[Advice] Designing a System for the No-Name Consultant

To develop as a consultant, digital marketing and using the tools of online digital content development are the most critical tools in your toolbox.

And, if you’re not connected to Booz Allen, McKinsey, or Boston Consulting Group, they you have only three tools in your box available to you, to grow your business:

Researching
Reading
Writing

These three tools serve as the cornerstone of all digital marketing efforts, and thus, as a budding consultant, with no name recognition, no building, no fancy cards and nothing but time, your best bet is to sit in front of the computer and grind it out.

Then, distribute your grind in a drip, by drip, by drip fashion throughout the social channels to which your audience flocks every day.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Most Valuable Battleground

Is anyone listening?

Reading well, listening thoroughly and responding appropriately are the hallmarks of working through the minefield that is adult interaction.

However, our brains are changing demonstrably through intersection and interaction with the internet, social media and mobile devices.

The brain already processes information twice as fast as a human being speaks it, and thus attention wanders and multitasking becomes a way to keep the brain engaged and to avoid boredom, rather than to actually accomplish tasks of merit.

Listening well and maintaining eye contact is critical, but as face-to-face communication has degraded, eye contact becomes the hallmark of a valuable conversation.

The bunker that we have built inside of ourselves is cracked through eye contact, listening well and responding appropriately, but attention—true attention—becomes the most valuable battleground in the 21^st century.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

HIT Piece 08.19.2014

Going to the US Capital is always an adventure for me.

The museums are free and are open even on Sundays, but the trade-off is that you’ve gotta walk everywhere and buy overpriced food.

Museums, monuments, street names, bill titles, building names are all reflective and demonstrate to others what we value, whose side we’ve decided to be on and the nature of historical moment realities that may not translate to future realities.

-Peace Be With You All-

The FDA’s Slippery Slope

The FDA believes that a “like” is akin to an endorsement.

Pretty soon, the Justice Department and the Supreme Court, following this logic, may determine that if a video of a violent crime is liked, shared or tweeted by enough people, those very acts may be seen as promoting the crime.

This is s slippery slope, not only for the conflicts that inherently exist inside of this legal, prosecutorial and policy making thinking, but also for the wider world at large.

Because, if as a private individual, I tacitly endorse an act by another private individual that may or may not be illegal, then I might be accused of yelling “fire” in a crowded social media theatre.

And we all know how slippery slopes can be…

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: hsconsultingandtraining@gmail.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

Christian Peacemaking in a Fallen World – Bully Edition

Bullies are everywhere it seems.

They are at school. They are at work.

Have they always been around or are we only now becoming sensitive to their presence and their impact?

From Donald Sterling to the workplace bully to the disaffected school shooter, modern Western culture seems to be turning up more and more of the disaffected and the dysfunctional.

Eventually, the societal call will come to violate the inviolable in order to ferret out and better address the impacts of bully pathology.

The conflation between the everyday bully and the societal scourge will become easier and easier as time progresses and peace will become harder and harder to attain.

There will be less understanding, less forgiveness and the road to reconciliation will be even tougher.

The hard work of #BuildingForTheFuture is just beginning…

-Peace Be With You All-

[Opinion] Grains of Sand in the Human Heart

A handful of sand contains one million grains.

How many ideas does that number of grains represent?

How much untapped potential?

The conflicts of the 21^st century will more pointedly focus on the conflict between potential and potential neither realized, nor accessed.

Real wisdom and leadership will come, not from designing more fancy tools, but from accessing old knowledge and applying it to, what will appear to be new challenges.

How many grains of sand can be contained in the human heart?

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

[Opinion] Secret Apps and Public Trust

Post Secret. Whisper. Secret. Yik Yak. The Right to be Forgotten.

In 2014, it seems that the conflict between having everything known to anyone and the idea that there must be boundaries and things that are private, has escalated to new heights.

Yes, Edward Snowden’s activities have raised a lot of attention, and there are events occurring right now in the sharing, common spaces of social media that have created almost paradoxical, real-world, legal decisions, but the conflicts only seem to be increasing.

In addition, the intelligentsia and “people that matter” are all up in arms about the rise of narcissism and the ubiquitousness of the “selfie” in popular culture.

The true conflict, the real material issue, is not privacy versus control.

Or even narcissism versus humility.

The real issue is trust versus respect.

The apps, the court decisions, the NSA and everything else are indicative of a lack of trust in various social, economic and cultural areas by multiple public constituencies.

First in the markets, then in the consumer and finally in the system of governments, that should have principalities and powers earning more of the public trust, rather than being perceived as being engaged in wickedness in high places.

And conflicts where trust is the core thing that is lost are almost never resolved thoroughly.

-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/

HIT Piece 08.12.2014

As the media market continues to fracture and as consumers are allowed more and more opportunities to create their own entertainment, subscription (and micro-subscription) services for content delivery will be all the rage.

I don’t think that 260 million people will be creating their own micro-subscription services anytime soon; there will always be consumers of content, rather than just creators.

I also think that as the media landscape continues to fracture, the idea that there will ever be one world, united in opinion and purpose, becomes ever more tenuous.

-Peace Be With You All-

The Artistic Part of Marketing

Brands and corporations assume that consumers are either always listening to their bullhorn and noise, or are never listening at all to anything and thus must be shouted at via a bullhorn.

However, if that doesn’t work, then brands get depressed, defensive or melancholy and stop trying. And ultimately disappear.

Or revert to ever larger and more unseemly spectacle.

The reality is something much more mundane–and hopeful.

Consumers’ interest and attention ebbs and flows like a river. It is fickle, unfixed and ever changing.

The hard work for brands is to remain consistently interesting, engaging and relevant so that when consumer attention comes back, the brand hasn’t changed.

The hard work of overcoming the fear of being irrelevant tomorrow and the anxiety to just keep yelling today, is the artistic part of marketing.

-Peace Be With You All-

[Advice] Queen of the YouTube Selfie

Narcissism is the great modern diagnoses.

From philosophers to social scientists to political theorists, the erudite thought leaders have spilled rivers of ink (or created tons of bytes) by critiquing the rise of everything from social media to the “selfie” and positing that such developments spell the end of Western civilization.

For our money, the end of Western civilization may come about, but not because a few million people posted images of themselves on social media sites.

And here’s a prediction for the intelligentsia: If the candidates for President in 2065 don’t have at least a Youtube channel, we here at HSCT will be genuinely surprised.

After all, we hear that you can’t even get a book deal these days without having a platform and an audience first.

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-Peace Be With You All-

Jesan Sorrells, MA
Principal Conflict Engagement Consultant
Human Services Consulting and Training (HSCT)
Email HSCT: jsorrells@hsconsultingandtraining.com
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HSConsultingandTraining
Twitter: www.twitter.com/Sorrells79
LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/in/jesansorrells/