advice

My Top 10 List Of TED Talks On Creativity

by Paul Joseph July 25, 2011 Featured

Hello again. I’m off on a new tangent this week, it’s been inspired by Yaro’s last post . Actually, I’ve had this niggling feeling I needed to take his advice since receiving the email in my inbox several weeks ago with tips on writing great articles – I just have so much spinning in my head that it often takes a while to action everything that’s fighting for my attention. The Master Plan Yaro’s great idea is to make top 10 lists of things related to my topic. He suggested a top 10 list of my favorite books on creativity. Whilst that’s a brilliant idea, there’s one small problem … for some terrible reason, most likely due to my own scattered brain, I’ve stopped reading books to completion. I get part way through them and charge off on other tangents. This is a considerable problem when it comes to making top 10 lists of my favorite books on creativity. So I did what all good creatives do when faced with an impasse and I improvised . Whilst I spend the next few weeks finishing reading all the books on my top 10 list, I decided to make a top 10 list of something else. The “something else” is largely responsible for why I don’t finish books anymore! Details Of My Ongoing Love Affair I have an ongoing love affair with TED . At the end of the day, when I’m sick of dealing with black text on a white computer screen, I crawl into bed with TED and let the world’s most inspiring, informative, ingenious and innovative people take me on adventures into their worlds. I don’t watch TV these days. I watch TED. Somehow, because I’m learning new things and being inspired by what I see, I can sneak past that feeling of guilt I get from watching mind numbing entertainment because it’s not productive. So my first ever “top 10 list” is my top 10 TED talks on creativity . The Master Plan Explained This is how it’s going to look. I’m going to show in order of 1 to 10, the talks I have found to be most inspiring and also practically useful in regards to creativity. I want to explain to you how each clip made the cut and why it’s ranked as it is. So each week, I’ll cover two or three clips, and try to explain why they’re important and a give summary of the magnificence within them. Some of the talks are directly related to creativity. Others are great examples of someone being creative. And others are expressions of crucial elements of creativity, like Isabel Allende’s talk on passion. There’s one talk in here that isn’t so much about creativity. But I realized it’s possibly the most useful way to overcome one of the biggest stumbling blocks to realizing your potential, and take the risks needed to explore and express your creativity. Even though it’s not necessarily pitched as being about creativity, it could be the most important clip of them all if it moves you to action. Drum Roll… Here’s The Top 10 List Sir Ken Robinson “ Schools Kill Creativity ” Sir Ken Robinson “ Bring On The Revolution ” Tim Brown “ Creativity and Play ” Isabel Allende “ Passion ” Ross Lovegrove “ Organic Designs ” Tim Harford “ Trial, Error and the God Complex ” Matt Cutts “ Try Something New For 30 Days ” Joshua Walters “ Being Just Crazy Enough ” Larry Lessig “ The Law Is Strangling Creativity ” Elizabeth Gilbert “ About Genius ” As you can see, I’ve got a bit of a thing for Sir Ken , I have an ongoing love affair with his work to rival the one I have for TED talks. Sir Ken even tops my TOP 10 book list and hogs the first few places : / I think this is for a number of reasons. Details Of My Other Love Affair Ken’s talks are educational, insightful, beautifully articulated and they make me laugh. This combination is a bit like holding the ace of spades as far as I’m concerned, especially that last element. Another reason they top the list is because Sir Ken’s talks set a great foundation for the rest. Sir Ken deals with the starting point of the problem of dislocated creativity, our schooling. We waste a good twelve years of our lives learning how to do things that don’t energize and inspire us… learning how to stuff our dreams away and stamp out our creativity so we can endure those years of schooling. Really, it’s just like twelve years in training for what to expect for the rest of our lives… Unless we’re blessed to have held onto enough hope and determination to do what we love anyway… or unless by some stroke of luck, the schooling system actually did steer us in the direction of living the life that speaks to our deepest truth . Sadly, Sir Ken says during his second talk, of the many people he meets, very few have been able to find this place within themselves to live from. If you have the time and inclination to watch these first two talks in my top 10, I assure you it will be a great foundation for us to launch into the ones that follow in the list next week. Once again, I’d love to hear any comments you have at the end, and I’m going to leave you with a fabulous Sir Ken quote about creativity. “If you’re not prepared to be wrong, you’ll never come up with anything original.” Cheers, Neroli. Get your bonus copy of my book “How To Start An Internet Business & Make Your First $1,000 Online” Download Here

