Biznik Blog

“Going indie” - (becoming an independent business owner) - means the end to weekly dry cleaning bills, memos from headquarters, and the annual summer company picnic. While you’re welcome to wear a suit to Biznik events and you can write yourself memos, what do you do about the the annual company picnic, when you’re working all alone?

Bizniks, Linda Jensen and Tammy Redmon have teamed up with the answer: the first Biznik Summer Picnic for the WHOLE family on Sunday, August 9 at an extraordinary 12-acre water-front site in Olympia, Washington. (View the video on YouTube.)

Sponsor, PartyOutfitters is providing an Extreme Sports Challenge for the adults and there are loads of activities for the kids such as: Black Hills Gymnastics Tumble Bus, Tug-o-War, Three-legged Race, Water Balloon Tosses, Volleyball and Face Painting. And if that isn’t enough, the beach location includes: beach combing, sand castle building, a beach fire and s’mores. Come spend some R&R in the company of other “indies” and get some networking in while you’re at it.

The cost? FREE

Complimentary hot dogs, burgers and buns, along with ice cream from Cool Cycles Ice Cream have been provided. Attendees are being asked to bring a side - (details on the event details page.)

There’s room for many more - RSVP for this unique summer event today!

Head’s up Biznik: here’s the names of the entrepreneurs who we’ll hear from in the first official SHINE trailer, which we’ll be releasing tonight at midnight at http://biznik.com/shine/trailers:

John Trivedi
Edward Hlavacek
Bethany Mooradian
Tiffany Nash
Ruth Hartmann
Ksenia Oustiougova
David Muller
Josh Johnson
Mike Whitmore
Houston White

If you’re on the fence about joining the SHINE fundraising team with your contribution of $40, here’s 10 great reasons to support the film now:

1. Because this economy needs more entrepreneurs to succeed.
2. You’re tired of the word “entrepreneur” being defined in the media as venture-backed businesses, when the truth is that less than 1/10th of 1 percent of all new businesses ever receive venture funding.
3. Have you ever had the opportunity to get YOUR picture in the title of an important film for $40?
4. You don’t want big businesses like WalMart to completely take over the Earth!
5. These powerful stories from entrepreneurs will help inspire the next generation of brave thinkers and creative doers
6. You just might find the key to success in your own business hidden among these incredible entrepreneurial stories
7. Because you’re more likely to be struck by lightening than you are to receive venture funding for your business.
8. Because you want to hear entrepreneurs like Bruce Livingstone, the founder of iStockphoto, tell you in their own words the personal price they’ve had to pay to build a company from idea to sale for $50 million
9. Because most entrepreneurs are invisible, and it’s time to change that
10. Because you want the world to know why you work incredibly long hours, often for low pay, always facing great uncertainty … to create the business of your dreams

I’d like to send a shout out to all the awesome people in this community who are throwing their support into raising the $50,000 we need to complete Shine.

Today, film co-director Ben Medina is cutting the first official trailer, which will include a taste of some of the stories that will appear in the film. I’ll be posting that on the film page late this evening at http://biznik.com/shine, where I invite you to visit to learn about three great incentives we’ve created to get you involved in supporting this important and timely film.

Ben and I are flying to Cleveland next week to interview Scott Shane, a professor of entrepreneurial studies at Case Western Reserve University, who is the foremost expert on the real numbers about entrepreneurship. He’ll be adding an authoritative voice to the film with answer to questions like: what are the odds of success or failure that entrepreneurs face? How much money does average entrepreneur make? Why do most people start businesses? What is the economic contribution of entrepreneurs to the economy?

Everyone who has contributed $40 or more will get their photo in the banner on the Biznik homepage, and a very cool, animated version of that banner will become the title frame of the film.

Here’s my A-list - thank you! Add your name.

