I feel like an evangelist
Add value to our guests
Kent Untermann of Pictures Plus interview
Credit Union and Great Harvest Bread promo
Coupons and coupon book
First press release
Chatt Wright – President of Hawaii Pacific University meeting
Transcript:
Today is August 23, 2005. This is Evan’s Journal coming to you live from Honolulu, Hawaii. The title of today’s post is ‘I feel like an evangelist’ and that’s really what I do feel like. I feel like I’m evangelizing this whole thing of social entrepreneurship. I’m excited about it. I love to talk about it and this whole thing with this duel bottom line is just absolutely fascinating. And not only fascinating in terms of the impact on the community or the impact on business, but it’s just an unbelievable marketing tool that if you can allign yourself properly with a social mission of some sort, it’s good business. And I don’t mind talking about this at all. In fact, that’s a lot of times how I get these meetings with people that I normally probably would not get a meeting with or really have any you know I’m not sure what I would talk to them about also. So this whole thing is still kind of in the ether. I mean it’s still a work in progress and we’re trying to figure a lot of things out but I mean nonetheless we’re getting a number of interviews done. These journals are up and hopefully of value to some people, and you know we’re just going to keep pushing forward. The interesting things is that it seems like we’ve been doing this for so long, however we haven’t even really launched our radio show portion yet, so that’s going to be really interesting to see how you know it comes about and what the response is. And you know what, after today’s interview, I feel like I’m ready to go live. I mean if besides the sponsor mentions and things in the station ID portion where we have you know we make a mistake or whatever, but other than that I feel like I’m ready to take phone calls in and then run the show that way and start getting feedback from people and listening to exactly what they have to say. So, hopefully that will be pretty soon. I’m thinking maybe probably end of September, beginning part of October, but you know we do have a lot of interviews that we have already done and we’re at least two months in advance, so. Once we actually get them processed and produced then we’ll be doing pretty good about that.
[00:02:21]
The other thing I’m thinking about is how do we actually add value to our guests? You know, this whole thing more or less kinda came about where I thought that the media in terms of the community interacting with corporations and non-profits and then also the media taking a part in this and where does the media’s benefit come into play. I couldn’t really figure that part out and the media didn’t really necessarily want or traditional media let me say pick it up, so we decided to do this whole deal ourself. And what I really want to do is if companies that we find truly do have this duel bottom line and a social mission, I really want to give them as much promotion as possible, so one method could be ideas in terms of their PR or their marketing so that they can you know they can utilize their social mission and add it into their marketing message and then have it be more impactful and get more or less more bank for your buck. The other thing I was thinking about is putting together some kinds of coupons or a coupon book and you know I’ll talk a little bit about that that later, but things that can help these businesses have more revenue, more exposure and thus more success for their business and social mission, but not necessarily cost them anything extra. And then have these people that have come on the radio show meet each other and network with each other. I think that would be really cool for them, so. It just it’s kind of a interesting thing how there’s a lot of dots out there and we’re just trying to connect the dots in order to make this thing make sense.
[00:04:22]
Kent Untermann came in today. He’s from Pictures Plus. Kent’s story is truly fascinating because he was recruited from San Fransisco to play football for the University of Hawaii. They were I think the team back then was pretty good, as under Dick**4:26 who is I don’t know if he’s coaching in the main land, I don’t even follow football, so I don’t know. But Kent ended up getting drafted. I guess he tried out. Ended up getting signing a deal with the Dallas Cowboys and I think back in that time Dallas Cowboys were doing pretty good under Tom Landry, but he was injured and with a hamstring injury, and he said he was telling us that the actual another injury that he got was he busted his ankle in a snowboarding accident, so you know he was kinda laid up from an accident that wasn’t really have didn’t really have anything to do with football. But then once he was you know done with football, he said, “You know what. I’m not going to able to play at 100%, I’m going to do something else.” Then he took his money and stared you know selling products at the swap meet and then that led to something else. Within a year he had bought a container. $35 grand he said he put into it and bought a container of art work product and then started selling that. And then started his stores and so on. Now his business is his business is I think a $14 million per year annual revenue business with something like 12 locations or so and 138 employees. I mean the guy is a major major employer. I think actually he might have more employees than anyone we’ve interviewed so far. So good job for Kent Untermann. He’s got some interesting things to talk about. really good stories. And then he’s also got some interesting social aspects for what he’s doing in his business, so, please listen to that interview.
