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wolfstar-in-color · 3 years

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July Creator Spotlight: Desicosplay

Hello, lovely people, and welcome to our second creator spotlight!

Each month, we will highlight a different creator in our lovely fandom who features diverse characterizations of Sirius and/or Remus. We will invite you to get to know them better through questions and answers, Fandom Discourse(tm), and a featured prompt created by our guest.

For our second spotlight, we are absolutely honoured to having the presence of @desicosplay, an incredible cosplayer and writer that if you don’t follow, you should do right away. They’ve gifted us with many, many amazing gifsets, a lot of them about Sirius. Below you’ll see a little snippet of the interview and Mastani’s prompt. Under the cut you’ll be able to read the full interview. Don’t forget to share and interact with this post, and if you have anyone you’d like to recommend for a spotlight, shoot us an ask!

“Diversity means celebration. So in fan spaces, that means actively seeking out creators that you might otherwise miss. It means trying out new perspectives, or listening to new perspectives on your favorite characters. It means standing with your peers, being loud in your love and support of them. I’m not saying you have to reblog or comment on everything. Diversity is not just visual, it’s also mental. Diversity needs to be intentional and active, even if that takes place just in your head.”

Mastani’s prompt: Muggle AU! Sirius and Remus at Harry’s sporting event!

Hi! I’m Mastani, she/they/he pronouns, I’m a 1.5/2nd Generation Indian-American, and I cosplay and write fanfiction!

Q: How did you start creating in the fandom? What did you wish to bring into the fandom?

A: Almost five years ago, Laina @ohtheclevernessofme1972 convinced me to join the HPRP community. She and everyone else were so supportive of my desire to bring my culture and background to the Harry Potter characters. Eventually, I also started writing fanfiction again!

Q: What things about s/r as characters or in their relationship inspire you to create around them?

A: I think that they are very complex characters that really demonstrate how external factors affect your life, whether you like it or not. Their relationship, whether platonic, romantic, or anything in-between or outside, is also so fascinating in its potential to evolve. Wolfstar is constantly changing, and all its interpretations are totally feasible to imagine.

Q: What things would you like to highlight about the Wolfstar fandom and your experience in it?

A: My main dips into the fandom are when I cosplay Sirius, and every time, I feel so much love. The fandom is so open to any interpretations of Sirius, and it does wonders to make someone feel accepted.

Q: What type of content do you wish you saw more in the fandom?

A: This is entirely self-indulgent, but Godfather/Uncle!Sirius just make me feel so warm inside. There’s a love inside Sirius that only gets touched upon inside the books. AUs where he gets to interact with Harry as a child or teen outside the pressure of a war are just so calming and warming.

Q: What is your favourite wolfstar fancontent (fic/fanart/gifset/etc) and how does it inspire you?

A: Y’all, I have so many Wolfstar fics saved that are just stunning and several that are comfort fics. I think the biggest takeaway from all of them is the comfort the boys find in each other. All of them are AUs, and I’m inspired to depict my Wolfstar as something kind, gentle, and communicative.

Q: Which of your own identities inform your creative processes? How has that process been for you?

A: All of them! But more specifically, my racial background informs most of my process. My process is… Sporadic, to say the least. However, when I do get struck with an idea, I have to create it almost instantly. One example, Wolfstar-related, is that my Sirius cosplay has long hair, half-up in a bun. I feel like desi!Sirius would celebrate his heritage by growing his hair long, which also is a nice, “screw you,” to societal and familial constraints.

Q: What advice do you have for other content creators with diverse backgrounds in the fandom? What would you say to people that might feel they don’t have the “right” history/experience/characteristics to participate in the creation of content related to Wolfstar?

A: think the best advice for participation I have comes from the iconic Jay @siriussly-serious, Rest in Power. “Go. Get in. Dive in. Fucking head first. Fuck that, cannonball your butt right in there and make a damn splash…” There is no, “right,” history/experience/background. These characters are fictional, but they can reflect our world. Our world is not homogenous. So why should fictional worlds and characters be that way? These stories are ours, and we shape them to be whatever we want them to be. If you want to create, that’s all the prerequisite you need.

Q: How could we build a more diverse fandom?

A: This blog is a great example of how to build a diverse fandom. Celebrating creators with diverse backgrounds and being loudly supportive of them makes us want to stay. Finding communities that celebrate, not just accept, can make a world of difference. So, raise your voice and love on your favorite creators.

Q: What’s your favourite thing to modify in Sirius’s or Remus’s characterizations to bring new perspectives to them?

A: I’m a huge communicator, so improving character communication is something I love to do. I like to create fluff, and this change lets me focus on the gentler parts of Sirius and Remus, or the parts that need some love, e.g. mental health. It also lets me flesh out their senses of humor more, like their dislike of cats (in my headcanons).

Q: What does diversity mean to you? What does that encompass in fanish spaces?

A: Diversity means celebration. So in fan spaces, that means actively seeking out creators that you might otherwise miss. It means trying out new perspectives, or listening to new perspectives on your favorite characters. It means standing with your peers, being loud in your love and support of them. I’m not saying you have to reblog or comment on everything. Diversity is not just visual, it’s also mental. Diversity needs to be intentional and active, even if that takes place just in your head.

Q: What are your ideas about the notions of culture and ethnicity? How do you relate to those notions?

A: I find culture and ethnicity to overlap in many ways, as they both pertain to group characteristics. I’m not an anthropologist, so I don’t know the detailed differences between the two. However, in my quick searches, it feels, to me, that culture is a bit broader and ethnicity is more geographic. So, I’m culturally Indian-American and ethnically Gujarati Indian (Gujarat is the state in India). I find these notions to be helpful when defining and describing my experiences. For example, among desis (and other brown folks), saying I’m generation 1.5/2 tells them that I straddle American/Western and Indian culture. If I tell another Indian that I’m Gujarati, they instantly know the kind of foods I grew up with and the language my parents speak. It’s a streamlined way of explaining my experiences, and as a science brained person, it makes life easier for me.

Q: Is there a page/organization/institution you would recommend for fans to search/read when it comes to learning about diversity?

A: With the tool that is social media, there are so many activists and creators that are willing and able to teach about diversity. On my page, I keep a page titled, “Resources for Justice.” This page has a wide variety of social justice resources on it. Google is great, but you also want to cross-check your sources. However, I feel like the best way to learn is to ask questions. Do so respectfully and ensure the person you’re asking has the energy/time/compensation to answer. Especially if you’ve done some research ahead of time, I find that many folks are willing to have a discussion - but again, check with the person first. Trust is paramount in these conversations.

Q: Is there a project/organization that you want to hype?

A: Oh, I could name so many. However, the ones I want to shout out here are Chrysalis - Gender Identity Matters and Raze Collective. As many of you know, Jay @siriussly-serious passed away recently, and in his name, we’re promoting/donating to these charities. Chrysalis - GIM offers online and in-person mental health support for trans and nonbinary people in his area and Raze Collective supports LGBTQIA+ performers. Ami @ami-acts and a few others (I apologize for not remembering exactly who - I’ll message the mods if I remember/please add on if you know) organized this. Links are below.

Donate to Chrysalis - GIM here.

Donate to Raze Collective here.

Q: Leave us with a quote or work of art that always inspires you

A: Is it too cheesy to say all of our fandom? To be totally honest, that’s who/what inspires me most of all. It’s a work of art, all the people in it make our fandom a work of art!

#creator spotlight #desicosplay #cosplayer #writer #hp fandom #HPRP

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twiceblackvelvet · 4 years

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Soulmates?

requested!

Early rises and strolls to work for the opening shift are far more pleasant than imaginable. The sun rising slowly over the horizon whilst the pathways are clear of other people and hardly any cars noisily taking up road space. It’s calming, beautiful, in fact, to see the change in hues in the sky from a deep orange to a lighter yellow once it’s high enough above everything else. A camera roll full of pictures taken with the beams blazing down could never possibly do it justice, but it does help take off some of the chills during the winter months just looking at them.

It’s quite an easy job, truth be told, the only complication that ever presents itself is through difficult customers and they are few and far between thankfully. Doing the rounds to turn on all of the appliances and the fridge lights is a welcomed routine compared to the never-ending cleaning that comes with a closing shift. It should be a world record how long it takes to hoover the floors, mop them, and then try not to mess up all of that hard work by creating a shoe path through the wet flooring.

For the last six months, Mina has been working at the convenience store, and taking on every single shift her schedule will allow whilst still trying to continue her studies. Serving customers isn’t the be-all and end-all but she is grateful to have been offered the position with no experience in hospitality whatsoever. The owners had recently had to let go of one of their original employees after he was caught taking money from the register thus she was hired before even sitting the interview out of desperation to replace him.

Whilst there are a few customers who are tough to deal with, there are also the locals who are always full of small snippets about their lives, or, will simply offer a courteous smile if their own day is not going as planned. Her favorite, however, is watching all the young and in love couples enter the store together, there’s something about watching their small yet romantic gestures toward one another, and whilst the green-eyed monster known as jealousy would rear its head for anyone else, Mina merely longs to feel what they are one day with her true love.

A soulmate is a difficult thing to explain to anyone which is why it is taught and told from such a young age. The idea that there is one single individual wandering this Earth who is meant to be just as in love with you as you are them, and no one else seems unreasonable or forceful at best. Every relationship in life is significant and can work if each of you put in the work to make sure that it lasts. Just look at how often people will get attached to celebrity relationships, only for them to break up a few years down the line and people are convinced love isn’t real. In fact, there are many people during her life who have told her it was a crazy idea to hold out for ‘the one’.

However, Mina has always been a hopeless romantic and never been able to grasp the concept of dating multiple people when there is a very clear sign on her right hand linking her to the one she’s meant to be with. The one who will offer her a tingling feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever they exchange so much as a glance. The one who she’ll meet for the first time and something inside of her will click, telling her that they are the one for her. The one who will offer her endless reassurance whenever things in life get difficult. She’s always wanted it all, and more. But, they’ve yet to enter her life and whisk her off her feet.

Her mother would often share tales about meeting her father when they were younger, both of them too scared to reveal their markings, both of which being on their legs in the shape of a tiny rocket, to confirm what they had believed to be true, that they are soulmates. But, one day her father invited her mother to a break from an intense study session by going into his pool. They had both completely forgotten about having not shown their markings but as it turned out, they were the exact same. It was always Mina’s favorite bedtime story to hear about how her parents fell in love with each other, their own firm belief in soulmates only furthering her desire to find her own.

There were plenty of people during her early years that Mina thought were going to be the one, and rather than following entirely in her parents’ footsteps, she’d find any excuse to look at people’s right hand, such as holding their hand as she grabbed a skipping rope from them, or even going as far as gifting the girl next door an orange every single day on the bus to school until one day she took it with her right one. All of which failed miserably but she never gave up hope that one day it would simply happen without her having to think too much about it.

A small four-leaf clover resting directly in the palm of her right hand. It’s beautiful, and Mina often finds herself tracing it back and forth whenever she’s bored. Her father had explained to her that it must mean her life with her soulmate will be full of luck, but finding them alone will require a lot of luck, Mina isn’t so sure she’ll be gifted any more beyond that.

Today is no different from every other morning shift, no one bothers to enter for at least the first hour which means restocks and ordering anything that appears to be running low. The higher shelves she has to grab the old wooden ladders from the storeroom in the back, which, she’s convinced are going to one day give way and break causing her to crash through the display behind her. However, the manager, Mr. Kim, no matter how many times she asks him to get some new ladders simply states that he’s going to soon. When soon is exactly, Mina has no idea but she doubts it will be soon.

“Is anyone working?” A high-pitched voice calls out close to the counter. From her spot on the bottom rung of the ladders, Mina can only just say make out some brown hair.

The bell for the door to signal a customer had entered has clearly not done its job as Mina quickly rushes around to see who it is that’s waiting for her. Fortunately, it isn’t one of the angry customers who no doubt would have put in a complaint about her for not being at the counter, but instead, it’s Sana who works in the coffee shop just up the street and often calls in for a morning visit when they’re both on earlies. Mina thinks Sana has a sixth sense about this because they’ve never formally exchanged schedules with one another nor do they know each other beyond each other’s respective workplaces.

Sana’s own soul mark is directly under her left eye, a small golden star with sparks flying off of it. Mina adores it and finds that it makes Sana’s already beautiful eyes even more charming to look at.

“Ah, there you are Mina. Here, I brought you your usual. If the morning is kicking my ass, I know it is for you too.” Sana says as she hands over Mina’s usual order of an americano. Her eyes look tired and Mina can tell she isn’t fully present as of yet. “What were you doing? Do you know the bell is broken?”

“Restocks,” She quickly takes a sip of the piping hot drink, Sana subconsciously doing the same but regretting it when it burns her tongue a little. “Thank you for this. It was warm out on my walk-in but those clouds look threatening.” The pair of them look out the window to see the sky now lacking the sun-flamed sky that Mina adores and replaced by dark, overcast clouds. “No, I didn’t know the bell was broken until now, it seems everything is falling apart in here.”

“Did you get your new ladders yet?”

“Nope.” Mina pauses to look back toward where they’re just standing in the middle of an aisle and gives herself a mental reminder to move them once Sana leaves. “I’m thinking about just fetching my own in from home, we’re never going to get them and now, the bell probably won’t be fixed for the foreseeable.”

Sana’s eyes follow Mina’s toward the aisles and then drift up toward the bell above the door. She places her cup down onto the counter and taps Mina’s hand to get her attention back on herself.

“Don’t bring your own. I might know someone who can bring you some and fix the doorbell, you’ll still be here at 1 PM, right?”

“Yeah, I finish at 3, but you know he’ll never agree to pay for any repairs Sana, and especially not ones he hasn’t personally authorized”

“Don’t worry about it Mina, she owes me a favor anyway. Just take it as yet another act of kindness from your favorite and prettiest barista.” Sana chortles, fluttering her eyelashes.

“Oh, Jeongyeon is going to get some new ladders for me? I didn’t realize that’s what you meant.” Mina jokes knowing just how to make Sana a little jealous.

“Very funny, you know I meant myself, not her… Though now you’ve said it, you’re right, it could have meant her.” There’s a quick flash of Sana’s eyes unfocusing and drifting off likely to thoughts of her co-worker who she’s been dating for around a year. They aren’t soulmates but Jeongyeon isn’t a believer and Sana thinks she has too much love to give for one person. However, Mina has often caught Jeongyeon tenderly stroking Sana’s soul mark whenever they believe no one is around.

“Who is it?” Mina queries upon realizing Sana never said who it was that would be her savior.

“Hm? Oh… right. Don’t worry about it, just a friend of mine who can repair it for you.” Sana quickly looks up toward the clock on the back wall and picks her cup up from the counter before shifting toward the door, bell once again not working when she opens it. “Okay, I gotta go but 1 PM, be here not hiding in an aisle, or next time I might just snitch to Mr. Kim. Bye!” She shouts heading out before Mna can say goodbye in return.

It’s a fairly easy day, the weather does indeed end up turning sour as a downpour quickly starts not long after Sana had left and doesn’t ease up even for a second. There are only a handful of customers who enter and the majority of them are simply trying to escape the rain, which Mina is supposed to ask whether they’re going to purchase anything or not but she doesn’t have the heart to force them out into the cold, thus there was at one point just a collective of people stood by the door hoping for a dry spell that never arrives. They do all fortunately shuffle off one by one, all of which running to their cars or the next building for shelter.

By the time 1 PM rolls around, Mina had completely forgotten about her conversation with Sana. The ongoing entertainment of watching people force their jackets up over their heads whilst trying not to walk into streetlights had provided enough of a distraction for her. So, when someone with their coat up over their head holding a pair of ladders enters the shop, Mina simply believes they’re a customer.

The coat comes down to rest around her shoulders and reveals a face that is small yet striking. Eyes dark and wide, nose bright red from the cold, and the rest of her skin an olive color. She’s tall, quite tall in fact as she stands above the very ladders she’s holding around her left arm. A toolkit rests in her right hand, it’s small but looks heavy, however, if it is, the girl doesn’t let on as she carries it easily. Her frame hidden by the huge coat slumped around her but Mina finds her breathtaking and can’t quite remove her eyes from her face.

“Um… hello?” The girl waves a hand in front of Mina’s face dragging her out of the hypnosis she’s sure this girl had just put her under. “Are you Mina?” Yet again, Mina drifts off elsewhere upon hearing her name exit this girl’s mouth so softly.

“Y-Yes... I am… Mina. Yes. Sorry. I’m Mina.” She stutters, quickly trying to make even a slight bit of sense.

“Yeah, I got it the first time. Sana told me you need some ladders and your doorbell is broke?” The girl poses as a question but quickly gets to work looking at the doorbell which isn’t far away from her head but Mina would struggle to get anywhere close to reaching it. “Those are yours, by the way.” She points toward the ladders. They’re brand new, metal. Far sturdier than the wooden ones.

“Thank you, um…” Mina hesitates, realizing she hadn’t asked for the girl’s name as of yet, nor did Sana tell her who she was.

“Tzuyu.” She states flatly, never bothering to look back toward Mina whose eyes are piercing through the back of Tzuyu’s head never moving.

It doesn’t take her long to fix the doorbell. The batteries inside had managed to corrode and damaged some of the inner-wirings but luckily, Tzuyu had some spare on hand in her toolbox and got it back to signaling the door opening and closing in no time. Mina has no idea what Tzuyu has just technically done as she’s never been the most gifted when it comes to repairs, however, watching her weave the wiring together and connect all of the pieces back together certainly looked impressive.

There’s an awkward silence for a second as Tzuyu steps away from the door to finally look at Mina once again, neither of them knowing how to finish off this unpaid transaction of services.

“Um… Thank you,” Mina starts, but is unsure how to continue, just knows that she wants to continue talking. “So, Sana said you’re doing this as a favor to her?” Mina tries to ask, Tzuyu, however, moves to retrieve her toolkit from the ground.

“Yes. She’s a good friend.” Tzuyu says coldly, turning toward the door to leave but then swiftly back to the counter. “It was… It was nice to meet you, Mina.” Her voice more upbeat this time, yet forced as she outstretches her right hand in front of Mina.

Without hesitating, Mina grasps her hand in her own in a handshake. However, her skin immediately feels an electric shock the second their palms connect with one another, and Mina is stunned into just standing there frozen. Tzuyu is the first to pull her hand away which startles Mina back to reality realizing she wasn’t alone in feeling it. But, before she’s given the opportunity to talk to the girl in front of her the small four-leaf clover resting in the center of Tzuyu’s palm quietens any words that were close to escaping leaving them stuck in her throat.

