Sentence first — verdict afterwards

Live. Love. Inspire. Live your life. Love what you do. Inspire others.

A very simple idea, a very strong impact. Here is how the thought breaks down:

• Live. (Live your life): Our daily grind can very easily and very quickly get in the way of us doing what we want to do and how we want to do it.  While obviously not getting yourself into trouble, do things that make you happy.  Don’t let others hold you back from your passions, regardless of how stupid or childish you or others may think they are.
• Love. (Love what you do): We’ve all seen it before. Jimmy at the local grocery store hates his job. You know this not because Jimmy told you, but because it’s blatantly obvious with how Jimmy acts towards others. Follow your passions, don’t be just another statistic, don’t be another Jimmy.
• Inspire. (Inspire others): We cry about needing a better education for our youth, but what are we doing to help this cause? We need to learn to draw on our passions and help inspire our younger generations to follow their own passions. Inspire our youth to believe in themselves.

Be yourself.  When it comes to how we live our lives, the only ones that can control what we do is ourselves.  Spread the word and be sure to pay it forward (Inspire).

Community. At Treat Dreams, that’s what it’s all about. The community.

It’s not too often when you can walk into a restaurant, ice cream parlor, or anywhere and feel completely at home and part of the family.  Though my mom (who came with us) has gotten to know owner, Scott Moloney, well over the past few months, my wife and I felt as if we had been there many times before after walking in yesterday evening.

At Treat Dreams, Scott has done something that you really only see in movies and TV shows.  He actually incorporates the community into his ice cream. No, not like Soylent Green… his ice cream isn’t people… although, people flavored ic… nevermind. As I was saying, Scott has incorporated the communities ideas, thoughts and concerns into his fabulous ice cream.  He has built his business around the ideas that his fans and customers have had, including Snozzberry (yes, the snozzberry taste like snozzberries!).  While some of the flavors may not sound the best, Chicken and Waffles for instance, they are absolutely amazing and will surely ‘wow’ you.

What has really set Treat Dreams apart in my eyes is something that Scott said last night during our conversation.  We walked in and he recognized my wife. Not because we’d been in there before (we hadn’t), not because she’s a celebrity (she’s not), but because Scott has made a amazing effort to get to know the faces of his Facebook fans, he “wants to know who his fans are before they walk in.”  I instantly became a friend of Scott and his business.

The use of social media has surprised me.  While still in the early stages of his business, Scott has quickly gotten a hang of how social media should be used for his company.  His facebook page is quite alive with activity, and his Twitter and Foursquare streams are soon to gain some well deserved steam. He’s not afraid of social media, in fact he embraces it, knowing that it’s a key piece to success.

If you’re interested in getting to know Treat Dreams better, be sure to stop by their store location in downtown Ferndale at 22965 Woodward Ave. Ferndale, MI, 48220 (just north of 9 mile) or contact them at (248) 544-3440.

I’ve lived near the Detroit area for my entire life, and until recently never knew that the Belle Isle Ice Tree existed.  Thanks to the great Becks Davis from Detroit Moxie, I’ve had the opportunity of seeing some amazing pictures from last years tree.

Since hearing about it, I’ve been looking forward to the day when they turn the water on to get a picture like the one on the right there, allowing me to make my way down there to see it.  Sadly, the news has come that due to electrical issues the tree will likely not have the opportunity to come to fruition this year.

Hoping they are able to get things fixed, I’d love to have the opportunity to see it before the weather gets warmer! Come on Belle Isle, fix the the magic tree!

It’s true. Social networks? They’re simply a fad. As soon as the next ‘cool’ thing comes along, we’ll drop facebook and twitter without giving it a second look.  We did it back when MySpace was the cool thing. We did it with LiveJournal too. But wait, I’m an advocate for social media right? Yup, have been for quiet a while now, but that doesn’t stop me from realizing that the social networks we know today are simply the new cool thing.

Now, don’t be angry with me, there is a flip side to this post.

While the specific social networks we use are fads, the engine, the idea at which we receive this social information is nowhere near a fad.  One of these days Facebook could very possibly trip over itself and fall apart.  The day may come when Twitter is no longer ‘the’ micro-blogging source. But that doesn’t matter. The idea is still there. We as a society have gotten a taste of how it is to actually have some control over what we want. We’ve learned how to voice our opinions about products, people, and anything else our ten little fingers can  muster up. We’ve learned how to actually engage with a larger demographic. Heck, I’ve learned how to build my network from non existent to having some of the greatest friends and connections I’ve ever had … in less than six months.

So yes, the social networks we know today are simply the next big thing, they’re cool and exciting, they are in fact, a fad. Who knows where they’ll be in 10 years.  But the idea behind it? It’s not going anywhere. The geniuses behind facebook and twitter have altered our society forever. They’ve given us a completely new venue to explore and allowed technology to gain more steam than it already was.

Thought I would start my blog off with the greatest attention getter of all time… BACON!

Back in the day, before most people that know me well knew me, I ran a little site called onederlnd.com. Sure, it was my personal blog, but it became a semi-popular blog (at least in my universe it did). After some issues with the registrar (the fabulous godaddy.com who tried to charge me $90.00 to renew this domain that I owned for 8 years) I have finally repurchased the domain for an amazing $7.95.

With that, my blog is back! I plan on keeping this simple, updating at least once per week, and venturing into discussions such as Marketing, Branding, Detroit, events, random happenings around the city and much much more.

I am a lifetime student of life, so this blog will be ever changing. I have two rules for those reading the blog:

1. Don’t feed the monkeys or trolls living under the bridge
2. Enjoy.

If you ever have any blog suggestions, whether it be design, article suggestions, or any random thing out of the blue sky, feel free to drop me a line at onederlnd@gmail.com.