You can’t always interact with people in person… give them a social media high five instead.

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The glorious activity that is the high five

A very strong analogy hit me this week, and I think it’s a good one to share.

Any true sports fan can identify with the following scenario. You’re in a sports bar watching your favorite team in a big game. There’s a buzz in the air, the beers are flowing, and people are really into it. Along the way, you might be cheering wildly, talking to your friends standing next to you, and everyone is either in a good mood… or incredibly stressed out over the unknown outcome. I’ve been there too many times to count.

And then the moment happens… it could be a game-winning, walk-off home run, an interception returned for a touchdown that seals the game, a buzzer-beating 3-pointer in basketball, or a game-winning goal in sudden death overtime.

The entire crowd erupts in unison. Everyone is on the same page and going crazy. Now it’s not just enough to yell or scream, or to celebrate with your best friend – everyone needs to get into the action.

[The video below shows *exactly* what I mean. I was at a sports bar at this moment as well, and it was surreal, especially due to the delayed reaction. Note: You gotta watch the kid at 3:23; the scene at 4:00 is 3 blocks from my apartment. Enjoy]

Suddenly high-fives are being handed out like free newspapers on the subway. In the moment of delirium, EVERYONE in the bar gets a high five. This includes the bartenders, the server who may or may not know who actually won (they’re just glad people are drinking more), and everyone else within a 20 foot radius – the drunk guy that almost spilled a beer on you 15 minutes earlier, the obnoxious frat boys off to your left, the old timer with the team jersey from 1979, the guy that kept yelling out stats just to show off. Anyone.

High five.

High five.

High five.

High five.

High five.

It feels good to be part of that celebratory community, right?

It feels good to give that symbolic gesture, and to receive it, right?

[Two notes of advice based on years of experience… first, if the crowd is especially drunk, make sure to secure your beverage tightly in your left hand to avoid spillage; in very crowded bars, I always go for a bottle over a pint glass just for that purpose… and second, it can be effective to be the person just holding your hand up for the high five target, and let the other person hit it, almost like the focus pads a boxing trainer holds up when doing sparring practice. When both parties are winding up and taking drunken SWINGS at the attempted high five, the odds of both hands contacting and not spilling a beer or putting someone’s eye out decrease rapidly.

[Beware the drunken high five]

The social media high five

But what if you’re not in a crowded bar, surrounded by like-minded sports fans?

What if you find yourself alone in your man-cave, watching the game solo on your 50” flatpanel TV? You’re just as into the game. You might even be yelling and screaming at the TV (to the concern of your neighbors).

What do you do when your team breaks through and scores that game-winning Stanley Cup goal?

[click image at right to enlarge]

Answer: You turn to social media.

After feeling quite silly jumping up and down by myself in my New York apartment after the Bruins’ Game 2 victory, I immediately jumped on the computer.

As I scanned my Facebook feed, suddenly all my Boston sports friends started posting victory messages. Some were clever. Some had profanity. Some had photos. They were everywhere. Family members, high school classmates, former hockey teammates, college buddies, general sports fans.

In just a few minutes, there were about 5-10 in row in my feed. So what did I do?

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

Click.

I went down the line and “liked” every post in a row.

In it’s own way, it was strangely rewarding like those high fives.

As I later tweeted, “Giving likes to every #Bruins celebratory update in your FB news feed is the digital equivalent to high-fiving all your friends in a bar.”

Using digital high fives in your business

As I delved further into the topic a day later, I realized that this phenomenon holds true for business as well. So ask yourself

Are you giving enough social media high fives?

Marketing your business through social media is not a one-time thing. You don’t create one awesome post and put it out there. You don’t wait until you have something to sell, and then reach out to people in a cold call and ask them to do you a favor.

True branding and marketing takes place over the long haul. You need to build relationships with people over time, so that when it comes time to ask a favor, they’re happy to do so because you’ve supported them along the way.

What’s crazy is this is so simple to do in the social media age.

• Being active on Facebook and liking people’s posts and adding helpful comments builds trust over time.
• Connecting on Twitter and retweeting valuable content and favoriting tweets is a way to show that you’re paying attention.
• Leaving helpful comments on someone’s blog – not just for you but for the writer and other readers – is a way to show you care.
• Writing email and checking in on friends and colleagues not just when it’s convenient, but actually the opposite… just to check in and say hi.

These little connection over time will help your business in the long run.

I was reminded of this very thing last week. My online course was selected as part of a huge promotion, and it was a huge week for me and my business. This wasn’t just, hey, I have something to sell… this was an opportunity that doesn’t come around often.

Because of this, I went heavy on the promotion. While this can feel too salesy, here was my justification:
1) I contribute to social media frequently and try to add value at every step, trying to adhere to the 90% value and 10% promotion ratio.
2) We all spend an inordinate amount of time building up these networks, shouldn’t we get to use them once in awhile? It’s almost like the person that saves their entire lives and has $250,000 in the bank, yet has never taken a vacation. Why save it if you don’t use it? You never want to abuse it, but knowing when a key point of your business is happening, people WANT to hear about it and will be happy to help if you ask for it.

So what I did was write a personalized email to about 25 influencer friends in my network. This obviously too far longer than putting them all on a BCC email blast, but to me it was worth it.

23 of the 25 were happy to send a tweet and help spread the word. Some bragged to me that they knew of friends that had already purchased my course because of their help.

One person wrote back to say that they normally would have helped, but they felt that they had been too promotional on their social media accounts recently. I really appreciated this feedback from this person, who I admire. She was doing exactly what I just talked about… monitoring the level of value vs. promotion that came across her feed, and adjusting accordingly.

As for the last person, I can’t be 100% sure, but I don’t believe that he ended up sending out a tweet. I don’t blame him at all. In retrospect, while I consider this person a great contact in a business sense, I haven’t had the kind of interaction over time that would warrant him justification for sending this promotion to his tens of thousands of followers. He had to uphold his brand.

In short, I hadn’t high fived him enough.

Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Highs and lows

As of this writing, 2 games have been played in the Stanley Cup Finals. In the first, my Boston Bruins took a crushing loss in 3 overtimes. In the second, they had a spirited win in 1 overtime. Lots of ups and downs. The same thing can happen with your small business. You see have great weeks with lots of clients and checks coming in, and sometimes you go on droughts.

The good thing about Freshbooks accounting, is you see all these trends right in front of you and can react to it. How many invoices are outstanding? What payments have been made? How can I quickly send invoices when the opportunities are rolling in. It’s all right in front of you. Like a puck sitting in front of an empty net.

Switch to cloud accounting and join over 5 million people using FreshBooks to make billing painless at Freshbooks.com.

New York has launched a new bike share program, and people have lots to say.

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For loyal readers of The Hopkinson Report, you know two things I really love: New York City and biking. So it’s no surprise that I was very excited about the launch of Citibike, the Big Apple’s new bike sharing program.

The program is off to an amazing start, recording 100,000 rides in just the first 10 days.

Today I’ll cover two things:
1) My review of the bike share program
2) What business lessons we can learn from it so far

First Look Review of Citibike Bike Share Program:

I wrote this up after my maiden voyage on June 5:

The system:
- In terms of pricing, Citibike offers a yearly membership for $95, which allows you to take the bike out for 45 minutes at a time.
- Short term memberships are $10 for 24 hours and $25 for a weekly pass, each give you 30 minute rides.
- Activating a bike is simple, just insert your key fob into a station with a bicycle, wait for the light to turn green, and it activates.
- It’s a little tricky to remove the bike itself. You need to do a combination lift-and-pull at the same time.
- They did a good job with the Citibike app, combining your geolocation + bike stations
- There are 600 locations, with about 30 within a few blocks of my apartment near Union Square. See the only ‘coming soon’ one on the map? Yup, that’s the closest location to my place. Sigh.

The Bike:
- The bike itself is really solid. It is made by Public Bike System Company (PBSC, also known as Bixi), who has also done similar programs in places such as Montreal and Boston.
- It’s built like a tank, but I found it surprisingly nimble and not too heavy, even though it is about twice the weight of a normal bike. You can tell that a lot of effort went into the design.

Click the image below to see some bike details:

- While it takes a little oomph to get going, I found the ride incredibly smooth. I was impressed. You can get going at a decent pace, and are able to power over uneven city streets and potholes that litter New York.
- The brakes are decent, but I’ve found they vary from bike to bike. Allow a little more stopping time vs. your normal bike due to the extra weight.
- When riding, you notice a lot of other people riding these bikes too… it’s like we’re in a new special club

The big issue: Safety.
Look, navigating Manhattan is always a frightening experience. Buses, cabs, cars, delivery trucks, pedestrians on cell phones, delivery guys on bikes, moms with carriages, tourists, runners, idiots. They’re all still there folks, they just come at you a bit faster.
- I think there will be some growing pains, but feels like a pretty interesting new development. Thumbs up.