[00:06:05]
Okay, credit unions. I am going after credit unions right now to do to become sponsors for this. The issue here is that this whole thing is so new to me that I’m not sure on what to charge, what to pitch, how to package these programs. I don’t have a media kit really yet. I got to go and pick it up. I think Sheldon had made me one from KKEA which is cool of him, so I’ve got to go and get that and see what I can put together. But the cook thing is that my close family friend introduced me to a couple of credit union marketing people. What I found out was one credit union had already spent their budget on stuff and the other one is willing to talk, so I’m going to give her a call tomorrow and then talk about it. When I was talking with my friend, he was telling me that I asked him how do they you know track this kind of these ads you know. How do they track their marketing to make sure it actually works because he said if it doesn’t work for them then you know they won’t do it. But if it works good they will. My thought was how are they actually tracking it? How do they make a decision on whether it’s working or not. So he said for radio portions, I guess people are coming in and they say, “We heard your radio show” or “We heard this thing mentioned on the radio and we came in for our free gift” and they get like a mug or you know mouse pad or something like. You know it’s little knick-knack kinda things. So I thought about it and I said, “You know, what could we offer? What could we offer that would give value all the way around?” And I came up with Adam Wong. Because Adam Wong gives away free products to non-profit organizations. The credit union I believe is a non-profit organization. I said, “Why don’t we offer a coupon for cookies” where we can say that go into your nearest so-and-so credit union location and tell them that you heard about them on Greater Good Radio, Hawaii, and you’ll get a free cookie from Great Harvest Bread Company. And then when I talked to Adam about it, he was so cool. He said, “You know what, why don’t we just give them a whole loaf of bread, because I think the retail value of the cookie is about $1.25 or so, but the retail value of the bread is you know $5.00 or more.” So he said just give them a thing of bread. So that’s cook because that way I can offer you know a free gift on their side and have the tracking and then add more value to this sponsor promo type thing. I don’t know. I haven’t even pitched it yet, so, we’re going to see.
[00:08:40]
Then I thought about what if we could take this a couple steps further, and then we could actually do a coupon book. So the you know the people that we have in that are coming on the show and interviewing could offer coupons if they have you know whatever services or goods that they sell. Maybe they could offer coupons and then we put together a little book and you get the book from our sponsor’s location. Everybody kinda wins on that because the you know the people that give the coupon, they don’t really have to pay anything. They get some new customers and you know they’re offering discounts, but so what. That’s just the cost of advertising. The credit union makes out because people are coming in for these coupon books and you know of course we win too because we get the sponsors. So that’s kind of what I had in mind. I’m not sure in what is entailed to make these kind of coupon books, but you know we’ll look into it a little bit more after we start talking with the credit unions.
[00:09:43]
So far we’ve written our first press release. I have a friend of mine whose working on that for me and it’s interesting because no matter who we are talking to, the concept of Greater Good Radio goes so far beyond what most think. Most people think oh you’re going to have a radio show and you’re going to do interviews. Or oh it’s going to be an Internet pod cast. But they have no idea the social implications. What we are trying to do long term. How everything interrelates and just the true intricacies of what it is that we’re doing. It’s even tricky to explain on this journal, so I’m not even going to go there tonight, but I’m revamping that press release now. And then I’m sure that by working with her, it’s going to be excellent and we’re going to learn from each other and very soon we’re going to launch as much press as we possible can. My goal here is to be in the newspapers as well as to be in the magazines and get you know cover stories or really good pieces written on our company. Get on television. Get on you know other people’s radio shows if possible. Other people’s pod casts. Internet marketing. Anything that we can to get this message out there, that’s what we’re going to be doing. Right now we’re still in the process of making sure the web site, every thing is squared away, cuz there is a lot of things to do on that site. And then make sure that we have shows that are finished and produced that we can offer and then you know then we can push hard in the marketing because at least we’ll have something to show. Right now we don’t necessarily have too much to show except for these journals. So, that’ll be coming up soon.
[00:11:25]
Tomorrow I have a meeting with Chatt Wright, who is the president of Hawaii Pacific University. He took over the University I believe in the 70’s or so and it was a really small tiny little school. He’s built it up to a you know a pretty large college. I believe that they actually have the larges MBA program in the State and Chatt Wright has all kinds of interesting things going on down there. That’s why I wanted to meet him. I want to talk to him about what we’re doing with the radio show. I want to talk to him about what we want to do with college education and the you know revamping that. And then I want to talk to him about doing an interview and who knows. Maybe eventually sometime they’ll end up being a sponsor of this show. So I will post you know I will update you guys on how that goes tomorrow I guess.
[00:12:20]
Tomorrow’s interview is going to be with Peter Kay. Peter Kay used to have a company called Cybercom, which was one of the first companies to do $100,000 web sites for corporations and I guess whoever would pay it. Peter is an entrepreneur at heart doing a new software called Titan Key, which is a spam software. I don’t know if it’s venture backed or what, but the guy is always moving about. Got a lot of really interesting things to say. Somewhat spiritual also and really into balancing his life properly and it should be really really good, so. I’ll let you know how that one goes also. And then on Friday I got a meeting with Duane Kurisu so that we can go over the updates on what’s happening with the show. Of course, we always appreciate Duane’s input because he’s you know one of the main reasons this thing has started and it’s at the point where it’s at now and I want to get his ideas on you know how we should proceed and move forward. Also he wanted to know about the format of the show so what to say or what you know topics to go over. He doesn’t like to do interviews. That’s going to be an interesting one. Okay, so that’s it for Evan’s Journal tonight. I will talk to you tomorrow. It’s August 23, 2005.
[00:13:43]
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