Arupa Tesolin | Spark & Ting
August 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Arupa Tesolin is a Speaker, Trainer & Innovation Leader for using intuition and true creative vision as a fuel in today’s organizations. Many people are becoming more curious about their intuitive power and creative capabilities. When these capabilities are more fully developed by individuals, they become transformed and can then contribute more powerfully and meaningfully in any team or enterprise. Understanding how to use intuition, imagination and creative power have become essential skills for Innovation, Success & Performance. Arupa is the author of the international business book ‘Ting! - A Surprising Way to Listen to Intuition & Do Business Better’ rated 4-Stars (the highest) by Training Magazine (US), the upcoming new book release (April 2007) ‘Spark - Raise Your Mind to the Power of Infinity & Create Anything’ and more than 100 articles in leading training and management publications internationally; including HR Innovator, Chief Learning Officer, Workplace Performance Magazine, HR.com, Training & Development Magazine, Training (US), HR Reporter, Workplace News, HR Professional (HRPAO) (Canada) & Training & Management Magazine (India). Arupa has over 20 years of strategic management and organizational learning experience, is the creator of Intuita training programs, and the leader of Learning Paths International Canada.
Charles Jacobs | Retirement Writing
August 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Some 50 years ago, Charles began his career as a stringer and reporter for the New York Journal-American to help put himself through Columbia College and earn a Masters Degree at the University’s famed Pulitzer Graduate School of Journalism Charles’ credentials reach from coast to coast. He rose to the prestigious position of Publisher/President of the Alameda Newspaper Group in the San Francisco region, and later served as CEO of the Garden State Newspaper Group, publisher of the North Jersey Herald & News and Editor-in-Chief of FOCUS, a million circulation magazine in New Jersey.
He has served as a consultant to magazines and
newspapers, has ghost-written several books and is the author of the published novel Blood Bond
Charles has taught classes in writing for magazines and newspapers and has served as guest speaker for a variety of organizations and at writers conferences sponsored by the National Writers Association More than 750 of Charles’ articles have appeared in magazines and newspapers throughout the country from the Los Angeles Times on the West Coast to the New York Times in the East, as well as in Canada Travel publications throughout the United States and in Canada have carried Charles’ articles. He has written for Grand Circle and Overseas Adventure Travel, and has served as Editor-in-Chief of Travel World International Charles’ writing has been honored with numerous awards from the Society of Professional Journalists, New Jersey Press Club, Working Press Association
And the North American Travel Journalists Association
Susan Benjamin | Business Communication
June 20, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Susan Benjamin, host of the popular talk radio show The Greater Voice, has been a business problem-solver for almost twenty years. Publications from the Wall Street Journal to the Chicago Tribune have featured Susan’s novel approaches to team management while her commentaries on communications-
Bea Fields | Gen Y & Success
May 30, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Bea Fields - an internationally renowned leadership consultant and author - recently launched the second edition of her book: Millennial Leaders: Success Stories From Today’s Most Brilliant Generation Y Leaders Co-authored with Scott Wilder, Jim Bunch and Rob Newbold, the book presents the details of a socio-economic study of Generation Y and its potential economic and political power and highlights a number of Gen-Y leaders who have already made a name for themselves, including a 14 year-old political appointee to a finalist on “The Apprentice.” http://millenni
Shel Horowitz | Grassroots Marketing
May 16, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Shel Horowitz, Speaker, Author, Consultant is an Expert on Frugal, Ethical, Effective Marketing–and the World’s Leading Authority on Frugal Fun Frugal marketing is the art and science of getting the largest marketing results for the smallest expenditure. Copywriter, author, and frugal marketing consultant Shel Horowitz set up FrugalMarketing
Gretchen Neels | Gen Etiquette
May 9, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Gretchen Neels has over ten years of experience recruiting and retaining top talent at a number of prestigious professional services firms, including Skadden, Baker & McKenzie, McDermott Will & Emery, Bain & Company, Bank of America and Gordon Brothers. As a recruiter, Gretchen often saw excellent candidates who did not get jobs for which they were technically qualified because they lacked developed soft skills - the ability to connect personally with another. She also observed that employers would sometimes overlook a lack of soft skills in a new hire, thinking their technical competence made up for whatever interpersonal shortcomings they had. Unfortunately, in today’s competitive marketplace, employers need every employee to have the ability to both do their work and connect with clients. As a result, employers now more than ever strive to hire people who excel in both technical (hard) and interpersonal (soft) skills. She has found manners and interpersonal skills elements essential to success in todays business environment. An accomplished and sought-after public speaker, Gretchen enjoys developing young executives: “Helping a young associate understand the intricacies of the corporate world brings immense satisfaction to me as a facilitator. Seeing them gain confidence and develop client relationships brings that same satisfaction to management.”
