Good, good morning. Thank you for, for your assemblages this morning and hopefully we can get our work done in a very powerful and meaningful way in a short way. Thank you all so much for being here just before we get started. I think it's customary and I think it's our tradition now. When we start a meeting, we generally have a word of grace.  Create and merciful God for all that you've done for us, for the glorious possibilities you've allowed us to share in. Lord, we thank you for every person that has assembled today. We thank you for your mercy that allowed us to assemble. Particularly Lord, we ask that you be with Henry Simons and his family. We ask for your continued mercy and grace as they struggle with the reality of death. As a family, as a city family, allow us to be with him. Allow your spirit to enrapture them with your mercy. We ask it in your name. Amen. Several things we want to talk about this morning and of course the continued conversation on the, as we gather as an administrative policy committee on the chief in the city of Columbia Health Initiative. We want to at least legitimately discuss alternatives and options as we wrestle with the whole issue of health in our city. I want to thank Tim Benjamin, our chief of staff, and of course Ms. Ashley Wood, for she's not here today. She's not feeling well. We litter up in prayer too. What I'd like to do is I've had a conversation with Ms. Benjamin and Ms. Wood previously and of course I think the committee has shared information with them relative to some of the things and how we plan to continue to talk about this. Pam, if you would carry us through what we've talked about and materials that has been shared with us. Yes, sir. Additionally, I'd like to just report through. There were two recommendations from council. Of course we will need to meet again to further discuss those two matters. The first matter of course is the mayor proteum position. The position of course usually and traditionally has been a one year stand. I think the proposal is that we change one word to make it two years, but that's an additional conversation. The other conversation of course relates to municipal judges and the election of the municipal. The description of the municipal courts. That's correct. So if we could, what we're going to do is defer that conversation until we set another meeting with the administrative council committee. Okay. Is that agreeable? Yes. Is that agreeable? Yes, sir. All right. Ms. Benjamin. Good morning, everyone. Good morning. Yes, Reverend McDowell and the administrative policy committee charge staff with evaluating the creation of some type of some type of way to address community health issues within the city. And based on the research that we provided to the administrative policy committee. The recommendation was to look at creating a community health initiative model where there would be a partnership between city leadership. A committee or board that's formed that consists of community organizers, organizations and medical health providers to push forward health related programs and services in the city of Columbia. The model pulls together all of the resources that already exist. The healthy BR and some of the other organizations that are out there doing this type of work. It pulls together all those resources to help the cities, the city address health disparities, chronic disease management and provide guidance to city leadership on how to deal with health related emergencies and crisis. So the beginning step to implement this sort of initiative or this committee would of course be to approve the formation of the community health initiative committee as we do other committees that address city related issues through a resolution. The suggestion or the thought is that there would be a board of directors and you see before you a listing of potential partners board of director member suggestions that would be a part of that community health initiative board of commission. So what in essence what happened is we would have these experts in the field of health and wellness who would provide us with the data to support any goals or vision for any health initiatives that the city would be sponsoring supporting or initiating. The committee will be responsible for assessing the current state of the health and wellness of the city through the use of data that already exists with these partners and or that may be gained from doing a survey or a health assessment. Then with that they could focus on the areas that are in need of attention, whether it be specific health related conditions like diabetes, hypertension, those types of health related issues. They could also do things that target specific communities or zip codes. So that would be something that they would gather from the data that they pool together and they they use. They would also leverage their individual organizations that they represent in order to target their efforts that they're already doing towards improving those health related indicators. And so working with those partners, we could implement programs, sponsor events or do other health related activities to improve those health outcomes. Anybody got any questions about that so far? Mr. Chairman, I think this is a good start of the list. I think it's probably too many people to be on a board to get things done. The way I have kind of put it together in my mind based on the Baton Rouge plan is that we would have a small governing committee of health experts as the core committee. And then form subcommittees based on let's say diabetes or based on gun violence or based on whatever element of the health that you want to be focused on at that time. And that the head of that committee, the subcommittee would then automatically go up and serve on the oversight committee, the coordinating committee.  And we can identify plenty of problems to form a committee to look at that particular problem. And then the leader of that committee serves on the oversight board that kind of coordinates the activities of all of these people. Yes, sir. And if you look on that list that we give you, it does have. Let me just say one word. Yes, sir. Certainly. When we look at our potential partner list, we recognize initially that if we did this, this would be our humongous board recognizing. But we also recognize that informing this list, we identified persons, we identified persons that would be needful and helpful in putting this together. No, we do not need a conglomeration of folk doing things and then sudden that out to various committees. What we have here, I think, Pam, what we talked about. These are potential persons and we want to recognize those persons who are the quote unquote the sensuals and perhaps doing something as we drop down a tier below that. That board needs to be a governing board, but it also needs to be persons. I mean, there are other persons on this list that we've left out. Sure. And perhaps them being placed in our own subcommittee would be would be helpful. But we do need that boy. Whether it's seven to ten folk. And of course, tearing down and sort of branching out. I think in my estimation that gives what we want to do more latitude to do other things within the community. So I don't want to give the impression that we put together a board that has 4,000. Yeah, we don't want that to happen. But we do want a board at the very beginning, at the very beginning to be an oversight board. I'm sorry, Mr. Davis. Yeah, I basically agree with both of you. Just looking at the list of potential partners. I think I would use this list also to be the whatever the unit is, obviously the board, a board as we traditionally know it would be a bit large. But to maybe break that down into the group, the committee, and they could use this list as for potential resources. Each one of these entities listed, in a lot of cases they have, there's some specific expertise or associations that would give us, that would kind of help do some legwork in going back to part of your presentation to identify not only the areas and people who might be impacted by certain challenges, but they would have access to information. And also, I probably already have partnerships that we could tap into and in some cases partner with to get us to where we want to go and how we want to make the health initiative of the city more effective and very impacted. So I'm thinking we're saying the same thing, but it's good to realize that a lot of these entities right now, for example, they list, they exist for a certain reason. But we all know that the reason, the initiative that we have on the table now exists is because there are some shortcomings or we need to make sure as a city that we're getting, the citizens are getting full benefit of the services that do exist. And that helps us in terms of an overall quality of life of the people who live in the city. Yes, sir. And if you look down on the, at the bottom of the page, you'll see board of directors, and then we start with a few people. And I don't want to name names because we of course haven't reached out to these individuals, but these are some potential people and you'll see that list is is a little shorter, but identify specific people who are working currently, either through MUSC, the South Carolina Institute of Public Health, Sisters of Charity, Mental Health, those are some ideas. So you're exactly right. We would be tapping into getting board members from the community, a smaller group, seven to 10, who would represent that board, and then they could bring in subcommittees and other individuals to participate in the initiative. So that those were our thoughts. Of course, we wanted to make sure council other council members had the opportunity to provide any suggestions on board members as well. These were just some that we we knew were out in the community doing the work and some that we thought we may invite to participate in the board. And Mr. Chairman, going on what Ms. Benjamin said about that, letting the other council members have input into this in a couple of weeks, we're going to have three new council members, one of which is a doctor in health sciences, if she is the one selected for that position. So I think that once this committee agrees on the form that we want to move this health committee direction, we want to move this health committee in. We need to pause and let the council get reconstituted with at least three new members, maybe four new members, before we start adding flesh to the bones. I think you're right. I mean, anything that progressively is going to happen, it has to be after the election. No question about that. Which means that there has to be a repeating of priorities and what we essentially want to do for the city of Columbia as it relates to health issues. We're going to have to do that. We're going to have to have a perhaps a talk back session with the other three new members on council. Now, the other the other thing that I think is very important. Some of these persons on the list, we did take off the list. Because we just felt like that was not the right time for us to include them. It's going to be essential, though. It's going to be essential, I think, as we put together this model is that we've got to identify how many board members there's going to be. We've got to identify persons who are going to be a part of that feeder system. If you've got a board here, and you've got subcommittees branching off of that. That has to be something that has to be clearly delineated. No question about that. The other thing is persons who are board members, who are our own perhaps a subcommittee, sort of like a feeder system. They're going to help us because there are prostheses out there who wants to be a part of this thing as it relates to diabetes, as it relates to amputations and that sort of thing. We don't particularly need them as a board member, but they could very well be a part of that feeder system. And I think those are the kinds of resources we want to make available and have available for as we put this board together. Now, we don't want a board and we'll get at the real rough edges of this thing. We don't want a board that's just going to be, we want a reactionary board, a board of accountability. And I think as we work through this, that has to be, those things has to be included in that model. Because you can easily say there are other persons who are doing the same things, but the issues are still there. And actually they have become greater. So