I’m just getting back into the swing of things, despite having been back over a week from Blogworld 2009. Whew, what a show. This was my third year attending, and also organizing and moderating the entire monetization track. If you didn’t make it to any of my sessions, too bad for you, because they were the best ones at the show!

Day 1 – Zappos

The week started off by taking a tour of the Zappos facility with a gaggle of others who also wanted to see just exactly what “awesome customer service” meant. On the bus was @ctango @jasonrubacky @AllisonNazarian @leesabarnes @elizabethpw @sarahrobinson @carlayoung @davetaylor @mpgomatic and me. We were picked up at the LV Hilton by the Zappos tour bus, and driven to their facility. Our tour guide, Mika, was fun, perky and well versed in the inner workings of the company. (I think they all have to be to do tours.)

When you first get into the lobby, you’re greeted by many bookshelves filled with books that their CEO Tony has read. You’re instructed to help yourself to a book as well. I helped myself to two, sorry Mika! Then it’s off on the tour. What a fun place. It’s lively, open, loud, and in general fun. I don’t see how it would be possible to get any “real” work done with all the “noise”, but I guess you get used to it?

One of the highlights of the tour was the blending station. With an actual Blendtec blender from the WillitBlend.com series. Of course, I had to ask if we could blend something and we did. Here’s the video of that.

Part 1

Part 2

Overall, Zappos is #1 because they get it on so many levels. You can tell they treat their employees right, and the employees love them for it. The do an extensive weeding out of the bad apples during the hiring process, and if you haven’t heard, they even offer potential employees $2k to not take the job. It works.

The rest of the day I spent doing a staff meeting with the Blogworld team. We get a tour of the show floor and the rooms and this and that. Same thing every year, I know what to do. :) I met with John (Vegasgeek) about a project we’re working on together, and had a few drinks with @jasonfalls of social media explorer. Wednesday was also the night I got to go see Mystere at Treasure Island.

Time I was in bed sleeping? Midnight.

Day 2 – Off Day

My track didn’t start until Friday, so I got to spend Thursday hanging out in Vegas. You know what the problem with “hanging out in Vegas” is? It means either drinking too much, or spending too much. I did both. At last count I drank Sake, Whiskey, Vodka, Beer and something else, I forget. Dinner was blur, and so was the late night fun. I do remember, however, meeting up with my new super-cool editor for my new book from Wiley… the awesome Shannon Vargo. I also remember not being let into the super-party at “The Bank” club because I was wearing shorts and sandals. It’s ok, I hate clubs anyway and I like it when they don’t let me in.

Time I was in bed sleeping? Um… 3am-ish.

Day 3 – My Track Begins

Got up out of bed and headed over the show with a mean head hurter. But managed to get all the panels in my track off without a hitch. Heck, I even moderated a few of them. If you want to see what my track looked like, you can view the agenda here. Tim Jones has a summary of the panel he was on here.

Friday night was a blast because I got the opportunity to play in the Blogs with Balls charity poker tournament at the Hard Rock Casino. For $60, I was able to sit at a table with two professional poker players… and beat them both! Yep, I sat with Annie Duke (she was on the Celebrity Apprentice) and another guy named Gavin Smith. Side note: I’m pretty sure Annie and Gavin were completely annoyed that a total n00b beat them both. Oh well!

2-hours later, I had won the entire table and earned my way to the finals. What a rush! I hadn’t played poker in over two-years at least, but I kept getting good cards and kept getting lucky. For my effort, I won some prizes, including a year subscription to Sports Illustrated, a Tiger Woods Xbox game (which I gave to mad man Jason Rubacky) and a bottle of Crown Royal. Side note: You can’t pack a bottle of whiskey in your carry-on. TSA threw it in the trash. Duh, Jim. I didn’t advance very far in the final table, but it was a great time!

Things only got more fun that evening. After beating the pants off some poker sharks, the crew I was in headed over to the Imperial Palace to play some cards. “Why go there Jim? Isn’t that place dumpy?” Why yes, it is, in fact the bathroom I was in had raw sewage coming up through the floor drain. But! And a BIG but… they have celebrity lookalike blackjack dealers. We got to play against Tony Orlando (who was super funny) and Garth Brooks. Great time. Thanks to Brian Littleton for leading the crew. And Missy Ward, well, she’s always just awesome to hang out with.

I hate to admit that I had not eaten since noon and I had the cab driver take me through McDonalds at 2am. That Big Mac was great though.

Time I was in bed sleeping? Um… 2:30am-ish.

Day 4 – Final Day

This was actually the best day of the show for me. My panels were kicking on all cylinders. My room was packed for almost every one of them too. People were swarming the speakers at the end of every session wanting to get more questions answered.

