Following the second driest year on record and with near record low storage in California’s largest reservoirs, Governor Gavin Newsom today issued a proclamation extending the drought emergency statewide and further urging Californians to step up their water conservation efforts as the western U.S. faces a potential third dry year.
Regardless of how one feels about governmental powers, I think all of us can agree that if all people and businesses in California use the maximum amount of water, things won’t be so good.
What may IEUA cities do starting June 1?
As a result of the current drought conditions, the Metropolitan Water District has asked the Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) and five other agencies to take emergency actions effective June 1.
[T]he MWD has asked six of its member agencies to consider requiring its customers to restrict outdoor watering to just one day per week, or find other ways to conserve water, according to the large water agency that provides water to 19 million people in six counties.
As a regional wastewater treatment agency, the Agency provides sewage utility services to seven contracting agencies under the Chino Basin Regional Sewage Service Contract: the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Fontana, Montclair, Ontario, Upland, and Cucamonga Valley Water District (CVWD) in the city of Rancho Cucamonga.
In addition to the contracting agencies, the Agency provides wholesale imported water from MWD to seven retail agencies: the cities of Chino, Chino Hills, Ontario, Upland, CVWD in the city of Rancho Cucamonga, Fontana Water Company in the city of Fontana, and Monte Vista Water District (MVWD) in the city of Montclair.
Notice that MWD has only asked that the IEUA “consider” restrictions. Why can’t MWD mandate them? Because the MWD is not the only water provider for the agencies in question. Take the city of Upland, for example:
The City water interests are a result of either a direct water right or indirectly through its shareholder interest (entitlement) in two private mutual water companies. The City has a 93% shareholder interest in West End Consolidated Water Company (WECWco.). The water received from WECWCo. is local groundwater. The City has a 68% shareholder interest in San Antonio Water Company (SAW Co.). Both local groundwater and surface water from San Antonio Canyon is provided by SAW Co. San Antonio canyon surface water supply is subject to availability and is closely tied to rain and snowpack. This local surface is treated at the City’s San Antonio Water Treatment Plant. In addition to the local surface and groundwater supplies, the City invested and owns 22% interest in an 81 million gallon imported water treatment plant, Water Facilities Authority (WFA-JPA), Agua de Lejos located on Benson Avenue north of 17th Street. The WFA water treatment plant receives Northern California State Project imported water from Metropolitan Water District of Southern California (MWD) through Inland Empire Utilities Agency (IEUA) our MWD member agency. In 2013, IEUA completed regional pipeline facilities and began delivering recycled water. Recycled water is predominantly available in the southeastern sector of the City and is mostly used for large landscape irrigation areas, such as the Upland Hill Country Club Golf Course, City Parks, several school grounds and the Euclid Avenue median.
Anyway, if you live in one of the named cities, or in any city in California, be sure to keep up with your local city to see if water restrictions will affect you.
I recently announced a change in business scope for my DBA Bredemarket. Specifically, Bredemarket will no longer accept client work for solutions that identify individuals using (a) friction ridges (including fingerprints and palm prints) and/or (b) faces.
This impacts some companies that previously did business with me, and can potentially impact other companies that want to do business with me. If you are one of these companies, I am no longer available.
Since Bredemarket will no longer help you with your friction ridge/face marketing and writing needs, who will? Who has the expertise to help you? I have two suggestions.
Tandem Technical Writing
Do you need someon who is not only an excellent communicator, but also knows the ins and outs of AFIS and ABIS systems? Turn to Tandem Technical Writing LLC.
I first met Laurel Jew back in 1995 when I started consulting with, and then working for, Printrak. In fact, I joined Printrak when Laurel went on maternity leave. (I was one of two people who joined Printrak at that time. As I’ve previously noted, Laurel needed two people to replace her.)
Laurel worked for Printrak and its predecessor De La Rue Printrak for several years in its proposals organization.
Today, her biometric and communication experience is available to you. Tandem Technical Writing provides its clients with “15 years of proposal writing and biometrics technology background with high win %.”
