The Hotdogman Jumps in the Shark Tank

Eric Colti, the guy with the Wine Balloon on this week’s episode of Shark Tank, was an idiot. He let fear make him lose sight of the bottom line and why he was there in the first place. Everyone liked the invention-it was clearly far advanced over every other product purporting to do the same thing.

>>READ MORE ON THE SHARK TANK

Update on National Hot Dog Month 2012

While the rush to fund the National Hot Dog Month 2012 tour has not resulted in an initial public groundswell, lots has been happening behind the scenes.

I have forged two traditional media partnerships (one newspaper and one TV station) with negotiations in process for additional partnerships. These partnerships guarantee mass exposure for the tour which results in many more eyeballs to the tour and the websites. This presents a unique marketing opportunity for companies that wish to be associated with the tour; for relatively short money (compared to traditional marketing channels) a company can sponsor the tour and get exposure for their brand for the entire month.

I am also very pleased to announce the addition of Drew Bennet to the team. Drew runs the Benspark blog and has a very dedicated following. He's also an accomplished photographer and videographer; Drew will be handling most of the video recording and photography for the tour. He's also working on getting General Motors to give us vehicles to travel around in. You may recall, he scored a Camaro convertible for our visit to Larry Joe's New England Fire Pit last summer.

I have also decided to focus primarily on the iconic hot dog establishments of New England- places that have a 50+ year history- for at least half of the visits. We will also attend more baseball venues, particularly if certain deals that are in the works fall into place. GM would like the "baseball, hot dogs, apple pie and Chevrolet" angle as would several local minor/collegiate baseball leagues in New England I have been in contact with. Of course we will have a few carts, trailers and trucks in line, just not as many. We are also going to limit "repeat visits" this summer- no offence to past participants, we just want to keep the content fresh.

Check back for further updates.

SAT Practice Test FAIL

As frequent readers may know, I am a licensed teacher. I don't have a regular teaching gig, but I do some tutoring and I teach SAT Test Prep classes. The SAT has two parts: Math and Verbal. The verbal section allows 25 minutes to write a short essay which is then evaluated along with a series of multiple choice sections. Every three or four sessions of these SAT prep classes, we would administer a test as if it were the real SAT so the kids could practice under "real" conditions. The practice tests consist of tests from 4-7 years ago.

Last spring, while proctoring one of these practice tests, after the 25 minute writing session, we began the first of 4 multiple choice sections. One student raised his hand at the end of the first multiple choice section and asked to be excused to go to the bathroom. He never returned. Here are the answer sheets he left behind (I had to make copies- it was THAT bizarre): 

This kid's parents paid a little over $700 for this course. Way to go, kid.

Rob's Hot Dog Tales

Rob's Hot Dog Tales is LIVE. Bookmark it to get daily news about your favorite food, the hot dog. This online newspaper is dedicated to collecting news about hot dogs from all over the world on a daily basis.

Check out Rob's Hot Dog Tales

Do you put ketchup on your hot dogs?

I would like to do some statistical analysis on the age old question: "Do you put ketchup on your hot dogs?"

Please take a moment to answer the survey HERE.

Interviews at Affiliate Summit West 2012

When I attended Affiliate Summit West 2012 in Las Vegas last month, I had the opportunity to interview John Chow, Shawn Collins, Nate Beal, Syed Balkhi, Wade Tonkin, Tricia Meyer, Bryan Knowlton, Missy Ward, Eric Thomas, and Eric Hom. This video is a compilation of those interviews.