Polishing junk
The first rule of social media is that it powers the spread of remarkable ideas.
The second rule is that all the social media in the world can't make a lousy project work in the long run.
The time you're spending polishing might be better spent building.
Which charity?
Organized non-profits provide reach, leverage and consistency that can't be matched by the millenia-old model of individuals helping those they encounter in the community. It's one of the extraordinary success stories of the industrial age that they've been able to have such a worldwide impact with relatively few resources. As our choices continue to increase (yes, there's now a long tail of philanthropy), it gets ever more important that we make conscious choices about what to support and how.
Here are a few questions with no right answers, questions that might help you think about where you want to allocate your charitable support...
Are you more drawn to emergencies that need your help right now, or to organizations that work toward long-term solutions to avoid the emergencies of the future?
Would you prefer to support a proven, scaled, substantial organization, or does the smaller, less well-known organization appeal to you?
Canaries and coal mines
Years ago, I went on a grueling trip, four cities in four days doing speaking gigs. That meant I was in a lot of airports. At every airport bookstore, there wasn't a single copy of any of my books, including one that had recently came out.
I whined to the team at my book publisher. What sort of distribution was this?
Someone wrote back, "Seth, if you tell us which airports you'll be visiting, our salesforce says they will do their best to have your book in a place you can see it."
My own little Potemkin Village. I'm afraid he didn't really get the point I was after.
The hard work of understanding
Sometimes, we're so eager to have an opinion that we skip the step of working to understand. Why is it the way it is? Why do they believe what they believe?
We skip reading the whole thing, because it's easier to jump to what we assume the writer meant.
We skip engaging with customers and stakeholders because it's quicker to assert we know what they want.
We skip doing the math, examining the footnotes, recreating the experiment, because it might not turn out the way we need it to.
Thinking about money
Many marketers work overtime to confuse us about money. They take advantage of our misunderstanding of the time value of money, of our aversion to reading the fine print, of our childish need for instant gratification and most of all, our conflicted emotional connection to money.
Confusing customers about money can be quite profitable if that's the sort of work you're willing to do.
A few things to keep in mind:
The amount of money you have has nothing to do with whether or not you're a good person. Being good with money is a little like being good with cards. People who are good at playing cards aren't better or worse than anyone else, they're just better at playing crazy eights.
Delight the weird
Everyone who eats at your restaurant expects a good cup of coffee, and it's difficult to wow them, because, of course, your competition is working to do the same thing.
But of course, it's not everyone who wants a cup of coffee. Some want a cup of tea, or a cup of herbal tea, and those folks are used to being ignored, or handed an old Lipton tea bag, or something boring.
What if you had thirty varieties for them to choose from?
Everyone who stays at your hotel expects the same sort of service, and it's difficult to wow them, because, of course, your competition is working to do the same thing.
On the hook
Mentorship works for two reasons. Certainly, the person being mentored gains from advice and counsel and even access to others via introductions, etc.
But mostly, it works because the person with a mentor has a responsibility to stand up and actually get moving. The only way to repay your mentor is by showing the guts it takes to grow and to matter.
Interesting to note, then, that the primary driver of mentor benefit has nothing to do with the mentor herself, nothing beyond the feeling of obligation the student feels to the teacher. Whether or not the mentor does anything, this obligation delivers benefits.
We can simulate this by living up to our heroes and those living by example, even if we never meet them, even if they've passed away, leaving us nothing but a legacy to honor and live up to.
Ambassadors and treaties
A great ambassador doesn't show up in a foreign land and start complaining about how everything here is so different. She doesn't insist that people start acting the way they act back home. And most of all, she welcomes the idea that people might have different goals and desires than the people she grew up with--in fact, different than she has.
And every great treaty causes both signatories to change something substantial, something important, in exchange for accomplishing a bigger goal via cooperation.
Your customers need an ambassador. Someone who is open to hearing what they have, need and want, not merely a marketer intent on selling them a particular point of view. Once you understand someone, it's much easier to bring them something that benefits everyone.
And your partners need you to honor the spirit and intent of the deals you do with them. The goal of a long-term relationship isn't to find the loophole that lets you do what you want. Instead, figure out what you're giving up and what you're getting in return.
Monday afternoon book Q&A
As a fun summer diversion, I'll be answering a question every week about one of my books. Go ahead and ask...
The question form is right here. There's a prize every week for submitting the question I send up using.
Understanding sponsorship
The answer to the question, "how are you going to pay for this project?" is turning out to be sponsorship more and more often. If you don't know why organizations want to sponsor things, though, it's likely a long, hard road to find the sponsorship you seek.
As the number of media options continue to explode (blogs, books, conferences, tattoos, speaking engagements, film festivals, stadiums, entire websites...) it's worth thinking a little bit about why organizations buy sponsorships.
1. It might be a substitute for advertising. How many people see it? How much does it cost per person? (this is the cpm, but instead of cost per thousand page views or magazine readers, it's cost per thousand impressions, which come in a myriad of ways). I think this is the film festival/book fair model. It's a reasonable way to reach a hard to reach, high value group.
Coming to Australia, Denver, Turkey and Oslo...
