The other day I posted about how to do a successful Webinar. One of the things we didn’t have time to cover in that podcast was passion, and how important it is for you to show it in your voice.

I do an enormous amount of online teaching as well as teleseminars, podcasts, Webinars, videos and online teaching for the University of San Francisco Online. If there’s one thing I pride myself on is my passion for the topic at hand, and specifically how I convey it through my voice when I’m speaking. On stage in person too.

When I’m talking to someone on a class who’s all the way on the other side of the world, I have to make sure they can feel my passion through my voice. Believe me, it resonates if done right. Students and prospective clients can literally feel it in the tone of my voice, and because of that, I come off as someone they’re more likely to listen to closely, and someone who isn’t just trying to sell them something.

You’re passionate about something. I know you are. What is it? Why aren’t you taking that passion and communicating it to your audience in a way that they can literally feel it oozing out of you? You can’t do that in text. Why not try podcasting, or Webinars, or teleseminars or video?

Here’s a good example of a Webinar I did this week. It’s about a half hour long. See if you can feel the passion in my voice.

Prfessor Jim Demo from Josh Walsh on Vimeo.

If done right, passion resonates as more than a sales pitch, it’s a belief. It starts with you, and ends with your new customer. Get it, and get it now.

I often talk to my students and clients about developing a UVP. A unique value proposition. Some people called it a USP or a unique sales proposition. Same thing to me. The bottom line is you HAVE to have it. It’s the reason that someone chooses you over someone else.

Example: You have restaurant A and restaurant B. Someone says to you, “we have two choices, A or B, which one should we choose?” That’s a buying decision. Now, whichever restaurant has the better crafted, more appealing, problem-solving UVP is going to win.

So obviously your first step is to know your customer. If you know their pain point, then you can deliver them the solution, therefore making them choose you. But you have to know how to deliver that UVP to them that makes sense. How?

I was just watching an interesting video by Dan Heath, the guy who wrote Made To Stick over on the Openforum. Here’s the link to go watch since they don’t allow me to embed the video (lame).

He’s essentially talking about the same thing. It’s how you explain what you are/do. You must be able to relate to a person in a way that they understand.

Do you have a UVP? If not, you better get one. If not, how in the heck do you expect a customer to be able to choose you over someone else? You can’t.

I once wrote that “Nobody’s a blogger anymore, we’re all publishers“. The point is that at some point in the last few years of blogging growing up, and social media grabbing hold of us, that the reasons we started blogging became different. It wasn’t only about expressing our thoughts… it became more.

It became a business. Ok, you know what I mean. You start a blog today because you’re looking for something. Either to build your brand, or generate revenue, or to get publicity, or get a new job, etc… Therefore, since your intentions have changed, you no longer are a blogger… you’re a publisher.

A publisher is someone who’s looking to get something by producing content. A blog is just a tool you can use to do that. Same with Twitter, Facebook, Linkedin, etc…

Now, what’s interesting to me is that we’re seeing the same shift happening in social media now that just happened with blogs. Albeit, we’re several years early for mass adoption of this meme, but I feel the trend happening. More and more people are getting into social media with a goal in mind.

The goal could be figuring out how to make money, or build their brand, or find a new job… whatever. But it’s more than just “socializing” as the intent is my point.

Why is this happening? Well, it could be that people have finally realized that it’s possible to “do something more” than chat with friends. People are now beginning to see that these tools can be used to help them accomplish something, and frankly, I don’t think that’s such a bad thing.

Why shouldn’t we have goals?

How long will it be before more and more people begin to become aware that social media is more than a glorified chat room and friend finder? Time will tell. But in my opinion, that trend is moving faster than you think.

I’m sitting here in a coffee shop trying to concentrate on writing my upcoming book called “Attention!”. In fact, I’ve been sitting here for almost two hours now, and I’ve probably written about 100 words.

Fail.

It occurs to me that despite my best attempts to focus on writing this book, I’m not getting it done as fast as I thought I would. Why? Well, probably a bunch of reasons.

1. The Deadline Isn’t Close Enough
Classic excuse eh? Are you like me and you are able to “perform” better when you’re on the spot? When you KNOW you MUST get it done? For example, when I’m on stage, I KNOW I have to bring it, so I do. Or when I’m about to have an important phone call with a client and I have things due to them, I KNOW I have to get it done. This book manuscript isn’t due until Jan. 15, 2010.

Now I know better than this. I KNOW that it will be a HUGE mistake to not have it close to being done before Christmas. I KNOW that I don’t want to be sitting in a closed room for 2-weeks prior to the deadline frantically writing and stressing out. Yet, here I am, not focusing, instead writing this blog post.

2. Social Media
I have Tweetdeck up and running on my other monitor all day long. I look at it probably every minute or more. It’s a HUGE distraction to me. Fortunately, I’ve closed it here, ok, I lied, it’s open, but I’m closing it as soon as I get done with this blog post.