Alana Nelson
Amy C. Darling, LAc
Andrew Lippert
Bethany Mooradian
Bob Strong
Bob Dunn
Clem Head
Danny Bronski
Dennis Dilday
Diane Head
Elizabeth Van Moppes
Gretchen Krampf
Hazel Grace Dircksen
Jacob Sayles
Jen Duchene
Jim Dickeson
John Trivedi
Joy Stephens
Judy Dunn
Kelli Standish
Kristine Proctor
Ksenia Oustiougova
Laila Atallah
Leif Hansen
Libby Higgins
Lori Richardson
Lynn Colwell
Margaret Ryan
mary ann dujardin
Michael Carpenter
Paul Kyriazi
Randy Lind
Ruth Hartmann
Shane McSimov
Sherri Schultz
Susan Rolfe
Susan Evans
Tammy Redmon
Toya Turner
Tresa Leftenant
Tyler Dow

OK everyone, here’s your chance to weigh in on an important issue: how Biznik can continue to grow and generate revenue in a way that works for everyone. We tried an advertising experiment more than a year ago that taught us an important lesson: advertising doesn’t work on social networks. At least not on this one (MySpace, which just laid off 400 people, is another luminous example).

We’ve been thinking about this, and have decided that on articles, many of you may be interested in further exploring the topics of articles that get your attention. So yesterday we deployed an experiment - we’ve added a list of books that are relevant to the topics covered in the articles. These link you to Amazon, and if you purchase the book, Biznik collects a 4-6 percent commission.

We don’t want to clutter up the interface unnecessarily, especially for something that simply doesn’t work. So we’ll be listening to your feedback, as well as watching closely to see whether members like you are actually following the links and completing purchases, which of course, is the only way it will be worthwhile to us to continue. Check out an article or two and let me know what you think. Intrusive? Helpful? Relevant?

Note: we’re conducting an A/B test (to determine which is most effective) of where to put the book links. On some articles, it’s located at the end of the article just above the comments, which appers like this:

On others, there is a sidebar on the right column, which looks like this:

OK, we screwed up. Big time. We spent an entire morning filming entrepreneurs for SHINE a couple weeks ago at big aircraft hangar at Sandpoint, and forgot to get their names. So here’s your chance to help them (and us) SHINE! Do you recognize any of the entrepreneurs on this page? If so, please post a comment below or better yet, click which will take you to Biznik’s Facebook fan page where you can drill down to each and tell us who they are in the comments. We can’t use them unless we know who they are…

Share it with the rest of us, of course! Here’s how:

Download your SHINE video clip from your Biznik profile. If you participated in SHINE, you’ll find your clip waiting for you to download on your profile page. You must be logged in to your profile to see the link to download. NOTE: Make sure you download it before July 31, as we’ll be removing the download link at that time. To download: Mac users can CTRL-Click on the link, and you’ll be prompted to save the file to your system. Windows users can right-click on the file to do same.

Be patient - it’s a big file, which can take a long time to download. Once you’ve got the file, it’s time to publish it to one of the video sharing sites that Biznik supports. If you don’t have a preference, I’d suggest using YouTube - it’s the most popular service. Here’s specific instructions for each:

How to publish your video on YouTube.

How to publish your video on Viddler.

How to publish your video on Vimeo.

How to publish your video on Facebook.

How to publish your video on Blip.tv.

Once your file is successfully uploaded to one of the above services, it’s time to spread the word. Here’s how:

1. Post a comment on Biznik’s Facebook fan page that your video is available, with a link to your video. That’ll alert me, and I’ll post it so that all the other fans (which number about 1,800 now) will have a chance to see your video.

2. Post it to your Biznik page (if you are an Active or Supporting member). To do that, click the “share” link on your video’s page, and copy the resulting embed code. Then, open your profile on Biznik, and select the service you’re using from the popup menu. Paste the code into the field, and save. Your video will appear on your Biznik profile.

Common problems:

I’ve had a few people complain that the file is corrupted after downloading (an error message appears when you try to play it, or the sound is missing). If that happens, delete the file, and try downloading again. It’s likely that it was someone corrupted in the download, so re-downloading will fix that. Repeat until you get a good copy of the file.

File takes forever to download - this means you have a slow internet connection. Because the file is huge, you’ll need to either start the download when you go to bed, OR go to a coffee shop that has a high-speed connection to retrieve the file.

