Author Archives: Jason

Brilliant: Image Cropper for Social Sites

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I got an email from Joan Stewart about the Social Media Image Maker and thought “I use snagit from techsmith… they are the bomb.”

Yes, they are the bomb.  If I get a new computer it’s one of the first apps to go on the computer.

But the Social Media Image Maker is different.  Totally useful and awesome.  Here’s Joan’s post about it.

It helps you create the perfectly cropped image for many social sites you might be on.

Email is DEAD. Unless you are serious about communicating.

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I’ve heard the Email is Dead argument a bit from young people.

They say that email is for old folks… GenX and beyond.  My heavens, they don’t want to be bothered with having to check their email.

Why can’t people get on the texting bandwagon?  Life would be so much better and more efficient, right?  LOL (if you are old, that is text language for laughing out loud, which means it’s funny)

I don’t think email is going to die anytime soon.  I think those young kids who think email is for the birds will get on email when they get a real job.

When their boss sends them an email (and not a text), guess what?  They’ll check email.

It will become important to them.

When a prospect or customer communicates with them via email, guess what will all the sudden become important, and not-dead-anytime-soon?

Yup.  Email.

For an excellent post on this, check out what Dave Girouard has to say: In Defense of Email

Les Mis, Catwoman, Wolverine, Borat

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This is one of the funniest things I’ve seen… I actually finished the unabridged Les Mis in January… but I saw the new movie right after Christmas (I was about 250 pages away from finishing the book).

To be honest, I didn’t like the movie because there was so much missing!  I know everyone on Facebook loved it but oh well.  What can you do in 2+ hours (compared to a 1,400 page book), right?

Here’s the funny stuff:

Les Miserables review by Sam Richardson….Went to the movies with my wife.  We saw this obscure movie I had never heard of, some French foreign film.  They must have been giving away free tickets because the lines were out the door.  Anyway, the moview starts and Wolverine is singing his guts out.  Then Catwoman starts crying and singing, and it’s all very moving.  The only problem was, the girl next to me, who had apparently read the book or something, starts singing along.  It was very distracting.  So Wolverine is on the run from the Gladiator because Catwoman had a baby at Borat’s house, but now she wants Wolverine to care for her.  Time Skip. A bunch of kids get shot, and in the end everyone dies.  Four stars.

ROFL.

How do I Prepare for Webinars and Teleseminars

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I do a lot of webinars, teleseminars and video recordings.  Here are some tips on how I prepare.

  • Go potty.  You don’t want to be on a 1 hour call and have your bladder screaming at you.  Maybe you *can* hold it, but do you want to concentrate, answer questions, and sound awesome while having that distraction?
  • Have water.  I have a big cup of water, full.  I’ve done a few calls and didn’t get my cup filled… never a good idea.  A coughing fit doesn’t sound very well…
  • Have the right headset.  I use GoToWebinar and Skype mostly (I use all kinds of systems but those are my favorites), and 99+% of the time I use VOIP, which means a headset, not a phone line.  The most important part of my headset?  The inline mute button, which allows me to to mute by pushing a button that is about 2 feet down the cord.  And, the “right” headset doesn’t mean expensive.  My favorites are about $30.
  • Write down the phone number on a piece of paper. If your internet goes down, and your smart phone loses service, you want to be able to pick up a landline and call in… but you need that number!  I write down the number, the code to get in, and even the number of the host/hostess.
  • Have a backup computer/laptop?  I have been doing this for over a year.  Look, my webinars are worth a lot of money to me.  Whether it is thousands of dollars, or potential to make sales or share my brand, if someone schedules their time on my call, I want to make sure my main computer isn’t the cause of an early termination. I have a laptop and headset set up so that if my PC crashes, within 5 seconds I’m up on the backup laptop.  The alternative (which has happened too many times) is my PC restarts and it takes seven to ten minutes to get back to the call.  Those seven minutes are KILLER.
  • Write down the talking points.  I speak on different things, and most presentations are different from the others (even if it is the same topic).  I always write down the talking points to make sure I talk about every point the audience thinks I’m going to talk about.  No matter how smart you are, your brain will go in a lot of different directions, especially if the audience can ask questions during the call.  Write down your points and respect your audience by talking about the stuff you said you were going to talk about.
  • Respect TIME.  I typically start within 60 seconds of the time I said I would, and I do what I can to end on time.  Don’t go longer, don’t do part and tell people you’ll do another part later.  Respect the audience and watch the clock.
  • Be ready for the unexpected.  If someone else is co-presenting and their line dies, what do you do?  Can you talk through it?  What if you get the hiccups?  What about a bloody nose?  What if there is unusual and loud noise by your office?  I’ve had these and more… you need to be ready and able to ignore, or talk through, the unexpected.  FOCUS on your audience and your presentation.
  • ???

