"Stop And Think!" via Mike Ramm in Google Reader

Sergey Brin on Google Glass – Making a case (or not)

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Fri, 24 May 2013 23:06:45 PDT

Let me first make a case for not cutting your hand by a knife? You should just prick your hand with a needle. It is less painful and you will probably bleed less.

Does the above make sense?

Probably not.

Now, how about making such a case for Google Glass?

Watch this video where Sergey Brin makes a case starting at 2:45
[ Note: I respect Sergey Brin for all the awesome work so these comments are only based on a particular storytelling incident ]

Click here to view the embedded video.

Sergey explains that people keep looking at their smartphones while having conversations and it’s distracting and that’s one of the reasons behind the Google Glass project. You see, with Google Glass they don’t have to look down and get distracted.

Really?

Yes, you can get distracted without even looking somewhere else.

Making a case for the sake of making one won’t cut it, unfortunately.

On adding a zero

Seth Godin — Sat, 25 May 2013 02:27:00 PDT

What happens if, instead of one sales call a day, you make ten?

Or if instead of 3 freelancers working on scaling your work, you have thirty?

What happens if you add a zero in places where it feels impossible to handle... what then?

Scale isn't always the answer, but if it is, then scale. Build the systems necessary to dramatically change your impact. Halfway gets you nowhere.

Overcoming the impossibility of amazing

Seth Godin — Fri, 24 May 2013 02:00:00 PDT

If you set your bar at "amazing," it's awfully difficult to start.

Your first paragraph, sketch, formula, sample or concept isn't going to be amazing. Your tenth one might not be either.

Confronted with the gap between your vision of perfect and the reality of what you've created, the easiest path is no path. Shrug. Admit defeat. Hit delete.

One more reason to follow someone else and wait for instructions.

Of course, the only path to amazing runs directly through not-yet-amazing. But not-yet-amazing is a great place to start, because that's where you are. For now.

There's a big difference between not settling and not starting.

Thoughts on education and the burgeoning trophy shortage

Seth Godin — Thu, 23 May 2013 02:00:00 PDT

It's graduation season, so a few relevant links about school, students and our future:

Here's the audio of an interview I did with PlayBuffet

My TEDx talk about education

And a reminder about Stop Stealing Dreams, a free manifesto that asks, "what is school for?" I hope we can ask this question more and more often...

Feel free to share with your favorite graduate. Or her parents.

Bonus: 20 video minutes at Creative Mornings.

Let's start with "sorry"

Seth Godin — Wed, 22 May 2013 02:43:00 PDT

By the time the phone rings, there's already trouble. When that manager is called or this department is reached, it's because someone is disappointed, angry or stuck. Illness, broken promises or a real urgency have led to this new conversation even taking place.

So don't start with, "[Name of company] mumble mumble" as if there's a blank slate just waiting to be written on. There's already a lot of writing on that slate. Don't demand to know the record number or begin with doubt and an edge of dismissal. Be on our team.

"It sounds like we've got a situation on our hands..." is a fine way to disarm the person you're about to talk with. He won't have to spend the first six sentences expressing his anger and urgency, because in less than ten words, you've done it for him. Or perhaps, "I'd like to help, if you'll bring me up to speed..."

It's not easy being on the receiving end of a days'-long parade of blame, but no one said it was easy. We asked you to do it because you're good and because it's important, not because it's fun.

Our scars

Paulo Coelho — Tue, 21 May 2013 17:55:27 PDT

by Pramiti Sapru Scars; they seem so beautiful at times. I’ve got many, deep and shallow. They aren’t self-inflicted, well consciously they aren’t. They cover my arms, my legs, even my fingers are painted with them. To others it might seem like a cry for help or a careless attitude but for me it’s my [...]

Levels of marketing magic, the placebo effects of desire

Seth Godin — Tue, 21 May 2013 05:18:59 PDT

ANTICIPATION: Before the product is released, the true fans are buzzing and speculating and waiting in line. The anticipation is self-reinforcing, a placebo effect of desire.

UTILITY: The album is good, the software is useful, the book changes things. It works better than we hoped. Exceeding expectations pays significant dividends.

REMARK: It's purple. Remarkable. Worth talking about. The word spreads. Ten people tell ten people and suddenly, it's abuzz. Not because of PR or hype, but because the remarkability is built right into the product or service itself. And more people enjoy things that are getting buzzed about.