Tim Kellis | Relationships & Wall Street
April 25, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We spoke with Tim Kellis today about marriages and why they break up so often in this country. Kellis analyzes the break ups from a Wall Street perspective.More information from Tim Kellis’ website:
Why is knowledge of mathematics important to understanding relationships?
Almost without exception, observed the great 20th Century philosopher Bertrand Russell in his exhaustive study of the history of Western philosophy, modern Platonists “are ignorant of mathematics, in spite of the immense importance Plato attached to arithmetic and geometry, and the immense influence that they had on his philosophy.
Russell aptly sums up why modern psychology has been remarkably unable to grapple with the very human struggle of modern relationships. Tim Kellis calls today’s relationship gurus Freudian failures as one out of every two marriages are dissolving in divorce. The approach by Dr. Phil and others is merely psychological and intuitive, when what’s required is a more analytical and scientific evaluation of the philosophy in human relationships we call happiness.
According to Kellis, mathematics is the very basis for science as well as a prerequisite for understanding logic and philosophy. A student of mathematics and engineering, as well as a brilliant Wall Street analyst, he tells his clients: “Happiness is a philosophy not a psychology.” The ability to comprehend the causes of relationship struggles requires the skill to analyze, comprehend and then write, he says. His mathematically derived analytical skills provide the foundation for his ability to find the relationship solution that can save marriages.
For Kellis, writing this book has been a life experience involving his professional and personal life, as well as his imposing intellectual and emotional development, that has led him to understand how to make a relationship work.
“Too often I’ve heard ‘I’d rather be happy and single, than unhappy and married.’ Yet my parents taught me that divorce was not an option in life, something they taught me not by what they said, but by how they lived. They had a very unhappy relationship for a very long time, but they stayed married. The only reason I was able to come to understand how to make a relationship successful is because I was able to overcome my own childhood shortcomings, forgive my parents and see them for who they really were–my parents.
Ambition and a strong aptitude for math helped lead Kellis to discover how to make relationships work. His math skills led directly to an engineering degree, nine years in the telecommunications industry, an MBA in finance, and finally on to Wall Street, where he became the very first semiconductor analyst to focus on the communications market.As an analyst you are required to be an expert in your field. The research completed before writing Equality: The Quest for the Happy Marriage was pursued in the same fashion as that required before becoming an analyst. The search for the truth requires a critical mind.
After publishing a 300-page initiation piece entitled Initiating Coverage of the Semiconductor Industry: Riding the Bandwidth Wave, Kellis became a leading semiconductor analyst at one of the biggest firms on Wall Street. As an analyst, he was in constant contact with investors, honing his presentation skills to the point that he became an expert presenter, a skill he believes is essential in his new role as relationship advisor. The experience he gained as a Wall Street analyst provided an excellent backdrop for researching and writing a book on relationships. As an analyst he had to deal with many egos, some healthy, some not. During this time, he learned why corporations and systems functioned at their best or worst and today applies much of what he learned to smaller, more intimate systems embodied in relationships.
What is the thread common to all corporations? Regardless of industry, almost every company starts out initially with the sole purpose of providing a product or service that makes its customers happy. The exception here is relationship therapists who have simply rationalized unhappiness. Competition exists to keep every corporation on its toes. Try to think of a product that makes customers unhappy or a television commercial where the actors are portrayed being unhappy using a specific company’s product or service. There aren’t any.
