Category Archives: Business & Marketing

Business & Marketing

Jim Collins: Get Used to Economic Turmoil

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Jim Collins, the renowned business author of Good to Great and Built to Last talked with Fortune magazine last month about the current economic crisis. He claimed that 1952-2000 was an aberation of stability that brought unprecedented economic prosperity. He said that’s rare in human history and doesn’t think it’s likely that we’ll see it again in our lifetime.

He concludes: “What we’re experiencing now, get used to it! It’s life, and it’s the normal life.”

That kind of economic pessimism seems commonplace. It reminds me of something I posted on Twitter last week, a quote that “Americans’ standard of living is undergoing a ‘permanent change’.”

I don’t know if any of that is true. Nobody can predict the economic future with absolute certainty. Though I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing if we have to realign our standard of living and get used to getting by on less (another tweet about the average American consuming as much as 520 Ethiopians comes to mind).

Of course Collins goes on to talk about how great companies can survive these times, so it’s not all gloom and doom. And he points to making this a defining moment, not just a state of panic: “You have to ask the question, What can we do not just to survive but to turn this into a defining point in history?” Sometimes a bad situation can be a blessing because it forces you to do what you really needed to do.

Business & Marketing, Introspection

You Have To Be Obsessive To Be Successful

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I’ve been reminded lately that in order to be successful you have to be a little obsessive. There are examples like Thomas Edison’s 10,000 failed prototypes for the light bulb (according to the legend) or this story of a family raking in $1,000 in change since 2005 (they blog their daily take) or this story of a guy making a living as a dumpster-diver. OK, so maybe you have to be a lot obsessive.

The point is that success is never easy. You don’t make $1,000 by picking up a few pennies. You have to be obsessed with picking up change. You don’t bankroll your own business ideas by trash picking on the weekend. You have to know what’s worth something and what isn’t, be relentless and methodical, and stick to it even in a Canadian blizzard. In short, you have to be obsessed.

That’s how novels are written, amazing albums created, great works of art brought to life. That’s how professional bloggers make money, how techies build incredible applications, how an evangelist can speak to more people in live audiences than anyone in history. Persistence trumps talent.

My question then becomes am I obsessive enough?

Sometimes I think I’m obsessed with too many different things, I dabble too broadly to truly be obsessively successful. And I guess that’s the hard part. You can’t hedge your bets by dabbling, you have to dive in. It’s kind of scary. And that’s what makes it worthwhile.

Business & Marketing, Writing

20 Minutes at a Time

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Earlier this week I read an article by Cory Doctorow (of Boing Boing fame) about how he’s able to be a productive writer in an age of distraction. It’s definitely a worthy question. In some ways I’ve answered that question with National Novel Writing Month, but that’s not a very sustainable solution (nor is it all that more productive; I’ve yet to truly polish any of the three novels I’ve written during NaNoWriMo).

One of Doctorow’s suggestions is to have a short, consistent schedule where you do nothing but write. Even if it’s just 20 minutes, as long as you do it every day you’ll accomplish a lot. I’m beginning to realize how true that is, for more things than just writing.

Think of all the enormous tasks in this world is accomplished not with some Herculean effort, but with the small, slow drip of consistency. Winning an election, overturning a social ill, writing a blog, landing a job, landing on the moon, earning a degree, making a friend.

It’s hard to do. Even as I’ve had this idea in my mind all week I haven’t found those 20 minutes for my writing. But I have found 20 minutes for other projects, and it’s proving beneficial.

It’s the old tortoise and the hare: Slow and steady wins the race.

Blogging, Business & Marketing

Seth Godin Defines Blogging: Drip, Drip, Drip

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I love how Seth Godin explains blogging in this little nugget from an interview earlier this year:

“Blogging lets you drip ideas, bit by bit, to people who want to hear them. There are two crucial ideas in that sentence, so let’s unpack them.

“The dripping matters because that’s how people learn. Not in one hour chunks, but one little idea at a time. Do it for five years or more, every single day (as I’ve done on my blog) and you build trust and credibility and a body of work. The permission (“want to hear them”) is important because if no one is reading your blog, you’ll know. And then you can change it. And over time, you can earn the right to talk to a thousand and then ten thousand and then a million people.

“And isn’t that your mission?”

That drip, drip, drip of ideas is how the best of focused blogs work (which probably means this blog isn’t very focused). If you want to succeed at blogging you have to understand the importance of that tiny, consistent process of dripping.

Business & Marketing

Curiosity is not Enough

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Curiosity alone is not enough to get my attention. If you’re spreading the word about something, marketing anything or just telling your friends—curiosity is not enough.

Now I’ll concede that some level of curiosity is always necessary. But if you’re completely relying on curiosity, it’s going to fail.

Examples:

  • E-mails with vague, generic subject lines like “check this out” or “newsflash.” The sender is hoping curiosity will prompt people to open them. No, it won’t.
  • Twitter posts that link to articles and give vague explanations, like “This is so cool,” “I can’t believe this,” or “Interesting”. Tell me what’s so cool, interesting or unbelievable.
  • Direct mail that comes in plain, unmarked envelopes. They’re trying to trick you into opening it, appealing to curiosity. But instead I open it to make sure it’s not a bill and then recycle it. Immediately.

