Whats makes 22 different?

Marketing with roots. Some of you may know that before I got into Internet marketing, I was heavily involved in grassroots political action. Grassroots activism at its heart is marketing. In both marketing and grass roots advocacy, we promote ideas, organize people around information, and sell hope. 22 Media will approach our marketing campaigns by blending the fundamentals of both Internet marketing and grassroots advocacy.

People matter. I am a firm believer that people matter. Clients, contractors, customers, users, artist, engineers and everyone else, all play an important role in how we run our business and engage the world. I only want the best of the best involved with 22. Therefore, one of my first moves with 22 will be to build an invite only partnership network of artist, engineers, and content producers. Together we will work on projects of the highest quality. We might not be the cheapest, but you can rest assured that the folks working on your finished product have high standards of excellence and produce nothing but the very best!

If you want a web marketing and development company that expects nothing but the very best in everything we do and engage, then give 22 Media LLC a call!

For the last several years I haven’t felt that my disability isn’t relevant to many of the things I do on the internet. Because of that I have tried to steer the dialog away from it. In short, I want folks to talk about me because of the code that I write, the brands that I build, and the stories that I tell. Not because of the 200 pounds of steel strapped to my ass.

Because of this I have been apprehensive about talking publicly about my disability in the last several years. Which quite honestly has been really hard and strange for me. You see, I used to do nothing but talk about my disability (more on that later). But now its time that I let the cat out of the bag and start talking honestly about my life with a disability. I hope by doing this I can share a different perspective on the things I do.

A long time ago in a galaxy far far away…

On January 22nd 1982 my twin sister, Rachel, and I were born. Weighing in at 6lb 6ozs Rachel was perfect in every way. However, I had a different agenda. Sporting an authentic South Carolina mullet (seriously, it was weird) that went half way down my back, I came into this world blazing! To start things off, I had 22 broken bones during child birth. With the medical staff not really sure what to do with me, they decided to call in an expert. Soon, Dr. Richard M Davis diagnosed me with a rare bone disorder called Osteogenesis Imperfecta (OI).

Osteogenesis Imperfecta is a genetic disorder characterized by bones that break easily, often from little or no apparent cause. If you really want to geek out on OI, read up on genetic collagen deformities.

So in short, OI causes my bones to break easily. I have had some where in the ball park of a few hundred fractures so far. OI is also defined by the LPA as one of the most common types of dwarfism.

As a result of having OI I am three feet tall and use an electric wheelchair. I am also partially deaf as a result of OI affecting the bones in my ears.

The birth of a hacker.

So having a brittle bone disorder as a kid means not playing sports, riding a bike, or taking part in many of the physical activities that most children enjoy. Because of this I think most people with OI develop a creative personality at a very young age, from the need to entertain themselves. While many of my friends were playing school sports or exploring the neighborhood, I was in my room taking things apart.

Joe Hall – Age 10 – Family Vacation

Yep, that’s right I said taking things apart. You see from as far back as I can remember I have always had a very curious obsession with learning how things work. I love to look inside something and trace the steps and parts to see how it functions. Which is what ultimately led me to teach myself to program using reverse engineering. Taking things apart was so much of an obsession that as a kid I started taking apart anything I could get my hands on. I have taken apart, TVs, telephones, radios, clocks, watches, remote controls, cameras, fans, VCR’s, camcorders, computers, lamps, doorbells, door locks, and much more. My favorite thing to take apart is a hair dryer, because when you remove the outer shell it looks like a ray gun.

Eventually, my parents got a bit tired of me taking apart all of the appliances in the house and started taking me to garage sales on Saturday mornings to find new things to take apart. The rest of the weekend was devoted to hacking my new prize! I remember visiting my friends houses and they would have shoe boxes of baseball cards. When they visited my house they would see my shoe boxes of electric motors, LEDs, circuit boards, and battery assemblies.

As I got older I taught myself how to write HTML using Angelfire and Geocities to experiment with. Web development back then was different mostly because WYSIWYG editors weren’t widely available like they are now, and as a result folks that built web sites actually understood the code.

