Tinkers, A Deathbed Story Of Fathers And Sons

This fine novel is ostensibly about the death of George Washington Crosby, an old man who lies dying of cancer in his living room while his family keeps watch. But the book isn't about George's death; that simply provides the framework for the real story, which is about his unsteady relationship with Howard, his father. While Paul Harding takes the reader into that theme through George's deathbed recollections (and possibly hallucinations) he develops it in a parallel narrative told from Howard's point of view. The story arc can be confusing, but it's clear when the reader pays attention. It's well worth the effort, too.

Tinkers worked for me on many different levels. Harding immerses the reader into the dying man's stream of consciousness, a flow of thought/feeling/dreams that I suspect is very realistic. At times George is lucid, recalling notable incidents of triumph and tragedy from his life as clearly as a newspaper reporter. Often, though, he slips into prose poems that seem to have little bearing on the story but perfectly reflect the semi-dreaming state of his mind. Some readers may find these passages overwrought or superfluous; I thought they contribute to a greater understanding of the way a dying man's mind conducts itself.

The strange workings of Howard's mind often intrude on the storyline, too. Despite these forays into sub- or semi-conscious thought, I found the characters well-defined, believeable, and sympathetic if not always totally likeable. In other words, George, Howard, and George's grandfather (who makes a cameo near the end) are just like real people. And, just like real fathers and sons, their relationship are very complicated, reminding me often of the paternal ties explored in my own short fiction collection, A Tale Of The Christ. The value of the novel lies in its ability to increase our understanding of ourselves.

Tinkers may be a short book, but it is not a light read. Not because the subject matter is heavy, but because there are layers upon layers of meaning piled on the reader who takes the time to appreciate it. I plan to return to Tinkers again and again and expect to find at least one hard new truth every time I read it.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Image Advertising: Is It Worth It?

Let’s talk about your advertising. Why it works and why it doesn’t work a lot of the time. There are three basic advertising functions, which you must keep in mind. These are the goals that advertising can accomplish for the advertiser: image goals, sales goals, and positioning goals. They are not mutually exclusive and certainly many ad messages accomplish or attempt to accomplish more than one. But for now we will focus on image goals.

Image advertising goals are those sort of warm, fuzzy, amorphous ambitions that many advertisers have. They want people to feel good about their business or good about their company. There is no question that television is the great image medium. But keep in mind that those kind of images don’t sell a heck of a lot of merchandise, so image advertising needs to be used with great care. The key to doing this kind of advertising is to start by answering the question, who are we trying to influence? Who is the intended recipient of our message?

Legitimate image advertisers almost always have a very specific and narrow intended audience. These will tend to be companies like financial institutions, public utilities, health care companies, certain manufacturers or others who have very specific image problems. The people they are trying to reach will have some influence on the success or failure—the economic health—of the advertiser’s business. The root of addressing an image need through advertising isn’t to enhance the image—it’s ultimately to affect the bottom line, which can mean either profit or loss.

A company’s employees are a frequent target audience for advertisers. If the employees feel better about their company, they’re less inclined to do nasty things like go on strike, more apt to work harder, and less likely to leave for greener pastures, among other things. That’s why you’ll often see companies advertising on TV a year or so before their union contract negotiations begin. They want to soften up the opposition. They can’t very effectively address employees directly with messages about company love, but they can obliquely get the message across through such image ads on TV.

Sometimes advertisers spend to influence even smaller groups, like government regulators. If you’re in one of many kinds of regulated businesses, like public utilities, insurance, or telecommunications, your ability to make a profit is highly dependent on the attitudes toward you held by the public service commission or insurance commission or other regulatory body that governs your business. That group of five, ten, or fifteen citizens holds your fate in the palm of their hands.

Lastly, there’s another audience that image advertisers sometimes try to influence, but it’s one that they don’t talk about much. In fact, they’re usually not even conscious of their attempt to reach them. Many times, image ads are directed at the advertiser’s friends and acquaintances! If you’re the only bank in town that doesn’t advertise on TV, you may feel somewhat self-conscious at the country club when your peers and competitors are talking about their TV campaigns. There’s some keep-up-with-the-Jones’ in business life, too.

