Moments of Clarity

Verizon Expands EVDO (fast) Wireless Data Network Across Iowa

Here's the article.  I use it.  It's fast and good.  Verizon has had EVDO up and running here in the Des Moines metro for gosh...maybe a year now??? But now it's going to be available more widely.

A Journey Back to the Heartland

I was contacted yesterday by someone from the Orange County Register News Paper, my paper of choice when living on the Left Coast.  Apparently I have a blog reader out there that found me and thought I'd be interested in this feature by Tom Berg called, "A Ride Back In Time to the Corn Fields".

The tale begins with Paul O'Brian, a Seal Beach, CA resident and successful designer trying to ready a 1935 Ford pickup for its trip back to Grand Mound, Iowa.  O'Brian's trek to the heartland is just something he had to do to reconnect with his father's legacy of values and work ethic.  Life sure wasn't easy back then, but the elder O'Brian set Paul on the right track with a steady dose of agrarian practicality and appreciation for what's important in life.

If you have family roots in agriculture, you'll surely appreciate this story.  If you don't, it will make you wish you did. 

Enjoy.  Thanks for finding an expat OC'er living the dream in Iowa.

Please welcome a new blogger to the family

After a lengthy diatribe over a cup of Sumatra...my friend and Des Moines area real estate investment guru Nigel Chapman has launched a Des Moines area real estate centric blog.  In this market, we really need this kind of information and commentary.
Please check it out here.

Like most converts...Nigel just needed to see what business blogging was really all about before committing.  I recited many "Mike Sansone'isms" and referred him to some key posts to brush up on tactics. 

A quick learner, Nigel has deployed his blog, used widgets, and has started contributing to the community by sharing his brain.

If you need real estate assistance as a buyer, seller, or investor, I highly recommend Nigel.  Please check out his blog and get to know him.  He's committed to the next summit in Sept.

Camera #2 is now: "The Iowa Gold Finch Feeder Camera"

Click on the link to my streaming web cams.  One of them is now trained on a finch feeder in the backyard.  We're getting lots of traffic on these now with beautiful birds.

Enjoy.

Top 10 Things I Heard From Barack Obama at the Iowa State Fair Today

The top 10 things I overheard when I passed by Barack Obama at the Iowa State Fair today.

10.  "My God I'm thin"
9. "I just ate whaaaaaatttttt?"
8.  "Hey...You know I'm gonna raise your taxes right?.......Awwwweeee I'm just messin' with ya."
7.  "Did HOGZILLA swallow a couple of Wilson footballs or what?"
6. (To the secret service agents with him).."pssst..do you know if they have any salads here?"
5. (To his handler/campaign manager) "Sooooo like...did Hillary eat pork chop on a stick cuz I don't want to appear less manly than that woman?"
4. "It's sooooooo awesome...check it out.....an Iowa Hawkeye temporary tattoo!"
3. "Explain to me again why there's a cow and a Harry Potter made out of butter again."
2. (To secret service)..."Guys...GUYS...take it easy on the corn dogs it's not like I have Hillary's war chest."

...and the number one thing I overheard Barack Obama say at the Iowa State Fair today from the home office in Des Moines Iowa...

1. "I vow to banish all trans fats from the Iowa State Fair...but there will be a deep fried Twinkie Exemption even if I have to do it by secret executive order and torture people to make it happen!"

(cue the music)

bonus overheard nugget" "Chief Justice Roberts? Sheesh..yeah I could take him"

Central Iowa Golf Is Hurting: Here's Why & What To Do

Background
There was a sports front page article in the Des Moines Register yesterday highlighting the current tenuous state of Central Iowa golf courses.  Courses are experiencing flat or declining revenues, declining attendance, and price pressure. The piece provides a few reasons for the tough times.

1. Fixed costs have increased including wages and petroleum based fertilizers, etc.
2. High property taxes hurt courses because they're taxed as commercial property vs. recreational.
3. Municipal courses (owned by cities, i.e. subsidized by having less tax burden) green fees are low and getting lower to keep the crowds coming.  Private courses don't have the luxury of operating this way.  Sound familiar?
4. The high cost of gas to get to the course in the first place.
5. The war in Iraq.
6. More parents are "Dedicating themselves to their kids," by spending a day at the soccer or softball field.
7. Legalized gambling.
8. Too much supply.  Too many courses.  Aggressive overbuilding of "hole inventory".  Courses and developers have been using the 1990's website rule for business decision making, "Build it and they will come". 

Analysis
I believe that numbers 1-7 are somewhat true but not enough to make the measurable impact the industry is feeling. 

