Freelancing, Speaking and Why Facebook is Better
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| From: ToothpasteforDinner.com |
Kemp Edmonds
"I am no longer taking on unpaid speaking gigs. I apologize for that. I would accept an invitation to speak if a Charitable donation ($50+) was made to the charity of your groups choice. I am sorry that I am unable to come as a free speaker."
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What are your thoughts on this idea?
Is this the end of Social Media?
"[The end of social media is a] very silly prediction IMHO. The buzzword, sure, will eventually fall out of fashion so that the pundits and conference-circuit "experts" have a newer, hotter term to bandy about and explain. But the concepts behind social media, social computing, whatever you want to call it, go back to the 60s, exploded in the early 70s, and will be around on the Net as long as there is a Net. I suspect ten years, twenty, fifty years from now, the applications that collectively comprise "social media" will have exploded beyond present-day imagination, although how they explode can be fairly well guessed at given an extrapolation of trends."
- Brainstorms
I would like to leave you with a video of a 100 year-old woman with her first computer, the iPad.
Fuelling your Social Media body
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| Photo: law_keven. Remixed under Creative Commons. |
As a member of the Vancouver Board of Trade I've had the opportunity to meet many different and interesting business professionals. When I met @CoryFry of @ThinkCOS it was a great connection. His company offers health and wellness services to large organizations as part their benefits packages. He invited me to a few bootcamps where I got my lazy butt kicked.
After falling off that train and neglecting my need to exercise, I was later contacted by the Principal at Think COS to discuss how I could contribute to his organization by consulting around technology. I met with Antonio at a coffee shop near my office one sunny afternoon. Antonio's business acumen, his sheer desire to succeed and his genuine interest in improving the health and wellness of everyone were inspiring. I recognized him from somewhere but couldn't remember where.
I then realized that he was the trainer from the bootcamps. Not only does this guy work 12 hours a day on his business but he also runs the bootcamps to ensure that the exercise is quality and attendees are getting the most out of the experience. At the end of our talk he invited me to join him down at Kits beach Saturday mornings at 9am for a beach side bootcamp. It was that bond that began me on this road to a healthier lifestyle. Someone else was willing to go the extra mile for me and a complete stranger at that. I was floored and Saturday morning hurt but it's been great ever since.
I didn't think about how important what I am eating is to this experience until I was watching this documentary about the making of a hollywood film in Kansas by a father and son team. The movie starts at the exact moment that got me to thinking. Even those who are in the best shape need to be conscious of what they put into their bodies.
What one puts into the machine is so important to determining what one gets out of the machine. The same is true for social media, networking and business in general. What you get out of it is all about what you put in. So what are you putting in your social media machine? Human communications, promotional messages, marketing? Consider what is working in the space. Companies that are putting positive intentions, positive messaging and a true concern for customers into their social media machine are enjoying success on social media. See @Starbucks (big), @GranvilleMag (small).
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| Photo By: Amanda Slater. Remixed under Creative Commons. |
I then realized that he was the trainer from the bootcamps. Not only does this guy work 12 hours a day on his business but he also runs the bootcamps to ensure that the exercise is quality and attendees are getting the most out of the experience. At the end of our talk he invited me to join him down at Kits beach Saturday mornings at 9am for a beach side bootcamp. It was that bond that began me on this road to a healthier lifestyle. Someone else was willing to go the extra mile for me and a complete stranger at that. I was floored and Saturday morning hurt but it's been great ever since.
I didn't think about how important what I am eating is to this experience until I was watching this documentary about the making of a hollywood film in Kansas by a father and son team. The movie starts at the exact moment that got me to thinking. Even those who are in the best shape need to be conscious of what they put into their bodies.
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| By: Paul Kelpe. Remixed under Creative Commons. |
How Social Media startups are hurting my friends
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| Original By: bootload. Licensed under Creative Commons. |
Sadly, there already is a Facebook and a Digg and hundreds of other variations. Unless you have big backers and/or a niche market that is in serious need of it's own social network your idea is extremely unlikely to succeed. The sheer number of 'companies' launching as social networking or bookmarking sites is reaching into the tens of thousands. How many will be successful? Maybe none, maybe one. Now I know that your social network is better, faster, cooler and more versatile than Facebook but that doesn't mean people will use it. The trend that I have been noticing lately is that people don't want to login to another site to access yet another network they have to put time into the benefit; people are already spread to thin.
"Working at a startup is a valuable experience, and making mistakes earlier in your career will save you later on. Even if the social media startup fails miserably, you have learned valuable lessons that will make your future ventures more likely to succeed." -Anoop
Anoop is so right on that and don't get me wrong start-ups are a good things especially when planned properly, not just around an idea but around a business model where revenue is a real thing, not something that will come. How are start-up leaders going to pay their employees? That's the problem; often they don't. Young people like the idea of equity but equity in something worth nothing is worth, well, nothing. Whether it's for equity or as an intern these newly minted technology and programmer masterminds are often being used as 'slave' labour.
