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5 Reasons Why You Need To Come To The Next Queen City Hack
I had the pleasure of judging the last Queen City Hack hosted by Gas Buddy. I was BLOWN AWAY! These teams created some amazing applications, working applications, applications designed beautifully, ALL IN 24 HOURS!!! I couldn’t believe what these teams created and was incredibly surprised! I left inspired, the future is looking very bright. Here are 5 reasons you should get involved with the next Hack-a-Thon:
Learning Friday(s) 2017
We want to be one of the most caring, smartest, driven companies in the world. How can we do that? By working on the team!
Every Friday after lunch our team gets together and learns something about work at @StratLab. We invite clients to learn with us and so far it’s been awesome!
Week one was “All About Dat Measurement”
This coming week (January 27th) is “Learning About Your CreativEddy” -with your favourite @edwardoalvaro.
- Learn how he uses Photoshop and Illustrator
- Learn what goes though his mind when he posts on Instagram
- Learn how to put simple text over a photo as well as make simple edits
- Delve into the awesome world of Edwardo Alvaro
February 3rd – 5 Minutes Question Roundtable, no question is off limits.
February 10th – Eddy (Illustrator) Alvaro is leading down another creative rabbit hole.
- Reviewing Photoshop quick keys (lets make a checklist!)
- Troubleshooting in photoshop
- Creating freaking amazing Instagram moments
February 17th – Creating your own business cards/team building
- You business cards should reflect you, your personality, your beliefs. Let’s create some!
- Similar to the Hugh cards, we make personalized business cards by illustrating and putting quotes on the back
- What’s on the front you ask? Well lets decide as a team!
February 24th – Brooke on how to create a following on Instagram
- How do you make pictures look GOOD?
- What frequency do you post at? Time of day? Day of the week? Are those annoying questions?
- How do you gain a following?
March 3rd – Andy on how to make you a better videographer with 5 tips
- How can you take a simple video, add music, a title and post, AND still make look good? ………..You can’t.
- How do you prioritize what to do when creating a major video? (Walter Scott as an example)
- What have you changed your mind on in regards to video in the last three months? What trends are happening currently?
March 10th – Conrad on how to be a better, faster, smarter writer
February 24th – Brandon on how he designs a website and where websites are going in 2019
The Most Important Lesson ‘Cool Runnings’ Taught Us
“A Gold medal is a wonderful thing, but if you’re not enough without it, you’ll never be enough with it.” -Irv Blitzer to Derice Bannock after Derice asked why he had cheated in the Olympics.
Winning isn’t everything.
At times it may seem like it is but coaches, captains, players, and parents all need to understand that winning isn’t the goal of team sports. Like Irv (John Candy) says, if you’re not good enough when you lose, you’ll never be good enough when you win. But we insist on focusing on the score or the team record, when’s the last time you heard someone worry about the team culture or player wellbeing? That’s because most of us don’t know how to run a team successfully.
Focus on what’s more important than the win
Why It Sucks Being a Coach….. Some Days // eps 52 #inthelab
Why it sucks being a coach….. some days
At a given Volleyball tournament of 12 teams, the first three teams go home happy. One, Two or Three are a nice finish, but anything after that really sucks. So the average coach has a 25% chance of going home happy?!? That’s crazy! Now I’m obviously over exaggerating but your win loss record is only one of many things to focus on as a coach. The problem is that’s the easiest thing to single out as a parent, athlete, spectator, did you win? Why not?
It’s not just coaching, in life we often forget what the purpose is. Is the end goal really just to win the tournament? At what cost? What are you willing to sacrifice? When will one more win be enough? In life, how much do you make? How much did you clear last year? How Any time I hear conversations like that I feel a little worse for man kind.
The money doesn’t matter, just like the win doesn’t matter.
Your goal is to get your team to focus not on the win but the bigger issues at stake in sport.
- Are you a team?
- Are you contributing to that team?
- Are you getting better every day?
These can be very hard to focus on when everyone around you wants a win.
It’s hard to focus on creating something amazing in life when everyone tells you to get a “real job”.
As long as you don’t give up you’re not a failure.
The 75% of the tournaments you leave without a medal makes the other 25% all that much sweeter. There’s a romantic side to sports that Billy Beane talked about in Moneyball and I see on coaches faces time and time again. It seems delusional how much these coaches and volunteers put in just to help the younger generation see a sport through their eyes. It’s really quite amazing to see.