Tagged as: advice, attention, books, life, mindset, online

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Young Entrepreneur Interview: Divya Gugnani of Behind the Burner

by Paul Joseph June 23, 2011 Featured

For anyone working in an industry that isn’t their true passion, inspiration can be found in our talk with Divya Gugnani, entrepreneur, TV personality, author, and founder & CEO of culinary media brand Behind the Burner as well as Send the Trend . Having created a successful career in the world of investment banking (a career with which many professionals in that industry would have been perfectly content), Divya never forgot her love for the culinary arts and finally left the finance world behind to pursue her true passion. Now, she’s doing what she loves, and doing it well. She and her company have been featured on MSNBC, American Express OPEN, CBS News, The Huffington Post, and Tech Crunch, just to name a few. She’s a shining example of what an entrepreneur can accomplish when they’re doing what they love. Enjoy the interview, and share your thoughts in the comments or on our Facebook page ! You are the CEO of Behind the Burner, CEO of Send the Trend, and the author of the book, Sexy Women Eat: Secrets to Eating What You Want and Still Looking Fabulous . You’re also on the board of New York Entrepreneur Week and appear regularly in all forms of media. How do you balance it all? Sleep is an indulgence! I also have a great team. At the end of the day, every successful endeavor comes down to people, and I surround myself with smart people. When you’re the dumbest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. You refer to Behind the Burner as a “culinary media brand.” For our readers who aren’t familiar with Behind the Burner, can you give us a quick overview? Behind the Burner is a culinary media brand that focuses on tips, tricks and techniques for food, wine, mixology and nutrition. We create videos that can be seen on NBC NONSTOP network across the US as well as recipes, blogs, and interviews with chefs, sommeliers, nutritionists, and winemakers that can be viewed on the site.

Tagged as: advice, book, business, entrepreneur, entrepreneurs, Featured, finance, interview, people, study, thoughts, women

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Stop Marketing… for now, and Start Brand-ing!