as we continue to model and fashion this board, we just need to ensure that we've got, that we're covering all bases. So it's not ladies in general, a process of meeting today and ratifying what we need to do today. Because if we're going to talk about health issues as it relates to this, this has to be an issue that is ongoing with accountability and with actionary things to be done. I'm sorry, we're right here. Mr. David. I'm agreeing with both of you again, my thoughts are that one of the expected outcomes would be that health related issues and challenges that tend to impact the kinds of policies the city has to put together. And when we look at those numbers, say health care for example, I don't know if you guys recall when we were initially trying to deal with the, you know, we were communicating with everybody that had some issues with the challenges that law enforcement have. And I can think of a specific neighborhood right now where there's some mental health challenges that neighborhood is having. And it's a question of what is everybody doing to make sure that that particular challenge that that neighborhood is having with individuals is being addressed. If not, then that's an unhealthy issue in a neighborhood, which tends to spill over amongst the people who live there. Law enforcement has to face a challenge that especially if they're not familiar with some of the background issues before they got there. And I firmly believe as an example that law enforcement staff has to have as much background as possible. And in some cases where they don't need to be the only person on site if there's an issue going on, you know, somebody that's trained in mental health issues that in terms of calming a situation and it's a question of who acts and interacts with that person first. You know, so those kinds of things. And if you have a lot of that going on in a city, then that's that's something that everybody's not not paying attention to the diabetes, same thing. Yes, sir. And we could definitely part of the boards. Some of the things they could do is also advise our internal departments. As you all know, we've got a mental health professional within the police department now. So this board could certainly make recommendations to internal staff in our departments to help us evaluate how we're providing services to our citizens. We just want to make sure, you know, as a city, we don't have certain opportunities falling between the cracks. Communication is one. Information is another. And that sort of thing. It's not a blame thing. It's just, again, making sure that we're doing our part to ensure that, again, that people like to live in this city. And for a number of reasons that feel safe, that they're healthy, and that sort of thing. All right. Thank you. Mr. Chairman. Yes. When I think about trying to develop the subcommittee topics, we use diabetes because everybody knows that's a problem. I go back to the equity study that we have just been briefed on in the last couple of weeks. And when you look at the about 50 different metrics that they used in that equity study, a lot of them are around health issues. And that might be one place that we can use to identify a subcommittee based on trying to solve the difficulty in one metric. The example that the doctor that presented the equity study to us was teenage pregnancies in Spartanburg County. Spartanburg is highest. They have done it. And they took that as a target. And they work with the healthcare providers and the school systems and all to put together a task force on reducing teenage pregnancies. And we're very successful. And I bet if we look at our equity study and go through the metrics that they use there, it would identify for us plenty of targets for us to form a committee. We could form a committee on diabetes and on teenage pregnancies or whatever else the equity study led us to. We might be able to kill two bearded birds with one stone, be more efficient, taking care of our responsibilities to do something about the inequity by doing something positive with the health. Right. And that's the genesis of it all. And of course, this is the first step and we still hadn't identified who those persons might be because every council member will be given an opportunity to perhaps identify or put someone's name into place. Now that person may not and we sort of sort of jump in the gun in terms of board of directors formation. But we would think that council members would be given that opportunity to do that. But this is the first step in identifying that this is what we've already identified a real critical and crucial issue within the city of Columbia. We've already identified that how we bridge that gap becomes very voluminous in terms of identifying subcommittees, whether it's diabetes, whether it's HIV AIDS, whether it's hypertension, whether it's obesity. There needs to be, there needs to be some accountability and I guess this is what I'm shooting at. There needs to be some accountability as relates to our other partners because it gives us an opportunity to ask for not only for the data, but also for the information that we're going to gather putting these committees together. So I think it's a real opportunity for us to not only hear what this, what our staff has put together, but it gives us a great opportunity to expand the horizons. Yes ma'am, I'm sorry. No, sorry. You're absolutely right. And Councilman DuVall is absolutely right. The thought would be that this would be data driven. We would pull things like the equity study, other type of assessments that have been performed to identify those focus areas. And then, like you said, Councilman McDowell drill down, create those subcommittees and then have actionable items like Councilman DuVall was talking about. And Spartanburg, whether it's task force, we have people who are leveraging these partners and what they do to actually effectuate change for a particular problem. Look, that's the most important part of what we're talking about today, accountability. And we know we've got partners to do this, that and the other. This board gives us an opportunity to drill down on specific needs and to not demand, but at least ask that there's some accountability attached to what that particular partner is doing. That does not negate their efforts at all. But what it does, it gives them a real sense of big brother is looking. Big brother is looking. So, I'm sorry. I'm sorry, Mr. Davis. No, I'm surprised that we have so much in agreement here. The big brother syndrome and so forth to take the approach that I think we're trying to get to would prevent the appearance and the accusation that this thing is going to be or this approach is going to be bureaucratic. And I'm saying the less people we have up here, the less bureaucratic it will appear as well as allow more and faster direct interaction and communication with the resources. We really talked about resources, and it's a question of the always two questions. Why is that happening? How? What are we doing? Why aren't we doing whatever? And I think if you can show and prove that you're not going through so many. Through so many steps to get conclusion that we're okay because you look at the list. This is a hell of a list right here. And they're all resources. There's a question of how do you get through all of this to individual attention? If we do that, then I think a lot of the challenges, questions, and sometimes allegations, we would be in a better shape of not being faced with that. And I think that's the bottom line. People are healthy because they have access, they get treatment, or they get attention, or they have an opportunity to participate. And we have that, then we would reach that goal. Yes, sir. Reverend Dow was really imparted on Ashley and myself about not just having a board for the sake of having a board, but for people to be doing things that are really going to help, you know, the community tangible things, real things that mean something to people. So I think the next step would really be for you all to have the actual creation of the Community Health Initiative Committee. Like you formulate other committees, go through that process as a council to do that. I would prefer that we recommend back to the councils that we do a Community Health Initiative, but hold that until January. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that's fine. Okay. That was the intent, of course. I think I may have said after the election, whatever that means, after the season is over, and all of us have over. That gives us a good opportunity to foster greater participation. We're going to have at least three people that might think differently. Yeah, they may think differently. You know, if Howard and I are still on this committee, of course, and my brother rotates off, then of course there's a person we need to bring into full circle. And the other persons, of course, as we report to the council, they will need to know full circle what has taken place and what is predicted. So we're not talking about something that's going to, and I think we need to be very clear about this as critical as health issues are in Columbia. We need to be very intentional about our approach to making sure that these things are taken care of and that there's someone or a group of persons out there who's very concerned in addition to our partners. But we're looking for accountability, man. We're looking for, if you say to me, if a partner says to me, well, we've given X number of dollars to a partner, and we still got a growing issue in this zip-coded area, we got an issue. We got a problem. So this initiative allows us to circle back and say, we need more dollars. We really need to make sure our bank is just like the books we're giving. So I think we're right in terms of putting this together, this first step. But it's not a final step which involves steps, and that's steps within this. If we're going to make this a kind of emphasis in our city that's going to be doable and empowering to those persons who are in those areas with some real health issues. So Mr. Chairman, I know that the staff gets nervous when we try to vote in these committees. So I won't make a motion. Please don't do that. But I would suggest that maybe the chairman at our next meeting on November 9th? November 9th. Is that the 19th? November 9th. That's correct. November 9th. 19th. 9th. November 9th. And November 9th, the chairman report back that the committee has agreed on a framework for a community health initiative. And we would like to delay any further action until we have a newly constituted council in January. All right. Well, I'm not going to process that procedurally, but we'll take that suggestion. And of course, these two brothers are in agreement. We'll bring that report to the council of which I am in agreement. We can call another meeting. Maybe we can do it by zoom because I don't think it'll take five minutes to do next administrative committee meeting. But that'd be ideal. That'd be ideal. We'll send a team out to get Sam all hooked up. I think the framework of what we want to do, I think we've initially, and we'll carry this to council with hopefully with their approval to move forward as we continue to do the framework. Is that Erica? You okay with that? You got that? Yes, sir. Thank you, ma'am. Miss Benjamin. That's it. That's it? That works for me. That's it. Well, look. Anything else, Mr. DeVall? Mr. Davis? No, sir. Maybe we adjourn. No, I'm looking for a healthy city. Well, just let me say in parting, I want to thank Pam Benjamin and Ashley Wood. They've been very receptive to some of the things that we've talked about. They've been very helpful in having us put together some of the resources that are there for us. They've been very helpful in identifying persons with some real expertise in areas. This is not the end, folks. This is not the end. This is only the beginning of what I think and what can be a very helpful and healthy process in the lives of our brothers and sisters here in the city of Columbia. It's not about just putting it on paper. This is actionary. And if we don't pursue this as an actionary kind of effort for our city, these issues will continue to become volumous in the lives of people. So, Pam, thank you. In her absence, Ms. Woods, thank you. Thank you, Madam City Manager. And, of course, again, please lift Henry Simon and his father and his family in your prayers. Thank you all very much. Have a good evening. Day. Stand adjourned. Thank you.


