Products, Projects and Process

Heap CRM Categories: Set Them Up Like Tags

November 20, 2009 By chris

I’ve been using HEAP now and digging what it will be doing for me. I review Heap CRM as a better CRM than I review Infusionsoft. It’s more functional, and Heap is staffed by people that never lie to you, unlike infusionsoft which has business “coaches” which aren’t really coaches but hourly type employees. They don’t know how to run a business, just punch a time clock (think, people–why would you trust someone like that). Heap is different, it’s self serve, damn near perfect and you can bend it to your will.

The first part of the last list was to rethink my categories, so I’ve done so here. This is probably too many, but it’s consolodated from about 40 ID/Statuses from ACT. I’ll keep banging on this list.

Heap Categories/Tags:

VIPs Anyone that’s important and rare: No more than 50 people can have this category at any given time, and it’s meant to be the 50 people most important to my business. They can be anything: vendors, service providers anything. This tag is for other people to know that these folks get whatever we can do for them. A VIP vendor is someone that has my back.
Prospects: People that may buy something and are in the category of likely to buy at some point some day. This is people that have or haven’t bought from me.
- Never Bought: Someone that’s never bought from me.
- Have Bought: People that have bought something from me.
Big Time: Anyone that’s a megaprospect or hugely good at what they do.
Met/Talked To
Unmet/Never Talked To
Competing Services: Just so we watch it.
Social Media
- Found Me - If someone randomly follows me on Facebook, I get to market to them. They came to me, so it’s all cool.
- I Found. I have to tread carefully here.
- FB-
- LinkedIn
- Twitter (how they got added)
Aweber Opt In: Someone that opted in to AW and became part of a database (scrub against Aweber unsub list before sending mass emails).
Personal: Primary source is personal. Friends and Family.
Refered By Other
Advocate: Whenever someone refers me someone, closed or not, whenever someone has helped.
Prior Bad Acts: So we don’t see it as a big deal when they are brusque. Should be rare that we tag them.
Live Lead: Took action to call on purpose.

Loads of fun.

Filed Under: miscellany, Products, Projects and Process

Screenflow Love: Ten Features I’d pay anotheR $99 to get.

August 18, 2009 By chris

First–and at the risk of sounding like a fanboy–I love Screenflow. I paid $89 or whatever for it, and I think that in every manner it’s the best value out there. For your mac, it does everything it does, it does about right. There are some counter intuitive interface things, but they are all balanced out by the ease of use and easyness of the editor.

Still, it could be fun to have a ‘pro’ version. Screenflow isn’t about slick transitions and effects, it’s about being easy to make good videos.

With that said, here’s what I want:

Usability: Open file -> creates new file. Right now to make a new file, you have to record 2-3 seconds of video. That’s dopey. It’s tolerable, but just have a ‘create new file.’ I often use screenflow as my NLE when I’m doing stuff that I don’t need to putz with final cut for.
Autosave when finished recording: this is a feature I want because if you start working (and it’s easy to just start working) you can lose data if the mac goes to sleep. Autosaving on a mac isn’t part of the norm, but I’ve lost work catastrophically 2-3 times because of this, and it’s an easy (enough) fix.
Bring In Media (pack & go) if you want to, it should do what Audacity does and bring in all the files it’s searching for and using if you want it to. This will increase the file size, but it will also mean that it’s not a PITA if I move some file to some other part of my hard drive or delete an old version of something.
Chroma Key: Look, with today’s webcams starting to kick ass (my Eyeball by Blue) why not use this thing? It could be an awesome, gamechanging feature since you guys are so far ahead of the field. doing a chroma key/greenscreen video right would make you beat the TAR out of your competition.
Crop Different: I’d like to make different shaped videos. I’d like to cut around someone when possible, instead of being limited to square shapes. If I want to cut out the space over my shoulder, let me.
More Precise Editor: The editor’s habit of ‘snapping to’ is an irritant, and it should be able to be just a little more precise than it is if we set it to be that way.
Save Effects: If we’ve made an effect that brings a video in, and then makes it fly away from whence it came, we should be able to save the effect/effects as something so we can save time creating it.
Hotkeys: Evetything that Screenflow CAN do should be done via hotkey. Insert text box, for example
Text Boxes: Let’s do a better job with those. Let’s be able to save text box styles and apply them correctly, and precisely. Font size and stuff are there, but having to mouse around to make all of our changes is a bummer.
Colors: Being able to make things B+W or sepia or whatnot can’t be that hard, and if I’m a talking head, I want to be in black and white? Damnit make me in black and white. Or red. Or whatever. The current workaround is to export out into imove, make black and white and bring back in. Doable, but why?