TRIBE: The core group, the true fans, are even more connected than before. The organization has helped them organize, the product creates a culture, commitments are made, conversations persist, a culture is built. To use something that makes us feel as though we belong is magic indeed.

[repeat]

If this sounds like Apple, Bob Dylan, The Rocky Horror Picture Show, the Dead, gun collectors or Shake Shack, it's not an accident. It's definitely not an accident.

Are you ready to do something special?

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Sun, 19 May 2013 22:43:58 PDT

Before I go any further, watch these two videos that will set the context for this article. While there is a chance that this may be staged, the point is to focus on the lesson on not on winning a debate that will lead to nothing.

Video #1: Pumpcast News, Part 1 – The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

This is a short video (5 minutes) where Jack Rafferty surprises a cool couple (husband is a bartender and wife is a fitness instructor)

Click here to view the embedded video.

Video #2: Pumpcast News, Part 2 – Happy Couple on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno

Jay Leno invites the happy couple from the Pumpcast News to play with the band

Click here to view the embedded video.

While the entire thing was pure fun and entertainment, there are a couple of lessons to be learned from this. The key ones for me are:

1. Are you ready to do something special?

Opportunities don’t come packaged and delivered on a set date. They come abruptly and out of the blue. You rarely can capitalize on them unless you are ready for them – meaning you should have invested enough in yourself such that a moment’s notice is all that’s required to bloom. As we both know, it’s never the lack of opportunities but the lack of preparedness to capitalize on opportunities that are passing by.

2. Being comfortable with who you are

Yes, it is difficult to be like someone else but it’s harder to be just YOU. It was very clear that the couple were super comfortable with who they were. What you need to be careful is not to confuse “being comfortable with who you are” with “complacence.” The world where we live requires you to be moving fast just to stay where you are.

3. Small wins are cool (sometimes they lead to bigger wins)

Notice how this all started – Jack Rafferty offers the husband free tank of gas if he sings. That “small win” was more than enough for the husband (and later his wife) to sing his heart out. Of course, the big win was to get on the Jay Leno show but that was not the reason for both the husband and wife to participate in the “game”

Have a great week ahead.

Six Simple Growth Equations

thinksulting@gmail.com (Rajesh Setty) — Sat, 11 May 2013 07:27:24 PDT

I was advising a young student who is getting into his first real job and wanted to keep everything plain and simple. The outcome was the following six simple growth equations.

1+1 = ?

This is where you are working without a purpose. You don’t know what you want in life so you are confused whether you are growing or sliding sideways. The anxiety to “get things right” robs a lot of your growth.

1+1 = -1

This is where you make dumb career decisions such as focusing on personal gain at the expense of relationships. You take advantage of people forgetting that you don’t lose a person but a relationship network. This is a no-win strategy.

1+1 = 0

This is where you work to ensure that you keep your job for the next year and nothing else. Since you are doing “just enough” you escape from the axe but since you are not “growing” sooner than later, disaster strikes.

1+1 = 1

This is where you are adding one year of experience with another year of experience. In other words, you don’t bring the power of your first experience to the second year to enrich the second year experience and so on. This problem is way more prevalent than what

1 + 1 = 2

As simple as it sounds just getting here will put you in the “above average” category as you are building up your experience every year. In a short-span of ten years, you will be miles ahead of your peers if you keep up the attitude and approach towards learning.

1+ 1 = 11

This is where the magic of leverage comes. In this case, not only are you learning but you are also “giving” so that others around you are improving on the equation. You ensure that nobody around you is below the 1+1=2 equation. So, sooner than later, you would have built a small army of people who have vested interest in helping you succeed big time. Knowingly or unknowingly you are filling in the reservoir filled with the power of reciprocation.

Bonus Equation: 1+1 = !

This is where you take your experience from work AND mesh it with uncommon investment in yourself to create something remarkable. Remember that all said and done you have limited control on what your experience will be in the first few years of your career but you have unlimited control on how much you can invest in yourself. Taking advantage of that is where all that magic is.

Please take a moment to share this with anyone in your network who is starting their career.

You should buy the book

Seth Godin — Mon, 20 May 2013 15:35:38 PDT

Mitch Joel is a generous and perceptive blogger. Well worth the daily read. He has a new book. You should buy it.

