Why We All Need Visionary Leaders

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Click Here To Start Your Vision

I have always felt as leaders with global experiences and exceptional connections we have a responsibility to share our journey and energy to inspire future generations.

In recent years, I’ve focused my time and energy on sharing Burberry’s brand, culture and digital transformational lessons. Speaking to different sectors - from banking to insurance to educational institutions - I hope in some small way to have shed light on ideas that could greatly impact the companies and communities they serve.

Just under a year ago, I had coffee with someone I greatly admire - the visionary digital educator Sal Khan who is single handedly disrupting a sector desperate for revolution. Very few leaders have what author Jim Collins calls ‘big hairy audacious goals’ but with their simple mission to make education accessible to everyone, Sal and Khan Academy could change the world.

Not dissimilar to Bill and Melinda Gates who want to eradicate disease, Scott Harrison ofcharity: water who wants to provide everyone with clean drinking water or Mark Zuckerbergwho dreams of connecting the world, it is so rare to find a great leader with a gigantic global vision and such passion and clarity as to how to resolve it.

Hopefully, this is not the first time you're hearing about Sal or Khan Academy. Perhaps you’ve seen his TED talk, visited Khan Academy or read about it in various business publications. In short, Khan Academy is a not-for profit with the goal of providing free, world-class education for anyone, anywhere. Through leveraging digital and great video content, they’ve created one of the most innovative companies in the world that will transform one of the most underinvested and fundamentally valuable foundation to our future generations’ growth and development.

I had the honour of speaking with Sal and his incredible team in San Francisco last spring, sharing lessons on brand, leadership and how to nurture a culture of creativity and innovation. I left that day with even greater respect for the clarity and intensity of their vision and the passion with which they execute it.

At Burberry, we have always said that our greater purpose is to create not just a great brand, but a great company. Through the Burberry Foundation, global teams unite to share key learnings with young people in communities where associates live and work to inspire, unlock and nurture their creative confidence. As the company prepares for tomorrow’s changes and challenges, one key measure of its success will be how many lives around the world are touched and transformed by the power of its performance. It is humbling to think our story could inspire the Khan Academy team to continue to do what they already do so brilliantly.

Education is a global issue for all of us. We need all companies to get behind Khan Academy and contribute to making sure every person on this planet has the opportunity of education.

Congratulations to Sal and the Khan Academy team!!!!!!

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The Power Of Being A 'Nobody' by: John Hope Bryant Influencer

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Being born into this world a nobody just might be the best thing that ever happened to me.


The world undervalues the economic nobody, and grossly over-values the wealthy somebody. On this point the world is wrong.

You have nothing to lose when you are a nobody. And because you realize that 'you can’t fall from the floor,’ you’re not all stressed out about whether you are going to actually fail at something or not. Everyone born as a 'societal nobody’ has the exact same middle name, inserted sometime after birth, which translates roughly: DO SOMETHING.


I had lunch today with the CEO of Sapient, a $1 billion plus company that was started by two young guys with a few thousand dollars on their credit cards. Now they employ 12,000 people worldwide and the company is publicly traded.

A nobody is often under estimated, until they aren’t. Below is my update on a 20th century standard.

First they will ignore you. Then they will criticize you. Then they will try to copy you. And then you will win.

When a self-knowing economic nobody wins at life, they almost never forget where they came from. They are often the kindest, philanthropic, most positive, confident (yet understated) people you will ever meet.

Crazy as it sounds, it is often the off-spring of the one who created from nothing that then somehow gets it in their heads that they’re some kind of a big deal. And it is this other thing -- of becoming ‘important,’ or seeing oneself as a ‘so-called somebody,’ that is a really dangerous thing. It can ruin you in ways that poverty never could.

Here are some recent examples of wealth that came from near nothing:

Jan Koum, the CEO and co-founder of WhatsApp, once lived on food stamps before Facebook made him a billionaire. 

Starbucks' Howard Schultz grew up in a housing complex for the poor. 

Born into poverty, Oprah Winfrey became the first African American TV correspondent in Nashville. 

Luxury goods mogul Francois Pinault (think Gucci, Yves Saint Laurent) quit high school in 1974 after being bullied for being poor.

Oracle's Larry Ellison dropped out of college after his adoptive mother died and held odd jobs for eight years.

These brilliant and hard working folks were not sitting around thinking deeply about how great and noble they were. That had no time for any if that nonsense. And they weren’t publicly profiling either; trying desperately to look a certain way before a bunch of strangers. They weren’t sitting around, endlessly choreographing their every next big move in life. They just moved. 

