The Vancouver community turned out en masse at new ‘changing technologies’ conference player, The F5 Expo, this week. Vancouver is really coming into its own as a hub for fast and furious new media development. That being said, conferences like F5 have a long way to go before becoming truly useful to a wide audience. For newbies, the seminars would have been a chaotic introduction to social media with too much terminology and ‘in-crowd’ jokes. For those of us more up on the lingo and best practices, there wasn’t enough meat for our conference-going buck. Read more…

I’ve been asked this a lot by other entrepreneurs recently: where do you find your mentors?

To answer this question properly, you first need to know why you’re on the lookout. What kind of advice or expertise are you hoping to get out of mentoring? Conversely, what knowledge, skills or enthusiasm can you offer in return? Mentoring isn’t about finding the one key individual who will solve all of your problems by dolling out connections and sagely wisdom on a timely basis. Read more…

This week, the topic of discussion for my mentorship group was sales. We discussed many ideas around the art of selling, but there was one that stood out in my mind. A common barrier in the presale process was that certain clients focused on telling us about their problems, instead of fully listening to our solutions. Others were only interested in the facts and benefits of our services; in other words, the hard numbers and measurable ROI.

My next ninja tip is: in order to sell, you first need to invest in your client. Read more…