I'm safe now. I'm in the safe zone. So are you guys filming for anything specific or just- This is a public access. Oh cool. I keep calling people who might look like you but aren't actually you. Good luck today. You guys are good. Yeah. You gonna be good? No. Sure. It doesn't take a face of this. This might make the history of the world. I like the classic of the old school. Fast forward to 2017. You're gonna open the history book ten years from now and see all of you diverse being dragged out for the cause. Be peaceful. It's so insane. We all got families. They got families. Me hurting them or you hurting them. You don't want to make the cars go away anymore.   They're screaming shame now with somebody who's walking by with maybe an American flag, a violent, leftist, antifa group, mob, anybody who walked through this crowd over here. I'm gonna show you. Whenever they see someone that looks like a concern or something like that, you'll see them start screaming shame and run over and mob people in large groups over here and start attacking. One lady walked up in here. You want to be hard? Be hard. But you swing at each other? What's that? What's hate? You don't know me. I don't know you. But I'm out here trying to stand and bring everybody together. Unity. Many, many people coming together in unity against fascism and against white supremacy. We were up in the balcony where the Shaw Memorial is. We only came down here at the very end because we couldn't have the flag bulls on the column during the event. Boston and Massachusetts and New England comes together to fight and say no to white supremacy, to say no to anti-Semitism, to say no to the KKK and quite frankly also to say no to the politics of President Trump. It was good just to see a lot of people. The Nazis, that's a small section of this country and it's good for other people to come out and say no. A lot of us don't think this way. We actually want to move this country further, further better. The idea is that hopefully coming together on this side of the fence we can reinforce each other and give us the confidence to go back into our own lives and to, when we're not in those ego chambers of Facebook or Twitter where we're talking to people with the same ideologies, we have the confidence to be able to say, hey look, this is wrong, this is why it's wrong and educate ourselves based on those perspectives we've been able to take away from other people that we've met here. I think that's hopefully the next step for everybody on this side of the fence. Very nice.  We have to realize what's really going on. We're just being treated as cattle and we have to take our power back. Nothing is meant for us to benefit. Everything is for their benefit to carry out their agenda, whatever that is. It's not what ours is. You see, ours is peace and love and prosperity. I'm from the Boston Common in Boston, Massachusetts, here at the counter protest, the corner of Tremont and West. We're at the lingering after effects of the counter protest to the free speech rally that was planned to go on earlier today and was cut a little bit short. We're here talking to people in the crowd and just getting a feel for how things are playing out on this muggy August day in Boston. I don't want to have fun when everybody has another color. I'm a mutt. I'm a mess of every color. I have black meat. I have white meat, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Russian, German. My grandparents are like rabbits. They were horny bastards. So am I. My father used to have it in the 60s. He was a hippie. He used to go to Woodstock. I went to Woodstock in the 90s. This is wonderful. This is wonderful. Boston is spoken. Boston is spoken. Are you a Boston resident? Yes, I am. We are setting a great example for the rest of the country. Yeah. We're setting a great example. And that's important. I think one of the most significant things is the protest was a reaction to the speakers. And the speakers never spoke. They left without delivering their message. Because they underestimated the solidarity of Boston. I'm a Unitarian Universalist clergy person. And I believe that none of us are free until we're all free. And that white supremacy is violent and killing the people that I know and love. And we as religious people have broken promises many times. And have stood on the side of white supremacy many times. And it's time that we keep our promises and fight for liberation. I'm gonna let no hatreds into our city, into our state. It's unified love only. Boston strong. What's your name? My name's Dominic, man. Lewis, man. I'm from the Dorchester relative, man. I'm from Boston all my life, man. I'm gonna fight for these streets every day I live. How many times did you get this? I left work. I told my boss. I said I got an hour, sir. I got here at one o'clock. I thought I missed it. But I made sure I came for the best time.


So we're going to talk about a little brand building today, and we're going to mix in a little social media later on But first a little housekeeping. My name is Eric Kuznasek. I am a Wisconsin native lived here about 80% of my life Live in Janesville now was born and raised in the Elkhorn area. So not too far away from here Went to I guess grew up with computers in the household. My parents bought a TI 1994 a back in like 1984 So I was like rockin basic and hooked up to the black and white TV. So when I wanted to watch cartoons I had to undo the computer But it was kind of my foray into I guess what became my career later down the line I went to college at Drake University in Des Moines, Iowa Which is one of the finest cities in the world if you've never been there And I was drawn there and I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding at all Drawn there largely because in 1994 when I was looking at colleges, they had a Macintosh in every dorm room program So grew up as the son of an educator had a computer in the house went to college and at that time You know, I knew one person in my four years that had their own machine and they brought a PC So different times I got a lot of gray in the beard. I guess I'm one of the older folks in this industry now So for whatever that means When I got to college, I found this thing called the links browser anybody ever developing links text-based. Yeah, good stuff so I just started doing view source and trying to figure out what this whole internet thing was about and Deconstructed and reconstructed some websites Actually went to school for journalism. So did that for a number of years went into the public sector for a while found WordPress in 2010 I guess as part of a volunteer situation I was in Went through a life-altering career change and devastating injury in 2012 Which I won't get into go to hero press calm and look me up if you're interested in that story But that situation basically introduced me to my career now of full-time WordPress and and consulting and all sorts of other It goodness so follow me if you'd like This is a definitely a practice what I say not what I preach talk So if you go out there and you notice big holes in my social media and it's like he said to do this But he's not doing it. Just ignore it. I'm a one-man band So there's only so many hours in the day But if you want to see these slides if you go out to the why the fuss tech one right now Hopefully my slides posted at 2 p.m. Like they were scheduled to and the tweet went out and everything else if it didn't We'll work on that later on Why the fuss tech? So a brand-building I Am not I don't consider myself a branding expert But I've helped others and I've built my own business And I think I've learned a thing or two and I've definitely made some mistakes So I guess that's what this presentation is is kind of a walk through some of the things that I discovered or made those mistakes And how I got around them or how I as a one-man band and able to brand myself as To look at something bigger maybe then than what I am We're gonna talk about core values for your company. We're gonna talk about how to translate that into your social media platform of choice But I will warn you this talk is not about how to use Facebook. What's the best social channel for your particular business? Can I help you with your Facebook page? I those are all things for another topic for another session So the other thing I wanted to say is I usually do this as a two-hour Presentation to a corporate group every year so I've kind of narrowed it down try to get it into 45 50 minutes We're gonna fly through some of the stuff So again the slides are out there and I'll be at the happiness bar afterwards if anybody wants to continue the conversation So and one other thing there's an Easter egg if you go to the slides There's an Easter egg hidden somewhere that I'll just say it's a link that doesn't have anything to do with the presentation If you find that I've got a door prize for you here So first one and actually probably how many ever people find it. I got door prizes. So add a little fun to it. So What is branding and how do you build a brand?  It's why you wake up in the morning. What you're passionate about the image You want to show the world all those things that are kind of I won't say intangible But you can't hold them in your hand and it's not a product that you're trying to sell to somebody So branding and marketing get confused a lot of times marketing is a very tactical Operation where branding is kind of just something you have to do it's intrinsical you do it you do it every day You don't change it. Don't change it radically. I should say and you kind of just build yourself It's it's not an overnight process. It's it's called building a brand for a reason So I went out and this is where I kind of sound like a sixth grade book report According to Miriam Webster's dictionary branding is defined as and so this is what I found an entrepreneur calm and I think it's absolutely wrong personally That it's just a name symbol or design how many people in their business or their organization have a name symbol or design Do you think that you've done a good job branding if you stop there? So this and this is entrepreneur calm. I mean this is you know The source for go-to if you want to start a business So I thought that was kind of odd and I wanted to dig a little bit deeper So this is definitely part of it, but it's not all of it Marketing is actively promoting a product or service as I said you're getting that You're using a message to push your product our widgets are better than their widgets because or our widgets are the best because Or ours are the coolest because that's a marketing tactic Branding as I said a few minutes ago is more intrinsic. It's it's who you are and what you want to portray It should wrap itself around everything you do. So your marketing efforts are definitely influenced by your branding But your branding it's it's like a square is a rectangle, but a rectangle is not a square They're not always Compatible and they're not always mutually exclusive It's the essential truth branding is your the value of what you're providing your organization your product your service It's your characteristics the values and the attributes of your business that you're communicating out to the public whether it be verbally In print video Just the people that work for you the way they care themselves what they wear how they act how they speak these all all are things that go into branding Branding at the end of the day ultimately Determines whether or not a customer is loyal. I mean what you're trying to do is basically build loyalty build Brand evangelists people that are going to go out there and do your job for you Hey, and my business is called why the fuss technical solution. So go to WTF for your WordPress website He takes the hassle out of it. He's a good communicator.  Those are all things that when I Started my business.  