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I think this might be my favourite right now. I love the trumpets.

The post Brand New Songs From DJ Clumsy Vegetarian, Your Downloadable Stock Music Sensation! appeared first on Jeph Maystruck.

Ever spent hours trying to find a song that “goes” with your video to find that the song costs SEVEN HUNDRED DOLLARS?!? I know right?! I didn’t need a $700 song, I needed, well a DJ Clumsy Vegetarian song!!

Yup I’ve been there. That’s why we started “DJ Clumsy Vegetarian”…because I be droppin’ so many beats. Music by the average person for the average person. Don’t go selling it ya over-achiever but come on, we could all use some “okay” music to go along with our video blog.

Use this music all you want, I just find it fascinating that you can share music for others to use. Link back to here if you wish!

I mean there are some great places to get music for your blog, I like Ben Sound.

But if you want to try downloading for free some DJ Clumsy Vegetarian well then by all means…

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Inspired by the Malcolm Gladwell Ted Talk on Spaghetti sauce. We find ourselves more and more focused on perfection, the perfect ________. The problem is, perfect doesn’t exist, there are only many types of amazing, but no perfect.

This goes for donuts too obviously.

Just a subtle reminder that you are wonderful. You’re supposed to stick this sticker somewhere you’ll see it every day.

Again, “complimentary” stickers. Yes they’re free but they also compliment you!

Kind of a mantra around our office. Don’t hang around people who believe in absolutes, and don’t believe it when people say something is impossible. They are lying.

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I’ve taught at Saskatchewan Polytech for the past four years. I’ve taught Marketing, Digital Marketing, and my favourite class to teach, Entrepreneurship. It’s my favourite because we actually start a company and the students experience Entrepreneurship first hand. They can’t just read a book a bunch of times, remember it better than everyone else and ace a test, no no, this class is much more difficult than that.

From the book the Mastery, throughout the history of civilization the best way to learn anything in this world is by doing it. Apprenticeship is the long forgotten method of learning how to do almost anything in our world. But instead of making student apprentice in a subject, we make them learn all the theory of the subject. The problem happens when you engage the theory in the real world and a different result happens. What do you do when what you’ve been told will work 100% of the time fails? What an amazing learning outcome.

Failure is a part of life and when you do something like launch a company you experience a lot of failure. These end up being the best learning moments in the classroom life.

Our ancestors decades ago didn’t have the luxury of libraries, schools and teachers, they learned anything by doing it.

Enter Entrepreneurship 2.0.

In my Entrepreneurship class we start a company. We don’t Uplifting T-shirts, Free Hugs T-shirts, and this year we did MisMatched Mittens. 

Born out of an idea from Junior Achievement(JA) in our city. JA in the high school curriculum has students creating a company as a team and actually taking a product to market. What a novel idea, experiencing entrepreneurship instead of learning about it. 

So Uplifting T-shirts was the first project. Supporting a local organization who came and presented to our class on “Social Enterprise”. Tyler Gray from Carmichael Outreach talked about the importance of business creation and job creation to get our community out of the cycle of poverty.

The idea of Uplifting T-shirts revolved around donating all proceeds to Carmichael. 60 T-shirts were printed with the slogan across the chest which read

“Kindness is Contagious
Pass it on”

We sold them for $28 a piece. 60 t-shirts were sold in Seven days and the students raised $1,000 for Carmichael Outreach. Pretty cool outcome for a class of only Five students.

Next was a similar idea for a “Free Hugs” campaign. This was done by our Digital Marketing class and it was a Summer semester so we never did get to finish selling the t-shirts. I may or many not even have one lying around if you’re interested!

We got come press about this one!

Finally MisMatched Mittens was the 2016 Entrepreneurship project. This time profits going to the Redcross Anti Bullying campaign. “These mitts are different and they don’t care, do you?” read the tag the students hired Articulate Ink here in Regina to create. They sold 89 pairs of Mitts at $15 a pair. After expenses the class ended up donating $870 to the Anti Bullying campaign. How awesome!

I believe the learning outcomes are much more concrete when you experience Entrepreneurship.

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Michael Moore is always stirring some political pot. At times he’s not the most liked in his home soil of the United States, but one fact you can’t deny is Michael Moore, love him or hate him, doesn’t mind controversy in the search of truth. Yes he bias, what producer isn’t? Every movie of his you must watch understanding that there’s a hidden bias or else you’re going to take his movies too seriously (Sicko, Capitalism: A Love Story, Fahrenheit 9/11, Bowling for Columbine).

