement that would stop them in their tracks. It shouldn’t appear to relate to your content.

You will always be able to connect the headline and the content later, after the 1st drafts have been written. I call it the Bridge from Nowhere.

TRIZCON 2010 is a conference on TRIZ and Innovation.

My opening sequence is “Autism Can Be Good”.

That should get their attention.

Your audience’s initial thoughts should be “Where the hell is he going with this?, not “He told me what he is going to tell me.”

#2 – Mash the Monotone – Use timing, silence, inflection, and animation to emphasize your points. I have always known this is my biggest weakness. The class attendees reconfirmed this. I even tried to exaggerate in my practice speech, and most people thought it was just “normal”.

I was told this effort took some balls……..“but only BB Balls”

I need to practice taking it to another level.

You never look as silly as you think you do by showing emotion, so go for it.

I now make sure in my speech preparation that I have specific areas where I stress the use of timing, silence, and inflection. I have to plan for it and practice it because it is not natural for me.

#3 Authority – You can choose from an infinite number of things that are unusual to show how confident you are in your message, even if you are scared to death. Do something the audience would never expect someone to do if they weren’t totally convinced they were the world’s expert. I have seen the Wizard flip off his loafers and place them on the podium, take off his belt, and tear a $100 bill into 87 pieces. It signals that he is incredibly comfortable and confident in his presence on stage. But come up with your own shtick to show you are totally in charge.

#4 – Crawl into their cage – You need to speak the language of the audience. Tailor your speech to things happening in their company, the city you are speaking in, the venue, etc. Check local newspapers. Ask the locals what are the hot spots. Look for stories that are unique to this audience and environment.

In many cases you are giving the same message just packaged differently. Make the speech harmonize with the specific environment.

In TRIZ it is called “Local Quality.”

#5 – Tickle the Taboo – You want to do something that is a little taboo. You don’t have to go so far that they storm the stage with pitch forks, but push it past the ordinary. Talk about things you’re not supposed to. As Roy says this one is Nitroglycerin.  You have to handle it carefully, but it is all so powerful. Who said you can’t talk about, sex, religion, and money?

To really move some of your audience, you will push others towards the door. That’s OK. As Roy told me, they should love you or hate you, but please don’t bore them.

For Geez sakes, I am opening with “Autism Can Be Good”, that for sure will polarize some of the audience, but it won’t bore them.

#6 – Metaphors– Tell stories that connect the unfamiliar to the familiar. The goal of your presentation should be to reveal a new perspective. To be transformative. Take what the majority already knows or believes to be true and connect it to your new perspective through metaphors.

#7 – Specifics – Specifics are always more believable than generalities. Quote references, use the Dr.’s real name, quote the specific study, etc.

#8 – Planned Vulnerability – I’m screwed up, you’re screwed up, and so is everybody else. So use it to your advantage.

If the information is unplanned, you look like a cry-baby and the audience feels sorry for you. But if you plan to include a intimate personal story that emphasis your point the audience is more likely to connect with you. They will also see your commitment to the message.

In my Cincinnati speech I plan to reveal my chronic White Coat Syndrome. A former Chief Engineer on the Space Shuttle program is scared to death of a blood pressure machine 24/7/365.

I can easily tie it into my overall message.

#9 – Imitate someone you admire – What does R&D stand for?

Yes Research and Development is one right answer.

Another one is Rob and Duplicate.

It is OK to copy someone else’s presentation style until you learn to develop it on your own.

A really bad impression is still good.

In the class, Roy Williams revealed the 3 people he has copied in his career as far as presentation style. I have seen him present for nearly a decade and would never have been able to tell you what 3 people it was.

In fact, I never knew he was copying anyone, I just figured he was a genius (he is).

Now that he told me, I can see it…sort of, but that doesn’t matter. It made him one of the best speakers on the planet.

My biggest moment with this #9 tip involved the character Captain Jack Sparrow, from the movie Pirates of the Caribbean. You know, the movie starring Johnny Depp where he has a quirky walk and almost looks gay.

Hilarious.

Depp admitted he was just trying to do a bad impression of Keith Richards from the Rolling Stones.

This bad impression has grossed $355 million.

#10 – Close Big – This is even more important than the 1st one, but uses the same principles. Try to tie it back into you opening statement and overall message, but don’t leave them bored by saying, Thanks for having me everybody.”