I'm used to Toyota's, you know foreign car. I've never driven a foreign car. How does it work differently? So on and so forth But if you have a good experience if you buy that Toyota if they convince you that this is the product for you And then you say hey, wow, this is better.  This doesn't break down the tires are better the audio whatever the case is suddenly you've Toyota has gained a Customer for life or a dedicated customer in evangelists that will then go out and say hey I bought a Toyota. Maybe you should buy one too because hey, it's a good car. It's lasted me ten years Never had a problem so on and so forth It's It can go the other way also you can really turn somebody off with your branding and you have to I guess at the end of the day Understand that not everybody is going to buy into your brand But that's why you are marketing to a certain audience. You're trying to find the audience that agrees or that Kind of identifies with your brand and what you're trying to do The other difference I guess or the other thing that why Branding and marketing are different as marketing is an investment You're putting down money for TV commercials Prince ads whatever the case may be But branding is something that you're not necessarily putting down money But it's it's you're spending money and everything you do so the people that you hire the products that you produce the quality of your print materials the Look and feel and the inner interactivity of your website How are those things all tied together? And it turns out both marketing and branding should be something that makes you money in the long run Forgetting that I can do this So how can that strong brand help your company if your price, you know, you have a higher price point You're a luxury store You know people can get a cheaper widget, but they want to go to your store because hey They're brand or they identify with I Identify better with their values at the higher end than at the lower end price isn't as important to me They attract new customers So you don't know who you don't know and you're putting that brand out there And hopefully you're reaching the audience the people that you're trying to reach They help block new competitors or people switching brands going back to the Toyota and versus Chevy example If someone's driven Toyota's their whole life or Chevy is their whole life. It's a difficult switch So Chevy or Toyota might say hey We've got that person because of a B and C why they enjoy our vehicles over the competition Say that kind of segues right into the next one an economic downturn when people aren't spending as much money If you have people who are dedicated and loyal to your brand Suddenly they're still going to spend that money with you when times are tough and when times are good You can hope that they're there and they're being that evangelist and they're pushing into even more And they help you create a bigger footprint. So as I mentioned, I'm a one-man band I can only do so much with the 24 hours in the day But I can make it look through my branding like I might be a bigger agency And then when I am ready to hire employee number one or bring on a partner or whatever the next step is That branding that footprint that infrastructure I put into place Hopefully a seamless and that next person is able to convey the brand and represent the brand Just as well as I've been doing as a one-man show By the way interrupt me if you have questions because otherwise I'll talk all the time and there's a ton here So if we don't get to solve it because we got some good questions, I'm not gonna cry over that This is probably where I'm gonna describe this slide rather than play it because I'm on video And it's copyright if you're familiar with the show Mad Men I Believe and this is an example of how it I kind of Use this to show how Don Draper the main character was more of a branding expert than like an ad man or a marketing man So in this particular scene from the first season There's a group of lucky strike cigarette executives sitting around in the sterling Cooper offices Lamenting the fact that the federal government has said you cannot use our cigarettes are healthier than the competition cigarettes as part of the marketing Right. This is 1958 or something. So things like that definitely happened back then so one of the the other characters Pete Campbell who's kind of a Go-getter or brown-noser wants to be an ad man says hey The government says that we can't say they're healthy But people already know that cigarettes are dangerous just like getting in the car is dangerous because you might get hit and die So let's market it as who cares smoke it away, you know kill yourself and everybody at the table looks very aghast And then Don Draper speaks up and says tell me about your cigarettes Tell me about your process because if your competitors can't say they're healthier than yours or the competitors are being looked at as poison You're being looked at that way too But how can we differentiate your product from the next product and what they came up with if you were watching this clip is it's toasted If you know anything about tobacco, it's all toasted But they made lucky strikes set apart because we care about you because we toast our tobacco. It's a process This is how we make our cigarettes. The other guy just makes poison. We make toasted lucky strike cigarettes So I hope that's a good enough synopsis to show how that's basically a branding decision that we're the healthier cigarette But we're not saying we're healthier. We're toasted It's a great clip. I wish I could show it So then how do you figure out? Before you can even build a brand you have to come up with these core values Like I said When I started my business, I wanted to be known as the guy. He knows what he's talking about. He's cordial friendly doesn't talk Way over your head very technical stuff helps people understand kind of What they're dealing with and if it's a problem that they can't solve themselves that I'm the guy And also my logo is WTF question mark So when I hand out a business card or my truck drives down the street people think it's something else and it's a good conversation starter It works trust me It's the only thing you can't do is drive aggressively instead of the bar till three in the morning because it's right on the side of your vehicle So so anyway a lot of people start to think of their brand before they come up with these core values And it's kind of like putting the cart in front of the horse because how do you know what your values are? How you're gonna brand yourself when you haven't even identified what those values might be So Why does the company need core values? Again, they're part of your DNA. That is who you are what you do how you behave These values are fundamental enduring and actionable meaning that they shouldn't change radically Unless your company changes radically and even then if you've been doing business in a certain way under a certain brand for a certain number of years If anybody's ever tried to do that and pivot to something else completely different But keep the same name and logo and colors Probably doesn't work real well because you've already established yourself. You've established those core values So after this slide, I've got three or four examples of different companies in their core values I've been doing this presentation for three years now, I guess Didn't even go to make sure that those are still their core values didn't look up the website Because if they changed You would know I mean we would know they're large companies And they would have completely shifted away from doing business a certain way into another way So I'm going to assume that those companies are still using the same core values and and very well, they should be This is not a political statement the next thing I'm going to say and I put that in my notes for a reason Corporations when it comes down to our people and that's again not a political statement But what are corporations and what are companies and organizations made up of people human capital? And everybody behaves in a certain way and everybody Carries themselves differently, but when you have a brand if you have that outlier That's a really good way to confuse people and say hey their brand is professional and on time and Quality work. So if you've got somebody who shows up and you know sloppy clothes a half an hour late and gives them something And you know, let's just say a website that doesn't work That is completely contrary to your brand and that's harmful So the human capital you're working with other people you're trying to attract human customers Selling to human people buying from human people. It all goes in to the branding equation because If you're seen as a top-performing company or top-performing Agency staff product, whatever it is Those are things that are Noticeable from a distance You know pull back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and it's just a guy in a microphone, right? But how many times does that curtain get pulled back on your business as long as you present it again with a unified? Well organized cohesive brand So here we're gonna have I think believe there's three examples of large companies And their core values and these you can go out and find them So like I said, I didn't check this year to make sure they're still the same, but Anybody not know who Google is? So just read through the list. I'm not gonna insult your intelligence by reading through all those but If I didn't have the name up there if I didn't have Google and I said this is a technology company Would you be able to maybe figure out or maybe narrow down what brand what organization this might be? Because everything they do if you just think of whatever Google product It is that comes to your mind think of how these core values might fit in with that For example Gmail, I'm sure that 75% of this room uses Gmail Have you ever thought about some of those core values going into Gmail? Have you ever used an email a web-based email program that's super slow? Do you ever? Let's see Great just isn't good enough. I mean so Gmail is one of those things that you don't have to pay for But they keep putting out new features You know it's something that yeah, they're they're tracking your information. They're advertising to you But there's a pretty robust suite of features available just through the basic Gmail platform that You know Microsoft Outlook charges 100 200 bucks whatever it is per month now So those things are things that Google believes You don't have to do you don't you can make money without doing evil You can be great Not just good fast is better than slow all these things go into all their products Would anybody argue with any of those core that believes that Google operates differently than that? So they've done a pretty good job then is what I would take away from that The next one is Whole Foods You know, it's a supermarket at the end of the day, you know, we all need to shop and cook But if you've ever been in a Whole Foods You can probably go through this list and say yeah, I can totally see how that is their ethos That's how they operate I live in a town in Jamesville where there is not a Whole Foods So I've been to them a handful of times here and there But I would say that all of those things as you go through the list are pretty applicable To to the whole Whole Foods experience Absolutely, and that's you know, I think that's a pretty how many other people have heard that So that's them setting their brand at a premium price point, right? Have you you've been into Whole Foods? I assume then Uh, were you the only one in there at the time? No, so they they've branded themselves at a price point and you know the whole paycheck It's you laugh about it, but uh people still go in there. It's not driving people away It's they've set themselves apart with price with the quality of the products the You know the local sourcing the farm to table their part in that equation that whole thing So this next one I'm always curious to see the reaction because I'm not a fan of the