Enter: Where To Invade Next?

This is my favourite Michael Moore movie yet. It has nothing to do with war (though the title seems to make you think so). He visits various countries in Europe and talks to them about Government, Tax, Education, Health Care, Judicial system, food and much more.

Enlightening is an understatement.

Every place he visits seems to be beautiful, friendly people who work great jobs for great wages and have a very important family life. In some places the kids are never assigned homework because social connection and family time is so important to the education system. Two hour lunches with your family, 36 hour work weeks and lots of vacation time. Hard to argue with that!

One of my favourite parts was when Mr. Moore was talking to teachers in Finland (one of the best regarded countries for education worldwide) he asked “what’s the one thing you would tell me to take back and spread across the USA?”. Almost in unison they all said “get rid of the standardized test!” Hard to argue with some of the best teachers in the world.

The Documentary is on Netflix right now and I think you should watch it.

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Marketing is dead!

Marketing as you know is done. It’s over. We can move on now. The powers of the traditional campaigns, press releases, air time, 30 second spots, distribution lists, the bloody Yellow pages,  and I could go on and on. Its all dead. No one needs to be told what to buy, we Google it. 

What do you do in a world where everyone has access to enormous amounts of information?

You figure out a way to use that to your advantage obviously. What Ryan Holiday does is look at trends, finds curves and tends to fling himself with no holds bar into the edge of business. He’s on the forefront of communication strategy, I mean he could teach several classes at Harvard on advertising, marketing, consumer behaviour, social psychology, just name a few.

There’s something new afoot! Growth Hacker Marketing the term coined in 2010 in an article by Sean Ellis talking about startups and their unique business savy and avoidance of traditional marketing means.

Out of necessity a new a new type of marketing is born, welcome Growth Hacker Marketing

Testable, trackable and scaleable.

The pursuit of sustainable growth. Taking a company from nothing to something.

Under the news laws of the universe (mostly because of the Internet) you can’t use traditional means to get your “brand” out there. At this point you may not have a clue as to what your brand is anymore! Hint: you don’t control it whatsoever. No, growth hacking has everything to do with exponentially growing your organization far past where you ever thought possible. Here it is…

Growth Hacker Marketing

1. Product market fit
2. Finding your growth hack
3. Going viral: turn 1 into 2, 2 into 4 and so on
4. Close the loop: retention and optimization

1. Product market fit

“The number one way marketers fail is trying to market a bad product.” The marketing team is usually called in after the specs have been decided upon, the products already shipped and all they have to do is “create awareness”. “Just advertise a little, can’t you?”, “I heard Facebook is free, lets use that!”. 

I prefer Seth Godin’s take on product market fit, “advertising is the tax for the unremarkable”. Meaning, those who don’t have to advertise to sell their wares possess something very special. Something extremely valuable, product market fit. They fit so well into their market that their customers fans will ensure they don’t have to advertise.

2. Finding your growth hack

So what’s the one thing that you can do to your company today that will guarantee a better tomorrow? What’s the one secret you know that none of your competitors knows? What’s the one idea that’s going to put your organization on the map? What’s your thing?

Similar to Jim Collins’ The Fly Wheel Effect, whatever your growth hack is it will almost certainly increase in value over time. Your “IT” factor, your “Blue Ocean”, your “Free Prize Inside”, the reason people talk about you behind your back. That will be your growth hack.

3. Going Viral (turning 2 into 4, 4 into 8, 8 in 16)

One of the most difficult stages because it’s hard to plan to go viral. There are so many unknowns to guarantee a product/campaign will go viral, all we can do is push you in the right direction, to increase your odds of going viral so-to-speak.

When Gmail first launched you couldn’t just “join” you had to be invited(scarcity can create virality). Dropbox paid you in online storage to invite your friends to the platform and gave even more storage away when you took the online tutorial (an educated consumer is a better consumer). Giving away storage was very inexpensive for Dropbox, but to an end user one free Gigabyte of data is a big deal.

Facebook doesn’t have a “marketing” department, they have a “growth” department. When you realize you don’t necessarily need “marketing” but instead an idea that will spread like wild fire, you’re starting to get it.

4. Close the loop (optimization and retention)

“Your job is to work on customer retention.” -Eric Ries

Now the final step is to connect back with current customers and see where you’re failing, where you’re doing really well, and what you can change. Retention of customers is a very important signal that you’re on to something.

