Normally, we keep the commentary on our blog related to the microcosm of internet marketing and how it can help your business succeed. Sometimes, however, a cause is too good to pass up mentioning. Esbenshade’s, a garden center and greenhouse located in Litiz, PA – is teaming up with Youth with a Mission International (YWAM) to provide these temporary houses to the homeless in Haiti.

What Are Hoop Houses?

Hoop houses are low cost, easy to assemble greenhouses. To simply explain it, a hoop house is a greenhouse with a plastic roof draped over plastic piping. The hoop houses Esbenshade’s has sent to Haiti are pre-fabricated and customized at the company’s greenhouse.

According to the team at Esbenshade’s, nearly one million temporary homes are needed to shelter the homeless earthquake survivors in Haiti. To help, they have designed and constructed 14- x 16-foot “hoop houses” that can provide a temporary home for a family of up to five.

How Esbenshade’s Is Helping Haiti

Two hundred homes left a Florida port on Monday. When the houses arrived at the port of St. Marc in Haiti, a team of local YWAM personnel and construction volunteers from the Lancaster-area met the shipment. In total, YWAM plans on constructing 100 homes per acre – in total providing about 1,000 homes for Haiti’s homeless.

Esbenshade’s would greatly appreciate any financial contributions from the public to help continue the Hoop Houses for Haiti effort. The cost for one home (including materials and shipping) is around $300. Anyone in the Lancaster-area who is interested in volunteering their time and energy to assemble the hoop house materials in Litiz are also appreciated. Of course, volunteers are also in high demand in Haiti – for hoop house assembly and a variety of other causes.

Anyone looking for more information on Esbenshade’s Hoop Houses for Haiti program should call 717.626.7007 or visit Esbenshades.com.

Well, it’s that time of year again, and yes, this is the obligatory “Happy Thanksgiving” post. But in all seriousness, as we enter the holiday season, it’s important to reflect on the past year and all the things you have to be thankful for. Quite frankly, it’s something you should do on a regular basis, but let’s face it, most of us only worry about it from November to January.

Tis the Season for Thanksgiving…

I’d love it if the team and our readers could take some time and just give a shout out about what they’re thankful about. At the risk of sounding like a kiss ass, I am certainly thankful to be in the position I am here at ProspectMX. I work with some great people, I’m constantly learning new things… and I’ve got seniority I can lord over other people… kidding, kidding (sort of).

For real though, the internet marketing field is not only an exciting one, but incredible in it’s flexibility and need for creative thinking. Where else can you go out for a few drinks with your coworkers and wind up with tons ideas? Some are brilliant, some are hilarious, some are ridiculous, but all useful. Plus, once executed, those ideas can result in thousands of dollars in revenues from traffic, links, media notice, etc.

It’s a remarkable industry, and it’s nice to be a part of something that continues to grow and evolve.

Thanksgiving Fun Facts

I’m a sucker for fun or little known facts that have no practical use… so, here are some I found to add to my repertoire (and which are guaranteed to make you feel fat!):

• The average person consumes over 4,500 calories on Thanksgiving Day. (And we wonder why Americans are overwhelmingly overweight…)
• Turkeys can drown if they look up while it’s raining.
• American eat over 530 million pounds of Turkey on Thanksgiving, while more than 45 million turkeys are cooked and eaten on that day.
• Ripe cranberries of good quality will always bounce. (Um, you may want to wash before eating if you experiment with this…)
• Domesticated turkeys can’t fly, but wild turkeys can fly over 55mph for short distances.
• Turkeys can have heart attacks. Apparently when the Air Force conducted test runs and broke the sound barrier, fields of turkeys would drop dead.

Dang… I feel really, really bad for turkeys all of a sudden. But luckily not quite bad enough to go vegetarian this year. I can’t vouch for the validity of some of those facts… credit goes to the 1-800 Flowers website.

Have a blessed Thanksgiving everyone!

Cool news from out of the ProspectMX camp…

One of our company’s co-founders, Steve Young, has been named to Central Penn Business Journal’s (CPBJ) annual “Forty Under 40″ list for 2009.

Young is the second ProspectMX co-founder to earn this recognition from CPBJ. In 2006, Rory Wilfong was also honored with the same distinction.

While Young plays an important role within ProspectMX, he also manages the day-to-day operations of GetMyHomesValue.com. GetMyHomesValue was the first company Steve, Rory, and Dave established in 2003 that was a finalist for CPBJ’s Emerging Business of the Year Award in 2006 and named one of Inc. Magazine’s 500 fastest growing private companies in 2008.

Young was selected for this year’s Forty Under 40 for “his commitment to business growth, professional excellence and the community.”

Nominations for the Forty Under 40 program ended in late April, and a panel of four judges who have all won the award in the past selected the top 40. This is the 15th time CPBJ has honored the region’s top young business leaders.

Young and the other 39 recipients will be honored at an awards reception on October 23. The winners will also be featured in a special supplement to the October 30th edition of the Central Penn Business Journal.

Central Penn Business Journal is an award-winning business newspaper for Central Pennsylvania that provides more information, analysis and advice for business than any other local publication. The Journal has served the Central PA community for 23 years.

Congrats Steve!

Jodi (my wife) asked me tonight if there were any new pictures from the breeder we’re purchasing our dog from. The dog was born on New Years Eve and we are picking him up in February, so we like to get photo updates.

So, to be funny, I googled “world’s ugliest dog“… and BAM!

The reaction was great.

There are just SO MANY ways to build links… I just may have to do a “World’s Ugliest [whatever]” contest…

What “worlds ugliest” ideas do you have that could generate links for your site?

Coming from Lancaster, PA and heading to York last evening (New Year’s Eve), my family and I noticed a very bright non-moving object in the sky below the Crescent Moon. My hopes of it being a true UFO or even better yet a “Space Station” were quickly dismissed.

When reality set in, further investigation indicates that it was the planet Venus. It was truly a very cool sight to see.

Did anyone else notice Venus last evening under the moon?

This post contains a video. To view it you will need Adobe Flash player installed.

He’s over 21… and he certainly isn’t retired.

But Dave Conklin, ProspectMX visionary and fearless leader, was recently interviewed by Michael Dunlop of RetireAt21.com.

RetireAt21 is a showcase for young entrepreneurs started by Michael Dunlop, an online entrepreneur himself who turns 20 on December 12. Word on whether Michael actually retires at 21 is forthcoming, but his site is a great place for young entrepreneurs to learn from others like them who have achieved success in online business.

Most of the interview focuses on Dave’s success with GetMyHomesValue, a 2008 INC 500 company he started with Rory Wilfong and Steve Young in 2004. For all the details about that, check out “Our Story.”

The holiday season is underway. Enjoy it. Don’t let your family drive you crazy.

Rory, Steve and I will be heading down tonight to Washington DC where we will be hanging out with some incredible people including Kris Jones, Seth Godin and others…

We will be love live blogging the conference over at our real estate coaching site, rorysteveanddave.com… so check it out!

We may even post some video, pictures of people we meet and more!

On Friday, we were all sitting around complaining about how hungry we were… so we decided to take a trip over to Iron Hill, a local restaurant.

We had a great time… here’s some pics…