company and I have I would argue with some of their points here. They try But does anybody love flying Southwest Airlines? And why I just out of curiosity, why is that? So there's a local a local reason there is the you know the lack of a You know Midwest Airlines anymore, but you said fun Fun loving attitude is right there on the bottom They don't make their staff flight attendants gate attendants all that stuff. They don't make them It's not a stuffy suit and tie environment You know the fact that they're going to go out of the servants heart one that they're going to go out of their way to Be kind and put others first and proactive customer service Other companies out there that shouldn't be doing that that seems Pretty you know one-on-ones type stuff And you know the desire to be the best All of those are kind of you know, you should be doing those things, but My experiences on Southwest are probably much different than yours. I find it to be a cattle call and Not a big fan. So But this is the way this is what they've established as their core values and whether or not you believe in them Kind of goes back to that Branding are you an evangelist? I mean this gentleman back here is probably more of an evangelist for Southwest Airlines than Most people okay, but but you will stand up in a room of 70 people and say that you love Southwest Airlines So you just kind of Like okay, you prefer it over The next one and just out of curiosity. Why are you uh, uh, what's your attraction to Southwest over American or some other airline? So you have a unique situation with your you have to bring your dog and some airlines And I don't you know, I have a dog that I would love to bring on an airplane, but she's not gonna be a good airplane flyer So you bring your dog some airlines are more accommodating than that are Southwest you've found in your experience to be the most And maybe I need to give Southwest a second look because that's that's a very convincing argument right there from someone who has experience Going through their system And you know, I guess an airline is a good example of you're always going to probably run into Different employees, you know, if you go to the airport once a week on Monday Maybe it's the same lady work in the counter every time But you're flying into one airport out of another So you're experiencing different people all with kind of the same attitude and that's goes back again to their fun loving attitude They're displaying or their servants heart So it sounds to me like your experience lines up well with their what they've established as their core values So excellent and and there's you know, there's a difference right here of branding So their branding doesn't appeal to me. I'm sorry. I forgot your name. I saw your Speech earlier miss Rachel Rachel has had great experiences. She is probably the event and like she said is the evangelist. So Either way, uh, not everybody's going to fly Southwest so To each his own So now we're getting to the good part the social media part And uh, so we've talked about core values as you go through that and set up what you believe in how you want to act How you present yourself? How do you then take that and translate it into the interwebs putting it out there for the world to see yes, sir So if people didn't hear that it's how do you determine your core values when you're starting from scratch essentially Sure. Um, I guess a lot of Brainstorming so again, I'm a one-man band, but if you're part of a team you sit down you brainstorm Who are we what are we doing here? What are we doing now? Or what do we you know, what are we doing currently if you're in business versus? What do we want to be doing or if you're just a startup? How do we want to make our splash? How do we want to present ourselves to the world and there's a lot of Soul searching and again. I'm one person so it's easy for me to soul search I can't search your soul So in a team, I guess it's more of a collaborative effort of saying here's what I believe And if it's a team of four people go around the room and say here's what I believe and kind of do your Venn diagram Or your SWAT analysis or however you want to do it to kind of figure out where the everything you know people's beliefs overlap and then For lack of a better term fight it out if there's you know if you got hey We want to be the lowest price and we want to be the highest price Your team probably is never going to be able to be like have a cohesive brand because you've got those differing opinions So you at least got to get on the same page. Is that yeah answer your question? So Yes, sir Sure I mean so could you as a new company could you say we want to be the lowest price point but also the best customer service? Sure, and if that's the way you want to brand yourself It might be difficult because you know you're charging people less than maybe what your competitors are Which means you can put less money into research and development of your products Into marketing of your products into paying your employees So who here wants to make less than they're making today? You know so paying people again the human capital part when you pay people well And you pay for the talent that you want That's going to help benefit your brand if you're looking for that top talent if you're looking for any bum warm body off the street You know you're not going to be able to find the lowest price and the best customer service because that person Who's working for seven 25 an hour or whatever minimum wages now is probably not Doesn't have the soft skills the formal education the training whatever the case might be Any other questions before I this is a good point to kind of pivot So if there's we're good to move on So, um, how do you do it? How do you take all of these core values that list of 10 things that google Believes in how do you take that and translate that to social media? Well, first we have to figure out what social media isn't because it is a lot of things But I think it isn't a lot more and social media If anybody believes that it's gotten smaller in the past year and we'll get smaller in the coming years You should probably take another look at things So, uh, when you're whether you're a new business, uh, you're launching a new product you're Pivoting what your offerings are you need brand awareness out there, right? And you need brand awareness whether you're marketing to consumers or to businesses or to both or to whoever So when two thirds 70 percent whatever the number is now of internet users have some sort of social media account And that's where people are gathering online or gathering in general That's the place to get brand awareness Uh, 40 years ago you might have put an ad full page ad in the sunday paper because you knew that everybody was getting that On their doorstep after church looking through it, um, you know clipping things to save because there was no internet There was no um save it for later insta paper type things Um, so when you go online and and you're you're looking at these social channels again, whichever ones are best for your business Um, they're vital for getting that brand awareness for getting that recognition of who you are What you're doing what your brand is so Here are all the things that social media isn't uh myths and fallacies It's inexpensive Has anybody uh, you know those of you who have a facebook page for your business Is the best strategy that you found just post stuff out there without boosting it without really any Strategy and just seeing what sticks and what is popular and what people react to You don't get too far doing it that way because facebook is a business and they want money and you know their exchange of money For services is we're going to expose your message to more people So if you think that you can get out there and just hey for free We're going to create a twitter account an instagram account a snapchat account Everything under the sun and we're going to put messages out there and our brand and our business is just going to take off I I don't think it works that way. Um, not in my and if it does work that way somebody needs to retrain me and Do it Um and Segue weighing very quickly into the next one that social media is fast that hey if we create an instagram account today Suddenly that's the end of our problems. That's you know solves everything. We need to do Not going to work. Um, it takes a long time to develop a voice develop a following Um to figure out, you know best times to post best times not to post Best times to post very aggressive marketing messages best times to post Hey, it's monday. Everybody hates monday's right, you know, like, um, there's certain types of things That you can do to build that audience. Um, and it takes time, you know, you start with one follower You know this whole social multiplier effect Takes takes hold. Um, hopefully you have a hundred followers, uh, and then a thousand followers But it doesn't happen overnight and don't ever go on twitter and or don't ever go on google and say buy twitter followers You know and all that don't try to artificially inflate your following counts because um not going to help you out at all Fake accounts don't do anything for you There are people that believe social media is just viral marketing That hey, i'm going to create this video of me falling down the stairs and daniel tosh is going to pick it up Put it on his show. It's going to have eight million views. Um, does anybody heard of over the summer? It's been a couple months now and actually he just broke both of his legs So i don't think he'll be doing it anymore. Uh, the laguna beach jumper out in california Uh guy, you know late 20s, uh working as a waiter or whatever just decided hey screw this I'm going to go do what i want to do and what i want to do is create youtube videos of me jumping off balconies into the ocean And it worked for about a month two months And then he jumped off something and broke his legs and uh, he made four thousand dollars for all these millions of views that he got So as medical bills, i'm just going to guess as someone who's broken a femur before medical bills are more than four grand in that case So, um, don't create your so don't go out on social media thinking that you're going to go viral And that's going to be the the key to your happiness and the key to your success because There's a big downside of going viral too, but forcing something to go viral is is not the way to go Um Hey social media results can't be measured right Yes, they can and it just gets better and better and better. Um in terms of being a marketer or a business owner Um The i'm a big analogy guy Again, i i don't want to talk above my customers heads and i deal with a lot of small businesses who they have no idea What a website how it even works. They just know that they need one um I live in janesville, which is just north of beloit and i use the analogy Hey, if you have a hamburger stand in janesville, uh, and you want to put up a billboard on the side of i 90 The advertising company can tell you how many cars go by there every day, you know How many between this time how many between that time? Which is great because hey 100,000 cars every day. That's 200,000 eyeballs at least, um, you know, that's that's a lot of eyes But what they can't tell you is what time of day they're driving by if they're hungry if they like hamburgers If they had a hamburger yesterday for lunch, you know all these things that a billboard is static It doesn't change It's there and if you buy a billboard for a month and after a week you're not getting the results You think you should be getting try calling the advertising company saying yank it down. I want my money back They're going to say you signed a 30 day 60 day whatever contract. It's going to stay there and we're going to keep your money With social media you can try something As much as you want as little as you want you can change it whenever you want You can put a campaign out there and if it's