Everywhere I go people stop me on the street. They ask, “Blogenberg, you were on the Inc. 500. What is the secret to your success?”

I’ll tell you one of my secrets. For things that are complex and outside of our core competency, I outsource. I find the very best and pay them to do it. I don’t believe in learning curves.

That’s what I do when it comes to our GSA contract. To do government contracting of any significance, your company has to be on the GSA schedule. But all of the regulations and procedures are so complex that I’d sooner try to rewire the space shuttle. So we pay Aronson & Company to handle it all for us — they make sure our GSA contract is structured so we can succeed.

Because I believe in the old adage: you have to spend money to make money. The key is spending it on the right people with the right expertise.

(We also pay Aronson & Company to handle our accounting, since they specialize in accounting support for government contracts.)

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• GM effort to change the rules on how to pay the production costs for its commercials could significantly impact the ad industry.
• In case you’re wondering which online community to get involved with, here’s a good look at who is using each of the most prominent ones.
• Sarah Perez gives voice to a thought many have - how can I use Facebook for my personal and professional lives?
• We like sports here at Blogenberg; a lot. So it is always refreshing to hear rare stories of real sportsmanship like this.
• Author Gary Talese uses his wordsmithing talents to help out some of New York’s panhandlers in an usual way.
• New York’s mayor is seeking to promote innovation and creativity in to spur a financial sector revitalization.
• Jason Falls discusses how journalists can leverage social media.

We ordered a dress online this week — for the winter formal at school that’s Saturday night! It came yesterday. It fits perfect — it’s so wonderful being tall and thin, the kind of girl they design dresses for! But there’s like, this lacy frill that’s like an outside layer of the dress and it’s too much; it like floats out too much. So dad rushed us to the cleaners that has a real good woman who does alterations. She has a very strong Asian accent. We didn’t understand everything she said. But she’s going to fix it. In time for the formal. Wow, it looks like another crisis that we will survive — kind of like living in that Aretha Franklin song, you know, “I will survive…”

There is no book that is relevant to your business, or my business. That’s what I’ve realized. Just like parenting, there may be books that can provide some insight, but none that can tell you what to do.

Running a business, like parenting, is flying in the dark, with only cockpit controls to guide you, cockpit controls that were made for a different plane. There’s no model to follow (and I suspect that’s true for franchises, as well). There’s information you can process. But the only way you know if the controls you have pushed along the way are the correct ones is if you land safely or end up in the drink.

The one thing I know: don’t buy the business books. (In fact, much more useful is reading biographies about men and women who have done great things. Right now, I’m reading the biography of Alice Roosevelt.)

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• The New York Times reviewed a book on the lives of graffiti artists.
• Guy Kawasaki discusses the art of generating buzz with Emanuel Rosen.
• On the Media considered the role of media in criminal prosecutions.
• New York Magazine wrote this interesting piece on film critic, Armond White.
• The Freaknomics blog ponders what “micropayments,” like pay-per-clicks, would do for journalism.
• Participate in the Philanthropy 2.0 project.
• The Pew Internet and American Life Project recently released a report on Internet usage habits. (11% of Americans now post status updates of some sort.)

Everything I preach to clients about messaging, presentation, and interviews boils down to this: keep the audience focused on your message. Don’t chase their brains away from what you want them to hear and understand. Somebody needed to tell Lawyers.com this.

Lawyers.com has a perfectly reasonable television commercial airing right now. But at one point, the camera zooms in on a computer screen, illustrating a feature that allows visitors to search for a lawyer by issue and location. The fields are populated by “Immigration, Los Angeles CA.”

Why do that? Why chase my brain away to thinking about illegal immigration and border crossings?

Don’t spend lots of money on a TV spot and then make one little mistake that chases my brain away.

I’ve banned the recession. It’s no longer happening. Instead, let me tell a precautionary tale for parents.

My wife and I went out to dinner to a fancy restaurant on Valentine’s Day. Two couples sat at the table next to us, both about our age. I wasn’t eavesdropping but I picked up snippets. One couple talked about their children and nothing else — the entire evening. The other couple had that politely paying attention look plastered on their faces. Here’s a rule: if you can’t figure out anything to talk about but your kids, stay home.

We love our kids. They are exciting, though far from perfect, to raise. But lock me away if I can’t find anything else to talk about.

I saw the movie, The International, this weekend. It’s about a global bank that sells missiles and munitions, supports unrest worldwide, and crushes people in its way. The ultimate goal of the nefarious bank directors is to use debt as a means of enslavement. I guess the poetic license was the selling of arms.

This week’s recommended reading from your friends at Blogenberg…

• John Jantsch on business culture and process. These seven words that may save your life: This is how we do it here.
• Some guys at NASA produced a video about how bureaucracy and organizational culture can stifle innovation. To its credit, NASA has authorized its release to the public in hopes it can help other organizations become more nimble and innovation-centered.
• Slate covers the “25 Things” phenomenon on Facebook. (You know. That thing 15 of your friends have tagged you to do, but you just can’t seem to find time for.)
• Blogs provide 80% of traffic to online videos.
• This is a follow-up to a link of a few week’s ago, Merlin Mann’s talk on developing the patterns of creativity.
• This is an interesting article on how the Amish community has adopted (or not adopted) technology.

Clients and regular readers of Blogenberg have often heard me say that the point of communication is to get the audience to understand your meaning — nothing more. I just came across the best example of this I’ve ever read or heard in Ted Sorensen’s memoirs Counselor. Sorensen was John F. Kennedy’s closest aide and speechwriter.

In 1963, 5 months before his death, JFK stood on the steps of the West Berlin City Hall. It was shortly after the Soviet Union had erected the Berlin wall. JFK famously ended the speech by telling the huge audience before him that, “I am a Berliner.” He stated it in German.

“Ich bin Berliner” means “I am a Berliner.” But, according to Sorensen, he accidentally wrote, and JFK stated, “Ich bin ein Berliner.” In his memoirs, Sorensen notes that, in common parlance, at least at the time, what JFK said actually meant, “I am a jelly doughnut.”

JFK received a 15-minute ovation. The huge crowd was not applauding because they liked jelly doughnuts. They understood what JFK meant.