Optimize how people purchase your product or service. Its the ol’ Mark Cuban, “make is incredibly easy for customers to buy from you or you’ll find your customers buying from someone else.” You can always improve some part of your process, whether that be at the product level, the after purchase followup, or in research and development. Anything to add value to your end users experience.

Growth Hacker Marketing

1. Product market fit

2. Finding your growth hack

3. Going viral

4. Close the loop

The post Traditional Marketing is Dead: Long Live Growth Hacker Marketing appeared first on Jeph Maystruck.

For a while last year I was showing the 2014 Google year in Review video and it got a great response. People would be tweeting about their goosebumps after watching. I use it to tell the story of the most important yet most overlooked part of your marketing strategy, search. 

Social media will change, it always does. From MySpace to Hi5, and Facebook to Snapchat, it’s a never ending cycle. It’s hard to build a business around an ever changing platform. Do you know what doesn’t change? Search. Well I shouldn’t say “it doesn’t” change, because it does, it gets more and more valuable. As you use Google more and more it becomes easier and easier to navigate. From searching on your smartphones to voice commanded search, we love to search. It’s only getting more and more pervasive, making it easier for potential customers to find you.

Why is Google search so important?

1. It’s not decreasing in popularity like most online platforms. Most popular sites have a shelf life. They gain in popularity, they grow to their peak, and just like any growth curve, there’s a decline. The online world has made it much easier to decline after your 15 minutes of fame. Search hasn’t declined, actually quite the opposite. Some of the keyword searches we’ve tracked over the past 3 years have quadrupled in volume. Think about that, “Real Estate Regina” three years ago was getting a quarter of the searches it gets now. That’s growing at a steady rate.

2. You can measure a lot with search. Every time someone goes to your website you can see where they went, where they found your website and how long they spent on your website. If you want to learn more about measurement, make sure you have Google Analytics on your website and talk to me about it! There’s an incredible amount of information on the backend of your website.

3. It’s the easiest way to solve your problem, specially in places like Regina. Think about it, ten years ago you used to look at the phone book or ask a friend when you needed something. How archaic is that? Today, whether it’s an argument about what the Mayor makes for a salary or who to call for a boost, Google is the number one place we go.

Sure other local apps will try and compete, obviously there is a lot of advertising revenue to be made if people frequent your “phone book” to find an answer regularly. That book is now Google, dislike it if you want, but it’s the future and if you want to be relevant in the future you have to understand Google the best you can.

Search on.

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No one’s going to ever look at you and say “Yup, your superpower is ______”. After a while, it may become apparent, but in the meantime try new things and experiences, and really track what you love and don’t love about those experiences. If you keep trying new things you’re going to eventually stumble upon your superpower. It’ll be a magical moment in time where you’ll finally understand your calling, your purpose, and the reason you were put on earth.

No, it won’t be flying, invisibility, or metallic claws coming out of your hands, no it’ll be something inside you, something unique that sets you apart from everyone else. If you still think it’s impossible, I will still beg to differ. Nothing is actually impossible and yes everyone does have a superpower.

Nothing’s Actually Impossible

Remember when you were a kid, you’d tie a bed sheet around your neck and Leap from chair to chair because you were a superhero? Nothing was impossible. If you wanted to ride a bike, build a fort, fly to the moon, WHATEVER, no one could tell you it was impossible. You’d just fail and fail and fail until you got it right.

Somehow between being a superhero child and “growing up” someone takes away our cape. They tell us to do what we’re told, don’t follow our dreams, after all, superheroes are made up, right?

WRONG!

Everyone has a superpower, everyone has something they are amazing at. If you don’t know what yours is, just try a different cape!

We’re all meant to do something super, nothing is actually impossible, we just like to believe what the critics say. Critics don’t change the world, superhero’s do.
Go tie that bed sheet around your neck, find your superpower.

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The Best Example of User Experience in Real Life.

A brilliant architect was designing the new front outdoor landscape of a university. When it came time to plan the walkways through the grass the architect refused to and instead opted for grass to be put EVERYWHERE. Not knowing his brilliance, the administration let the mad scientist have his way. A year later the architect came back to find a perfectly worn path where people walked and now they knew precisely where to put the path.

Moral of the story: don’t assume you know what people like, user testing is ten thousand times more reliable than “experience”.

Don’t assume you know, assume others do and your job is to find out from them by observing and testing.

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