working you can continue add more money to it You can stop at any point. You can change your message I believe on the other side of the wall. There's an ab split test talk going on Which is essentially what this is is figure out what people respond to and what they don't respond to and go with the More popular message But all you can measure all of that Using facebook ads using twitter ads instagram I haven't done a whole lot on snapchat Because i'm almost 40 and I don't understand it quite honestly And I don't have kids so no one can explain it to me So you can definitely measure your results and and you know a couple years ago Social media results couldn't be necessarily translated into sales through your website if you're doing e-commerce But now um google analytics does that and all these other analytics programs I can tell you someone left you know using your facebook pixel somebody Took your ad clicked on your ad went to your website Browsed for however long bought five products. They exited that funnel. There's a conversion for you I mean that's measurable results. Um that return on investment. Uh, it's all right there Whereas again the static billboard on the side of the freeway is going to cost you a thousand bucks for a month Hope you made a thousand and one dollar. So it was worth it And the last one being oh, I'm sorry. It's second to last one social media is optional Does anybody think that if you're starting a business today, you shouldn't have a presence on social media at all It's pretty self-explanatory. It's it's not getting any smaller. It's it's getting larger And social media is hard. Well, I can't do it because it's so hard. No, it's not hard Anybody can go on there and create a facebook page and you know, there's tutorials left and right on If you google it, but it's complicated. It's complex. It's um, it's a lot of Looking at your analytics looking at your data Figuring out who your followers are where they come from. What time they're online Why they like your brand versus your competitor? There's a lot of science that goes into it and um People who are much smarter than me with statistics have figured out ways to make it digestible But it's still a very complicated process and that's why there's people out there who are social media managers Because the business owner has no idea why facebook is a better channel for them than twitter But they'll hire somebody and pay somebody to do that. So it's created this whole industry of people Who understand this and again, i'm not an expert. They understand it much better than I But you as the business owner you as the the the freelancer or the consultant working with a client You can help them understand it using some of these tools, but it's still complex. It's still it's not easy So now that we've talked about all the things that social media isn't Let's talk about how to take those core values and and some of those things we talked about earlier And translate them into whatever channel it is that you're using And i'm probably going to go pretty quick here because I got 10 minutes or so And I want to leave some time for questions. So and this is from the canva.com design school blog If you haven't heard of canva. It's a great tool to help you brand to create consistent images To make facebook banners all that stuff you go on there and they do have a paid account But there's a lot that you can get for free. So um, this is from their blog And they're you know, each one is pretty long. I just broke it down into some pretty simple messages here consistency Use the same font You know if it's a website use the same font families on your website as you do on your Your social media banners or your print ads or what have you colors Routine come up with a schedule. So if you're going to post every monday morning Stick to that so people that are following you and post more than once a week. I guess is what I should also say But do it at a time So again, look at your data. When are people visiting your site? When are they liking your posts?  This is my job. So give them a guide hand the new guy who's replacing you a Document that says here's how we do it. Here's the colors we use Here's what we don't do Put all those things in writing and and go back to that and you don't need to alter it dramatically But just make sure that it's current that's fitting your needs Because the style guide should be a living breathing Document i'm a former newspaper reporter and if anybody else has ever used the ap style book It changes, you know, not drastically but here and there it changes and you got to keep up with it Because I had an editor that when you would make an ap style mistake would take you out to the woodshed for it So I you had to learn that thing Second one and Should have explained this at the beginning of the speech but the numbers up there are just for your reference. They're slide numbers It's not no. This isn't tip number 18. It's slide number 18. Sorry So I can just write in your notes It's slide 18 that you want to ask a question about or go back to so strong logos are always a good thing again Mine is wtf question mark and you know I have why the fuss technical solutions and very small writing below it So you got to get pretty close to know that it's not The other thing that wtf might stand for And also visual logos a lot of times have hidden meanings in them And actually if you click on that image in the slides, you'll go to a list of 10 of them And just one example is the fedex logo. Does anybody know what that The little hidden thing in there with the arrow To make sure or to show you that they're fast that they're going to take it from point a to point b And they're the ones to do it. Just little hidden things like that So there's some other examples in that blog post that are interesting that you may not have realized What you've been looking at all these years is actually a subliminal message colors Use consistent colors first of all and use don't use a bright red background with bright yellow text because First of all, it looks like mcdonald's second of all. You can't read it Third of all people who have need to use screen readers and assistive devices. That's high contrast things aren't great But then also use and I know that color wheel is a little bit small up there, but certain colors Present certain feelings and and people identify certain feelings with those colors And I don't know if anybody can see what blue is up there on the wheel But there's a very uh, I used blue as the dominant color in this presentation for a reason Blue is trust and so hopefully y'all trust me at what I'm saying because if I'm blowing smoke You're going to walk out of here and uh rate me poorly on the survey But um, it's a it's a trust thing. It's hey, I I know what I'm talking about I'm going to use this color to kind of underlie that Voice and style again. This goes back to in your style guide. How are you going to talk to people? How are you going to respond to your your customers or people with complaints? Um You know, there's a lot of mistakes out there case studies on ways people have reacted to different situations Um, one of them, which is not the actual company doing it But if you recall target a year or two years ago, maybe so that all their bathrooms are going to be For both genders, you know, they're not going to put male or female on them anymore and uh people Had a fit as you know online people have a fit about just about everything Um and somebody created a customer service Facebook account with the little target bullseye logo And started responding to these people uh on the target page who are complaining about this policy change And it you know, it got picked up really quickly because a half the people thought it was target, uh, given them like a You know smart ass response to you know, their their comment Um, but the other part of it is target didn't take those posts down They kind of said this guy whoever's doing it in the background is understanding what we're trying to do here And yeah, he might be a little crude making these comments, but as long as he stays within our our guidelines, he's all right and it kind of Um It made target look good because they weren't just deleting that off the face of the earth So they allowed someone else to use their style of voice because it agreed with them Um, which I guess for a big company you I you can't think of too many search situations where they allow that to happen Um, so I've always thought that was a pretty cool thing Because honestly some of the things people get bent out of shape about online and I'm not making a comment about that case in particular But people get bent out of shape because the sun didn't come up this morning. So Kudos to target for for letting that go And I guess the three things that I wanted to mention if I didn't already because I have my list here tone language and purpose How are you talking to them? What sort of language are you using and what is the why you're responding to this person? Why are you putting this post out there? Have it make it have a purpose Be a human You guys are probably already all seen Twitter accounts facebook accounts that are basically auto generated You know, you get a twitter follower some beautiful young girl is following me on twitter now all of a sudden out of the blue that I don't know And all she's tweeting is non sequiturs, you know all this gibberish nonsense with every once in a while.   We can get pretty deep into functions and php and javascript and all these different terms That the average person they may have heard but they probably don't understand So again going back to my personal brand. I try to talk to people at a eye to eye level not up here So talk to them like a human and You know make them feel like you Are having a conversation with them not talking at them Limit your plugs I'm sure we all follow social media accounts where it's just buy this buy this buy this buy this buy this every day It's not the best thing to do. Customers want two-way communication. They don't always want to hear your sales pitch They want to hear about other things. They want to be able to ask questions and get human responses and not just corporate speak Tell stories Anybody know who Chris Lemma is Anybody heard him speak he tells stories and he's fantastic at it Tell your story. Don't just post. Um, hey, we just put out a brand new widget It's the greatest widget ever talk about maybe why you put it out or how it came to be or why you saw this product Or hey, here's a customer who we bought our widget and really benefited. Um, it's a testimonial Again, that's that's your evangelist doing your work for you. You're just putting it out there in the form of a Story on your blog or on your social media Or wherever you'd like transparency and the reason the mcdonald's sign is up there is in 2012 the whole pink slime Ground beef situation mcdonald's got accused of hey, you know, you're using pink slime So mcdonald's canada, which is different than mcdonald's us said. No, we don't let's show people how we make our burgers Let's show people how we make our french fries all that stuff So they started doing these videos Putting it up there ask mcdonald's q&a type things on youtube and you can still go out there Actually, I think if you click that link in the slides, it'll take you to the page Where they have a lot of those videos archived, but it worked very well There's case studies out there that showed that consumer loyalty And dedication to the mcdonald's brand grew after that because it wasn't just Oh fast food junk food, whatever they were showing that they sourced their potatoes from Whatever farmer in manitoba And we're able to walk people through the process now Does it mean mcdonald's is the greatest food ever that it's not unhealthy? No But at least they're pulling back that curtain on the Wizard of Oz rather than saying no We don't use pink slime period and a story. They showed people They proved or showed people how they