"Attract Perfect Clients " the Online Newsletter from Valiss,
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In this week's issue – Have you ever had one of those days?

Have you ever had one of those days when you wanted to jump back into bed and pull the covers over your head? I'm having a week like that!

Last weekend while my wife Ellen and I were camping at Lake Tahoe our neighbors were having the weekend from hell. Ed, a retired school administrator, just purchased a new camper that he wanted to try out. Next month Ed is bringing his 3 daughters, their husbands and 5 grandchildren camping so he wanted do a test run with his new camper. So Ed convinced his neighbors Les and Roger to go camping with him. Roger hitched his boat on the back of his pickup and Ed hitched his camper on the back of his pickup and off they went.

When they arrived at Lake Tahoe, Roger tried to leave his boat at the local marina. They said they couldn't let him leave his boat overnight. They only did monthly slip rentals, not daily. After trying a few other marinas and hearing the same story, they left the boat in the parking lot of a ski area and left a note on it saying the they'd be back in the morning. Luckily nothing happened to the boat overnight.

Frustrated, the trio continued on to the campground. When they pulled into campsite number 63 they realized there was no room for the camper. The registration website said campsite 63 was designed for trailers but there was no way they could back the camper into the parking space. So they ended up camping next to us since nobody had reserved campsite number 70.

Their luck didn't change any time soon. Here's a quick summary of their misadventures.

1. When Ed bought the camper, the salesman threw in 2 propane tanks for free. He didn't say full propane tanks so when Ed started to cook dinner, the stove died about 5 minutes into cooking.

2. Les came to the rescue with his portable stove. But he forgot his propane bottles.

3. When they went to bed Ed slept at one end of the camper and Les slept at the other. Roger opted for the back of his truck and wanted no part of sleeping in the camper. Well Ed didn't know he had to lower the 4 leveling legs on the camper. Every time he turned over in his bed, the camper rocked and Les launched into the air. When Les turned over, Ed was launched into the air. Like a see saw, this went on all night long!

4. At 5:30 AM the entire campground woke up to the sound of a piercing electronic alarm. Ed's battery went dead because his generator wasn't turned on. The alarm screamed for at least 10 minutes while they figured how to turn it off.

5. At 6 AM Roger pulled the cooler out of the bear box and started to prepare breakfast. He walked over to his truck to get some matches to start the fire and a bear grabbed his cooler and started shaking it. He ran over to the bear and started banging pots and pans together in his ear. He chased the bear out of the campground and became the hero of everyone. His only comment was "Did you smell how much that bear stunk?" Ellen and I didn't smell the bear because we never left our tent, clutching our tiny Maglight flashlight which was our only weapon.

6. Campsite 70 was reserved on Saturday night so Ed, Les and Roger had no place to stay. Ellen and I felt sorry for them so we offered to move our car and let them move the camper into our parking space. After what we witnessed over the previous 24 hours it's the least we could do. Plus we felt safer since Roger loved to chase bears in case they came back!

The rest of the weekend was no different for Ed, Les and Roger. After each misadventure they kept repeating "This is just a test run to iron out the bugs for next month's trip." And after all this Ed is still coming back with his family next month!

Well my week hasn't been this bad except for our little misadventure with our new website www.getcopycat.com. The other day I invited everyone to watch a video to see our new product Copycat. Little did I know what was going to happen.

George, Lew and I have been working on Copycat for the past 6 months. We've been planning, plotting and testing along the way. We thought we had every base covered and were ready to launch our new copywriting tool. But we missed one critical piece.

All 3 of us have been working with the internet since the early 1990's. We consider ourselves experts since we have about 50 years of experience between us. George even owned his own ISP and I currently do webhosting for many clients. What did we forget?

We forgot to make sure we had enough bandwidth allocated for our new website. And sure enough, soon after my invitation to watch the Copycat video hit the internet, our ISP denied all visitors. The internet experts forgot the key ingredient to a successful website launch, make sure people can access it!!

So what am I trying to say with all of this rambling? You need to plan, plan, plan and test, test, test before you launch your new website. Assume nothing.

I can't stress how important it is to plan every little detail when launching your new website. Make a plan and check it again and again. Then have others check it to make sure you've crossed every t and dotted every i. That's what Ed, Les and Roger were doing on their "test" camping trip. We had 99.5% of our plan correct but missed a biggie that's probably going to cost us some sales. Plus our credibility is tarnished and our pride is hurt.

But we've recovered and ready to launch. So please take another look at www.getcopycat.com to see what we've been up to.

Until next time,

Ted

Ted Prodromou
valiss-info@valiss.com
(415) 785-1796

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