Tzuyu catches sight of Mina’s same soul mark and immediately rushes out of the door and away from her without a word.

A big part of Mina is telling her not to be stupid, telling her not to risk her job by chasing after her and potentially being seen as a weird stalker. However, the other side that desperately wants to figure out if this moment is the one she’s been searching for, the one she’s been seeking since the very first time she was even told about soulmates. With the consequences for her actions at the very back of her head, she dashes out of the door following Tzuyu and runs to catch up with her, stopping outside of the coffee shop where Sana works as she grabs onto Tzuyu’s arm to stop her, the same shock feeling coursing across her skin as she does so.

“You have it too and you feel it. Tell me… that you feel that.” Mina huffs out, breath struggling to catch up to her.

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Tzuyu blurts out hurriedly upon noticing some eyes starting to watch on, her own eyes refusing to look at Mina. “Let me go.”

“No, I know you feel it. I saw you pull away just before… and you have the same mark like me. You know what this means, right?”

The silence between them returns as both Sana and Jeongyeon exit the coffee shop together to watch the interaction between the two girls unfold, a few people stop in the middle of the street to eavesdrop in, one of them even pulling out their phone to record it. Jeongyeon moves to ask them to put their phone away and they reluctantly comply.

“Is everything okay, Mina?” Sana asks.

“Yes, Sana, everything is fine.” Tzuyu answers for her. “Go back inside.”

The two girls shuffle back into the coffee shop, however, they remain by the door just in case whatever is happening between Mina and Tzuyu goes further downhill than it clearly already is even if neither of them will say why.

“Please, just say something… I know you have it too.”

“Look, Mina… I don’t know what kind of fantasy world you’ve created for yourself inside your head that you so clearly live in… but just because you have the same tiny little mark as someone doesn’t mean anything. Yes, everyday people rely on such a silly little thing to determine their entire lives, and good for them if that’s what they want. But it isn’t for me. You’re not for me.” Tzuyu’s voice cold and without any emotion whatsoever, and yet Mina can feel every single emotion inside herself all at once fighting for dominance over which one will retort back to her.

“But…” Mina barely whispers, unable to form a full sentence.

“But nothing, we just met.. You can’t really believe that we’re now supposed to spend the rest of our lives together because of that one single moment.” Tzuyu pauses, waiting to see if Mina will answer before continuing when she doesn’t. “Plus… I already… I already have a girlfriend.”

For the first time in her life, doubt about who she is supposed to spend her life with has managed to creep up and break down all of the previous standards for love Mina had put. Her hand uncurls itself from around Tzuyu’s arm and she sinks down to the floor because she’s right. All this time, Mina thought that having a soulmate or one set person who you’re supposed to always be with was how life is supposed to be, giving it far too much control and power over her to the point where she has likely pushed away plenty of others who would have no doubt made her happy, made her fall in love, and made her look forward to her future.

Instead, she’s given all of the power and control to someone she hadn’t even met yet. Now that she has, she realizes her mistake because Tzuyu could never be the one for her, even if the mark is there. They are not compatible whatsoever, not at this moment. Perhaps, during different times in their lives, they could be perfect for one another, and perhaps they could live out all of the things Mina has dreamed about. But Tzuyu is taken, and Mina is too much of a fantasist.

Mina can feel Sana and Jeongyeon slowly raise her up off the ground, however, her entire focus is on Tzuyu’s retreating figure walking away from her down the street. She can hear them talking to her and asking what has happened but her throat is unable to produce sound. Everything feels so cold and as if she’s surrounded by emptiness.

Perhaps, there is no such thing as soulmates after all. Perhaps, there never will be.

#twice imagines #twice scenarios #mina imagines #tzuyu imagines #mitzu #mina x tzuyu #kpop imagines #girl group imagines #kpop scenarios #girl group scenarios #twice angst #twice fic #mina #tzuyu #myoui mina #chou tzuyu

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x5red · 5 years

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Sixty fun & fascinating facts about the classic Supergirl (4 / 4)

At last, the final fifteen fun facts in a series to mark the sixtieth anniversary of Kara Zor-El’s debut in DC Comics. This is the last batch of Supergirl info-nuggets, bringing the trivia total up to sixty, one for each year since her introduction.

As before, each snippet of data relates to the original Supergirl, the intrepid Argo City teen who leapt from that crumpled Midvale rocket ship. Covering her original Silver and Bronze Age incarnation, in comics and on screen, each factoid is calculated to intrigue and delight – hopefully even seasoned Kara fans will find a few morsels of trivia that had previously escaped their attention.

So, one last time: enjoy…

46. At one point she was blacklisted from being mentioned in DC publications.

In 1985 to mark its 50th comicbook publishing anniversary DC Comics launched a mini-series, Crisis on Infinite Earths, that sought to rejig its entire fictional universe to better address the new, more mature, direct sales audience. Childish elements were removed and iconic characters rebooted. Superman was to be recast as the only survivor of Krypton, meaning Supergirl not only had to die but be erased from all past events too. DC, however, decided that erasing Kara from fictional history was simple not cruel enough -- in a move straight out of a George Orwell novel DC airbrushed her from in-real-life history too.

Supergirl became she who shall not be named, seemingly banned from being mentioned, even in the editorial pages. When DC couldn’t avoid using her name, as happened in Secret Origins #42 (July 1989) when discussing Phantom Girl’s first appearance, they masked it with asterisks like an expletive -- ”S*P*RG*RL”. DC even went as far as to exclude Kara from a bio of writer Paul Kupperberg in the pages of Power Girl #2 (July 1988), despite Kupperberg‘s long tenure as Supergirl’s chief writer, and Power Girl being a parallel-universe re-imagining of Kara. Yet the Maid of Might remained popular with at least some DC staffers, as Alan Brennert proved when Kara made a highly unauthorised crafty cameo in his Deadman story inside Christmas with the Super-Heroes #2 (1989) -- Brennert only avoided censorship thanks to DC editor-in-chief Dick Giordano volunteering himself to do the story’s artwork.

47. Prior to her role as Supergirl, Helen Slater had struggled with eating disorders.

In an obscure 1988 interview for UK tv with psychologist Oliver James, Helen Slater talked frankly about how winning the role of Supergirl helped in her ongoing battle with Anorexia and Bulimia. Asked about the cause of the conditions, “Control was one part of it”, Slater admitted, adding, “I think Bulimia especially, which I did suffer from from 13 [...] is a lot to do with not having a safe space to express anger.” She went on to credit her Supergirl fitness trainer, Alf Joint (“the most beautiful man in the world”) with overcoming some of her fears around food by using Chocolate Brazils (chocolate dipped nuts) as positive reinforcement after a hard training session.

48. She celebrated her 75th birthday in 2018.

It is generally accepted that Kara Zor-El’s birthday, when using the Gregorian calendar on Earth, is 22nd September. That date comes from a reply to a reader’s letter published in Adventure Comics #389 (Feb 1970), but said reply didn’t give the year of Kara’s birth, meaning readers couldn’t work out Kara’s age. (“One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age”, wrote Oscar Wilde, ”A woman who would do that would tell anything.”) Fortunately a little bit of detective work means that fans can work it out. A story in Action Comics #305 (Oct 1963) gives the date of Kara’s arrival on Earth as 18th May 1959, and both the Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #1 (Nov 1982) and Action Comics #270 (Nov 1960) suggest that Kara was 15 years old when she landed. This means that she was born in 1943. So, as of her most recent birthday at the time of writing (22nd September 2018), she would require 75 candles on her birthday cake. Good thing she has Kryptonian super-lungs..!

49. Her nickname was Hot Dog.

Every fan knows that Kara Zor-El is Supergirl, and that Supergirl is Linda Lee Danvers, but how many fans know that Linda Lee Danvers was also... “Hot Dog”..?!?!!

Yup, that was her name when she was dating Philip Decker, music conductor and part-time lecturer at Lake Shore University, Chicago. The pair’s romance had blossomed in the pages of Supergirl Vol. 2 thanks to a shared love of Jazz music, and they spent an increasing amount of time together in each other’s apartments. It was during one such session of intense snuggling that Philip let slip his nickname for Linda: “Hot Dog”, a name what was met with uncontrollable giggles from Linda.

50. Her makeup bag hid a couple of super secrets.

Of course, if you’re one of the world’s greatest superheroes it is important to look your best when saving the world, but Kara’s beauty kit not only helped keep her looking immaculate while fighting injustice, but also concealed a couple of tricks to keep her dual identity a secret too. In Action Comics #270 (Nov 1960) Kara celebrated her sixteenth birthday. Her gift from the Man of Steel was an innocent looking lipstick which, in reality, hid a secret compartment to stash her super-compressed costume. “If you ever have to conceal your costume quickly, or remove it to go swimming...”, explains Superman (perhaps anticipating other activities that a young woman might get up to that could require stripping off clothing.)

Years later, in Supergirl Vol. 2 #17 (Mar 1984), Kara added more secrets to her makeup bag when she finally decided to ditch her brunette Linda Danvers wig. She still needed a way to switch from Supergirl’s flowing blonde locks to Linda’s brunette bob, of course, and the alternative she devised was a special energized comb that reacted with colour-sensitive molecules to instantly transform her hair’s style and colour. Clever stuff..!

51. She and Brainiac 5 weren’t really an item.

Despite now being firmly romantically linked in the eyes of many comic fans, Brainiac 5 and Supergirl’s relationship only really became serious during the 1990s Earth Angel era. Back in the Silver Age, when the pair first met in Action Comics #276 (Apr 1961), Kara was initially weary of Brainy, recognising his family resemblance to Superman’s arch foe. Her attitude softened, however, as the story unfolded, even calling him “sweet” by its close. As the years rolled by Brainy is clearly smitten by Kara, but she rarely reciprocated his affections. Finally, in Legion of Super-Heroes Vol. 2 #294 (Dec 1982), Brainy brings matters to a close: “You remember that crush I had on you? [...] I think I’ve finally worked it out of my system.”. In response Kara teases, “Really? What a shame. Here I was, starting to think how cute you were.” (Needless to say, Brainy is left dumbfounded as Kara promptly flies off.)

Kara dated numerous men during the Silver and Bronze Age, including long-term relationships with Dick Malverne and Philip Decker, but these were generally in her Linda Danvers identity. Brainy is the closest thing “Supergirl” came to a boyfriend -- perhaps that’s why some fans like to focus more on him rather than Linda’s beaus.

52. She was a fan of The Bionic Woman.

One of the problems of being a superhero is that your evenings are often taken up saving the world, leaving little time to catch up with popular tv shows. But on her odd evenings off-duty, what was likely to be on the Maid of Might’s tv screen? Unsurprisingly, Kara seems to have been a fan of superheroine shows, as demonstrated by comments in Superman Family #184 (July 1977) while she was battling an unnaturally fierce electrical storm in the skies over Santa Augusta. “Great way to spend an evening out”, complains a frustrated Girl of Steel, “If this storm doesn’t let up, I’ll miss ‘The Bionic Woman--!’”

53. She was a big fan of seat belts and personal computers, apparently.

Being a superhero doesn’t pay very much, if anything at all. That’s why DC Comics always liked to line up product endorsements for its big stars, and the Girl of Steel was no exception. Supergirl’s first apparent appearance in adverts (outside of selling DC’s own magazines) was in a late 70s commercial for kid’s underwear, but pretty soon DC had secured more prestigious work for Kara when in 1981 they had her extol the virtues of Tandy’s new line of 8 bit micro computers. More important work came in the mid-80s, when Kara teamed up with Honda and the US Department of Transportation to promote the adoption of car seat belts. The Maid of Might appeared in two full-length give-away comics (and on-screen Helen Slater even appeared as Supergirl in a tv advert.) Kara was so committed to the cause of road safety that she even did the second give-away comic after her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths -- now that’s dedication for you..!

54. Only one woman worked on her comic-strip during the entire Silver and Bronze age.

It is a sad reflection of the industry in the 60s and 70s that if one totals up all the writers, artists, and editors, who worked on the Supergirl strip during the Silver and Bronze Age, there’s only one female name on the list: Dorothy Woolfolk. Editor for Supergirl Vol. 1 #1 (Nov 1972) only -- yup, a single issue -- Dorothy launched the Girl of Steel into her first self-titled comicbook before giving way to industry veteran Robert Kanigher for issue #2. Allegedly a larger-than-life figure, Dorothy was a rare example of DC allowing a woman to work outside of the romance genre during the Golden and Silver Age; she is even credited by some with suggesting the idea of Kryptonite to Superman writer Jerry Siegel.

(Away from Supergirl’s own strip, two other women briefly worked as editors on comics featuring the Girl of Steel in a guest capacity. Karen Berger and Laurie Sutton both edited 1980s Legion of Super-Heroes issues containing Kara cameos.)

55. Her most iconic costume contained a pair of clocks.

The problem with slinky skin-tight superhero costumes is that they don’t leave much room for the practical necessities of life... like pockets... or watches. But that never stopped the Girl of Steel from sneaking a few hidden practical elements into her outfits. Most fans know that the inner lining of her cape hides a secret pocket (where she stashes her everyday clothes when out superhero-ing), but how many fans realised that the three discs aligned over each hip on her iconic 70s hot pants outfit actually acted as a pair of clocks? According to Krypton Chronicles #2 (Oct 1981), by placing three fingers on the discs over her right hip Kara is telepathically informed of the time in New York (her then home), while the same action on her left hip reports the time in Kandor (Krypton’s capital, famously miniaturised in a bottle by Brainiac.)

56. The USA was actually one of the last countries to see the Supergirl movie.

The Girl of Steel may have been able to zip around the world in an instant, but apparently her movie couldn’t. After opening on Thursday 19th July 1984 in the United Kingdom, then days later in Ireland and Japan, the movie slowly made its way around the world, opening in the Philippines, Australia, and Spain during August, and then France and Canada during October. By mid-November, however, American audiences were yet to see the Maid of Might grace cinema screens.

The delay was caused by Warner Bros. withdrawing from its US distribution deal near the end of production, causing producers to scramble for a replacement. Eventually, on Wednesday 21st November -- over four months after the UK debut -- the Supergirl movie hit US cinema theatres thanks to fledgling distributor TriStar Pictures, but with almost 20 minutes of material chopped out. It wasn’t until 1998 that the full international cut was legitimately available in the US thanks to an Anchor Bay VHS video release.

57. She was Wonder Woman’s sister.

Incredible as it may seem, for a brief period Supergirl was Wonder Woman’s sister. The incident happened in Supergirl Vol. 1 #9 (Dec 1973) after Kara finally had enough of being two-timed by boyfriends as Linda Danvers, and hit upon by men as Supergirl. When Kara bravely rescues an Amazon warrior ship under attack by fierce sea creatures, Queen Hippolyta offers to adopt her as a daughter, making Kara the sister of Princess Diana (aka Wonder Woman.) Realising that the Amazon’s island home is free of men, Kara accepts, but a medical emergency forces her back out into the Man’s World to seek the ingredients for a serum. With the emergency over, Kara considers that maybe she was too hasty in turning her back on all men, and leaves her new Amazon home to give them a second chance.

58. She valued her privacy.

When you have as many extraordinary abilities as the Girl of Steel, the usual fears and phobias just don’t apply. Why be afraid of heights when you can fly? Why be afraid of snakes when your skin is not only fang proof, but bullet proof? But Daring New Adventures of Supergirl #4 (Feb 1983) revealed that there’s one thing guaranteed to make Kara Zor-El flee in terror -- fear of having her everyday identity exposed. The issue sees Kara hypnotised into seeing her greatest fear by the villain Ms. Mesmer: as a result Supergirl continually sees her Linda Danvers identity reflected back at her in windows and mirrors. Convinced that everyone can see through her disguise, Kara seeks solace with her adopted parents. It is only thanks to the calming influence of her mother, Edna Danvers, that Kara has the courage to go back out onto the streets as Supergirl to defeat Ms. Mesmer.

59. Her first kiss was with a very hirsute Jimmy Olsen.

The opening season of the Supergirl tv show teased a possible romance between Kara and James Olsen, and in some ways this echos very early Supergirl stories where the pair were occasionally seen as a potential love-match. Indeed Jimmy Olsen was actually Kara’s first kiss, although the event came about in a highly unorthodox way. The pages of Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #44 (Apr 1960) saw Jimmy transformed into a werewolf, and Superman reasons that the curse can only be lifted by the kiss of a young girl. In steps a fifteen year old Kara Zor-El, who gives the cub reporter a delicate peck on the lips, reversing the spell. A year later Jimmy managed to turn himself into a werewolf for a second time(!) in Superman's Pal Jimmy Olsen #52 (Apr 1961), but Kara’s kiss proved ineffective that time.

60. She didn’t entirely die in Crisis on Infinite Earths.

Obviously it is a matter of record that the original Kara Zor-El gave up her life in Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 (Oct 1985) – at least until DC later saw fit to retcon that particular story line – but in their attempts to erase the Maid of Might from existence, DC had forgotten about a rather inconvenient story published just a year before, in Supergirl Vol. 2 #19 (May 1984).

The tale dealt with a Supergirl clone who had assumed the identity of Linda Danvers. The clone had no super powers, but she did have all of Kara’s memories and personality. The story ends with a twist: rather than take the easy way out by having clone-Kara conveniently fall under the wheels of a speeding bus, writer Paul Kupperberg has the two Kara’s work out a deal. ”It’s a big world out there… with plenty of room for two people with this face!“, explains Supergirl, “We can find a place for you… a name of your own…” And with that the two Karas go their separate ways, meaning that although superpowered-Kara may have surrendered her life in Crisis, powerless-Kara (her clone) presumably continued to live out a regular life anonymously somewhere in America.

And that’s it -- all sixty..! Thanks for reading, Hope you enjoyed the series and learned at least a few snippets of trivia along the way that you found amusing or thought-provoking.

Don’t forget to come back in 2048, when it will be time to celebrate the 60th anniversary of the Matrix Supergirl... Or maybe not..!