Use these 10 tips as a checklist for your future presentations, your colleagues will be dying to know your secret.

We have periodically talked about getting involved with Big Brothers Big Sisters, but the same problem keeps popping up its ugly head.

We just can’t afford the time commitment that they demand.

But recently I was contacted by Fresh Air Fund

You can get involved by letting an under privileged kid spend a 2-week summer vacation with you.

That’s it, just 2 weeks.

That really got my attention.  Could just two weeks really make a difference to a kid? That is what got me thinking because Big Brothers Big Sisters says you have to have a more long term commitment with these kids to make an impact.

But then I started thinking about my summer vacations. Those times where I got to do something different for a couple weeks are the once that I really remember.  The first time I really got to venture far from home was a result of an exchange program through my little league football team. The Purple Marauders arranged it so we got to stay at one of the competing team player’s family.

For 2 weeks in the summer.

I got to go to Pittsburgh, PA. May not sound exciting to you now, but as a kid that hadn’t ventured more than about 6 miles from home, it was pretty cool.

I remember that summer well.

I just found out about Fresh Air and I am gone all of July doing my creative thinking workshops, in London, Chicago (with Blackberry), and the Wizard Academy in Austin, Texas.

But we may be a host family in August if we can finish the home remodeling in time.

If not, we plan to sign up for next summer.

Check out this video of Brandon Mendoza

Fresh Air still needs some host families for this summer 2010, so please contact them if you want to change the life of an inner city kid this year.

As a minimum, I am going to work with Fresh Air and see if I can donate copies of my book Da Vinci and the 40 Answers to the host families. I know they could use the tools in the book to really come up with some creative ideas to make the kids summer vacation the best of a lifetime.

Please host a kid this year or donate to the Fresh Air Fund, it sounds like a great cause.

But I finally hit pay dirt when I called my life-long unlucky charm, David Gralla. Alas!.. He didn’t jinx me this time.

David, his wife Pat, and 9-year old daughter Sona agreed to meet us.

Besides us, the only people who are vertical at 6:50 am on a Sunday morning are 3 guys and one chick standing in the Jonathan’s parking lot waiting for the bar to open… at 7:00 am.

Seriously.

No hot air balloon in the history of the world as ever launched and flown out of Cocoa Beach.

Until now.

It’s in the record books.

I have been wanting to do it for years. The winds were finally right where I wanted them; 60 degrees at 8 knots.

Perfect.

We launched from Jonathan’s Pub, flew over the Cocoa Beach golf course and landed in Viera.

And without the involvement of city police, sheriff, civil air patrol, fire and rescue, NSA, or the FBI.

Not a single “authority-harassment.”  Not even any scruff from Jonathan.

It was great day.

Well it’s gonna happen. It may not be tomorrow, but the death of your star will come some day.

It’s a fact, so why not assume it is going to happen sooner than later?

One of the tools I use in my creative thinking workshops is to assume that my client can no longer make any money directly from selling the product to consumers anymore. In this case, how else could you make money from the product besides a direct sale? This exercise allows you to discover other revenue streams that you can capitalize on now. They are right under your nose; you just haven’t taken the time to smell them.

It’s kinda Google’s model in a sense. The primary product they have is “search” but it is given away for free. They make money on all the side doors.

What are your revenue side doors?

I recently applied this tool to a recent product I developed called Nest Egg Software. It is a revolutionary retirement planning software package which 100’s of thousands of dollars were spent in the development of it.  (Go get your free account, www.NestEggSoftware.com )

 
Of course I could easily sell the software, but I decided to give it away for free and apply the Sunken Ship philosophy before I ever launched the product. As part of the business model, I assumed I could never sell it directly to the consumer. I did this on purpose to expand my creative thinking and come up with different ways to make money with the concept without directly selling it to consumers.

Here is what I came up with as targets for revenue streams;

• Financial Advisors, who then use it in their practice for their clients
• Corporate HR departments:  as a benefit for employees and let them rebrand it as their own. Every employee hates HR and it gives HR a chance to give some benefits back to their workforce
• Advertizing space on www.NestEggSoftware.com
• Radio commercial spots integrated into the blog podcasts
• Refer the “free” consumers to financial advisors and obtain referral fees
• Find other companies who use the term “Nest Egg” in their branding and create partnerships
• Banks, brokers, and financial institutions allowing them to rebrand it for their customers.
• Retirement associations like AARP

These are just a few of the side door revenue streams we are going after in the business model. We also applied the principles of Word of Mouth Marketing in the business plan as the product was being developed. We will cover more on WOM in another post.

