So...What's Next?!?

Coffee with my favorite skeptic

Sometimes we just need to have coffee.

I was invited by one of my favorite skeptics to meet for coffee this morning. We met at 8:30am and spoke until 11:30am. 3 hours of conversation about how the world is changing, is it for better or for worse, how we need to adapt, and is social media waste of time when we need to be billing for our hours.

My skeptic gave me the best visual ever. He said that as he is reading and attempting to be part of the social media world, every time he hesitates he see me as his "Jiminy Cricket" urging him on.

As we discussed the opportunities to get vital information from a simple tweet on Twitter, he said - "a tweet is a wish your heart makes."

Alright - someone has watched too many Disney movies.

We discussed the importance of learning how to learn. 150 years ago people needed to know how to think on their feet, solve problems and adapt to the wilderness for mere survivor. Today we are dealing with a wilderness of information, and we need to know how to think on our feet, solve problems, and adapt to the wilderness.

Although both of us had work to do, a three hour coffee discussion was just what I needed to refresh my spirit and connect all the reasons why I am so optimistic about the future of the world.

Every topic that came up, from privacy issues to HR concerns we were able to explore the changes that needed to happen in the world and the positives of those changes.

The only dark side in my view of the future is the fear of those who remain ignorant. I fear that information in the wrong hands can be used to influence those who do not take the initiative to be life long learners and skeptics. I fear a world of sheep in an environment where a charismatic person can broadcast a warped message loud and wide.   

I love that information is available to everyone to both find and contribute to. I feel that the participation of the masses is what protects us. I think, somewhere, deep down, that is what compels me to be such an advocate of participation by the masses.

Finally, I think  besides taking the time to participate in online communities, we need to take more time to have 3 hour coffee conversations. Life shouldn't be all about business transactions and networking. Every now and then we need to have the opportunity to connect simply to explore what we do all of this for.

I Blame My Mom!

Mom - if you are reading this...I love you...but

Every email that I send where I used the word was instead of were, through instead of threw, or I simply made up a word that should exist but doesn't....I think of you.

When you say g-many Christmas, or hot as all get-outs - it's cute. I do not know what you mean, but it's cute.

When you say "they was" I cringe a bit...but I accept it.

When I say "they was" I want to slap myself because I KNOW better.

But...as with most things in life I try to find the bright side.

In 10th grade Anatomy I rebelled (as I did in most classes). I refused to dissect a pig and was willing to fail the class. However the paper I wrote that semester earned a perfect grade keeping me from failing. The teacher, however, did not want to accept that, so he accused me of plagiarizing the paper. It was the various unique grammatical errors and spelling errors that my friends pointed out that proved the paper was truly an original.

As much as my "typos" in both speech and writing make me cringe, and as hard as I am trying to change my habits - I still try to look at the bright side and think of them as my trademarks that make me unique - and I get my uniqueness from my mom.

A Perfect Wedding

Yesterday's wedding was flawless. My friend, Janeen, was married in South Carolina, where she has family.

It was truly a southern wedding. As Matt said, it felt like we were in a cute little wedding movie.

Yes, I got all choked up at the wedding, which is not like me at all. Being there with Janeen and her family, including her father and brother who I know were there in spirit, brought back a flood of memories.

Besides being a new wife, Janeen also became a new mom yesterday (right before mother's day...good timing)

The highlight of the day was the entertainment. The reception was held at a little southern restaurant that Janeen's grandmother eats at. They have become friends with the owners and rented the entire restaurant for the day's event. One of the women serving the food broke out in a song for the couple. She was great! It was like when Aretha Franklin breaks out in song in  the movie the Blues Brothers.

But of course, what we all were waiting for, was when Janeen sang to her new husband. Janeen has always been my favorite vocalist and it was simply the sweetest moment to see her sing at her own wedding.

So many memories from our past, so many memories left to create.

My Best Friend's Wedding

Yesterday, throughout the day I kept thinking about the title "My Best Friend's Wedding" which I knew was the title of a movie. Last night I started flipping through the On Demand movies, and there it was - so of course I had to watch it.

It is a fun movie. The best thing about movies like that is that characters like the one Julia Roberts plays makes you feel like you're ok. In the movie, she does everything she can to split up the couple and potentially ruin her best friend's life. She does this because she is driven by her own feelings of wanting to be with the groom. Of course, at the end all is forgiven and all is well because of the bond of their friendship.