They worked, hustled, did what it took to win. They were focused on getting the job in front of them done, rather than simply looking good for those standing in front of them.

But most of all — they just never took themselves seriously. Never. To quote my friend Quincy Jones, “people should never come down with a case of seriousness.” Take life seriously, but never take yourself too seriously. Taking yourself seriously is the kiss of death. My mentor Ambassador Andrew Young once told me that “men fail for three reasons: arrogance, pride and greed.” Enough said.

I have a lot of experience with people who really believe that they’re a somebody, and they’re really exhausting to deal with. It’s a lot of work dealing with someone who takes themselves so seriously. And if they don't change, their doomed. As the age old saying goes, "the first generation makes the money. The second generation spends the money, and the third generation often loses the money."

People tend to feel sorry for the poor, but I actually feel sorry for my rich friends' children. I wouldn’t exchange my life, growing up struggling in South Central Los Angeles and Compton, California, for the privileged lives of my wealthy friend’s kids for all the tea in China. 

Young people who grew up believing that they were ‘somebody’ are suffering from at least four distinct disadvantages in life. 

(1) They never learned how to ‘suffer for the good.’

(2) They were more often than not spoiled rotten, which makes it harder to value a dollar, or even hard work and sustained struggle.

(3) The ‘entitlement’ problem. This is a misguided sense that success is somehow owed to some, which in turn causes you to take your foot off the gas in life and just coast. A perfect work day is then defined as in late, long lunch, and leave early. I always wanted just the opposite of this. Still do. I love to work and to make my own way. Every single day.

(4) Too much private school-only air. Private schools have their value, but if you never went to at least a few years of public school then in my opinion you are really in trouble. Public school is where you learn how to deal with difficult people, diverse environments, and challenging situations. Just like life itself. 

People who believe they are ‘somebody’ are doomed, precisely because they believe they are somebody. A so-called nobody has none of this needless baggage.

Those who have a nobody’s mentality actually have what they need to win, right from the start.

I remember asking Ambassador Andrew Young’s gardener back in 2009, how the global economic crisis was impacting him. He said in response, “I was poor before the crisis, and I’ll be poor after it’s over. It's my depressed rich friends who have all the problems. I feel just fine.”

Or when I went to see my mentor, Dr. Cecil “Chip" Murray, as a young man starting out in business in Los Angeles. I wanted to know ‘why folks were following me,’ and I wanted to know how I could manufacture and replicate even more of this feeling people were getting, so I could get even more attention. His response as usual was brilliant. “If you got it you John, you wouldn’t have it.” 

Murray continued, “…if you got a thing, you would then be conscious of a thing. If you were conscious of a thing, you would be self-conscious of a thing. And if you were self-conscious of a thing, it would be an act, a put on. Not real." He concluded by saying, “John, you’re not suppose to get it. People are following you because you’re real. Because they believe you’re authentic. The minute you get it, you also lose it. Just keep doing you John. Keep being you.” DO SOMETHING.

The power of being a nobody is an asset everyone on the planet owns from birth. It’s your birthright, to fulfill your God given destiny. It’s the new definition of freedom, called self-determination.

And you thought someone calling you a ’nobody’ was an insult.

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A $32,000 Startup That Was Sold for Millions

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I meet entrepreneurs all over the world who think that venture capital is a prerequisite for starting a company. They write business plans and ask for introductions to venture capitalists. I tell them that they should instead bootstrap their startups. That what would have cost millions of dollars a few years ago now costs thousands.

Think about it. Today’s laptops have the same processing power as the minicomputers which cost millions of dollars in the 1980s. For storage, you once needed server farms and racks of hard disks. Today you have cloud computing and cloud storage—and these are cheap.

You can also bootstrap hardware companies like Nest (which Google acquired for $3.2 billion). Sensors such as those in our smartphones would have cost tens-of-thousands of dollars a few years ago. They now cost practically nothing. Entrepreneurs on shoestring budgets can build smartphone apps that act like medical assistants and detect disease, body sensors that monitor heart, brain and body activity, technologies to detect soil humidity and improve agriculture.

Entrepreneurs can also participate in the genomics revolution (here is an article that explains this). It cost more than $100 million to sequence a full human genome about a decade ago. It now costs $1,000. Genome data will soon be available for millions, then billions of people. Anyone anywhere can write computer code that compares one person’s DNA with another; learns what diseases people with similar genes have had; and analyzes the correlation between genomes and the effectiveness with which different medications or other interventions have treated a given disease.

