You Can’t Quarantine Hustle – Part 2 – Communicating While Working From Home

by jasonyana | Mar 24, 2020

With the craziness that has come with the pandemic and quarantine measures, I thought I would share something that might help some of you who are trying to work from home for the first time.

I’ve spent more than a decade running my business remotely, even spending 5 years on an island, literally. We lived on the Island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and I ran my business remotely using nothing but a sub-par internet connection.

This article series contains some tips and tricks I can share that may help you.

I know a great deal of you well enough to know that you don’t lack hustle and that with the right tools and the right attitude I know you can pivot through this thing and I’d like to help any way that I can so hit me up if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.

Communicating as a work from home hustler

The way you communicate is going to change a bit. If you’re like most, you already do business using email and phone calls, so that’s not going to change all that much. But remember that not everyone knows how to FaceTime, some can use Skype but not zoom, some have their own in house systems, some use go-to-meeting etc.

So be flexible and meet people halfway with their needs. If you don’t know how to use any of these things, take a breath and take an hour to run through:

1 – FaceTime if you have any apple products – it’s easy and it just works

2 – Zoom Video conferencing

3- Citrix go to meeting

4 – Skype

Get yourself setup and practice with a family member, the younger the better. If you have a millennial on lockdown with you, grab em and make them show you this stuff in exchange for 10 bucks of credit on their xbox game or something, if you can get them off the couch.

Get an 800 number – you’ll love it.

There are tons of free and almost free ways to get yourself a toll free number. Why do this?

Call forwarding – you give people the toll free number instead of your home number or cell number. The toll free number will allow you to forward your calls to wherever you want. I have mine ring on my office landline phone and on my cellphone at the same time, I can just answer wherever I am and that way I’m not handing out my landline number to anyone, your spouse will thank you for this later and it just looks more professional.

It’s Time to Ditch that AOL Email

Yes, I’m talking to you. Get a free gmail account – it comes with google documents which are amazing. A spreadsheet, word processor and power point like presentation software that you can use for free, files get saved online automatically and you can assign other people to view and edit those documents, in real time. there’s nothing cooler than opening a spreadsheet and seeing a team member edit stuff in real time as you watch.

Having a Gmail account will also allow you to do what I’m about to show you in the next paragraph

Use A CRM for Sales if you Don’t Already

If you don’t already have a CRM and you are in sales, you gotta get with the times. It’s just a way of managing your leads, organizing them and if you work in a team, you then leverage that power with your team and share those resources.

I have a thing called “streak” which is a full featured CRM that just hooks right into your gmail. So you don’t have to even login to something else, it just seamlessly hooks itself into gmail, it’s amazing and simple.

Use something like Slack for Internal Communication within your team

Slack allows you to create custom channels with just your team. It’s like being able to have a chat room or text chain that is shared across your company, instead of fumbling around with long chains of emails.

I don’t want to throw to much out there at once, to keep this digestible – Please keep in mind that when you are using words to communicate there isn’t any body language or vocal tone cues, so sarcasm can be missed and if you don’t include some sort of human element to your communcation you can come off as bossy or rude without intending to.

People are so different in person than they are on the phone and this same dissonance happens with email and text, I know you already know this, but please try to remember it, I see this happening more and more lately where people forget their table manners sometimes and “sound” downright nasty in an email, but then once you get them on the phone, they morph back into a rational and reasonable human being.

Stay reasonable and I hope you can see the beauty, even when it’s not pretty – especially right now.

Regards,

JY

About the Author :

Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.

His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.

You Can’t Quarantine Hustle – Part 1 – The Work From Home Morning Routine

by jasonyana | Mar 23, 2020

With the craziness that has come with the pandemic and quarantine measures, I thought I would share something that might help some of you who are trying to work from home for the first time.

I’ve spent more than a decade running my business remotely, even spending 5 years on an island, literally. We lived on the Island of St. Thomas in the Virgin Islands and I ran my business remotely using nothing but a sub-par internet connection.

This article series contains some tips and tricks I can share that may help you.

