There are still a few seats left at Wizard Academy in Austin for Selling Customers Their Way on April 5-6. If you manage a sales staff, this is a great course...
March 21, 2011
July 07, 2010
Marketing Beyond Advertising: Save enough to pay for airfare and hotel!
Wizard Academy just made an offer on Facebook that is so darn good, I just had to pass it along.
Marketing Beyond Advertising is listed on the Wizard Academy site as a $2,000 2-day course next week on the 15th and 16th of July. Trust me, it's worth every penny too.
Because they are trying to fill a few empty seats, they have announced a call-in price of just $500. With the money you save, you can book airfare, car rental and hotel, easily.
Check out the curriculum and pick up the phone. Call 512-295-5700 and ask for the discount. This is the best deal I've ever seen for a first time visit to Wizard Academy.
April 01, 2010
Will you be in the room when the good stuff happens?
There are loads of new things going on at my favorite non-traditional business school. In fact, it looks to me as if this would be a good time to just rent a place in Austin and establish some kind of semi-permanent residency.
Chris Maddock is teaching a series of writing classes under the title, Workin' It. What a great title for a series. Chris is the best non-trad teacher you'll ever get. Have I ever told you that Chris calls me several times a week, yet we rarely talk. Yes, that's the nature of our relationship.
Marketing Beyond Advertising is a revamped version of Tom Wanek and Mike Dandridge's course. Crafting policies and plans for delivering kick-ass customer experience is what you'll get out of the class.
Selling Customers Their Way is the new title for a sales course taught by Ken Brand and Dennis Collins. They've both proven their sales expertise through careers in training and coaching their own staffs.
My favorite Naked Accountant, Jean Backus is teaching Money and Cool Chicks in June.
Marketing on a Shoestring Budget is a FREE class from Mike Dandridge and Clay Campbell.
Escape The Box is downright scary. Dr. Richard Grant will spend 3 days helping you train the dragon in the other side of your head.
And, that's not all. Why don't you go check it out.
PS...For graduates, Sean Taylor has resurrected the Beagle Bugle. Keep an eye on this!
February 11, 2010
Congratulations to the Bootstrappers!
Congratulations to my friends Rich Christiansen and Ron Porter, who have sold their SEO firm, Castlewave and will now proceed to take life easy until the next business-building bug starts to itch.
You may remember me writing about their book and their courses. They started Castlewave as a living case study for their book. Here's an excerpt from their blog:
As all of you know, this business was created with $5,000 to prove the principles in the book. CastleWave indeed was profitable from day one, generated over $1MM the first year at 50% margin and this past year did apx $1.4 MM. We have offices in both NYC and Utah and presently have 23 employees and apx 30 active clients ranging from smaller companies like Bank On Youself to large customers such as OpenTable and IMax.
It's been a lot of fun and quite educational enjoying their friendship and working with a few mutual clients. I can't wait to see the next chapter in their lives unfold!
October 29, 2009
Terry Pettit: Coach, Mentor, Author, Rockstar
Every field of endeavor has its Rockstars. In the world of Collegiate Volleyball coaching, Terry Pettit is a Rockstar. As the coach of the University of Nebraska Volleyball team Terry Pettit's coaching record was an astounding 694 and 148 (82% winning record).
When Terry travels back to Nebraska from his current home of Fort Collins, Colorado, he is recognized in stores and on the streets where people want to re-live his teams' amazing feats.
His 2008 book, Talent and the Secret Life of Teams is a masterfully crafted collection of some of the best leadership lessons you'll find anywhere. Although written about volleyball, you'd have to be pretty dense not to see the applications for business, marketing, hiring and mentoring.
It was exciting news to find out that Terry would be attending my class at Wizard Academy this week. He was an engaged and inquisitive student, asking challenging questions and always wanting to know more detail and underlying concepts in our blog/web workshop.
Both Terry and I were scheduled to fly home to the Denver airport Thursday morning, but the weather intervened, requiring us to stay in Austin for an extra day.
Today, the tables were turned. I was treated to a personal seminar from one of the best leadership presenters I've ever come across. Pettit's stories of trust, collaborative leadership and talent are woven together with movie clips, insightful exercises and the wisdom that can only come from a lifetime of walking the walk.
A private seminar that coaches and corporations have paid tens of thousands of dollars to hear, went a long way towards making up for an extra day away from my family…not all the way…but certainly unforgettable and the best weather delay you could possibly ask for.
If you want to run into rockstars like Terry Pettit, you should come to Wizard Academy. I think Terry will be back one day soon.
October 12, 2009
Signup Now for a free Bootstrap Business Book
I wish I could have been in Austin for the Bootstrap Business Bootcamp debut at Wizard Academy. Rich Christiansen and Ron Porter had a super group of students a couple weeks ago.
I can't say enough good things about this book and the expertise behind it. I had a very early manuscript and I knew that it was just the kind of information that a person needs in the very early stages of starting a business.
Since then, I've been able to spend a fair amount of time with these guys. Rich has helped me put some proper focus into my own business and my life. These guys are the real deal. They live what they write about and they can teach you how to do the same...especially now that their Bootstrap program is up and running.
I've got an extra signed copy of Bootstrap Business: A Step-by-Step Business Survival Guide. (You can't have my copy...because it's dog-eared and full of notes and hi-liting)
Here's how to win it: Just enter your name and email address in my subscription form at the top of the right hand column. I just put this form on the site and I'd appreciate some help in testing it. I'll draw one winner from today's subscribers only.
I've got some pretty cool offerings coming up in the next few months, so subscribing will definitely be worth your while, even if you don't win the book. More on that later...
October 05, 2009
Just a few seats left in Blog/Web Workshop
Roy Williams gave a nice plug to my blog/web workshop at the end of today's Rabbit Hole in today's Monday Morning Memo.
We'll be teaching the class using an innovative and relatively easy WordPress system. It's not the free blog you can get on WordPress.com, but it's an easier path than doing the whole self-hosting thing where you've got to buy hosting, do the FTP thing, apply themes, etc.
Who is the class for? If you've been using your computer for quite a while, but have never ventured out past the safe harbor of browsing and reading email, we can get you rolling. We've taken folks who didn't even know that there was such a thing as a right-click on their mouse and turned them into bloggers.
If you've experimented with pointy-clicky editing and content management systems quite a bit, you may find the course to be a bit more elementary than you would like. You are still VERY welcome to attend, but we may ask you to help your classmates along!
So, you'll walk away with a website and integrated blog. You'll have a much better idea of how the internet works and why blogs are a big part of the glue that binds it all together. You'll understand the basics of how a design is chopped up and applied to a site. You'll also get a bonus session where you'll develop the outline of an entire year's worth of blogging, or the outline to your next book.
You'll get all of that...if there's still a seat left.
August 30, 2009
August 01, 2009
Dave Young
Marketing Consultant and Persuasion Architect, recovering broadcaster.
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