Follow-up Review of Citibike Bike Share Program:

So it sounds like everything is rainbows and butterflies, right?
Not so fast. I used Citibike twice more in the next few days. Here are the results:

- On June 6th I went to a nearby location to check out a bike. I tried to activate multiple bikes using my keyfob, but the light stayed on yellow and refused to work. I walked 3 blocks to another station and tried on a different set of bikes, and was able to unlock one. Great.
- From there I sped down Broadway to the New Work City coworking space. The trip was much faster and efficient than the subway, and I was excited to get to work for the day. I pulled into the docking station directly across from the NWC office.
- However, that’s where the frustration really began. As I jammed the bike into multiple docking stations, it refused to lock. Since this was all new, I wasn’t sure what the problem was. Was it me? Was it my account?
- From there I rode 3 blocks in dangerous traffic along Houston Street to another docking station. Once again the bike refused to be checked in. Within 5 minutes two other riders joined me and were having the same problem. So at least I knew it wasn’t me or my bike or that one other dock. This was a bigger issue.
- In their defense, I called the 800 number from my cell phone, got through in under 30 seconds, and a very pleasant customer service rep walked me through the issue and told me to leave the bike there (you can still put the front tire in the dock, so even though it isn’t locked, at a glance it appears to be). She checked me out of the system so I wouldn’t be liable and got me on my way.

However, there were more problems to come, when I rented a bike on June 9.
- I grabbed a bike near my place and checked out with no issues.
- Because I haven’t yet memorized the bike lanes and best paths, I had to go out of my way to get to my friend’s house so that I wasn’t commuting against traffic.
- When I got to the closest station to him, once again the bike refused to lock.
- Repeat the same dance… leaving the bike there, a call to customer service, and late for my appointment.
- As expected, there are some growing pains here

Business lessons from Citibike

Everything is in beta
You know how nearly every new website launches and has the words “Beta” below the logo, symbolizing that this is still in the launch phase? That goes for real-world businesses as well.

I’m smart enough to know that this is a massive undertaking and will need a few months to work out the kinks, but others have been quick to criticize the program.

However, the only way to succeed in life is to throw things out there and see how it performs in the real world. There’s no way to predict how something works in the real world while it is still in the lab. Get it out there and get feedback.

Branding matters
. The NY Times reports that Citibank paid $41 million to be the lead sponsor for 5 years.

In a world featuring bad stadium names such as Northeast Delta Dental Stadium, Save-on-Foods Memorial Center, Sports Authority Field at Mile High, and the $238 million KFC Yum! Center, Citibike is a pretty great name.

The name flows off the tongue, and it’s near impossible to say Citibike and not think Citibank. The company logo and colors are now ubiquitous throughout the city, not only at the 600+ station, but now as rolling billboards across every block in Manhattan.

When you’re creating a name for your business, make sure it has positive connotations, is easy to say, and think beyond any initial financial outlay to the long term branding.

Big, open data
I think one of the most awesome features is the incredible amount of data that is being generated. On a personal level, each annual member can log onto the web to see a detailed account of their trips, including the date, bike stations, and duration of the trip.

Over at the Citibike blog, they’re posting realtime stats of the entire system daily, including weather conditions, popular start and end stations, and average trip duration. This will go a long way to optimizing the system over time, allowing them to allocate bikes for weekday commuting and weekend excursions.

Other bloggers are taking this data and repurposing it, such as an interactive heat map showing the most beneficial neighborhoods.

Whether it’s Google analytics or social media stats, pay attention to the data.

Mobile + Geolocation makes for a killer app
For a world that always has a cell phone in its pocket, it’s no secret that mobile technology will be the single biggest tech revolution over the next decade. Combine that with geolocation capabilities and the opportunities are endless.

The Citibike app does a great job simply pulling up a map of the closest stations to you, but I can see it expanding to do so much more moving forward.

Whatever your business is, you need to account for mobile.

Technology and software giveth and taketh awayThe technology behind Citibike, from the LED lights on the bikes that are charged as you ride, to solar powered stations with touchscreen kiosks is impressive. But much of the issues are being blamed on software. When talking to reps about my issues, they’ve talked about “rebooting” stations. Felix Salmon talks about the software issue in a Reuters article, and spoke with someone from the city:

NYC DOT’s Seth Solomonow tells me that “a quick inspection can address” the problem. Basically, if a technician goes out there and resets the station, the problem is solved. But there doesn’t seem to be a way to reset the station remotely, and it’s not at all clear whether CitiBike HQ even knows when a station isn’t working, unless and until someone calls them to report the issue.

Customer service is crucial
It’s not that your business won’t have problems, it’s how you handle a problem that is crucial. Just about every person that calls Citibike’s hotline is going to be angry. They’re lost or stressed or late and are having problems with a bike. I don’t envy the reps on the other end of the phone.

But to their credit, they seem to have been well-trained. They have been incredibly understanding and apologetic and worked to solve any problem immediately. They have also brought in additional reps to handle calls at this crucial time period while they work out any issues. Adding a 10 minute wait on hold for customer service would have infuriated early adopters.

Haters gonna hate
From the start, there was opposition to Mayor Bloomberg and this program, and some of the hiccups have given the naysayers additional ammunition.

- Some worry about the safety and liability of inexperienced riders – helmets are encouraged but not mandatory.
- Friends are concerned about unleashing thousands of additional bikes into the already crowded streets.
- Businesses and residential apartments are up in arms over bike stations taking up sidewalks and interfering with their foot traffic. And there is worry about vandalism.

If you decide to quit your job and become an entrepreneur, or do something revolutionary at work, you’re going to face opposition as well.

The bottom line is, you can’t please everyone. This is a massive program that will ruffle feathers. But if it makes New York greener and easier to navigate and has health benefits to its residents? It’s a worthy program.

[Image via AM New York]

Go big or go home
What impressed me the most is the sheer size of the program from day 1. This wasn’t a few hundred bikes in a few key locations. This was a massive rollout with thousands of bikes in hundreds of locations, with more planned.

Are you looking to launch a business or do something great? Be bold.

Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Something new

Everyone loves something shiny and new, like brand new bikes. If you’ve been doing your accounting and invoicing the old way — with spreadsheets and word documents — you need to try something new and move to the cloud.

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British accents! Entrepreneurs! Crowdfunding! Selfpublishing! Marketing Tips! Inspiration! Shall I Continue?

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Today I’m getting back in the interview chair for the first time since… wow, it’s the first interview this year! The last interview was Ekaterina Walter back in December talking about her book “Think Like Zuck.”

Well today, we’re going to think like a British Millionaire. Or at least my guest is named Matthew Turner, and goes by the nickname Turndog Millionaire.

Podcasting note: We recorded this on Skype, and my volume is a little bit louder than his. Fortunately, I tried to let him do most of the talking, so crank it up and enjoy.

Also note: Matthew and I talk about a lot of different things on the podcast that aren’t covered below, so go ahead and subscribe to it on iTunes.

Tell us about yourself

My name is Matthew Turner and I’m an Author & Storyteller from the grand old isle of England. With a background in Marketing and a rather creative imagination, I decided to leave the corporate world and become my own man – setting up Turndog Millionaire and concentrating on my writing and helping others Discover, Create & Share their own Stories.

Early in 2013 I published my debut novel, Beyond Parallel – a book I first began writing in 2006 – and fulfilled a long standing dream of mine. It’s been quite the journey, indeed everything I’ve done since starting Turndog Millionaire has been, and I can’t wait to see where it all takes me.

What is your book about?

One boy. One girl. One insignificant moment that changes their lives forever.

Bella and Clark are two young twenty-somethings finding themselves in a chaotic and crazy world. One craves love; the other avoids it. Will they find one another, or will a single what-if moment send them down different paths?

In the same mold as Sliding Doors, Beyond Parallel flips between two parallel tales. One follows Bella and Clark as a couple, the other as if they never meet.

It’s incredible how a small, everyday decision can affect how you look, where you live, the people you love, and who you become. We could all live a billion lives, but we’re only given one. Is it all a game of chance, or are Bella and Clark meant to be?

How does that relate to business?

Although a work of fiction, Beyond Parallel surrounds the notion of “what if.” I don’t know about you, but this is something that lingers in my mind, and I often consider how everything could be different had I chosen otherwise.

In business we make hundreds of decisions each year, most of which are hazy and with elements of doubt sewn within them. Turning left could result in a complete contrast to that of turning right, but we’re only given one life and we are dealt with what we’re dealt.

This fascinates me and I encourage people all the time to consider the what if. Not only does it make your day a little more interesting, it can have huge repercussions on how you do business, who you do business with, and why you do what you do.

Lots of people dream of writing a book, but never have that initial spark. How did it work for you?

In my instance it was a rough breakup toward the end of summer, 2006. I was left pondering, wondering, and longing for what was. It was a tough period and for the first time I turned to writing as a form of therapy.

I’ve always loved stories and being creative, but writing wasn’t something I did a great deal of. The plot for Beyond Parallel formed quite easily though, and in the following months the first draft (which was awful by the way) was complete.

Why did you choose self-publishing?

Initially I was going to send my manuscript to agents and publishers, but as I have a background in marketing, I wanted to form a platform, start networking online, and create some foundations that would make things easier further down the line.

In doing this I discovered the world of self-publishing and fell in love. I like control. I like learning new skills. I like to get my hands dirty and have the freedom to try new things – even if they’re a little risky and out there.

You can’t do this with a traditional publisher so I decided to self-publish and take a chance. It’s hard and I still have a great deal to learn, but I don’t regret my decision one bit. There’s no shelf-life for books anymore, which means you can take longer to build a following and gain momentum. It does mean you have to work hard though, and it does mean results can be non-existent for rather a long time.

The freedom, however, is amazing.

I hired an editor to help me make Beyond Parallel the best book it could be, but I did most of the other work (formatting, cover design, etc) myself. I wouldn’t recommend everyone to do this, but I like to learn new skills and understand the process. In future I’ll hire more people to do more aspects, but I’m glad I did what I did for this book. I’ve learned a lot.

How are you marketing the book?

