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You Picked That Vendor

January 9, 2012 By

I see people online – all the time – bitching about how their vendors botched something (and it impacted their customers).

Amazon went down a year or so ago, and everyone was appoplectic.

Bluehost goes down, and people totally lose their shit.

…

They say “if a vendor impacted your business, you’d bitch too.”

No.  I pick my vendors. I vet them.  I also don’t rely on them.  Not since Netmeg told me not to.

If a contractor screws up an animation, I’ll be just fine.  Their deadlines and the delivery date are decoupled and we’ll do it.

I won’t have anyone to blame.  Because bottom line: it is my fault.  Clients don’t want excuses.  They want results.  Passing the buck onto clients is the province of losers.

Anything that a vendor screws up is my fault. I picked the vendor.  I could have done a better job, but that entitled, snotty, stupid attitude that people have towards their vendors is perplexing.  Because, who picked them?

Filed Under: Books

Success and Planning

November 18, 2011 By

Simplifilm is the most successful venture I’ve taken part in.

That is to say in one year, it is throwing off enough income to pay 2 people, to grow at a steady clip and to make money.  All of this is happening even though:

  • We don’t have a “tagline”
  • We don’t have a coherently presented website (I hate it)
  • We don’t have a mission statement
  • We have yet to spend one dollar on advertising
  • We don’t have products listed on our site.
  • We don’t have a content strategy.
  • We don’t have employees.
Now, we’ve gone to far in the opposite direction.  What we have is quality and hustle.
I’m not sure where all this goes – I’m just thinking out loud at the moment.  I have this idea where we’re a brand with the love and clout of Apple. 
Filed Under: Application, Books

Drafting

November 18, 2011 By

There are a few people I draft.  That is, I follow what they do closely to the point of stalking.

I do this using a variety of tools, mostly RSS.  Following comments feeds on a WordPress blog is easy. Following twitter is easy.  Setting alerts is easy.

I don’t feel the need to comment that often.  I learn a lot. I follow 9 men and 3 women.  All of ‘em are folks I admire. A couple may have figured it out, but I don’t say anything explicitly.

I am guessing that everyone I’m following is going to have massive success.  Many have.

It’s my obsession. And it’s fun.

Filed Under: Application, Books

The Future

November 13, 2011 By

“Believe me, there is no insight to be gathered from the life of the working-class milieu…”
-Tom Wolfe

I don’t know what the future holds.  But I do believe that there will be even more stratification in “class” than there is today. I don’t know if it’s a problem or not. If everyone gains, but many gain the most, what does that mean?

The gains from the current software revolution are accruing to a relatively small subset of the population. About 90 million iPhones have been made and about 75% of them are in service world wide.  (Back of envelope calculation from Wikipedia and AdMob).  5.3 Billion people have access to mobile phones.  Only 302mm are smartphones.  This is 4% of the population, roughly.

That’s an elite set of people, any way you shake it.

The gains from our advances are accruing to this small set of elite. It’s going to get more pronounced as the gains become less trivial.  Right now, you can get by – even productively – without a smartphone, without much more than an older laptop.

Having studied product for 2 years now, it seems to me that we’re on the cusp of a wave of health related products that are non trivial and non incremental. The first wave is products like the Up and the Fitbit.  The next wave is coming and I don’t know precisely what it’s going to be, but it appears to me that humans will have instruments with and software enhancements within a decade.

Companies like Nike are going to be every bit as relevant as companies like Pfeizer–maybe moreso because the FDA can’t regulate bytes in the same way that they regulate ingestables. (They will try. Hackers will work around regulations with ease).

Institutions such as politics and presidents and universities and careers are going to become more and more irrelevant as we head towards something of a Singularity.  Being in position to participate in these gains seems, to me, to be one of the most incredible opportunities that has ever existed.

[pullquote]The future is already here — it’s just not very evenly distributed. -William Gibson[/pullquote]

What’s going to become of the vast working class? The people unaware of the changes that are coming? I don’t think that they are going to be able to legislate or bully their way past this particular collective rope.  I think that, over all, things will be much better for them, compared to any other generation.  But, there will be more income and lifestyle stratification than anything we’ve ever seen.

If you get to live 140 years, but your neighbor gets 300 years, are you better or worse off? What if you are smarter and more capable than any generation, but you have only 1/50th the cognitive power of some new elite class?

