Noah Masterson

Specialization is Career Suicide

2010-02-16T18:22:53Z

"You're a musician? What instrument?"

"Guitar-bass-drums. Mostly."

I have some version of this conversation every week. If it's not about music, it's about my career trajectory. You know, the usual path of the film and art major turned restaurant critic turned NYC subway musician who became a marketing manager for a financial services company and also built websites and is now a consultant. (I'm leaving a bunch out.)

Refusing to specialize was never a conscious decision. At the time it felt more like dabbling until I achieved competence and then moving onto something else. But I now realize that my "failure" to decide what to do with my life has become my biggest asset. Life is a process of constant adaptation and if I'd stuck with some of my earlier interests at the expense of later ones, at best I'd be a mediocre comic-book artist. At worst, a juggler.

You never know what skills will benefit you later in life. The computer science courses I took in college taught me DOS and Lotus 1-2-3 and nothing about the web. But outside of class I guiltily frequented the pre-web Prodigy network which turned out to be time well spent. As a musician I was never in any danger of commercial success but I learned how to collaborate with other creative people, particularly when I worked with directors and actors at Inverse Theater Company. My writing, most of it doggerel, was published in a few places but more importantly taught me to operate on tight deadlines. And come to think of it, being able to juggle five tennis balls or three machetes is incredibly dorky but requires significant grace under pressure.

Some call me a jack of all trades, which implies, of course, "master of none." But there's an older, better word for it: polymath. It's not such a bad path to take.

Rabbit, Run

2010-02-08T15:39:59Z

It was 1987, close to midnight on a warm Miami night. My friend M and I were taking a shortcut home across an unlit golf course. We were about halfway across when we heard angry voices coming from about 50 yards behind us, then fast-approaching footsteps.

"RUN!" said M, and we ran. I had short legs and was wearing heavy combat boots. M quickly outpaced me and disappeared into the night. I was being chased, alone in the dark, and my predator was closing in. This was not going to end well.

I was 15 and had begun hanging around M a lot. He was a skater kid, a freckled blond who wore baggy shorts and flannel. He lived with his mom in a small house in Coral Gables. His mom was never home so M would skip school, smoke cigarettes and listen to records all day. He had an amazing collection of UK-import Dickies records from the late 70s. His favorite band, though, was Social Distortion. He wore their t-shirt under his flannel practically every day.

M did lots of things to get attention. He gave the impression of someone who did a lot of drugs, although he didn't have any money for drugs, and I never saw him do drugs. One time he said he'd been in a mosh pit the night before and someone with a spiked ring had punched him and cut the inside of his mouth. He pulled down his lower lip to reveal a wide slice along the ridge of his gum. It was years later before I figured out that everyone has that "slice" on their gums. He also gave me one of his Minor Threat records (the iconic one pictured here)—hinting that he wasn't going to be around much longer so he might as well. (M survived at least four more years; I last saw him at UM. I was a student; he was just riding a BMX bike around campus, completely unchanged. A Google search today reveals nothing.)

I too did things to get attention. In fact, just that day M had used a Bic disposable razor to give me a mohawk. It was uneven and left large bloody cuts on my scalp. Later, my driver's ed coach would remark that I had a dead ferret on my head. I also had braces and was small for my age. My appearance during this stage of adolescence once prompted a child crossing the street in ethnically diverse South Miami to remark, "Damn, that's one ugly-ass cracker!" Looking back, he had a point, and my haircut didn't do me any favors.

So I'm running as fast as I can, running for my life, even, and it's not fast enough. Someone bigger and faster and stronger than me, who wants to do me harm, is quite literally breathing down my neck. I reach the far end of the golf course, cross into the backyard of one of the houses on the perimeter when a large hand grabs hold of my t-shirt and yanks me to a stop. I'm caught. I'm dead.

He's winded. He's still holding onto my t-shirt but he's doubled over, catching his breath. "I can't believe I caught you," he wheezes. He's big, much bigger than me, but kind of pasty-looking and baby-faced. He's wearing an unseasonable leather jacket and an unfashionable fedora. He's not someone I would ordinarily find intimidating but now that he's chased me across a golf course and dragged me to a stop I'm plenty intimidated. I'm long past "fight-or-flight" having already fled and lost. Now there is no choice but to fight and I am going to get my ass kicked.