My main focus right now is on my upcoming Kickstarter Campaign, which is in aid of creating a Paperback and Limited Edition Hardcover of Beyond Parallel.

I love the concept of crowdfunding, not only because it offers financial backing, but because you reach a whole new audience that would otherwise be left untouched. The money raised through my Kickstarter Campaign will help me print both a paperback and hardcover edition, work with a few amazing individuals to help make the entire campaign sparkle, and introduce me to a whole new breed of individuals.

I find crowdfunding so intriguing and exciting. I can’t wait to see how it all goes, and I have a few other campaigns lined up for the summer ahead. Here’s for a great and sunny 2013!

You can find me at:
Online: TurndogMillionaire.com
Twitter: @turndog_million
Facebook: facebook.com/matthewturner.writer

Book: Beyond Parallel | Beyond Parallel UK

Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Great American Novel

It’s an interesting thing, this desire to write. Anyone can do it. It’s free and easy to start a blog. It’s just putting words together on a page. And in fact, millions of people do it each year. It’s strange to think that at it’s core, we’re just putting many of the same words on a page, but what order they come out determines whether something is a best seller or a basement bargain. None of this has to do with accounting. Just get Freshbooks and get back to writing.

Switch to cloud accounting and join over 5 million people using FreshBooks to make billing painless at Freshbooks.com.

Twitter’s new video service is more than a fun app, it can be good for your business.

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I’m Vine, thanks.

For more than 15 years as the web evolved, writers told stories and communicated their ideas through blog posts. While many bloggers stretch their legs and produce columns of 1,000 words or more, Matt Mullenweg of WordPress has said that the average post has remained constant at about 280 words.

– Then Twitter came along in 2006 and suddenly we were challenged to condense our thoughts down to 140 characters and share them socially.

– In the last decade technology within Digital SLR cameras has grown dramatically, enabling aspiring photographers to take 20 megapixel photos even with consumer-level models.

– Once again we learned to simplify, as 100 million active users fell in love with Instagram, adding filters to millions of photos a day from their mobile phones.

So in a world where YouTube is receiving 1 billion users per month, it’s no surprise that the mobile-social-simple trend has come to video as well. It’s called Vine, and businesses are starting to take notice.

Vine basics

Vine is a mobile app that lets users capture and share a 6 second looping video. The company was acquired by Twitter in late 2012 and launched in January 2013, and was one of the top free apps in the iTunes store in April.

The service contains all the hooks you’d expect from a modern social media app:

• Ability to log in with your current Twitter account
• Find and follow friends
• Share videos socially
• Leave comments
• Tag other friends
• View popular and trending videos

Predictable evolution

Vine also followed another interesting adoption path that any shiny new service seems to take, from shoulder-stabilized VHS cameras to handheld Flip Cams to thumb-operated smart phones.

First, there were the pictures of kids. Give any parent the ability to film their child, and you’ll get an instant archive of babies burping and toddlers tumbling.

Next come the cats. It didn’t take long for a site called Vinecats to pop up, specifically dedicated to cat videos filmed on Vine.

Not far behind is adult content. Just a few days after Vine’s launch, a not-safe-for-work video mistakenly got featured as an Editor’s Pick (blamed on human error). While they’ll probably always be an ongoing battle of users uploading risqué content and the company removing it, it seem like less of a problem at the moment.

From here, people start to get creative. Vine turns out to be a fantastic vessel for stop motion video, and some truly amazing results have started circulating.

Artists, storytellers, and comedians are harnessing the service to make people laugh and be inspired. The Tribeca Film Festival even had a call for entries, receiving more than 400 six second “films” and awarding $600 (“a Benjamin for each second”) to six winners.

Finally, people started using Vine for business purposes.

3 ways businesses are using Vine to market their business

As always, a few brave early adopters have rushed to this new platform and jumped into unknown waters headfirst. Here are a few examples.

- The Teaser
Whether you’re launching an eagerly-awaited summer blockbuster or have a new product launch every two weeks, everyone likes a sneak preview.

James Mangold, director of the movie The Wolverine – set to launch in July 2013 – released a six second Vine trailer, which he called a “tweaser.” Two days later the full movie trailer was released.

Over in the print world, Rolling Stone magazine runs a feature called “Guess who is on the cover,” revealing just enough of the front cover in a Vine video to keep readers guessing. - The Demo Six seconds is surprisingly enough time for a speedy “How-To” video. If you have a product that is easier to watch than describe, this might be for you. Cadbury chocolate has a delicious video showing how to consume their “Egg ‘n’ Spoon” delicacy. Meanwhile Bacardi Rum demonstrates three simple steps to making a “Blonde rum and Coke”: Ice+Bacardi+Sprite.

- Content
If there’s one thing we know about social media, it’s that the appetite for content is insatiable. Have a great post, a great tweet, and a great photo to share on Facebook and Twitter and Tumblr and Pinterest? Awesome. Now we need more. Day after day after day. Vine gives marketers another outlet for creating quick and digestible content that can be shared.

Editor/Critic Ron Charles from The Washington Post breathlessly summarized his latest book review in just half a dozen seconds, while (stay with me here) a mariachi band for Doritos plays name that tune with 80s songs for the chance to win Easter prizes.

So, is Vine the next evolutionary step in your company’s marketing plan? You’ll want to match the strategy to your brand, but if the mobile-social-simple trend is here to stay, you’ll want to check it out.

Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Road Trip

A college friend once left me with a quote I’ve never forgotten: “Never say no to a road trip.” So it’s with that in late May that I climbed into my car to go exactly 700 miles from New York City to Asheville to visit another college friend. How can I just leave my business for so long? I don’t. I can access Freshbooks billing on the road from my iPhone, my iPad, and my laptop. The only thing I have to worry about are over eager traffic cops.

Switch to cloud accounting and join over 5 million people using FreshBooks to make billing painless at Freshbooks.com.

It’s not a sexy topic, but it needs to be discussed: healthcare for entrepreneurs.

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Healthcare: Try not to lose

Here’s the problem with healthcare… you can never really win, you can only hope not to lose.

- If you pay a lot of money for premiums and have a bad accident and everything gets paid for, well, you had an accident: Lose
- If you pay a lot of money and never get in an accident, well, you paid a lot of money for nothing: Lose
- If you get a really cheap plan (or have no insurance at all) and have a bad accident, well, now you had an accident and are broke: Really lose

The only way to win is to take an incredible gamble and not have insurance, live life to its fullest, and yet somehow never get in an accident. If you can pull that off – and not be incredibly stressed along the way – then you’re one of the lucky ones.

For most of us, the answer lies somewhere in between.

(At the end of this column, I’ll show you specific recommendations)

Health Insurance for entrepreneurs: What to consider

First off, the big disclaimer: I am not a doctor or a lawyer or have any more knowledge about the insurance industry than you probably do. I’m just a guy that loves doing research when I can’t find good answers on the web, and this is such a situation. You need to make your own decision based on your specific family situation, medical situation, tolerance for risk, and where you live.

That being said, here was my thought process, in hopes that it helps you.

Do I need to get health insurance?

In my mind, absolutely yes, at least some kind.

However, it was shocking to me that during my research, THREE different solopreneur friends of mine told me that they do not have insurance right now.

These are people regularly traveling the world internationally, living with significant others, and braving a city that gets hit by epic hurricanes, and where your main form of transportation is getting into a car with a stranger from another land and not wearing a seatbelt (ie, taxis).

I consider myself extremely healthy… I eat right, don’t smoke, get a physical every year, work out 4-5 times a week, and rarely get sick. So if anyone should take a risk on not paying for insurance, it should be me right?

Wrong. Because sometimes this happens while mountain biking:

Where do I get health insurance?

Because paying for insurance yourself can be so expensive, you want to try and do everything you can to get a company-sponsored health care plan.

5 places you can look:

1) Spouse. If you decide to start your own business and have a spouse working full time, the easiest way is to get on a family plan.

2) Cobra. If you’ve been laid off from your current job as you start your business, most companies offer you Cobra, the option to extend your health care. In my case, I went with Cobra for 18 months before having to find my own plan.

3) Hidden jobs. I tried to find a loophole within the companies I had worked for in the past 18 months.
- Since I had taught at NYU each fall for 5 years, I was hoping I could sneak into their plan. Turns out I teach 14 hours, and the minimum needs is 40.
- Then I tried Mediabistro. They changed over from paying their teachers as freelancers to designating them more like “employees,” but they told me I didn’t qualify.
- I’ve heard of others taking unrelated jobs in order to get benefits. For example, I believe Home Depot offers medical to part time employees.

4) Organizations. There might be groups within your niche or network that you can join that offer health insurance.
- One friend told me about PEN, the oldest human rights and literary organization in the world, but it wasn’t right for me.
- I researched the Manhattan Chamber of Commerce and National Association of Colleges and Employers but no luck there
- The main option for individual employees in New York City is the Freelancers Union, so that was definitely on my radar

5) Individual plans. You can buy individual plans directly through health insurance companies.

What do I need to consider?

Again, each person’s situation is different, but here are the things you’ll want to look into.

a) Premium. How much you’ll pay each month
b) Deductible. How much you pay before the benefits kick in
c) Copay. How much you pay each time you go to the doctor.
d) Prescriptions. Are you on regular medication or not? Many plans offer options with and without prescription services.
e) Primary care physician. Do you want to stick with your current doctor or not?
f) Timing. When does your new plan begin?

Case Study: Me

OK, so lets get to a case study… me… a single, healthy dude in New York City.