by Paul Joseph March 10, 2011 Featured

When most think of the term Branding they often associate it with the function of Marketing or in some cases a traditional branding iron and a cattle ranch. When they think of the term brand, generally an image or a symbol such as a logo, or a tagline come to mind.  In fact, none of these associations are truly accurate.  This is one of the most confused issues in business today, but knowing the difference can translate to exponential growth in your industry. Marketing vs. Branding Marketing is the act of communicating or disseminating the message you want your audience to perceive as your brand.  Marketing is about ‘getting a message to market’ using a plethora of  creative vehicles to leverage it locally, nationally and/or world-wide (e.g. electronic or print advertisements, PR, tradeshows, websites, networking, collateral pieces, videos, Twitter messages, Facebook posts, blogs, etc.). Marketing is executed in ‘event’ scenarios, generally from 3 to 18 month cycles that start and end with expected metrics and analysis that help prepare for the next ‘event’ campaign. Brand-ing, on the other hand, is the process of first defining what the message is representing and then creating ways to live and be congruent to the message of your brand.  You can think of your brand message as delivering a specific PERCEPTION. What is the PERCEPTION you want your brand to evoke in the minds of your market? When your message isn’t clearly defined with consistent, supporting processes in place that reflect and affirm it, then your marketing dollars will be wasted and squander valuable budgets in the process.  This happens when your brand doesn’t walk your brand talk, meaning your marketing is saying one thing (making a perceptual promise) and the experience is ‘other’ than what is perceived. The process of building your brand starts at the internal level of the business, (i.e. how your employees/culture cultivates the message and ultimately serves the client) not in an external focused marketing advertisement.  It is a function of identifying your brand’s Dimensional Nucleic Assets (your DNA) so that you can then build on those detailed attributes that make you distinctive. Hence, our advice…?  Stop marketing , at least for now.  And, start brand-ing. Your challenge: Make a conscious effort to get crystal clear on a specific message you want to convey to your customers and train and empower your staff to deliver it relentlessly. Think about all the facets of your business; from your values and behaviors, your brand promise, to how you deliver your products and services. All of these are integral to morphing a good brand into a great brand!  To show up in a conscious way that builds and sustains your brand, three key attributes must be in place: Consistency, Distinctiveness, and Engaging . Consistency = Trust Brand CONSISTENCY is showing up the same way every time, walking the talk and being true to your brand promise. Why is ‘consistency’ so important to sustaining your successful brand?  What it boils down to is one simple word: Trust. Consistency builds Trust, Trust creates History, History forms Traditions, and Traditions become Rituals. – Martin Lindstrom, author of Brand Sense Becoming a brand ‘ritual’ like Starbucks, Harley Davidson, Apple, and Google became possible because of their relentless focus on the consistency of their brands’ deliverables, visuals, and experiences. Think about how you show up consistently within the many facets of your business…from how you answer the phone, to what customers see, hear, taste, touch, smell and intuit must be congruent with your brand’s promise, day in and day out. Oprah is the “Queen” of consistency.  Thirty million people+ totally trust her.  One initiative through Oprah’s Angel Network generated $12.1M in donations for children in South Africa.  No one would donate that kind of money if they did not trust Oprah and expect that she would consistently follow through on her promise. Carving Out Your Distinctiveness. What is the one word you ‘own’ in the minds eye of your market that distinguishes your brand from others? This is one of the hardest questions to answer if you haven’t done the work to discover your own DNA. But it can also be one of the most insightful and thought-provoking exercises in building branded perceptions around that one word. Brand DISTINCTION means you stand out uniquely and unequivocally different than your competition both internally and externally while being congruent with your Brand Promise. FedEx literally ‘owns’ OVERNIGHT in the market space of the shipping industry. What makes FedEx so distinctive in their industry is their “unrelenting commitment” to deliver overnight requests.  UPS, DHL, or USPS are harder to categorize what word represents their brand. Google ‘owns’ EMPOWERMENT (customer control) in the browser market space, and hence, has transformed the experience of internet searches – delivering on its promise of innovation. Apple continues to ‘own’ INNOVATIVE in the computing space, and finally, Disney ‘owns’ FANTASY in the theme park industry. They have carved out a specific ‘way of being’ and elevated their distinction. What word does your brand want to own? Being ENGAGING is MEMORABLE! Engaging brands enlist, equip, and empower stakeholders through traditional and emerging tools (i.e. email, 800, chat, social media, etc.) which build and sustain community advocacy for the brand. How is your brand engaging your customers? How does it engage your employees? Check out how Harley Davidson is pointedly going after the female market by creating powerful dialogue and community-building platforms through their website and social media. Notice how Tom’s Shoes has built an extremely loyal following through their website by enlisting and equipping their customers and employees to deliver on the brand promise “for every pair of shoes sold, a pair will be given to those in need.” Stop being a commodity and start creating meaning behind what your brand stands for, and engage, first and foremost, your most valuable assets – your employees! Fortune’s 100 Best Companies to Work For are primarily on that list because of their internal attention to the teams of employees that make it all happen. Consequently, these companies are among the strongest and economically healthiest in the nation. So, Stop Marketing (for now) and Start Branding! Make sure your brand’s DNA speaks to your desired perception and is ‘messaged’ with clarity which helps your customers understand what ONE word your brand ‘owns’ in the market. Enlist, equip and empower every employee to understand and live your brand’s DNA through their unique talents and expertise – help them understand how they contribute to the brand’s success. Assess your current customer touch-points and capitalize on creating CONSISTENT, DISTINCTIVE, and ENGAGING customer experiences. You can do this through personal interaction as well as through powerful social media tools that enhance the experience. Get creative! So, build the PERCEPTION/Brand you want to become ingrained in the minds of your stakeholders (customers/employees/vendors, etc.). That is the first critical step to building out your actions and behaviors so they are congruent with whom you say you want to be. Creating and living the brand message cannot be overemphasized.  Unfortunately most businesses go straight to the marketing function prior to identifying their unique Brand DNA. Approach your brand in a conscious, strategic and holistic way to show up consistently, distinctively, and engaging in every way!  Now go, spread your DNA! Suzanne Tulien is Principal and co-Founder of The Brand Ascension Group, a multi-faceted consulting and training firm specializing brand perception. View her full profile here .

