THE DREAM IN ACTION

To be consistent with my ongoing effort to connect with and meet as many Twitter friends as possible I decided to interview my 1000th follower. I reach this small milestone about a week or so ago. I got lucky because this #1000 turned out to be an awesomely interesting dude, from San Diego of all places, my home town and as we will mutually call it, paradise. Everyone, meet Dave…Dave, meet everyone.

RG: Who are you and what do you do for work?
My formal name is Daniel Marashlian, M.Ed. (that’s a Masters in Education in Leadership)

And I’m the CTO for Pelotonics, LLC – a software company that is focused on fundamentally changing the way people work in groups for the better. We want to pull the “Google” in our space of Group Productivity. As Google fundamentally changed the way search engines should be.

RG: Where are you from and where do you live now?

I’m from Sedona, Arizona (poor Cardinals, they should have won the Super Bowl) it’s a famous tourist destination. It gets voted like top 10 most beautiful place on Earth like every year. A bunch of Red Rocks and what not… It’s pretty cool. Though I now live in paradise, or as most people say, San Diego!

RG: How/why did you join Twitter?

I just recently found out about twitter about 6 months ago, as Troy Malone (Founder and Chief Evangelist of Pelotonics) hired Marshall Kirkpatrick as a consultant to teach us about the new “Social Media” and what benefits it would provide us as a business in the Web 2.0 world.

RG: What is the coolest thing that has happened for you because of Twitter?

Proving out that if you do it “right” and add true value out to the online community through Blogging, Twitter, etc… That it truly works for marketing and it’s a great base of highlighting the cool and innovative things we’re doing at Pelotonics.

RG: What is your goal with your use of Twitter?

1. Show people how to be more productive through our blog (http://blog.pelotonics.com)

2. Make people aware of Pelotonics and what it can provide

3. Make viable connections to people in ways that I never thought was possible.

4. Provide TOP TIER customer service. We’ve solved many customer issues over twitter. As one of our customers said, “Pelotonics has decided to redefine what customer service means” because we truly provide amazing customer support and input. From our support email, our office line is posted for anyone to have, and PeloTV (http://www.pelotonics.com/media/peloTV.html)

RG: Do you care more about who’s following you, or who you are following?

I personally care more about who I follow. I’m more in the background of the operations of Pelotonics, where Troy is the front runner as he’s the Chief Evangelist. I like to soak up all of the data I can get and turn it into useful information, to see if it will benefit me or Pelotonics in any way.

RG: If you had the power, what business model would you implement for Twitter?

Here are some suggestions (just some thoughts off the top of my head):

1. Limit the number of tweets you can do unless you’re on a paid account

2. No Direct Messages unless you’re a paid user

3. Limit the number of people you can follow or people that can follow you unless you’re a paid user

4. Maybe if you’re on a paid account, you can customize your twitter page to your own CSS

RG: What’s the happiest day of you life…so far?

It would have been yesterday, if the Cardinals won the Super Bowl, but since they lost… I think there are 2…

1. The day I decided to move to San Diego. I LOVE it here, I have truly found home.

2. Me and all of my buddies from Sedona go to Tahoe every year for a boys trip and the first year we went, the last night was sooooo fun. As a group we were unstoppable at the casino, between 6 of us, we took the roulette table for around 25K and just had the best time. It was like a movie, we had the whole table, and there were like 40 people surrounding us just watching and cheering. It was an amazing night.

RG: Care to share the worst? (Optional)

Besides falling in a cactus when I was 12, the only thing that comes to mind is my girl breaking up with me a month ago. It’s been a rough month, I thought she was the “one”. I guess not…. L

RG: Do you have a motto that you live by?

A few, “Go big or go home” is a great one, though mainly it’s, “Be a kind gentle person, and a friend to all” Those are the words on my father’s gravestone, and I’ve always lived by those words. I figure everything else (love, money, etc…) will come if I’m true to that.

RG: Where else can people find you on the web?

www.pelotonics.com

http://blog.pelotonics.com

http://www.pelotonics.com/media/peloTV.html

@danielzev on Twitter

Daniel.marashlian on Skype

Probably some more as well, but they’ll have to find me.

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Dan, I just want to thank you for being so open and honest and following all the probably meaning BS that I liberally spew at you on a daily basis over Twitter. I look forward to meeting in San Diego next time I’m home. Cheers buddy. –Ryan