1) After my job was eliminated, I went on Cobra, which was $450 a month. Things were hectic, I was starting a business, trying to get my ducks in a row, so when faced with an intensive search for health care, the easiest thing for me to do was just roll with my former plan on Cobra, which meant I didn’t have to think about it for 18 months.

In retrospect, when you look at my final decision and that I never had any health issues, that might have been a $4,800 mistake (since I eventually signed up for a plan with a $270/mo savings x 18 months). But “I don’t have to think about my health care for a year and a half” was a pretty strong urge.

2) Since I couldn’t convince anyone to marry me in the 10 days between my Cobra ran out and I needed a new plan, NYU and Mediabistro didn’t qualify, and none of the government or other agencies had plans. I was looking for an individual solution.

3) I researched the Freelancers Union, (available in New York only) which offered 5 plans ranging from $225 – $603. Despite my research and a pretty well designed comparison chart of healthcare plan options, I still found it difficult to compare plans.

Sure, you can deductible differences between $3,500 and $6,000 and $10,000, but it’s so hard to put this into perspective. There is no one that can really tell you “THIS is what makes the most sense for you.”

Anyway, I had generally heard good things, so they were the ones to beat.

4) I started Googling to find plans for entrepreneurs, and there wasn’t a lot of good information out there. A few people pointed to ehealthinsurance.com, and suddenly things started to feel a bit creepy.

There were a lot of sites like this, and it reminded me of finding a mortgage. With all the ads on Google and elsewhere, I started to see how this stuff worked.

There is a ton of competition, agents probably earn a commission, so these aggregator sites are dying for you to enter all your information and try and spit out the best option for you, usually directing you to sales agent. I tried to stay away from this as I’m always of the opinion that YOU should your control your destiny when researching things like a mortgage or a credit card, not let offers come to you.

Thus, let’s move on to the contenders:

Individual health plans for freelancers

- United Health Care: Called them, they took all of my information and said an agent would call me back (one never did)

- Emblem Health Care: Called them, they took all of my information and said an agent would call me back. I ended up speaking with someone and it broke down as follows:
- They had two Alliance Value programs, but since they were $755 and $1000, they were out of the running
- They had two “Health NY” plans, $244 per month without prescriptions, $302 with prescriptions. This was a unique situation where you had to earn a certain amount as a freelancer, yet have reportable income from your Schedule C below a certain amount. I might have qualified based on last year, but would have had to FedEx an application and my tax forms overnight to meet their deadline. It seemed like a lot of work.

- Empire Health: They offered an emergency only plan for $180 a month called Traditional PLUS, which was interesting. If you have an emergency, they cover everything, as long as the doctor is employed by the hospital.

In other words, if you break an arm and go to the emergency room, they knock you out, they fix the bone, they keep you there, etc… it’s all covered. However, if the surgeon bills separately or you go to a different one, you have to cover that.

They are part of Blue Cross/Blue Shield and my current doctor is in their network. They cover preventative doctor visits like an annual checkup. For what it’s worth, Men’s Health ranked this #1 for single guys.

- Someone said look into Humana, but they don’t cover New York.

- Someone said look into Atlantis Health Plan, but they seemed to be part of Easy Choice now, and I couldn’t find information there.

- Freelancers Union. I actually went to an event where their president, Sara Horowitz was speaking about her book, and while the employees there weren’t familiar with the plans, I spoke to a few people that had their coverage and they thought it was fine and reasonably priced. They did say that there was an approval process to go through, where you needed to prove you were an entrepreneur, join the union, then apply for benefits, etc. I had procrastinated so was hoping to get this done in less than 3 weeks.

The Choice

In the end, I ended up choosing Empire Health Traditional PLUS. While I did do a bunch of research and had a pretty nice Google Doc going with all my questions and options, I’m pretty proud at how fast I made the decision once I realized time was running out and I got someone on the phone. To summarize:

- I am healthy, so I was ok with an emergency-only plan
- I am happy that I get to keep my own doctor
- They were the least expensive plan by far, at only $180 per month
- They were able to get me applied within 20 minutes, and have the insurance ready by June 1 when my Cobra ran out
- They said I could switch plans at any time, and could go to a different plan on the first of the next month
- The plan works for internationally – they cover 80%
- This might be a short-term solution until a national health care plan comes out in 2014
- The main issue is I have to make sure of exactly who is taking care of me in the event of an emergency.

– Note… Obviously I just signed up for this, so I actually don’t have experience yet USING the program, so again, proceed at your own pace.

Summary

I love doing deep-dive research, and while this wasn’t as fun as new website templates or comparing the latest GPS models, I still got some satisfaction from it.

Additionally, I know how frustrated I was with the lack of finding a human being trying to explain this stuff in terms of how people might actually make a real-world decision, so if you came across this in Google, I hope it helps. Please spread the word to others and say hi on Twitter.

Stay healthy.

Wish you had a little more money in your pocket to pay for those doctor visits? Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Stay healthy

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What a cross-town trip can teach you about your business.

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2 critical miles

The distance between the FDR highway – the farthest road on Manhattan’s East Side, and 11th Avenue – the farthest road on Manhattan’s West Side, when traveling along 23rd street, is a short, straight, 2 miles.

Oh, but so many things can happen between those two points.

As I made the trip from point A to point B this week, it occurred to me how it was a metaphor for running your own business. Let me explain.

I keep my car in a garage on 23rd and the FDR for a few reasons:
- The monthly rates are “reasonable” for Manhattan (aka, less than the cost of an iPad)
- You park your own car (never handing your keys to a valet)
- Easy access out of the city to the Northeast, such as Boston

The problem is whenever you need to go west, which involves crossing the entire width of Manhattan just to have the pleasure of arriving at the Lincoln Tunnel.

Venturing into this territory can test the mettle of even the best of drivers… as you try to navigate kamikaze cab drivers, enormous city buses, and rogue bike messengers, you’re bombarded by swarming hoards of tourists, thousands of Type-A business people on their phones, and dog-walking residents.

Once coming west after a 12 hour road trip, sitting in the tunnel for another 2 hours, and literally having one more left turn to make to head toward my garage, a street was shut down, a cop forced me to go straight, and I was infuriatingly directed over the Williamsburg Bridge and into Brooklyn, adding another 20 minutes to my trip and hitting a 6” deep pothole to rub it in.

The same thing happens when you start your own business. There are dozens of friends and family members giving you advice. There are blogs and podcasts and courses to learn from. Everywhere you turn, new ideas for your business surround you.

Then, I finally hit upon an epiphany.

Two rules that changed my attitude toward crossing the chasm:

1) Put on some jazz

When I’m in my car, I’m usually listening to one of two types of music. The first is hard-driving, fast rocking, driving music. When you’re trapped in the concrete jungle most of your life, when you get to escape on the open road, you want a soundtrack to match.

The second type of thing I listen to is podcasts. I hook my iPod for long road trips and by the time I get through my favorite shows on sports, comedy, or business, the hours have flown by.

But neither scenario is good for crossing Manhattan. You’re certainly not going fast, so the fast music is only going to frustrate you. Trying to listen to a podcast isn’t fun either… you can’t really concentrate on it, and the FM tuner gives off too much static. Even having no music on is frustrating, as you get up in your head and overanalyze every inch of your 2 mile trip.

The best solution is jazz. It’s relaxing, it helps you focus, and blends into the background. I’m not even a huge aficionado. I really only own 3 CDs that someone recommended as “must have,” Kind of Blue by Miles Davis, and Blue Train and A Love Supreme by John Coltrane.

2) Take it one avenue at a time

The best ideas are so simple that they’re obvious. Whenever I’d make this trek, I’d focus on the end goal. I need to get to the other side. In doing so, each step of the way was frustrating, as I wasn’t getting to my destination quickly enough.

Often I would speed up to the next intersection, only to have the light turn red. Sometimes the path would be clear for cars, but pedestrians crossing held you up. Here was the new and simple plan:

For every one of the 14 sets of lights or so, my expectation was to make it only a single block. If you made it a single block each time the light changed, you met your goal. Sometimes it would take 2 light cycles. No big deal. If you made it through 2 blocks in a row, that was great. But the main goal was very attainable and achievable. You saw progress.

How it relates to your business.

The reason this works for business is that it incorporates both short term and long term thinking, with adjustments in between.

Three key points:

1) Have a specific, clear, end goal in mind.
When driving I know I need to get to the dealer on 11th avenue, and in your business you have clear goals you want to attain.

2) Have a roadmap to get there.
For this trip it is easy – straight across 23rd. For you, you’ll want to draw out a series of shorter, attainable goals to reach your end goal. Looking to launch your own tax consulting business? Maybe that means you need to make sure you have the right licenses to practice, decide if you want to open a storefront, determine a marketing plan, and focus on your target customers.

3) Be open to change.
The conundrum on Manhattan’s 2 lane streets is as follows: If you stay in the left lane, you can get stuck behind someone turning left. If you stay in the right lane, you’re confronted with cabs, idling delivery trucks, and cars stopped to let pedestrians cross. Knowing that you can’t win and there’s no correct answer, you adjust your plan on the fly each and every block, going with the flow. The same goes for business, you still are achieving one goal at a time, but you must be open to many different ways that you can adjust as you go and still achieve it.

Driving in the streets of Manhattan isn’t for everyone, just like starting your own business is an enormous task. But if you put on some jazz and take it one step at a time, you’ll achieve your destination.

Wish you had a little more money in your pocket for jazz albums? Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Travel

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Looking to update your website? Make sure to do these things first.

