On Thursday January 26th The Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship (IAE) will be teaming up with WBEZ’s new project Front & Center to host a resource fair for the self employed, small businesses, start-ups, and freelancers.

Mini seminars and presentations will run through out the evening at the fabulous Catalyst Ranch located at 656 W Randolph St # 3W in the Polka Room.

Mini Seminar Topics Include: 

Entrepreneurship 101
Presented by Institute For Arts Entrepreneurship

Receiving small loans as an independent worker
Presented Accion Micro Lending

Doing your taxes as a freelancer, small business owner, or independent
Presented by Center for Economic Progress

Create. Innovate. Repeat: featuring 4 fabulous presenters, 7 slides and just 5 minutes each to pitch their most innovative business idea to you.
Presented by Institute for Arts Entrepreneurship.

Partial List of Participants Include:

Co-Lab Evanston providers of shared office spaces.

Northside Freelancers Network  who can help you connect to the growing Chicago self-employed community. Make sure to ask them about their weekly “freelancers soup” lunch.

Accion will be on hand to discuss how to get a  micro-loans to jump start your own business.

Northside Community Bank can help you find funding for your small, local project.

IndieMade is itself a small business. They create websites for independents, artist, small businesses, and start-up projects.

Rockstar CPA offers CPA services specifically geared towards the self-employed, with a specialty in creative projects.

The Law Project offer affordable legal resources for freelancers, independents, and small businesses, such as creating contracts, negotiating pay, etc.

Chicago! Come on out and celebrate self-employment with us! We hope to see you on January 26th.

Fair begins at 6pm @ Catalyst Ranch  656 W Randolph St # 3W, in the Polka Room

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #4:  Plan on 2+ years to get your art licensing business established.

Licensing is no different than other business, it will take time to create contacts, processes, and revenue. If you expect it to happen over night, you are most likely thinking about the wrong business, or perhaps entrepreneurial endeavors are not right for you.

I’m going to give you a timeline here that I know will be valuable when considering the art licensing industry and planning your time and budgets.

It would be reasonable to expect that gearing up your business will take at least a year. Six months might be spent creating your art licensing portfolio and collections, evaluating and refining them, as well as setting up your web site and establishing a rough business plan. In the next six months, you should kick-off marketing efforts targeted toward manufacturers or to prospective agents.

You may be able to close your first deal (or two) within a year, but only with active marketing efforts. Once you receive an offer, be aware, that it can still take 1 to 6- months to finalize the deal and get the signed contract completed. It certainly varies with every manufacturer.  For example, if they are pursuing something topical and hot, then it may be a matter of weeks and you are done.

Let’s say it then takes the manufacturer 3-months to 1 year to produce the product, and this is actually a relatively short timeline, as many overseas products take even longer to develop. Then you add a 3 to 6-month window before the product is ready sold to retailers, distributed to them and available in stores.

If you add up all those numbers, I can tell you the total time is approximately one year to 2½ years before you see any royalty revenues. You may have negotiated an advance on that deal, so you had some money come in when you signed the contract. However, the core of royalty revenue is generated when product is sold by the manufacturer (wholesaler) to retail stores. Then it takes even longer to hit your bank, since most manufacturers will pay you quarterly for sales generated in a prior quarter.

Now, I’m sure during this time you wouldn’t be sitting still waiting for the revenue from that one deal. Licensing is a cycle; you continue the process of creating, marketing and selling—over and over again—utilizing both new and existing art in different ways. You can really understand the huge potential of licensing when one piece of art, or a single collection, sells well on multiple products and generates revenue way beyond it’s value as “a” piece of art for the wall.

And meanwhile, you create product and keep marketing. Plan ahead, knowing that you will need funds to live on until the revenue stream from multiple deals start to come in.  So plan on 2+ years before you’ve got a solid revenue stream. Keep that in mind. It’s a great business to be in, but it does take time to build it and work to keep it going.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

At what point, if any, does extending brand uniqueness create a tipping point that then threatens the very foundation of the brand itself? Lately I have been asking myself this very question about the Starbucks brand.

Starbucks 1st store location in Seattle's Pike Place Market, 1971

As we all know, back in the 90′s Howard Schultz transformed the second most consumed drink after water, and the second most traded commodity after crude oil, coffee, into a unique retail destination for us all between work and home.

Putting people before products, Schultz used intuition more than “brand strategy” in those early days to develop Starbucks into the social place outside of work or home most of us did not even realize how much we needed. Schultz’s vision and intuition allowed Starbucks to leverage a low cost commodity, coffee, and transform it into a “$4.00-human-interactive-experiencial-brand.”

And now with Howard Schultz’s recent return to Starbucks as CEO, after a series of setbacks and financial downturns after his departure, the question is can he add more value to the bottom line while retaining the “human soul”- the uniqueness- he built into the Starbucks brand? Or is he reaching for the tipping point leading to the erosion of it?

According to Merriam-Webster something that is unique is defined as:

1. Being the only one.
2. Being without a like or equal.
3. Distinctively characteristic: peculiar.
4. Unusual.

There is no doubt Starbucks has managed to create a unique retail store environment with their friendly customer oriented staff, great music, comfy chairs and heartfelt emotional connective messaging.

And they have quite successfully been able to extend the feeling you get from their brand outside their stores too spending far less on advertising than other large retailers and consumer products companies to achieve tremendous brand loyalty.

Check out these 2006 comparative stats of what other companies spent on advertising for their brand.

1. Microsoft – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $11.5 billion
2. Coca-Cola – more than $2.5 billion
3. Yahoo – more than 20 percent of their annual revenue or $1.3 billion
4. eBay – 14 percent to 15 percent of its revenue – which was $871 million, much of that to advertise on Google
5. Google – In the millions rather than billions of dollars – with $188 million
6. Starbucks – $95 million

In 2006, Starbucks spent just $95 million on advertising with 7.8 billion in sales demonstrating their amazing strength as an “experiential brand”.

But is it possible to continue to expand the human experience of this brand while Starbucks’ transition into what Schultz hopes will be the first company to excel as both a retailer and a purveyor—in supermarkets and other mass-market channels—of consumer packaged goods?

According to Schultz, “This is a unique inflection point for Starbucks; I think we’ve identified a very big opportunity to do something that really has not been done before. And that is the following: there are many, many companies, domestically and around the world, that have built a domestic national footprint around retail stores, just like Starbucks—the Gap, Costco, Wal-Mart, Coach, Zara. And there are many consumer-packaged-goods companies—Pepsi, Coke, Kellogg’s, Campbell’s. There hasn’t been one company I can identify that has been able to build complementary channels of distribution by integrating the retail footprint and the ubiquitous channels of distribution—in our case, grocery stores and drug stores.

So the model is, Starbucks can seed and introduce new products and new brands inside our stores. We introduced VIA instant coffee in our stores. Instant coffee is a $24 billion global category that has not had any innovation in over 50 years. And no growth. If we took VIA and we put it into grocery stores and it sat on a shelf, it would have died. But we can integrate VIA into the emotional connection we have with our customers in our stores. We did that for six to eight months and succeeded well beyond expectations in our stores. And as a result of that, we had a very easy time convincing the trade, because they wanted it so badly.”

And while it’s true Starbucks has tallied up five years of positive earnings and five years of positive free cash flow, again, in part, under Schultz’s leadership, Starbucks stock has only just recently seen a rise above mid 2006 values.

However, food stocks should be on the rise. It makes sense that with unemployment up, the housing market down, and the world economy on shaky ground that food-makers would deliver stable sales.

So the question is can Starbucks continue to introduce produces like VIA into their stores and translate the uniqueness of their brand through them into distribution channels?  Will their customers buy into all the products they introduce in their retail environment, bond with them, and then readily buy them from their local grocery store or drug store?

I don’t know about you, but I for one was completely turned off by VIA’s introduction at Starbucks.  My sense of embracing the serenity of my “home away from work or home” felt threatened by the through I was being encouraged to take a little packet of dried coffee home as a substitute for the experience of being in their retail environment. I have always bought into Starbucks being an ” escape,” a destination, a home away from home. To add insult to injury, I was told if I liked their dried coffee, which I also perceived as cheapening the brand,  I did not even have to come back into the store- I could buy it elsewhere. It almost felt like an invitation to never come back- I felt like I was losing a friend.

Howard Schultz in his 2011  book Onward: How Starbucks Fought for Its Life without Losing Its Soul specifically talks about his mission in a way that’s very different from most CEOs. “Everything we’ve tried to do,” he writes, “is steeped in humanity.”  I certainly find Schultz’s new goal as being very problematic for the brand.

Purveyors use distribution channels and have retailers who connect with end users for a reason- because retails act differently than purveyors. I have witnessed this first hand within the music industry. The clarinet company I represent, Buffet Crampon, increasingly in the 90′s adopted some of my best practices working with customers. Increasingly they acted more like a retailer than a distributor, or the purveyor they are, by increasing the attention they paid towards potential end users. They threw private parties and gave potential customers the opportunity, before retailers, to see and experience new products.

In the end, it pissed off retailers who felt side stepped and while left uninformed were expected to close the sale with the majority of the customers anyways. I am not sure how much it really did to help them grow their brand then but they have abandoned most of those practices now. While I realize, Starbucks first and foremost is recognized as an extremely well established retailer- a significant difference from being a purveyor dabbling in retail,  placing people over products simultaneously in both distribution channels and retail environments will be challenging. Distributors exist to move product and retailers exist to sell those products to people. The motivation of each is different and as a result using the same messaging for both won’t be easy to effectively manage.

While I think Schultz’s idea is very interesting to try and be the first company to excel at both,  how will Starbucks lead me or anyone else to rediscovering why we’re best friends with this as their end game strategy in their retail environment?

I don’t know about you, but I spend time with a best friend.  I get to know them. I also frequently see them in the same places and I don’t just spend money on them. While distributors and Schultz alike may hope Starbucks can convincingly sell us many products at the local grocery from an experience or two in their retail environment, it is yet to be seen how well they can translate the uniqueness of their brand into repetitive buying decisions in locations outside their own doors.

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #3 Know your skills.