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| By: MotivatedPhotos.com |
If you are or know a talented young person drawn in by this new startup model be warned or warn those you know. Any startup without a marketing plan or an inkling of where revenue will come from should be avoided. Below is an image including a number of logos from recent startups in the technology space. The ones crossed with a pink X no longer exist and there are thousands more to come.
What are your feelings on this? Do you have personal experience? Any good experiences? Please share.
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The minimum donation is $50 for a 30-45 minute talk. For groups with little to no funding what do you think of this format? The idea isn't to help the speaker but to ensure that the audience understands that these things aren't free.
Matt has a point, but if you go that route, tracking is everything. See what groups give you the highest ROI and stick to that demographic. Otherwise, it's your time down the drain - which is the last place it should be.
Jeremy, that video is hilarious. I love the part how he compares the high end restaurant to the taco shack. Beef is beef? ha!
As for the video, if I ever teach a freelance course, that's the first thing I'm showing my students.
If you feel strong enough about your product, charge it up. 50$ is not a lot of money especially if a bunch of people are going.
And it really depends on the event too - for example if they just want Jeremy to photograph a random party and he'd "get exposure to potential clients", then it's not so great, but if the event is actually about how to take good photos, then that could actually turn into some great results after everyone there realizes how much better it would be to just have Jeremy do it for them in the end. That's worked well for me with talking about how people can make their own web videos.
I see too many people speaking for little or no money at events where participants pay $500+ to get in. That's a serious problem. It's one thing if you have a vested interest in the event or if you're selling something at the event or your talk will boost sales, but if you're speaking for free and someone else is raking in dough on your talents you are doing yourself and every other speaker out there a disservice ('you' being anyone, not Kemp Edmonds Esq.).
A $50 charitable fee for open talks at non-paid events should be fine and will weed away the less serious people. But for big events it's not enough.
@MattsMedia I don't want it to seem like I am there to pitch anything or drive them into a funnel. Although I will provide information about courses afterwards: one info slide + handout.
@JeremyLim Great advice and thanks for the laughs.
@ Corey I think we had this conversation about your work about 2 years ago or so. I learned alot then too. This is a small group of entrepreneurs and not a money making machine requesting I come and speak.
@JLate Layers is my currency of choice as well!
@JoshRimer I agree with you. Sometimes it challenging when others are profiting off of something that you contribute for free when it costs you heaps of time.
@Mor10 Thanks for the advice and support for my position. For big events I agree it's not enough.
The value of a speaking engagement or opportunity should never be determined by the compensation one gets. There should be better more relevant markers for determining whether one should accept the free speaking engagement.
I do agree that if the event is charging people to come to the event, then speakers should be compensated, that does not have to be money.
There's much more to be said on this topic, I would error on the side of caution when using money as the deciding factor to speak for free.
I drove to Seattle a few months ago just to see and meet this guy, his talk is 3 hours long and as @MattsMedia and @JoshRimer mentioned you have to have other strategies...
Quote from @MattsMedia "I'd say get as many speaking gigs as possible and pitch them on your class at the end."
During this guy's presentation he promotes his books, his seminars and his coaching services. His name is Brad Sugars and he is the founder of Action Coach.
Not once did I hear a sale pitch though and he only gave real life examples and then got the audience to say "mmmm isn't that interesting" we must have said that line 20X.
All that being said this guy is doing his own show, but he started out somewhere, most likely talking to as many gigs as he could. (I will ask him)
Would I talk if someone was trying to scoop me...nope
@KempEdmonds I love your idea of charging a nominal fee ($5) at the door with 100% of proceeds going to a charitable organization. If 100 show that is $500...awesome, I might even implement it for my July meetup.
Sorry i missed your meetup last night @JoshRimer I look forward to seeing pics and hearing about it.
You can ration these out over the year so you always have one available for those low-budget, high exposure opportunities that make sense.
The fact is that a lot of big money gigs come about as a result of someone having seen you speak for free. Also, if there's no real budget for a speaker, there can be lots of other benefits you can negotiate such as book sales, donation to Kiva, camera crew, promotional exposure, video testimonials recorded at the event, live webcast, referrals etc. etc.
It will always make sense to do "free" on occasion, and you can judge each situation as it comes. Your instinct to "always get something" for your services is bang-on though.
PS. I was in a speaker line-up a while ago where the $10K keynote was doing a freebie to help out an old schoolmate. Cheers..
Also, search out organizations like the Vancouver Board of Trade etc. that have people in the audience that can actually pay you for your services. I do stuff with them and other associations at a reduced rate because there's 10's or even 100's of thousands of dollars of spin off.
Too many organizations want free seminars and their audience is full of people who can't hire you or expect more stuff for free.
Have done some work for charitable donation as well which helps out in spades later. :)