CMS Rock Star

Ecommerce sites provide a good way to find deals on products that you can’t buy locally for one reason or another.  In my example, I live in a rural area that is so far removed from any stores that it costs a small fortune to go shopping anywhere!

So although I try to buy locally as much as possible, sometimes the best solution for me is to use the Internet to buy what I need.  For example, I can find Cheap Computers online through such commerce search engines as Shopping.com and Dealtime.co.uk.  The Shopping.com website is geared for the US consumer, the Dealtime website is geared towards the consumer in the UK.  Both shopping sites help the consumer find what they are looking for quickly and easily.

Yesterday I read on the Internet that Larry Harmon, the man who licensed Bozo the Clown died of congested heart failure on Thursday July 3rd!  I read the news on on the Kansas City News website.   The article talked about how how although he did not invent Bozo the Clown, he is the man who licensed him, which makes him the “official” Bozo.  He turned Bozo the clown into a multi-million dollar business.  He was 83 years old when he died.  My mother says she remembers as a young child watching Bozo the clown on television.  Seems to me I remember watching a cartoon Bozo the clown show when I was a kid, too.  I suspect Bozo the clown was in some way an inspiration to McDonald’s to create their Ronald McDonald character.

Did you know that a lot of big businesses only contribute to charities that are in their own home town?  I was trying to do a charity fundraiser a few months ago, asking for goods to auction off and going from store to store in the local strip mall, going to the “Big name stores” and asking for donations of merchandise or gift cards and they said it was “against corporate policy” and that their stores only contributed to charities in their corporate headquarters home town that was in another state?  Yet the small mom and pop locally owned businesses ALL donated gift cards or new merchandise to the charity event.

As I was saying in my previous post, doing business locally is becoming more important in today’s economy. Doing business locally saves gasoline, too, which is good for the environment!

Local reviews of local businesses can often be found on the Internet to help the consumer locate a local business and find out whether or not the business is a reputable one.  The WeLoveLocal.com website is an example of such a website.  Although geared towards the United Kingdom, this is a good example of a good way to find local businesses and reviews of them.  You need to register to use the website, but registration is free.    This website is easy to use; you can find local businesses by clicking on the search button.  You can write reviews by clicking on the review button.   You can create your own network of friends that you trust to do business by clicking on the community button.  I think it would be wonderful if there were websites like this in every United States community too!

With the economy going down the tank and unemployment rates, gasoline prices and the cost of living rising every day doing business locally becomes more important.  If we can do business locally that keeps jobs in our own communities, which is important to all of us.  Local businesses usually provide better customer service to their customers; they often service what they sell.  Going into a locally owned retail store is often likely to result in having your own personal shopper helping you find exactly what you need.  Doing business with locally owned businesses keeps the profits of the business in the community instead of shipping the profits to another state or country.

Many large corporations frequently hire outside vendors like Resources Unlimited to assist them in doing specialized training programs/seminars for employee enrichment programs.  One type of employee enrichment program revolves around learning more about your own personality, which then assists you in dealing with others, resolving conflicts, and developing your own goals.  Resources Unlimited, Authorized Inscape Publishing Distributor of DiSC is the company that sells one of the most popular personality profile programs, called DiSC.  The employer has the employee answer the Online DiSC Classic 2.0 Profile questions prior to the seminar so that the employee can have the results before the seminar starts.