The point is, social media is a distraction. We’re all so, ok, maybe just me, dependant now on knowing what everyone else is up to. Where they’re getting coffee at and how they’re partying in Vegas. It’s a good thing, to be vested in the lives of our friends and associates. But it’s a HUGE distraction for sure.

3. Gmail
This is worse than social media. I’m an email guy. My business revolves around email. All day, all night. On my phone, on my Mac. Wherever. Email rules me. It owns me. I know I should shut down Gmail and I’d get more done, but it’s oh so hard to do.

I’m interested in how you find ways to focus on goals? How do you get things done? For me, I’m a burst worker. That means that I go for long periods of time meandering around in my head and online plotting and thinking and formulating what needs to be done. Then, when it’s all cooked up in my head, I go, go, go… and produce a very large amount of high-quality work in a short, bursted, period of time.

My friend John Ettorre pointed out to me once that many famous people were burst workers. Einstein for example. Whew, so I’m like Einstein I guess? I wonder if he can come by this coffee shop and help me write this book.

Twitter just released Twitter Lists. Steve Rubel points out that this is perhaps the new measure of influence?

In July 2008 I wrote “The Death of the A-List” which caused a slight stir. Ok, not really, I was right.

Here’s what I know. We don’t need lists to tell ourselves how influential we are. You don’t need them. I don’t need them.

You have influence or you don’t.

I was influential speaking to 30 entrepreneur ladies in a knitting shop the other night in Lakewood, Ohio. I didn’t need to be on their list to know I affected them. I could see it in their eyes.

I was influential on stage in front of 3k people introducing Chris Brogan and Gary Vaynerchuk at the past Affiliate Summit events. Do I need those people in that audience to put me on a list to tell me that I’m influential? No. Hundreds of emails and contacts later I just know I did a good job.

Haven’t we got past this yet? Twitter lists seem to want to resurrect the idea that certain people are “more” than others. Being on a list doesn’t mean anything anymore, as it shouldn’t. It’s nice to be included, but…

Influence is measured to me in terms of sales, leads and publicity for myself or my clients. Or in the way that my audience reacts to me either immediately or down the road. Perhaps it’s measured different for you, that’s fine. The point is there’s ROI in influence. Being on a list is going to help that? I’m not so sure.

Or maybe I’m missing the point entirely?

Todd says…

I think Twitter Lists will end up helping separate the men from the boys when it comes to influence. In addition to seeing a Twitter users follower count, we can now see the number of other Twitter users who have added them to lists (example to the right). I would argue that getting added to a list is a bigger deal than simply getting someone to follow you.

In today’s world, if you need to be on a list to prove your influence. You’ve already lost.

It’s interesting that this post from Copyblogger came out today about the ‘3 fatal diseases that kill good blogs‘. Why? Because I’m currently writing a book right now called ‘Attention!’ and one of the themes I’m working on in the book is…

This is a business, not a hobby.

Social media, blogging, email marketing, affiliate marketing, online PR, you name it… This is a business. We’re doing this to make money, or leads, or get publicity. Not for fun. Not for “friends”. Until you flip that switch in your head where you understand this, you’re going to continue to find it very hard to find success on the Internet.

From the Copyblogger post…

If you are serious about blogging, you need to treat your blog like a business. You are the CEO of You Inc., and you’ve got to weigh every single decision as if there were millions of dollars on the line. Yeah, it would be great to blog in your underwear and sleep in every morning, but the reality is that most of us can’t afford to do that.

Measure the day’s work in results, not in hours spent typing on Facebook or Twitter. Absolutely, fostering relationships is important, but every action needs to be treated as an investment of your time.

This is especially important if you are a solo blogger, as there is only so much work that you can get done in a day. You’ve got to be efficient with your time. This means measured action and measured results — not just going with the flow.

I wrote the first eBook about how to make money from blogging back in 2004 called Blogs To Riches. When I wrote it and released it, I was getting hate mail from people saying things like “You shouldn’t use blogs to make money you jerk” and “You’re ruining the Internet, F#$% you”. These people didn’t believe that blogging was a business, or could be.

Of course, a few years later people like Problogger came on the scene and proved that you could buy a house with the money you make blogging. Now, today, we all realize that blogging is in fact a great way to do business. Yet, still so many of us treat it as a hobby still.

Here’s why. Because “regular people” are the people who start blogs. They’re not marketers. They’re not entrepreneurs. They are people who have a passion about something and they want to share that passion with the rest of the world without having a gatekeeper tell them they can’t.

But things are changing, yes they are. We’re no longer bloggers anymore, we’re “publishers”. The majority of people don’t start blogs anymore just to waste time. They want something out of it. It may not be money they want. It may be fame. Whatever it is, they want something for their effort, and that makes them a publisher.

What happened to me in 2004 is the same thing that is happening now to social media. We’re all being told we shouldn’t try to make money with social media. It’s pure, they say. Leave it alone, you’ll ruin it.

This is ALL a business, not a hobby.

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!

Thanks to the power of blogging, I was able to get to go see my first Las Vegas show while attending Blogworld 09. I got free tickets to go see Cirque Du Soleil Mystere, and wow, it didn’t disappoint.

