The Education Business Blog

ISTE's NECC 2008 was a success by any measure. The sibilant susurration of schmoozing and selling suffused the show space. Attendance was high (12,250), sessions were well attended (over 924), and the show floor was constantly busy. Even the San Antonio weather cooperated by being a bit cooler than usual.

If you landed on the planet on Sunday and came straight to NECC you would have no sense of the pressure on education budgets that the economic downturn is creating.

Some of this is attributable to Texas, which as an oil producing state is having a milder downturn that many parts of the country. Typically 50% of attendees at national trade shows are from within in 200 miles (double that for Texas). But that doesn't explain all of it since according to the official numbers Texas attendees only made up 25% of the total.

Since budgets for instructional materials remain relatively static what is going on? Don't be fooled by the calm surface waters, there is turbulence down below in the niches that make up the total. Companies that are producing standards based education technology resources and tools are booming. Textbook publishers continue to commoditize and consolidate.

The evidence is piling up that education technology does work - even if it is just at the level of engaging today's digital natives more effectively than print. Given the costs of textbooks ($35-$75 a copy) it is getting easier to justify digital resources ($2-$10 a year). Good teachers know what works even without Scientifically Based Research (SBR) and they are voting with their interest for digital resources.

But some of the same old complaints were heard. No School Board asks the Instructional Materials folks to prove that textbooks are being used in the classroom, but they demand this all the time for education technology. It isn't an unreasonable request - but the standard should be applied equally. If teachers are only using 50% of a textbook that is a lot of useless atoms being shipped and schlepped around. As for SBR and skepticism about technology consider this - if the textbooks were working as claimed we wouldn't have failing schools....

NECC remains the premiere education technology event of the year, the launch pad for the following school year, and the best place to do business with your customers and your partners.

Having said that I am increasingly skeptical that the amount of money spent on these shows is justified. Thee were at least a two companies that spent over $500,000 on this event. It showed in their presence on the floor and around town. But what could they have done with that amount of effort and cash on more plebeian but long lasting efforts like sales force training, new product innovation, or web 2.0 based marketing (which delivers new customers 365 days a year)? For half of what they spent they probably could have achieved the same result and been ahead in other parts of their business.

I'm advising my clients to dial back their investments in trade shows. To be clear - I'm not advocating abandoning trade shows - but I think they need to be relegated to a more junior position in the marketing budget given how much more effective other programs can be.

NECC 2009's Washington DC location drew a mixed review from the vendor community. It will be useful to be in the capital in what is shaping up to be a transitional year for educational policy. On the other hand DC is one of the most expensive places to do business in the country with hotel rooms even at third tier chains going for $250/night. It will also be the height of tourist season - plan for busy and expensive flights as well.

A Few Corrections

Yesterday in my impressions of NECC piece I made a couple of errors.

There were computer vendors on the floor including Dell, Gateway, and RM. While Apple was not exhibiting they were engaged behind the scenes in sponsoring events and providing equipment for registration and other activities (although it was amusing to see IBM monitors hooked to Macs in the reg area). But the overall computer vendor presence was subdued. Even Microsoft had a relatively small space.

I underestimated the number of people Promethean sent - it was over 100. Times are good in whiteboard land. With Nettrekker and Atomic Learning they threw a hell of a party for their customers last night (thanks!).

ISTE's National Education Computing Conference (NECC) 2008 is in full swing in San Antonio.

The Education Technology maven's tribal gathering is bigger than ever. A sign over the entrance reads "The Worlds Largest Education Technology Exhibit." That's a Texas sized ambition.

Here are a few impressions from day one. I'll write a more detailed analysis after the show closes.

There is a huge amount of energy here. The show floor was thronged until closing and sessions are well attended. Even the Press Suites are jammed. Oddly, the scene on the Riverwalk tonight was a bit subdued (I don't know if that is because people were tired from a long day or if we just missed the big party).

The electronic whiteboard guys rule the roost. It appears that Promethean (who has the most prominent exhibit at the show) is spending well over $100k just to have staff here. Smart has a big presence as do RM and all of the players in that space.

