Video Blocked

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About a month ago I made a viral video that reached over 10 million facebook views across many pages, a million views on snapchat, and 880,000+ views on YouTube. It was called, “The Weeknd- Can’t Feel My Face (Uber Edition). It was a video that brought people together and made them smile. I’m not going to lie, I’m really sad and distraught right now as I try to figure out how to resolve this issue.

As I wait to see the fate of my future, let me tell you that I think this goes into a deeper discussion of how this affects my life as a whole.

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On Email Marketing: The Product Launch Formula (Part 2)

My last post I talked about the pre product launch that should happen before you start pushing out your product to your e-mail list: you can read it here. In this post I want to tell you about the product launch formula I use when I launch a product for a brand.

I understand this isn’t an email marketing or business blog. However, this site is where I write my most intimate thoughts and this is just on my mind. I promise I’ll write something that strays away from business / email marketing next time. Till then. Thank you for reading.

How This All Started

Kipkay Kits was planning to add a new feature with additional products to its store. And, they wanted me to promote this product to their e-mail list. I was in a fortunate position because, as I stated in my last post, I already had a successful (30 % open rate) auto-responder that made it clear to users that we’re an active brand that will email you.

Therefore, I think it’s very important to know that you cannot (shouldn’t) implement a product launch to your e-mail list unless you’re already sending emails to them. You’ll be wasting your time otherwise because a product launch will require you to send 12-14 emails to your email list – in a span of a week. This means that your emails will most likely hit your user’s spam folder if your users are cold.

Now that you know how it all started, I’m ready to tell you the product launch formula I used and it’s actually pretty simple.

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On Email Marketing: The (Pre)-Product Launch Formula (Part 1)

An email is the most important and sacred thing you can get from anyone. Yes, your fan may like your facebook page, follow you on twitter, and even be an active participant on your instagram account. But, it will never compare to you having the ability to interact with them first hand via their email.

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Every single person in the world checks their email on a daily basis. Though we’re at a time where people are now getting accustomed to delineating between spam and important emails… a really good email can gain the attention of your suspected prospect and hook them to your product(s). The right title, message, and follow up can turn your $0 business into a multi-millionaire dollar business.

This is why I’m in a love and in a hate relationship with e-mail marketing. I understand the value and importance, but I also know the abundant struggles it takes to acquire an email, get the prospects hooked, and then getting them to pull out their wallets. It’s a process that can take many weeks, many months, and even years!

Why am I talking about all of this?

Well, for the past year I’ve been hired as a brand consultant for a few clients. This job means I’m dealing with the brand’s imaging, product development, and more importantly, the brand’s e-mail marketing side of things, but thankfully,  you can learn more about managing your business online

It’s safe to say that e-mail marketing has been on my mind (taking over) and since this is where I share all my intimate thoughts… I want to share the concepts I have in my brain with you.

The clients I’ve been working with (that I can talk about): Kipkay Kits (60k+ email list ) and The Checklist Mom (it was at zero when we launched 3 weeks ago. We’re now going to be hitting 1,000 emails).

Hopefully this helps you or brings you some perspective about what I know in regards to email marketing. Here we go!

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What It’s Like Being A Manic Depressant

I’m a manic depressant.

Manic Depression is a genetic mental disorder that can be best described to be related to an individual who is bipolar and who also has post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Like any (genetic) mental disorder, mania is triggered through events that carry overtime.

This means that at any moment, without warrant, I can plunge into a feeling of depression. Or, in another moment my brain can catapult into a high. In this post, I’ll talk about what depression feels like, what the high does to me, and what the pills do to my body… Let me explain:

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Why I Made “Say Something Wonderful Surprise!”

I recently made this film to help cope with my anger management issue:

Last weekend I visited my family in San Diego to hang out with my 15 and 17 year old brothers. The youngest one is into film while the other is into music. I’m fortunate to have creative family members because that (this) weekend I wanted to film something for my YouTube channel.

I haven’t posted anything for about a week. But I didn’t want to film just anything, I wanted it to be good.

The first concept I had was to start off being sad and then actually crying. The background would change as my face would tear up while looking miserably downcast. This is how I actually felt at the time (I’m a negative person). Then, the camera would shift and a smile would begin to creep up on my face as I looked up to see… the Disnelyand sign!

