BeforeProfit

Brought out the booth to Kelly’s going away party on Thursday night… needless to say it was a pretty big hit! I’ve got another gig lined up tomorrow night as well. Some kinda hair expo thing. Not really sure, but it should be pretty fun regardless!

Having a party? Getting Married?!
You should probably rent a Photo Booth!

In my last leadership meeting the theme was on education. I’m going to try to write up a little bit more on this when I have some free time but here are two very good videos to watch.

A Vision Of Students Today

20/20 Report on “Stupid in America”

Apple has made a few big announcements the past week or so here’s a roundup.

Third party apps coming for the iPhone!

Let me just say it: We want native third party applications on the iPhone, and we plan to have an SDK in developers’ hands in February. We are excited about creating a vibrant third party developer community around the iPhone and enabling hundreds of new applications for our users. With our revolutionary multi-touch interface, powerful hardware and advanced software architecture, we believe we have created the best mobile platform ever for developers.

iTunes plus DRM free tracks now $0.99!

Offering customers the largest catalog of DRM-free music in the world, Apple today expanded iTunes Plus to more than two million tracks while at the same time lowering the price of those tracks to just 99 cents. In addition to artists from EMI’s digital catalog, iTunes Plus now includes artists from Sub Pop, Nettwerk, Beggars Group, IODA, The Orchard and many others. All iTunes Plus tracks feature DRM-free music with high-quality 256 kbps AAC encoding, offering audio quality virtually indistinguishable from the original recordings.

New version of OSX Leopard coming out on October 26th!

Packed with more than 300 new features, Mac OS X Leopard goes on sale Friday, October 26, at 6:00 p.m. at Apple’s retail stores and Apple Authorized Resellers, Apple announced today. And, beginning today, customers can place pre-orders on Apple’s online store. “Leopard, the sixth major release of Mac OS X, is the best upgrade we’ve ever released,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “And everyone gets the ‘Ultimate’ version, packed with all the new innovative features, for just $129.”

And here are some random pictures!

Looking to do a little re-modeling in my kitchen. Need to get some new cabinets and these were by far my favorite at ikea.

Mmmmm driving through sand on the road…. if only it were snow.

This is the scariest hoodie I’ve ever seen. The hood zips up and covers your face. Probably a requested feature from people who rob places.

I’ve been super busy lately, but here are a few pictures!

Currently running billing at work. No so much fun.

Kiteboarder from the other day.

Beach grass down the road from my house.

“The Company” sign that I had made for the Wedding Expo.

I need to clean. Or play less nintendo wii.

This is GVSU’s President playing beer pong with us at the 5/3 ballpark tailgate for the football game.

A rainbow from last week or so

Slangin’ Business!

So last weekend I participated in my first Wedding Expo with the photo booth. I was really pretty nervous about the whole thing since I’ve never even went to an expo before. Would my booth look good enough, would all the equipment hold up alright, etc.

It turned out amazing though! With the help of a bunch of great friends I managed to book well over the 5 rentals I’d hoped to get at the expo. Construction on the new version of the booth continued up until the morning of the expo as we fitted a flash unit into the booth right at the event!

The response to the booth was amazing, I had no idea that people would love it so much! Some of the really great quotes from the day were: “I want one of these [photobooths] more than I want flowers at my wedding” “Everyone is always looking for the next hot thing for weddings, and this Photobooth is it!”

The thing that sold them the quickest, aside from the fun of the actual book was the guest books. I had two out as examples and I think they were the selling point for most of the people. They loved the idea that they would have this great book full of pictures of their guests, in a unique format.

There was another Photobooth set up at the expo from Uptown Photobooths, while I love what they are doing, I didn’t quite understand why they came since they are from Minnesota. They are just starting up just as we are, so I would think they would want to focus on one area, then work to expand. But hey, I’m not one to tell them how to run their business.

Lessons learned at the expo:

-Battery powered flash for the lighting sucks. Flash would shut off after 30 seconds or so and the first picture in the strips would be black since the flash didn’t fire.

-Bottles of water are good to have handy, you mouth gets dry fast when you are talking so much.

-A 12′ roll of carpet will just barely fit into a Dodge Caravan.

-This whole idea is going TONS better than I’d ever planned. Just don’t want to get too big too fast.

Thanks again to everyone that helped out at the Expo I couldn’t have done it without you guys!

Here are some more pictures!

Finished booth with the new sides and corners that my Dad was nice enough to build for me!

Detail view of the edges, Just need to get a frame around the screen now.

There were 3 fashion shows, and I gave away free booth rentals for each one!

The Cottage for lunch and beer after tear down at the expo (which took less than 30 min!)

Wow, I used to have a little respect for him….not any more.

Sorta slow in the beginning, but it starts getting really pretty impressive a little bit into it.

And to think this was on Ellen before I saw it tonight, weird.

Also look for a Wakeskate Video coming soon..

The Real World must be a truly depressing place to live. It’s apparently a realm where new ideas, unfamiliar approaches, and foreign concepts always lose. I’m told that the only thing that works in The Real World is what its inhabitants already know and already do. No matter how flawed or inefficient that way may be.

People who live there are said to be living Real Life. An existence filled with pessimism, despair, and every shade of pitch black imaginable. Yet strangely, these people living Real Lives seem not to be interested in getting out. They are not looking for a change of scenery of the dreary Real World.

Instead, they’re actually trying to recruit! In arguments everywhere, they’re trying to convince those of a sunnier demeanor that they must convert to Real Life or perish. That resisting the Real World is futile. This call persists even in the face of contrary experiences. Tales of people who actually did things differently and still lived to see the sun rise in the morning.

Please don’t be fooled, there’s nothing even remotely attractive about The Real World. It’s a bleak mirage suitable only as a place of communion for those who have lost all hope.

I’m not even going to say anything else about that post. I’d just ruin something about it. So if you read it once, read it again. Via SvN

So the Photobooth business is going pretty well so far. It would be great if I had some more money to spend to make things even better with it, but isn’t that what starting a business is all about? Being strapped for cash in the begining…

Oh well… So I’ve joined a few associations recently! The first decision I finally made was to join up with the Muskegon Chamber of Commerce.

I also recently joined the West Michigan Wedding Association…

So thats an update to some of the new things I belong to now!

ANNNDDDDDDD……
I’ve made a pretty major update to my Photobooth Company website.

I figured it was time to get a little bit more info up there, and try and make my site just a touch nicer than this other photobooth rental site that is also listed in the West Michigan Wedding Association… Anyone like the music and animations from the 90’s he’s got going though? Old School right? Christ….

And if you are bored, and feel like supporting me a little bit, please go and nominate me for Business of the Year

Today I tried logging on to my bank account to check on balances. Evidently the system is currently down, no big deal I guess. I can just check later.

What bothered me though was the format of the error message. If I can’t log on to my account because you are having problems why are you prominently displaying a link for me to try and log on again.

Instead maybe it would be a good idea to provide a form that would automatically e-mail me when the system is back up.

Just seems logical. If anything don’t push me a link for a broken service.