According to Kellis, “working with so many people who loved their jobs on Wall Street exposed me to many happy relationships. Their happiness was not simply a result of how much money they made, many of the happy relationships were with people who were not making a lot of money, but because they found working on Street incredibly intense and exciting. The common notion within mainstream psychology that relationships without arguments are impossible is simply a fallacy.
Caroline Howard-Johnson Transcript
March 29, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent: Welcome to Sound Authors. Today is March 28th. It is almost April, the first day of spring. It is a beautiful day outside. Foggy, rainy, but its warm. Four guests on the show today. The last guest, of course, is an author sound, Doyle Lawson. His famous band, Quicksilver, has been around for a long, long time.Then I have three authors on the show. First author is Caroline Howard-Johnson, with her books about writing books. My second guest is Jim Olson with his novel “An Eagle Unchained”. My third guest is another novelist with her book, “Every Last Cuckoo”.Welcome to the show to Caroline Howard-Johnson. She has a long resume with a whole bunch of amazing achievements in the world of writing. Her website is carolynhowardjohnson.redenginepress.com. Welcome to the show.
Caroline Howard-Johnson: Hi. Thanks a lot for having me!
Dr. Kent: And I’m sure you have a bunch of other websites as well.
Caroline: My favorite one is easy. It is howtodoitfrugally.com.
Dr. Kent: howtodoitfrugally.com.
Caroline: Easy to remember.
Dr. Kent: So tell me a little bit about your whole method. You have a couple books out recently. They’re to help authors with what they do.
Caroline: Yep. They do. I certainly hope they do, and it seems that they are from the mail I get. They’re in the How to do it Frugally series of books for writers. They came about because I’m, at heart, a novelist and short story writer and poet. As your author listeners will know, those are the hardest books of all to get people to read, especially if the novel is a literary novel.I fell into all kinds of potholes. I had a publicist background, and I wanted to help writers combat the same problems that I had. I also wanted a text that was really practical for my classes at UCLA. So my first book in the series was “The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won’t.” The second was just released. It is called “The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward To Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success.”
Dr. Kent: Let’s talk a little bit about the first one, “The Frugal Book Promoter: How To Do What Your Publisher Won’t.” Most folks that aren’t in the publishing industry don’t know that a great deal of the books that do get accepted, they go through that whole sieve. They end up being asked to be on a press and all of that, and then they get published, and what happens? It sits on the shelves. Tell us a little bit about that.
Caroline: Exactly. And that’s exactly what happened to my first novel. It is called “This is the Place.” It was published traditionally. I was living the myth two decades ago that my publisher would do it for me. It is set in Salt Lake City. It was published just before the winter Olympics there. I thought it was going to be a big seller, and it just wasn’t doing anything and I didn’t quite understand why.Luckily I did have a publicist’s background, so I just started researching ways that I could get the word out there. Of course, book promotion is a lot different from fashion promotion, which is what I had done before, so I had a heck of a lot to learn.That book is just simply a compilation of all the things I tried, all the resources I found, put very simply and in a light language so that people can read it easily. People who aren’t yet really familiar with the publishing industry.
Dr. Kent: How about the age-old… “This book is going to make it onto Oprah”?
Caroline: Well, I think that you can probably put your energies into a lot better channels if you’re on a limited budget or if you don’t have an awful lot of time. The chances are very, very slim. I never like to be discouraging. If that’s your dream and you’re an author, hey, go for it. But if you’re budgeting your time as well as your money, the net is just open to about any kind of an effort you want to make. So are many radio shows like yours. I think those are the best places.Also speaking and teaching are good ways to get the news about your book out to the world. I wouldn’t be surprised if Oprah chooses one book to feature in, I don’t know, a hundred thousand that are submitted to her every year.
Dr. Kent: What is the connection between your first book, “Frugal Book Promoter” and your second book now, “The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward To Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success.” Tell us a little bit about that one.
Caroline: In the meantime, I started editing a lot of people’s books. I found that people were really submitting awful material. Not in terms of editing. Things written… Not necessarily grammatical errors. Not necessarily typos. But they were writing the way they’d been taught to write in high school. Writing has changed since many of us were in high school. Fiction is different from writing a high school essay. So is poetry different from the way it was written in the days of the classics, the poetry that we studied. On and on…I became concerned that that very first line of offense that we authors have, the very first time that we present ourselves to a publisher or an editor or whatever, is really extremely poorly edited. So I wrote “The Frugal Editor.” I consider it almost a marketing book also because that is your first effort. Your first presentation to what I call the gate keepers, the people who can say yes or no to your work.
