Customer Spotlight

Kindness: Greater Hope Foundation for Children – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Partners

This week, we’re talking about kindness.

And it’s harder to imagine even kinder people than those at the Greater Hope Foundation for Children.

This is a serious Not-For-Profit dedicated to helping the foster care system. And it’s phenomenal, arduous work. The foster care system doesn’t always work well. A lot of good children are failed by it.

A lot of good children need a healthy, regular dose of kindness.

And that’s what they get from the Greater Hope Foundation. A few years ago, before government bureaucracy intervened, shutting down this dream, the Greater Hope Foundation branched into education: Greater Hope Prep. It was a phenomenal model, and it worked.

Unfortunately, the State of California couldn’t keep good on its promises, but the dream is alive with Greater Hope Foundation.

We’ve had the pleasure of designing and building a few websites for GHFFC. One of our favorite logos ever was that of the Greater Hope Prep.

In our quote this week, the Dalai Lama reminds us that we must be kind whenever possible. And with a toothy grin and that adorable, loving cackle, he commands us, “It is always possible.”

We wish the wind be ever at the backs of the Greater Hope Foundation, a group filled with their own brand of Dalai Lamas, all spreading kindness, joy, and hope to children here in California.

It’s always a good idea to donate to Greater Hope Foundation.

It’s easy to be consumed and to forget. We get caught up in our own constructs, our own perceptions, our own smallness. But when there is kindness, it’s easier to see that there is one greater, universal truth:

It is always possible.

Efficient: PCGS – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight, Interfanatic Expertise, Partners

“Supernova,” a gold coin from the sunken shipwreck SS Central America treasure, authenticated and graded by PCGS, recently sold for $282,000.

Our quote this week is said by Robert Half, and he explains efficient work. Interfanatic uses custom systems and processes to do efficient work.

And that’s precisely what PCGS, part of Collectors Universe, does. Before I lose you, know that there is an incredible market and worldwide traveling circus for collectible coins – one that PCGS powers. PCGS, the Professional Coin Grading Service has, at time of writing, graded over 41,000,000 collectible coins.

Those 41 million collectible coins have a total market value of over $35,000,000,000.

PCGS has a couple of major competitors, so their portion is probably over half of the total certified coin market.

Since PCGS began in 1985, they’ve worked endlessly to be efficient. They certify something like 10,000 coins per week. Each coin is valuable and each coin must be tracked ruthlessly without compromising integrity and objectivity. There are hundreds of thousands of coin types from all over the world, and the coins must be proven authentic and graded to determine market value. It’s a difficult task, but they take it on.

It’s a similar, incredibly complex process to run a Search or Social Ad Campaign. Have you ever looked at a Google Analytics dashboard? Or a Search Console? Or a Local home screen?

This is where Interfanatic lives.

It used to be sufficient to create a website – you could be the only business in town with one. Now, there’s so much competition on the Internet, businesses have to compete for customers. And with margins slim, it’s all about efficiency.

We’ve run half-million dollar budgets to produce upwards of eight figures in revenue. And we’ve run $50/month campaigns to drive traffic and sales.

The only way we succeed with small budgets is by being ruthlessly efficient.

When it comes to spending on ads, that is. When it comes to working with our partners and customers, we give information freely.

We worked quite a bit with PCGS on a number of marketing initiatives and search ad campaigns. Most of our work centered around content marketing, social media marketing, event marketing and public relations. It was exciting work, pushing some fantastic initiatives through video, print, and digital marketing.

But just as we can play with the big dogs, we LOVE helping local small businesses and Not-For-Profits excel in the digital space. We do help smaller players work their way up with ruthless efficiency. We make ourselves affordable enough to help the causes we believe in – including local community small businesses.

Information isn’t what matters – everybody knows information. We know more than most because of our experience, so we share it. What you do with it? – that’s what matters.

Execution matters.
Efficient Interfanatic execution.