#supergirl #superhero #superman #dc #comics #superheroine #dccomics #silver age #bronze age #comicbooks #lex luthor

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elisadeveloping-extendedpractice · 5 years

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Limitations and strengths of podcasts

‘The traditional limitations of the podcast form create much of its appeal: Listening to a story without visuals feels intimate. Restricting podcasts to audio encourages a small, loyal audience—but it also poses a hurdle for increasing their audiences. There's no easy way to share snippets of audio files through social media, and no easy access to shows outside of the Apple Podcasts app; those steep barriers to entry have resulted in a vast untapped audience of not-yet-listeners. This is the year when the podcast medium will prove whether it can reach listeners beyond its largely white, wealthy, and educated core. Through experiments with multimedia and even new distribution models, we're about to find out just how far podcasts can spread. Serial is just the start.’

To cater to listeners accustomed to three-minute songs, Riggs and his team break episodes into smaller chapters, unlike the hour-long episodes available on the Podcasts app. "From a streaming perspective, we think about it as a continuous listening experience—people will listen for a bit on their commute or at the gym," says Riggs. "Taking an hour-long experience and breaking it into chapters seemed like a seamless way for users to digest this content."

Experimenting with MultimediaIf you want to respond to a ridiculous tweet, you can embed a GIF on Twitter. If you want to share your favorite moment from last night’s TV episode, you can upload a video on Instagram. But there’s no easy way to share podcasts, other than posting the external link to a full episode and explaining which part of it you like best. For a medium that relies on personal recommendations, that's an especially cumbersome problem."Podcasts largely rely on word of mouth," says Anne Wootton, co-founder and CEO of Pop-Up Archive, which transcribes podcasts, and Audiosear.ch, which makes them visually searchable. "It's much less common for people to come across an excerpt or a clip on Twitter or on Facebook."

But for podcasts to scale up, creators need to reach listeners outside of the echo chamber—and enable those listeners to share with their networks. "Fundamentally, for audio to become more of a mass medium," says Wootton, "shareability and accessibility are crucial."

WIRED Magazine online

Connection makes people feel less alone - like You, Me and the Big C

Guardian: ‘Normalising discussions of cancer was Bland’s mission from the start. “We wanted to create a space where you feel like you’re sitting down having a cup of tea, talking about it like it’s EastEnders,” she explained when I interviewed her in June, only days after she had announced her terminal diagnosis. I was nervous to meet her, but we had a ball. “When you have a conversation about cancer,” she told me, almost to comfort me, “you normalise it.”Above all, Bland reminded me how social media can still be a huge force for good. She had found personal comfort from people sharing their cancer stories, so she continued to share hers. Her treatments, her days out with her husband and young son – and her race to write a memoir for him – were all documented with purpose and beauty. Her last post underlined that her podcast will continue, with James and Mahon in charge.’

Spotify has been working on building out its podcast business, and now offers a large catalog of shows (including our own Original Content, which you should definitely check out). Today, it’s debuting a new “multimedia format” that adds visual elements to podcasts (as well as audiobooks, news bites, and other audio, but for the sake of simplicity, let’s just call all that ‘podcasts’).

The launch of Spotlight is going to feature stuff from Gimlet Media, Crooked Media, Cheddar, BuzzFeed News and others, and will also include original series created by Spotify itself, like RISE, Secret Genius and its Spotify Singles session series with various artists.

Spotify’s original content hasn’t had a spectacular start out of the gate (Singles being the one exception) but this new format could be a way to help give it a boost. It could also help Spotify differentiate its podcast offering, among legacy leaders like Apple Podcasts, which still dominates in terms of overall market share.

Spotlight will offer up content in playlist format, which visual elements available on devices using the Spotify app. It’s a bit like the rich media MP3 podcasts that some creators take to the time to build, which have dynamically changing album artwork, as well as embedded links, chapter markers and more. These aren’t supported by every podcast player, however, so it’s rare that podcast producers will take the time to build them in. Spotify’s Spotlights will include photos, videos, and text in addition to audio, and is rolling out to U.S. users first.

Perhaps becoming too visual will shy away from much of the appeal of a podcast that a story without visuals feels intimate.

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hecamity · 7 years

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this is all that’s left to look at

a/n: here it is, my submission for this year’s irbb!! it’s my first time writing ir so i was incredibly nervous. i want to give huge, huge thanks to @daethberry for putting up with me, throwing out some ideas for the fic, giving advice & looking over the first half of the fic back in decemeber, @sequencefairy for being so sweet & helpful. thank you so much for beta’ing this incredibly long mess of a fic! the final result wouldn’t be what it is without your help! & finally, @princessmariedeathberry for being the best irbb partner i could ask for and throwing in some amazing suggestions for the fic (including the title of the fic). this is only the 1st chapter of the fic. you guys can check out the rest of the story on ao3.

ao3: ch. 1 | ch. 2 | ch.3 | ch. 4 | ch. 5 | ch. 6

*(edits with more art to be made later on) links to @princessmariedeathberry ’s art: 1

summary: Kurosaki Ichigo’s the lead singer in one of the most successful J-rock bands. Kuchiki Rukia is a Japanese native who’s gained international recognition for her outstanding vocal and dancing skills as a member in one of K-pop’s most iconic girl groups. They are now engaged to be the next virtually married couple on a variety TV show where they’ll be expected to complete weekly missions and live the newlywed life. An IR We Got Married AU full of pure, tooth-rotting IR fluff we all deserve.

“So, I was informed this morning you’ve been cast as one half of the next couple on We Got Married, Kuchiki.” Kuchiki Rukia, who was currently sitting across from her long time manager and close confidant Matsumoto Rangiku, in a trendy little café not far from her group’s entertainment company, nearly choked on the sip of scalding hot tea she had just taken at the sudden remark.

The taller blonde woman snorted in amusement and took a sip of her iced coffee. “Careful now, Rukia-chan.” Rangiku shifted to pull her bag closer to her and withdrew a yellow manila folder, sliding it across the table.

Rukia knew that because her group had had their comeback two weeks prior, she and her members would be making many variety show appearances for promotions but she hadn’t expected the casting on We Got Married. The petite vocalist let out a tired sigh. “Is it necessary?”

Having debuted nearly 7 years ago at the age of eighteen as a part of LUNA, an internationally and domestically revered idol group had definitely made her a variety show veteran but she wasn’t sure how she felt about having to pretend to be married.

Rangiku only gave her a pointed look and Rukia knew exactly what that look was trying to convey.

You know it is.

The smaller woman fiddled with the tea bag in her drink and sighed in defeat. “What’s in the folder?” She jerked her chin in the offending object’s direction.

“That, my dearest, contains your potential husbands for the next few months.” Rangiku grinned mischievously. “I’d choose wisely if I were you.”

Rukia raised her eyebrows in surprise. “I get to pick?” She didn’t know she’d get some kind of say in the deal.

Rangiku shrugged. “I mean your pick isn’t set in stone exactly, but the producers asked that you list them in order of preference and that they would do their best in casting.”

She immediately reached for the folder and tore it open.

There were a total of five profiles: the first one was a much older and well-known comedian she’d met several times, two actors she’d met at awards ceremonies and was well-acquainted with, and a solo musician that she hadn’t quite spoken much to before aside from quick greetings at music shows. The final profile though had caught her eye immediately.

Kurosaki Ichigo.

Her violet eyes caught sight of the small photo the profile provided and traced the familiar features of his handsome face: the always-present scowl, his amber eyes, and of course, his head of orange hair.

She hadn’t personally met him before, but she was no stranger to who he was; she enjoyed the music his band produced since their debut a few years ago. The last few months had seen a sudden popularity of the group in South Korea, their music making it onto the airwaves.

She’d also seen several interviews and he seemed like a very genuine person: passionate, kind, talented and she guessed he maybe had a temper. It could be interesting.

Rukia smirked to herself and reached for a pen to fill out the sheet the show producers had provided her.

In the number one spot she wrote, neatly: Kurosaki Ichigo.

One week later

Kurosaki Ichigo let out a long sigh and tapped his foot impatiently against the carpeted floor as he waited for Urahara Kisuke, the CEO and founder of UK Entertainment, the entertainment company he was signed to, to enter the room. The young musician had been called in for a meeting and had been waiting for the last half hour in the large office of Urahara’s entertainment company’s Seoul location.

The room was completely silent bar for his rhythmic tapping, the ticking of the clock on the wall, and some occasional sighing. His amber eyes wandered the room looking for any sort of entertainment, eventually settling for looking outside the large glass window with a great view of the busy streets and crowds in the Gangnam district of Seoul.

It had been nearly a month and a half since his and his band’s arrival in South Korea; HOLLOW had been active in Japan for six years now and with their newest album, their band had begun to gain a huge international following.

Urahara had thought that the next step for the band should be to promote in South Korea, one of the countries where they had gained a lot of recognition. They would promote their most recent album while working on a brand new one in Korean, which was to be released within the next year.

Ichigo’s crowd watching was interrupted when at last Urahara made his appearance. “Ichigo,” the older man smirked as he navigated towards his desk to take a seat. “You’re looking handsome today.” Ichigo rolled his eyes in response and ceased his tapping.

“And you’re late,” he deadpanned.

“I know, I know—but I’m a busy man,” Urahara pulled out some folders from a drawer in his desk. “So, Ichigo, I’ve called you in to share some news.”

Ichigo only raised his eyebrows at his light-haired boss and waited for him to continue. “You were offered a spot on We Got Married. I accepted the casting offer on your behalf. Filming starts next week.” Urahara gave him an expectant grin but only received a blank stare in return.

Ichigo certainly wasn’t an expert in Korean variety shows but the name of the show rung a bell and from the title, he wasn’t sure he liked the sound of it. He wracked his brain in attempt to recollect anything about the show.

He felt his stomach drop when realization came through; he vaguely remembered snippets of it from when he’d visit back home; his younger sister Yuzu was a fan of the show.

“No.” Ichigo made an attempt to stand from his chair but Urahara stood from his faster, making his way around to position himself in front of his longtime employee, blocking his exit.

“Urahara, do I really look like the type to do variety—especially a show in where I have to pretend to be married?” The orange haired singer gave him his best scowl.

“Well, no,” Urahara was frank. “but it’s good exposure for you and your promotions here. I wouldn’t worry too much. I’m sure you’ll be able to charm the audiences somehow—you do have quite the fan base already.”

“My Korean still isn’t that good.”

“You don’t have to worry about that. Yoruichi will be around and there’ll be a lot of help with the translating if need be,” Urahara crossed his arms crossed his chest and gave him a winning grin. “You really don’t have much say in this, Kurosaki.”

Ichigo knew he didn’t but that didn’t mean he couldn’t try. Closing his eyes and letting out a long sigh, Kurosaki Ichigo resigned himself to his fate.

“Can I at least know who,” he cringed at the next words that came out of his mouth, “I’m marrying?”

“That, Kurosaki, you will find out come next week when filming begins.” Urahara’s gray eyes travelled to his wristwatch. “Ah, well that’s all I had to say. If you’ll excuse me, I’ve got another meeting I’m running late for.”

With a smirk on his face and a quick pat to Ichigo’s shoulder, Urahara briskly walked out of the room, leaving behind an irritated musician.

Rukia looked around the large room curiously. This was where she would be stopping by every week to be interviewed for We Got Married. The walls were completely black and in front of her were several cameras, producers, and other staff.

Rukia ran her fingers through her hair as one of the producers made sure her microphone was properly attached to her top.

“Are we ready to shoot?” asked the cameraman, peeking out from behind the camera. The producer gave Rukia a warm smile that she returned and shot the director a signal. “We’re ready.”

“We’ll begin with you introducing yourself,” the cameraman instructed. “And…we’re rolling.”

The petite vocalist gave her best smile at the camera. “Hello, I’m Kuchiki Rukia from LUNA and I’m 25 years old. I’m very happy to be here and I look forward to the married life.”

Unbeknownst to her, Ichigo was sitting a few rooms away, waiting for his own introductory interview to begin.

It was a new week—the start of December, and the gray skies outside quite seemed to capture his mood. He currently lounged, mug of coffee in hand, inside of moderate-sized apartment in Seoul as he waited for the camera crew to arrive.

It’s way too early for this, Ichigo thought to himself as he stared blankly at the TV that played a variety show he could hardly understand. He knew he needed to get himself perked up and to appear somewhat approachable for filming.

He was about to take another sip of his coffee when his phone buzzed next to him. He unlocked his phone to see a text message from Shihouin Yoruichi, his longtime manager.

I’m outside with the camera crew, Kurosaki. Let us in and remember to wipe your permanent scowl off your face.

Twenty minutes later, he found himself surrounded by lights, several cameras, and a crew of about 15 people. He was rather overwhelmed, to say the least.

“Are you ready to start filming?” the producer in charge asked Ichigo in Japanese. The musician looked towards Yoruichi, who only shrugged at him.

“I’m ready,” Ichigo replied. He ran a hand through his hair awkwardly. “So, what do I need to do?”

“Just relax. Show us around a bit so we can get some shots—people will be curious about how you live.”

Ichigo nodded and began to lead the camera crew around. “There’s not much to see, really.” He demonstrated his clean and fully stocked kitchen that garnered impressed murmurs from some of the staff. He led them back into his living room and watched as the cameramen walked around documenting his bookshelves that housed his extensive manga collection, the 3 different guitars he kept in a corner, several figurines he’d collected over the years, and the picture frames of his family he’d hung on his wall.

After a few minutes of them filming his apartment, the producer walked up to him. “We’re ready to start filming you now—just remember to act natural. Pretend the cameras aren’t around.” She extended a hand and offered him a red envelope. “In this envelope is your first mission.”

Swallowing hard, Ichigo took a seat on his couch and opened the envelope. It took him a good moment before he was able to decipher the Hangul characters.

TO: Kurosaki Ichigo

FIRST MISSION: Decide a time and place for your first meeting and notify your wife.

Below is her contact information.

“I’m supposed to pick a place?” Ichigo glanced up and back down at the card. The orange haired musician was stumped. He didn’t know who the person would be or what she could possibly like. He also didn’t want to go for something mediocre like a café.

Wait, why did do I even care this much? I don’t even want to do this.

“Does anyone know any good places in Seoul?” he asked the crew hopefully, eliciting some laughter.

Left to figure something out on his own, Ichigo took out his cellphone and began to research ‘good places to take your virtual wife on a first date is it even a date’.

He’d clicked the first link:“10 Things to do with your Significant Other in Seoul during the Holiday Season”.

He scrolled down the list slowly, rejecting the first few options until his eyes landed on number nine: Ice-skating.

Ice-skating could work; it was fun and it could help alleviate some of the awkwardness that was sure to come with first meetings. Ichigo looked up and mumbled, “I think I know the place.” He still felt a bit out of place with the cameras around and he had to keep talking despite not having anyone to converse with other than himself.

Now came the hard part. He had to notify her. Should he text her? He was sure the crew expected him to make the phone call but he wasn’t certain. “Do I call her?” he asked in clumsy Korean.

Yoruichi, who stood with some of the crew in a corner, shook her head at him but was relieved to see most of the crew was amused at his awkwardness. The producer in charge gave him an encouraging nod.

With a long sigh some of the crew snickered at, Ichigo grabbed his phone once more and opened up the dial pad. He carefully tapped in the phone number provided on the card and without hesitation pressed the call button, setting the phone on speaker, ignoring the way his chest tightened a bit—he was most definitely not nervous.

The first ring filled the silence in the room. Ichigo tapped his foot anxiously as he waited. Two more rings. Click.

You’ve reached the voicemail of—

The orange haired musician looked up at the crew. “She didn’t pick up.” He stated the obvious. “I’ll try calling again.”

Rukia sat in her own apartment, surrounded by cameras and staff from the TV show. Her phone had rung at least four times already. She snickered as she saw her screen light up again, with another incoming call.

She knew it was her “future husband” calling and she wanted to mess with him a little. Rukia would answer the phone call—eventually.

“Gonna make him sweat a little.” She smirked mischievously. Once more, she rejected the call after letting it ring a few times.

Almost immediately after, her phone lit up once more with an incoming call. She looked up at the crew surrounding her with a playful smile and hovered her thumb over the answer button. “I think I’ll take the call now.”

With a swipe from her thumb, she let the call go through. She was getting curious to see if she’d be able to tell who her chosen partner was from his voice. “Hello?”

“Finally.” She heard a short grumble in Japanese. Rukia resisted smiling—it seemed that they were able to cast her first choice after all.

“This is—uh, this is your partner from the show,” the deep voice on the other line began awkwardly. “I was calling to give you a meeting location and a time.”

“You’re quick and to the point,” Rukia replied teasingly. “I’m doing fine, thank you. How are you doing?”

There was a deep sigh and a moment of silence before he responded. “I’m sorry—I hope you’re doing well. I hoped you would be alright to meet at Seoul Plaza tonight at 7PM?”

She raised her eyebrows at the mention of Seoul Plaza. “What are we going to be doing?” Rukia asked curiously.

“You’ll find out tonight. Dress warmly—and I hope you’re not as bad at telling the time as you are at answering phone calls.” Click.

Rukia scoffed. “He hung up on me.” She had assumed right. He definitely had a temper. She glanced back down at her phone and noticed it was only 10 AM. She had several hours to prepare.

Perhaps she had riled him up a bit too much and should make some kind of peace offering.

She was no expert in the kitchen, so cooking and baking were out of the question.

She was, however, rather great at drawing;, she made sure to include a drawing in her monthly letters to her Nii-sama and he told her she’d improved quite a lot. The other members of LUNA also complimented her drawings when she showed them her sketchbook.

The petite, raven-haired vocalist stood from her spot and dashed to get her sketchbook.

WEEK 1 – First Date

It was a few minutes before their scheduled first meeting and Ichigo stood at the entrance of the large skating rink that took up a majority of Seoul Plaza. The bitter winds nipped at his face as he waited for his “future bride” to show up.

Several cameras and plenty more staff than earlier that day surrounded him, he shifted awkwardly in attempts to ignore curious eyes from passersby and skaters alike. He also felt incredibly silly; one of the producers had forced him to wear a hat to cover his hair “because it would make him too recognizable”, large sunglasses despite it being night time, and a black scarf that completely covered his face.

All in all, Ichigo felt ridiculous but that came as no surprise as he felt that the entire situation he was stuck in was completely that.

He scanned the crowds of people, keeping them peeled for someone wearing a matching hat, sunglasses, and a white scarf, as the mission card he had received upon his arrival had told him to do.

Another few moments of people watching and his eyes finally caught sight of a head in a hat similar to his own bobbing, the approaching small figure attempting to weave in and out between the crowds of people much taller than them.

Was that her?

Ichigo stood straighter and tried to ignore the sudden bout of nerves that overcame him when he noticed one of the many cameras begin to shift, the staff also having caught sight of the approaching figure.