Meanwhile the computer companies are largely AWOL. Apple doesn't even have a booth.

Who is making the smarter decision? Are the whiteboard companies making hay while the sun shines or are the computer guys moving all their spending to the web where they can reap the rewards year round rather than over 3 days?

There are still lots and lots of really interesting little companies springing up - ed tech is a lively sector. While education funding may be static or down slightly the ed tech niche is up considerably. This is based on both the number of attendees and the word from vendors.

Am I getting older or is the hall getting noisier? It seemed to me that the noise level is getting ratcheted up as more people do booth theaters with mic'ed presenters. Part of this is just the high level of activity on the show floor, but some of this is an escalating problem that will spell trouble in the long run. Vendors need to have consideration for each other and for their prospects. One large whiteboard vendor that had a huge staff presence (ahem) was making so much noise for most of the day that it was hard to conduct a conversation two aisles over. Ultimately this will drive people outside for some peace and quiet. Oh, and you kids stay off my lawn.

San Antonio's exhibit hall has a weird layout. It is so long and twisty that it takes forever to get from one end of the show to the other. This didn't seem to hurt booth traffic, but it did make finding people a real pain in the rear.

So far it is shaping up to be a great show. All Y'all come back and read more about it later.

Bad marketing comes in two flavors. There is poorly executed marketing that no one notices. Then there is insincere, dishonest, and misleading marketing that everyone notices. The first kind is a waste of your money, the second kind gives marketers a bad name.

I've written elsewhere on finding a good target market, selecting a winning brand promise, and engaging in conversational Web 2.0 marketing. If you do those things well you can largely avoid execution error.

Today we focus on an example of the second kind that was so breathtakingly awful I had to backtrack and take a picture of it.

This idiocy was on display outside of a jewelry store in the Houston airport last week. I'm not going to name the store - it would only encourage them. Lets look at what is wrong with this.

First - they actually have a stunningly simple promise - and that is powerful. Everyone likes a deal and if you have been away from home for a week or two a little jewelry would help ease re-entry. Of course one's next thought is that they just jacked up the price on everything by 50% - so as promise it rings of insincerity. This is one step above the rug store in my old New York neighborhood that attracted tourists by "Going Out of Business" for the entire two years I lived there.

Second - they trumpet their insincerity with the "a few exclusions apply" small print at the bottom. They picked a promise they had no intention of actually delivering on - and they are open about that. This is a really bad idea.

Good marketers, sincere marketers, pick promises that the company can live up to. The goal is find something that you can organize the entire business around - even if it doesn't end up as your slogan or in your advertising. McDonalds does affordable family food really well. Wal Mart delivers low prices. Pearson has one of everything you might need in a classroom (or they will buy it soon).

If these weasels really wanted to deliver on this promise here are a couple of things they could do to live up to it.

1. Actually price things at roughly 50% of their competitors - and have display ads the show comparisons to prove it to you.
2. Get rid of the items they are excluding - that way they can eliminate the small print retraction.
3. Have a price guarantee - if you find it at another jewelry store at list price for more they will match whatever half of that is.

I would rewrite the add to say "Lets keep it simple, half off everything. We'll prove it and we guarantee it."

Barring these actions all we have here is the kind of sleazy marketing that gives all marketers a black eye. If they can't live up to this then they should keep looking for another promise that meets an urgent need of their target market. I guarantee there is something else they could do.

My guess is that the lie is so transparent that the campaign isn't even working very well for them. What a waste.

How are education publishers reacting to the economic downturn? Guest blogger and PR maven Charlene Blohm shares some concrete examples of steps companies are taking to trim expenses.

Part 1 - Education Spending & The Economy - Survey Results
Part 2 - Education Funding Market Dynamics - By Doug Stein

By Charlene Blohm, President C Blohm & Associates

District budgets are tight - many schools have already lost the music teacher, the art teacher, the band teacher, the librarian. Left with few other places to cut, two elementary schools near us will be sharing a principal next year. Districts seem to be delaying major purchases and upgrades, especially with administrative or support systems (those that aren't directly tied to student instruction).