Then a funny thing happens. We look up at the house in whose backyard I am about to get pounded. The house has large sliding-glass doors that lead to a bedroom. A bedside lamp is on, and on the bed are a man and a woman, naked, chubby, mid-coitus. My oppressor releases his grip on my t-shirt and for a moment we just stand there, watching, open-mouthed. Then I quietly slip away into the darkness.

Web Bootcamp Drill #1

2010-01-26T15:43:10Z

Some of my colleagues in marketing asked me to share my knowledge of the web—everything from HTML to social media. They think it will help them in their careers, and it will. But I plan to make them suffer. I set up server space to get them started (the single nice thing I will do for them during this boot camp), but, particularly if you have a web host (I recommend Modwest), you can play along at home on most of the drills. If you're willing to sweat blood, that is.

Drill #1

You have 24 hours to complete this task. Do not ask anyone—especially not me—for help until you have fully Googled the problem on your own.

Download and install a free FTP client. Log in using the protocols I emailed you. Create a directory named whatever you want in /htdocs/www/bootcamp/. (This is your personal directory. You'll see that I have a directory named "sarge.")
Create a second directory within your personal directory. Name this one "images."
Find a picture of someone, preferably someone you know, doing something stupid. (We are going to ridicule this person publicly.) Upload the image to your /images directory.
Next, open a new document in Notepad or Wordpad or SimpleText (not Microsoft Word).
Go to this this page and copy the source code into your document.
In your document, change the code so that page title, headline, and text say something different, and so that it references your image instead of mine.
Save your document as "index.html"
Upload the document to your personal directory.
If you did everything correctly, your web page will appear at www.avenuedmedia.com/bootcamp/name-of-your-personal-directory/
Post a link to your page in the comments of this blog post.

Three Ways Facebook Encourages Banality

2010-01-06T19:15:13Z

I don't find Facebook addictive or even interesting.

I check Facebook once or twice a day and skim updates from friends and family. It's nice to know that individuals with whom I share varying degrees of closeness are still kicking. But that's about all I get out of it: Confirmation that certain people are still alive. Surely there's more to it than that.

The writer Corey Doctorow argues that the subtext of the banal musings posted on Facebook is "I am thinking of you, I care about you, I hope you are well." Maybe so, but Facebook more often feels like a waste of time than any other social media in which I participate. Something about the platform encourages banality. Which is strange, because, unlike Twitter, Facebook was developed as a gated community in which only people you select can see what you post. (Facebook's recent ghastly changes to their privacy defaults are a topic for another post on another day.) So why the hesitation to post anything meaningful?

(Full disclosure: the majority of my posts on Facebook contain maps of where I have ridden my bike. If it can get more banal than that I'm not sure how.)

Facebook undermines conversation. Sure, you can post something, and dozens can comment on it. But it's a free-for-all, like a verbal spitball fight from opposite sides of a large room. The spitballs never connect midair; they just go splat. Since every comment becomes a non-sequitur, people tend to post comments that can stand on their own, bearing little relevance to the original post.
The "Like" button. Is there anything lazier?
Its attempts to be more like Twitter. Even as a late comer to Facebook I recognize that it ain't what it used to be. The Wall, which was once the main selling point, is now subordinated to the News Feeds and Status Updates. (Related: Can anyone explain to me the difference between the two?) At least when you posted on someone's Wall you were attempting a personal connection. Now Facebook functions more like Twitter, except, let's face it, your circle of friends and family isn't nearly as interesting as the strangers you could be inviting to your dinner party on Twitter.

How do we fix Facebook? We don't. You could thread the comments, add a "dislike" button, scrap the Twitter-mimicking. But Facebook's management has made clear that it doesn't want to be fixed. It just wants to monetize you. Time to move on to the next hot social media phenom: picking up the phone.*

*Yes, I know this makes me sound like a smarmy old git. But it's in line with one of my New Year's resolutions to acknowledge special occasions more. I plan to achieve this through snail-mail cards and phone calls and, for the bigger ones, actually planning in advance for once. Because I know something important is being lost when we resort to e-greetings and Wall posts.

Why Twitter?

2009-12-22T19:52:02Z

When Sarah and I worked at a small-town newspaper, we ran a column that asked local citizens to name five guests, living or dead, whom they would invite to a dinner party. Jesus, Elvis, and George W. Bush were the most popular choices.