Accrued advantages start out tiny, but accumulate fast.  It’s already begun.   When it’s more than gadgets or 10 extra years or wealth, what then?  What if it’s the beginnings of a new form of humanity?

What, when the miracle of this transcendence is inevitably only bestowed on a small fraction of of us?  Are we worse off because some of us achieved a higher plane of existence (and we would dare to hope, enlightenment)?  We have already gained longer lives, we have already achieved.  If some folks widen their gains, is that bad?

Is it vulgar to make arrangements to step into the category of people that ascend?

Filed Under: Books, Philosophy

Getting A Job [In a Strange Economy]

November 3, 2011 By

A few (3) people I know and like have asked me about how to get a job in this economy.  A couple more haven’t asked.

Let me preface by saying that I am unemployable. I can’t keep a job. I’ve never had the temperament to be an employee.  At various times, I’ve been contemptuous of employees, I’ve been envious.  Working for myself isn’t a choice, it’s a necessity.  My family doesn’t understand that.  That I have to live or die on my own. Heather was viciously angry when things were grim in 2007-2008.  I didn’t have options other people do.

I do, however, know how to get hired. I do it with Simplifilm regularly, and I don’t have the skills to do animation. I’m going to give as many of my thoughts as possible.

1.) Handle the basics – don’t seem crazy.   Privacy is a relic.  Put pictures up, have a basic web presence. This means, for people, LinkedIn and Facebook. If you’re in tech, a Blog. This means that we connect with 100 or more friends on the services.  Have a blog with something to say about your industry.  Yes, web privacy sucks, but listen: we don’t want to be that guy.

2.) Have a story and a message: “I’m doing paid consulting right now, but, of course, I’m open to a wide variety of business arrangements.”  Listen, everybody puts on a brave face. Everybody makes it seem like they left voluntarily.  Nobody is fooled. If you were canned, say “Yeah, I was canned.”  Because they’ll figure it out. Do it matter of factly.

3.) Write To The Essence: I see resumes and LinkedIn Profiles that say nothing, but have a laundry list of skills, as if stuffing keywords in there is going to yield better results.  Say what you do, phrase it how you want to do:

“I move people from PHP to Rails.”

“I get search traffic via organic links.”

Whatever.  Write to the essence of what you do.

4.) Start with Gigs: Write proposals, start with gigs. Do paid work.  A fish can swim in an inch of water.  You need cash coming in, even if it’s not the most you’ve made.  If you can’t get cash, fine whatever. Do free work.  Whatever it takes to not be in the Job Search Funk.  When I was having a hard time finding website business, the stink of despair got on me. My timings were off.  It was obvious I wasn’t busy and that lessened my chances.  So when I learned to start doing free sites, that kept me busy.

Looking for a job is like looking to get married before you date. I don’t understand how that would work. So I’d skip it.  Gigs-then-Jobs.  Handle business arrangements upfront.

5.) Connect with 10 people each day.  It’s 2 per hour for 5 hours. ToutApp is one conversation starter. You don’t need an agenda, mix it up. You needn’t always get it out that you’re looking for work, people get it.

6.) Help (without expectation) one person per day:  Listen, this is a big thing, but if you help people, you change your focus from the “woe is me introspection” to the “i’m here to help,” vibe. You can’t do favors with any expectation that it will come back ,

This is about what I know. This will get you hired. Because you lose the focus on “Woe is Me, I need a Job,” and become, “Hey, here I am, let me help.”

We hope you liked this. Comments are off, but you’re welcome to email me at chris@instigate.me. I check every other day or so.

Filed Under: Books, Sales, The Meditations

Hustle Creates Options

October 31, 2011 By

I hustle daily so I can meet people.   And so I can help people. It’s my M.O.  Always will be. The tools change. The people won’t. The helping won’t.

This article got a little long, but it’ covers:

  • What Hustle Really Is
  • How I present myself (and how I sometime screw it up)
  • How To Pitch
  • Who To Pitch

If you want to upgrade your connections, you need to read this article. If you’re stuck and aren’t getting traction, read this. If content marketing isn’t yet efficient for you, read this.

Hustle Is An Enlightened Numbers Game

So I meet people. On purpose. Many folks I meet  are great people. Some of the great people want to work with me. Some people we “sync” with.

