And yes, I know the competition is fierce. In fact, the title of the post is pretty redundant. But still.
Thanks to Bas for the link. Here’s my ppt riff. And yes, I still think it applies to any field, at any level. No exceptions for doctors, CEOs, structural engineers or marketers.
Jon from New Zealand writes:
I was amused by my own behaviour this morning.
I was looking for a welder of stainless steel to make up some security gates.
I went to a website list of suitable contractors, clicked on all those in my area and ended up with 25 pages opened. I then called the first one and asked if they could make up something to my drawing. They couldn’t (not their type of business) but I had a very pleasant and helpful discussion with the owner about stainless steel in general.
I then asked if he could suggest anyone else that might be able to do the work. He suggested a name and number. I called them, discussed the project and am waiting for their quote.
I then closed the other 24 web pages – unseen or contacted.
The rapport that I felt (from a perfect stranger) was sufficient to make me take his recommendation and pursue a quote from his referred "friend" in preference to the other 24 open pages. Funny that! The need for a personal link goes deep.
Modems are no match for human interaction and trust. Not carefully tracked online ratings, but the sound of a voice, the tone of authority, the receipt of a favor. It matters more than it ever did.
The very first time I ever presented the Purple Cow was years ago at Ted. I get nervous just watching it. The neatest part of the site, though, is how they handle the ratings.
That video is nothing compared to this array of trick bowling shots, however.
Thanks to the hordes who responded to my post about quitters. Books went out on Friday, and I wish I could have sent one to everyone.
So, who’s a quitter? Several people pointed out that Scott Adams (Dilbert) didn’t quit, he was fired. (This is a great interview, sent in by Nancy, one of the longest I’ve ever read with anyone about anything). Actually, my opinion is that Scott quit conceptually, even though he kept showing up.
Others: Jeff Foxworthy, John Legend, Scott Clark, Gandhi, Tom Peters, Shea Gunther, Ernie Mosteller, Francis Crick, Bill Gates, Ray Kroc, Howard Stern, Francis Obikwelu, Dave Ramsey, Suze Orman, Harrison Ford, John Piper, Willem de Kooning, Jill Konrath, John Grisham, Jeff Bezos, Michael Bloomberg, Shawn Carter, Rowan Manahan, Ralph Roberts, Dan Schapiro, and even Apple, home of the Newton and the Apple III.
There were many more, but that ought to get you started.
It’s not often that I disagree with Hugh, but this time, I do: gapingvoid.
The headline of his post is, "How well does open source currently meet the needs of shareholders and CEOs". I think this question is part of the problem.
Almost no new idea meets the needs of shareholders and CEOs. That’s because most of all they need predictability and apparent freedom from risk. This is why public companies are almost always on the road to disaster. They flee from change in order to do what they think is meeting the needs of those constituents. They fight changes in laws, policies, technologies and markets because their CEO (especially) wants a nice even flight pattern while he racks up big time options.
Shrink wrap software feels safe. Secure. Supported. Beyond reproach.
But…
It turns out that open source can do a brilliant job of meeting their actual needs (lower overhead to install and maintain, higher productivity to use, more stable over time) but the problem is that apparent needs (playing it safe, making your boss happy) almost always get in the way. Until it’s too late. When it’s too late, the competition has leapfrogged you.
Simple example: blogging. Blogging doesn’t seem to fit into the command and control mindset of media companies. It doesn’t seem to have obvious ad-driven or traffic-driven payoffs. It represents a threat (or at least volatility) to the stock price. So they ignore them. Until, of course, a blog has a greater circulation than the company’s magazine.
This post is worth a read: The Devil & Online Advertising — Young Go Getter.
What should my local chiropractor do? Or the acupuncturist? Or the pet store? What about that small church or mosque?
The web has changed the game for a lot of organizations, but for the local business, it’s more of a threat and a quandary than an asset. My doctor went to a seminar yesterday ($100+) where the ‘expert’ was busy selling her on buying a domain name, hiring a designer, using web development software, understanding site maps and navigation and keywords and metatags and servers…
These are businesses that have trouble dealing with the Yellow Pages. Too much trouble, too much time, way too expensive. So, should local micro-businesses just ignore the web? Or should they become experts in the art of building and maintaining a website?
We’re talking about people who don’t like to tweak. About local businesses that are struggling to be found by people a block or a mile or five miles away. Entrepreneurs who can’t be bothered to understand typography or HTML. Why does my dog’s vet have such a lame website? Why do basement waterproofing sites sit moribund? Do they all have to become experts and spend the money–or sit it out and lose out?
I think there’s a third way, one that gets them just about everything they need, takes an hour or two a month and costs about $60 a year. Here goes:
Step one: head on over to Typepad and sign up for their cheapest service. It’s about $5 a month. Pick a ‘quiet’ and professional blog layout. Your first post should include the name of your business, your address, your specialty and your hours and phone number. Click the button that says "Feature this post." From now on, this post will be at the top of your blog (which is really your ‘website’, so first time visitors
will see it front and center. When you go on vacation or stock a new line of products or have a story to tell, just blog it.
The beauty of this first step is that for $5 you have a web server, a professional layout, no worries about design, a site you can edit yourself in no time and no hassles with weird domain names.
Next step: build a Squidoo lens about your business. List your hours and stuff. Then insert a google map of where you’re located. Put in a list of books if you think your potential (or current) customers will benefit from an understanding of what you do. Insert a guestbook so your favorite customers can give you testimonials. Put in an RSS feed from your blog, so every time you update it, it will show up here, too. If this is too tricky, have your smart next-door-neighbor do it for you. You won’t have to do it again.
