Well, the top three reasons why you shouldn’t and if you do it’s going to cause disaster of frustration and stress in your business as an entrepreneur. Now the number one reason why you shouldn’t hire it is your marketing firm is especially if you are right now at the startup stage or you’re a struggling business.
If you don’t have the foundations of business right. If you don’t have your sales right, you don’t have the right team members, you don’t have a business plan, you don’t have the strategy set your foundation, their digital marketing is not the Silver Bullet. That’S going to take your business to the next level. So again, if number one reason is because, if you’re struggling right now, your business doesn’t have product market fit product market.
If you don’t have your financials in place, if you’re struggling to generate sales right, if you don’t have your basic marketing processes in place and you don’t have your operations in place as well, all these things are the fundamentals of a business, and when you don’t have This digital marketing is not the Silver Bullet. It’S going to take your business to the next level. You want to make sure that these are in place.
First, before you take your business and start considering hydrogen your marketing firm because did your marketing firm in most cases, if you think that they’re going to do the heavy lifting of all this stuff, they’re, not they’re, going to be only the ones that going to amplify. What’S already working or implement some core strategies, it’s going to take your business to the next level, for example, something will strategy my firm.
We focus on implementing traffic, getting your idea, artists, to pay attention to your business and be able to have hundreds of thousands and millions of them visiting your website online. The second thing we focused on was leads: how do we get them? The 80 to 90 percent? That went on your website that don’t, by the first time, start the communication process and then eventually third stuff and the most important thing.
How did we convert that into revenue and sales in your business at scale? Those are the only three core strategies that we focus on when you don’t have any of these in place, doesn’t matter how? What kind of industry and what kind of product or service you have audience you’re going for. Did your marketing will amount work for you? The second main reason why you shouldn’t hide digital marketing firm is, if you think that you can do it all on your own as an entrepreneur understand where have the lone wolf mentality, we think we are the gods that create the business and we’re able to go To market sell products, everyone should buy your product or service, they love it.
They love your business. You can do everything you’re doing all the marketing the sales everything – and this ties again. It’S you if you’re starting a business right, especially if you found Li the entrepreneur at the start, especially you think that you could do everything. You don’t want to leverage anybody, but this is actually a symptom of a more fundamental cause and which is really you’re, not open-minded to things, especially if you are not open-minded.
You think that you are the only one that can make the decisions, and you are the ones that can set the strategies and you are going to fight the process of growing your business with. Is your marketing firm that you should not do it? So another thing is basically: you are not open-minded, you’re, not open to new ideas. You think that the strategies that you have in place are the only ones that are going to work.
Then that’s why you should be working the firm, because a lot of times when an entrepreneur engages with a firm you have to be open and receptive to new ideas. You have to be open-minded to receiving critical feedback on your existing business marketing plan, your business structure, your growth strategies, because you are essentially enlisting a third party, a digital, strategic partner that comes in and looks at your business from a different point of view and sees Different insights and different answers and different things that they’re going to be using to grow your business at the same time, they’re also going to be incorporating their own experience, their be incorporating their own principles, their own strategies that they learn across multiple different industries.
And you have to be willing and open-minded to accept those new ideas into your business. Those fresh ideas could mean the difference between a good business, a business, that’s struggling and also a great and amazing business that continuously grows in a single year. So that’s why? The second thing: that’s the most important. Is you want to make sure that you, on the opposite side, our open-minded, because, right now, if you are not open-minded, then in most cases you shouldn’t be hiring as your marketing firm now, the third main reason and the one that we end with on what top-3 Is why shouldn’t hydrogen marketing firm is expectations? One of the biggest reasons I see, companies not get the great results that they should be in a business is really the expectations that they have when it comes to higher digital marketing from the expectations in what areas right.
When it comes to the results, when it comes to the money that it cost, when it comes to the time that it takes to grow your business, when it comes to the resources, that’s required to grow, you don’t have the right expectations. You think that it’s going to be happening in the shortest amount of time possible. That’S it, for example. This is how long do you think it’s going to take when reality, it’s actually going to take this long, the money that you think you need.
Do you think you need a thousand dollars or a few thousand dollars? What ends up happening is that actually requires tens of thousands of dollars? It’S always here’s a principle for you. To sum it up. It always takes more resources more time, more effort than you actually think, and that’s why the expectations that you have when it comes to hard digital marketing is extremely important. You want to make sure that you yourself going into any relationship with your market firm.
You got the right really. You have to write it agent. It takes more time more resources in order to get the revenue goals and the growth that you want in your business. So that’s one of the most important things. If you don’t have the right fit Asians, you should not be hind as you’re working firm and when you do, then you have a more thriving relationship with that phone now. One thing I want to end this article with is essentially, if you want to be able to jump on a on a website formless.
I check out that we have a digital marketing strategic roadmap that we can put together for you that clients pay $ 2,500 for, but you can get access to. Gratis is my investment into you and reading this article. If you feel like you, do not have these three chains holding you back and your business and also yourself, and you want to take your business to the next level and you feel like you’re a right fit right now and that you should confirm then check it Out from Southern Strategy, calm, you go on there and you’re able to find more information.
At the same time I get asked this. Is that plan I talked about you know for helping you take your business to the next level.
It’S the Gateway that we have to the web. People that maintain websites are in many ways very concerned about how their sites appear in search engines. So, but I want a restaurant. I want to be on the top page results when people search for restaurants Ameria. If I run a company, when people are looking for things, I sell or services that I offer it’s critical that I get on one of those top search pages, particularly in my local area.
If I don’t, people are going to find my business and my numbers may go down so there’s a lot of interest, and this is something that you can find our whole blogs about. Search engine optimization or something that’s also known as SEO, and all sorts of advice about different techniques, blah blah blah. You can divide that sort of into two different categories: there’s black hat SEO, which has to do with things that the search engines don’t condone.
These are practices that are really aimed at manipulating the search results or manipulating a sites position in the search results, putting it higher than it should be. On the other hand, there’s also a great set of white hat SEO techniques that are designed to just try to make sure that your site appears properly in the search results. So you can, you can say you know, the black hat techniques are trying to boost your site above where it should be.
The white hat techniques are just trying to make sure that your site is where it should be. Can a search engine find out appropriate things about my site? Can it make sure that it understands what pages on my site are about? Can it make sure that those pages are returned by the appropriate search queries so right? You know that – and this has to do really with you know – adjusting the structure of the page and other pieces of information that the website provides to search engine and to the robots that crawl the web.
So you know various things you know picking good titles right. So making sure that your pages have a title and that the title is appropriate. The title has some information about the content on the page. That’S another one, adding keywords and descriptions. So the metadata that a particular page has has influence on how robots process the page and so making sure that those keywords are good and the descriptions are up to date.
Things like this. You know making sure that robots can find pages so setting up potentially a site map that allows robots to make sure that they can find every page on your site and then also provide some interesting metadata information about how important those pages are. And then, of course, you know making sure that the contents of the page are in good shape that they’re up to date that they are relevant, that they’re interesting.
You know to some degree. The reputation of a website, hopefully fundamentally has to do with the content that that site provides not necessarily some of these gimmicks that are designed to just make sure that things work well with search engines. But there are some straightforward things you can do to make sure that your site appears in the search results in the proper position. If you want to learn more about this again, you can spend days.
You know trying to find different frameworks to optimize your the weird things up here in the search engine if you want to. But fundamentally you know, given how important searches is a huge amount of interest in this area, making sure that search results are relevant and appropriate. You
So what we’re going to do now is set up an optimized LinkedIn profile and the reason that it’s so important to do. That is because there are more than 300 million members on LinkedIn, and that was from April 2014 statistics. So it’s it’s even more now, but LinkedIn members are not just are not like Facebook members LinkedIn members are much more likely to be looking for services, programs, products, business partners, referral sources, business networking it is the biggest online business networking platform in the world.
It’S in more than 200 countries and territories, it says – and it’s just amazing so so when you optimize your LinkedIn profile, those 300 million members are looking for. Some of those people are looking for. Someone like you to serve them to partner with them to refer people to, and so you’re going to be much more you’re going to be increasing your chance of being found in the LinkedIn search engine as a result.
So I’m going to just expand this a little bit, so it’s more easy to see, okay, so setting them a LinkedIn profile. So, first of all, we already talked about this in the last lecture, so I’m going to move on now so now we’re going to talk about fully filling out your LinkedIn profile and if you have team members to have them, do the same thing. Okay. So let’s take a look at this and see what’s involved here and by the way I am speaking quite quickly because I try to make these articles shorter if possible.
If you find that I’m speaking too quickly. Please give me that constructive feedback and let me know to speak more slowly or we find that my speaking quickly is inspiring you at keeping you energized. Let me know that too. Okay, all right so first thing about your LinkedIn profile is your professional headline. Is probably the most important thing about your LinkedIn profile? Let me show you what the professional headline is when I go to my LinkedIn profile or actually, let’s just take a look here under people.
You may know so: Cynthia McGrath, that’s her name and then, and then Doctor of Nursing Practice, Family nurse. That’S the headline. The professional headline Chris Jensen, executive director has named Bruno Mountain. Read that’s a headline owner thus end the meeting game, salon editor and then, of course it kind of cuts off here. But there’s more. Let’S take a quick look here editor, but you see how a lot of people by default, I’m just an openness person’s profile.
A lot of people – OH editor, Kingston outlook, a lot of people by default, use their their job titles and I don’t think that’s the best use of professional headline. Let’S take a look at what mine is, so you can kind of see what I what I do here see my professional headline is Right: Livelihood! Okay, excuse me here, I’m going to just X this out. My professional line is Right: Livelihood online marketing, social media.
So in the first line, I immediately give people a sense of the things that that they should remember about me: I’m not just another business or marketing coach, I’m really a coach that deeply values the concept of aligning our highest values with the work that we do. Every day, in other words, Right, Livelihood is one way of saying online marketing, but I want people don’t mind to remember me as someone who can advise them on reaching a lot more people online.
I want people to remember me as someone who can train them and coach them on social media for business and therefore streamline business just to streamline the right life streamline. I should really write streamlining business for coaches consultants counselors in here. So how do you, edit? Your professional headline, you come to you, you you go to LinkedIn log in you, move your you can click directly on profile, and then you move your mouse over this area underneath the the name and you click on it.
And then this is where you write it and the maximum number of characters is 120 characters. So the way I like to do it is I like to go to a website called word counter. Dotnet word counter dotnet, and I really like to use this, so I why I’ve already you know I’ve already pasted it here. You can see it’s 119 characters is just about perfect. Actually, if I wanted to change like to streamlining that would work to streamlining business, okay, so I would cut, I would write us all out.
I would copy it by doing command C or control C on your keyboard command C, on the Mac, ctrl C on a window, I would go to edit profile click on this select everything here, delete it and then paste it paste in my new one and then Click Save ok, see there, it is ok, so professional headline is incredibly important because, as use as you saw from my earlier screen here, it’s being seen in all kinds of places see people you may know again.
These are professional headlines again. Most people are not optimizing. That that’s space use keywords that describe you well and what prospective clients partners are. Looking for again, like I said it’s the most visible thing on your LinkedIn profile beside your name and photos, so I wanted to just spend extra time on that. It’S incredibly important. The other thing you can do to get ideas of professional headlines just go to the search box and search for people who are your niche mates, people who are who are doing a similar service as you serving similar audiences you.
So, for example, for me or let’s just say for you, let’s say you are a relationship: coach, okay, so I’ll just search relationship, coach and that press ENTER on my keyboard and once the search pulls up, I’m going to click people to kind of filter by people And then see this is this: is the professional headline? Ok, so this again, this person is not optimizing. The number of characters, but this good that this person has some keywords in there see this person is, is doing a better job of optimizing.
The number of characters and her headline relationship consultant integrated life, coach notice, how I search relationship, coach right and then LinkedIn in the search results will will bold the the keywords that I searched for in the professional headline. So you see how important the professional headline is. Its figures in heavily into the search algorithm itself, so whatever thing phrases, words that you think your ideal clients are looking for on LinkedIn or would look for in a search engine use those key words, those words or phrases in your professional professional headline, if possible, the Ones that are most likely to be searched by your ideal clients when looking for someone like you, let’s take a look here, the relationship doctor.
So it’s it’s cool how this person she’s a PhD. So she calls from a doctor can use a sort of a tagline to have to make herself more memorable like him. She puts it in quotes, meaning this is what people call me. So I really like that intersection of biblical wisdom and personality science. So this is a really interesting headline: isn’t it because it really narrows down on people who believe in the Bible who really value the Bible and she’s really trying to reach other people like that people who also find personality science interesting? So this is a really good job Ronna for writing that certified Tantra educator.
So it’s nice that this person is is putting some credibility right into our professional headline as well. Conscious relationship and the word conscious relationship is a key word, a key phrase that some people are searching for, so it’s nice. I should put that in there jewel in the Lotus coaching. Now she really doesn’t need to put jewel in the Lotus coaching. That’S our business name, but unless that name is a household name in their industry, chances are people aren’t searching for that.
