GoHuman Blog

1) Register on GoHuman.com

2) Say “Yes” to our Newsletter when registering (so we can communicate with you directly about the contest)

3) Send an email to Contests@GoHuman.com with your suggestion on how GoHuman can work better to help you and your business become more successful.

During the 12-week contest, GoHuman’s contest judges will email a short questionnaire to semi-finalists and interview 10 finalists by email for each prize, before we pick a winner.

Winners will receive the following ($5,000 in total value!)

• $100 Google AdWords Certificate (or more)
• 2 weeks professional AdWords Account Management (or longer)
• GoHuman Winner Blog Feature
• A “Give it Forward” Blog written by a Marketing Consultant
• Your own mini-contest Marketing Support inside and outside GoHuman
• Social Media Consulting Package: strategy, content, implementation
• 6-12 month Premium GoHuman Account

Here are the revised contest dates:

• 4/25: Santa Fe / New Mexico Winner Announcement
• 5/23: Atlanta Winner Announcement
• 6/20: Anywhere, USA Winner Announcement

Please note: Winners must meet the criteria in our finalist questionnaire, including basic age and eligibility requirements, as well as agree to be featured and participate in our “Give it Forward” contest promotions, and key Google AdWord terms that will be referenced in our next weekly blog on the contest. Our “Give it Forward” model invites the winner to support its marketing initiatives to grow your business by providing your own giveaway which we’ll use to increase awareness for your business. The official rules can be found on our contest rules page.

We can’t wait for your suggestions, and to show our lucky winners what GoHuman can do for your business.

We’ll, we’re certainly loco for local, and our mission is to support you, the local business owners who make up our core customer base.  But we also know that investing in developing custom products and services of value to you will help us as much as it helps you.  So we conceived of this four-month “Give it Forward” contest in support of our core mission, to change the way our world works.

The specifics of our Marketing Giveaways are also tailored to support the roll out of premium functionality and content for all our customers within GoHuman.com.  Giving our exciting new products and services away is a great way to test-market and fine-tune our premium products while delivering value to our customers.  And when we roll out a custom “Give it Forward” campaign for our four lucky winners, they’ll have the same benefit.

For everyone who doesn’t win, we’ll publish the results for your review.  We”ll all be able to quantify the value of these products and services, helping GoHuman.com establish the go-forward price tag.  And as a special benefit to all contestants, we’ll offer you a limited time 50% discount to engage the same team to help you grow your business.

So what are you waiting for?  Follow the simple entry guidelines and you’ll be entered into our contest.

Our team can’t wait to help you succeed!

Apply basic analysis to these concepts, constructs and models, and realize that even the idea of a Free Market is an oxymoron. Markets are created by agreed upon rules. What currency will be used, and how is the value of that currency established?  By market forces, of course, but regulation supports the accuracy and flow of information.

How do we assess the value of the “pigs in the poke”? By weight, by squeal? And what agency do we trust to provide the independent assessment?  My obvious point here is that without regulation, you have no market whatsoever, free or otherwise.

The picture abovet represents a marketplace of the past.  It’s best to learn from history, while leaning towards the future.

GoHuman‘s approach includes transparency, through our ratings system, and leveling of the playing field, leveraging technology and local reputation to help the smallest compete with the largest.  Please join us in changing the way our world works!

The Co-Founders of GoHuman restructured the company in late 2011 so that we could focus first and foremost on serving the smallest of local businesses.  We wanted to architect the company and our business model to enable a sustainable grass-roots movement with an immune system capable of resisting the temptation to astroturf our way to success.

In our first quarter we’ve focused on repairing and rebuilding our infrastructure, partnered with a non-profit to ensure our heart is in the right place, grown our stable of author/bloggers, moved away from Wells Fargo Bank to a Credit Union, and announced Real Estate as our first industry focus area.

The upcoming Change the Way GoHuman Works for You! contest is the next step in helping to sweeten the pot for the GoHuman community, as we work together to build something valuable, real, and sustainable.

More grass, less turf.

We encourage all of you who have an interest in these and other topics related to Real Estate to spread the word about this industry focus, and to help us grow the community of communities needed to own, vs. just occupy.  This is yet another way in which GoHuman is working to “change the way your world works” —  for the better.

All of this is a great start, but we NEED YOU to complete her assistance program! Without donations, our mission cannot succeed. So take a moment and sign up for free on GoHuman.com, mention BFR, and we’ll donate another dollar for Dawn on your behalf!

After you’ve done that, visit BFR’s site to donate more towards Dawn’s cause, and view updates on all our successful families and events. BFR thanks the GoHuman community for your continued support.

If your presence doesn’t make an impact… your absence won’t make a difference.

GoHuman.com has had its share of struggles with associates who are more interested in marketing than sales, more interested in talk than the urgency of driving results.  Counting Twitter followers, for example, instead of GoHuman.com registrations, leaves me asking  “Where’s the beef?”

Put another way: how do you motivate marketing folks to be more bottom-line outcome oriented?

Let’s contrast two nervous teenage boys who both want a chance with the prettiest girl at the dance.

