Dellanave

I started using Foursquare about a year ago. It was neat, and I hoped that it would catch on in a bigger way with more of my friends. I can imagine a world where you check Foursquare to see where your friends are out and about and go meet up with them.

That world hasn’t materialized, leaving us with just the “game” aspect of Foursquare. Put simply, it just isn’t fun. Sure I was the mayor of my favorite spots. Coincidentally, none of which had mayor offers leaving me with almost no incentive to care whether or not I was the mayor. About a month or two ago I just stopped caring about checking in completely.

I think a lot of people are having the same experience. Here’s the thing though: Foursquare is a lead gen dream come true.

Near Lake Calhoun in Minneapolis there is a Punch Pizza right next to a fantastic new bakery and coffee shop called Rustica.  When I say fantastic coffee shop, I don’t take that lightly.  They easily have the best espresso in Minneapolis.  When you checkin to Punch Pizza on Foursquare, you should get an offer from Rustica.  ”Have an espresso on us when you buy a Punch pizza”.  That isn’t happening.  Which is to say, the people who should be using Foursquare are not.

Another example: hellllllo customer acquisition.  Hi, @completelydark, can I offer you a coupon to try Galactic Pizza?

All of these services run into a chicken-and-egg situation.  Without users, Foursquare doesn’t get very far.  Without checkin locations and offers, Foursquare doesn’t get very far.  Except Foursquare is focusing way too much on acquiring users and not enough on getting offers out there to give people an incentive to check-in.

Foursquare should be taking a page out of Yelp’s playbook and creating a massive sales force to get 4sq into the hands of small business owners where it can add dollars to everyone’s bottom line.

I want to repost this story my Dad sent me out of the blue today. Here it is, unedited. Please note that my father started learning English at age 41, having immigrated from Italy.  My dad is 67.

Before I get into why I think anyone can benefit from kettlebell training I must tell you how everything started.

I was leaving for Italy, one morning in October 2008, to escort a small group to Turin for the bi-annual Salone del Gusto 8-day extravaganza. I woke up at 6:30AM with a pain in my left leg. A pain that had been bugging me for a couple of months but never got too serious to get the advice of my doctor.

I got up, had a breakfast and went out for my morning exercise of about 45 minutes of walking. At the end of the walk the pain was more noticeable, but I kept going on. There was no time to think of anything else than driving to the airport.

The problem was getting worse by the minute but only when we arrived in Milan and had to walk out of the airplane I realized that I was in for something really serious.

We arrived there a day ahead of the group, we checked into our hotel and decide to go into Milan, just for fun. But walking for me was really excruciating, I was almost in tears and decided to go back to the hotel. I had a miserable sleepless night. But the business was requesting my attention.

To shorten the story I returned from Italy on the 26th of October seated on a wheel chair. Early the morning after my return, I was at Mayo clinic to find out what was the reason of these pains. No painkiller was able to take care of the problem, the pain was unbearable.

After an extensive series of X-rays and a MRI the diagnosis was a “protruded disc” was pushing into the sciatic nerve, therefore the excruciating pains.

The options to alleviate the problem were just a couple, surgery or physical therapy. My doctor suggested the latter and I was happy because I didn’t feel like I wanted to have a surgery that would require a long and painful recovery. Unfortunately Mayo Clinic was fully booked for at least about two months.

A this point my son David decided that I needed to find an alternative. He was already training with kettlebells and started searching for somebody in the Rochester area. The only RKC trainer available was Tim McPhee in Byron. I get a call from my son: “give a call to him and make the arrangements to do the training.” David doesn’t waste much of his time, he knew that was the only thing I needed.

I called Tim and made the first appointment at his house and decided to start with two sessions weekly.

I must admit that I was really curious and hesitant, actually more hesitant than curious of this kettle bell training. I had no clue of what this was all about. I knew what kettle bells were but I couldn’t imagine why and how a cowbell could cure my back problems. But I didn’t have another option and had to go and meet with Tim.

Tim was very nice, we immediately established the right feeling, but the curiosity, and hesitation, around the system was still hanging there. Actually, before I started other thoughts were milling in my mind. One serious concerns was how in the world training with a weight could help my painful back? If there was any logic it should have been the opposite, call it ignorance or whatever these were my major concerns.

Honestly after the 2nd session all my concerns were gone. I was quickly getting better, the pains were gone, I quit taking painkillers and started moving a little bit better. And the fun part of the story is that I liked the work out. Maybe because I was getting relief and the pain was gone but I really started liking the exercise.