Art talent isn’t enough to make it in the Art Licensing industry. Even more interesting is the fact that you may do very well in Art Licensing for any number of other reasons. For example, your art skills may be good; they may even be awesome!  But you could be incredibly successful in Art Licensing because you can market yourself better than other artists. Perhaps you have the innate ability to capture the attention of various media outlets, or you have a large following of active and demanding fans (which would be is very appealing to manufacturers).

I’ve seen artists make lots of money because they appeal to a certain niche audience (not a small niche, but one that’s large enough to warrant mass market attention) that is peaking and has a current need for art. Maybe an artist loves creating holiday themed art, for which there is always a need. Art Licensing is a commercial industry, so artists who have a distinctive style, enjoy creating a certain theme, and who also appeal to huge audiences have more potential for income than others.

Other skills that affect your Art Licensing business potential are:

Technical Skills

You definitely need computer and technical skills, or access to them. If you don’t have them, you need to get them or find a partner that does, because people will no longer put up with artists not having internet access, high resolution scans, layered files, etc.

Product Design Capabilities

If you can envision your art on products, then show your art to manufacturers on product mock-ups to help them. This is a really important skill set today and is going to help put you in the league of serious art licensors.

Trend Watching

Not everybody is going to be a trendsetter, because that takes a lot of forward thinking.You may have that, or you may just love to watch trends, and can keep up with them. Either way, don’t avoid learning about trends and seeing how your art can interpret them.

Entrepreneurial Abilities

Artists need entrepreneurial skills more than ever!  And we’ll talk more about this later…

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

This weekend I had the true pleasure of “taking-in” a TARGET store- and not just running through it looking for the extra large containers of toilet paper and Tide.

Positioned as the household-one-stop everything- spot, replacing the old Main Street Five and Dime, TARGET understands the core reason buyers come in droves to buy. They have all the basics anyone would ever need to take care of their family. And for most of us, family means everything to us. What wouldn’t we do for someone we love?

So of course TARGET has a great assortment of lawnmowers, kids toys, clothes for every member of the family and tools for Dad at his work bench. Something for everyone. But most of these same items can easily also be found at Kmart, Walmart and Sears.  So how is it TARGET continues to lead the pack with their 2011 sales results?  What does TARGET  know that their competitors don’t know? Could they be an emotionally intelligent marketer? Or are they using their knowledge of human nature to manipulate and grow sales? And what is emotionally intelligent marketing anyway?

In their article from 1990, “Emotional Intelligence,” Professors Peter Salovey and John D. Mayer define emotional intelligence as “the ability to monitor one’s own and others’ feelings and emotions, to discriminate among them and to use this information to guide one’s thinking and actions. (Salovey & Mayer 189).

What does their definition of Emotional Intelligence teach us about how we can use it in consumer marketing? I think that our emotions can be used to guide logical thinking and goal-oriented actions; which makes EI particularly impact-filled in consumer marketing.

This also explains WHY sometimes highly successful brands can be viewed as being “emotionally manipulative.” Yet, if you know anything about human nature you likely already KNOW WHAT IS AT THE CORE of every single big loyal brand follower. 

The story of the Rider and the Elephant. It goes something like this.

There once was a story about a Rider who wanted to ride the Elephant and control him. The Rider was smart and tried to use his cunning logic on the elephant to persuade him to listen to him as his Rider.  But the Elephant could not understand a single word the Rider said. He could however feel the Rider’s motivation and it made the elephant angry and he refused to take even one step forward with the Rider on his back.

So how does the story end?  Does the Rider eventually control the Elephant with his great logic?  Or does the Elephant control the rider with his emotions?

The moral of this story: No stream of logic will EVER trump how we feel about something or someone. Human nature has proven it time and time again with both good and evil. The elephant inside us always wins.

The Golden Circle

Simon Sinek refers to the elephant within each of us, which resides in the limbic part of our brain that has no language, in his TED talk Start with Why; also known as The Golden Circle. Sinek explains that it is those few companies that know WHY they do what they do and can communicate it effectively to their herd of elephants who thrive.

All companies know WHAT they do and that’s why most are failing.  No one cares about another widget, another electronics store, or burger place. One more cog for the wheel doesn’t evoke any kind of emotional response. The elephant inside every customer will buy into WHY you do what you do, NOT what it is you do or even how you do it. The elephant will buy based on its visceral response to you.

So is the average TARGET consumer really looking for an emotional experience? What is the RIDER inside the average consumer going to TARGET thinking?

Well, how about something like this..” I’m out of paper towels, we have one more cap-full of Tide, I scooped up the dogs last dish of dried food, and I’d really like something more than a black cup of coffee in the morning.”  And behind that is the unspoken- ” I love my family. I want to care for them and give them what they need.”

TARGET understands this IS the reason for their being in existence. Their entire store- every ounce of it says ” We are here to serve the needs of your family.We are here to help you live more comfortably and enjoy your life. We want to give you more, so “expect more and pay less.”

And while TARGET might dress it up with a really cute dog,  they are hitting the emotional bullseye of every elephant- their customer-  every time they take one of their items displayed on basic peg boards and make it through the check out line.

How do they do this?

Let’s look closely at Salovey and Mayer’s  three characteristics of emotional intelligence.

The first is our ability to both appraise others emotions as well as express our own. Emotionally intelligent people are a good judge of character and have an authentic ability to communicating their own.

Emotionally intelligent people can control or regulate their emotions; which of course means we can experience the release of them but still remain emotionally high functioning because of our understanding of the emotions we feel.

And lastly, emotionally intelligent individuals have an ability to utilize their emotions to communicate clearly and directly.¹

 ¹ Under this final point Salovey and Mayer list four more categories. I think TARGET has carefully studied and learned  how to leverage all four of these EI characteristics into their brand.

These four additional characteristics are:

I came in to Target looking for some velcro- less than a $10.00 item- to help keep my pictures hanging straight on the wall, and came home, instead, with an additional purchase of these two holiday seasonal decorations for another $40.00 bucks.

1) Flexible planning. An emotionally intelligent thinker is one who is flexible in their planning. They can walk in a store with a list of things they are shopping for and yet can comfortably find themselves improvising and making an unexpected purchase or two in the store.

2) Creative Thinker. An emotionally intelligent person is a creative thinker. Ahh, here it is! The cereal aisle loaded with possibilities! What does this mean?  We will continue through my series of blog posts on Creative Theorists to see how much we can uncover about how vastly different others see what it means to become a creative thinker. But if we are talking about retail shopping? This is what I think it means.

TARGET consistently pairs more practical low cost items with something "extra" at many multiples of that low items price.

An emotionally intelligent shopper is going to see the creative value in buying the glittery Christmas tree-like decoration in addition to those bargain basement CUTE $2.99 wine glasses on their shopping list.  An EI shopper would be thinking: “I am already replacing those plain chipped wine glasses for something that looks really nice for the price. These glasses where not even 1/2 the price I expected to pay for them. I can afford to splurge with a little something festive and decorative to show them off.”

At this point the EI buyer is hooked. Logic won’t easily persuade you that your paying $14.99 for a foam cone covered in black fabric with a stapled piece of shiny material over it.

3) Redirecting Attention. An emotionally intelligent shopper is going to be really comfortable having their attention redirected to all different kinds of products spread across one store. Why? Because according to Salovey and Mayer part of our ability to utilize our emotions effectively to communicate is that we possess the ability to easily redirect our attention into new places.

4)  Motivation. And lastly, emotionally intelligent individuals demonstrate motivation. As such, if you are appealing to emotionally intelligent shoppers, who have the same values as you do,  your aisles are going to be filled with both lots of interesting and varied products along with lots of interesting people who want to buy most everything on your shelves.

Emotional intelligence means embarking on the path of self-actualizing

Another important aspect of  Salovey and Mayer’s insights into what demonstrates emotional intelligence, is their question about what emotional intelligence entails:

“People who have developed skills related to emotional intelligence understand and express their own emotions, recognize emotions in others, regulate affect, and use moods and emotions to motivate adaptive behaviors. Is this just another definition of a healthy, self-actualized individual?” (Salovey & Mayer 200)

The beauty of working with our emotions is that we naturally reap the benefits of getting to know ourselves more intimately. When we have a clearer sense of who we are and who we are becoming, we can make wiser choices in life by strengthening our response ability to everything that happens “to” us.

Self discovery is a lifelong process, and it can serve us for our entire lives. Self discovery is the basis for self care, and self care is the foundation for long lasting satisfaction and happiness in life, which are intricately linked to mental, emotional, and physical health.

Salovey and Mayer’s conception of Emotional Intelligence was  “The ability to perceive emotion, integrate emotion to facilitate thought, understand emotions and to regulate emotions to promote personal growth.”

This ability-based model views emotions as useful sources of information that help one to make sense of and navigate their social environment.  I believe, this ability-based model works equally as well in defining an emotionally intelligent company.

As I see it, an emotionally intelligence corporation:

• Perceives emotions and uses their ability to decipher emotions in faces, pictures, voices, and cultural artifacts to reflect back in their people and their branding. Emotionally Intelligent companies use and develop the ability to express emotions in their people and to harness emotional understanding, problem solving and whole brain thinking.

• Understands emotions well enough to comprehend emotional language and to appreciate the complicated attachments we have to our emotions and the ambiguity they sometime need to cause until they can be clarified.

• Can harness emotions, even negative ones, and manage them to achieve intended goals.

While we go to TARGET for diapers, underwear, workout clothes and socks, we leave with a wreath, flower vase and a new bed spread which we simply just felt we had to have. It’s easy to pick up the hood and look under it to see how this mega-retailer does it. TARGET is demonstrating their own emotional intelligent which masterfully helps them position their brand to emotionally impact their buying elephants.

The limbic part of your brain- the part which has no language- is  from where we fall in love with someone or something and from where all “purchasing” decisions are made. Target has found our sweet spot.

Written by Art Licensing Coach J’net Smith

Rule #1 Learn all you can about art licensing before committing your time and efforts.

Licensing is big business. According to the 2011 annual Licensing Industry Survey released in June by the International Licensing Industry Merchandisers’ Association (LIMA), global licensed product royalty revenues reached $5.065 billion in 2010. Character licensing, from all types of entertainment venues, represents the lion’s share at 47%, while art licensing equals about 2.5%. Art licensing is by itself a $128 million dollar industry.