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Redesigns are very dangerous

I read once somewhere that a site redesign is one of the most dangerous things you can do in your business. Why? You run the risk of spending countless hours of work, costs can quickly spiral out of hand, you could alienate an existing customer base that was used to using your site a certain way, and you can cause a near riot of egos and opinions within your company.

I saw this firsthand back when I was working at ESPN. We were doing a refresh on the Fantasy Games website, and everyone had an opinion.

• The VP was focused on making it very easy to buy our products so we can hit our revenue numbers.
• The edit team wanted our content front and center, people were coming to the site for information.
• Our lead producer wanted to focus on navigation for user’s actual teams… most people check on their fantasy teams every day, make it easy to get to them.
• The engineering team just wanted to make sure all the back-end stuff kept working and the site loaded quickly and efficiently.
• And the designer was taking this all in, trying to make the site balance aesthetics with functionality, speed with ease of use… without killing anyone.
• My job was to make sure he didn’t kill anyone. Thankfully, I succeeded.

Redesigning your website. First things first.

As you may know, I love design. I love designers and secretly wish that I was one, so I have to do the next best thing and try to do my best to be one, while knowing when to step back and learn from them.

I’ve written about this a lot in the past:
- 3,700 words on How to build a revenue-generating website in 24 hours
- I walked you through How to create a personal website, showing the steps I went through to create JimHopkinson.com, including the Part 2 follow-up
- Now that I am obsessed with mobile access, I gave you 10 Responsive web design examples in action.

So with the launch of my new online salary negotiation course, it’s time to start thinking about an upgrade to my book site, SalaryTutor.com. The main reason is that it has evolved in its purpose.

Originally, it served to launch a book. The main goals were to sell the book, and have people sign up for my email list to hear about events. But now that the book has been out for some time and I am doing more business around it, it’s the perfect opportunity to refocus, make it mobile friendly, and give it a fresh coat of paint.

But before I even update the first pixel, here are:

10 important things to consider BEFORE you do a website redesign

1) Ask again. Do I NEED to redesign?

You’d thought I’d have learned my lesson with JimHopkinson.com. As soon as I became an entrepreneur, I rushed to hire a designer and build an entirely new website.

You want the honest truth? I should have first spent that money building my business for a few months, and then thought about creating the website. I don’t fully regret it, and I think it has helped, but it didn’t need to be the top priority.

So ask yourself, is now really the time to update your website? Would you be better off with just a few minor tweaks.

2) What is the goal?

The best way to start is to get really, really clear on your goal. It can be so simple, yet so many people don’t ask the #1 most basic question:

What do I want a person visiting this website to do?

If you don’t know the goal of your business, that you have a lot more to think about than your web presence. You must start with these goals.

For Salary Tutor, my goal at a high level is to transition from a website that showcases my book, to one that serves as a resource for job seekers looking to negotiate salary, and to direct them quickly and easily into the products and services that I offer.

I will then break it down to a specific goal, which will be to take my course, hire me to consult or speak, or buy the book.

3) What are my time and money resources?

Redesigns are a little like house renovations… they always take a little more time and cost a little more money than you first budgeted. You need to be aware of the impact of this project on your business.

For my project, I have two goals in mind:

a) I am going to look at this as a longer-term project, evolving over the next few months. I am leaving for the World Domination Summit conference around the 4th of July, and since putting the pressure to launch my other project before the SXSW conference worked as such a great motivator, I might do the same and plan on about 8 weeks as a time frame. I will allocating a certain amount of my week toward this, knowing that I have other projects to work on.

b) This is going to be a lower-budget design. At least right now, the goal is not to hire a designer at $500 to $3000 and let them have at it. Rather, I plan to buy a WordPress theme for under $100 and do most of the work myself.

Why? The first reason is to save money as I grow my business. The second is that I actually enjoy the nitty gritty production and bringing a project to life. And the third is that it will force me to learn some new skills.

Will I most likely pay some money or swap advice for beers to designers or consultants here or there when I get stuck? Sure. But I want to try and do a lot of it myself.

4) Should I update my logo?

This is a great question. If you’ve built up a lot of equity in your existing logo and it appears on books and websites and tshirts and other marketing materials, then no, maybe it’s not a good idea.

But just as pro sports teams and major corporations do a refresh over time, so should you. For me, the Salary Tutor logo is not directly tied into the book, and it feels a little bit plain. The graduation cap, while referring to Tutor, also makes it feel a bit like a book just for college students, which it is not. It needs to grow up a little.

5) Should my site be mobile friendly?

Yes. Next question.

OK fine, I’ll explain. If you are just putting new touches on a massive, well-established website and it would take a huge effort to retroactively make it mobile friendly and your users don’t access it from their phones, then maybe you don’t need it.

But if you’re updating the code and doing a refresh of any kind anyway, then you’d be an idiot not to pick a design that is readable on any device. I won’t even share the stats with you again. Let’s move on.

6) What is the competition doing?

While you shouldn’t worry about looking over your shoulder and trying to mimic everything others in your space are doing, you’d be a fool not to take some time and see what your competitors are doing with their sites.

Are they also making updates and keeping current? Are they doing something you should be doing as well? Is there a way you can differentiate yourself from the competition? Watch and learn.

7) What are the big boys doing?

Next you should move beyond your competitive set. Huge brands like Starbucks, Nike, Apple, and Amazon have enormous budgets, massive research and design teams, and millions of dollars at stake for providing a clean, easy interface for their users on their websites.

Take a look at how they handle things like logos, taglines, navigation, text size, buttons, shopping carts, and more.

Where to get inspiration? Take a look at Fast Company’s 50 most innovative companies of 2013, which is also broken down by industry.

8) Don’t reinvent the wheel

The great thing about modern web design is that you can get a great looking site without a ton of work. Unless you have an incredibly specific kind of site or a huge budget, there is no reason to try and build a brand new website from the ground up. The alternative?

a) WordPress: Build a website built on WordPress. According to Wikipedia, WordPress is currently the most popular blogging system in use on the Web, powering over 60 million websites worldwide.

b) Themes: Let other designers do the heavy lifting! There are experienced designers that have put together WordPress themes that can greatly speed up the time it takes to build your site, for only about $35.

One of my favorite sites is Themeforest (affiliate link) and I find myself browsing through their options for hours on end.

What I might be using for my SalaryTutor.com update is the Genesis theme from Studiopress. A lot of popular bloggers are using this, so it makes sense to use a theme that has a large amount of support in the industry.

The specific theme I am looking at is the StudioPress Executive Theme on the Genesis Framework. What do you think? (Click the image to see the demo).

9) Eliminate the unnecessary

You know when you move apartments and you spend the first week throwing out or donating the stuff you don’t use anymore so you don’t have to pack it? The same should go for your website.

Go through your existing site and eliminate menu items, extra copy, ad banners, and anything else that is not useful toward your desired user reaching your goal.

10) Focus on usability

I can’t emphasize this enough, and I’m going to try extremely hard to make my new site unbelievably easy to use. It’s crazy how many websites make it frustrating for users to navigate and complete what they want to do.

Some action items:

• Jakob Nielsen is considered one of the top usability experts, so you could do far worse than spend a few hours reading through his studies on everything from using OK/Cancel vs Cancel/OK to banner blindness.
• A great book in the space is “Don’t Make Me Think” by Steve Krug. You can probably guess what it’s about… making web design so obvious that users aren’t confused. They don’t think, they just act.
• Focus on user design first, graphic design second. Go out and talk to a user designer, someone whose job it is to make sure a task on a website gets done. They look at the big picture and how people interact with your site. Then you can look at things from a graphic design perspective, thinking about things like fonts and colors and layout. Ideally these people are on the same page. Often they are the same person.
• Test test test. There is something incredibly easy and simple to do that will go miles toward creating a good website: Testing it. Sure it would be nice to rent out a usability studio in midtown Manhattan with a 2 way mirror and a video camera.But in reality, even if you just ask 5 close friends to complete a task on your website – sign up for your newsletter, search for an article, buy a product – and then patiently watch them try to do it, you’ll see with your own eyes just how easy your website really is. You’d be stunned at the results.Better yet, harness the power of the web. You can recruit people from a site such as Fiverr.com, or see more resources from this article, 5 Ways to Get Usability Testing on the Cheap. For example, the site usertesting.com can send you videos of someone using your site and giving their feedback out loud, and the site FeedbackArmy.com will give you 10 results for $20. Money well spent.

  So there you have it. Remember, redesigning is dangerous, but you can do your best to have a successful launch, delight your customers, and move your business forward if you think about these 10 steps before you dive in.

  

  Wish you had a little more money to put toward a redesign? Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

  Sponsor Message: Freshbooks Fresh Take of the Week: Making a change

  Making changes can be good. Today we’re going to talk about updating a website, but it can apply to anything from your haircut to your small business. If you don’t like the way your billing and accounting is going, make a change to Freshbooks.

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Why you should stop your whining and listen to Elon Musk.

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How was your day?

Did you whine because your boss gave you a little extra work at the end of the day? Did you feel good about yourself because you wrote a nice little blog post, closed a sale, or balanced your budget? Or maybe you had a really productive meeting?

Well, it doesn’t really matter because you’re still a total loser.

You heard me! Are you complaining about the ONE little job that you have? Are you puffing your chest out because your Vice-President replied all to your group email and said “Nice work!”?

Well, you’re pathetic because you’re not Elon Effing Musk.

Who or What is Elon Musk?