The figure’s direction became more certain the closer they came, and Ichigo was now 100% certain that this was his wife. The hat she was wearing was identical to his, a white scarf hid practically half her face, and a pair of sunglasses hid the other half.

With a better view of his wife-to-be, he was indeed able to confirm that she was very tiny, her body engulfed by a long, lavender winter coat, and her hands hidden by woolen mittens. Ichigo could see the curled ends of raven colored hair brushing her shoulders.

“Hello,” her voice was muffled but Ichigo could tell it was a hint amused. She bowed respectfully at the cameras and staff before turning back to him and offering a small mitten-covered hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

Ichigo lightly grabbed at her hand and stiffly bowed, mumbling, “nice to meet you.” She laughed quietly at his awkwardness.

“What an interesting choice for our first meeting,” She continued smoothly, transitioning from Korean into Japanese.

Ichigo’s eyes widened in response to the sudden change of language, “you can speak Japanese? Wait how did you know…?”

“Shall we remove all this? The scarf is kind of suffocating and as great as I look in these sunglasses, I kind of feel weird wearing them at night.” Rukia ignored his question, as she reached for the scarf around her neck.

Ichigo froze momentarily as he watched her unravel the scarf. She wrapped it around her arms and looked up at him expectantly, her hands suspended on her sunglasses.

“Aren’t we supposed to be doing this at the same time?”

“Er…yeah, sorry.” Ichigo quickly ripped off the scarf and hesitantly reached for the sunglasses. Now that the scarf was no longer covering half her face, Ichigo was able to see a smirk grace her face.

“On the count of three?” She asked, her hands still hovering over her sunglasses.

Ichigo nodded in confirmation.

“One.”

“Two.”

“Three!”

They both ripped off the sunglasses, her a bit clumsily due to her mittens and Ichigo’s breath caught in his throat.

Violet irises met amber ones and Ichigo could see mirth dancing within them. Now that her face was completely exposed, realization dawned on him.

“Kurosaki Ichigo, it’s very nice to meet you in person.” Rukia kept smirking as she smoothly slid the sunglasses into her coat pocket.

“Do you know who I am?” she asked as she wrapped the scarf back around her neck, less tightly than before.

Without a doubt, Ichigo recognized the small woman in front of him. His younger sister Yuzu was a fan of Kuchiki Rukia and of the group she was a part of. She also had an immense fan base in Japan and although she was not as active as an entertainer over there as she was in South Korea, it was impossible not to recognize who she was.

“You’re Kuchiki Rukia,” he replied right away. “Do you know me?” Rukia snorted at his question.

“Of course I know you,” she stepped away from him and gestured towards the skating rink ahead of them. “Now aren’t we here to skate? What are we waiting for?”

“Oh—yeah,” Ichigo had forgotten for a moment where they were standing. Rukia shifted closer to him to get into line for renting out skates. Ichigo noticed that she hardly reached his shoulder

“I see you were able to make it in time.” Ichigo brought up nonchalantly. Rukia narrowed her eyes at him.

“If there’s one thing I am—it’s most definitely punctual.” She crossed her arms across her chest.

“Well, I just figured you may have trouble with getting to places on time considering you’re not very good at answering phone calls.”

Rukia scoffed. “I’m very good at answering phone calls if they’re from people I want to speak with.”

Ichigo’s eyebrows shot upward and scowled at her. Not even ten minutes together and she was already irritating him. So she hadn’t been answering on purpose.

Ichigo was about to retort when the woman renting out skates interrupted him; “Good evening, what size?”

A few minutes later, the new couple found themselves once more at the entrance of the rink. Ichigo was lacing up his skates and glanced up to see that Rukia had already finished putting hers on. “Have you ever been ice skating?”

She looked down upon hearing his question and shook her head. “Nope, never.”

At her response, Ichigo cursed himself internally. He hadn’t thought that perhaps she might not know how to skate.

Together, the two of them carefully approached the ice. “Just step on to it carefully. Here you can hold on to…” He let himself trail off, stunned and hand suspended midair, as he watched the raven-haired vocalist glide gracefully past him.

“Aren’t you coming, Kurosaki?” She grinned at him expectantly, before spinning around skillfully to join the other evening skaters.

Ichigo let out a sigh of aggravation, determined to catch up.

After an hour of Rukia outskating Ichigo, and her laughing at his irritation, the couple found themselves sitting in a nearly empty café. They sipped their teas in silence, a large slice of cake set in between both of them. The only sound was the quiet chatter of the few patrons surrounding them and the soothing Christmas music playing over the speakers.

Rukia lifted her gaze from her steaming cup to observe the orange haired musician in front of her. He didn’t seem like much of a talker, but he had definitely been too quiet since they left the rink. His lips were turned downward into a slight scowl.

“Are you sulking?” Rukia asked. Ichigo looked up, startled out of his thoughts and scoffed.

“I am not sulking.”

“You are so sulking! Is it because I’m a better skater than you?”

“You told me you’ve never skated before!” Rukia snorted at his aggravation and took another sip of her tea. “Eh, it was a little white lie. I wanted to surprise you.”

“You also admitted to not answering my phone calls on purpose.”

“I wanted mess with you a little,” Rukia teased back. Ichigo gave her a blank look and she sighed a little.

“Okay, okay, so maybe I messed with you a little too much today,” Rukia put her mug down and turned around to reach inside her coat’s pocket. She pulled out a large pink envelope and offered it to him with a small smile. “This is my peace offering. I hope you like it.”

Ichigo raised an eyebrow and cautiously took the envelope from her hands. He carefully and slowly opened the envelope, trying to ignore the way her eyes lit up and her little wiggle of anticipation as he pulled out the card from the envelope.

The front of the card only had: To my ‘future husband’ written on it. He opened the card and nearly choked on his spit at what was inside.

The inside of the card was decorated with what seemed to be poorly drawn…bunnies? He assumed that these bunnies were supposed to be them as one of them had a mop of orange hair and the other shoulder length black hair. The bunnies were drawn in what seemed to be wedding attire; bunny Ichigo wearing a black tuxedo and bunny Rukia a wedding dress.

She had written underneath the drawing; I look forward to the married life!

“What do you think?” Rukia looked up at him with a child-like enthusiasm, seemingly anticipating his reaction. “Aren’t they cute?”

“I wouldn’t quite call them cute,” Ichigo said, with a snicker. Rukia narrowed her eyes and frowned at him, crossing her arms across her chest.

“So what would you say they are then?” She challenged, her gaze was piercing. Ichigo leveled his own stare at her and smirked.

“They’re hideous.”

Rukia’s mouth dropped open and she let out a huff. “Excuse me?” Ichigo sniggered at her reaction. “I said they were hideous.”

Rukia continued to glare at him but Ichigo’s merriment at her anger was short lived. He groaned in pain when he felt a sharp kick to his shin. Ichigo whipped his head up to glare at the petite woman sat in front of him.

“What the hell, Rukia?”

“You’ve obviously got no taste in art. And it’s Kuchiki-san to you.”

“If anyone’s got no taste in art it’s you.” he retorted with a scowl. “You should stick to singing and dancing because drawing is definitely not your thing.”

“You are so lucky we’re sitting in a middle of a café, Kurosaki.” Rukia deadpanned. She let out a breath in an attempt to compose herself. “I can’t believe I’m stuck with you for the next few months.”

“I can’t believe I’m stuck with you for the next few months. If I’d of known you’d turn out to be a lying, violent, midget who doesn’t answer phone calls on purpose...” he muttered to himself, ignoring Rukia’s protesting.

“Besides,” Ichigo continued, “you obviously drew this before meeting me.” He lifted the card and pointed at the bunny that was obviously drawn to be him. “You knew I’d be your partner. How?”

Rukia wiped her face of all expression and shrugged at him, picking up her mug of now cold tea to take a sip. “I’m not obliged to share anything with you.”

“You were probably tipped off. That’s—that’s cheating.”

“It isn’t cheating, you fool. This isn’t a board game.”

“I’ve known you no more than two hours and you’re already the most infuriating person I’ve ever met.” Ichigo groaned and resisted dropping his head on the table.

Rukia snorted and slid the plate of cake closer to her, finally taking a bite. “Just for that I’m not sharing this with you.”

That of course, led to more bickering. The pair was completely immersed in their argument, completely unaware of the exasperated looks most of the staff were exchanging with one another.

One of the baristas stood by the table with a black, velvet box and red envelope in her hand, wary of approaching the bickering couple. She turned and gave the camera crew a look that said, Are you sure it’s okay for me to be interrupting this?

It was needless to say that the looks she received in return were pleading.

With a nervous sigh, the barista approached the musicians. “Excuse me.” her voice was bashful but firm. “I’ve come to give this to you.” She bowed respectfully as she placed the items on the table and then shuffling away.

Both Ichigo and Rukia reached for the items at the same time, the petite vocalist beating him to it. She grinned at his scowl and opened the envelope first. She cleared her throat and read aloud the mission card:

TO: Kurosaki Ichigo & Kuchiki Rukia

In that box you will find your wedding bands. Exchange them as a sign of your love and union.

“Do we really have to?” Rukia turned to the camera crew. “Is it not too late to change partners?”

“Oi! It’s not like I particularly want to be stuck with you either.” Ichigo reached across the table and snatched the box from her hands. He stood from his seat and made his way over to her. The orange haired singer opened the box and pulled out the smaller of the two rings. “Give me your hand.”

Rukia wrinkled her nose at him and held her hand out to him. He slid the ring on rather roughly, shoving the box in her hands and held his hand out expectantly.

“Much romantic, oh, I’m swooning,” Rukia mocked as she slid his ring onto his finger.

“Shut up.” Ichigo rolled his eyes. Rukia stood from her chair and reached for her coat, stepping around him.

“This has been the worst first date I’ve ever been on and I can’t believe I can’t just pretend it didn’t happen and have to be fake married to you for the next who-knows-how-many months.” she told him as she put on her coat.

Ichigo followed her lead, putting on his own jacket. “The feeling is mutual, believe me.”

“I want my card back, by the way.” Rukia held out her hand expectantly. Ichigo’s eyes bulged in surprise. “How are you going to ask me to return your so called peace offering?”

“You called my bunnies ugly, therefore I’m rescinding my offer for peace. I also do not share my artwork with those that do not know how to appreciate it.” Rukia pursed her lips, waving her hand at him.

Ichigo stood silent for a moment before shoving the card messily into his coat pocket and rushing past her. He hastily bowed at the staff members as he ducked out of the coffee shop, shouting a quick, “Thank you for your hard work!”

Rukia was momentarily stunned before realization dawned on her. “That child.” She fought the urge to chase after him and instead bowed at the staff. “I apologize for his rude behavior. Thank you for your hard work.”

Not long after, the shooting for their first segment finally wrapped up. As the staff members prepared to load their vans with their filming equipment, the producer in charge couldn’t help but think to herself that perhaps this had to be the worst pair-up in We Got Married history.

She could only hope they didn’t kill each other and the show’s ratings.

Location: We Got Married Interview Room

“Congratulations. As of this week, you have officially met your wife. What do you think of your partner?”

Ichigo looked over at the producer that asked the question and leaned back against his chair. He kept his expression neutral as he answered the question: “She’s tiny, full of anger, and her drawings suck.”

His response earned some chortles from surrounding staff members.

“If you had the opportunity, would you pick another wife?”

“Absolutely.”

An hour and a half later, Rukia found herself sitting in the same seat. She smiled politely at the producers surrounding her.

“Rukia, earlier this week you finally had the opportunity to meet your new husband. What do you think about him?”

Rukia did not hesitate to give her response. “I’m not very impressed. He’s got no manners and he does not know how to appreciate good art when he sees it.”

“Unknown to many of our viewers, you had the opportunity to share with us who you would be interested in being paired up with. Interestingly, Ichigo was your top choice. Now that you’ve met him, would you change your choice, if given the opportunity?”

Rukia raised an eyebrow. “Why? Is that allowed?”

#ichiruki #irbb #ichiruki big bang #irbb 17 #mine: irbb #mine: ir #mine: fics

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lightsize95-blog · 5 years

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WCG Roundtable: What Are Your Thoughts on Cody Parkey’s TV Appearance?

I hate throwing salt on old wounds. After some time to reflect on the season as a whole, and of course Cody Parkey’s notorious “double doink” kick, I feel that the incident as a whole has been overblown. This is, in the end, a game. Life will happen and it sucks.

With that said, the embattled Chicago Bears’ kicker did what I previously thought was unthinkable. He elected to appear on national television with the “Today Show.” If you wish to watch his full interview, you may click on this link, and see the appearance for yourself.

How did Matt Nagy, Ryan Pace, and others take to this event? Not too kindly.

In case you have been living under a rock, much has been said about the overall unhappiness in the tone from Halas Hall. Matt Nagy in particular was visibly annoyed with the entire stunt pulled by Parkey. When both Pace and Nagy were asked for their opinions on the “Today Show” interview, Nagy chimed in with this statement.

“We always talk about a ‘we’ and not a ‘me’ thing, we win as a team and we lose as a team. I didn’t necessarily think it was a ‘we’ thing.” (Matt Nagy; Head Coach, Chicago Bears)

Ryan Pace added that the Bears will be looking to improve their Kicker position during the offseason. He wasn’t kidding, as they’ve already signed a new Kicker in Redford Jones. This comes after they held tryouts/workouts at their team facilities. And, I won’t be surprised if they add at least one more kicker to the mix, before cutting Cody Parkey.

I certainly have my own views on this matter. Additionally, some of our fellow writers here on WCG submitted their own thoughts for this topic. I asked everyone the following questions.

What are your overall and personal thoughts about Cody Parkey’s appearance on the Today Show, in terms of the message(s) he delivered and the manner of which he conducted himself?

Do you, personally, believe Parkey’s media tour was selfish? If so, or if not, why?

Based on question 2, do you share the same thoughts that Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy presented during their press conference?

First, we’ll start with question #1.

“What are your overall and personal thoughts about Cody Parkey’s appearance on the Today Show, in terms of the message(s) he delivered and the manner of which he conducted himself?”

ECD (myself):

I totally understand why Cody decided to take to national television. I really do, considering his entire family was threatened and attacked by swarms of fans on social media. I have nothing wrong with a person standing up for themselves and their family.

What I do have a problem with, is how Parkey presented the message, in addition to how he proceeded to carry out this interview.

This just wasn’t a smart move on Parkey’s part. Not only did he piss off his coach and the front office, he inadvertently tossed a torch on the lone wooden bridge connecting the player with the team. His already slim chances of staying with the Bears went up with flames after this decision.

Will Robinson (WhiskeyRanger):

First, let me preface this by saying that I didn’t watch it. The wounds were still too fresh, so I just shook my head and watched Twitter react instead. Besides, I don’t even know when the Today Show is on, or even what channel lol. Not something I’ve ever watched.

But, my personal thoughts are that he probably should have just kept his head down for a while (read: this entire off-season). Turning off all emotion, I’ll say this. It probably wasn’t the smartest business move on his part, from a PR standpoint.

The smart business move would have been to stay quiet, kick a few hundred balls a day every day, and let THAT news be what people hear about you this off-season. End of the day, it’s his life, and I don’t begrudge him doing interviews if that’s what he wants to do, but doing it SO soon was probably never going to do anything but rub people the wrong way. Unless he was announcing his retirement lol.

Ken Mitchell (a man of few words):

A totally selfish, self-serving act by a me-first player who should be fired, today. Don’t wait, fire him today.

Sam Householder:

I didn’t watch either. I started the clip but then I almost like blacked out, sort of like a weird mental block as soon as they started talking about the missed kick. It was still too fresh and now I just don’t care enough to watch.

That said, I mean, fine, if the message was supposed to be ‘hey online harassment and threats hurt people because we’re real people’ fine, maybe someone watched it and thought ‘wow, I won’t be tweeting at the guy that messes up that I hope his children die anymore, I’ll just drink to sleep.’

But it seemed like the message was more about how he carried himself following the loss. Which, all right, I guess, but to me the whole thing seemed pointless, like all right, you’re holding your head high but you still kind of suck at your job. So why not just lay low and silently practice away and then show you’ve moved on next year by kicking better?

Lester A. Wiltfong Jr.:

Honestly, I never watched the whole thing. I caught a few snippets on social media, but I thought it was poor timing as the “wound” was still fresh. He made a choice to do something he had to know would be ridiculed, and now he’ll have to deal with the consequences.

Robert Schmitz:

I thought it was an obviously selfish act to appear on the Today Show, but I never “blamed” him for doing it. The NFL is a business, so I struggle to be upset at a player marketing himself after the biggest miss of his life. He came across quite cordial throughout the segment while doing his best to suggest that the double-doink was more a “gosh-darned bad break” than a poor kick. Obviously I disagree with him, but he’s allowed to do it.

“Do you, personally, believe Parkey’s media tour was selfish? If so, or if not, why?”

Myself:

Yes. No matter how hard I tried to listen and watch this entire interview objectively, all I kept hearing in my own head was, “me. me. I. me.” He owned up to his performance in the locker room minutes after the playoff game had ended. That was perfect and well done by itself.

Why on Earth did he think it was necessary to go beyond the post game interview? I can’t help but feel he did this as a move to boost his own self confidence, and not to remedy the situation in-house. His teammates supported him, and have his back. Just leave it there!

He felt bad about the kick, even though technically it is now a “blocked” kick, I understand that. The timing of the interview in combination with Nagy and Pace’s reaction to the matter suggests the notion Parkey went about this situation on his own. Big mistake.

Will:

Again, I didn’t watch it, but yeah. I’d probably say it was selfish. I’d also say it was probably misguided, since I don’t believe it was ultimately self serving in the end.

I’m sure he wanted to get out in front of the bad press, and do some damage control by humanizing himself. He likely wanted everyone to see that he’s a person, not just a number. Make it more difficult for people to hate him.

Unfortunately, it instead came off to most as a selfish move for a player who both had an inconsistent year, and came up short (or rather, low) on the most important play of the season. The whole thing, was just ill-advised.

Ken:

Absolutely it was selfish. 100 percent me-first.

Sam:

I do because it’s making it about himself, putting himself out in front to say ‘hey I screwed up but I’m not letting myself get down over it.’ Which is fine, but why even make yourself the face of it? The whole thing just confuses me as far as what he set out to accomplish. It came off selfish even if he didn’t mean it to be.