The danger of all image advertising is that it doesn’t directly influence the sales or other revenues of that company. But it can be profitable when it comes to getting the word out there about your small business.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Beating The Competition Through Profitable Sponsorship

When it comes to sponsoring sports teams, it’s all about ROI: Return on Investment. Put another way, what’s in it for me?

The marketing essence of sponsorships—-whether you put your money into race teams or the PTA bake sale—-is the endorsement value that the investment gives you. There is, hopefully, a halo effect in which the potential customer’s good feelings about the sponsored entity transfer to your shop or product as well. And if the customer admires and wants to emulate them, all the better. That’s why golf club manufacturers shower golf pros with free clubs, balls, and shoes. But is the halo effect enough?

“It’s essential to show the sponsor that you gave them value for their money,” according to Tony Thacker, VP of Marketing for So-Cal Speed Shop, which is headquartered in Pomona, California. “It’s very difficult to quantify the return on sponsoring somebody else’s race team effort,” he says, “unless you know that they’ve got the wherewithal to give you the return that you need.” So-Cal’s high-profile involvement with racing dates to 1946. Thacker points out putting a decal on the car is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to giving value to the sponsor. “In our own race effort, we send regular reports out to all of our sponsors and we try real hard to get stories on the race car in different magazines. Typically, other people don’t do that. Professional racers do, but the typical people calling us don’t realize that that’s the more important part of the job."

A productive sponsorship will also generate publicity outside the track environment, with personal appearances, endorsements, and other news-worthy events. That’s what drives the maximum return on investment.

Here are some suggestions of things you can ask for when sponsoring a team:

1. Pictures of the team in action that you can use in your advertising.

2. A letter from the team thanking you for your support that you can post in your business, use in other advertising, and attach to proposals when you give them to potential customers.

3. Personal appearances by the team members—and their equipment—at your shop. You can promote the appearances with direct mail, email, or even newspaper ads as events where fans can “meet the pros” while they inspect your business.

4. Distribution of frequent press releases—identifying your shop as a team sponsor—on event results and team developments.

All of these things will help the team, too. Remember, sports teams depend on fans just like a business depends on customers. The more fans the team attracts, the greater the value of the sponsorships it sells.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Buying Good Word Of Mouth

Plenty of small business owners consider advertising a total waste of money. According to them, word of mouth is the best advertising and that’s something you can’t buy. They’re right, but only partly: word of mouth is the best, but you can buy it. That’s what good advertising does-—it buys word of mouth. Keep in mind, that “advertising” doesn’t have to be a million-dollar TV commercial on American Idol. A fifty-cent postcard announcing your new selection of life-enhancing widgets mailed to a targeted list of a couple of hundred potential customers is advertising, too. It’s the kind of advertising that buys some word of mouth.

When to advertise, how much to spend on advertising, even whether to advertise at all are questions that are at best difficult to answer for businesses in the automotive performance industry (or any other). On the one hand, you like to think that your reputation for good work and fair prices will draw people into your shop. On the other, you have to realize that if they don’t hear about you in some way, that elusive new customer isn’t going to even know you exist, much less that you have a strong reputation. And when you factor in all the competition you face, advertising becomes much more imperative.

Linda Hietala, who owns Reliable Welding and Speed in Enfield, Connecticut, with her husband Brad, agrees that you have to keep trying to attract new customers. “The best form of advertising is word of mouth and referrals,” she says, “but you can’t totally rely on that. You need to be in different publications so people can find your name and phone number.”

So how do advocates of small business advertising go about it? Hietala believes in the scattergun approach, using as many different promotion vehicles as she can afford and not relying on any single medium to hit all the targets. “We try to reach everybody in every different way,” she says. Reliable advertises in Speedway Scene and regional racing papers and also does track programs and similar publications. She’s also a believer in the Internet.

Like many speed shops, Reliable is also a heavy supporter of the local race scene. “We have a forty-foot parts trailer that we bring to one of the local race tracks,” Hietala explains. “That’s a good way for us to advertise because the track (Stafford Speedway) has, in addition to their weekly racing, special events through the year where they’re bringing in other touring series like the featherweight modifieds and the Busch North. Being visible there with a trailer, we’re reaching a lot of people.” Constantly assessing how well advertising performs is also vital Hietala believes. But she also gives each promotional outlet plenty of time to prove itself.

