Last week I got an email from someone who used JibberJobber to help organize her job search. She gets that part:

“I appreciated your presentation, your tips and your enthusiasm. I used Jibber Jobber during my 7 month job search. It is an excellent tool and I enjoyed using it.”

Awesome!

Then, she said:

“I started a new job on October 3.”

Uh oh. This is usually where they say “I’m good now – see ya later!”  I’m thrilled when my users get a job, whether they use JibberJobber or not, but I dislike how so many put their career management on hold while they have a job

But Colena GOT IT.  Instead of breaking up with JibberJobber she wrote:

“Having attended your presentation, I now have a reason to continue using the tool even though my job search has ended.”

Let’s go back to the title of this post: Branding and understanding.

I want people to use JibberJobber to help them navigate (organize and manage) their job search.

However, many people somehow miss the idea that once they land a job, they could be unemployed fairly quickly, and they need to do stuff, like grow and nurture their network, and work on their personal brand.

The JibberJobber brand clearly conveys that JibberJobber is a tool for job seekers.

Does it stop there?

For many people, it does.

The understanding of JibberJobber is that it is for active job seekers.

But there are others who use JibberJobber as a relationship management tool:

• happily employed professionals who know they need to be ready for a transition, even if the writing isn’t on the wall
• unhappily employed professionals who are worried about a pending transition
• freelancers and contractors who might have a day job, but also have outside clients they need to keep organized
• Authors who are interested in self-marketing (since the publishing companies don’t do it for them), and recognize the value of a relationship management tool
• Small business owners, like myself, as well as professional speakers (like myself!)
• Songwriters, who recognize that getting a hit song depends on your ability to network, as well as your talent,
• and many others…

Job seekers see one facet of the brand, and they understand some of the potential, thinking they understand all of the potential.

This is a HUGE issue for all companies… companies who have clients who don’t “get” what they do.

This is a HUGE issue for job seekers, who have branding issues.

How do YOU help your clients/audience understand your brand, your offerings, and your value?

This question can help your job search end faster, or help your company grow bigger.

Ignore it at your own risk.

Wednesday night I was listening to the great Mark LeBlanc speak to about 50 professional speakers on how to “grow your business.” More on that later.

I normally don’t day dream, but at the break I had a conversation with Brad Barton about making money as a beekeeper. I asked him how much money you could make, and his answer surprised me. I was excited to include it in my new book, 101 Alternatives to Real Job.

When Mark LeBlanc started up again, I let my mind wander to a future visit with Brad’s family.

I imagined that I was with his kids, we were dressed in beekeeper suits (the kind the bees can’t get through), and someone had a video camera. I thought it would be cool to actually get some video of me for one of the chapters… somehow a few bees got in my suit and started flying around, and I got a few stings.

It was kind of comical, and a bit scary (this is one of my I DON’T EVER WANT TO BE IN THIS SITUATION scenarios), and I had to bite my tongue to keep from laughing during Mark LeBlanc’s presentation…

Ah, the mind! It’s a beeeeeautiful thing :p

A few days ago I was talking to my seven year old daughter, telling her the story of a time when I could have died.  (she likes the story, and requests it often)

She said, “wow Dad, I’m glad you didn’t die.  If you died, we wouldn’t be here!”

I said, “yeah, mom would have married someone rich, handsome and a good singer!”

She says, “DAD!  You are that!”

“I’m what?” I ask…

Her reply: “You are rich!  You own your own company!”

Yes I am.  Very rich

I am doing some research on freemium models, and specifically the upgrade page (technically, I’m looking for design ideas to enhance the “user interface” (aka: UI)).

I came across an excellent must-read post for anyone who thinks they want to do freemium, written by John Greathouse, who was involved in the precursor (?) to GoToWebinar  (BuddyHelp). I can’t find much info on BuddyHelp… but hey, that was internet eons ago.

Anyway, John writes How To Make Freemium Customers Generate Revenue For Your Startup. Go read it, as he seems to have identified a lot of pitfalls that you can avoid.

When I started JibberJobber, there really wasn’t any competition.  I’d get on the phone with a career center and they’d say “wow, that is brilliant!!”

No one had heard of a relationship manager just for the job seeker (job search CRM).  It was novel.

That was good and bad… bad because I had to educate people on what it was.  Job seekers didn’t immediately get why they should use such a heavy duty tool.

Then, I got my first competitor.

I have to say, I hate competition. I hate losing, and I hate having to compete.

But everyone said “competition is good!”

I thought “I’d rather not have any competition.”

This week, by Tuesday morning, I had learned of TWO new competitors in the job search CRM space.  One is ____ and the other is ____. (nope, not going to link to them :p)

Are these two competitors going to be good for the space?  For our clients?

Who knows.

Before they came along, over the last five years, I’ve seen about 9 others come out.  I refer to them as “me-too” plays.  They mimic or copy JibberJobber.  One even got a software team to develop accounts on JibberJobber so they could rebuild what we had.

Two of them are now out of business.

They couldn’t figure it out.

Another one, I’ve been told, doesn’t “get” the job seeker. I heard that from a user of mine who started using them.  They don’t “get the job seeker like I do,” I was told.

Is that my competitive advantage?

No, but it might be a component of it.

Competition – good or bad?  I don’t know.

But I do know this: I have a window of opportunity, and it will only be open for a period.  I have to take advantage of that, because when it closes things are dramatically different.

I saw that with my last company.  We tried, the window closed.  End.

Not this time.