Lester:

I don’t think he meant anything in a selfish manner, but that’s the perception. Someone should have advised him not to do it, or at the very least, to wait a while. Bears brass wasn’t happy with it, and I can’t imagine his teammates were very pleased either.

Robert S.:

Yes I do. I think so primarily because he came across like a kid who’d broken a window and had since made it especially clear “how badly he felt about it”. I don’t really think any of his teammates or fans cared about how badly he felt, they just wanted him to make the kick. After the miss, I think they just wanted to move on. Publicly dwelling on it like he did makes me feel like he was directly talking to everyone but Bears fans. About himself. So, selfish.

Based on question 2, do you share the same thoughts that Ryan Pace and Matt Nagy presented during their press conference?

Myself:

Again, yes.

First and foremost, it’s never a wise decision to pull such a publicity stunt without running the plans up to your management for guidance. Matt Nagy’s comments suggests Parkey took matters into his own hands, brashly if I may add, and didn’t take steps to see if the interview was permissible with the powers at be. You’re just begging for problems when you skip steps to address what you feel is a crisis.

It’s no longer a secret, if it ever was one to begin with. The Chicago Bears weren’t happy with Cody Parkey’s production from the start. And now, they’re incensed with his approach to the matter. Cody is a good man, I will give him that credit. You also can’t keep a player after this misstep. It’s simply too egregious to ignore.

Will:

Sure. Basically what was said in their presser was that it was more of a “Me” moment, and the team prefers “We” moments. I can get behind that. There’s nothing wrong with doing things that serve one’s self, so long as they don’t take away from the team.

I don’t see anyway Parkey’s interview helped this team. Then again, I don’t see how it helped him either, even though that was likely the motivation.

Again, the proper move both for Parkey and for the team would have been to keep his head down, put in a bunch of hard work to get better, and let news of that be what people heard about him this off-season. That would have been a positive story both for Parkey, and the Bears. Had that been the case, he probably would have stood a decent chance of being with the team in 2019. Now, it’s a long-shot.

Ken:

No, I don’t. I believe they should have come right out and said “we have notified Cody that his employment with the Chicago Bears is being terminated.” Period.

Sam:

Definitely.

It didn’t seem like a ‘we’ thing, which, as cheesy and cliche as they may sound, summed it up perfectly. Instead of standing by his teammates, who went out of their way to stand behind him all year long, he went rogue to talk to a morning show to be the ‘Most Honorable Player’ or whatever crap they said. That’s some B.S.

Lester:

Nagy and Pace sure seemed annoyed to me in their presser. I think they said the right things, and I think they’ll follow through on the competition angle. I wouldn’t be surprised if they kept him until someone (UDFAs, scrap heap FAs) beat him out in camp. But if they sign another veteran free agent (like Robbie Gould), I think he’ll be immediately cut.

Robert S.:

Given that they came across pretty angry, I don’t quite share their viewpoint. I don’t think I can.

Pace and Nagy stuck their necks out for this guy, one signing him to a multi-year contract and the other sticking with him after an especially bad run of kicking, and Parkey rewarded that faith by going behind their backs.

Put it this way, Parkey’s actions didn’t reflect an immense amount of respect for his relationships with the two men. Ultimately, I think the entire ordeal simply makes him easier to cut.

What are y’all’s thoughts on Cody’s appearance on the “Today Show?”

Source: https://www.windycitygridiron.com/2019/1/27/18198562/chicago-bears-wcg-roundtable-what-are-your-thoughts-on-cody-parkey-tv-appearance-nfl-offseason-2019

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seotipsandtricks-me · 5 years

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2019 SEO Tips From The Internet Marketing Podcast

With every year, nay every day, things are changing in the field of SEO. From Google’s behavioural shifts, ensuring your website is mobile first and the importance of conducting log file analysis to creating a Google My Business Strategy we had a ton of expert marketing guests on our Internet Marketing Podcast in 2018 sharing their knowledge and experience concerning all of the above and more. Read on to discover their top SEO tips, advice and predictions for 2019 ahead. We’ve also added each podcast episode so that you can listen to the full shows and get even more great SEO tips. The Latest in Mobile, International & Technical SEO: Interview with Aleyda Solis Aleyda Solis is an International SEO consultant & founder at Orainti. In November, Aleyda joined us on the show to speak about mobile SEO, International SEO and Technical SEO. Here are her top tips for each: 1) The technical SEO fundamentals are ensuring that your website is accessible and indexable. It can be validated by most of the SEO crawlers out there including Screaming Frog and Deep Crawl, which support JavaScript crawling. You can compare the plain HTML (non-JavaScript) versus the JavaScript one and identify any differences. If there is a change in meaningful content, then go to your developer and talk to them about this. 2) Increasingly, many businesses are concerned that the international versions of their websites are seeing minimal profit or ROI and take a lot of effort to maintain. As such, proper planning and a strategic approach to International SEO is needed to inform which markets are profitable/viable for you to invest in. Consider what goals you are trying to achieve with each international version. Is there actually an interest in each market? Strategize your approach to international SEO otherwise you risk unnecessarily throwing your money away. 3) From a user perspective, always be considerate of mobile first. Don’t just replicate the desktop version of your website simply because it worked well for desktop. Research if your mobile audience behaves or interacts with your content differently versus desktop. Responsive web design is not necessarily a bullet proof approach. If you have the opportunity, take time to personalise the user experience. Generate different types of content and produce more of it. Alternatively, repurpose your existing content and organise it in a different way to better fulfil the mobile experience. The Future of SEO is on the SERP: Rand Fishkin’s Keynote Talk from BrightonSEO Rand Fishkin is the co-founder of Moz, Founder of SparkToro and author of Lost and Founder. In his September BrightonSEO talk, Rand focused on Google’s behavioural shift over the last few years and offered SEO tips for how marketers can adapt to these changes: At present, there are two conflicting truths for marketers: 1) It has never been more difficult to earn organic traffic from the web’s major players than it is today. 2) Rather than being someone else’s property, make your website (and email list) the centre of your web campaigns. In the future, these big players are going to operate similarly to how Facebook did with organic reach and, as a result, we have to own our property as best we possibly can. What we can do about this: 1) Leverage every scrap of traffic that Google and other search engines/social networks still send. There has never been a better, or more important, time to make organic traffic acquisition a centre of your strategy and to take a bunch of your paid budget and put it towards that. In the future, when acquiring organic traffic becomes even more difficult and challenging, you will be ahead of your competitors who failed to do so. You will be in a stronger position as more traffic goes paid only (or Google only). 2) Use CTR estimates in your keyword research. 3) Shift content marketing to keywords Google is less likely to cannibalize. “That means long tail and chunky middle and hard to answer in the SERP’s type things”. 4) If Google biases to Google owned properties (YouTube, Google News, Google maps etc) then we have to create content for them. 5) It would be unwise not to use featured snippets. You should entice the click. The 5 R’s of SEO: Interview with Bryan Eisenberg Bryan Eisenberg is a Keynote speaker, best-selling author of Be Like Amazon and Co-Founder of BuyerLegends. Bryan spoke about the importance of relevance, reputation, being remarkable, producing readable content and understanding your reach and used Amazon as a barometer. He explained: Amazon are not the biggest innovators even though they spend lots of money on research, development and innovation. They don’t release things until they feel there’s a certain level of comfort in the market place. I believe in the next few years they’ll start building sophisticated retail bots personalised for our good. It will be ubiquitous, the same way that when it first launched on mobile it was tied to their desktop. They’ll do the same thing, whether this agent is in your car, in your glasses, on your wrist, in your suit or implanted as a chip, it doesn’t matter, but if that agent will be able to recognise the world around you, it will be able to plan things for you, to gather information and they will have a wide world index for the market place. Everything You Need to Know about Google Penalties: Interview with Fili Wiese Fili Wiese, is an ex-Google engineer & SEO Expert at SearchBrothers. He appeared on the Internet Marketing Podcast in April to discuss all things Google Penalties, HTTPS and Link Building. Here are his top SEO tips. SEO is constantly evolving and changing. If you’re serious about SEO, depending on the size of your website, ideally you need to audit your website at least once a year, Make sure you don’t have toxic links to your website. These are things that can hold you back. Consider inhouse and external marketing teams. An external team has the benefit of offering a different viewpoint. They aren’t tainted by previous experiences of the website and can look at it afresh, as Googlebot would look at it. At the same time, it is important for an inhouse team to check your website regularly too. Modern SEO: Tips for Success in 2018: Interview with iPullRank’s Michael King Michael King is Managing Director at iPullRank and appeared on the Internet Marketing Podcast to discuss technical SEO tools and tactics. He told us: Log file analysis is so important. It went out of style a few years ago as we got caught up in content marketing. With so much JavaScript framework being built into the web at this point, realistically, we really need to understand what Google’s crawling, what it’s seeing and how that compares with what we’re seeing from these running crawls that we’re doing. SEMrush Ranking Factors 2.0: Interview with Fernando Angulo Fernando Agulo is Head of International Partnerships & Corporate Speaker at SEMrush. Speaking in January 2018, Fernando Angulo joined us on the show to discuss the SEMrush ranking factors studies research and offered the following takeaway tip: Every marketer working in the search world should be prepared for the mobile first algorithm. We’re living in a mobile era right now. Even personal assistants like Alexa or Google Home are mobile devices and we’re making search queries through them. Everything’s going to change – the way we are making our search (using voice search and personal assistants), and the different types of search results we’re going to receive with our mobile devices. Local SEO 7 Things You Probably Didn’t Realise You Could Do in Google My Business with Marcos Alvarez Martin Marcos Alvarez Martin, SiteVisibility’s SEO analyst and trainer in SEO Fundamentals at Brighton SEO, featured on the podcast in February and discussed lesser known features of Google My Business. His takeaway tip is as follows. If you have a business with local presence then you definitely need to create a Google My Business strategy. It’s not only there for updating information relating to your business. You can also use Google My Business to create ads, to reply to reviews and to provide a better experience for the user planning to visit your website. It’s important to consider how Google My Business will fit in to your overall digital marketing strategy. For further reading on Google My Business and local search, read Marcos’ blog post on How to Create a Google Maps Marketing Strategy to Dominate the Local Results. Local SEO Tips for 2018: Interview with Gregg Gifford Gregg Gifford is Vice President of Search at DealerOn and frequent BrightonSEO speaker . He joined Andy on the Internet Marketing Podcast to discuss the biggest pitfalls with Local SEO and tips for succeeding at it: When mobile users are clicking the website link on your Google My Business listing, a lot of the time, this is getting misattributed as direct traffic. So, if you just have a standard, naked link there, you’re not getting correct attribution in Google Analytics. Clicks which are coming from organic search are showing up as direct, so you need to make sure you put UTM tracking on those links. It is essential to do this. You will usually see a massive jump in your organic traffic. Make sure you put a link or CTA in Google posts. Again, if it’s’ a naked link it can get misattributed so make sure you add UTM tracking. What did you think of the above podcasts? Were there any tips offered by our guests that you found particularly helpful or plan to implement into your SEO campaigns in 2019? Leave a comment below, we’d love to hear your thoughts. Similarly, if you’re curious to find out more about any of the topics discussed in the podcasts above and how you can implement them, or want to speak to a member of our team about your 2019 SEO campaigns, please feel free to give us a call on 01273 733433 or fill out the form below: Contact Us Name* First Last Email* Message*CommentsThis field is for validation purposes and should be left unchanged. jQuery(document).bind('gform_post_render', function(event, formId, currentPage){if(formId == 13) {} } );jQuery(document).bind('gform_post_conditional_logic', function(event, formId, fields, isInit){} ); jQuery(document).ready(function(){jQuery(document).trigger('gform_post_render', [13, 1]) } );

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onlinemarketingcourses · 5 years

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Q&A with SEMrush CEO / Cofounder, Oleg Shchegolev

Oleg Shchgolev, CEO and Co-founder of SEMrush, also created SEOquake that was released in 2006. SEOquake was the inspiration to creating something more complex. Then SEMrush was born with the help of his partner, Dimitri Melnikov.

Today, SEMrush has 10 years in the market with 500 employees, revenues close to 100 million, and about 2 million users worldwide.

I had the pleasure to interview Oleg, including some questions beyond Search.

KT: What type of inspiration, vision, and loyalty did you see in Dmitri Melnikov that made you want to go in business with him?

OS: First and foremost, Dima is my friend. Second, he is a SEMrush co-founder; he’s been here right from the very beginning. We have always believed in the product that we’ve been working on and I totally admire him as my friend, my colleague, and co-founder.

We make most decisions together as CEO & co-CEO. Our temperaments are mutually reinforcing and this contributes greatly in allowing us to make balanced and informed decisions.

KT: How is your relationship with your partner Dmitri Melnikov?

OS: I’ve known Dmitri for more than 30 years. We grew up in the same neighborhood; we started programming together and over time our friendship expanded into a business partnership. We’ve gone through lots of ups and downs together.

KT: To be successful in the tech industry do you consider a person has to go to college or can they be self-taught?

OS: Formal education greatly enhances discipline and concentration, helps you socialize and find the right and important people — to network, if you like.

But a lot of leaders I know are self-taught. Back when I was a student, people had pretty much no idea what SEO was, or how important (and complicated) it would become over the years. Students should be aware that their knowledge gets outdated fast. They need to be prepared to dedicate a lot of time to continuing self-education.

The IT industry is developing extremely quickly. That’s not to say that college education is not needed at all (it definitely doesn’t hurt to learn some basic stuff in college), but other than that…like I said, I don’t deem formal training to be absolutely essential. With all the online courses and workshops, it’s possible to study everything remotely.

KT: Does SEMrush have corporate social responsibility initiatives? Such as giving scholarships for people that dream with tech careers? Or any other?

OS: At the moment, we work closely with American and European universities and give students the opportunity to explore SEMrush. While learning digital marketing, they familiarize themselves with our tools and work on their projects with the help of SEMrush. Representatives of our company give a lot of master-classes to students, providing them with the insights about digital marketing.

We organize a lot of meetups, roundtables and conferences on digital marketing and agile. We always welcome other IT companies to take part in such events. Lots of lectures, a great deal of useful insight, plenty of opportunities for networking — these are just a few reasons to come by our events.

On a different note, we certainly care about ecological sustainability. We are going to implement waste separation in all our offices and we encourage our employees to cycle to work to reduce CO2 emission.

It goes without saying that we give people the opportunity to work with us on paid internships. Pretty often, former interns become our full-time employees. We have plans for a large project on how to help novice specialists find work in the digital sphere, but we won’t reveal the details yet

KT: Where is SEMrush headed in the next 5 years?

OS: We are definitely going to add more features to SEMrush, while enhancing our content tools, along with local SEO and traffic analytics (Competitive Intelligence 2.0). We want to ensure that we remain the leading digital marketing software.

As for strategic plans, we are going to strengthen our global brand. At the moment we’re working diligently to enter emerging markets such as China — right now, we are updating our databases to cover Baidu data.

We’ll also introduce tools that help figure out how to rank better on Amazon and optimize for voice search.

This is just a minor part of what is coming. There are a lot of other things we are working on, but we’ll keep them quiet for a while! Hint: 2019 is going to be a big year for us.

KT: What are your biggest pain points as SEO thought-leader? What additional support/buy-in do you think most companies struggle with to get on board? Does this result in limiting their growth opportunities?

OS: SEO is multidimensional and its development is extremely rapid. 5 years ago we couldn’t even imagine that image search or voice search would be everywhere. Such technological growth involves non-stop education and creative thinking, both from my side as a thought-leader and from the side of companies trying to get on board.

One more indispensable thing to get on board successfully is to have some unique feature, to understand your uniqueness and, crucially, to communicate that knowledge to your audience. Such an environment of extrinsic value, created for your customers, will also help build strong and long-term relationships with them and will directly affect customer retention.

KT: What will impact the traditional SEO from Voice search devices in the coming years?

OS: The share of voice searches is growing, along with the amount of voice-activated smart speakers. Naturally, voice searches are different from the searches that are typed — the former are longer and the wording is different — more conversational.

Voice search is about questions, prepositions, and comparisons – the same as with featured snippets . If it’s not an informational query, people are likely to search for location-based info.

Backlinko’s study claims that 40.7% of answers come from the featured snippet. Our SEO clients are putting more and more emphasis on this feature. Questions, prepositions, and comparisons dominate featured snippet results. A whopping 52% of questions have featured snippets.

KT: Can we get a dashboard or report on voice search?

OS: There’s no single dashboard or report on voice search in SEMrush (at least for now) but some of our tools help find solutions for voice search optimization. For instance, featured snippet checks or mobile devices optimization — this contributes to voice search ranking.

KT: What’s the most popular SEMrush feature and why?

OS: Everyone loves us for Keywords Research tools, but there is so much more to SEMrush.

KT: What’s a feature of SEMrush that is less utilized and why?

OS: The features that are available in the Admin Mode only =)

KT: What is diversity like in the tech industry? Do you think there is gender bias in the tech industry?

OS: Judging by what the media says, there are indeed a lot of problems with diversity in the tech industry. In SEMrush we want our company to be equally welcoming to people of any race or gender. About half of SEMrush leadership positions are women and we believe they are awesome specialists who help make SEMrush an industry-leading company.

Closing thoughts

My favorite answer is the last one because I am an advocate for equality and inclusivity.

In my conversation with Oleg I also learned that SEMrush’s headquarters is now in Boston.

To summarize the success of SEMrush, it is based on a great communication within its talented partners, a great culture of inclusivity, and the amazing people that work there.

Want to stay on top of the latest search trends?

Get top insights and news from our search experts.

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mediacalling · 5 years

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Should Small Businesses be on IGTV? (and 3 Quick Ways to Test It Out)

Repurposing your content across channels is a great way to get the most from your social media strategy. However, sometimes, certain channels will perform better than others.

When GQ posted a video about Kylie Jenner and Travis Scott on its YouTube channel (with 2.5 million subscribers), it was watched almost 30 million times. The same video on their Facebook Page (2.8 million fans) was watched 4.7 million times. A snippet of the video on their Instagram account (4.3 million followers) was watched 2.1 million times.

But when GQ posted the same video on IGTV (the video was cropped to fit the vertical format), it only generated 137,000 views.

A mere three percent of their follower count.

GQ isn’t alone. A quick (unscientific) look at a few brands seems to tell the same story:

Airbnb has 3.3 million followers and their three IGTV videos have 39,000, 77,000, and 22,000 views respectively (about two percent of their follower count).

