Make a dolla holla workshop notes

Mazda T. Miles, CMM,

Perfection Events Inc.

15 yrs in events mgmt

events->what is the goal, objective of the event… produce measureable result

Take our time to do what we need to do to connect with the people we need to connect with

What do you need the people who attend.. to know, do, and feel

What qualifies her to talk about this:

1- Been too church all her life; churches know how to raise money thru fundraisers

2- On too many volunteer boards, built on donations..

3- Business… been in corporate for awhile, has managed budgets for many different events

4- Entrepreneur – built own business... lost job and was forced to find a path

Started business, budgeted investment, networking to find help; collaborators

Plans to show HOW to come up with compelling and unique events

-Strategic planning meeting for events

BUILDING the NETWORK

Nonprofits aren’t as diligent as businesses about networking

Nonprofits don’t realize: need to sell

What we do so close to our hearts, think everyon should be as passionate as us about our cause

It’s up to us to communicate th value of what we do

So that they will want to be involved

Definition of networking:

1- Lines connectin up down left right and all around

2- Connecting interactively

network – build holistically

EVERYONE can help us

How do we feel about people who call us just when they need us

Don’t just call on people when we need them – more constant contact

- company used to “drip” (well developed strategy

Stay in touch after we get what we need - users

Don’t think people “higher” than us – change mentality about what people will and will not do for us

Change approach

Build loyalty – don’t want people to simply contact us when it’s time to give us what we need

Investment we can make outside of what we can immediately benefit

Networking exercise

Networking is about sharing

Discuss two of biggest challenges you’re facing with regard to individual donors, fundraising, special events

Selling self

Clique within org

Network too large

Societal consciousness cause

Startup fundraising

Expanding business: revenue and territory

Understanding full value of fundraising, donors and events

Committing to sticking to persistence :-à set up processes and minimum daily behavior needed to reach goals

Motivating (INSPIRING) WE not just ME

Participation: getting people to attend events, participate in org’s activities : engagement

Raising funds: getting $

Expanding beyond current bubble

How to execute a good event: what’s gonna get people thru the door (wanna attend? To the goal)

Sales

Didn’t know nonprofit work involved SALES

Selling self, selling business

Convincing people of value to invest time or money in business

Understand WHO people buy from

People buy from: who they KNOW LIKE TRUST

Loyalty/engagement

Consistency is important

Experience

Conversion: converting the network to sales: people who will give time, money, resources

Invested in sales training

Retention: how do they STAY knowing, liking, trusting

Make it personal

When you want to engage someone, do you know what drives them, what is important to them, why they are giving to you

Use tools available to get information PUSHED to you (auto alerts, notification)

Referral

Learn how to ask for referral: are ther people that you know that could benefit from what your org does

Do you know anyone else who would be interested… who could benefit from what I do

Referral: automatic credibility… if some one refers you to them, then the person who’s been referred to you will automatically KNOW LIKE TRUST

People buy to solve pain more often than to resolve pleasure

(those are the two reasons people BUY)

buy = engage

same chemical released from our brain when we give up money as actual physical pain

(cash is more of that chemical then check then debit/credit card)

Buyers Buy Emotionally, and Justify it Intellectually

Engage people emotions

Tell the story of the business and why you are doing it and candid accounts from those served and how it has changed peoples’ lives

All this becomes a base as you specifically put together a fund raiser or Event

Do these people know like trust me?

Am I solving some sort of pain for them? Meeting a need

Am I making it pleasurable? Meeting a want

Make people listen to your idea and give feedback

Claude Edney

2675935483

digicorpproductions@yahoo.com

companyvoice.com

think of donors as buyers

for buyers, you have something to prove: why buy my product

for donors, we tend to think we shouldn’t need to prove to them/convince them to buy(donate)

What is the need for the buyer?

What pain can I solve?

What dot he people (demographic) of my network need?

What ar they pained by? The network

How can I provide pleasure?

Shark tank-like event

Q: how to get those people who would be on that panel?

