LAUGHING GIANT

We have a friend who worked as a professional photographer and photojournalist for 30 years. Now that he’s retired, he just carries his camera with him and shoots out of habit. He then makes “Photoshop art” by colorizing, texturizing and filtering photos on his Mac.

When he brings by photos of a recent event, like the 4th of July barbecue, I’m always amazed. The shots are amazing. They move you, and you can taste the hot dogs, smell the summer night, and remember just how that scene in the photo felt.

But there are only three or four photos. Total.

“Where are the rest?” I think. He was snapping shots all night.

Everyone thinks he’s a great photographer. And he is. But he doesn’t show you 95% of his product. Just the best shots.

37signals wrote something interesting on this today that reminded me of our friend. 

And today, I saw Michael Curry speak at the Portland Creative Conference, and he said something that caught me: “The most successful artists create FAR more bad work than mediocre ones do.”

My favorite example of this is Prince. He has recorded and released hundreds, if not a thousand, songs in his career. A LOT of them are really inane, repetitive and uninteresting. But there are easily 50 really good ones. And there are probably 20 unbelievable, unforgettable ones. “Little Red Corvette,” “Kiss,” “1999” and the list goes on.

Most of us would kill to write ONE unbelievable song in our lives. He’s got 20. But he had to get out lot of chaff to get those golden kernels.

September 07, 2008, 1:22am   Comments

Yesterday afternoon, I caught wind of a talk going on at Weiden + Kennedy by Gary Vaynerchuk, founder of tv.winelibrary.com and new media guru. He was in town to promote his new book, and Legion of Talk persuaded him to give this free  talk as well. About 150 technorati and entrepreneurials turned out to hear him in the 90-minute session, co-sponsored by Weiden + Kennedy and Strands. Legion of Tech’s goal is to bring the speakers of the TED conference to the masses whenever and wherever possible. Portland’s a great place to do it.

Here are some of the best points from last night. For background on GaryVee, see twitter.com/garyvee or check out http://tv.winelibrary.com.

If you are not 100% fulfilled and energized at work, you are making a huge mistake in where you spend your time. This is the age to do what you love.

If you really, really, really do what you love, you will have the energy to put in the 18-20 hours a day that success requires.

Email is over. No one under 25 uses email anymore. Messaging has fractalized to Twitter, Facebook, texting, IM, Pownce, LinkedIn.

Social media is brand new to the masses. Twitter and Facebook and LinkedIn are just getting going. When Oprah gets on Twitter, then you will know it’s hit bigtime. Until then, it’s in growth stage and we are early adopters.

Want advertisers for your podcast or other content? Google a search on your topic’s keywords, look in the right sidebar, and those are the advertisers you can approach for sponsorship. They’re already buying ads for your audience. It’s an easy sell.

Word of mouth is out of control in today’s market. It used to be that a well-connected professional could perhaps tell 50 qualified people about your product or service. The Web, Twitter, etc can multiply and target word-of-mouth referrals by 100. 

Be Authentic. If you come out in the biggest, most authentic, way you possibly can, you can’t lose. Always be honest about who you are and what you do.

Don’t be afraid of who’s better. Don’t be afraid of who’s bigger. Don’t be afraid of who else is in your space. MySpace was already there. Facebook didn’t care. Yahoo! was already doing search. Google didn’t care.

Don’t chase the business models or money trail when finding your space. Chase yourself. Find what you really love. Only then will you have the passion to put in the 18 hours a day it will take to own your space. (Basecamp was built after hours on raw energy and passion).

Be the Media. Stop consuming content. Start producing it. If you’re sitting home watching “Lost” on DVR, you need to shut it off and figure out your game plan, or you are wasting your time. (Don’t read. Write.)

Be a RAT — Real. Authentic. Transparent.

The Secret Sauce:  Caring about people. The most important question in business is “how can I help?” Focus on providing a truly valuable service to your customer and you will win. Period. 

GaryVee’s 80/20 blend: Inject 80% of the energy into every relationship you have. The 20% you get in return will be sweeter than wine. Why is Zappos beating the rest of the market right now? Because they actually give a shit, and it shows.

Today’s Gold Rush is about the personal brand. You need to own your area of expertise and make sure everyone knows about it. No longer are the brands the companies. Now the corporate brands exist by following the personal brands around. Scoble. Oprah. Kobe. Godin. Calacanis. Kawasaki. Vaynerchuk.   

Thanks GaryVee. And thanks to Twitter, @billder and @turoczy for the hookup.

July 03, 2008, 12:56am   Comments

Think about how many people you email during a day. How many people do you telephone?

In the average workplace, especially the mobile-enabled workplace, your phone is likely to display the caller’s ID, name or telephone number. This lets you know whether your boss, wife, husband, daughter, or a salesperson is calling, and it lets you decide whether to answer it or not.

Think about what it was like before voicemail and caller ID. Think of old movies. A person would walk to the ringing telephone on the wall, and fix a dreamy smile into space as they answered “hello?”. There was no pre-cognition. The call could be the postal service, or news of a loved ones’ death, or a simple friendly chat from Aunt Bea. They had to be prepared for anything and deal with it to their best ability.

Today, we’re able to look at the caller ID, and get excited, or nervous, or angry, and decide how we’re going to conduct the conversation before we even pick it up.

We enter the conversation pre-disposed by our conception of what the caller might want or need. Not necessarily as a blank page, greeting the caller optimistically and without bias. 

Before, if you were in the middle of writing a letter, and someone called to chat, you would have to either talk with the person or use all your best social graces to guide the conversation toward a pleasant close.

Now, you don’t need to keep those graces sharp, because caller ID lets you pre-filter who you’re ready and willing to talk to, every time.

Try turning off caller ID, and see how more alert you have to become. 

June 17, 2008, 10:23am   Comments