I know a great deal of you well enough to know that you don’t lack hustle and that with the right tools and the right attitude I know you can pivot through this thing and I’d like to help any way that I can so hit me up if you have any questions or if I can help in any way.

The Morning Routine of a Work-From-Home Hustler

Lizzy, my insightful wife, was talking this morning about the side effects that this quarantine lifestyle is going to have on many of our lives. It’s a great time to look inward at ourselves and truly honor our health spiritually, physically and mentally. It’s really an opportunity – the car is in the shop and now that the car is in the shop why not put it up on the lift and do some serious unscheduled maintenance on it.

So she says “you can either be the victim of this thing, or figure out how to make it into an opportunity to be better” – Pretty cool, right?

For example, she and our daughter are homeschooling and sheltering-in-place at our house so they took the opportunity to draw on the portion of the sidewalk that passes in front of our house writing messages like “be happy” “ don’t worry” “ be grateful” and “be healthy”. Opportunity to brighten someones day and give them a bit more hope taken.

Establish a Morning Routine

Even though you won’t be leaving the house, establishing a morning routine is going to set the tone for the day and get your mind in the right space to be productive.

It’s all going to feel odd for a while, change always does, but the difference between being a victim of the situation and thriving through it is being intentional and taking control of the situation.

Taking control of the situation begins by taking control of your day.

So doing something good for your body, a workout, meditation, yoga, something for you done by you.

Then ditch the sweatpants and dress like you mean business and proceed to your dedicated workspace. I’m going to write more tomorrow with ideas about the dedicated makeshift workspace, but you just have to have a space, however sophisticated or ad-hoc it is, to get your work done.

Aside from just plain productivity, the best reason for this is so you can separate your home life from your work life. You have to draw a line in the sand and not cross it or you and your family will be miserable.

Be Intentional About A Work Life / Family Life Balance

You will be tempted to let your work life bleed into and take from your family life and vice-versa.

Its a balancing act and it’s also a controlled fall. None of this is going to feel or be perfect, it’s a controlled fall, all you can do is fall forward and the only way that is going to happen is if you are intentional about where you are and where you are going.

If you work more than a reasonable 8 hours a day, you are saying to your family that your work is more important than they are. You don’t have to take every call, answer every email in a millisecond.

Frankly if what we have is a society in which our corporate bosses expect us to drop our children and file that A2645 performance data powerpoint excel spreadsheet bullshit immediately – then you know what, something is wrong and this is the perfect opportunity to change that crap here and now.

So be intentional, set hours, set a space to work in, and do your best to stick to it. You’ll fail, and that’s ok, just get back up and keep moving towards that work life balance thing and then at least you will fail forward.

Regards and now more than ever I hope you see beauty even when it isn’t pretty

JY

About the Author :

Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.

His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.

Increase the Success of Building Material Magazine Ads

by jasonyana | Jun 30, 2017

Start “scaling-up” your marketing with product renderings and animations

Ask a building product marketer about their advertising. They’ll usually picture an ad in a trade journal’s printed or digital magazine. They’re hoping to catch their prospect’s eye while flipping through pages to get to the next feature article.

It’s an expensive way to get customers. Think of the money you pay to make it happen:

Photography – You’ve got the photographer’s time, any models, studio time rental, and your own staff’s time.
Copy – You have the cost of a professional copywriter to get the words right.
Design – You’ll need a graphic designer to assemble the copy and images to look great for the final layout.
Ad space cost – Depending on the trade journal, for a ½-page ad, you’ll pay $3,000 to $11,000 per ad.
Ad agency – If you hired an ad agency to help put all these pieces together – Guess what? They get paid, too.

And that’s all for a single ad. You might run the same ad several times, but you’ll pay the ad space cost each time. It adds up fast.

So why do some companies go with this as their knee-jerk reaction to marketing their products and leave it at that?

It’s not their fault. It’s just how a lot of marketers were programmed to think… “Let’s get our brand in front of as many eyeballs as we can and we’re golden…”

But I’ll bet you’re better than that. Read on for some ideas to help you expand and scale your advertising efforts.