No, Elon Musk is not the latest Obsession fragrance from Calvin Klein or an Eau De Parfum from Chanel

He’s a California-based man-god-entrepreneur and all he did today was:

Work on how to revolutionize the space program
AND
Overhaul the entire transportation industry
AND
Oh yeah, try and solve the energy crisis

I saw him speak at SXSW in March, immediately became enthralled by him, built a keynote speech around him in April and 2 days later noted that he was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People in the World.

Oh, and he was the inspiration for the character of Tony Stark in the movie Iron Man.

So once again I’ll ask, what did YOU do at the office today?

The truth of course is that you’re probably not a loser, but it’s hard not to feel that way when compared with someone with such an impressive resume.

At SXSW I was surprised at his demeanor on stage… a little giddy, assuredly geeky, ever so slightly nervous, but able to make fun of himself in one breath and then talk intricately about rocket propulsion technology in the next.

One of my favorite moments was the casualness of one of the biggest “name drops” I had ever heard, when he began a story with, “So there’s a friend of mine, Richard Branson…”

As the co-founder of PayPal, Musk has already made a great contribution to technology, using the proceeds from the $1.5 billion sale to eBay to fund his future endeavors.

Going to Mars

So he tells the story about how he wanted to go to Mars, so he went to the NASA website to see their progress, and when they were going. What he found was that they didn’t have anything. There were no plans. Budgets were being cut. He couldn’t get answers.

So he decided to do it himself!

He wanted to get people excited and increase NASA’s budget. So he went to Russia to check out some ICBMs. Oh, and he put up $100 million of his own money in the process. Now as CEO of SpaceX, the company collaborates directly with NASA, with the goal of building something sustaining beyond earth.

Tesla Motors

I think disruption is one of the most interesting stories of the last 20 years. Everything has been disrupted… the music industry was turned upside down, giant companies like Kodak were left behind by digital photography, the way the iPod killed CDs, the way Netflix killed Blockbuster, the way the iPhone created a multi-billion dollar app industry, the way eBooks are creating chaos for publishers, the way social media has infected our lives, and so much more.

At a time when American car production in Detroit had clearly stagnated, Musk did something novel… he treated a car company like a startup. In fact, his success was probably due to the fact that he was NOT in Detroit, and able to look at things from an entrepreneur’s perspective.

Let’s look at the Toyota Prius hybrid car. According to Wikipedia, first put on sale in Japan in 1997, it was introduced worldwide by 2000 and nearly 3,000,000 cars have now been old worldwide.

Meanwhile in 2001, the US was still creating cars such as the Pontiac Aztec.

This is considered one of the most hideous looking cars of all time and was sold up until 2005!

Were the engineers blind? Forget about the aesthetics of a Mercedes or BMW or Audi at that time in comparison. Even a Toyota Rav 4 or a Hyundai Sante Fe were nicer than this.

He tapped into his network, focused on design and performance, marketed his first prototypes to early adopters, and engineered efficient lithium-ion batteries.

GM Vice-Chairman Robert Lutz once said, “How come some tiny little California startup, run by guys who know nothing about the car business, can do this, and we can’t?”

True to his plan, Musk used the flashy Tesla Roadster to help fund development of a family sedan, the Model S, which was named 2013 Car of the Year by Motor Trend and Automobile magazine.

See any resemblance between the Aztec and Tesla’s cars? Me neither.

Solar City

Hey, global warming is a problem. Maybe we should harness that thing called the sun. OK, sounds good to me. I’ll be chairman of a solar panel company in my spare time. Let’s do this.

On Education

Of course I was thrilled to hear his thoughts on this, as I am going all-in on this trend, having announced my Salary Negotiation course here last week and seeing the results first-hand… 1,000 students in just over 6 weeks.

He said “Education is wrong. Khan Academy is going in the right direction. Education should be like a good video game. You don’t need to tell kids to go play a video game. Make it interactive and engaging. People do different things at different paces. It’s not all linear. Follow your own pace.”

“Current education is doing the same lectures several years in a row. It’s like seeing a vaudeville show. Contrast that with Batman, The Dark Knight. The editing, the cuts, the special effects. Imagine if instructors treated education like a 1 man play of Batman.”

“Peter Thiel of Paypal said higher education is unnecessary. You learn the most in the first 2 years, and during that you learn the most from classmates, not the studies. Otherwise, you would just read textbooks or go online. If your goal is to start a company, there is no need for college. I would have quit sooner if I knew that.”

In Summary

Musk’s goal is not necessarily to solve every problem in the universe – although sometimes it seems it — but to advance development by a factor of 10. He has gone through the struggles that any entrepreneur faces, admitting, “There were a number of years that sucked horribly.”

Through it all, he has relied on his physics training as a framework to look at things that weren’t obvious. He cautioned against judging people and putting too much weight on talent vs. personality. He urged the audience not to make the mistake of looking too much at the brain, saying that what matters is that you have a good heart.

By the end of the interview, while impressed with his accomplishments, I started to feel less like a loser and more inspired to make my own difference in this world. You don’t have to launch rockets or build sports cars or run three companies to change someone’s life.

After all, everything is relative.

Just ask Elon’s good friend Richard Branson, who also has his own little space project going, while overseeing 400 companies.

Maybe you HAVEN’T sold your startup for $1.5 Billion? Wish you were paid a little bit more? Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

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Jim talks about the launch of his online salary negotiation course, and how you can build one too.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
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The announcement

I am so excited to share what may be a poorly-kept secret with my podcast audience – I have launched two courses on online learning site Udemy.com:

How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset
How to Negotiate Salary: Negotiating a Raise or Promotion

The beta launch date was on March 5, 2013 but if you’re a regular reader, you’ve heard me hint at this project before:

July: THR 196: The Dawn of Digital Learning presents my case for a trend that I’ve been following
August: THR 199: How to build your first digital product shows you the demo I was working on
December: THR 217: Have patience, when the filming schedule was pushed back
March: THR 227, How to kill procrastination and build something awesome during launch week
March: THR 228, The teacher of tomorrow and how that will affect the new economy.

This was a project 9 months in the making.

The niche: Salary Negotiation

At first I thought that one day I would finally do a “How to negotiate your salary” post for The Hopkinson Report readers. And while that is certainly a great topic for this career and lifestyle blog – or for any working professional – that’s not specifically what this blog is about.

I’ve always prided myself and showing you how I talk the talk and walk the walk. I don’t TELL you how you should work remotely or try and get to the frontpage of Google or how to build a course, I DO IT and then pass on my learnings.

So if you’re looking for advice on how to get a higher salary, head over to my other blog, SalaryTutor.com. There you can choose how you want to learn.

My book is available from Amazon, I do 1:1 salary consulting sessions if you prefer to work with a real person, you can hire me to speak to your group, you can read dozens of career articles for free, and now culminating everything I’ve learned in this area, my salary negotiation courses are now online. You can also follow my Salary Tutor accounts on Facebook and Twitter.

So today I’m going to tell you about the process.

Find your single motivating purpose

My friends over at the Internet Business Mastery podcast have made a slight change lately, and I like it. Previously focusing on making money from an internet based business so that you could have more freedom… to travel, to spend time with family, to do what you love, recently they’ve been talking more about having a purpose-driven business. I look at it as asking the question…

What were you put on this earth to do?

For Michael Jordan, it was to play basketball.
For Stevie Wonder, it was to sing and perform.
For an entrepreneur, it might take a little time to figure out.

Here are three questions to ask to help you, which come from the book The Big Leap, which I talk about here.

1) I’m at my best when I’m…
2) When I’m at my best, the exact thing I’m doing is…
3) When I’m doing that, the thing I love most about it is…

For me, I’m still in that process, but I think I was put on this earth to teach.
That’s when I light up.
That’s when I feel alive.

More specifically for this project, I want to teach the world how to negotiate their salary.

How do you reach the most people, and make money while doing so?

To do this, I want to be able to reach the most people possible with my message, earn a good income, and still be able to keep an entrepreneur’s lifestyle.

This is a matrix I created as an exercise for my business.
- My book reaches a lot of people; it’s available on Amazon and in Barnes and Nobles across the country. But right now like many authors, it’s not making me rich.
- I love doing 1:1 consulting. It pays me well on a per-hour basis, but it doesn’t scale
- I’ve experimented with live classes, but for me it reaches a smaller group of people, and when you factor in the time renting space in NYC, paying fees, and the time and effort to market each class, there’s not a huge payoff
- Speaking is a mixed bag. You can often reach lots of people, and it can pay very well at times. But getting those opportunities can be hard-fought.
- I needed something with broad appeal and the ability to bring in revenue for my business

Why digital learning?

The venn diagram I’ve been speaking about for some time is as follows:
- Traditional college costs keep soaring
- The recession + $1 trillion in debt + changing skills have altered the workforce
- Technology is now mature, with high speed internet, high definition video, and multiple devices, allowing anyone, anywhere to take classes at their own pace

Part research, part gut feeling… this is something I wanted to be part of.

Testing the market

Eric Ries has built a career talking about the Lean Startup, and in fact has his own courses over on Udemy. His talk, Build. Measure. Learn. Lean Startup SXSW 2012 has been seen by taken by more than 22,000 students.

And his advanced course, The Lean Startup (affiliate link), has been taken by more than 1,400 students.

He talks about testing an MVP, minimum viable product. Putting something out on the market quickly to see how it does. I explained how I did this in my case study, filming a quick negotiation course using just Powerpoint and a web cam.