Joe goes to Washington

During my senior year of high school I remember a lot of folks telling me that I should study computer science in college. A few folks told me that working with computers would be the best choice for me because of my disability. After I heard that I knew I would never study computer science! The absolute worst thing you can tell a young person with a disability is, you should do this or that because of your disability.

So, I did what any idealistic energized young person would do, I studied politics! During my study of political science I quickly became involved in the disability rights movement. I joined the National Disabled Students Union two weeks after it was founded. And, several years later became their executive director. My time at NDSU was one of the most important parts of my life. I can accredit most of my marketing and PR skills to working along side some of the most amazing public policy and political minds in the disability policy sphere. It was during this time that I started to learn about marketing. Although at the time we called it grass roots political action, but in the end it was marketing none the less. In both marketing and grass roots advocacy, we promote ideas, organize people around information, and sell hope.

Back to Binary

While I was deep in the political world, I never stopped writing code. In the little bit of spare time I had in 2002 I created Sivle. And I often did small web sites for the organizations I was working with. After college I kept volunteering for many of the organizations that I was active with in college. But then discovered the hard truth that there isn’t much money in changing the world. In fact many of the jobs that I was most passionate about back then didn’t pay a dime.

So, I naturally started building web sites and custom web applications for anyone that needed it. Eventually, I took a job as an in house IT specialist at a local real estate company. While there I convinced the broker in charge to let me build a web site and start an internet marketing campaign. With in several months our leads from the internet went from 0% to 90%. Despite the influx of leads the company still had a hard time in a terrible market. As a result, slowly every member of the staff was laid off, except me. As my broker put it, I was the only one that produced results. However, even my internet marketing magic couldn’t stand up against one of the worst housing markets in history, and soon I was let go as well.

For the last several years I have put my heart, soul, money, and lack of sleep into building a business on the internet, and, I can honestly say that I am more excited about the future than I ever have been. I have no idea where I will be next year, but I can’t wait to get there.

If you have never talked to me online or met me in person, make sure you reach out on Twitter or with the links to the right. Or email me anytime at joe [at] jozsoft [dot] com

The responses below appear in the order in which they were received.

Q: Whats the most important thing for new entrepreneurs to understand when launching a new business or product?

Andy Beal

Author of Radically Transparent & CEO of Trackur.com

Not sure if this is THE most important thing, but as the CEO of a SaaS tool, I can tell you it’s one that I did not anticipate–but deal with each day: Managing our customers’ feature requests.

When you launch your product, you have a vision of what that product is going to look like, what it’s going to do, and the audience it’s going to serve. In the early days, it can be easy to get caught playing “shoot the squirrel.” It’s an imaginary game I made up.

When you receive feature requests, you have two choices: shoot the squirrel or shoot the deer. When your company is presented with lots of random feature requests, it can be easy to get distracted by them. You want to please that paying customer, so you drop everything to add that little feature. Unfortunately, that feature request is just a squirrel, because it only feeds that one, single customer. It’s a feature only they find of use.

Instead, you have to hunt for the deer. The deer represents the feature requests that you hear about, over and over again. These are the changes that will make many users happy–and likely attract many more just like them. In other words, shooting the deer feeds many more people than just one squirrel.

By all means, you should listen to your customers. But notice I used the plural: customers. Listen for consistently requested features, and you’ll build a better product. Focus on the single, isolated feature request, and you’ll be dining on squirrel tonight!

Neil Patel

Quick Sprout

Entrepreneurs need to understand that they won’t get the buzz and traction that they are looking for if they aren’t solving a problem. It doesn’t matter how sexy your business is, all that matter is if you are solving a big enough problem.

If you do this, you’ve built a long term business that has a chance of making money instead of something that just creates buzz and dies down within a few weeks.

Julien Smith

Co-author of Trust Agents & blogger of In Over Your Head

It’s critical to know that emotional attachment and familiarity with a subject/point of view do not a successful business make. We tend to think about the opportunities around us and believe that everyone thinks the way we do. They don’t. Wanna start an upscale barbershop? Better make sure there’s a market for it that’s more than you alone. This is most obvious in restaurants but exists everywhere else where passion reigns.

Bonus tips: The numbers matter. // Ask people in the industry with experience. // The network is everything.