Warby Parker has 448,000 followers and most of their IGTV videos get one to five thousand views (about one percent of their follower count).

HubSpot, 120,000 followers, generates one to three thousand views (about two percent of their followers).

What does this mean for small businesses that are considering IGTV in their social media marketing strategy? Is it not worth your time and effort?

I think it’s too early for small businesses to dismiss IGTV right away. Let me share why.

(Oh, and if you’re not familiar with IGTV, this blog post will give you a quick introduction.)

The rise of vertical mobile videos

The popularity of Snapchat and Instagram Stories has set our expectations for videos on smartphones to be vertical and full-screen. Ninety-six percent of mobile consumption is vertical so even if a video is square, or in the traditional 16:9, horizontal format, very few people will flip their phone to consume the content.

This is the trend that Instagram has betting big on with IGTV. Instagram believes that vertical videos are the future of video. And there are statistics to back this up.

According to data collected by Statista, more than 50 percent of digital videos are now viewed on mobile. And it has been showing a general upward trend since 2013.

A study commissioned by Facebook also found that people are watching Facebook and Instagram mobile videos everywhere — at home, at friends’ home, in public spaces, at work, and during commute.

These statistics are telling us two things. One, videos are going, if they are not already, mobile. And two, people prefer using their phones vertically.

Among all the major social media platforms, IGTV seems to be best positioned to tap onto and accelerate this vertical mobile video trend. It took Instagram less than two years to grow Instagram Stories, another vertical format content, from zero to 400 million daily users. So if you want to ride on their wave of growth, now is the time.

IGTV has a distribution issue but…

When IGTV came out, we knew we had to test it. Ash Read, our managing editor, created a vertical video of his interview with Ryan Carson, CEO and founder of online technology school Treehouse, and shared it on our IGTV channel.

We have about 41,000 followers on Instagram, and the video was watched…

474 times.

What we realized is that distributing your IGTV videos is hard.

It’s not easy for brands to nudge their Instagram followers to their IGTV videos besides using Instagram Stories’ swipe up link feature. Furthermore, IGTV only allows users to search for channels (i.e. Instagram users) and not topics. This reduces the likelihood of someone searching for a topic relevant to our brand and finding our videos.

But it’s really too early to dismiss IGTV as a potential social media channel for your brand.

“It’s a new format. It’s different. We have to wait for people to adopt it and that takes time” Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom

Instagram CEO Kevin Systrom told TechCrunch that long-form vertical videos are different from most videos we see today and it’ll take time for people to fully embrace the new format. Even top brands are not deterred by the low viewership at the moment. National Geographic’s director of Instagram Josh Raab told Digiday that “I think it is still too early. We are defining what IGTV is and the role it plays for us, but Instagram is also still developing the role [IGTV] plays on Instagram overall.”

Instagram did an amazing job integrating Instagram Stories into the Instagram app and growing its usage. We see Instagram Stories right at the top of the Instagram app, we can tap on profile photos to view Instagram Stories, we can even see Instagram Stories highlights on profiles. Seeing how Instagram grew Instagram Stories gives me the confidence that they’ll be able to grow IGTV well, too. They have already been testing many ways to showcase IGTV videos within the Instagram app and will likely find a way to smoothly encourage more people to be on IGTV.

Definitely think it’s a user flow issue. If they place IGTV in the Stories feed, it’d instanrk increase viewership

— Jack Appleby (@JuiceboxCA) September 5, 2018

For example, what if IGTV videos are featured in between Instagram Stories? (A interesting suggestion by Jack Appleby, Director of Creative Strategy at Petrol Ad)

While viewership on IGTV is low at the moment and distribution isn’t that great yet, it might just be the perfect time to jump in. This allows you to test different content and gradually improve your content before it gets too crowded with other brands and very polished videos.

How small businesses can get started on IGTV

Should your business be on IGTV?

Well, I believe not every small business (or business) has to be on IGTV. But you’ll never know whether IGTV is great for your business without trying.

As a small business, it’s definitely not easy to find time investing in a new social media channel when you are already managing multiple social media profiles. I understand this and would love to share some ways to quickly experiment with IGTV without too much time and resource investment.

Before we jump into the tactics, I would encourage you to see IGTV as an extension of your Instagram strategy rather than an entirely new standalone social media channel. A follow on IGTV is automatically a follow on Instagram (and vice versa). Your efforts in one can help the other.

1. Re-post your horizontal and square videos

If you are already creating videos for social, this is the easiest way to get started on IGTV — simply re-posting your horizontal and square videos onto your IGTV channel.

Yes, your videos will not make good use of the full screen and your followers will be forced to rotate their phones to watch your horizontal videos. But for a start, I think this could be a great low-investment way to experiment with IGTV, test out different content, and see if your audience on IGTV is interested in watching your videos.

For example, Velon, a professional road cycling organization that aims to bring fans closer to the riders and races, posts race highlights on its IGTV channel. Its videos are made to be viewed horizontally so the team rotated them and posted them on its IGTV channel.

You’ll need to rotate your horizontal video first because IGTV only accepts vertical, 9:16 videos. You can easily rotate your horizontal video using Windows Movie Maker on Windows or QuickTime Player on a Mac.

Thanks to Kovács Máté, you can also resize your horizontal or square videos into vertical videos on your iOS devices using his IGTV Video Resizer.

2. Repurpose and crop your videos vertically

The second way is to rework your horizontal videos and crop them vertically. This requires a bit more work but is likely more manageable than creating vertical videos from scratch.

For example, GoPro cropped its horizontal YouTube video on freediving with Tiger Sharks into a vertical IGTV video.

You could also put a frame around your horizontal and square videos to make them vertical, like what Ben and Jerry’s did with its YouTube video.

If your videos are filmed in a way that is suitable for cropping into vertical videos, you could try using tools like Kapwing and crop.video to help you with the cropping. Otherwise, you could also try creating your videos using video editing tools like Wave.video and Typito, which allow you to easily resize your videos from horizontal to vertical.

3. Point and shoot with a smartphone

What if you are not already producing videos? The third way is to point and shoot with your smartphone — no professional video camera or lighting — just your smartphone.

Great content doesn’t always have to be produced professionally. The Guardian shared with Digiday that their less polished Instagram Stories (static graphics or quick video explainers on news topics) have been more popular than their professionally shot, edited, and produced videos.

The early content on Instagram is also less polished images with filters. Since IGTV is still a very young platform, with a vertical video format that is still less common than the horizontal video format, people might be more forgiving and focus more on the content itself rather than the aesthetic.

ECFIT Boulder, which coaches endurance athletes, shares unedited training tip videos (taken with a smartphone, I presume) on its IGTV channel.

For such instances, you might find it helpful to have a tripod to stabilize your smartphone or even just to hold your smartphone if you are filming yourself alone. There are many affordable options on Amazon.

Here’s another example, from Everlane, an online clothing retailer known for their pricing transparency. Its social media team shares lightly edited vertical videos on their IGTV channel.

Over to you: What do you think?

While you don’t have to be on every new social media channel, especially as a small business with limited resources, I would recommend testing a few videos using the low-investment methods mentioned above. IGTV has only been live for a small number of months so it is not surprising that not many businesses are on there yet — and those that are there, are still figuring things out. This creates a great opportunity for you to test and see if IGTV will work for your business. If it doesn’t seem to be working for you, you can always pause your efforts and rethink your approach.

What do you think? Do you think your business should be on IGTV? Why or why not?

P.s. Want to learn more about vertical videos? We have a short-series newsletter just for that and would love to have you. Sign up here!

—

Image credit: Statista, the respective IGTV channels

I first learned about the GQ story via Jack Appleby’s tweet and then via Digiday’s article.

Should Small Businesses be on IGTV? (and 3 Quick Ways to Test It Out) posted first on http://getfblikeblog.blogspot.com

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catherinesnyder · 6 years

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15 inspiring Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow in 2019

Looking for entrepreneurial inspiration? Ready to stop procrastinating? It’s so easy to get sucked into procrastination mode when your Instagram feed is clogged up with teacup pigs and tiny dogs wearing tiny sweaters—incredibly cute, but not very motivational. Here’s a simple life-hack: fill your go-to time-wasting spaces (like Instagram) with inspiration from successful entrepreneurs instead!

To get you started, we curated this list of 15 entrepreneurs whose Instagram accounts are the real deal. These guys, gals and groups are proven success stories and they share their wisdom on Instagram to help you kickstart your business. Read on to see what we love about them.

Everette Taylor

Who he is: CEO of ET Enterprises. Strong proponent of millennials, women and people of color creating their own success, rather than fitting into the established mold. Find him at: everette on Instagram Why follow him: To see photos of the speaking events he’s at and where he’ll be next.

Everette Taylor is the CEO of ET Enterprises, the umbrella under which his multiple million-dollar companies operate, including Millisense, Popsocial and Growth Hackers. A former high school dropout who overcame homelessness as a teen, Everette built his first business at 19 and sold it two years later and not even a decade after that, he’s been named one of Forbes 30 under 30 in marketing and advertising.

When we asked Everette how he uses Instagram to support his business, he replied, “It’s an amazing customer acquisition channel. On the personal side, I’m able to promote my products and businesses organically to my growing audience as well as earn money as an ambassador and influencer for brands. I use that money to put towards my businesses or new products.”

Via Everette Taylor

Everette Taylor’s Instagram is full of photos of him at speaking events and screenshots of articles featuring him. Following him is the quickest way to read his latest interviews and see what he’s up to.

Everette’s not shy about discussing his past. He’s not full of himself, either. The advice he’d give his younger entrepreneurial self is to “optimize for happiness, rather than success. Money and success mean nothing if you’re not happy or lack peace of mind. Self care is essential. You can still grind and be productive without burning yourself out.”

Peter Voogd

Who he is: Founder of Game Changers Academy. Believer in escaping the rat race and living life on your own terms. Find him at: peterjvoogd on Instagram Why follow him: For bite-size snippets of advice that’ll get you in the right mindset.

Peter Voogd founded Game Changers Academy, a mastermind community that provides entrepreneurs with tools and services like coaching, monthly mastery calls that connect members with him via video chat to discuss business and lifestyle development strategies, and access to a proven step-by-step system for growing profits. When Peter speaks about business, he knows what he’s talking about—in his short career (he’s only 30!) he’s built multiple million-dollar businesses and published two books on entrepreneurship, Massive Success and Six Figures.

When we asked Peter for a tip he’d give an entrepreneur starting a new business, he emphasized the importance of keeping things simple.

Via Peter Voogd

“In order to really thrive in entrepreneurship and business, you must learn to shift from complexity to simplicity. When you get rid of all the noise in your head and focus on the few activities that matter most you’ll gain a new sense of awareness and motivation,” he said. “Most of the things you do in your business don’t accelerate growth—they just ‘maintain’ at best. Don’t try to be great at fifty things. Be obsessed about the few things that can really move your business forward. You’re a lot more productive when you’re doing your highest value activities in uninterrupted blocks of time.”

Peter sums up his Instagram strategy as “The main objective is to position our brand as the leading authority for millennials and young entrepreneurs. The goal of my Instagram is to do three things: 1) inspire and motivate to think and act bigger, 2) educate and challenge people to think different and 3) entertain and make people laugh.” We can confirm that he excels in all three.

Marie Forleo

Who she is: CEO of MarieTV. Believer in putting all of yourself into everything you do. Find her at: marieforleo on Instagram Why follow her: To see new episodes of MarieTV as soon as they’re up, a daily dose of motivation and to get a peek into Marie’s day-to-day life, whether that’s making pasta from scratch, soaking up the sun on the beach or spending cozy nights on the couch with her dog.

Marie Forleo tells it how it is because she knows that’s what you need to hear on your journey to reaching your full potential. No fluff, no ego strokes. Her Instagram is rich with inspirational quotes and announcements of new episodes of MarieTV, her weekly show full of life wisdom and strategic discussion around building successful businesses and fulfilled lives. And it’s all washed in soft pastels and beautiful design, which we love.

Marie’s not one of those “gurus” with no real experience. An experienced copywriter and online marketing expert, she turned her efforts to educating others in her field with her blog, her book Make Every Man Want You, and her two online courses, B School and The Copy Cure.

Via Marie Forleo

On Marie’s website, she tells readers what drove her to launch her socially conscious digital empire: “I wanted to know, what exactly is it that makes people genuinely happy, successful and creatively fulfilled? Why do some people struggle while others find a way to thrive, often despite the most challenging circumstances? I believe you must bring your whole self to the table if you want to thrive in today’s world. That includes your unique set of gifts, your personality, your sense of humor and most importantly, your heart. I believe that whether you run your own business or not, a creative and entrepreneurial approach is critical to fully blossom in the modern world and to experience the happiness and fulfillment you deserve.”

Gary Vaynerchuck

Who he is: CEO of VaynerMedia and VaynerSports. Not afraid to drop expletives when he has to get his point across. Find him at: garyvee on Instagram Why follow him: To get hit with truth bombs exactly when you need them.

Gary Vaynerchuk, who can be found on Instagram as @garyvee, is a prolific investor who’s supported Venmo, Twitter, Facebook and other big-name companies in their startup days.

How’d he get to this point? First, by growing his family’s wine business from $3 million in revenue to $60 million through a rebranding process, starting a weekly webcast to build a community and educate viewers about wine. Today, he’s still at the cutting edge of marketing, sharing his knowledge with the world through his podcast, The GaryVee Audio Experience.

Via Gary Vay-Ner-Chuck

His profile feels edgy, modern and full of brutally honest advice for marketing in the social media era. One standout quote you’ll see in multiple posts of his is this: “If your voice in your head is mean to you, remember that someone manipulated that voice and instilled it in you. Kill that fake voice and find yours. I love you, now love yourself.”

Besides his undeniable selfie game, follow Gary for sharp humor, no-nonsense advice, and loads of video content.

Harvard Business Review

Who they are: The official magazine of Harvard Business School. Committed to making practical workplace relationship advice easy to access. Find them at: harvard_business_review on Instagram Why follow them: For thought-provoking content about leadership and life in the workplace.

Via Harvard Business School

For the official magazine of a business school within one of the most prestigious universities in the world, Harvard Business Review’s Instagram is, in a word, colorful. Here you’ll find bold text against bright backgrounds, cleverly manipulated photography and eye-catching illustrations.

Many of Harvard Business Review’s Instagram posts link to the magazine’s articles. Others are simply conversation-starters. One thing all of Harvard Business Review’s posts have in common is that they’ll make you think… not just about your job, but about what your day-to-day actions mean in the larger context of your career and your relationships with others.

Many of Harvard Business Review’s posts are concise management tips. A few examples of these tips are:

“To finally start that big project, start small”

“Get more sleep, starting tonight”

“Keep your network small and meaningful”

“Encourage your team to call out narcissistic behavior”

6amsuccess

Who he is: Victor Hathaway. Believer in taking as many tiny steps as necessary to chase big dreams. Find him at: 6amsuccess on Instagram Why follow him: For succinct motivational quotes that hold you accountable for your success or lack of it.

Via 6amsuccess

6amsuccess’ goal is to wake you up to your inherent capacity of making your dreams reality. Every week, 6amsuccess motivates 20 million people.

Some of the coaches and motivators on our list aim to inspire followers from across industries. Not Victor Hathaway, founder of 6amsuccess. Based in Silicon Valley, his niche is inspiring business owners and creators primarily in the tech space. His aesthetic: aspirational lifestyle photography with alternatingly inspirational or humorous text overlaid in white block text, meme-style.

Each post communicates directly to his specific audience. It’s not subtle, but it’s not supposed to be. It’s also not very wordy—Victor keeps it focused and simple by limiting each post’s text to a hashtag or call to action, letting the images speak for themselves and really communicate his philosophy of constantly pushing yourself forward and not letting yourself become discouraged by failure. You’ll see succinct, accountability-focused quotes like “I didn’t come this far to only come this far,” “If you can’t stop thinking about it, don’t stop working for it,” and “When you’re about to quit, remember why you started.” Follow 6amsuccess for an instant boost of motivation.

Natalie Franke

Who she is: Founder of the Rising Tide Society. Builds stronger businesses through connection, rather than competition. Find her at: nataliefranke on Instagram Why follow her: To see the latest in the #communityovercompetition movement and learn about your mindset through her self reflection-provoking posts.

In a previous life, Natalie Franke was a wedding photographer. Now, she’s a brain tumor survivor, an entrepreneurship coach and founder of the Rising Tide Society, a worldwide network that brings creative entrepreneurs together for monthly meetups.

On Natalie’s profile, you’ll see pastel colorscapes awash in soft lighting (her experience as a photographer definitely comes through) alongside quirky script style fonts and minimal illustrations connected to direct conversations with her followers about their businesses and brands. Between these conversations you’ll find occasional glimpses into her life chronicling her personal health struggles. Natalie isn’t afraid to get real and raw on Instagram because if you want to build a successful brand, you need to be willing to get raw about the personal struggles you’re facing.

Natalie explains her approach to entrepreneurship as “I believe we all have the opportunity to step outside of the box and become exactly who we are called to be.” She continues, “as human beings we are wired to connect with one another. Our brains are equipped with empathy and powered by a desire to thrive not merely as an individual, but as a family, as a species. In May 2015, I founded the Rising Tide Society and took a simple idea from launch to exponential growth in less than six months, and to 100K members in a year and a half. We challenged the status quo, where everyone was out for themselves, and reframed the state of mind in the creative industry.”

Shane Feldman

Who he is: Founder and CEO of Count Me In. Focused on personal resilience, advocacy and inspiring teens to act as agents for positive change. Find him at: shane_feldman on Instagram Why follow him: To maximize your brand’s impact by reimagining it as a social movement.

Shane Feldman builds movements. He does this by working with business leaders to transform their brands into vibrant, action-oriented social movements. Check out his Instagram to see him speaking at Count Me In events, selfies and documentation of people doing good in the world.

Shane’s no stranger to making a difference. Because of his own experience with bullying, he founded teen mentoring program Count Me In. Through Count Me In, he coaches teens who struggle with confidence and self-esteem to set goals, avoid burnout and become internally motivated to pursue and find their own success.

Via Shane Feldman

When we asked Shane about the biggest fear he thinks entrepreneurs should overcome, he told us “Fear of self-care. I know that may sound ridiculous but I work with so many entrepreneurs, managers and business owners who think that success means they need to work themselves into overdrive 50, 70, 80+ hours a week. They are terrified that if they take a moment for themselves, it will look like they aren’t ‘committed’ to their brand. So many people have bought into the lie that you need to hustle 24/7 to ‘make it’ … checking your texts, emails and Slacks into the night, only eating power snacks throughout the day, and ignoring weekend altogether.”