Some we don’t. I’m fine both ways.  If I didn’t meet people, I wouldn’t meet some I clicked with.

I used to have a fit when someone would get the wrong assumption. Some people that don’t yet know me think that I’m needy because I call first. I’m hungry, not desperate. I’m trying to be OK with the idea that some people won’t ever get that. It’s hard, no lie.

Churning up contacts, deliberately saying hi, trying to give serious value by sharing what you know helps.  Creates options. It helps me, and it helps others. Every day I make a connection or two, and I make introductions.

No use telling people “Hey, don’t give me options…” if they don’t work.

I ping a couple dozen people each day. That habit, more than anything I do, amasses options for me. This is important because we can then choose to work with the best possible people. This continually upgrades our business (and my life).

Because of the volume of people I connect with, I’m more or ness inoculated from anyone. Nobody can be my “meal ticket”.  Simplifilm could lose our top 5 clients tomorrow and still be the same business, we’d still sell every Simplifilm we can make. (Don’t worry, I’m not going to engage in pointless destruction).

If working with one company is not appealing, fine. There are many, many more. Hustling has so many benefits. We’re often in the exact right place at the exact right time because of hustle. Because we can be in a lot of places at once with the tools today.

When my messaging is off with someone? I note it, correct it and drive on. The sea is full of fish. I don’t care which of the many qualified fish I catch.

Even now when we’re busy as can be – I hustle. Because of this, I was able to slide in 2 “quick” jobs last week for companies that I’ve wanted to work with since forever.  It’s not much in the way of revenue. We helped, we got an account our competitors didn’t.  We can prove we’re great, and then the people we work with will be able to refer us out.  Options amass.

Present Yourself Correctly: People Will Help

Some of the more effective pitches I’ve given others are without the pretense of something to give. I used to puff myself up and exaggerate my achievements. As if that was believable. 

Last week, I got Ryan Holiday to send me some great writers to work on stuff for Simplifilm. I won’t likely be ever in position to help him much (though I would if I could and I made that clear). He helped, didn’t cost him but a couple minutes, and he made a great connection for me.  His post is a great primer on pitching.  So is this.

I’ve made plenty of other connections with “nothing to trade but gratitude.” Way better than “false promises nobody believes.”

If you’re sane, when you pitch, you get better at pitching. Look at feedback. It’s not “more hype,” that helps, it’s “less hype.”

If you’re not sane, you’re in PR. You’re getting worse and worse at it as time exposes you for the fraud you are.

This isn’t an unusual story: PR firm pitched the Bloggess.  Badly.  After Jen said no, and had her automated but fun reply in place, the firm punitively said “Oh, look, we won’t place ads with you, nyah-nyah-nyah”   As if that was really going to happen. The retroactive, stupid impotent punishment is exactly the same type of entitled thinking that gets PR firms sending me nonsense.

Even though I have zero reach, I get still PR pitches a couple times a week.  They are never relevant. I have one that is, based on my distaste for oDesk. That got me engaged. Only one that knew me.

I get a lot of people trying to get a free Simplifilm.

Generally, I send a polite no if it’s not a fit.   (Hint: it’s not a fit. We don’t need exposure, we’re booked through March. I don’t want to ‘graduate’ from hustling.)

When Global Entrepreneurship Week pinged, our missions are aligned so I said yes, under these conditions. Win.  There was no hype or pretense that I wasn’t just being generous. I wasn’t told “it was massive exposure,”  I was simply asked for help.

I always thank people for giving us some option. The classy ones say something like: “Bummer, I figured. I just wanted to work with you guys, if we ever get the budget together, I want to afford you.”  The stupid ones say, “Well, you’re a fool, you missed out on all this (imaginary) business I was going to send.”   (Hint: wilcomes never happen for anyone).

The Stink of Despair Will Destroy Your Hustle.

The fact that I can afford to fire my clients is liberating.  I don’t have to react to the insanity. That means I don’t twist myself into knots over nothing anymore.

I can afford this because I hustle.

I don’t self destruct. I can leave them to their insanity.  I never  feel trapped. I can either take their shit…or not, but there’s no bluster, no drama. I don’t get that sick, panicked, stuck feeling I used to get when everything was life and death.  When I was shitlessly scared.

I don’t feel that fear. (Read this post by Willie Jackson. It’s fabulous).

