RISE #26: Seth Godin On What It Takes To Be An Entrepreneur Way Beyond 2010

Smarter, Faster, Cheaper Entrepreneurship: An Interview With Seth Godin

If there is ever an interview that contains zero fluff, it is this one.

Seth Godin. The man, the myth, the legend. One of the top marketers of all time, one of my top business heroes and a personal mentor to me (whether he knows it or not) was nice enough to take time today to help all of us entrepreneurs.

Seth is not here to give any of us a step-by-step, paint-by-the-numbers road map, but instead to challenge, inspire and offer some absolutely killer ideas on how you can become an indispensable linchpin.

Plus, he has a cool office.

In this interview:

-Seth’s views on how the business world is changing and how you can become irreplaceable.

-Are you an entrepreneurs or a freelancer? (My FAVORITE point of the interview).

-His thoughts on building a community.

-Are you working or wasting time?

-Why you should not care how Seth creates/works and instead worry about how you create/work.

-Seth mentions a few people in this video. One of them being Venture Capitalist Fred Wilson.

For more on Seth, of course visit his blog (click on his head) and check out his Internet company Squidoo and try your hand at creating a lens on your favorite subject.

Must Read Books:

Do yourself a favor and pick up all of Seth’s books starting with Linchpin (amazon link) which I finished recently on your Kindle. Great views on the relationship of art, entrepreneurship and the changing world.

Here are five other personal favorites of mine written by Seth (amazon links):

1. Tribes

2. Purple Cow

3. Small Is The New Big

4. Free Prize Inside

5. Permission Marketing

How Does This Help You With Your Business?

In the interview, Seth challenges content providers not to simply ask for thoughts in the comments. Our goal has always been to create a community in our comments on RISE so we can all build amazing businesses with each others help and guidance.

Which begs the question: What tidbit from this interview will help you the most with your business?

And Always A Big Thanks To Our Local Presenting Sponsor Making RISE Possible: Johnny Londoff Chevrolet

Just for being a RISE viewer, you get haggle-free, supplier pricing whether you are from St. Louis or anywhere else at Johnny Londoff Chevrolet. A great guy really getting into online marketing and relationship building.

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RISE #25: How To Build A Massive Kick-Butt Online Community

Building An Online Audience: A Discussion With Anita Campbell

I’ve gotten this question countless times via email, Twitter, Facebook: How do I build a passionate audience online?

Fantastic question especially since in 2010-and-beyond many entrepreneurs are viewing themselves as publishers and community builders.

Two-way conversation starters. Educators. Inspirerers (not a word, but hey it works).

How do you bring in folks to your website/blog and more importantly keep them interested?

This is something we strive hard to do every day on The Rise To The Top (and if you have suggestions on what you would like to see, please let me know. More interviews? More tips? More resources?), but Anita Campbell is an absolute rock star at building community and has been doing it online since 2003.

I invited her to come chat with our community to offer some ideas on how to build and maintain that elusive passionate audience.

Her website Small Biz Trends caters to over 250,000 entrepreneurs and small business owners monthly. Anita also owns a really cool social bookmarketing site (see our button below) called Biz Sugar which is sort of like a Digg or StumbleUpon for business content.

Grab a cup of coffee and enjoy this one (so many juicy tidbits).

In this interview Anita and I discuss:

-How she built her online community.

-Tips for building your online community.

-Social bookmarketing for entrepreneurs and small business owners.

-Her favorite trends and unique resources for “Do It Yourself Marketing” including:

1. GetListed.org: Check your local listings in the search engine.

2. KnowEm.com: Reserves your company name on hundreds of social media sites.

3. LotusJump.com: Enter keywords and it will let you know where you should be participating online to gain legitimate visibility.

Thanks To Our Local Presenting Sponsor Johnny Londoff Chevrolet

He believes in our mission and wants to help businesspeople like yourself – especially during tough times like we are in. So if you tell him that you heard about his store through RISE- you will get SUPPLIER PRICING. This deal is unbelievable – no negotiation is necessary. All you have to do is pick the vehicle you want and the terms are pre-negotiated. You will have a hard time finding a deal like this anywhere else

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RISE #24: DEBATE: Is LinkedIn Sexy Enough To Spend Time With?