So that would be a bit of a wasted space. There psychologist dating relationship wellness coaching at dates, a soulmate again, there’s no need to use your business name unless it’s a household name in your industry. Okay, unless you work at a company, that’s a household name, coach workshop facilitator and that’s nice. That should put the word workshop in there, because maybe people in her industry are looking for people to run workshops so that you know that that if I were searching relationship workshops, you know that might hurt her name would come up closer to the top.
So I hope, just by giving you a couple of ideas here, that it helps you remember to search for your niche mates using different words to see examples of what other people are using and borrow emulate. What’S examples you’re really liking, so I hope that’s helpful. Next. We’Re going to talk about the other parts of your LinkedIn profile in the next lecture, see you there
Social signals are very real and help your search rankings. Learn more in the video below.
Alright, now, the reason why I Kind of like came up with this idea to shoot this article is because I’ve had a number of friends. Actually, personally, text me reached Out to me – and so I kind of wanted to maybe make this as like a little help for them As they’re going through and growing their business they’re all in different businesses.
So this could work if you know you’re real estate. You know on a marketing agency – Oh my god, Friends got want to start a Golf Channel, Another friend, that’s in network marketing. There’S there’s all these different things and it all is pretty consistent when you’re going through and building up your business on social media right now. Now, I’m just so you guys, if you guys, are brand new to the blog.
My name is Jason Wardrop And I use these exact strategies yesterday, mated twenty thousand dollars in just one day, I’ll, actually I’ll, throw a little Screenshot right here. Something like that. So you guys can actually believe me see that it’s real There’s, no exact strategies that I’ve gone through and used, And the cool thing is. I was just talking with a friend the other day actually, and we were talking about how, Like I started, diving into this stuff less than two years ago.
Okay, so it’s not like it takes you a whole lifetime. Let you go if you’re a doctor you’re going to go and get to spend eight to ten years in school, And then you kind of like hit a cap of what you can really go through and make, whereas with social media. Since you can reach so many people, you there’s not really a cap on your income or learning, And you could do it fairly quickly. Alright, But there’s a few core things that you need to know as we go through and break this down so step number one guys I’ll try to write it fairly big, so you guys can see this and excuse my my terrible handwriting here, but number one is Gain a Skill okay, so let me just hit this really quick guys, So many people – this is bugs me and I know it bugs a lot of people They go.
They try to be the fake expert because, like being an expert, is Big nowadays, because it’s like oh you’re, the expert go launch a course and make all this money. Well, if you don’t have any credibility or authority No-one’s going to go trust you and you’re going to make like Pennies compared to like what you really could make now, if you think about it, If you guys are familiar with Gary Vaynerchuk, which I’m sure so you Guys are, he is a big-time businessman.
He’S got millions of followers on all the different social media platforms, But the interesting thing is: if you guys go, look at the beginning of his career And when he first started out, he started out with a company called Wine Library, or it was called a Wine Library, TV Right, he start out with a YouTube blog and would shoot a article every single day to go through and propel His wine business.
He was selling wine out of his dad’s little shop And he went through it, took him to the Internet And then I think they sold that company for like 60 million dollars right. So You got ta gain a skill and ideally that skill is something that you’re passionate about right like so when my friends, He just texts me yesterday is like hey man. I want to start an Instagram page on our Instagram profile on golf he’s, a big-time golfer He’s super good at golf.
He’S in all these big-time tournaments He’s, like you know, how would I go through and do this, and so that’s the nice thing he’s got a skill, Whereas I’ve got other friends who they want to go through. They want to create the big social media following, But there’s no one, there’s no backstory to them like I’ve got another friend. He is called the bucket list. Family They’ve got, I think, close to million followers.
Now He’s got a cool story, He went started an app and sold a snapchat anyway, We were in the same business school together and we were having a few classes together, But what he did instead of going through and getting like that, necessarily like that skill, He Built a story around his profile right where it’s like: hey He’s taking his family, He sold everything all their belongings And then they’re traveling, all around the world and now they’re getting sponsorships and cool deals and stuff like that.
So he’s got a story behind it, whereas most people you’re going to need to have some type of skill set like You know, Gary Vee he went in and he started just like going through and Evaluating wines right or you need to go through, learn Facebook Ads. If you want to start a marketing agency Or you’ve got to get some, I got an another friend. He sells courses on Amazon, okay Or he sells stuff on Amazon.
He build a course around that and now his personal brands blown up. So We got to gain a skill guys that that’s number one, If not then you’re going to be kind of built on like a deck of cards. Okay, go on deck of cards, alright, So the second thing is going through, and this is this part number two is really what I think you guys here for is building a personal brand Okay, so I started about a year and a half ago marking two real Estate agents right and I’ve kind of become the known as The guy okay he’s the the real estate Legion marketing guy and all that stuff.
So I’ve worked with now a few thousand real estate agents, helping them generate leads Market. The business go and I’ll grow. That and now I’m kind of starting to help other people Create their own marketing agency right. So I’ve gone through and I’ve kind of built that personal brand – and it didn’t happen overnight and like with Gary Vaynerchuk, Didn’t happen overnight. He was for years doing that that daily show and just working – And he wasn’t like necessarily just like in the branding kind of comes with it right.
So when you’re going through and you’re building your personal brand, It’s key to pick the right platform. Where you know your users are going to be okay, so Bit my bigger, if like, if you guys, are reading this on YouTube, Which you are cuz, I’m shooting it for my youtube blog. You see, I probably have like a thousand subscribers, which is pretty miniscule Right. That’S not not that big on Facebook, I have about 30,000 followers.
Okay, which is you know it’s getting up there. It’S not like a huge falling, But it’s a decent size And the reason why I build it up on on Facebook is because there’s a lot of real estate agents. A lot of mortgage brokers a lot of real estate brokers on Facebook, more so than are on YouTube. Okay, and so I went through – and I built my personal brand on Facebook, But then, like my buddy, he wants to go through and build his.
He wants to build his Instagram account right so, depending on your business, You got to know your target market and know where they hang out, like, for example, And one friend I was telling you about who’s got. He sells on Amazon, well, Amazon, crypto Shopify, all that stuff. That’S super Hot, on YouTube right! So, if you’re going to go through and connect with other people, you got to make sure you’re using the right Platform where you know like snapchat.
It’S going to be a different following Instagram different following, whereas like Facebook, now You used to be all like kind of the younger generation and now none of the younger. I got some of the younger brothers and none of them are ever on Facebook. It’S kind of like: oh, that’s, not cool anymore. That’S for old people right, so you got to pick your right Platform is you’re going through a building and guys Like I could go through and we could hit different strategies on how to build on Instagram YouTube.
Facebook. All these different platforms, But there’s like there’s a million other articles out there on how to do each one of those specifically and there’s guys that, like they Specialize in that one platform, all right, so we’re not going to hit that in today’s article. I just want to cover a few these key concepts so that you can have a kind of core basic Understanding of some things that you should probably put in place When you’re going through and building up your social media following alright, then the third thing is Okay.
This is key to you: got ta have some type of product product to Sell. Okay. Now this obviously the whole idea behind all of this is that you can go through and make money For your business or make money just for life in general right. So You know some people might be starting to be like well Jase, I’m not in for the money. Well, Let’s get real at the end of day. At some point you are going to be right, you’re not going to want to spend all your time.
Game is skill, build a personal brand and then make no money whatsoever, okay, so the Products this could be a number of different things, so it could be a digital online course. Okay, It could be a software, it could be a physical good, Okay like, for example, Logan Paul. He sells like his maverick merges his t-shirts awesome. I don’t know how much she’s going to be selling now that that u2 is basically banning him or doing some crazy stuff there.
But you got to have a product to sell or like, for example, You know my buddy that wants to start the Instagram account for a golf okay. He can maybe have a training on how to go through and improve your putt or your chip shot Or you drive whatever it is. I don’t I don’t golf something all the different terms, or he could do some type of affiliate deals With links to Amazon. Where he’s saying hey, I recommend this driver.
This driver is awesome, It’s great to use, and then he get a little affiliate cut where you don’t have to manage any of the product, the shipping any of that stuff and That super beneficial, where you’re probably not going to make as much money. If it’s you just going to feel They attack the product, if you have your own products, you’re going to make a lot more money, But that’s another way to kind of like have that hands-free business more of the lifestyle type of business right.
So This is he right here guys because, yes, you can go through and make money from YouTube ad revenue. Yes, you can go make money from like brands and sponsorships and all that stuff, But honestly that type of money that you can make is like Pennies compared to. If you have your own product right. So I know people that they’ve got tens of thousands of followers. They’Ve got hundreds of thousands of followers and They don’t make a ton of money because they don’t have this core back end product nailed down completely Okay.
So you got to think about Okay, If you have 10,000 followers or 30,000 or 100,000. What? What kind of like that niche right like what? What is that following based on and what would be something that they’d all be interested in? Maybe you could make like you know some t-shirts, like a community type t-shirt like Logan Paul at the Maverick brand like a. I mention a little bit earlier Or you know Gary Vaynerchuk.
He had the wine that he was going through and selling, so He went through gain a skill set. He was really knowledgeable up about wines: Okay, Build a personal brand around wine initially, And then he had the product to sell on the back end. Okay, now one core thing guys! I want you guys. I really want to stress this big-time gaining this skill. Okay, if you do not have a skill right now, No worries, okay, like so that’s kind of where I found myself about two years ago I was, I was doing a startup And I was like can’t.
I know I know some digital marketing stuff and all that stuff. But let’s say my startup completely tanked and everything just went to crap and I had to start over completely from scratch Or, let’s say even worse, like I had actually get a job right like happy for me, That would be like the worst thing on the planet. So what I thought was like man, You know I’m pretty good at like some of the social media mark and stuff, But kind of just been dabbling like I know SEO a little bit.
I know a little bit of the YouTube stuff. I know a little bit of all these things. I was like if I really knew how to go, sell on webinars buy really new Facebook Ads buy really new email marketing like I’d. Had these core skill sets that It served not only me, but you know every like a lot of other businesses. Okay, So I went through and I spent probably the next. I don’t know six and nine months going through and hammering that down really learning that skillset guys.
Believe me, It wasn’t easy but, as I mentioned guys, yesterday made twenty thousand dollars in just one day. So if you think about that, that was like less than two years ago that I took a step back was like man. I need a skill set. Okay, So if I can tell you, hey, go get a skill set nail it down and then in two years You could potentially be making five grand a day or ten grand a day or twenty grand a day Or I’ve got some buddies that are doing.
Like fifty to sixty grand a day, Okay, which is insane like I want, I want to get to that level like that’s crazy right, so anyway, guys. These are some kind of basic tips as far as how to get started With social media for beginners. If you really wanted to build a business around it, I highly Recommend gaining some type of skill set right Like get something where you either know a lot about a topic like whether it could be.
You know wine like Gary Vaynerchuk. It could be accounting finance marketing. Whatever it might be like or you know, tan or J Fox Talked a little bit about him on the blog before he knows how to sell on Amazon, right Or other guys to know how to sell on Shopify or, like my skill set was. I knew how to generate leads For real estate agents really well and now you know mortgage brokers and kind of like branch, that off from off that okay, Then I went through and after I kind of got that core base of like okay, these guys, I’m generating These form having great crazy success stories.
This is awesome. I can now go build my personal brand around it, and Now I’ve got a product to sell where we bill out of software. I have trainings, I have coaching’s all that stuff And then there’s easy, even things like little fingers of pieces that I can build off of that where it’s like now. I’Ve got my core training teaching Real stages. How to generate leads on our software, and now I got a whole different training Teaching mortgage brokers.
How to generate leads on the software, because they’re so closely related right and now I’ve got a third training of teaching digital marketers right, like maybe you might be a digital, marketer or marketing agency right and teaching them. They go, get real estate, Clients and mortgage clients. Now I’m just I just started that a month ago, because a year year and a half ago, Yes, I was getting clients, But I wasn’t like getting him on a super consider how to go through, and I had to gain that skillset.
First, I had to like make a get a better foundation on that, And so once I built that solve foundation – and you know I think today so yesterday we did twenty thousand, and I think today, We’ve already had like 50 to 60 new signups or something like That on our software, So it’s like, I feel like I’ve – got that skill set got that nailed down where I Feel confident where it’s not like the blind leading the blind.
I know how to lead people to be able to say: hey, you want to generate real estate, leads and And go get real estate, clients and market for them and get paid a monthly commission for your marketing services. On that, Here’s exactly how to do that! Here’S like the légion campaigns, Here’s how to go through get more people organically. So anyway, It’s kind of a proven process. But, as I mentioned it’s taken time, so what I would suggest, if you’re completely starting from scratch Right now, you don’t have a skill set.
Take the next six months, KS January 2018 January 11th, I think, or twelve things, twelve Okay, so January 12 2018. Take it till set it to the goal. Okay, say by June You’re going to Have a solid skill set, whether it’s you know hey, you know how to generate leads or Forfor. Like you know, some type of business owner real stay Insurance whatever or you Know how to like golf or you know how to you’re really knowledgeable about wine or some topic and then once you do that, Go through And you’re helping people right, you’re getting some excuse.
