Last Saturday I moved into the new Lava Row office, which is at 400 E. Locust in Des Moines’ gentrified East Village neighborhood. It’s great to finally have a home for the business, especially after a year of working from my house and various coffee shops. Please stop in for a visit if you’re in the area — visitors are always welcome! I’m way up in the tower, as shown in the photo below.

Just a quick note to announce that I’ve started blogging at IowaBiz.com — a multi-faceted collection of Iowa bloggers talking about various small business topics. I’ll be posting three times per month, covering new media and social media marketing.

Mike Sansone, who previously addressed these subjects at IowaBiz, is stepping aside to further focus his efforts within his business and other arenas. Multiple hat tips to Mike for getting the ball rolling, and to Drew McLellan for inviting me to join the family!

The first post is about Google’s OpenSocial API standard, and why your business should take note of it.

The business world is brimming with Big-Talkers — a slippery personality type that aggressively initiates contact, makes bold statements and promises, but never actually does anything. These people exist in every type of business, government and organization, and at all levels of authority.

Be wary. Getting involved with Big-Talkers will waste your valuable time, and at the very worst can damage the reputation of you and your business. After dealing with enough of them, I’ve started to develop a “spam filter” (if you will) so that I can efficiently weed them out.

If the following criteria apply, you’ve likely sniffed out a Big-Talker:

Do they talk about large budgets in the first conversation?
Do they feed you lines like “I’ve got a big-time client that I need your help with” or “We’re devoting lots of money to this” or “We’ve spent $X already.” In most legit cases, people won’t reveal budget specifics until further into the relationship.

Do they contact you from far away, but never inquire about where you’re located?
This means they didn’t do their homework when looking you up, and are probably in panic mode, looking for somebody to clean up their messes.

Do they want to “pick your brain” for suggestions and strategy before entering into a contractual agreement, or at the very least, a face-to-face meeting?
Your experience and knowledge should speak for itself. I firmly believe that ideas are intellectual property, and should be treated as such — especially if your livelihood depends on it. When putting forth spec ideas in a proposal, make sure to include the appropriate legal verbiage to protect yourself.

Do they suddenly go very quiet, and sometimes disappear, right after you propose your fees?
If this happens, don’t waste your time following up — they were never serious.

Can they be found in Google searches, or on LinkedIn?
If there’s no trace of them online, there’s probably a reason.

Do contracts and work orders make them sweat?
Big-Talkers will say things like “Oh, we work without contracts all the time” and will push you to start projects before everything is signed off. Always get signatures.

Do they contact you from a weird e-mail address?
Seriously, it’s harder to trust catlady1799@aol.com as a serious business prospect.

Avoid these types at all costs. Even as minor annoyances, they steal precious time that could be better spent elsewhere.

Everyone sets personal resolutions for the new year, but it doesn’t hurt to do this for your biz as well. I despise PowerPointy words like expectations and objectives, so here’s my List of Things I’m Obsessed With Making Happen for Lava Row in 2008. Each one of these will serve as the basis for future blog posts:

1. Make clients famous. 
2. Get smarter every day.
3. Attack new ways of making money.
4. Open a headquarters. (Lava Row currently operates from various rooms in my house and coffee shops.)
5. Hire another brain.

Simple, digestible and challenging. What are you seeking to accomplish in 2008?