Another pre-event to inform people and engage them about the business

Getting bigger donors – sponsors… by partnering with bigger orgs, government agencies

Gala for those being served

Intimate dinner for those who can support

Expo to educate people about this cause and provide exposure

Being able to say what th contribution is for (quanitified)

After: show what contribution was for and the measured results

Sale - goal

after

Presentation/proposal – make pitch about what my biz will provide

after

discovery meeting – find out way we might be able to work together –

after

conversation – talk to prospects

after

prospecting – find out people who could use service

----------------------------------------------

MINIMUM DAILY BEHAVIOR

Start with, say, 100 prsopects

Might land conversation with 20

Might get discovery mtg with 5

Might get to present/propose to 2

To get one sale

If you have to gets say 1 sale in say a month, and have 20 working days in a month – need  to contact 100/20 prospects per working day

Basically: greate goals and timeline then do basic math to assess minimum activity needed each day to reach goal within a given time frame

Visioning --à execution

Steps in between

If you aim for nothing, you’ll hit it every time

Ensure strategy aligns with desired outcomes

Dreams, or goals of a (socially) conscious, passionately creative soul

Tomorrow we (or, some of us, here in the U.S.) observe the birthday of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr., the late famed martyr and champion for equality and justice during what has come to be known as the Civil Rights movement of 1960s America. Among other things, he is famous for his "I Have a Dream" speech, and around this time every year you will have many people examining how far our country has (or hasn't) progressed towards the realization of his dream. Or, folks will describe and discuss their own dreams for social progress. So here I will do the latter, and get somewhat personal as well. I think.

For the past 4 years I have run a moderately successful small business, a tutoring agency: Apple Tutors U.S.A. I created it because, ever since I was a moody, arrogant, intellectual teenager, I had an interest in education. Back then, my main career aspiration was to be a teacher. Now, I've always felt like a person with far above-average intelligence, a creative, analytical problem solver who is also thoughtful, compassionate, and patient. I could think of no better way to contribute to my world than to devote my life to educating the next generation. I did volunteer tutoring throughout high-school. I tried to continue doing that work during college but the high schools in the area didn't like my appearance. After college I eventually worked in after school programming for a non-profit, and also spent a few years working as a substitute teacher in Chicago's public schools (southside). But after my second year of that gauntlet, I decided that I should probably have some other career, and then maybe return to the classroom as a sort of retirement. I landed in the field of web application development, and I now work as a tech lead at a small software firm outside of Philadelphia. But I started my tutoring agency at the same time that I started by career as a programmer.

I had been doing some tutoring on the side after college, and also during art school a couple years after that. I have always felt that working with students (of various ages) one-on-one was very rewarding, and I could see how important the supplemental assistance was for many students. I realized I could make a bigger impact (and generate more revenue) if I recruited tutors and had them working for me, so I did just that. With my agency, I have had the greatest success when I establish a partnership with a school. The school provides space, and refers its students to us. At the first school, parents paid us directly for after-school assistance which we offered at the school during after school hours. For the past 3 years I have had a contract with a school that pays my agency from Title I funds.

My dream is to continually expand my agency's impact and evolve the service we offer. With the current relationship, most of the tutors are students themselves: a few undergrads, but mostly graduate students, who work earn some supplemental income while helping elementary and high school students  in academic problem areas.

Of late, I have felt the need to define the mission of Apple Tutors U.S.A., and to define my vision for the venture. Apple Tutors aims to provide personalized educational assistance in order to help students build a strong foundation in basic skills and perform to their highest academic potential; to supplement the instruction that students receive in the classroom in order to help them more effectively apply what they have learned. Apple Tutors U.S.A. also strives to build community by creating an opportunity for young, struggling, growing scholars to form relationships with older achievers, in the hopes that this exposure and the academic growth created by these relationships will encourage struggling students to achieve. Apple Tutors also seeks to provide quality, focuses (one-on-one or small group) academic assistance to students and households who can't afford to pay the rates normally charged by private tutoring services, by developing relationships with funded organizations and academic institutions.

So, although the agency started off by providing its services to parents who paid its competitive rates out of pocket, for the past three years it has served students whose parents paid nothing, as we have partnered with a private school who, as I mentioned earlier, has been able to pay for the service with Title I funds.  Part of my vision for the agency is to develop more such partnerships, and to even apply for such funds as well, as I seek to fulfill the agency's mission.

