CustomUSB.com Official Blog

Prior to that, I either bounced the light off the ceiling/wall (which didn’t work too well if you had high or painted ceilings) or aimed the flash directly at the subject (which created harsh shadows and unevenly exposed areas). Compared to this, the handmade bouncer was a revelation.

The original cardboard bouncer was cut from a regular piece of cardboard and lasted only a couple of weddings before it became dirty or damaged. For the past several years I’ve been trying to perfect this product and I think I have the winning formula.

If you were looking for a way to diffuse the harsh light from you on-camera and off-camera flash, this is the only flash bouncer you will ever need.

Here’s the recipe:
Ingredients:

• White Foam Board – you can pick this up at Walmart, Target or any stationary store, like Staples. It costs anywhere from $2 to $4, depending on size and store.
• Scotch All Weather Fasteners – for mounting the bouncer to the flash unit.
• Flash Bouncer Template – I made a template in Adobe Illustrator for cutting out the bouncer from the foam board.

STEP 1

Download the Flash Bouncer Template and use it to cut out the shape of the bouncer from the foam board. For mine, I used a laser engraver which made the edges smooth and even. (see photos below)

STEP 2

Attach Scotch All Weather Fasteners to the bottom part of the bouncer and back head piece of your flash. (see photos below)

That’s it!

Here’s how the whole kit looks assembled.

Now go make your own. Or, for just $14.95 I can make one for you using my state-of-the-art laser cutter. I’ll even engrave your logo on it FREE of charge (email your logo in EPS vector format to molotalk@gmail.com).

This is Royce (known as Pedro in his formal life). He was adopted a month ago from Orphans of the Storm, an animal shelter in Riverwoods, IL, and renamed after a Latin singer, Prince Royce. We never knew we wanted a dog, until we saw him.

You’re driving in the left lane and you come up to a minivan driving the speed limit. “No problem,” you think as you start get on his ass while flickering the high-beams. After about 30 seconds of doing this, you realize this guy is not moving. You then cut off an innocent-looking elderly person as you make your way into the right lane to pass this soccer-mom-minivan-type motherfocker. As you pass, you make your angry face and mutter some obscenities while trying to make eye contact with this slow-moving a-hole. A quick thought passes your mind, “nothing makes me angrier than bad drivers.” Just then, you look in your rear view mirror and you see the van slowly changing lanes into the right.

Have you ever thought about why you always look who the driver is as you pass?

The immediate answer is you want him to see that you are angry about his driving so that he can learn a life lesson and never drive like this again. I think we both know what he’ll learn from this – nothing. People don’t want to admit fault or see their actions as wrong.  Now, that doesn’t mean you should stop trying to impose your hard-knock-life justice onto wrongdoers. But that’s a different post.

The answer you don’t think about, which is probably more true than the previous one, is you want to see what type of person is capable of acting this way and associate a their face with the action. In more complex terms, your mind has a database of visual cues which sends signals to the body to prepare for a fight or flight response. In simpler terms, you want to be able to predict who is capable of doing what before they actually do it.

No matter what everyone says, we like and need to prejudge. We want to be able to look at a tattooed Russian guy and in an instance determine if he will be violet if the sutuation forces him to. We want to know if the woman with a hispanic name walking into a dealership will be a laydown.

In many instances, prejudging keeps us alive. Go ahead, be prejudice, just not racist.

If I was making cranberry juice, I’d call it Cramberry Juice. It would sell in a round glass bottle which would be crammed with real fresh cranberries (not made from concentrate). It would be organic and contain no sugar or high fructose corn syrup. Cranberries would be sourced from small local farmers whose profiles would appear on the label along with terms like “the real 100% juice” and “a glass a day to better urinary health”. The factory would house a cranberry bush garden where visitors could come in and pick their own cranberries to make fresh squeezed juice on the spot. Our website would be cramberry-juice.com (this domain is available, for now).

I see this behavior in many industries and witness many people doing the same thing. When business is tight, they try to find new clients. Well, what about the clients you already have? What happens to them?

What I have learned from working in sales all my life, is that there is no loyalty. Everyone says they are loyal, and they are……to their own interests. I witnessed this again on Friday. One of our sales reps works with Red Stripe, and we recently did a custom order for them (USB drive in a shape of Red Stripe Beer Bottle). It took about a month to close this deal and we gave them all sorts of mockups, 3D renderings, engineered the design of the bottle, I mean everything. Now they want to reorder, not with us but with another company that gave them a less expensive price ($0.30 less per unit at 3000 units). Look, we have a price match guarantee on our website, and sometimes it brings it competitors’ clients too, but you would think that someone you had worked with on a completely custom project woudl come back to you to reorder. I guess not.

You would have to agree that current economy sucks. People are being laid off left and right. Business is slow(er). So what do companies do to increase revenue – advertise more. Why? Because they want to bring in new business. Well, how about the business you already have. Here is what you can do to increase revenue without spending more on advertising (at least to bring in new clients).

