Relentlessly evolve…change with what changes around you and put people first.

Following Garry Jones Kevin Harrington a world-renowned direct response marketer, infomercial genius and investor on the Shark Tank spoke.  After speaking several other judges (Investors) were brought onto the stage and a mock “shark tank” was held where several entrepreneurs pitched their business venture in the hopes of raising capital. Really cool!  This was a flash back to when I pitched in the UCF Business plan competition- the Joust, which I won two years in a row, and later judged twice.

Incidentally, Tom from Bongobox, a company that “Makes Moving Less Sucky” won. Following this Orlando’s Mayor Buddy Dyer spoke and discussed Orlando’s entrepreneurial economy and plans. Dyer mentioned that Orlando is #1 in the nation for job creation in companies with less than 100 people. Awesome stat!

The co-founder & CTO of Grooveshark Josh Greenberg also spoke discussing the challenges that his team had when growing their business and how they overcame them.

Later in the day after lunch, which was catered by Arthurs- who catered my wedding the awards for the Big Awards were given.

Props to my good friends at GroundFlights who won the Orlando Inc 2011 Business Innovation and Growth award at the Big Summit today. Check out their awesome commercial when you get a chance. Very well done!

Finally Gary Vaynerchuck gave the keynote and as expected… Crushed it! He spoke about his life story…immigrating into the US from the Soviet Union, franchising a lemonade stand business at 5 and picking up his money on his big wheel…lol , selling baseball cards making $2k+ a weekend and then taking his family business, a wine company, from $3M to $70M by leveraging the power of social media. True American dream story…pure hustle and passion!

Another big thing Gary talked about was building relationships as opposed to push marketing and the importance of building relationships with individual customers, listening to them and doing random acts of kindness. I know first hand that this is very challenging and time consuming, but can pay dividends if you’re willing to make the investment.

Gary discussed traditional media versus engaging through social media and the fact that consumers have more power than ever before because they have instant access to the wisdom of their social circle of influence. This causes the good brands and products to rise to the top and the bad to get exposed. If you’re not listening to what’s being said about your brand or industry you are really setting yourself up for failure. The truth is participating and alone is not enough…you actually have to be better. In a capitalist society the market will indicate what is the best and the fact that everyone is so connected with enable the good (and the bad) to travel very quickly.

If you haven’t checked out Gary Vaynerchuck definitely follow him on twitter:  @garyvee and check out his Facebook page: www.facebook.com/gary .  He also video blogs often at Wine Library.

In addition to being an amazing innovator and entrepreneur Steve Jobs was also a great writer and speaker. One of my favorite Steve Jobs quotes is from his 2005 Stanford Commencement speech.

“You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle.

As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”

This is a very powerful quote and one that we should all live by.

I’ve added the full video for Steve Job’s commencement speech below.

Thanks for being such a great inspiration Steve.

You’ll truly be missed.

Google Insights for search is a tool freely available that can be very useful to a marketer is used properly. Google insights is is similar to Google Trends, a tool that shows the increase in frequency a keyword is searched, but Google Insights provides much more robust information that can be used for market intelligence and research.

Here’s a quick overview of how Google Insights for Search works…

First visit Google Insights for Search

Once you’ve arrived at the tool type in a keyword you would like to research, for this example I used “Hurricane Irene”.

You also have the ability to filter your search by type of search, location, time frame, or category.

Once you’ve done your search you’ll be able to…

See the Increase in search frequency over time

You can play with the time frames for your specific purpose and as you do so the graphical output will change.

View Top searches

You can see a list of the top searched keywords related to your initial search. This can be helpful to generate keyword ideas to get in front of a particular customer.

Uncover Rising or Break Out Search terms

Similar to the top keywords, but this shows those keywords that have the biggest increase in searches lately. It could be that these keywords will become top keywords soon, so this data can be very valuable as well.

Regional Search Data

This map functionality reminds me of the one in Google Analytics, and provides a map displaying the areas with the greatest number of searches. The initial search query, if left unfiltered will show countries. You then have the ability to drill down into that country and view the states and cities that have the highest frequency of searches. Though the example I used is for hurricane irene, one that could be a very profitable set of keywords for generator, travel, hurricane window, hotel and other types of companies this tool can produce data that would be immensely valuable for nearly any type of business. Whether you are a local service based business, or a large brand planning where to invest your advertising spend on a local level this feature can really help.

