Teaching children to be entrepreneurial is a task that should be taken more seriously. I have 3 children and I’ve always pushed them to try and educate themselves on other things that they may be interested in. I try to make them believers of saving money and being economical. It wasn’t until I met one of the producers from the Biz Kid$ show that I realized I should also be encouraging them to think of new ways or improve older ways of making money.

Biz Kid$ is a show dedicated to the entrepreneurial kid. They feature successful kids and teenagers who are business owners or done something worthwhile that was lucrative. They also teach proper methods of starting and running a business. Some of things they have done are remarkable. This is more than your front yard lemonade stand. Working on their next season of episodes, they decided to include the internet as a medium of making money and starting a business. How can you present proper website building, search engine marketing and social media consulting in an entertaining way? Duh…you find the SEO Rapper!

The producer contacted me and shared her vision about what they wanted to accomplish. How could I resist? I love kids, rapping and the internet. They are based in Seattle Washington and she offered to fly me there for a few days if I was willing to compose a Biz Kid$ focused instructional rap about using the internet to start a business. Interesting task. I was glad to do it. I contacted Dre Dubb Entertainment, one of my favorite music production teams (also produced Design Coding) for a track to the rap I was writing. I received the track, completed the rap and went to the studio to record it. A few weeks later I was on a flight to Seattle. I finally met some others from Biz Kid$ who showed me a great time. The video shoot was awesome. It went a little longer than expected but I had a blast doing it. Touring Seattle was great. I had a chance to walk around and take lots of pictures and next time I’ll remember that if you walk down a hill and you parked at the top of the hill, you have to walk back up the hill. The Biz Kid$ episode is supposed to air on PBS sometime in January. Stay tuned…

Thank God for Spike T.V. finally having the guts to play the number one anticipated event in all of television history- the entire saga of Star Wars! I wouldn’t consider myself a nerd, but I just love this story. This saga is a visionary epic and George Lucas is da man! It’s amazing how a movie based on so much fantasy has multiple applicable real-life meanings. So of course in preparing myself for a hectic work week, I spent my entire weekend watching this series for the 800th time.

Lucky for me, I also took about ten minutes out of my busy weekend to flip through an old dusty book or two (of course, applicable to my client services role at Pop Labs). Don’t we wish our kids were invested so heavily in their future too? Too bad George Lucas didn’t make a movie about those books.

I recall reading about educating your clients on new products and services as well as new uses for existing products. In fact, the book went so far to suggest that anyone in the client services industry that didn’t educate their current happy clients about new products and new benefits for existing products actually does that client a disservice. After all, if the client is happy paying you for Service A and you roll out the brand-new Service B, why wouldn’t you want to offer him service B and contribute just that much more to this client’s happiness and satisfaction?

Lightning strikes and magic happens. It was as if Obi-Wan just handed me my father’s light saber! This whole concept is completely applicable for online marketing as well. The past is the best predictor of the future. If you manage online marketing campaigns or PPC advertising, then you know when your PPC campaign can absorb more clicks. If you have a benchmark for performance and your PPC campaign is a well oiled machine that is consistently turning out ROI, why wouldn’t you offer your client the opportunity to expand their business by asking for a bigger budget?

That’s a rhetorical question young Skywalker…the answer is fear! Is your fear of failure greater than the excitement of success? Fear of sales, fear of the almighty NO, fear of everything this side from death. So below are a few Jedi mind tricks to help get past that fear and moving towards the direction of more profitability, productivity, and success for your clients, Google, and you:

• Love your Clients! - Clients could care less about what you know until they know you care.
• Serve your Clients! - If you’re selling something that the client doesn’t need, then you probably shouldn’t be selling it at all. If they do need it, then you’re not really selling, only consulting through educating and persuading. Remember- people hate being sold, but they love to buy!
• You are Yoda! – Just as every Jedi goes to Yoda, your clients come to you because you have the omniscient, all-knowing Yoda type of knowledge that is responsible for them paying you in the first place.
• Encourage New Ideas! – Keep a questioning nature and always remember that business owners know more about their businesses than you do. So shut up and pay attention…
• Get Hungry! – A closed mouth doesn’t get fed if you want things to happen. You have to initiate the action!

Remember, if you manage online marketing/PPC campaigns for your clients, wouldn’t it be to their benefit if they were willing to give you whatever budget you needed to help grow their online presence? Especially after you have a benchmark for success based on past behavior (e.g. daily budget runs out)? After all, once you establish that you truly care about their business, wouldn’t it be a shame if they decided to spend their advertising budget elsewhere in another form with someone who didn’t care as much as you do? I’d wager to guess that the answers to these questions are “yes,” in which case you have one solution. Get to explaining, educating, and asking for additional budget to support your clients’ business growth.

Working in the world of the 11th continent is absolutely enthralling! There are always new things to learn and old news to catch up on. For me, educating other people who aren’t “in the know” about search marketing and sharing what I learn really gets me going. So, you can only imagine how ecstatic I was when I found out that my company was going to sponsor a trip for me to attend Pubcon 2007, especially because I knew it was in Las Vegas: the worst place for all of us industry folk with self-diagnosed ADD to gather and be distracted by the bright flashing lights, never ending sounds of people losing money on the slots and the extreme desire to blow last month’s paycheck at the blackjack table; but, really, the best place for all of us creative types to network, learn and enjoy the conversations with which we all so love to bore those who don’t really care.

Pubcon started back in the late 80’s as a group where industry-minded people would meet and discuss related news, discoveries and techniques at the local pub - hence the name Pubcon. Over the years, Pubcon has expanded. This year’s conference was a success with thousands in attendance. All of the biggest names in the industry shared their knowledge, experiences and personal stories of success. Pubcon is not just for those who are experienced, though. Whether you are new to the industry like me or a seasoned veteran, there is a place for you there. There are webmasters, search marketers, program managers, affiliates and even client side attendees there to gain knowledge of how to better run their online store, increase their brand recognition online or just learn about search marketing and social media in general.

At Pubcon, the inspiration was limitless. I highly recommend to all of you in the industry that you attend Pubcon next year. If not Pubcon, there is also SES, OMS, SXSW, and SMX.

And for those folks who want to keep it kinda local to Houston, here’s a list of other communities to check out/join:

• BarCamp Texas -January 26th, 27th
• BarCamp New Orleans - February 16th, 17th - This one is really special because it is the first time the tech community in New Orleans has really gotten together to help re-establish/re-build the technology sector in the city since Hurricane Katrina.
• BarCamp Austin/SXSW III - Not officially announced yet…
• Refresh Houston
• NetSquared
• Air Houston

Why Should I Get Involved?

• To be known, and to get known - make great contacts
• To learn - now there’s a novel idea
• To share your ideas

I always love when I get a chance to talk about social media and education because those topics are so important to me. A few weeks back when I was presenting a social media camp at ITEC Chicago I got a chance to meet Leslie Minkus. Leslie is the CEO and founder of Kid Dads Moms a company that specializes in providing parents, students and teachers with tools designed to help kids learn by emphasizing their natural strengths or what KDM calls “Edudevelopment factors”. Naturally this intrigued me since it’s exactly what I teach in my Creative and Visual Thinking classes. (more…)

 

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