I spent a full day creating the first module in PowerPoint and developing 10 negotiation myths. Then another 3-5 hours fine-tuning the layout and design.

From there, I put my nose to the grindstone and worked from 9pm till 3am on a Friday night, with about 2-3 hours to record everything on video, then 2 hours to edit everything, and to 30 minutes to export all the files.

The next day, I spent several hours posting everything on Udemy. All total, about 3 full days work.

What this did was two key things:
1) Allow me to get familiar with Udemy, their platform, their support, and other technology
2) See if people were interested in the subject

The result was that I got 125 students in a very short amount of time, as well as some great feedback.

Going all in

At this point I decided to push all my chips to the center of the table. I wasn’t just going to make any course. I wasn’t going to half-ass it. I wanted something that I built from the ground up, that contained everything that I had learned over the past few years studying negotiation.

In a competitive way, I wanted other teachers to look at my course and say, wow, that one is really, really well done. I wish mine was that good.

From a value standpoint, I wanted students to watch just 10 seconds of my video and get an immediate feel that this was a high-quality production, and therefore that it was worth the $199 price point that I would be charging for the advanced course.

I also won’t lie that I was enticed but what the top performing instructors were doing on Udemy, with report of the top 10 instructors earning a combined $1.65 million, and a quarter of approved teachers earn $10k or more

But mostly, I wanted something that I could proudly stand behind as my own.

Udemy upgrades their requirements

Along the way, something fortunate happened. Around December, Udemy announced that they were greatly increasing the requirements for their courses. There was an extensive 40-point UDemy High Quality Course Checklist of requirements that each course would have to adhere to, including the need for high definition video, and quality lighting and sound.

Those courses that didn’t meet the qualifications in the next 2 months weren’t deleted from the site, however, they would not be surfaced within their search and not featured on their frontpage.

This was huge for me, since I was already in the process of creating a course that met all the requirements. That meant by the time my course launched, hundreds or maybe thousands of lesser-quality courses would be hidden from students (for example, my original course with simple webcam video), or instructors that wanted to keep their course live would need to re-film their courses to meet the new requirements.

I have a theory here that when Udemy was in their launch phases, they allowed anyone and everyone to submit a course… the key was getting as many classes as possible up and running to gain traction.

Once they had momentum, I picture one of their investors telling their management team, “OK, you’ve passed the first hurdle. But in order to justify the millions in capital we’ve given you, now you have to clean up your act. No more amateur “How to knit a sweater” courses… we need to up the quality.”

Course structure

One of the major decisions I had to make was how many courses I would actually produce. Should I try to teach everything I know about negotiation in one huge course, or split it up? In the end, here’s what I decided.

1) Use a freemium model. This means that I would offer one course for free to allow students to see what I was all about, and then use that to upsell a percentage to a paid course. My reasoning?
a. This is what several instructors on the platform appeared to be doing successfully, and it has been used as a business model in everything from consumer software to iPhone games
b. I wanted to make sure that even my free course was incredibly high quality and over-delivered on value
c. My course structure fit into this nicely

2) The free course would be on the Negotiation Mindset. This is because the first step for inexperienced negotiators is to be in the right frame of mind. Since this is something that is so new to some people, this is the logical place that almost everyone should start.

3) Split the course into 3 segments. From my experience, people needing negotiation help fall into 3 distinct categories:

a. Getting a raise. People working full-time, who are looking for a raise or promotion. In this scenario, the worker is generally negotiating with their supervisor, their current salary is known to both parties, and it’s more about proving your worth based on an existing body of work.
b. Negotiating for a new job. In this scenario, the worker is generally negotiating with human resources, the salaries of both the employer and employee may be unknown, and the hiring manager is taking a gamble on how the person will work out.
c. Negotiation for freelancers. In this case, the negotiator is actually the business owner. They may be a designer, or consultant, or run their own business, and find themselves constantly pitching business and setting rates for projects. The main question to answer here is sometimes “How much do I charge?”

4) Plan for the long term. The plan was to create the free course and the raise course at the same time, see how they did, and then come out with the other 2 paid courses later in the year.

Scripting

I spent a several weeks writing out the scripts for the course. As a writer, teacher, and wanna-be comedian, it was awesome scripting out the course from scratch. I treated it like a movie script, even using a script template within Microsoft Word, and adding on camera directions.

IE, “Jim is standing behind HR holding cue cards… Allison squints to read them in a robotic voice… HR notices this and whips around suddenly… Jim tosses the cards in the air and runs off camera.”

Acting

The main host of the course would be yours truly. Maybe I was cocky and maybe I was lucky, but I just assumed I could do it and didn’t do any special training or practice whatsoever.

I figured I had 5 years of podcast speaking experience, dozens of public speeches and teaching sessions under my belt, and I was pretty fearless.

The main character in the course, Allison, is played by Emily Crom. I had worked with Emily when she played the part of the job-seeker in the trailer for my book. She is a 25-year-old from Brooklyn via Minnesota, and has done a lot of Improv acting, and is now training to be a life coach.

Quite frankly, I thought she was perfect. She was amazing to work with, hysterical to hang out with, never missed a line, never complained, and was perfect for the part. And wow, she can really sing too.

The other actors also had an improv background and were fantastic as well.

Video shoot

The man behind the camera was Eric Pearson. Yes, just him. One guy. For video, lighting, sound, production, planning, set design, and keeping me on track and putting up with both my ego and micromanaging tendencies. Oh, and he builds stuff and is a musician and a photographer and it doesn’t hurt that he’s a Boston guy like me.

About Eric Michael Pearson | Eric Michael Pearson Photography

Editing

For those that haven’t done video projects before, editing is one of the most crucial roles in the project. I didn’t sweat the details on this one… Eric recommended Justin Farrar, and I knew that he did the editing for some of the most popular entrepreneurs on the internet and thus knew the style I was going for, so I just signed off on it. I’ve still never met him in person.

What I expected was fantastic editing, and I got that. But what I got as a bonus was someone that immediately understood the look and feel for my course, that helped me make key decisions on things like photos and graphics (and actually did the animations himself), someone that stepped it up to meet my deadline, was always instantly available via email and chat, and despite probably 100 bullets of minor changes and 100s of words of text, didn’t make a single typo in the entire course and never missed a change.

Justin Farrar.net

Design

I tried a few crowdsourced websites to create the course images, but ended up not getting something I liked. So I went back to the well and tapped Brandon Werner, my former intern at Wired that has done work for me before. He nailed it in one round.

Can you see the trend here? Work with the best.

The trailer

This was actually a mistake I made, and one that I got lucky on. I forgot to script out and film a separate trailer, which is crucial to drawing in customers and can also be used on YouTube. Fortunately, there were parts of the course where I said “Welcome to the course” and introduced myself and so on, and Justin worked his magic to splice it all together.

I thought the boss laughing was one of the best scenes we did — slightly improv’ed — so I concluded with that.

We used stock music that Justin picked out from AudioJungle, and because this part of the trailer is always free, the licensing fee was very low — just $14. This was also a case where Justin made a recommendation, I told him to do something else, and when I saw MY choice, I immediately knew that it was wrong and I should have just listened to him in the first place. It has that “Apple Commercial” feel.

One thing to note is that YouTube incorrectly flagged my video for copyright infringement. Following these instructions, I had to:
1) Dispute the claim by clicking the link that says, “I believe this copyright claim is not valid”
2) Check the option that says, “I have a license or written permission from the proper rights holder to use this material”
3) State that “A license to use this royalty-free music was purchased from AudioJungle.net”

Add-ons: customizable templates to add value to your course

I think one of the most valuable items in the premium course are the customizable, downloadable templates that are included. Here is what I include:
- Document to keep track of your accomplishments (Word & Excel)
- Email template to reach out to key contacts to find your true value
- Digital portfolio to prove your worth (2 versions)
- A salary research document to achieve the highest salary, 1 Excel version and 5 Photoshop templates

So much of the job search is being memorable and having the documentation to prove your point. These templates do that.

Think about what additional downloads you could offer for your course.

Response

From the moment it went live, the free course started going nuts. I jumped on a plane right after launch and went into the chaos of SXSW, and what was awesome was checking my iPhone from the hotel or from the conference and seeing new emails stating “John Smith is now a subscriber to your course” flooding my inbox every time I checked it.

I hit my 500th student exactly 3 weeks to the day from launch, and am on target to hit 1,000 students around April 15.

[If you were listening to my podcast and not reading the blog post, you'd be very happy right now. Just sayin'. Want to listen? Find The Hopkinson Report on iTunes.]

Summary

As an entrepreneur or someone working on a side hustle, there are lots of ways to monetize your work and spread the word. You can create an ebook, do consulting, do webinars, create a membership site and more. You need to do what’s comfortable for you.

This podcast was to introduce another method that might be just taking off, and that’s creating an online course for the world to see. You don’t have to go as crazy as I did for your first product, but check out Udemy.com and see what other instructors are doing.

I am so excited to kick this off and have you guys be a part of it. If you have any questions on launching your own course, please let me know.

Also see:
Full column for the Udemy blog: How to negotiate a raise or promotion
Guest post for DaveDelaney.com: 4 Stunning Statistics People Ignore When Job Searching and Negotiating
At least 36 additional free salary negotiation articles

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Jim gives preparation tips and tricks when giving a core conversation speech at SXSW, or at your next meeting.

- Download podcast: Via iTunes | Save to computer (Right click, Save As)
- Play it below:

$1,200 in 10 minutes

I made $1,200 within the first 10 minutes of being an entrepreneur.