1. Create a weekly newsletter that tells your clients about new product offerings and specials.
2. Setup a blog that all of your sales and production people can contribute to.
3. Call your customers on a regular basis just to say hello.
4. Find out what social networks your customers are using, then join them.
5. Start a Ning community and let your customers network amongst each other.
6. If you work with a lot of resellers, run regular educational sessions about your products or services.
7. Develop and incentive based referral system.
8. Regularly ask your customers what they like (or dislike) about you.
9. CARE

Is there a professional way to protect myself from prospective clients stealing my ideas and putting them out to bid without coming across as totally distrustful?

An I answered:

There is always a chance that someone you quote will take your idea and just go elsewhere to shop for a lower price. We do about 60 or more quotes a day and not all of them order, and some of them probably take the information they get from us and try to outbid the price with our competition.

As a creative individual or company, the best you can do is keep coming up with creative ideas and stay remarkable. There will always be a market for what you do, as long as you are truly exceptional. And if you sometimes get someone who takes your concept and bids it out, it’s okay. You probably don’t want these people as customers anyway. What I’ve found is that if you teach prospects something they did not know before, they will come to you in the future, even if they don’t order the first time.

They also posted my question, which will be published in the March issue. The question is:

I know that distributors [companies that buy from suppliers and resell to end users] are always out to get the lowest price, but where is the trade-off between being the cheapest and having the best service?

Here are the responses I anticipate:

• Of course service is important, way more important than the price.
• I don’t mind paying a little more to get the best service.
• I always want to go with a reliable company as long as long as the prices are reasonable.

Here is how it is in reality:

• That’s too expensive, I can buy it cheaper in China.
• I need to be able to make 30% margins, what can you do for me?
• [after a follow up on a week of no response] We went with someone else, they were less expensive.

This month, I see this more than ever. Due to an under supply on the flash market, prices have been going up for about 4 weeks now. Since not all sales are instant and it takes a little bit for some people to actually commit to an order, we have customers who are ready to order now and their quotes are no longer valid.  One of my recent conversation conversations with someone who waited to order went as follows (not exact wording):

Me: Sir, the prices has increased by about $2 per unit.

Customer: I already quoted my customer, I can’t call them back now.

Me: Why not? I am calling you.

Customer: It is not honorable. I need to to sell under cost so that I am able to make some money on the order?

Me: I am not able to sell under cost. Is there a way we can call your customer together and explain why the price has increased?

Customer: No. You will either sell to me and lose money on the deal, or risk losing millions of dollars in business that I may bring you in the future. We are a large company so this is why you need to sell to me under cost.

We did not sell under cost and he ended up taking his millions of dollars in business elsewhere. Not sure if this order ever got placed anywhere else, since the quoted price really was under market cost, but my instincts tell me that he finally called the customer, and they probably understood and went with the order anyways.

So it’s official, I am going to Cali. The Urban Network is putting me on the “Digital New Media – Penetrating the Social Networks” panel.

As I look at the list of my fellow panelists, I see nothing but representatives from social media platforms (MySpace, Ning, Beta Records), and it’s ok. After all, it is a social media panel. I do, however, think that there is much more to social media than just the “tools”. The creation of sites such as Ning, Twitter, Facebook and others enable anyone to create their network of friends, customers and fans. And while everyone is jumping on the social bandwagon, not too many people trully understand what they are getting into. I mean, it’s easy to setup a free account on Facebook and start acquiring friends. It’s easy to follow everyone on Twitter. But it’s hard to form personal and genuine relationships with your core fan base.

I lied (somewhat). This post is not about social marketing, it’s about what you do before you start the actual marketing (or more precisely – using the tools). As I see it, there are two main reasons of why musicians don’t succeed in effectively using social media. One is, they don’t do it long enough. They try it out, it doesn’t work well (at least immediately) and they quickly try something else – different tactics, different tools. And two (and this is the most important), they don’t have the right foundation. In one of his recent books, Meatball Sundae, Seth Godin talks about how you need the right sort of company (one that is calibrated for social marketing) to effectively utilize social media. Well, not only do you need a social media ready company, but you also need to be someone who is trully exceptional. And this is what I want to talk about today.

First off, I don’t know much about urban music. In fact, the last time I listened to rap was when I was 17 years old and had 2Pac playing on my Walkman. This doesn’t matter. Music business, whether urban or alternative is still a business. And an artist (rapper, rocker, or tenor) is still an employee of they system, no matter how free-spirited he is.

A business can not survive without its customers. Artist’s customers are his fans.

In order for you to stay in business for a long time, you have to be honest, caring, and authentic. Same goes for the music industry. Be real, care about your fans (not just yourself), and provide an experience – on stage and off (don’t just sell tracks).

While we’re at it, let’s establish a few more things.

Your business is a brand. An artist is a brand. Your fans (true and loyal fans) don’t care about the tracks, they care about you and how believing in you makes them feel.

The place we go to for lunch (Eggshell Cafe in Deerfield, IL) is a medium sized diner not far from our office. The food is great and soccer is regular TV programming. We’re there at least twice a week, hence we know the owner pretty well. Just the other day, he purchased a new Mercedes CLK and spent the entire lunch hour talking about it and showing us videos of it on one of his large screen TVs. Talk about brand loyalty.