were doing their Creation of their burgers rather than taking the lowest common denominator and dumping ammonia on it and then pressing it out into a Patty so And mcdonald's usa actually picked up this program and did it a couple years later because it was so successful in canada Be relevant You guys like going on facebook and seeing this you'll read more little link And then you do that and then it says continue reading and then you go to another window where it's like this long And that's great if you're a journalist and you got something to say But as a company keep your messages short because you know how people go through facebook Or twitter It's this it's just going through it until something catches your attention. So Don't take your time posting a thousand words on facebook. Uh, keep it short. Keep it sweet Keep it to what people want to hear and what they're interested in And use visuals. Uh, and that went up there I wish it was larger because that can put you in a trance. Uh, but again when people are scrolling through Kill in time, they're looking mostly for visuals. They're not stopping to see what everybody typed out They're looking for pictures that catch their eye videos. Um, so use those sorts of things to your advantage Even if they're just pictures, uh, you know people using your products It's better than just a text post that says we're the best because we're the best Show why you're the best show somebody using your product and having a great day or Great meal or whatever it is you're selling. Um visuals are very important Wow, I got a minute to spare. Um, so thank you to and this is just some of the resources that I use when making this Thank you again to the word camp, uh, walk shop organizers And there's my information. I'll be at the happiness bar. Um, I can probably take a question or two How would you help customers set budgets? I say, what's your budget for this? And they say $300 and I say that's not going to cut it.  I'm not going to say well, maybe you know, no, I'm not going to do it. Here's the expectations But here you want to do abc and d here's what I would charge If you don't have the budget, uh, can you take out c and we can reduce that number a little bit? Sure No, that's an essential part. Well, then the budget needs to be increased And I guess the the stock answer is every situation is different anything else. Oh, yeah I would say that there there's a situation where that would definitely be So you're a caregiver.   That's just, you know, there's certain situations where it's appropriate and there's certain situations where it's not I would say it's a pretty good equation pretty good ratio. Um, you know, again some situations it might be Uh, 10 to 1, you know, because you know that you have a very dedicated audience And that you don't have to keep marketing out to them because they're already Brand evangelists. Um, but there may be some situations where you don't want to put all the fluff out there You just need to get down to brass tax. And so again, it's kind of You know, I don't think that there's a so I always say that they're practicing medicine not Perfecting it and so I think that's a lot of what social media is you're practicing and if something doesn't work It's easy to try something different So I think I got to wrap it up here again If you want to come to the happiness bar and chat for the next hour or two, I'll be in there Otherwise, thank you for listening


In today's video, I will be searching for Yu-Gi-Oh's most expensive new cards. What's up, guys? We're back with another video opening packs for expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards. We did this about a month ago, and our pulls were absolutely ridiculous. So I decided, why not try this again, but do it in a little bit of a different way? I have not just three sets like last time. I have three boxes here, which are Age of Overlord, Photon, Hypernova, and Battles of Chaos. And we'll be pitting them against three other boxes, Rarity Collection, Battles of Legend, Monster's Revenge, and Maze of Millennium. What we're gonna do is we're gonna have a two video series. We'll be opening three boxes today, three boxes tomorrow. We're gonna do a little value counter to see which can pull better. These all have expensive Yu-Gi-Oh cards inside, so I'm not sure how this is gonna go, but I'm excited to find out. But before we get into it, we have a giveaway. I'll be giving away these Blue Eyes Wine Dragon cards. This is a laminated Blue Eyes Shining Dragon, by the way. I don't remember where I got this, some sort of collection or something. But you guys can win this. Just like the video, be subscribed to our notifications. Let me know down below who will win. Will it be the side sets with Rarity Collection involved, Maze of Millennium, the new bonfire set, or will it be the core sets with some really high end staple cards, slash meta cards? All right, so in today's video, we're gonna start with the side sets because I think these have a higher floor. So we're probably gonna take a lead here, and then tomorrow we'll have to find out if they can actually come back by pulling some crazy cards like SB, Little Night, and stuff like that. But if we do pull Ash Blossom, or if we pull IP Mask Arena, or if we pull Bonfire CR, it's gonna be really hard to beat. All right, I'm gonna open these boxes up, get the packs out, and we'll get to a 72 pack opening.  All right, I've gotten all the packs out. Let's get to it. We have 72 packs to open today. There will be a counter on the screen for our total value pulled in this video. Then tomorrow, you'll know what we need to beat. So come check out the video tomorrow as well. I think it's gonna be fun. I think it's, oh. Killer, first pack magic! Okay, QCR Effect Valor. All right, I don't know the exact price on this, but I expect it's pretty expensive because the Starlight of this card used to be an $800 card, and not so much anymore, thanks to that QCR. But that means that QCR is probably at least like a $50, $40 card. I think Ghost Bell was $40, $50, so it's gotta be around there, I would think. Does depend on like the meta playability at the moment, but that's a good card. That's a really good start. So right off the bat, we pulled amazing. I don't know, is it two for the back on this one or not, I can't remember. We have Sage. Okay, so it is two for the back. Potential to pull the IP Masquerana or Zeus QCR in this set. Overall, Monsters of Eng is a little bit iffy in terms of like a overall set, but we're looking for expensive cards, not necessarily well-rounded sets here. We're just kind of going with what we got. Okay, we gotta do two for the back here. Speaking of high end cards, not necessarily well-rounded sets, we have Maze of Millenia, there's a Ruxen special. Right to the super, nothing too crazy there. Wow, that was a great start for rarity collection. Okay, rarity collection off to a hot start. Uh, I'm just gonna keep doing it like this. Got really no more. It's a good card. We have Red Eyes Flare Metal, Junk Speeder, and Blue Eyes Abyss Dragon. Always good cards out of rarity collection, doesn't matter really where you get them in. We got rarity collection two coming out, so should be pretty fun. We're gonna complete a binder, hopefully live again. That was super fun last time. Oh, it is two for the back here, isn't it? We have the additional, Bischobaldrake. I have an error card of this where it's like super off-center. We have Sage, Sprite Carrot, and the Noah Punk Ogre Dance. All right, Maze of Millenia. Let's pull some, I mean, we've already pulled something big. I mean, normally I'm like, let's pull something big. We have already done it. We started off the first pack. Whenever we do these kind of openings, they just seem to pull good cards. Like we did that, you know, go check out the other one if you haven't seen it yet. When we opened expensive Yu-Gi-Oh packs about a month ago, it was ridiculous. The pulls were insane. So if we get anywhere close to those, we're gonna be happy this time. Ash Blossom, that's pretty good. It's already a couple bucks right there. Herald of the Arc Light, or yeah, Arc Light. A, is that a, no, it's not a Platinum. Okay, Fairy Tail and Strel Skism. Couple of nice cards there. Ash Blossom I think is still a couple bucks, so not bad. That'll add to our tally, that's what we wanna see. That's the nice part of our rarity is it's gonna have a lot of value in it, even if you don't pull a high-end card, which we already have, don't pull. Well, you'll pull a high-end card, but a good high-end card. Okay, we got something here for Maze, Sun God Unification, and this thing, man, I've pulled this thing a million times. I don't even know if it's a dollar. It's probably not great, but I've pulled that card so many times. Monsters Revenge, I mean, it's taken forever to get my cases. At the time of recording this, we haven't even opened my cases yet. That'll be tomorrow, so yeah, hopefully tomorrow we don't pull so many of those Sprites Badgers. You'll know by then, if we did, Dark Hole Secret Rare. So nothing too exciting, and that one, that's okay. So far it's been a pretty good opening. We want to get a big lead because SP Little Knight QCR could probably beat like every card. So another QCR, okay, Baron to Floor. I don't know if that's still a dollar, still a nice card. We have the Spellbook of Judgment. Probably not the QCR you want though. Evenly matched, that's also a good card. So just a ton of nice cards in rarity. I'm interested to see how rarity Collection 2 will do in terms of just like every card being a banger nearly. I know some people were a little bit upset with some of the, not upset, but they were like speculating that it's not gonna be as good in terms of reprints. It's gonna be hard to match, you know? Cause when you take 81s, this is kind of what I said in my video, Rocket Coder. I don't know if Rocket Coder's still money, but it was at the original release. It's hard to have good reprints after you've already reprinted 81 good cards. And once it's 162 after this, it's gonna be even harder, you know, to find the good reprints. So that's, that was kind of my point. And hopefully they are able to, cause I want it to be a banger. We have Earthbound Prisoner. Cause I'm excited to collect it either way, cause we're gonna be collecting the full set like we did last time. But I would rather it be really awesome, you know? Even though, honestly, they do have some nice Boomer Bait for us, like Mystic Swordsman. For people like RomStyle, we have Ice Dragon Prison, Abyss Dragon, Caspace. So all that's gonna be super fun to put together at nice rarities of those. I am excited to see that and see what, I'm happy that they're putting a few Boomer cards in there. You know, I'm Boomer. I like the old school cards. We have Earthbound. Just put like 50 awesome Metacards and then put about 30, you know, 30-ish for us Boomers. All right, Monsters Revenge. So far, it's been, it was great right off the bat. So far, I'm just gonna go right to the middle here. We have Junk Archer, cause this is just Monsters Revenge, you know? If we pull IP, I wouldn't be excited either way, you know? We've already pulled two QCRs out of here. No Ulti's, no Prismatic Ultimate Rear's either. Rota, Dark Ruler no more. Harpy's Feather Storm, okay. All good cards, but not the cards we're looking for. Maze of Millennia, can you give us a bonfire? Can you give us a Toon Rollback? Or not to, I would say Toon Rollback. Transaction Rollback. There is a Toon Rollback card as well. More of an old school card, Mirage. It's not old, but you know, it's Toons. Earthbound Prison, so feels old, even though it's not that old. Rarity, rarity. Can you give us some rare luck? Reasoning, we have Iris Hortzol, Wing Dragon Ross here, but man, we're having a lot of duds in a row with rarity collection. We're not pulling Ulti's, we're not pulling collector's. Kind of weird, or Platinum, for that matter. Just the QCRs so far. We have Sage, we have Super Polly. Okay, number 72, Shogi Rook, the Shogi Rook. Wanna play some Shogi? All right, let's go. Come on, Maze. Come on, Maze. We got Donut, we got Code. Earthbound Prison, I'm pretty sure they double stamped these rare's. I'm like 90% sure. Ring announcer, oh, we got something. Wrong spell card. Drastic Draw, another one that I've pulled many, many times. I thought maybe we got the Fire of Vaan, which is the card that everybody wants. We have Artemis. Oh, another QCR. What's going on with this? Three QCRs already and nothing else? Oh, there we go, the Deer Servant. Look at that. All right, that's a pack. Check that out. Who's excited for rarity collection to six luxury rare packs? I am excited about that. The only thing I'm not excited about is how much these rarity collection cases cost. I don't know if you guys have seen this, but the rarity collection cases are not cheap. I probably should make a video talking about that. They're crazy expensive. They're like way higher than the normal cases cost.  