A few Graceland and Sun Studios photos…

We had a great day today, we were in the first group to arrive at Graceland where we went through the entire house and grounds tour twice…

At the front door of Graceland, it is a very humble (and very cool) house considering how wealthy Elvis was….

Everyone should have a Jungle Room in their house.  I am convinced of this.

Kevin looked closely at all of the Elvis clothing items, he is looking for a more rockstar look for Influence 2010! Maybe Gold Lame with sequins would work great…

Elvis and his parents are buried on the Graceland property and we showed our respects to The King…

We had lunch on Beale Street and the Blues City Cafe where I had a half rack of the best ribs in Memphis, and we walked past B.B.King’s and down Beale Street.  Then I felt that no trip to Memphis is complete without a trip to the Peabody Hotel roof for a view of the mighty Mississippi and downtown Memphis.  (Of course we also saw the ducks in the fountain, and their new Duck Palace on the roof)…

Then we headed on to the legendary Sun Studios where Elvis Presley recorded his first song which he paid them $3 to record.  Others who have recorded in this studio: Carl Perkins, Johnny Cash, Roy Orbison, U2, Jerry Lee Lewis, B.B. King, and a who’s-who of Blues and Country legends…

Here’s the original office and desk where the 18 year old Elvis approached the Memphis Recording Studio (later Sun Records) to record his first record.

The Million Dollar Quarter was L-R Jerry Lee Lewis, Carl Perkins, Elvis Presley and Johnny Cash.
When you add Kevin Hogan, you get the Million Dollar Quintet…

They claim this is the real microphone, and they asked us not to lick it!  There is an ‘X’ on the floor where Elvis stood to record, and Bob Dylan came to Sun Studios recently, walked into the studio, went to the X, kissed it, and left… True Story!

After the Sun Studios tour, Kevin picked up the Gene Simmons guitar and strummed a few chords.  He didn’t sing and he wasn’t arrested.

A close up of Gene Simmons autograph on the Guitar..Notice the $ in $IMMONS

Total elapsed time 7 hours to see it all.  We took hundreds of pictures and videos today and look forward to sharing more in the future.

Have a great day…

Rob

Hi, Just landed in Memphis. Beautiful evening… Here’s one of my favorite songs to listen to with this post…

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I have been to Memphis twice before in the past ten years.  It is even more of a Music City in my mind than Nashville.  There are so many great historical roots of the Blues here and they culminated in the birth of Rock and Roll in the form of Memphis’ most famous son– Elvis Presley.

Elvis was (maybe still is) a master at total domination of his market.  I think there are many things that come in to play here:

1. originality
2. authenticity
3. a little luck- right place, right time
4. massive over delivery to his audience
5. willing to embrace new popular media (like movies)
6. raw talent
7. a flair for self-promotion
8. a solid team to support him

There are more, and I’ll be looking for them tomorrow as I tour the grounds. Stay tuned.

And isn’t this song by Marc Cohn, “Walking in Memphis” great?

Saw the ghost of Elvis
On Union Avenue
Followed him up to the gates of Graceland
Then I watched him walk right through
Now security they did not see him
They just hovered ’round his tomb
But there’s a pretty little thing
Waiting for the King
Down in the Jungle Room

Seize the Microphone…

Rob

A little detour into entertainment…

I went and saw Star Trek with my 13-year old son yesterday and it was great fun.  And it stayed very true to the series as well… For me, this was kind of like watching the last Star Wars episode (Revenge of the Sith) as the last half hour or so as they were filling in all the pieces of the puzzle to setup the story that we all know and loved…

Each time one of the beloved Star Trek characters would arrive, it was like another piece of the puzzle falling into place… Kirk, Spock, Bones, Chekov, Uhura, Scotty… I thought they did a good job with the backstories too.  And the effects and the overall plot was very entertaining (except for the fact that they violated one of the major no-no’s of science fiction which only Sci-fi and StarTrek purists will likely care about. I can’t say more without spoiling the plot)

They even kept the most annoying (yet endearing) feature of Star Trek-  whenever there is danger, the absolute top leaders head off to battle the leaders of the enemies usually hand-to-hand… As if World War 2 was won when FDR and Churchill swam the English Channel, gained the beach at Normandy and then marched to Berlin to finish off Hitler personally in a sword fight. 

Highly recommended, and it makes a few good business points as well—

If you know you are right, fight for what you believe in.

There is always a little more that can be had, even when you are being assured that they’re “giving her all she’s got”

Never back a Romulan in an important business negotiation.

And then last night was the bloated three-hour finale of The Celebrity Apprentice which was a pretty entertaining season until the final five minutes when the despicable exceuse for a human being Joan Rivers won.  (even though Joan had already lost repeatedly over the prior weeks because of Godwin’s Law which states that when you compare your opponent to Hitler, you lose automatically)

I used to respect Joan’s business acumen although I never liked her (and her talentless daughter Melissa’s) red-carpet schtick or Joan’s version of shrewish comedy… But Trump crowned her the winner over poker champion Annie Duke who mopped the floor with Joan Rivers the entire season.  Annie raised 3x as much money for charity in the final challenge– $465,000 plus vs. $150,000—yet she lost.  Trump is a buffoon, and this show lost all credibility for me—it is nothing but a scripted drama as far as I am concerned.  I hope they go back to real people on this show, the Celebrity version is pretty much dead for me…

Grrr…

Rob

At the Frank Kern event I was in the front row so I had perfect spot to take pictures and Twitter them.