Currently I have been more interested in evolving our service offerings, and in particular I have been trying to determine how best to integrate technology. I have researched supplemental education software; I am currently working towards using Khan Academy's math and science lessons for our sessions on all levels. This is a step, but, I believe, it will just be the beginning. Perhaps we it is time to thoroughly explore offering online tutoring.

Changing course, I want to talk more about the dreams keeping me up at night. My agency is just part of what how I imagine myself contributing. I have other business ideas, but no time or capital or formal business plans. I need to develop these things, but I must still sustain myself. Sometimes I think that I should quit my job. Other days, I think that perhaps I should ask them to invest in my own venture(s), just as someone once invested in theirs. And sometimes I think I should just find a different job, as I am starting to feel like my creative potential cannot be realized in my current role and position. I feel that I could and should be ding something much more interesting. Some sort of creative director in a socially conscious community development organization, or something of the sort. I know that I'd like to be doing something more interesting, something that ignites my passion and is also challenging, something that really engages my creative analytical senses, but also allows me to use the broad education which I've invested in. I feel stifled...like I'm about to be stuck. But I know that it is within my power, and my responsibility alone, to do something about all this. I'm searching. In pursuit of my dreams. Whatever they may be!

Chef John's Pizza Dough Recipe

The “Sponge”:
2 teaspoons dry yeast
3/4 cup lukewarm water
2/3 cup bread flour
Dry Ingredients:
4 cups unbleached white flour (or bread flour)
1/4 cup rye flour (or more bread flour)
1 teaspoon salt

1/3 cup olive oil

1. Make the sponge: Combine the sponge ingredients in a mixing bowl; set aside for 30 minutes.
2. Combine the 4 and 1/4 cups of flour and salt in a separate bowl. Mix well.
3. After the 30 minutes is up, take a cup of the flour mixture, and a cup of cold water, and mix it with the sponge, using whisk and then a rubber spatula. Set aside for another 30 minutes.
4. In a large bowl, pour 2/3 of the flour mixture. Pour the sponge mixture on top and slowly incorporate the flour using your rubber spatula. 
5. When most of the flour is gone, add in the remaining flour mixture and the olive oil, and slowly incorporate using the spatula. (Doesn't need to be completely mixed together)
6. On a floured cutting board or counter, knead the dough (about 5-6 minutes of kneading).
7. Take the dough ball, rub some olive oil on it and put in a bowl. Let sit for 2 hours (to rise).
8. Lay the dough out and punch it down. Cut into six pieces.
9. Use the dough now, or form into balls and coat with olive oil, put in freezer bag to allow it to cure overnight (in refrigerator).

Pizza dough should be at room temperature to use.

Ready Lee Jones Jr. and it just don't stop

It's 2012 and I haven't posted on my blog in a while, so as I sit here solo on my sofa, I'm inspired to type a few lines.
The past year was beautiful... but I'm looking forward in this current one. SO many big things I wanna get done in 2012; in winter hibernate mode, it's the most wonderful time: to look at the recent past and meditate on future plans:: I'm on the march towards Independence::: Let's go there together my friends:::: Let us be diligent, aware, compassionate and creative, and let our Love lead the Way.

It's raining, and cold outside. Old Man Winter is here, but he's been in a mild mood for the most part (so far)...Pray that he stays that way! Meanwhile, I've been evolving and growing; each day I am a better version of me than I was in the previous one. That said, I won't go into the mysterious details of my plans for the New Year here.... but I will say that I am planning for even greater personal success this year than the last.

Of course, I also hope for success in Love! The Hopeless Romantic, All Day I Dream About She: the Divine Woman for whose love I am living, and to whom I wish to show and share my utmost:: strong but tender devotion, honor and sacrifice. I've searched for so long.... and now I feel that I KNOW what it is I have been seeking, can recognize Her and, granted the time and opportunity, am ready to explore the endless possibilities of our limitless intertwining... So hey girl I hope you're ready for me!

I never give up til I reach my goal. So may I persevere alertly, have courage in my determination, and heed the signs along the way. And choose widely my path and wisely... I am so grateful for my life; I wanna leave something truly beautiful behind before it closes out.
Let's go together my friends.... and may we be diligent, aware, compassionate and creative...
...and Let our Love lead the Way.

