(Yes, I know the irony.)

The point is that her interests are mainly local – she’s a real estate and interior design nut, and is constantly researching the market. The *local* market.

Over at “Naked Conversations”:http://redcouch.typepad.com/weblog/2005/11/predictions_for.html, Shel Israel has just posted his predicitions for 2006. His third prediction reads

After a few major metropolitan newspapers die, dailies will begin to understand that blogs are part of their solution, and will start incorporating neighborhood bloggers into their system.  These microchannels of news will be well-supported by local advertisers who will be thrilled to support these effrots over Google Local or static Yellow Pages. Why? Because these newspaper bloggers will be comprised of local people talking to their neighbors. What better way to reach such a community?

I couldn’t agree more. My wife is typical (well, hardly – but in this rare occasion she is). The point is that she doesn’t care what format the information is is: blog site, web site, print, or radio. What she cares about is getting _relevant_, _topical content when she wants to find it_.

It strikes me that one might be wise to investigate ways to aggregate local content. Off the top of my head I can see a couple of ways to leverage existing technology to create effective, profitable portals.  While it may be beneficial to partner with a local community newspaper in order to use their sales team and local marketing reach, I’m not convinced it’s a requirement for success. Their entrenched culture may make the concept of citizen journalists reporting on screen difficult to grasp.

Hmmmmm… Investors?

The best way to get me is at the office at peter @ theblogstudio.com

Phone works awfully well too. The office number is 416-461-4406

I’m located in the quite wonderful city of Toronto, which puts me smack dab in the middle of the Eastern time zone.

You can try to get me on AIM at theblogstudio, but odds are I’ll have it set to ignore.

If you read me with any regularity, you’ll know I have a propensity for overusing the word ‘power’. This paragraph will be no exception. I think being the 97th monkey puts me in a pretty powerful position. If I know all the other monkeys are going to start washing their potatoes soon, I can set up a potato washing service before the market gets saturated. See what I mean?

I’ve ignored this gut sense far too many times. This blog is my attempt to stake out a bit of territory, and establish myself as an expert in a narrow field before the field becomes too cluttered. My chosen field is a hybrid of graphic design and marketing, with an emphasis on personal connection between a business and its customers.

Almost Cool, v8.0

Almost Cool was created in the fall of 2004, while recovering from disc surgery, and trying not to go insane with boredom. The impetus for, or rather the catalyst to doing the actual design and coding was an “article”:http://www.designbyfire.com/000158.html written by Andrei Herasimchuk at “Design by Fire.”:http://www.designbyfire.com

*About the Name* Do we all remember the heart warming cold-war story of *The Hundredth Monkey*? For those who are too young or too old, the premise of the story is that once a certain percentage of a population learns a lesson (in this case, one hundred monkeys), the whole of the population spontaneously shares the knowlege. I am the 97th monkey. I am not the first monkey, nor the 10th, but I am in that lead group, albeit at the tail end. Hence, almost cool.

*About the Code* XHTML 1.0 Transitional and valid CSS. No big whoop. I use WP to power this particular *About the Author* Having already compared myself to a monkey, and not a particluarly bright one at that, you may well be wondering who it is pushing the buttons behind the scenes. I dislike having to sum one’s self up in a few sentences. Who am I? Oh boy, there’s a loaded question. Let’s just say this: I am a father to two incredible girls. I am a husband to the love of my life. I am a loved and loving son. I am an ex-bike racer, an ex-windsurfer, and ex-snowboarder (don’t worry, only until my back is better). I am an avid reader, a dis-interested gardener, and a lover of fine foods and wine. I’ve studied business and art, and practice both. I live by the words “help others make wealth, and wealth will come to you”.

How’s that? So that’s what the 97 is all about. Clear?

In addition to having a business though, I have a family. Trying to balance the two is incredibly tough. Working 24/7 isn’t a realistic long term possiblity either.

Part of my strategy for maintaining my sanity and having a good quality of life is to take weekends off, and to close the studio in time to have dinner with my kids.

The challenge is that there is an expectation on the part of some of my clients that I be available to chat during non-traditional business hours.

This is complicated by the fact that my clients are spread all over the world. Trying to connect during office hours when our time zones are on opposite sides of the world is plain impossible.

Obviously, if I want to play, I’ve got to pay. What I’m wondering though, is how you handle this situation. I’ve got our studio hours posted on the contact page of “my site”:http://www.theblogstudio.com, but that’s the absolute bare minimum.

So, what do you do?

I’d build a gallery of proposals. Proposals for all kinds of work: design work, consulting work, building work…

It would be organized by category. Prices and names (including firm names) could be blacked out. The point would be to create a resource for best practices in proposal writing.

Anyone know of anything like this? Anyone want to create it?

At the Blawgthink conference in Chicago this weekend, one of the concepts that came up was the return on investment of blogging. The point was made that calculating time spent vs dollars gained doesn’t give an accurate answer.

One must also consider the money and energy saved as a result of blogging. Think of the money saved in print advertising, yellow pages, etc. For a small business, this can result in a significant savings.

As a small business owner, I can assure you that blogging is an *amazing* way to earn business. I don’t have an ad in the yellow pages – I don’t need one (that’s a savings of thousands of dollars a year in this market).

If you’re concerned you can’t afford to put the time into blogging (and really, who isn’t?), consider how many hours you have to put in to cover the cost of your existing marketing? I’m not saying that blogging will replace your current ad spending, but it may make a pretty big dent in it.

After consulting with a number of people I know and trust, I’ve made the decision to move ahead and grow my business. Current challenges have to be overcome, and future opportunities abound. I need great people here to work with me.

Today Michael Caputo and Lucia Mancuso joined Richard and I at TBS world headquarters. Mike is an excellent designer, with a keen eye for balance and placement. His work has an elegance that fits well with my aesthetic. He’s pretty handy with xhtml and css too.

Lucia joins us as project manager. She is here to save me from myself. Ask any of my current clients, and they’ll tell you what I mean. She’s been here for a day, and already there’s a sense of control returning. Lucia will take over the tasks that I don’t particularly excel at or enjoy. This will allow me to focus more on design and managing the overall creative direction.

I would like to thank my clients for having the patience to stick with me during this nutty growth spurt. I’m writing this publicly to preemptively let the blogosphere know we’ve “experienced slippage” in many of our recent milestones. If you’re going to hear about problems with my company, I want you to hear them from me.

I’ll tell you honestly: I misjudged my workload. I hadn’t factored in the slack to allow anything to go wrong. Hence, once somthing did, it spiraled into a nasty storm at a wholly inopportune time (of course).

The addition of Mike and Lucia to the team is specifically to help us get back on track. As a result, we’re not going to be starting any new work until Dec. We are booking work though, so if you have a project you would like to discuss with us, please do so sooner rather than later. This will ensure we can get it on the schedule as early as possible.

There’s lots of lessons here, not the least of which is “be careful what you wish for”.