Why does this matter to you? Because Laurel not only understands your biometric business, but also understands how to communicate to your biometric clients. Not many people can do both, so Laurel is a rarity in this industry.
Perhaps your needs are more technical. Maybe you need someone who is a certified forensics professional, and who has also implemented many biometric systems. If that is your need, then you will want to consider Applied Forensic Services LLC.
I met Mike French in 2009 when Safran acquired Motorola’s biometric business and merged it into its U.S. subsidiary Sagem Morpho, creating MorphoTrak (“Morpho” + “Printrak”). I worked with him at MorphoTrak and IDEMIA until 2020.
Unlike me, Mike is a true forensic professional. (See his LinkedIn profile.) Back in 1994, when I was still learning to spell AFIS, Mike joined the latent print unit at the King County (Washington) Sheriff’s Office, where he spent over a decade before joining Sagem Morpho. He is an IAI-certified Latent Print Examiner, an IEEE-certified Biometric Professional, and an active participant in IAI and other forensic activities. I’ve previously referenced his advice on why agencies should conduct their own AFIS benchmarks.
Why does this matter to you? Because Mike’s consultancy, Applied Forensic Services, can provide expert advice on biometric procurements and implementation, ensuring that you get the biometric system that addresses your needs.
There are other companies that can help you with friction ridge and face marketing, writing, and consultation services.
I specifically mention these two because I have worked with their principals both as an employee during my Printrak-to-IDEMIA years, and as a sole proprietor during my Bredemarket years. Laurel and Mike are both knowledgeable, dedicated, and can add value to your firm or agency.
And, unlike some experienced friction ridge and face experts, Laurel and Mike are still working and have not retired. (“Where have you gone, Peter Higgins…”)
Bredemarket does not accept client work for solutions that identify individuals using (a) friction ridges (including fingerprints and palm prints) and/or (b) faces.
Bredemarket does not accept client work for solutions that identify individuals using secure documents, such as driver’s licenses or passports.
Bredemarket’s standard office hours are now from 8:00 am to 12:00 noon Pacific time on Saturdays. I have discontinued Monday-Friday weekday office hours. I am available by appointment outside of my office hours (please confirm first).
It would be nice if my initial plans for my consultancy Bredemarket were perfect and addressed my consulting needs for years to come. But my plans are NOT perfect, in part because I can’t anticipate what will happen in the future.
And so I iterate. Which is why I’m renaming the Bredemarket General Business Services Facebook group and the Bredemarket Local Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page.
In this post I examine why I created Facebook groups and showcase pages in the first place, why I originally named the Facebook group “Bredemarket General Business Services,” why I subsequently named the LinkedIn showcase page “Bredemarket Local Firm Services,” and why I’m changing things.
Why create Facebook groups and LinkedIn showcase pages?
When I established Bredemarket in 2020, I knew that I wanted to target multiple customers. This sentence on the Bredemarket home page has remained unchanged since 2020:
Bredemarket presently offers its services to identity/biometrics, technology, and general business firms, as well as to nonprofits.
These four customer groups have some different needs. A nonprofit’s concerns differ from those of a fingerprint identification software vendor. Because of this, I wanted to find a way to talk directly to these customers.
So Bredemarket…has Facebook groups that are somewhat similar to the Bredemarket LinkedIn showcase pages. One difference is that I have three groups on Facebook. In addition to the identity and technology groups, I also have a general business group. At this point it didn’t make sense to create a LinkedIn showcase page for general business, but it did make sense for Bredemarket to have such a group on Facebook.
You can see how these Facebook groups (and LinkedIn showcase pages) are derived from my original 2020 statement of Bredemarket’s target markets. To a point; as I noted, I didn’t create a general business showcase page on LinkedIn, and even today I don’t have a nonprofit LinkedIn showcase page or a nonprofit Facebook group.
But I would begin to pivot Bredemarket’s business that summer.
Why I created the Bredemarket Local Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page
As I write this, Bredemarket has no clients in my hometown of Ontario, California, or in any of the nearby cities. In fact, my closest clients are located in Orange County, where I worked for 25 years.
