SchwartzBlog

I love New York. I really do. I love the fact that even at 4am, there is still traffic in Time Square. I love the pace of this city. And even more than that, I love the people.

There are a lot of people in New York on a given day. I classify them into three groups; Residents, commuters, and tourists. I classify a commuter as someone who spends more than 20 hours a week in the city. All of these groups are easy to identify.

Resident’s are like commuters, but are more laid back. This is because they don’t have to wake up as early to go to work. They simply have more time in the day. Commuters get between one and three hours less sleep than residents, so they are more likely to be in a rush.

Either way, both resident’s and commuters go by a New York code. It is the code that differentiates the two groups from the tourists. For example; A new yorker knows that the traffic light is not the best way to tell when to cross the street. A new yorker knows to take their metro-card out of their pocket BEFORE getting to the turnstile. And a New Yorker knows that if you get a phone call on a Metro-North train during peak hours, you ignore it. People pay hundreds of dollars a month to ride those trains and expect silence. If you break that silence, you will be known as a tourist.

There are a few ways to know if you are acting like a tourist in New York City;

1. If you spend more than 5 seconds at a subway turnstile.
2. If when everyone else crosses the street, you wait for the light.
3. If you can’t walk more than 5 blocks without someone stopping you to offer a bus tour of Manhattan
4. If you answer your phone on the train and don’t care who is listening.

Wherever I go, I try to blend in with the culture. I’m not shy or anything like that, but I never like to be labeled as a tourist.

When I travel with people, I don’t like when they label themselves as tourists either. Because when they do, they label me one as well.

When you travel, what do you do to blend in?

Hi All,

In a word, this week has been insane. To kick it off, I played Lincoln Center on monday. The true difference between a rehearsal space and a concert hall is a concert hall doesn’t need microphones. It is sculpted in such a way that sound can carry from one part of the theater to the other. It is an architectural masterpiece. But besides that, it was an amazing night just from a musical prospective.

Tuesday was even bigger than that, if you can believe it. Tuesday was Seminar day, and boy was I dressed for it. I wore a CIA style earpiece and a full suit. and by 8:45 that morning I was already tired. But this year was different, because this year I didn’t have that much on my plate for seminar day, so I have no idea what it could of been like for the people who actually had to run the event. Nonetheless, Annalie Aplin and the HGHS Student Council pulled that day off without a hitch.

On a side note, for the second seminar day in a row, I got an internship offer.

Wednesday I went back to work, if you could call it that. I say that because most people attribute work with negatives, and I can’t call what I am doing negative.

On wednesday I was able to shine at Swift Kick, as I was asked to put my own spin on their program. Currently, Swift Kick is a speaking company targeted at colleges and some high schools. One of their trainings focuses on increasing student leadership, while the other focuses on shaping a digital identity.

A few months ago I did a free seminar on the impact of social media on students. The presentation was to an audience of parents and teachers. When the presentation was concluded, the first question asked was “Are you going to go speak to the students?”

I said no because I had way too much on my plate to start thinking about making free speeches a career. But, When it came to expanding Swift Kick, my prior experiences came forward. Why can’t we appeal to parents just as we do students? Why can’t we teach parents how to raise a student through social media?

And then the real idea hit me.

For about five months now I have been discussing this idea of intrinsic motivation. Motivation that doesn’t come from a paycheck or fear, but from the drive to complete a task or make someone else feel good about themselves. When someone is intrinsically motivated, they do more than those who are simply motivated by payment. So if employees were intrinsically motivated, wouldn’t that make the company run better?

I am going to give you two scenario. In scenario one, a co worker you have never met before comes to you with a task and asks you to complete it. In scenario two, a co worker and friend comes to you with a task of equal effort. Which one will you complete with more effort?

There is an added level of effort when a friend asks you to do something. You know that the sooner you complete it, the sooner your friend can move on with their day or complete their next task.

Therefore, when employees are better acquainted, the company runs better. And how can we get employees more acquainted? The same way we get students more acquainted at high schools and colleges.

This is where my idea took form. Swift Kick has a product that can bring a student body together. It makes sense that you could use that same tool to bring a company together. And how can you pitch that idea to some of the top businessmen in the country? Present to the parents at some of the top high schools in the country.

So in conclusion, when you present to parents in top high schools and the like your presentation, then you tell them about your corporate programs. When these parents, who are also captains of industry, hear about this product, maybe they decide to jump on.

That’s just the morning. Wednesday nigh I went to a seminar on how to use Google Aps to increase efficiency in the classroom. It’s part of an organization called EdTech Meetup, where once a month a group of people come together to listen to a speaker and discuss who we can use technology can further the advancement in education. Not surprisingly, I was the youngest there. But it was honestly amazing. I didn’t only get to hear to a google expert and get a chance to see the new chrome laptop, but I also heard from professors and teachers from all over the tri state.

What is starting to emerge in this internship is the transition from observation to interaction. I have an idea that has been brewing since I did my first presentation on social media. A lot of parents don’t know enough about social media and its impacts to make an educated decision on how to let their kids use it. So over the next few weeks, I want to make that my goal. Get parents to understand the true benefits of social media. It is a strong force, and everybody deserves the chance to use it to its full potential.

Thursday was where everything in Tom’s mind started to take form. I learned about myself that day was that I can be creative, but not in an artistic sense. My creativity strives from my words. When I talk and when I blog, I can be creative. Tell me to build a website and tell me exactly how you want it to look, and I will build it. But tell me to design a website, and I’ll be completely stuck.