Some testimonials experience, basically that credibility. That authority Then go start building your personal brand around it on the platform that that complements whatever niche You’re going after and then create some type of product to sell to the masses, And that’s the beauty about social media right like instead of back in the day When you could only reach your local real estate Agents like we’ve, got agents all across the United States and Canada And we’ve now, I think they were pretty close to 3,000 agents that have been on our platform and using our Training and all stuff which, which is Crazy right, like I, would have never been able to do that probably 20-30 years ago, But now I can do that because we’ve got social media.
We can connect with so many people right so Anyway, guys leave a comment down below. Let me know your thoughts. Let me know I’m curious to hear about what you’re trying to go through and build your social media brand on And if you guys leave your thoughts down below I’ll be sure to respond to every single one of you guys. If you guys got a question I’ll give you guys some feedback, let you know how I can be helpful And if you guys are brand new to the blog.
My name is Jason Wardrop, as I mentioned earlier, and if, if you’re not Subscribed yet make sure you subscribe because we tried I’ve tried to launch a new article every single day and stuff gets me know, It gets piled up, so it gets hard sometimes. But I try to launch a few articles. Every single week, at least Be able to help you generate more leads, make more money and grow your business right so anyway, guys Thanks so much for reading today and we’ll talk to you all later.
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This is their home screen and does not look great. Isn’T that pretty That the crowd here seems like it. So what’s so great about it? Is that it’s just so plug-and-play it’s pretty, and it’s simple so you that you can’t ask for more than that – and these are my applets, that I have set up and there’s a couple of fun ones that I want to bring to your attention and stuff. Maybe you’ve never thought about before there’s some obvious ones that are just practical, but I really like having fun with some of the ones that are more out-of-the-box, so the first one I’m going to show you is this one.
So what this says is if the weather changes then post a tweet with an image to my Twitter account. Let me back up here because I didn’t do a great job to sort of introducing. What is tiki is the essence of ifttt, and that is, it connects applications and devices together to automate things, to make your life just a little bit easier. Okay, when do you think, might be a good time to use something like this.
I could think of a million ways, and I actually was inspired a while ago by a blog post are read that talked about how the coarser in group in New York uses this. So, basically, whenever new york is forecast well, actually, whenever it rains in New York, a tweet automatically goes out with an image, and it says paint new york check out these top 10 things to do in New York when it rains in the city when it rained Something like that, so I thought that was a great idea.
You can also time this for sunrise and sunset, so one of my clients was a an online Jewish magazine, and so what we did was we triggered a like shabbat shalom, happy sabbath to go out with the come down on friday, so really cool. What I did in this case, here’s 1 i’ll, show you a graphic. So when it rains and Cleveland, I send out this graphic – and it says it’s raining Cleveland a great time to get cozy and brush up on your social media, so think about the ways that you might use that.
But you can also do it based on your calendar, so let me get back to here, so you could say on the first of every month to do this. You know on every full moon. Do this so really really fun way to use ifttt. Let me go back over to my applets okay um. Now, let’s just talk about i’m going to walk through these we’re just going to talk about some of these. You probably already have set up with this red square up here on the top right and it says post your Instagram photos as native Twitter photos when twitter is in the caption.
So if you want your Instagram photos to show up nice and big and beautifully in the twitter feed, that’s all you have to do is get set this this applet up and the reason you would do this is because, if you just connect the app whether it’s Facebook or Twitter or anything with instagram, then you typically just end up with an ugly little link in this case. It post the picture, nice and big, and bold and beautiful, but check this one out so on Twitter.
What this one says is: if anybody tweets with the phrase I want to create a course, then send me a text message at this number, so really anytime. Anybody tweets with that exact phrase. I’M going to get a text message now. Why is that a good idea like why? Why would I particularly want to have that information? Well, because I have a course that teaches people how to create courses now are another experiment that I love to do is in those of you who have followed me for a while have probably seen me do this a few times.
But, to be honest with you, it really never loses its novelty far as I’m concerned. This is difficult thing ever and that is you’re going to go over to Twitter and then we’re going to go to advanced search, which is twitter.Com /a search cash advance. Alright, this is what we want and where it says this exact phrase, i’m going to say, I need a graphic designer and then we’re going to click search and what you see is all the people who have just tweeted that they need a graphic designer.
This person is guys I need a graphic designer someone to redesign to design logo, t-shirts, corporate branding, i’ll pay marketplace price, pls retweet to assist or please reply to it with resist to assist. I need a graphic designer, that’s good, a tree, creating logos, I mean on and on, but you don’t have time to sit here and hit advanced search all day long in twitter. But what you do have time to do is to set this up so maybe you’re.
If you’re a graphic designer in the quotation marks, it would say I want a CI need a graphic designer and then you’re going to get a tweet every time. Someone says that pretty cool right: let’s go back over to the other applicants and remember don’t worry, you know, don’t worry about writing all this down. I am putting all this into a slick. Workbook, that’s going to be emailed out tomorrow. Course it’s free and I’m hopefully going to compile some of your suggestions for your favorite ifttt applets and recipes combined with these as well on.
Let’S see here, what’s the next one automatically sync starred emails in gmail to evernote, so I don’t know about you, but I get a ton of email and a lot of them. I don’t have time to answer right away, but they’re important, and I don’t want to forget about them. So I will start i’ll click the little star in gmail and it will automatically go to my Evernote this next. One automatically create new reminders on your iphone.
Four emails that you start in gmail, yeah, that’s redundant, ok, email, me, 10, things to know in the morning. I love this one. This one I get. This is where I get great ideas for what to post on my social media, because I’ve got new york. Time result New York Times. Basically, I get an alert from them with any breaking technology news. So if you’re in the health and wellness base, then you would get breaking news for health and wellness and so on and so forth, according to whatever your me shit.
What else I want to point out? Oh, this one’s cool, so whenever you arrive in the city in New York, send yourself a map of the subway. So I’m they’re quite a bit these dates, because I’ve been participating in Todd, Herremans on basecamp mastermind and so its cool the minute that I’ll and I get an email with the map of the subway system. This one saved my too much more times than I can even tell you.
This is set an SMS alert before any event starts on your google calendar. So, for example, today I had a client call at ten. Am I almost forgot about it, but I got a text message. 15 minutes prior to the meeting. That said, your meeting with so-and-so is starting a 10am, so that was really helpful on a every morning at 7am I get the forecast for the day this one pin a photo to a Pinterest board and this one I highly recommend right here where it says.
If new is TT update, then send me a text message and that’s because ifttt is constantly adding new, integrations new devices and stop softwares and platforms that they integrate with and you’ll find out about it. If you set up that rule, so let me show you quickly, starting from the beginning, how you set up one of these easy, peasy little recipes and see, look at how beautiful this is it’s so so, like I just love how clean and simple it is so You’Re just going to follow the prop, so we’re going to click here.
If this now look at all these things we have to choose from, we can connect any of this stuff together. Even your washing machine, ok, your washing machine light bulb SurveyMonkey. I mean I’m just randomly your nest, thermostat on and on on Iran. So many things. Ok, so let’s say on it. You don’t want to scroll through all these things, and you know what it is. You want to connect, then you could just start typing it in date and time and now I could say everyday at a certain time.
Every hour, every day of the week every year on a certain date and time you specify every month on the whatever day of every month, so every single person that’s reading with your audience, there’s something you can come up with. That would be of value to your audience to send them on the first of every month or at the last day of every month, to check in and say, hey, you know it’s the last day of the month.
Did you do such and so or this is a reminder to do such and so so explore this and have fun with it? So what we’re going to do is we’re going to say every month on the first of the month and then we’re going to click create trigger, and then the next probably get is just blew that so now we’re going to click on that and what we want To do what we didn’t do on the first very much um gosh, we have so many options.
So i’m going to say Facebook page and i’m going to say that I want to. I can either just create a status message or post the link or I can upload a photo from a URL. So that’s probably going to be the best thing to do so. I’M going to click here and i’m going to put in the photo URL now quick, tip low pro tip for you in order to get a really easy, clean URL for a photo like the one that I showed. You hear that I have.
That goes out on a tweet every time it rains is to go over to amazon s3. Now I’m warning you now that if you’re not familiar with amazon s3, when you look at it you’re going to go yeah yeah I this is more than I want to take on. But if you just follow exactly what I’m doing, you’re going to be fine and now look at this teeny weeny weeny right there – s3, that’s what you want and what I’m showing you is basically a cloud, but the great thing about amazon s3 is that number one Stuff, uploads lightning-fast: you can create these buckets to organize your content and the truth is, I need to go in there and add a few more buckets and organize myself a little better, but you can create these buckets and then and then you upload articles or graphics Or PDF documents – and it gives you these shareable link in it.
I don’t even know what I pay for this. It’S so inexpensive, maybe five dollars a month, and I have so many articles so much content and I’ve never gotten a message that says like you’re, you’re, running low on content and it’s extraordinarily reliable. In fact. There’S a lot of big-name systems and platforms like teaching platforms, and I don’t want to name them right now, because I used one the other day and I can’t remember which one it was like.
I don’t know if it was teachable, I don’t know where I was, but the point is a lot of big companies that how your content already use Amazon at s3 to host, so that just shows you like help how kind of durable it is or dependable. I should say so: okay, so here we are and arm i’ll, just go over here to this one, because this is where I just uploaded that little dog graphic and you click upload and then you’re going to click, Add file, and I recommend for this purpose to Find a PNG payment, which is what can be if you create your graphic in kamba.
It will default to that format. So let me go to downloads, because I know I have one there. I thought I did so now. What I’m going to do is just click dot PNG in my search and that’ll bring something up just so. I could demonstrate okay, so we’ll just pick this and then click open and then don’t forget this part in the lower right hand. Corner click start upload. Ok done: do you see how fast that was just insane done? Not only that I’m live streaming and I’ve got all these things open and that just happened that fast.
So then, this is very, very important. You’Re going to click to the left of that file, its blue now and then you’re, going to click properties and you’re, going to click permissions and then add more permissions and you’re going to click open, download, you’re, going to check that check the little box and then You’Re going to make sure on the pop-up menu click everyone. Then click save now we’re going to hit reload on this and there’s the file we’re going to click the little blue button.
Again, click properties again and then there it is, there’s our beautiful little link. So you just turn that graphic into a link this also by the way, works really well as a lead magnet. So you know arm, as opposed to feel like when you send a thank-you after someone off into your thing or on the thank you button on your lead page. You can have this be the link, so they are immediately. Click on it and they’re automatically taken right to thing that they opted in for so very, very cool.
Alright. So let’s go back over here, so the photo URL would be whatever it was that we just created. And then you put your message here: it’s the first of the month, it’s lalala and then just click create action and then that’s going to be your ifttt recipe. There, so that’s it! That’S how you create a recipe. It’S just going to just going to walk you through it totally plug-and-play. Please feel free to comment down below and share.
Your favorite is TT applet with us and for those of you who are just joining us. This will be mailed out to you if you’re my email list, you’re going to get the beautiful workbook that I’m creating, which is a compilation of all my favorite, is TT recipes, some that we mentioned today and some that I did not get a chance to mention. So on that note have a great day thanks for joining me, and I I hope you have some nice zesty delicious tacos tonight, because it is talking to use that
Already DOING on Facebook to create sales transactions, // (, snap, ), //, (, research search terms, ) Engaging with customers and having them SHARE. Our messages It’s what most of us are doing with social Media But if you’re like most marketers getting Your messages, blog stories and articles SHARED on social media is NOT growing sales for you.
What WILL is giving customers and prospects? Incentive to share things that end up creating SALES for your business. You can start doing this RIGHT NOW by applying A practical PROCESS to your Facebook strategy: First identify where your customers are congregating. On Facebook Next identify what it is that your customers Are interested in doing learning or seeking out Finally devise a way to join in that adds? Something valuable to whatever they’re doing or seeking, But do it in a way that mixes in an incentive To buy from you As an example, Brian Safady of JandOFabrics.
Com Sells novelty fabrics to arts and crafts enthusiasts He’s netting new customers using a Halloween Costume contest that targets one of his customers’ favorite activities, — sharing photos on Facebook By giving customers an INCENTIVE to upload Their costume photos and enter Ryan is winning new customers that track back to his Facebook. Contest He simply offers a reward. — a grand prize and A discount coupon for every new customer who enters and chooses to buy fabric from him Ryan is making social media sell for him.
Fabulously mine has started out uncomfortably because I’m doing this year live article. I am not yet at a place of conscious competence, no unconscious competence with live articles, my comfort zone. I have identified when it comes to recording articles is still very much in the pre-recorded phase of article making, as opposed to these live articles.
So this is me you are witnessing me stretching myself far out of my comfort zone, where I am feeling less than confident than I usually am and yeah aren’t you likely to see this unveiling itself so today I wanted to show you five myths about confidence that We all just assume you know we have all these ideas about what confidence is, and I want to talk a little bit about these five myths as a way to empower ourselves and to recognize when we are in a place of you know falling under the spell Of these myths and not really recognizing how they are impacting us and how we’re showing up in the world, hello, Natalie, yay laughs – this is me doing live article as opposed to pre-recorded, for once, thanks for joining me, what time is it there in Australia or New Zealand, sorry, New Zealand, and so I’m not going to wait for people to join because I’d rather then it just be me and you Natalie, you know I’m quite happy having that conversation, so the five myths of confidence, the first one being that oh, it’s 10 p.