The marketing teenager signs up for dance lessons, updates his wardrobe, follows the latest movies, music groups, and articles on “how to catch her attention,” chooses a hairstyle and an outfit, puts on cologne, brushes his teeth and…  well, you get the point.

In the meantime, the sales teenager asked her to dance, and they are chatting at a coffee shop as he asks her out on a more serious date.

Steven Covey said, “Start with the end in mind.”  Figure out what you want your potential customer to do (with GoHuman.com it’s Register and post on our site). Then find the best time and place to ask them to do it.  And finally, ask them to do it.  Easier said than done, I know.

Some of our marketing efforts started too many steps back from that, with flip-phone contests, Facebook pages and Twitter.  Those are certainly great marketing objectives, but if we’re not asking our potential customers to dance with us we are not investing our limited resources wisely.

We’ll be working with you to find the best ways to dance more and shadow-box less.

I’ve been a WFB Customer for almost two decades with a Premier Master Asset (PMA) account identifying me as a “High Value” customer.  At the beginning of the housing bubble I loved WFB for financing single family rental property investments for my retirement.

But when the poop hit the fan, they treated me worse than a number.  As rates came down I spent years trying to refinance my properties through them.  They could not (or would not) help.  They had me resubmit reams of information they already had, charged me a $500 application fee, then denied the loan, multiple times.

Finally, as interest rates plummeted last year, I spent ten months working with an independent mortgage broker to refinance four properties.  Imagine my shock when two weeks after closing the last one, WFB acquired two of them.

PMA customer or not, WFB would not loan me money, despite a 19 year relationship with them, but had no problem acquiring my loans from a third party.  Individuals are a tiny, insignificant annoyance to the business of big banking.  WFB works for someone, but not for me, and likely not for you.

I stuck with WFB because they were not even close to being the worst of the lot.  But the problem is systemic, and I founded GoHuman to initiate radical change, so GoHuman.com is in the process of switching merchant services from WFB to Summit Credit Union.

My apologies to our community for taking so long to take this step in breaking my personal co-dependence on a “too-big-to-fail” institution.  This move is long overdue, but it’s now easier to say WFB PMA?  KMA!

Over the next few months we’ll get more serious about establishing who and what we are, and how, exactly, we are going to change the way our world works!  We also look forward to hearing your thoughts.

This unexpected expense hurts, but my wife and I are both employed and tax returns and a bonus are on their way, so this is really just a minor inconvenience.  For millions of Americans who have lost jobs or have otherwise been negatively impacted, however, unexpected expenses can have much more serious consequences.  GoHuman’s partnership with Belief for Relief allows us, and you, to help such people… like Dawn Lane, for example.

Dawn is a hard-working mother in Rocky Point, NY who is the sole provider in her household, holding two jobs in order to support her family. Dawn budgets carefully to meet monthly expenses, like many families in America who have no choice but to live paycheck to paycheck.  With monthly expenses rising and household income decreasing, her car broke down. Dawn can’t afford to fix it, so it simply sits in her driveway while she struggles to get to work in the middle of winter.  Belief For Relief Inc. has approved her request for $1,500 for car repairs, but Dawn is on a waiting list until more funds become available.

Dawn’s car is GoHuman.com’s third MicroCause.  You can contribute directly, or assist her by getting friends to sign up at GoHuman.com.  We’ll donate $1 to Dawn’s car repair for each new registrant who mentions Dawn or Belief for Relief. So what are you waiting for?! Let’s make a difference together.

Thanks for the pic Chris (click to read the story).

U.S. founding fathers were familiar with a 4,000 year old economic system, which enabled capitalism while limiting capitalists’ ability to exploit the system and oppress its losers.  All families owned land, debts were forgiven every seven years, and land was leased, not sold, for a maximum 49 years.  It reverted to the tribal / family owners in a year of Jubilee.

But Solomon, a king of Israel and “the wisest man who ever lived”  wrote “The rich rules over the poor, And the borrower is servant to the lender.“  Why would the king of Israel, in which every family was supposed to own land and debts were forgiven, state such a thing?

Because the people abdicated ownership, on multiple levels. Within a very short period of time, freed slaves were again enslaved, first by their fears and desires, then by their kings, then by outside forces.  Human nature hasn’t changed much in 4,000 years.

American-style capitalism has addicted the planet to a mass-market consumer culture, fed by an insatiable desire for corporate funded entertainment.  We have allowed ourselves, and worse, our children, to become programmed consumers, with a black hole in our soul, into which we cram the things advertisers tell us we need.

I know I’m oversimplifying, but it’s still true.  If we want lasting change it must start with us. I salute the Occupy movement for focusing attention on Corporate oppressors. But realize that we create and empower these Frankenstein monsters.  As long as we’re willing to sell our future for temporary gratification, a cycle of debt and oppression will continue.

Only owners have a legal right to occupy. To claim a moral right we need to own the moral ground we stand on.  Every individual and family should strive for ownership, at all levels, to advance the occupation. GoHuman seeks to build ownership, at the local level.  We wish to empower small, local businesses and their customers to occupy and regain ownership of their own communities.  One backyard at a time!