On the show floor, I fulfilled a life-long dream of meeting Chad Vader, from the Web series. I got my picture with him and watched as he played actor Kevin Pollak in Rock’em, Sock’em Robots. Kevin won.

That night the show wrapped with a very nice dinner out by the pool put on by Blogworld, hanging out with Cleveland buddy Joel Libava, and a Tech Karaoke event in the casino. I was going to sing, but went upstairs to pack and fell asleep. #finalnightinvegasfail Rumor has it that Shannon Paul does a mean Pat Benetar Heartbreaker, but I can not confirm this.

I’ll be back for Affiliate Summit West 2010 in January.

Summary

Another GREAT show in Vegas for Blogworld. I was able to have a LOT of fun, and connect with many people that I only get to see on Twitter usually or in emails. There’s a million people I would want to call out here but it would take me hours. Remember, you NEED to go to shows like this because you NEED to get the face time with your peers. You need to be seen.

If you’d like to see a bigger breakdown of a ton of excellent blog updates from the show, visit the Blogworld blog.

Thanks to Rick, Dave and Jim for the invite again. See you next year!

You don’t sell what you think you sell. Let’s get this straight. You need to understand this.

If you’re Nike you don’t sell golf balls and shoes and athletic equipment… you sell winning. That’s why you have Lebron and Tiger as your spokespeople. If you’re Debeers, you don’t sell diamonds… you sell “forever”. You sell “a special moment”.

This is what the teaching industry, or basically almost every industry, doesn’t get. Continue reading to find out how to fix this problem.

Case in point, over a year ago I went online to try and learn how to play the ukulele. What did I find? All the same stuff I found years ago before the Internet existed that stopped me from wanting to learn the piano.

In other words… learning was too hard. Accomplishing my goal was too hard. They didn’t make it fun. They all wanted me to follow their strict rules of lessons and reading music and proper technique. Blah. I didn’t want to do that 20-years ago when I wanted to learn piano, and I didn’t want to do that last year learning how to play the ukulele.

But perhaps most importantly, they didn’t “get” why I wanted to learn how to play the ukulele. Which was just so I could have some fun and play a few of my favorite songs. I had/have no intention of wanting to master it, or use all the proper strumming techniques or learn every chord.

I just wanted to mess around.

But what I found was miles of sites and guides that wanted to continue to make it hard, and show me how to “learn properly” and all that.

In other words… they were trying to sell me something I didn’t want. So I didn’t buy.

I taught myself online instead without classes and learned how to play (poorly, I admit) my favorite songs all on my own.

We’re getting to the point, bear with me.

Once I learned how to do the things I wanted to do, which was just play fun songs and have fun, I realized that the VAST MAJORITY of people who also wanted to learn how to play musical instruments really just wanted the same thing.

Yet, the music teaching industry keeps on selling the exact opposite product. Why?

Probably because they don’t know how to sell wine. Gary Vaynerchuk knows how to sell wine in a modern age. Instead of selling all the associated snobbery that came with wine, Gary changed the game and sold fun. He made learning about wine easy, and approachable. Everyone else was zigging… so Gary zagged and broke the industry in half, for the better.

Gary sells wine in a different way then everyone else, and now he’s got almost 100k people a day who watch him on his Winelibrary.tv show to prove it worked.

So this really isn’t about wine though. I’m using Gary as a prime example of what most people/businesses don’t do, and that’s know what to sell.

Last week I created a site called Play A Uke where I crafted a class on how to learn how to play the Ukulele. For $10, which I donate to charity, I teach you how I learned how to play the ukulele online for free. Again, admittedly, I play very poorly.

Since launching the class, I’ve had a lot of signups who love it, yet one ukulele person on Twitter called me out as “a dreadful load of junk”. Fine, I accept his/her opinion. They are a true teacher and I’m sure very skilled at what they do. That’s great. I appreciate the fine art and people who are highly skilled.

But don’t call what I’m selling “dreadful junk” and “not important” and blame me because you don’t know how to sell your product. Because you don’t. It’s pretty obvious.

And no, I don’t blame you, you’re not a marketer. You shouldn’t know as much as I do about selling. I don’t know a lot about teaching ukulele. It’s all even.

The truth is you sell all the wrong things, when you should be selling all the right things. People don’t learn how to play musical instruments, typically, to be the best in the world. They just want to mess around and sing some songs mostly. Yet, the teaching industry, music, or in fact, most industries in general, don’t sell what people really want to buy.

Take a look at how Gary does it, and get your brain working. What do you really sell? What do your customers really want? Because until you figure that out, you’re never going to find the success you think you should have.

I’m going to continue on this theme in the next few months. I’ve been doing a lot of teaching lately and it’s interesting to me to see the way the teaching online industry is broken. Let’s fix it.