Seth Godin

Author of Linchpin & blogger at Seth’s Blog

The most important thing to realize is that in a post-industrial age, in a world where google makes everything a click away, you are no longer entitled to my attention (let alone my business) merely because you exist. Power has shifted, and entrepreneurs who create the things we want to share, talk about and seek out will always do better than those that race to the bottom.

Lisa Barone

CBO of Outspoken Media

That it’s going to TAKE OVER THEIR ENTIRE LIVES!

Sorry.

The real answer is “their audience”.

You have to understand your audience – who they are/ /and who you want to be in their world. Your audience is who you’re launching what you’re launching FOR. It’s not for you. It’s to provide a product or service to others. And a lot of entrepreneurs and business folk get tripped up there. They’re coming from a place where they’re experts at what they do, but they’ve forgotten (or they just never learned) how to speak and think like “everyone else”. You’re not marketing towards you and your buddies; you want to hit the “everyone else”.

I wrote a post recently about the dangers of living inside your bubble and I think it’s something way too many of us do. We know what WE want, what WE think is cool and what WE’D buy, but we forget that our audience isn’t at the same level. You have to build for the “everyone else” and stay in their mindset. And it takes stepping outside of yourself and your bubble to figure out how you can be useful to someone else and how you can offer something exciting.

Another part of understanding your audience is identifying who you want to be in their eyes. Everyone needs a point of difference, an angle or a way to tie themselves to an experience. At Outspoken Media we create a very different experience than most other SEO companies. And we attract an audience who responds to that. You have to figure out your place and how you’re going to market yourself to your audience. If you’re a local coffee shop, who are you? Are you home to the $1.00 cup of coffee, the overpriced café, the green cafe, a place for coworking, a place for moms and their kids, coffee snobs, etc. How can niche can you make your audience?

There’s so much that goes into creating a business and starting down that entrepreneurial path, but I think one of your first concerns has to be your audience. Who are they, where are they and how can you reach them? That’s what you need to understand.

Chris Brogan

Co-author of Trust Agents & blogger of ChrisBrogan.com

The most important thing for entrepreneurs to understand is that the human network is everything. Build relationships before you need them. Help them more than you ask for help. Fuel their success long before you need them for your own. And then, when the time comes, make your “asks” from them easy to execute and simple to pass on to the rest of their own networks.

Brent Csutoras

Social Media Marketing Consultant

I think the most important thing for an entrepreneur launching a new business or product is to really understand the true value in each marketing or promotional step they take. This might seem like common sense, but a lot of new businesses jump into online marketing without really considering what they are doing.

There is an enormous amount of information on the web telling you about all the things you must do to succeed online, but all things cannot work for all people. Take the time to really review what each marketing opportunity does and how it will have a positive effect for your specific product or project.

In addition to what the various methods of online marketing offer your project, also identify if it is right for you right now. Some aspects of SEO are helpful from the start, but do you really need someone working full time on ranking reports and keyword analysis? Social Media is super popular and effective, but do you really need a full Twitter and Facebook campaign before you ever have something to share or talk about? Paid advertising can drive a ton of business, but how do you know whether you have the best converting page yet?

So when you are about to launch your business or product, really take the time to review each aspect of marketing you want to participate in to see that it is not only going to be effective for accomplishing your goals, but also that it is the right time to get the best value from your efforts. Identify the things that are best suited for you at the moment and then focus on things one step at a time.

I would also recommend finding the leaders in each aspect of marketing you want to employ, and read what they have had to say about their respective fields. Hell… most of the real experts will even be willing to give you a little help or point in the right direction (so long as you are not asking for them to basically do it for you).

Brian Clark

Founder of Copyblogger

That no one cares. Yet. Give them a reason to care first. People search for known products and brands. They’re not searching for you. Give them a reason to. Deliver valuable content related to what you sell that not only makes people care, but that also makes them understand the benefits of doing business with you.

Lee Odden

CEO of TopRank Marketing

Companies that launch a new business or product because of a great idea and perceived market demand really need to make sure they have a firm grasp of the actual needs of the customers they’re trying to reach. How you go about this varies by product and audience of course, but there is no substitute to doing the homework of understanding the market.

