How to Do Google Adwords and Google Adsense Marketing Right

I was speaking to my students this week at http://stedwards.edu, and realized I have never posted this short training on Google Adwords I put together.

It's a quick read and I think highly useful... so check it out!
http://www.slideshare.net/hbombers/how-to-do-adwords-and-facebook-marketing

How to Do Adwords and Facebook Marketing from Harlan Beverly

Slideshare is Cool!

You will see a number of new blog posts coming up today, all because I recently decided to post every personal training presentation I could find in my old inbox.

I hope you will find some of these useful.

You can see all my presentations here:
http://www.slideshare.net/hbombers

Meanwhile, I am continually impressed with Slideshare: http://www.slideshare.net/

They somehow have figured out a way to really make it easy for people to upload Powerpoint in a useful way to share with the world.

Let the knowledge be unlocked!

Who's with me?

What PPT have you uploaded recently?

Unlikely Sources of Professional Creative Inspiration

This summer at Oklahoma State University in the PhD in Business for Executives program, me and my fellow teammates did a preliminary study into the sources of Professional Creativity in the workplace.  Our goal was to try to begin to understand how and where professionals become inspired for creativity.  We uncovered some interesting results...

Below, have a look at our final presentation to get a deeper understanding of our study (my co-authors agreed to allow me to publish this on my blog). We interviewed 8 professionals, 4 who work in 'traditionally creative roles', and 4 who work in what many might consider 'not very creative roles'...

Here are some of the big surprises:

1. All 8 of our informants thought they were highly creative... leading us to think that role doesn't matter in terms of how people perceive themselves as creative.
2. Most of our informants found themselves to be "Struck by Deep Creative Inspiration" while OUT OF THE OFFICE!
3. Common activities that generated creative ideas were: walking, exercising, sleeping and bathroom activities (showering, brushing teeth, etc.).
4. Common locations for inspiration were: outdoors in nature, bathroom, and relaxing with friends.
5. One surprisingly insightful moment was when one of our informants mentioned the idea of "vulnerability" as a catalyst to inspiration... this idea seemed new and worthy of further study.... looking at our commonalities between informants we saw many examples of this vulnerability: showering, sleeping, etc., and could not find any prior research that explored the topic of vulnerability helping to inspire creativity.

What about you?  Where are you when you find that 'inspiration' strikes most often?  Driving? In Bed?  I'd love to hear from you in the comments below.

6713 creative inspiration final-7.16.13 from Harlan Beverly

Why it's nice to know a CEO...

I am a CEO.  I hire people... a lot of people... at all levels.  I am desperately trying to find people to fill my 4 open positions (as of 8/15/13)... http://keyingredient.com/blog/jobs .   And I know a lot of people.  So why is it nice to know me???
The answer is simple.  The same reason it is nice to know any CEO:

1. Because if you know one, and they know you, you've got a leg up on ANY job role they are trying to fill.
2. If they know you well enough, the CEO might even reach out to you pro-actively!
3. Because a CEO of a company today, will very likely be a CEO of a different company tomorrow... e.g. they will likely be in future hiring positions as well.
4. If you know them, you know what they are like to work with, and the kind of culture they build at companies.
5. Because there are plenty of Business Development opportunities that come up all the time with the CEO.
6. Because we are cool (see the picture from my most recent family hiking picture above!)

So, come on people, get to know a CEO!  They just might be able to actually help you with your career some day!  * I'd be glad to help any of my friends or acquaintances as best I can, for example.

The Importance of Ethics: Engineering Ethics vs. Business Ethics

When I was CEO of Bigfoot Networks, I rarely encountered ethical 'problems' of any kind; I thought business ethics were a fairly useless thing to learn.  Now after being involved in many different start-ups and companies, I find that ethical issues can and do actually come up quite often... and I realize that I was addressing ethical issues at Bigfoot, even though I didn't realize it.

As a student of engineering and business, I've been exposed to two very different interpretations of ethics.  In Engineering, we talk about the ethics of "bad calculations", "building a bridge with errors", "cutting corners", or other things that can actually get people KILLED.  This kind of ethics always seemed like "real ethics" to me.  Business ethics seemed like a silly thing in compared to people dying.

I guess I'm starting to finally understand the importance of Business ethics.  I realize now, that I've always had good business ethics, and that's why I never had to deal with ethical problems.

At Bigfoot Networks, I was using very ethical business practices without realizing it:

1. I never even considered buying stuff without some form of purchasing/payment contract or pre-paid:
1. thus avoiding the ethical issue of "no contract"
2. I always treated partners and customers as valuable customers and nothing else.
1. thus avoiding potential conflicts of interest and complex issues like "customers as investors" or "partners determining our product direction".
3. I avoided making promises I couldn't keep, or would not put in writing.
1. Thus avoiding confusion and frustration.
4. I always treated people with respect and courtesy.
1. Thus avoiding employee issues and problems.

While I can't say specifically all the ethical issues I am facing today... I am glad that:

• The issues are not "Engineering Ethical issues"!!!  e.g. they are not life or death issues, thank goodness.
• I do know how to avoid business ethical issues, even though dealing with the problems themselves are a challenge.
• My 7-Habits training and my years of running companies has prepared me to handle these issues, so I am confident I will do my very best to resolve them.

My advice for everyone: JUST AVOID THESE KINDS OF ISSUES!  It's way easier than dealing with them.