I’m a Web geek. I’m super busy. I stopped golfing about 4-years ago because well, I was too busy. I’m still too busy.

But I’ve found this great little par 3 course just outside of downtown Cleveland (Fleet Ave. off 77) that I can play 9 holes in less than two hours.

So I’m going to start golfing again. Want to join me? There’s no commitment, just show up if you want to play. No tee times needed either.

Check this page for the time we are playing, it might change.

For now, we’ll be playing as the Washington Golf Learning Center at 9:45 every Wednesday morning.

Washington Reservation
3841 Washington Park Blvd.
Village of Newburgh Heights, Ohio 44105
(216) 641-1864

The first day we will start playing is Wed, April 15. Cya there.

Oh, and you don’t have to be on Twitter either, just show up.

All you have to do is visit my site at InternetHalftimeShow.com and watch the video, answer three easy questions and then tune in during halftime for the live show.

I’m starting a new mission to sing happy birthday to anyone who asks. So here’s the deal, watch the video below, if you or anyone you know is having a birthday and you want me to sing to them, I will, no cost. Why? Well, why not!???

Want me to sing to you or someone else you know?

Send email to jim at jimkukral dot com & include name of person/business/whatever you’d like me to sing to. I shoot these videos every Monday and post them on my blog for the world to see. Subscribe!

Click To Play

A few weeks ago I asked you to shout out your color of your Flip camera in video or picture format on Flickr. By the way, you can still do this so c’mon and have some fun!

Here’s some video responses by a few people that got in on the fun. First is a video from the gang at Marketleverage. Second is a video from Missy Ward, and third is from Shawn Collins.

Check out the live Flickr stream for all the videos and photos.

Hate your job? Dread going to work every day? If so, you’re not having fun.

Do you have fun in life and in your work? I do, every… single… day. I make “fun” a priority. Look at the projects I work on (AwesomeMillion.com, BigBrownBox.com, TwitterMeThis.com, to name a few). Most of them are built around fun first. It’s by design, believe me. Life is too short to work on stuff that isn’t fun.

YOU CAN DO IT! YOU CAN HAVE FUN AND EARN A LIVING IF DONE RIGHT! Right now, get a piece of paper and write down what would be fun to do every day. Then the plan is to figure out how to do it.

It can be done. I’m doing it. I start every project with fun as the first factor. You should try it. Watch the video below for some inspiration. Want to share you video about your fun project? Send it over to me, or leave a comment below.

We interrupt the Daily Flip to bring you a video you have to watch. Gary Vaynerchuk, the Wine guy, talks a little business/life strategy.

It’s pretty obvious that I’m crushing, in a totally marketing geek non sexual way, on Gary these days. I mean, I even wrote I wanted to be him months and months ago. You know I love you man, in a normal non freaky way, Ha. What can I say, the guy has it down, across the board.

Watch this video peeps. Gary’s giving school and I’m in the front row, you should be too. Join the verygreenteam too.

Watch video below to see the world premier of my new Daily Flip jingle!

I’ve always wanted a cheesy jingle. You know, like the ones you see on late night TV from the used car salesman in your town? Or the windows/garage door/plumber, etc…? You know what I’m talking about. They produce these seemingly low-quality, yet, extremely catchy jingles that they run on radio and TV over, and over, and over… Until it’s hammered into your brain. Hey, it works.

So, the other day on Twitter (add me) I said I wanted a jingle, and someone responded and said they could help me find someone to do it. Two hours later I have a jingle for the Daily Flip, and I love it. Twitter is kicking butt for me these days. Great news, because I quit it last fall, now I’m back and loving it, for now. So, does your brand have a jingle? It should?

Oh yeah, If you think you can make a better jingle than the one in my video, go ahead and send it to me. I’ll feature it on the show. For now though, watch the video below and enjoy my new jingle.

Subscribe to my email update list. No spam.	Subscribe to my YouTube channel.	Grab my rss feed!

Referenced in this video. Makemeajingle.com.

Also watch at:
YouTube, Metacafe, DailyMotion, Blip.tv and Veoh.

I’m bringing back a few videos from waaaaayyy back in the day. August 2006 to be exact. We did these videos on Awesome Dave’s Mac. It was my first exposure to creating online videos and I realize now that these videos are a huge reason I pursued moving to video. So much fun.

So what is this all about? Me and my buddy Dave created the Awesome Million, where anyone, or anything, can become really awesome! It’s free, so go get yourself awesome today!

By the way, check out my Awesome page.

Here’s our quick intro video of what it’s all about.

Here’s a longer video talking more about it.

And here’s a wacky video of us seeing who can eat a stack of crackers the fastest.

Here’s one of us dancing like idiots with Billy Bob teeth.

What are you waiting for? Make yourself or a friend really awesome right now, for free!