It’s no secret that I’ve been working to rectify that gap and drum up more local business.
After attending Jay Clouse’s September 2021 New Client Challenge, I determined to pursue this local market more aggressively and determined how I was NOT going to pursue Inland Empire West customers.
So when I market to local businesses, I’ll want to do that via relevant Facebook Groups. Obviously I won’t market the local services via LinkedIn or Twitter, because those services are not tailored to local service marketing.
Let me draw out the implied assumption in that statement above, that even the Facebook marketing would be via groups created by other people. It wasn’t like I was going to create my OWN local Facebook group or anything like that. I was going to post in the Facebook groups created by others.
Anyway, proving that my initial plans are NOT perfect, I fairly quickly changed my mind regarding LinkedIn, deciding to create a LinkedIn showcase page devoted to local services, even though I didn’t have (or need) a parallel Facebook group.
And in fact I’d cheat by adapting the artwork for the Bredemarket General Business Services Facebook group and repurpose it for use in the Bredemarket Local Business Services LinkedIn showcase page.
This appeared to be a brilliant idea, and the new local LinkedIn showcase page was successful. Not as successful as the Bredemarket Identity Firm Services LinkedIn page, but it certainly provided me with an avenue to speak just to the local community.
Aren’t I brilliant?
Why I’m changing the names of the Facebook group and LinkedIn showcase page
Well, maybe not so brilliant.
Time went on, and I would share identity stuff to the “Identity Firm Services” showcase page and group, and I would share technology stuff to the “Technology Firm Services” showcase page and group. When I wanted to share local stuff, I’d obviously share it on the Bredemarket Local Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page, and sometimes I’d also share it on the Bredemarket General Business services Facebook group.
But this raised two questions.
What is the Bredemarket General Business Services Facebook group?
The third market category that I created in 2020 isn’t making sense in 2022. If you go to the Bredemarket General Business Services Facebook group today, it’s kind of vague. In fact, you could say it’s, um, general.
If you scroll through the group posts, you’ll see a lot of posts from me that have to do with businesses in California’s Inland Empire.
Because I do not moderate the posts in the group, other people like to post, and their posts can be, um, general. For example, there is one person who occasionally posts things like this.
Now I have no reason to reject the post, because the poster isn’t violating any group rule. However, this person could use the services of a marketing and writing professional. The company is doing SOME things right. such as advertising the services provided, including illustrative pictures, and incorporating a call to action. The call to action, of course, is to call…
…061 531 5144?
For those who aren’t familliar with geography, Kempton Park is outside of Pretoria, in South Africa. Which means that if I had wanted the company to provide a quote when my own roof was damaged by winds, I would have to call the country code 27 first, THEN call the local area code 61 and the local number 531 5144.
Somehow I doubt that Ontario, California is in this company’s service area.
Now I could have posted a comment along the lines of “You idiot! Do you really think that people in this group are going to contract with a roofer on another continent?” But I didn’t do that. Instead, I simply commented with this question:
Over a week later, the original poster hasn’t responded to my question. I guess the poster is too busy writing “Thought the group would like this” posts on every “general business service” Facebook group. (Terrible waste of the poster’s time, when you think about it.)
And that’s what can happen when you create a group for “general business services.” It’s too general.
What is the Bredemarket Local Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page?
Thankfully I avoided this same problem when I created the Bredemarket Local Firm Services LinkedIn showcase page.
Or did I?
If you don’t know me or my background and encounter a showcase page devoted to “local firm services,” what are you going to think?
That’s right. The page name doesn’t mention the locality that is the focus of the page.
Next thing I know, my roofing friend is going to discover my Linkedin showcase page and start posting weekly, with an equal lack of success.
How do I make these better?
So it’s obvious that both the LinkedIn showcase page and Facebook group would benefit from a refocus and a rename.
But what name?
If you had asked me this question in September 2021, I would have chosen the name “Bredemarket Inland Empire West Firm Services.” My local marketing target at that point was businesses in Ontario, California and the surrounding cities. “Inland Empire” was too broad a term for those cities, but “Inland Empire West” is a real estate term that fits nicely in my target market area.
