You Suck At Photoshop

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Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you’ve seen Donnie Hoyle’s brilliant Photoshop tutorials. It’s sick, twisted, NSFW (unless you work with a bunch of truckers), and it’s a legitimate viral hit. Here’s the proof:

• Over 2,000,000 combined views on YouTube alone for his 4 tutorials since December 21st, 2007. This doesn’t include views for tutorials uploaded to various other sites across the Internet.
• A search for “you suck at photoshop” reveals about 361,000 results on Google.
• Diggs: Episode 1: 3,278 / Episode 2: (not Dugg, for some reason??)  / Episode 3: 2,946 / Episode 4: 3,403
• 18,400 results from Digg.com in a site search for “You Suck At Photoshop”
• A huge spike in traffic for MyDamnChannel.com, according to Alexa.com – a peak rank of 14,828 yesterday, up from a previous high of approximately 40,000.

While Scott Kelby’s PhotoShopUser TV has a more loyal and professional following, You Suck At Photoshop has reeled in a wider audience. However, Donnie’s off-color jokes and R-rated language makes this one heck of a dilemma for marketers. I think most marketing people would want to sponsor him, but would likely get a lot of complaints from customers and management.

So naturally, two questions arise: Do you love or hate these videos? (I don’t think there’s any fence-sitting on this one), and would you support a company that sponsors these videos?

My First Million: Albert Lai

Congrats to Albert Lai on this great CBC profile. I’ve always said that we Canadians need to celebrate our entrepreneurs like the Americans do. It’s awesome that Albert is getting some rock star treatment!

How many of you would be interested in hearing Albert speak in Calgary?

 

 

Edmonton Entrepreneur School: Jan 22-24

I’d like to start this post off by apologizing to all of you who have been trying to contact me for the last week or so – I was on a west coast road trip with my Brother-in-law Greg Kolodziejzyk. He holds two world records in piloting human-powered vehicles, and my entire family was there on both occasions to witness those events. So, I figured I would lend a hand while he was testing the boat that he plans to cross the Atlantic Ocean in later this year, in record-setting time. We had a great time in Tofino and Victoria, and even had the chance to fit in a quick meeting with Dave Shworan, an old high school friend and CEO of Bravenet and Quotemedia on our way through Parksville.

Anyways, the next stop on my tour through Western Canada will be none other than Edmonton, for an appearance at a 3-day entrepreneur school. (Download brochure) Randy Thompson and his group at the Alberta Venture Channel have done a great job in rounding up some great speakers, including Sean Wise, Kelly Graves, and Don Chapman. The program costs just $250, due in large part to Randy’s tireless efforts in encouraging government to fund these efforts. So, if you’re an entrepreneur in the Edmonton area, I strongly encourage you to attend.