Henriette Weber

I got back from Roskilde Festival sunday night. Monday was for catching up on stuff and today I feel like creative writing. It’s fantastic, because it’s one of the things I love the most, the total flow of needing to get things down on “paper” and shared away for inspiration.

These days I feel like im in some sort of vacuum waiting to burst out. It was the same when I released “return on involvement” in Danish last year. And with the english book “return on involvement” coming out + my new e-book (working title “social media value chain”, which I still need to find out if I can publish calling it a value chain without getting myself in trouble).

Another things that’s on my mind is the process of moving. We are (still) selling our gorgeous apartment and we’re moving back to my childhood home in Elsinore (about 50 km around from where we live now). Talking to the bank and facing the “when will your apartment be sold” question or “how many has been out to see it” makes me tired.

But – I turn to writing and researching for clients and myself. Now, one of the things that popped up in my curly head today, was a fun trick that I think will help you gather acknowledgement and fame (and make you into the rockstar that I KNOW you want to be).

One of the most important and interesting parts of my business is to figure out what people are saying about you. Both the lovers and the haters, the likers and ignorers (the people who ignore you for some apparent reason) and the rest who hasn’t had the chance to meet you yet. There’s a couple of things that always gets me going and makes me put myself on the spot all the time.

These things are the facts that:

- I believe that about 10% of all people in the world will be straight out negative about you. If you expect that, then the path to being your fullest self and daring to be different isn’t that hard. You will experience that some people thinks that what you’re most passionate about is the most stupid waste of time. Accept that these people are around and get going. Don’t focus on them. on the contrary I choose to believe a lot of people thinks that what I do kicks a**. I need to believe that – you do too.

- It takes quite a long time to get people to find out what you actually do – don’t worry they will come around if it’s for them.

- “They” will screw you over. it’s likely to happen so why not expect it?

- I will come out of every situation stronger.

- That you need to think about these things in a positive way, otherwise you wont publish your next piece of brilliant content, or the next – maybe it’s not exactly accurate, but it get’s your self-esteem up and makes you dare to be yourself. You’re on a special mission and nothing is going to stop you. You’re doing something that no one else has done before – because it has that magic touch of you on it.

But a way to direct this and to strategize around people, is to get aware of what it is that you want people to say about you. Put it down on paper.

So here’s the questions I asked myself (and my own answers below):
Why do you want the lovers to love your work ?

Because they think it rocks. Because it gives them value and that kind of “Henriette” insight and creativity that they didn’t know they where looking for. Because it’s made to inspire. Because it will make them more money and have their business running better… (and that’s also why I believe that Toothless Tiger (aka. my business) has been in business for 5 years, and is still going better than strong=)

Why should/would people hate you ?

If you think I’m an obnoxious woman, who likes to voice my opinion and whom you can’t stand. Don’t like me. Not even on facebook. Don’t retweet. Don’t sign up for my newsletter.  It’s ok. Question my authority. Tell your friends to hate me too. I’m fine without you. No worries. You will be fine without me as well.

Why do they like what you’re doing ?

Because they are inspired by me and my work. They think I am a creative individual who gives them value.

Why do they choose to ignore you ?

One of the things I continuously say in my head is that they deliberately ignore me because they are afraid of me – sometimes I even say it’s because they are jealous. I need to believe that  it’s because I am better, faster, smarter, sexier and more insightful than them

What do you want the in-betweeners to say after the first time the read/hear/see you ?

That I gave them insights they haven’t thought about. That my ideas where genuine. That they would love to work with me at some point.

This is a giving exercise to do. It helps you position yourself. Now look at the answers to your questions and figure out: how will you make it happen ?

Today I am heading down to Roskilde Festival – a place I have visited at every opportunity I’ve had since 1997. Anyway this year there’s a lot of connectedness tools going on down there (foursquare camp, tweetups etc.) and I will attend as much as it as I can.  It’s awesome sitting here looking on twitter at the #rf10 tag and see what people are doing down there – I can’t wait to participate myself.

At Roskilde Festival 2007 I worked with a client of mine Jaiku.com – one of my favorite webapps of all time (and I may still add, in my opinion used to be superior to twitter as a microblogging tool), and one of my favorite clients of all time. We tried to set up to use Jaiku.com as a part of the “roskilde community” site (before it was integrated in the overall site=). I think we where around 30 people using jaiku at Roskilde 2007. It was good fun.  I remember @shevy and @aj42 and @wendelboe and I tried to plan a meetup – it was really hard though because the jaiku client drained our phones of batteries.

This year – three years down the line, things have changed and the apps are everywhere – the online/offline relations are booming and it’s a joy for me to see -  My only problem is that if I bring my iphone I will run out of batteries in a day or two. I am thinking about bringing a really old nokia instead – but then I will miss out on all the geolocated fun.

It seems like the collective education of the crowd when it comes to social apps has come so far, where as in my camp 3 years ago people where sitting and asking if I was a reporter or why I was fiddling with the phone all the time. When I said that I was updating the internet they looked puzzled to say the least. Today I don’t think anyone will ask that question. It’s a part of people’s behaviour nowadays. Even though some of it are slightly geeky, the 3 people who asked me questions about “updating the internet” will probably poke a person or two on facebook or send a tweet.