M. There, okay awesome so almost bedtime for you Natalie so and maybe what you can right there natalie is what and myths or what misconceptions you have about confidence and how it impacts your experience of being a confident woman, because I think that might be an interesting thing To discuss, but in the meantime, five myths about confidence, the first one being that I’m born or confidence. The confidence that you are born with is the confidence that you are stuck with, and that is just not the truth.
If you think that confident people, if you look at somebody who is a confident person, you think that they’ve always been that way. I’M here to tell you today that that is not the case. They have not always been confident. So there has been research done by very academic and sciency type people into the topic of confidence and whether we are born with it or whether we are not. And while there is some truth in the in the in this myth of being born with confidence there.
There are some genetic tendencies that will determine whether somebody is confident overall or not and what it comes down to. Essentially – and I don’t know the technical jargon – cuz – I’m not a scientist, but it’s something to do with receptors in your brain and there are three kinds – and I will I will get the names of these things and I will write these down in a blog post. In the future, but there’s three kinds of these receptors in your brain and depending on the size of these receptors, will determine how much of an outgoing and gregarious and leader type person personality.
You tend to have versus how much of a a person with anxiety or insecure, or somebody who looks to other people for leadership, and this study was done in some in a lab with monkeys, and I forget the name of the monkeys. I really need to remember these things where they could identify that. Yes, the monkey who had this type of receptor in their brain tended to become the you know, a leader in the troop, whereas the monkey with the smaller or the shorter receptor in the brain became was one of those monkeys who stuck with its mother and was Shy and timid when it came to interacting with the rest of the troop.
So yes, we do have that as far as being born with our confidence but reign through our you know upbringing through our experiences in life as a child. We learn certain things and we are actually able to mold our our confidence, but it does take especially when we get to adult age. It does take effort and intention on our part. So certainly, events in our childhood are going to impact our confidence for sure, because we’re going to make those those events and experiences mean something.
But then, as we get into you know an independent and self-aware adult we can. We can go back and we can look at those events and re reframe them and redefine them and make them mean something else that is more serving and we are also able to instill practices that help us rewire, our brains, the neural pathways in our brains. So the confidence – and I mean that’s so exciting because it means that the confidence that you’re born with is not the confidence you have to stick with for the rest of your life.
You are able to change it and that is so empowering, don’t you think, and just looking at Natalie, yes, confidence can be learned, hello, Caroline and so let me know in the comments, Natalie and Caroline what your take on that is. Did it was that a mess that your head bought into that you believed that the confidence you were born with is the confidence you’re stuck with and then let’s look at comp.
Myth number two myth number two confidence myth number two you either are confident or you’re. Not it’s a black and white thing total myth. That is not true in any way. You are not. You know you are not specifically a confident person and a not confident person. You can’t look at two people and decide that this person is confident and that person is not confident. There is a lot of gray area that comes with confidence, and the reason is, is that confidence spends so many parts of our experience of life.
Our experience of reality and and it’s not a one size fits all, and it’s not you know equal across all those areas of our life and our experience of life. I might be confident in taking people’s photos naturally, because I am a photographer and I have a lot of experience in that realm and yet I might completely feel complete lack of confidence in the kitchen when I’m cooking cuz. I don’t have much talent in that regard and I don’t put a lot of effort into that.
So my confidence levels when it comes to cooking like gourmet meals, it’s nowhere near as high as my confidence when it comes to taking photographs of people. So confidence is contextual, it depends on the context and also in my mind, confidence has different. There are different sides. Confidence is body, confidence, your physical appearance, and you know the the shell that we are presenting to the world and that which we are being judged by others on hole, tena worms, a confidence that comes up there then there’s mind confidence.
It’S that talk that goes on between our ears, that is either helping us or hindering us and depending on the quality of that in our head and the thoughts that we encourage or the thoughts that we entertain will determine whether our thinking is that of a confident Person or not, and then there’s also what I call soul, confidence which is kind of the more rourou stuff which really relates to like the bigger meaning of life stuff, it’s the the higher self stuff that really speaks to our well.
You know why are we here? What is what is my purpose, what is my, what is my gift to the world and and how aligned we are to that? So for me, there’s those three aspects of confidence and you might be confident when it comes to your soul. Confidence, like you know exactly what your purpose on this planet is, and yet you might have very low body confidence, because you are basing too much extreme extrinsic value on other people’s opinion of your appearance, and so there might be a mismatch there.
So confidence is not a across-the-board thing. You might be confident in one area and not confident in another, and so anybody that you look at you label as a confident person yeah in this particular instance. They might be confident but put them in an unknown environment with people they don’t know or you know, ask them a question that they haven’t considered before they probably aren’t going to be as confident as you first thought: hey, Candace, um, hey brainy, look at us talking Again, for the second time today, I just interviewed Briony to find out what confidence means to her and what a phenomenal conversation the that recording will be going out in June.
So I’m so excited to say that that’s going to be awesome, so confidence, myth number three extroverts are confident. Introverts are not total crap, not true at all. Just because people who we perceive to be extrovert are loud and they like to be the center of attention, and they you know they yeah. They are the person at the party that enjoys being seen. They enjoy having other people paying attention to them.
For the duration of the party, that is not a guarantee of their level of confidence, in fact, sometimes their extraversion might be a mask that they put on to hide their lack of confidence. So something that you see you know in somebody at face value may not be the authentic truth of who they are and then vice versa, an introverted person just because they are the person setback and in the corner of the room observing all of the other people.
Mingling and socializing, and being loud and laughing, and all of that kind of thing just because they are quietly standing in the corner, observing doesn’t mean that they are not confident. Essentially when it comes down to introvert and extrovert. It’S where the person gets their energy from like an extrovert tends to thrive on the energy of being the center of attention and an introvert tends to get their energy from being on their own and being introspective and reading a book or whatever.
The case is that’s. How they feel centered that’s how they feel grounded to who they are, and just because we might read an introverted person as quiet and insecure and lacking confidence. They might just be quietly observing you know, reading everybody and they’ve got. They are seriously in no way lacking confidence, so just but if you’re a quiet person doesn’t mean you’re lacking confidence. You are secure in who you are you accept that you’re an introvert you, you acknowledge it.
You understand where you get your energy from and in that acceptance there lies your confidence, so don’t judge somebody on their extraversion or their introversion as to their correlation to confidence, because you never really know what is going on behind what we can see on Facebook. You does anybody relate to that. Maybe comment in in the comments see I’m doing I’m trying out all of these Facebook live things that I see.
Other people do so, let me know in the comments whether you’re, an extrovert or an introvert, and whether you’ve ever related that to your confidence levels. The confidence myth number four confidence is all about how you look yeah Briony says she completely relates. Thank you, um yeah. So when I started out on this confidence crusade of mine, it the in the the instigator the catalyst for this journey was my portrait photography and so naturally, when I’m photographing somebody I’m photographing their their outer form, their extrinsic layer, you know and what it looks, what They look like that is what I am capturing for them, and it was an interesting process for me and they’re catalysts of that got me onto this journey was seeing that my the the work that I was doing was allowing these women to see themselves differently because They had an image in their mind of what they looked like.
They were judging their physical appearance and very harshly, I might say, and they were judging their physical appearance based on what they thought. Other people were thinking about them, so their locus of validation was all external to them, other people’s opinions they based so much emphasis on what people thought of them and their physical appearance and like as women. It’S obvious that we would do that because we are being bombarded with magazine covers with advertisements with Instagram feeds of a certain type like a certain body shape and a so definition of beauty, and we are consciously or subconsciously taking on board that that’s what beauty looks Like and we’ve been Fiddler’s ever since we were able to identify that that is a woman versus that is a man and because we were being fed very intentionally a certain image of a woman.
We started to internalize that. That’S what beauty looks like. That is what I should be aiming for. So it’s no wonder that nine times out of ten clients that come to me for portraits are already apologizing that they aren’t photogenic before the cameras even come out. They’Re apologizing that they’re not photogenic. They explain that they hate. Having their photos taken and they shy away, they like to be on the other side of the camera.
Photographing their families and they’d rather be the side of the camera, and that, for me, was so sad that that, for me, was really really sad. And while we place a lot of emphasis, because it is the most obvious like area of confidence – is our physical appearance, confidence is not only about our appearance. That’S probably the starting point like where it’s most obvious, because we can visually see it.
We can, you know, compare how we look to somebody else and make a judgement based on that, and invariably the pattern is that we find ourselves lacking and but confidence is deeper than just our appearance. That’S just a surface level. Our appearance is just a surface level. Before I started this this work, I thought that confidence was being able to wear a dress that I like and walk into a room and not care what other people thought about me like.
That was as deep as my definition of of confidence with wind. Now that I’m doing you know now that I do a bunch of research and I read constantly and I’m understanding that confidence is it’s so much deeper, very much deeper than just that. It is about recognising your abilities, your talents, it’s about understanding, your holistic self you’re, like all your weaknesses, all your strengths, it’s about loving each one of those is about accepting them.
It’S about celebrating all parts of you outside of any other people’s expectations or definitions. It’S about just getting to that place of authentic truth in yourself, it is about taking action. In spite of fear, it’s about doing face book lies when you’d really. Rather, there was nobody reading and you could record it and you can edit and you can cut out all the UNH’s and r’s and the purpose it is about believing that you can go out and become anything your imagination confer them anything if you want to.
If you want to change yourself for the better, for the positive confidence is believing that you can do that that you will find a way, and so it’s more than just your physical appearance, that’s one aspect of it. It is not the whole deal. Are you feeling me are you? Are you resonating here? Oh hello, hello, how are you Helga Sears relate definitely energised by being alone out, so we’re talking about the introversion but you’re a dichotomy an extroverted introvert can be can be when need to be enjoyed listening.
Ah, thanks Helga and going back to that point, I totally relate to that Telegraph. I’M an I define myself as an ambivert, so some days, I’m an extrovert other days, I’m a complete introvert and I celebrate both of those. I acknowledge both of those I recognize when I need to go into each of those. Sometimes I love getting energy from other people and being as loud and look at hands like the bigger my hands get the more extroverted.
I am feeling in that moment, but then other times like put me in front of my computer and I’m happy just to nerd out and do some coding and all kinds of crap and yeah so and Candice says I would love to. I love pro photos taken of me but beyond petrified, never mind the physical image, but the inner confidence shows on the outside totally the feedback I most often get when I take portraits. Is that somehow I managed to capture the essence of the women that I photograph and I fully believe – and I will say this forever – I’ve said it ever since I started photography.
Is that when it comes to portrait photography, it is 80 % technical skills. No sorry see, I would have edited that out. If this was a pre-recorded article, it is 20 % technical skills and 80 % people skills. Sir, when it comes to a client coming into my studio, I put so much energy and love into making them feel as comfortable as possible. Leave the camera, like don’t even get the camera out for at least an hour before the shoot and just focus all energy on creating their safe space, holding the space for this woman who is coming and feeling very vulnerable.
And I truly believe that that is how I’m able to capture the essence and that I’m told I capture, so your confidence is on the inside and it reflects on our outside and thank you briny. I appreciate the support and encouragement and then myth number five and you have to be successful to be confident who this is a heavy one. For me, this comes up a lot and because the irony, the irony of putting all of my effort and energy into being a confidence Crusader, is that so many times I don’t feel confident and I’ve had to battle many many gremlins in my mind in this journey That come up and say who the hell.
Do you think you are that you can talk about and you can teach and you can encourage other women to be confident when today, you’re not feeling confident like that is such a real? That is such a reality. For me that comes up regularly and – and my ego was like no – we have to get to that point of 100 percent confident before we can ever try and encourage other women to be confident and I’ve realized that complete company there is this, like expectation that has Been created through social media that life and business and everything is glorious and gleaming and glamorous and everybody has all their together and that’s like that’s what we need to aspire to.
While that has a place, I think in motivation and inspiration. It is miniscule like it’s a drop in the ocean. The reality is that when it comes to confidence, you the day that you stop learning how to become a confident person is the day you take your last breath because it is a daily ongoing journey and some days are going to be better than others. Like some days, you feel like you can take on the world and other days you don’t even want to like get your head out from underneath the duvet, and the irony in this journey is that this has been the most expansive experience.
For me, the most vulnerable experience I’ve ever had because I’ve had to not only face my own confidence issues very privately. But I’ve had to step it up a bit and and begin to face. Those like with others like share the vulnerability and not and and and my commitment to myself, was to never put it out there that I’ve got all my together and to put it out there that I’d sorted out my confidence issues.
My commitment has always been to share very authentically that yep some days are good. Some days are bad, I’m here as a copilot with you to help you create more confident days than not because that’s the reality of the situation and I have found in my practices my you know my learnings – that there is a toolbox of taken and practices that You can use to ensure that you’ve got more good, confident days than bad confidence days and as with anything in life.
What you put in is what you get out. You can never do a technique once or you know, have one aha moment and think that’s it. I’M set for life, I’m now confident it doesn’t work like that. It is what are you going to do today, then? What are you going to do tomorrow? What are you going to do on Wednesday? What are you going to do? What those you basically make it? A confidence, it’s a pro confidence lifestyle that you get into and like just like some days going to gym is easy.
