Disqus - Latest Comments for franchisewhale

Re: Is Microsoft readying for a surprise come back?

Franchise Whale — Wed, 01 Dec 2010 02:28:06 -0000

Good even handed Reporting

Re: Glenn Beck mentions the No Insurance Club in Arguing with Idiots

Franchise Whale — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 13:44:30 -0000

Many thanks!

Re: 9.11.09 Breaking News

Franchise Whale — Sat, 12 Sep 2009 03:03:59 -0000

How'd they do that! Miss Arizona in two places asked the same question and one with their NY corespondent.

(a) World's greatest green screen?
(b) Celebrities already lining up to be on HCCN?
(c) Rosalie is an Alien?

Re: http://www.healthcarecrisisnews.com/

Franchise Whale — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 17:52:30 -0000

Hey Rosalie. I saw you in Party Wagon and you are even funnier as a news anchor! Glad the news world found you. Looking forward to your next news cast.

Re: How to make the post office wildly profitable

Franchise Whale — Sat, 29 Aug 2009 01:45:03 -0000

Maybe you could do "Post Office Fridays" at the store. They all need to
dress up like Cliff Clavin and customers can send out free post cards from
your store and the recipient will have a chance to win something.

You could create a juicy list gamer to gamer. "Dude, bring this postcard
into the store with an old game before next Friday and I get a free ticket
to a $100 dollar G-Hero tourney."

Re: How to make the post office wildly profitable

Franchise Whale — Fri, 28 Aug 2009 21:55:03 -0000

Too kind. Thanks for the comment, hopefully they will make me Post Master
General and we could make USPS a fun place. Imagine if you "Sign a 2 year PO
agreement you qualify for the lucky draw for a free Jet Blue card for
unlimited air travel for an entire month and other great prizes. New winner
each month!"

You just put the winning ticket in the PO boxes randomly and then instead of
having advertisers send worthless paper that gets tossed, they line up to be
in your promo so they are guaranteed to have their ad scene by every PO Box
holder because they are part of the monthly lucky draw promo that is a
scratch ticket. 12 advertisers a year, 12 knock out offers only for people
who contract for 2 years at a time and the advertisers get scene each month
in the scratch ticket, but only need to put up an offer once a year per post
office location. I only had time to post 1 idea for the licensing side but
there is number two.

Re: http://www.franchisewhale.com/?p=766

Franchise Whale — Tue, 11 Aug 2009 00:00:36 -0000

We think a huge opportunity has opened in healthcare. We will not see this again in our life time. Graying market, short labor (Physicians), new regulation to move to electronic delivery of services and opening the market to more customers (Patients) will combine to create large pockets of price volatility that could take 10 years to normalize. The healthy uninsured is probably the biggest opportunity because under any plan, prevention will be big. One solution we have is this http://www.noinsuranceclub.... the other main driver to expand into specialists is to start a channel that markets daily preventative care in a way that the subscriber opts in for the best healthcare offers by zip code. That channel goes live and the two points will converge, marketing and delivery. http://www.healthcarecrisis... It will deliver a 2 minute healthcare news program based on humor with a custom offer most likely not available with insurance or a no wait offer. We have been doing a lot of programming, both content and code to automate processes. After September 1st, we will have our first major groups in place and the channel launched so should be a busy month. I also think that Mexico is as negative as you can get, and we are looking for opportunities there to build a community based around a medical tourism complex very near the sea of Cortez. Arizonians call it Rocky Point. We are meeting another group tomorrow in fact that has a very interesting parcel. It has just been destroyed between, subprime, drug lords, swine flu...I think it has hit bottom, new international airport opening in November will have 45 minute flights from Phoenix and directs from Chicago, and LA. If you ever get out this way, you should come down with us, I think it would be interesting for you with your Spanish, fun experience to see what is going on down there.

Re: http://www.franchisewhale.com/?p=766

Franchise Whale — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 14:22:13 -0000

Thanks Anthony,

I think he was making a generalization that we need to move the yardstick from senior in high school to freshmen in college when it comes to calculus as the pinnacle math skill that is built while in high school. Just moved back a year and fill up the free time with risk, statistics and probability would create an average workforce more prepared in today's world.

I had a friend from Berkley who learned German just because it was the "language of math." The sole purpose of learning it was to make him better at math. He, like you would probably die hearing Benjamin's generalized video, maybe not, better send it to him.

Thanks for adding to the discussion and the link.

Re: The missing link in your social media toolset

Franchise Whale — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:49:24 -0000

We are self hosted. I have someone looking into getting the comments over. Another caveat the links. You will have a gaggle of Google links that are dead that you took years to build up. That's completely fixable as well. Get everything lined up and then make the switch. Do as I say, not as I do. When we are done, I will have the guys put together a Blogger to WordPress checklist that might be helpful with our mistakes to avoid.