What would you add to this list?  How do you prepare, or what have you seen other presenters do that is awesome?

Tesla vs NYT: Absolutely fascinating

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I have been blogging for almost seven years. I remember when journalist (real journalists) hated on bloggers.  Bloggers were naive, they didn’t fact-check, they were sloppy, they had typos, the were amateurs, etc.

Bloggers would never amount to anything compared to a real journalist.

As my business grew I tried to get any notice from journalists so they could write about the amazing JibberJobber.  Really, I think JibberJobber revolutionized the job search.  I think JibberJobber changed the landscape and empowered job seekers in a way that was never done before. I think JibberJobber responded to the need of a professional transitioning regularly (ever few years), which was a new thing.

No journalist would touch it.  Well, a few touched it. I was delighted to get some air time on the NBC news in NYC.  That was awesome.  Oh yeah, US News and World report did a full page article on me, which was probably triggered from my LinkedIn book. Here and there someone picked up something, but in general no one would touch it.

I learned that journalists:

1. Care about sensational stuff, which is what sells papers,

2. Play to PR professionals. I didn’t have a 10k/month PR team behind me making those calls and tapping into their networks, which meant no journalist would spend time on me.

This week there has been a dramatic soap opera playing out where a journalist from the New York Times test drove a Tesla car, and then slaughtered the experience in the newspaper.

I didn’t pay any attention to it.  My only thought on briefly hearing about it was “maybe electric isn’t quite ready yet?  I know Elon is hustling to fix stuff… ”

No big deal.

Then, I saw a post on LinkedIn about how Tesla, with its blog, went head-to-head with the NYT.  This would have been unheard of seven years ago.

But Tesla SLAUGHTERED the credibility of the reporter, and the NYT (journalistic integrity?  Whatever).

How did they do it?

  1. They had a platform.  They had a blog where they could write posts.  And they used this platform, with a built-in audience to respond to the horrible journalism of NYT. Do you have a platform?
  2. They stayed calm.  If you read their response you know they were disappointed, and mad, but this was not an emotional gloves-off name-calling unprofessional post.  They took the higher road and kept the tone reasonable.  Otherwise people would have thought they were too emotional, trying to hide stuff, etc.
  3. They used data. I think it’s brilliant how they could take every data point the journalist used and say “well actually, according to the data here’s what really happened.”  And they backed it up with charts/images.  Comparing the claims to the hard data (who knows if it was real data, but it sure looks good!).

It’s so good to see bloggers really stand up to what I call yellow journalism, which is my term to say “You really trust media?  Are you serious? Do you think for yourself?  The media has an AGENDA, folks, and they are bought!”

Here’s my question to you: if the NYT or whoever were to write about YOU or your company, do you have a platform where you can respond?  A blog, with a history and maybe even some readers, is a great platform.

Are you ready for that day?

 

Why Twitter is failing, and what their demise would be

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This is one of my biggest frustrations with Twitter (the frustrations have mounted over the last 18 months):

Have you ever seen a DM (direct message) in your email inbox with that exact message?

I get them regularly… probably once or twice a week for over a year.

Clicking on this link will infest my account with gremlins and probably spam all of my followers.

It’s a great virus/scam.  People are always like “oh my gosh… a picture of me? And it is an LOL, so it is either flatter, cool or embarrassing!  I’m so cool/vain I better click on it. ROFL!”

These very few words totally play into human nature.

I do not understand how Twitter continues to let this type of crap perpetuate their social network.

Why isn’t some brainiac at Twitter saying “Oh, we should filter messages that say “Did you see this pic of you? lol” and then have a bit.ly link.

HOW HARD IS THAT?

Why have they not done it?

There are third party apps/services that you can subscribe to to keep the spam down, but in my opinion this is Twitter’s responsibility and obligation.  They MUST work to keep this crap out of their system, and from what I’ve seen they don’t care.

Every single time I get another spam message from Twitter I think it’s another nail in their coffin.

I am dumbfounded.

Should I make a book out of my blog(s)?