Is LinkedIn Sexy Enough To Spend Time With?

Is Linkedin worth spending time on for entrepreneurs, small business owners and content producers (bloggers, etc.)?

That was the question I posed to my good friend and LinkedIn evangelist Lewis Howes.

A little back story.

I personally don’t spend much time on LinkedIn. I log in. I check on requests. I update my status via Ping. That is about it. It isn’t sexy enough for me.

I’m using myself as an example here, but realized after talking to tons of folks that many people are in the same boat. And on the other end of the spectrum, many people absolutely swear by it.

It All Started With Chris Brogan:

The debate “heated up” (we are all friends here) last week when Chris Brogan made a great post about how he was thinking of deleting his LinkedIn account because he already had too many touch points for people to get in contact with him and most of the activity coming at him on LinkedIn was requests for people needing help (introducing to contacts, etc.).

Lewis had a great follow-up to Chris and did a fantastic video showing him the benefits of LinkedIn.

Well played, but I wanted to dive deeper. Why? Because we aren’t all Chris Brogan (in fact, probably none of us unless you are Chris Brogan. In that case, hi Chris).

Other folks have chimed in too including RISE viewer Ryan Taft on his Catalyst Marketing Blog about the positives and negatives of LinkedIn. He has a great story on the positive side.

For me, I just prefer Twitter and Facebook. In the video you will find out why. But I love the speed and simplicity of Twitte and the rich professional/personal interface of Facebook.

Lewis of course is on the LinkedIn side and has a huge following there.

My conclusion? That whatever works and where you feel comfortable is where you should spend the most time when social networking. The tools are going to change over time, but the principles of social networking and the social web are here to stay. As long as your goal is forming better relationships, you will win.

Your Thoughts & The Big Question:

What are your thoughts on this topic? Do you swear by LinkedIn? What are your favorite sites and the big question:

If you were to delete one of the three major accounts what would it be and why?

And Always A Big Thanks To Our Local Presenting Sponsor Making RISE Possible: Johnny Londoff Chevrolet

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RISE #23: How To Make Your Website More Sharable & Spreadable

How To Make Your Website More Sharable & Spreadable

It is no secret the one-way, corporate-speak, personality-lacking website is dying by the day.

Here are some easy wasy to set your site up so it will be like peanut butter: Easily spreadable. A great way to build your business by being smarter, faster and cheaper.

1. Updated Content: A blog is usually the answer here. Give people a reason to keep coming back.

2. Share Buttons: Even if you don’t know the difference between Digg and Del.icio.us, your audience might. Know your audience and what buttons they use to share stuff.

3. Links To Your Social Media Sites: Let people find you on social media. Don’t worry about people leaving your website, instead allow viewers to interact with you where they feel comfortable which might be Twitter, Facebook, etc.

4. Email Marketing: Stay in contact with people. Don’t just randomly add people (SPAM), but have an easy opt-in email. Email is currency.

5. RSS Feed: Really Simple Syndication (basic article on RSS here): Quick people to read many blogs in a short amount of time. People can access your content when they want it. A must-have.

6. Social Media Sharing Buttons: Allow for retweets (Tweetmeme is a good service to use to add a retweet button), Facebook Share and other niche buttons in your niche (example, we use Biz Sugar to share content with entrepreneurs and small business owners. A great website and share button).

7. Search: We use Lijit (Thanks Chris Brogan for the idea). Allows folks to search, find, share (SFS).

8. Comments: Key to being interactive and social. Allow for comments. Participate. Have fun with it and allow all comments.

Not sure where I heard this quote, but a truly great website isn’t completed when you can no longer add anything, it is completed when you can no longer take anything away.

COOL EVENT: STL INNOVATION CAMP

The details:

February 26th-28th: Workshops, Innovator’s (not Innovation like I said on the show) Cup, Training Series.