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Create: Peninsula Seniors – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

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Our quote this week – which @themobiletechtutor guessed correctly, winning himself a free SEO or Local Marketing Check-up, CONGRATULATIONS – was Bruce Lee telling us not to wait around for the perfect moment. He reminds us to create opportunity.

And that’s exactly what Peninsula Seniors did. After years of hard work, everything came together and they managed to secure a beautiful, permanent home in Palos Verdes, California. They’re right between the PV Library and the Promenade on the Peninsula outdoor shopping mall. A perfect location, really.

But it wasn’t easy. And it didn’t happen because of luck.

It happened because PV Seniors hired the right people to help them achieve their goal.

Sure, luck and circumstance always helps in these things. But we make our own luck by surrounding ourselves with the right people. That’s what Peninsula Seniors did, and that’s how they got where they are.

Interfanatic recently got to help them with PR, we got some newspapers and tv stations out to publicize their building dedication and we’re continuing to help with some of their local and social media marketing.

And it’s an honor for us to work with them because they’re a great group!

It’s a hang-out for retirees on the Peninsula. They give people something to look forward to – some camaraderie, events, lectures, ping-pong, mahjong… lots of stuff to do. To keep busy, make friends, and create quality time.

Peninsula Seniors (at PVSeniors.org) is a fantastic not-for-profit, that through the help of generous donors, now have a beautiful, $2M facility to make good things happen on the Palos Verdes Peninsula. Go check it out – you’ll see how fantastic it is. But they didn’t get there by hoping. They got the right people on their team – and they asked for good fortune.

If you want to progress…
you must do the same.

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Appreciation: The Living Christmas Company – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

The Living Christmas Company appreciates life.

Have you ever thought about the fact that we celebrate Christmas with a dying Christmas tree? It’s such an odd thing, when you think about it.

But then again, so is the notion of renting a Christmas Tree.

Just odd enough that it might work.

At least, that’s what investor Mark Cuban thought after hearing founder Scott Martin’s pitch on Shark Tank.

We helped TLCCo digitize its brand identity long before Cuban came along. We were enthralled with the charismatic Martin, aka “Scotty Claus” and the beauty and simplicity of his idea. He’s an energetic, grateful person of fantastic energy. The kind of person that everyone wants to be around. The kind of person that lights up the room when they walk in.

Scott’s a good dude.

We got him off to the right start, we helped him source caricatures at Downtown Disney for his founder-member portraits that we then got up on the website. We took his sketch and turned it into a beautiful, lively logo. We took his website and we brought it to life. It was thrilling.

We didn’t do the technical part of the site that handled deliveries and pick-ups, but we helped Scott with that hand-off. That project, we only worked on the fun stuff.

And that’s exactly what being part of this movement was – thrilling. We gave Christmas – many of our favorite Holidays – even more life, bringing living trees into our homes and helping them remain green for next year, and next year. Children grew up with their Christmas trees, which are stored for the off-season and cared for.

The trees are appreciated as a living thing, a living member of our Christmas family. It’s awesome, and we’re proud of the part we played getting TLCCo going.

So think about that next Christmas season. If you want to celebrate life, and living, and green, and all the things that are joyful about Christmas, think about getting one of The Living Christmas Company‘s living Christmas trees.

Beauty: Garboushian Gallery – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

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Natural beauty takes at least two hours in front of a mirror.

Pamela Anderson

Ms. Anderson’s quote is fantastic.

It’s funny. And it’s axiomatic.

Natural Beauty = Hard Work

“Natural beauty” – beauty that’s just right – takes a lot of hard work. It takes talent to envision. It takes work to enact.

Just like artwork, a great website is born layer by layer. Look at your favorite websites from around the world. How do they look? Are they busy? Are they simple? Do they convey a huge amount of information quickly and easily?

They say a picture is worth 1,000 words. And sometimes it is. Other times, one word sums it up well.

What does your website say about you?