Licensing is the simple concept of taking your copyrighted art, and contractually arranging and agreeing to lease the rights to one or more images to manufacturers who develop product with the artwork and then sell product to retailers to market to consumers.

So, licensing is really both a business and distribution model. It’s simply one way of getting your art onto product, and out to the consumers. The licensing model is especially appealing to artists, since it doesn’t require you to invest your money up front in production, or to learn the complex in’s and out’s of manufacturing and retail distribution.

The basic players in an art licensing agreement are these:  the artist is Licensor—the owner of the copyright. The licensor may market their art through self-representationor utilize the services of an agent. The Licensee is the entity (company or individual) who licenses the rights from you.  Most often it is a manufacturer, but it could also be a retailer, or an advertising sponsor. The contract—the legal agreement between the two of you—is the Licensing Agreement.

Like any business venture you might be considering, I recommend you study the industry to see if it is right for you and learn all you can about what it will take to succeed in art licensing.  So Rule #1 is that you must learn all you can about art licensing before you commit significant time and efforts. I can’t guarantee it will be easy, but if it’s right for you and you are willing to put in the effort, it can be rewarding and lucrative. Reading this blog series is a great place to start and here are some additional resources that also may be helpful.

About J’net Smith

Jeanette Smith is the consummate art licensing coach—she is passionate about helping you achieve a level of success beyond imagining and definitely knows how to do it! In just six short years, J’net turned Dilbert™ from a relatively unknown syndication-based comic strip into a 200 million dollar a year global brand. Then in 2000, J’net translated and expanded on her extensive experience to train, advise and license all types of creators. She has helped hundreds of artists, graphic designers, painters, photographers, authors, illustrators, design firms, fine artists, creative companies, non-profits and agents to maximize the power of their brands and talents.

J’net is best described by her combination of specialties—she is one of those very rare people who possess a balanced combination of creative sensibility and extraordinary business acumen. It is this combination that has served J’net over the span of a very impressive career,and has garnered her equally impressive press and testimonials!

From her early days in New York building new divisions for such corporate giants as Official Airline Guides, MacMillan Publishing, Paramount Communications, and VIACOM International, to her six years of work at United Media spearheading the astronomical growth of Dilbert, Jeanette has compiled a long list of satisfied clients and has gained an enormous amount of respect and experience in marketing, licensing, advertising, PR, agenting, negotiating, and much more.

I recently stumbled into a 2011 Mercedes-Benz print campaign I had never seen titled Music, Paint and Passion.

The campaign was created by Shalmor Avnon Amichay/Y&R Interactive Tel Aviv, Israel. All of the images in the campaign draw on the same emotional ties between the left and right brain. Each illustration is beautiful and expresses the creativity, free spirit and the passion of the right brain, as well as the familiar, accurate and linear logical side of the left.  The copy for each is also carefully crafted, incredibly communicative and highly suggestive.

I have only one problem with these ads. I would have never guessed they were developed for the Mercedes brand. Would you?  Mercedes products historically have embodied high performance precision but little creative free-spirit.   And yet, it appears, this campaign has quite successfully helped Mercedes spur car sales and pick up market share in 2011.

So is whole-brain thinking the next big trendy marketing idea?  Or, instead, is Mercedes actually simply continuing to reinforce the elitism of their brand by continuing to appeal to (only) the 5% of the population who truly are whole-brain thinkers and high level leaders?

Frankly, my hope is the former.  If for no other reason than “c-suite-wanna-be’s” with their new Mercedes will need creativity and emotional intelligence training to develop the whole brain thinking Mercedes has lead them to believe they already have.

I guess that’s the power of a great ad.

I kind of like the idea of “popularizing” the idea that a fully-engaged-whole-mind is the next cool “thing” we all need to have. Our broken world certainly needs it to be.  And the arts and artist alike are an untapped font we need to utilize to help develop more than 5% of the population into whole-brain 21st century innovators.

Here is the copy for each of the Mercedes ads. It’s all the same. Here is what it says:

Left

“I am the left brain. I am a scientist. A mathematician. I love the familiar. I categorize. I am accurate. Linear. Analytical. Strategic. I am practical. Always in control. A master of words and language. Realistic. I calculate equations and play with numbers. I am order. I am logic. I know exactly who I am.”

Right

“I am the right brain. I am creativity. A free spirit. I am passion. Yearning. Sensuality. I am the sound of roaring laughter. I am taste. The feeling of sand beneath bare feet. I am movement. Vivid colors. I am the urge to paint on an empty canvas. I am boundless imagination. Art. Poetry. I sense. I feel. I am everything I wanted to be.”

 Music

Paint

Passion

Written by Randy Woods, October 25th. Appeared in Entrepreneur Magazine online.

Andy Fife's mission is to provide a solid financial foundation for entrepreneurial artists.

In the drizzly Pacific Northwest, Andy Fife is a rainmaker for the region’s thriving arts community. Through Shunpike, a Seattle-based arts organization, he has helped nurture more than 2,500 creative enterprises across Washington, providing a solid financial foundation for the region’s most prominent entrepreneurial artists.

So what’s his big secret? “We mostly focus on writing a business plan, creating a marketing plan, securing funding, establishing lines of credit,” Fife says. “That, itself, could be considered innovative in the art world, where most people aren’t trained in the business fundamentals.”

“Artists always do badly with money,” admits Jennie Shortridge, a Shunpike client and co-founder of Seattle7Writers, a collective of published Pacific Northwest authors. “We just aren’t very good with spreadsheets and bank accounts and, frankly, we don’t always want to be.”

That’s where Shunpike comes in, offering two tiers of service for its financially challenged members. “Basically, we’re a service hub for all the back-office functions,” Fife explains. “Our mission is to handle all of that for them and let them spend their time doing what they do best, which is producing art.”

Shunpike’s first-tier program offers grant-writing services, tax-exempt 503(c)(3) status and consultation about fundraising, finance and advisory board development for a $100 annual fee and a 7 percent cut of revenue. The second tier, called the Partner Artist program, offers all of the above, plus assistance in bookkeeping, taxes, licensing, permitting, human resources, payroll and insurance. The same $100 annual fee applies, plus 10 percent of revenue.

Even in the shadow of the Great Recession, Shunpike appears to have no shortage of potential clients. A 2010 report by Americans for the Arts said Seattle is home to 4,370 businesses in the “creative industries”–museums, symphonies, architecture, advertising–employing more than 21,000 people.

When Fife joined as executive director in 2007, Shunpike’s annual budget was $400,000; today, it’s $1.4 million. About 55 percent of these funds come through donations by government agencies, corporations, foundations and individuals, he says. The rest comes from consulting fees and percentages of Partner Artists’ revenues. Shunpike, now in its 10th year, has about 115 Partner Artists on its roster.

Providing aid to nonprofits is Shunpike’s specialty, but the group also doles out advice to for-profit ventures. Katrina Toft, co-founder and owner of Two Ravens Studio in Tacoma, Wash., sought marketing and financial advice from Shunpike in 2010 when she and her business partners wanted to grow their metalworking business.

“Andy created a diagram for us, explaining how to get bank loans, address environmental concerns and go through the permitting process,” Toft says. “We also learned to be open to not just the standard methods of marketing. He gave us great advice on utilizing social media and venturing into Facebook.”

“It’s so important to learn business skills,” says Teresa Thuman, producing artistic director of the nonprofit Sound Theatre Company, a Shunpike Partner Artist since 2006. “We had no real structure when we started, so Shunpike essentially became our business office. They helped out tremendously with grant-writing, licensing and fundraising.”

Fife recommended that Sound Theatre eliminate overhead by renting out local theaters. He is also a champion of pooling artists into collectives and raising funds via online crowdsourcing, much the way Kickstarter works, with incremental PayPal donations.

“You might find other organizations that will help support your business, but no one else will support both your business and your artwork,” Thuman says. “There’s really no other organization like Shunpike.”

Soon that may no longer be true. Fife says he may try to export the Shunpike model. “The strength is that it’s a very local approach,” he says, “but there’s no reason it can’t be repeated in other cities.”

NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud just recently released their third annual 2011 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report. Their report provides insights for nonprofits, foundations, media and nonprofit- focused businesses about the most important behavior and trends surrounding social networking as part of nonprofits’ marketing, communications, fundraising, program and IT services.

Who Participated
Respondents included 11,196 nonprofit professionals representing small, medium, and large organizations and all nonprofit segments including: Arts & Culture, Education (Higher and K-12), Environment & Animal Welfare, Health & Healthcare, Human Services, Internal, Professional Associations, Public Benefit, and others. Between January 24, 2011 and February 10, 2011, these nonprofit professionals responded to a survey about their organizations’ use of online social networks.

Two groups of questions were posed to survey participants:
1. Tells us about your use of commercial social networks such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and others.
2. Tell us about your work building and using social networks on your own websites, called house social networks.

Top 10 Survey Results

From the commercial social networking world (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube)

1. Facebook is King and Extending Its Lead – Slowly
Facebook, the consumer-focused social networking platform, is the most popular commercial social network for nonprofits and continues to grow, albeit slowly. Nine out of 10 nonprofits (89%) report having a presence on Facebook in 2011. In the last three years Facebook usage has grown from 74% to 89%, with the largest chunk of this adoption occurring between 2009 and 2010 – a 16% jump from 2009 to 2010, and just 3% from 2010 to 2011.By comparison, Twitter, the professional micro-blogging community, looks to have leveled off among nonprofits with usage levels reported at 57% in 2011, down slightly from 2010 (60%).LinkedIn, the online professional social networking community is used by 1 in 3 nonprofits (30%) in 2011, representing a steady-state – no real change from the 33% usage levels reported in both 2010 and 2009.MySpace, variably claimed as the future of social music distribution and consumer-based social networking more generally, is dying on the vine with an all-time low in 2011 of just 7% of nonprofits indicating they maintain a presence here, a -50% drop from 2010 (14% of nonprofits were on MySpace) and a veritable plunge from 2009 when 6% reported a presence on MySpace.

2. Commercial Social Networks Keep Getting Bigger
Apparently nonprofit efforts to attract more supporters on social networks are working. The Facebook average member community size is up 161% in 2011 to 6,376 members compared to 2,440 and 5,391 respectively in 2010 and 2009. The average Twitter follower base is up just 2% in 2011 to 1,822 followers (from 2010’s 1,792 followers) and up a massive 535% from 2009 levels (287 followers). LinkedIn, while not as large overall compared to Facebook managed to quietly creep up to near Twitter levels with an average of 1,196 members in 2011 compared to past years – just 450 in 2010 and 291 members in 2009.

