adaptability

Adaptability: German Coins – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Adapt or die!

Ron Guth has a numismatic career spanning decades as a pinnacle expert. He’s an author, an experienced executive, an auctioneer, … and proprietor of German Coins.

Guth built his first website around the same time we started our business – around 1998. (We started in 1999.) And as the Internet has changed, Ron Guth has changed with it.

As most of our successful clients, Guth embodies our quoter’s thought. Jessica Hagedorn is a bit of a maverick and found success in many ways – all of them through knowing how and when to adapt.

German Coins: Adapting to the Market

I had the great honor of working with Ron Guth when we did some marketing work for PCGS (Collector’s Universe) and handling the marketing for the second tranche brought up from the Ship of Gold. We worked together on more than that, too. It was always great working with Guth. He’s such a pro! Soft spoken, self-effacing, kind, and one of the most knowledgeable and sharp individuals you will ever meet.

And you have to be to take on the niche of numismatics that is German Coins! Coins of most countries are complex and intricate. There are entire libraries dedicated to the two-hundred denominations of U.S. Coins through history.

But German Coins encompass not only the intricacies of the modern era (West German, East German, and Unified Germany), but the upheavals of the 20th century and going back through the German States. Forget 200 denominations, how about 200 States, each with it’s own unique set of non-decimal denominations! And then there’s porcelain coinage, notgeld, precious metals coinage, territories – it’s insane. For reference: if you’ve ever seen the phone book size Krause “Standard Catalog of World Coins”, you know that of the three inches of material, US coins inhabit… maybe 1/8th inch of the 1900-2000 volume. For the 1800-1900 volume, twice that. German States comprise a full inch of the 1700-1800 Krause.

Ron Guth is one of the few sharp enough to take on such a daunting task.

But if you want a deep and rich niche of numismatics to delve into, German Coins are for you! That would be one helluva type set.

We began helping Guth with GermanCoins.com a few years ago. We added a shopping cart to his site, and gave it a quick redesign at that time. More recently, we relaunched the site with an all-new design that makes the site easier and faster than ever.

This quick video shows the changes the site has seen through its life.

Check it out now to see the latest design: https://germancoins.com

Adaptability: An Interfanatic Quality

Adaptability is the simple secret of survival.

Jessica Hagedorn

To survive and yes to thrive, we have to change. We have seen so much change through our 20 years in business. From Netscape to Google, from MySpace to Facebook, from Nokia to iPhones, from AdWords to Yelp, we’ve seen so many fads come and go.

One thing that hasn’t changed: having your own website to tell your story the way you want to tell it is the way to go. You’re not reliant on some external force presenting your message. It’s on you. You get what you want.

“I don’t need a website, I just use Facebook.” Now that facebook is the home of fake news and toxicity on the Internet, that may not be the place for you. Plenty of businesses use facebook successfully. But if you want your message shown without distraction, it may not be the best place to showcase your products and services.

“I don’t need a website, I just use Yelp.” Which is great, so long as you have 5-star reviews! But what happens when Yelp doesn’t prioritize your correct reviews, but rather chooses to showcase some nutjob’s? You have to pay their fee, and even then you may not get what you want.

Websites are not the be-all, end-all, but I’ve heard so many times through my career that “websites are a thing of the past”, and yet here we are.

Kinda like Ron Guth and German Coins. They adapt.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Power Business Website Production

Last week, I told you about our Website Management services, which keeps sites running strong and keep the surprises away. Today, let’s talk about our Power Business Website production.

We’ve adapted this service multiple times through the years. The main thing you get in any service is labor – our prices are determined by the time it takes to properly complete the service you need. In the case of Power Business Website Production, we build a proper business website for you with either a focus on SEO (which most businesses care about) or speed (which is important, but not always the priority.) If you want both, look for our The Works service, which includes both incredible SEO, incredible speed and performance, and more. If neither are critical, look at our Basic Site Production.

Most customers we’ve experienced are most focused on SEO – getting traffic to their site. We’ve always done some SEO service in our builds, it’s just a requirement of the times. But to really focus on SEO in 2021, there’s considerable extra labor involved. And the results are always worth it – especially in the long run.

“…we invest extra time with our SEO-focused builds, we invest extra time in lightning performance for speed-focused builds.”

Some customers are not interested in SEO, (surprisingly.) For those customers, we emphasize the speed and performance of their website. When you have a business that is not concerned with SEO, it’s because you have enough customers – you just want referrals to have something sharp to see when they check you out. As we invest extra time with our SEO-focused build, we invest extra time in lightning performance for speed-focused builds. We have a couple of options here, including headless website builds, that might work best for your application. Talk to us about your needs and we’ll guide you.