Found your site via FriendFeed stream from Scoble

Re: The missing link in your social media toolset

Franchise Whale — Mon, 10 Aug 2009 04:40:15 -0000

Like the post. I recently migrated from Blogger to Word Press and the comments getting copied over is a real pain. I had built an island of comments that not only were stuck and un-levered conversations but when it is moving time, they literally are stuck on a Blogger island. I guess if I took the time to have someone write and run queries and move them all over but too many other issues to deal with. Disqus, separate Friend Feed stream and a page for my Feedly shares, it is a much better forum. Discovered Wibiya on your site looks very nice, will check it out. Thanks.

Re: My Pledge to You

Franchise Whale — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 21:14:58 -0000

Be your brand Chris. You will lose more people, than you will save if you try and write something you are not. "Those with ears will hear" and those who won't can always find copy more to their liking. You have a big juicy brain, not writing the way it wants to spill out on the keyboard is like hooking a plow to a race horse. Let her run man!

Re: Is Now the Time To Pursue Government Contracts?

Franchise Whale — Sat, 08 Aug 2009 12:31:45 -0000

Lemon-aide can be found in the most unusual places. I really like the government contracting podcast and is a surprisingly under served topic in the business blogs and main stream media.

Re: How to add gift cards to any website

Franchise Whale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 03:21:49 -0000

The percentage of instant gift cards is 85%

Re: Healthcare collaboration in virtual worlds.

Franchise Whale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:25:29 -0000

test

Re: What I learned from a gum company about successful pricing and advertising.

Franchise Whale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 02:03:22 -0000

It's important to look at examples from the past to develop marketing plans for today.

Re: Why I Love Obama

Franchise Whale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 01:30:58 -0000

Anytime you have any market go through an upheaval, it creates tremendous opportunities because of the disruption. prices become unstable, systems are too slow to react and legal frame work needs to be rewritten to accommodate the sudden change. When this happens it creates opportunity for entrepreneurs to close the gaps back to a more ordered state. The cool part about this, the same thing exists in physics. Economic and science laws are tied together when dealing with Chaos.

Another way to look at it, let's say tomorrow we wake up and all the subsidies for gasoline world wide are gone overnight. In Venezuela prices are kept below cost at .12 a gallon and I remember when I was in the Middle East in 2006, Kuwait was .40 cents a gallon. Well UK is about $8 bucks a gallon. The huge disparity is taxes or subsidies. If those were removed over night and the market was left to find a natural price, prices would plummet in Europe and entrepreneurs that could organize energy, auto, airlines, travel...companies to take advantage of the sudden price changes would make the largest profits until enough competition copied their successes and fill the demand by filling the price void.

Now consider a market almost 20% of our entire economy here and vastly more complex than the oil and gas market. Health care is having an upheaval now that will only accelerate for the next 10 years:

#1 More demand enters the market by demographics. Boomers hit peak health care spending.

#2 More demand enters the market by more participants. Reform will enlarge the market by covering more people that were on the sidelines.

#3 Prices will become chaotic as reimbursements will rise and fall by service and provider.

#4 Drive to reward system to go electronic and penalize users who are still stuck in paper systems. IT demand at all levels will go way up.

#5 More providers will exit the market due to lower reimbursements.

#6 Wait times will grow longer and open opportunities for "No Wait full service" Concierge cash payers that value time more than money.

#7 Medical Tourism will continue to boom as more people elect to go abroad for elective surgery.

#8 Private Insurance companies will be limited to existing patients as they will slowly be moved to a government plan over time. The cash they have now will be redeployed to create "reverse insurance" People paying cash for high end procedures, that will have very liberal payments terms and short wait times. "Want a liver? How about $295 per month for 24 months." People with cash and good credit will find a growing market willing to cater to their every need.

#9 Lab companies will really be in trouble and pharmaceutical companies will probably all move offshore if the subsidies go away.

#10 State medicaid programs will need networks to provide systems to reward prevention, and control access to the ER more than ever since more lower income patients will be added to the books. Physician networks with the right risk models, strong IT, and solid networks could make a bomb or lose it all. very high risk high reward at the state levels. Especially those that are on the edge of bankruptcy like California.

The opportunities will be bigger than the PC, Car, internet, trillions will pass from some groups to others in a very short time frame. Entire industry will wipe out and new ones will explode, a very exciting time to be alive.

Re: What I learned from a gum company about successful pricing and advertising.

Franchise Whale — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 00:28:06 -0000

Thanks for stopping by. Will have the rest of the post later this week.

Re: Bing and Facebook together what happens to Yahoo?

Franchise Whale — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 17:16:28 -0000

You are missing the main point Joe. Burgers...Burgers...! Maybe this will get your mind on the important part of our discussion. http://www.cheeseandburger.com

Re: Bing and Facebook together what happens to Yahoo?

Franchise Whale — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:00:25 -0000

Hey Joe, now were talking! First,

-"I don't think Bing and facebook have (or ever will have) anything to do with each other."

MSFT already owns 1.6% of facebook, not Google so they already have something to do with each other. Now keep in mind I love Google, I am not switching search, and I highlighted that most of the skin Mr, softy will remove will be from Yahoo's hide, not GOOG. Mashable just reported yesterday however, they took a 1% chuck out of GOOG just last month.

http://mashable.com/2009/08...