In just a couple of hours I will be attending my best friend's wedding. I have known Janeen since I was 4 years old.  She is more like a big sister to me. Here is a photo of us at my wedding.

I met Janeen when we moved in the house across the street from hers. We have lots of memories of our very young years. As the years past our lives took very different directions but we have always stayed connected.

Overall, I got to thinking how special friendships are. How there are certain people in our lives, who are not family, but might as well be. These are people that you can lose touch with for years and then pick right back up again. These are people who love you because of who you are and stay with you through the various changes when you are trying to become who you might be.

The last time I spent time with Janeen was right before starting this company. I was in Ft Lauderdale for a business trip for Robert Half Technology. I told her about the roller coaster ride I was on, I told her what I was thinking about doing - and instead of looking at all the things that were against my decision, she assured me all would be well. I next saw her at my father's funeral, and again, she assured me all would be well.

Today is her day and I get to watch her make a commitment that I know means so much to her. I am so excited to see her life change and grow and change. I just hope I can offer her as much on this day as she has offered me throughout the various key moments in my life.

How Can I Explain This To You?

I received a call yesterday, which is very similar to many calls and emails that I get.

People hear me present, they are in some way convinced that social media can help their business, then they call me and want a quick answer to how to get started.

Seriously, for 2 1/2 years this has happened over and over again.

I do have an answer...just start. Pay attention to what you are doing online and when you are on social sites. Participate.

But when it comes to your business, and especially when you are rolling out a strategy for a medium to large business, I would not recommend "just starting."

Yesterday I was told a large company was going to allow their employees to be a part of one social network. To date they had not been allowed to be on any. They were asked to choose which one they would like.

One,  it is naive to think they are not on any - I mean how much control does a company think they have? Two if the employees have followed the rules and not been on any to date, how would they know which one they would want to be on? Three did they start their business this way? I explained to my caller that asking me which social network site they should start with is like calling me and asking where they should put their business without telling me anything about a business plan.

Yes social media is open to everyone. Yes most of it is free. But it is composed of communities and networks of people, with all kinds of needs and personalities and cultures, with various things competing for each person's attention. It is a marketplace of ideas, and complaints, and gossip.

Go ahead and simply jump in - you can do that. Or you can evaluate the landscape, learn the tools, and come up with some strategic and targeted content and campaigns.

Yesterday my 7 year old asked me "when is the future?" Once I explained that he asked me " how many futures are there?"

Those questions were easier to answer than most of the questions I get from people who want the quick and easy on social media.

A World of Choices

Yesterday we had a very dynamic speaker at the Enterprise 2.0 meeting.

Joey Reiman, Thinker & CEO - As founder of BrightHouse, the world's first ideation corporation.

Joey had some interesting things to say about how we are each creative beings and how Web 2.0 is unleashing our creativity. You're going to have to wait until my Sunday blog post to read more about yesterday's session - at least from my point of view. The other bloggers on the board, Dan Greenfield, and David Cohen might have something to say about the session as well.

However, a series of related events, starting with yesterday's presentation, have got me thinking more and more about how we truly live in a world of choices.

Joey talked a bit a bout how momentum starts with your ethos, your culture, you values and from there you define your strategies and tactics.

That really resonated with me.

Later in the day I took my boys out to eat. During the course of catching up with them in dawned on me that my oldest will be 14 this year (Yes these things do "dawn" on me - although I am faced with it daily - it still surprises me how fast they grow up). I opened up the conversation about getting a job. I think he could get a worker's permit to be a busboy when he is 14.

My son is not ...materialistic. He gets $10 a week from us and typically has more money in the bank than we do. He simply does not spend his money and has never been the type of child that wants much. Therefore he does not have the urge to get a workers permit to get a job.

Now my ethos, culture and values simply responded by saying "huh?"

As soon as I could make money I was. At the age of 12 I lived in a small town in Indiana and would walk down to the strawberry fields and pick strawberries for a quarter a quart. At 15 I was riding my bike 5 miles to work at a small gourmet grocery store. At 18 I was working at least 2 jobs and worked 2 jobs at a minimum until I got out of college.

My son understands that I have these values and quickly responds to my "huh?" by saying he would prefer to cut grass than to bus tables. This is a nice idea, but guess who cut our own grass this past weekend - me.