Number 8 is a BIG factor. The bottom line is that there are virtually limitless choices for golfers at all typical golf price points within typical driving distance around the metro.  In fact, the number of available holes for golfers within a 20-mile radius of Des Moines grew by 30% in the last decade.

The factor that is not mentioned, discussed, nor implied is the purple elephant in the room.  It's the largest single factor that impedes growth and repeat business. 

Golf courses make almost no effort whatsoever to market themselves, create brand identity, or create an experience for golfers that is ANY different than other courses in their competitive landscape.  Golf courses leave the entire branding function to the courses beauty and layout itself.

I have only golfed at about 10 courses since I've moved to Iowa.   One has asked for my email address.  None have created any experience or purveyed a brand.  If I asked you to name a brand of coffee that has created an experience and maintained a premium price for something that costs almost nothing to make...you could name at least one immediately. I should be able to do the same for Iowa golf courses...without having to resort to the $300+ per round facilities.

Recommendations
Golf courses need to get past the helpless, brand-less, malaise they're in now.  They need an injection of creative marketing (beyond the logo golf ball) and branding so their courses are synonymous with the kind of experience that creates raving evangelists that want to grow your business for you.  This is especially true when there is NO stand out, no leader, and a "that's just the way it is" attitude out there.   

1. Engage in meaningful email marketing.  Segment your audience and target them with offers that make sense.
2. Host customer appreciation days at the club house.
3. Leverage "course greeter liaisons" a la Walmart to welcome players and build the experience. 
4. Invite families to play together and space tee times to allow for slower play. Think Disney.
5. Blog.  I would absolutely subscribe to a blog written by a golf course that gave me offers, course condition updates, and opinions.  Extend the conversation beyond the 19th hole. 
6. Leverage SMS marketing (text message).  Would I choose a course that used my exact marketing preferences and sent me offers at key times just for me?  Yes.  I know many others that agree with me.
7. Develop unique factors that separate you from the competition.  I'm still looking for "self serve honor system for non-alcoholic beverages" at key points around the course.  I'm also looking for the "buy drinks from the cart on a tab that I can settle after the round".  This speeds up play and frees people up to spend more.  I promise it works.  Just about every course out there believes that price is the key in the buying decision.  Honestly, I've never asked once how much the round would cost in advance of stepping up to pay in Iowa.  Generally, we know that it's going to be between $30-$50 to ride for 18 during prime time.  A few bucks does not the decision make.

There are plenty more options for courses to engage in that would separate themselves from the crowd. But like many businesses, golf courses don't hire marketing/branding employees or leverage agencies or consultancies...rather they put these responsibilities on the course manager or owner.  While this man or woman may be excellent at running a golf course, they probably don't have the time or inclination to move beyond "coupons in the paper".

Courses must shift their mindsets and become competitive and agile.  They must develop a road map to uniquely separate themselves from the over supply in the market.  Remember, there are plenty of places to get coffee...but only a few that create an experience.  It's up to you.

Are you ready for help golf course owner/manager?



   

Kotkin on the Burbs...Data Shows Continued Strength

The first paragraph of Joel Kotkin's piece appearing in Money Magazine's "Best Places To Live" edition paints an incredibly accurate picture of the erudite downtownistas:

An increasingly trendy theory holds that the ticket to attracting and retaining the educated and upwardly mobile is a big dose of urban cool: Think open-air cafés where well-heeled retired boomers and twentysomething professionals gather after the theater to sip Pinot Grigio while looking out at a skyline defined by the latest creation of a world-renowned starchitect.

Excellent description.  In the case of the Des Moines metro, I'd slide in a reference to, "...and eating some kind of exclusive private label pork product." 

With the umpteen "Flats, Brownstones, and Loft" projects underway in downtown Des Moines, one would think that a massive trend is underway to move into the heart of the city where apparently no one actually makes coffee at home or buys wine by the bottle at Costco (Costco is located in the suburb of West Des Moines and is the only Costco in the state of Iowa).  However as Kotkin and the Praxis Strategy Group research points out, the data simply does not support the validity of this trend.

Suburbs and areas outside of the "Hip urban core" as Kotkin describes it, consistently demonstrate higher growth numbers and are delivering on the promise of a homey feeling more so than their "industrial downtown domiciles".  Kotkin cites a Temple University study that indicates, "Nearby suburbanites were considerably more likely than city dwellers to see their neighborhood as "home."

