Heelblog

I must have spent almost 2 hours just tonite procrastinating and being busy checking email and LinkedIn and a myriad of other sites (no Facebook funnily enough…yet – I probably will midway thru this post) – so it’s tough for me to imaging the changes that will have to place if I plan on ever being able to “work” 4 hours a week and make enough coin to pay the bills and the odd night out at The Burgundy Lion.

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AJ

This post will also appear on the socialmediabreakfast.com blog. A new site is being launched in there in the next couple of days, thus the group’s founder Bryan Person has asked we refrain from posting new material to the old web property.

See additional party pix at in our FB Album.

I’m sitting down to write this post a little over a week after our first ever Social Media Breakfast Montreal Holiday Cocktail ( a mouthful I know…) took place.

Andrew, Luis, and Mike of KAI Design were kind enough to co-host the affair with Heelatch in their centrally located and super chic studio. Over 50 people were expected at the event, and although we never took an official head count, over the course of the night somewhere close to that number may well have made their way in and out. Why not right? Free food, free booze. Heck, if I were trudging through the snow on my way home from work and known such an event was taking place I would have stumbled in whether I knew anyone or not.

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Image credit to 1stwebdesigner.com

There is no such thing as a perfect client. And, as much as you might like to think so, a perfect designer/consultant/idea/friend/parent doesn’t exist either. If after reading that statement you’re saying “whaddya’ mean? I’m damn near as perfect as it gets..”, you and your business/job are already probably already in trouble.

Thankfully I’m offering up some advice. It won’t be perfect, but with a sprinkle of links and references to folks who have played and succeeded in our space, along with some of my personal anecdotes, maybe you’ll see the error in some of your ways and brainstorm some ways you may go about fixing them.

I’ve talked about how the clear conveyance of instructions by and to a client and/or design firm (or any other business for that matter) is critical to a project’s success in the past. My views on the subject certainly haven’t changed much in the year or so that’s gone by, but neither has many of our new clients’ approaches to job specifications and direction when it comes to a design job.

Over on the Duct Tape Marketing Blog, John Jantsch offers up some excellent points in a post titled: How to Collaborate with a Designer. There is no such thing as too much information when it comes to collaborating with a designer/developer – unless you’re relaying fluff (make this “pop”, or “jazz” this up, etc…). Concrete examples work best – visual if possible.

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The Wolfman

It was a chilly Halloween. So much so that we decided to take our little Giraffe and Tiger to the Faubourg de L’Ile, in Pincourt, Quebec to go trick or treating at an organized 3-5pm event where mall-goers could bring their dressed up kids and do the rounds indoors. Our thought was that maybe, if it rained or snowed, this would be a worthy substitute to the great outdoors and that kids and parents alike could satisfy their sweet tooth.

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Brand New World by Max Lenderman

A few weeks ago, I wrote about having attended The Art of Marketing Conference here in Montreal in late September, an event at which Max Lenderman was a speaker. Upon learning I’d secured tickets to the event I made the conscious decision to buy Max’s book and was in the middle of it by the time the conference rolled around.

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We had a great time at The Art of Marketing Conference today here in Montreal at the Palais des Congres. Definitely some real inspiring and enlightening stuff being shared by the likes of Seth Godin, Avinash Kaushik, Max Lenderman and friends.

It’s amazing the things you take for granted before you actually see or meet a person live.

Seth was everything I’d built him up to be and more. It would seem as though he lives and breathes (and has done for quite some time) what he preaches and has quite the storied career that include stints at Yahoo!, the authoring of several books, speaking, inventing and failing.

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The weirdest thing happened the other day as I was cruising around minding my own business. Patrick from godaddy.com rang me up. Like a lot of you I’m sure, we’re forever obsessed with trolling for the perfect domain name (for what business we’re not sure…). It was for two of these that we’d registered a year or so back (and never used!!) that Patrick was calling about. He wanted to know if I was interested in renewing them…I didn’t know they did this.

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Trust Agents: Using the Web to Build Influence, Improve Reputation, and Earn Trust

I have been tearing through books lately. A lot of books. In fact, my wife is starting to wonder what exactly keeps me in the can for 10 minutes (ok, sometimes longer) that can be so interesting, ummm, errr..important. Truth be told I’ve never been an in-and-outer, but I digress….

My thought was, because I’m spending all this time reading these books, that I would review them. In no way am I really qualified, but my English teacher in college was my favorite before I decided to drop out. So, maybe I am qualified after all.

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Trendspotting and Accusations Abound

A few months back, like many in the know, I picked up Gary Vaynerchuk’s book #crushit. As you’ll read further down, I just couldn’t put the thing down and made my way through it while sitting in my truck near a local WalMart – with 2 hours to spare before I was to meet a client at a restaurant around the corner. read more »