Jim interviews Michelle Ward, aka The When I Grow Up Coach, who explains exactly what a life coach is, and how she helps creatives going through career transitions.

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What the heck is a “Life Coach” and why would I need one? Well, this week Jim interviews certified life coach Michelle Ward, also known as The When I Grow Up Coach, to find out her journey and answer those questions.

Summary of Topics covered:

- Michelle’s lifelong passion for theater and entertainment, leading to a cameo on Saturday Night Live and (off, off) Broadway
- Her transition away from the arts and into a “grown up” job
- The intense, unmistakable moment that she knew she could not work at her full-time job another day
- Her transition and training as a certified life coach, leading to helping more than 100 creative people devise the career they think they can’t have
- How she has expanded her business from 1:1 coaching to group sessions and workshops
- The development of “Operation Creative Career Cheer,” a 50-page illustrated rhyming career change workbook
- Yes, a rhyming career change workbook. I told you she was in theater, right?

We also discuss
- How she uses social media and referrals to get clients
- Who should go to a life coach, and how they will benefit
- Macro trends of people overwhelmed at work and wanting to get out of the cubicle
- How are millennials approaching their career differently than others
- How do they measure the ROI of a lifecoach
- Examples of success stories, from Israel to Japan to Minnesota

Learn more:
When I Grow Up Coach Website | Facebook | Twitter | What is coaching?

Today I talk about one of the latest technology trends, the Square reader and digital payments.

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For my full thoughts, please listen to the podcast.

Summary of Topics covered:

My digital trend spidey senses are tingling.

People often ask, what’s the next big thing? Sometimes I don’t know.

But sometimes…
- Something intrigues me
- I see it in Wired
- I’m curious about it
- It makes sense
- Big names around it
- Then I want one

The topic of the podcast is the rapidly evolving digital payments space, basically the ability to pay for things other than with cash.

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Today I interview Joanna Penn of The Creative Penn and self-published author of the religious thriller, Pentecost.

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For the full interview — a must-listen for anyone wanting to self-publish their own book — please listen to the podcast.

Summary of Topics covered:

Joanna’s amazing journey
Joanna Penn has had quite an amazing journey from the UK and a Theology major at Oxford (hence the religious thriller), all the way to New Zealand and Australia, and now back to the UK.

As a full-time IT employee, she started her writing career with non-fiction books such as How To Enjoy Your Job and the basic ways of marketing.

She once tried to do the full-time author route and take an extended period of time off in order to write “The Great American (Australian?) Novel,” and tried signing on with traditional publishers, but it didn’t pan out.

Intrigued with the rise of digital publishing, print-on-demand, and using social media as a marketing platform, she started a blog and podcast called The Creative Penn. Joanna immersed herself in everything going on in the industry, and became a trusted source for information, while also interviewing dozens of authors.

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Today I interview Michael Margolis, and he tells us how to tap into your superhero origins to create the most important page on your website – your About Me page.

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Podcast Transcript: 5/10/2011

Hi, this is Jim Hopkinson; I’m your Marketing Guy, bringing you the marketing trends that matter. Welcome!

Today I interview Michael Margolis, and he tells us how to tap into your “superhero origins” to create the most important page on your website, your “About Me” page.

Jim Hopkinson: Hey everybody, this is Jim, welcome to the podcast. Today I have a fantastic guest, Michael Margolis, who is the dean of Story University and the creator of a new program called, ‘The New About Me.’  So, welcome, Michael.

Michael Margolis: Hey, what’s happening, Jim?

JH: So, you’re kind of out on a personal mission to help people reinvent their bio as a story. So, talk about that for a second.

MM: Yeah, you know, I think part of it for me is; I sort of think about this as personal branding minus the icky stuff. I started realizing my own journey over the last few years; I went through a lot of reinvention in my career, and I’d always been a story teller. But part of what was missing for me is I think personal branding, in many ways, it’s sort of has made a lot of us kind of feel kind of gross. Or sort of like, ‘Ahhh, do I have to be that obnoxious person who’s like, look at me, look at me, aren’t I cool?’ Jim, I don’t know if you realize how much of a big deal I really am.

JH: [Laughter] Yeah, do you have a podcast, do you have like an icon with your photo on it, like I do? ‘Look at me, right?’

MM: Well, unfortunately, actually, I do like, I’ve got T-shirts and I’ve got mugs and I’ve got a manifesto and a blog, and I’ve got all sorts of stuff. But, it’s less about having the stuff and it’s more about your persona and how do you share more about who you are in a way that people can actually connect with you and relate to you.