Other day is not so much same thing with your confidence, and so my commitment with this has always been that I’m you know confidence, you don’t have to be the Guru. You don’t have to be the expert to be able to be confident and to be teaching confidence or whatever the field is that you’re in and and you don’t have to have made it yet before you can start helping other people on your journey. The the biggest aha moment I had in this journey was realizing that all I need to do is to be two or three steps ahead of somebody on a parallel journey, because then I can turn back to them and give stretch out my hand and help them To get to where I am and then together we can go forward, so you don’t have to be the expert in your field in the world before you start helping people before you can show up as your most confident self.
No, you work on your confidence daily and you look around you and you see. Who can I help? Who can I stretch out my hand, for who can I give a stepping stone to so and in fact, the more confident the more you work on your confidence? The more successful you will get, so you don’t wait for success before you work on your confidence. You work on your confidence in order to get successful. So that’s my thought about myth, number five, and what do you think hey Megan Bryan? It says we are all a work in progress.
If any of us waited for perfection, we would never do anything. Totally. Perfection perfection, it’s a one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine ten! It’S a dirty 10-letter word like we should X made that out of our vocabulary. Now it’s a disgusting word disgusting. The P word, let’s not use it anymore. Meghan says totes needed this reminder this morning, glad to be reminding you of this and Candace is struggling with success, feeling below the average.
Regarding my skills or personality yeah, that’s a that’s an uncomfortable place to be, and it’s a self judgment you are deciding. You are making that judgment, Candace that you are and below-par hey, Simon. Well, we’ve got a boy in the group wow, that’s interesting! How you do it and Helga says sometimes success can be driving us to be accepted. I find it doesn’t necessarily mean someone is confident because they are successful.
Absolutely absolutely just like work. We said with the extraversion that might be a friend that they put on and then like. They seem on the outside to be very successful and then they go home and they cry because they’ve been misaligned like they haven’t, been true to themselves all day because they’ve been putting on this act. They’Ve been putting on this show it’s all fake, and so your success doesn’t necessarily mean they are confident and yes, P, word Candice is myth.
Number five is key. Number one need confidence to be successful. Yes, absolutely work on your confidence. For me, confidence is like the foundation. You have to build that solid foundation for from the ground up for anything else to have any chance of flourishing of growing, because if you keep your eye there and you’re aiming for that success, or you know that that ideal life but you’re doing nothing in terms Of developing your confidence or developing your personal resilience or your resourcefulness or anything like doing the the personal work, the personal development work that is going to be very and fickle and and you’re going to define yourself by your degree of success or lack of success.
Because you haven’t really identified who you are because, through this personal development journey, that’s where you really connect with your authenticity and when you are fully grounded in your true authenticity. All of this other staff actually loses power over you. You you no longer define yourself by your success or your lack of success, or you know in whatever area of life and because then it becomes just about you yourself, your higher self, your meaning.
That’S all confidence that I was talking about that, ultimately, where we want to get you to get to that place of complete and utter intrinsic soul, confidence that we know in our heart of hearts that we are worthy regardless of what is happening outside of us. Regardless of what you know, all these other societal definitions of success are so that is my five myths on confidence. To recap. Number one.
The confidence I’m born with is the confidence I’m stuck with number two. You either are confident or you’re, not it’s a very black and white number. Three extroverts are confident and introverts are not number. Four confidence is all about how you look and number five. You have to be successful to be confident, so I hope you enjoyed these busting. These myths of confidence, let me know which one resonated with you the most, because if it kind of pained, if it, if you felt like oh yeah, that one that one got me here, then that’s probably the one that you need to do.
The most work with. Maybe you need to journal about it and see why? Why did that one hit you the most and and then yeah? Let me know in the comments how you see that impacting your confidence and how you’re showing up in the world – maybe maybe you couldn’t see how it’s holding you back from really showing up and really making the impact that you were destined to be. And so let me know so, my official facebook live it’s not as bad as what I thought, and so I will be doing more and in fact I plan to do one on Wednesday, Wednesday afternoon and and I’d like to do a Q & A call.
So if you’ve got any questions about confidence, anything that comes up after today’s call, let me know send me comments like post your questions and Anita’s article or send me a DM, and I will look to answer those questions that come up for you. If you’ve got any questions now pop them in the comments and I’ll gladly see, if I can answer them for you, Elmarie say thanks for this article v, one reason eight at the most okay, so you you have to be successful to be confident.
Let’S work on that out Laurie, let’s change that be confident and then you will be successful and Brian EC is the one that resonates the most is that you either have confidence where you don’t, but more than that, it’s the three types of confidence that you defined: That really resonated with me ya body, confidence, mind confidence with soul. Confidence canvas is all of the above resonated with her yeh and you’re.
So welcome. Thank you for letting me be live, and I like this. This is like we’re chatting over coffee and in fact I’ve got my coffee mic here and like yeah. This is what we do. In fact, talking of coffee, I’ve got a if you’re in the Cape Town area and have a over coffee confidence. Conversation happening next week, Tuesday at the Slug and Lettuce here in Observatory. So if you want to come and chat, we’re going to be talking about resistance and how resistance is stopping you from taking action, that builds your confidence and so it’s a free event come along.
Let’S do this in person much more connecting that way and yeah. Oh. The other thing I wanted to tell you about exciting is that I have a competition. I’M running a competition this week, okay, so the competition is for you and a fringe two of you together, because I know as girls we like to go to the bathroom together. We we pretty much. Do everything together you and you’ll be is yes, can win a spot on my confidence workshop for women, which was happening on the 26th of May? That is next week Saturday, it’s going to be held at the yoga sentry in constantia.
It’S going to be a whole day of working through all the tools, the techniques we’re going to be looking at the change process. If you want to change something about yourself, what does that look like giving you a framework we’re going to look at your body? Confidence? How can you start to change the way you see yourself, your physical appearance, we’re going to look at mind confidence? How can you start to rewire your brain neuroplasticity, we’re going to give you tools and techniques for starting to change the way that your brain talks to itself, and so that you can think more confident thoughts and then, ultimately, soul, confidence connecting you to the deeper essence Of you, like your Higher Self, you already have all of the answers.
You just need to peel away all of these layers so that you can see them, and so we’re going to be true, doing tools and techniques for helping you reconnect to your soul. Confidence going to be an amazing day, I’m so excited because there are hard moments for me, like goosebumps, there’s going to be a goose bumps all day, so don’t shave because we know what happens when we get goose bumps just leave.
Leave your legs hairy and it’s going to be awesome. We’Re going to connect with each other we’re going to have fabulous, healthy, treats and you’re going to get a photo new profile picture, courtesy of mark, so the competition this week you and a buddy can win that. So all you need to do is comment on this article tag, the friend that you want to take to the workshop with you, and let me know why you want to work on your confidence.
How will your confidence, if you were to elevated? How would that make your life or your business different and better? How would your reality change if you were to be able to notch up your confidence one or two notches? Let me know why you want to work on your confidence. You can enter as many times as you want, so you can tag if you’ve got 16 BFFs tag each one of them, and you leave me 16 reasons why you want to work on your confidence.
Cheese and C’s applies that competition is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Facebook, just saying and then yeah, that’s it oh and then I should tell you so there’s going to be some goodie bags as well. We’Ve got some vouchers you’re going to get a voucher from sublime skin and body so that you can go and pamper yourself, because that is something you should be doing on a regular basis. You’Re going to get free access to my online conscious confidence course, which you will have lifetime access to you’re, going to get 15 % off any photo shoot that you book with me, you’re, going to get 200 grand off of a consultation with the image consultant.
Who is going to help you dress in a way that reflects your personality authentically and with confidence and a whole bunch of other goodies that are going to make? You look and feel fabulous. I will be sharing those so do come and join me, and I will put a link to the registration page for the workshop as well. So if you just want to secure your spot, I’m going to cap the number of attendees at 10 women so that it is intimate and awesome.
I’M going to have a makeup artist there as well who’s going to make you feel fabulous for your new portrait photo, and it’s just going to be a wonderful day of connecting with your true authentic confidence self. So I’m so excited already for your future version of you and I would love to have you there. So get tagging get commenting down below and if you just want to secure your spot ahead of everybody else, then just go ahead and register right now and yeah.
That’S it. Thank you so much for joining me. Are there any questions Candace’s going to the bathroom together? Yes, we asked girls, we do that Helga. Thank you, you’re, a natural teacher. Thank You. Helga, that’s a kind and yes briny, don’t shave your legs. I will your enjoyable, you can attend the workshop, but because there’s going to be so many goosebumps, you know, and if you shave your legs, then you have the goosebumps, then the hair sprouts and all that shaving for nothing and in keep time we have to conserve Water, so we can’t be shaving our legs every day.
Yes, Candace! You can tag yourself twice. Let me know so: that’s it. For today I can’t 37 minutes. Look at that selfie high-five right there. I did not see that happening awesome. Thank you. So much for joining me. Let me know if you’ve got any questions for Wednesday’s Facebook live Janine Flint said I would like to join with Angie yeah. That would be awesome to have the two of you they’re, so awesome yeah.
I better cut this now cuz. You got to get your work done, go get your work done. I got ta go, get my work done. Okay, I will see you again on Wednesday. Have an awesome day, work on those five myths, I’ll post them, because my handwriting isn’t very neat so I’ll person. There have yourself a fantastic day: tap into your confidence, show app as your most confident self go out. There be significant make an impact.
Yeah just generally be awesome, see you again soon.
Have you heard the term "social signal"? If not, watch the video below.
I wanted to make this article to share my experience in my excitement about the creative process of building this website and what it means to me. I also wanted to highlight some of the key features and functionality of the site, so this whole thing was a really big process for me and it came with a lot of interesting and dynamic challenges, it’s hard to say exactly how long I worked on it for, But it was easily over a hundred hours of work, and so I feel that the passion and the commitment that I put into this project really shows when you’re navigating the site.
I wanted the site to be a total extension and representation of my own unique, creative self-expression, so because of that, I designed custom artwork and assets for the entire site, and I also taught myself how to actually code in liquid, which is a programming language that is Indigenous to Shopify and Shopify is the platform that I built this site on, so the project was a really powerful opportunity to redefine myself and to even further clarify what it is.
My service is to the planet on a physical level and in fact I encourage really everyone to create a website for themselves, not only for the purpose of sharing your business or your creativity with the world, but for the sake of actually speaking, your true self into Existence – and that’s really what this was for me: there was an opportunity to further ground my true self into the physical experience.
So with this website, I strongly feel that I achieved weaving all of my creative passions into a singular platform of creative self-expression. This site truly highlights all of the things that I absolutely love and offers them as service to others. So with that being said, I now want to give you a little tour of the site highlighting some of the key features and services alright. So here it is, this is the home page of my new website.
As you can see here, these slides they highlight some of the custom artwork that I was speaking about and you’ll see that every few seconds they actually switch highlighting a different portion of the site and when you click them, you’re able to navigate to different areas. This is the media homepage or the landing page, so from media you can actually see my digital art, my music, my article is my photography, but just going back to the home page just want to continue to show this to you all.
So if you come down here once again, there’s these little circles that also take you to different parts of the site, and here you’ll see some of the highlighted products that I actually have on this new site, and this was one of the the big things for Me with this project was to actually turn my life turned myself, my my creativity into a marketplace so that people can purchase some of the things that I’ve created and then coming down here.
You know you will see that it’s connected to my Instagram and at the very bottom here you can actually join my newsletter, and so I recommend that people that that follow me and they want to stay updated on the most recent events or recent content or recent Products just to sign up for the newsletter and yeah. I send out an email every every few weeks when there’s a there’s, a there’s, a lot to say a lot to share.
So the first key feature that I want to speak about it in regards to the site is just the the shop area. So here you have this drop-down menu and you can see the different areas of products that I offer so under prints. You can see that I have canvas prints, metallic prints, stickers, poster prints. I actually started my own clothing company called new human designs and right now I’m selling shirts.
So if you come over here, you also have my music section, and I broke this up into three main categories. You have my electronic music and being meditative music and my hand pan music and then over here. These are the shop services which I’ll get into in just a minute, so you can navigate using this drop down menu or you can actually click on shop and sort of get a better visual representation of all the products.
So you have canvas prints, poster prints and metallic prints. The clothing and I’ll actually go here so right now, one second! So right now I have two primary designs and you can get those two designs either on a t-shirt or on these 3/4 baseball Ragland shirts. This this one in particular, is my favorite. I wear this one all the time and these shirts they come in all different sizes. You can see the sizing chart here, the other ones.
If I go back here actually come in different colors and you can see the colors that they come on by clicking over here, so that’s something. I’M really excited about the the clothing, particularly and I’ll. Just highlight some of these. These are some of my canvas prints and you can get different, portraits different ET portraits. I have some of my sacred geometry type art as portraits, and even the designs that you see on the clothes.
These are also offered on canvas prints with these ones. There’S more of a sliding scale terms of the price because they they range in terms of size, the smallest one is twelve by twelve and largest, one is 24 by 24, so these are really really amazing for me to just have you know to have my digital Art actually come to life in a more tangible way and in a way where people can receive that and to showcase that in their house.