If you’re still having problems, drop me a note and I’ll be happy to help.

Finally, if you’d like to take your video to the next level, have a chat with one of the awesomely talented and truly helpful videographers who volunteered their time to create the clip for you in the first place. Here’s a list:

• Anthony Tackett - Absolute Tech.
• Basil Shadid - Being Media.
• Cary Ray - BrainStorm Video Production
• David Barbosa - 3rd Eye Films.
• Goldie Jones - Subversionz Media.
• Grace Stahre - Versant Media.
• Greg Sommers - Flying Gecko.
• Len Davis - Pangeality Productions.
• Staci Bernstein
• Steven Bradford - VidTeams.com.
• Travis Becker - Victory Studios.
• Valerie Vozza - Double V Productions.

I’m a big fan of clarity in communication. Every time I send a special message like the one I sent out Friday, asking for help to claim our identity on Facebook, I cringe because I fear someone will take it the wrong way. I sweat over every word, careful to create messages that will be well received and that offer something of value to all recipients.

When you send a message to 30,000 people, you gotta figure at least one of them is having a bad day. Still, this reply is so over the top that I just gotta crack open my inbox and share part of it with you:

I despise facebook, twitter! This is for FOOLS who Stalin and Hitler would have had sent to termination camps. I can’t stand sheeple or groupies and don’t want to make you rich unless I too get there. Don’t send me this condescending crap………take me off your list.

Wow. Really, all you had to do was click the unsubscribe link.

On the positive side, I also got this message from member David Iwano, who hails from Brisbane, Australia:

Dan,

Mate you had 999 fans now you have 1,000…. keep up the good work.

Thank You
David Iwanow

Update: Biznik now has in excess of 1,700 fans on the Biznik Facebook Fan page, which we’ll be using to post special offers, member Shine videos, special announcements and much more. Thanks for your support.

Lara and I are heading to the Seattle Wine Awards tasting this afternoon, where we’re looking forward to meeting some of Washington’s best independent winemakers and - more importantly - tasting some of their yummy wine! We’ll be posting updates here and on Twitter and Facebook throughout the day - in fact, starting around 4pm, you can watch a livestream from the event right here:

As an aside, the Seattle Wine Awards appear to be doing a heroic job of incorporating social media into the event, in a way that I haven’t seen many local organizations do effectively. For starters, they invited us! Biznik is a great fit because every winemaker is an independent business - Biznik’s core community. But they didn’t just invite us - The Wine Awards gave us 4 free tickets, so that not only could we attend, but we had a pair of tickets to give to a lucky Biznik community member (which we gave away last Friday to Margaret Friedman, the winner of our invite contest.)

Nice work guys - thanks for including us and I look forward to posting more here throughout the afternoon. First up: I plan to interview some winemakers about what’s near and dear to us: entrepreneurship.

5:44 PM: Lara and I wandered the floor at #seawineawards for several hours, met some great winemakers, tasted a lot of amazing wine, and made this 2-minute video to share the passion that wine entrepreneurs have for their product. Enjoy!

As of 11:25 this morning, almost everyone who participated in SHINE can download their personal video clip from the front page of their profile. All but 27 of the clips are ready to go - the remainder we are still working on. We plan to post the remainder on Monday.

The link on your profile will direct your browser to download the video file in QuickTime format. This format is suitable for upload directly to any of the video services supported by Biznik, which include YouTube, Viddler, Vimeo and Facebook. You can further edit the video in any respectable video editing package should you like to make changes to your clip.

After you’ve viewed your clip, if you decide you want to take your video to the next level, remember that you can contact the person who operated the camera at your event. All are outstanding videographers who are available for hire. Here’s the list of videographers who volunteered at SHINE - I recommend all of them highly:

• Anthony Tackett - Absolute Tech.
• Basil Shadid - Being Media.
• Cary Ray - BrainStorm Video Production
• David Barbosa - 3rd Eye Films.
• Goldie Jones - Subversionz Media.
• Grace Stahre - Versant Media.
• Greg Sommers - Flying Gecko.
• Len Davis - Pangeality Productions.
• Staci Bernstein
• Steven Bradford - VidTeams.com.
• Travis Becker - Victory Studios.
• Valerie Vozza - Double V Productions.