That fear creates the stench of despair.  Despair is the most unattractive quality that someone can have. The desperate oversell. It makes us tell obvious, stupid lies (Well, I quit my job because I was too honest/competent/hardworking for them).  

The fear makes people blunder into remarks that reveal that they need you to like them.  That’s the biggest repellant on the planet.

People need help.  They pretend it’s a business opportunity.  Nobody is fooled. Generous people help because that’s who they are, and how they got there.

Think about  college – or a Chamber of Commerce networking situation.  The salesman who calls.  Is there anything more profoundly unattractive than someone that has no sense of self? Some dude that just needs you to like ‘em?

The icky odor of bragging about imaginary goals. People with a severe need for approbation are tough to respect.  It’s not as much the neediness as it is the pretense that the neediness is not there. You aren’t folling anyone. You’re coming off as both needy and you insult their intelligence by lying.

Trust that the hustle will work, and it will.

How To Pitch:

The tools will come and go. Right now, I like the telephone, Twitter, Google Reader/Alerts and Tout.  When reader and G+ are more tightly integrated, I’ll probably get into that. But the tools will come and go. I have been paying some attention to LinkedIn, and I might try  a little harder with that.

First, be honest. You won’t fool anyone. Trying is an insult to their intelligence and is a poor way to begin a relationship. Exaggerating your connections, resources or skills isn’t going to work long term anyway.

Next: be specific. If you are pitching, pitch. Here are my lead lines that work:

  • “I saw your neat article in _________. Noticed you didn’t have  yet a demo video….if that’s on your roadmap, I wanted to make you aware of us.”
  • “I saw your video, and it seems that you could improve it…with some minor tweaks…here’s what I’d try”
Be Brief: Keep it to a minimum. The above pitches are 3-4 sentences. You’re not convincing people, we’re informing them.  Puffery/many words isn’t going to help.  A sample, effective, tested pitch:

Dear  (person I’m pitching).
I’m (Chris Johnson)  and I (make demo movies)
I know you because (you were mentioned in Tech Crunch/Write an Awesome Blog/came out of stealth)
I was hoping  you’d be willing to (introduce me to ________).
When you do I’ll ____________,
Even if you can’t help on this one, feel free to call on me for anything I can help with in the future.
Thanks so much,
_________

Now, don’t brag about your work ethic, abilities or other intangible achievements.  Greg Swann calls this “bragging about your imaginary dick.” I’ve done it a billion times, and when I stopped, people responded to my pitches. Look, I can show the work we’ve done. That work speaks for itself. It’s beyond obvious we’re good. People brag about what’s about to happen.  Nobody believes intangibles. And, if you spread BS about yourself, especially BS that a simple Google Search can dispel…

Finally, don’t pitch before you’re ready.  I used to fall into this. Bragging about a dream or something. “Hey, I’m going to do this someday, will you join me when that happens?”  ”Sure, kid, sure I will.”  Keep it real.

If you just want a connection, say that I send articles to people I follow that don’t yet know me. I often just want a connection or to have a virtual lunch. Sometimes it goes somewhere, sometimes it doesn’t.

Don’t have expectations. Let go. I want to meet people that are interesting. I don’t do it just with people I want to do business with.   I want to share and discover music, or just have a connection somewhere. Ammassing options helps.

Pitch To Help: Look, before you pitch, you’re doing it with the idea that you’re helping someone else. You want your pitch to be of service.

Those are the parameters. There might be common sense exceptions.  There are a couple conflicting ideas,  this is what you need to stay cognizant of when you want to be effective.

How To Choose Who To Pitch (The Actual Hustle)

This is the fun part. I used to have GTD oriented convoluted, stupid systems in place. The complexity of my system kept me from really operating on a high level.  I was paralyzed constantly on what to do next, so I refined my system, instead of made connections.

This is what happens – you read the many content marketing blogs. They dutifly convince you that you need 18 steps to being ready to get ready to sell. (No. Take action and go to where you’re drawn and do it with aplomb).

I fixed it. I read stuff in my Reader, and ping folks in the morning that wrote good articles.  I generally don’t comment on blogs, as personal brief emails are better.

I switched it to simple: I  ping 20 or so people each day.  Some mix of strangers, close friends and mere acquaintances. I largely use Tout nowadays for this. (I just started – I’ll blog it at the Simplifilm blog next week).

