The Golden Rule, truth and correctness…

…it’s what I live by, it’s what our team lives by, and it is what I hear in my head whenever I think about one of the biggest mentors in my life, Mr. Martin Haas.

Martin has been, and continues to be, one of the most inspirational people in my life — both personally, and professionally.

Just being around him you feel the buzz!

About a week ago, I had the pleasure of sitting down with Martin in his office at Entech’s headquarters in Fort Myers.

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We call it the Showcase Effect…

it’s the reflection that appears around the bottom of a photo, giving it the artistic showcase look, making it look like it’s popping out of the screen at you!

Back in June & July of 2007, when we were creating the design concepts for our new web site, our inspiration for this came from two places:

1. Seeing showcased artwork in a gallery, and
2. Cover Flow, which is part of iTunes and MAC OS X’s Leopard.

As you can probably imagine it plays an important role in the simplicity of use in our new ISG Web Site.

Over the last few weeks, we’ve made it available in our ISG Content Manager on select web sites. It allows you to Showcase photos, videos & PDFs (check our News section to see an example of showcased PDFs).

If this technology interests you, or you have questions about creating and achieving your goals on the Internet, Contact Us, and we’ll get help you out right away.

Simple, intuitive and the way of the future.

I believe those very words capture the theme of our new, beautiful, results-oriented web site.

The process for us took about a year, and was a very collaborative effort among our team (as you can probably imagine, we’ve had some lengthy discussions about it in our weekly team meetings).

In that process, we first took a look at our very own creations and asked: Read the rest of this entry »

Do you have a billboard in the desert?

If a web site is built, and not promoted — it is as effective as a billboard in the middle of the desert.

We can build the most beautiful, functional, results-oriented web site, but if no one visits it — what’s the point?

Promotion, and more importantly, the results proper promotion will generate — is of top importance to us.

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What’s your dream job? Are you living it?

In one of my favorite books, Good to Great, Jim Collins discusses having the “right people on the bus” in your business, and then, taking it step further by assuring “that they are in the proper seats”.

I like to take that a step further by assuring they have a comfy seat with their favorite things handy — and are surrounded by positive energy.

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Almost ten years ago, at the height of ISMI’s success - I did not understand balance.

I let the business run me — instead of me running the business.

Early mornings, late nights, working 7 days a week, no exercise, constantly putting out fires (especially when we hit the 5000 user mark at the end of 1997) — initially carving out Sunday’s for personal time, only to give in as we grew and go in to “just wrap a few things up”.

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Most of the ISG team you see today have worked together since the early 1990’s. From what I’ve seen in business (especially technology-related) - that’s pretty amazing!

In the late 1980’s and early 1990’s, I was Vice President/General Manager of small computer company called Total Systems Support, Inc (TSS) in Howell, Michigan.

TSS’s focus was primarily building, selling and installing IBM Compatible Computers (DOS, Windows 3.1, etc). I was also responsible for running a bulletin board system (BBS) initially called TSS BBS, but was later renamed, Livingston County On-Line (LCOL).

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I like to think of it as the description of the perfect employee…

When this photo was taken — July 3, 1998 — a beautiful Friday afternoon at ISMI in downtown Howell — I had an excellent idea of what characteristics the perfect employee would have…

I just never made the time document it.

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After creating our Vision Statement, it was time to create the framework for actualizing it.

Believe it or not, this was much easier than creating the Vision Statement for two reasons:

1. It dealt with ISG as it is today.
2. It didn’t have to be one sentence!

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It was two and a half years ago (wow, how time flies!)

and my good friends — Dale, Heather, and Paul — made it sound relatively simple:

“Concentrate on the future & think globally — now, in one inspiring sentence — tell us what you want your company to produce.”

All of these ideas came to my mind, and I started typing.

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