Dr. Kent: So what is the difference between… I know you’re talking both about what they used to call vanity presses or self-published process, and then you’re also talking about approaching the big ones.
Caroline: Yes. I believe that there’s probably the right place for every book for every book and every author, and no one place is right. In other words, traditional presses like Simon & Schuster, really publishers, are wonderful. If that’s where an author’s heart is, maybe that’s where they should try to go first. They need an agent for that.But there are lots of other ways to publish now. Thank heaven, in the last decade we’ve come a long way. Some books are really better published on a POD press, self-published, or with help. Those are called subsidy publishers. So we’re not at the mercy of an agent or a large publisher anymore. There are all kinds of roots. And some of those other roots are becoming very well respected unlike the Vanity Presses of even the 1950s. Some are far more profitable and some are better suited to say a how-to book, than others.So if people do their homework, they can be published. I just want them to be published properly edited. [laughs]
Dr. Kent: Let’s get into the nitty-gritty of that. How much… in your book you talked about how do I do this?
Caroline: How to get published?
Dr. Kent: Well…
Caroline: That’s the next one in a group of series. [laughs]
Dr. Kent: Well not even how to get published, the editing. How do you break open…?
Caroline: Well, you start off learning to write a terrific query letter because obviously that query letter is what you’re going to be using to approach agents if you do want to be traditionally published as an example. And a query letter is simply a letter asking people to do what you like an agent to represent you. And it must actually ask that question, a lot of people neglect to do that. They’re not used to asking for what they want. They almost intentionally avoid saying “I’d like you to represent me.”Beyond that there’s a format you can find, a pretty good format in “Writers Digest Market”. The front of the book usually has some samples. There are samples of good query letters in both the “Frugal Editor” and the “Frugal Book Promoter”. And from there on you keep using query letters add in tonight until your book is dead and shredded. Because you’re going to continue to use them when you approach contest judges, when you approach editors for feature stories, when you approach radio hosts like you, you need to be able to write a good query letter.
Dr. Kent: Now how about… there’s a whole bunch of presses out there that almost like…I guess they’re sort of preying on unsuspecting first time authors. What do you think about those companies?
Caroline: Well, I think that the looser the publishing industry has become the more scam artists there are. There are also a lot of so-called agents. There are a lot of so-called editors; the “Frugal Editor” tells people how to choose an editor for their book so they don’t run afoul of somebody who has just published one book and poorly and now calls themselves an editor. There’s a lot of that.And we do need to be wary. I guess it’s a capitalist system. It’s that buyer beware system. We need to know what we’re doing. We need to do our homework and there are lots of really good books out there that will help authors, perspective authors, others who want to have a published book do it right.
Dr Kent: That, well, is a fascinating discussion. Can you give me a… can you tell me who your audience is for these? Are you selling to publishers? Are you selling to the authors themselves?
Caroline: That’s a good question. I don’t think I’ve ever been asked that question.
Dr Kent: [laughs]
Caroline: Actually yes, as a good marketer I try to sell to whomever is interested. I sell to publishers. They sometimes buy the book in quantity and then give them to their authors because obviously if their authors know how to promote and know how to edit than that’s going to make their job easier.I sell directly to authors. I sell online at Amazon. I sell to beginning authors. People who have been around a long time still find my book really amazingly helpful because a lot of times they’ve been around a long time and they haven’t picked up the finer points of either promotion or editing. So really, they’re there for authors and publishers and anyone in the publishing industry.
Dr Kent: Wonderful. Well, you have a whole bunch of connections as well. How have you been received by the market? You’ve received the Best Books Award winner…?