There are similar advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, 3D printing and many other fields.

In 2011, I mentored a startup called Beat The GMAT that figured out how to rebuild and bootstrap itself on just $32,000. The company was acquired last year for millions of dollars by Hobsons. Its founders Eric Bahn and David Park say they are really enjoying their financial freedom and are glad that they took the risk. It wasn’t easy, but was the most incredible experience they have ever had. Below is a version of an article I wrote for Bloomberg BusinessWeek about how they did this. There
 are valuable lessons that you can learn.

After graduating from Harvard Law School in 1999, David Park founded discussion forum service Coolboard.com. It took more than a dozen software developers, product managers, and quality assurance staff 18 months to build the company's core technology. To fund it, Park raised $10 million in venture capital, of which $4 million was spent before the company was launched. It went down in flames in 2003, a casualty of the dot-com bust.

In 2005, Park partnered up with his friend Eric Bahn to launch his next business, MBA admissions social network Beat The GMAT in San Mateo, Calif. Rather than take venture capital, they limited startup costs, spending just $119,000. The site steadily gained traction, but they were nervous that technologies like Facebook and Twitter would make it obsolete. So they chose to make it obsolete themselves.

In 2011, the team decided to rebuild the site and the company. Their goal was to create a social network for business-school applicants that had features such as aggregated GMAT-prep and MBA-admissions news; a way for members to connect with one another; and social gaming elements to keep members motivated. It makes money advertising test prep services. Amazingly, the new site took only four months and cost just $32,000 in total.

I was skeptical when Park and Bahn approached me last year to ask for advice on business strategy for the site. They were convinced they could build a bunch of sophisticated technologies in months—on a shoestring budget. They were determined not to raise venture capital. I had doubts. My two software companies had taken years and cost millions. Yes, technology is much easier to build today than it was during my tech days. But I meet Silicon Valley startup founders every week who tell me about their ideas and their plans; and no one says they can build their products for less than the cost of a BMW 328.

But Park and Bahn did. How? To start with, they crowdsourced the design. Instead of hiring a bunch of marketing people, as tech companies usually do, they asked their user community for volunteers to help conceive a new site. Then they selected a handful of the most eager users and trained them on the basics of Silicon Valley–style product management. Next, Park and Bahn needed to find a designer. They used 99designs.com, which hosts design competitions, for a two-week contest that attracted hundreds of designers, yielding a design they used as the theme for the new site. The contest, prize, and designer's time cost $9,200.

They broke up Web development into two tasks: front-end engineering (turning design artwork into code) and back-end engineering (making the code actually function). They built their technology on top of WordPress, phpBB, and Drupal—free, open-source platforms. Front-end engineering usually requires sophisticated coding done by contractors who earn as much as $100 an hour. Instead, the Beat The GMAT team turned to a service called PSD2HTML.com, which converts Photoshop design files into HTML and CSS code. The cost of this service, at $160 to $220 per Web page, totalled $4,500. For back-end engineering, they hired four developers from Hungary and Ukraine on the outsourcing website oDesk. They paid $15 to $20 per hour. The back-end engineering cost $18,000 in total.

In software development, things don't usually go as planned. Park and Bahn had their share of missed deadlines, buggy code, and product problems. Outsourcing always makes things more difficult, because developers are in different time zones, speak different languages, and don't always understand what is expected of them. It took many sleepless nights and lots of caffeine to surmount these obstacles.

In the result, a company that later sold for millions cost its founder just $32,000 because the relevant technology now is so inexpensive. The ability of entrepreneurs to build sophisticated technologies so cheaply in the Web world is even foreshadowing the marginalization of venture capitalists. Software startups often spend the first few months of their existence polishing business plans and pitching to investors. They can instead be working with smart people all over the world, focusing their energy on perfecting their technologies, as Beat The GMAT did. When a law-school grad (Park) and a sociology graduate student (Bahn) can build successful technology companies, the notion that website founders need computer-programming backgrounds too is outdated.

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ADOBE ILLUSTRATOR CS5 TUTORIAL""" By: Derek Banas

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In these two video’s I show you how to use Adobe Illustrator CS5. I created this tutorial because of a request from DeathByKazillion.

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 1

Here I cover every new feature available with Illustrator CS5 and provide a review.