Don’t give up.
I talk to amazing teachers, mentors, and coaches all the time. I feel everyone is on the brink of quitting and getting more “me” time. I crosses every volunteers mind I guarantee it. But the tittle of this post is “It Sucks Being a Coach….Sometimes” because there are these magic moments where you see kids come together, do things they never thought possible, and learn life skills in a completely different way.
This past weekend we has Nationals in Winnipeg. We didn’t do as good as I thought we should (in the tournament), but throughout the weekend I witnessed a bunch of thirteen and fourteen year olds become a team. As a team they cheered on our arch rival at Provincials, Meadow Lake in any game they watched them play in. It’s like they grew up. The crux of the boys coming together was after cheering on a girls team they all went on to the court, lined up to shake hands, and congratulated the girls team on a game well played.
I couldn’t have been more proud.
Life gets hard to teach us a lesson. As long as we don’t cave under the pressure, as long as we don’t throw in the towel, we’ll be okay. The harder the challenge the more important the lesson.
The Importance of Accepting Another Person’s Point of View // eps 51 #inthelab
“I now appreciate public transit.” –Conrad Hewitt, 2016
Trying to see peoples’ points of view isn’t something that comes natural to humans. As we’ve evolved, the softer skills in life have become much more important to our survival than the hard skills (fight or flight) as of the last hundred years. In business it’s even more rare. Empathy is a word that is not often discussed in the board room. Love, Kindness, generosity, all words never uttered in the corporate world. Until now.
There are many unforeseen benefits of seeing the world through another persons eyes here are three.
- It’ll cause you less stress. You don’t need to constantly be “right”. It’s counterintuitive when you think about it. Usually we go into a discussion to be heard or to get our way, but if you’re smart about it you’ll go in trying to learn and adapt your point of view based on the new knowledge you discover.
The next time someone tries to argue with you try and agree with what they’re saying and come up with a better solution all together.
The smartest people in an argument will change their mind, one of the hardest things to do, on a topic to see the issue through a different lens. This take willpower, empathy and some mental Jujitsu but it a very powerful tool. - Your clients perspective is a great reflection of your business. Your brand is what your customers say about you. Every interaction is showing others a reason to like or dislike your organizations brand. Smart organizations are asking customers what they think, how could they do better, and what they love about their service or product.
You gain empathy when you show empathy to others, when you truly know how people feel about you. - You’re not the most important person in the world. The sooner we all come to grips with this the better. It’s easy in a moment of lost baggage rage to freakout on the airport attendee, afterall, you needed your bag for tonight! Get over yourself.
Nothing can happen to you that is so bad that you have to ruin someone else’s day over it.
Remember, you aren’t the most important person in the world and that service worker that you’re about to reem out about an over charged phone bill could be having the worst day of their life. You never know when showing someone kindness could mean the wo rld to them.
The next time someone thinks you’re about to get really mad at them do the opposite. You’ll see it in their eyes, that priceless look of a genuine human ‘thank you’.
Why You Don’t Need a Marketing Strategy // eps 50 #inthelab
Why You don’t Need a Marketing Strategy
How many small startups have a marketing strategy? I’d venture a guess as very few. No I don’t mean a “marketing plan” I mean an actual strategy with tactics, objectives, and intended outcomes. Rarely do startups care about marketing because if you have to rely on marketing to make your product or service successful you’re not going to be.
How many recent extremely successful products or services have grown exponentially because of a marketing strategy? I’d guess very few. The reason something catches fire is one part luck and one-part remarkability.
Remarkability: The odds that someone will talk about your company, product, service or organization.
Most business owners think of marketing as logos and commercials when really it about getting people to spread your story. There’s nothing traditional about marketing in 2016.
You don’t need a marketing strategy. A lot of people will tell you you do. Professors of marketing, those who’ve never practiced their theories just taught them in the classroom are the worst at spreading the lies about why you need a marketing strategy.
They’ll say you can’t be “off brand” and that every communication you make needs to be consistent.
“Mind your four p’s!” they’ll tell you, even though three out of the four are almost obsolete or useless for your company. Price, Place, Product, Promotion.
Marketing needs to start at the beginning of the planning process of your product or service.
I love the Seth Godin quote “Advertising is the tax for the unremarkable.”