It’s a program put on by ABI and is like a collegiate version of Business Horizons.   I got to chat with some really cool students who (hopefully) will jump on the blogging bandwagon soon.  Check out some of their thoughts of the week right here.

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The good news?  I’ve spent numerous hours learning how to market products online.  If you can tell me about your perfect customer… I can help you find a way to reach them.

The internet has changed the marketing world.  Many people may disagree with this… They’ll argue that, conceptually, nothing has changed.  I mean, we’re still finding ways to connect with our customers, right?

Of course.

But what has changed is our ability to laser target the EXACT customer you’re looking for.  Before the internet, what were your options?  TV, Radio, Billboards, Direct Mail, etc…   And not one of those is cheap.

Now you can throw up a test campaign on a Pay-Per-Click system and know within a day whether or not your ad is effective.   Pretty amazing, eh?

Not only that, but our ability to test and measure messages has changed, too.  For example… every time you send a mass message, you should split test the headline.  Split testing refers to sending two of the exact same messages, but changing one thing (like the subject.)  Based on the open-rate of the message, you’ll know exactly which subject lines are most effective.

Do this over the course of a year and you’ll have a database of EXTREMELY powerful information you can use in all different aspects of your marketing campaign.

Marketing is changing… The internet is making it cheaper, faster and more effective to advertise.  If you don’t have an online strategy and don’t know where to begin, shoot me a message and let’s see if I can help.

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The key is knowing how to use the technologies that can make that happen.

Most people only use the basic, easy to use social media sites.  (Facebook, You Tube, etc.)  They never learn about sites that will make them better employees because they don’t have someone to teach them.

That’s where I come in.

Social media isn’t just for reconnecting with old friends… I teach employees how to use tools to make their lives more efficient.  Tools like iGoogle, RSS Readers, and social bookmarking sites can make a night and day difference in how your employees spend there time online.

I’ve worked with all sorts of groups… from a training for 1000+ people at a Fortune 250 company to a small local chapter of HR professionals.   The presentations have ranged from “Twittering in a World LinkedIn by RSS: A Beginner’s Guide to Social Media” to “A Journalist’s Guide to New Media:  Blogging.”

The range of audiences and presentations vary, but my presentations always incorporate two things:  Education and Interaction.

Your group/employees/audience will walk away with a new appreciation for technology and with ACTIONABLE steps they can take the moment they walk out of the door.  Steps that they can **instantly** use and see a difference in their levels of productivity.

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I’m a self proclaimed nerd, but for a much different reason.  I teach people how to APPLY technology.  You won’t learn anything about HTML, PHP, CSS, or any other acronym… but you will learn how technologies applies directly to your job, your business, or your life.

I’m a big believer that technology is about your attitude and not about your age.  The reason a lot of people don’t embrace technology is because they don’t understand it.  And because humans are naturally programmed to fear what we don’t understand, most people simply ignore new technology.

Confession:  I was never a nerd until I met someone who taught me about technology.

I started diving into social media for one reason… I met a “Blog Coach” who taught me all about it.  One day when I was annoyed, confused and upset because I didn’t understand the technology, he told me an analogy that I’ll never forget…

Me:  ”I don’t get this stuff…  How does that even work?”
Him:  ”Well… Explain to me how the engine in your car works.”
(I’m mechanically difficient, by the way.)
Me:  ”Um…  Gas… And, uh… I don’t know.”
Him:  ”So you don’t know how your engine runs?”
Me: “No.”
Him:  ”But you use your car to get where you want to go, right?”
Me:  ”Yea…”
Him:  ”Think about technology in that same way.  You don’t have to know exactly how the technology works to get where you want to go… You just need to know how to use it.”

That moment forever changed the way I looked at technology.  And it has shaped the way that I teach technology to others…  I focus purely on how technology applies directly to your business/job/life.

I’ve taught individuals how to use blogs to jumpstart their career… I’ve taught HR professionals how to use social media to get better at recruiting… and I’ve taught employees how to use social media to increase their productivity…

The options are endless.  If you just don’t *get* technology and wonder why so many of these websites are getting attention, shoot me a message and let’s see if I can help.

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He hardly knows which.