3. Low-Level Fundraising on Facebook Increased
Fundraising on Facebook is growing but it’s still a minority effort. The number of groups successfully generating a small fundraising revenue stream ($1 to $10K annually) has risen each year from 38% in 2009 to 46% in 2011. The number of organizations raising $100,000 or more per year on social networks doubled this year from 0.2% to 0.4%, but obviously this still represents a critically thin slice of the sector.

4. Nonprofits Still Agree – CSNs are Valuable
Nonprofit industry sentiment toward social networks remains very positive with 4 out of 5 (82%) nonprofits indicating that they find their commercial social networking (CSN) efforts valuable (i.e. the combination of respondents who answered with “very valuable” or “somewhat valuable” when asked about the value of their CSNs). The same question in 2009 and 2010 saw 79% and 81% of nonprofits respectively found their CSNs valuable. It looks like nonprofits got hooked early and are still enamored with the idea of doing business on commercial social networks.

5. A Few Newcomers Hit the Scene
The newbie, place-based social networking platform FourSquare appeared in our survey results in a substantive way for the first time in 2011 with 4% of nonprofits saying they have a presence here.Newcomer Jumo (founded in February 2010 by Chris Hughes, co-founder of Facebook) claims a thin slice of less than 1% of charities, along with other narrowly adopted (and not so new) outlets such as Vimeo (video sharing), Yelp (local search and review), Picassa (photo sharing), Ning ( build your own community) and Delicious (social bookmarking) all of which individually accounted for less than 1% of responses each.First-time mentions this year also include the donor-empowered peer-to-peer giving sites CrowdRise, FirstGiving, Razoo and Causes. All were reported as being used by nonprofits but by less 1% of respondents each.Facebook made efforts to supplant all of these companies with the release of new product features in 2010 and 2011. It will be interesting to see if these smaller players are able to carve out a firm hold in the market despite Facebook’s best efforts.

6. Surprise Result: Master Social Fundraisers Come in all Sizes
It turns out that nonprofits of all sizes are able to scale their fundraising efforts on commercial social networks. We identified a subset (27 organizations) of “Master Social Fundraisers” from amongst the survey respondents. Master Social Fundraisers are nonprofits that raised more than $100,000 on Facebook over the last year. Fascinatingly, the first characteristic that jumped out reversed many of our conclusions regarding organization size: 30% of the Master Fundraisers were Small organizations ($1 to $5MM annual budget) and 8% were Medium-sized ($6MM to $50MM).

Table 1.1:  Master Fundraisers – the size of organizations raising more than $100K on Facebook

The average Facebook following of a Master Social Fundraiser is nearly 100,000 (99,911) members—more than fifteen times the general average. This number demonstrates that a prerequisite for raising big dollars via social networks is a big community. Viral or word-of-mouth-marketing within online social networks may reduce the cost of building a community, but nonprofits still need a large base of supporters to bring in substantial fundraising revenue. Staffing is important as well – 30% of Master Fundraisers dedicate 2+ staff to managing and fundraising on their social networking presence, compared to just 2% for the industry. The conclusion is that resourcing matters a lot to get the job done if you want to fundraise successfully on social networks like Facebook, and it doesn’t matter how large or small your nonprofit. If you manage to dedicate the budget and staff to the task even a small charity can raise $100,000 or more on Facebook.

7. Environmental/Animal Welfare and International Services Groups Outperform the Sector
We sliced the survey results along nonprofit verticals and identified the top performers. Environmental/Animal Welfare groups recorded the highest average community size on Facebook with 8,490 members compared to the overall industry average of 6,376 members. International Service organizations reported the highest use of Facebook with 97% of these groups reporting a presence here, and nearly double the number of Twitter base with 7,360 followers compared to second place Environmental/Animal Welfare group average of 4,182 followers and an industry average of 1,822 followers. Public and Societal Benefit charities report the highest average LinkedIn base with 5,544 members, more than three times greater than the nearest peer sector – Higher Education with 1,591 LinkedIn members.

Moving on to the house social networking world, we round out our Top Ten results from the 2011 nonprofit social networking survey.

8. Average Community Size is Up (Again) for HSN’s
Just like commercial social networks, the community size of nonprofit house social networks (HSNs) is on the rise with an average of 5,967 members in 2011 compared to 3,520 in 2010, a 70% increase year-over-year. Organization size looks to have a direct bearing on community size for house networks with Small ($0 to $5MM annual budget) organizations claiming an average base of 4,473 members, while Large ($51MM to $250MM) and Very Large ($250MM+) report average community sizes of 15,717 and 18,528 members respectively.

9. Program & Service Delivery Creeps into #1 Spot
Over half (55%) of nonprofits who have a house social network report that the role of their community is for Program and Service delivery, eclipsing Marketing (49%) for the first time as the primary purpose for charity house networks. This mirrors our anecdotal experience over the last year as we talked with increasing numbers of nonprofits looking to use their house networks for delivery of health (e.g. stop smoking), education (e.g. electronic delivery of business education curricula), advocacy (e.g. stop climate change) or best practice innovation (e.g. animal welfare shelter improvements). Layering on or weaving mission into socially-enabled online communities helps to differentiate them from Facebook; finally answering the question, “Why would my supporters register and use my house network if they are already on Facebook?

10. Business-focused Departments Still Running the Social Networking Show
Unlike many of the recent technology waves (e.g. web sites, email, mobile) social networking projects (and communities) are typically managed by the business-oriented departments instead of IT. Even the more technologically intensive house social networks are owned by Communications (17%), Marketing (13%), Fundraising (13%), Programs (12%), Executive Management (10%) and cross-departmental (owned by multiple departments equally) (11%). IT owns house social networking projects for 9% of organizations. It seems that the department that most directly benefits from the social networking program owns the effort, and IT mostly assists.

Click the link to download the entire 2011 NPO Social Networking Benchmark Report

About NTEN, Common Knowledge and Blackbaud
NTEN is the membership organization of nonprofit professionals who put technology to use for their causes.

Common Knowledge, an Internet consulting agency, founded in 2002, provides online fundraising and marketing services to nonprofits and higher education.

Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations, enabling them to improve operational efficiency, build strong relationships, and raise more money to support their missions.

Last night when I sat down to get ready to begin my social media class, I  started up my computer and up popped Oprah Winfrey’s face and a Skype request to connect to her. Talk about a surprise. I wrote Oprah about nine months ago. She is the only “celebrity” I have ever written a letter to.  Think it’s really her? Doubt it. Scammers are everywhere online.

Anyway, my social media class is run by Angel Oakley, Unicatis Marketing- quite the “branding” gal.  In class we spent some time talking about the value of Twitter. Angel shared this video with us. It’s an interesting clip of Gary Vaynerchuk hanging out with ” The Harper Studio peeps“.  Watch how he converts them into Twitter believers.

So did Gary convert you into a twitter believer too?   He couldn’t convert me because I already have a  ( fledgling) Twitter account @IAEOU.  Remember: business skills are to artists like vowels are to words- pretty basic and necessary.  But Gary did convince me to follow him @garyvee. Learn more about Gary @ http://garyvaynerchuk.com/

Gary Vaynerchuk is a 35 year old New York Times and Wall Street Journal Best-Selling author who is also a self-trained wine and social media expert. Gary does not claim to be a ‘techie’, but in 2005, he began video blogging and now has close to 1 million followers on Twitter and was included in Business Week’s list of the top 20 people every entrepreneur should follow. Pretty amazing self made creative entrepreneur really.

Written by Seth Godin on October 15th, 2011

The email feels like a welcome one. “I’d like to invite you to…”

And then you find out it’s a charity gala. 500 people at an expensive hotel, eating a not very good meal and paying a great deal for the privilege. Sure, some of the money goes to charity (but too much goes for the chicken in white sauce). Sure, it’s entirely possible you will have ten interesting minutes of conversation, and yes, it may be that you’ll hear a speech that will move you.

But I think we can agree that this is a ridiculous way to efficiently raise money for a good cause.

Galas and charity auctions and other events designed to raise money from the inner circle of a community suffer because they’re conflating several benefits at once.

First, being invited to a gala feels like a gift. It’s nice to be asked, to be noticed, to be included. The socially appropriate response is to accept the gift and say yes.

Notice that the invitation isn’t being accepted because it’s a good cause, it’s being accepted because it’s a social obligation.

Second, there’s a set of benefits to both the invited and the inviter. The gala is held in a reasonably enjoyable venue, with lots of money spent on wine and food and such, all to benefit the attendees, not the charity. The inviter gets the social gratification of hosting, plus the added benefit of feeling charitable. The guest gets the social benefit of being included in this stratum of society, of having an excuse for a night out, and possibly the commercial benefit (lawyers, brokers, etc.) of being part of a trusted circle.

Again, none of this benefits the charity. [And having a big donor pay for the whole thing changes nothing.]

For this reason, the gala is actually corrupting. Attendees are usually driven by social and selfish motivations to attend, and thus the philanthropic element of giving–just to give–is removed.

Attending an event that’s dramatically overpriced for what’s delivered to the recipient is a signaling mechanism as well. It says to the other attendees, “I can afford to overpay and so can you, we must be similar, and our hearts are in the right place as well.”

Do elements of our community need gala-like events to lubricate their social interactions? Quite probably. It’s a tradition, particularly in certain cities and tribes. But is it a scalable alternative to selling generosity for its own sake?

About Seth Godin

SETH GODIN has written thirteen books that have been translated into more than thirty languages. Every one has been a bestseller. He writes about the post-industrial revolution, the way ideas spread, marketing, quitting, leadership and most of all, changing everything.

American Way Magazine calls him, “America’s Greatest Marketer,” and his blog is perhaps the most popular in the world written by a single individual. His latest book, Poke The Box is a call to action about the initiative you’re taking – in your job or in your life, and Seth once again breaks the traditional publishing model by releasing it through The Domino Project.