So another key feature that I want to highlight. I talked about the media page and we can just go into some of these sections a little bit so here, if you click under digital art and once again you can go there by just clicking this tab and then viewing the drop down or you can go To this sort of landing page – and that just happens when you actually click media – and you can navigate that way – it’s really whatever your preference is.
I did this just to make this as straightforward and as clear for people as possible. So anyway, going into digital art. You will see the full, I mean this is yeah. This is essentially the full gallery of all the ET art that i’ve created thus far, all the self-portraits I’ve done for people coming down even further. You get different types of digital art that I’ve created in the past and yeah all sorts of different fun things that I’ve created that you can observe here, just a big gallery and if you click on them it it highlights the individual pictures.
So if you come here, you’ll see that there’s a this is under music there’s a playlist of a lot of my music and actually, if you’re listening to these playlists and you enjoy a song, you can come back under shop and you can navigate to where that Song might be if it’s an electronic piece, then there’ll be under electronic music and you can just purchase the tracks that I have here: they’re, each just a dollar and yeah.
If you enjoy that – and you want to support me – you can totally do that, and that would be much appreciated if we’re going under articles, we have my entire youtube blogs, actually just linked into the site. So if you prefer to read on youtube, that’s great, but also if you feel like there’s a article that you want to find and it’s harder to find on, you feel it’s harder to find on youtube. I have these different categories here under this application, so you can navigate that and then last over here is just similar to my ETR, but it’s just a gallery of my photography.
These are just different nature: shots that I’ve taken in a lot of different, a lot of different locations. So now I want to talk about the services starting with the private sessions. So I currently provide and you’ll see here 30-minute consultations for $ 30 conducted over text. 30-Minute consultations for $ 60 conducted over the phone 60-minute consultations for a hundred and twenty conducted over webcam, or this is something I’m very excited about.
I’M offering one day long, private one-on-one retreats for people and these retreats. They basically consist of you and I, whoever you may be going on different hikes and adventures throughout Sedona Arizona, which is a place that I currently live and I’ll bring you to all the secret spots that basically only the people that really do a lot of exploring. Can find these really really really high-energy spots and will go on adventures and basically go out to lunch and do other spontaneous activities and the reason why I’m offering? That is because for a lot of people, I know that people get very activated by listening to the content that I share, whether it’s it’s reading the articles, I will same to the music or reading some of the art that I’m creating, but to be in person With me, one on one having an intimate experience where we’re really sharing on a very personal level.
This is really where the deepest healing and transformation can occur, so I’m very excited about that and for other people, if you just want to text consultation, a phone consultation or the 60-minute webcam consultation. This is the one that people do the most and before I made all these other categories, I was just doing these 60-minute webcam consultations. These are conducted over Skype or Facebook, article or Google Hangouts.
So really all of these sessions are designed to provide insight. That is specifically tailored to you and I’m using my intuition to guide the individual into a balanced state of emotional mental clarity and, as this process occurs, basically the individual that I’m working with can begin to access and integrate higher states of consciousness to embody their greatest Potential and it’s a very these sessions are very powerful for both myself and the individuals that I’m working with.
I have I’ve done hundreds of them thus far, and you can see all these different testimonies from people whose lives have been changed just by having a conversation with me, because really what I’m doing is I’m I’m acting as a mirror, so that you can see yourself Clearly, so that you can see where you’re limiting yourself and you can see actually where the beautiful expansion and your life can occur and a lot of people they also.
They also message me and have these sessions with me to gain more clarity and understanding in regards to an extraterrestrial or extra dimensional encounters that they might be having, and these sessions can really act as support for for the individual that I’m working with. So that’s the basis of my private sessions. If you’re someone that wants to go deeper on their journey mate, you know maybe just reading the articles, that’s all you need that’s beautiful, but but if you need a little extra boost or some extra clarity in your life, I strongly recommend them.
I’Ve done so many of them and they’ve been highly potent and highly transformative for myself and for the people that I’ve done them with so moving on. I want to speak about my blogs ETR offerings, so here you will see that there is several different tiers of these offerings and basically, what what this is is. This is a bloged creative expression that is designed to reunite individuals with their cosmic heritage.
So I’m using my illustrative and intuitive abilities, and also just my tangible, close encounters quote-unquote with extraterrestrials to bring forth these artistic rendition renditions of these extra-terrestrial energies that seek to connect with the individual that is wanting to participate in this particular service. So here you will see the different tiers. The first here is for 222 dollars. It’S a blogled, extraterrestrial metaphysical illustration – and here you see this example of that, for a little bit more for 333, you can get a what I’m calling a Galacta ated self-portrait, which is essentially a digital rendition of yourself, and with these I basically ask the client to Send me several pictures of themselves at different angles, with some specific lighting so that I can essentially sculpt a replication of you in digital form and Galacta PHY yourself.
So the next here is a bloged illustration or a self-portrait, plus a minute long animated clip depicting your digital avatar in action. So here you’ll see an example of that. This is what some of these clips will look like. This is taken from a being that I bloged and I made the article alchemical rebirth using him as a basis, but basically these will be the types of articles that you will receive at this tier of the service and all of these articles actually come with unique.
Sound design and a musical soundtrack that help to anchor and express the energy of these animations really excited about this. I’M excited to make more of these kinds of articles highlighting these ETS. It’S it’s! It’S a it’s a lot of work, but it’s really very rewarding and very satisfying and I enjoy offering them so last year you have a bloged illustration, plus a self-portrait plus a one-minute animated clip.
So this one you had either a et portrait or a self-portrait plus the article and then this package. This last package, is all of these things. So the one thing that I want to say about this is it’s a very because it’s an intuitive process. It’S a bloged process is very unpredictable. I don’t know what energies may come through for me to share and therefore I ask for people to have an open heart and an open open mind to receive the the full benefits of what I’m offering and generally these.
These portraits will, depending on depending on the tier, if I’m doing a self portrait, sometimes it can take anywhere between two to four weeks. It might take longer if I’m doing an animation. One of these, the last two tiers of the service it’ll, take longer it’ll, probably take at least a month, maybe longer so yeah very, very excited about this. I’Ve done many different portraits for many different clients thus far, and you can view those just by going to the media tab and the digital art section of that.
That’S my entire art galleries there so go moving on to the next service, my musical offerings. So here I am offering music composition and production lessons music theory, lessons, instrumental lessons. Some of the instruments that I play include guitar piano, percussion Hong Drum these sessions are an hour long and they’re $ 60 per lesson. Basically, these lessons are designed to teach you everything that you need to know about music, if you’re someone that wishes to learn something I’m specific about the musical topics, our lessons can focus on that particular topic.
If you’re someone that is newly exploring their musicality, then these lessons will meet you where you’re at and they will follow a curriculum that I’ve designed to give you the most direct path to mastering your musical self-expression. So it doesn’t really matter if you’re, if you’re amused. If you consider yourself a musician, if you’re wanting to learn a new skill, these lessons really will take you from beginning stages to more advanced stages, and they highlight different areas of music, whether you’re wanting to learn about music composition and production, just something that I do Often, whether you’re wanting to learn the theory behind music or you’re wanting to learn a specific instrument, or maybe all of those things, these lessons will absolutely provide that, for you, I’ve been teaching music lessons for years.
Basically, since I was in college – and I love doing them so I I’m excited for people to sign up for that and to start teaching music lessons again. So here is a very awesome thing that I’m offering, if I do say so myself. Basically, this is the ultimate digital media package, so this is for people that are looking for a website and need help sharing their message with the world. This package, this particular package.
It gives you every possible digital media social media asset that you need to launching to. Basically, launch your business into the next level or just just bring that business into fruition. So this comes complete with a custom lis designed website complete with original artwork and assets. Your own logo, I’m going to set up your own YouTube, blog complete with an intro and outro youtube banner, all of that kind of stuff, just other assets that you might want to use for social media platforms such as Instagram and Facebook, and also lessons designed to Actually, teach you how to use these tools so that you can take perhaps what I’ve created and expand upon that and maybe teach that to other people and pass that on.
So this is a really complete package and I’m really passionate about this, because I feel very strongly that by having something like this, we are able to create a powerful platform through which we can share our unique message with the world, and I feel that everyone should Not only have something like this have a website have their own artwork that expresses themselves but also know how to use these tools, because this makes this makes us collectively a more powerful asset to help the world transform through using the this digital world that we have At our disposal, so if you’re someone that doesn’t necessarily want this full ultimate package but you’re someone that just wants lessons to how to use certain different types of software, I give lessons on how to use Adobe Photoshop premiere After Effects Daz Studios, which is a 3d Modeling studio blender, which is a 3d modeling studio Shopify, which is an e-commerce platform.
It’S a platform that I made this site on Squarespace Wix and a lot more you can. You can sign up for lessons and they’re similar just similar to the musical lessons they’re an hour, and there are $ 60 say you’re, someone that also just wants a website design, none of the other kinds of assets, that’s totally cool, there’s a sliding scale price range, Depending on the complexity of the site, I’m also offering custom digital artwork, custom, branding local design, social media assets and article production and editing.
So, as you guys know, I produce and edit all of my articles, the animations, the music articles, the documentaries, the vlogs, the whatever. If you’re someone that is looking to have something filmed for them or edited for them or both, then this would be a service that you might be interested in and once again, if you’re interested in any of the web design or digital media services, just you can Just contact me by using the form here under contact, so here you’ll just see this little cute little form and yeah.
That’S basically the easiest way to get in contact with me or you can just send me a direct email or message through whatever platform you’re reading. This on so yes, that is really the premise of all the things that I wanted to share. You know there’s other little lot of their little things throughout the site that you’ll find as you’re navigating, but those are the main features that I wanted to highlight on the site.
Thank you so much for listening to this article for reading this and for enjoying me sharing my creative process with you and my creative excitements. If you’re interested in supporting me, it would be wonderful just to browse my shop to see. What’S there, maybe there’s there’s a article of clothing that you like. Maybe you like my music, maybe there’s prints that you want or maybe you’re interested in the services.
I encourage you to look at those things and to browse that for yourself and to see what feels good for you. So thank you so much. I hope you have a wonderful day and until next time may the force be with you
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We are Looking for articles to explore how Google handles energy consumption in Their data centers To do that. We build a search that incorporates some Alternative terms, so we get the best results. So, let’s put Google in our first Box In the second box, put’energy or electricity’, This use of the’or’ between The terms means we will get articles that have either of these terms See I Get 539 results, which is a few more than I want to review.
So, let’s add in some More keywords: I will add’data cent*’ with an asterisk That asterisk means That I will get both British and Americans spelling of centers. Then I can Add in’or data libraries or cloud computing’ When I have done this search, You will see, I get 64 results and the first two look perfect. If I open the second title,,’energy efficient data centers’, I will find that Addition to the full text I also find subject: geographic industry codes and Abstracts on every article, Those subject terms can be particularly useful For Example, if I want to know everything, about’data libraries’, I could simply Click on that link, There are also some helpful tools to Find on this page Over on the right, you’ll see a number of icons.
These allow You to easily email, send the citation or create a permanent link using the Permalink on the side, If you’d like to do this for multiple articles simply Click the’add this folder’ and go back to your results list. You don’t have to open An article to save it in your folder, For example, I can just simply click that Folder icon to the right, While the majority of the articles in this Database are full-text, some such as the first one are not What you want to do is Click this’find it at CU’ icon.
This will take you to a page that will Link you to the full text of the article in another database When you click on The link for that database, you should get the full text and in this database You can also email and print the article for yourself Going back to business. Source complete, remember, we selected a number of Articles that we thought would be useful. You can access these either by clicking The folder icon on the top or the’folder view’ over on the right sidebar Once I’m In there I can select the articles that I want to save print or email and if I Choose email: I can send this to multiple recipients.
The email will also provide The PDF, if included in the database and by switching to the citation format of Apa, I will actually get the citations for the articles as well Hope this was Helpful, please contact the Business Library if you have any additional Questions. Thank you.
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Since the mid 1990s and I enjoy helping teams, Explore agile and lean practices with the goals of improving quality communication.
And developer happiness If you’ve worked with Agile or lean practices you may be familiar with some Concepts that come from Japan, like Kanban or Kiazen, Both originate from the world. Of Japanese manufacturing and have since been Applied around the world to software work Kaizen is about making Constant small improvements and empowering individuals to discover and make those improvements. Kanban was originally a system used to monitor assembly lines.
And in the world of software it’s grown into a system to help teams prioritize work, manage Flow and uncover obstacles The term I wanted to introduce You to today is Omotenashi, which describes Japanese Customer service and hospitality, The application of Kaizen And Kanban software work is something that has evolved over time. My goal in this presentation – Is to share some thoughts on how Omotenashi might Provide similar value for us to start exploring how We might adapt concerns, adapt concepts from it to our work and evolve.
Beneficial practices, Kaizen and Kanban are Concepts from management in Japanese manufacturing so aren’t really part of every day life for most people in Japan. In contrast, Omotenashi is very much part of every day life in Japan and is a significant Aspect of Japanese culture In Christel Takigawa’s presentation to the International Olympic Committee, in 2013 she made Omotenashi the key theme of Japan’s successful bid.