How did I do that? Well, it wasn’t through marketing or selling a product or closing a deal. On November 1, 2011 I was called into a director’s office and was told my position had been eliminated. Although I was a bit shocked at the sudden layoff, I was actually pretty thrilled at the prospect of starting my own business.

I walked back to my desk, checked my personal email, and sitting in my inbox was an invitation to speak at SXSW 2012. I still wanted to go to the conference, but obviously my company – now my former company – wasn’t going to pay for it.

What this meant is that as a speaker chosen from more than 3,200 applicants, I would receive a free gold-level conference pass. Value? About $1,200. My freelance career was off to a good start.

There are a few different types of programming sessions at SXSW, such as solo keynote speeches and panels. This first year was a 20 minute reading around my book Salary Tutor, followed by a book signing. Rather than read from the book, I did a presentation called How to be a Salary Negotiation Rock Star.

This involved me in front of about 100 people, addressing the audience with an informing and entertaining PowerPoint presentation:
- I had honed the material for the past year in other speeches.
- I put this particular presentation together weeks in advance.
- I knew my opening, I knew my jokes, I practiced it over and over again until it was smooth as butter and timing out at 19:45 seconds.
- If I may be so bold, I rocked it. Exactly to plan.

Inspired by this, I applied again for 2013 was honored to be chosen once more, for my freelance negotiation topic, “How much should I charge?”

However, it wasn’t a keynote or a panel or a book reading. It was a “core conversation.”
What the heck was that?

What is a Core Conversation?

From sxsw.com… The informal discussions that pop up in the hallways between, during and after panel sessions have traditionally been one of the most productive parts of the SXSW Interactive Festival.

In 2008, we formalized this process with the Core Conversation program which has quickly become one of the more popular aspects of the event. In these less formal hour-long sessions a single moderator will introduce the topic to be discussed and then facilitate the conversation.

In many ways, a core conversation is similar to any meeting that you need to run at the office. It’s not always presenting findings from the latest marketing plan… sometimes you need to discuss a project with many decision makers, make sure everyone is clear on the goals, has their input, and get everyone on the same page.

Speaking out of your comfort zone

While I was just slightly nervous when doing my book reading, I knew that I could overcome any anxiety through preparation, and you can too. Practicing a major speech in front of a friend or spouse, or even videotaping it, can give you insights that you can change before you go live.

You’re in control. You know your slides, you know the jokes, you know the timing. Presenting in front of a large audience is terrifying for many people, but at least you can prepare.

This is not something you can do with a core conversation, and it freaked me out a bit. But I love the saying, do something every day that scares you. Or if you’re a little bit scared about doing something, that’s a good thing. So here is what I did.

How to: 10 Tips for facilitating a core conversation or speech at SXSW or your next business meeting

Let me walk you through the general structure that I used, which can be adapted to any meeting.

1) Talk to someone that has been there

First, I read up on exactly what was expected from the SXSW website, to get that clear. Then I went called my friend Twanna Hines from Funky Brown Chick, a SXSW veteran who has led many panels.

Knowing my speaking history, podcast and blog experience, and ego, her advice was blunt:

“It’s not about you. Don’t make it about you, make it about them. Your goal is to get them talking, not teach them. Because to be honest, the people in that audience know more than you do.

Use phrases and conversation-building questions such as:
‘Here’s the first question for you…’
‘What is currently working for you?’
‘What new techniques have you seen being used?’

Don’t be afraid to call on people in the audience. And remember, it’s not about you.” Thanks Twanna.

The next thing I did was start researching. There wasn’t a lot of data (which is why I’m giving back by writing this), but I did come across this great blog post by Gene Kim, How I Prepared For Moderating My SxSW Core Conversation.

He narrowed it down to rehearsal, preparation, and process. The key thing I really got from it, was to chunk out different topics into smaller increments (his were 6 minutes), and use a quick-reference sheet to keep organized.

2) Bring the energy and ask a question

I started out with a huge, high energy welcome, and asked them a for a show of hands on a question, gauging whether they were newbies just learning about the topic, or experts looking for a few extra key tips. This will help you guide the level of your discussion.

3) Open with a stat…

Jim preps in his hotel room before the speech

I started the conversation with facts: We are all living in a gig economy. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, by 2020, 40% of the workforce – 65 million people – will be freelance or temp workers.

This set a serious context for what we were talking about… we are all freelancers in some way, and knowing what to charge is crucial. It also gives the note-takers something to jot down, and is very tweetable.

4) Then go right to a joke

In classic misdirection, now that they think you’re serious, hit them with a joke. Mine was…

“You know, negotiation and knowing how to set your rates is very important in all facets of business. Whether you’re negotiating your salary, setting your rates, or lets say you going to sell your company because you have the next big startup:

It’s like Airbnb… but for bathroom… it’s called Air Pee n Pee”

The great part about that joke is that it is so bad, that it catches people off guard and they laugh before they can groan.

5) Establish credibility

While I knew the session wasn’t all about me, it IS important to give context around who you are, what you do, and why you’re qualified to lead this session. I practiced my opening bio several times to make sure it was succinct without being boastful or going on too long. People want to know who you are.

6) Set the housekeeping ground rules

You’re all going to be here together for an hour. Some people have had this on their schedule for a month, others wandered into the room at the last second. I took a minute to point out the following:

- For those that don’t know, explain what a core conversation is and how the session will work, it’s about them sharing stories, not me
- The Hashtag was #getpaid
- My twitter account was @HopkinsonReport
- The studies and materials I’ll be referencing will be linked at SalaryTutor.com/sxsw to be viewed later. This relieves stress for the people that worry about missing every note, knowing they can go back later and have it all in one place

7) Think big picture

I heard a great goal for conferences over at the Lifestyle Business Podcast, and borrowed it for this session. I told people that their goal for both SXSW in general and this session in particular, was to follow the ABCs of conferences:

A – Actionable advice
B – Be inspired
C – Connect with people

8) Get the room rocking

From there I segued into action, by saying “Let’s get item C going right now… turn to the person next to you and introduce yourself, and ask…”

Before I could finish my sentence, the room erupted into conversation, as everyone turned to their neighbor and started chatting. This really brought up the energy in the room, and get people excited. This is a must-do.

9) Have a structure

I thought about the best way to be a leader but not a speaker, and that was coming up with a structure around the conversation. This played in perfectly to the layout I’ve been working on for freelance negotiation.

I won’t go all the way into it, but the framework is the letters MY RATE
Each of the letters stands for something around negotiation:

M – Mindset
Y – Yes or No

R – Research
A – Adjust
T – Techniques and Tactics
E – Experience and Execution

This allowed me to frame the conversation along the way and keep things flowing. I didn’t have a hard in and out on timing, but was always aware to move ahead after 5 minutes or so. Sometimes people brought up issues that I allocated for later (ie, a tactic while we were still on mindset) and I said we’d get back to them, other times I just let it flow.

What this also did was let me create a notecard like Gene recommended to keep my pace and have some talking points.

I have to say, the people in attendance were the stars. I could have done all of this, but it was up to them to really speak, and the audience was awesome, with lots of people contributing amazing tips. I thank them.

10) Be prepared. Be incredibly over-prepared for the worst case scenario

I’ll tell this in a nutshell:
- I didn’t want to use my laptop, so I asked SXSW for a flipboard
- They said no, but could provide a whiteboard
- I asked if I could get it the day before, so I could neatly write things out in my hotel room and practice
- They said no, I could get in the room 25 minutes ahead of time
- I get there, and while there are 2 empty easels, there are no whiteboards. They get on the walkie talkie, and tell someone to bring one from the convention center next door
- They yelling back and forth, the person is sprinting over, and with 1 minute before I’m supposed to go on, the white boards arrive
- I comment… thanks… do you have markers?
- Nope. No markers.

For the average person, this would have been a nightmare. I had planned on putting all the housekeeping info… the Hashtag, my twitter handle, the ABCs on one whiteboard, and the MY RATE acronym on the other. Even if there was a pen, I’d have been frantically writing, looked very unprepared, and started late.

Fortunately, I follow Murphy’s Law and completely prepared for the worst. I had picked up some of the new large Post-It notes (see point #2 in photo above) they were giving away at the trade show (Thanks 3M!). I brought my own pens and markers, and while they were scurrying for the whiteboard, I assume they would not arrive and used the Post-Its to great success.

Always, always, always have a backup plan.

Bonus: Have a bonus example

After 30-40 minutes of the same routine… going to the next letter, asking questions, calling on people in the audience, people tend to drift off and start checking their phones. There is a lull for sure.

I combated that by busting out a case study about beer ¾ of the way through the presentation (see point #1 in photo above). This broke up the monotony of what was happening, brought things back to me for a moment, had a specific, actionable learning takeaway, and even had a few jokes mixed in.

You can read the beer pricing example here:

If you’ve been selected to lead a core conversation at SXSW, congrats and welcome. However, I think it’s easy to translate these goals to any business situation where you need to lead your peers.

To sum up:
1) Talk to someone that has been there
2) Bring the energy and ask a question
3) Open with a stat…
4) Then go right to a joke
5) Establish credibility
6) Set the housekeeping groundrules
7) Think big picture
8) Get the room rocking
9) Have a structure
10) Be prepared. Be incredibly over-prepared for the worst case scenario.
Bonus) Have a bonus example

Check out my free online salary negotiation course, “How to Negotiate Salary: The Negotiation Mindset.”

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