Author: mtallen

5 Tips for Hiring Good Employees

I recently read a great blog post by Bill Flaggs of RegOnline about strategies for hiring good employees. Bill laid out his 5-step process and some very useful suggestions for finding and hiring great employees. As an employer, I think his advice is worth remembering and personally employing (pun intended).

In a nutshell, Bill Flaggs’ five employee selection steps are as follows:

1. Write a job ad that is standout and personable.

Flaggs uses Craig’s List for this. The example he offered is “Support SuperStar: looking for people to knock the socks off our clients everyday.”

2. Link the job ad to a strong landing page.

Since the ad is online, link it to an interesting and personable landing page (see a screen capture of the RegOnline landing page) that tells prospective employees why they would want to work there.

3. Show why people like to work at your company.

Use a video, letter from the CEO and other interesting details (RegOnline even linked to their Continue reading “5 Tips for Hiring Good Employees”

Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers Presentation at BlogWorld

On September 20, 2008 I had the privilege of joining Shawn Collins and Tim Jones in the Las Vegas Convention Center for a BlogWorld Expo panel presentation entitled “Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers.” Jim Kukral served as our moderator.

Our presentation slides can be viewed here and a video below (unfortunately the picture and sound quality is low [Update: as of 13-Aug-2016 this video seems to have been removed]).

I enjoyed this panel and the positive experience of working with the other panelists. We had a lot of fun and our audience seemed to enjoy it as well. There were a number of questions.

Being a blogging conference, there has also been some written feedback at Continue reading “Affiliate Marketing Secrets for Bloggers Presentation at BlogWorld”

Negotiation Tips & Suggestions

Today I had the privilege of hearing a presentation entitled “Negotiation for Community Leaders” by L. Steven Smutko of NC State Universtity. Several points struck me as particularly valuable and worthy of being added as life skills.

Smutko defined negotiation as “any communication between two or more people with the intent to influence or persuade.” One important trait for a negotiator is to recognize that possibilities for mutual gain often exist and, when possible, to identify those areas where such gain can occur. As such, negotiation does not have to be a competitive process but can instead be used to create additional value (a “pareto optimal solution“) through mutual gains.

The purpose of negotiation, according to Smutko, is “not always to reach agreement. Agreement is only one means to an end, and that end is to satisfy your interests. The purpose of negotiation is to explore whether you can satisfy your interests better through agreement than you could by pursuing your Best Alternative To a Negotiated Agreement (BATNA).”

Interestingly, the party with the best BATNA has the most power and best position from which to Continue reading “Negotiation Tips & Suggestions”

1967 Chevrolet C10 LWB Stepside Pickup


I have a 1967 Chevrolet C10 long wheelbase stepside pickup truck. When I bought it in 1988 it wasn’t much to admire. In fact, it was very rusted, wouldn’t go into first or reverse gears, and had holes in the floor. Much has changed since then as you can imagine.

Over the years I’ve put a lot of time and effort into restoration and I need to do a lot more. Below I’ve listed some of the technical details and fun upgrades I’ve done to it over the years. I stuck with the inline 6 cylinder 250 engine it had when I bought it and think it’s fun to try to make 6=8. Continue reading “1967 Chevrolet C10 LWB Stepside Pickup”

Welcome to MikeAllen.me

The domain name MikeAllen.com was a given to me as a gift from my wife in 1998 to be used for something special someday. (I’ll get to MikeAllen.me later.) There seems to be at least one other Mike Allen everywhere I go and it’s easy for some people to get us confused; however, I think most of those experiences add to the fun of life. Even the occasional call from attorneys and collection agencies have their exciting moments until they finally believe me that they called the wrong Mike Allen. As you can guess, I’ve also had several offers to buy this domain from others with the name Mike Allen but I am not interested in selling.

Over the past decade I’ve had various things posted at MikeAllen.com. It’s been an on and off, hit or miss process. At times it has even been a “parked domain” page. Past websites, though, have included family photos, writings about my efforts in restoring and upgrading a 1967 Chevy pickup, and links to various work and other, mainly political interests.

In short, though, I didn’t feel that these uses were best for MikeAllen.com. When I restarted MikeAllen.com in 2008 as a personal blog I soon regretted that move. Instead, I felt I should be reserving it for something more substantial. So when the .me extensions became available a few weeks ago I grabbed MikeAllen.me and later moved some of my previous content to this location. Now I can save MikeAllen.com for something better and still have a personal blog with my name. Ah, the best of both worlds it seems.

What I anticipate for MikeAllen.me is to use it as a place for Continue reading “Welcome to MikeAllen.me”