Review of "Collapse of Distinction"

As someone who is interested in starting a new business, I was intrigued by the title Collapse of Distinction. I have been reading a lot of books, blogs and web articles to learn how to best approach branding and how to make my brand “distinctive”. This book does an excellent job outlining rules for success simply and succinctly. From the explanation of how we got into a world with no distinction to highlighting ways to create a differentiating factor that for you business. Using Mr. McKain’s four cornerstones of distinction: Clarity, Creativity, Communication and Customer-Experience Focus, it is easy to understand how to differentiate your business from others and most importantly from your competition.

The book illustrates the main points with case-studies on business successes from a small Mom and Pop diner to Barack Obama’s presidential campaign. The examples make it easy to see what steps companies have taken, and what they continue to do to make themselves distinctive.

Each chapter provides a helpful executive summary, action steps, questions and ideas to implement for your own business. There are also many additional resources that Scott recommends including business books and blogs, as well as a website created for the book and a place for folks to chat and learn more.

I'd highly recommend this book to anyone looking to make themselves or their brands more distinctive.

Lots to do...

But what's new? Spring semester is finished, grades are done, everyone passed, so all is right with the world. We survived the big Greek funeral in LA. Four days of eating and drinking, made us closer to the family and FAT. Always good to see D's folks and especially nice to meet the out-of-towners. Quite a good group of people, lots of talk about Uncle Byron. I never had the pleasure of meeting him, but he sounded like an interesting guy.

Interesting group the Greeks. I'm not sure how it works as it does, but ex-wife's, girlfriends and assorted extended families all mix and mingle quite well together. I found it fascinating. I'm guessing that they are not the only ones to carry on this way I just hadn't been exposed to it before.

The Greek church St. Sophia was magnificent. A true Hollywood story the church was build by Charles Skouras. He promised that if he became successful in the movie business the would build the most beautiful church to show his gratituge. The church is simply stunning, intricate mosaic work, crystal chandeliers and gold leaf paintings was masterminded by the Greek Hollywood producer and his two brothers.

After four days in LA we were back and at it hard. We're working with a web designer and trying the get our web-site up two months earlier than intially planned (and I thought clients were bad, I'm now one of those clients).

We're also still looking for the perfect home. We're meeting a new realtor tomorrow, so fingers crossed that he can help us find our dream home.

Also played our first round of golf of the season on Sunday. My drive is still dead on and long (thank goodness). The rest of my game is awful and spotty at best. Much to practice on this summer. And I look forward to it all :)

Burger of the Month Club NYC

I wish I had thought of this. Group of 8 guys goes out once a month, they all get a burger with cheddar and bacon and rank the burgers. The article today includes their top ten. I was surprised to not see the Brooklyn Diner, but jazzed that there will be some new choices on my next trip to NYC. Enjoy!


http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/06/dining/06burg.html

Whirlwind Again....

Well the mighty bungalow deal has fallen through. After one counter-offer the NRA toting man has held at $309M. Not exactly where we wanted him to end. So we're waiting to hear if there is any other thing to negotiate on, since we're not getting much closer to each other. So both of us are rather down as we kinda got our hopes up. Which we know is not smart but hard to do none the less.

After a wonderful dinner with some friends on Saturday we realized that we need to stay with heads on this one and not our hearts. It would be way to easy to pay the man what he wants. It's within our budget, but the house is just not worth it right now. Too much work needs to be done to get it to where we would like it. It has loads of potential but that's it right now. The HUGE 50x214 lot was exactly what we were looking for. It's just that the house is a little too small, small kitchen, small bedrooms, ah well. So it's onward and upward.

We're concentrating on work early this week and will drive back in later this week. We need a little break from the house hunting world.

My last class is on Monday can't believe it went by so fast. Can't wait to see how they do on their final media plans next week. Several of them seemed pretty anxious last night, I see that as a good sign.

Shortly we'll be off to the Club for Cinco de Mayo night. Complete with tequila tastings and Mexican goodies.