I cover specifically:

1. Bristle Brush
2. Perspective Tool
3. Creating Custom Brushes
4. Live Paint
5. Live Trace

If you like videos like this tell Google To make me extra happy, feel free to share it

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 2

Here I show you how to convert a jpeg or any image into vector art / EPS with Illustrator CS5. I also cover:

1. Rasterizing Images
2. Live Trace
3. Live Paint
4. Live Paint
5. Convert Muli-color Image into Vector Art
6. Working with Text Tool’s
7. Using Gradients
8. Using Strokes
9. Using the Knife Tool
10. Cleaning up Vector Art
11. And a bunch more in just 9 minutes

Adobe Illustrator Tutorial & Review Part 3
Here I show you how to use every other tool available with Illustrator CS5. I also cover:

1. Line tools
2. Shape tools
3. Layers
4. Colors
5. Text
6. Art boards
7. A bunch of random tip’s and trick’s

That’s All Folk’s

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Why Snapchat is Valuable: It's All About Attention"""

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Most people who encounter a link to this post will never read beyond this paragraph. Heck, most people who encountered a link to this post didn't click on the link to begin with. They simply saw the headline, took note that someone over 30 thinks that maybe Snapchat is important, and moved onto the next item in their Facebook/Twitter/RSS/you-name-it stream of media. And even if they did read it, I'll never know it because they won't comment or retweet or favorite this in any way.

We've all gotten used to wading in streams of social media content. Open up Instagram or Secret on your phone and you'll flick on through the posts in your stream, looking for a piece of content that'll catch your eye. Maybe you don't even bother looking at the raw stream on Twitter. You don't have to because countless curatorial services like digg are available to tell you what was most important in your network. Facebook doesn't even bother letting you see your raw stream; their algorithms determine what you get access to in the first place (unless, of course, someone pays to make sure their friends see their content).

Snapchat offers a different proposition. Everyone gets hung up on how the disappearance of images may (or may not) afford a new kind of privacy. Adults fret about how teens might be using this affordance to share inappropriate (read: sexy) pictures, projecting their own bad habits onto youth. But this is isn't what makes Snapchat utterly intriguing. What makes Snapchat matter has to do with how it treats attention.

When someone sends you an image/video via Snapchat, they choose how long you get to view the image/video. The underlying message is simple: You've got 7 seconds. PAY ATTENTION. And when people do choose to open a Snap, they actually stop what they're doing and look.

In a digital world where everyone's flicking through headshots, images, and text without processing any of it, Snapchat asks you to stand still and pay attention to the gift that someone in your network just gave you. As a result, I watch teens choose not to open a Snap the moment they get it because they want to wait for the moment when they can appreciate whatever is behind that closed door. And when they do, I watch them tune out everything else and just concentrate on what's in front of them. Rather than serving as yet-another distraction, Snapchat invites focus.

Furthermore, in an ecosystem where people "favorite" or "like" content that is inherently unlikeable just to acknowledge that they've consumed it, Snapchat simply notifies the creator when the receiver opens it up. This is such a subtle but beautiful way of embedding recognition into the system. Sometimes, a direct response is necessary. Sometimes, we need nothing more than a simple nod, a way of signaling acknowledgement. And that's precisely why the small little "opened" note will bring a smile to someone's face even if the recipient never said a word.

Snapchat is a reminder that constraints have a social purpose, that there is beauty in simplicity, and that the ephemeral is valuable. There aren't many services out there that fundamentally question the default logic of social media and, for that, I think that we all need to pay attention to and acknowledge Snapchat's moves in this ecosystem.

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3 Technology Trends Your Company Can’t Ignore"""

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Technology is evolving…fast. For that reason, it’s imperative that your company be focusing not just on the changes that are happening today, but also on the technological trends that are emerging and shaping the future of your organization and your industry. Why? Because the more anticipatory you can be in regard to technology, the more creatively you can use it to gain competitive advantage.

As someone who has been accurately predicting the future of technology for over 30 years, I urge all leaders to focus on the following three trends that are emerging and reshaping the business landscape, as we know it.

1. Just-in-Time Training
Thanks to cloud-based technology, we’re on the brink of a revolution in just-in-time training. This will enable people to use their laptops, cell phones, and tablet computers as a tool to receive training precisely when they need it. In the current training model used by many organizations, people receive training for a variety of things before they actually need the expertise, thus taking the people away from their jobs and costing the company a lot of money. With just-in-time training, companies can keep people in the field or in the office without the specific training. Then, when the person needs a certain skill set to complete a job or do a task, he or she can receive the training for it in real time via cloud-based technology.