A fantastic event for entrepreneurs whether aspiring or established. There will be some awesome speakers out there (and me, somehow I slipped into the mix). For ticket information and other goodies check out their website.

I’ll see you there!

Discussion:

I’m sure I missed some ways to make your website more sharable including mobile, etc. What has been successful for you?

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RISE #22: Lessons Learned From Hustling My Way To The Front Page Of CNN

Note: No, you are not crazy and your computer isn’t broken. The sound for some reason didn’t work in the intro in today’s episode. It will be fixed this afternoon. Hugs and kisses! Fixed!

Lessons On Building Your Business From Today’s Episode:

This past week I was fortunate (lucky, crazy) enough to make it to the front page of CNN.com talking about the Apple iPad (photos below) and here is a link to the article.

I got a flood from folks asking who I paid off (just kidding) and how I was able to pull it off.

Well, here is the story and it is quite a wacky one.

The purpose of this episode is really to shed light on that fact that with some good content, promotion and sticking yourself out there as a multi-media source (and not just a blogger or entrepreneur or business person) good things can happen.

Also, credit where credit is due on this one. Thank you to Nathanial Broughton and Steve Garfield for the idea of posting videos to CNN’s iReport.

And if you haven’t checked out Steve’s book “Get Seen” (Amazon Link), I would highly recommend it as a great introduction to online video.

(Front Of Tech Page on CNN.com)

Front of home page (bottom left) of CNN.com

Here are the steps that occurred for the video to make it from my weird brain onto the front page.

1. I posted a video on CNN’s iReport: You can do this really easily as well and stake your claim as a citizen journalist. No permission required! Here is the first video I posted.

2. The key is relevance: I found a story that interested me and I felt like I comment on the best. On this particular day it was the iPad as opposed to the Toyota recall or Haiti. The takeaway is look for the absolute best fit based on the story. If there isn’t one, the news never stops so try again the next day.

3. You can upload directly: The process of shooting, exporting and uploading took less than 30 minutes.

4. Promotion: Promote your iReport wherever you can. Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, on your blog, etc. You have to let people know.

5: Luck & Speed: When driving back from my haircut, I received an unexpected and very nice call from a great producer at CNN. She asked if I could shoot another video after the iPad announcement (which was occurring about 5 minutes after the phone call). Of course I said “yes” and the rest is history. I shot the video. I uploaded it (rinse, wash, repeat) and it made it onto the front page. While of course every video isn’t going to make it onto the front page of CNN.com, the takeaway here is I can guarantee it won’t make it if you don’t try.

Being able to act quickly and create good content in 2010 is a huge asset for every entrepreneur and business owner regardless of company size, age or experience.

Tickets Are Flying For Lunch & Learn Febraury 24th In St. Louis:

After hearing what everyone wanted, we are launching the first ever St. Louis Lunch & Learn on February 24th at Araka Restaurant in St. Louis, Missouri. The idea behind the event is killer networking (entrepreneurs, innovators, aspiring entrepreneurs and those interested in entrepreneurship, media, marketing folks and more) and all kinds of new tools you can learn while you dine and actually use that afternoon (if you would like to).

There will be three bite-sized, fluff-free, tip-filled interactive talks including:

I’ll be speaking about maximizing online video and why now is the time to jump in head first.

Mark Sawyier, the founder of Off Campus Media, will be discussing how to reach the new consumer (hint: college students)

And there will be a live taping of RISE as I interview restaurant-preneur Brad Beracha, founder of Beracha Concepts which includes Araka and Miso Lounge, who will be dishing out his business secrets.

Tickets are in limited quantity and you can nab them right here.

A Great Deal From Local Presenting Sponsor Johnny Londoff Cheverolet:

All you have to do is mention “The Rise To The Top” when you stop into Johnny Londoff Chevrolet and you get supplier pricing (no haggling, fixed price). We worked hard to create a unique deal with Johnny to help you and we are grateful for all of his support.