Herair Garboushian of Garboushian Gallery knows exactly what his website says about his Beverly Hills art gallery. He carefully chooses the artists he works with. He invests time in them, in their preparation, in understanding them and in understanding what drives their art. He carefully curates the paintings to go up for show. He invests time in placement, and order, and how people see the art. So that it is presented as his artists wants it to be presented. And, like his gallery, he makes sure that every pixel on his website is exactly where he wants it to be.

Garboushian has a taste for great art. He admires the art his friend, Jim Morphesis, produces. And as a collector himself, he knows art. He knows what collectors want. And when it comes to Modern Art, that’s not such an easy thing to know.

Spotting the next big thing is the difference between a $700 canvas collecting dust and a $150,000,000 masterpiece gathering attention and bidders at auction. Herair Garboushian can spot that diamond in the rough.

Garboushian is always as particular with his website as he is with his gallery. His instructions are precise because he wants to be sure his site visitors, just like his gallery visitors, can focus on the beauty in front of them.

It just looks… right.

To many people, “that just looks right.” But artists, art connoisseurs, and website designers know, that “just” looks right is the result of practiced talent, careful consideration, and applied skill.

“That just looks right” is most often the result of countless painstaking hours of precise work.

Check out Garboushian Gallery to see what I mean.

Presence: Better World International – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

You’ve got to be there. To finish first, you must first finish. You miss 100% off the shots you don’t take. Et cetera… You’ve heard the platitudes. They say the same thing:

You’ve got to be there.

Perhaps that’s why social media has become such an important part of digital marketing: our customers are there. So we have to be. Presence of mind.

Presence. You’ve got to be there.

Better World International understands.

Earlier this year, Interfanatic began working with BWI and their product: The Good Cards. We’ve set up and managed a couple of Google Ads campaigns, consulted on print graphic design, and produced and begun optimizing landing pages for them.

We’re excited about working with Better World International because their product, The Good Cards, is so simple, it’s fantastic. You sign up for a few bucks and you get a physical card in the mail. You download their app and you get missions attached to a QR code on the card. You perform simple, good deeds of kindness for yourself and others, making the world a little bit better one person at a time. Then you pass on the card, and you can track your card around the world, watching your good deed blossom and spread.

It’s beautiful.

Part of its beauty is its simplicity. It’s an easy thing to do. It costs almost nothing – just enough to cover production and mailing. But a kind deed goes a long way, and many kind deeds bring people together, healing the division and hatred we see in the world.

And it works. Corporations are jumping on board, schools are adopting The Good Class as a social emotional learning tool for kids, and normal people are affected by The Good Cards every day.

We’re really proud and excited to be a part of spreading good around the world. If we can turn one bullying incident from progressing to a school shooting into a good deed that spreads kindness like wildfire through the halls of a classroom, it’s worth trying. If we can turn one person’s jealousy and anger into a passing kindness, like a hug of support, and turn a dour nine-to-fiver with no reason to go on into a productive, happy person, we’re in.

And it’s working, so it’s worth doing.

Join us. Check out The Good Cards. If you’re in school, check out The Good Class. If you’re a corporation looking at corporate mental wellness initiatives, pick up some Good Cards for your employees.

It works. Because Better World International is there.

Presence. When you’re ready to do a little bit of good, The Good Cards are ready to enable you.

Adaptability: Checkered Past Racing – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Customer Spotlight

We created a beautiful website for the good people at Checkered Past Racing about 12 years ago. Of course, in 2007, smartphones were just becoming a thing, and the world was only just moving to 4G. People didn’t use their phones to search the web much. Looking back at our analytics, mobile accounted for under 10% of traffic.

Checkered Past Racing Responsive Mobile-Friendly Website
Checkered Past Racing Responsive Mobile-Friendly Website

Today, mobile accounts for 80% of site traffic (depending on your marketing mix).