What does this have to do with Twitter? When people complain that they don't "get" Twitter, that's it's all noise and what-I-had-for-lunch minutia, I describe the way I use Twitter: I treat it like a party with carefully handpicked guests—like Truman Capote's Black & White Ball.

Here's how I do it:

First of all, I limit the number of people I follow to 100. By being picky about whom I follow, I force myself to seek a diverse group of interesting human beings from different walks of life. I might one day follow 200 or maybe 500, but I will never follow thousands of people. I'm pretty sure the only reason to follow thousands of people is to try to get thousands of people to follow you back. Today I have only 72 followers. While I would like to have more, I want people to follow me on the merits of what I post, not just because I am following them.

Back to the party metaphor: What is different about Twitter, compared to most parties I've been to, is that with Twitter it is easy to eject boring, unwanted guests and replace them with more interesting ones.

The other nice thing about Twitter is that it's okay to be a wallflower—or better yet, a fly on the wall. I often go days without tweeting, but I check Twitter constantly just to see how the conversation is going. Because my "guests" are people I know personally and/or they are interesting and/or useful to me, there is always something worth eavesdropping.

So whom do I follow? Right now I am making the transition from full-time employee to self-employed contractor, so my tweetstream is dominated by people in my field and city who provide job leads, tips for freelancers and the like. But I also follow tennis players (@andyroddick, @clijsterskim), politicians (@billwhitefortx, @BarackObama), entertainers (@SarahKSilverman, @geneweingarten, @pennjillette), bloggers (@anildash, @dooce), and a few who have made a name for themselves via Twitter alone (@shitmydadsays, @sween, @mktgdouchebag). And of course, friends and family (for as long as they stay interesting anyway).

In the last couple months my austere Twitter approach has netted me one job interview, one brunch meetup, two or three web services I now consider essential, loads of entertainment and the occasional belly laugh. Could I do it better? Of course I could. My follow list is constantly evolving with the goal of finding the 100 (or 200 or 500) most interesting human beings in the world. This will only get harder—and more fun—as more people sign on.

You can view everyone I'm following here. I'll attempt to sort these out into lists one of these days. And don't forget to follow me!

Birth Control. Or: A Typical Night in the Masterson Household

2009-12-10T17:16:14Z

This is a fairly typical night for us. I have not slept soundly in six years. I don't expect to until both kids are long gone.

8 PM Both kids asleep. Hallelujiah.

10:30 PM Lights out for Sarah and me. Sarah falls asleep pretty quickly. I toss and turn like I always do. Finally start falling asleep when...

11:30 PM Charlie lets out a wail. I fly out of bed to stop him before he wakes Ava. I put my hand on him and he falls back asleep in his crib. I head back to bed and toss and turn until drifting into an uneasy sleep.

2:30 AM Charlie unleashes a scream that peels paint off the walls. I bolt out of bed on autopilot, my eyes still closed when I reach his room. This time he's wide awake, screaming "Mama" and "Daddy." This is the scream of "Even though I'm almost two years old, I didn't eat any dinner, and now I'm starving, and what are you gonna do about it?" Answer: Give him milk at 2:30 a.m. Like a newborn.

Now Charlie is in bed with us. There is no point trying to force him back into his crib. He used to snuggle against Sarah so that I barely noticed him in our bed, but now I'm his preferred victim. He wedges against my back, leaving approximately 8" of mattress on which to lie. Still, I manage to sleep until...

4:30 AM Sarah is shaking me awake. "Ava!" she says. I'm so tired I think she is actually talking to Ava until I realize that she is telling me that Ava is screaming her head off, which she is. Sarah and I have a tacit agreement that I get up for the majority of these episodes because I can function on about 2/3rds the sleep that Sarah needs. It's a plain fact and I harbor no resentment. So off I go to Ava's room.

Upon entering, Ava instantly composes herself and says, "Daddy, I am screaming for two reasons. One, my stomach hurts. Two, I had a bad dream."

"Rest is the best thing for your stomach," I say.

"OK. What about the bad dream?"

She has me there. I am too tired for conversation. "Snuggles from Daddy," I admit.

Ava sets about rearranging approximately 8.5 million stuffed animals to give me more room. I curl myself around her like a question mark and go to sleep on even less square footage than I had in the bed with Charlie. Every time I shift to get comfortable, Ava grabs me and begs me not to leave. Normally I can convince her that she just needs another million animals in her bed and she'll be fine, but again, I am too tired for conversation. I sleep intermittently until...