That’s it for now. This would make an excellent ‘pro’ product, and I’d kill to have it. The distance between Screenflow and Snapz would get wider. Still, this said, there probably isn’t any better value in software than Screenflow at the present time. Amazing NLE and amazing what CAN be done. Let’s make it just a little easier.

Note: Transitions and peel aways would be great, but that doesn’t impact workflow that much.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process

The NAMBLA/KKK Weight Loss Plan

July 31, 2009 By chris

Let’s get something really, really clear. I hate NAMBLA. HATE. (I won’t link, google if you must know what that horrible organization is and does).

I also hate HATE the KKK. Of the organizations they are 1 and 1a in terms of “totally evil, but sadly, must be legal.” That whole libertarian streak

I’m going to use these vile organizations to help me lose weight. Stay with me here, I know it’s a stretch.

How To Use People You Hate For Goals You Want:

I’ve been in an accountability group for a while. I’ve been focusing on selling 100 blogs. That goal is on pace. The one that’s not, though…I’ve gone through it in fits and starts, and it’s been an interesting journey for me. Right now, I’m trying to lose 40# in 100 days. About 40 days in, and I’m only down about 9 net pounds, and all of that was from a couple of weekends. I’m doing better-but-not-great at the dinner table. I’m doing badly at getting to the gym. Flat out badly. I need to work out more. Nothing has worked–my intentions are good…but between sleep training Ruby and everything else, I’m just not making it. So let’s fix it with something that MUST work.

So, I had an idea. What if a kitten would die if I didn’t work out. Sadly, both PETA and I agree with the premise that kittens shouldn’t die if I don’t work out.

So, I had another idea: what if I lost money from not working out. (Note: when you’re less attractive, you lose money) So I wrote out a check to a few friends, and told them the score: I don’t work out, they cash the check. Still, it doesn’t have the STING that I want. Because I’m helping friends out. And it’s a perverse incentive.

So, I thought: first, time I miss the gym it’s a warning. I get a check written out to a couple of friends and they cash it. The SECOND time.

Well, let’s just say that I become the Grand Wizard of NAMBLA.

So, 4 checks. All with instructions: Cash this if I don’t prove that I got to the gym. First check goes to my friends. The second check? That goes to NAMBLA or the KKK.

They BETTER do it. Phil? Jesse? Counting on you. They’ve been sent SASEs. I gotta go to the gym man.

I’ll probably up the ante a little bit and make a picture of my ‘food diary’ become necessary.

Anyway, the rule is this: I gotta prove that I was at the gym, or these puppies get cashed.

I gotta do this till October 1st…then the checks I will void.

Bottom line: I get one day off a week, either Friday or Sunday, but not both. I’ve got to post a video by 1am the next morning on Youtube proving that I was at the gym. I don’t know of a practical way to prove a workout, but this is good. I’ll also be taking a picture of what I ate and putting it here. All this is in the sidebar to the right. Please subscribe. Rat me out. I’m tired of the excuses.