Though there are numerous tools that help with keyword research Google Insights for Search is one of the best to help identify and take advantage of trending or topical searches. In many cases there may be a very popular event or trend that causes a huge surge in search engine traffic, but because this is out of the normal search pattern it may not show up in other keyword tools. Though Google Trends shows the top or break out searches on a high level, once you’ve focused in on one Google Insights is a fabulous tool to really knock it out of the park.

I hope that you found this post helpful.

If you’ve had experiences with Google Trends, Google Insights, or other keyword tools that help identify trends I’d love to hear your thoughts and experiences. Drop a comment

All the best,

David

For those of you that don’t know….

GroupTable is a simple collaboration software that helps you easily manage group projects, study groups and all of the other groups of your life. With group calendars, to-do lists, file sharing, discussion boards and more, Mashable, a leading technology news blog, had this to say ”The entire makeup of the service is quite impressive. Powerful but not overwhelming.”

Over the last few months we have launched a number of major upgrades to GroupTable.  We have also launched a GroupTable Support Wiki to help our users.  We also created a simple overview video explaining GroupTable, which I’ve added below.

There are also a lot of great progressions going on behind the scenes as well that will come to light soon.

Thanks for your support over the last couple years everyone!

We’ll keep you posted

David

I was asked to speak about entrepreneurship with the goal of motivating the students to begin pursuing their entrepreneurial journey and have a great week at the camp.

Many people at this age, and many others, want to launch a successful business, but don’t necessarily have a start-up or business concept yet.

Rather than talk about how to market a business I focused my presentation on the following topics:

• Developing a personal brand- How it provides a solid foundation for entrepreneurial & professional success.
• Gaining experience and specialized knowledge-Becoming a student of the “game” you choose to play.
• Standing on the shoulders of Giants-Connecting with and leveraging mentors, advisers and thought leaders.
• Growing & managing your brand online-Beginning to reveal your expertise online & reputation management
• The Entrepreneurial mindset- What to be prepared for, being a problem solver, putting yourself in a position to succeed, etc.

My logic was that whatever business these students decided to go into these principles would help them.

The presentation above doesn’t include the personal anecdotes or additional depth I added regarding the topics referenced, but I still thought it would be worth while to share the presentation slides here.

After the presentation the students asked a number of questions, some of them were specifically related to start-ups they wanted to launch.  It was very exciting to see their passion at such a young age.  When many high school students are out hanging with friends, or playing sports, these students committed themselves to learning more to become successful in business.  It was a fantastic experience and I look forward to helping out with Junior Achievement more in the future.

The information I shared with the students I spoke with is relevant for many of my readers and others out there.  With that being said I thought I’d share it here as well.

First off a small back story to put everything in context…

Over the last six months or so I’ve given probably five different speeches/presentations, primarily to start-ups and second stage companies.  This actually included a talk at the Florida Technology Partnership event in Ft. Myers two days prior to my talk at UCF.  As I was in my hotel room in Ft Myers, after my speech to a group of CEOs and marketing executives, I had a thought….I’ve given essentially the same presentation the last five times or so that I’ve talked focused on marketing strategy, SEO, Social Media and branding.  Though this presentation was good I realized this information and delivery is perfect for those who already have companies and are trying to grow them, but will it add the same value to motivated college students.  Many of these college students aspire to be an entrepreneur, but don’t have a venture in mind let alone a product or service to market now.

What should I do…Should I give the same presentation or craft a new one.  My talk was scheduled for 1 hour and I altruistically always want to make sure my audience gets the most from my experiences and insight.

Unsure of how to approach it, especially with a  day and a half to go and lots of work to do at Brand Advance the next day…I decided to sleep on it and plan my attack on my drive back to Orlando from Ft. Myers (about 3-4 hours).

I started to go through a simple marketing exercise that I take my clients through at Brand Advance and thought about who I was trying to reach and influence….what are their problems, motivations, experiences, etc.  What can I offer to impact them the most and add the highest value.

In the case of students, learning new marketing tactics to grow brand awareness of a business isn’t as important and essential as learning how to market themselves…after all you are the only product you will have for the rest of your life.  If you can perfect marketing and building your personal brand through the process you will learn and understand how to market other brands as well.   Building brand you will continue to pay dividends and attract great opportunities into your life.

Personal branding is more important today than ever before.  Unemployment is extremely high, more people are graduating and more people are getting laid off from their jobs.