For example, suppose your IT staff has to install some new hardware at all your company’s office locations. The hardware is brand new, complex, and requires special installation procedures. Rather than taking your IT staff out of work and putting them in a training course, you keep them on site without the specific training. Then, when they have to install the hardware or troubleshoot it, they can receive the training on how to do so in real time via their mobile device as they are installing or servicing the hardware.

Now, let’s take this trend a step further. Suppose the IT professional is using the just-in-time training module via his tablet computer. But he’s still confused about a certain aspect of the installation. All he has to do is touch the “help” icon on his screen and it immediately connects him to a master trainer live on the screen. But instead of just telling the master trainer what the problem is, the IT person can put on a headband that has a camera on the front, much like the headbands with a light on the front that people use for camping or car repair. By wearing this digital, high-resolution camera that interfaces with the mobile device, the IT professional can show the master trainer exactly what the issue is. Now that master trainer can see what the IT person sees and can tell him exactly what to do. The master trainer can lead the IT professional through the installation as if he were standing right there. Talk about a dramatic savings and increase in efficiency!

Realize that using cloud-based technology for just-in-time services goes way beyond installation and repair. It could be used to train people on new software, train salespeople on product upgrades, instruct employees on new policies and procedures, etc. And it’s different and better than a standard tutorial, because the training can be accessed via any device, anywhere, and at anytime…and it offers an option for live help. In reality, the applications for cloud-based, just-in-time services are virtually limitless.

2. Processing Power on Demand

The increased bandwidth that our mobile devices now receive enables us to connect to the cloud-based technologies easier and faster than ever before. And one thing we know about bandwidth is that it will continue to increase. Because of this, we’ll soon be able to take advantage of another trend that I call processing power on demand—or virtualized processing power.

We have already virtualized so many things. We have virtualized storage where we can store our data on a cloud-based network. Many companies choose this option for data safety and ease of backup, as well as for the ability to access the data via any device. We have virtualized our desktops so that we can see our desktop on anyone else’s machine, just the way it’s supposed to look.

It only makes sense, then, that processing power will be virtualized too. In other words, a mobile device only has a certain amount of processing power. But if you can tap into additional processing power via cloud-based technology, you can turn your mobile device into a super computer where you can do advanced simulations and crunch different data streams together to get real time analytics. Now your handheld device is as powerful and advanced as your desktop. Imagine the increase in productivity if each of your company’s employees had the capability to do complex work that required advanced processing power while they were on the road, armed with nothing more than their mobile device. What would that shift do to your company’s bottom line?

3. Creative Application of Technology
For both of these trends and others to fully emerge, business leaders have to consider what their people would do with the technology. It’s no longer enough to just deploy technology; you also have to consider how your people can creatively apply the technology in order to gain competitive advantage.

Therefore, you need to go to your internal customers (all the people using the technology in the enterprise) and ask what they want technologically. Give them what they ask for, but realize that they will under-ask because they don’t know what’s technically possible. So while you want to listen to what people in the organization are asking for and give it to them, realize that what they’re not asking for is the bigger and better capabilities—the things they don’t even know are possible.


This is about putting existing technologies together and using them in a creative way. For example, there are literally thousands of features in Microsoft Word that you can select. Most people are using only seven to ten features. And your competitors are using the same features, which means you’re not getting any true competitive advantage. So you need to ask, “What features would be great for our sales group [or HR, or accounting department, or logistics people, etc.] to use—features that are so buried in the software that no one knows they exist?” Most IT departments won’t ask those questions because they’re too busy making sure everything is connected, working well, and safe. And if they’re not asking, who is? Who in your organization is looking at the tools you already have and asking if they are being underused? Chances are the answer is “no one.” As such, it’s safe to say that all your tools are underutilized.

Therefore, you need to implement a communication vehicle that engages the different groups you serve in the enterprise—such as sales, logistics, purchasing, accounting, HR, etc.—and you need to engage them in helping them understand the power of the tools they have access to. One suggestion is to automatically show them a “feature of the day” and how it can make their life easier. This is about giving them information in short, fun, engaging ways rather than a hundred-page document detailing all the features (which no one will read anyway). Some software programs have such features where you get a tip per day. Perhaps you can customize that idea and apply it internally so that the different groups get information tailored specifically to them and their needs.

Create Your Company’s Future
Many business leaders will say they are too busy to address any of these trends. But if you don’t address them, who will? Ultimately, whoever drives these trends within an organization will be perceived as a significant contributor to the enterprise—someone worth keeping…and someone with high value in the marketplace. When that someone is you, you can drive results to the bottom line and be a key contributor to the organization’s success

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How to Live the Difference Between Money & Wealth""

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When you consider how many people seem to have money, they aren't the same as the people who are wealthy. The distinction is worth considering. Money is a symbol, often an empty one. Weapons, pornography, and gambling will always make money, because greed, fear, and sex are permanent. Wealth, on the other hand, is based on values. If you can fulfill a value as it arises from society, the opportunity for wealth is made possible.