I don't believe that the downtown loft craze is a bad one.  Des Moines struggles with its identity.  It wants to be hip and cool so that its recent college grads from many fine Iowa institutions stay here instead of bailing out for the coasts, Chicago, Minneapolis, etc.  This urbanite form of living may help bridge that gap for the 22-28 post college demographic.  However, when those men and women begin to settle down and have a few babies, they'll begin to sprint for the suburbs where we watch our children ride bikes and electronic John Deere tractors while mom and dad chat with neighbors and sip inexpensive Shiraz.  The data as well as my gut both bear this out.  The Des Moines register often profiles people that have made the downtown leap...and they're always either retired (or close to it) or attractive twenty-somethings.  When I read about a family of 5 doing this, I'll modify this post.

So if I was a betting man, I'd go long on the positive mojo provided by the glut of urban development in Des Moines.  The recent Fast Company article that touted Des Moines as a "City on the Verge" of becoming a tech boomtown, also indicates that the metro may be on the verge of retaining the younger set as employees of hip tech companies.  (My comments on that article will appear in the magazine next month I believe)

But what happens if the tech companies plant their offices in the burbs because of tax breaks and other back office niceties? (Very likely and far more practical) Will the youth choose a 15-20 minute commute (about the longest commute possibly in God's gift to mankind, Des Moines) from their downtown  "above the coffee shop" loft?  Or will they buy a nice 3 bed room home with a mortgage payment that's less than rent...and use their savings for a Costco membership?  Come on in folks...the burbs and the inexpensive wine are just fine! 

The Buzz In Iowa

Here are a few great items I came across that I think you'll find interesting.

1.  Urbandale, the city next door to me, was named th 39th "Best Place to Live" by Money Magazine. 

2.  The Mid-American Wine Competition just wrapped up, and plenty of Iowa wines took home honors.  There are many parallels between my CA and IA lives...and I never imagined that plentiful viticulture would be one of them.

3.  A Rhode Island company is considering Newton, IA (35 minutes east of my home and the great home of the Iowa Speedway), for a Wind Turbine plant that could employ over 700 people!  Good luck Newton, after Maytag bailed it's looking a bit bleak over there (except for race weekends).  Here are some quick and very cool facts as reported by the DSM Register.

Iowa is the third-largest producer of wind power in the United States, behind Texas and California, and the 10th-windiest state in the nation, according to the American Wind Energy Association.

In the wind industry, the upper Midwest is often called "the Saudi Arabia of wind," comparing the Midwest's wind energy potential to the Arab country's richness in oil, Loyd said.

4.  An article titled, "The High Cost of Wooing Google" showed up in Business Week too.  I've written about this a few times and will continue.  The bottom line is that the company that doesn't want to do evil is leveraging the heck out of desperate "less urban" areas for a pittance of tax revenues.  I believe these towns are doing what they can to survive and certainly crave the allure of the GOOG.  Then again, GOOG is doing what it's supposed to also...spending as little as possible to maximize profit.   

Iowa is truly an amazing place.  I would have NEVER imagined the breadth of activities or how cool agri-business really is.  We're fueling the food engine of the world here in the Midwest...and now we're fueling your Escalade too. 

Struggling! (Marketplace at Jordan Creek per the Front Page of the Business Section Today

I've done my quick case study on the Marketplace at Jordan Creek (MAJC).  I've also highlighted another friends experience where "neutral service is negative".  Now today the front page of the Business section in the Des Moines Register has the following headline:

"Specialty Grocery Struggles in W.D.M."

(W.D.M. is West Des Moines non-Iowans).

The article paints a pretty bleak picture of the market's prospects and does well to prop up its competition.  (Which by the way has gotten pretty good marks from my ad hoc surveys of customer service experiences).

I still believe that the bottom line is this:
In retail, especially high priced retail (aka Starbucks)...experience is everything.  Create the environment that brings folks back over and over again, because single visits do not a successful market make.  It's repeat high average ticket sales that win the game my friends.

I'm still offering to recruit a cadre of black aproned customer service agents to make this a place that people rave about.  Shall I shine the signal light in the sky?  Is the MAJC listening to the blogosphere? 

A Promise Called Iowa (on IPTV)

All I can say is wow.  I put the kids to bed last night and decided to watch TV for an hour and accidentally came across, "A Promise Called Iowa".  (The link gets to you to the home page for the program and includes video clips, etc..).

I sat there mesmerized by Iowa's ex-governor Robert Ray as he help unfold the story of Iowa's lead role in stepping up to take refugees in the post-Vietnam war era.  Of most interest was the acceptance of an entire community of refugees at one time, the Tai Dam, that took a special exemption from President Ford. 

Maybe every Iowan walking around already knows tales of this era...but as a transplant I was completely ignorant. 

I'd highly recommend that you seek out and watch this program.  If I read things properly on the website, I believe it's on again June 21st, at 7PM.  It's an invigorating and humbling experience. 

I am a proud Iowan.