Not like that

Don't you hate when you prepare some(food) for someone, and you make it a certain way, to be enjoyed a certain way, and they just mess it all up because they gotta do it their way, and totally ignore the your serving suggestion?
Take my curry-flavored turkey burgers for instance.. They're best enjoyed with some (spicy/brown) mustard on a wheat bun. I might serve it to someone and, before they even taste it, they decide to slather ketchup all over it... I can't stand that! And it's not that she doesn't like mustard..but she just spurns my suggestion and then will wonder why it doesn't taste so good....
If you're gonna put ketchup all over it, then you want some other burger - NOT my curry-flavored turkey burger! So go 'head with that. Keep it movin....
Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.

Lamb Burgers with herbed yogurt

Served 6
1 small onion, peeled
1.5 in. Fresh ginger
4 large garlic cloves peeled
2 cups fresh cilantro
2-3 green chilies chopped or up to 1 teasp red chili powder
1 lb ground lamb
.75 teasp ground cumin
1.5 teasp garam masala
1 rounded teasp salt
1 large egg
2 slices thickly sliced whited bread, crumbed(or enough to bind well)
2 tablsp veg oil + extra for oiling

Herbed yogurt:
1.5 cups Greek-style yogurt
3 cups fresh cilantro leaves
1 handful fresh mint leaves or 1 tablsp good dried mint
1-2 green chilies
Salt to taste
.5-1 teasp fresh ground black pepper

To serve:
Buns, lettuce/spring mix, sliced plum tomatoes, large onion slices (rings)

Directions:
Chop/mince th onion, ginger, garlic, cilantro and green chilies. Add to th ground meat along w/ remaining ingredients.

Shape into six burgers and chill for 20 minutes or until you want to eat. Take out 30 minutes before cooking.

Meanwhile, mix together all th ingredients for the herbed yogurt and season to taste.

Heat th oven/broiler and cook burgers on a well-oiled baking sheet/broiler pan for 10 minutes, turning them halfway through. Add th buns to th oven for 3-4 minutes before th burgers come out.

Serve in warmed buns on th bed of greens, tomato and onion rings with a heaping spoonful of th herbed yogurt on top.

Yummmm
Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.

Oven-fried chili chicken

1.75 lbs. Chicken, skinned and forked all over
3 tablsps veg. Oil
.25 teasp ea.: salt and freshground bl.pepper
.75 teasp ground cumin
4 slices of white bread crumbed
1 large egg beaten
1 lemon cut into wedges to serve

Marinade:
1.25 in fresh ginger
9 large garlic cloves
2-4 green chilies sans seed and membranes
1 teasp ea: salt, garam masala
1 tablesp lemon juice
2 tablesp veg oil

Blend marinade ingredients into paste and place in nonmetallic bowl. Add chicken and coat well in th paste. Leave in fridge for couple hrs or over night. Bring to room temp before cooking.

Preheat oven to 425. Pour oil in a roasting pan large enough to accomodate chicken in one open layer. Place pan on a high shelf in th oven to heat up for 15 minutes.

Mix th salt, black pepper, and cumin into bread crumbs. Take chicken out of th marinade letting excess drip off, roll in th spicy crumbs, ensuring an even coating on all sides. Dip into the egg and add a second coating of the crumbs.

Place th chicken in th oiled roasting pan and cook for 20 minutes. Then lower the oven temp to 400F, turn th chicken over and cook another 15-25 minutes (depending on size of th joints) or until cooked through. Serve fresh from the oven with lemon wedges.
Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.

Even Time is Money

Note for example the ways in which the great professional vocations of the West - lawyers, journalists, academics, doctors - have been co-opted and corrupted by bottom line thinking. Money and "efficiency" are the values by which we stand, not law, truth or health. Students are imagined as "customers", citizens as "stakeholders".
[...]
In the US, and increasingly even in Europe, the income differential between the poor and the wealthy already resembles that of banana republics.

