Tag Archives: business

Luxury Toys?

Posted on by
Comment

We’re not impressed.

Yesterday, Mike and I drove down to the new Cardinals Stadium in Glendale, AZ for the “Men’s Luxury Toy Expo and Sale.”

Mike and I are big into toys. It isn’t because we like to be conspicuous consumers. We have so few close friends in the area that there’s no one to show off to. It’s just that we like to play with toys. So it’s always nice to see what’s out there to play with.

If your idea of a “luxury toy” includes hot tubs, sand rails (modern day dune buggies), and garage storage solutions, then this show was for you. Unfortunately, those things don’t fall into what we’d consider luxury toys. We were pretty disappointed, since that’s what dominated the show.

To be fair, there were two or three Ferraris (the definitive sports car, in my opinion) and some very nice, mint condition classic cars. And I did like the idea of buying a room on a residential cruise ship to live out the rest of my life on a nonstop, around-the-world cruise. (Now that’s a house boat! I just find the $1.8 million entry fee plus $90K annual maintenance a bit tough to swallow right now.) But there were also vendors selling beef jerky, overpriced plastic shoes, and miracle mops. (In my opinion, if you have enough cash to afford a real luxury toy, you also have enough to pay a professional to keep it clean for you.)

The weirdest thing was seeing an advertisement for one of the garage storage solution places with the same exact layout and colors as my Flying M Air brochure. If that wasn’t a rip off of David’s design work, I don’t know what is. They could have at least changed the color scheme. The ad was in the show brochure and I won’t dignify it (or spread the word about the company) by reproducing it here. I’m just glad they weren’t pushing helicopter tours and charters. I’m trying to use the design for my new branding and it’s not nice to see someone else trying to do the same thing with the same design.

I’d brought along a bunch of Flying M Air brochures and old Sedona/Grand Canyon rack cards with the idea of leaving a few around on tables with other mixed literature. There weren’t any such tables, so I wound up carrying around the brochures for the whole show. That wasn’t so bad because we were only there for about an hour.

I thought the event might be a good place to advertise the business. Imagine bringing Zero-Mike-Lima onto the show floor, all sparkling and clean. That would certainly get some attention! But when I saw the kinds of people walking the floor, I realized that the dreamers outnumbered the buyers by a good margin. (The beef jerky guy was doing a good business but I didn’t see the residential cruise ship guy handing out too many cards.)

I don’t regret going, though. We got to see the inside of Cardinals stadium, which isn’t 100% finished yet. (Looks like they still have some painting to do in the bowels of the arena.) It’s a nice place — very state-of-the-art and the air conditioning works pretty darn good. The show was on the stadium’s concrete floor. The grass, which was growing nicely outside, looked ready to roll in for a game any time. The only thing I regret was not taking a few pictures. It isn’t often that you get to walk on the field (sans grass) for the newest football stadium in the country.

Would I go again? Doubtful. I’ll call later today to see what the exhibitor pricing is like. If it’s affordable, I might give it a try. Depends on how the beginning of my season goes. The show is in February; my big season here in Arizona starts in November. So I have plenty of time to think about it.

Retouched Photos?

Posted on by
2

My own foray into retouching photos.

I’ve been rather absorbed by the story of the Reuters news photographer who had modified photos and sold them to Reuters for publication.

N7139L in FlightOne of the things about it that interests me is that I have been accused of cooking up a photo that I didn’t “create” with photoshop. This image of my first helicopter N7139L, is an actual air-to-air photo, taken by my husband, Mike, from a Piper Cub airplane as we flew in formation. (And yes, that’s me sitting in the pilot seat, looking right at the lead aircraft and its photographer.) The photo appeared on a lot of my advertising materials, including my business card. Yet when I showed it to my aunt in New Jersey, she refused to believe that it was real. She thought the helicopter had been parked on the ground for the photo and that we’d superimposed it over a background photo taken from the air.

I admit that her refusal to believe that I was telling the truth about the photo rattled me. After all, if your family can’t believe you, who can?

Later, however, I admit to cooking up a photo of N630ML before it was built. I didn’t do the cooking, actually. My buddy Bert Monroy, Photoshop expert extraordinaire, did it for me.

N45PG in FlightI gave him this first shot of my friend Tristan flying his helicopter near Vulture Peak. I’d leased Tristan’s helicopter for a season to see if a bigger helicopter would help my business. (It did.) Tristan and I flew in formation in the area while Mike took photos. That’s Tristan in the pilot seat.

N630ML - NOT!I told Bert that I needed a photo of my helicopter to start putting together marketing materials. I asked him if he could make a plain red helicopter, without stripes, and change the N-number to the one I’d have on my helicopter, N630ML. Bert delivered this photo via e-mail within hours. It was easy for him — a straight color change job. I probably could have done it if I knew how. But I didn’t. And yes, that’s still Tristan flying. This photo appeared on slides at the local theater and on my Web site.

N630ML in FlightLater, I flew in formation with my friend Jim and Mike took this photo of the real thing. That’s me in the pilot seat again.

Of these four photos, the only fake is the third one down, with Tristan’s helicopter painted red. Software like Photoshop makes this really easy to do (if you know how).

Be sure to check out my links for today (published at midnight) for more online information regarding the recent retouching of photos in the news.

Howard Mesa

Posted on by
Comment

My windsock.

As I’ve written extensively elsewhere, Mike and I own 40 acres of land at Howard Mesa, which is about halfway between Williams and Valle, Arizona, 5 miles off route 64. If you’ve ever driven from Williams to the Grand Canyon, you’ve passed within 3 miles of it (as the raven flies).