6:30 AM Sarah enters the room and says she needs to get in the shower. Charlie is still asleep in our bed and can't be left alone. Relishing the idea of 20 minutes in a king-size bed and only a toddler to share it with, I head back to our bedroom, ignoring Ava's protests. Charlie has somehow managed to stretch himself horizontally so that he occupies 80% of the bed. The other 20% is occupied by our smelly cat, Lucie. It's a bad idea to wake either one of them, so I wedge myself in and stare at the ceiling until...

6:50 AM Ava wanders in. I extract myself from my two sleeping companions and lead her into the kitchen to make breakfast. The day has begun.

Quick CMS/Blogging Platform Comparison

2009-11-23T15:28:40Z

I originally launched this site to explore the possibilities of using Movable Type as a full-blown content-management system (CMS). Since then, many professional Movable Type themes have been released that make this possible, even easy. Additionally, I've had an opportunity to play with a few other free platforms. Here is a quick, possibly unfair comparison:

Use Drupal if you need a really complicated website.

Use Wordpress (self-hosted) or Movable Type for everything else. (I'm starting to lean toward Wordpress but still pretty much ambivalent. Right now, Movable Type is about the same as Wordpress in terms of features and usability, but harder to install. This could change with each new version.)

Typepad is clunky if you need a lot of customization, which virtually every client will. I imagine the hosted version of Wordpress is similar but I haven't used it yet.

Stay far, far away from Joomla.

How to win industry awards

2009-10-27T19:01:39Z

Winning industry awards can be a great way to get recognition for your company and, perhaps more importantly, your personal contributions. Who pays the most attention to them? Your bosses. That's why industry awards are important, even if no one outside your field gives a poop.

I have a pretty good track record of winning industry awards. For example, this year I submitted five entries to the Mutual Fund Education Alliance's STAR Awards and won all five. While I certainly stand by the accomplishments the submissions represent, I think at least 50% of the reason we won is the submissions themselves. Here are some steps you can take to improve your chances.

1. Choose the award carefully.

Most of us will never win an Academy Award—or even a Webby, for that matter. Choose awards you have a realistic chance of winning, but that are still meaningful to people within your industry. Within the mutual fund industry, everyone has heard of the MFEA. There were enough entrants to make it a legitimate competition, but not so many that we'd get creamed by bigger players with more resources. (It especially helped that entrants were grouped according to assets under management, so we competed against other mid-size companies.)

2. Follow the rules.

It's amazing how many awards submissions get discarded because people can't follow the rules of the competition. If you're asked for a one-sentence summary, keep your summary to one sentence. If they want quantitative evidence, include quantitative evidence. If they want eleventeen copies of each submission, bound together with masticated Zebra Stripe gum and airplane glue... you get the idea. However, following the rules is no excuse to be boring. (See steps #3 and #4).

3. Know your audience.

You are writing for the judges—and no one else. Judges have to sift through dozens, maybe even hundreds or thousands, of identical-seeming submissions. They're tired. Their eyes look like chewed grapes. They kinda wish they had never volunteered for this gig. (I once judged an independent film contest and the experience nearly put me down for a dirt nap.) So you need to make your submission stand out. Which leads to...

4. Treat your award submission as a marketing opportunity.

Because you are marketing to the judges, and no one else, there is no need to be stodgy. No need to employ industry jargon that most of us hate. Write succinctly and confidently. Don't be afraid to be a little edgy, too. And above all, BE BRIEF! (I pared the communications objective of one submission down to one sentence, something like: "The goal of this web page is to provide financial advisors immediate access to the most salient information with the lowest possible barrier to entry." Boom!) You are not being judged on how many synonyms you can find for "synergy" and "leverage." You are being judged on how well you can paint a picture for the judges, without wasting a moment of their time. As Strunk and White wrote, "Omit needless words."

My most recent experience is in the financial services industry. But these tactics apply to all industries that are big enough to celebrate their own, which is most of 'em. I hope you find this useful. Let me know if you do. Good luck!

Reviews of albums I did not listen to

2009-10-22T02:19:02Z

Ever run across a piece of writing that seems only vaguely familiar until you realize that you wrote it? I found these Amazon reviews from 2000 that I (apparently) penned. The millennial Noah was cleverer—and had more spare time—than the modern Noah. Enjoy.