An Economics textbook I read somewhere described economics as "the study of the way people interact with each other" or something to that effect. Of course, it's usually defined with regard to the production and distribution of wealth, or goods and services... However the term apparently derives from Greek roots, roughly translating to "the rules of the household, or the rules of management of a household (or administration)..."
So, in a sense, the policies of our home reflect the politics or our interactions with people beyond our home.
And the "bottom line thinking" that Barkawi says has prevailed in a Western-dominated (capitalist) world: this thinking seems to have corrupted each generation more than the previous, so it's no surprise that people will silently ignore and endure the unjust suffering and neglect of others, "as long as I got my own..." Look at the delays in the recent US debt debacle. Then I try to fathom what motivates violent flash-mobbing youth... Humankind seem increasingly disaffected and even irrationally selfish.
"Money is the root of all evil."
"Mo' money, mo' problems."
It's true, too, as far as I can tell, that "few today in the West can imagine any other politics than those of big money": Big money apparently led us headlong into recession, has stifled our recovery, and seems to dictate the government of the Land of the Free. Money talks, and people will listen. Big money talks, and people will "shut up, obey, and collaborate in the dark work of exploitation for profit, for which they will be well rewarded, at least financially..."
What it all means: alienation from each other disaffected neighbor, and yet (or thus) an inflated sense of self-importance (collectively) has turned our interactions into more and more of a mathematical equation.
A better way seems so simple: we must throw away the notion of being motivated by "What can I get out it", and instead consider more enthusiastically "What can I put into it?"

If our social interactions are going to be quantitized, let's focus on increased value (+)

How is this done you may ask? Let me come back to that later (eyes blurring)

FINDING SILENCE

Listening carefully to every word,
Studying also the phraseology of intervals,
The poignant pause, abiding; Confidence.

Providing: A Vessel, a valet at the vestibule,
Or, as quiet as a librarian or the lobby in the morning,
especially on Sundays.

And Still, a ticking time bomb in the square
waiting peacefully until the fateful moment it may exude its artful potential,
thwarting the innocent, the guilty, the bystanders.

Or Witness the wittiness,
as She keeps on passing me by,
wandering and troubled, a silent scent.

And so i sit and inhale the silence sent,
Breathing forgetfulness, exhaling memories...
managing to fight the urge
to play that song,
as the words don't make sense anymore.

SEOwizardry

Sooo.....

If you Google 'Apple Tutors', we're the top search result.

That's exciting to MEE!


-rodnificent, SEO

Musings of a Web Programmer

So I was just thinking that... Facebook is to forums as Twitter is to chat rooms as Tumblr is to the contemporary web.
Meaning:
On Facebook, you can have a thread on a topic (based on a post or status msg), just like a forum.
Whereas to follow a tweeted discussion of a topic would be like trying to do the same in a chatroom, except with Twitter you're most likely to be reading that conversation in reverse chronological order.
While Tumblr makes it easy for ANYone to have their own website with their own content... but then, that's everywhere: so many of today's web apps enable end users to collect, maintain, manipulate and distribute diverse digital content (Facebook, Twitter, and blogspot, for instance).
Content management systems.

And now it's looking like touch screen tablets may soon supplant the laptop for lay use; power users will still need, i think, the desktop style computer terminal and its keyboard for at least another half century (50 years is an arbitrary, rather uneducated guess).

What will come after that? I still believe it's only a matter of time before the computer enters the body; a separate screen will no longer be needed: it will broadcast images and messages straight to our consciousness. Close your eyes and imagine that.

Dream Log

I had a dream last night that I had somethin my eye. It didn't seem to bother me but it was obstructing my vision... I looked in the mirror and I could it there, but I was reluctant to try to remove it. My eye loomed large. The foreign object seemed sinister. I don't remember if I removed it...

Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.

R! (do th math\.e)

i'm Ready(lee)
4thee Right now,
but undeRstand
How theRe would be
no(ne)
(w()R*the(e)
aRound...

nd I'm blu nbRown about town...
k**win ii (\r)
gits DOWN! (Fa ma cRown)
+mfull o'fiiRe
..nd as such eteRn-
al(lee) desiRe
....heR(s) ..thus it's
1)+(r(search) = nvain
(Na_cissisticalistica_essentialism o_ sensualism)
"But I digRess."
-fRom R (sleep)

Go! In the name of love....