JH: Yeah, cause it’s really hard right now, a lot of people have used social media to do this, right? It’s a great thing – you can have your own podcast, your own blog, you can have a Tumblr account and do videos, and it’s a great thing and you want to share this, but, you don’t want to be “that guy”, right?

MM: Exactly.

JH: How do you strike that balance?

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Jim gives his take from the Wired Business Conference

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On Tuesday May 3 I had the privilege of attending the third annual Wired Business Conference in New York City, “live tweeting” from the @WiredBiz Twitter account.

A lot went on and there were some impressive speakers with fantastic insights.

In the podcast, I look at 6 take-aways from some of the world’s best thought-leaders:

Speaker: Bill Gates
Takeaway: Money+Brains = a good thing

I came away very impressed with Mr. Gates. He said that the amount of IQ being spent thinking about energy now vs 20 years ago is night and day. I’m glad that he is one of the brains thinking about this.

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Jim gives his observations from the NY Auto Show. Is the industry advancing, or is it all just marketing bling?

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Episode #150! Thanks to everyone that has read the blog and listened to the podcast over the years.

It seems things have come full circle… In Episode #1 of the Hopkinson Report podcast, I compared the iPhone to a Porsche, and asked, “Has the iPhone reached ‘no substitute’ status?”

Well, the iPhone is still going strong, with Apple on track to make $100 billion dollars in 2011. It sold 18.65 million iPhones in the quarter, an eye-popping 113 percent increase over last year, destroying Wall Street’s consensus estimate of 16.6 million units.

As for Porsche, I get to them a little later.

When I talk about marketing cars, I think the interesting thing is that companies have to market them all the time. A user might buy a car only once every 3, 5, or even 10 years, so car companies have to be building this brand and trust constantly.

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Jim interviews uber entrepreneur Alexis Ohanian

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Three years. It’s hard to believe I’ve been doing this podcast for that long, but on April 16 2008, The Hopkinson Report was born.

Just 2 weeks later on April 30, I recorded my very first podcast interview ever, speaking with Alexis Ohanian about their up-and-coming site reddit.com. It’s interesting to go back to Episode #3 (and 4) and hear where reddit was at the time, and also just how new and nervous I was with the whole process.

So, it was with great pleasure that I got to sit down with Alexis this week for Episode #149 and compare notes, as we’ve both come a long way.

Reflecting back on reddit years later, I asked:

How have things changed since you started reddit?
What would have you done differently?
How did they just pull off 1 billion page views with just 6 employees?
What was reddit’s theory on development and iteration?
What was the key takeaway as a founder of reddit?

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Jim interviews Ross McLean, Executive VP / Group Planning Director at ad agency Draftfcb

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Recorded at SXSW Interactive in March, I sat down with Ross McLean, who is the Executive VP / Group Planning Director at ad agency Draftfcb in Chicago to talk all things digital marketing.

In the interview, we discuss:

- Thoughts on SXSW
Our impressions in year 2 (Ross) and year 3 (Jim) at SXSW.
Will it keep getting bigger?
Will it jump the shark?
Where is the conference going?
Will it outgrow Austin?

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To successfully publish (or self publish) a book, you need the right team behind you. Here are the 10 people you need to know.

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When I announced on the podcast several weeks ago that I had landed a book deal, I promised that I wouldn’t talk about it unless there was a topic that I felt I was bringing true value to you, the listener.

Of course, that’s always in the eye (or ear) of the beholder, but I think with the success of the iPad and the Kindle, the digital revolution we’ve seen as people are producing their own podcasts, videos, music, blogs, and photography with consumer level tools, that there has to be people in my audience saying…

“I’ve always wanted to publish something.”

There are a few scenarios how that could unfold:

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This week I interview entrepreneur John Murch and his motto, JFDI.

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John Murch is a good friend and well, a lot like me. He’s a geek at heart, a fellow Computer Science major, and his interests include SEO, entrepreneurship, Tim Ferriss, cars, the iPad, SXSW, and helping others with their projects.

We co-founded a meetup group called NYC Masterminds to bring together people in the world of design, social media, internet marketing, programming, and app development, and well, if we could just find some more time away from working on our projects, we’d host more meetings.

The intention of our meetup group was to help people find and develop side projects and get them off the ground.

For me, it was my salary negotiation class, which eventually became an eBook, and then was picked up by a mainstream publisher (Salary Tutor goes live on Amazon on April 1, 2011!).

John has a very different and unique product: uBlanket, a site that allows you to take your old favorite t-shirts and convert them into the ultimate curl-up-on-your-couch-and-watch-The-Dark-Night blanket.

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