This also tied in with a marketing promotion that I was running at the time, in which I would offer a discount for customers in this immediate area. However, I recently rescinded that promotion (as part of the numerous changes I’m currently making to Bredemarket’s business). Since I wasn’t making money (from an opportunity cost perspective) with my regular package pricing, I certainly wouldn’t make money with DISCOUNTED package pricing.
At the same time, I was getting less strict about keeping my target within the Inland Empire West, and was therefore open to extending throughout the Inland Empire. Although most of my online collateral is currently targeted to the Inland Empire West, I won’t turn down business from Moreno Valley or Redlands.
So perhaps I could use the name “Bredemarket Inland Empire Firm Services,” without the “West.”
But I didn’t like that either.
While “Firm” implies that I work with businesses and not individuals (I don’t write resumes), I figured it would be clearer if I used “B2B” instead of firm. “Business-to-Business” would be better, but that would make the page/group title awfully long. Of course some people don’t know what “B2B” means, but that could be an effective filter; if you don’t know what “B2B” means, you’re not going to use Bredemarket’s services anyway.
Having settled on the title “Bredemarket Inland Empire B2B Services,” it was now a matter of making the title change. (Without changing the legacy URLs and potentially breaking existing links.)
Again, the URLs don’t match the page/group titles because of legacy issues, but I think it’s better than what was before. And hopefully this will focus the content and make it more relevant.
Unless you’re a Pretoria homeowner with a leaky roof.
I’m making a lot of changes at Bredemarket right now, but I haven’t announced all of them.
For example, when I discontinued two of my editing packages (see my previous post “Bredemarket announcement: discontinuation of editing offerings”), I simultaneously raised the prices of two of my writing packages. I didn’t make a formal announcement at the time, for the obvious reason that potential clients usually don’t respond positively to a price increase.
But as I thought about it some more, I realized that there are benefits to explaining why I raised my prices, both from a “macro” perspective and from a “micro” perspective. (Yes, my BA is in Economics.)
Once I explained my rationale in raising consulting package prices, I knew that some potential clients would NOT want to do business with Bredemarket, but that other potential clients definitely WOULD use Bredemarket’s services. And I want to work with the latter group, because they pay better.
Service pricing from the macro perspective
Simplistically, there are two price tiers for people like me who offer writing services. I won’t characterize them with positive or negative adjectives, but those two tiers can be decribed as follows.
One pricing tier for writing services
One of the pricing tiers is definitely lower than the other tier, and these writing services can be provided by anybody, in any location, for a low price.
Which means that if you want to make $22.50 per hour on a 1,000 word project at five cents a word, you need to complete that writing project in…27 minutes.
And now you know why so many pennies per word writers live in the Third World. They can afford to live on these rates.
And why the “guy” quoted in the Reddit comment above didn’t immediately go to his $10 writers. I guess his $10 writers weren’t turning out quality writing at those rates.
The other pricing tier for writing services
Some writers choose not to compete on price, instead competing on expertise and level of service, and/or by targeting a particular clientele. Morning Brew cites a Business Insider behind-the-paywall post about one high-end offering.
Some ghostwriters on LinkedIn are making $500–$700 an hour writing posts for high-powered execs and LinkedInfluencers, according to Insider.
First, look at the market these ghostwriters target: executives and influencers. While the term “LinkedInfluencers” has extremely negative connotations, there are people on LinkedIn who write posts to achieve very specific (and measurable, attainable, realistic, and timely, or SMART) goals, such as talent attraction, lead generation, or revenue realization.
To help their clients reach these SMART goals, the ghostwriters need to provide a superior level of service. The ghostwriters must understand the clients’ goals for the project and work closely with the client to ensure the final written text addresses those goals.
Finally, the ghostwriters need to have one or more types of expertise.
General expertise in writing. Can the ghostwriter effectively communicate the client’s message, incorporating a focus on the client’s customers and an explanation of the benefits the client’s customers can realize by following the client’s advice?