Howard Mesa WindsockThis photo shows my windsock at the top of the property, with a dead tree in the foreground. It was probably taken during the summer; that’s a thundercloud in the making in the distance in the background.

I occasionally land my helicopter not far from the windsock on a gravel pad. It’s a three-hour drive from our house to the property but only an hour by helicopter. We sometimes fly up just for the day — usually to do some work in the shed or check on things.

The dead tree is a whole other story. Here’s the short version.

Imagine a whole lot of land laid out in one square mile sections called…well, sections. The sections are colored on some maps like a checkerboard, with private squares and state land squares. The private squares were owned by cattle ranchers. They contracted with the state to graze their cattle on the state land as well as their private land in what’s known as open range.

Cattle eats grass. The ranchers got the idea that more grass would grow if there were less trees. So they came onto their land (but not the state land) with bulldozers and knocked down all the piñon and juniper pine trees that grew there. The trees died, but since the ranchers didn’t take them away, their carcasses littered the rancher’s land.

The ranchers were wrong. About the same amount of grass grew.

Years passed. New trees grew in place of the old. The ranchers had another brainstorm. They realized that they could make a bunch of money by selling their land to developers. Best of all, with Arizona’s open range laws, they could still graze their cattle on the private property that didn’t fence the cattle out. So they could stay in business without actually owning the land the cattle grazed on.

The developers split up each section of land into 10-, 36-, and 40-acre lots. We bought one of them.

So now you know why we have dead trees like this one on our land.

The good thing about all this: there’s no shortage of firewood.

Howard Mesa, Arizona, photo

New Flying M Air Brochure

Posted on by
1

I work with designer and layout guy extraordinaire, David Van Ness, to get a really professional tri-fold brochure designed.

I’ve decided to dive into marketing in a conscious effort to build my helicopter tour and charter business, Flying M Air. March and April were such incredible months, that I have an inkling of what business could be like if I just tried a little harder to attract it.

Of course, another motive is to market and sell the Southwest Circle Helicopter Adventure excursion. I needed a nice printed brochure to be able to send people on request. But rather than have a bunch of different brochures to produce and send out and store, I decided to go with one tri-fold design.

With the assistance of Certified Folder, I found Teldon Print Media, a print house based in Victoria, BC (Canada). At my request, they FedExed me a bunch of samples and I was very impressed with their work. I was also impressed with their prices, which were about 25% of the cost of other print houses I’d used in the past.

The only trouble was designed. Up to this point, I had designed all of my marketing material — and it showed. I’m very good at emulating, but terrible at coming up with new designs. Although the samples Teldon sent me were full of good ideas, I lacked the Photoshop, Illustrator, and InDesign skills I needed to execute an imitation.

So I looked for help. After a few false leads, I hooked up with David Van Ness, a freelance production guy who has worked with me on several of my Peachpit Press books. Although I do layout (in InDesign) for my Peachpit books, I only know enough to get the job done. David’s job (with me) is to tweak the layout to give it its professional polish. I assume that he does a complete layout job for other authors who don’t do their own packaging.

David admitted that he was like me — he didn’t have the skills to come up with an original design. But he did have far superior InDesign and Photoshop skills than I ever will. I sent him a scan of a sample brochure I liked, along with some copy, photographs, and my company logo. A few mornings later — I think he’s nocturnal — I had a low-res PDF in my e-mail In box, along with FTP info to download the brochure files.

Flying M Air's New BrochureI opened the PDF and could not believe that he’d done such an incredible job in such a short time. It was 95% perfect. And since I had the files, I could take it the other 5% without bothering him.

If you’re interested in seeing what the “final” brochure looks like, download the PDF (816K).

I just uploaded the files (all 46.6 MB of them) to the Teldon Print Media Web site. I’ll get proofs while I’m away in CA this week and, with luck, can turn them around quickly so the print job gets started on time. I should be the proud owner of 25,000 copies of the brochure by the end of the month.

From Teldon, they go to Certified Folder’s storehouses in Page and Flagstaff. Then to brochure racks in Page, Flagstaff, Williams, and Grand Canyon. In September, they move south and start their run in the Phoenix area. And, of course, I’ll have about 1,000 copies sent to me in my office so I can distribute them locally and start marketing to Phoenix resorts.

And none of this would be possible without David’s help. Thank you, David!

Stanley, ID

Posted on by
Comment

Yet another photo from my midlife crisis road trip.

I rolled into Stanley, ID one day on the second half of my trip. I’d started the day in McCall, ID, and would end it in Sheridan, MT. According to my notes, I drove 452 miles that day. It was one of the longest driving days of the trip.

Stanley, IDI was immediately struck by the beauty of Stanley. It was a nice, small town with the Salmon River running through it. The Sawtooth Mountains bordered the area to the southwest, the direction I’d come from.

Stanley has an airport, which I was quick to check out. Unfortunately, the elevation there is 6403. Although that’s fine for operations in my helicopter at less than max gross weight, heavy loads at high temperatures affect performance at that altitude. It would limit my capabilities. And, after all, the whole reason for my trip was to find a summer (or year round) place to live and operate my business. Stanley, although beautiful, was not the answer.

I took this picture as I was heading out of town. I stopped alongside the road, got out of the car, and pointed the camera back toward town. Down along the river, two people were riding by on horseback with a pair of dogs. The drive so far that day had been very refreshing, following one mountain stream or river after another. Although I didn’t know it then, in less than 3 days I’d be back in the desert, missing all that flowing water.