Music
Price: $6.99

Availability: In Stock

1 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

Better Than Patsy Cline!, November 12, 2000

On this disc, Madonna--the most diversely talented human since the late Steve Allen--explores her heretofore unexplored country/western side with phenomenal results.

The opener, "Music," carries the listener on a delightful magic carpet ride to a smoky honky-tonk, complete with sawdust on the floor and bottles a-flyin' through the air. She out Patsy Clines Patsy Cline when she pulls aching low notes from her diaphragm.

"Impressive Instant" explores the fleeting nature of love: a star struck female rodeo clown is impressed by a swaggering bull rider -- but only for an instant. The twang of a distant lap steel only adds to the heartbreak.

"I Deserve It" is about good love gone bad, as a trailer resident with low self-esteem cries herself to sleep at night after her nightly beating by her truck-driving husband. Willie Nelson ably acts the part of the hubby in this soul-wrenching duet.

"What it Feels Like for a Girl" answers an age-old question: why do girls like horseback riding so much?

Finally, "Gone" is a chicken-fried tribute to Greg Ginn's post-Black Flag days in the band by the same name. Merle Haggard lends his voice to this a cappela number; Madonna and Merle conjure memories of old-stlye barbershop quartets.

Bravo! Five Stars! Buy it Now!

No Strings Attached
Price: $8.98

Availability: In Stock

2 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

It's About the Lyrics, November 8, 2000

It's time to overlook the N'Sync boys' hunkiness and good manners, and focus on what really counts in the post-modern age: the lyrics. And guess what? N'Sync's got lyrics as good as their dance moves!

"Just Got Paid" is a Springsteen-esque tribute to the working class. As the title suggests, a man has "just got paid," and wishes to celebrate with his special someone. Could that someone be you? You can only hope! This song accurately portrays the hand-to-mouth existence of middle America.

"No Strings Attached" has a cunning double meaning: Is it about the boys' management by an evil puppeteer? Or is it about a relationship that indulges in carnal pleasures, with none of the messy dating or phone calls. Good show, boys!

"I Thought She Knew" is also a song that pop historians will be attempting to decipher for many years to come. On first glance, the knowledge in question seems to be whether the author is currently in a long-term relationship (i.e. "I thought she knew I already had a girlfriend"). But the sly references to "the clinic" leads one to wonder about altogether different interpretations.

Finally, "It Makes Me Ill" is the lyrical coup on the "No Strings Attached" CD. Food allergies are a sensitive topic for youngsters, and never has it been so poignantly addressed.

There can be no doubt that, lyrically, N'Sync are the Bob Dylan of their generation. Poetry books could well outsell their albums!

Amazon Reviews Matter, Part Two

2009-10-13T15:54:30Z

Back in July, I posited that favorable customer reviews led to a considerable spike in Amazon sales of the book I co-published with my wife, DC BABY. This seems pretty obvious, but several articles on this subject have been recently published in major media.

For example:

Web Shoppers Trust Customer Reviews More Than Friends (Adweek)
Companies are learning to make the most out of customers' online reviews of their products (WSJ)

I figured it was a good time for an update. Since my initial post, sales have continued to rise:

I think what makes our story unique is that all we had to do was ask our customers for the reviews. It was that simple.

The family business

2009-10-09T16:42:51Z

My brother, John, and his business partner, Steven, have been running the web-hosting company Modwest for nearly 10 years. In 2006 they launched Grupthink, a free-for-all discussion platform, and just recently Grupthinkpowered.com, the professional version of Grupthink that allows businesses to create their own branded feedback communities.

It's been interesting to sit on the sidelines all these years watching my brother grow from rudderless grad student to big-time entrepreneur and business-owner. He's not only gainfully employed, but he gainfully employs other people—and that's really something. (I'm sure he's been just as amused by my career arc from punk rocker to financial dude.)

Now that we're older and more settled, our professional interests have converged and it's become apparent that the timing is good for me to do a little consulting for Modwest/Grupthink. It's all very pro-bono-loosey-goosey right now, but I really like what I am seeing in both business lines.