As an entrepreneur, he has founded dozens of companies, most of which failed. Yoyodyne, his first internet company, was funded by Flatiron and Softbank and acquired by Yahoo! in 1998. It pioneered the use of ethical direct mail online, something Seth calls Permission Marketing. He was VP of Direct Marketing at Yahoo! for a year.

His latest company, Squidoo.com, is ranked among the top 125 sites in the US (by traffic) by Quantcast. It allows anyone (even you) to build a page about any topic you’re passionate about. The site raises money for charity and pays royalties to its million plus members.

Written by Lewis Whittington, appeared in Salon on Monday August 29th, 2011

Amid bankruptcies and closures, a handful of radical innovators are building a new future for the city orchestra.

Strikes, closures, bankruptcies, record deficits — the classical-music world has been rocked by troubling financial news in recent months.

The city symphony is in trouble — and the size and cultural footprint of the city hardly matter. Musicians have walked picket lines in aging industrial cities like Detroit and Cleveland, but the New York Philharmonic has also reported record deficits. Orchestras in Philadelphia and Louisville, Ky., have filed for Chapter 11 protection, while bankruptcy also silenced — at least temporarily – the Honolulu Symphony and the Syracuse Symphony Orchestra. (Both hope to return in a new form this fall.)

The problems are easy to identify: The recession has pummeled charitable giving and endowments, while the audience has continued to age. Many large orchestras have been juggling high operating costs and diminishing revenues for years, so they were especially vulnerable to the downturn. Local governments and benefactors, under pressure of their own, are less able to save the day.

So what will? A crisis can sometimes be an incubator for innovation, but some observers worry that there’s a lack of bold new ideas — and that without them, many city and regional orchestras are simply doomed.

“All the data tells us all new audiences are looking for different things,” said Jesse Rosen, the president and CEO of the League of American Orchestras, the industry’s leading advocacy group outside of musicians’ unions, who hopes orchestras use this period to make sweeping positive changes.

“The appetite for classical music remains as strong as ever,” he said. “[But] the desire for it is expressing itself in different ways besides people buying tickets. So how do we adapt to the generations coming up? The problem isn’t in the music, but how to be responsive.

Appeared in Forbes, Written by Dan Schawbel, contributor

I recently caught up with Ryan Blair, who is a serial entrepreneur and author of the new book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain.” Ryan established his first company, 24-7 Tech when he was only twenty-one years old. Since then, he has created and actively invested in multiple start-ups and has become a self-made multimillionaire. After he sold his company ViSalus Sciences to Blyth in early 2008, the global recession took the company to the brink of failure resulting in a complete write off of the stock and near bankruptcy. Ryan as CEO went “all in” betting his last million dollars on its potential and turned the company around from the edge of failure to more than $150,000,000 a year in revenue in only 16 months winning the coveted DSN Global Turn Around Award in 2010. In this interview, Ryan talks about how he re-branded himself after being in a gang, the issues with the education system, and more.

How did you shake your criminal record and re-brand yourself?

I remember when I was working my way up in the first company that employed me, I used to have nightmares that one day they’d find out about that I had been in a gang, call me into the office, and fire me. In the beginning I didn’t talk much about what I’d been through. But eventually when I got to a point where I had established myself as a professional entrepreneur, I embraced my past, used it as part of my branding, and crossed over.

In this day and age people want authenticity. Now that the world is social, people know all about you. Assuming you decided to join humanity, that is. It turned out that as I started showing my true identity, so did the rest of the world. One of the reasons my company ViSalus is one of the fastest growing companies in the industry today is because we share our good, bad, and ugly. Like sharing a video of me playing a practical joke on one of my employees, for instance. As a result of embracing authenticity, I turned the company around from near bankruptcy to over $15 million a month today. Unlike our competitors, our distributors and customers know exactly who we are, and I’d say that corporate America has a lot of catching up to do.

What’s your take on the educational system? Will a college degree help or hurt your chances at starting a successful business?

As a product of Los Angeles’s public school system, in a state with the highest dropout rate in the nation (about 20 percent), I can tell you from personal experience that some of our brightest minds are being misidentified because of a one-size-fits-all learning environment. Because I had ADD and dyslexia I never got past the 9th grade.

I recall sitting with a career counselor in continuation high school, being told that I didn’t have the intellect or aptitude to become a doctor or a lawyer. They suggested a trade school, construction, something where I’d be working with my hands.

The irony is that today I employ plenty of doctors and lawyers. Would you rather be a doctor or a lawyer, or a guy who writes a check to doctors and lawyers?

If President Obama phoned me today and told me he was appointing me Educational Czar, I’d turn education into a business, a capitalistic, revenue driven system, creating a competitive environment where each school is trying to attract customers, based on quality of customer experience.

As an entrepreneur, having a college degree or getting classroom training won’t hurt your chances for starting a successful business, but it’s ultimately not necessary. In Malcolm Gladwell’s book “Outliers,” he makes a point that it takes approximately 10,000 hours to master a skill set at a professional level. That means experience, over traditional education.

What three business lessons did you learn from juvenile detention?

I learned a lot about business and life from my time spent incarcerated. I like to call these pieces of wisdom my Philosophies from the Jail Cell to the Boardroom. One of the biggest lessons I learned was that in Juvenile Hall, new guys always get tested. When I went in the first time, I was just a skinny little white kid and I had to learn fast. People will be bumping into you on the basketball court, or asking you for things, testing to see if you’re tough.

And everyone knew that if a guy let someone take their milk during lunchtime, they weren’t as tough as they looked. Soon you’d be taking their milk everyday, and so would everyone else. It’s the same for business, if you give people the impression that you can be taken, you will be.

Also, adaptation is the key to survival. In jail the guy who rises to power isn’t always the strongest or the smartest. As prisoners come and go, he’s the one that adapts to the changing environment, while influencing the right people. You can use this in business, staying abreast of market trends, changing your game plan as technology shifts, and adapting our strategy around your company’s strongest competitive advantages. Darwin was absolutely right — survival is a matter of how you respond to change.

The last lesson I got from jail is that you have to learn how to read people. You don’t know who to trust. It’s the same for business because a lot of people come into my office with a front. I have to figure out quickly who is the real deal and who isn’t. Based on that fact, I developed an HR system that I use when interviewing potential new hires that I call the Connect Four Technique. Yep, you guessed it. I make my future employees — and I have hundreds of them — play me in Connect Four.

Can everyone be an entrepreneur? Can it be learned or do you have to be born with a special gene?

No. Not everyone can be an entrepreneur. There are two types of people in the world, domesticated and undomesticated. Some people are so domesticated through their social programming and belief system, so employee minded, that they could never be entrepreneurs. And they shouldn’t even bother trying. The irony is that this is coming from a guy who teaches millions of people how to become entrepreneurs. I’m literally selling a book about becoming an entrepreneur, telling you that not everyone should read it.

To be an entrepreneur, you have to have fighting instincts. Are instincts genetic? I don’t think so, but you ‘inherit’ them from your upbringing. Now, if you’re smart you can reprogram your beliefs. But there are still some people that would rather watch other people be entrepreneurs, like the people in the Forbes “richest celebrity list” than take the time to reprogram themselves, and live their lives like rock stars, too.

Is there a need for business plans these days?

When you’ve really got the entrepreneurial bug, the last thing you want to do is sit down and write a business plan. It’s the equivalent of writing a book about playing the guitar before actually knowing how to play the guitar. You don’t know what your new business is going to be like. And just like a guitar, a business will have to be tweaked and tuned multiple times, and you’ll need long practice sessions and repetition, before you can get even one successful song out of it.

In my book “Nothing to Lose, Everything to Gain,” I actually included a chapter called “I Hate Business Plans” where I talk about this. Most business plans that get sent to me, I close within seconds of opening them up because they are full of fluff and hype. A business plan should be simple, something you could scribble on a scratch pad. No more than three pages of your business objectives, expected results, and the strategy to get there. But the best business plan is one built from a business that is already up and running and that matches the business’s actual results.

The point is that you should be so obsessed with your business that you can’t sleep at night because that’s all you can think about. And that’s your ultimate “business plan.”

About Dan Schawbel

Dan Schawbel is the Managing Partner of Millennial Branding, LLC, a full-service personal branding agency, and author of “Me 2.0: 4 Steps to Building Your Future.”

This list was posted on Don Griesmann Nonprofit Blog on 7/12, 2011

How can the arts grow outside into other sectors and strands of society?  One way is by finding new sources of funding from new sectors outside of the arts who can appreciate and understand the value we can bring to other subject matter.

• no fees
• open to all
• meaningful list
• broadly based
• user friendly
• timely

The Foundation Center has an excellent Guide to Funding Research for grantseekers that should be read by everyone, staff, consultant, volunteer or board member, starting out for the first or 30^th time searching for grants – http://foundationcenter.org/getstarted/tutorials/gfr/ According to the Foundation Center there were over $7.6 billion in grants given to 15,675 international recipients in 42,169 foundation grants. http://fconline.foundationcenter.org/maps/