If you focus on speed with your Power Business Website Build, there can still be some SEO done. If you focus on SEO with your Power Business Website Build, there will still be good performance. But getting those last few percent of each are labor intensive, so that’s what we do. We invest the labor on your behalf to get you the website you want.

Interfanatic: Adapting to Thrive

Our business changes every second of every day. We don’t do the same thing we did in 1999. Our systems and processes have evolved to adapt to the current business model that works best for our clients. What hasn’t changed is our commitment to excellence. We haven’t changed our willingness to what’s needed to ensure we do everything in our power to help them be successful.

You see, some things need to be adapted. Others, like doing what’s best for our customers, do not need to change.


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Adaptability: Allen Berg Racing School – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Adaptability enforces creativity, and creativity is adaptability.

Pearl Zhu

This time we’re in requires adaptability. Many people resist adaptation under the auspice of not liking to be told what to do. They may not like that, but also likely: they don’t like change.

Change can be scary. But you either embrace it and go with it or resist. Resist you may with all your might, but the fact is you will have to adapt, at least on some level.

The Internet and of course digital marketing were completely different in 1999. I remember hearing about this new thing called Netscape Navigator while I was in college. Then hearing about this thing called Google. It was supposed to be better than AOL or Yahoo. It was certainly simpler.

And then came widened connectivity as people started to ditch modems. Then phones had internet connections, and people could text. Then facebook. And now, the current flavor of the month is…?

Through it, we had to adapt. We adapted as people. And here in this digital information realm especially, businesses that adapt can thrive. Others have tried to go too far and failed. But through it all is a major change in the way we find and process information.

If you refused to adapt, you might be okay. You may still get some calls from the Yellow Pages, but there are companies who thrive with tons of leads from nothing but social media. They adapted. They went with the change.

One such company who chose to adapt is Allen Berg Racing Schools. When I think of adapting, I always think of that fighter Allen, who insisted upon succeeding. He adapted, and in doing so put himself in a place to succeed.

Adaptability: An Interfanatic Quality

Adaptation is not unique to the business of the Internet. Adapting is almost always a difficult piece of progress. Adaptation requires compromise. Most people don’t like to compromise – they want to keep things the way they are, so they’re comfortable and know what to expect.

But there are some that relish the challenge. There are some people that recognize the need for change and for adaptation to that change. There are some who exploit changes with their ability to adapt. Others give up and fail. Those who succeed adapt.

For me, I enjoy doing what works. Unfortunately, there are many people of ill will who exploit what works to their advantage – but to the detriment of others. So, “what works” in our business unfortunately changes rapidly and regularly. And so we must adapt. The sooner we adapt, the sooner we’re back to what works.

Zhu explains that adaptability and creativity are one in the same. Being creative, bringing a creative approach to a problem is adapting to conquer it.

The Indomitable Spirit of Allen Berg, He Who Adapts to Succeed

The industry of motorsports racing schools is a difficult one. There have been many players, and most have fallen by the wayside as they struggled to adapt. Allen Berg marches on.

“Berg continues that success with what has become one of the largest open wheel racing school on the planet. He did it with adaptation.”

Allen Berg is a Canadian man who raced Formula One with Michael Schumacher. Well, even he would say that he raced in the same races with Schumacher, but not really with him. To succeed in Formula One, as in life, as in business, you must have a critical combination of skill, perseverance, and perhaps most important: luck.

Many people fail to acknowledge that last one. Luck is perhaps the most important factor. And yes, I’ve heard time and time again, “we make our own luck”, but the truth is we do what we can and others around us may help. There are plenty of great ideas and nearly successful people out there who are able to recognize the importance of luck. There are some extremely successful people who are unable or unwilling to recognize that luck played an important part in their success because they’d rather believe they did it all themselves.

Allen Berg is both. He made it to the top tier of motor racing, only to be stymied before further progress. But making it into Formula One is and always has been an incredible feat in itself.

Now, Berg continues that success with what has become one of the largest open wheel racing school on the planet. He did it with adaptation.

The plucky Berg would not be defeated. It is that determination that has made his own luck and helped his school to be successful. He continued to come up with creative ideas, to enlist the help of bright people, and to work hard until his school became the prominent one that it is.

So when he came to us years ago searching for new ways to adapt his website and his digital marketing to a changing world, it was a great honor and pleasure to consult and work with Allen Berg.

It’s easy for successful people to talk about their success. Now that Allen Berg has adapted to create success, he can tell you his story.