My five year old daughter couldn’t stop singing this phrase over the weekend:

I KNOW A SONG THAT GETS ON EVERYBODY’S … NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE, EVERYBODY’S NOSE!

How cute is that?

She also calls an ear worm a “head worm.”

Why?

One day a great song came on the radio (I don’t know which one) and she said “TURN IT! TURN IT!  That song gets stuck in my head!”

I said “oh, that’s called an ear worm… when you can’t get it out ”

Taking one word from her description and one word from my description, she said, “I don’t want a HEAD WORM.”

Love it

Every once in a while I find a gem that is hiding in plain site.  Here’s one I read this morning on a TC post:

… Heiferman jumped back into the startup scene with RocketBoard, a project he describes as “a colossal failure and actually we blew through about $20 million dollars of AOL money.” The silver lining? Heiferman received advice that sticks with him to this day—create products to help the greater good of society.

I LOVE THAT.

Sounds too simple, but if Heiferman “spent” $20M to learn it, and he remembers it for an interview, that’s good enough for me.

What are you doing for the great good of society?

I’m working on my fourth book (I know, I know, I swore off books after the first one!), which I’ll announce shortly.

As I research, and read the news, I like to find stories of people who find a problem and figure out a solution that can go to market.

That’s exactly what Jennifer Lindley did.  She’s a diabetic, and has a son who is diabetic, and was concerned about what to do in an emergency.

In a local news article she says:

Someone had used spray-paint to emblazon “DIABETIC” on the rooftop where a group was stranded in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“It was a really hopeless, helpless feeling for me,” Jennifer Lindley said about seeing the image on the news. “I didn’t know what to do for him.”

These kits are what she came up with:

I love how brilliant this is.  Combine Utah’s “thing” about emergency preparedness (it’s a theme I don’t see as prominent outside of Utah/Idaho) with a HUGE, HUGE need we have around the world, and you get a simple solution that is affordable, and can help set your mind at ease. Learn more about her product here.

Why do I love this?

Because I’m looking for ideas where you and I and regular people like Jennifer Lindley can CREATE our own income, independent of a boss.

Kudos, Jennifer!

I think this happened in January of 2011, but it could have been 2010. News story here.

I remember reading about it in the newspapers… when four Wal-Mart employees had a thief in a back room, accused of stealing something.

Right after the dude took the laptop out of his pants, he took out a gun, and put it in the back of one of them.

They went into self-protection zone, without a moment to even think about it, and eventually got the gun away, and had the guy pinned down until the cops came.

Dangerous? Yes.

Heroes? Yes, to one another for sure, and to all shoppers who would have been in danger as the crook tried to flee.

Against store policy? Yes.

Rewarded? Only by being FIRED.

This, in my mind, is a huge failure on Wal-Mart’s part.  I get that it was against corporate policy.  I don’t get the impression any of these people were out to be Chuck Norris in Texas Rangers. No one was out to be a hero and take down this bad guy.

But there’s a gun pointing in your back, or your coworker’s back, and it is a highly volatile situation – what do you do??

Do you try and talk the guy out of it?  You probably aren’t trained in hostage negotiations (of course, you probably aren’t “trained” in wrestling a gun away from a guy).

What if you talk the guy out of it, then what?  Hope he gives you the gun, and waits for the cops?

Or do you let him go, and hope he doesn’t shoot or kill anyone on the way back?

Regardless, corporate policy is, well, policy. You can’t have a precedence set that will encourage others to act this way, right?

I get where Wal-Mart is coming from, but I still think this is a huge failure.

Want more failure out of this?  How about this: The local news (KSL) tried to get the surveillance video, and had to request it FOUR TIMES through “government records requests.”  FOUR TIMES?  Seriously.

Check out the Wal-Fail, though:

When KSL News persevered in getting the video, Walmart even threatened Layton City to try to keep them from releasing it. In a letter last week, Walmart attorneys wrote: “If Layton City intends to release Walmart’s video tape to KSL, Walmart will move forward in district court, seeking an injunction to prevent Layton City from doing so under GRAMA.”

That’s a good idea, Wal-Mart.  Cover it up by not letting the video out.

Who am I to say, though. I’m not a lawyer, and I don’t know what GRAMA is.

If I were Wal-Mart, though, I’d try to make this go away, and fighting and fighting, just to protect a policy, doesn’t seem like the right thing to do.  Heaven forbid their employees are empowered to make decisions.

If my family where at that Wal-Mart I’d want to know that the security people tried everything they could to not let a gunman run through the store… kudos to the heroes.

I think about these things a lot, especially when I’m speaking.  I think “my heavens, I need a new email signature.”

Why?

Because the current one isn’t communicating what I want it to communicate.

Here’s the old one, from this morning:

Any guesses on what each number means?  I’ll list them below, but here’s the new signature:

Here’s what each number is for:

1. This is a special string of characters I chose to tell JibberJobber to not make anything below it a log entry.  I could change it, and probably will, but this is a very important line, even though it really means nothing to anyone.
2. I think it’s important to put LinkedIn DVD, instead of just DVD.
3. I moved this description behind the link, to be consistent with the other lines.
4. I decided to take this off… my Twitter followers hasn’t necessarily grown, and if you really want to find me you can search for me.  We’ll see if I flop back on this one.
5. I took the JibberJobber mobile link out… I think there are more important things to communicate…. like the new line for my LinkedIn book!

Luckily I can change things as often as I want… make changes for yourself… if you hate it, you aren’t locked into anything!

Here are other posts one when I changed my signatures:

Today I (tearfully) retire my email signature
A new email signature