To host the 2020 Olympics, She highlighted Japanese hospitality as something that set Japan Apart from the other contenders, She began her speech by saying “. We will offer you a unique welcome. “ In Japanese, I can describe It in one unique word “ Omotenashi” Now before I go on, I should Probably answer the question that might be on your mind at this point: Why is an American white guy on stage talking about Japanese customer service at a Ruby on Rails conference? I’D like to answer that question by way of answering another question, which is what do I think About when I think about Japan First, I think about the time I spent in Japan with my family.
My wife, Maria, is a second Generation, Japanese-American She’s an academic and studies; Japanese, Politics and economics She received research, grants that brought us to Japan. To live for six months in 2007 and again in 2014, My oldest son went to yochien there, which is Japanese kindergarten. She has relatives there and we’ve made almost a Dozen other trips to Japan over the past 20 years, I’ve been incredibly lucky to have the opportunity to Travel extensively within Japan and I’ve made several good Friends in our time there.
But having said all that Since I’m an American, my knowledge of Japanese Culture has inherent limitations and I have no relevant Professional expertise, so I’m not here to sort Of mansplain it to you, Instead, I’m here to Share what I’ve learned, in my time there from my own experiences, my wife Maria’s experiences and from talking with Friends, I’ve made there Having an outsiders. Perspective also has value, as it’s helped me gain a deeper Awareness of my own culture and learn from it’s differences.
With Japanese culture, So what are some of the other Things that I think about when I think about Japan, I think about so many things When I first worked on My draft of this talk, I filled it with slides about Japan’S high-tech modernity, its ancient history, Its cultural heritage, its wonderful food and even Its amazing manhole covers, But for the sake of making sure there’s actually some time, Left for our main topic, I’ll, unfortunately, have To skip all of that and limit myself to Aspects of Japanese culture that relate to the Omotenashi So with that in mind, Something I think about when I think about Japan is orderliness and societal respect.
I took this picture in 2004 back when pay phones were still a thing. This is my wife, Maria using a pay phone on a subway platform in Tokyo. Sometimes the most mundane things can tell you a lot about a society Notice that all the wiring Is not secured at all The power chord is exposed and plugged into an ordinary wall outlet. The handset chord is about the same as what you’d see on a home phone. This is because street crime and vandalism Are rare in Japan Compare that to an American pay phone where the only accessible Wire is the handset chord and it’s wrapped in steel.
Tokyo is one of the biggest Cities in the world, How long do you think a pay? Phone like this would last on a subway platform in a City like New York or LA Also note how spotlessly Clean everything is In case you can’t see. The picture that well the subway platform floor is immaculate and the chrome, railings and The wall tiles are all shiny, Which brings me to the Next thing, I think about when I think about Japan, cleanliness For anyone who might not Be able to read that it’s a sign in a Japanese Bathroom that says, “, please urinate with Precision and elegance” Things you may think Of as inherently dirty like public, restrooms or garbage trucks are just about always Really really clean, I think about politeness, personal Respect and friendliness Everywhere I have traveled in Japan.
I have always been made to feel welcome. This quote is from a friend of ours after she visited Japan for the first time, and I can’t think of a better Way to describe the feeling She said “, I just wanted to hug. Everyone” Japanese are known for being polite, but they’re not generally Known for being friendly, but they actually are, especially if you Venture outside of Tokyo, If you make an effort to engage socially, you may be surprised at the warmth of the interactions you’ll have, I think, about professionalism and decency, One of the things that Struck me the most in Japan, is that almost any full time Job will pay a living wage people are treated with respect, Regardless of their job – and you can pretty much always expect professional quality service As an example, Shinkansen The bullet trains – these are the trains that go very fast and go all over Japan and can get you anywhere.
About as fast as an airplane, These trains average 12 minutes between arriving at their last stop and then departing again. Five of those minutes, Are needed for passengers to get on and off, which leaves 7 minutes for cleaning the train. Typically, there is one person Cleaning every train car Those cars each have 100 seats, So they have seven minutes to pick up the trash on The seats clean the floor wipe down the trays at every Seat check for any lost items and since the seats rotate They also have to make sure to rotate them all to Face the same direction for the new passengers, Doing a job like that.
Well, In such a short amount of time requires having a Standardized set of tasks that maximize efficiency and it requires executing those tasks with Excellence day in and day out Now here I am on stage At a software conference excited to tell you about how They clean trains in Japan, It’s an ordinary job. But when done so well, it rises to the level of an art form, One that Harvard business. Students want to study – And this brings us to The idea of Omotenashi, Japanese customer service and hospitality A key motivator for why Things like cleaning trains are taken so seriously.
In Japan is hospitality In the US, we think of Hospitality of something we experience when visiting Someone’S home or maybe a hotel, but in Japan it’s also a key aspect of almost every business. When you do something like get on a train, it’s very much considered similar to visiting someone’s home in terms of how you should Be made to feel welcome Bridget Brennan, who is a Columnist for Forbes Magazine put it well in describing her Customer service experiences in Japan, She said “ wherever I ventured.
In stores large and small “ I experienced what would be Considered white-glove service “ back home, delivered with A kind of warm enthusiasm, “ and salesmanship typically found “ in black and white movies” Omotenashi is a combination. Of two words in Japanese omote, which refers to the public face that we show the world and nashi means without Omotenashi, means that your actions are whole-hearted.
Sincere And without artifice, Whether people genuinely Feel that way, while say working as a cashier at a 7-11 day in and day out is another question, but The main point is that customers experience The service you provide as if it was always true Uniqlo, is a clothing store company chain that started in Japan and Has since gone global, To give you a sense of the Quality of their service, Uniqlo’s, CEO Tadashi Yanai, said this when they opened their First store in Australia, He said “, there is customer service “ and then there is Japanese customer service” They spent a full year.
Training, the Australian staff to get them to a Japanese Level of quality service Imagine going through 12 months of training before taking a job at A place like The Gap Now, if you’ve been to One of the Uniqlo stores that have opened in the Us in the past few years, your customer service experience may not have stood out. As anything special, the quote in my slide here is from 2014, So this is just a guess on My part, but I think Uniqlo must have found it cost prohibitive to do this level of training as they rapidly expanded.
Globally in recent years, But to give you a more personal example when I was living in Tokyo, With my family in 2007, I was responsible for our boys each day, while my wife was working After dropping off my Oldest son at Kindergarten, I would usually find a Place to explore in Tokyo with my one and a half year old son, I found out about a department store that had a children’s play. Area on its top floor, So we headed there one day We were the first to arrive.
When they opened the doors in the morning and there Were no other customers Now in an American Department store, you might see the staff milling around and still getting ready for the day. You know this early in the morning, But in Japan there are There and they are ready to serve you Department stores in Japan also have more staff than in American stores, as You would never want to risk keeping a customer waiting.
Now I had to head across the main floor to the elevator on the other side, to go up to the play area and, as I walked with My son in the stroller lined up in front of me on each side every 15 feet or so was a staff person and they would bow deeply To me, as I passed by, I had experienced this before With individual staff people, but never with so many like this, and it made me feel like royalty. It also made me feel a little bit bad because I wasn’t actually Going to buy anything, We just wanted to go play with Legos and UltraMan action.
Figures at the play area. Similarly, if you visit A boutique retail store like a nice clothing, Shop and make a purchase when you leave the person who helped you will follow you out. The Door and bow deeply staying bowed until you’ve. Reached the end of the block, Westerners typically perceive this as self-less devotion to the customer. You get the impression That Japanese workers will do anything to please you, since you were made to Feel so well taken care of.
That’S certainly how I Perceived it at first, But this perception is The result of our own Western cultural assumptions, Where we presume a Hierarchical relationship That it’s a service provider’s job to do what the customer wants. That’S, not how customer Service works in Japan. As a customer, you are expected to respect the professional judgment of your service provider. And respect their expertise, If you are a customer Service provider in Japan and you have a customer Asking you for something that isn’t supposed to be! Part of their experience, that means things are Starting to go wrong, It means the customer has overstepped the bounds of their role.
It’S your job as a service provider to steer them back onto the correct path. Not surprisingly, this Happens most frequently with foreigners visiting Japan who naturally don’t know Anything about Omotenashi Situations like this put a Japanese customer service provider in an awkward position and they need to get things back on track as gently as possible, but also firmly To illustrate this. I’M going To show you a brief clip of a TED Talk from Dr.
Sheena, Iyengar She’s, a professor at the Columbia, Business School and is an expert on choice. Why people want choice, how they choose and so forth At first, I wanted to just paraphrase what she says here, but I realized that I really couldn’t do it justice, So here she is describing One of her first experiences when visiting Japan for the first time I knew even then That I would encounter cultural differences And misunderstandings, but they popped up when I least expected it.
On my first day I went to a restaurant and I ordered a cup of Green tea with sugar. After a pause, the waiter said: “ one does not put sugar in green tea” “. I know,”. I said “, I’m aware of this custom, but I really like my tea sweet.” In response. He gave me an Even more courteous version of the same explanation: “ One does not put sugar in green tea,.” “, I understand,”. I said “ that the Japanese “ do not put sugar in their green tea “.
But I’d like to put some Sugar in my green tea”, Surprised by my insistence, the waiter had to take up The issue with the manager Pretty soon (, lauging ), a lengthy discussion ensued and finally, the manager Came over to me and said “, I am very sorry. We do not have sugar” ( laughing ). Well, since I couldn’t have My tea, the way I wanted it, I ordered a cup of coffee which the waiter brought over promptly Resting on the saucer Were two packets of sugar ( laughing )? My failure to procure myself A cup of sweet, green tea was not due to a simple misunderstanding.
This was due to a fundamental difference in our ideas about choice From my American perspective, when a paying customer Makes a reasonable request, based on her preferences? She has every right to have that request met The American way to Quote Burger King is to “. Have it your way” Because, as Starbucks says, “ happiness is in your choices”, But from the Japanese perspective, it’s their duty to protect Those who don’t know any better ( laughing ) In this case the ignorant Gaijin from Making the wrong choice: Let’s face it, the way I Wanted my tea was inappropriate according to cultural standards, and they were doing their Best to help me save face, So she says at the end that they wanted to help her save face.
This is a common reason why You may not get what you want in certain situations. She didn’t realize that From a Japanese perspective, she’s unwittingly embarrassing herself by asking for sugar with her tea, So they are trying to Protect her from herself, There can be other reasons for these kinds of situations as well, which we can explore with A couple more stories: Here’s one from my own experience when Japanese customer Service professionalism collides with Americannotions of choice.
In 2014, we lived in a City in southern Japan called Fukuoka for six Months and near our apartment was a pastry shop called Anderson’s. It was a favorite, stop. Especially for my boys, as you can see in the picture here, You would get a tray and Pick our your own pastries and then go to the cashier to pay The cashier would also individually bag. Each of your pastries, I’m very eco-conscious. And this would bother me, It felt very wasteful to Me to use so many bags So one time using my Limited Japanese skills: I mustered the courage to Politely, ask the cashier to use just one bag.
Her response was to simply ignore me. I felt confident she understood me as I’ve had many other kinds. Of simple customer service, verbal exchanges without any trouble, My Japanese wasn’t comfortable Enough to feel comfortable pressing the matter further. But on future visits I tried a few more times and they would always just ignore me, So why were they doing this? It’S because they knew what might happen if they actually did what I asked I would go home and take my Sugar donut out of the bag and give my wife her egg bread and it would have sugar All over it from the donut and she would think to herself “ boy what a lousy job those People at Anderson’s did”, So in this situation, There are not just trying to protect me from myself, They are trying to protect Others from me, as well and by extension, maintain Their own reputation, Here’s a third and final example of a customer service situation.
Going a bit off the rails, This is a story. My wife Maria told me She was in a small tableware shop in Tokyo and was admiring a handmade tea caddy, which is for storing tea leaves. Unlike me, her Japanese is excellent and is actually good. Enough that native speakers often don’t notice her American accent at first She was chatty amiably With the store owner and said that she would Like to show the tea caddy to her friends back home in America At this point, his demeanor Completely changed He stiffened up and he said “, oh you’re from America, “ You’re not going to put Paper clips in it are you?”, (, laughing ).
This isn’t just about Protecting her from herself or protecting other from her It’s about protecting The product from her He would prefer to not make the sale rather than see it used incorrectly. This may seem a little extreme. So what’s really going on here Before I answer that question, I have to provide some context for the next short article. I’M about to show you My wife, Maria, has recently gotten into a very ridiculous, very Fun and very self-aware, Japanese, heavy metal band Called Maximum the Hormone Now, when you read articles on YouTube, they automatically recommend other articles that their algorithms think you might like, and so she came across a Article by Marty Friedman, So who is Marty Friedman, He’s the former lead guitarist for the American heavy Metal band Megadeath: It turns out that he has lived in Japan for the last 16 years and Has his own TV show there? So I give you Marty Friedman, proving some advice for First time, visitors to Japan in an interview he did With the online magazine, Metal Injection and it Turns out it’s perfect for what I wanted to say: About this experience, Maria had while shopping for a tea caddy, That’s one of my favorite Things about Japan, customer service is off the charts, Just wherever you go.