Next step: Get a sign featuring your name and phone number. Something 1 foot by 2 foot or so. Printed on cardboard. Now, take your digital camera and start taking pictures. Pictures of your offices. Of your staff. Of your satisfied customers. Each picture should include the sign! Now, go post those pictures on Flickr. (And then put the pictures into a set and pull that set into your Squidoo lens, and post the best pictures on your blog too).
Last step: Ask your best customers to build Squidoo lenses about your business. Ask the ones who blog to mention you in their blogs. Ask the happiest of all to pose for a picture holding your sign, or to give you a testimonial for your blog.
So, you’ve probably invested a few hours by now. You’ve spent a few dollars, read a book or two on blogging. But you haven’t become an expert, not by a longshot, in any technologies. You haven’t tweaked a font or focused on a sitemap. Instead, you’ve been running your dry cleaner or writing your sermons.
Even better, no one is judging you on whether or not you’re an expert at building websites. No one is choosing not to do business with you because your website looks like your cat designed it. And you’re not spending big money tweaking tweaking tweaking just to get the last ounce of blood out of your site.
A month later, if someone types, migraine acupuncture des moines, into Google, they ought to find you. Or pet store 10706. The beauty of your situation is this: if only 5 or 10 new people a week find you via this ring of links and google searches, you’re going to have a shot at doubling your customer base within a year. For $60.
TZ wrote to me today. Here’s his story about quitting and then becoming the best in the world:
I rose up the ranks in [name of bank] Bank Financial Group to become a Program Manager in Operations…specifically Change Management.
According to how my parents used to define success: I was a superstar. A 29 year old with a senior level position at a huge company with a safe salary, crazy benefits and a religious adherence to a 9-5 order.
The first 2 years were fueled with idealistic notions of changing the world: I entered my cubicle with enthusiasm every morning and left every day, hoping that next day would be different.
In the beginning, it didn’t even bother me that I wasn’t following my passion (music!), because I had a business card with my name, a fancy title (which was longer than the list of my accomplishments) and the beautiful logo of a major corporation.
I could sit at Starbucks with other bankers on company time and we could laugh about "fooling the man".
As time went on, I began to realize that I’m the one being fooled. With every promise of a longer title and bigger salary, I would salivate like one of Pavlov’s dogs and automatically go along with whatever needed to be done to get that bigger office.
I realized that advancement was less about changing for better and more about maintaining the status quo. In big corporations, senior management always seeks out ideas from idealistic middle managers to give them a sense of hope and a promise of a better tomorrow that keeps the drones at least half alive.
So I continued to create fancy power point slides with generic expressions like:
"well positioned for growth" – translation: we’re not saying we WILL grow…we’re just sayin….we might.
"adding value" – question: WTF did everyone think they were getting paid for? Not adding value? Why does it have to be on every slide?!
"leveraging" , – comment: i asked everyone on my team not to use those words. the frequency of use of words like "leverage" is inversely proportionate to the amount of original thought. the more you say "leverage", the less you’ve probably thought about what you’re saying.
Because I used the language of my audience, my presentations were always a big smash! As much as a presentations that "encourage change with minimal change" can be.
In short, I became resentful toward the corporation for setting up a hampster wheel and resentful toward myself for staying in that very wheel, in exchange for cash, titles and security.
So I left.
My wife and I moved to a cheaper place, I got rid of my BMW and we began to try to live on 30K a year.
From a huge corporation, I went to a music production house with 10 people.
I started at less than half my bank salary and I worked the longest hours I’ve ever worked. Good thing all the stores were closed when I’d leave the studio, that way I wouldn’t spend the money.
This was 6 months ago.
Today my salary has jumped, in direct proportion to my contributions, to almost what I made at the bank.
I have no clearly defined responsibilities….my title is whatever I want it to be….the only mandate is: do the things that make us the top production house in the city.
I’m having the time of my life and in less than 6 months, I have accomplished more in a small business with minimal budgets than I have in 5 years in a huge bank with billion dollar revenues.
I got more mail about this story in the Washington Post than any other non-blog topic ever. I saw it when it first came out, but didn’t blog it because I thought the lesson was pretty obvious to my readers. [World-class violinist plays for hours in a subway station, almost no one stops to listen]. The experiment just proved what we already know about context, permission and worldview. If your worldview is that music in the subway isn’t worth your time, you’re not going to notice when the music is better than usual (or when a famous violinist is playing). It doesn’t match the story you tell yourself, so you ignore it. Without permission to get through to you, the marketer/violinist is invisible.
But why all the mail? (And the Post got plenty too). Answer: I think it’s because people realized that if they had been there, they would have done the same thing. And it bothers us.
It bothers us that we’re so overwhelmed by the din of our lives that we’ve created a worldview that requires us to ignore the outside world, most of the time, even when we suffer because of it. It made me feel a little smaller, knowing that something so beautiful was ignored because the marketers among us have created so much noise and so little trust.
I don’t think the answer is to yell louder. Instead, I think we have an opportunity to create beauty and genius and insight and offer it in ways that train people to maybe, just maybe, loosen up those worldviews and begin the trust.
I’m trying to assemble a list of a dozen or so people who have achieved the status of ‘best in the world,’ but quit something else in order to get there. Example: Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, was a mid-level cubicle-dwelling drone at PacBell, and would be to this day if he hadn’t quit. Suze Orman was a broker at Prudential-Bache before she quit and created an empire.
If you know some great examples of people who have quit and been glad they did, I’d love to hear them (unfamous examples welcome). My top 10 favorite submissions get a free signed copy of the Dip, which I’ll mail out next week. Send your idea by email, don’t forget your mailing address.
[I got a TON of great entries. I’m processing them now. You can send more if you like, but chances of winning are close to zero. Thanks, guys.]
