|
Monday
April 8, 2013 How’d They Do That? The Making of a Logoed LollipopOne of my favorite sections of Advantages magazine is the Strategy section titled “How’d They Do That?” where the making of promo products comes to visual life! This month’s product: A logoed lollipop. Here’s the 7-step process, provided by Grumpe’s Specialties Inc. (asi/58480). Enjoy! (Click below for a larger pdf version to see all the sweet detail!)
Click here for a larger image (PDF).
Thursday
October 11, 2012 Top 5 Markets For Ad SpecialtiesFiled under: Education, Tip of the Day
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: Finish Line Offers Branding SecretsFiled under: Education, Fun, The ASI Show As Tony Robbins winds down a day in which he shared eight full hours of motivation and inspiration with The ASI Show Chicago audience, he focused on the importance of branding. “If you’re really a great brand, people start using your name to explain the category,” Robbins said in the last hour of his presentation. “That’s when you own a market. A commodity becomes not a commodity when you’ve successfully branded your company or your product.” It was that message that Robbins hammered home toward the end of a day of dancing, jumping, self-revelations, and inspiration. “To effectively brand yourself and your company, you have to do so much more than anybody else does that you dwarf them,” Robbins said. “Every person in this room could do it. You have to outwork people to build your brand.” To enforce that, he told a story of a guy in Encino, CA, who was struggling to make it as a real estate agent. He was 21 years old and not offering anything special or different than other established agents were offering in the area. And, in his first year of business, he didn’t sell a single home. Then he saw a game-changing opportunity. There was a six-week long trash strike in Encino, and the trash was piling up on street corners, and owners of plush homes were getting antsy. This guy then hired a company to pick up all the trash – at great expense. “He couldn’t afford it, but he cared about the community, and wanted to build his company,” Robbins said. He didn’t advertise the effort, but dumbfounded and happy home-owners began to find out that he was behind it. His phone started to ring off the hook, as locals offered to pay him back. He wouldn’t accept their payments, but he told them to think of him the next time they were looking to buy or sell a home. “In the next seven years, the guy made $2.8 million in commissions,” Robbins said. “There wasn’t a single home sold in Encino that didn’t go through him. What can you do that’s different and you can build around? What do you want to be known for? Why should clients do business with you versus anyone else? Go answer these questions now, and you’ll be successful.”
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: A Blueprint For HappinessFiled under: Education, Fun, The ASI Show How would you describe life? Is it fun? Is it exciting? Is it completely, utterly lousy? Understanding how you feel about life AND how your customers feel about their lives can actually help you sell to them more effectively. “You can determine how people look at things very quickly, even in a few moments,” said Robbins. “To influence another human being, you must know what already influences them.” The first step to improving business relationships, Robbins believes, is to figure out what makes YOU happy. If your answer is money, your happiness probably won’t last. “In 2006, at the highest financial level that we’ve seen recently, studies showed people were the most unhappy,” Robbins said. “When I go around and talk to people, my goal is to help them have a life that’s fulfilling. If you’re not happy in your life, this is all a waste of time.” So what then is a formula to happiness? “Happiness is when your blueprint or core expectations in life match your present conditions,” Robbins said. “The formula for unhappiness is when your life conditions do not equal your blueprint. If you’re massively off of it, you’re going to be miserable. If you’re unhappy, you also tend to believe change is out of your control.” When you determine the triggers of personal happiness, you then can turn your attention to making customers happy, Robbins said.
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: Hugs and Kisses AplentyFiled under: Education, Fun, The ASI Show Some people buy from you just because you put them in a better state by being around you. Tony Robbins provided proof of this concept when he asked audience members to greet their seat members in the normal manner that they’d greet a stranger. The usual bland handshakes and quick “hellos” ensued. Then, with U2’s “Hello!” blasting, he made them jump up and down to get their energy up, and then greet those same seatmates as if they were long lost friends or lovers. All of a sudden, the energy in the room changed. One woman bounded down an aisle, hands waving in the air as she greeted a stranger with a warm embrace. Kisses were exchanged by people who hardly knew each other. One six-foot-tall man grabbed a five-foot-tall stranger and whirled him around in a circle, his legs dangling in the air. “How did that person make you feel?” Robbins asked the crowd, who of course universally agreed that they felt great after the unusually-personal exchange. The point: energetic, happy people are going to give a much better impression to clients and prospects than “the boring people that call on them every day,” Robbins told the audience. So how to rev yourself up to be the kind of person people want to be around? Robbins had plenty of ideas, including acting out what it would be like if your favorite team won the Super Bowl (which, of course, he had audience members try), and changing your movement (think jumping, galloping, and fist-pumping). Doing these type of exercises before an important sales call or client meeting will put you in the right frame of mind, Robbins said. “You can be someone who sucks all of the energy out of the room, or somebody who lifts people up by your energy,” Robbins said. “Which one do you want to be?”