What does this mean?

It means that you have more competition for both obtaining a job, and growing your entrepreneurial ventures. What causes you to stand out and land that good job, find investment funding, gain experienced mentors, or align yourself with those who will be energized to work on your start up?

It’s your personal brand- made up of your credibility, past achievements, experiences, the way you carry yourself, who you associate with, and the knowledge you have in your respective field.

Here’s how I foresee many falling into the trap…

1. A student graduates excited to get a job in their field
2. Realize that unemployment is extremely high and get a job in an un-related field to pay the bills until they can find a better job, or launch their start-up.
3. They end up working in that unrelated job for years, not building experiences and credibility in their respective field and not keeping educated on new trends and industry knowledge.
4. When the market turns around in a few years an employer is going to hire either a fresh college grad that they can mold, or hire someone who was laid off in the field with industry specific experience.
5. The college student working in an unrelated field to pay the bills will be stuck in a weird spot…they won’t have enough industry specific knowledge to get a relevant job or launch a viable start-up that solves a market need.
6. They then are at a time to move on in their life and get married and have a kid at some point making it even harder to close the gap as others who get on the inside track in an industry so to speak.

So the question becomes….How do you solve this and avoid the trap?

Here’s my thoughts…

1. Get Educated…I’m not talking about a school education, though in some fields like medical and education this is essential.  I’m talking about keeping up with industry trends and learning how others in your field are staying on top of their game.  School is great at teaching you how to learn or the basic fundamentals in a given area.  Truth be told many of the trends that can really help you can’t be taught in school because the teachers are too busy teaching older text book lessons to keep up with them.  Even if they did teach you something innovative or forward thinking they are also teaching everyone else.  You need to learn more than other students in your classes….remember you are competing with students graduating at schools all across the country as well as those experienced industry professionals who have lost their jobs.
2. Stand on the Shoulders of Giants / Get Connected…It’s essential to begin developing relationships with influencers in your respective field.  These influencers can connect you to other influencers and if you’ve built your personal brand, have credibility and deliver good results this can be a continual never ending process.  You can meet potential business partners, employers, investors and much more.  Also- those who are more experienced in an industry also will be able to see trends that you may not that can assist you in developing new ventures.  Building your network of mentors is also another very wise thing to do.  They will have a personal interest in seeing you succeed and will be able to connect you to others in their network to assist with your endeavors.
3. Flex your expertise / Build your brand awareness:  Once you’ve found innovative trends and can begin constructing your own thoughts on various industry topics begin flexing your expertise by starting a blog utilizing wordpress.org or blogger.com.  I also recommend identifying top bloggers in your field and build a relationship with them by commenting on their blog or talking with them on twitter…If possible see if you can become a guest writer for their blog, which in many cases will have thousands of readers.  I also would suggest finding online groups and physical networking groups (ex: Linkedin, Google/Yahoo Groups & Meetup) to join as well as answering industry related questions in Q&A sites like yahoo answers.  Revealing your expertise through blogging and online networking will work wonders…I have gotten clients from my blog, job offers, new venture opportunities, media coverage and much more.
4. Leverage your successes: Often times people will achieve something that can differentiate them from their competitors, but will not put it out there.  It’s not bragging, it’s establishing credibility and showing your value.  Create an achievements page, it’s essentially an interactive resume.  It’s much more powerful than a regular resume because it can go more in depth, show pictures and even link off to other pages where you elaborate.
5. Control your brand online or someone else will:  You ideally should want to own the page when someone types your name into Google with content that you want them to see.  Employers will search for you, potential business partners, customers, investors and many more.  This is a huge part of building your brand online.  You want it to be easy for others to find you and when they do you want their findings to represent how you want your brand to be perceived.Purchase your own domain name if you can get it, or some sort of variation.  This can be done at godaddy.com.  Get a wordpress blog up, which should take about 10 mins or so and start blogging!  Also be sure to watch what you post on Facebook as well as what others post.  Know your brand and what you are trying to convey and don’t do anything contradictory to that because it may end up online.  Everyone has smart phones with cameras and video recorders these days…Your slip could be the next viral sensation and really damage your brand.
6. Launch a start up:  Once you’ve taken time to build your personal brand you should have connections and an understanding of trends occurring in the market place.  In my mind at this point it’s not a bad thing to start planning and getting your start up concept in motion.   Even if you fall flat on your face you’ll learn.  Don’t get discouraged entrepreneurship can have a lot of ups and downs, but more potential risk…more potential reward.  Note:  I would never recommend running up your credit cards and sinking all your money into a startup.  This kind of financial strain is never really a good idea unless you have some strong proof of concept.  Best case scenario….Your start up will be a success and you’ll create a job for yourself or better yet an asset that will make you millions.  At a minimum you can equip yourself with something to differentiate yourself from others in a job interview.  Working on a pet project and showing potential and traction is in my eyes much more impressive than a coffee grabbing internship, unrelated job, or high gpa.  It shows that you are a self starter, are resourceful, disciplined and can add the same value to another organization as well.By the way colleges are a great place to launch a business for a large variety of reasons.