My Gym is urban active, and here’s the first video I got:

These little accountability videos will show up in the side bar. I’ll do the vids with my crappy Blackberry. I would rather have a PXL 2000, but this will do. Join me at http://www.youtube.com/user/accountachris to track my progress and encourage me not to deal become the Grand Wizard of Nambla.

Oh, also: if I go to run at the woods, that counts, too, but I gotta find a stranger to say what day it is and go on video. Should be fun.

Fight Racism: Encourage Me To Get To The Gym.

I made a badge since Ryan wanted one.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, miscellany, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: dreams

63 FREE Autoresponder Headlines for A Long Term Campaign

July 30, 2009 By chris

So I’ve had some autoresponder fail for a long time. I have decided to arrange my schedule in working for what I’m doing in the mornings, and in the afternoons work for other folks. If he ever gets his magnum opus done (I’ve seen the notes) Remarkablogger has a very cool mastermind-level thing that helps you think. He’s claling it ‘gateway blogging.’ Bug him to finish it because the notes are Goooooooooood.

Anyway, that said, he’s got a bit on profiling customers. Describes how to do it. You folks, reading this blog, are unlikely to be customers for my Guerrilla.ME blogging services. Mostly the people that read me are friends and other bloggers with blogs. So I do this for ideas…I am not selling anything to you (unless I go the affiliate route, and right now, I’m more interested in making honest recommendations that YOU KNOW I’m making to benefit you, not me, than collecting the bucks from selling excellent products like the Freelance X Factor).

Even though blogging is young, there are more people that are going to be blogging than are blogging. We will need to share this “how to blog” info with people. I made a bunch of autoresponder headlines that I’ll tighten up a bit to tell the story to my leads. This will fix autoresponder fail because the story is a breezy 150-250 word dispatch that defines stuff for my prospects.

Steal at will. If you use, please either linkback or gimme a testimonial to celebrate my genius.

Follow Up Sequence:

Guide to blogging for small business part 1
Beginners Guide to Blogging Part 2
What’s Wrong With Your Online Marketing
Think Like a Searcher: “How Do I” Questions.
How Blogging Builds Trust With Customers
How Blogging Can ALSO be an Email List
Tell Your Story However It’s Comfortable: Make It Make Sense.
Make Changes As Easy As A Word Document!
Local Search: Where To Compete To Win The Wara
Is It Your Site? Or Your Designers Site: How Blogs Put You In Control.
All Roads Lead To Rome: A Social Media Strategy You Can Live With.
How To Use OTHER SITES to Win Customers
Create A Social Media Plan That Works
How To Be Sure Your Blogging Will Have An Impact.
Testimonials: How They Are ALL That Matters
How You Can Waste Your Trust
How To Be 100% sure You’ll Get Traffic on the Web From Your Efforts Blogging
How To Tell If Your Web Guy is Lying To You
How ____________’s Blog Started Working.
Why Flash Sites are Dead
How To Use Facebook to Launch Your Blog
What 10 True fans can do for you online.
How To Blog if You Hate Writing
Nobody Cares About You (Unless You Care About Them First)
What is a “keyword” and why do I need to know.
How Do I Get A Return on My Investment
Testimonials? Why Not Having Them is Killing Your Business
Relationships? How Is Blogging About Relationships.
Beginners’ Guide To Blogging Part 3
How To Ensure That You’ll Get Traffic From Blogging
What is Keyword Bingo and Why You Need It
How To Make A Blog Work in 2 Hours A Week
10 Reasons Why Your Clients Don’t Trust You & How It Breaks Your Site.
Why Your WebPresence Is Wasting Time Online
35 Ways To Waste Money Online
16 Ways To Get People To Opt In To Your List.
9 Ways You’re Alienating Your Customers.
Kill It.
Why Not Finish? You Need to Do More Online To work
Don’t Worry About Traffic from Kazhikstan (SP)
How to (Really) use Twitter (if at all).
Make Your Customers Trust You By Being The Most Consistent
What is Paper Click Advertising?
10 People On Youtube That are Uglier Than You:
Why Greed Based Selling is a Thing of the Past
Why Helping your Customers is the Way To Go!
It’s Not About You: Making Your Blog About Your Customers Is The Way To Go
How To Exchange Links With Others
Put a Video On it: How to Put Youtube Videos on the Blog in 5 minutes.
What ATMs Taught us about Our Web Presence
I’m ugly. Should I post videos Anyway?
Why Your Site Isn’t Working and How To Fix It.
Interact With Citizens, Not Conusmers
Be Predictable: Don’t Sell Greed
Demonstrate Virtuosity:The Point of Blogging
Be of Service: The New Way To Survive
Promote Others To Win Your Own War
Why Putting A Phone Number On Your Site Makes Webforms More Friendly
How Long Will I Have To Wait Before I Get Paid?’
How To Get Traffic With Youtube Videos
How Social Media Can Enhance Your Web Presence.
How Can You Tell If Your Web Page Is DoingWell
What is “Opt In?”