How are companies reacting? More than one company has adjusted its sales forecasts down based on decreased spending. The major sales they were hoping to close yet this school year are being delayed, with the forecasted income moving to the next school year.

As a result here are some of the cost saving actions we are seeing across the market.

• Booth sizes at trade shows are a tad smaller - I've seen some movement where last year's 80x80 became a 60x60 this year, or 40x40 became 20x20, etc.
• Also, fewer staff are working trade show booths. Travel is down no matter how you look at it - flights are dang expensive, and often hard to find depending on where you need to go. And that applies to vendors as well as educators.
• There has been an up-tick in direct mail - people weren't getting the results they wanted from what I bet they thought were going to be "free" email campaigns. Even with the postal rate increases, people are blending the two more now than they were a year ago.
• People are stretching advertising dollars with more online purchasing. In fact, some folks are now online-only advertisers.
• There seems to be less money being pumped into product development, and the time for a product to prove itself in the marketplace is getting shorter and shorter. That's been happening for awhile now, so this is not necessarily related to the current recession.
• We're getting more phone calls from overseas prospects. I'm not sure if that's a function of our reputation (we've been doing that for years) or the economy - but I think it's safe to say that foreign companies aren't afraid to spend money on product development and marketing.
• In recent weeks, it seems that people are finally starting to think Web 2.0. I've had more conversations about keywords in the past two months than in previous two years. That signals to me that people are keen to make sure their name is up in bright lights - meaning they need the leads and visibility in a way they didn't before; I don't think there's just a sudden interest in Web 2.0 on its own merits.

Charlene Blohm is the President of C Blohm & Associates a full service Public Relations firm focused on the education market.

"A Cranky, Skeptical, Loudmouth looks at Social Media Marketing" is a little rain on the "Conversation Economy" parade. It was written by Bob Hoffman over at Copyblogger. The 55 comments are as good or better than the article itself (alert the Irony Police).

"You and I are web geeks. We spend way more time than we should looking at computer screens. We are not normal. Especially you. The biggest mistake any marketer can make is marketing to himself, i.e. assuming his customer is just like him. They’re not and they never will be."

I can't disagree with that.

I like his definition of interaction as well.

"...the ability to interact with the content of the medium, not just the medium."

Changing the channel doesn't count. Adding a comment does.

The metrics are trickier. Using banner ads and click through ads as metrics is a red-herring. Those are old media dressed up in new clothes - kind of like running plays in TV. Of course they suck when compared to traditional media.

He also points to how few people are doing social media well and disparages any positive anecdotal evidence as outliers. But early in any transition far more people are failing at something than succeeding. Even after the transition has occurred more people are failing than succeeding, the ratio just improves over time. This isn't a great metric either.

What would be a good metric? I would like to see an analysis of the performance of companies in traditional markets that have invested in social media compared to their peers. We'd need to look over 2-4 years since community building takes time. No, this would not be perfect, but it would be better than what has been used to date. If you know of anyone who has done this research please share it in comments.

Perhaps by biggest beef with this outlook is that it takes an absolutist perspective - I hear this all the time from clients when I advocate a social media investment. People jump to the conclusion that in order for social media to succeed all other marketing forms must fail. The reality is just the opposite - we always find a niche for new tools AND we never toss the old tools. Just because a company is investing in social media doesn't mean they don't need to do good old fashioned trade-shows and advertising. The relative mix will change towards what is generating the highest return and every where I've seen it used well social media generate a very high return indeed.

I think those of us advocating social media need to take thoughtful critiques like this one very seriously. If we can't convince the skeptics amongst us then we have work to do. If we are going to be intellectually honest we also have to consider that they might be right. A rigorous debate is best way to sneak up on the truth.

PS - As an FYI Copyblogger is my favorite site for blogging tips and ideas.

Blog years and dog years have a lot in common. They go fast, take constant care and feeding, and bring companionship and warmth into your life. Dogs force you to get up and move your body, blogs force you to get out and work your mind.

Social media are reshaping the business landscape and I've never found a better way of learning something than just wading in and messing with it. Under the tutelage of my blogfather Richard Carey and the folks at Justia I launched this site last May.

So what have I learned?