Anyway I just looked at the clock and it’s 3:48 am…time flies when your in the zone.  Another thought on that note…be prepared to work long hours at times.  Launching a start up and building a personal brand, especially when working another job takes a lot of hours.  Don’t let your health suffer, but be prepared to put the time in.  It will eventually pay off.

Remember:  If it was easy everyone would be doing it!

I hope this post helped.  If you please share it with others in your network via Facebook, Twitter, Digg, delicious or Stumble Upon.

Good luck on your journey to success and watch out for the trap!

Let me know what you thought about the post in the comments below.

I need some help marketing my last two dance classes. Any suggestions on where and how to get the word out?

There are a number of ways that you can do this….

1) SEO: If you have a website optimize it for local keywords so that people can find you.  There are two main aspects of search engine optimization what happens on your website and what happens outside of your website.  The on page factors include your website’s code, content, urls, page titles, etc.  A website’s off page SEO is basically their link portfolio- how many sites are linking to you, what is the quality of the sites linking to you, etc.  Here is a previous post that I wrote regarding link building.  There are many different tactics, but this article will go over the basics.  http://davidbrim.org/seo-and-link-building-101

Also be sure you are listed on google places, yelp, etc and the other major local listing sites.  Check out www.getlisted.org

2) Facebook Ads: Advertise to your potential customers on Facebook.  You can select your target customers demographics, interests (including dance or dancing with the stars, etc), location and more.

3) Google Adwords: Similar to SEO, but pay for placement.  You basically bid on keywords and the combination of highest price and quality score (relevancy and authority in google’s eyes) will show first.  You only pay on a per click basis.  If going this route make sure you track your costs and the amount of sales generated to make sure your getting a return on investment.  You can also target your ads to a specific geographic area so you won’t be paying for those who are not in the right area to take advantage of your service.

4) Social Media: Use tracking tools like www.socialmention.com and monitter.com to see who is discussing dance related topics in a certain geographic area on twitter and facebook.  Viralheat.com is another good tool for monitoring social media conversations globally or locally, but that is a paid subscription based tool.Once they are found you can engage these users with various tactics to raise your brand’s visibility.

5) Craigslist & other Classified marketing sites: Post your service on craigslist in your city.  This is a very highly trafficked classified site and can be very effective.  Other popular classified marketing sites include: Back Page and Epage.

6) Referrals: Tap into your current client’s social circles of influence and ask them for referrals.  It’s also wise to have your current clients become a fan of your brand on facebook so your brand gets out to their friends.  Possibly offer an incentive of a free class or discount to those who refer other clients.

7) Direct mail & Traditional Marketing: We worked with a dance company and did a direct mail campaign to kick off their grand opening.  We had formal invitations developed and mailed them out to homes tax assessed at $350K+.  They had a great turn out, but direct mail can be very expensive.  Radio and TV are also options depending on your budget, but internet marketing will provide a more cost effective and measurable solution.

Give a free performance- Attract people in with a free show or performance.  Once they are there give them food and/or wine (if legal aged) which can be donated from sponsors.  While there have people offer a free lesson to those who attend and sign them up on the spot.

9) Local Coupon Sites like Groupon- The local daily/weekly coupon craze is going full blast.  Leading the charge is Groupon, however competitors like LivingSocial, Tippr, and Buywithme are all gaining traction.

10) Harness the power of Local Meetup and Facebook groups- Local online groups can be a very powerful way to raise awareness of your venture.  Visit www.meetup.com and do a search for your zipcode and a relevant keyword.  Also visit Facebook and do searches to find relevant groups and fan pages.  There are several ways to utilize these groups and pages.