Filed Under: Business Building, Products, Projects and Process

Killer WP Tool: Dagon Design’s Scheduled Post Plugin

July 8, 2009 By chris

Sometimes you can write with fluency and perfection.

Sometimes you can’t.

Sometimes you write posts tha don’t need to come out ant any particular time.

I’ve been having this WordPress dream for years. That I’d have the ability to have a blog that runs itself. When I create a content surplus, I can file it away.

That’s what Mat @ Dagon Design did. He’s got a wicked collection of plugins. The one that I love is this:

Scheduled Post Plugin.

Category driven, you can make it post in the future ONLY when you don’t post within x hours.

Think about that? You then post every morning at 9, no matter what.

And you can do more in batches.

Friggin’ cool tool if you ask me. Go get it and let me know if it has any issues.

WP Pumpkin photo credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/ericmmartin/

Filed Under: miscellany, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: Products, Projects and Process

My Autoresponders are DISGUSTING

May 29, 2009 By chris

When your autoresponders suck, it’s worse than not having them at all. When someone trusts you with an email address, it’s the beginning of a relationship. Letting them down is a problem.

Disgusting. That’s What my auto responders are at the moment. Foul and nasty and…just plain bad. I’ve gotta fix it this week, and I will. Its one of those things that fell through the cracks. Writing autorespoonders is not hard work. it’s not particularly time consuming.

But, mine blow. I have not done the job I wanted to do because I haven’t REALLY decided what strategy I’ve wanted to execute. I’ve kind of been in transactional mode because I have been working my ass off to get the IRS out of my life. And that’s going to be something that I’ll do this week.

Autoresponders work. I’ve set them up for many people. Mine? Won’t do anything but confuse people. I have 3 set set up with a great plugin that Keith built for me. Really slick. Pulls people into aweber in a great way. Then when they get there? They hear nothing.

So it’s time to change that, and I’ll let you know what happens when I improve my campaign.

You’ll hear back from me Monday or Tuesday.

First:

A mea culpa to my list.

Then:

Notes that matter, and I’ll add the autoresponders to my daily tasks/tabs.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: GenuineChris, time consuming

Getting Things Done (GTD) With Firefox Tabs: Setting Them To Have a Good Day

May 27, 2009 By chris

I love GTD. I fall off the wagon all the time, but I do love the promise, and it’s a great framework to go back to. Since I make my living connecting with people in social media, and helping them connect, and since I’m still doing “project work” as I launch my businesses…I figured I’d show you what I’ve implimented as a practice to get started.

One of the things that went wrong was the book I wrote. I abandoned it because, well, I have acute IRS problems, and I can’t bonzai something to perfection when I need money now. The thing is, I do and did have the time to get stuff done with regard to FT. But I didn’t get things done because, largely, t wasn’t in front of me.