Interfanatic Service Focus: Interfanatic Power Site Production

Interfanatic‘s brand of website production requires constant adaptation. Adapting to the constantly changing digital environment of 2021 is demanding, but we’re up for the challenge. We do what works until it doesn’t, or until there is a better way. Then we add that better way into our systems, into our processes, and that becomes what works. Until it doesn’t, and then we adapt again. We’re always on the search for and implementation of what works.

But we do so slowly – not quickly abandoning what has worked. Sometimes what worked in the past will work again. Sometimes what seems like a better way forward is not after further testing and more experience. So we take our time to adapt – we adapt to do what is best, but not for the sake of change. We want our customers to trust our systems and processes.

I think that’s why we have built many great customer relationships through the decades.

Interfanatic: Continual Adaptation

2020 and 2021 surely require radical adaptation we as a people are not accustomed to. When adaptation is convenient and comfortable, we hardly notice how much things have changed. But when it is inconvenient and uncomfortable, our default as a society is to resist.

Sometimes the price of resistance is too great. At Interfanatic, we have grown comfortable being uncomfortable so that our customers don’t have to be – so our customers don’t even have to notice.


This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

Adaptability, an Interfanatic Quality. Interfanatic Digital Marketing founder Ryan Delane takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.
Adaptability, an Interfanatic Quality. Interfanatic Digital Marketing founder Ryan Delane takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

A sunrise of a new day. 2021 did not bring with it a clear, bright new future. 2021 will be hard. But hopefully, it has brought us all a renewed spirit to adapt, do what’s right, and understand that life will not always be as we wish it to be. But the more we work together, the better we can make it for ourselves, for those closest to us, and for everyone.

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Adaptability: Peter Getoff – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

Enjoying success requires the ability to adapt.

Nolan Ryan

Nolan Ryan stayed on top of baseball – in one of the most taxing positions – for an incredibly long time. He says here that he achieved that with adaptability.

Sometimes a company comes out of the gate looking huge. They seem to be doing everything right. Their customers love them. But even if they had the right product or service mix to answer consumer needs for a specific time, they won’t last. Just as they analyzed and adapted, to their opening moment, they have to keep analyzing and adapting.

Sears. Kodak. K-Mart. JC Penneys. All retail giants, gone.

The one I find most interesting is Sears. One of the original catalog companies is flailing and failing in 2020. Because somehow, they have not adapted their catalog model to the Internet: the most recent catalog going to everyone in the world.

On the face of it, they should be perfectly positioned to OWN the Internet and Internet retail. And yet, here comes a book seller who puts them and all other book sellers out of business. It’s remarkable.

Adapt. Just like Ryan suggest we need to.

Adaptability: An Interfanatic Quality

Because there are so many companies that come out of the gate without any way to monetize but billions of fake dollars in investment, there are hundreds of flavors of the month in this bizz. I tend to ignore all of them at first.

Once a company has been around for a while, once I feel it will be a viable long-term solution for filling needs, I start to pay attention.

If we tried to adapt to every new flavor of the month, we’d never get anything done. But if we did not adapt to the time-tested shifts in our industry, we wouldn’t be in business for over 20 years.

So, we adapt. An in many ways, we continually innovate. What we do is work in a way that is beneficial for our customers to do so.

Peter Getoff, Psychotherapist, Corporate Consultant and Trainer – Continually Adapting

We’re working with Peter Getoff to help people learn more about his business. He’s a very successful psychotherapist, corporate consultant, and an nfp management trainer in West Los Angeles.

And after working with Peter for some time, it’s clear that he understands the need to adapt. More than most. Even though he’s already quite successful, he wants to do more for his community, and getting to that next level requires adaptation.

It’s a pleasure to work with Getoff, and in many ways it’s because he’s willing to listen and change the things that need to be changed.

Even though he’s already quite successful, Getoff wants to do more for his community, and getting to that next level requires adaptation.”

Getoff’s industry is heavily influenced by the digital world, and he has chosen to embrace that digital world. To adapt – to work with it – to further his practice and his involvement.

By adapting to the world around him, Peter Getoff serves better himself, his customers, and his community. He acknowledges that things around him are changing and need more change. And he makes himself a positive part of that changing action.

Adapting to your Customers: Interfanatic Power Search Advertising with Setup

We have many great way to invest a small amount a learn a ton about your customers. One of the most efficient and enlightening is Search Advertising, like Google and Bing Ads.

You start with what you think you know about your customers. And sometimes you’re right. Sometimes you learn. And when you learn, you can adapt your business to better serve your customers.

For example, you run some ads for Product 1 you offer in Location A. But from running ads, you find that nobody in Location A is searching for Product 1. People in Location B are. Potential customers in Location A are looking for something like Product 1, but not exactly the same thing.