I even ping people that I know don’t like me much. On purpose. Because it’s hard. Because you’re drawn away from it. When I ping some dude that I know dislikes me, I can ping anyone.  Real world: Grant Griffiths of Headway Themes disliked me. He’s now one of our most important and most generous clients. He’s done business 3 times. And  I’ve lost track of their referrals.

I even pitch people I don’t like.  Because why the hell not.  I’m wrong a lot about people, and I don’t want my mood the moment I met someone to obstruct work. We all have defects.

I select people from a variety of sources:

  • Past Clients/Acquaintances/One Time Leads  Batchblue tells me who to pitch.  These are friends and past clients. Everyone’s on a system and I get an email each morning. If I don’t have time, I just ignore it without worry.
  • People I love to follow: I think of people when I read stuff. I send them articles.
  • Strangers that are moving up in the world: I read Tech Blogs and set a reminder to pitch them 3 days out (hint: if they get a writeup in Tech Crunch/Gizmondo/TheNextWeb EVERYONE is pitching them).
  • Long Shots: These are the people I’d love to work with. I follow up with 11-12 people that are long term dreams. I got one recently.

This enough. I ping mostly to say “Hi” with a purpose. I follow my scripts. I’m building a Tout library for quickly tweakable scripts to use. I’m here to help, no expectations.  I’m around to help.

The ethos that I have: I’m making myself available to be of service. No expectations. No drama. No problems. I hustle because it’s who I am and it’s what I do. When things are right, this is how it all works.

You’ve learned how I built Simplifilm into what will be a substantial business. In less than a year. What are you doing to pitch? How are you getting better?  I want to know. Please feel free to email me: chris@instigate.me. I prefer conversations to comments, and I’ve enjoyed meeting people in private. I check that email every day or two, and I respond to everything right now.

Filed Under: Application, Books, Sales

Blocking Yahoo and Other Sites

October 28, 2011 By

About a year ago, I blocked yahoo.com and a bunch of other sites from my Mac.

I used the directions here to make it happen.

Anyway, I sill find myself going to Yahoo.Com about 3 times a week.  Just the home page. The habit isn’t worn out even though I’ve put a barrier up.

It gets to how hard it is to change a habit.

Filed Under: Books, Business Models

Reverence

October 22, 2011 By

There was some sort of deluded mania I carried with me my whole life. I knew success was going to happen. I knew it, and had ridiculous affirmations/etc/etc. I was always hopped up, excitable, ready to rage.

When we built Simplifilm it was pro from the start.  Not an addict’s business, but a real business devoted to craft.

We revere our customers. Not ourselves. That’s made an enormous difference in the quality of the message and work I’m getting to do.

You can’t summon reverence for a boofy haired realtor.

Reverence is the secret ingredient. You have to revere your clients, your work. Protect it from drama, mania.

 

Filed Under: Application, Books, The Meditations

Desperate Resellers and Wilcomes

October 17, 2011 By

I encounter people all of the time that presume that I’m going to do business under basically any sort of terms. I hear from them all of the time, and they say “Hey, I’ll try to do a deal with you,” or they presume that I’m hungry to the point where I have to grovel or beg.

The attitude isn’t meant as an insult, and it’s really just a reflection of their own insecurity, but it eats me up. I always feel like I need to point out, “listen, jerk, I do the business I want how I want to do it, all the time.”  Gets me nowhere. But there’s this dumb attitude where people presume Ineed something from them. I need nothing, I make my own luck.

Bill Gates? Just some guy. If I don’t do business with him, there’s Bezos, Elison, Zuck, Benioff, etc.  There are many people to work with. There are many people that we can work with. It’s a great honor to work with everyone, but at some point every client is completely fungible and replacable. It does me not one shred of good to point this out.

But it is on my mind plain as day. I can’t hide my thought.

.:.

The other part of my day is a waste of time with low end ad agencies. Loads of them. They pretend they have a product that they are pitching or schlepping. They aren’t. They just want to talk to us. And they ask about a reseller agreement. All the time.

When I say no to the business I wasn’t ever getting anyway, I’m mocked. I’m given a lecture about how I should run my business. I’ve given the same lecture when I was unable to meet payroll, so I get that impulse. I have compassion.

But it grates on me daily. People want what we’re offering, at the level we’re offering it.