Big Picture:

If you are Google and you want to completely destabilize Microsoft and keep them so busy retrenching they can not try and flank you would you go after Advertising, Search or OS?

OS is their bread and butter, that would be the most devastating right? Likewise, if you are Microsoft, what would you do that would keep Google back on their heels for a few rounds? Advertising, Search or OS?

I think Google knows that Andriod with cloud computing could completely destabilize an desktop OS company. Likewise I think Microsoft knows that a search engine based on "Likes" would be a complete gamer changer.

If you are going to go big on Google, a new skin with a cleaver campaign won't do, it needs to be a game changer. If you use facebook and were given the option to allow your profile and likes used in your personal search results to offer cleaner search with the bonus of actually getting paid to search or earn some credit for something, would you opt in to allow Bing to pull from your profile?

Now keep in mind the MSFT could be outperforming for Windows 7 that it will make up for the Vista mess. I am using Windows 7 and love it, it actually is not buggy and will not go out for 6-9 more months. I love it. So yes the stock could be up on that, I suspect however, Yahoo running to Redmond last week doing a 10 year deal something much bigger is in the works a real game changer. We had a world with mainframes only before the PC right? Alta Vista and Excite were on the scene long before some dudes tried to make it better with only an idea and no money.

Microsoft has money, gobs of it. With the right idea, I think they might change the world, again.

OK, I got. If Bing has a market share of search more than 20% in 12 months Zipps on you Aug 1st. Under Zipps on me. I love their Pepper Jack Jalapeno burger with a side care of chopped Jalapenos and half rings half fries. Hey @zippssports Tweet me one now please.

Re: Commenting just changed for bloggers with JS-Kit Echo

Franchise Whale — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 20:56:08 -0000

The idea of "real time conversation assembly back to where the conversation first occurred" would give any self respecting investment banker or Madison Avenue executive a chubby. But reality, JS-Kit Echo service is too much on an echo chamber for me. I check out Building 43 and it is already too spammy. The assembly point is too "Porous"

I think the idea is fantastic and has huge potential. The application however of an increased leveraged conversation that has monetization capability is still too early for me. I am sticky with DISQUS on my site but keep cranking. Loved this interview.

Re: Twitter MUST Stop the Spam Use of APIs Now

Franchise Whale — Fri, 24 Jul 2009 10:09:49 -0000

Hey Twitter the telcos learned from ISP's what NOT to do when they opened SMS on their networks. Email for awhile was really bad, remember the old days? Twitter, we are not going to become more tolerant of spam, we are becoming less. If telcos let their SMS gateways get prostituted out by spam programmers we would all flock to the one telco who did not. Try and get a MSO license from a telco to become a third party SMS carrier, my cousin has a license and believe me, once you get one, the risk of being cutoff is so great you would never let spammers over your network. Take a lesson from the telcos, not ISP's Twitter and we will keep using you, otherwise, Feedly and FriendFeed become more useful to use everyday.Facebook, I hope you are hearing this too because "Which farm animal are you" is not going to make anyone more enlightened.

Re: An Interesting Book Promo Offer

Franchise Whale — Tue, 21 Jul 2009 11:32:59 -0000

I think it is a great idea and I have never heard of the author or the book. The NYT best seller list is a number based on time and volume. It get more difficult to make the list the farther away you get from the publishing date. If she would have created a promo that had clues released from inside the book from day one with the ultimate drawing the movie premier, she may have created more loyalty and buzz and had a better shot at NYT. I bet her fans would love to participate in the promo, but fans won't get her to NYT, she needs new readers. I think a general adventure that everyone could enjoy might have more appeal and some viral tracking, content on her website as the receipts pour in where people can submit photos with receipts and they appear on the site, something to get her community more involved.

Re: Building Successful Long Term Relationships

Franchise Whale — Tue, 23 Jun 2009 15:47:34 -0000

Full entrepreneurial disclosure before marriage can save years of heartache. Fred sums it up nicely here.

Re: How To Find An Idea For A New Startup

Franchise Whale — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 23:28:14 -0000

Andrew: let's do a 7 minute podcast on "license versus franchise" I can arrange the Attorney who did the licensing for Terminator, Rambo and Star Wars. He also has franchise experience. I could fill in some "Now the license agreement is done, now what?" stuff for 2-3 minutes and I think we would have a tight show. If you are game let me know where to drop an outline and best times for you. Thx Chad

Re: How To Find An Idea For A New Startup

Franchise Whale — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 18:47:24 -0000

Licensing your idea to someone is a fast cheap way to protect your idea and make some money using someone else money, brains and talents. Equally it is a great investment from a licensee's stand point to have use of trademarks, know how, distribution, products...by paying a %5-10% royalty without any front money in some cases.

win/win. Attorneys don't talk about it much because all the money is in franchising not licensing but franchising is the wrong place to start in most cases for a really green start up, licensing fits better.

Can't believe I just found this site! Love it! Keep up the good work, all the best Chad.