Three other key players who were deeply involved in SHINE, by supplying video cameras from their production companies (Daniel and Jeremy also were interviewers at SHINE):

• Daniel Cardenas - Sierra Media
• Jeremy Dodd - RedGrey Concepts
• Sunshine Whitton - Absolute Tech

On the editing side, we have:

• Caution Zero Networks, with two talented team members: Stephen McCandless and Ben Laurance.
• Chris Julian - Christohpher Julian Designworks.

Shine’s production team featured these talented members:

• David Guilbault, documentary filmmaker
• John Patzer, Snacky! Brand Media
• Lorraine Montez, marketing, writing, film production

Lara and I will be attending the Seattle Wine Awards tasting on Sunday afternoon, and we’ve got a pair of tickets to give away valued at $170. The tickets include a sumptuous Rainier Club dinner buffet, a souvenir Riedel Magnum tasting glass, and a chance to sample the best wines produced in Washington. If you’re a wine lover like we are, this event will be a real treat. So how do you enter?

Here’s the deal: To decide the winner, we’re having a 24-hour contest to see who can invite the most new members to Biznik in 24 hours. The person who sends the most email invitations using Biznik’s invite tool will win a pair of tickets to the wine tasting, valued at $170. How’s that for a deal?

NOTE: Invitations sent to existing members will not be counted!

The contest will run from 4:30 pm today through 4:30 pm tomorrow (Friday). In addition to sending the invites, drop me a message on Biznik that you’ve entered, so I know to count you. We’ll be announcing the winner immediately after the contest ends tomorrow afternoon, so you’ll have time to plan your weekend wine consumption accordingly.

Here’s more info about the event:

The Grand Awards Tasting will be held Sunday, June 14, 2009 at Seattle’s historic Ranier Club. Taste for yourself Washington’s award-winning wines for 2009, meet the winemakers and tasting panel, and enjoy a splendid afternoon with other wine connoisseurs. Your ticket includes a sumptuous Rainier Club dinner buffet, a souvenir Riedel Magnum tasting glass, and a chance to sample the best wines produced in Washington. Tickets are available online now!

Tomorrow morning, I’ll be participating in Embrace Social Media, a “telesummit” hosted by Biznik’s Vancouver, BC Ambassador, Christa Wagner. What’s a telesummit? Here’s how Christa describes it:

What Is A TeleSummit?
A TeleSummit is similar to attending a multi-day conference, all from the comforts of your own home telephone. Our TeleSummit, Embrace Social Media, will include 8 social media experts who will be speaking over a two-day period for 75 minutes each.

What Will You Take Away?
We are going to kick off each call with a case study from each expert about their social media topic. We have a Facebook expert, a Twitter expert, a LinkedIn expert and an expert to talk about time management and social media. We want the goods; if you are a social media beginner or Tweeting several times of day, you will learn how to maximize your social media results through questions, examples, case studies and tools, you can start using immediately. No one needs one more thing to do; but everyone wants and needs new clients. By attending the Embrace Social Media, a TeleSummit, you will finally understand how this new marketing phenomenon can expand your clientele to a place you have not imagined.

I’ll be involved in an hourlong question and answer session about social media, in which I’ll answer the following questions:

1. Tell us a little about how you came to use social media and start a social networking website?
2. I have heard you talk many times before about the power of the weak connection; can you talk a little about that as I know many people don’t understand the benefit of marketing to people they may not know and knew once upon a time.
3. What is social media and what characterizes something as social media?
4. How is social media changing the face of marketing?
5. When did you realize SM wasn’t a fad?
6. What opportunities are available to business owners using SM?
7. What makes a success SM campaign?
8. How long does it take to see results?
9. What is the first step to getting starting with SM?
10. What suggestions do you have for someone who has been dabbling in SM and not getting much out of it?
11. Can you share 1 -2 companies that are using SM successfully. Perhaps who are using Biznik.com.
12. Can you use SM too much? Go overboard to speak?
13. Are there any risks associated with SM?
14. What common mistakes do you see on Biznik?
15. Where do you see SM in 1 year, 5 years and 10 years?
16. What is your best advice for a small business owner using SM?

