Seth Godin's Blog, page 186

Toward a mobile app for this blog

Every few days, someone asks for a new mobile app for the blog. I've been ducking the issue for a while, because I'd like it to be something worth using, but I don't have a passionate or commercial interest in creating one--it's not a focus of mine. But it's time.

One approach is to just license my RSS feed to anyone who wants to build an app around it. I'm hesitating to do that, because if it has my name on it, I'd like it to be reliable, and the app store makes it hard to tell the good ones from the not so good. So I thought I'd ask developers if they'd like to take this on, and what they'd like to do if they did. We might end up with two or three approved apps that you could choose from. They might end up being free or costing money. We'll see. My goal is for it to be easy for you to use and really headache-free for me to create.

If you're a developer and you'd like to suggest yourself for this project, here's a simple form to fill out.  Please don't email me about it, but I promise to review the first forty applications I receive. Deadline is November 2, and as usual, extra points for being early.

Everybody knows everything

William Goldman famously pointed out that before Hollywood releases a picture, nobody knows anything about how it's going to do. It's such a black art that there are no real clues, yet every self-important exec acts as though he's an expert. It's easy to pretend expertise when there's no data to contradict you.

The internet and the connected economy turn much of that on its head. Now, in many fields, you have to assume that everyone knows (or can easily know) everything.

Relying on the ignorance of a motivated audience isn't a long-term strategy.

No one ever bought anything on an elevator

If your elevator pitch is a hyper-compressed two-minute overview of your hopes, dreams and the thing you've been building for the last three years, you're doing everyone a disservice. I'll never be able to see the future through your eyes this quickly, and worse, if you've told me what I need to know to be able to easily say no, I'll say no.

The best elevator pitch doesn't pitch your project. It pitches the meeting about your project. The best elevator pitch is true, stunning, brief and it leaves the listener eager (no, desperate) to hear the rest of it. It's not a practiced, polished turd of prose that pleases everyone on the board and your marketing team, it's a little fractal of the entire story, something real.

"I quit my job as an Emmy-winning actress to do this because..." or "Our company is profitable and has grown 10% per week, every week, since July," or "The King of Spain called me last week about the new project we just launched."

More conversations and fewer announcements.

Raise and lower (more for less)

What if you discovered that due to a tax implemented by invisible interstellar aliens, you would have to increase the price of what you sell by 10%? What would you add to your offering so that people would still choose you despite the fact that all of your competition hadn't raised their price? What sort of service, guarantee, design or other free prize bonus would you add to maintain your market share?

And now, having survived that, what if you discovered that you had to reduce your costs by 10%? What would you take out of your product or service so that you could still profitably sell your product even though it must cost you 10% less to make?

Of course, the interesting thing is what happens if you do both at the same time, when there are no aliens slowing down your growth, increasing your costs or hindering your sales...

The beaten path

Here's a common mistake: make something amazing and figure that people will beat a path to your door.

Or go to a retailer or a sales rep or a middleman and expect that they will offer your product or service to their customers and let you keep most of the profit.

The beaten path isn't something that happens to you, it's something you build. It's not something convenient, it is, in fact, the primary asset of your organization.

Attention and trust are worth more than just about anything else, because they make it likely you have a chance to tell your story, which might resonate, which then leads to the beaten path. It's the last step, not the first..

Meeting expectations

In many settings, happiness and success are measured in terms of whether or not expectations were met (or exceeded).

From the stock market to tech to what's under the Christmas tree, we let expectations determine whether or not something good has happened. Not whether it was useful or kind or productive or delightful, but whether it beat our fantasies.

There are two things you can do with this truth:

1. Spend a lot more effort managing expectations, and

2. Focus on the wonderful instead of the exceeded.

Brands and stocks and careers that are here for the long haul do both.

Two new videos to share

Stop Stealing Dreams, a free ebook manifesto I gave away early this year, has been downloaded millions of times, translated into a few languages and turned into an audiobook. But I'm hoping for an even wider audience, so when Lisa Daniels gave me the chance to do a TEDx talk about it, I took it. Doing a talk for the first and only time is a risky thing, and a lot of work, but I hope you'll find it worth 17 minutes of your time--and share it if you can.

Find the video and the ebook at the Stop Stealing Dreams page.

Also! Two weeks ago, the very generous writer and thinker Jonathan Fields published a Good Life video interview he shot at my office. You can find it at the top of my project page.

Missed opportunities vs. poor execution

When you think back to the last ten years of your career or your company's history, how much of what you haven't achieved is due to missed opportunities (the product you didn't launch, the service you didn't choose to do, the effort you didn't extend, the stock you didn't buy) and how much is the result of doing your assigned tasks poorly?

____ % missed   vs.  ____ % incompetence

Now, compare those percentages to where you spend your time, your focus and your anxiety.

The no-problem problem

An organization that's run on emergencies and reaction to incoming doesn't know what to do when there are no problems.

Instead of seeking out new ways to delight, they run around looking for new emergencies, and if they look hard enough, of course they'll find them.

(Two reasons for this: emergencies concentrate the mind and allow things to get done, and history).

The easiest way to get people to do what you want them to do...

is to start with people who want what you want.

Identify, organize and excite people who are already predisposed to achieve what you had in mind and you're much more likely to have the outcome you seek. It's far easier (but less compelling) than turning strangers or enemies into customers/voters/supporters/colleagues. Over time, an engaged and motivated base of followers is the single best way to earn more followers.

You used to be stuck with whoever walked in the door or opened your mail. Today, you change minds indirectly, by building a tribe that influences via connections to others.