Expertise in the client’s industry. Can the ghostwriter communicate the client’s message in a way that is convincing to the client’s customers, and in a way that establishes the client’s expertise?
Expertise in LinkedIn. Can the ghostwriter produce something that readers on LinkedIn will find? I hesitate to use the word “viral” because of its negative connotations, but if a client wants a LinkedIn article to be read by potential purchasers of electric cars, then the article has to be written in such a way that it will appear on the LinkedIn feeds of potential electric car purchasers.
Guess what? You’re not going to get someone to write that for $10.
Service pricing from the micro perspective
Now let’s look at (some) specifics of my own business, and how my initial pricing affected my business. I’m going to concentrate on two of my service packages: my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service and my Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service.
When I initially started Bredemarket and created these (and other) service packages, I already envisioned that these offering would include production of one (or more) drafts with review by the client, and submission of the final copy.
September 2020 description of the Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service.
And then I started offering both packages to clients, with rates that fell between the $0.01 per word category and the $700 per hour category. Over the next 16 months, I worked on client projects based upon these packages and prices, using Toggl Track to keep track of the time I actually spent on each project.
At the same time I iteratively expanded my process for completing these packages, adding more value to my offering by beefing up the beginning stages of the project (most recently by incorporating new kickoff questions based on Simon Sinke’s Golden Circle) and adding additional services through the course of the project.
At the beginning of 2022, I audited these hours to see the time that I spent on each package project. Then I asked myself: if I had charged my hourly rate instead of the package rate, would I have made more money with the hourly rate, or more money with the package rate? I figured that if I would make more money by charging an hourly rate, then I was losing money with my then-current package rates.
Guess what? I was losing money (from an opportunity cost perspective) because I had underestimated the hours that I would spend on these package projects. In some cases I would have made twice as much at my hourly rate than I did at the package rate.
To address this opportunity cost revenue gap, I had two choices:
Work faster by doing less. (“Who cares about benefits? Who cares about your goals? I’ll just put some words together and we’ll be finished. No, this doesn’t include HAVARD citations.”)
Charge more by raising my consulting package pricing.
Rather than reducing the level of service I provided to clients, I chose to raise my consulting package pricing.
But should I tell anyone that I raised my consulting package prices?
If you look at the September 2020 description of my Bredemarket 400 Short Writing Service above, you’ll see that I didn’t provide my package pricing. I just said “$Quote.” I figured that I would only share this pricing with potential clients who were well into the sales funnel.
This is not uncommon for service providers or product providers. How many times have you gone to a company website to find the price of something and encountered the words “contact us for pricing” or something similar?
In essence, the company will have a salesperson contact you, explain the benefits of the solution in question, and THEN quote the price after you are awed and dazzled by the solution’s benefits.
But there are other views on the matter of exposing vs. not exposing pricing, and there people who state the benefits of providing transparent pricing for services. You can find many sources for the “show pricing” argument, but I like the way that Pia Silva stated the “show priing” case in this Forbes article. Here are two of Silva’s benefits for this approach:
Pricing transparency immediately weeds out bargain shoppers, which are people I’m not interested in working with. If you want a healthy, profitable service business, you must have a decent margin on your work, and that will never be in line with a customer whose only concern is the price point (which is a short-sighted way to make business decisions)….
I believe the best way communicate [values]…is by doing something very transparent that demonstrates integrity, i.e. being upfront about our pricing and not changing it based on what we think the client can afford.
You read about the Bredemarket content creation process. While there are slight differences between the Bredemarket 400 and Bredemarket 2800 content creation processes, each process is extensive, with nine steps. I’m not in the business of “you ask me to write something, and I’ll complete it 27 minutes later.”
Only AFTER you have read about the service and the content creation process do I provide my pricing. It’s kind of like a traditional sales pitch, but in written form.
The U.S. Census provides “quick facts” about U.S. jurisdictions, including business facts. While the business facts are ten years old, they still provide an indication of business health.
For Fontana, the U.S. Census Bureau has documented almost 14,000 firms, over $1 billion in manufacturers shipments, and over $2 billion in retail sales. These figures have presumably increased in the last ten years.
