Expect heavy large business lobbying against this proposed ballot measure in Upland. Because if they have to pay a debilitating $865 in fees, they’ll shutter their business and join Elon and Chevron in Texas.
“Under the existing system, each $20,000 a business makes is taxed in $54 increments. Businesses reach the $864 cap when they have roughly $320,000 in gross sales….
“If approved by voters, the Nov. 5 measure would mean businesses would pay $50 for every $100,000 they generate in revenue….Meanwhile, the measure would increase the cap on business license taxes to $29,500.”
For the record, Bredemarket is based in Ontario, and I’m glad I’m not subject to Upland’s current licensing fees.
A person in Upland, California posted this on the local NextDoor. While anecdotal and not statistical, in this case the geolocation capabilities of a device (in this case AirPods) identified someone in possession of a stolen vehicle.
There is a popular practice in which people ARE well aware of the original message, but only some of them discern the hidden message, or metamessage, behind those words.
And you don’t have to look to business communication to find examples of this. Take the romantic world, in which the statement “If you go out with me I’ll treat you like the princess you are!” conveys the metamessage of predatory desperation. In the business world, “Let me take that under consideration” means that the speaker is not considering the proposal for a nanosecond.
Sometimes many of us can’t discern the metamessage until long after the message is stated.
Remember the message that Whitney Houston gave to Diane Sawyer?
Respect: We treat others as we would like to be treated ourselves. We do not tolerate abusive or disrespectful treatment. Ruthlessness, callousness and arrogance don’t belong here.
Integrity: We work with customers and prospects openly, honestly and sincerely. When we say we will do something, we will do it; when we say we cannot or will not do something, then we won’t do it.
Communication: We have an obligation to communicate. Here, we take the time to talk with one another…and to listen. We believe that information is meant to move and that information moves people.
Excellence: We are satisfied with nothing less than the very best in everything we do. We will continue to raise the bar for everyone. The great fun here will be for all of us to discover just how good we can really be.
Now to be fair to Houston, the cocaine detected in her toxicology report may not have been CRACK cocaine, and cocaine was not the only substance detected. But now we know that while crack may have been “wack,” cocaine was OK, and marijuana, Xanax, and other things were OK too.
I have no desire to be fair to Enron, but I guess we can say that “the very best in everything we do” can be defined as “maximizing personal value,” that there isn’t an “obligation to communicate” EVERYTHING, and that falsifying records does not necessarily mean ruthlessness or arrogance.
When the metamessage agrees with the message
How often do you roll your eyes in amusement when a business says something?
Conversely, how often do you nod your head in agreement when a business says something?
Now I’ll grant that there’s not universal agreement on whether Company X is truthful in its messaging. For every person who thinks that Apple is the last guardian of privacy on ths planet, there is someone else who is convinced that Apple is an evil corporation who has (and I quote an anonymous source) “become what they accused Microsoft of.”
But it doesn’t matter what the world thinks.
What matters is what your prospect thinks.
Does your prospect think your company is telling the truth?
Does your prospect think your company is lying?
Does your prospect need more information to make a decision?
How case studies help you reach message-metamessage agreement
One powerful way to convince a doubting prospect is via a case study.
It always helps when someone else is singing your company’s praises. Especially when the subject of the case study backs up what you’ve been claiming all along.
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.
Even people who live in Ontario, California may not know the story of the “mule car” in the median of Euclid Avenue at B St. You can see the mule car behind me in the “Cloudy days at the mule car” video below.
(And yes, sometimes the sun DOESN’T shine in Southern California.)
Four truths about the Ontario mule car
There are four things about the mule car that we know as fact.
1. The Ontario mule car began service in 1888
The single-car train line connected Ontario, North Ontario (North Ontario was later known as Upland), and San Antonio Heights (near 24th and Mountain today), and benefited local residents by providing an easy way to travel between the three establishments. As the Historical Marker Database website notes, more and more people settled on the master-planned Euclid Avenue in the years after Ontario was established in 1882, and the train line provided an easy way to travel north and south.
2. The Ontario mule car benefited from gravity
For those who are not familiar with San Antonio Heights, Upland, or Ontario, the northernmost community (San Antonio Heights) is near the mountains, and (according to the Electric Railway Historical Association) there is an elevation drop of 1200 feet over the ten miles from San Antonio Heights to Ontario.
Of course, from the southern perspective of Ontario (see this Pacific Electric Railway page for a picture of the railway looking north), there is an increase in elevation of 1200 feet, which is why the mules were needed to pull the train up the hill. The uphill climb took about an hour.
Once the train reached San Antonio Heights and began its descent back to Ontario, the mules were no longer needed to pull the car.
[O]n the return trip the motive power climbed aboard a tiny trailer and coasted down with the car.