Tagged as: advice, apple, business, companies, dna, entrepreneur, facebook, marketing, phone

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Blog Income For Women Review – How To Generate A Passive Income With Your Blog

by Paul Joseph March 8, 2011 Featured

Blog Income For Women Blueprint – by Krizia & Alexandra Name: Blog Income For Women Blueprint Creators: Krizia & Alexandra URL: www.blogincomeforwomen.com Purpose: Learn how to make a monthly passive income using your blog with a topic of interest or online business. ‘Blog Income For Women Blueprint’ is designed for female bloggers, but men would also benefit as it teaches how to target female readers, while making a passive income online through CPA marketing and niche marketing techniques. You can find a list of other product and service reviews and resources to run an online business in the Reviews Section of this website. It is interesting where life can lead you sometimes. When I started out in the world of blogging, it was purely for something fun to do and in actual fact, to pass the time whilst my baby was asleep – I was fortunately blessed with a sleeper! I thought, perhaps I would make a tiny amount of money (if I was lucky), but it was only once I delved deeper into the world of internet marketing did I realize that making a decent income from blogging was possible and with work, attainable. This was quite a revelation for me. Like many other women out there who have also decided to start a family, I quickly learned that combining my previous corporate career with my new family commitments was going to be very difficult to manage in the long term, and so my blogging ‘career’ began! The latest internet marketing product to hit the marketplace, ‘Blog Income For Women Blueprint’ is designed for someone just like myself – a female blogger who has a blog on a topic of interest (mine was cooking), rather than a blog whose topic was chosen for the sole purpose of making money. This course is written by two female bloggers, Krizia (she is the narrator) and Alex , who have successfully managed to turn their own blogs into highly profitable income streams. They have blogs on topics that interest them and their readers are predominately women – for example, one of their blogs is reviewing the latest beauty products. So, just how did they turn their blogs into an income stream? Through their clever use of CPA marketing . For those who don’t know what CPA marketing is, it stands for Cost Per Action marketing. CPA marketing is when someone provides their name and address on an online form or gives their details for a free product trial. I am sure I am not alone in having provided a company like Colgate with my name and address in exchange for a free toothbrush – that is classic CPA marketing. The purpose of CPA marketing is that, using the example of Colgate, companies are giving something away, not out of the kindness of their heart, but to capture my contact details for their marketing database so they can continue to inform me about any other products they think would interest me. This is big business for many companies and therefore many will pay a commission to anyone who sends them a lead. As a blogger, the beauty of CPA marketing is that it does not require any selling on your behalf since the readers are not required to spend any money in the process. In fact, as was the case with me, I was more than happy to give Colgate my name and address in exchange for a free toothbrush, and it required very little selling from them. That said, like you, I probably wouldn’t give my details to just any company, they have to be offering me something I was interested in. This was exactly how Krizia and Alex turned their blogs into passive income streams . About The Course, ‘Blog Income For Women Blueprint’ As the title of this course suggests, it is aimed at women but I actually think the content is more about teaching you how to target women to become your readers . As such I feel men could gain as much knowledge from this course as women. This video course is broken down into eight different modules, as well as four bonus handouts which are outlined below. Module 1: Introduction – How I discovered to boost my blog income After months of not making any money, Krizia explains how she started to generate income from her blog Module 2: CPA (Cost Per Action) Network 101: Using CPA offers to generate income on my blog This module teaches you the basics of CPA marketing and how to find appropriate CPA offers to promote on your blog. Module 3: Opening your first CPA account and working with your affiliate manager Goes into how to apply for a CPA account and get approved. This module also provides you with answers to potential questions they might ask you in the approval process and advice on what to do if you get rejected. Module 4: Niche marketing 101 Explains the basics and importance of niche marketing which is a key aspect to the course. This module also describes how to find niches that appeal to women. It also contains an additional video demonstrating how to use five different free research tools to find these niches. Module 5: Keyword research to find niches that appeal to women This module goes through the basics of keyword research which is used for the headlines and content on your blog. As a bonus, five different niches which specifically target women are provided in a niche pack. Included in the pack are their corresponding keywords to write content on, as well as five articles which just need to be rewritten for originality, so you can get started right away. Module 6: Selecting a domain and selecting your first set of CPA offers Explains how to select a good domain name for search engine optimization and also how to choose a CPA offer which is likely to perform better than others. Module 7: Your 30-day plan A 72 page document outlining a step-by-step plan for each of the 30 days. Module 8: Build your list of “female buyers” from day one with auto-responder messages that speak to women’s issues How to create an email list of subscribers to your blog. This is important so you can continue to promote other CPA offers to your subscribers. Bonus: Quick Start Package (worth $47) This is a great bonus package of 