Mediaboss Marketing

(MoneyWatch) Where do you host your important business deals, negotiations or meetings? Your office? A local restaurant? Maybe even the golf course? Some people are getting more creative -- way more creative. For instance, ever thought about taking your clients and colleagues on a night-fishing boat, in a helicopter or in a karaoke room?

Read about these and other stories of unusual locations for business deals below. You just might consider canceling your conference room booking and trying something a bit more outside the box.

At 750 feet up in the air We recently made a deal in an Augusta Bell Helicopter, one mile offshore and 750 feet in the air. [We used it for] signing a contract so as to save taxes and sign an offshore contract. In the above unique location for a business transaction, we were providing a $17 million loan. The savings were more than $900,000 and the cost of the helicopter was $23,000 for 20 minutes of use. The savings far outweighed the cost of the helicopter. -- Jim Angleton, president of Aegis, a financial services corporation.

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While rocking out at karaoke I flew to Guangzhou to meet members of the SFDA (Chinese State Food and Drug Administration) to discuss distribution of drug information data to the pharmaceutical market. We ate dinner without touching on business at all. Then, the driver brought us to a KTV establishment where we were shepherded into a private, dimly lit room with Chinese pop music playing. (In China, many deals are closed in places called "KTV" and they are private establishments for karaoke.) It was quite odd. We drank, sang (only American songs for me) and discussed business. By the end of the night, we arrived at a deal. -- Michael A. Puscar, President/CEO, Yuxi Pacific Group, a software consulting firm.

While getting a sweat going I love to schedule workouts, especially with vendors or clients in from out of town. I bring them to my gym and we train together. They love it because they can squeeze in a work out, and I love it because I get two or three hours of uninterrupted quality time with them. The adrenaline helps bond us too. -- Andrew Blickstein, Founder/CVO, Home Run Media, Inc., a consulting firm.

While night-fishing Recently, my business partner, a friend and I all went on a night fishing trip for striped bass out of Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. While we were on the boat the topic of domaining came up and after some discussions, our friend who is a domainer discovered that we were selling a portfolio. Before we got back to land, we sealed a deal to sell him the domain name portfolio. Not only was the trip a super fun time but it also provided us with a great business opportunity. --Ian Aronovich, CEO of GovernmentAuctions.org.

In a moving taco truck We just closed our biggest deal to date in the back of a moving taco truck. The executive we were dealing with had his car towed, and he was late for his daughter's soccer game. We paid the taco truck outside our restaurant $200 to drive us to the soccer game. We literally signed papers on the way in the middle of tacos and lettuce. -- Ben Smith, CEO of Chancebending Media, a digital strategy firm.

While hiking a mountain My last business deal [was completed on a] hike 1.2 miles straight up the mountain in under an hour. We took a break from [a] conference and hiked Camelback Mountain, in Scottsdale, Arizona. It was a great bonding experience and I have a new partnership to boot. I feel unique locations and surroundings make for a better meeting. My next scheduled meeting is at a picnic table in an olive orchard! These new partnerships add thousands of dollars in new revenue for my business. -- Elizabeth Hannan, CEO of Blue Blazing Media, a digital marketing agency.

Where is the most unusual place you've conducted business? Share your stories in the comments below!

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Unusual, creative locations for business meetings

By Richard Birecki - April 30, 2012 | Tickers: AMZN, MSFT | 0 Comments

Richard is a member of The Motley Fool Blog Network -- entries represent the personal opinions of our bloggers and are not formally edited.

Analysts sit like civilian generals in their ivory towers waiting for reports from the battlefields to pour in. When all data is received, they come to a collective consensus, the distribution of which, taken as gospel by most investors, often causing seismic activity in stock charts. However, most of these Wall Street number crunchers don't see the permutations of the game as it is being played. It is the soldiers in the trenches that see the fight as it evolves.

While Enron was robbing citizens of California, and falsifying their figures to meet Wall Street expectations, "experts" on the street screamed "Buy! Buy! Buy!" based on their so called "exhaustive research," publishing glowing reports filled with spreadsheets and projections, sending many lemmings over the cliff and to their doom.

The company was a house of cards. When you ignored the hype, and took an objective look at what they actually produced (nothing), and why anyone wouldwish to invest in them (hopefully you didn't) it became a very simple equation. Yes, there were reporters that actually did serious investigation and unearthed the fraud, but where were the analysts during all this? Drinking the Kool-Aid and passing on cups to their clients, who trustingly drank down the poisoned spreadsheets.

Watch the video: Robots- the next .com of investing

Look, don't get me wrong, I'm not saying that number crunching, and analytics aren't necessary. I'm not advocating purchasing a stock just because you and your friends use the product; more investigation is needed. You can have a great company, with wonderful offerings, and be paying way too much for your shares without analyzing what's a fair price. Case in point, Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) in 2000 was a great company, with bright prospects, but overpriced. Steve Ballmer, while certainly no Steve jobs, has increased revenues, profits, and created value, but investors have been clamoring for his head because the stock still is nowhere near its all time high, but whose fault is it that investors had bid the price up to the moon? (not his) Today, Microsoft is at a turning point, if Windows 8 is a hit, on computers and in mobiles, Softy might even get back to levels seen way back, well ... in 2000.