There are numerous stories of great ideas going to market and failing because there was no market for the product outside the imagination of the entrepreneur. When it comes to software or online services/businesses, networking into a group of savvy and influential users provides product development insight and grass roots enthusiasm for spreading the good word.

Participating in forums, chats, social networks and using monitoring software to understand how the product category is discussed, what the common issues are and to indentify influentials provides critical insight that can save time and increase value. It’s not enough to come up with a great idea, that idea needs to be capable of creating a momentum of support and enthusiasm. Passion, persistence and agility are also critical for any new venture.

I am totally ripping off Joanna Lord’s post. Oh well, she will get over it!

Be Transparent

We talk about transparency a lot in social media. But for me it seems to be one of those buzz words that really doesn’t sink in til you, um, actually start doing it! This year I took a leap of faith in many ways and started being more transparent in social media. For starters I quit trying to hide my disability (future post coming soon). I also started to tell real stories and not pander to the BS dialog that many trying to gain attention do. Now, if you interact with me on Twitter you are likely to get a genuine Joe Hall response, full of snark!

Show Up

A big part of doing anything amazing is just showing up. I attended two conferences this year and they both transformed my business. Meeting people in person is so so important. There is no substitute for the type of trust that is built when you shake hands with someone. And after attending a few conferences you are on your way to building the types of relationships that can foster huge business and personal gains. Showing up means that you are taking transparency to the max because you no longer have a keyboard and monitor to hide behind.

Trust Your Gut

What is a gut anyways? I have no idea, but I know when it is trying to tell me something. Good intuition is extremely valuable, but trusting it is incredibly scary! Intuition is never based on anything concrete. Because of this many of us try ignore it and base our decisions on “evidence” in front of us. Over the last year I have learned the hard way that you should never ignore your gut. I put faith in two separate people even though my gut was telling me not to trust them, in the end I lost a good amount of money on one and a bunch of time on the other.

Invoice Often

I love writing code. I love designing database structures. I love creating chat bots and silly applications. But at the end of the day I really love making money. Now, don’t get me wrong, my love for money making doesn’t devalue my principles or make me evil. Its just that, if I am going to spend sometimes up to 17 or 18 hours a day writing code, I want an effin pay check! Invoicing often guarantees that. It also guarantees that my client’s projects are finished sooner than later because I can’t invoice if I haven’t shipped!

Do Business Like a Pro

When you act professional with your clients, they act professional with you. Sometimes it takes an extra effort to write a good proposal or to setup an invoicing system. But all of that pays off when you send them the invoice and they pay it with no questions asked. Some clients won’t care if you aren’t professional with them, but in my experience it is more beneficial in the long run if you let them know what to expect from you, so they will know what you expect of them.

Drivers Get Paid More Than Mechanics

“Forget programing learn marketing, Drivers get paid more than mechanics.” – lordofseo About a year ago I was at a friend’s wedding and during the reception someone asked me, what I did for a living. Instead of giving the typical “I build web sites” BS, I decided to go a bit more in depth, and so I said something along the lines of, “I write the software that makes interactive web sites work” She looked confused, but then her son perked up and said, “basically, he does all the hard important work but doesn’t get any credit for it.” BINGO! Now don’t get me wrong, I have some of the best clients that a web programmer could have, but the truth is coders are like tools you can have a really awesome one that does all the work for you, but you don’t want to tell anyone about your secret code monkey.

Because of this, I am shaking things up in 2010! I have 3 major products on the table that I will be releasing under my companies’ names. By doing this I hope to focus more of my revenue stream from services to products. This way I will have the freedom to truly leverage my time for things that I really care about.

At first I was really worried about my clients and how they were going to take the news. But I knew I had to tell them soon. So, I grabbed my netbook and hit up a wireless cafe. Their response was awesome. A few were rightfully upset that their projects were going to be delayed 2 weeks, but they were all understanding and I didn’t lose a single client! Sometimes polite brutal honesty really works well.

So now that I had contacted my clients I had to face the ugly reality that for the first time in close to 5 years I would be with out Internet access for longer than a week! What the hell was I going to do?? I ended up reading a few books and writing a bit. But, for the most part I did a lot of thinking.