He simply pursues his vision of excellence
through whatever he is doing
and leaves others to determine
whether his is working or playing.

To himself, he is always doing both. 

- James A. Michener

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But I’ve also had some really amazing things happen… And one special opportunity that I wanted to share.

It all started back in January… I set a goal to make $1000 / month of passive income. I mostly wanted to make enough passive income so that I wouldn’t have to write a check for my student loans every month.  So I set a goal of making $1000/month by December 31, 2009.

I’ve tried a lot of things over the past five months… and nothing seemed to stick. Until I found this really sweet “Business Litmus Test” from Clay Collins.

It was designed to teach people how to find niches and tell if they’ll be profitable or not before ever entering them.  So I spent a weekend testing niches…. and nothing seemed to hit… until Sunday afternoon.

March 29th I found a niche that looked like it had potential.  And to make a really, really long story short, it did.

The last six weeks I’ve been busting my ass… Most nights I’d come home from work and work on this until 11 or 12.  Last week, the site I built launched, which kept me up until at least 2  or 3 a.m. for four days straight, preparing for the launch.

But now that it’s launched, I can tell you that it was worth every minute.

We launched Thursday night.  (I say “We” because I’ partnered with a really great guy from Ohio.)  So we launched Thursday and now we have a membership site that is bringing in roughly $5,000 of revenue every month.

Assuming that attrition rates aren’t too bad, we’ll have built a business that creates $50K/year in six weeks.  Which is really amazing when I stop and think about it…

Anyway… I wanted you to know this because couldn’t have done this without a few things.  Most importantly is my mastermind group.  They’ve taught me a lot and kept me from making a lot of mistakes.  (Like, a LOT of mistakes.)

And I never would have found this niche if it wasn’t for Clay Collins‘ Project Mojave…

Lucky for you, today is the grand opening for Project Mojave. I joined this site before it went live to the public back in April.  Clay is brilliant… and if you’re at all interested in internet marketing or creating “freedom businesses” as he calls them, you absolutely HAVE to join this community.

If you truly want to build some sort of internet marketing business, investing $97 in this training will be the best money you spend.  http://twurl.nl/zjgsf1

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Tomorrow (Monday) I’ll be speaking with her to the students at the University of Northern Iowa in the College of Education.  Angela is the author of “Classroom Habitudes” and we’ll be talking about taking the Habitudes from the classroom to the boardroom.

Last week we brainstormed an outline for the presentation.   She called me tonight and said, “Andy - Remember the outline we talked about last week?  Well… I changed it all.  I figured since I’m going to be missing 24 tomorrow night, we’ll give the presentation a Jack Bauer theme.”   Nice.

So if you’re interested in how Jack Bauer would S.C.A.M.P.E.R. his way to a job, click here and you’ll be able to watch the presentation via UStream.  It’ll starts tomorrow at 6:45 P.M. CST.

Here’s a preview of part of the slideshow:

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Which is the point of this post.  To write what I know about speaking and to learn what other young speakers have dealt with.

Here is what I’ve learned so far:

1)      Establish Credibility - The beginning of a presentation should grab the audience’s attention.  If you have a baby face like me, you’ll already have their attention because they’ll be thinking, “Who is this kid and why is he here?”  You better have an answer to that question and you better answer it early.

2)      Don’t Bullshit the Audience - You don’t know everything… don’t act like you do.  It’s o.k. to admit what you don’t know. 

3)      Don’t Reveal Your Age (Err… Sometimes) - Not revealing your age can give you an advantage because some people might think you’re older than you really are.  Which is good.  I break this rule sometimes because I have a good story to tell and the story follows my next rule…

4)      Make Fun Of Yourself - This goes for any speaker, but it’s especially important if you’re young.  Making fun of yourself shows humility and it’s a joke that won’t offend anyone.  Plus, our generation is different.  We might as well make fun of it.

5)      Don’t Talk About College - It goes back to the age thing.  College makes you look young and inexperienced.

6)      Have Really, Really Good (Original) Content - This is a must.  If you’re asked to speak, you better have something worthwhile to say.  And if you’re younger than everyone else, give them content that YOU create.  Don’t recite something you’ve read in a book because, odds are, the audience has already read it.  Want great content? Start a blog.