Since this is the Bredemarket blog, I can’t let this story pass without discussing the benefits of this system:
Faster travel to on the southbound route to Ontario due to the faster downhill time.
No use of power for the southbound route.
Greater energy on the northbound route due to the rest that the mules received on the southbound journey.
(For additional information on benefits, click here.)
3. After electrification in 1895, the mule-less train line continued service until 1928
After several years, the train was electrified and the mules were no longer needed to power the train. This is when the train celebrated its heyday.
A thirty-acre amusement park was built by the company of San Antonio Heights, with a powerhouse adjoining. Heavy crowds were transported along Euclid Ave. in the early days, for the line connected Ontario with Upland, provided connections between the (Southern Pacific) Station at Ontario and the Santa Fe Station at Upland, and cared for the thongs bound for pleasure-seeking at the Park.
Unfortunately, I haven’t been able to find any additional information about the original 30-acre amusement park. Today’s “San Antonio Park” has ball fields, BBQ, picnic tables, a picnic shelter/gazebo, a playground, and restrooms, plus the historical San Antonio Heights Railroad Company Waiting Station. Fun, but not THAT fun.
And, of course, this provided benefits to various stakeholders:
The rail line benefited from increased revenue from passengers who wanted to connect from other rail lines to get to destinations on the route, most notably the park.
The park benefited from a convenient way to arrive, something that we seem to have lost today, since neither Ontario International Airport nor Los Angeles International Airport enjoy direct train service. (The Omnitrans 61 bus route goes to Ontario Airport every 20-30 minutes, and some day the Boring Company may establish a train connection.)
Passengers benefited from an easy way to get to this park.
(For additional information on benefits, click here.)
Ownership of the train line passed from the Ontario Electric Company to the Pacific Light & Power Corporation in 1908, and eventually to Southern Pacific in 1912, where it became the Pacific Electric Ontario & San Antonio Heights Line.
Eventually this rail line, like all rail lines in Southern California, ran into hard times because of our growing adoption of motor bus and automobile travel.
Line cut back to La Cima on 4 July 1924; on 1 November 1924, cut back to Upland. On 6 October. 1928, Ontario-Upland Line abandoned…. In the abandonment hearing in 1928, PE produced records which tended to show that this line was hopelessly incapable of earning even operating expenses.
If you visit the mule car at Euclid and B and wonder at how well-preserved it is, that’s because this isn’t the original 1887 mule car, which was lost to the winds of history. This is a replica, built in 1956-1957 and restored in approximately 1974. As the inscription on the plaque notes:
In 1956, William Richardson headed a group of citizens to have a replica of the original Mule Car constructed for the city’s 75th anniversary in 1957. With donated funds “a couple of prop guys from the MGM Studios in Hollywood” recreated it, working from old photos. After the 1957 Mule celebration, the Mule Car was stored in the City Yards, abandoned and forgotten.
In memory of their son Donald, who worked for the City of Ontario, Kip and Elinore Carlson and their friends restored the Mule Car and constructed this facility. On April 28, 1974, this Mule Car was dedicated “to the whole community.”
There is one thing about the mule car that may or may not be true, but it makes for a good story. Both hmdb.org and erha.org, as well as other sites such as our local Best Western website, tell the story of what happened to the mules after the train route was electrified and the mules were no longer needed.
According to the sources, the mules were sold to a farmer, who put the mules to work on his farm. This worked out for the farmer…half of the time. When the mules were required to plow uphill, they did so with no complaints.
However, according to the story, the mules refused to work downhill.
Bredemarket presently offers its services to identity/biometrics, technology, and general business firms, as well as to nonprofits. I offer my services to firms in my hometown of Ontario, California, as well as firms in Eastvale, Fontana, Montclair, Rancho Cucamonga, Upland, other cities of the Inland Empire West, and throughout the United States.
This post concentrates on the services that Bredemarket can provide to businesses in my local area. Read on if you own a small, arty business in the Emporia Arts District of Ontario…
…or perhaps a larger, less arty business north of Holt in Ontario, or perhaps even a business in one of the other cities that I mentioned, or one of the ones I didn’t (sorry Narod).
There are a lot of local businesses out there
Even if you don’t count sole proprietors (such as myself) or freelancers, there are somewhere around 7.7 million businesses in the United States. (This figure is from 2016; I’m not sure if it’s gone up or gone down in the last five years.) Now if you include sole proprietors in the total, then you’re talking about 32 million businesses. (This particular number may have actually increased over time.)
Obviously I can’t target them all. Well, I could try, but it would be a little ridiculous.
So what if I took a subset of those 32 million businesses and tried to see if Bredemarket could serve that subset?
The local small business persona
When you want to market to a particular group, you develop a persona that represents that group. You can then develop a profile of that persona: the persona’s needs, aspirations, and expectations; the persona’s underlying goals and values; and perhaps some other elements. The persona may be developed via extensive research, or perhaps via…a little less quantification.