Side doors are all around you. Look for them and try opening a few.

3 – Start with the end first. What is the Last Mental Image (LMI) you want your audience to have stuck in their head after they have read or seen your ad?

1 – How to begin. That is the 2^nd most important step. What is the First Mental Image (FMI) you want your audience to have. Is the FMI impactful enough that it grabs your attention and makes you stop thinking about whatever you were thinking about just one second before.

 It has to be really different to work.

2 – What to leave out. The last step is to figure out what to leave out of the message to make it more interesting and impactful. We all tend to give too much information. We make it too long and boring.

Another  friend of mine, David Freeman,  is an expert consultant in making Hollywood movies. They have a term for it in Tinseltown called FSD: First Shitty Draft.

Everyone starts out with garbage the 1^st go around, so don’t get discouraged. David told me most of Dan Aykroyd’s FSD’s are off the scales on the “S” factor. It takes even Dan many, many versions to get it right.  Just right the ad then go back again and again to make it better before you go live with it.

Watch this advertisement. I think it does a beautiful job of applying these principles.

What was your LMI? What was your FMI? What did they leave out to make it more interesting and memorable ?

“Right… I know that, but we are talking about fluid ounces not weight ounces, there is a difference”

“No there’s not”

“OK, this 20 fluid ounce bottle of water weighs about 2 pounds, right?”

“Yep”…tossing it from hand to hand.

“So how much would a 20 fluid ounce bottle or mercury weigh? About 25 pounds, right? They are both 20 fluid ounces but different weight ounces”

“I still don’t think we landed on the moon”

David doesn’t like to dwell on subjects when they start to rub him the wrong way.

We were in Costco loading up supplies for Haiti and trying to keep track of how much everything weighs.

We were getting ready to fly to Haiti to deliver supplies to the Earthquake victims there. David McInnis was so generous and kind hearted; he was flying his personal plane, a Pilatus N116TH, all week long from Ft. Lauderdale, Florida to various landing strips in Haiti.

We needed to make sure we didn’t overload the airplane with too much cargo since all planes have weight limitations. Too much weight and you could pile up at the end of the runway on take off.

I wasn’t about to have my tombstone read “Chemical Engineer, but still could not add.”

We loaded up the plane and realized we hade the ability to load another 600 pounds. Coordinators on the tarmac were asking all the planes there headed for Haiti if they could take on a little bit more cargo from the stockpile of donations. Literally tons of them.

Cup O’ soup, sterno, children’s Tylenol, Vienna sausages, tuna, bottled water, rice, and a dozen soccer balls from our Costco run. Cases of canned goods from donations.

Airborne over the Atlantic with 1200 pounds worth of goodies,  along with big dose of turbulence to keep all 3 of us on edge.

“Does this plane not pull fuel from both wings at the same time?”

“Yes, why?”

“How come the right tank is at 75% full and the left is still completely full?”

“Good question”

“And why is the right fuel pump light on?”

“Good question”

5 minutes of head scratching.

“I think we are venting!”

“What the F$%#!, Is this Apollo 13?”

“Do you see a contrail-like looking stream coming off the right wing tip?”

“Uh….no….. like what?”

“Like this” as Bob pointed out the left wing. I leaned over to see what he was talking about. Holy shit, is that fuel? We are venting fuel?”

Suddenly the ocean in the windshield looked bigger than I had ever seen before.

We took turns flying the plane and trying to troubleshoot the problem by reading the emergency procedures.

“Try pulling that breaker. No, not that one, the other one. OK maybe reset the mains. Maybe try pushing the breaker back in. Try another one. OK maybe that one.”

“Can we reboot this whole thing?”

We tried a couple dozen things, not being sure if we solved the problem. We sat there and starred at the left fuel gauge. Finally it started to drop. We were burning fuel on the left tank OK now. A visual check out the window and no more venting.

We just had our glitch for this mission.

Not sure how we fixed it but hopefully it was gone.

Gremlins.