The most important question you must ask

The very bottom line of any marketing action you take – online or offline – is you have to answer “Yes” to the following question:

“Does it advance the making of the sale?”

This is paraphrased from direct response marketing legend, Dan Kennedy. He was talking about when to use humor in a sales presentation. But it’s a simple question you can and should use to stop throwing your budget into the marketing money pit.

Before you run another ad, put it to this test. Does it have the elements to move your ideal prospects in the right direction toward buying or specifying your product?

You’ve surely been in a conversation about a clever or funny Super Bowl ad, but nobody remembers what product the ad was selling.

This is a prime example of an ad that doesn’t pass the test. It’s not moving anybody toward the sale of anything. (And that company paid a LOT more for the TV ad than your trade journal ad costs…)

So, if you’re game, let’s use this question to…

Scale-up your marketing

My goal isn’t to convince you to quit advertising in trade journals. Quite the opposite. I’m showing you how you can do it better.

In another post, we talked about how you can leverage high-quality images and video to synergize your marketing efforts. If you haven’t read that one and seen the examples of how some of my clients are doing it right, go ahead and read it.

I’ll wait for you…

…You’re back? Good. I hope those examples gave you some ideas for your marketing.

Now let’s look at how you can use those images and videos to scale up your other marketing efforts. Specifically, how you can combine the power of high-quality product renderings and animations to supercharge your offline advertising.

The perilous path of offline-to-online…

In most cases, your ultimate goal for your magazine ads should be to give your prospect a compelling reason to go from the magazine to your website. Or your social media pages. Or to send you an email. That’s what I’m calling offline-to-online.

Let’s say you drew a simple cartoon strip of the ideal progression from your prospect (an architect for our example) finding your building product ad in a magazine. It might go something like this:

But we both know about 1,001 things could go wrong on that path.

He might…

Get sidetracked between seeing your ad and typing in your web address…
Get distracted by something else on your site and never come back to the original product he was looking for…
Forget to include your product in his specifications…
Let the contractor substitute an inferior product without a fight…
Have to deal with an installer screw-up and blame the product…
Or 996 other little distractions or bumps in the road…

We can’t cover all 1,001 fixes in this post. But we can look at how you can create better ads to create a “greased slide” to get him from Step 1 to 6 as smoothly as possible?

Creating ads that work for you…

Flip through any trade journal and you still see so many companies missing the mark of an effective ad.

Most ads won’t get a prospect engaged enough to make it through the “gauntlet of distractions” to even reach Step 2 or 3 of your comic strip above.

Most ads have an eye-catching image of some kind, along with the company or product name taking up most of the ad space. But you’ll usually get lost figuring out what the image has to do with their product. And how it can benefit you.

Then, if you’re lucky, the ad includes a web address. But guess where it takes you?

The company’s home page. And that home page is full of distractions to lead you astray.

So how can you make your ad better than the rest? Let’s start with that image…

If you’ve been reading any of my other posts, or are at all familiar with my work, you should already have some ideas on how to improve the image.

Don’t just throw up a pretty picture of a completed building and hope your prospect can figure out what role your product played. You need to help them bridge the gap with an image that makes it crystal clear how your product will help make their building a success.

With more effective images, you’ll not only grab your prospect’s attention. You’ll also tell him so much more about your product through these visuals.

Keep moving forward…

Now let’s look at the copy in your ad. This is where you need to give your prospect a reason to take that next step. To get him to make the leap from offline-to-online, you need to offer something he wants.

That’s where your product animations can come in. He’s seen the image of your product. He’s beginning to see how it could help his project.

The next logical step in convincing him could be a video demonstrating your product in action. Tell him why he’ll want to take that next step.

Use your limited copy to help him see how your product’s benefits are a good fit. Then let him know where he can see more…

This is where so many ads go wrong…

Don’t give him a web address that sends him to your home page. Hoping he finds your video. He will get lost or confused. (Remember we’re creating a greased slide.)

Give him a custom URL that takes him directly to that video. No other stops along the way. No distractions.