Caroline: Yeah, isn’t that exciting? I really believe in awards. I believe it’s an excellent promotion device and it doesn’t have to be a huge award. I’ve been lucky. Both of my frugal books have been named USA Book News, Best Book of the Year, so that’s a prestigious award.But they don’t have to be prestigious awards for an author to use them. Small awards, runners up, finalists, honorable mention, all will help set an author’s book apart from the other ones that are sitting on a bookstore shelf. If there are two books on a similar subject and a book buyer goes in to purchase a book they may not know exactly which book they want and if one has won an award that tells them something. I really believe in going after awards and the “Frugal Book Promoter” has a list of awards and places that authors can go to actually apply for awards.
Dr Kent: I have a question that my producer and I both have. Your name is Howard- Johnson, any relation to the hotel chain?
Caroline: No orange roof here, no, no. Howard was my maiden name and then Johnson is my married name. There’s an interesting story about when I went into journalism when I was very young about how they couldn’t put that whole Howard-Johnson into Caroline, Howard-Johnson is a very long name, into a one-column byline. So I made a hyphen, which made it my real name, and they had to figure out a way so they just ended up using two lines for my byline, which was very sneaky for a young girl of 19 in the 50s. [laughs]
Dr Kent: Very sneaky. Well, this has been wonderful to chat about editing and about publicity. Give us a ten second sound bite about your books and about your website.
Caroline: OK. I’d like everyone to take advantage of the experience spoke of. Experience both practical experience and my past as a publisher and marketer. Read my books before they start on their trek to publishing. If you haven’t read that kind of a book read mine, read John Cramer’s, read Dan Pointer’s, but please do read!And find me at www.howtodoitfrugally.com where you’ll also find lots of resources outside my book.
Dr Kent: Wonderful. Thank you so much for being on the show Caroline Howard-Johnson.
Caroline: Thank you so much. It was a pleasure.
Dr Kent: And the next guest will be Jim Olsen with his novel “An Eagle” we’ll talk about politics. Come on back!
Caroline Howard-Johnson
March 28, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We spoke today with Caroline Howard-Johnson, author of two books in the “How to do it frugally” series for authors. She speaks with us about her background, her interest in working with writers, and much more! More about Caroline Howard-Johnson from www.howtodoitfrugally.com:
Carolyn Howard-Johnson’s first novel, This is the Place, and Harkening: A Collection of Stories Remembered are both award-winners. Her fiction, nonfiction and poems appear in national magazines, anthologies and review journals. She speaks on culture, tolerance, writing and promotion and has appeared on TV and hundreds of radio stations nationwide. She is an instructor for UCLA Extension’s Writers’ Program and has shared her expertise at venues like San Diego State’s world renowned Writers’ Conference, Dayton University’s Erma Bombeck Writers’ Workshop and SPAN’s (Small Publishers Association of North America) annual conference.Carolyn was recently awarded Woman of the Year in Arts and Entertainment by the California Legislature; her home town’s Character and Ethics Commission honored her for her work on promoting tolerance and the Pasadena Weekly named her to their list of “San Gabriel Valley women who make life happen” for literary activism. Her nitty-gritty how-to book, The Frugal Book Promoter won USA Book News’ Best Professional Book 2004 and her chapbook of poetry, Tracings, was named to The Compulsive Reader’s Top 10 Best Reads for 2004 and Military Writers’ Society of America honored it for excellence. It is now available from Finishing Line Press and Amazon .Carolyn’s newest book is The Frugal Editor: Put Your Best Book Forward to Avoid Humiliation and Ensure Success . Cheryl Wright of Writer2Writer says, “The Frugal Editor will become a well-used reference for writers around the world.”Howard-Johnson loves to travel and has studied writing at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom, UK: Herzen University in St. Petersburg, RU; and Charles University in Prague. Carolyn is the founder of Authors’ Coalition where writers share with other writers and learn from others, too.She edits “Sharing with Writers,” a newsletter associated for that organization as well as a blog that helps authors turn a dull book fair into a sizzling success: Find it at:http://www.AuthorsCoalition.blogspot.com.Her literary website is on part of this site on this page: http://carolynhoward-johnson.com.Her Sharing with Writers Blog is at http://www.sharingwithwriters.blogspot.com .She also blogs athttp://TheNewBookReview.blogspot.com where writers can recycle their favorite reviews.http://TheFrugalEditor.blogspot.com where writers can ask questions — any question — on editing, grammar, style choices, and using editing as your first line of offense in your marketing campaign.
http://WarPeaceTolerance.blogspot.com where Carolyn gets to rag and nag about how tolerance relates to war and how we can do more than pay lip service to support our troops.