The next sequence of shots would be of me having a ton of fun on Disneyland rides. I was going to call it: “The Happiest Place on Earth.” However, we didn’t film it because we realized that Disneyland is very expensive, almost three hour drive away, and their was something missing in the overall concept. I swayed back and forth until I made the decision that we needed to push the idea for a later date.

This got me into a very depressed mood.
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How To Get Into UC Berkeley

Note: you can always skip the intro if you need help writing your UC Personal Statement. Advice & My Contact is near the bottom. 

For how small this website’s community is – I’m always surprised when someone emails me (jonathan.gaurano [at] gmail.com) asking me to write an article. I appreciate it and like when you all do this because it helps me write something on this blog. Yes, I’m writing for you.

This person asked if I could write about I got into college.

Here it goes!

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Making & Connecting with Friends

A week ago a reader emailed me asking me to write a post:

I think it would be cool to hear more advice on making friends. I know you have a post on networking though. I love hearing about networking advice though lol. Personally though, I struggle with connecting with people and making friends, and you seem like someone who knows a lot about that.

I think this reader gives me a little too much credit in this department. I’ve been thinking about this subject and I’ve realized the one thing this reader has to understand is that making and connecting with friends are two very different concepts. I believe making friend is one of the easiest things one can do in life, it requires little or no effort and you can even do it online in sites like chatempanada.com and others. Connecting with a friend is harder because it requires more time and trust with both parties involved. However, the main thing to keep in mind is that for both things to happen you cannot go in trying to be friends with anybody: you need to let it happen naturally.

As you can see there are three concepts we’re going to analyze and go through. Let’s begin.

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Surround Yourself With Smarter People: For The Entrepreneur

Surround yourself with people who are smarter than you, people who you can bounce off ideas with, and people who are there to motivate you till the very end.

It’s been three months since I’ve been out of a job and in the process I’ve been looking for other opportunities to keep me going. The time has been spent traveling from North to South California to even random places, like Utah. I’ve been able to interact with a variety personalities in the YouTube space and startups.

This whole ordeal has led me to one conclusion: I need to surround myself with people who will get me to work. This is basically my issue is that I’ve been able to get out of bed and start working. You can see this as a sad thing but I’m unable to work alone. I love working an office. I love working with people who I can talk to about my ideas and here the projects they’re working on – this keeps me on my toes. And, I’m taking this philosophy not only for my own personal work, but also to the people who I work with (interns).

For example, I’ve now left my girlfriend in Northern California (staying long-distance) because the peer group I need to be at is in LA. And, I just purchased a plane ticket for my intern so I can start working in LA over the summer.

I believe the biggest investment you can make are the people you surround yourself with: you can do things yourself, but it’s always great to get second opinions on things because it can only make your work better. Also, it’s always great to have people who also believe in your projects because that in itself will make you make more.

I’m saying that you should be doing the same thing.
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How To Make a Prank Video with LAHWF & Tim Ferriss: Video Strategy?

Today I finished editing and just published my new video: Making a Prank Video with LAHWF and Tim Ferriss. It was a fun one to shoot and edit; especially the editing part wherein I experimented with some FCPX effects. Now, all that is left is doing things to make people view the video.

Before I begin telling you what I’ll be doing today (hopefully it works) – you can first see the video here:

Alright, now let’s get started…
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My Disease Called Gambling

I have a gambling problem.

I’m writing this because I find if I make this issue public I’ll be able to get a better grip of my problem. It’s not only a need – I WANT to stop this horrible habit because it is ruining me financially.

I know I would be about $100,000 richer and done more productive-meaningful things in my life (time wasted) if I didn’t gamble.

It is SUPER CRUCIAL that I must stop this time because I’m starting my own business venture this summer. Every cent I spend must be spent wisely towards a business purchase / decision. I am fortunate that, till September 2014, I will have steady income being deposited into my bank account.

However afterwards – gulp.

Therefore, I am telling you that I have a gambling problem. I’m going to tell you my story of why I got into it, what it has destroyed, and how I will fix it altogether. I hope sharing this will help anyone else who is dealing with compulsive disastrous habit(s) / disease(s) such as gambling.

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