My point, most huge trends and huge price movementsare so obvious in retrospect, but few people take advantage because they can't see them, their heads are buried in the numbers, collective consciousness, and the premise that the analysts know all.

Let's take a look at some examples of some situations that we can see clearlywith 20/20 hindsight

In the mid 1990s, newspapers (do they still exist?) were yelling about the information superhighway that was coming. The term snail mail was invented; a radical, new, disruptive technology was coming into being, creating real value for society, and yet there was a several year delay before Internet stocks shot into the stratosphere.

Original post:
Robots are the New Dot Coms - Before Destroying Humanity

JAMES MACPHERSON

Jim Deitz believes he's creating a landmark, but the downtown apartment house he's painting one polka dot at a time is making a city planner in the US cringe.

The retired house painter in Bismarck, North Dakota, has been putting the final polka dots on his home-turned-apartments, where passers-by have been gathering to watch him work and to request colors from his palette of a dozen cans of brightly coloured paint.

"Pizza delivery drivers won't have any trouble finding this place," Deitz said of the century old-two story home that houses six apartments. "You can't miss it."

The house is next to a church, a fraternal organisation building and a new low-income apartment complex. Deitz and the city had negotiated a deal to buy out the property to expand the low-income housing facility.

Deitz said he was offered US$100,000 (NZ$122,000) for the home a year or so ago.

"They were going to buy me out and they backed out," Deitz said. "I want US$150,000 for it now."

Ryan Brooks, the city's senior planner, said the polka dot house is an eyesore and that he thinks it's Deitz's way of protesting the city's decision not to buy the property.

"It's hard to say what this gentleman's true motives are," Brooks said. "I think my opinion is the same as everybody - I wouldn't want to be living next to it."

Brooks said the city doesn't have a code that forbids homeowners from painting their houses in certain colors or schemes, however garish.

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Polka dot house an 'eyesore'

Dot Hacker frontman Josh Klinghoffer wasn't really sure how he'd celebrate the release of his band's debut album, Inhibition: "Um, I probably won't, really. It'll be a quiet celebration. Maybe... where will I be on May 1?"

For the past three years, Klinghoffer's been the lead guitarist of the Red Hot Chili Peppers, a career-defining gig that's taken him to stadiums around the globe and, just last April, the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. It has also made it difficult for him to promote Dot Hacker, his independent project with Jonathan Hischke, Clint Walsh, and Eric Gardner, all Los Angeles-based "session musician types" who spend much of their lives on the roads as well. It's no wonder that the album, an architectural-yet-intimate collection of songs recorded in 2009, is just now being released through ORG Music.

Klinghoffer phoned in from a RHCP tour stop in Toronto to talk the band's genesis, his fears as a front man, and injuries sustained in the name of rock.

Josh Klinghoffer of Dot Hacker and the Red Hot Chili Peppers. (Getty) Zimbio: Dot Hacker is a group of really talented musicians best known for working with extremely famous people. How did you find each other?

Josh Klinghoffer: I met Clint, the other guitar player, when we were touring together with Gnarls Barkley in '06, and we sort of quickly became really good friends and talked about always wanting a bandhe has a band, but I never really did, so we talked about trying to pull it together, if we could. I met Eric through him, and I introduced him to Jonathan, who I had met when he was touring with the band Hella, coming out of California, I had known those guys for a long time. We just kind of threw it together and it worked instantly.

This album has been finished since 2009, but it's just now being released. Why the delay? Did you ever consider a self-release?

JK: So initially, people started going out of town, doing their tours here and there to support themselves, and then I got asked to join the Chili Peppers, so that kind of took me out of the equation. So then it kind of sat there, and we were always hoping to keep it alive, and looking for someone to put it out, I guess we weren't too proactive about it... It's kind of hard to sell someone on putting out a record by a band that's unavailable to tour or promote it or anything like that.

Then there were periods of delays. We tried to get it out before the Chili Peppers, then something or the other didn't happen... We thought it was probably better for it to come sometime after the Chili Peppers rather than putting it out right on top of it.

Zimbio: Do you have any plans for touring now? Is there any time and space for that?

JK: There is. There's nothing planned at the moment, but the Chili Peppers' touring schedule is pretty solid. I'm pretty certain where I'll be for the next year or so, because everyone in the band has families. Our schedule's pretty solid, two weeks on, two weeks off, so I can potentially book shows with Dot Hacker any break. I'm sure we will at some point. I'm sure this summer we'll do stuff. Really any time we can I'd love to.

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Zimbio Exclusive Interview: Josh Klinghoffer of Dot Hacker and the Red Hot Chili Peppers

30-04-2012 07:50 June Brown takes a break from EastEnders - Gwen Stefani for US X Factor - Madonna for The Voice. Report by Sam Homewood. Like us on Facebook at and follow us on Twitter at

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Gwen Stefani, Madonna and Dot from EastEnders all in TV news - Video