I was also in the right place when they brought in a Britney Spears impersonating Boy Shakira. This happened during a roast of Frank Kern where he “launched” his new website “FrankKernSexTape.com”.  So, I had this video, and I decided to try and build a list from that video, as well as to generate traffic to my website.  Mainly as an exercise in how to do it.  We’ll see how well it works…

And the Springsteen concert last night was amazing, I was 5 feet from the stage, I got a lot of video and I have posted the first one here…the last two minutes of this are awesome… and no politics all night…

Back to regular posts tomorrow…

Rob

A bit of entertainment on this Sunday, since I am going to see Springsteen in Atlanta tonight, I hope to be five feet from the stage.  Worst case I will be thirty feet away on the floor like this concert last year in Charlotte…

And I’m testing out this plug-in at the same time, hope it works…

Rob

Hi,

I just saw “The Wrestler” and thought it was great.  

Mickey Rourke plays “Randy the Ram”, an aging pro wrestler, totally broke and twenty years older than his heyday… still playing to small crowds of nostalgic wrestling fans.  He works part-time in a supermarket to help make ends meet.  He lives in a trailer (when he can pay his rent and isn’t forced to sleep in his beatup van) and his only daughter wants nothing to do with him, having been let down too many times before.

Marisa Tomei plays “Cassidy”, an aging stripper who is becoming rapidly outshone by the younger models and she is slowly coming to grips with her plight.  Mickey tries to begin a non-customer relationship with Cassidy and is rebuffed, but he keeps trying.

Then The Ram has a major health issue that threatens what small bit is left of his wrestling career….  The wrestling footage is realistic and awesome, and Marisa isn’t so bad either as the stripper love interest!

Here are a few takeaways I got that can be applied to life and business…

1. when you get a second chance to make something right, don’t screw it up

2. reinvent yourself as you go along or it’ll be too late one day

3. Wrestling may be “fake”, but those guys are devoted to their job and are willing to work and suffer

4. keep promises to family and friends, don’t end up alone…

5. don’t waste the Bruce Springsteen tune in the white text on black end credits, use in the movie…

Well worth seeing it and it is less than 2 hours… Rourke is nominated for the Academy Award for acting, as is Tomei for Supporting Actress, and it deserved a Best Picture nod in my opinion… (Slumdog Millionaire was better and should win the Best Picture though) 

Seize the Day!

Rob

Is Your Corporation Protecting Your Assets?

 There was a tremendous amount of action, my greatest complaint was that the villain just wasn’t on a par with the best Bond villains… a guy named Mr. Greene trying to corner the Bolivian water supply just doesn’t quite meet the standard in my book.   This was the problem with Casino Royale as well, I guess I just prefer world domination.  I suppose that I should take up my argument with Ian Fleming, the author… (They are running out of Bond novels and shorts to turn into movies)…
 
Today, we watched the 1964 James Bond classic “Goldfinger” as a comparison… Sean Connery has always been my favorite Bond but I have to say that

With that said, here’s what I think they missed with the latest Bond:

1.      The opening Bond song stunk.  And the opening credit sequence that went with it was lame as well.

2.     They should have let Q and Miss Moneypenny have their token sequence, at least in passing.  This is one of the ways that we mark time in the Bond history.

3.     They should have let Bond introduce himself as “Bond, James Bond…” once and let him order a “Shaken not Stirred” Martini (as it was, it sounded like a Gordon’s product placement).

I just think it is better to have these throwbacks to the past, as a way to keep the Bond story fresh yet true to its roots.  When you realize that they have been making Bond movies since 1962 (the year I was born—Dr. No was released) it seems that it is a small price to pay to maintain this amount of consistency.  They can have their hard-to-believe chases, and incredible action-fight scenes, and the machine gun fire at point-blank range with Bond unscathed, but keep the old James Bond classic bits…

Rob Northrup…

Is Your Corporation Protecting Your Assets?

The new James Bond .007 “Quantum of Solace” opens this weekend in the US, and all indications are that it will do very well…

This despite the fact that most people haven’t a clue what a “Quantum” or a “Solace” is.  How can that happen?

Because the people who make James Bond movies have been able to create an authentic, memorable character that the target audience identifies with and wants to connect with.  And. remarkably, they have been able to create this character over more than thirty years with numerous actors taking on the lead role of James Bond. 

When you go to a James Bond movie, you know that you will get fast action, unbelievable plots involving world domination, pretty scenery and stunning women, and a glimpse into a sophisticated lifestyle.  We know all about his quirks and we expect to hear Bond order a martini at least once, we expect to have a meeting with Q, and we expect some flirting between Bond and Miss Moneypenny, we expect a female counterpart with a risqué name…  There is something timeless about this and it brings us back to the first time we ever saw a Bond film, when we were younger. 

Apparently, they have decided in Quantum of Solace to not do a few of these expected things, relying more on plot and big explosions, and less on the classic Bond idiosyncrasies.  Once you lose the character and his back story, Bond becomes just another clever good-guy spy.  And there are plenty of movies about those, Bond has always remained special…

How to relate James Bond .007 to business?

…everything that you do to build your relationship needs to be based on authentic repeatable stories and actions.  How you got started, how products were created and why, what your policies are relating to customer service, what you like to do in your free time, what is your PURPOSE for being in this business (besides the money).    And you need to make the whole thing congruent…

The difference between you and your competitors is they have a different story and a different business philosophy.  In many cases, they have one that is very garbled and hard to decipher, and often incongruent.  Incongruence can kill your  sales because it often hits people at the gut level of intuition. Something doesn’t FEEL right, and the sale is lost.  Perhaps my friend Intuitive John will have more to say about this big problem for many companies…

Stand out from the crowd with a story that attracts customers and is the authentic YOU at the same time.  And never get tired of telling the same story, you hear it often, the customer doesn’t hear it often enough.

I’ll post a review of the movie this weekend, and I’ll be watching for more Business Lessons…