1. It works. 11,528 people interacting with my ideas has helped my business immensely (see stats below). As Jim Bower over at Numdeon is fond of saying - "it isn't about eyeballs, it is about eyeballs connected to brains." Half of my clients come from web referrals and the trend-line is up. It is far better than advertising and its "free." At April's rate there will be 24,000+ visits in the coming year.

2. Writing for a public sharpens your thinking in all contexts. Personally this has been the most rewarding part of blogging. It has forced me to organize and articulate my thoughts on key issues that affect our industry. It is far different than internal corporate writing, blog articles stand or fall on their own merits.

3. Focus = Traction. To succeed a blog has to have a clearly defined audience. I always try to bring my posts back to what the topic means for the companies that serve the education market. If you search on "education business consultant" or "K12 education marketing consultant" this blog is #1 or #2 in Google. That happens because Google rewards sustained focus and original content.

4. Networking is part of the job. Blogging is all about a conversation - know who your peers are and engage with them. Read about related industries and bring the insight back to ours. I use my blog roundups to share things other bloggers are saying that I think are relevant. Some of the most popular posts on the site also came from guest bloggers (thanks Randy, NT, and Paul).

5. Mix up depth and breadth to keep it interesting. People like the depth a 4-5 part series can bring to a topic, but for everyday browsing they also like short pieces that engage their interest.

6. Make it personal. This medium is all about being genuine. Speak your mind, share your story, and be real. Every few months I post what I'm listening to on my iPod - and I get a lot of positive feedback about it even though it isn't on topic. I also enjoy putting in human interest pieces and humor - but that is also part of my personality.

7. Key words matter - a lot. Learning to write blog posts is an art - and doing it well without it looking artificially structured to parse in a search engine isn't always easy. Knowing what words to use and where to use them in your articles is a skill you need to master.

8. Links and visual cues bring a post alive. Having quality links to support your arguments (or provide alternative viewpoints) adds credibility. Picking a graphic that amplifies the message also helps a lot. There are tons of free or near free images out there today so you have no excuse.

9. Good tools make it easier. I use Ecto to draft posts - it allows me to work off-line and is seamlessly integrated with iPhoto and Amazon. Movable Type isn't as user friendly as I'd like it to be - Ecto makes up for that and then some.

10. Patience. Gaining traction takes time - there is no short cut around this. It takes about 20 posts before the search engines take you seriously - with the 10's of thousands of new blogs started every day this is just common sense. But even after you have build a corpus of posts it takes time for people to discover you and become regulars. Don't be discouraged early on.

My thanks go out to those who helped me get started on this path and to the many readers who have provided feedback and encouragement as this adventure has unfolded.

The most popular posts from the last year:

1. Education Publishing - A Wave of Change Sweeps Over the Industry (multi part series)
2. Information Overload (how to build materials for the 21st century - multi-part series)
3. Teachers and the Internet - Five Things You Should Know
4. Lifelong Learning - Retired Construction Worker Deciphers Stonehenge Construction
5. Where is the Wii for Education?
6. Textbooks vs. Education Technology - Clash of Paradigms
7. Target Market Selection
8. The Future of Education Publishing - Panel Report from the Education Industry Investment Forum
9. Ethics Video Game - Using Frankenstein to Teach Ethics?
10. Are We Producing New Education Entrepreneurs

Some stats from the last year.

11,528 visits - This does not include RSS. Not having Feedburner set up from the get go was a mistake. We are putting it in place now.

19,740 page views. This might seem low, but since the landing page is the blog this makes sense. Most people go there, read the latest posts, and move on. Again - without Feedburner this the low end.

1:38 minutes is the average time on the site. This means 314 hours of people interacting with my ideas (or 40 eight hour days). This is a highly leveraged use of my time. Consider these alternatives

• At 7 minutes prep and talk time per call (assuming you got through on the first call) this would take 168 eight hour days.
• To get this kind of engagement via direct mail with a 1.5% response rate it would take 768,000 mail pieces.
• To reach this number of people by speaking at conferences with an average room count of 100 it would take 115 presentations.
• You get the idea.
• Actual time on task - 2-3 hours a week (or 16 eight hour days a year).