1. ·  Grants.gov is an excellent source for timely notice of federal grants, sorted by opening or closing date over the past 7 days. It includes domestic and international grants. I suggest this should be a “favorite” if you are interested in federal grants because it changes regularly  http://www.grants.gov/search/search.do?mode=Search&dates=7&docs1=doc_open_checked
2. ·  Federal Grants Wire, a useful search tool for finding federal grants, government grants and loans. They currently index 2,481 federal grants and loans organized by sponsoring agency, applicant type, subject area http://www.federalgrantswire.com/
3. ·  Federal Business Opportunities (Fed Biz Ops) with 25,000 – 32,000 contract opportunities, some for nonprofits. This is not an easy site to navigate but if you are looking for business contracts rather than grants this where you can start https://www.fbo.gov/?s=home&tab=list&mode=list
4. ·  NonProfitExpert.com, detailed listing of grants and good information for grant seekers; review the categories listed on the left hand side.    http://www.nonprofitexpert.com/federal_grants.htm
5. ·  Jon Harrison and Michigan State University have a comprehensive list of funders alphabetized by subject http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/2sgalpha.htm
6. ·  Youth Grants for NPOs working  in that service area http://www.youthtoday.org/grants.cfm
7. ·  Rural Assistance Center has an excellent directory of foundations with funding links by topics, and links to state resources http://www.raconline.org/funding/funding_topic.php
8. ·  Common Grants material has a list of foundations that accept their universal grant application form. The list of foundations is in alphabetical order and is searchable by location, program type and beneficiary http://www.commongrants.com/participating-funders
9. ·  Meyer Foundation’s list about funding opportunities, outside Meyer, includes information on ways to strengthen nonprofit organizations, research about people and communities that Meyer cares about, and useful links for nonprofits and grantmakers
   http://www.meyerfoundation.org/resources/Other+Funding+Opportunities/
10. ·  FundsNet Services.com has excellent information about grants and you can browse through categories of grants from Animal & Wildlife Grants to Women Grants – http://www.fundsnetservices.com/
11. ·  Women’s Funding Network connects and strengthens more than 160 organizations that fund women’s solutions across the globe http://www.wfnet.org/the-network/member-directory
12. ·  Grant Makers in Health has partners listed and linked alphabetically -http://www.gih.org/link_no_cat2664/link_no_cat.htm
13. ·  Environmental Grantmaker Association has an alphabetical list and links – http://www.ega.org/funders/funder.php?op=list
14. ·  Animal Rescue and Rehabilitation funders are listed at the University of Wisconsin grants’ library http://grants.library.wisc.edu/organizations/animals.html
15. ·  California Polytechnic State University, listed by subject in alphabetical order -   http://www.calpoly.edu/~grants/3_FoundSubj.html
16. ·  Foundation Center has a list of the 100 largest U.S. grantmaking foundations ranked by the market value of their assets, based on the most current audited financial data in the Foundation Center’s database as of April 27, 2011. http://fdncenter.org/findfunders/topfunders/top100assets.html
17. ·  ChristianGrants.com features links by key words and by work projects including building campaigns, program support, outreach ministries and more http://www.christiangrants.com/
18. ·  National Association for the Exchange of Industrial Resources (NAEIR) features a catalog of donated merchandise for supplies http://www.naeir.org/
19. ·  A reader suggested – ScanGrants™ is designed to facilitate the search for funding sources to enhance individual and community health – medical researchers, social workers, nurses, students, community-based health educators, academics and others
    http://www.scangrants.com/

1. Canada’s CharityVillage has a section with a list of grantors in alphabetical order, searchable by categories http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/nonpr/nonpr17.asp
2. Canada funders can be found on FundsNet Services.com http://www.fundsnetservices.com/searchresult.php?sbcat_id=29
3. Nobel Peace Prize has a list of international foundations http://www.nobelpeaceforum.org/grantsandrelatedresources.htm
4. Grants from foundations aimed at United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and other international funders at Fundsnet Services.com http://www.fundsnetservices.com/showcats.php?sbcat_id=10
5. Jon Harrison’s list of Women in International Development, a compilation of web pages of potential interest to NGOs seeking funding opportunities related to women in international development- http://staff.lib.msu.edu/harris23/grants/2wid.htm
6. The International Human Rights Funders Group has a grants tool designed to enable both grantmakers and grantseekers to search for human rights funders by several key criteria: areas of rights funding, activities supported and geographic focus at http://ihrfg.org/funder-directory-search
7. Grant Makers without Borders does not provide grants but does have an excellent directory of foundations and other organizations interested in international grantmaking http://www.internationaldonors.org/advicegs/index.htm
8. LGBTQ Funders Directory provides information on funders of organizations and projects working with lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender and queer (LGBTQ) communities. All of the groups included in the directory have provided financial support, of varying types, to LGBTQ programs. http://www.lgbtfunders.org/seekers/directory.cfm
9. ChristianGrants.com features international opportunities with links by key words and by work projects including building campaigns, program support, outreach ministries and more http://www.christiangrants.com/
10. Grantmakers Online.com, an interactive database of world-wide funders, in Beta form, and a little clumsy but highly useful, http://www.grantmakersonline.com/

This article was originally a speech for TEDxMichiganAve delivered by David Dombrosky on May 7, 2011 in Chicago, Illinois.

One of my favorite quotes comes from Confucius. He said, “Tell me, and I will forget. Show me, and I may remember. Involve me, and I will understand.” This quote has become one of my touchstones because it reminds me that: life is experiential, and the most resonant experiences in my life were ones in which I was an active participant. The first time I sang a solo for a public audience. Writing and performing a solo theatrical performance in college. Learning how to tango earlier this year.

If the arts community agrees that we want audiences to have deeply resonant experiences with the arts, then the question arises, “How can artists and arts organizations go beyond telling their audiences about the work or showing the work to patrons and actually INVOLVE them in the work?”

Technological advances over the past decade have propelled us into a highly participatory culture, wherein individuals no longer simply consume culture, but they now actively produce and contribute to culture. In 2006, media scholar Henry Jenkins and his colleagues published a white paper entitled Confronting the Challenges of a Participatory Culture in which they described five defining elements for participatory culture.

Jenkin’s 5 Traits of Participatory Culture. Image from OpenParenthesis.org

With this article, I would like to address the question of how artists and arts organizations can involve audiences in their work by highlighting how a number of artists and organizations exemplify the defining elements of participatory culture.

#1 – “A participatory culture has relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement.”

We see evidence of this every day. The number of free web tools and mobile apps that have been released over the past decade is astronomical. With each successive release, the barrier to artistic expression and engagement is lowered that much more.

One recently released, free tool called Broadcastr allows people to record 3-minute audio segments and pin them to specific locations on a map that is available on their website as well as through their mobile application.

 

Click here to listen to “If the Mole People Attack” from 30 Plays in 30 Blocks from the Neo-Futurists 

Many of you may know the Neo-Futurists, a theatre performance group originally established here in Chicago. Their New York City chapter has a show called Too Much Light Makes the Baby Go Blind which contains 30 plays performed in 60 minutes. Earlier this year, they used Broadcastr to create 30 plays in 30 blocks. So if you go to Second Avenue in Manhattan, you can walk from Houston Street to 29th Street and experience 30 location-specific, interactive pieces of audio content. Some of them direct you to do things, some of them are little songs, some of them are plays with multiple voices, and some of them reference their locations very directly.

The technology required to do this? Either a computer with speakers and a microphone OR a smartphone. That’s it.

#2 – A participatory culture has strong support for creating and sharing one’s creations with others

Over the past two years, choral composer Eric Whitacre has worked with singers from around the world to create “virtual choirs” for the performance of his compositions. Participating singers download a PDF version of the sheet music for their vocal part. They watch a YouTube video of Whitacre conducting the music, record their vocal tracks, then send the tracks to Whitacre for final editing. Whitacre and his producer then combine all of the vocal tracks together into a single audio composition and syncs it with a video featuring a virtual riser with the floating faces of each of the singers performing the piece.

His most recent virtual choir composition entitled “Sleep” features 2052 singers from 58 different countries. As of today, the video has been viewed nearly 500,000 times on YouTube. His 2009 virtual choir composition “Lux Aurumque” has had over 2.4 million views.

#3 – A participatory culture has some type of informal mentorship whereby what is known by the most experienced is passed along to novices

One organization which exemplifies this element is the San Francisco Symphony. With their Community of Music Makers program, the symphony serves amateur adult musicians and promotes active participation in music-making and lifelong learning. Community of Music Makers includes workshops and events for amateur vocalists and instrumentalists in symphony’s performance hall, where participants are able to improve their skills. They also receive live and online coaching sessions from the symphony’s musicians and artistic staff. A chamber music convening service serves as a clearinghouse to help individual players and ensembles connect each other and identify performance opportunities in the local community.

The lesson here? Learn to love amateurs as they are likely to be a strong core from which to further develop your audience.

#4 – In a participatory culture, members believe that their contributions matter.

The Brooklyn Museum pioneered crowd-curation in 2008 with its photography exhibition Click! First launched through an open call for artists to submit photos related to the theme of “The Changing Faces of Brooklyn,” the artwork was then made available online for anyone to curate. This year, they are taking another spin on this concept with the exhibition Split Second: Indian Paintings, which invited the Brooklyn Museum’s online community to participate in a project that will result in a small installation of Indian paintings from the Museum’s permanent collection in July 2011.

The first stage of the project explores split-second reactions: in a timed trial, participants were asked to select which painting they prefer from a randomly generated pair of images. Next, participants were asked to write in their own words about a painting before rating its appeal on a scale. In the final stage, participants were asked to rate a work of art after being given unlimited time to view it alongside typical interpretive text. Each part of the exercise aims to examine how a different type of information—or a lack thereof—might affect a person’s reaction to a work of art.

Once the exhibit opens in July 2011, visitors will be able to view a small selection of the paintings that generated the most controversial and dynamic responses during the evaluation process, accompanied by a visualization and analysis of the data collected.

With both of these experiments from the museum, the online participants had a clear understanding of how their contributions would matter to the overall project.

In April of this year, choreographer Jonah Boaker debuted FILTER at the Ferst Center for the Performing Arts at Georgia Tech University in Atlanta. FILTER explores how the audience can serve as a collaborative filter for the performance through the use of a mobile application.

Interview with Jonah Bokaer about FILTER.

Boaker worked closely with students from the university’s Music Technology Program to develop MassMobile, a smartphone app that acts as an interactive platform for audience members to participate by affecting the stage in different ways. Boaker’s approach to participation actually allows the audience to co-create the artistic experience in real-time.

#5 – In a participatory culture, members feel some degree of social connection with one another

Okay, so my absolute favorite exemplar of this element is the MP3 Experiment created and hosted by Improv Everywhere in New York City. Begun in 2003, the concept is quite simple. Improv Everywhere puts an original mp3 file online (usually around 45 minutes long) that people download and transfer to their iPods. Participants then: synchronize their watches to a clock on the organization’s website, venture out to the same public location, and blend in with the crowd. At the predetermined time, everyone presses play. Participants then carry out coordinated instructions delivered to their headphones via narrator “Steve,” and everyone around them tries to figure out what in the world is going on.

In 2010, over 3,000 people participated in a MP3 Experiment in Midtown Manhattan. The event started in retail stores and progressed to Bryant Park for the narrator’s surprise birthday. The event ended with a massive toilet-paper-mummy dance party.

The next Mp3 Experiment in New York is scheduled for July 16, 2011. Stay tuned to the Improv Everywhere site if you’re in New York and wish to participate.