While these advertising opportunities are specific to speed shops and other automotive-related businesses, many similar ones exist for small business owners serving other markets. Many pet shops support their local animal shelter, for example, and clothing retailers are often big sponsors of local fashion shows. Of course, as with everything, one of the keys to success in advertising is consistency. This will require large amounts of time and money but in the long run it can pay off.


Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Friend And Follow Marketing

Did you know that more Americans use the Internet than read a newspaper every day? That’s bad news for publishers, but great news for business owners and managers looking for ways to reach customers. If you’re like most business operators when you think of the Internet, you visualize a website for your company—and plenty of them have been built at considerable cost and effort. But there are other ways to use the ever-evolving online medium that can be just as (if not more) effective—and costs a whole lot less.

One way to market in cyberspace is with a blog, a type of web presence that has many interesting possibilities. A blog can be nothing more than a simple collection of written entries about anything (or nothing) that’s posted on the web for the curious to read. There should also be a place for you to advertise and write about your company’s history and the things you do. You can also link to your shop’s conventional website. You might even be able to sell advertising on your blog to other local businesses as well as to your vendors. Blogs are cheap (often free!) and very, very easy to create. I got started at www.blogger.com (a service owned by Google) and just followed the easy online instructions.

Another approach is to sign up for Facebook or Twitter or one of the other rapidly proliferating social networks. While there are some major differences between blogging and marketing through social networks, many of the same principles apply. The main feature of both is a sort of message board where you make diary-like entries about topics of interest. The entries don’t have to be long or even particularly literate just as long as they’re about subjects you think your customers care about. The biggest added feature of a social network page is your ability to reach customers (and potential customers) who have signed up to “friend” you. With luck, they’ll keep their connection to you and see your messages every time they visit their own social site page.

But how do you use a blog to market your business? By making it the centerpiece of an online community of your customers and potential customers. What makes either one a “community” is your customers’ ability to post their own messages along with yours, either in response to the ones you’ve posted or about subjects that they’d like to discuss. In fact, it’s this interactive feature that sets a blog apart from a traditional website (although you can have similar features there, too). A blog or social network site also gives you opportunities to help the physical community as well, which most business owners consider good for business. A substantial side benefit is that your business enjoys some of the same “halo effect” that an event sponsor gets—at considerably less expense.

If putting your business into cyberspace has seemed like more trouble than it’s worth, maybe now is the time to reconsider your decision. A Facebook page or blog is cheap, easy, and can be a very effective marketing tool.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Selling In Cyberspace

Many business owners have considered how much - if any - time and money they should devote to marketing online. The Internet does offer many exciting business growth possibilities, however. The marketing possibilities are limited only by your imagination, your pocketbook, manpower, and patience.

Art and craft galleries, just one of the many types of businesses on the net, have been marketing online for many years. The website is essentially another complete business location--which happens to draw customers and artists from around the world who shop with their keyboard, mouse, and credit card. Artique Galleries' owner, Mike Stutland, put his Lexington, KY, galleries online in 1999 and says, “The web site has attracted customers from beyond our normal market area. It has brought people into our stores, especially through our links with many tourist information sites.” Those customers may well not have been reached otherwise and therefore represent new sales.

In order to compete for the attention of online customers, the former Chairman/CEO of Valentine Radford Advertising in Kansas City, Mo., Chuck Curtis, offers some tips based on the agency’s survey of 1000 online shoppers.

1. 89% of Internet shoppers use the Internet for product information. Make sure your web site is rich in product details.

2. 45% of Internet shoppers click on their local newspaper and 32% click on their local television station site. This is good news for businesses who can inexpensively buy advertising just on the local media’s web site.

3. Also buy advertising in the email news updates that local news media send out. About half of online shoppers have signed up for these.

4. 58% of these shoppers have signed up for an online loyalty program. It’s a smart idea to reward your best customers with a frequent buyer plan (like the frequent flier programs run by the airlines.) For example: Get a 10% discount on your next purchase when you spend $50.

5. More than a third of the survey (38%) use a wish list feature on the site for their purchases. These are items they would like to buy, but can’t purchase at the moment, and they register their desires online.

6. About two-thirds of the time a shopper will research a product online and then buy it in the store.

7. Many retailers will publish their coupons for in-store use online because the distribution costs are so much lower than putting them in the newspaper or on direct mail.