122 countries. 71% are from the US. Others in the top 10 are Canada, UK, India, Australia, Singapore, Philippines, Malaysia, Germany, and China. I love going into the mapview in Google Analytics to see where people have come from. It took me forever to hit all 50 states - Montana and Delaware were the hold outs! Globally Tibet, Cambodia, the Stans, Syria, Central Africa, Greenland, Guyana, and Uruguay are still terra incognita for this blog.

95% of readers were on a high speed connection. I no longer worry about putting video and other high bandwidth links in my posts. I'm toying with doing some v-casts as well.

79% of users were on Windows, 20% on Macs 1 % on Linux. 7 People came in on a phone and 1 came from a Playstation (WTF?). Why the oversampling of Macs? It probably has something to do with Education being the target market.

5% of users were on 800x600 screens. It looks like we could have comfortably designed for a minimum of 1024x768 and hit 95% of the users.

Information Overload and Education Publishing Marketing penned (keyed?) by yours truly was published today on the AEP blog. This is a summary of the longer series I did last year on information overload. If you want a quick introduction or need a refresher hop over and take a look.

While you are there bookmark the blog or better yet drop it into your RSS reader - on a regular basis senior people from the publishing industry will be writing about the business.

Advertising isn't working as well as it used to. In an age of information overload people are tuning out distractions as a matter of survival.

Here are two visuals to help make this point.

1. It is far more important to be found when someone is looking these days than to be visible when they are just scanning. To visualize this look at the graphic below

When someone is scanning (watching TV, reading a magazine, walking a tradeshow floor) it is relatively easy to fall into their visual field. When they are seeking (googling, reading blogs, using RSS) you have to be right on point for them to see you.

2. Don't believe me - take this 20 second test.

As people adapt to the world of information overload they will scan less and seek more and advertising will become increasingly difficult to justify.

As usual Seth Godin sums it up nicely:

"Media rule of thumb: if people wouldn't miss your ads/content/noise if it went away, you should find somehting else to sell to advertisers. Not because it is ethically wrong to annoy people just because you can, but because in a world with a bazillion channels, people just ignore you if they choose to."

Marketing departments have tried to control brand identity with years of research and oceans of ink (and pixels). But the concept that a company can control its brand is a myth and it always has been. At best a company can contribute to its brand identity, but in reality that identity is created by the market. That identity includes not just the nice polished stories pumped out by Marketing, but all the crappy and in between stuff that happens when product meets customer.

This topic was brought home in a lively discussion at the Austin Social Media Club breakfast this morning. Bryan Person led a conversation about how to lead people to Web 2.0 who are outside of the technology bubble. One theme that surfaced was marketers' reluctance to give up controlling the message. That "control" is a total conceit on their part.

With Web 2.0 customers can talk to each other about the things they always talked about, but now Marketers can see it. This is hugely disorienting for a tribe that thought they "controlled" and "managed" their brand identity. But all of us as consumers are gravitating to this new way of interacting with each other. For companies that can adapt it will result in much more authentic conversations with their customers. We need more focus on contribution and less on control.

Later in the day Andy Pass from Classroom 2.0 and I were talking and he stated that the challenge is that companies don't need to develop an on-line voice they need to develop on-line ears. They know how to shout, but they are terrible at listening. Until you can stop shouting and start conversing you are not in tune with where customers are going today.

The net effect of 80 years of broadcast culture has been the development finely honed BS Meters among the general population. When you read your marketing copy does your own BS Meter peg into the brown zone? Lighten up, get real, and learn to listen more.

Hype alert - Web 2.0 Marketing is a paradigm shift but only a portion of the market is using it today. In Part 1 I argued that market trends should be pushing you to use social networking, blogs, wikis, and the other tools of Web 2.0 in your marketing mix. Given the uneven adoption of these tools in your customer base you will be managing a mix of the old and new for quite some time. So think of it as expanding your paradigm.