Nice ride all the way to Haiti after that. Definitely the coolest airplane I have ever flown.
Descending from 26,000 feet we finally dropped into the clouds. I kept double checking the height of the terrain on the radar to make sure we stood clear.

Bob nailed a perfect landing.

As soon as we started to offload the goodies, it began to pour down like crazy.

Then McSmartAss did it.

He threatened to do it, but I wasn’t sure he would go through with it.

The mayor of Jacmal had decided a day earlier that he was now going to charge pilots a $22 landing fee. Rightfully so this really pissed David McInnis off. He had been spending is own time and resources to the tune of thousands of dollars out of his own pocket to help the Haiti people.

Then this butt-head Mayor decided to line his own pockets with a new “landing fee” tax.
When the mayor asked for the $22, McSmartAss handed him a shoe box full of pennies. $22 dollars worth. About 20 pounds worth.

“That is Shit money! You insult me!”

“No, this is valid U.S. Currency.”

By this time Bob and I were already heading off into the distance to avoid the gun fire.
We hid behind a King Air that had crashed a couple days before.

By some miracle, we didn’t hear any gun shots or see any RPG’s. Not sure how he pulled that off.

Back in the Pilatus heading for home.

We could not see any of the damage at Port-Au-Prince, the cloud level had it completely covered.
One of the doctors in Ft. Lauderdale, before we had left, had just returned from Port-Au-Prince.
He told me his team was doing about 200 amputations a day.

That is what I saw I my mind’s eye beneath the clouds.

The flight home was smooth in the night-time air. We were watching the fuel the whole time wondering if we had enough to make it back to Ft. Lauderdale or if we would have to land in the Bahamas for fuel. None of us want to do that if we didn’t have to. It was getting late and it would add a couple hours of postponement to bed time.

“We should be fine as long as we don’t hit any head wind”

About 13 minutes later a 43 knot head wind smacked us right in the kisser.

The FAA wanted us to start our decent in Ft. Lauderdale from about 100 miles out to sea. We asked if we could stay at 26,000 until the last minute to save on fuel.

They said no.

We said pretty please.

“Are you in “min” fuel situation?”

“Yes”

The let us stay at 26,000.

Cool.

We landed with 8% left in the tanks.

Good luck Haiti.

Death Valley in July

or

Santa is December

No I am not some kind of Scrooge; I just want to show you an example of how you can use deliberate creativity.

A tool to help you think “how to think.”

If you’re running holiday advertising with some version of St. Nick, you may need a few new stocking stuffers.

Differentiate yourself from the competition by using the power of TRIZ. It allows you to view the world from a different perspective.

The 40 “Lenses” of TRIZ allow you to see things differently. Like the proverbial Rose-Colored Glasses, but in this case we are not looking at the world with a delusional positive view, we are looking for creative solutions to real problems.

Let’s look at recent example.

TRIZ Lens 13 is “The Other Way Round” and it is applied pretty much the way it sounds. Do it backwards, apply the opposite…or go the other way round to be different and creative.

So how could we do the opposite for a radio commercial at Christmastime?

I applied the lens of “Other Way Round” to a client of mine: Amish Furniture Outlet.

This lead me to think:

“What is another holiday symbol I could use to substitute for Santa?

What would be unexpected?

Ah – Easter Bunny!

Wait a minute. Is the Easter Bunny a boy or girl? Hum. Not sure.

Googled it. No clear answer.

I decide to go with girl. Mostly because they sound better than us guys. OK if I am going to use a women’s voice, applying “Other Way Round” again I’ll use a voice that in non-American sounding. Throw in a little humor here and there and presto!”

Click the arrow below

[podcast]http://www.tangenttime.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/12/Easter_Bunny_Female.mp3[/podcast]

“Easter Bunny here. Yeah it’s Christmas. But Amish Furniture figured you’re ‘so-over’ that Beet-Red, bag of wind. Come on – That Kringle clown’s not even real.
 
Amish Furniture Outlet hired me as their spokesrabbit for this holiday season. Why ? because at Amish Furniture you get the unexpected.
 
You won’t find that rickety, saw dust, press-on nail furniture those other’s guys push on you. Amish Furniture Outlet only makes hand-made, solid wood furniture, designed and built specifically for you.

Meet me @ AMISH FURNITURE OUTLET dot CA.”