Wealth circulates, keeping a society vital and alive. After Spain plundered the New World, it captured an enormous horde of gold and silver, but within a century its economy collapsed. Greed and inflation were a deadly combination, but at heart the habit of hoarding seems to have been the real culprit. A monied economy never turned into a wealthy one. In the Great Depression and the recent Great Recession, vast sums of money sat on the sidelines, doing nothing to invest, renew the economy, or aid the unemployed. As a result, even though the world was awash in money, people felt insecure and hopeless - they lived by the psychology of poverty, not wealth.

I'm not preaching the evils of money - symbols can be interpreted any way one chooses. They are essentially empty on their own. But a psychology of wealth needs to be present for success to truly matter. You are in a wealth mode when any of the following are present:

• You fulfill a worthy need.
• You are the steward of money, not its slave or master.
• You deliver the greatest good to the greatest number.
• You benefit the planet rather than despoil it.
• You add to the meaning and purpose of life, both your life and the life of others.

Wealth gives us a reason to forgive the wrongs inflicted by callous, greedy money. I realize that this is a tall order. The wounds suffered by ordinary people at the hands of monied people are grievous. The widening gap between the haves and have nots isn't value neutral, although various factions would like to portray it that way. To be on the right side of a value system is a mark of wealth, which is one reason benefactors are honored long after the greedy are forgotten

ONE WORLD: Paul Scialla & Deepak Chopra
Paul Scialla, former Partner at Goldman Sachs for the past 10 years interest in both altruistic capitalism and in sustainability led him to found Delos, the pioneer of Wellness Real Estate.
At this moment the graduates of prestigious colleges are flocking to Wall Street, one reads, in great numbers if they can get there. The shared aim of these young people is to make a few million by the time they are twenty-four or twenty-five, after which they intend to abandon filthy lucre to live better lives. This phenomenon is what it is. But I hope that someone teaches young people that there is such a thing as capitalism with a conscience, inspiring them to work with wealth as their personal goal, not simply money. The values of a globalized economy and the challenge of revamping the system that has so deeply harmed the planet depends on each generation redefining its values and in so doing finding new avenues for wealth.

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Spring Cleaning for Social Good!

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Four Ways Your Spring Cleaning Can Be Used For Social Good

Housebound by bad weather? Why not do a little pre-emptive spring cleaning. Start small; maybe you have a linen closet or a bookshelf that could use some pruning. Don’t think of it as chore, but as a way to pass along items you no longer need to someone in need. Here are four things you can do: donate books, linens, clothing, or if you're selling on eBay, donate a portion of the proceeds. You'll be surprised how good you'll feel and how much you can help.

Donate Books

                                                                                                                                                                    

According to the American Library Association, most public libraries in the US accept gift books, with the understanding that the library is free to add donated books to its collection, sell these books to raise funds for the library, or discard them. Contact your local library for details.

The ALA’s fact sheet on book donations provides the names and details about organizations that need your old books. Here are some suggestions from the fact sheet:

1. Gently used (or new) children’s books:
2. Bernie's Book Bank for Chicago, IL and surrounding suburbs
3. BookEnds of West Hills, CA
4. Migrant Media Book Flood Project for Watsonville, CA
5. Reader to Reader of Amherst, MA - You can find additional information here, on GreatNonprofits.org. One reviewer said: “Reader to Reader is a great organization. They have made a real difference to many schools and libraries. Plus it’s a great way to give new life to old books.”
6. African Library Project of Portola Valley, CA

Books for All Ages

1. Darien Book Aid Plan Inc. of Darien, CT
2. International Book Project, Inc. of Lexington, KY

Donate Clothing

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A Beginners Guide To Using Psychographics To Improved Your Marketing Efforts

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In marketing practice, buzzwords are as ubiquitous as copy. Some come, and some go, but the ones that stay are of far-reaching, intrinsic value that better your efforts and customer satisfaction in some way. With this in mind, it’s a fair bet that psychographics are about to demonstrate some impressive longevity. Through a more comprehensive understanding of what drives customer actions, using research and analytics to fuel the endeavor, your materials and distribution can see greater permeation than ever before.