Before we go on I want to add to what I said in Part 1. There is one additional reason for doing all this that is specific to the education market. Most teachers are isolated in their classrooms - they yearn to have their voice heard and to be part of a larger community. The asynchronous nature of most social media are ideal for meeting this need. It is one of the reasons there are so many education groups already on Ning.

So what does this “paradigm expansion kit” look like? Here are five ways of thinking like a Web 2.0 Marketer that you can add to your toolkit.

Idea #1 - You can’t do this on your own. The value from Web 2.0 is other people talking about your products. For people to do this they need a context where they are comfortable interjecting their voice. Many companies believe that they can build their own walled garden so that they can control it. But customers want Switzerland - a neutral zone where they can get useful information - not company controlled spin. Your first goal is to become a trusted player in the larger on-line community. Join and support the networks that are out there and blend your network into it rather than trying to go it alone.

Idea #2 - Web 2.0 Marketing is a process not an event. You manage it the way you would any other process - with a sustained commitment to continuous improvement. This breaks the paradigm of a lot of event driven marketing. You don’t manage your personal relationships this way (“I sent my wife an email last week - don’t need to worry about talking to her for a while....”) and you can’t build on-line relationships with customers this way either. This is a budgeting challenge because you have to dedicate resources to managing your on-line presence. My suggestion is to look at some of the most expensive items in your budget (trade shows, advertising, etc.) and dial back on them as you dial up on Web 2.0 activities. Smaller newer companies should start here and add the other elements as they can afford them.

Idea #3 - It is about authentic conversations. When you engage on-line speak as yourself. This is not a new and improved way to push your spin into the world. People will sniff out on-line phonies and expose them. Ridicule is not going to help your brand identity - particularly if it shows up in Google. A positive example of how to do this is Randy’s Journal - the blog of Boeing’s CMO. He speaks from a personal rather than corporate voice. Marketers are welcome to the conversation if you add value and contribute expertise. Oh - and don’t spam bloggers with press releases - it just annoys them. Make comments on their articles or phone them up and talk.

Idea #4 - Web 2.0 should be embedded in your products. Seth Godin in his latest tract - "Meatball Sundae: Is Your Marketing out of Sync?" - makes the point that most companies try to graft Web 2.0 approaches onto existing products and services with predictably disappointing results. Consider this - on-line gamers spend 1 hour reading about the game on companion websites for every 2 hours playing. That is because the companion sites have been encouraged to develop as part of the games’ ecosystems. Imagine what your customers would be saying about your curriculum content if students were showing similar levels of engagement. For more ideas on how to do this see my article 10 Ways to Build Instructional Products for 21st Century Skills.

Idea #5 - Set your expectations correctly. Social media sites are hugely popular as measured in total traffic, but fewer than 1% of your customers will probably be contributing participants. If you expect everyone to comment and contribute you are going to be disappointed. You are trying to reach the influencers who will help spread the word. Overhyping the participation rate in order to get a project funded is a time honored tradition at many education publishers - but in this case since actual participation is so easy to measure it will ultimately undermine your project.

Some of this probably looks like common sense, some of it may look a little weird. My strong suggestion is that in order to understand how to use these tools for your company you need to first use them for yourself. Next in this series we’ll look at some ways you can get started with social media.

Part 1 - Web 2.0 Education Marketing

Education marketers have been slow to adopt wikis, blogs, social networks, and virtual worlds. There are valid reasons for this (see below), but it is time for us as an industry to begin embracing these tools. In this series I'm going to explore the industry context, the gestalt, and some concrete ideas to help you get started down this path.

Over the past year I have been asking people "what is the first thing you do in Amazon after you make sure you have the product you were seeking?" The almost universal answer is that people scroll down to look at the user generated comments. This is the power of Web 2.0 at work - what your peers have to say on a subject is far more important than anything a company might say.

There are two primary reasons the education industry should be employing Web 2.0 tools:

1. The education industry is going through huge change driven in large part by technology substituting for older ways of doing things. In this time of transition staying close to your customers and their shifting priorities is going to be a requirement. Web 2.0 tools are some of the most effective ways to create a real two-way dialog with customers - what I have elsewhere called Socratic Marketing.