If you’ve got a video at that URL that helps him fill in the gaps, you’re well on your way to leading him through the path to specifying your product.

What you should do next

Today, you’ve seen how most magazine and trade journal ads are not nearly as effective as they could be. You also learned the crucial question you should ask of every step you’re taking in your marketing strategy.

You also saw a few simple adjustments you can make to your ads. Tweaks to help guide your prospects down the path to knowing, liking and trusting you and your product.

So what do you think? Does all that sound do-able? It really is a few simple tweaks that can make a huge difference.

As always, if there’s anything you need help with in the way of high-quality visualizations — let’s talk. We can get you set up with installation animations and 3D renderings to help scale up all of your marketing efforts.

About the Author :

Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.

His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.

Start with WHY to Find Your Building Material Marketing Message

by jasonyana | Jan 31, 2017

Introduction

It’s a sunny Saturday morning and I’m stuck here at my computer looking for something to help take one of the things off my “honey-do” list. And it just happened again!

Why does it keep happening over-and-over? Like I’m trapped in some lame version of that Bill Murray movie, “Groundhog Day.”

Here I am, looking at another home repair product’s website, and I have to work hard to figure out what the product actually does and why I should pick it over all the other options out there.

In some cases, they’ll have a beautiful, high-resolution image with a clever phrase or tagline. (Or maybe just their logo…) But I can’t figure out what the heck they’re trying to sell me. In others, there’s just a bunch of technical information pounding me over the head with facts and features about their product. But they never get around to telling me why their product is better.

I’m like most guys, and if it takes me too long to figure out the next step, I’ll just find an easier thing on my list and move on. But not this time. No sir!

I saw this as an opportunity to dig in and pull out a marketing lesson or two. The idea actually grew from a TedTalk my wife recently shared with me…

Start With Why

In 2009, Simon Sinek gave what’s become one of the most popular TedTalks of all time called, “How Great Leaders Inspire Action.” It had almost 30 million views, last I checked.

In his 18-minute presentation, Sinek used the ideas and principles taken from his book, “Start with Why.”

The big thing that stuck with me from the talk is what Sinek called the “golden circle.” He used this simple visual to explain the fundamental differences between the “Apple” companies of the world and everyone else.

Basically, he simplified how we think, act and communicate to three words, or layers: Why, How, and What.

WHY – This is your business’ core belief. Why you do what you do.
HOW – This is how your company fulfills that core belief.
WHAT – This is what you do to fulfill the core belief.

We all know what we do and can talk about it all day. It’s the tangible things. The basic features and benefits we can all recite from memory and list on our technical data sheets.

Some companies know how they do what they do. They often use these to explain how they’re different or better than the other guys.

But most companies or individuals find it hard to clearly articulate why they do what they do.

Sinek’s point was that most companies start with the much easier what and how they do business. But rarely, if ever, do they think or talk about their why.

That’s what sets the “Apples” of the world apart. They start with why and then move to the how and what they do.

To help boost your connection with your target audience let’s take a look at some of the key takeaways, and use the “Start With Why” framework to look at a few building product websites through that lens. We’ll focus on window manufacturers to compare a few similar products

3 Key Takeaways for Building Product Marketing

1. Use “Why” to put a framework around your product

As Sinek says, “People don’t buy what you do. They buy why you do it.” Think back to why you got into this business in the first place – about why your company does what it does. This helps make sure your entire team is aligned with your core belief(s).

And when I say “team,” in our industry that can be very broad term. It can mean the sales and production staff for you company, but can also extend to your sales reps, suppliers and even the architects or designers who might become your “product evangelists.”

If your whole team understands your “why” it’s a whole lot easier for them to pass on “how” and “what” you and your product do.

Let’s take a look at our first example website to see how they do on this one…

Andersen Windows

(www.andersenwindows.com)

Here’s the screenshot of Andersen’s Home page (desktop and mobile) on the day I wrote this:

I thought we were onto something here when I saw the simple quote, “The brand trusted by more builders than any others.” Followed by a button to click saying, “SEE WHY.”