If you want to sell to the people in Location A, you can adapt your business by selling a different product. If you want to sell to people in Location B, you change your product to get them what they’re looking for. And, you can continue to run ads in different locations until you find a location with customers interested in your inventory of Product 1.

You might never figure this out if you never ran any ads. You can find out so much, so inexpensively, so fast. Search Ads are a great way to learn about your business so that you can adapt it to reach the customers are looking for.

And with Interfanatic, learning about your customers and product fit can be very, very inexpensive.

Interfanatic and Adaptability

After 20 years of working with many businesses, we have ideas to help you adapt. We can help you learn about where your business is failing, and where it is succeeding. But to adapt, you must first begin, and you must first show willingness to listen.

We’re here to be a resource to great businesses. To help them be greater.

Like Nolan Ryan, we’ve adapted to much, and we can help you adapt, too.


This week’s image:
Interfanatic‘s founder, Ryan Delane, takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

Adaptability, an Interfanatic Quality. Interfanatic Digital Marketing founder Ryan Delane takes or creates every image you see in our social feed.

The Long Beach Grand Prix. To win, these cars adapted. I took this photograph shortly after the conclusion of the sports car race on the Long Beach Grand Prix weekend. These cars are obviously designed to go fast. Their designers also created them to be elegant examples of adaptability. But so are all of the cars that raced. To win, engineers adapted these cars to the circuit and to their drivers better than any other cars. Just like business, these cars have strict rules they must keep. The cars that adapt best and stay quickest, longest, and adapt the most over the course of the race are the ones that win.

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Loyalty: Checkered Past – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

“I’ll take fifty percent efficiency to get one hundred percent loyalty.”

Sam Goldwyn

Samuel Goldwyn is no saint, but I suppose the tired excuse that he was a product of his time fits. But what he was, was an incredibly successful businessman. And if he will take loyalty over efficiency, I’ll believe him.

We’re all about efficiency. At Interfanatic, we’re all about systems and processes that ensure success, are efficient, and are sustainable.

But loyalty – sustainability in people – is a beautiful thing. Having somebody you can depend on is about as good as it gets.

Immediately, I think of Chris Locke. Locke’s Checkered Past Racing and Checkered Past Productions™, and all of his successful business relationships, are surely built on his loyalty. Not just being good to everyone he meets, but being good to the right people.

Locke has enjoyed being a major proponent of the Lotus brand in historic motorsports for decades. And a fine purveyor of their story, he is – driving everything from Jimmy Clark to Mario Andretti’s Formula One cars. And many other wonderful historic race cars.

But now, as he establishes himself as successful in event and film productions, he’ll surely look to rely on and practice more of his famous loyalty – with the right people.

We work hard to earn loyal customers. And our hard work has paid off. And we remain loyal to our customers, working hard for them when times get tough so that we can all enjoy the spoils when things get good.

So is having somebody we can trust more important than having somebody who will finish the job quickly? Over the long haul, yes. We aim for both, but we know that when recessions hit and things get bleak, we want to be with the right people, and have the right people.

It was Sam Goldwyn’s way. It’s the Interfanatic way. And that’s Chris Locke’s Checkered Past way.

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Adaptability: Team Tyrrell – Interfanatic Customer Spotlight

…the most successful people are those who accept, and adapt to constant change.

Paul Lutus

The Internet is a sea of constant change. We must be like water, and conform to its incessant morphing waves.

Through 20 years, we’ve watched revolution after revolution, heard about millions of “shortcuts to success”, but stuck to doing things the right way.

In that, we’re reminded of Team Tyrrell, Ken Tyrrell’s Formula One constructor dating from the 1960’s. In the early days, Ken’s only job was to give the brilliant Jackie Stewart a good enough car to win. Ken did his job.

The way to make a car win a race is to engineer it so that it’s easy to drive. Tyrrell’s most successful cars weren’t easy to drive at first, but with hard work, they adapted the chassis to the job. And with a brilliant driver up to the task, they were able to make the aspects that were most difficult into absolute advantages, securing easy wins with regularity.

The cars were so good in fact, that Jackie’s lesser-known team mate won and could have won many more races. Francois Cevert was an excellent driver, but no Jackie Stewart. Nonetheless, because the cars were adaptable, Cevert was able to beat Jackie Stewart on his day with the same machinery – no easy feat.

Tyrrell had to remain vigilant, his cars adaptable to the ever changing conditions and tracks around the world.

We must remain vigilant and adaptable to the ever-changing environment of online business.

It has been our pleasure to be associated with Team Tyrrell during its vintage motorsport campaigns. Many of the cars that were successful in their day are still fan favorites, running around the country at historic motorsport events. We at Interfanatic are pleased and humbled have our name associated with such an iconic brand as Team Tyrrell.

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