So I laughed at him.

At the same time I realize his world is so very different from my world. I had to work, he doesn't.

The entire world is very different today than it ever has been. We all have so many choices of what to do and where to work. In spite of all the talk about jobs being lost and a pending recession, we have more choices today than ever before. Barriers have been knocked down, creativity has been unleashed and the world has been flattened. Now we simply need to release the fears that we have learned that ties us to jobs we do not like. Joey threw a statistic out yesterday that 70% + of the workforce is depressed when they go to their jobs.

We do not need to be.

Only recently, I have truly accepted the idea that I am a leader. Originally I was building this company as a salesperson. I made a lot of mistakes with that level of thinking. Today I am looking at things through the eyes of a leader and asking myself why people follow me or simply support my efforts. What am I offering them at this point and time that makes them choose my endeavors over all the other choices that they have?

Today I thought about why I turn down or resist opportunities in my life. Oftentimes it has nothing to do with the financial opportunities but the opportunities that support my own ethos, culture, values and that align with the momentum I have created to move through the strategy and tactics.

So, not only has the world of choices affected how we work and choose to work, it changes how we lead and who we lead and more importantly why we lead.

More to come

 

Social Media Training - What a Concept!

So, here's the deal.

When I started looking into what was going on in the world of social media I had an epiphany. There is no one to train people about all this new technology.

This was an epiphany for me because I taught myself all the technology that I know, from Windows to Word, HTML to CSS and the great but failed attempt of trying to learn networking and Java Script.

However, I had the great blessing, which at the time seemed like a curse, to sell training for a couple of years. I learned quickly the value of training. I learned that although I knew the basics of Word, Excel, and Outlook, there was A LOT I did not know and training made life a bit easier. I also learned many people prefer to be trained than to "just figure it out themselves."

So, immediately, training became part of our offerings. We offered classroom training for a minimum of 5 students and a full day campaign kick off training. The past two years, this has been at least 1/2 of our revenue.

Here is the problem I faced though. It was not fiscally reasonable to train just one or two people and there was a geographic barrier to how we were providing our training.

A couple of weeks ago I provided the Human Resource Association of Broward County a 2 hour workshop. At the end of the workshop I had 54 business cards of individuals who wanted to learn more. That put a magnifying glass on my problem, (Individuals in FL).

It took way too long, but all the pieces in my head finally started to form a picture...online training.

I officially launched the idea over the weekend and we already have a number of people signing up for the full series of classes. I will officially start marketing the idea later this week.

Here is what we are offering:

What to Expect from the Training

• Each session will be 90 minutes long and will be held as a live session with the ability for a two way dialog .
• Each session will be archived for the students to review after the session for two weeks.
• Each session will come with a pdf training guide.
• Each session will have a moderated private online community for students to continue to collaborate and ask questions.

Price - $299 each or a series of 10 at $2490 

Contact:

Sherry Heyl, Chief Strategy Officer
404.386.9801
sherry@empoweringconcepts.net

http://www.empoweringconcepts.net

1. Introduction to Social Media (RSS, RSS Readers, and Tags)

Pre-requisite: Computer/Internet Experience

Date(s) Offered May 29, 2008 9:00-10:30 am

2. Advanced Internet Syndication (optimizing your content)

Pre-requisite: Solid Knowledge of RSS and Tags

Dates(s) Offered June 26, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am

3. Analyzing the Online Marketplace

Pre-requisite: Solid Knowledge of RSS and Tags 

Date(s) Offered July 31, 2008 9:00-10:30 am

4. Blogging 101 (How to start)

Pre-requisite: Solid Knowledge of RSS and Tags 

Date(s) Offered August 28, 2008 9:00 -10:30 am

5. Advance Blogging (Building your network)

Pre-requisite: Solid Knowledge of RSS, Tags, Hyperlinks and Trackbacks

Date(s) Offered September 25, 2008 9:00- 10:30 am

6. Social Network Communities 101 (Getting the most from your profile)

Pre-requisite: Understanding of Aggregating Content

Date(s) Offered October 30, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am

7. Advanced Social Network Communities (Building Communities)

Pre-requisite: Understanding of Aggregating Content 

Date(s) Offered November 20, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am (one week early due to Thanksgiving)

8. Media Sharing 101 (Communication Channels and Content)

Pre-requisite: RSS, Tags, Hyperlinks, Trackbacks and Aggregating Content

Date(s) Offered January 29, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am

9. Advanced Media Sharing (Going Viral)

Pre-requisite: RSS, Tags, Hyperlinks, Trackbacks and Aggregating Content 

Date(s) Offered February 26, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am

10. Social Bookmarking and Editing (Research and Collaboration)

Pre-requisite: RSS, Tags, and Hyperlinks

Date(s) Offered March 26, 2008 9:00 - 10:30 am

We Eat Too Much Mexican!