2. Our customers are becoming accustomed to using these tools everywhere else in their lives. If we don't keep pace we run the risk of becoming irrelevant.

There are some good examples of people working with these tools like here, here, and here. But they tend to still be the exception not the rule.

So if these clear needs are out there why haven't we seen more of this in education? There are three reasons that come to mind:

1. A key factor is the concentration of decision making at the district level that we have seen in the past few years due to NCLB. Without a need to reach broad numbers of teachers companies simply see this approach as a lower priority.

2. Some of it has to do with the inherent conservatism of education and the spillover of that mindset into the companies that serve them.

3. Finally, most of those setting budgets and priorities at the larger education companies are digital immigrants to the world of Web 2.0 - it is unfamiliar, vaguely threatening, and will require learning new ways of thinking and acting. It is easier to keep doing what you are already doing.

Of these three reasons only the first is a valid "marketing" reason not to do it. The other two are just excuses for holding back. If your product truly touches just a few people at the district office then this may not be the path for you (on the other hand with 14,000+ districts it may still make sense). But if your products are in the classroom or serving a broad network of people across a district then you should begin to think about how you can tap into the power of that network.

Next in this series - 5 core concepts for marketers for working in a Web 2.0 world.

Busking teaches fundamental business concepts. As a young man I saw the world by tossing open my banjo case and belting out a few tunes. I played in Boston, Montreal, Tokyo, New York, Paris, San Francisco, Seville, New Orleans, and Amsterdam to name just a few spots.

Along the way I absorbed some interesting lessons that have helped me be more effective in the business world.

1 - Make people feel something. People respond to musicians who make an emotional investment in their performance. Laugh, sigh, get that ache in your voice, and share your joy.

• Address your customer's unstated social needs. Will your product make them look better? Will they feel more professional using it? Is it cool?
• Build products and deliver services that go beyond the basic spec. Make your product something people are proud to have around.
• Never check your soul at the door of the workplace. If you have to - find another job

2 - Respect your audience by mastering your craft. The goal of practice is to work so hard that performance looks effortless. When you play well the audience will reward you, not the guy who knows three chords and two songs.

• If you can afford the time, get things right on a small scale before you try to master the universe. Build practice time into your business plans.
• Read, go back to school, fill the gaps in your knowledge in any way that you can. Make opportunities to practice your craft in service work.
• Learn the black art of setting and making a budget.
• Cross train - invest in your career by doing a variety of jobs.

3 - Play well with others. Street scenes are like market niches, you run into the same people every day. Most afternoons in Paris I would trade off sets with a Peruvian pipe flute band in an alcove down in the Metro. It had heavenly acoustics (that I still dream of) and we both made tons of money.

• Get involved with your industry associations. They tackle problems no individual business can.
• Never speak ill of your competition - just out-hustle them. Customers don't want to know about your rivalries - they want a solution.
• Network to find others with complimentary skills and bring them into deals. Most (not all) will do the same for you in return, expanding your deal flow.
• Be loyal to people. Look after each other because the company won't.

4 - No one wants to be the first customer. Buskers always start by throwing $3 their own change into the case.

• Give a new product away to the first two customers. Factor this in to your business model as an expense. If it makes you feel better make them pay for training.
• Donate your time to get started in something new. My first consulting client several years ago paid me a straight commission for business development work. I was able to show up at conferences legitimately representing a client which made it a lot easier to find other clients. That first deal was lousy for me, the other deals were the gravy.

5 - Don't rush to judgement, sometimes it is just a bad day. There are days when the weather is wrong, you are there at the wrong time, your fly is down, or people are just being ornery.

• Give ideas and people more than one chance to make an impression.
• Be leery of a single focus group - if you get the same result from several then you are on the right track.
• Bring job candidates back for multiple interviews and make sure they talk to a variety of people.

6 - Have fun. The purpose of busking is to pay for your adventures. Go see the ruins, sleep in, enjoy a long coffee, stay out late, and enjoy your trip. In the business world this means:

• Take risks that move you towards your personal goals.
• Remember that you work to support your life, not the other way around.
• Have a laugh or two in meetings.
• Take your dog and your office down to the coffee shop by the lake.