When you click on the button, the next page is a nicely designed listing of their features and benefits. Energy-efficiency. Experience & Innovation. Beauty. Performance. Service. Sustainability. Giving Back.

All great things, but you’ll end up finding very similar lists of “how” and “what” on the other sites you visit. But, here on the surface, I couldn’t find the “why” behind their company or their product lines.

So, I decided to dig a little deeper…

By going off their product site to the Andersen Corporation website, I looked a bit at their company history. There you can see they originated the “two bundle” method of construction to help streamline the window construction process on the job site.

Later, they developed the first completely assembled window unit. You can keep clicking through to see their many other innovation and a little bit of the “why” behind each of those advancements.

To truly embrace the “Start With Why” principles, they could certainly look at folding more of these things back into their up-front marketing efforts. Andersen has a lot of why’s out there, but it’s not something we shouldn’t have to dig for.

2. Pull the “Why” into your marketing

As we saw in the Andersen example, there are always opportunities to find the “why.” The challenge is to find ways to effectively pull that forward and incorporate that into the visuals and copy you use in your marketing.

Our next example website is…

JELD-WEN Windows and Doors

(www.jeld-wen.com/en-us/)

Screenshot of JELD-WEN’s Home page on the day I wrote this:

At first blush, the JELD-WEN site is just showing me a catalog of their products with lists of features for each of the products. Nothing too compelling or exciting to connect with me or make me pick them over any other window out there.

Again, I have to do some digging to find a hint at their “why.”

On the “About Us” page of their site, you can find their value and mission statements, and a bit about their history. But even those aren’t getting to that elusive “why” that I want to see to help me connect with them and make them my go-to resource for windows.

Not much more I can say about JELD-WEN, other than they could do more self-exploration to help find their why and bring it up to the surface.

3. Redefine your target market

Depending on how long your company has been around, your target market can change over time. It’s sometimes based on the trends in the market, or changes in your own products and services.

By going back to the “Start With Why” principles, you may find you’ve lost your way a bit. That’s OK. We all need to re-examine things from time to time. As the quote, attributed to Socrates, says, “The unexamined life is not worth living.”

If you do choose to go through the process of finding and starting with your “why,” it can help you clarify WHO it is you want to serve. This can go a long way in helping you clarify your marketing messages.

For our final example website, we’ll look at:

Marvin Windows

(www.marvin.com)

On their Home page, Marvin has a great video background that loops through a variety of images. I can tell they cater to the residential market and it looks like they have products that fit with traditional and more modern designs.

On the sections below the video loop, they go into several of the standard
“why work with us” statements we’ve seen on other manufacturer sites. But they are starting to bake in more of their “why” into these statements.

For example, when they talk about their unmatched service, they say, “Building and keeping relationships is as important to us as the unwavering quality of our product…” That’s a pretty good why that I can identify with. Relationships are important to me, too.

For their commitment to quality, they say, “We set high standards for ourselves so we can be sure that every single product we make for you is built to last…” When you use the phrase “so we can” that’s giving me your reason why.

Could their reasons be made stronger and clearer? Absolutely. There’s always room for improvement. The point of examining these examples is to get you started down the road to examining your own messages and those of your competition.

Final words…

If you don’t define your why, nobody cares what your product is or how it works.

They might select your products based on price, but you won’t develop that loyal following we’d all like to depend on for our business. If you want to quiet the competition and get your customers and teams on board with you, you need to inspire them and connect with them.

To do that, you need to start with your why.

About the Author :

Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.

His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.

3 Easy Ways to Display Videos at Building Material Trade Shows

by jasonyana | Jan 3, 2017

If you have come to this article, you’ve likely done a lot of hard work creating a video for your tradeshow booth. You’re likely at the same point that many of my clients have arrived at :

“How do I put my video or videos on a loop and have them run at my booth without a thousand headaches and a ton of expense?”

Of course, there are many options here that are going to get this job done, but I would like to give you three good ones here with some steps to remove some of those headaches.

