…And by Fishing, I mean working my freakin’ rear end off helping clients do really cool stuff. And loving every minute of it.

This means I am no longer taking on any new clients or projects. Sorry!

If you’re in a bind, however, contact me and I’ll try to refer you to someone who can help.

Lastly, this means I am not going to be updating this website very frequently.

Best,

/mz

If you need more reasons to consider the importance of the narrative that represents your life and your business, check out this presentation which is very fun to navigate through:

The design and dimensions were placed into Google Sketchup. Instead of using a prefabricated booth provided by the convention hall, we saved money by ordering Ikea furniture, which was then modified to feature and display the products: the K-Bow violin sensor bow, the StringPort for guitar, the Batt-O-Meter battery tester, and the SoftStep. We also had a station set up to demonstrate the StringPort for violin/viola.

At that conference, I had the pleasure of meeting with Jason Perl and Paul Riario from Guitar World and giving them one of the prototypes of the Batt-O-Meter to play with. (You can see a video of Paul demonstrating the Batt-O-Meter on YouTube here.)

As I was explaining how the Batt-O-Meter worked to Paul Riario, he shuddered. He explained he was just thinking about all of the times he sticks 9V batteries to his tongue as he’s testing them out. With the Batt-O-Meter he no longer had to do that.

Other than coming up with the idea and working with a great team, I can’t take too much credit. This ad really was a team effort, with everyone pitching in and getting it delivered on time and on budget.

The advertisement ran for at least six months in six issues of Guitar World magazine through the fall of 2009.

Special Thanks to: Paul Riario for inspiring the ad concept; Julia Furbee with Furbee Creative for putting together the comps and final artwork; Jason Perl for introducing me to Paul and putting together the great deal Guitar World gave us as advertisers;  and Chandra and Marimikel of Glow Marketing introducing us to Jason and brokering the deal and starting an amazing relationship between Guitar World and KMI.

This is an affiliate site set up using WordPress, called The Big Bang Theory Tshirts.

It’s pretty basic, with a focus on capturing visitor metrics and monitoring traffic to make decisions later about what design and sales funnel changes to make.

This is a blog I currently run called Music for Profit. The purpose of the blog is to share some of my experience as a professional musician over the years.

Design-wise, this was a template theme that I did a few tweaks for customization. I have an array of plugins I use on most of my sites, and when I want to experiment with a new one, it’s usually on this site that the trial happens. I also have Adsense ads that I occasionally run, plus FeedBurner, Analytics, and an email capture. The email sign-up is courtesy of MailChimp.

This was my last project with Keith McMillen Instruments. The goal was to rapidly build a complete e-commerce microsite for the launch of the StringPort product. We used Wordpress and heavily customized the Techozoic theme. We also integrated it with WP Wishlist Member and 1ShoppingCart. We also included video content and screenshots for the StringPort software, which was subject to frequent changes as the product software developers made revisions to the front end of the software product. Another hurdle was strict requirements as to the sales funnel that a user was required to be taken through prior to making a purchase.

One really cool feature that WP Wishlist Member provided was the ability to mask sections of a given page until a member had become a customer after paying for the product. For example, new options for customer support were listed under support, or replaced with customer support, whereas prospective customers received contact information to sales contact information, and no access to software downloads.

There were a lot of elements that needed to be tied together for this website. An ulterior motive was to test out Wordpress as a platform for a future site redesign of www.keithmcmillen.com once an upcoming product became available.

As a methodology, I worked with two other members of the business team to adapt a scrum methodology to incorporate the very frequent changes that were requested. Skills: Scrum, Agile, Google Docs, CSS, HTML, Javascript, Photoshop, Illustrator, Project Management, E-Commerce, Membership site.

Check out the actual live site at www.stringport.com.

Let me explain this dramatic header image : a mountain range, and three lines pointing to three phrases.

It has to do with one of the many skills I applied from Scouting to Business. First, allow  me to provide the legend to this cryptic introduction:

• You are here. Literally, reality. If you had a working GPS, this is where your blinking dot would appear.
• You think you are here. Unfortunately, GPS systems get wet and break. Unexpected weather doesn’t help. Confusion, optimism, even panic distorts reality.
• Your goal. Meanwhile there’s your goal, your destination. Do you see it? Maybe when the weather clears…

First, every business needs a goal, or a destination, or a target to hit (point B). Second, you need to know where you currently stand and are located (point A). Third, you need a plan (or map) and a method (compass) for getting yourself from point A to point B.

Does your business have these three things? If not, then that’s your task: to get together these three items. If you’re having trouble, then hire a local sherpa or guide to assist you. Or get yourself a good old American Eagle Scout. Like me.

The shortest distance between two points is under construction. – Noelie Altito

Ever since Jason aka Jay talked about this in the Internet Business Mastery Academy, I’ve been struggling with finding a way to track actual time spent against my planned/projected calendar and schedule. At the time of watching Randy’s video, I was experimenting with using a combination of my Google Calendars with Freshbooks time tracking, plus Chronolite. Honestly, it wasn’t really working for me.

Something clicked, however, after watching the time management video, and I jumped into action.

Now, a quick tangent, because I want to share with you something I’ve never shared before. It’s my obscenely geeky way of testing out ideas and apps to find the best tool for the job. Here it goes: When I have a new topic, hobby, or area of interest I want to explore, I download lots of free iPhone apps that I feel are relevant. And by lots I mean between 15 and 30.

After I’ve filled up a new page or two on my iPhone with new applications, I do a quick scan to eliminate any that seem poorly designed, underfunded (read: company won’t be around in 3 months), or simply irrelevant. I’m usually left with half a dozen iPhone apps that are free or “lite” and I try them out for a period of time.

As usual, I downloaded every single free iPhone application that I thought might have something to do with time tracking or logs or billing to try and find the solution I was looking for.

That is exactly how I came across Eternity. I missed it the first time, but I think the way Pausch phrased it caused me to use different search keywords in the iPhone apps store when looking for time management solutions. (Which is why carefully and liberally choosing your keywords is so incredibly important!)

Eternity is one of the very, very few applications that I’ve paid money for. I upgraded to the premium version to give myself more entries that I can track, and the ability to export to an excel file (which I have yet to use, to be honest.) It’s incredibly helpful when someone asks me what I did over the weekend, or if I need to remember if the dog is just whining today for fun, or if I’ve forgotten to feed and walk him.

TAKE ACTION:

• Do you have a great way of measuring how you budget your time, versus how you actually spend it? Please share!
• Learn more about the Eternity iPhone app at Komorian.com