I can recall a time that a friend came forward to lend his time and heart for me.
I had a 4 year old niece with cancer that was scheduled for a bone marrow transplant. As her sister shared a hospital room with her in hopes to go to sleep next to her little sister, share part of her body and save her life, they were scared but determined. No one knew how successful this surgery would be.
Days before the BIG day, my fri...
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Santa has always had a special hold on our childrens’ hearts. And based on the reviews and feedback we have received, our V-Greetings are only making that bond stronger. And we are so proud of that … it is just what we had hoped for in terms of a reaction. Dare I say, we are really “making believers”.
One Wisconsin mother said that her son jaw dropped to the floor when Santa knew of the bad habit she was trying to break. A father from Ohi...
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Santa does not say Ha ha ha! He says Ho! Ho! Ho! Always has, always will. Many of you may have heard that down under in Australia, a Santa school was trying to mandate that their new Santa students replace the traditional, time tested HO HO HO with HA HA HA. Why? Because some women, they reasoned, might be offended and children may be frightened by a hearty HO HO HO! See the text of the full story here. Are they serious? Were any of ...
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The day has finally arrived! Today, Tuesday, November 13th 2007, is the official launch of MakeBeliever.com! It took lots of long days and more than a few late nights. There was a tremendous amount of writing, endless hours of conference calls, constant communication and coordination, standing checkpoints to make sure that we were focused on the ball, making adjustments to break through unanticipated roadblocks (and there were plenty of them)...
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We have all been there. All of us. We have all come up with a great idea but usually we get stuck on the next phase—How to get if off the ground. Earlier we talked about managing the risk through rigorous analysis. But the other lesson we learned first hand was the importance of teamwork. Embrace it, seek it out. There are a lot of subject matter experts who are masters at what they do while you are a jack of all tr...
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You can’t think of Christmas (at least I can’t), without thinking about Christmas music. From right after Thanksgiving until the Christmas Tree comes down, holiday anthems fill the house and car around the clock. Working on MakeBeliever and thinking constantly about Christmas, Santa, and V-Greetings has me in the spirit for Christmas music extra early this year.
My favorites are the classics that I remember my Dad, Charlie, pla...
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Exciting news! MakeBeliever is teaming up with Children’s Cancer Association (CCA). MakeBeliever has committed to give a significant portion of our net operational profits (much higher than the national average for corporate giving) to help support the wonderful programs of CCA. Based in Oregon, CCA provides award winning programs and services, information resources, and family support that help enrich the quality of life for serio...
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To those thinking of starting their own business, let us offer our two cents worth of insight.
The first thing to remember, is fundamental--and may sound obvious but it does bear mentioning nonetheless. And that is, there is risk --significant risk--- in starting your own business and it is quite natural to be scared when doing so. We sure were when we started MakeBeliever and rolled out our first V-Greeting. Even Henry Ford was scared wh...
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There have been so many different things to focus on in the course of bringing MakeBeliever to fruition; strategic, tactical, macro, micro, technical, marketing, content, legal, and the list goes on. One of the tactical items was the selection of images to use on our site (see ‘Image Makers’ post).
One fun personal touch for me was using pictures of my wife Caroline and my daughter Honor to represent two of our V-Greeting offeri...
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Oh, boy! It’s early October and we are less than a month away from the launch of MakeBeliever. Has anyone out there started their own business? What an emotional roller coaster it is. You experience the widest range of emotions that you can imagine, but the two most predominant ones, far and away, are fear and excitement--and in nearly equal doses! It just depends on the day in terms of which one you feel the m...
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