Checkered Past Racing's old website. It worked beautifully in the pre-mobile world.
Checkered Past Racing’s old website. It worked beautifully in the pre-mobile world.

Time to Evolve

We decided with Checkered Past it was time to evolve. We looked at the data, the site usage statistics, and their goals. From this data, we created a new, beautiful, even more effective responsive website that should carry them another 10+ years, fulfilling their goals and serving their site users better than before.

Ten years ago, mobile accounted for under 15% of site traffic. In 2019, we have some sites as high as 80% mobile traffic.

In addition to a new site, we set them up with a new hosting plan which includes maintenance and a secure certificate and a powerful server protected from hackers and kept up to date – all for one low price. Just as Checkered Past Racing evolved, we evolve our products and services to match the needs of our customers.

Willingness to Adapt Leads To Success In the Digital Marketplace

Checkered Past Racing is willing to adapt. The digital landscape shifts quickly. To stay on top of it and be successful, you must adapt and overcome. The testing we do on websites and marketing packages is much like the testing engineers have done on race cars for dozens of years – we’re all making minor tweaks in hopes of eeking out better performance.

But you have to start somewhere.

Start with us. We’ve done this before, we’ll show you how it’s done.

Tenacity: S.T. Go, A Business Comeback Akin to Tiger Woods

Customer Spotlight

Alright, forgive my clickbaity headline. S.T. Go has always been a great company, but they faded, and now they’re back.

In the skincare industry, coming back from that ain’t nothing.

I’m proud to say we got S.T. Go moving again when it was time to move to digital marketing. They’re good people. Tough, but good.

S.T. Go was a massively successful company. They had the perfect marketing mix, the right offers, and customers kept coming, and kept coming back.

After venturing off in another direction, relying on what worked before, sales started to decline.

The ultra-competitive skincare industry never rests, and there were plenty of competitors to gobble their market share.

They Could Have Rested

The owners could have packed it in. They could have rested on their laurels. They could have retired very happy with the success they’d already achieved.

But they didn’t. They’re back. The world has changed so much in the last few years – what worked then is nothing like what works now. It’s funny to think about: 20 years ago, Google wasn’t really a thing. Ten years ago, Facebook was just becoming a real craze in business. And here we are in 2019 and Facebook has waned and Google is still marching on, both behemoths losing the trust of the people.

My, How Things Have Changed… Persevering In 2019

But that’s just a quick snapshot of how things have changed. Thirty years ago, cellphones started to become commonplace. Just ten years ago, iPhones became a thing. Ah, the constant change of communication.

I appreciate the tenacity of S.T. Go

And that’s why I appreciate the tenacity of S.T. Go. The product continues to get better, but it’s always been the best. What changes is perception and the way we reach all of our clients. S.T. Go relies on data, patience, and tenacity.

And the combination of data, patience, and tenacity is a force to be reckoned with.

Risk: Carroll Smith, “The Man That Wrote the Books”

Customer Spotlight

I met Carroll a long, long time ago.

Carroll started his adventure with risk. And he never looked back.

He was a good man. We lost him some years ago now.

Carroll decided to go racing in Italy. It was a risky endeavor. It paid off. He wrote what are largely considered the Bibles of motorsports engineering. Drive to Win, Engineer to Win, Prepare to Win, Tune to Win. All were (and many remain) required reading for all engineering students interested in automotive engineering and race car preparation.

But it all started with that first step. His long and illustrious motorsports career, including working with Carroll Shelby to bring home the wins for Ford at Le Mans, all started by leaving the shores he knew so well.

I’ll never forget when Carroll asked me to make a website for him. It was a shocking honor. And all these years later, it still is.

Though the Smith family has shifted its focus to the ease of working with Amazon, they still manually ship out the orders that come through the site I made for Carroll in 1999, www.CarrollSmith.com

Be like Carroll: take that risk! You might be shocked at what you can achieve if you’re willing to ditch the sure-thing boat to be your best you.

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