Now, after a little bit more than one year I can start getting an understanding of this experience that I believe it is extremely positive. No more back pains especially when I stand hours on my feet, neither for walking or sitting or sleeping. I lost some weigh from the 42 pant size, now I’m very comfortable (loose) in the 38 and hope to go back to wearing, again, those old 36 that are still hanging around in my closet.

An experience that I strongly recommend to all those people with back pains, do not be scared of the word weight, chose the bell weight you like better and work with that. To see the gain and benefits I suggest three sessions a week, keep your diet in control and you’ll a new person in just a few month. Thanks Tim & David.

Gabriele Dellanave
TravelingtoItaly.com

There is a lot I could write about this past weekend, in a way I don’t even know where to start. I could write a whole post about the new friends I made like Mark Wilson who runs a Bootcamp in Fargo, Josh Hanagarne who is the World’s Strongest Librarian, or Adam T Glass whom I’m not sure I even want to pigeon-hole with a title.

My friend Brad Nelson who runs the most successful kettlebell gym in the country put on a seminar on Saturday called Grip & Rip.

I went to G&R thinking I would learn a few things about how to get stronger and walk away with a few tips to work into my training. Instead, I was shown the keys to a method and ideas that have completely changed the way I look at human movement and development in general. It was bar-none the most eye-opening experience of my life. I will go into further detail in the future.

My favorite quote from the weekend was from Adam, but it may actually be attributed to Frankie Faires. He said, “It is your biological birth right to get better every single day.” To expand a bit on that, the human body is adapting every day. Whether or not you provide it the inputs to adapt in a positive way is up to you, but like it or not your body is adapting to stimuli every moment of every day. Our goal, is to provide as much beneficial stimulation as possible to adapt in a positive way.

I am looking forward to seeing where this takes me.

P.S. In the mean time, if you are dealing with any chronic pain issues and you’re ready to fix them, contact Brad Nelson or Adam Glass.

This works on Mac OS X for sure, but I suspect if you can find the right files on Windows it’s the same fix.

1. Quit Yammer.
2. Open Terminal
3. type: rm -rf ~/Library/Application Support/Adobe/AIR/ELS
4. type: rm -rf ~/Library/Preferences/Yammer*
5. Relaunch ze Yammer.

Thank Fox News for your latest edition of chartfail:

I was going to write a bit longer post, but in lieu of that I’m going to write a short but timely post.

Last week I was in beautiful Del Mar, CA for ThinkTank and I’m happy to report that it was a fantastic event. I’ll admit I was a little skeptical at first knowing all the crazy thing DK would have in store but it really all fits together.

This is the one event that you should attend if you need or want to make connections in the industry but are not very good at meeting people and networking at the typical conferences. The way DK has structured the activities it would literally be impossible to spend 3 days there and not at least meet every person.

As a result of ThinkTank, I also discovered surfing which could possibly be my obsession over the next 15 years.

My only criticism is that sometimes the event isn’t serious enough. But then again, if you are really serious about growing your business, go to Elite Retreat. Yeah DK, I know that’s a shameless plug, but it’s also true. ThinkTank is a wonderful, fun event but it is a lot harder (in my opinion) to get serious and see a return from what you do at ThinkTank than it is at Elite Retreat where there is a laser-focus on results.

All told, DK and his team put together a well-organized (much to my surprise) and fantastic 3 days in the sun and surf. Bravo.

Here is my scorecard for the TC50 at the end of day 1. Basically I am trying to see how well I score on judging these guys.

Fail: For one reason or another I feel this company will fail. Either a bad idea, bad execution, or a bad team. Failure is defined as either not doing great revenue a few years out, or not being acquired. Fire-sale asset acquisitions count as failures.
Hit: You’ll know it when you see it. These are companies either posting huge revenue, or getting acquired. Keep in mind I think some of these companies that will be Hit’s will not necessarily become a household name, but the technology or IP will be acquired for a gazillion dollars.

Edward Tufte hates you.

I have been getting harassed for months by Sirius satellite radio since canceling my subscription. Telling them to stop calling doesn’t work.

BUT this does: 1-888-440-6342

You call that number, press 7, and these idiots never call again.

I am not a User Interface designer by any means, but when I was confronted with this order page I immediately popped a blood vessel in my brain and stalled on what to do next.

If you have an e-commerce site, and your order page looks like this, STOP.  Do not do ONE MORE THING until you fix it.

Click to see a bigger version: