5 Things I Gained by Reading for Thirty Minutes Everyday

It is said that the average self-made millionaire will read at least one or two books a month. And those books are generally nonfiction: self-help, financial, career based and leadership books. Hearing this fact inspired me to make my own personal goal last year. I was going to read at least thirty minutes every day with the hopes of completing at least one or two books a month. Now, I may not be a millionaire (yet), but I truly did see some pretty amazing outcomes from reading as much as I did.

5 Things I Gained

1. Knowledge – You read for one of two reasons: entertainment or learning. I chose to focus my reading on learning. I can honestly say, before reading books like Total Money Make Over by Dave Ramsey and Rich Dad Poor Dad by Robert Kiyosaki, I did not have the best grasp on how to manage my money. But reading led to knowledge, and that knowledge led to action. Now my wife and I manage, invest, and budget our money better than we ever did when we first got married—all thanks to what we learned while reading. 

2. Creativity – I was able to expand my creativity three different ways by reading. First, I made sure to read a few different novels last year. A well written novel can help expand your imagination and, in turn, your creativity. Second, I read creativity focused books such as Steal Like An Artist by Austin Kleon. Creativity based books are full of ideas on how to expand your creativity which I have found to be very effective. Lastly, business and marketing related books gave me new business ideas. They let me think creatively when thinking business.

3. Vocabulary – I like to keep my phone near me as I read for one reason—to use it as a dictionary. As I read, I look up any words I’ve never seen before. Ironically enough, I never knew what the word lexicon meant until reading Scientific Advertising by Claude Hopkins. Then, once I’ve memorized that new word, I keep it in my arsenal of “smart sounding words” for later use.

4. Writing Skills – If you want to be a great basketball player, you’ll study the greats like Michael Jordan and Kobe Bryant. You’ll watch their games, see how they handle the ball and move their feet, and then go out and try it yourself. Writing is a similar skill. When you read books by great authors, you start to pick up on their writing style. You also become more familiar with correct grammar and sentence structure. I’m definitely not the greatest writer, but my skills have sure improved since making it a goal to read every day for thirty minutes.

5. A Healthy Habit – I used to spend my breaks at work and the last half an hour before bed on my phone. I would do as most people do and surf Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and LinkedIn to kill time. I decided to choose those times of the day as when I would do my half an hour or more of reading. I replaced the mind numbing bad habit of spending too much time on my phone with the honorable habit of reading. Essentially, I replaced pointless cat videos with wisdom. Now, rather than craving my phone throughout the day, I start jonesing if I haven’t done my reading yet. 

5 Tips To Help you Read Every Day

Would you like to make reading every day a goal of yours? It’s not an easy task, but it’s definitely doable. Here are 5 tips to help you achieve your goal of reading every day for thirty minutes or more:

1. Always have another book to read before you finish the current one you’re on. This will help you not miss a beat. You can finish one book today, and quickly start another tomorrow.

2. Dedicate a time of a day for reading. Sometimes we tell ourselves that we’ll read at some point during the day. Then, low and behold, the end of the day shows up and we haven’t had time to read. This problem is easily solved: set a specific time to read. I personally read during my break at work and then right before bed—9:30pm MST to be exact. If I know I’m going to be busy the next night, then I’ll plan accordingly around it and choose a different time. 

3. Pick an amount of time to read. Thirty minutes is what I chose and it differs for every kind of book. If I am reading a nonfiction, thirty minutes is perfect. I then like to spend the rest of my time before bed or early the next morning absorbing and reviewing what I read in my mind. But if it’s a novel, I’ll read that 500 page beast in a few days depending on how captivating it is. Either way, setting a minimum amount of time that you’ll read for creates a goal. Then, as you read, you’ll feel obligated to read for at least that amount of time. That way you don’t end up reading just 5 minutes a day.

4. Keep a list of books you want to read. Whenever I hear about a book that seems intriguing, I write it down in a note book of mine. I literally have a page, front and back, in my note book dedicated to books I want to read. Then I put a check mark next to the books I’ve read on the list. This helps me choose my next book easily, and makes reading feel like a game.

5. Read a shorter book every once in a while. To help me break up reading longer books, I’ll choose a shorter book to read in between. For example, between reading 7 Habits of Highly Effective People by Stephen Covey (340 pages) and David and Goliath by Malcolm Gladwell (295 pages) I read It’s Not How Good You Are, It’s How Good You Want To BE by Paul Arden (127 pages). This way it feels like I’m taking a break, without ever really taking one. 

Next Year’s Marketing Plan: Start an Epidemic

Word of mouth is easily the most powerful and effective tool in advertising. Just ask any small, successful business that swears it doesn’t do any advertising on its own. Though word of mouth is often perceived as something that comes naturally as long as you have a great product or service, there is most definitely a strategy behind it all. If you really want to spread awareness of your product or service, you’ll need to roll up your sleeves, get to work, and start an epidemic.

In his book, The Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell discusses what it is exactly that causes certain ideas, fashion trends, products, and bestsellers to gain nationwide recognition. His argument: they spread like viruses just as in an epidemic. So how do you start an epidemic for your own business’s products and services? According to Gladwell, there are three factors that play a major role in your epidemic spreading efforts: The Law of the Few, The Stickiness Factor, and The Power of Context.

1. The Law of the Few

The 80/20 Principle is the idea that in any situation roughly 80 percent of the “work” will be done by 20 percent of the participants. So it is in the epidemic spreading process. The Law of the Few is the idea that your product can become the nation’s next big trend thanks to only a few people—a very rare type of few people.

“The success of any kind of social epidemic is heavily dependent on the involvement of people with a particular and rare set of social gifts,” says Gladwell. These people are especially enthusiastic, energetic, and have many social connections. As they come in contact with your message, product, or service, they will begin to spread the word to all of their connections. Unlike the average Joe though, these special people are so enthusiastic and likeable that they can sell almost any of their numerous friends on your product. So in this case, rather than focusing all of your attention on reaching the masses with your marketing efforts, why not try to reach the rare few that could spread the word for you?

2. The Stickiness Factor

What’s the point of creating a message that is contagious, if it’s not going to stick? Most of the time, thanks to the stickiness of a message it gets spread even further. Gladwell said, “The Stickiness Factor says that there are specific ways of making a contagious message memorable; there are relatively simple changes in the presentation and structuring of information that can make a big difference in how much of an impact it makes.” Unless your audience remembers the message they heard, why would they purchase your product or buy into your services? Tweak your presentation to make your message so intriguing that people won’t be able to get it out of their head. Once it’s stuck in their head, they’ll most likely start telling their friends about it.

3. The Power of Context

Gary Vaynerchuk once said, “If content is king, then context is God.” Malcolm Gladwell said, “The Power of Context says that human beings are a lot more sensitive to their environment than they may seem.”  When marketing to your audience, it is important to consider their environment. Gladwell argues that the key to getting people to change their behavior sometimes lies with the smallest details in their immediate situation. I guess the question then is how well do you know your audience?

Marketing guru Seth Godin echoes a lot of the claims made by Gladwell. In his book All Marketers Are Liars, Godin had this to say, “Whether you create a product, market a service or run a nonprofit, you win when you spread your ideas. If your ideas spread from person to person, you’ll grow in influence and everything will get easier.” He goes on to say, “If everyone who matters knows your idea, you win.” Get your message into the hands of influential people, make that message as memorable as possible, and make sure it is tailored to your audience’s wants and needs. That’s how you start and epidemic. And that is, as Godin puts it, how you win. 

Is Your Company’s Advertising Seeking Applause or Sales?

When you’re a marketer, driving on the freeway can actually be quite enjoyable. As you drive by countless billboards, you tend to read and critique them. There is a particular stretch of freeway going north of my home that I really enjoy driving on. Over this 30 mile stretch, there are certain billboards that always tend to draw my attention—not always for a good reason. There are two different businesses in particular that advertise on billboards in that 30 mile stretch that I always love analyzing. There are some pretty big key differences between how the two of them advertise.

Business A has about 10 billboards down that stretch of the freeway going each way. Business B, on the other hand, only has one billboard. I think it is safe to say that Business A is winning at frequency. But, how successful is frequency when the content on the billboards does a poor job of conveying a message. Neither business uses any photos in their ads, just written content. Here are just two examples of Business A’s ad content: 1. Less Ponzi, More Fonzie. 2. No one knows what it means, but it’s provocative. After reading that content, do you know what Business A does? Are you going to drive home and buy whatever it is they are offering? Now here is what Business B’s ad says: Write cool code and still see your family. Can you tell what Business B offers? Can you decipher their unique selling point? I know I can.

As far as I have researched, both Business A and Business B are fairly young companies. They have not achieved the level of global brand awareness that Nike and Starbucks have. Therefore, one would think that the content on their advertisements is critical in introducing them to consumers. The advertisements need to somehow, in a matter of just seconds, convey a message that tells a story and sells the customer on their product or offering.

Tell a Story

The author and marketing genius Seth Godin says in his book, All Marketers Are Liars, that the place to start with your product, service, or organization is this: what classic story can I tell? Godin explains, “In order to survive the onslaught of choices, consumers make snap judgements.” He goes on, ” The pieces of the story come together in an instant and the story is told. If the story is confusing or contradictory or impossible, the consumer panics and ignores it. But if the story is compelling and addresses basic desires like fear or power or acceptance, it might just be embraced.” Business A does not seem to tell a story with their billboards. They have quirky quotes that are meant to spark some measure of curiosity in the consumer—possibly leading the consumer to find out more about the business later. Business B, on the other hand, tells a story. I can learn to code and still have time for my family. That’s a pretty awesome story to tell consumers since coding is usually seen as something that can be quite time consuming.

Be a Businessman

When creating an ad, advertisers have to ask themselves what the goal of the advertisement is. Is it to generate laughs? Is to inform the masses? Is it to educate? So on and so forth. The advertising pioneer Claude Hopkins had this to say in his book, Scientific Advertising: “Ads are not written to entertain. When they do, those entertainment seekers are little likely to be the people whom you want.” He goes on, “That is one of the greatest advertising faults. Ad writers abandon their parts. They forget they are salesmen and try to be performers. Instead of sales, they seek applause.” According to Hopkins, as well as many other great advertisers, the whole point of advertising is to make sales. Therefore, when advertising, you must think as a salesman would think. What would you say to a customer if they were in right in front of you? If a salesman came to me and said that they have a business that is less Ponzi and more Fonzie, I would stand there confused. But if the same salesman came to me and said that he can help me learn how to code, and I would still be able to see my family, I would be very interested in hearing more about his offer.

Sometimes advertisers can fall into the trap of wanting to create content that is entertaining, edgy, or clever, but does not help generate sales. When creating an advertisement, advertisers need to first focus on how the ad will bring in new sales. The entertaining, edgy, and clever parts can come later. Study your typical consumer. What will draw them in? What story can you tell as a salesman that will bring them to your store or your website and help them make a purchase? The time spent thinking like your customer and creating an ad fit for them is crucial. Your execution cannot be mediocre. For, as Claude Hopkins put it, “A mediocre salesman may affect a small part of your trade. Mediocre advertising affects all of your trade.” 

Left-Brained Marketing Vs. Right-Brained Marketing

When it comes to marketing your business, choosing where to focus your advertising budget can be a challenge. Professionals will argue over which form of marketing is most important based off of your business’s size, industry, and budget. In the end, however, how well you execute your advertising is just as important as what methods of advertising you decide to use. If the execution part seems difficult, think of it this way: Have you used the left side of your brain, as well as the right side?

A person who is "left-brained" is often said to be more logical, analytical, and objective.  In a nutshell, these people do math for fun—that’s a joke of course because no one does math for fun. A person who is "right-brained" is said to be more intuitive, thoughtful, and subjective. These are generally those artsy, creative people. When it comes to marketing, we need to be both left-brained, as well as right-brained.

The way I see it, left-brained is used for checking off all of the boxes. It’s almost like seeing everything as a checklist. For instance, a marketing department wanting to use their company website to market their business might ask themselves the following questions: Do we have a website? Is it functional? Is it built up to the current SEO standards? Is it being found on the first page of Google? Right-brained thinking would be more like: Is our website attractive and unique? Does it tell a story? Is it creative and engaging? Proper balance between the two sides leads to a well-rounded marketing effort.

I once had a client call me, asking why he wasn’t receiving more business. He explained that he had recently built a website which listed his business phone number and address. “I’m not receiving any calls. What’s the deal?” he asked. I pulled up his website and there it was, a one page catastrophe. Remember those awful websites from the ‘90s? The ones full of twinkling, bright colored text? You know, a black background with the business name written in Comic Sans? Yeah, that’s what my client had just paid a web designer for just months prior to our phone call. If I remember correctly, there was a photo, about a paragraph of body copy, and then the contact information down below. That was the whole website. “But the website is up, it has my contact information, and I’m even being found on the first page of Google for certain keywords,” the client argued, “What gives?”  Ah-ha, he is thinking with the left side of his brain. He is checking those special boxes that tell him he is doing everything right.

So I posed the question, “What story does your website tell?” A moment of silence. “Well, I guess it’s not telling any type of story,” he responded. Not that I said this to him, but his website was telling a story unintentionally—a bad one at that.  But I went ahead and explained to him that checking the boxes isn’t enough. I asked him, “If you came across your website, would you want to do business?” Another moment of silence. “Well, I guess not,” he finally answered. I used the right-brained/left-brained analogy with him and explained that he needs to redo his website: add new pages, pick new fonts, write better content, and much more. To some, that may seem harsh. But it’s the truth. You can’t always look at things analytically. “Well, I have a website and I’m showing up on Google, therefore I can go focus on other marketing efforts now” is not the type of attitude you can have. It goes deeper than that. Marketing goes deeper than that.

Yes, you do need to check all of the boxes as you execute your business’s marketing efforts. But you also need to look at things through your clients’ eyes. I know this may seem like a surprise to some, but website viewers aren’t always going to view your website’s page source in order to make sure that you have properly optimized your website. “Do they have all of the proper meta tags in place? No? Well I’m not buying from them then,” said no one ever. What they are going to want to see is an engaging, interactive, and compelling website that tells a story.

The left-brained/right-brained idea applies to so much more than just a website. It applies to your Social Media marketing, your PPC campaign, your SEO efforts, everything. Having a business Facebook page and posting consistently isn’t enough. Are your posts compelling? Do they draw in your audience? On Twitter, are your tweets worthy enough to be retweeted? The examples are endless.

If your business is struggling with your marketing efforts, try this: check all of the boxes on the checklist, and after, dive deeper. If you do not have a good content writer on your team who can write creative web content and social media posts, hire one. If you’re advertising in a visual realm, but don’t feel the generic stock photos you are sharing are good enough, hire a skilled graphic designer who can create amazing visuals. Overall, remember this: use all of your brain, not just one side. Marketing is more complex than you might think.

Who Is Managing Your Company's Social Media?

Before my last semester of college, I worked as a marketing intern at one of the country’s top consulting firms. One of my many tasks was to manage the firm’s various social media accounts. This included the company’s Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn pages. Having taken classes on social media marketing and strategy, I felt confident in my skill set. There were a few times as an intern, however, when my supervisor, the marketing director of the firm, would hand me articles written on social media marketing and ask that I read through them, take notes of anything we should implement, and then report back to him. To my surprise, the majority of the articles I was handed stated that the number one cardinal sin businesses make when implementing social media into their marketing strategy is to have untrained employees manage their social media—sometimes that meant interns. If I’m being honest, the intern part was generally left out when I reported back to my supervisor.

Though at first I felt that these articles could be detrimental to me managing the company’s social media, I really did not have much to fear. When talking about interns, the authors were referring to interns that had not been trained in social media management. But what was even worse than an untrained marketing intern, was random people from the company being tasked with managing their business’s various social outlets on top of whatever job they already had.

An inside joke that a lot of marketers share is that some employers tend to think that their seventeen-year-old niece could manage their company’s Facebook page due to the fact that she herself has a personal Facebook page. One business owner recently told me that her company had only recently gotten on social media. “We decided we finally needed to get on the social media band wagon,” she said, “so we got one of our guys in IT to manage Facebook and Twitter. I mean, he has a Facebook so he should know what he’s doing, right?” Let that sink in for a second. There are actually employers out there that think that due to having a personal social media account, a person is automatically qualified to manage the social media account (or various accounts) of their company. Wow. So if I need a professional photographer, should I hire someone who has taken plenty of pictures with their iPhone? No training required as long as they know how to point and shoot, right?

With the amount of people on social media today, it is crucial that employers understand the importance of their company’s social media pages. These pages, when managed properly, can be the voice of the company that creates an alternative route for lead generation. But it takes skill. There is research and strategy that goes into the management. At what time of the day should you post? How often should you post? What kind of content should you post? Not to mention, when should boosting and paid ads be implemented into your company’s marketing budget? There are no universal answers for any of these questions.

 Each company has a unique audience that they try to target.  A strategy that works well for one company, won’t always work well for another. All of these decisions are determined through thorough research of the market and, a lot of times, by trial and error. Once social media marketing has begun, the efforts need to be watched, recorded, and studied in order to see if any changes need to be made. Managing social media is so much more than writing a clever post or uploading an attractive photo. There is a strategy involved that can only be accomplished by someone who, just like with any other skill, has studied and trained.

If your reason for using social media is to give your company a more personal voice while at the same time increasing your business, then you better make sure that it is being handled by a professional—someone  who has worked with social media marketing before and has learned the tips and tricks. Think about the business you work for and ask yourself these questions: Who is managing our business's social media? Who is behind the voice of our business's social presence? Is it one of the young fellows from the IT department? Or is it a trained professional who has the knowledge and experience to hold such an important responsibility? For your sake, and your business's, I hope it is the latter.

The Art of Being Self-Taught

Sometimes in our moments of unexpected meditation we have the most wonderful epiphanies. One of the greatest I ever had was as a recent college graduate who had just gotten married. I don’t know what caused the epiphany more, the fact that I was responsible for providing for another human being, or the fact that I was finally done with school. I felt overwhelmed as I thought about how I had just spent four years in college, yet felt like I still had so much more to learn. I was nervous that due to a lack of knowledge and certain skills I might not be able to find a good job and provide for my wife. And that’s when the epiphany came in all of its glory: Just because I’m done with school, does not mean my education is over.

As I have spent more and more time studying successful entrepreneurs, I have found that most of them share one common belief: being school-taught is good, but being self-taught is better. Some of the greatest entrepreneurs, such as Mark Zuckerberg and Steve Jobs, didn’t even finish college. Though they quit on school, they never quit on education. These men spent countless hours learning and honing their skills. I think it’s safe to say that these men dedicated more time and effort to their education than most college students probably do.

 In his book Steal Like An Artist, Austin Kleon says, “School is one thing. Education is another. The two don't always overlap. Whether you’re in school or not; it’s always your job to get yourself an education.” With all of the technology that’s available right at our fingertips, it’s never been easier to educate ourselves. The late author Stephen Covey said, “Education—continuing education, continually honing and expanding the mind—is vital mental renewal. Sometimes that involves the external discipline of the classroom or systemized study programs; more often it does not. Proactive people can figure out many, many ways to educate themselves.”

Many times we are so anxious to see immediate results that we don’t spend enough time educating ourselves. As Covey put it, sometimes we are so focused on sawing down the tree, that we don’t take the time to sharpen our saw. You can’t get very far with a dull saw. A lot of people like to trick themselves into believing that they are too busy to learn outside of school. The truth is that there’s always time to learn. The key is to be proactive about it. Someone who spends an hour a day on Netflix could easily cut that hour down to 30 minutes and spend the rest of the time reading. There are so many opportunities throughout the day to learn, but opportunities are often missed and time is frequently wasted on less important things like social media and TV. Other times people think that their college degree alone will get them their dream job. It’s a sad day when they realize that all of the other applicants of their dream job have college degrees as well. Though if it’s any consolation to them, at least they have one up on Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg.

If the old adage “knowledge is power” is true, then we must continue to learn. We must sharpen our saw. No one is going to force us to do it. Like Stephen Covey said, we have to be proactive. We have to be hungry for education. We have to be willing to make sacrifices. If we do not continue to learn, we will not continue to grow. And if we do not continue to grow, how can we expect to accomplish greatness?

Creativity Is Theft

Creativity, in essence, is the beginning of all things in existence. For example, Michelangelo used creativity to design and paint the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. In today’s era, people like JK Rowling use creativity to dream up fantasy worlds that are visited by many adoring fans through books, movies, and now a theme park. Even Mark Zuckerberg relied on creativity to develop a website that connects people from all over the world.  

What does each one of these creative people have in common? They were all influenced by their predecessors. Michelangelo was influenced by early Renaissance masters such as Ghiberti, Ghilandaio, and Giovianni. Mark Zuckerberg had surely heard of Myspace prior to inventing Facebook. And I often argue with people that it’s no coincidence that the horcruxes in the Harry Potter series are tangible items that keep the story’s antagonist alive, just like Sauron’s one ring in The Lord of the Rings. My next blog post, by the way, will be on how to offend any die-hard Harry Potter fan in one sentence.

The visionary artist Pablo Picaso said, “Art is theft.” The New York Times Bestselling author Austin Kleon added to that declaration by saying, “All creative work comes from what came before. Nothing is completely original.” In his book, STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST, Kleon discusses 10 tips for being creative. Number one on the list is: steal like an artist. Kleon says that every artist gets asked, “Where do you get your ideas from?” The honest artist answers, “I steal them.”

The writer Johnathan Lethem once said that when people call something “original,” nine times out of ten they simply just don’t know the reference or original source involved. Think of the last time you created something. It could have been a piece of artwork, a meal for your family, or even a new marketing strategy for your company. Now that you have something in mind, think of how it was created. Did you magically create something entirely “original” out of thin air, or did you take little pieces and ideas of what you saw others do before you and produce something new? If I had to guess, I would assume the latter.

So how do we steal properly without being considered a plagiarist, a copycat, or a knockoff? Simply put, we seek influences and then we imitate. Salvador DalÍ said, “Those who do not want to imitate anything, produce nothing.”  Copying a book word for word, chapter for chapter is plagiarism. Gaining ideas from authors you idealize and then writing your own story is art. Kleon put it this way, “Nobody is born with a style or a voice. We don’t come out of the womb knowing who we are. In the beginning, we learn by pretending to be our heroes.” We tend do that our whole lives. We constantly think of who we want to be like, and we try to emulate them. In this way we aren’t really “stealing,” rather we are learning to be like them, think like them, and create like them. Kleon said, “A wonderful flaw about human beings is that we’re incapable of making perfect copies. Our failure to copy our heroes is where we discover where our own thing lives. That is how we evolve.”

When you feel a lack of creativity in your life, stop and think of one of your heroes. It can be an author, a musician, an athlete, an entrepreneur, a connoisseur, a saboteur, so on and so forth. Find out what makes them who they are. How do they view the world through their eyes? How do they create? What have they created? Once you have that figured out, steal from them.  Don’t plagiarize, but research, absorb, and then emulate.  By doing this enough, we take existing matter and create our own world, hoping that one day someone might steal from us. 

What Type of LinkedIn User Are You?

Networking has never been as easy as it is today. You can literally sit on the couch, pull out your smart phone, open up the LinkedIn app, and begin connecting with other professionals in your industry. After connecting with fellow LinkedIn users, you can begin to reach out and network. Need help finding a job? Try reaching out to someone who works at a company you want to work for. Want some advice? Send a message to someone who holds a position you want to hold one day and ask them how they got there. With LinkedIn being such a convenient and easy way to connect with other professionals, it is surprising that more people do not attribute their success in finding a job to the online networking site. If I had to guess at why that is, I would say it has everything to do with how LinkedIn is being used.

Simply put, there are two types of LinkedIn users. There are those who use LinkedIn exactly how it was intended and then there are those who do not. After graduating college with a degree in advertising, I was on the hunt for my first real career-starting job. My wife and I were going to move to Provo, Utah so she could start esthetician school. Neither of us had ever lived in Provo before and therefore didn’t know what the job market was like. It was at this time of my life that I dealt with the two very different types of LinkedIn users. I will let you, the reader, decide which user you think is using LinkedIn correctly and which is not.

LinkedIn User A

Not knowing much about the marketing industry in Provo, I decided to hop on LinkedIn and look for any acquaintances that lived in the area and worked in advertising, PR, or marketing.  After a bit of research, I finally found someone. It was an old friend of mine from California whom I hadn’t seen in over five years. I sent him a very professionally written message over LinkedIn asking if he knew of any agencies that were hiring. I then waited anxiously for a response, but it never came. Not even a simple ‘no’ ever entered my inbox.  I watched as that same friend continued to post his accomplishments and projects on his LinkedIn feed for all of his connections to see. He would even ask his connections for favors such as letting him borrow personal items for projects he was working on.

LinkedIn User B

Once it was solidified that my wife and I would be moving to Provo, Utah I changed the headline on my LinkedIn profile to read something along the lines of “Seeking a job in advertising in the Provo, Utah area.” Only a few days later I received a LinkedIn message from a former classmate of mine. He told me that he had seen that I was looking for an advertising job in Provo and wanted to know if he could help. He and his wife had moved to the area a little less than a year earlier and he had been looking for jobs in copywriting. We had a long discussion where he gave me advice on building my portfolio, suggested certain books to read, and even let me know of some agencies in the Provo area that he knew were hiring.  At the end of the conversation he told me to reach out to him if I ever needed more help.

Now for the moment of truth: which LinkedIn user uses LinkedIn correctly and which one does not? This should be an easy one. LinkedIn user A uses LinkedIn for the purpose of showing off what they have done, hoping that one day their dream employer will reach out to them asking if they want a job. LinkedIn user B uses LinkedIn exactly how it was intended—for networking. The Oxford dictionary describes a network as, “A group of people who exchange information, contacts, and experience for professional or social purposes.” That word “exchange” sticks out to me the most because it means that networking is a two way street. You have to give in order to receive. Unfortunately, all too often we see people on LinkedIn who use it as a way to make themselves look good, without considering how they can help others. So next time you use LinkedIn, ask yourself—what type of LinkedIn user am I? 

How to Win a Social Media Fight like a Champ

I was recently browsing Facebook when I came across an interesting post in which a friend of mine, like many others do on social media, expressed a personal belief of his. Shortly after he made his comment, a fight broke out. Within an hour he had almost 50 replies under his original post.  The majority of those who commented disagreed with his opinion, while a few brave souls were there to defend him. As someone who was not participating in the argument-simply spectating- I watched things go from bad to worse. Personal attacks were being made towards my friend all because he expressed a simple opinion he believed strongly about. As a result, he ended up deleting his post the very next day.

Now the question I ask myself in these situations is this: is it better to stay silent on social media so that you don’t have to deal with bullies? The answer, of course, is ‘no’. Social media is meant to be a place of interaction and expression. We shouldn’t have to fear expressing our opinions just because there are people who are constantly scouring Facebook looking for a good argument. Disagreeing with someone is just fine, but verbally attacking someone is never alright. It is in moments like these when we must learn how to handle those pesky commenters who want nothing more than to give us a headache. Author, speaker, and social media guru, Guy Kawasaki, has come up with two bullet proof tips on how to win any social media fight like a champ.

1. Go Three Rounds. Guy teaches that the first key to winning any social media fight is to embrace the rules of amateur boxing and fight for only three rounds. He says, “The opening bell is when you share a post. Ding-ding. Round 1: Commenter comments. Round 2: You respond. Round 3: Commenter responds to the response. End of fight.” Simple enough right? Don’t let the fight last longer than it needs to; otherwise you’re going to find yourself going 10, 15, 20 rounds with some random person you haven’t talked to since high school.

2. Delete, Block, and Report. If keeping it to three rounds doesn’t work, move onto tip # 2.  Guy advises, “Don’t hesitate to ignore, delete, block, or report trolls and spammers. You don’t have a moral obligation to engage with them, and there’s little advantage to lowering yourself to their level.“ Have you ever heard the saying that one way to win a fight is to ignore it? The point is that we all know that social media arguments are pointless, so sometimes the best thing to do when you feel that someone has crossed the line is to delete their comment (not yours), delete that friend, and move on with your life.

There you have it, two tips for winning any social media fight like a champ. We are all too busy to worry about offending someone over social media. If we aren’t using profanity, posting obscene photos or talking about topics that would be considered inappropriate to the average human being, then we are likely in the clear to post to Facebook. If someone disagrees with your post and makes a comment, that’s totally fine. That’s one of the many reasons for social media. But if someone is constantly trying to argue and personally attack you on social media where all of your friends and family can see, just drop them. Ain’t nobody got time for that. 

Be Like a Sponge

The late Bruce Lee once taught us to be like water: formless, fluid, and flexible. I would echo his teaching while also adding a bit of my own: be like a sponge. As a sponge absorbs, it grows. My advice to you is to absorb everything.

A couple of years back, I took a semester off of school, went back home to California, and worked as a mason to earn some money. There I was, a junior in college studying advertising, taking a semester off so I could work a job in construction. That might seem like the biggest waste of time. Trust me, that thought crossed my mind more than once. But as I settled into the idea of working construction for four months, while I could have been doing an internship at an advertising agency instead, I decided that I needed to make the most of it. I had to ask myself as I worked, “What can I gain from this experience?” Now I’m not talking about money. In this case, I’m talking about knowledge and skills. I broke my back every day cutting rebar, stacking bricks, mixing cement, and building walls all while being yelled at by a foreman.  Though it was rough, I ended my time there with a much better work ethic. This job had taught me, quite literally, how to push through the dirt and filth in order to create something beautiful.  You better believe that a skill like that comes in handy when working in advertising, graphic design, or even writing your first blog post.

Now, not everyone needs to stop what they’re doing and go grab a shovel. But the point is that we are all put in situations that we either want to be in or would prefer not to be in. So why not make the most of those non-preferred situations and actually try to learn from them? We choose whether to simply go through the motions, or to take something out of the experience so that it can be applied to something completely different and unrelated in our lives.

I made it a goal to start absorbing everything, whether it’s at work, while reading a book, or even talking to a friend. I constantly ask myself what I can absorb from any given situation.  I stopped reading books only to be entertained, but also to learn. I take notes, annotate in the margins, and mark the spots I love the most, so I can return to them in the future. By the time I finish reading a book I want it to look like it was jumped by a gang of highlighters and sticky notes.  Even when I sit down to watch a movie or a TV show, I try to think of what I can take from it. I mean, even Walter White has some redeeming qualities that we can learn from.  I don’t live just to be entertained, but to absorb so that I can grow.

What is the point of doing anything at all, if we are not going to take something away from it? Next time you are in a job that you aren’t too fond of or tasked with doing something that you would rather not, don’t turn your brain off and wait for it to be over. Do the opposite. Absorb.  And next time you are reading a book or sit down to watch your favorite show, do the same. Absorb. Be like a sponge, my friend.