I've promised so many people that I'd come to Australia one day that it gives me jet-lag-overcoming joy to let you know that I'll be there in early September 2014.
You can see the list of four public Australian Business Chicks seminars here.
Or, if you're up for it Down Under, consider joining me at an intimate full-day Q&A seminar, the only one I've scheduled anywhere so far next year. It won't overlap with the Business Chicks events, so maybe you could come to both...
Closer to home, I'll be in Denver with Brian at the Copyblogger event in May. And in Phoenix in April.
Can an audiobook change your life?
There's no doubt that a well-read recording of a novel can make a long car ride pass much more quickly. We're eager to find out what happens next, and sometimes, it's even worth sitting in the driveway just to find out.
I'm more interested, though, in non-fiction audio, particularly the kind you listen to ten or fifteen or a hundred times in a row.
When I was starting out on my own, success was not around the corner or even in sight. For years, I was flirting on the edge of failure. I was thrown out of salescalls, rejected by just about every organization I approached and was pretty stuck. More than once I considered giving up the entire entrepreneur thing.
One of the key factors in both surviving this time and figuring out how to shift gears was my exposure to (as we called them then) books on tape, particularly the work of Zig Ziglar. I listened for sometimes hours every day. I've been grateful to Zig every day since, and I still listen regularly.
Less vs. more, give vs. take
You could build a company dedicated to paying your employees ever more. Or you could build a company based on the strategy of paying them ever less.
You could create a business based on the idea of charging your customers the lowest possible prices, or you could set out to figure out how to charge them as much as possible.
Your organization could depend on ever increasing the amount of choice and privacy you give your users--or you could work daily to reduce them.
You could protect your users from interruption or you could decide to profit from interruption.
Nature and nurture (professional edition)
The boss, conference organizer, co-worker, interviewer, parent or client who wants your best work, your art and your genuine enthusiasm:
...can demand that you bring your best possible work the first time, can point out that they are paying you well, that they're busy, that they're powerful, and that they accept nothing short of high performance or you're out.
...or they can nurture you, encourage you, set a high bar and then support you on your way. They can teach you, cajole you and introduce you to others that will do the same.
The first strategy is the factory mindset, of interchangeable parts and interchangeable people. It is the strategy of ensuring six sigma perfection, on demand, and the strategy of someone in power, who can demand what he wants, when he wants it.
Proving the skeptics wrong
"It'll never last..."
"Someone with her background will never make a go of this..."
"Are you kidding me?" "Pathetic! Delusional!"
"Social media is a fad, the iPad is a toy, you're never going to amount to anything..."
"But what if I fail?"
You will.
The answer to the what if question is, you will.
A better question might be, "after I fail, what then?"
Well, if you've chosen well, after you fail you will be one step closer to succeeding, you will be wiser and stronger and you almost certainly be more respected by all of those that are afraid to try.
Q&A: The resiliency of Permission Marketing
Here's my first Monday Afternoon book Q&A. Thanks to everyone who responded...
The first book is Permission Marketing and virtually all the questions were the same, best summarized by Brandon Carroll, "How do you feel like Permission Marketing has changed since the 90s when you wrote it? How can it be applied in today's fast changing world?"
If you haven't read it yet, here is some context. I wrote it in 1998, before YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Psy, the iPhone or the bankruptcy of Hostess.
I felt confident writing the book because there were two key shifts that hadn't drawn enough attention:
The humility of the artist
It seems arrogant to say, "perhaps this isn't for you."
When the critic pans your work, or the prospect hears your offer but doesn't buy, the artist responds, "that's okay, it's not for you." She doesn't wheedle or flip-flop or go into high pressure mode. She treats different people differently, understands that she is working to delight the weird, not please the masses, and walks away.
Isn't that arrogant?
No. It's arrogant to assume that you've made something so extraordinary that everyone everywhere should embrace it. Our best work can't possibly appeal to the average masses, only our average work can.
Trash talking important work
The self-induced anxiety formula often goes like this: What I'm about to do is important. I've never done it quite like this. It's incredibly crucial, a turning point, a high risk venture, a moment in time I won't have again. Therefore, I am nervous. And I need to get more nervous, because the importance of the moment warrants it. This is going to fail. I can vividly picture all the ways it won't work...
On and on.
A common approach to decreasing the unhappy cycle is self talk to minimize how important the upcoming event is. The mantra is: No one will be watching, I'm exaggerating this moment, it's no big deal, it's not as important as you think, it doesn't really matter...
The problem with that approach is that you spend your day trash talking your leverage and impact. By actively diminishing what you've accomplished, you make it less likely you'll see yourself as worthy of even bigger achievements tomorrow.
The sea of strangers
Is there anything more frightening than showing up (really showing up) in the place where you are unknown and alone?
All our warning systems are on high alert. From an evolutionary perspective, strangers represent danger. They are not only a direct threat, but carry the risk of rejection and all the insecurity that comes with it.
But the opposite can be true: Strangers can represent opportunity. The opportunity to learn, to make new connections, to build bridges that benefit everyone.
This is an internal debate, not something that comes from outside. When we look for rejection and reasons to hold back, that’s exactly what we will find. On the other hand, if we seek possibility and look for people that need us as much as we need them, there they are.