Why I have to be nice to someone that is wasting my time with a delusion that will never happen, I don’t know. Talking to me, a vendor, isn’t going to solve the revenue problem that they have.

And I’m stuck talking do them. Nonsellers.

.:.

Then there are the wilcomes. People promise me a bunch of future business for taking one on the chin now.

They premise is that I should do something cheaply for relationship they won’t fulfill with reach they don’t have. Classy people with reach and referrals have always paid the first time. They have the money.

I’m supposed to think that it’s in my best interests to drop my price.

And it never is, ever.

But I have to pretend like it is. Or somehow, I’m the asshole. Not once has a “wilcome” worked out.  A small discount on an early deal does occasionally benefit me, but not generally.

Business wise, right now, I don’t want for anything. I have ideas, a team, and I’m growing. So why do I have to entertain this crowd?

Filed Under: Application, Books, delusion, The Meditations

Squandered

October 11, 2011 By

Listen. I’ve squandered a bunch of chances, second chances, third.

For most of my life I was of the opinion that real change was a good week away. Like I’d have plenty in a short period of time.  I would turn that corner.

I thought a loan, a sale, or even an infusion of VC cash would make me be my real self, the one that had money to do something. I figured all I needed was $20k and all would be well.

Most people live their entire lives this way.  I promise you.

If – at any time in my life – I had gotten this dough it would simply have been squandered.

Right now, it’s not the case. I’ve earned it, and I’m not giddy about it. I’m happy, I’m pleased. I’m not self-satisfied nor am I a ball of energy that can’t wait to spend it.

This means I might keep it.

Filed Under: Application, Books, The Meditations

Being The Best In the World Is Highly Underrated (The Dip by Seth Godin: Book Review of Sorts)

September 20, 2011 By
the_dip

“Being the best in the world is highly underrated.”
-Seth Godin, The Dip

When I read The Dip the first time.  I was restless. Something was off kilter.  I misread the message.  The message I got was Try Harder Than Anyone In The World Right Now. In Godin’s words: Power through the dip.

By itself, that’s a recipe for burnout. The real message is: Raise your standards till you make or do something better than anyone else does it. 

I had this little business, see.. I sold websites to Realtors, Accountants. etc.  The damned Rotary Club. On a good day, I was mediocre at it. (Some of the story is here, more is here). It’s still open, limping along.  I’m not suggesting anyone buy anything, I’m taking care of the wind-down.

I sold a lot of WordPress websites. Hundreds. I used Thesis and Headway for this. I was fast at it. I was shoving mediocrity down the throats of the world, faster, faster.

How Burnout Happens: First, Tolerate Mediocrity….

I tried to help. But it was a job. The chase of volume meant it was a job. I wanted to be a half notch better than the  dumb templates that they all bought that were $99/month for next-to-nothing. Econ class thinking.  I needed to make an income, it was a lifestyle business. Of sorts. I was bereft of imagination at the time. So it didn’t provide an amazing lifestyle.

I was running from it. I hired Trish.  I hired designers so I didn’t have to design (I can’t summon the muse). I hated the business from the first. It was there because it made sense. Every email filled my heart with despair. “Oh, shit what does she want.” I burnt out because – in my heart -. I knew that the work didn’t matter.

Get some Relator to the first page of google for his “Suburb +Short Sale”. God. Who wants that job?

I didn’t prepare. I blew off calls.  I blew off conference calls. I never got much better than what I was when I started.

I hoped that nobody would show up on Webinars I was doing so I could have a beer. Any – flimsy – excuse was a welcome reprieve.

I invented a McJob for myself. I never meant to.  Each step seemed reasonable.

More People Aren’t Going To Save You

I brought in people – Rachael Acklin, Chris Jordan.  Tennyson Rog. Kasey Kelly.  Others. I asked them to be part of the “fun.” when I pitched it to them, it seemed reasonable. “Just do a header, footer and the rest, and get it done fast so you can make a few hundred bucks a week, while you’re between projects.”

Problem is, it’s not just a couple hours in design work.  It’s also letting your soul get infected with a notion that mediocrity is sometimes OK. That we’re just doing our jobs. That’s cancer of the worst kind.