He went on to say, “Self-care isn’t selfish. In fact, it’s absolutely critical to success. This is true for anyone, but in particular entrepreneurs who don’t have an old-school 9-to-5 position that you clock out of at the end of a shift. Practicing self-care ensures your mental health and mental clarity stays tuned up.”

Amber Lilyestrom

Who she is: Brand strategist, business coach and creator of the Ignite Your Soul Summit. For her, big leaps, rebirth and transformation are the keys to branding success. Find her at: amberlilyestrom on Instagram Why follow her: To see her latest content as soon as it drops.

She’s an author. She’s a branding strategist. She’s a podcaster. She’s a business coach. If you can say anything about Amber Lilyestrom, you could she’s a master of multitasking.

When we spoke to Amber, she shared her secret to balancing everything she does. “Get help, don’t try to go it alone. People who aspire to begin their own businesses tend to naturally be self-sufficient and highly ambitious. While these are admirable qualities, they also tend to make people feel like they have to do everything themselves—that they should have all the answers, be all things to all people—which will lead them straight to burnout and frustration.”

She went on to advise, “Find others who have gone before you to help guide the way and shorten your learning curve, enlist the help of others whose area of genius is where one of your weaker points may be. Whatever you do, don’t be afraid to ask for support + help from the people who are offering it. Saying yes to them could be the decision that takes that great big vision of yours from a dream of the future, to a reality in the present.”

Via Amber Lilyestrom

She’s totally killing it at everything she does. Amber’s all about empowering women to launch and build successful businesses, and you’ll feel her passion for building others up radiate from her photos. Nestled between photos of her enjoying life with her family, you’ll find inspirational quotes that speak to her philosophy on life and engaging conversation-starters for her community.

She told us her social media strategy is to “Consistently show up as myself. It can be easy to put on the filters, to sell the story of a perfect life and + business—but that’s not what people need, nor really desire. People are craving REAL, people need TRUTH, and your followers want to see what it looks like to show up 100% authentically—even on the days we least want to.”

Melyssa Griffin

Who she is: Creator of the Pursuit with Purpose podcast. Brings fun and focus on a positive mindset to helping entrepreneurs build their businesses. Find her at: melyssa_griffin on Instagram Why follow her: To grow your online impact through her business-building educational products.

Melyssa Griffin recognized the importance of approaching entrepreneurship with the right perspective. She’s a mindset coach, building her brand around nurturing this specific business skill.

On her website, Melyssa Griffin discusses her approach to business coaching as “I believe you have an inherent, baby I was born with this power to build an online business that creates profit, brings you joy, and changes people’s lives. Trust me. I’ll show you how to do it. I believe you have a Big Fat Goal you’ve kept hidden in the back of your mind for far too long. I’m here to help you bring it to life in an unstoppable way.”

Talking a bit more about how her approach to life meshes with her approach to building online businesses, she adds “I believe you deserve happiness, respect, and love. And I’m determined to give you the tools to create those feelings in every crevice and cranny of your existence.”

As a business strategist, she offers online courses, free downloadable resources and podcasts. On her Instagram, we get a glimpse into her daily life, having fun and spending time with her corgi (we love Monja). Her profile is one that’ll put your mind at ease as you learn more about how she can help you reach your full potential. She gets into the day-to-day challenges online entrepreneurs often face, like having a tv on in the background while they’re working to fend off loneliness and breaking out of destructive thought patterns like success = worthy of love.

Sir Richard Branson

Who he is: Founder of the Virgin Group. Also known as Dr. Yes, his business philosophy includes a focus on socially conscious actions. Find him at: richardbranson on Instagram Why follow him: To see what life’s like for a business magnate, adventurer and philanthropist who’s been in the game for close to 50 years.

Sir Richard Branson’s Instagram documents one adventure after another, showing him kayaking, bicycling and even swimming with sharks.

The adventure pics aren’t just for show, though. Between documenting exotic landscapes, event highlights and heart-warming family content, we get a taste of the philosophy behind Sir Richard’s celebrated business acumen. Not all of the quotes Branson features on his Instagram come directly from him. He also posts inspirational quotes from figures like Dorothy Parker and Mahatma Gandhi. A few of the quotes that sum it up include:

“It’s amazing what doors can open if you reach out to people with a smile”

“There’s nothing more important than family, and that’s how it should be”

“If we can change business for good, we should also make an effort to change the world for the better”

…and the brief yet powerful “Be in the moment.”

Although his profile isn’t coaching-focused like many of the others on our list, it offers a different kind of motivation: a look at what life can be like once you make it as an entrepreneur. Follow him to see where your dedication to building your business can take you… like using your resources to lift others up.

Justin Dry

Who he is: CEO of Vino Mofo. Realist who’s willing to grind hard for success because he’s been there, done that and knows it works. Find him at: justindry on Instagram Why follow him: To see where he’s speaking, where he’ll be next, and the latest news from Vino Mofo.

Justin Dry, co-founded and joint CEO of Vino Mofo, calls his story an “uncorked success.” He cites Sir Richard Branson as one of his inspirations and in the spirit of continuing the chain of inspiration, uses his Instagram profile to inspire others. Justin’s profile is full of motivational thoughts, pictures of his dog and family and naturally, plenty of wine.

“Nobody cares, work harder” is one of the quotes you’ll see on his Instagram, but that’s the kind of real talk that got Justin Dry to where he is now. Another is “entrepreneurship is living a few years of your life like most people won’t, so that you can spend the rest of your life like most people can’t.”

Via Justin Dry

Today, Justin Dry does more than lead Vino Mofo. He inspires other entrepreneurs by speaking at business development events like Yeah Nah Summit 2018 and the Bayside Business Breakfast. Between events like this, he’s an active blogger on Medium, publishing concise pieces about the tools entrepreneurs need for success like patience, focus and a willingness to take risks even when they make you scared or uncomfortable.

That willingness to face discomfort can be found in other quotes Justin Dry posts to his Instagram, like “Show me your friends and I’ll show you your future” and “the pessimist complains about the wind, the optimist expects it to change; the realist adjusts the sails.”

Instagram for Business

Who they are: The group behind Instagram Stories for businesses. Driver of distraction-free marketing opportunities for companies on Instagram. Find them at: instagramforbusiness Why follow them: For in-depth looks at the innovative businesses they feature.

We can’t do a roundup of the best Instagrams for entrepreneurs to follow without including Instagram for Business. This is where you’ll see stories and write-ups featuring entrepreneurs who are changing their industries in big, fun, highly visual ways.

Via Instagram

Visually, you can expect Instagram for Business to up the saturation with lots of bright, bold colors, clever photography, and a whole lot of honest-to-goodness talent because Instagram for Business is all about highlighting the splashes independent entrepreneurs are making. On their website, they tell entrepreneurs how they can use Instagram for Business to connect with their audiences more effectively.

“People look to stories for inspiration,” Instagram for Business writes. “Find out how you can use stories to form new connections.” They also describe where their service fits into larger marketing campaigns: “Many of our direct response advertisers have seen success with performance objectives like sales and conversions. Consider using and testing Instagram Stories ads as a full funnel solution.”

Along with these descriptions, you’ll find tangible, tactical advice for using Instagram for Business, like how to add stories to Facebook campaigns and how to optimize your business’ stories. A lot of the content here is from Curated by Facebook, a project by Facebook to showcase individual Instagram creators. In each showcase, you’ll meet the creators as individuals and see their work.

Amy Landino

Who she is: Host of AmyTV and co-founder of aftermarq. Starts her success with getting into the right mindset by taking small steps for personal productivity. Find her at: schmittastic on Instagram Why follow her: To connect directly with Amy through the engaging questions she asks her followers.

Author of Vlog Like a Boss and host of AmyTV on Youtube, Amy Landino is a motivational speaker who found success on YouTube. On AmyTV, she gives advice for professional and personal success, like how to manage your time efficiently, how to always look put together, roundups of her favorite productivity apps and book recommendations for followers looking for more motivation.

When we asked Amy for the tips she gives entrepreneurs launching new businesses, she said, “Do not romanticize your product. Work hard on it. Believe in it. But when the market tells you it’s not the right thing, stay focused on getting them the right solution rather than trying to force something that’s not going to work. However, if you’re about to give up on something because you think the product isn’t right, check your marketing. You could just be doing a crap job of telling the story for why it matters and any amazing product will suffer without great brand awareness.”

She also cautions new entrepreneurs that “Entrepreneurship isn’t a get rich quick path and some new entrepreneurs I’ve encountered have a weird sense of entitlement when it comes to what they do and how they should get paid. It’s going to be tougher than you think in the first few years and you need to be willing to put in the work and for less money (a lot of times, FREE).”

“But the experience and the hustle of making things happen will get the right entrepreneurs where they need to be to make this an experience to last a lifetime. And if we’re reaching for an amazing lifetime, the journey should be just as important as the payoff. Otherwise, you’re in the wrong gig.”

Amy travels widely and uses her profile to showcase her travels. They’re part of her larger aesthetic: showing that you can have it all and achieve what you really want out of life if you plan smartly and focus on self-improvement, which fits right into her motivational messaging. She also views Instagram as the ideal conversation platform. “Because a lot of my content happens on YouTube, Instagram is a perfect place for me to continue the conversation with my community.”

Startup Creative

Who they are: A quarterly magazine that features entrepreneurs from around the world founded by Kaylene Langford. Shows featured freelancers and entrepreneurs in a raw, realistic way that breaks down how they became successful. Find them at: startupcreative on Instagram Why follow them: For business development advice that’s focused on you.

“Chase your stars fool, life is short.” For straightforward, refreshingly blunt business advice, follow StartUp Creative, founded by Kaylene Langford. StartUp Creative pushes you to craft your own success. Other pieces of advice you’ll find on StartUp Creative’s Instagram are: “Can you accept the notion that once you change your internal state, you don’t need the external world to provide you with a reason to feel joy, gratitude, appreciation, or any other elevated emotion?” and “Your potential is endless. Go do what you were created to do.”

Providing this advice in the forms of podcasts, blog posts, and online courses and even poetry, StartUp Creative’s focus is on helping entrepreneurs really work out how they can make themselves successful through knowing themselves better as people.

Via Startup Creative

Entrepreneurs who would rather work at their own pace instead of participating in StartUp Creative’s courses can take up their official ebook at their leisure. Those on a budget—or really, anybody who wants to build a more efficient, profitable business—can take advantage of StartUp Creative’s free resources like its guide to building profitable websites and its business plan template. On their Instagram, you’ll find inspiring quotes, minimalist spaces and spotlights on entrepreneurs from around the world.

Find the inspiration that resonates with you —

As you scroll through our list, which of these entrepreneurs’ stories particularly resonate with you? Give yourself time to find an entrepreneurial role model whose work really inspires you, because that’s the inspiration that’ll set you up for your next success.

Looking to get a creative project off the ground to grow your business?

We can help! Work with our designer community to make it happen.

Let’s do this!

The post 15 inspiring Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow in 2019 appeared first on 99designs.

via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/

15 inspiring Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow in 2019 syndicated from https://www.lilpackaging.com/

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helenpattersoon · 6 years

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15 inspiring Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow in 2019

Everette Taylor

Via Everette Taylor

Peter Voogd

When we asked Peter for a tip he’d give an entrepreneur starting a new business, he emphasized the importance of keeping things simple.

Via Peter Voogd

Marie Forleo

Via Marie Forleo

Gary Vaynerchuck

Gary Vaynerchuk, who can be found on Instagram as @garyvee, is a prolific investor who’s supported Venmo, Twitter, Facebook and other big-name companies in their startup days.

Via Gary Vay-Ner-Chuck

Besides his undeniable selfie game, follow Gary for sharp humor, no-nonsense advice, and loads of video content.

Harvard Business Review

Via Harvard Business School

Many of Harvard Business Review’s posts are concise management tips. A few examples of these tips are:

“To finally start that big project, start small”

“Get more sleep, starting tonight”

“Keep your network small and meaningful”

“Encourage your team to call out narcissistic behavior”

6amsuccess

Via 6amsuccess

6amsuccess’ goal is to wake you up to your inherent capacity of making your dreams reality. Every week, 6amsuccess motivates 20 million people.

Natalie Franke

Shane Feldman

Via Shane Feldman

Amber Lilyestrom

She’s an author. She’s a branding strategist. She’s a podcaster. She’s a business coach. If you can say anything about Amber Lilyestrom, you could she’s a master of multitasking.

Via Amber Lilyestrom

Melyssa Griffin

Melyssa Griffin recognized the importance of approaching entrepreneurship with the right perspective. She’s a mindset coach, building her brand around nurturing this specific business skill.

Sir Richard Branson

Sir Richard Branson’s Instagram documents one adventure after another, showing him kayaking, bicycling and even swimming with sharks.

“It’s amazing what doors can open if you reach out to people with a smile”

“There’s nothing more important than family, and that’s how it should be”

“If we can change business for good, we should also make an effort to change the world for the better”

…and the brief yet powerful “Be in the moment.”

Justin Dry

Via Justin Dry

Instagram for Business

Via Instagram

Amy Landino

Startup Creative

Via Startup Creative

Find the inspiration that resonates with you —

Looking to get a creative project off the ground to grow your business?

We can help! Work with our designer community to make it happen.

Let’s do this!

The post 15 inspiring Instagram accounts every entrepreneur should follow in 2019 appeared first on 99designs.