It's kind of weird, but okay, Draco Berserker. It's still expensive though. That's all I got to say if you're going to buy a case. Maze of Millennium. Box prices are going to be higher. It's going to be weird. I don't know. I'm going to have to figure it out. Alter guys, we have Magispector Toad, O'Gama. We have Ruxen Special, right to the Salamandra. Joey Wheel. Joey Wheel. We have Sage. We have Elich. Ghostrick Angel. Change your heart. And Downer and Magician. So far it's only been QCR. Well, no, we got, we did get the Collector Rare Nader Servant. So that's it. Very strange, because those are supposed to be a lot easier than QCRs. I'm going to keep pulling those. I'd be okay if we pulled like 12 QCRs. That'd be cool. Formpal, how about a QCR IP? Water and Chantris. Very nice. Good stuff so far. I think we've pulled okay. Our value is going to be pretty decent. I mean, it's not bad at all.  We have Chimera. We have Jet Synchron, Ruxen Special, right to it. Can't help it guys. I just can't help it. I just got a Ruxen Special. Every single time we open something, stick with this. We've got Magician Salvation called by, ooh, a Mass Hero Darklaw Prismatic Ultimate Rare. That is a beautiful looking card. Looking good. Now let's see if Monstrous Revenge, which is basically the, you know, this one is like really hit or miss. And we have not hit at all out of this. We have Ghost Wyvern. Flaming Man Infernal Rage. That could be like a dollar. That might not be bad. We'll have to find out later in terms of you guys have already seen it. I have not. Let's see if Maze of Malinia can really turn this around and give us something big. Oh, Gamma. Swords Dance. We have Totem. We have a Geo. Not yet. They are not turning it around. Not yet. Oh, come on. It's not on the rip. We have the Compulse. Digo Tucker Heat Salt. Whoa, Ruxen Spads are right past the Red-Eyes Flare Metal, which is not a great card in terms of value. But hey, it's a really cool looking card. I'll say that. Regular Ulti has a prismatic ultimate rare. You know, has all of them. That's Ghost Rare. Very cool card. Okay, Monster Survenge. Hello. Would you like to wake up and pull up something good? Maybe a Zeus Secret Rare at least. We have Sprite Smashers. Tri-Edge Master. Okay, that is not a Zeus at all. We have a Maze of Malinia. You've also been slacking. Rarity Collection is hard carrying right now, which I know it's shocking. Rarity Collection is the best set here. Kodak, we have Alert. Combat Wheel, gotta be careful. We have the Supreme King. And then the Magispector Raccoon. A Raccoon. Back to Rarity Collection. Will the Raccoon make a reappearance? We have Egyptian Godsline. Pot of Prosperity, good card. Secret Rare, we'll take that. And then some other nice cards that are not as nice as Pot of Prosperity, Secret Rare. We'll take it. All right, we're going straight through. We have, oh, that's way too straight through. We went right to it with the Ruxus Special. Nothing there. Let's try Monster Survenge. I believe in you, Monster Survenge. You can do something. Dark Armed. Teller Knight told me, yes, okay. Okay, not that great. Rarity, number 100, Triborgate Revolts. Summon Limits. Oh, oh, and we can drag it around, okay. Battles of Legend, Monstrous Revenge makes its appearance once again with the QCR. Okay, oh, the Dark Magician, the Knight of Dragon Man, I can't say it. But this is a card I looked for for a long time and we never pulled it. So maybe I should revisit and open more packs of that. Just do a separate video, like trying to get that thing because I literally tried for that for forever and we never got it. We have Doppel Warrior, Combat Wheel, and a Kypterra, very nice. Rarity Collection, Rarity Collection. You got to do something for us right here, Rarity. We have the Dimension Shifter. Okay, platinum rare, we'll take that. And Ghost Bell, good stuff. This is gonna be it. This is gonna be the Dark Magician QCR, the Knight of Dragon Magic right here. We have Divine Arsenal Zeus, there we go. All right, we got a good card. We'll take that. Divine Arsenal Zeus, we're making a run now. Here we go, we just had to switch styles of opening to bless us a little bit. Here we go, we're going straight to it, we're going. Oh, oh, we got something. Oh, it looks like an XC. Number one, Infection Buzz King. All right, another nice pull. Not incredible, because it's just an Ultra, but still really good. I'm feeling better about this. Overall, it's been a decent opening. Ever since the effect of it though, it's been a little slow, but overall, I think it's pretty good. Here we go, here we go. A Lich, Pot of Desires, Pot of Extravience, wow, it's a pretty good pack. A lot of pots in there, very nice. Come on, Maze, give us something big. Give us a collector rare. Nope, that's not either of them. Nothing there. Burfomet, I summon Burfomet in attack mode. I really need to rewatch. Okay, Effect Valor, Evenly Match, and Pot of Desires, what a pack. Really need to rewatch the original anime. I've been wanting to recently, I just haven't done it. Probably need to start doing that. It's just gonna be really epic, because it's the original anime, it's so good. Okay, Maze, come on. Give us a Flame Swordsman card or something. That'd be pretty cool. We have the Earthbound, that was the wrong stack. That's okay, we have Rarity Collection to turn us around right here. Right now, we have a, oh, oh, back to back, Ulti's Downerd and Ghostbell, there we go. Ghostbell's really good, that's a nice pull. Nothing gets too expensive in these Ulti's or collector rare, it's usually like 20 bucks is the max, so I'm guessing that's like a $10 card, something like that, but $10 is $10 when it comes to the score. And that's what we care about, is winning the battle versus tomorrow. Make sure you come check out tomorrow's video and see if we can make a comeback, because this is gonna be hard to do. We probably have at least $100 in value so far. Everything has contributed, really. I mean, we got the Zeus out of the Monster's Revenge. The Maze has probably been the worst, well, maybe not, just because of the three Ultras are probably worth a little bit. There's an Ultimate Flame Swordsman, really cool. So I'm interested to see, I mean, I know Rarity Collection, we should probably split them out. I kinda wanna do that, yeah, if we split them out between, so that you can see what each pack is contributing to the total score in the battle. And that way we can see like the slacker of the bunch. We can see the good one of the bunch, you know, Book of Eclipse. Which I think right now is Rarity Collection. It's kind of close between Maze and Monster's Revenge, though. I don't know which one's gonna be the slacker. The Slypa Slacker. That was probably not how to say that. What was that? Maybe that was more of a Crowler voice. Pot of Prosperity, that's a good card. So that's Rarity Collection's adding up for sure. It's looking good. We have Monster's Revenge. And then we can do that tomorrow, too. And then we can do a total score of all six sets. See which one was the worst. That'll be kind of fun. Neo's, I think that might be okay. That was originally, it's hard to really know with Battles of Legend, a lot of stuff goes down after the original release with that. If it's not like Rarity. Turbulence, that card went not too great. So we've got a few packs left. I believe we can do this. We have the, oh, Predaplant Dragustipelia. Evenly Mashed Ultra, not bad. Dragustipelia is probably not gonna be money or anything, but still cool ulti, we'll take it. We have the, uh-oh. Uh-oh. Uh-oh. Ah, Harmonic Synchro Fusion. Okay, so that, this is not the bonfire box. Not the bonfire box. That's for sure. Unless it's in one of the last packs. Who knows? Who knows? We have another Fairy Tail Luna. Let's go. Okay, Fairy Tail Luna. Collector Rare, beautiful. Looking good. I don't think that's a crazy one either, but hey, we'll take it. Rarity Collection's kind of done its part. Monsters Revenge, if you can get a QCR, even if it's the X-Tox Hydra, it would be pretty decent. We have Courageous. And the maze will pull nothing that time. Perfume it. Okay, I'm gonna go back to that maze to try to switch it up on us. Give us some good Rescue Ace Hydrant. That did not work. That did not work at all.  I might have skipped them a couple times. That's definitely possible. We have the Junk Archer. Good stuff. Junk Archer. Let's try another Battles of Legend. Monsters Revenge. This is about a fun opening. If you guys enjoyed this style where we're kind of doing a little battle between the two days, let me know. And we can do this again in the future. Maybe with some, who knows, older sets we could try because we're doing newer sets right now but they are banger newer sets. Striker Dragon. All right, Striker Dragon, Striker Dragon. Not that crazy, but it's a card. Okay, Monsters Revenge. We're down to only like seven packs left. Golden Rule. The Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would have them do unto you. Maze of millennia. I would, you know what I would like to do? I would like for to allow myself, you know, I would really want someone else to pull a bonfire. And so I would like to do that to myself as well. Pull a bonfire. You know, then everyone's happy.  Who would be mad about that? Nobody. Be fantastic. How about we do that? We have a Assault Synchron. That used to be a good one as well. I don't know if it still is. One pack left of each. If you guys enjoyed this video, make sure to subscribe to the channel and check out tomorrow's video to see if they can come back from what the total score is going to be. Right now it's, I'm guessing over a hundred bucks that we've pulled. We've pulled pretty well. We have a, okay, our Arcane Enforced 15. So they did not show out with Maze. Not, didn't exactly ball out or anything. So hopefully that'll do better. Let's try Monster Survenge. IP Mask Arena right here would be epic. Let's see. We have, it wasn't a QCR, but hey, I asked for IP Mask Arena. We got one and oh yeah, we're going to be able to get the alternate art soon and QCR and rare to collection too. All right. Last pack magic, rarity collection. Let's see what we can add to our total. We've already pulled three QCRs. I don't know if we're going to get a fourth. I think that would be some sort of error or something. So really we're hoping for collector rare or ultimate rare or platinum rare. There's Nibiru. Herald of the Arc Light. Make sure to subscribe to the channel if you guys have enjoyed it. Heart Peas and Nibiru. Okay. So I think we did pretty good. We didn't do as well as the first video where we went crazy on this, but we did pretty good. I think tomorrow could definitely win though if they pull some amazing cards. Shout out to Tomfoshow, Puffins of Doom, Ernesto Dian, America Doidster, Brad, KK Beats, and Anatai Show, Ian Musa, Junior Barting, Robert F, Thomas McLean, Chen Gling and Joey Castle. Thank you guys for supporting the channel. And I'll see you guys next time. Peace.