In the past few days I have gotten the same question over and over, which is “What do you want to do for the rest of your life?”. And I don’t have a clue. I want to be involved with technology because that’s what I am good at. I want to be in a position where I am interacting with others constantly. I can’t sit behind a desk and do data entry. You couldn’t pay me enough to sit behind a desk for the rest of my life and do data entry.

People tell me I should start some company. Here is the problem: My specialty is not creating the next big idea. It’s taking an idea that has the potential of becoming the next big idea, and making it the next big idea. I can take something good and make it great. So what does a person who wants to do that do? In my mind, I feel like I would be the perfect right hand man. Don’t get me wrong, I still want to be out in public, but I won’t be the guy who made the product. So what will that mean for me? I have no idea. I guess we will all just have to wait and see.

Thanks for reading

Over the past few days in my internship, I have been listening on quite a few sales calls. I’ll go into a few details. The company I work for has a few categories. These include student engagement software as well as leadership seminars and training. In the past few months, they have been very focused on the technology aspect of the company, and recently they have decided to ramp up the leadership training part of the company. To do so, we needed to reconnect with all the people who had brought this company in before and had not had a chance to bring us in again. So in short, I have been listening in on quite a few sales calls in the past few days.

One of the biggest things I noticed didn’t have to do with the business part, but the personal part. Whenever Tom started or ended a call, he always kept a personal element. When I read Made To Stick, they referenced a similar aspect.

Think about this: More people will donate money to a single child in Africa than the number of people who will donate to a cause for an entire African country. That doesn’t seem to make a lot of sense, because obviously an entire country is more important than the a single person. And yet, facts are facts. When people see that one child, they no longer are thinking logically, they are thinking with their emotions. People act differently when thinking emotionally. Emotions drive people to acting in a way they would never act when thinking logically. So when we get people to connect on an emotional level, they are much more likely to care and, more importantly, remember.

Start-up type businesses are all about making themselves stick. When it comes to higher education and especially corporations, The people you contact within each organization have a lot on their plate. Therefore, in an initial sales call your goal is not to sell your product, but to make yourself stick. In our case, we want our prospective customers to know that Swift Kick is personable, innovative, and, well, cool.

When you talk to someone about your product, it sticks to you. You know all about your product so when you talk about it you can think about your product from every aspect. But when I talk about leadership training, most of you won’t know exactly what leadership training is. You will know that we are training people to become leaders, but probably not much more than that.

So when I talk to customers, I can’t just talk about the product, because it won’t stick with the customer. “Innovative” will stick. “Cool” will stick. When you think of “cool”, something comes to mind. When you refer to something as cool, you link it to something else you already know. In other words, it sticks.

My goal is to make myself stick. So the next time I call and say “Hey it’s Andrew from Swiftkick”, people don’t say “Who?” If they have related me to other things in their mind, they will know who I am. I will be (to a certain extent) emotionally connected with them. And, with that, I can start to sell a product.

When you make yourself stick, you greaten your chances of success. That’s a life lesson right there.

Hello Everybody!

I know its been a while, but I guess I’ve been pretty busy. What changed is my plans for the future. For those of you who are unaware, this past wednesday was my last day of classes. I am participating in a pilot program called Senior Experience.

Senior Experience began because of an elephant in the room, senioritis. After AP Exams, a senior in high school has little motivation to keep themselves focused. While some people claim to get senioritis in middle school, my belief is that senioritis begins as early as the day one is accepted to college and does not end until they actually get to college. The reason for senioritis is that certain parts of school motivation come from fear. We fear getting a bad grade, we fear what our parents will think, and we fear what colleges will think. But fear only works to a certain point. Once that fear goes away, they only motivation we have to keep going is intrinsic motivation, motivation that stems from our desire to complete the tasks assigned to us. For some, intrinsic motivation is a part of school. But for most, intrinsic motivation dies the second we hear about that night’s homework or the next day’s test.

We still have intrinsic motivation. We all have things that we love to do, whether it be solving problems, writing a novel, or even teaching. We all have activities in our life that thrive and excel based on our intrinsic motivation. Senior Experience was created to get seniors involved in activities that would keep their mind at work and keep their motivation levels rising. And the man in charge was the perfect one for the job.

I am going to go on a tangent here. This semester I had an english class called Senior Literature. The teacher, Mr. Corsilia, let us choose whatever books we wanted. Essays had little requirements, only that we wrote what we thought about the book. It was the first english class I had ever taken which I truly enjoyed from start to finish. In past years, I didn’t always read the books assigned to me. I had no motivation to do so. What I got this semester was the opportunity to read what I wanted. I immersed myself in Daniel Pink, Malcolm Gladwell, and Dan Heath. Books that I loved and could read simply because of my intrinsic motivation. And it showed, because I have read more books in the past few months then I have ever read before.

Corsilia understands senioritis at its core and has spent his classes trying to overcome it. This year, he took it a step further with Senior Experience. Because instead of having seniors in class where motivation and learning levels are low, this year students are allowed to spend a month doing an educational activity that would drum up intrinsic motivation. This year only about 30 seniors are involved, but the hope is that it will grow with time.

Back to the story. For those of you that keep up with my blog, you know who Tom Krieglstein is. For those of you who don’t, go to TomKrieglstein.com and find out, or else. Tom, who I interned for briefly over the summer, is who I am spending my Senior Experience with. For the next month I will not be going to school. Instead, I will be in New York City learning lessons that will help me way beyond the classroom. I will learn about the true challenges of running a Start-Up. I will start to get more acquainted with public relations, and will get to work hands on with the customers themselves. I don’t know exactly what I will be doing, but I know that I won’t need to rely on fear to keep the learning process afloat.

As part of my Senior Experience I will be blogging about my internship along the way. Just a heads up.

And at some point I am going to have to talk about assassins…