4 videos showing you how to get started right away. The videos are as follows: How to open a Gmail account How to open a Blogger.com account How to open a CPA account How to set-up your first CPA offer on your Blogger.com blog These videos use an example to walk you the entire process to get you started – from starting your new blog to publishing your first review with a corresponding CPA offer. Bonus offers The course also contains the following four bonus offers: Bonus 1: Outsourcing parts or the entire process (worth $97) Bonus 2: Other strategies to boost your blog income (worth $97) Bonus 3: Perfect article writing formula (worth $97) Bonus 4: 100 tips to get more readers to your blog (worth $197) For more details about the product check out: www.blogincomeforwomen.com . What I Learned In The Course Although I am not new to the concept of CPA marketing, I actually learnt quite a lot in this course. One really important point was that if rejected by a CPA network, you can appeal that rejection. This was most certainly news to me and I will definitely be following up with the CPA networks which had previously rejected me with a friendly phone call for an explanation – sometimes this is all that it takes. Unfortunately rejection to these networks is not uncommon but now knowing that many people successfully get their rejections reversed is encouraging. This course also shows that there are a multitude of CPA networks out there, so if you are unsuccessful in getting approved, Krizia provides plenty of others to choose from. This course also shows you how to compare CPA offers across numerous networks using a free website called Offer Vault . Offer Vault enables you to compare CPA offers and their associated payouts without having to apply and get approved to each of the CPA networks which the offers are on – a huge time saver! I also learnt that once approved on a CPA network, you can ask the affiliate manager on that network which offers have the highest conversion rates . This is a very handy tip as it takes the guess work out of choosing which offers to promote. Krizia explains that the affiliate manager wants you to make as much money for them as possible, so it is in their best interest to help you out as much as they can. What I Like About The Course Going through this entire course, it is clear that Krizia and Alex certainly have a lot of experience and knowledge in this type of marketing to offer you. I feel this video course has a lot of good content and it is clear in its structure and format which makes it all very easy to understand . As mentioned earlier, applying to CPA networks can sometimes be not that straight forward, but the course prepares you with good answers to a number of questions you may receive. This was useful for someone like me who has been unsure about how best to answer some of these questions. The course also explains the best way to manage your CPA networks and actually advises you to only apply to a maximum of five networks. This was news to me as I didn’t realize that keeping track of the latest offers on the different networks requires some effort. This advice is clearly from experience . What I Don’t Like About The Course The 30 day plan, which contains the complete outline of what you need to do on a day-to-day basis, is very intensive . Without the help from outsourcers, I feel it would be a lot of work to do on your own. I am not saying that it couldn’t be done, but it would be a serious time commitment. As Krizia explains, most of the process can be outsourced . But this depends on how comfortable you are with outsourcing before you start generating any income. On the flip side, the fact that you can be up and running in 30 days may very well appeal to some people. However, if you find this plan becomes too much of an arduous task, you may very well achieve a similar result even if you took a little longer. Krizia writes reviews of products on her blog which leads me to my only other gripe. I would have liked some more information on how to effectively do the research of the products and write the reviews since this is the core content on the blog. Should You Study ‘Blog Income For Women Blueprint’? As I said earlier, there was quite a lot of good content in this course and I certainly gained some very valuable information. In my opinion, someone who has basic knowledge of blogging would gain the most value from this course. However, if you are completely new to blogging, the 4 videos contained in the Bonus Quick Start Package which show you just how to get started and are perfect for someone who has never set up a blog before.  Through a worked example, Krizia shows you how to set up a free blog using the free blog platform Blogger.com and then demonstrates how to write your first review on your new blog with links to a CPA offer as well as banner ads displayed throughout the review. It will leave you little excuse to not get started right away. But if you want to have your blog with its own URL and hosting (this difference is explained further in the course), there is no guidance on how to set up a WordPress blog, how to navigate around WordPress or how to place ads on your site. If you are comfortable with WordPress and want to learn the ins and outs of CPA marketing, I don’t think you will be disappointed with this course. Each video has a handout of the slides of the presentation which is handy and the bonus offers also contain some useful content. The 30 day action plan, which is the nuts and bolts to this course, is very thorough and extensive and is a great way to fast track your blog into a healthy income stream. As I mentioned earlier, implementing all parts to this 30 day plan would be a serious time commitment on your behalf, but hey, what’s 30 days in your life if at the end of it, you could set yourself up with a nice passive income – seems like a worthwhile trade off to me! Good luck! Blog Income For Women Blueprint – $97 USD one time payment Ilana Wechsler Get your bonus copy of my book “How To Start An Internet Business & Make Your First $1,000 Online” Download Here

Tagged as: advice, book, internet, life, make money online, search-engine, small-business

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