David Meerman Scott writes an essential blog, daily. His book is a classic. You should buy it.

Tom Asacker writes a very thoughtful blog about marketing. Worth the read. He has a new book. You should buy it, too.

Every day, Mark Frauenfelder and Corey Doctorow blog tons of goodness at Boingboing. They each have books. You should buy them and share them.

Bernadette Jiwa's blog keeps getting better and better and you are probably already reading it. She has a new book on the way. You can guess what you should do.

There are authors and actors who only show up when they have something to sell, who hit the road to briefly entertain us, pitch us and then leave. If you love their work, then by all means, buy it! But the frequent blogger is here for another reason. He or she has something to share and is relentlessly showing up to teach and lead and connect.

If you want that to happen more, if you're getting something out of it, buy the book.

[I actually hesitated to write, "should," because it puts books into the same category as classical music and supporting NPR. No one says you "should" buy comic books or go to action films...

Buying books is actually scary for many people, so they make up excuses about not having enough time or money. The reason that books are frightening is that they might make us feel stupid, or we might get a lousy one or we might end up feeling like a failure for not finishing it. This is pretty common, actually.

I think buying books from consistent bloggers is a little different, though. First, you're probably not going to be disappointed with what you get. Second, it's almost always their best work, because it doesn't feel as ephemeral as a blog post to the writer or reader--it's a far more focused and direct shot to your neocortex. And third, most important, because it's a very concrete form of encouragement (not just for the writer! but for the reader too), one that will selfishly make it likely you get more blogging from the very people you'd like to hear from more often as well as reminding you, the reader, that you're worth the effort and investment.

Plus, when you're done reading, it's a generous act to share one.]

How to Pitch Better: The Question Pitch

Dan Pink — Mon, 20 May 2013 06:02:57 PDT

Today we begin a new series of short videos based on Chapter 7 of To Sell is Human, wherein I reveal the 6 successors to the elevator pitch.

Up first is The Question Pitch, which shows when you should use the interrogative to make your case (and when you should avoid it).

Blog changes

Paulo Coelho — Mon, 20 May 2013 04:36:25 PDT

As you noticed, the blog changed its visual. Suphi did a great job, but there are probably a lot of things that we missed. So please list your comments/suggestions/etc. below Love Paulo

No Signal

Seth Godin — Mon, 20 May 2013 02:00:00 PDT

At a party the other day, I saw a dead TV monitor. On the screen it said something like, "No signal... check power, cable and source selection..."

It doesn't matter at all how hard the DVD player was trying to put on a show. It is irrelevant how good the show on cable was. If it's not getting through, no one sees it.

All of us own our own media companies now. We each have the ability to speak up, to tell our stories, and if we're good and if we're lucky, to be heard.

Too often, though, there's no signal. You may be pumping noise through your social media outlets, but noise isn't signal. It's merely a distraction. You're talking, but you're not saying anything, at least nothing that's being heard.

You get to choose your story. If the story you've chosen doesn't get through, it's up to you to fix that. Pick a story that reflects your work, sure, but also one that resonates with the receiver.

Our magic moment

Paulo Coelho — Sun, 19 May 2013 19:04:48 PDT

Every day, God gives us the sun – and also one moment in which we have the ability to change everything that makes us unhappy. Every day, we try to pretend that we haven’t perceived the moment, that it doesn’t exist – that today is the same as yesterday and will be the same as [...]

Having fun today

supi — Sun, 19 May 2013 15:58:48 PDT

5 books that changed your life?

Paulo Coelho — Sun, 19 May 2013 04:53:41 PDT

Reading the comments on my post The 50 books that changed the world , I think it is a good idea to ask the following question, so you can share with others: 5 books that changed your life? 5 livros que mudaram sua vida? 5 libros que cambiarán tu vida List them in the comment [...]

Learning by analogy

Seth Godin — Mon, 20 May 2013 11:22:26 PDT

The story of Hansel and Gretel is not actually about Hansel or Gretel.

You are surrounded by examples and lessons and case studies that clearly aren't exactly about your project. There's never been a book written precisely about the situation you are facing right now, either. Perhaps one day they will publish, "Marketing Low-Cost Coaching Services to Small Businesses Specializing in .Graphic Design in the Upper Peninsula for Dummies" but don't hold your breath.