What They ARE
Despite the curious title, psychographics are not as bewildering as their name might imply, and understanding their nature, use, and acquisition can breed a great deal of success in marketing efforts. At their core, psychographics are profiles of individuals that focus on lifestyle, habits, and tendencies, reaching beyond traditional demographic information and seeking more valuable data from user behavior.

For a better understanding of exactly what comprises one of these profiles, let’s look at a hypothetical user and see what we can learn from them. We’ll begin with John, a 32-year old office worker from Los Angeles, California. For the sake of thoroughness, let’s assume that he’s married with two children, has an income of approximately $60K per year, and owns his own home.

While all of this information has some kind of use, it doesn’t tell us much about him outside of raw data. What we want is information about interests and habits in order to better understand his motivations. A look at John’s Facebook page shows likes on pages related to fantasy football and an application that tracks player injury status. His Twitter page shows pictures of his family in a snowy location, holding ski poles and wearing goggles. Each of these social channels has some kind of activity, but a look at his Google+ page shows that most of his time is spent there.

What we have now is a wealth of information regarding John. He lives in Los Angeles and probably commutes. He enjoys fantasy football and skiing. He has a wife and two kids, all of whom are also active and athletic. He spends most of his time on Google+, and is young enough that he probably uses multiple devices to access information on the Internet through various media channels.

HOW THEY WORK
The power of this profile is manifold. As marketers and business owners, you want to understand where to put what information and when, so that the right people see the right things and think better of your brand or purchase product. To this end, John’s psychographic is a boon to our work.

First of all, as a working commuter with multiple channels of access, we have a better understanding of John’s browsing habits. He likely checks social networks and news channels in the morning and at night, before and after work, possibly stopping during the day to check his mobile phone during breaks. He uses Facebook and Twitter but is mostly found on Google+. Therefore, assuming John is the type of customer we want to recruit, our marketing is best published across multiple social networking channels, preferably Google+, during the morning (before 8 AM), afternoon (around lunch time), and evening (after 5 PM).

But logistics aren’t the only use of psychographics. A better understanding of user behavior gives us the added benefit of what kind of content should be published. As we noted, John likes to travel, ski, and play fantasy football. In terms of sales deals, airlines could offer discount tickets around wintertime, restaurants can offer deals for customers with a valid lift ticket, and sports magazines can offer price cuts on subscriptions around fantasy draft season. In terms of content, a travel magazine could create a review of the best ski slopes in Colorado, a sports website could offer insider information on sleeper picks, and an eCards website could offer templates for email postcards incorporating winter sports.

The incredible thing is, all of this came from a better understanding of customer behavior. Multiple industries, multiple businesses, and multiple aspects of marketing all arose from discerning the interests and habits of a target customer. With this kind of information available from only a judicious application of research, the last question that remains is how to obtain it.

HOW TO GET THEM
Start by leveraging the information you already have. Website analytics, past purchases, and social networking activity provide a sort of “back end” approach to customer research. Pay attention to what articles or offers performed well, what channel has seen the most success, and what kind of engagement your current topics are seeing. By looking at past successes and drawing some ideas from them, you can save money and build a decent bank of knowledge.

But customer behavior isn’t limited to online engagement. A thorough understanding of user interests and habits requires a great deal more insight; insight straight from the source.

Customer surveys are a good place to start since they offer a large sample size. The key is to ask the right questions, looking specifically for behavior and interests, offering the chance for open-ended answers where applicable. In your approach, be honest about your intent. Personal information is more guarded than ever in an increasingly privacy-aware society, but explaining your intent is an excellent way of disarming respondents through trust. Furthermore, most customers are more than happy to share this kind of information if it improves the relevance of information and product offerings.

Reinforce this broad-base data collection with customer interviews and focus groups. By inviting customers to meet or offering to converse with them over the phone, you’re providing an opportunity to ask responsive questions and delve further into fruitful areas, instead of relying on rote questionnaires. In addition, putting a human face on your efforts (and including refreshments if the meetings happen in person) is an excellent way to show customers that you care, increase engagement, and build relationships in the process.

Between these methods of research and an intelligent understanding of the worth of the data obtained, your business stands to expand its reach and its relevancy through psychographics. Focus on the characteristic behaviors, habits, and methods of communication that drive customers’ day-to-day lives and use that information to better craft content and logistics of publication. With an open ear and an aim toward seeing people instead of numbers, your content, relationships, and bottom-line, will all benefit.

