Not much to say here. I was just thinking about what makes a work day good or bad. The number one thing I thought of was the music that I have available to me. I have been listening to music on Lala.com which has given me the ability to have my full music collection with me wherever I have internet access. I suggest making a playlist that you can always work to. For me it is "Those Songs".

I was just getting ready to hop into bed and think about the amount of work I need to get done, or some other completely unproductive worrisome thing and I realized I had made a horrible mistake. In an effort to be as warm and comfortable as possible during my wondrous slumber, I had decided to wear fleece pants after my wife just changed the sheets to flanel. Apparently this just creates too much softness for the laws of science because every time I turned or rolled over my pants stuck to the sheets pulling the covers off of my wife.

The Point?! Same old story: Too much of a good thing is not always a good thing. Applied to branding: Sometimes when you use too much of a good word (buzz words anyone?), process, or gimmick it hurts rather than helps. Everything in moderation.

Remeber this: Be yourself, be your brand, but sometimes too much of a good thing can start to hurt.

What is good design? I speak to clients and other designers about this all of the time. What is good design and good or even real art? Looking at the landscape of design firms even in my home city of Grand Rapids, MI presents me (presumably as a client) with a myriad of confusing choices.

Cost and quality: These two measurements should be related. You pay more for better work. Right? Here you are shopping creative groups for one service or another. How do you know that you are receiving the best value? Remember value does not equal the cheapest. You also don’t have to get the absolute best quality work for it to be valuable. So how do you, as a customer and potential client, know what the best value is?

Remember this: DESIGN = COMMUNICATION.

There is no more to it. I promise. No really, I will argue to the end of my days that the most valuable design is the design that best communicates with you target audience.

So, base your selection of your creative group or design firm on what the answer to this question: Which group will help me most effectively communicate with my potential clients?

Analogy: Which investment is the best? The one that gets you the highest percentage return, or the one that costs the least to get into? In actuality the best investment is the one that provides the highest percentage return within your budget.

This is the last of the Unemployed videos. Why? Because I took a full time position. That's good news. Considering how much response we have received from the first nine episodes and hopefully this one I believe it would be a mistake to close this forum for small business and community marketing.

This sense of community made me think about today's marketing topic. People. We've talked about building community and using references to grow your sales, but not directly about the value of people.

Got a job offer today. Not sure it is one I want to take. I just don't know if I will be able to provide for myself and my wife with it and have the ability to pursue my dream too. It s a really great company though. Not sure what to do. The real question out there is how much support does Unraveled Idea Mill have? Only you can answer that.