This post will be a Thanksgiving tradition. You’ll see it every year here.

It’s the Holiday season (Thanksgiving, to be exact), and that means the 1930’s version of King Kong is on TV numerous times.

When I was a kid, this movie was on every Thanksgiving on NY Channel 9. And being a “monster movie” fan, I watched every year. And besides the annual Thanksgiving showing, they also seem to play Kong lot between Thanksgiving and X-Mas - hence this post, as it got me thinking about it.

Truth be told, I love this movie (the 2005 remake was decent, but too long - the original is a better experience… the 1977 remake never happened. Don’t bring it up again.) However, even though I love it, King Kong probably has the biggest plot holes of any movie I have ever seen.

KONG SIZED plot holes.

To wit, here are a few questions I have (these also appeared on my old site years back):

·     The voyage to Skull Island took over a month. So the voyage back (with Kong) would have taken a month. What did they feed Kong that month? And whose job was it to clean up after him?

·     The “big show” in NY was… what, exactly? Kong chained to the wall? That’s it? That was going to be the big show? Talk about underwhelming. Good thing he escaped - now THAT was a show. In fact, one could say it’s almost like they planned Kong’s escape (heyyyyy…. )

·     What did Kong do with the other women who were sacrificed to him? He kept Ann Darrow around - where were the others? I always envisioned he had a harem back at his cave… (for what it’s worth, I’d keep Fay Wray around too)

·     Kong climbed the Empire State Building. The friggen EMPIRE STATE BUILDING!! But he couldn’t scale that puny 50′ wall the natives built?? Really??

·     Which leads us to my biggest issue - the natives built a 50′ wall to keep Kong and the other giant monsters out. Truth be told, that’s probably a smart thing to do when you live on an island full of giant monsters. So tell me, why on earth did they equip this wall with a 50′ door??? That makes NO SENSE AT ALL. You build a wall to keep Kong out, but you also put in a Kong-sized door?? WHY??? For what possible reason??? If the wall needed a door, why not a regular, native-sized door?    

Anyway, have a great Thanksgiving!!

I remember, way back when I started my writing business, making the first “Clear-Writing” website. It was basically a left hand table for navigation, and right hand space to put the “stuff”. I coded it myself in notepad. It was nothing fancy, but it looked nice, and did the job.

For several years, my little homemade site worked well, but as I grew, I felt it really didn’t represent my professionalism, etc. I’m an “ok” web designer, but my skills are much more suited to 1998 than 2000-something.   And in looking at competitor’s websites, it was clear many others were “nicer” than mine. So I hired out – my friend Kelly Rao of Web-Eze did it for me (I basically had her code one page, and I took it from there.) It came out great – it looks wonderful, it’s easy to take care of, etc. In fact, it’s the site I’m still using today.

And that got me thinking – that website is more than 5 years old. Which is an absolute lifetime in internet years (internet years are like dog years on steroids.) So last month, I started thinking – “gee, is it time for another update?”  To answer this question, I looked around to see how I looked compared to others… and I was pretty surprised at what I found:

It is abundantly clear to me that web design is getting worse. Many of today’s “modern” websites, by and large, look like crap. The proliferation of the WYSIWYG / CMS-era of web design has churned out millions of cookie-cutter sites that just look bad.  They look blocky, the text looks awful, they can’t space anything well (you should leave a space in between bullet points, etc) – it’s just awful.

My five-year-old professional copywriting website looks infinitely better than any CMS site out there. Even this site you’re reading, which started life last year as a wordpress template (but uses traditional HTML coding in the meat of the pages), looks tons better than most sites out there.

I don’t want to sound old-fashioned, but the move away from traditional HTML coding has really changed the web design business. It’s likely opened the door to a lot of people who really aren’t skilled web designers, and I’m guessing CMS sites are a lot cheaper and easier for the end user as well, but I have to say, I’m not impressed with the look. It’s akin to a stately old house versus cookie-cutter tract housing.

Personally, I’m not using CMS style websites anytime soon. This blog is as close as I’ll get. All else being equal, I really feel a CMS designed site will hurt you business-wise.

Any web designers want to chime in?