It’s amazing how fast the collective education of the crowd has gone. I wonder where we will be in 3 years =)

by the way – this blog is probably going to be quiet while I am down there – I will however upload pictures to my flickr, so you can have your daily share of me (if you miss me too much=)

I found this blog post yesterday by Charlie Hoehn via Hey Amber Rae.  A lot of things came together in my head after reading it  – the best part of it is:

“My favorite part of The Dark Knight is when the Joker is talking to Harvey Dent in the hospital, and he says: “Do I really look like a guy with a plan? You know what I am? I’m a dog chasing cars. I wouldn’t know what to do with one if I caught it! You know, I just DO things… I’m not a schemer. I try to show the schemers how pathetic their attempts to control things really are.”

And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things.  Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy.  Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t.  No one does.  You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you.  There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps.  I’m making it up as I go.

It’s harder, for sure, and kind of scary sometimes.  But it will allow you to look at yourself in the mirror and know you’re playing by your own rules.”

Especially the “stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t” line really got to me. Those of you knowing me pretty well as a business owner and an entrepreneur knows that I have had some trouble aligning me with the whole “structure and goal setting go get’em, this-is-who-we-should-contact-today thing”. It’s not something I really like doing and so far I have done really great without it, but as the business grows and as I get smarter, I know I have to get someone inside Toothless Tiger that loves to scheme and plan, somebody who wants a set path – because I really don’t. I know I’m supposed to expect me to have a set path. But -it’s not for me, not right now at least. I became a business owner because I love the freedom to choose what to do next. I basically love the magic of the moment and the un-planning part of it.

That I can (like what I am doing this summer) spend all my time on my favorite clients, writing new products and staying at home with my daughter playing and creating and find out the moving process (we are moving to a house in my hometown Helsingør (basically it’s my childhood home we are buying from my parents) – and selling our awesome apartment 12 km from the city center of Copenhagen)

I love it. I am a dog chasing cars as well. I am not into the whole “getting there”. I just want to run free and do my thing.

(painting by my good friend Hans-Henrik Fischer)

I just wrote a blogpost on my danish blog about social media on amino.dk about a subject that I am totally on to this morning – which is why I will continue it as here as well.  I have always been thinking there’s a “few” things that separates my business ( you know t to the oothless tiger) from other businesses. And this morning I thought about it even further and… I have never competed. Not once. I guess it depends on how you define competing – but no, not that I am aware of anyway, I simply can’t think of an episode where I have done that. I have always been.. well creating my own marketshare instead of gaining marketshares from others – those things I have been doing has mostly been on a global scale or at least for the english speaking part of the world.

Isn’t there so much more energy to creation that competing ? it makes so much sense. Google creates markets. Apple creates markets. They don’t really compete do they ? either people like you or they don’t. if they don’t like you then they probably won’t buy from you and their preference is elsewhere…Everytime people they book a rock it session or they hire me as a strategist, speaker or rebel, it’s me they want, not anyone else…

Picture by the fantastic Lisbeth Hjort

A rose is still a rose =). Anyway this morning I decided that today was the day that I would launch my newest idea/product/way of life: Sessions. With me. Online. and in order to properly launch this I need a name. My first idea was the name “unplugged” but it doesn’t go that well with the online connection thing. I have had so many ideas, and I feel the name of the sessions is right out there, but I can’t grasp it right now. I want to make it rock n’ roll and me.

Therefore i decided to put together a (ta-da) competition where you can do two things to win an online (still unnamed) session with me. So help me find the perfect name and leave it in the comments here or where you normally connect with me.. (also if you can’t come up with anything you can still enter the competition by signing up for my newsletter (pretty creative no ?). Most of my readers has a pretty good idea of how I am/work and look from the outside..

So guys –  help me out with a name and I will eternally grateful =)

So a couple of nights ago I decided to do it – give the pressrelease and the date of the launch of the book to the public. danish press release here and google translation of press release here. It feels great to launch and give the date of when you can get the book in the bookstores (august 31st 2009) still there is a lot of stuff PR and marketing wise that needs to be done (oh and the logistics=).

I think it’s been a great ride, but it’s been a tough baby to bear, I guess I knew I had to do it on my own when my ex-editor told me that she didn’t think it was time for me to publish a book, i should be doing other stuff. Now one of the first triggers to get me going is when people tell me what I can and what I can’t do, I just knew that I had to get this book out of my system – and right away.

The book to me is something that’s missing out there. Not focusing on the social tools (to me they are 10% of social marketing and branding), not to focus on why you need to do it, but simply to give people an overview on what it takes (and it takes a bit) and how they create business unusual – the type of business I find is most suited for what I call the “anarchistic ways of the internet”. So it’s been a fun progress – it has a bit of everything I have been working on for the last couple of years – rockbandism, tools, identity, revolutions, movement, marketing, branding – stuff like that.