• First- you can simply participate in a popular local group- by sharing an insightful comment with a link to your website people will be intrigued to learn more and click through the link to learn more about your business.
• Second- You can contact the group creator or page admin and ask them to send out a message to their audience.  This may cost some money, but will give your brand good viability if you can find the right group.
• Finally- Start your own interest group.  If you have the time, it can be very valuable to start an online group around a topic of interest yourself.  You can network with people interested in this topic and if you ask intriguing questions and share thoughtful responses you will be perceived as an expert and someone a potential customer would want to hire.

I hope this helps!

If you have any additional questions let me know.

–

What do you guys think…Did I miss any anything?

If so feel free to comment.

All the best,

David

This may seem like a small adjustment, but what does this mean to your business?

This small preview icon in the search engine results means a great deal to a business…It can work for or against you, bringing you more customers or less.

If you show up highly on the search engines for various keywords, but have a poorly designed website you now have a higher chance of a customer selecting a lower result that appears (from instant preview) to better fit their needs.  On the other side if you have a strongly designed website you now have the chance to steal away customers who in the past would immediately click the first or second result that they came across.

Now if you have a strongly designed website, but are on the second or third page Google Instant Preview doesn’t necessarily help you, because consumers often don’t venture past the first page when making decisions via search.  Having a strong SEO presence consisting of optimized title tags, url structure, content, proper keywords and quality links is still extremely important.

If you have a website that is not being found through search engines now is the time to assess how it was built (functionally and aesthetically), enhance or re-design the website and implement an SEO strategy.

Have Google Instant Previews work for your business, not against it.

I thought I’d share the video and back story, both can be seen below…

Last January my girlfriend of five years, Lindsay, and I got engaged. At the time we were living in a prestigious and highly desirable area in Orlando called Baldwin Park. Though this was a fantastic area that we thoroughly enjoyed for over two years, we wanted to begin building a solid financial foundation together and throwing away $1,350 each month in rent wasn’t the best move in the long term for us.

This being the case I thought to myself how can we minimize our expenses, save for a wedding and still become home owners and have our monthly living expenses go towards building wealth not losing it…

Then I had an idea…

Why not find a duplex…Live in one side and rent the other out.

I spent the next 6 hours or so looking at properties and finally found one that I liked. I also noticed that the property was a foreclosure that was drastically reduced. It was also in walking distance to a fantastic shopping area equipped with a 24 hour fitness center, tons of restaurants and a frozen yogurt shop (one of Lindsay’s favorites).

I shared the idea with Lindsay and at first she said “No Way”…I said hear me out and explained to her the goal and what this would mean for us.

I also showed her pictures of the property that I found…She loved it

We had no real estate agent, but both wanted to see the property. I decided to go seek one out…I walked outside of our apartment talked to two or three people and a neighbor directed me to a friend’s mom who was a real estate agent. I met with her that day and the next day Lindsay and I saw the property.

We were very pleased with it…It more than lived up to the pictures that we had seen online. This was in mid August.

We put an offer in on the property and it was soon accepted….Smooth process right?

Not so fast

The property had $75,000 in tax liens and violations from the previous owner. There was also some code enforcement issues and it didn’t help that the bank we were in contract with sold the property to another bank while in contract.

What was supposed to be a done deal in early September turned into October then into November…Our lease for our apartment in Baldwin Park ran out in October and was immediately rented out to another family forcing us to move out…We were now homeless.

We moved in with a friend, who was gracious enough to have Lindsay and I as house guests…after dealing with lots of back and forth over the next month we finally closed on our property the day after thanksgiving.

Now that’s something to be thankful for!

Lindsay and I are very happy with our decision and plan on renting the property over the next couple weeks. This will really help us subsidize our monthly expenses and help our marriage get started in the right direction financially.  After all who wouldn’t want to have to pay their own mortgage payment?  Even if 50%-70% is covered it’s still a win, especially in the long run.

We are now settled into our new place. I’ll post pictures of the place fully furnished once all of our boxes are put away, but you can see the video above that I took several months back of the property.

What do you think about this plan?

Is this something you would consider doing as well? If you know of anyone looking to rent a place in Orlando…pass them my way

I’ll make sure you get a referral bonus if they end up signing a lease.

I finished up revising my presentation earlier this week and decided to share it here for all of you.

Let me know what you think!

All the best,

David