Because I was just trying to make dollar-store websites. Nobody could care about a site that a designer put a couple hours in.  Not me, not the designer, not the client.  And yet, the tension that the creative act requires, the energy, you still had to summon it. The act of making something itself is tense. It requires both effort and thought.

Cognitive Dissonance: Nobody Wants To Be Mediocre

I made errors at PageTent/FlatRate/Whatever I called it. I underestimated the creative energy required to do work. Mediocrity demoralizes you before you start. It’s hard to invoke the muse on some never-gonna-matter website. “Oh, great muse, please give me the strength to tell yet another story of yet another realtor that wants to help you buy or sell a home.” That prayer doesn’t happen.

Who wants to go through all that? I’ll leave that to Meyers. They can –  and do – sell pabulum.

Thee act of doing work that you know – at the outset – is going to wind up being mediocre is taxing. That created cognitive dinremarkable and mediocre creates stress and tension. Why should I be doing this? Is this who I am? Some monkey making websites for idiotic Realtors? (an aside: I was an idiotic realtor).  It’s painful at the outset, it’s painful in the middle, and it’s painful at the end.

But hey, I netted a few hundred bucks each time. It was fun. Really.

.:.

People Run Through Walls To Be The Best in The World

Jason Moore, my friend and partner at Simplifilm says that quality sells. I’ve always believed that selling sells. The first big project we did together, lives on at AgentTechSecrets.Com.

…it’s beyond obvious that that video is something to see. It’s a bad story, masterfully told.

Quality Sells. That’s what Jason said to me.  

OKAYfine.  The problem  with that idea is that when you’re broke, you can’t paint in color.

You have to take what seems to be now money because you’re always a step ahead of the spider. You have to do “now” things. I was broke, and my big client was forever paying me late. I had to do “now things.” I was stuck in the badlands.  People that tolerate low quality work are often low quality.  This meant drama and hostility from clients.

This created a circular effect. A drama cycle that mired me on the respirator for 2 years.

By not doing quality work, I didn’t get quality people. By not getting quality people, I couldn’t do work at the creative pace I wanted to.  By not doing great work, I couldn’t say no to money, even when it was attatched to a crazyperson.

(By and large, my clients were fine, I had to put up with, probably, 30% morons. That’s down to 0% with Simplifilm).

Enter Simplifilm: Quality Sells

It started by accident. I did a little work for some folks in the WordPress space. It was about that time I was learning to use Headway Themes.  They were coming out with a new release, and I also knew that they needed a video to show that they weren’t the same as the other things out there.

I pinged Jason -can we do this? Can we make Headway 2.0 an amazing product. Can we do it cheaply? 

Yup, he said.  We got it together, haggled with the owners of Headway (great, great folks), and made it happen. He and I worked out arrangements so we’d do it for a price of almost nothing.

We made this video:

THAT was a software video. THAT was quality. EVERYONE was blown away, and the relaunch of the video on the site contributed to a 200% increase in sales.

The day the video dropped, everyone wanted one.

Jason did 90% of the ‘awesome’ over on Headway. I just stayed out of his way and showed him what Headway did.  Helped when he needed it, and kept Grant (always impatient) muzzled (Grant is Awesome).

The day after we got Simplifilm done we got 3 more: MarketMeSuite, Borders (RIP) Bookbrwer and WishList Member.  Ramit says it’s a business when you do it 3 times.  We had three customers and then it was clear that we’d be fine. We are, we are.

My Flat-Rate Mistake: Trying To Build an Industrial Age Factory In The New Economy

The new economy isn’t about production or distribution.  The businesses that think it is are dying first. Look at Borders. Look at the record industry. Going, going, gone.
I was trying to do that – create a factory where I’d be part of a cascaded of indifferent propagation. I’d put out mediocre websites populated by mediocre content. There wasn’t one person in the chain that had any skin in the game. There wasn’t a soul that was a stakeholder there.

Not me.

Not the customer.

Not their readers.

I created a business that was the modern day equivalent of whatever you see in the end-caps at Walgreens. We did an honest enough job, but it was really tough to give a rip about it. Just like the T-shirts, or consumer electronics that sits there. People bought. Nobody cared.

The lesson of the Dip isn’t “to become the hardest working grinder in the world,” it’s “to become the best.”  We are getting close to becoming the best on Earth at telling software stories. We’re not there just yet, but the distance we have between us and the rest of it all is exhilarating. The air up here tastes better than any air I’ve ever had. I can’t wait to get higher.