8. Between 40% and 60% of shoppers (depending upon the amount they spend) strongly object to shipping charges. Many retailers build the price of these into the products, or offer free shipping above a certain amount; e.g., “Free shipping when you spend $50 or more.”

9. 81% of shoppers expect to find a wider selection of products online. Remember that your market online is worldwide. If you find items that you can’t display in your store because of limited retail space, put them on your web site.

With these essential tips from the pros you can take your business to the next level when it comes to online marketing, business growth, and sales.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Building Business Without Cutting Prices

Price-cutting competitors are like rust on a steel tool: as soon as you clean it off, it starts forming again. And, just like insidious oxidation, price-cutters can’t be ignored. If you don’t pay attention, they’ll erode your company’s business. One way to respond to price competition is to meet or beat it at the lowball game. Unfortunately, there always seems to be somebody willing to go even lower and your bottom line suffers as a result. Is there any way one can respond to this unrelenting competition? Two automotive shop owners have found alternative solutions.

One way is to diversify so that you can afford to pass up a job or two without worrying about its impact on your bottom line. Pete Bennett, owner of CoachCraft, Inc., in Lexington, Kentucky, provides as many automotive restyling services as he can think of in a successful effort to build revenue and fully use his shop’s capacity. “As long as we’re promoting quality and being fair about pricing, I don’t worry too much about our competitors,” Bennett says. Volume is important, but not at the expense of quality. According to Bennett, who believes better work supports higher prices. “The quality speaks for itself. “

Bennett not only tries to attract many different types of work, he also maintains a balance between retail customers and dealer subcontracts. He estimates that his business is split just about equally between the two. Retail jobs generate a higher profit margin, of course, but the dealer business provides volume to maintain capacity utilization. Because he has both, Bennett can afford to maintain his prices, even to dealers.

Lee Muntean, owner of AAA Convertible & Sun Roofs in Costa Mesa, California, has adopted exactly the opposite strategy for beating the competition. He targets a niche market and does one thing—but he does it very, very well. This approach provides a strong floor under his prices.

His pricing for dealers and general repair shops isn’t driven by a need to beat the competition, but there is another factor he takes into account: the dealer’s margin. When it comes to pricing work subcontracted to him by body shops and garages, he’s careful to allow them to make a profit without undercutting his retail price. “One thing I don’t want them to do is give the jobs away. That hurts me,” Muntean says. In the ideal situation, the garage’s customer would pay the same if he came directly to Muntean and vice versa.

Any business owner or manager will tell you there is always somebody willing to undercut your price. One way to respond is to make a knee-jerk price cut of your own. As these two successful business owners demonstrate, though, that’s not necessarily the only way to build your business.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Fathers, Sons, and God

The approach of Father's Day sent me to the archives for short stories I've written on the theme. I found four about the relationships between fathers and sons. They're available as an ebook mini-anthology from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and Smashwords. As I was choosing the stories, I discovered they all had another common theme:

Is God our father? Are our fathers gods? These four short stories explore what happens when fathers and sons look God in the eye and ask “why?”

In “A Tale Of The Christ,” The epic movie Ben Hur weaves through a boy’s tragic summer.

Like an impressionist's painting, “Tooth Fairy Daddy” explores a boy’s feelings for the father he visits on weekends.

At the end of his hard life, Konstantinos struggles with the debts owed him by his church and his God in “The Mark On The Dove.”

“Johnnie Reader” uses books to escape reality, then discovers they can save his soul.

The collection is priced at $0.99 and includes bonus chapters from two novels, Heart Of Diamonds and Hunting Elf.

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Help For Golfers

Like nearly 90% of all golfers, I've spent way too much time in the right rough--or worse. The slice, as you probably know, is the biggest single fault in most golfers' games. But now you can banish your banana ball with the help of my friend Brian Crowell and his new book, Slice-Free Golf In Three Easy Steps.

I had the pleasure of working on this book with Brian, handling the photography and design among other things, and in the process I learned a lot about my golf swing. It was kind of like having a three-month golf lesson with one of the top teaching pros in the country. You can get the same kind of advice I did--and get more control over your game--with the simple lessons Brian teaches and the drills he uses to help you hit the ball straighter and farther.