The best that I have taken with me from writing this book is the process of it. It was hard work (not just hard- but darn hard), and yet I still know what my next book will be about, I have even started to structure it in my mind, which is scary because I have promised myself that I need to take care of myself after this first insane project.

I have a saying that I can only take care of one baby at the time – now up is my health (I need to loose weight and these days I am loosing weight as we speak =), next up I am gonna ruin my weightloss by having another real baby. (Princess P is 5 now and tired of not having any siblings), heck I might even do 2 babies in a row (aka. weightloss probably pretty much ruined).

Also if you want to know more about the bookwriting process – I did a summary a couple of weeks ago

There’s gonna be a booklaunchparty on the 28th of August where all of the internet is invited.. So I hope to see you there.. be-fan the book at facebook if you want to know more.

ps. crossposted on toothlesstiger.com

So the videos from two talks I gave 2 weeks ago in Hamburg and Stockholm are online.

Here’s the one from next09 called: “rockbandism” or “why every company should be a rockband” based on my ebook with the same title – filmed by the amazing Andrea Vascellari

Here’s my talk on “return on involvement – how you can use social to create business unusual” from disruptive media a couple of days later i Stockholm.

Here’s where you find the video

This week I am working on putting last hands on a new ebook that is probably going to be entitled “from hopeless to hot – a crashguide in social marketing” – I don’t know yet – I change my mind all the time =) anyway the suggestion came from Eva Jonassen who send me a mail with the coolest suggestions…

Also I have made up my mind to move socialmediacamp copenhagen from the 5-6 of june to the 12th of september – this is mainly do to heavy workloads on the PR and publishing side of my big book (entitled return on involvement – how you can use the social web to create business unusual” which is due to come out shortly.

that’s about it these days – what’s happening on your side on the internet ?

This is basically a shout out to some of the traincompanies around the world. Yesterday I went by train from Hamburg to Stockholm, via Copenhagen and Malmø. It was an 8 hour trainride, but I decided to go for it, mainly because of the environmental issues, but also because I needed to work a bit.

1. hamburg – copenhagen, polish my presentation for disruptivemedia – no wifi not even in Denmark with my crappy 3g modem from telmore ( sorry guys it’s just not functional on trains – where I use it mostly)and structure the free ebook I am writing on Social Marketing a bit more

2. Copenhagen Malmø – no coverage by my 3g modem – grrr

3. Malmø – sthml – long trip – but they had free wifi on 1st class. You could buy wifi from 2nd class.

I got to do 5 hours of work on the train  – it was awesome – concentrated and I got to see Sweden as in “being in Sweden” not “flying over Sweden” – it was so enjoyable.

I love trains, and if you can create a workplace on the train, I think you guys have a winning strategy – especially if you have free GREAT wifi… You can take on the plane industry on shorter and longer distances – especially if you work on the train and track infrastructure internationally – so go do it =)

oh and trainpeople – give me a call I will explain more..

ps – did you notise that I have now made a newsletter about business unusual ? sign up if you can’t get enough of me =)

I can’t sit still these days – so I have decided to do another event within the field of social media : Socialmediacamp Copenhagen.

Socialmediacamp Copenhagen is an un-conference that seeks to research and teach people about social media: blogs, podcasts, video, social networks, online communities and transitional web apps. An un-conference is a conference/workshop-y format where all the participants is prepared to participate in the camp in different ways. Putted another way, you have to prepare something that you’re passionate about that could occupy the other participants for a minimum of 30 minute

Who is it for ?

Basically everyone can participate in Socialmediacamp Copenhagen, no matter if you are a super social media user, an expert or a newbie. If you have any interest in Social Media Socialmediacamp Copenhagen is the place to be. So take a look at it, and sign up.

ps. Crossposted on Toothless Tiger.com

see more Lolcats and funny pictures

Im one day late for earth day. Damn. I am surprised that nothing seems to be happening in Denmark at that day though. I have to change that for next year.

Anyway one of the things that can get me going mostly about the current state of the world, is that some people don’t really believe that the climate changes are caused by humans. Some of those people are in my near family and I can get so furious when:

1. people have all the lights turned on in ALL of their house
2. leave all their devices on standby
3. flying everywhere for leisure

We really need to rethink this -and we need to implement the changes and the action in a positive and fun way. Why the f*** should climate change be so serious ? Most of the planet can feel now how serious it is – but we can have a different approach that seriousness. Think Lolcats of change. Think green flashmobs and guerilla gardening.Think different and just do it. There’s two very good books that is actually helping this approach made by “we are what we do” -and they are cool for children as well. They are called “change the world for a fiver” and “teach your granny to text and other ways to change the world“.

Another thing that you need to think about when you think climate change, is that we are actually in a process of un-freeing our children. They are going to be limited in the future because we in the last 100 years have been using the ressources they are going to live of. This is truely a dictatorship of future generations. Im reminded of this everytime I see a lightbulb that doesn’t have to be turned on, a device that doesn’t have to be on standby and when I hear people getting on planes all the times.

BUT i am positive that this is creative, fun, involving and exciting times – and that we will be wiser on every level of all of these crisis’ – remember the universe has got our back =)