When I initially looked at this topic last September, I concentrated on a particular persona, but my thoughts on this topic have evolved over time. While I will still serve artists as I initially proposed last September, I’m now thinking of other businesses that can best use the type of content that I provide.
For example, the business may be an incorporated business that is based on the Inland Empire West, provides its products or services to customers in the local area, provides excellent service that is loved by its existing customers, and needs to get the word out to new potential customers by creating content that can be downloaded from a company website, shared via a company social media account, or handed out at a trade show or other in-person event.
Regarding the values of this particular persona, you can probably already deduce some of them based upon the customer love for the company.
The business puts the customer first and strives to provide services that satisfy its customers.
However, the business also prioritizes the well-being of its employees.
While the business may not have explicitly articulated a vision, its actions testify to a vision of excellent service, customer satisfaction, and care for employees.
But what does this business need in terms of types of content? For my example, these businesses are ones that need customer-facing content such as the following:
A document (online or printed) that explains the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides, and that discusses the benefits that the product(s)/service(s) offers to the customers. This document may take the form of a product/service description, or it may take the form of a white paper. For example, your business might issue a white paper entitled “Seven Mandatory Requirements for a Green Widget,” and the white paper just might happen to mention at the end that your green widget just happens to meet all seven mandatory requirements. (Coincidence? I think not.)
Portion of the concluding section of a white paper in which Bredemarket provided the text.
A document (online or printed) that tells a story about how an individual customer benefited from the product(s) or service(s) that the business provides. You could call such a document a case study, or you could call it a testimonial. Or you could call it a casetimonial.
These types of documents are more valuable to some businesses than to others. Your average convenience store has little need for a 3,000 word white paper. But perhaps your business has this sort of need.
How many words should your content contain?
When I originally wrote this last September, I started off by discussing my two standard packages, based on word length. But now that I’ve thought about it a bit more, there are some questions that you need to ask BEFORE deciding on the content length. (We’ll get to content length later.)
(Owen Lovejoy) “How long should a man’s legs be in proportion to his body?”
(Abraham Lincoln) “I have not given the matter much consideration, but on first blush I should judge they ought to be long enough to reach from his body to the ground.”
Abraham Lincoln. (Legs not shown.) By Hesler, Alexander, 1823-1895 – This image is available from the United States Library of Congress’s Prints and Photographs divisionunder the digital ID cph.3a36988.This tag does not indicate the copyright status of the attached work. A normal copyright tag is still required. See Commons:Licensing for more information., Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=18705107
So how far away is the ground? Let’s ask some other questions first before we determine the answer to content length.
Bredemarket’s initial questions for you
Before I create a single word, I start by asking you some questions about your content to make sure our project starts on the right foot. (Even though I am left-footed.)
What is the topic of the content?
What is the goal that you want to achieve with the content?
What are the benefits (not features, but benefits) that your end customers can realize by using your product or service?
What is the target audience for the content?
Once I’ve asked you these and other questions (such as a potential outline), we will both have a good idea of how long the final piece needs to be.
The length of the content also dictates the length and complexity of the review process.
Returning to the content length question
Once we have a good idea of the content length, there are three options that we can pursue to actually create the content.
If your content is longer, say 2800 to 3200 words, then I create the content using a similar (but more detailed) process through my Bredemarket 2800 Medium Writing Service.
If your content falls between these two lengths, or is longer than 3200 words, or needs a more rapid delivery time, we’ll talk and come up with a solution.
(And we’ll even come up with a spiffy name if you like)
When I established the Bredemarket Yelp account, I sadly had to inform two inquirers that my services (what I do) did not include resume writing services.
But I just discovered that if you are near Upland, California, you can obtain resume writing services for free.
Today (March 29) and every Tuesday at 4:00 pm, the Upland Library hosts a resume writing workshop, “Resume Runners.” And unlike Bredemarket’s services, Upland Library services are free.
I recently talked about planning for various scenarios, but I didn’t image something like this. Consider the following:
Amazon delivery drivers are measured on their ability to deliver packages. Kinda like U.S. Postal Service employees, but Amazon has better measurement tools.
Upland, California lies just south of a sparsely inhabited mountain range. Even though the mountain range has semi-desert conditions, the mountains are teeming with wildlife.
Put those two together, and you have this story from Los Angeles’ ABC station.
Yes, that’s an Amazon driver in the foreground, raising his hands to try to scare a bear away so he can make his delivery. He was successful.
The full Storyful video can be found here. (And of course it’s a Ring video. You didn’t expect a Nest video, did you?)
By the way, if your business has a story to tell, Bredemarket can help. (Psst: Upland businesses should scroll to the end of this page for a special “locals only” discount.)
If you would like Bredemarket to help your business tell your story…
Bredemarket 