So I decided to fix that a couple of days ago. I made some firefox tabs after my wife and I improved communication by sharing a Gdoc ToDo List (I know, I know, Remarkablogger is cringing as we speak). But, I needed to do some easy things on an iterated basis. And since I switched to FireFox 3.5.1b, Morning Coffee (a good plugin) ceased to work. So, I made tabs:

Chase- I check my bank balance every day, mostly to make sure I have not been levvied recently by the IRS.

Analytics- I’m just keeping an eye on stuff, and as my coffee brews, looking at numbers helps.

Twuffer: I have underused Twitter. Twuffer help me keep current. I do a mix of broacsast + connections, and it’s working.

GenuineChris – So I remember to post.

F#@% Therapy: So I remember to post.

Guerrilla.ME Again, so I remember.

LinkedIN: Answer whatever questions are in my wheelhouse, and look around for people to connect with. I’ve been on LinkedIn for 2ish years, and have underused the site. So it’s time to get after it.

Facebook: Kinda the same deal. FB is more about broadcasting than any of the other sites I deal with, but yano, I need to pay more focused attention to my groups etc.

YouTube: I’ve not used this NEARLY as well as I can, and I need to make sure I’m actually making a video once or twice a day.

Then it’s my MDAs- Minimum Daily Actions,

My @todos and @projects

My family budget/expenses.

And finally, my Greader. I don’t keep up with feeds like I used to, which isn’t a bad thing. I’m using reader now for alerts that I need to pounce on.

This gives me enough to do without being bored or distracted, and it is reasonably portable. If you’re on the web, almost all browsers have home tabs these days that you can set, and this is a handy way of getting done. Remember: GTD is mostly a collection of kludges and tricks that’s design is to make you better, faster, smarter.

[Time spent on blog post: 9 minutes]

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: GenuineChris, social media, wheelhouse

Goals…Update

May 20, 2009 By chris

So right now, the revenue part of the Chris Johnson show is working. I’m getting good clients and delivering blogs. I’m able to sell one or two a day, and that’s pretty frolicking cool. I’m able to work with a wide range of fun clients, and that’s also cool.

So, to date, I’ve sold 12 Blogs, delivered another $3500 in freelance projects, and gotten INCHES to the goal of getting extricated from the IRS’s clutches. By Inches, I mean it should happen in or before June. then I can hammer the rest of the stuff out.

But let’s be honest–I’ve barely made it to the gym. I’ve not gone much this month, and I’ve gained 2-3 pounds. That’s gotta change–today. Monday kicked ass, I hit the gym early. I pounded out some great work.

So, to get where I need to be, I gotta hit the gym every day–preferably in the morning–this week.

And I gotta use the Wii Fit every day at night for 30-40 minutes.

But the good news is this: I can still hit the goal of 8# gone this month, it’s nto too late if I hustle.

So it’s time to hustle. First day this week I miss the gym I’ll have a new fun challenge for y’all.

Filed Under: Achieving Goals, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: dream life

Snapz Vs. ScreenFlow vs. Screencast-o-Matic: A Review.

May 17, 2009 By chris

Greg Swann got me onto SnapZ last fall when I wanted to improve on what was available from Screencast-O-matic. I was looking for something that looked good, that would last more than 10 minutes and that would allow me to render stuff and do what I wanted with video. I downloaded the Free-and-Functional-for 14 days Snapz Ambroisia. And things were good. I was able to share info, I was able to build videos that explained to folks what I did and how to get on a blog. But something was missing. I bought the paid license anyway, and I used it. It was fast, hotkey driven and it was always waiting for me, always at the ready, when I wanted to make a video. I was also able to use it to rip some DVDs the long way, and that worked out well, too.