Whatever you try to buy even from a convenience, Store fast food chain high end department store The customer service is second to none. They will really make Your experience great, but one thing I want you to know, is unlike America and sort of like Europe, special orders are not Really going to happen This on the side or this with extra sauce or this with no sauce, pretty much. Take that out of your mind and you’re, going to have a Much more enjoyable experience The food is so incredible, Just go with it.
I mean how many times do You go to Japan in your life, you know what I mean It’s their way and if they Try to do it your way, it’s not going to come out right and they’re, not going To have the same pride that they would have In doing it their way, So if you get refused, please do not mistake. That for unfriendliness, Please understand that What they’re doing that’s their way and they Want to give it to you the best way they can A lot of restaurants.
Don’T Allow you to take food away like doggie bag type of things, That’s mainly because They don’t know exactly how you’re going to Deal with it afterwards and they want you to have it In the best possible form, So tying this back to Dr Iyengar’S, tea and sugar story, my pastry bag story and Maria’S tea caddy story: you can start to see the common threads There’s a very strong Focus on providing service according to strict Standards of excellence, The salesman Maria was dealing with, definitely went a bit Too far with his comment, but it’s an expression of His worry about a customer not having the right Experience with the product So there’s a reason: I’m Focusing on these stories about customer’s desires, Coming into conflict with the professional standards of Japanese customer service providers, because that’s where I think The most interesting lessons are for us.
There are three lessons that I thought of The first lesson is about How we, as developers, do our work and how we Work together, as teams Omotenashi, entails a rigorous approach to achieving consistent Excellence for everything from cleaning trains – To hosting the Olympics and with developing software, we have standards and practices that allow us to achieve. Excellence as well, And you have them right In most of the places I’ve Worked over the years when I started on the job, my team didn’t have things Like a definition of done or mutually agreed upon, Ways of doing things like testing or pair programming, Or if we did have them, they weren’t followed With any real consistency, I just mentioned the definition of done and, if you’re not familiar with this, it’s essentially a checklist Of tasks you should complete before saying your work.
On a feature is done, The checklist is something your team works together to create, and it should evolve over time as your team’s practices grow and evolve. It’S purpose is to help provide your team with a shared understanding of what it means to do. Quality work When you don’t have a mutually agreed upon way of working in your team disagreements. Typically End up being resolved by someone asserting authority, Or by whoever decided to push their position more aggressively or a situation may end up unresolved lingering to plague the team again, the next time it comes up Over the years, I’ve worked At major universities, medium sized tech firms, small Venture funded start ups, consulting shops and non-profits, and at all of these places, I’ve experienced team Environments like this, where there are always some areas of significant dysfunction, Maybe I’ve just been unlucky, but I’ve heard many stories like this from friends over the years as well.
So my impression is that these situations are more common than we might think. This has led me to believe That, just like every family, every organization is dysfunctional. It’S just a question of in What way, and to what degree, Just like with families, what you experience on a daily basis, naturally becomes to Define your perception of what’s normal, making it easy to become Blind to the dysfunction and the cost over time of That blindness can be high in terms of its effect on quality efficiency and team morale.
This happens because people are unwilling to have hard conversations or they don’t know how to have them, or they don’t have the Organizational support to have them In addition to that challenge, there’s a whole other challenge. As an industry, we are still figuring out the best way to do things. So, even when you can Bring your team together: it’s not always obvious what The right way forward is On any given day.
You can go online and find people arguing About whether Scrum is great or should just die in a fire or whether application Monoliths are bad design and we should all just Switch to microservices or whether test driven Development is dead, The world of software Development is like this because our industry is fairly Young compared to others, This is both a blessing and a curse. It’S a curse because it makes it hard to figure out how to proceed when you’re hearing really Smart and experienced people tell you really different things: About how to do your work, But it’s also a blessing because it means we have the opportunity to participate in the conversation about where we’re all headed, to learn, different ways of working and decide for ourselves.
What works best for us, So I encourage you to have conversations with your team that might be hard to work towards being on the same page for things like testing strategies having a definition of done, code, reviews, pair programming and so forth. Having those conversations first requires having an environment of Trust and mutual respect. Sometimes you have to Build up that trust first, but when you do, I have found that having a mutually agreed Upon way of working is really empowering and promotes team harmony, quality And job satisfaction, So everything I just said is about teams.
The challenges are even greater. When dealing with clients, whether it’s an internal Client in your organization or you’re, a consultant Working with external clients, The Japanese customer Service stories, I’ve shared have all been one time: retail Or food service interactions In our world, we have Ongoing relationships – This is a huge difference, Doing things like ignoring A customer’s request as a way to solve a problem like the cashier at Anderson’s Pastry shop did with me: that’s really not an option for us All the mistakes you can Make working with clients over the years I’ve made them.
The most common mistake is over promising and under delivering Unless you’re lucky enough to have an especially Enlightened management you’ll always face pressure. To do more in less time, I’ve done things like meekly saying yes to impossible deadlines. And then I exhaust myself and cut corners to try to make it happen. The end result is almost always damage damage to the code, quality stress and damage to your health and damage to the client relationship, Where, even after all, that they still end up with some combination of missed deadlines and buggy code.
To give you a sense of what I mean, this is a chart I made after I started as the Director of the web team at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine, It’s an effort allocation chart showing the number of people we would need to do. The work expected of us For the upcoming six months, compared to how many People we actually had The blue bars represent the staff we had, which were assigned to meet the needs of specific departments and small teams of Mostly one or two people, which meant the team sizes, were too small, but that was a separate issue and the red bars represent The number of people we would need to do the work that was actually expected of us Until I got everyone together to make the estimates That informed this cart, we didn’t really see the big picture of the situation we were in.
The team had never done. Estimating like this before, We used, what’s known as the Swag estimating technique to generate this chart If you’re not familiar with The term it stands for Sophisticated Wild Ass Guess, ( laughing ). So it’s by no means perfect, but it’s very valuable for Proving a general sense of scope and scale when you’re looking at a long time horizon and many projects, Almost all the demand.
In that tallest red bar was coming from one department. They had a history of always Getting what they wanted if we ever pushed back, they Would escalate their demands politically through the School’S administration to apply pressure Prior to this, we had no means to really Respond to this pressure other than to just give in These demands for projects Also came, of course, with deadline pressure, Which meant we would rush and not always do our best Work leading to more suffering for us in the long run, With bugs unhappy clients and poor experiences for users, This marked the start.
Of a very challenging but very worthwhile Transition for the team We discussed and implemented Good engineering standards and practices and stuck with them Over time. This allowed us to deliver more maintainable and less buggy code, giving our customers and Users, better experiences: We also adopted agile workflow And project management practices that allowed us To articulate and visualize the bigger picture of what was Going on with our projects Together, these changes Gave us the ability to do something analogous to what Japanese service providers do when faced with difficult situations, We were both protecting The client from themselves and protecting the Product from the client Importantly, these changes also Help us develop the ability to have productive Conversations with the client about how we had been working, Together over the years and how to find a better way forward, We even learned how to protect other clients from this client by developing skills for estimating and making data and charts.
Available about our work to all departments, we were Able to provide transparency on where our time and effort was going, which enabled other Departments to participate on a more equal footing and the higher level Political conversations that would determine our team’s Overall effort allocation So having standards And practices is good, but a huge part of what we do. Is creative problem solving Every project we work On is a unique creation, not quite the same as any other On a regular basis.
We are called upon to be insightful and ingenuitive To solve new problems, This is very different from The Japanese customer service stories I’ve been telling you, which is all about consistent Adherence to standards and providing service in The same way, every time An American friend of mine who lived in Japan for Many years said this, He said “ in Japan. I consistently Get very good service “ In the US, I’ve had the worst service “, but I’ve also had the best.
”. So what is he getting at here? At this point we know About the high quality of Japanese service and If you’re from the US or have spent any time here, you know about the terrible Service that can happen, But the best service he’s talking about is when you’re provided with Creative problem solving When Marty Friedman was Saying to try not to customize your order at A restaurant in Japan, that’s not such a big deal if we’re just in the realm of preferences, but what, if you have a food allergy When we were living in Japan? In 2014, we became friends with my Japanese tutor and her daughter had a food allergy.
She told me that going out to eat in Japan was often a frustrating Experience for them, While staff were always very willing to provide information about Items on the menu to avoid trying to customize an Order was difficult When they visited the US and when we went to good Restaurants with good staff, she was thrilled at the Service they provided Waiters would usually say something like “. Oh, it’s no problem.
“ I’ll talk to the chef “, We’ll see what we can do. “ We’ll come up with something That’S just for you.”. There are parallels here for the kind of work we do with software. Creative problem solving is Essential to the work we do and we need to incorporate It into our standards of what it means to do quality work. To give you an example, creative problem solving Can sometimes even call for pushing back on a client’s requests and educating them on possibilities? They hadn’t thought of When I was working in a consulting shop.
We had a client whose Business was to make buildings more energy efficient. They would retrofit buildings with new windows doors Insulation so forth. They wanted us to build an Online calculator for them for prospective customers To provide information about their buildings and then receive cost savings estimates They already knew how they Wanted us to do the calculations, but, as we became familiar with everything, we had an idea for what we thought might be a better way to do it.
We asked if they had Actual cost savings data from previous customers, and they said yes, So we said great if you’re willing to Share that data with us, we can do some statistical analysis and use that to have The calculator provide more accurate estimates, They seemed intrigued, but Also a little apprehensive, They said. Well, you know, we’ve always done it this way And they hadn’t worked with us before, and so they weren’t sure How much to trust us So they said no! No! At that point we Could have just said, fine and just gone ahead with their approach, and they probably would Have been perfectly happy, but instead we came back and offered to develop and Run an initial analysis and share the results with them and show how it had Compared to their old way, We said if, at that point they still wanted to do it their old way.
They wouldn’t have to pay Us for the time we spent on the analysis, So they said yes And once they saw what we did and stepped them through it. They really liked it and Adopted our approach Now, there’s a whole talk. I could give on interview, clients and Eliciting business requirements, but my point with this example is to illustrate the Value of asking questions and creative problem solving The key question is: where does a situation call for adherence to professional standards in order to avoid giving in to unrealistic demands, and when does it call for client, education and creative problem solving? I believe the answer is that many situations call for both.
You want to adhere to Engineering standards to maintain quality and moral, and you want to offer Alternative creative solutions to problems when necessary. This is the key point of my talk. There’S a lot. We can learn from Omotenashi for ways to think about. Having high standards and achieving consistent Professional excellence, but, given that the nature of our work is also about creative problem solving, we also need to always Be open to new ideas and new ways of doing things.
For example, if a deadline must met – and we don’t have enough Time to do the work well, can we defer certain features until later, or can we start with simplified version of certain features Or are there other creative Ideas we can explore that don’t require compromising quality or putting the team on a death march. These are the kinds of questions we need to be asking, But how exactly do we go? About having these kinds of conversations with clients, conversations that can often be difficult In the world of Japanese customer service customers are expected to respect the professional judgment.
Of their service provider In the world of software development, we’re educated on programming, languages, frameworks, tools, workflows, but we’re not taught how to behave. We’Re not taught how to clearly articulate and diplomatically present and defend our professional judgment. The key part of the education Of doctors and lawyers is how to behave with their Clients and coworkers Doctors know how to handle themselves in the pressures of an emergency room or how to persuade a patient to make more healthy choices By cultivating a perception of knowledge and expertise for their professions.
Doctors and lawyers are typically treated with great respect, even when they have things to say that their clients don’t want to hear Now. I’M not suggesting we All have to go to school for a million years like Doctors and lawyers do and spend a million Dollars in the process, But I am suggesting, is that if you want to be Seen as a professional and treated like one, that means pursuing technical excellence, providing creative problem solving standing up for the quality of your work and always being courteous and diplomatic, ( speaking a foreign language ).
That means the end ( audience applauding ). My slides are available at the link here. You can find me on Twitter @ mtoppa, I’m going to leave you with another short little article. This is a moment of Zen. This is an example of Creative problem solving and team work – These are my two boys when we were in Japan in 2007 and we were living in a small apartment In Japan. They call it a 1LDK. 1 means it has one bedroom.
L means it has a living room D means it has a dining room, which is also the living room And K means it has a kitchen which is also the diving room, which is also the living room, ( audience laughing ). So this is a small place. We had set the boys up in the bedroom and my wife and I put a bed in the living-dining-kitchen room. So this is the morning My boys are having breakfast and my younger son decides.
He wants to have access to my older son’s drink, But doesn’t want to have to Bother moving that drink So together they construct An extended straw – And you can see my wife In bed there still furtively trying to get some sleep: ( boy, laughing, ), ( boy, blowing bubbles, ) ( boy, blowing bubbles, ) ( boy, laughing ). Thank you very much. ( audience applauds ), (, upbeat music, ),
Thank you for visiting my post about the video I found on Youtube. I hope it gives you a little insight into customers and how you should treat your customers. Remember, I appreciate you and what you have to offer. Check out what Allshouse Designs thinks about customer service.
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