You can learn more about the telesummit on Christa’s website.

Most of the SHINE video clips are ready to go, but a few are taking longer than expected to edit, so we’ve had to delay delivery until end of day Tuesday. On Tuesday evening, you’ll be able to log into your Biznik account, and find your SHINE clip ready for you to download on your profile.

FYI, the clips are looking fantastic! We can’t wait to get them to you.

Attention Seattle entrepreneurs: we’re offering you an extraordinary last-minute opportunity to be included in SHINE, a big film about small business, that is wrapping up shooting this week in Seattle.

Today SHINE director Ben Medina and I were shooting some scenes for SHINE in the giant airplane hangar at Magnuson Park. The incredible space at the hangar inspired us to make the following offer: If you are an entrepreneur, show up between 8am and 2pm tomorrow, and we’ll shoot some very brief footage of you. No talking will be required. You’ll simply need to look into the camera for less than a minute, and that’s it. In and out. A few minutes of your busy day will virtually guarantee a split-second appearance in the film, which will debut later this summer.

Here’s how to get there (see map below). Head to building 27 on the map, and you’ll enter from the NW corner. There’s tons of parking everywhere along the west and north end of the building. See you tomorrow, entrepreneurs!

The Olympia community is really taking off lately - over the past week, Olympia is #4 on the list of cities with the most new members, behind Seattle, Austin, and Portland, in that order. And when Olympia resident Jerry Suhrstedt joined this morning, he pushed Biznik past another membership milestone: 29,000 members. Check out his marketing firm, Heavy Guerrilla.

From his website: Heavy Guerrilla is “an unconventional system of promotions that relies on time, energy and imagination rather than a big marketing budget. Typically, guerrilla marketing tactics are unexpected and unconventional; consumers are targeted in unexpected places, which can make the idea that’s being marketed memorable, generate buzz, and even spread virally.”

I want to thank you, Jerry, for not only joining Biznik, but also because you signed up as a Supporting Member. We’re committed to your success, and we deeply appreciate your commitment to ours. Biznik is an entirely member-powered community, so every paying member means we’re able to put more resources into connecting you with the relationships you need to succeed.

This is a truly inspired use of web animation/video. The world would truly be a better place if more companies marketed their products like this, don’t you think?

Check out the latest photos from SHINE posted to flickr by folks like Bill Hagstotz, DL Byron, John Patzer, Cynthia DuVal, and Dina Lydia Johnson.

Denise Barnes posted a nice 3:40 video of her experience at shine that is a fantastic example of web video storytelling. She combines lots of still images with her narrating her experience of the event. There’s some great clips of magician Jeff Evans who entertained the long waiting line at the event, and much more.

Nice job Denise - thanks for sharing the night with us.

Thank you, Darrell Kirk, of Seattle Coffee News, who recorded the entirety of my 7-minute “it’s time for you to shine” speech. Even though we had like 15 cameras rolling that night, none of them caught my speech, except for Darrell, for which I am very grateful, because I need the feedback to make the next one better! But I gotta say, I practiced the hell out of this one, and think it’s pretty good. Worth watching if you believe, like I do, that small business is the heart of the economy.

Lots of you know amazing Seattle chef Tiberio Simone, who has catered the food at virtually all of the large Biznik events such as BizJam and all of our annual holiday parties. Or you’ve met him at other events as that guy handing out chocolates. More recently he’s teamed up with photographer Matt Freedman to create the La Figa Project, in which Tiberio’s passion for food and beauty have found their ultimate expression. Check this out. If you don’t think passion and art and business mix, you haven’t met Tiberio and Matt! Nice work, you guys (and girls).