Modwest began in 2000 as a scrappy startup in Missoula, Montana, positioning themselves as a lean, open-source-supporting alternative to the bloated juggernauts then ruling the industry. When others crashed and burned, Modwest rose from the ashes. By 2002 they had tripled their customer base and have been on an upward trajectory ever since, upgrading office space every few years. (They now own space in the historic Wilma building in downtown Missoula.)

I'm consulting for Modwest to figure out how to grow their business to the next level in an increasingly competitive field. The biggest thing Modwest has going for it is its unparelleled customer service—which makes my job pretty easy, because empires can be built on that alone. (*cough* *Zappos* *cough*)

Grupthink began in 2006 as an offshoot of Modwest (all social networks need a web host, after all) with its highly addictive and fun feedback community at Grupthink.com. At Grupthink, you can create a "topic" in the form of an open-ended question (e.g. "What is the greatest love story of all time?", "If you could make anything illegal, what would it be?") and then the community takes over to provide their answers. Answers can then be ranked, commented on, flagged for being particularly funny, insightful, obscene, etc. The best topics take on lives of their own, inspiring more topics, comments, links and so on. It's crazy and fun and like the wild west of social networks—the platform is so flexible that literally anything goes, with the community itself responsible for most of its own moderation.

Early on it became evident that Grupthink had the potential to become a powerful tool for businesses. In 2007, co-founder Steven Sundheim was invited to speak at an MIT innovation lab where he caught the interest of an innovation leader from a well-known consumer-products company. (Name withheld by request.) They began working with that company in 2007, creating a private, customized version of Grupthink that powered online focus groups. That collaboration led to further refinement of Grupthink's business applications, and now any company can start their own, Grupthink-powered communities at grupthinkpowered.com.

The challenge for me and for Grupthink is that it's such a great product, with so many potential uses, it's hard to know where to begin. Their current clients range from the aforementioned consumer-products company using Grupthink for online focus groups to a site for hardcore gamers, GuildWarsIdeas.com, where fans of the Guild Wars videogame can make their voices heard. I see opportunity for Grupthink in the SaaS space—small to mid-size businesses with a large, decentralized customer base. Once Grupthink builds a little steam there will be no stopping it. So we're looking at where to focus our energies first, where to spend ad dollars, and so on.

Exciting times, and I'm thankful John and Steven are allowing me to be part of it.

Quick video of the kids

2009-09-24T01:19:50Z

Shot this last weekend in our new Austin house. This video demonstrates both the sibling rivalry we're dealing with and the reason we don't have much video of the kids -- they can't keep their hands off the camera!

Recent Discoveries

2009-09-08T15:11:06Z

I'm working on a long post about Charles Willeford that I might never complete. In the meantime, here are some websites I've discovered recently.

Why There Are No Girls in San Francisco

"The progression was this: Hippies were like, “Yeah, free love man, stop getting all hung up on artificial, culturally contingent and totally oppressive conventions of hygiene and sexuality, man,” and the Man was like, “Hey stop that, that’s disgusting,” and Hippies were like, “Try and stop us” and then Nature was like, “AIDS.”"

Slow Web

"There's a web that's well-considered and worth savoring. We'll show you where."

Alice and Kev

"This is an experiment in playing a homeless family in The Sims 3. I created two Sims, moved them in to a place made to look like an abandoned park, removed all of their remaining money, and then attempted to help them survive without taking any job promotions or easy cash routes." (Needs to be updated, but worth reading from the beginning!)

Straight Sets

NY Times tennis blog.

This is Austin...

2009-08-10T22:43:02Z

...at least it's consistent!

Amazon Reviews Matter: An Experiment in "Free"

2009-07-27T21:45:22Z

We're always looking for new ways to sell copies of my wife's book, DC BABY. (Lowering the price works every time, but that has the added effect of, well, lowering the price.)

The book is available through a variety of vendors, including Amazon. The latest edition of the book has been available on Amazon since fall 2008. But even though the book has sold at a steady clip, no one posted any reviews until last week. As of today there are 11 reviews, nearly all with a 5-star rating. How did we do it? It's simple: We asked. We also offered a free e-book in exchange for an Amazon review. Less than half of the reviewers requested the e-book; the rest just did it because they felt like it.

The results? In just one week, sales for the month have nearly doubled, as demonstrated in this chart:

Lessons learned? It never hurts to ask. And the collective voice of your community is more powerful than any sales pitch you can dream of.