via https://99designs.co.uk/blog/

0 notes

di-sss-learning-engineering · 6 years

Link

HOME EDITOR'S CHOICE SUBMITGET SMARTER AT BUILDING STARTUPS Following Ezgi Tasdemir Writer | Realistic optimist | Constantly curious & amazed | Passionate about healthcare, in pursuit of Positive Disruption to advance humanity. May 8 Strategic Learning: An Interview with Professor Willie Pietersen Creating and implementing strategy as a dynamic process for a changing world. We are in the eye of the storm of massive disruption and there is a clear recognition that the status quo cannot be maintained in this turbulent and ever-changing environment. How do we evolve our strategy to cope with a disruptive future, scientific revolutions, unanticipated events and challenges? To survive, we have to embrace change. To thrive, we have to be the change. Willie Pietersen, Professor of the Practice of Management, Faculty Member of Columbia Business School Executive Education, author of Strategic Learning: How to Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights into Competitive Advantage, has great insights in the matter. We met last year during a corporate training program he supervised and I had a chance to learn his Strategic Learning framework and vision, to discuss with him at length about the impact of new technologies on our lives/businesses, future of humanity and importance of ethics. Willie was also the first person to encourage me to write, the first person who read my articles and gave constructive feedback. It is my duty and honor to share here a snippet of his immense knowledge, expertise and wisdom. Willie Pietersen was raised in South Africa, and received a Rhodes Scholarship to Oxford University. After practicing law, he embarked on an international business career. Over a period of twenty years he served as the CEO of multibillion-dollar businesses such as Lever Foods, Seagram USA, Tropicana and Sterling Winthrop’s Consumer Health Group. In 1998, Willie was named Professor of the Practice of Management at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business. He specializes in strategy and the leadership of change, and his methods and ideas, especially Strategic Learning, are widely applied within Columbia’s executive education programs, and also in numerous corporations. He has served as a teacher and advisor to many global companies, including Aviva, Bausch & Lomb, Boeing, Chubb Corp., Deloitte, DePuy, Electrolux, Ericsson, ExxonMobil, Henry Schein, Inc., Federal Home Loan Bank of Atlanta, Novartis, Salt River Project, SAP, UGI, United Nations Federal Credit Union and also the Girl Scouts of the USA. Willie is the author of two books and numerous articles. His latest book is Strategic Learning: How To Be Smarter Than Your Competition and Turn Key Insights Into Competitive Advantage. You write and teach extensively about strategy. What is strategy and whose responsibility it is in a corporate environment? “That’s a key question actually because before we can function strategically, we must first be able to think strategically, understand deeply the underlying concepts and only then can we design the tools to harness those concepts. The interesting thing is strategy is a very important component of effective leadership. There are 3 basic components of effective leadership: 1. Leadership of Self, being deeply self-aware, being grounded on a sound set of values, being totally authentic and transparent as a leader. 2. Strategic Leadership, being able to give a clear direction and well-defined priorities for the organization to lead it forward. 3. Interpersonal Leadership, bringing out the best in others. These 3 elements work strongly together, none of them can work in isolation. When they do work synergistically together and we are able integrate them we become truly integrated leaders. Strategy is a fundamentally important part of that leadership structure. Unfortunately, strategy is widely misunderstood and therefore misapplied. That’s not really good piece of news. There is some global research in large number of respondents that shows that only one-third of employees in typical organizations truly understand their company strategy and only one-third are fully engaged with what the organization is trying to do. Those two things are linked. The other finding is that in high engagement organizations in top quartile in engagement, level of performance is significantly higher, level of profit is 21% higher on average. Employees can only feel fully engaged if they totally understand and committed to organization’s strategy. In terms of understanding what it is, I think we need to break it down to its simple essence which is an essential starting point for thinking strategically, and everything flows from this point. The key starting point is the reality of limited resources, and yet if we don’t really internalize that reality, we get derailed in our thinking. It means that we need make choices in terms of how we will mobilize our scarce resources for competitive advantage. That’s essentially what strategy is, it is about making choices in pursuit of competitive advantage. That only happens when we offer superior value to customers that we seek to serve. When we talk about making choices, there are actually 3 questions that we need to be able to answer: 1. Where will we compete and what is our aim? We have to determine our arena(s) of competition and put a fence around it. 2. How we will win the competition for value creation in that chosen arena? 3. What will be the key priorities for success? Everything an organization does cascades from the answers to those 3 questions as a derived set of choices. When we ask the question “Whose job it is to create the strategy?”, the answer we must give is it is everybody’s job, at every level, every function, every region, every business unit. That’s the way I think about strategy in a very simple way.” How can organizations achieve competitive advantage in this ever-changing world? “The world is dynamic and full of disruption. The old, static methods of creating strategy in a dynamic environment are no longer fit for purpose at all. There is a fundamental reality that I think we must internalize: sustainable competitive advantage -a buzz word, kind of the ultimate goal- in a dynamic and fast changing world cannot rest for long on a particular product or business model as these things are quickly overtaken by events. The very big mindset shift that we need to adopt is the understanding that sustainable competitive advantage is not a product, nor a business model, it is an organizational capability. We must build an adaptive enterprise able to constantly renew itself through learning. It is that understanding that helped me to create “strategic learning process”. It is a set of tools, a framework that represents a shift of gear from strategy as planning which is the old mindset to strategy as learning which is the imperative for being adaptive. It consists of 4 steps that move in a cycle. Step 1: LEARN by doing a situation analysis of the external environment, customers and our own realities & develop a set of insights about these. Step 2: FOCUS by using those insights to make best possible choices about those 3 questions (where we will compete, how we will win, what will be our priorities). Step 3: ALIGN the measures & rewards, structure & process, culture and competencies of our people. Step 4: EXECUTE, implement faster and better than our competitors, keep experimenting and learning. And then this learning goes back to Step 1, the starting point, as the environment is shifting hence we can’t stop learning. Strategic Learning Framework by Willie Pietersen The idea is to use this as a formal process, embed that thinking and set of practices within the organization. The situation analysis, which is the essential starting point, forces us to think “outside-in”. As military likes to say “intelligence precedes operations”, so sequence matters a lot. In going through these steps, understand that they are interrelated as a holistic system of learning and re-learning. In many companies this has become a formal process already and it seems to work well if leaders make it work. There is no process that is going to lead you to success on its own like a wind-up mouse running off on its own. No process is a magic bullet on its own. The magic bullet is leadership effectiveness, which means not just following the process mechanically, but appling the underlying principles that inspired the process in the first place. I would like to emphasize that strategy is about winning, not just about competing or participating. I am not a fan of the phrase “value proposition” because it leaves out the biggest question of all: How much value? Value is a relative term, like the temperature, it is not an absolute. We need a higher bar than a value proposition, we need a “winning proposition” which defines the margin of difference in the value that you will create; that gives your customers a compelling reason to choose you. It is based on a fundamental truth: the hallmark of a customer is to have choices. If they don’t have choices, they are not customers, they are hostages. They don’t wake up in the morning thinking they owe you something, you owe them something! Hence the measurable margin of difference in the value that you create, the compelling reason you give them to choose you is your winning proposition. That’s my take on sustainable competitive advantage. But winning once is not enough, you have to go on winning, through learning and adaptation.” How do we build this kind of thinking into the DNA of corporations? “Strategy is a military concept. A great thought leader on strategy Carl von Clausewitz, a Prussian general who fought against Napoleon, wrote the definitive book between 1832 and 1835 on strategy called “On War”. I don’t like war but that’s the origin of strategy and all the great principles of strategy were enunciated there. Warfare is a blood sport, military wouldn’t mind occupying the enemies’ territory or decapitating their leaders and so on. In the business world, strategy is not a blood sport, you don’t win by destroying your enemies, you win by scoring more points for your customers than your competitors do. All the other aspects of strategy are applicable in business world. We talked about strategic learning, it is very important to have a key process but being adaptive and thinking strategically cannot rest just on one process, strategy can’t just be seasonal. When it comes to “planning time” we suddenly start talking about customers, competitors, industry trends, and our own realities, we develop a strategy and then we turn the lights out because it is no longer strategy season! It is an ongoing process. Clausewitz emphasizes that in the military, strategy is a process of ongoing assessment and reassessment. The brutal logic is the fact that the external environment won’t stop changing, so you dare not stop learning! I advocate the following: always have small teams working on situation analyses for an ongoing assessment and reassessment, a team looking at customers and stakeholders doing a hierarchy of needs analysis, a team working on competitor analyses, a team analyzing industry trends; all teams always bringing insights into play as a habit of thought in performance meetings. Another thing I advocate is going on quarterly retreats away from the office: getting away from the urgent to think about the important. Another idea is to do after-action reviews, after each major endeavor to examine what worked, what didn’t work, why and then disseminate. A key cultural aspect is how we deal with mistake making. It is an inevitable result of risk taking. We urge our organizations to be prudent risk takers and that means there will be a certain number of mistakes. It is like a coin: one side says risk taking, the other side says mistake making. Being good at risk taking seems to rest on how good you are on dealing with mistake making. There are two categories: Dumb mistakes, when you repeat your own mistake or somebody else’s mistake, betting disproportionately more than the organization can afford to lose, acting without thinking deeply enough… The remainder are smart mistakes, provided that the value of the learning is bigger than the cost of the mistake. If that’s the philosophy of an organization, it moves the emphasis away from blaming to learning. That’s an essential aspect of being an adaptive system. An industry that’s brilliant in doing this is the airline industry. Every time there is a plane crash, aviation gets safer because they do the root cause analysis very rapidly and disseminate the learning across the entire global aviation system. We can all learn from them, if you look at the graph of airline safety it is a spectacular story of continuous improvement. That’s the way we should deal with mistake making.” You mentioned about “outside-in thinking” and also wrote in your book about “marketing myopia”. What do they mean exactly? “Our nature is to think inside-out. Sociologists have done research on content of informal conversations and 80% of them involve inside-out thinking; they are about what’s happening internally in our own family, society, company as opposed to what’s going on externally. It is a survival matter to know who is who, who can I trust… In business world, we need to understand that success occurs outside the boundaries of our organization, not inside. Inside is where we mobilize our resources to compete well outside. The ability to think outside-in is essential, yet it is an unnatural act. It is astonishing to me that, although we understand that intellectually, so often the conversation quickly becomes about what we want to do. That’s a terrible starting point for your strategy! The world doesn’t care what you want to do, the world only cares what it gets. Starting point is your customers and their needs, what are your competitors offering them, how can you create superior value? It is more easily said than done. As leaders we need to be role models. Samuel J. Palmisano, former president and CEO of IBM, said that every executive in IBM should be able to answer 4 questions in every conversation they have, which stem from outside-in thinking: 1. Why should out customers choose to do business with us? 2. Why should investors choose to give us their money? 3. Why should employees seek to work in our organizations? 4. Why should communities welcome us in their midst? These questions touch on 4 critical stakeholders, on the importance of dealing with their needs in an interrelated effort. It introduces an intellectual discipline of thinking strategically, as emphasized by Clausewitz. Marketing myopia is related to that. There is a wonderful article written way back in 1960 by Theodore Levitt. The ideas he put forward are still very relevant today. He wrote that you don’t sell products, you sell benefits. He said for example that the railroad companies failed because they saw themselves being in the railroad business as opposed to the transportation business. A railroad is just a means to an end for conveying benefits to customers. Customers don’t buy features, they buy benefits, they are looking for solutions to their problems. Therefore, we have to think outside-in. Let’s take Amazon for instance and their retail business. What’s the benefit they are offering? As Jeff Bezos pointed out: Amazon makes buying things easy with great prices, very fast and convenient delivery. We forget the importance of service model and customer experience. Another example about selling benefits is Hallmark cards’ winning proposition which reads like this: “We help people connect with one another and give voice to their feelings”. That’s the benefit they offer, the card is simply a vehicle to offer that benefit. That’s another kind of mind-shift we need to internalize. Kodak was so in love with their films that they couldn’t catch up with the benefits of digital photography. General Motors failed spectacularly. In the early 1980s they had a market share of 52% of the US auto market, today it is only about 18%. They went down progressively. There was nothing wrong with their intellectual capabilities but they became inward looking and political blaming it on the unions. They didn’t talk about their customers’ needs, they focused on their costs. We know why they failed, it is no longer a debate: Inside-out thinking. You need to think outside-in & understand that you sell benefits, not just products. Your benefit is competing against that of competitors’. The margin of difference in the benefit you offer will help you win. Don’t be a make and sell organization, be a sense and respond organization.” In the context of limited resources, we need to make choices and prioritize. What does this entail? “Choice making sounds very simple and straightforward, doesn’t it? Let’s step back for a minute. Albert Camus said ‘Life is the sum of all your choices’. Same is true of organizations. We make our choices and at the end of the day our choices turn around and make us. Now, what is a choice? Useful answer is: choice is not a choice until you determined what you will give up. Choice is an act of sacrifice. When you have limited resources, you are working with a zero-sum game. Every additional thing you do subtracts energy and effort from everything else you do. Nobody has the luxury of unlimited resources. Steve Jobs was really very good at this. He used to take his top 100 employees away from the office to brainstorm on potential areas of innovation. Team would come back with a lot enthusiasm and a list of 10 projects. At this point, most people would be tempted to try to tackle all ten. But Jobs knew that this would merely dilute the company’s impact. After the brainstorming, Jobs did something that many others would consider ruthless: he cut off the bottom seven things. He declared the ONLY things that Apple was going to focus on and put all its energy & resources were those top three priorities. Deciding what we will not do is a very hard thing. The vast majority of inputs have a minor effect on outputs. As leaders, we need to define those few things that make the biggest impact and prioritize them.” You are coaching CEOs and senior management in various industries around the world. What are the biggest challenges that they are facing? What are the most powerful ideas that will drive success in this disruptive world? “I offer perspective and guidance, I don’t claim to have all the right answers. I think we should be led by asking the right questions. I offer a point of view in all humility. I am very convinced that these ground rules mentioned previously are certainly important. What are the challenges we face? Yes, the world is changing, but more importantly, the nature of change in changing. World has become much more disruptive. Disruption means that the old structures are being destroyed, old rules of success no longer work. We have to constantly reinvent what success looks like. Peter Drucker said: in times of turbulence the biggest danger is to act with yesterday’s logic. In a market environment of that kind, we need to: 1. Create a learning organization and infuse that in your processes, your structure and in the way you lead. We need to think in Darwinian terms, adapt or die. Adaptation in human systems comes from learning; not from accidents. 2. Practice outside-in thinking. 3. Practice customer empathy. It is different from customer centricity. See and experience the world through the eyes of the customer. 4. Simplify. We hear all these terms like AI, quantum computing, big data etc. Most people don’t even really know what they mean. We need to understand the benefits and the greater value they create. They are vehicles for a greater benefit. We need to simplify them and explain them to our people. Complexity is your enemy. Complexity paralyzes, simplicity empowers, energizes. 5. Unify your people with a compelling leadership message. Don’t just look at your strategy as a document. People don’t follow documents, they follow people and ideas. The bigger the change you are embarking on, the more important it becomes to have a powerful narrative that binds people together. We run two large systems as leaders: a social system & an economic system. If one of those underperforms, it disables the other one. We so often forget the social system which is energized through storytelling, that gives us meaning in what we do. We are not human beings on a spiritual journey, we are spiritual beings on a human journey. Thank you, Willie! If you found this story interesting, feel free to clap once or twice or fifty times 👏👏👏👏👏 If you can’t get enough, follow me on Medium and Twitter 🤗 Here are a few more articles you may find interesting: Authenticity The Mindful Leader Leadership Ezgi Tasdemir, PhD is a Novartis Oncology employee. This article is created by Ezgi Tasdemir. Views, analysis, and perspectives do not necessarily represent the views or opinions of Novartis or any other company or organization. The author does not receive any funding or support from Novartis or any other pharmaceutical/non-pharmaceutical company for this blog. This story is published in The Startup, Medium’s largest entrepreneurship publication followed by 322,555+ people. Subscribe to receive our top stories here. StrategyLeadershipCompetitive AdvantageFutureLearning Like what you read? Give Ezgi Tasdemir a round of applause. From a quick cheer to a standing ovation, clap to show how much you enjoyed this story. 209 3 Follow Ezgi Tasdemir Medium member since Feb 2018 Writer | Realistic optimist | Constantly curious & amazed | Passionate about healthcare, in pursuit of Positive Disruption to advance humanity. Following The Startup Medium's largest publication for makers. Subscribe to receive our top stories here → from The Startup (Deliberate) practice makes perfect: how to become an expert in anything Aytekin Tank 6.6K More from The Startup Standing desks vs sitting: why sitting ISN’T slowly killing you Aytekin Tank 14.1K More from The Startup Stop Wasting Your Money On Instagram Influencers. They Suck. Jon Westenberg 🌈 4.7K Responses

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lovelyparanormalbooks · 6 years

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Book Blitz: Grand Finale: Terror by Eamonn Hickson (Giveaway)

On Tour with Prism Book Tours

Book Tour Grand Finale for

Terror

By Eamonn Hickson

We hope you enjoyed the tour! If you missed any of the stops

you can see snippets, as well as the link to each full post, below:

Launch - Author Interview

What is your motivation behind Terror? Why did you want to write it?

I want to be a devil’s advocate in one of most topical issues of our time: terror attacks. While I’m not condoning the characters’ beliefs or actions, I want to see what’s on the other side of a terror attack: why do ‘they’ do it? What motivates ‘them’? One man’s terrorist is another’s freedom fighter. Most of us see those who do unspeakable acts as terrorists, but to someone they might be heroes. Terror was also inspired by a visit to Belfast in Northern Ireland, where I (as a southerner) got to see both the Catholic and Protestant sides without fear.

Mello & June, It's a Book Thang! - Great Writing Is Dead

Some of my favourite pieces of writing were constructed by the likes of John Milton, Homer and Edgar Allan Poe. Words are magnificent; they can transport our thoughts back to a time long gone, to a world we know almost nothing about, to a world where our modern selves would never fit in. Or would we?

Teatime and Books - Author Interview

Can you tell us about your current work-in-progress?

I’m currently working on the sequel to Terror. While there is a sense of finality for a number of story arcs in Terror, some characters just need more time. Ideas are a dime a dozen, but I think a writer must trust his or her characters when they demand more airtime. The sequel is based in Boston again, for the most part, and will include characters who were affected by the events in the original. Some characters from Terror will still be front and center in the sequel, and we’ll get to see their longer-term reaction to their choices in the original… it’s hard to write about a sequel without throwing in some spoilers!

The Bookworm Chronicles - Excerpt

She reaches for words to say but they’re trapped behind a double-glazed window, visible but untouchable— Robert clasps her wrists. Ally doesn’t resist, and he throws her to the carpeted floor. She lands on all fours and a murder of tingles rush to her hands like demented crows stabbing a finch to death, while the mattress cover unclips from the edge of the bed and becomes a snapping Venus flytrap. Robert throws the piece of paper in front of her face and leaves the bedroom.

It's All About the Romance - I’ve lost control of my character. My bad!

You know how it works: you spend days, weeks or even months deciding on their appearance, memories, experiences, dreams, motivations, fears, desires, hopes… and they give you the middle finger halfway through your novel. If this hasn’t happened to you, can you tell me how you managed to keep a tight rein on your characters.

Wishful Endings - Good V. Evil

Quite some time ago, I visited Northern Ireland and, more specifically, Belfast. Being from the southern part of the Republic of Ireland, I had only heard bits and pieces about ‘The Troubles’ of the 1970s and ‘80s. So, I visited Belfast as an outsider, devoid of any strong views on what’s happened there. I went on a ‘black taxi tour’ through areas which were at the center of the conflict in the past and something dawned on me; the Catholic driver spoke of the events of his youth, how soldiers targeted his family and friends, how one put their life in danger by going down the wrong street, and how every action had a reaction.

Leels Loves Books - Review

"I enjoyed this book. With the title like TERROR, I was expecting more fear and horror – like a horror story – but the suspense and the mysteriousness of it all definitely made for a good read. If you can follow along with the different characters, the different stories, not always having the backstory right away when you want it – you will enjoy this book. It is definitely one that I think I will read again!"

Andi's Book Reviews - Excerpt

Nestor leaves the kitchen via the back door, walks around the house and stops in the driveway. His house sits on the corner across the street like an obedient dog. The new paint, the rattling window chimes, the nylon washing line, the new AC unit, the repaired woodwork, the balloon tied to the balustrade, the flank of flowers—they’re all imposters, along with Sarah and the Grinch.

Deal Sharing Aunt - Author Interview

Do you want each book to stand on its own, or are you trying to build a body of work with connections between each book?

The plan was to write standalone books. However, that’s changed with my latest release. I feel there’s another story to tell involving some of the characters in this novel and if I were to move onto something different, it’d be a storyline that I wouldn’t be able to seamlessly grasp onto again. So, in short, I’m trying to create connected stories. More on this in a later question.

Colorimetry - Killing Your Darlings

Breaking up is hard to do—and so is killing your favourite characters. I suppose it’s a compliment (from you to you) when there’s a character who is more than just a collection of letters and words and thoughts and actions. A non-existent persona, one conjured up and moulded in a joint collaboration between your brain and fingers, begins to relay messages back, asking you to spare them.

And don't forget to enter the giveaway below, if you haven't already...

Terror by Eamonn Hickson Adult Thriller

Paperback & ebook, 336 pages

April 29th 2017 Have you ever felt that society consciously tries to undermine you? In a society where everyone strives for growth, where everyone tries to build towards the heavens, there are some who wish to bring it plummeting down. Terror is a thriller in which three people from different walks of life find a common enemy in the contemporary world. Yet, unlike most, they decide to do something about it. Following his best friend’s death, military man Milton Haynes is forced to see a psychiatrist while he challenges his dishonourable discharge. Ally Winston, one year after being viciously assaulted, struggles to slot into the life her father has laid out for her, while Nestor Frings returns to Boston to find his parents have sold their home due to financial issues. The three initially voice their pains through non-violent means, however, they soon find their efforts futile. In a world where outsiders are considered dangerous and are not to be trusted, it will be the insiders who do the damage. Follow Milton, Ally and Nestor as they come to, what they perceive to be, the inevitable conclusion: they must commit a terror attack.

Praise for the Book

“Eamonn Hickson brings the fascinating, dingy, and complex streets of Boston alive in his new novel TERROR, a probing novel of survival in the modern world. TERROR is a masterful portrait of the hard decisions and harder lives that must be lived during a dark time in American history – the present.” — Self-Publishing Review Reviews of the Author's Other Work “…a suspense thriller with a fascinating version of heaven versus hell that lingers after closing the pages.” “Eamonn Hickson writes a vivid story of a war between angels and demons, and Heaven and Hell. The story captivates the audience as you witness deception, lies, and Heavenly Hosts that are working for the enemy.” “Find yourself enmeshed in a roller coaster ride to a mind-numbing conclusion that will remain with you many a day to come.”

Goodreads│Amazon│Barnes & Noble

About the Author

Eamonn Hickson is an Irish author of three novels. He currently works as a radio journalist in Tralee, Co Kerry.

Goodreads│Facebook│Twitter

Tour Giveaway

1 winner will receive a print copy of TERROR

Open internationally

Ends December 20th

a Rafflecopter giveaway

#ParanormalBooks

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