7)      Get Off The Stage - Podiums are boring and are a barrier to any chance of conversation.  Get off the stage and interact with the audience.  It’s hard, and scary, and nerve-wracking because you don’t know what will happen… But that’s also what makes it fun.

Those are a few things I’ve learned… What else can I add to this list? 

(Tom Krieglstein is a fantastic speaker that got started at a very early age.  He’s passed some of his advice on to me.)

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 That short sentence really got me thinking… Do ambitious people become satisfied?  And if they do, how does that affect their work habit? Do things ever slow down?

At this point, I feel like most of what I’m doing is out of dissatisfaction.  It stems from not being content with where things are at…

Don’t let that confuse you.  Because dissatisfaction isn’t equivalent to unhappiness.  I’m a really happy guy.  But that doesn’t mean I want things to stay where they are.

I brought this up to my buddy.  He’s young and financially free.  When he started his company, he said it was out of dissatisfaction… but that paradigm has shifted from ‘working hard out of dissatisfaction’ to ‘working hard to make a difference in other’s lives’.

Does that shift come from him being financially free?

It’s easy to say, “I don’t care if you don’t buy my product because it won’t change my lifestyle.  I’m just trying to help you out.” 

And if (when) you hit that financial freedom point, how would (does) your life change?  Do you work as hard?  Stay up as late? 

Or re-focus your priorities?

Just a late night thought…

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80% of jobs are gotten through networking.  Unless you plan on staying in your city forever… you should be making friends online.

And that doesn’t mean creating a Facebook profile.

Traditional social networks (Facebook/LinkedIn/MySpace) are used for maintaining relationships you’ve already built.  You meet in person… then you connect online.  That’s how they work.

But Twitter and blogs are different.  They facilitate the building of relationships because they connect you with people who share your interests.  Following a random stranger on Twitter is like saying, “Hi - It’s nice to meet you.  What you’re doing interests me.”

But follow a random stranger on Facebook?  Then you’re labeled a stalker.  See the difference?

To build relationships online, you need a blog and you need a Twitter account.  A blog is like your home.  It’s where you talk about things that interest you.  It’s where people can learn more about you.  And it’s how people keep up to date with what’s new in your life. 

If your blog is home, Twitter is like happy hour.  Imagine walking into a bar and seeing a room full of people.  Everyone is standing in groups of three or four people, chatting back and forth.  Now imagine that you have a remote control that can pause all of those conversations.  That’s what Twitter does.  Twitter allows you to jump in and out of each one of those small conversations.  You can jump in, share your perspective, and build a relationship with someone new… all without going through that awkward process of introducing yourself.

Traditional social networks are for maintaining relationships.  Blogs and Twitter are for building new ones. 

The key is to build relationships with people who have had more success than you.  Accomplished people are fun to talk with because they have great stories to share, they can open up some major doors for you, and there is much to learn from them.   

Here’s how I’ve met over a dozen talented authors.  Normally I find someone I want to meet through reading blogs or through Twitter.  That is where it begins.  Then I start by leaving a comment on their blog or sending them a message on Twitter. 

If that goes well, I try and find a common interest that we share…  Social media. Technology. Generational Issues. Marketing.  Anything that we both would enjoy talking about over the phone.  After chatting back and forth a few times on Twitter, I’ll email them and ask if I can interview them for my blog. 

If they say yes, I’ll call them on Skype and record the call with PowerGramo.  This way I can re-listen to the call to find the most interesting topics.  After that, I transcribe the highlights of the conversation and email it back to them.  They edit it and send it back to me so I can post it.

Why this works.  I absolutely love doing this.  First, I get to learn directly from someone really, really smart.  Second, it gives me more content for my blog.  Third, and most importantly, I help out the other person by promoting their stuff through.  Plus it lays the foundation, for future long term relationship with them. 

It wouldn’t be possible without a blog.  If you’re looking to expand your network online, a blog and a Twitter account are two things that you cannot live without. 

So there you have it… Your blog is your home. Twitter is like happy hour. How you can build relationships with successful people.  Try it out and tell me what you think.  I’d love to hear your thoughts.  You can reach me at andy[dot]drish[at]gmail.com.

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