"Here I come..."
This year has taught me the true value and meaning of sacrifice. I've also understood the price of the vice of selfishness.
Many of my recent (major) decisions as well as my current occupation(s) have been the execution of promises...assumption to loyalty...submission to responsibility. I'm still encoding it because I really am a discrete person, and who knows who's reading this (most likely, I KNOW who(ever's) reading this...but none of us KNOWS.....WHO's reading this).

But here I am and there I go, mostly for the sake of those towards whom I feel a strong and persistent sense of duty (and always will)... Family, students, colleagues, clients... And when I do get some time to be free, I usually seek to spend it with my love.... who yet remains absent...but I am thinking of you now, and I wrote this just for you. I am for ever at your Service.

So here I go again,,, in the name of...

Friday night contemplative

"So.. I say good byyye with no regrets.. " She's singin so beautifully...in this west philly desert lounge. old school. Now: '....I been here before.... Call it deja-vu.....' R.I.P. Teena
Now that I'm back home, I find myself wondering how different I'd probably be if I'd never left.
I think that's mainly because I'm lovin it so much, but only now understanding the costs of all that time away from those most dear, all who love me most...plus of course I'm gittin into all this philly soul,-: it soothes and includes me.....
Y las cosas seran como son, y que sera sera. Mi musica ignites and excites me, keeps me going and stays with me, massages my mind with its messages divinely human.
Now NOW... I'm simply planning, building for the future...:my people must be prepared.
&You know I'm ready......for you, my love

Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.

living for the eyes of love

don't change don't change girrlll
stay as sweet as you are baby.....

sometimes i feel like i've
let you down in the biggest way...

and when i went away and stayed..
could i ever come back from that?

but stay as sweet as you are girl
and everything will surely be fine

and if you ever need me
i'll be right there

home is where the heart is

i love being home

The 5th Annual Passion Exposition (Summary)

Desire strong enough to fill a page-

It is now and always time to debate the actualism of our this nowandneve.
Again i resound with them-ness - under and in-me;__

Desire, strong enough to lift a tree trunk- that is what MUST propel us to (and) this rock we call a place through the sky so fast it's slow - desire is repugnant in its repetitiousness, yet repentant...

And so good it is to yearn- we learn not to be sorry for having done so...

Feeling suspicious? Mind inclined to intrique looking for clues?
Then this you will see shows you your world is your desire.

Strong, sensual, as rust or perhaps how she just brushed past you.

Desire is sent down to you straight to the start and you, passive, resistant, follow through to it, till it is finished: you are automated, systematically

...( EXPLOSIONS HERE )...

Strong enough for a man to feel a woman and pleading;

I worship to desire,- and also desire to worship...

One.

Smug Arses

"Stay away from me, if you're contagious...cuz I'm a winner, no not a loser!"

You knooow... I usually try to take it easy: I don't cause trouble, I don't bother nobody, and I don't talk ish about people when they're not around. But right now I gotta get this off my chest...
ONE thing I cannot STAAND: self-proclaimed, so-called artists hung up on some inflated sense of self-importance... This goes for creative would-be 'divas' and other similar buffoons practicing any medium of the creative and performing arts.
You knoooow...: those people who call themselves 'artist'...
Much to my dismay (and adding to the confusion of the undiscerning observer) they probably have some degree of talent and even of technical prowess... They talk about tryin to 'get signed,'..... they're in a group show and their work is waay overpriced.... Fools who think that, because they have some above-mediocre level of creative propensity, that makes them God's gift to society, and that someone owes them something, and that they can act like smug asses and spoiled brats w/ shitty draws on.
Pray that I never become one of these assholes; I hope my true friends would let me know if I did.
In contemporary society it seems there are so many of these so-called artists roaming the land...dismissive irresponsibility, hollow stylism, facetious obnoxious philanderers. I've wasted enough of my life typing about this issue now, I think.

I've got dreams - dreams too rememberrr

Pues, ves entonces..por que soy asi: mi soledad brother: Lone Lee... That's why I Keep It movin to th K.I.M.
+ I be on that straight up on that I be futuristic shhhttt... Let me show you my vision
Mr. Rodney Lee Jones Jr.