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A buddy, Steve Duncan, has some cool blogs.  Here’s a post I came upon that I want to keep. Is there a book in your blog? Convert WordPress to Scrivener

I’ve not wanted to create a “book” out of my blogs (especially the JibberJobber blog) for a few reasons.

One blogger said that blogs make horrible books, and I think I agree.  To connect my blog posts together into something that flows, and the value grows as you read each page, would take a lot of work.  As a blogger I write what I want when I want, I don’t follow a schedule and plan throughout a year or month.  I might have a week-long series, but that’s as sophisticated as I get as far as flow.

Almost seven years later, though, I think it makes sense to pull certain posts out to create several books.  Seven years of writing is A LOT!

I could have a book on personal branding.

I could have a book on job search technology and very specific tips.

I could have a book on career management.

I could have a book on LinkedIn. Oh wait, I already have that :p

I could write a book on alternative revenue streams.  Oh yeah, already working on that.

Perhaps I could pull enough posts together (and fill in the blanks) to write a book on small business, and the ups and downs.

Interesting.  I really have put this off for a long time but when I saw Steve’s post it made me think maybe it’s time.  One reason is because I have a feeling I need some new “products” that I can either move/sell OR just get some buzz around.

I’ll have to noodle on this idea… in my “spare time.” :p

 

Surgery Recovery: An Update

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It is Monday night, about 9pm.  The family is down for bed.  Kaisie and I fell asleep around 7:00 while watching some show on a laptop. The kids had a great dinner thanks to friends and family who brought over some delightful things (some I can eat, some I just ask for a whiff :p).  Thank goodness for kids old enough to take care of things (get the little ones teeth-brushed, put food away, etc.).

It’s amazing how much my body is letting me lay around.  Typically I can’t lay in bed for too long.  If I take a nap during the day my night is restless.  But since I got home I’ve been able to lay a lot, and still sleep well through the night.  I feel blessed that my back is okay with all this laying around.

Here are some random thoughts since we got home:

  1. People are very, very kind.  I feel like my kindness towards people who go through hardships was stuck under a rock.  Watching neighbors, family and friends care and express and serve and help has been eye opening and humbling.
  2. This is nothing.  I have a neighbor/friend who was on a fishing trip out of town last summer and suffered a small stroke.  How very scary for everyone involved. He immediately came home (after getting the right medical care) and is doing great, but I can’t compare what his family went through (what? You are having a stroke five hours away from home??  Are you going to be alright???) and what mine went through (Dad had surgery, but it is routine and he’ll be totally fine in a few weeks.  No thing to see here, move along :p).
  3. This is, well, serious.  All surgery is serious.  And it’s no fun being the helpless observer, a role played by my wife.  Not only during the time at the hospital (where she was a champ, even journaling everything from the Doctors as she loves to stay informed of what’s going on), but at home.  Her goal is to make sure I keep breathing. I don’t have a problem breathing now but at the hospital I did, and that was her main concern after surgery.  It’s tiring to take care of someone else.  My heart goes out to people who do this regularly, long-term.
  4. I love that morphine didn’t touch my pain at the hospital.  I just think that’s cool.
  5. I hate percoset (sp?).  It doesn’t seem to help with the pain much, makes me feel loopy, but worst, it makes me ITCH.  Itching is such a yucky feeling.  From head to to, itch itch itch.  Hard to sleep, hard to relax.  I’ve been off percoset for a full day so far, which means the pain in my abs is tolerable.
  6. The main pain I’m dealing with is getting into or out of bed, when I use my abs.  Walking is fine, I have an appetite, and feel pretty good.
  7. I’m surprised that I am so tired today.  I’ve been told that there is still anesthesia in my body, and as it wears off I’ll feel various things (more pain).  But more fatigue… that’s a surprise.
  8. I’m blessed to have a job where 80% of my work is letting my fingers fall on the right keys on my keyboard.  I can do this from almost anywhere.  In contrast, we’ve had a guy in our house who is fixing our kitchen floor, and if he had a problem like this I bet he would be out of revenue/income for at least a month. Scary!
  9. My “right hand person” at work, Liz, is taking care of pretty much everything for me right now.  It gives me peace of mind to know she is taking care of things, and I love it when she tells me to rest.

I can’t think of anything else. I hope that after I forget how hard this recovery part is, and how real the pain is, I can come back to this post and remember, so I can be nicer and more serving to those going through it.

Thank goodness for a strong support system!