Same with you (artist or band). Your fans talk about you, they buy your t-shirts, they even get tattoos of your symbols.

When you go out drinking, what do you get? Why? Is it because you like the taste or because you like to associate yourself with a specific brand? Ok, I’m sure you a sophisticated connoisseur and you actually like Francis Coppola Director’s Cut Chardonnay. But most people out there do it on impulse. Their brain is on autopilot and when they order a drink, they remember that Blue Label ad they saw in the Robb Report.

Same goes for music. A brand of a musician (or a band) stands for something. And your fans like it specifically for that reason.

Moving right along.

Many musicians think (and I witnessed this at the last year’s Urban Network Summit) that all they need to do to “make it” is release a hit. Just one song, played over and over on radio stations and on MTV will make them rich and famous. Far from it. Historically, the best and the most known people in the music industry have been the ones that constantly released (and still release) good music. Think Madonna or the Rolling Stones.

I like Armani Exchange. Had I liked them if they only made one type of shirt? I don’ know, but lucky for me (or I guess, them) all of their clothes are made with style and quality and every season they come out with something new and different (and outstanding).

Reminds me of a saying I read, “greatness isn’t just talent, it’s talent applied consistently.”

The next part is probably the most important.

Each brand needs a story and the story has to be true. On top of true, it has to be authentic. If you are from Alaska, you better not be singing gangster rap (although in this case, there might me a niche market for you out there).There are too many Jay-Z wanabees out there for each of them to be noticed. Just as there are too many teen-pop-queens. BE DIFFERENT.

At the last Urban Network Summit, I was lucky enough to be at the Ruthless Records 20th Anniversary luncheon where they presented their upcomming artists. This guy is the only one I remember, and talk about (and I don’t even listen to rap).

A similar story, I’m Russian (funny how we were Jews in Russian and becasse Russian when we came to US) and I somewhat follow Russian entertainment media. A few years back a new artist appeared. He’s white, he’s from Belarus and he sings gangster rap. His music can be heard on millions of cell phone ringtones all over the world. He was nominated for two MTV Russian Music Awards. And he’s on the soundtrack and trailer of the new Grand Theft Auto IV. By the way, Russia is one of the most profitable countries for touring and selling music. Are you wondering what’s going on? Well, how many Belorussian gangster rappers can you name? Precisely.

And finally, your music will not be for everyone, but it has to be for someone. Don’t try to water down the content or the style, just focus on being yourself (given that you are talented) and your fans will find you. After all, that’s what social media is about. You would much rather have one loyal fan, than 100 fake friends. Trust me.

My first grade math book was wrong. One plus one does not equal two. It equals three. In fact, sometimes it equals a lot more than that.

If I am skilled at something and you are skilled at something and we  collaborate, great things can happen – greater than what we can do individually.

This is how open source and social media work. Someone (or a few people) starts a project, others join in and the end result is something all of those people could never have achieved individually.

I propose a new term – 113.

Obama’s election was a 113. Triiibes is a 113. Twitter is a 113. Being remarkable requires 113.

Who you are is what you do, and vise versa. So why are so many people stuck in jobs they hate. Every day I witness someone who is unhappy doing what they signed up for, voluntarily. Here are my thoughts on it.

You are employed at your present job for one of two reasons – you like what you do, or you are not sure what you want to do so you’re trying it out. First off, it’s ok to try. In fact, I encourage trying. This is the only way you ever will find out what you like - not by reading books and wondering what if, but actually trying (take a class on a subject you are not familiar with, work in a field you have never worked before, go do that new thing).

If you love what you do – great. I love what I do which makes me that much better at it. There is a saying, “the more you like your job, the less you call it work.” Notice that most great things are created by people who enjoy creating them.

Now, you’re still in the search phase. It’s understandable. A lot of people out there (including my wife) are still searching, so believe me when I say – I understand. In fact, I had to go through 4 years of computer school just to realize that it’s not what I want to do in life. Be patient and honest with yourself and your time will come.

Back to the issue of job hating. Why would you torture yourself and the people you work for? If you don’t like what you do, the solution is obvious. Or maybe not. Maybe your need to have a job outweighs your dread of coming to work each day. In that case, quit complaining and just work, or quit, but still quit complaining. As they say, “actions are stronger than words.” I don’t remember the last time that complaining did anyone any good. Action, on the other hand, at least does something.

Here are some points to consider.

• The grass is greened on the other side. It’s human nature to assume that it’s always better somewhere else.
• Someone out there is tired of fucking the supermodel. Realize that it’s not a difference of good or bad, but rather of new and old. This is why people quit good jobs, or cheat on their partners, or trade in a Ferrari for Lamborghini. Remember Hugh?
• You still have to work. A recent TechCrunch article shows some letters from Google employees who have resigned from their job at “the best company to work for”. After the free lunch and a ping-pong breaks, you still have to return to your cube and look at code for 8 hours. Stop thinking that you can cruise through life.
• Your attitude is infectious. By being negative, you make people around you feel negative. Instead of hating what you do, surround yourself with people that love their job.

Ultimately, the choice is yours, but keep in mind that the door is always open. If you’re not happy, change it.