Uploaded with plasq’s Skitch!

Here’s a video teaser.

What a fantastic show. Makes me want to go see all of the other Cirque shows now, and I will. But perhaps one of the coolest things I’ve seen is that they have a Web-based tool that allows you to take a quiz that then tells you which Cirque show is best for you. Smart marketing.

If you get to Vegas, check out one of these shows. Truly amazing. Note: I was not paid to do this review, or required to do so, however, I did get free tickets to the show. If the show sucked I wouldn’t have written about it. Frankly, I think it’s a smart way to get the word out about the show from their end.

As you may or may not know, this is my 3rd year as the organizer for the Blogworld “monetization” track. That means that I get to create sessions for the show that revolve around “making money with blogs”. The past two years have been extremely successful, with jam-packed sessions and thousands of happily informed people walking away with tips and tricks and motivation… oh my!

This year I’m at it again. The final schedule is up now and you can see the panels that I’ve put together.

Are you coming? Because it’s going to be the best track yet! Over the next few weeks leading up to the show I’m going to feature each panel I put together and talk about why you NEED to be in attendance.

Here’s a run-down of the sessions I’ll be talking about here on my blog over the next few weeks. Note: I’ll be personally moderating a bunch of these panels.

Friday, 11:30 AM
Panel: Are You Getting The Most Money Out Of Your Blog As You Can?
Description: You may think your blog is earning well, but what if someone showed you how you’re leaving money on the table and could be earning much more? Well, this panel will show you how to extract those extra revenues out of your blog that you’ve never thought of. Ready to make even more income next year? We’ll show you how.

Panelists: Dave Taylor, Tim Jones, Chris Pirillo, Chloe Spencer

Friday, 12:45 PM
Panel: Affiliate Marketing Blogging Secrets
Description: Top bloggers already know, and have proven, that affiliate marketing is a top three money making tactic for their blogs. Now is the time to learn from the affiliate marketing experts about how to incorporate high-converting affiliate marketing efforts into your plan of attack.

Panelist(s): Angel Djambazov, Brian Littleton, Ben Huh, Kim Rowley

Friday, 3 PM
Session Title: Making Social Media Make Money – The Top Ten Strategies
Description: Social Media has become our first choice for communication with friends and for business. Most of us start our online sessions with Twitter or Facebook. Social Search poses the first real threat to Google’s dominance. This presentation will explore practical applications to deliver real bottom line profitability for business and leading strategies for building your personal brand online.

Panelist(s): Jay Berkowitz

Friday, 4 PM
Panel: Did I Miss The Online Video Boat?
Description: So what happened? Last year everyone told me I should be making Web videos and I’d be rich. I didn’t do it because I was too busy and didn’t know how to start. Did everyone get rich besides me? If so, who and how and is there still time for me to jump on board?

Panelist(s): Steve Rosenbaum, Gary Rozenwieg, Vincent Everts

Saturday, 11:30 AM
Panel: The Money Making Potential of Continuity Programs
Description: The business case and money making potential of creating and maintaining continuity programs.

Panelist(s): Tim Kerber, Ryan Lee

Saturday, 12:45 PM
Panel: How to Earn A Big Ole’ Pile of Money By Making Lots of Killer Blog Content
Description: One way to make money on your blog is to create tons of high-quality content. But how do you do that if you’re a one-person shop? Learn from the experts about how they create massive amounts killer blog content that helps them earn like Web rock stars.

Panelist(s): Rosemary, Warren Whitlock, Dan Gray, JB Glossinger

Saturday, 3 PM
Panel: Blogging Super Panel Live Feedback Site Reviews
Description: Is your blog optimizing its potential to make money? Find out! This panel of the top money making bloggers of all time will spend a few hours reviewing your blogs live. So get there early and step up to the mic and be ready to have your blog picked apart by the pros who know.

Panelist(s): Darren Rowse, John Chow, Zac Johnson

Saturday, 4:15 PM
Panel: How to Make $60k a Month with a Membership Program?
Description: Learn the secrets of how to take a niche topic and turn it into a profitable membership program from scratch, capable of earning $60k a month or more. It wasn’t always easy either. Learn about the early days and the problems we ran into, as well as the mistakes we made in the process. Also learn how to turn on the marketing machine to attract new members.

Panelist(s): Timothy Sykes, Adarsh D. Pallian

Bonus! She’s not in my track, but she is speaking.

Session Title: Facebook & Twitter Fortunes: How To Strategically Grow Your Business Using the Top Two Online Social Networks
Description: Facebook is the largest online social network and Twitter is the fastest growing online social network. These two giant sites have changed the landscape of online marketing with significant implications for business owners, marketers, and entrepreneurs. Facebook boasts over 200 million active members and is growing at a rate of over one million new members per week. Twitter has grown 2300% in the past 12 months. Facebook, Twitter and other social media sites are extremely powerful marketing mediums through which to exponentially grow your business.

Panelist(s): Mari Smith

Chris Brogan and Julien Smith have written a thought-provoking book called Trust Agents. Here’s my video review.