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The Ultimate Guide To Building And Using Personas@@

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The local bakery down the street has a unique opportunity. By interacting with customers on a daily basis, the owners gain a deeper understanding of what their most valued patrons want. However, when you move from Main Street to the World Wide Web, the picture becomes blurrier as that one-on-one time becomes scarce. Fortunately, one tool is offering the opportunity to turn broad customer insight into a tailored approach that improves conversion, service, and satisfaction for businesses of all shapes and sizes.
Researching Your Audience
Buyer personas are a sophisticated approach to introducing the individual perspective back into broad-based demographic analysis. However, this approach requires that you start with a broad-based perspective in order to obtain an accurate understanding of buyer behavior.
For this reason, personas begin with audience research. This research can come in a number of forms, including:

• Analytics
• Surveys
• Focus groups
• Direct-mail responses
• Interviews
• Comments

Each of these formats provides its own insight. For example, analytics and high-volume surveys provide overarching trends for your audience that can be used to help narrow your focus. Focus groups and interviews, on the other hand, provide a more conversational opportunity to discover specific buyer behaviors and mentalities. Blog and social media comments are more informal, but contribute a fair degree of information that connects demographics with attitudes and values.

This initial step should focus on drawing the “boundaries” of your audience; essentially the broad characteristics of your regular customers. This way, you’ll understand who falls outside the boundaries of your audience and better comprehend the specific behaviors of your unique following.

Breaking IT Down
With this broad cross-sectional data in hand, the next step is to break it down. As mentioned, the benefit of overarching data is that it frames the kind of personalities that fall within your target audience. Breaking this information down into individual personalities is what turns audience research into high-conversion personas.

Begin by looking at the characteristics that fall into the majority of responses. If most of your site hits occur around lunch and just after working hours, it’s likely that your audience is of employment age. If the majority of your audience falls into a below-average income bracket, then it is possible that your deals are what attract an audience.

Look at each trend in your data as a piece of a puzzle. If your comment-to-follower ratio is higher on Facebook than on Twitter, then this points to a demographic that is likely just out of college or older, since younger generations are trending toward Twitter. This one element becomes noteworthy due to its connection to audience behavior. For now, simply focus on collecting the pieces of your buyer profiles through data and interviews and leave the actual assembly for later.

Understanding Personas
At this juncture, it is important to understand precisely what a buyer persona is. Knowing this will render assembly of your data-driven “pieces” easier, and provide insight into how they can be used.

If your marketing team uses broad audience research to design advertising materials, certain results occur. For example, if your business finds that your customer base is overwhelmingly female, ads and content may be created to appeal to females. If you’re looking to expand into your reach, additional materials may be crafted to appeal to males. In either instance, business decisions are made on the basis of characteristics.

What this approach fails to understand is that behavior and characteristics are not so easily correlated. Buyer personas attempt to introduce the concept of buyer behavior to the equation, informing marketing efforts and product development with the user in mind. A buyer persona focuses on the daily life, habits, values, beliefs, and goals of customers instead of their raw demographic information, constructing a picture of their average day that can be utilized to great effect.

Buiding Personas
It is with this mentality that you should then approach assembling your data. Two mechanisms should influence your construction process: social trends and observation. Pinterest, for example is largely slanted toward females, indicating that activity on that account is likely linked to the female portion of your audience. This kind of analysis should then be balanced by observational data, i.e. focus group discussions that specifically indicate buyer behavior and predilections.


In this step, it is much easier to understand the concept through example. Here are some insights that may contribute to a buyer persona:

• John Q checks Facebook in the morning and browses news sites at night
• Tina H values safety for her family
• David M watches product reviews on YouTube and CNET before making a purchase on our online shop

The names are, of course, fictitious, but the behaviors are not. Your data should outline behaviors such as these, providing insight into the day-to-day life of customers and identifying patterns in purchasing processes and consistent habits.

Putting Them To Used

With this understanding of buyer behavior, it is now possible to put it to use. From advertising to product pages, everything about your operations can be influenced and improved using this powerful tool.
Marketing efforts stand to gain a great deal of insight from these profiles. Ads can be targeted toward relevant social media sites using keywords and schedules designed around customer habits. The content of ads and blog posts can be tailored to reflect the hobbies or interests of your customers. Finally, innovative engagement opportunities can be developed around specific knowledge of your customer base, helping lead to higher participation and conversion rates.
Next, product development can be influenced by this understanding of customer characteristics. If your eReader is mostly used at night after a long day at work, it should possess a backlight that makes text readable without straining the eyes. If you find that your software is used by an older generation, buttons and text can be made bigger to allow for easier interface and navigation.
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