Marketing, like all forms of art, requires us to learn to see. To see what's working and to transplant it, change it and amplify it.

We don't teach this, but we should. We don't push people to practice the act of learning by analogy, because it's way easier to just give them a manual and help them avoid thinking for themselves.

The opportunity is to find the similarities and get ever better at letting others go first--not with what you've got, but with something you can learn from.

And the opposite is even more true. We over-rely on things where the specifics seem to match, but the lesson is obscured by the trivial. Sometimes when we see something happen that we can learn a conceptual lesson from, we instead jump to conclusions that the specifics are the important part.

Remember that the next time you have to take your shoes off before you get on an airplane.

It's Thomas Midgley day

Seth Godin — Sat, 18 May 2013 16:23:09 PDT

Today would be his 124th birthday. A fine occasion to think about the effects of industrialization, and what happens when short-term profit-taking meets marketing.

Midgley is responsible for millions of deaths. Not directly, of course, but by, "just doing his job," and then pushing hard to market ideas he knew weren't true—so he and his bosses could turn a profit.

His first mistake began when he figured out that adding lead to gasoline appeared to make cars perform better. At the time, two things were widely known by chemists: 1. Adding grain alcohol to gasoline dramatically increases octane and performance, and 2. Ingesting or sniffing lead can lead to serious injury, brain damage and death.

The problem for those that wanted to be in the gasoline business was that grain alcohol wasn't cheap, and the idea couldn't be patented. As a result, the search was on for a process that could be protected, that was cheaper and that could open the door for market dominance. If you own the patent on the cheap and easy way to make cars run quieter (and no one notices the brain damage and the deaths) then you can corner the market in a fast-growing profitable industry...

As soon as the lead started being used, people began dying. Factory workers would drop dead, right there in the plant. Even Thomas himself contracted lead poisoning. Later, at a press conference where he tried to demonstrate the safety of the gasoline, he washed his hands in it and sniffed it... even though he knew it was already killing people. That brief exposure was sufficient to require six months off the job for him to recover his health.

Does this sound familiar? An entrenched industry needs the public and its governments to ignore what they're doing so they can defend their status quo and extract the maximum value from their assets. They sow seeds of doubt, and remind themselves (and us) of the profts made and the money saved.

And we give them a pass. Because it's their job, or because it's our job, or because our culture has created a dividing line between individuals who create negative impacts and organizations that do.

People who just might, in other circumstances, stand up and speak up, decide to quietly stand by, or worse, actively lie as they engage in PR campaigns aimed at belittling or undermining those that are brave enough to point out just how damaging the status quo is.

It took sixty years for leaded gas to be banned in my country, and worse, it's still used in many places that can ill afford to deal with its effects.

After leaded gasoline, Midgeley did it again, this time with CFCs, responsible for a gaping hole in the ozone layer. He probably didn't know the effects in advance this time, but yes, the industry fought hard to maintain the status quo for years once the damage was widely known. It's going to take at least a millenium to clean that up.

We might consider erecting a statue of him in every lobbyist's office, a reminder to all of us that we're ultimately responsible for what we make, that spinning to defend the status quo hurts all of us, and most of all, that we have to balance the undeniable benefits of progress, innovation and industry with the costs to all concerned. Scaling has impact, so let's scale the things that work. No, nothing is perfect, but yes, some things are better than others.

I can't imagine a better person as the symbol for a day that's not about honoring or celebrating, but could be about vigilance, candor and outspokenness instead.

[Previously: No such thing as business ethics.]

Every day is an investment

Seth Godin — Fri, 17 May 2013 02:07:00 PDT

You're not lucky to have this job, they're lucky to have you. Every day, you invest a little bit of yourself into your work, and one of the biggest choices available to you is where you'll be making that investment.

That project that you're working on, or that boss you report to... worth it?

Investing in the wrong place for a week or a month won't kill you. But spending ten years contributing to something that you don't care about, or working with someone who doesn't care about you... you can do better.

El punto acomodador

Paulo Coelho — Thu, 16 May 2013 11:33:13 PDT

En uno de mis libros (El Zahir), procuro entender por qué todo el mundo tiene tanto miedo a cambiar. Cuando estaba en pleno proceso de escritura de este texto, cayó en mis manos una extraña entrevista a una mujer que acababa de lanzar un libro sobre -¿adivinan? – el amor. El periodista le pregunta si [...]