The three best options :

Using nothing but a Smart LED TV from Best Buy
Using your iPAD
Using a tv, monitor or projector with your laptop

Part 1 – Using a Smart TV

I like this option the best because the screen is big and sharp and you only need one piece of equipment. You will need to find a tv that has a usb input and can play videos this way. You also want the tv to have a repeat option so it will just loop your video over and over all day long without you doing a thing.

Step 1 – Get a tv that can do this job for you, and test it before you go to the darn show.

Here is an example of a TV you could pick up at any best buy and it will do this job for you :

Click on the image and you can head right over and buy one

If you’re not getting this exact tv or you are using one you already have, get the manual or look up the manual online and check what types of video files the thing can play.

Step 2 – Find out what type of video file you need.

There are all kinds of video files, you don’t need to know them all, just know that there will be a list in the manual telling you what types your tv can accept, but I guarantee if you have a mp4 file that plays on your macintosh, it will probably work on the tv. But check the list or send the list to your video geek or the nearest millennial and they will handle it for you.

Here is what that list looks like for our Samsung tv we picked out if you’re interested, but really just tell your millennial you want a .mp4 file with h264 codec and you’ll be golden.

Also if you’re serious about how the video appears, make sure it is High Definition. 720p HD is ok, 1080p is what you really want. It’s what Dancing With the Stars and Monday Night Football are broadcast in.

Step 3 – get your video file onto a USB stick.

Get a good USB thumbdrive, relax they are extremely affordable so get one that has plenty of space on it. they look like this :

typical usb flash drive

Next, plug it into your computer and save your video file to it.

Simple eject it, and plug it into the back of the tv.

Step 4. Get the Video Playing on a Loop

Once you have the USB drive plugged in select source on your remote

Choose USB device from the menu

you will now see a My Content Menu which shows all the photos videos and music files on your USB drive

Choose the file you want to play and then click the repeat button to have it play over and over all day long.

One note, turn the tv off before yanking the drive out of the back so you don’t damage the files on the USB Drive.

Part 2 – Using your iPad

An iPad can be a good solution when space is at a premium or if you use them in conjunction with a cool kiosk stand like this one :

Here are the steps.

Generally, the hope here is that you are the kind of iPad user who actually syncs the ipad with your computer. Many people don’t do this anymore at all, but it’s not that big of a deal and it basically plugs into your mac and throws things from your computer onto the ipad, like music, photos, movies, etc.

If you’re not one of these people, email me and I’ll explain a pretty decent way to get your video on there without all this.

Import the video footage into iPhoto on your computer.
Put the movie(s) in its own album in iPhoto and call the album with an appropriate name that will be visible in the sideshow when it starts playing at the conference.
Plug your iPad into your computer and sync your photos to it. Make sure that the new album is selected and the “Include videos” box is checked.
Launch the Photos app on your iPad.
Tap into the new album you’d like to use as the slideshow
Tap on the video you’d like to start the slideshow on to open it.
Tap on the Share button in the bottom left hand corner (up arrow icon).
Tap on Slideshow in the share menu.
For iOS 9 and maybe iOS 8 tap the video and click Options. On iOS 7 it’s in the device Settings > Photos and Camera > Slideshow > Repeat.
Turn Repeat to On
Set Music to None
Set Theme to Push
Now when you play your album as a slideshow it will loop forever – remember to bring your power cord.

Part 3 – Using your Laptop

This is a bit “old school” but it works.

If you are using a mac laptop

Plug it into the monitor, projector, or tv you plan to use via HDMI.
Get the display in mirror mode so the external display shows exactly what you see on your screen.
Open your video in Quicktime
Click View Menu > Loop
Click View Menu > fill screen
Make sure your laptop isn’t set to go to sleep when idle and you’re done

If you are using a windows laptop, install QuickTime and then do the same thing as above

About the Author :

Jason Yana has 2 decades of experience in architectural technology, 3d graphics and construction marketing. This unique combination provides highly-effective visual representations of building products that fuel marketing and support efforts.

His award-winning body of work informs, inspires and educates building product customers.