Namely, layering. I wanted to make some callouts. I wanted to do some things that looked less ‘vanilla.’ And Final Cut wasn’t really something that I wanted to get into at the time (I’ve changed since then, since Imovie 09 introduced me to layered video.) So Kasey Kelly suggested ScreenFlow. And I hated it. At first. I downloaded the free trial, and I hated its guts. It had an interface that bit, it had a timeline I hadn’t seen before, and I couldn’t get past the learning curve. And, with Imovie 09 making things easier, there was no need to.

So I was sticking with Snapz and iMovie to edit stuff. And life went on. Except when I got my Guerrilla.ME idea: reputation management + social media training idea. I wanted to go beyond it, and I knew–from watching good ones–that screenflow was a cool tool. And ultimately, I use it daily, it beats the crap out of Snapz, and I no longer

Screenflow Wins, But First The Bad News

There is about a 90 minute learning curve. Snapz is faster. It’s easier to use. It’s the thing to get if you do one or two–total–screen casts. If you plan to do one a month or more, you might consider Screenflow, because once you use it, it’s quick. It’s also cool that it saves only the part of the screen you tell it to, and if you’re stuck editing video in Imovie ’08–where there’s no cropping–that’s something to consider. Screenflow has its own Non Linear editor built in. And, I like a lot of the way it THINKS better than iMmovie ’09 or Final Cut Express.

Snapz also doesn’t put your talking head on anything, and you can put your mug in the corner with Screenflow which is important to some folks (me). You can shrink stuff down, make callouts (need more callouts)

Also, ScreenFlow doesn’t save settings. I do screencasts that generally look fine at 10-12fps. So I want to save ‘em that way. There’s no “default,” saving. PITA. Also, if you want to open the program and start, it doesn’t want to do that. Finally, it makes me ‘prepare to record’ first, and I do love the ‘instant on’ part of snapz.

What ScreenFlow Does Great

Screenflow is a fantastic entry point to non linear video editing. It doesn’t launch in that mode by default, but it is fantastic at trimming clips, splitting clips, and doing loads of other ‘minor’ fixes’ like adding titles. I like using it–for the most part–better than Imovie. When I need transitions or color effects I use iMovie, but most of the ‘roughing’ can easily start in Screenflow. It also rendes as fast or faster than Snapz on my setup.

It also captures your face. You can do a training video and put your little talking head in the lower left or upper right (or, hell, you could drift annoyingly across the screen). That makes a training video more relevant and intimate. There could be options–like color filters and CROPPING (in lieu of just resizing) but that’s a minor complaint, and I don’t think SF needs more complexity. It also does a good job of recording Keynote presentations and you can then put your face in the corner if your ego requires it.

Finally, if you want to make callouts, to make some things get bigger to illustrate a point, SF does a good job there–and it’s easy once you do it a couple of times. If you need a video TODAY, snapz is the way to go. If you need a video to be GOOD, screenflow it is. I own both, and I probably wouldn’t buy snapz again, but I still use it almost daily…particulaly when screenflow is rendering.

Screenflow can improve, but at the moment it does a nice job. There are workarounds for almost everything, and it’s a good tool to learn to sync sound with video…

Till next time.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: Mac, Products, Projects and Process, snapz, telestream, video tutorials, videos

Daylite CRM: First Thoughts and a Review

May 14, 2009 By chris

For other CRM Reviews See here:

Heap Reviewed and Highrise CRM Reviewed.

I just started using Daylite CRM by MarketCircle. I am not using its full capacity, or even coming close to scratching the surface of it. I’m underutilizing it, and I’m working harder than I need to work to get stuff done, and that’s no fault of the software. This is a patial review of the first month. I think it takes a couple months to figure out how to use a CRM, and for now, I’m on Daylite. I refuse to put up with web speeds for my CRM, and I refuse to put up with

For now, let’s take it and look at what it is and can do.

