I are very excited to announce the launch of SwitchWebVideo.com. I am sure to have more to say about this soon but I wanted to get this out there right away because I am so excited.
We have been chosen to a part of the Common Craft Explainer Network and it seems like it is a bit of a dream come true! I have always enjoyed Lee and Sachi LeFever’s videos and being able to be a part of their network is a really big thing for us. (And it has also kept us very busy since the launch a few weeks ago!)
Please check out the new site (which still has more content to be added) and tell us what you think.
We develop eLearning programs to help you train your program staff and sales teams and we make it fun. We don’t want people to feel like they are in high school math class. We want them to feel like they are checking out YouTube and connecting with their friends on Facebook. To do this we use a lot of video… so to learn more please click on the video above and lets us explain to you how it works.
I used to work for a company that have had zero goodwill from their suppliers. They achieved this by squeezing everyone, whenever they could and for whatever they could get out of them. I have reacted against this. I want people that work for me to be our biggest source of referrals. I want them to enjoy their work. I want them to enjoying working for me.
I really enjoy working with Henry and as luck would have it Henry really enjoys working for me! Here is what he has to say about working with Switch.
“My first encounter with Switch Marketing was through the popular crowd-sourcing website 99designs.com in which I entered a design contest to design a header graphic for one of their clients websites. After winning the contest, liaison was simple and swift, payment was instantaneous and more work was offered immediately.
From thereon in I continued to work for Switch Marketing and have earned over $4000 over a period of three months. Andrew and his colleagues have been incredibly easy to work with, very friendly and a pleasure to provide my services to. Never have I worked for a company so organized and so affluent in the technologies of tomorrow nor one so amiable, personable and efficient.
In this crowded marketplace Switch Marketing definitely sets the standards of dedication, good workmanship and client satisfaction lacking in so many of the other marketing agencies.”
(People often rely on customer testimonials. I personally would like to see more employee testimonials out there… that is how you tell the real winners out there.)
In this great video from Brain Rules about how exercise boosts brain power, John Medina shows us the most anti-brain learning environment: the traditional classroom with desks and seat work.
Not surprisingly, the most anti-brain work environment is the cubicle.
Why? Tiny proteins called BDNF are created when you exercise and act like Miracle Gro for your brain. When you’re at a desk you’re not exercising and your brain isn’t as receptive to learning.
Our ancestors walked on average 12 miles per day. As a result, the brain developed as a survival organ designed to solve problems in an unstable environment in almost constant motion. Imagine if our ancestors had been couch potatoes. They wouldn’t have survived very long.
Exercise improves all areas of executive function in the brain: concentration, impulse control, foresight and problem-solving. So if an employer were to focus on ways to incorporate exercise into the daily work day, they would get healthier and more creative employees as a result and the employer would save money too. For example, Starbucks spends more on health care costs than on coffee beans.
If you’re an employer, encourage employees to have walking meetings and take phone calls on the move. Consider moving workstations with a laptop/treadmill combo and a moving conference room with treadmills. This way you can do your emails while you exercise.
Those of you that work or study and take ecourses at home have it made. You don’t need a boss’s or teacher’s approval to move while you work and learn. There are many ways to incorporate exercise and movement into daily life (both inside and outside the workplace) without having to invest in fancy equipment.
I started Switch Marketing because I was frustrated with the quality of work and level of service that I was getting from web developers and graphic designers that I had hired in the past. Communication about the project was poor, the project was never totally finished until I asked 10 times and no matter what the deadline was missed.
Switch Marketing is a customer service business. Our goal is to develop a great process for our clients that helps us to work together to get the best results possible. Ultimately we to exceed every clients expectations and have it all happen before the deadline!
To help guide us I developed 3 Promises that we make our clients so that they know what to expect from us.
So far we have had great feedback.
“You are good!!!!!! Thank you so much… I really appreciate your great work on this.”
“I’m floored. You did an amazing job creating a captivating presentation from my original slides.”
“I would never run another training without your online training module. The result was less administration for me and program reps that were better trained and more motivated.”
“Thank you for all your hard work - you were such a huge help and I really appreciate it.”
Truth be told this business is built by solving a problem my little sister was having. She was looking for a better way to train a team of program reps that were spread out across Canada. We worked out a solution and I built it into a business. Joanna and I sat down to talk about the solution we created.
Mowdown Pollution is a great iniative of the Clean Air Foundation http://www.cleanairfoundation.org/ and The Home Depot of Canada http://www.homedepot.ca/ that encourages Canadians to retire their older, higher polluting gasoline mower or trimmer.
We developed an online training module including live action and screencast videos to help train the reps who ran the program in 166 Home Depot stores coast to coast.
Do you frequently forget someone’s name even though you were introduced to them just a minute ago? Or forget where you put your keys? That kind of thing happens to me all the time too.
I like to blame my aging brain, or lack of caffeine, but according to the book Brain Rules, the human brain can only hold about seven pieces of information for less than 30 seconds. If something doesn’t happen during those 30 seconds, the information becomes lost. To retain the information for longer than 30 seconds you have to re-expose your brain to the information. This type of repetition is sometimes called “maintenance rehearsal.”
But what if you want to remember something for longer than a few minutes? The best way to send information to your long term memory is to teach someone else what you have learned. When I mean teach, I don’t mean you have to do a Power Point presentation or give a lecture. I simply mean describing your experience to another person, which will help cement it in your memory.
For example, last weekend I went to hear one of my favorite authors give a presentation. I’m not an auditory person; I need visuals, so it’s always an effort for me to recall things I learn during a talk. But when I got home from the talk, I went on Skype and instant messaged with a friend who is also interested in this author. Because I was still excited from the talk I was able to recall many of the things the author said and told all of this to my friend. He also asked me many questions, which helped me recall more information. As we were talking, he found a review of the talk that had just been posted online. It almost exactly matched everything I said and we both laughed at how accurate my description of the talk was. I think I can safely say that this information has a good chance of ending up in my long term memory as a result of the talking with my friend.
Without training or tech support, even basic tools for information sharing can seem daunting; they always have. But with the proper guidance and explanation, they should be convenient and easy to use. If you love your computer, thank a techie.
We thank our techie Brad Cutler who taught us all how to open our new laptops.