What’s most frightening about relying on curiosity is that it begins to border on deception. If your message itself isn’t enough to get my attention and you have to rely on curiosity, I can’t help but wonder if you’re trying to trick me.

It reminds me of Guy Kawasaki’s comment in defending his Alltop auto-tweets that each one is intentionally different so they’re harder to spot as auto-tweets. That’s deception, Guy. Lame.

If you’ve really got something worth sharing, don’t rely on curiosity to intrigue me. And don’t even think about deception. Just let the idea stand on its own. Otherwise it’s not worth sharing. Be specific, be up front and let the content speak for itself.

Books, Business & Marketing, Writing

Authors Without Web Sites

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Earlier this week I singled out author Anne Lamott for not having a web site. But the sad fact is she’s not alone. A number of noteworthy authors lack official web sites:

  • Jonathan Franzen
  • David Sedaris
  • Sarah Vowell
  • Alice Sebold
  • Kathleen Norris
  • Robert Pinsky
  • Seamus Heaney
  • David Rakoff
  • Russell Banks
  • Frederick Buechner (supposedly coming soon)

Granted I’m doing a quick Google search. If an official site doesn’t show up in the first page of results, it doesn’t exist (quite frankly, if you have a site and it’s not showing up on the first page of results for your name, you’re doing something wrong). Even Wendell Berry, the Kentucky novelist who still uses a typewriter has a web site (granted it appears to be maintained by his publisher). So why do none of these well-known authors have a web site?

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Business & Marketing, Society

You Can Change the World: Blank2Clothe.com

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I'm About to Yo-yo 2 ClotheLast week I yo-yoed and clothed a homeless teen.

Here’s how it works: Virgin Mobile set up Blank2Clothe.com where anyone can submit a video*. They approve the video and donate one article of clothing to one of the millions of homeless youth in America. That’s it.

But it gets better. Each time a video is watched five times, they’ll donate another article of clothing. So far 11 articles of clothing have been donated from my video and the site claims more than 100,000 donations so far.

So let’s care for some homeless youth:

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Business & Marketing, Technology

I Picked a Fight with Guy Kawasaki

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Last night I picked a fight with Guy Kawasaki on Twitter. For those who don’t know, Kawasaki is a marketing genius, former brand evangelist for Apple and current venture capitalist. He’s a big name. One of his current projects is Alltop, a cool little site that offers the best of the web for any particular subject (say, church?).

I called Kawasaki out over the Alltop Twitterfeed, where anyone can sign up and let Alltop post tweets to their Twitter account. It’s essentially handing over the keys to your platform and ceding your voice to a commercial. A handful of people I follow on Twitter signed up when Kawasaki offered a signed copy of his new book. I started to notice when I saw friends posting tweets about stuff they normally didn’t talk about:

Is it stork time?: http://pregnancy.alltop.com is for you.

Mostly for lawyers: Electronic Discovery news: http://ediscovery.alltop.com

If you love bags, you’ll love this site: http://bags.alltop.com

And then different friends tweeting the exact same thing. I smelled a skunk. And it was Kawasaki.

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Business & Marketing, Politics

Election Marketing Sucks

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I’ve complained before about crappy campaign web sites, but this year I think election marketing in general sucks, from robocalls to direct mail to those darned web sites. And I’m not the only one: Marketing guru Seth Godin offers marketing lessons from the U.S. elections. Today’s election day, so it’s all over. Let’s take a look at what works and what doesn’t.

Election Calls
In Minnesota robo-calls are illegal. Yet that hasn’t stopped two robo-calls from coming through, one from the Campaign for Change-DFL and one from Minnesotan Citizens Concerned for Life. I guess that’s one from each side of the political spectrum, so at least they’re fairly breaking the law.

In response to that anti-robo-call law in Minnesota, the McCain campaign has had real people making those calls and just reading the robo-call script. That’s perfectly legal, but it’s also perfectly insane.

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Business & Marketing, Transportation

How Not to Market the Ford Flex

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Business Week has an interesting article about Ford’s new marketing czar, Jim Farley. Ford has effectively been having an identity crisis the past few years, struggling to sell cars while it has a reputation for selling trucks and SUVs. The solution so far doesn’t seem especially brilliant, but it’s certainly not bad. Initial ideas include getting dealer input and feedback on marketing campaigns and having strict control over the branding of each model.

Who knows if this will help Ford after their recent $8.7 billion (with a b) loss, though I’m pretty sure marketing alone isn’t going to cut it. Especially if this is what they come up with for their new seven-passenger crossover/SUV, the Flex:

The Flex is supposed to be a hip urban vehicle that Ford hopes will attract people for its design aesthetic rather than utility. At Farley’s urging, the team honed the Flex brand mission from a page, to a paragraph, and then to one sentence: “For people in search of stimulation.”

[Flex product manager Usha] Raghavachari’s brand book instructs dealers and ad makers that the Flex will never be shown with picnicking families, beach volleyball games, or dogs. No mentions of cup holders. “We can’t have this turn into a dog-drool minivan, but it might if we don’t exercise discipline,” says [CEO of Team Detroit, Ford’s ad agency, George] Rogers. All photography of the Flex was shot at night to drive home the nocturnally hip, ready-to-go-clubbing image Ford is aiming for.

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