Today is Cinco de Mayo. My youngest son celebrated in his class with a Fiesta. My oldest came home insisting on having Mexican for dinner - which there is about a 40% chance we would be having Mexican for dinner no matter what day it was. My youngest, blond hair blue eyed child chimed in saying "Yeah - we're Mexican, this is our holiday."

It took me about 10 minutes to convince him that we were not Mexican, not even a little bit.

However, we did have Mexican for dinner tonight.

Date Night

My husband and I re-established date night last night. We went to see Christian Finnegan at the Punchline.

Wow! that is a crowded room. I purchased our tickets online and the site gave me the option to pick our seats. It looked like a large venue from the seating chart. I picked two seats somewhat close to the stage. It was obvious we would be sharing a table, with two other people, but that seemed fine.

When we arrived I was shocked to see how small the room actually was and how small the tables were and how jammed packed they were.

We were sharing a table with a couple in our age range. We ordered martinis, they ordered a bottle of wine. I asked if the wine was for a special occasion, if they were celebrating anything, they told me it was their first Saturday night date - they had been dating for 2 weeks.

We shared that my husband and I had just celebrated our 14 year wedding anniversary.

Obviously a big difference! I felt like we were the little old couple watching young kids in love, even though I suspect they were both older than me.

Later, my husband pointed out to me that since we started going out on more dates we keep finding ourselves around couples our age or even older who are very early in their relationships. Is it because we REALLY married young or because married people don't date? (.... um.... each other).

Last night was really fun though. One I have a lot of respect for Christian Finnegan as a comedian. His opening really showed he studied the city he was in because he made some very accurate jokes about Sandy Springs. However, the majority of act was about his relationship with his wife. There were many times where my husband and I were able to simply nudge each other, squeeze each other's hand or look at each other and communicate our reaction to Christian's act. Subtle communication and a deep understanding only comes from years of experience with each other.

Although I looked at the bottle of wine on the table and thought how wonderful first dates can be (not that I went on many) and the excitement of getting to know someone and overall exploring new territory, at my side of the table, as the little old couple with all the experience, I simply enjoyed the fact that the person next to me was someone who I knew well and who knew me well and after all of our years together we still enjoyed our time out together to continue to get to know each other.

Career Day

I just returned from career day at my son's school. I got to speak to 6 different classes, but not my son's class :(

I really have fun explaining what I do to elementary school kids. They always think I have a really cool job and then they tell me about all the sites they are on that I did not know about. Specifically sites with virtual games.

I think I am going to adapt my career day presentation for some of my client presentations.

I broke it down into as simple terms as I could get. First we defined social as socializing  which is what they do at lunch or on the playground. Then we defined media, as TV, radio, mail, email, websites, online video, and so forth.

Then I spoke about how companies were once only able to speak to the masses and when the masses wanted to reply they could only do so through snail mail. I had an envelop to demonstrate the message going from one person to the next.

Then I talked about email, and as I was describing email I had the kids pass the envelop around until I said stop.

Then I explained what a blog was by writing a "blog post" on the whiteboard.

I asked how many kids held the envelop, which was usually 1/4 of the kids. Then I asked how many kids saw me write on the whiteboard - which of course was everyone. I explained to them that that was the power of social media.

I personally enjoyed the reactions of the teachers at that moment. What was even more fun is when I started talking about virtual worlds and the kids were explaining the concept to the teachers.

I think I left everyone with a couple of really good lessons. One was that technology was powerful, for both good and evil, so always use caution. Two was that the careers they hear about today may not exist tomorrow and careers that no one has ever thought  of may become their dream job. Their job is not just to learn how to read, write, and do math. Their job is to learn how to learn - because in today's world we all have to continuously be learning.