Filed Under: Application, Books, Philosophy

Made To Stick – Executive Summary Notes

August 23, 2011 By

I’m currently reading Made to Stick.  I’ve not gotten to it even though Scott told me to.  Sorry.

I’m also gonna grab the papers referenced by the Studies and read ‘em and report here, so it might take me some time, but this book comes highly recommended and seems to be grounded in academics.

Right now, for every “hard” book I read, I get to read something easy.  Made to Stick by Chip and Dan Heath is easy to read, and is in the “easy” category.

I’ll be updating this post from time to time – but I’m keeping more real-time notes on the chapters in a google doc found here.

I’ll do this, from time to time with the easier stuff I read when I’m at my desk reading.  Some stuff won’t make sense to do this with.  This will go out in the feed, but not on the main page.

Intro:

  1. Sticky Ideas are simple
  2. Sticky Ideas are Unexpected
  3. Sticky Ideas are Concrete –  Human actions, sensory info, etc REAL things – bird in bush, razor blades in apples.
  4. Credible: It is qualified
  5. Emotions: people must feel something for an idea to stick. as much fat as a ….
  6. Stories Spread Sticky Ideas

I’ll perhaps distill the main chapters and some of the Internet available source materials when possible.

This study  (pdf, tiny font, worth reading) was referenced and was in Marketing Science in 1999. The premise is that most creative ads follow 6 recognizable templates below (marked for the skimmers amongst us all)

SELECT STUDIES FROM MADE TO STICK

Jacob Goldenberg • David Mazursky • Sorin Solomo

The Fundamental Templates of Quality Ads:

  1. Pictorial analogy template: taking a picture of the product and transplanting it to another place or introducing it into extreme places
  2. The Extreme Situation Template: Unrealistic situations that demonstrate key attributes: Superglue holding a hat to a metal beam.  Variants: absurd alternative, extreme worth, extreme attribute.
  3. Consequences Template: Indicates implications of executing or failint to execute the recommendation advocated in the ad.
  4. Competition Template: Portrays Situations In Which The Product is subjected to competition  with another product out of its class.   (Car vs. bullet)
  5. Interactive Experiment Template: Ether engage (test drive) or imagine (yourself in a Mercury) the situation.
  6. The dimensionality Alteration Template: Manipulates the dimension of the product in relation to is environment: new parameter, multiplication, division, time leap. Example: speed of aircraft used to measure the size of the ocean.
Filed Under: Books

Sugarman -AdWeek Copywriting Handbook

August 23, 2011 By

Most “business” books suck. They suck because be author isn’t grounded. He’s more focused on being an Awesome Author than he is on actually learning what he is purporting to teach. There’s a giant gulf between guys who are the genuine article (Gitomer) and the goons that want you to “master your purpose,” — whatever the hell that means.

Each book has something of value, but you have to sift. Sifting is fine – you only paid a few bucks for the book.

Joe Sugarman is different. He’s highly specific and highly specialized. My friend Derek Halpern at Social Triggers told me to go read Sugarman. If you don’t know Derek yet, he started a new blog late last year, and it’s taken over the world. He is the best marketer working today. You would be stupid to ignore his advice. So would I.

I’ve read a ton of books on copywriting.  I plan to read a ton more.  Most copywriting books are crap sandwiches, written by wannabes, never-dids, and people that strut like roosters after writing an open house flyer.

Most copywriting books have something of value, but you have to sift through pabulum to get the gems.

When you read Sugarman, there’s no sifting. Every single page is a gem. There’s nothing to disagree with, just a proven step-by-step system for getting results.  He talks about print a lot, but really, that doesn’t matter –the competence translates.

Sugarman’s Axioms, Elements and Triggers

Sugarman writes book and it’s organized 3 sections, with Axioms, Elements and Triggers. He explains at length what these each do, and the purpose in the ads and context. It feels like you’re at a seminar – his folksy, down home way with words is highly convincing.

Unlike a lot of books, you can retain the value from this one long after it’s gone. Simply memorizing the Axioms, Elements and Triggers in Apendix C will go a long way into making us well informed copywriters.

He has many of each – and I’ll be delving into all of that here in a bit. Mostly, for my own benefit, but you may see some benefit from it as well.

Filed Under: Books, Sales
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