Something to consider about all of the artists and arts organizations that I’ve mentioned here is that they all invite the audience to play.

As an industry, we have spent so much of our time playing FOR the audience or playing TO the audience. In order for our sector to thrive in this participatory culture, we must now invest a significant amount of time and energy exploring ways to play WITH the audience.

What kinds of new jobs in the arts can we create?  What combination of skills do we need to unlock new economic opportunities for us and to change society’s perceptions of what value the arts deliver? How can we add more to GDP by building hybrid careers that transmit and translate all of our skills across all sectors and strands?

Below are two lists that I think are valuable to creatively thinking through the possibilities.  The first are interdisciplinary sites focused on the development of leadership skills through emotional intelligence building.  Embedding emotional intelligence training as part of an arts based venture can have many applications across many disciplines outside of the arts.

The second list is a list of performing artists who have already figured out how to fine-tune their artistic and creative competencies to provide experience-based learning alternatives to traditional leadership training and development. This list might provide some reflection and generate some ideas for those of you who are interested.

Emotionally Intelligent Leadership

• About Learning Styles
• Breakthrough Creativity-Achieving Top Performance Using the Eight Creative Talents
• Center for Creative Leadership
• Change Leaders, Inc. – Board Development, CEO Coaching, and Executive Team Development
• Consortium for Research on Emotional Intelligence in Organizations
• Human Capital Institute
• Integral Leadership Review
• New Horizons for Learning-Learning in the Workplace
• What Make’s a Leader?-Harvard Business Review Article on Emotionally-Intelligent Leadership

Performing Arts-based Leadership Training

• Ariel Group-Leadership Presence
• Banff Centre – Inspiring Creative Leadership
• Being and Living Enterprises – Creatively Optimizing Purpose & Performance
• Brian Tate Productions – The Voice of Leadership
• Business as Performance Art
• Colorado Business Committee for the Arts
• Creative Skills Training Council-Asia Pacific & Australia
• Creative Leaps International
• Leadership for Lawyers
• Learning Innovations Laboratory-Harvard Graduate School of Education
• PianoScapes – Awakening the Commons of the Imagination
• Society for Arts in Healthcare
• Theatre4Business – Play Hard; Work Well
• The Art of Possibilities
• The International Forum – Leadership Through Music
• The Maestro Effect
• Music and Management – Music Provides Excellent Metaphor for Business Climate
• Viva La Voice – Celebrate the Power of Your Full Expression

This post was originally published on the Acumen Fund Blog.

For the past few months, I have been reflecting on the role of the storyteller in the context of the non-profit sector and more broadly across sectors and geographies. The most obvious example of the elevated role and importance of storytelling in recent years is the famous TED Conference, which invites leading thinkers across sectors, geographies, and backgrounds to share their stories and insights about the world.

To speak from personal experience in the non-profit sector, we place tremendous emphasis on developing one’s ability to tell powerful stories. Storytelling is one of the most powerful tools we have to create empathy, raise capital, and connect people. We, the ones who travel back and forth from the slums of Kenya to the conference halls of Aspen (I just returned from the Aspen Ideas Festival), are seen as the carriers of these stories. While I have been a storyteller most of my life, my current work leads me to ask: What are my responsibilities as a storyteller?

Storytellers bear an enormous responsibility to acknowledge the world’s endless complexities. I have had the privilege to travel extensively in emerging markets (Pakistan, Senegal, Kenya, South Korea). When I travel in developed countries, I often find myself as the only one in the room who has extensive experience in the developing world. Sharing stories from these parts of the world can be an intimidating hat to wear. My advice before you tell any story is that you remind your listener of the “Danger of a Single Story.” Your experience and perspective is just one of many.

Storytellers must be dynamic. When I am in an environment where few people have been exposed to the things I have been exposed to, I am constantly observing reactions, listening to questions, and repositioning my story and tone. I have to challenge myself to continuously re-imagine the different sides of one story, and craft my message in a way that pushes others to question their perspective – but in a way that is not so jarring that they will unable to really hear what I have to say. This balance is critical. You must push your listeners at a rate they can absorb.

Storytelling must come from a place of empathy. A few weeks ago, I spoke to the JK Watson Fellows, young up and coming leaders in New York, and we had a long discussion about how to tell stories about individuals you have met along your journey. One of the Fellows asked me: “How do I know I am preserving the nuance and complexity of the person whom the story is about?” My advice to her was ask the protagonist of the story (whether they be a low income person in a slum or a wealthy philanthropist) what they think.

Finally Storytellers must uncover ways to be replaceable. I think we are at a moment in time of inter-connectivity and democratized technology that rather than telling other’s stories, we can find ways to empower them to tell their own stories. To give you an example of what I mean, one of the most amazing speeches I have seen to this day was delivered by Alex Sunguti, a young man born and raised in the slums of Kenya. Alex could easily take his story to a global stage. I (we) don’t need to tell his story.

I am not saying we should stop telling other people’s stories because our stories are intertwined with theirs and the reality is that this is not always possible. What I am saying is let’s figure out some levers to unlock and some new tools to use that will allow more people to tell their own stories. Twitter, YouTube, and Facebook are doing this on a massive scale. So we can see that technology is already helping, but let’s remember that we must drive that technology. We, the storytellers, need to let some stories go so that the voices of the world can truly be heard.

Blair Miller is Global Fellows Manager for Acumen Fund. Check out her personal blog here and follow her on Twitter at  @AcuBlair.

Written by Steve Hendershot, July 18th, 2011 appeared in Crain’s Chicago Business.

Lisa Canning uses a plug-in reader and the Square app to process credit card transactions in her clarinet shop. Photo by: Stephen J. Serio

Email is so old school. These days, small businesses that are getting the most out of their smartphones and iPads are all about the apps: add-on programs that can help them do everything from process credit cards to sketch skyscrapers.

Of the small businesses surveyed in a March poll by AT&T Inc., 72% said they were using mobile apps. Thirty-eight percent reported they would struggle to survive without them.

Here’s a look at how Chicago entrepreneurs are using apps to transform their businesses, plus recommendations on which new ones might fit in their collections.

Lisa Canning using Square to process a transaction.Photo by: Stephen J. Serio

Lisa’s Clarinet Shop in Lombard takes in more than $1 million annually, but it’s only a 15-hour-per-week job for owner Lisa Canning. Ms. Canning, 47, sees clients by appointment and doesn’t keep regular hours, so she hasn’t invested in a traditional credit card terminal for the shop. That’s led to some awkward sales: She would write down each customer’s credit card information, take it home, process the card at her terminal there and then email a receipt to the customer.

That changed with the app Square. Using a small, free credit card reader provided by San Francisco-based Square Inc., Lisa’s Clarinet Shop can process credit card transactions for a 2.75% fee; there are no monthly fees or setup costs.

“I was embarrassed by my old-fashioned way of taking credit cards,” Ms. Canning says. “I built a great reputation online, but when people would come in and I (couldn’t charge them there), it felt unprofessional. Now I’m consistent. This was a no-brainer, and it also produces a really positive reaction from my customers that reflects well on me.”

Square, founded in 2009 by Twitter creator Jack Dorsey, is growing quickly. Tech industry publication TechCrunch reported that the company is valued at $1 billion in its current fundraising efforts.

WHY IT WORKS: “There is a good reason why Square is already attracting a $1-billion valuation by investors,” says Brad Spirrison, managing editor of Appolicious Inc. “Business owners like it for its simplicity and the fact that it doesn’t require monthly fees, a merchant account or contract.”

SOMETHING ELSE TO TRY: “If your business finances are already run through another service, the Intuit GoPayment credit card terminal and the Authorize.Net credit card terminal are also good apps to turn your phone or tablet into a mobile cash register,” Mr. Spirrison says.

Photographer David Ettinger, right, uses an array of apps: Simplenote and Evernote for note-taking, Toodledo to make to-do lists, TripCubby to track mileage and Google Earth to scout locations for shoots.

In David Ettinger‘s gear case, you’ll find the collection of lenses, lights and camera bodies that you’d expect from a professional photographer. It’s nothing, however, compared to the staggering array of mobile apps he uses to run his Chicago business, David Ettinger Photography.

First, there are two note-taking apps, Simplenote and Evernote. Both apps are free; Evernote is more full-featured (you can include voice memos, photos and notes with formatted text), while Mr. Ettinger finds Simplenote to be faster. Lately, he’s been using Simplenote to collect all of his notes about a particular job inside unformatted text files.

“When I’m mobile, I want to be as fast as possible, even if it comes at the expense of features,” Mr. Ettinger says. “I hate being that guy standing there at the end of the aisle at the store, waiting for something to load.”

Then he breaks his notes down into specific tasks and enters them into Toodledo, the to-do list app he uses both to track his agenda and for record-keeping. It’s a $1.99 app that utilizes Seattle-based Toodledo.com’s cloud-storage system so that to-do items will sync across multiple devices. There’s a free version of the service, but Mr. Ettinger subscribes to a $14.95-per-year plan that allows him to store two years’ worth of completed tasks online.

Then there are the specialized apps: TripCubby, to track mileage; Analytics, for checking his website and blog traffic, and Google Earth, to scout outdoor locations.

“I can work wherever I need to work,” he says. “A big part of my business is being accessible to my clients when they need me.”

WHY IT WORKS: “Simplenote is basically a premium version of the iPhone’s built-in app, but I’m a fan because of the way it syncs to outside services like Dropbox. Getting data to the next place you’re going to consume it is the key,” says Phillip Leslie, CEO of ProOnGo LLC.

SOMETHING ELSE TO TRY: “Really advanced mobile workers like (Mr. Ettinger) have figured out how to complete 90% of their tasks using mobile devices, and they’re trying to tackle that last 10% where you’re still chained to your desk,” Mr. Leslie says. “They’re using GoToMyPC to access their office computers from a mobile device to complete those tasks.”

Sandy Marshall's firm, Marshall Creative, specializes in short films, audio projects and other digital content that's often too large to email. He uses the cloud-storage app Jungle Disk to solve that problem.

When Sandy Marshall is out of his office, the CEO of Chicago marketing firm Marshall Creative is as likely to be on a Caribbean cruise as at a client meeting across town. That’s because Mr. Marshall has a second job as a director for Second City’s comedic performances aboard the Norwegian Spirit, a cruise ship operated by Norwegian Cruise Lines.