I’m often found on the small business forums, because I like talking business, and that’s a pretty good spot.

There’s this guy on there whom I like a lot (he’s in one of the professional trades - if you spend some time there, you’ll get to know him, but I’d rather not ID him here.) But one thing he’s constantly fixated on is price. In a nutshell, he wants to be high end in his business, and he sort of dismisses people who shop on price. Now, I kind of don’t blame him here, but the reality is, in his own personal life, HE’S a price shopper himself (he’s admitted such).

Just today, he was mentioning he was thinking of charging a service charge to show up and assess jobs - like a $50 trip charge, etc. This is quite common with your better tradespeople, etc - I pay it for the tradespeople that come to my house, etc, because I want the best guy.

But here’s the kicker - he stated in the same topic that he personally  would NEVER pay such a charge, though. So here’s how I replied:

******************

You have no business asking for the trip charge, then, because you personally do not see the value in it.

You have this contradiction a lot - you have stated before that you shop on price often yourself, but don’t like it when its done to you. I have to tell you, you will never find what you are looking for in terms of a happy medium then - you will always have this price battle that you hate so much. Because your mind is conditioned to have it.

I’m the opposite of you - I almost never shop on price. It’s generally never even a consideration. I like what I like, and I’m willing to pay for the best that I can reasonably afford. Because in the end, in 99% of the things we buy, etc, the price really isn’t that much different anyway.

I’m not saying one must buy the highest price TV (etc), but make price the last thing you look at - get a nice TV first (when I bought mine, in the models/size I was looking for, I could have had a “decent” Vizio for about $1,100, or a beautiful Samsung for $1,400. I bought the Samsung without thinking twice.) I also go to nicer restaurants, I book nicer rooms on vacation, etc. I don’t “blow” money, but I definitely do not mind spending it, either. I’ll hire the better plumber who can come soon, despite the $50 trip/assessment charge… it doesn’t faze me one bit.

I wasn’t always like this - I became this way more after I was in business a few years. I am high end in my business, and I figured I should be that way in my entire life. And I noticed I got better clients the more/longer I practiced this. The attitude simply permeates into everything I do - my website, my writing, etc. Yes, I still get shoppers and cheapies, and I ignore them without a second thought.

Money goes and comes the same way. If you are tightfisted with a buck, expect to always deal with tightfistedness.

I promise you, this works.

Know what I do (or don’t do, to be more accurate)?

I don’t do business with websites that don’t provide a phone number. Not because I want to call (I don’t), but because it makes me feel like they are hiding something. I’ll make an exception for huge, well-advertised sites like Amazon.com (who has proven to be very adept at customer service), but otherwise, if you don’t provide your phone number, I’ll pass.

Why many companies feel they are too good to get away with not posting their phone number is beyond me.

So here’s a tip - not having your phone number on your website is almost certainly costing you money. Trust me - as disturbing as the thought may be, there are a lot of people like me out there.

I was going through some of my old computer files, and found this gem I jotted down a few years back. The story is 100% true:

*****

Around 1993, at one of my many jobs, I was a yellow pages salesman. My boss was this super-motivated “fast track” type guy. He read every business book out there, he had a list of goals, and he prided himself on being a peak performer (whatever that means). Not a pleasant guy to be around.

This one time, we were in a meeting. It was myself, my co-worker Butch, and the above-mentioned Mr. Motivation. He was telling us how he was disappointed Butch and I didn’t work late the night before preparing new ads. Instead, we watched the World Series at the hotel bar. He lamented that we would never beat last year’s sales figures if we didn’t get motivated and pull together as a team and focus on our objective (or some other type-A corporate BS) ….*groan*….

Anyway, at that point, I decided to lighten the overly-serious mood with a little humor. I got up and walked to a newspaper that was on a table, pulled the last night’s lottery ticket out of my wallet, and checked the numbers. Mr. Motivation looked at me incredulously and asked what I was doing. I replied “seeing if I still give a @#$% about all this…. Let’s see… 15, 47, 48… not one match… yup, I still give a @#$%. Continue”.

Mr. Motivation was not amused. I lasted maybe another week at the company.