Jessica Kizorek Transcript
March 22, 2008 | Leave a Comment
Dr. Kent Gustavson: Welcome back to Sound Authors. My next guest on the show is Jessica Kizorek, am I pronouncing that correctly?
Jessica Kizorek: Yes, you are.
Dr. Kent: I’m pretty good that way, what can I say? Her website is showmethebook.com. She is an industry speaker on the subject of video marketing and the Internet. She was featured on CNN’s series “Young People Who Rock” for documenting the impact of humanitarian efforts around the globe. This is going to be a fascinating discussion. Tell me a little bit about your book to start off.
Jessica: Well the book emerged from; as a video producer, about two years ago I realized that I was going to need to put all the videos that I made for my clients on the Internet. So I started researching, “How do I do this as a businesswoman?” The information was so scattered on the Internet. There wasn’t a solid, comprehensive source for what I was looking for. So my additional research for my business is what became and evolved as the book.
Dr. Kent: Tell me about the nonprofit work you do.
Jessica: The nonprofit work we do? I love taking my skills and expertise in storytelling through video, using video as a very influential and impactful medium. Giving my nonprofit clients a resource to communicate and effectively show what they’re doing in the world.Because there’s just so many organizations that are making a tremendous impact; be it with a community of 20 people or a community of 200,000 people in Western Africa. How do they show people what they’re doing on the ground? That is what I’ve developed an expertise in providing nonprofit organizations.
Dr. Kent: So your book itself is about marketing with video. I’ve seen images of, perhaps what the Internet might look like in ten years. We might not be even looking at text. We might be touching the screen and manipulating it that way. Where’s the Internet going? Where is this going?
Jessica: Right now as we see video, it evolved from television and film. Which is a flat screen, it’s not interactive per se. It’s a flat, motion and audio medium. I think what we’re going to start seeing, even next year, is a lot of interactivity layers upon the video. You may be watching a video that has a Gucci pair of sunglasses in it. You can actually click on the sunglasses, which takes you to a website that sells those sunglasses.So you can immediately purchase things. It’s really going to become a seamless user experience. Specifically, video will just be a foundational element upon which a lot of different motion, graphics, and e-commerce will be built on top of.
Dr. Kent: And what is your role in that?
Jessica: My role in that is producing the video content, it’s working with people from the conceptualization of the idea. “OK, this is what we want to show, this is what we want to communicate.” And then shooting the video, planning it out, storyboarding it, shooting it, editing it and providing it in appropriate formats.Whether that’s Flash files for the Internet or mastering DVDs for physical distribution or giving them files for broadcast television. That’s what I do.
Dr. Kent: Who is the audience specifically for your book “Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet”?
Jessica: The audience is fairly broad. Video producers, people that are in a similar position to myself. A lot of advertising and marketing people are very hungry for the information because they know that marketing spend is moving away from television. It’s moving away from print. All the eyeballs are online. People are online watching videos. People are online searching for information.It’s particularly people who are looking to expand their business through marketing on the Internet. Those are the people are looking for and reading my book.
Dr. Kent: And do you find, just out of curiosity, your own website– showmethebook.com; that’s a clever title by the way–do you find that you have to keep that cutting-edge looking in order to impress people that come visit you?
Jessica: Yes and no. I mean I have–right now I have up there hosted is my CNN video. If you go to my corporate website which is twoparrot.com, you’ll see different video interfaces where all the videos are available.So I definitely think that having a portfolio of everything I produce is immediately online, it’s transferable, it’s easily distributed. So yeah, I think that me being a demonstration of what I provide my clients with is absolutely very important.
Dr. Kent: Now do you have any trade secrets that you can reveal to us?
Jessica: Trade secrets?
Dr. Kent: Things we’re not supposed to know about marketing.