The challenge for Mr. Marshall isn’t just staying in touch, it’s that his firm specializes in short films, audio projects and other digital content that’s often too large to email. He uses the cloud-storage app Jungle Disk to solve that problem. Through Jungle Disk’s free app (which requires a paid subscription to the storage service offered by Suwanee, Georgia-based Jungle Disk LLC ), Mr. Marshall has access to the 100 gigabytes of content that Marshall Creative stores online, even when he is at sea.

Mr. Marshall uses a similar free app, Dropbox, for client meetings and to share large files with clients. San Francisco-based Dropbox Inc. offers its users 2 GB of free cloud storage, and Marshall Creative uses a free account to host individual files for presentations.

“I’m always a fan of in-person presentations, and getting that response,” he says. “With Dropbox, it’s a little easier (than with JungleDisk) to access audio and video files during a meeting.”

WHY IT WORKS: “Dropbox is far and away the best application, mobile or otherwise, to share multimedia files among co-workers. It works great on the iPhone, iPad and Android devices,” says Brad Spirrison, managing editor of the Chicago app-review company Appolicious Inc.

SOMETHING ELSE TO TRY: “Later this year Apple will be coming out with its own document-sharing service, which could be superior to Dropbox, at least on Apple products,” Mr. Spirrison says. “However, it is unclear if or how that product will interface with users with Android phones or BlackBerries.”

Helmut Jahn demonstrates a drawing program for his friend Howard Ecker. Photo by: Stephen J. Serio

Helmut Jahn has largely ignored the personal computer. The architect considers the device too complicated, too big and too heavy compared to his creative tools of choice: a sketchbook and camera. For years, as he traveled around the world, Mr. Jahn used fax machines to send and receive drawings to and from his firm’s Chicago headquarters.

Then, about eight months ago, his friend Howard Ecker introduced him to Apple Inc.’s iPad, and the device spurred a technological revolution in Mr. Jahn’s life.

“It has transformed how I think and how people in my office communicate with me,” Mr. Jahn says. First, he’s a more active emailer and better prepared for client presentations. But the centerpiece of his iPad usage is the $4.99 app SketchBook Pro, a drawing program from Autodesk Inc., the San Rafael, Calif.-based software company that also makes the AutoCAD engineering and architecture software.

Mr. Jahn, 76, estimates that he now uses SketchBook Pro for 90% of the drawings he makes while on the road, and even uses the program about a third of the time while working in his Chicago office. He also takes photographs of his sketches, then imports those images into SketchBook Pro so he can make notes and export the images. Drawings from SketchBook Pro can be emailed or transmitted to cloud-storage programs such as Dropbox.

Learning to draw on the iPad required an adjustment, but not a severe one.

“It’s a different medium, but the adjustment was no more different than working with a different pen or different paper,” says Mr. Jahn, who uses a stylus with SketchBook Pro. His drawings using the app “look a little more sketchy (than a similar drawing on paper), but I can actually work faster because I’m not attempting to get that accuracy.”

From processing credit cards to sketching skyscrapers, an increasing number of small businesses are harnessing the power of their smartphones and iPads.

In this video, architect Helmut Jahn and tenant representative Howard Ecker discuss how their favorite apps have changed their work lives.

Justin Seidenberg needs to be able to talk to his artists even when he's out of the office. Photo by: Erik Unger

Justin Seidenberg is accustomed to crises erupting at odd hours. Mr. Seidenberg manages a stable of musicians through his Chicago company, Kiqstart Music LLC, and it’s when his artists are at performance venues that they are most likely to require his help. In other words, he needs to be ready for action at 11 p.m. on a Saturday night.

“I’m out having dinner with my wife, but my artist gets to the venue and gets into a debate with the production manager. I need be available and prepared,” he says.

Mr. Seidenberg uses two iPhone apps to meet the challenge. The first is Skype, a free app from Palo Alto, Calif.-based Skype Inc. that allows him to video chat with his musicians, wherever they may be.

The second is GoogDocs from Fossil Software LLC of Austin, Texas. This app allows Mr. Seidenberg’s mobile phone to access spreadsheets he creates using Google Docs, Google Inc.’s free, cloud-based office suite. He keeps contract details there, such as the set length, sound-check time and financial arrangements between artist and venue, so he can quickly intervene if a dispute arises.

WHY IT WORKS: “A (video chat) app like Skype provides an extra layer of interaction that helps reinforce your message. If you have to air a grievance or a concern, a visual rendering can carry a lot more weight,” says Chris Pautsch, CEO of KeyLimeTie LLC.

SOMETHING ELSE TO TRY: For more formal video conferencing, Cisco Systems Inc. offers a free mobile app for users to join meetings that use the company’s WebEx Meeting Center. Mr. Pautsch uses the service at KeyLimeTie to stream video and share documents among participants.

Billy Dec uses UberSocial to streamline the process of posting to his 17,000 Twitter followers. Photo by: Erik Unger

There’s a common line among social-media critics that goes something like, “No one wants to hear what you ate for lunch today.” But that might depend on who you are and what you had for lunch.

Chicago restaurateur Billy Dec, for example, took a picture of the goulash he ordered during a recent trip to Budapest, and 45 minutes after he posted the photo on Twitter, 608 people had clicked the link to see his bowl. Mr. Dec, who owns four entertainment venues, including River North eateries Rockit and Sunda, commands a legion of more than 17,000 Twitter followers. His goal is to share his behind-the-curtain access to such scenes as a popular chef at work in the kitchen and a celebrity musician backstage.

He uses the free mobile-phone app UberSocial from Pasadena, Calif.-based software firm UberMedia Inc. Mr. Dec has been using the app for about six months and says its immediacy “allows you to see magic behind Twitter because everything is just instantaneous.”

Mr. Dec aims for 10 to 12 tweets per day.

“I feel bad if it’s more than 10 a day, but I also feel bad if I don’t get close to that because people have expressed an interest,” he says. “I didn’t realize people cared as much about this behind-the-scenes stuff as they do.”

WHY IT WORKS: “UberSocial has some neat features. It’s great to click on a tweet that includes a link and be able to see the web page in the same window,” says Brad Spirrison of Appolicious Inc. “UberSocial’s ‘Channels’ are a handy way to access ‘conference’ or ‘breaking news’ tweets.”

SOMETHING ELSE TO TRY: “Seesmic is a similar tool that allows you to view and update accounts for Twitter, Facebook and even multiple blog posts. It’s also easier to switch between multiple Twitter accounts (than with UberSocial). The free app lets you add Twitter accounts as giant buttons, so it’s easy to use in a dark nightclub,” Mr. Spirrison says.

Should you trust an app from an unknown developer?

Solo and small-shop app makers “are often creating the most innovative apps available,” according to Brad Spirrison, managing editor of the Chicago-based app-review company Appolicious Inc. However, it’s wise to vet any app before you start using it. To do that, Mr. Spirrison recommends reading reviews in Apple’s App Store and Google’s Android Market, as well as on Facebook, in industry publications and on sites such as Appolicious.

It’s also worthwhile, even if you don’t have an iPhone or iPad, to see if Apple has approved an app.

“There is a higher bar set for getting an app approved for use on Apple’s iOS devices than by Google for use on its Android devices,” Mr. Spirrison says. “If an app is approved or promoted by Apple, that’s a good sign.”

Written by Peter Spellman, Berklee College of Music

Put on your marketing hat for a moment.

Market position is often related to niche. The “mass market” has given way to a market of niches. The music market in particular continues to segment and each segment has beome a “world”, a cultural/economic portal, through which niche companies can create value and success.

Maybe your specialty is tube amps, or Latin jazz arrangements, or songs with a nautical theme. Whatever it is you can create a niche from it, a distinctive offering that stands out in the marketplace of useful things. As the saying goes, ‘Dig a hole an inch wide and a mile deep,’ and work it.

In order to help you strengthen your distinction, here are ten questions you should ask of your market positioning strategy:

1. Is it relevant? Relevant means applicable, connected, germane. The distinctions you create must be valued by a sufficient number of fans and customers.  Your distinction needs to con _nect.
2. Is it different? Being different for the sake of being different isn’t enough. Offerings must be genuinely different. What compelling reason is there for customers to switch their attention from existing brands to yours?
3. Will they care? Your point of difference must be truthful, authentic. Truth cuts through the clutter. Claims must not be empty, otherwise your audience will see through your ‘spin’.
4. Get emotional? Customers and fans must make a lasting emotional connection with your brand.
5. Are you the best? Superior quality alone is not enough to ensure market distinction, but it’s crucial. Quality is relative to consumer expectations. Raise expectations by delivering the best.
6. Can you say it? Every aspect of promotion should contain your differentiating idea presented in an easily digestible form. Creative concision is challenging but always effective.
7. Who are you? You are ultimately offering a human experience to fans and customers. Define your brand’s values, identity and personality in light of the experience you want them to have.
8. Are you innovative? Competitors will think nothing of stealing your ideas and calling them their own. Pre-emptive positioning based on innovation cannot be easily copied.
9. Can they afford it? Can buyers afford to pay for the difference? Improvements to products and services can be costly, but value is what you’re after and value transcends mere “price”. People pay for uniqueness.
10. Can you make a profit? The reverse of affordable—there must be sufficient profit margin once you have created your differences. After all, this isn’t a hobby you’re involved in – it’s your bread and butter!

Run your own positioning strategy through these ten questions and see it get stronger.

For more great food on this topic see, The Collapse of Distinction by Scott McKains (2009) and Career Distinction: Stand Out By Building Your Brand by William Arruda and Kristen Dixon (2007).

About Peter Spellman
Peter Spellman found his way into music as a guitarist in various New York bands and then switched to drums after seeing the Police perform in the late 1970s. Since then he’s performed and recorded with reggae outfit, The Mighty Charge, world music ensemble Friend Planet, and now with the Underwater Airport crew. He’s scored films for the National Science Foundation, composed video games for Massachusetts General Hospital, and coaches music entrepreneurs at Berklee College of Music. He is author of “The Self Promoting Musician” and “Indie Business Power: A Step by Step Guide for 21st Century Music Entrepreneurs”. Find him at mcareerjuice.com