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: Time To Kick It In GearFiled under: Education, Fun, The ASI Show “Decisions = destiny. If you want to change your life you have to make new decisions,” Robbins says. But we make three decisions, all subconsciously. First, what should I focus on? The experience today requires that we have to take control of our own focus. You want to change your life, change your focus, he says. When you focus on what you can control your self esteem explodes. “When you spin out of control, focus on where you want to go or you’re going to hit the wall,” Robbins says. Second, what does that mean? The moment you give meaning to something it changes your life. One word can change the meaning of everything. “The minute you give it meaning it creates emotion and emotion equals life,” he says. Finally, what should I do? “If you’re feeling love you are going to respond very differently than if you’re frustrated,” Robbins says. How depressed or excited we are can go back to the three decisions. “If decisions are what shape my destiny more than anything else then what shapes my decisions,” he asks. Well, how you are feeling will determine how you make decisions. If you are in a lousy state, you will make lousy decisions. If you are in a great state, you will make great decisions and you can control that. It’s all about energy. Energy comes from psychology and spirit, not food and sleep. For example, people who have charisma have a lot of energy. For inspiration, Robbins shares a story of a 72-year-old woman who had been running marathons and iron man competitions beginning at 40 years old. At 70, she vacationed in Hawaii and entered an iron man competition. A huge wind caused her to crash on the bike course and she was badly hurt. So the event organizers changed the rules that no one over 70 could compete. However, on her 71st birthday she went back to compete and they would not allow her, but she said it was a free country and she did the swim, bike and run on her own causing the organizers, out of embarrassment, to reverse the rule. Therefore, the message: if you can have the same spirit and energy, you can better control your destiny and decisions.
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: It’s the Emotions, StupidFiled under: Education, Fun, The ASI Show Ask people why they fail and they give you a number of excuses: We didn’t have the right people, we didn’t have the right technology, we didn’t have the time. “They’re saying they didn’t have the resources,” Robbins said. “But it’s not a lack of resources that’s screwing them up. It’s a lack of resourcefulness.” Emotions – creativity, flexibility, compassion, vision — are the ultimate resources. He brought up Walmart’s Sam Walton as an example. He had vision, started small and built an empire. In 1974, comparable retailers K-Mart and Sears were kicking ass and Walmart had a mere 78 stores. Today, Walmart has 10,000 stores and pulls in $444 billion in sales. K-Mart merged with Sears after bankruptcy. Sam Walton was fearless and fear is the biggest impediment to success. “The biggest fear people have is I’m not enough and I won’t be loved,” Robbins said. “But you can change those thoughts and emotions by changing your physiology – the way your body moves.” At that point, he told the audience to get up and stretch and go through various gyrations as loud pumping music played. He then instructed them to turn and massage the shoulders of the person next to them. “Most people don’t ever celebrate,” Robbins said next. “Turn to your partner and celebrate like crazy and see if they can outdo your energy.” The whole room erupted with cheering, jumping and fist-pumping. It was a sales rep’s Super Bowl. “I know it’s not your typical business seminar, but they’re boring as shit,” Robbins said.
Tuesday
July 17, 2012 Tony Robbins: “You’re Not Big Boned, You’re Freaking Fat”Backstage before beginning to talk to a packed ballroom in Chicago, Tony Robbins is warming up – very actively. He’s jumping on a trampoline. Smacking his own chest. Punching the air as if it was his mortal enemy. The warm-up routine gets him excited to finally jump on the stage and clap along with the audience to The Black Eyed Peas’ “I Gotta Feeling.” And, when he starts talking to his energized audience, his message is abundantly clear: Buck up and face the truth. “Good leaders see things as they are, but not worse than they are,” he said. “Too many people make things worse than they are and make up euphemisms for their situations. You’re not big boned, you’re freaking fat. Face the truth like it really is.” Robbins implored his audience to be honest about their own business – and to capitalize on the current economy. That’s right, he painted the picture of a struggling economy and then congratulated the audience for operating within that economy today. “This economy right now is winter. It’s snowy and windy and you don’t know from day to day whether you’ll be able to get where you need to go,” Robbins said. “Personally, I love winter for business. It wipes out the crap, and gets rid of all the nonprofessionals. This is when you can steal market share and capitalize on the problems of others.” But to do that, Robbins said, you need to see things a little better than they are – and clearly evaluate the situation around you. To Robbins, success at this point is all based on a strong mentality. This, he says, is what you have to tell yourself: “Winter is MY season. I was made for this time. This is where I come out stronger than ever.”
Friday
July 13, 2012 Live Blogging The Tony Robbins SessionFiled under: Education
More, from Counselor PromoGram:
So don’t miss a minute of the live blogging, which will begin approximately 9 a.m. (Central time) and end at 6 p.m.
Monday
November 21, 2011 Top Apparel Trends for 2012Filed under: Education Wanna know what the top apparel trends for 2012 will be? Then you need to look no further than 2011’s final issue of Wearables magazine, where Editor C.J. “Chaz” Mittica breaks it down and predicts what items could be the next big thing in wearable apparel. In the cover story titled “Top Trends of 2012“, Chaz not only discusses what’s gonna be smokin’ hot in fashion in 2012, but he provides a “Trend Meter” for each.
|
I love infographics, particularly a recent “Number Crunch” feature by Counselor magazine. Focusing on the 
Next week during Education Day at the 