If you own or manage one of these thousands of businesses, and you need to let other businesses know about your offerings, perhaps you should turn to the Fontana, California content marketing expert. Bredemarket can assist your firm with the following:
Both small and large businesses need to attract customers to their companies, their products, and their services. Once potential customers are aware of the company’s business, then they can consider the benefits of the company’s offerings and (hopefully) decide to purchase the company’s products and services.
But what if you don’t want people to buy your company’s products and services?
Edgar Porras, 49, of Moreno Valley, was charged in a criminal information filed today with one count of bid rigging. In a plea agreement also filed today, Porras agreed to plead guilty to the offense.
During the scheme that ran from 2013 through August 2018, Porras conspired “to suppress and restrain competition by rigging bids to obtain selected food contracts offered by the BOP,” according to court documents. To further the scheme, Porras, who was a contractor to a food company identified as “Company A,” agreed with co-conspirators not to compete to obtain the BOP contracts, and collectively they decided which conspirator would submit the lowest – and presumably winning – bid for a contract.
By spending his time on rigging bids, the guilty party made sure that he couldn’t actually spend valuable time improving prison food. And we certainly don’t want that.
If you want to ensure that your business doesn’t make money, then I have two helpful tips for you.
Two TERRIBLE tips for business promotion
Tip 1: It’s all about you
When potential customers research businesses, they are usually looking for a company that can solve their problems. In other words, customers want a business that speaks to the customer’s needs.
However, we all know that the customer is always wrong, and that customers don’t realize what is important to YOU, the business owner. (What is wrong with these customers?)
Therefore, it’s important that your marketing materials talk about YOUR concerns, rather than the concerns of the customer. This will impress the customer, who will obviously realize that their concerns are unimportant compared to YOURS.
Here are three examples of things to include in your marketing materials:
Spend a lot of time talking about when the company was founded, the number of patents and awards held by the company founder, some early stories that you find funny (why isn’t the Bill Gates arrest story on the front page of Microsoft’s website?), and how the company has changed since its earliest days.
When talking about your company’s products and services, be sure to concentrate on the features that impress your employees. Don’t try to apply these products to actual customer needs; customers should be able to figure this out themselves. Or just take the word of your engineers that the product is great.
If you write company-centric rather than customer-centric materials, then you are guaranteed to have customers ignore you, or even better avoid you.
Tip 2: Never update your content
Set it and forget it. It’s an easy way to maintain online content.
Granted, when you first create a website, a blog, or a social media account, creation of initial content is unavoidable. Now it’s quite possible that you can delay the appearance of that content by not posting anything until the content is perfect, but at some point the content is going to have to go live.
But once that unavoidable posting is complete, then your job is done. If you keep the same static content on there, you’ll maintain consistency. To maintain that consistency, be sure to avoid the following three things:
Avoid posting any new content. Once you post new content, then the search engines will flag and highlight the new content. And you don’t want the new content to appear more important than the old content, do you?
Avoid updating old information on your website or social media content. Outdated content such as 2015 copyright dates and references to Windows NT support are powerful messages that accentuate the long time that your company has been in business, without cluttering it up by mentioning anything modern. If your company was established in the 1990s, then animated GIFs and automated MIDI players convey an essential lack of innovation. For example, see http://www.netanimations.net/ (and yes, that’s http, not https).
Avoid updating outdated links. If you have a Twitter account that links to your website, and you fail to pay your web hosting bill, be sure that the Twitter account continues to link to the dead website. When the potential customer encounters the dead website, this will pique the customer’s curiosity and the customer will search for your new website, if any.
Professional salespeople often talk about pre-qualifying leads. If you follow the three steps above, then you will automatically pre-qualify your leads, since any customer who takes the time to find your current information is obviously motivated.
If you want to ignore my advice
Because I am always right, you will obviously follow my advice to alienate potential customers. If you instead choose to attract customers, then you’ll ignore my advice and do the exact opposite of what I say.
But what’s the fun in customer-centric, current content?
Bredemarket 