Over the last three years I have been busy building a business on the Internet It has been an amazing journey that has taught me so much about myself and other people. And now I had two weeks away from it all, to reflect. When I started out 3 years ago I could write code that could make your head spin (still can). But, I had absolutely no idea how to build a business and a brand. I will admit that in large part I am still learning, like everyone. But, I have realized a few things along the way…

For me 86% of building a business is all social. You can’t build a business and a brand on an island. You have to engage. Engage who? Everyone! Successful entrepreneurs wear their brand on their sleeve, they are their company and their company is them. Every interaction that I have is an extension of my brand. When I am at a conference meeting new people I am building my brand. When I am on twitter or facebook I am building my brand. When I am spending time with my family and “recharging my spirit” I am building my brand. When I am being an active participate of social spaces I am building my brand.

Being social can be scary. Theres a lot of people out there and a lot of times it can be overwhelming I would say about 80% of the folks I meet I want to build my brand with. Others are very interesting, but might not be the best for brand building, and a few are just assholes. Wearing your brand on your sleeve also means that you are always “on”. Which means that you always have to be smart about the ways you engage. This is sometimes a lesson that can only be learned the hard way. I will be the first to admit that I have engaged the “wrong way” in the past.

Which brings me to the beginning of something new. This new blog is fundamentally about engagement and how we can do that effectively the “right way”. We will talk about lots of different topics here, but in the end of the day its the dialogue that will push us forward. So please subscribe to the feed and join me in a new dialog!

In short, Rae uses Firefox’s Bookmarks in conjunction with custom URLs to turn your address bar into a souped up search machine! Here’s a quick example of how Rae works her magic.

Rae finds a service that uses dynamic URLs such as WhosTalkin.com She then runs a query through the service. As a result we get a URL that looks something like this:

http://www.whostalkin.com/search?q=sugarrae

Next Rae will replace the query in the URL with %s to act as a place holder. So the URL now looks like:

http://www.whostalkin.com/search?q=%s

In Firefox Rae will go to Bookmarks>Organize Bookmarks, then right click on Bookmarks Menu>New Bookmark

So now when Rae goes to her address bar and types “who sugarrae”, she will get a fresh set of results from WhosTalkin.com

Rae takes things a step further by using this hack to run analysis on pages and sites by using the URL in place of a query. For example if she wants to run a Whois check her setup might look like this:

Now when Rae types whois whostalkin.com into her search bar a Whois report from DomainTools.com appears.

Are you starting to see the magic here? If not here are a few of my favorite examples to get you started. Just copy and paste them into the method above.

Bookmarks with URLs:

Shorten URL’s
kl.am
http://kl.am/api/shorten/?url=%s&format=text
TinyURL
http://tinyurl.com/api-create.php?url=%s

Social Bookmarking

StumbleUpon
http://www.stumbleupon.com/submit?url=%s

del.icio.us
http://del.icio.us/post?url=%s

FriendFeed
http://friendfeed.com/?url=%s

Digg
http://digg.com/submit?phase=2&url=%s

Sphinn
http://sphinn.com/submit.php?url=%s

View a Site as Text at SEO-Browser.com

http://www.seo-browser.com/index.php?user_agent=1&address=%s&action=Parse+URL

On Page Keyword Analysis

http://www.webmaster-toolkit.com/keyword-analysis-tool.shtml?url=%s

Translate any web page into English:

http://translate.google.com/translate?js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&u=%s&sl=auto&tl=en&history_state0=

Bookmarks with Search Queries:

Google News Search

http://news.google.com/news?pz=1&ned=us&hl=en&q=%s&cf=all&scoring=n (sorted by date)

Google Blog Search

http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=%s&scoring=d (sorted by date)

Google Maps

http://maps.google.com/maps?q=%s&hl=en&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wl

Get Yahoo results as a RSS feed:

http://search.yahooapis.com/WebSearchService/rss/webSearch.xml?appid=yahoosearchwebrss&query=%s


Update Twitter

http://twitter.com/home?status=%s

Have fun playing with these bookmarks and feel free to leave some of your favorites in the comments! Stay tuned for my next post where I kick things up a notch with this bookmark hack and JavaScript!