Slice-Free Golf doesn't have any gimmicks, but there does seem to be a little magic in the way Brian explains his system for the set-up, swing, and follow-through that will lower your scores. He also uses an unconventional approach to somethings most golfers take for granted. When it comes to set-up, for example, Brian doesn't start with the grip, but with alignment. Makes sense, doesn't it? How can you aim the club face until you know for sure where to point it?

Then there is the swing itself. Like all great teachers, Brian has the ability to create images that stay in the pupil's mind. His "eye in your chest" is a fabulous reminder to keep your shoulders slightly closed through impact in order to hit your shot with a little draw spin.

Slice-Free Golf has over 200 images like these that you can mentally call up when you need them. If you need a little tangible reminder, there's a cut-out page you can use at the range--or even on the course--to remind you of the specifics of the slice-free swing. There are also over two dozen drills Brian has developed over the years to help ingrain good swing habits in the thousands of golfers he's taught.

But don't just take my word for it. Here's what all-time-great Gary Player had to say about Slice-Free Golf:

"Don’t let the slice diminish your enjoyment of this great game. If cutting the ball is frustrating you, please read Slice-Free Golf. Your score will improve and you’ll have more fun on the links. My friend Brian Crowell can help you to get the most out of your swing. He is an accomplished PGA instructor who has a very clear and comfortable way of communicating with his students. Slice-Free Golf is proof of both his effectiveness as a teacher and Brian’s hatred of the dreaded slice."

For more information about how you can banish your banana ball, visit www.slicefreegolf.com. You can get your copy of Slice-Free Golf directly from the publisher or your favorite bookseller. It's also available as an ebook for Amazon Kindle, Barnes & Noble Nook, and other devices.

In addition to writing about golf, Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.

Building Attention For Your Ads

One of the biggest, fastest-growing segments of the automotive performance industry is the off-road market, but beware of approaching it as if it were a monolithic mass. The market ranges from axle-busting rock crawlers and dust-eating dune racers to soccer moms whose grill-guarded, suspension-jacked, fog-lighted SUV’s never touch any surface rougher than the gravel drive at their weekend home at the lake. Each customer is different, but they’ve all got wallets ready to open to trick out their 4WD ride.

What differentiates these customers from each other is the way they use their off-road vehicle. What’s usually the same is what they want from the shop they choose: knowledgeable service. Industry experts believe that you’ve got to know the customer: “You’ve got the customer who knows the product, and he doesn’t want to talk to somebody who doesn’t know anything,” industry veteran Rusty Megois says. “Then you’ve got the other guy who has done the Internet research, read the magazines, but they’re still not sure. They rely a lot on what you tell them.”

That’s why shop and off-road park owner Carl Roy says he and his staff don’t sell anybody anything. Instead, “We explain things like the importance between differential ratio and tire size, weight balance and distribution, ground clearance, approach and departure angles, wheel speed versus the inertia of the vehicle.” He operates Performance Off-Road, Inc., in Alexandria, Kentucky.

Roy stresses the importance of learning as much as you can about the individual customer: “When it comes to what they want, it depends on their level of experience. For some of them, name recognition means a great deal, there’s a certain amount of brand loyalty. Others, it may come down to who had the best magazine ad that month.” The hard-core customer still sets the standard for the market, even though there are vast differences from one to another in that market segment and their tastes are changing, too.

Another factor to take into consideration is price. Price doesn’t seem to be as much of a concern to off-road customers as it is in other performance markets, although it’s always there in the customer’s mind somewhere.

There is also the influence of the Internet, which as Megois believes, “has made us all more competitive." But Roy believes that: “The Internet gives us a focal point to start the discussion. A lot of people will come in with an ad they’ve printed out and say ‘I’d like this for my Jeep. Can you beat that price?' That creates the opportunity for us to take them out and illustrate that there are differences—qualitative differences, warranty differences, product support differences, engineering philosophies—and how those transcend the price points of the product.”

Ultimately, the experts believe that quality time does the trick. “The amount of time we spend with the customer is our competitive advantage,” Roy says. “Everybody out there is selling the same stuff we are. The only advantages we offer are the experience and abilities we have.”

Dave Donelson distills the experiences of hundreds of entrepreneurs into practical advice for small business owners and managers in the Dynamic Manager's Guides, a series of how-to books about marketing and advertising, sales techniques, hiring, firing, and motivating personnel, financial management, and business strategy.