It’s a CRM that’s meant to share in a mac environment, in a real way. Multiple users can simultaneously access and modify the same database, and it has a fair degree of customization that you can do. It stores the important fields by default, and it has other fields that the user can define. It creates activity series and, once set up, this works PRETTY well. It can be used to relatvely efficently create documents with Mail, Word, & Pages, and that’s important for a mac. It’ll do your mail merges. With the exception of automated webforms, this has all the basics for a salesperson oriented CRM–and webforms aren’t that important to me. (If the Market Circle people show me webforms, go for it).

What it does right: Hotkeys, rightclicks and customization. I do wish that it had an ACT style “contact layout” mode, but I can get to anything I want via a lookup/hotkey that I can set for myself. So, if I want to schedule an activity series, I can do it. I can also have just a twitter address as a point of contact and have “get info” as a category, where I can move people in and out of that “ID/STATUS” (Act! style) at will.

The things I dislike: hot email addresses. I when I click on someone’s email address, OPEN MAIL AND SEND AN EMAIL. When I right click on a contact, GIVE ME MY OPTIONS. I wanna be able to email contact, schedule a TODO with the contact. You can do it when you view the contact in a LIST, but you can’t do it in the screen that looks like this:

I right click? Nothing happens but the normal mac stuff. Stupid oversight, hopefully they’ll correct it.

Same deal with email address. I should be able to hotkey launch MAIL to send an email from that view.

This sounds negative. It’s not meant to be, I think that Daylite CRM is a good start. When the interface comes around to match the features, then it’s a great start. They need webforms, and a half decent interface and then they are done, and can fine tune.

My fantasy is to be able to right click on a twitter name, have it get sucked into my CRM, and then have it get scheduled.

More soon–gotta actually get some work done.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: CRM review, heap

A Coherent Design Interview: Focus on What the Blog is FOR

May 13, 2009 By chris

One of the things I’m not is a designer. I outsource my design work to guys local and not local. I have a good sense of what looks right at the end. I have a thick skin to mitigate the demands of the folks I work with. I have a knack for getting people to compromise. But I’m realizing now that a design interview is critical to the process.

Revisions are where I lose money. Every now and then a project gets in revision hell and has no chance of winning. Once something gets to the fine details, once a client is focused on the teeny things that are wrong, they lose focus on the big picture: Blogs dominate SEO, blogging, done right is STILL in 2009, the EASIEST WAY of rocket your business upwards. The Thesis Theme even moreso. When we don’t get really close the first try, the customer gets honked. I filter the work that comes from my three (freelance) designers before it gets to the customer. More often than not, it gets done quickly. Sometimes, when a customer sends something up, they lose focus.

So I need a design interview, accompanied by a video, that expresses what I want to express in the way I want to express it. Because I’m ridiculously cheap, I have to make it video based, with examples. So I think I’ll sue the Contact Forms 7 Plugin so I can show examples and the like.

More to come.

Filed Under: Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: marketing, sales

Outline: Thesis Training Videos For WordPress.

May 2, 2009 By chris

I started watching some of the videos I made for my thesis clients. Man, what gibberish I made. Indefensible stuff. I had to scrap it all…because I honestly wanted to do a good job. I was meandering, and that came from a lack of pre-planning. I do a lot of tech coahing and that stuff can be done 1-on-1….because it’s being done specifically towards someone. This sorta thing has to have some polish on it, and my first efforts were merely a learning experience. Chalk it up to part of my 10,000 hours that Malcom Gladwell says we gotta put forth.

A training video can’t be haphazzard. It has to be carefully wrought, specific, and it has to have some VALUE. Nobody wants to hear a stammering ninny. So I’ve gotta start again. Which is fine.

The upside is with a decent outline–which I now have–I can run through this stuff really quickly with a lot of polish. I get rid of my hems and haws on the timeline in ScreenFlow (an awesome tool), and I can get this done in a few days.

Here’s what I know. Most of it is geared for the basic-to-intermediate crowd…and it starts after the fold to keep my pages lookin’ pretty.

[Read more...]

Filed Under: Business Building, Products, Projects and Process Tagged With: video tutorials