Jessica: [laughs] I don’t know that there’s anything you’re not supposed to know. The big thing is right now the market is so saturated by–consumers are constantly–they have spam blockers. They see advertisements or see marketing messages and they immediately turn away.So the whole industry is turning towards–instead of pushing something at consumers, it’s really like providing consumers with something that they’re interested in. So there’s really a shift in messaging and how do you have the consumer walk towards your brand rather than just be talked at or told what to do.
Dr. Kent: If someone visits a website online and they see a video, how do you get people to convert?
Jessica: It’s providing specific steps. A clear course of action. So if you have a video lots of times you want to put–you can’t really talk about video on the Internet without talking about the interface in which viewers interact with the videos. So converting really comes down to do you provide them with a clear course of action as to how to purchase your product or subscribe or–another thing with conversion, too–and we’re getting into a lot of this as people explore mobile platforms–so cell phones.It’s a function of knowing your audience. For instance, grocery stores are starting to do couponing through mobile devices. So basically you wouldn’t necessarily send a mother a coupon at three o’clock in the afternoon. Because that’s when they’re picking up their kids or they’re rushing to do things. You send them a coupon at a specific time of day when you know they’re going to be grocery shopping.When you know that they’re on their way to the store or about to cook dinner. So converting is knowing your audience, knowing what stage in the purchase cycle they are, providing different videos, whether it be brand awareness or a video later on down the line that has specific call to action.
Dr. Kent: Hmm. So what is it like for you to speak about all of this, to write about all of this, to become an author, I guess?
Jessica: Well one of the things that’s been very interesting to me is I’m 27. So I’m just a total baby when it comes to interacting with these people who have been in the advertising industry for the last 20 or 30 years. So for me to be a speaker and an author–the book has given me a tremendous amount of credibility. Somebody that’s 27 wouldn’t necessarily be taken seriously with the people that I’m playing with.The advertising industry is actually looking towards the younger generation. So people like me who grew up inside of a digital environment. People who have their own personal MySpace page and Face Book page and they understand social networking. They throw up YouTube videos on their mobile phone, just like in their private life.Marketers are hungry for people that are my age, that are in their early 30s because that’s where the best and most effective ideas are coming from. So for me being an author in this time period is really exciting. Because there’s very much an openness to the kinds of ideas that I have to offer.
Dr. Kent: This is fascinating. In your book for a very small price, folks can check all of your expert solutions to marketing and video and all of this. We’ll visit you on the web at twoparrot.com and showmethebook.com. It’s been a real pleasure speaking with Jessica Kizorek.
Jessica: Thank you very much for having me.
Dr. Kent: Absolutely. My next guest is Jimmy Scott, sometimes known as Little Jimmy Scott. A legend in jazz. And it’s going to be my pleasure to speak with him in a few minutes. Come on back.
Jessica Kizorek | Show Me the Book
March 21, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We spoke with Jessica Kizorek today, an expert in online video marketing, and well-known in the world as a non-profit storyteller.More on Jessica Kizorek from her website: www.showmethebook.com:
An industry speaker on the subject of video marketing and the Internet, Jessica Kizorek was recently featured on CNN’s series “Young People Who Rock,” for her passion in documenting the impact of humanitarian efforts around the globe. Her production company, Two Parrot Productions, has spotlighted NGOs in Africa, Asia, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.
Jessica’s experience as a Producer/Director played into her new book, “Show Me: Marketing with Video on the Internet,” which has already received impressive reviews from marketing professionals. The book, was released on January 17th in both hardcover and paperback, draws from exclusive interviews with over 60 of the nation’s top advertising executives.She graduated Magna Cum Laude and Phi Beta Kappa, from the University of Colorado, and is a Gold Medal winner of the Vision Awards for Excellence in Video Production.To view Jessica’s CNN interview: www.TwoParrot.com/cnn
Kris Manley | Little Resumes
March 14, 2008 | Leave a Comment
We had the pleasure of speaking with Kris Manley on the show today about her interesting new concept. Resumes for children? We spoke about overworked kids, and about the value of showing kids their wonderful achievements in a written form! Very interesting concept.Find out more about Kris Manley and her resumes for children concept at www.resumesforchildren.com:
Donna Kristine Manley “Kris” is a native New Yorker, and a product of the New York City Sc