Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 131

SPOS #709 – Ryan Hawk On Management, Performance and Leadership

Welcome to episode #709 of Six Pixels of Separation.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #709 – Host: Mitch Joel. Ryan Hawk is a keynote speaker, author, advisor, and the host of The Learning Leader Show, a podcast (like this one), where he goes deep with some of the world’s biggest brains on how to optimize business and thinking. A lifelong student of leadership, he rose to roles as a professional quarterback and then went on to a VP of Sales. Currently, as head of Brixey & Meyer’s leadership advisory practice, Ryan speaks regularly for many large organizations, works with teams and players in the NFL, NBA, and NCAA, and facilitates Leadership Circles that offers structured guidance and collaborative feedback to new and experienced leaders. Most recently, he published the book, Welcome To Management – How To Grow From Top Performer To Excellent Leader. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 57:48.
Hello from beautiful Montreal.
Subscribe over at iTunes.
Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.
Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.
or you can connect on LinkedIn.
…or on Twitter.
Here is my conversation with Ryan Hawk.
Welcome To Management.
The Learning Leader Show.
Follow Ryan on Instagram.
Follow Ryan on Twitter.
This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #709 – Host: Mitch Joel.

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #502

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

An Agenda for the 2020s: Inventing the Knowledge Age – Continuations. “Albert Wenger wrote The World After Capital, which is in my aspirational reading queue—I think that as a society, we aren’t prepared for possible abundance, since we equate scarcity with value. Watching recent political events, it’s clear that polarization means even more spending by both sides, resulting in a feedback loop of more and more focus on politics itself, rather than on getting things done—the underlying goal of societies. Wenger has written a pretty compelling list of things we need to tackle, and soon.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Have the Boomers Pinched Their Children’s Futures? – Lord David Willetts – The Royal Institution . “Want to see how we got here? Demographics. This is a fascinating talk from The Royal Institution‘s lecture series, that looks at how populations, aging, and fiscal policy makes us what we are. And the results, generations in the making, aren’t pretty. I had a root canal today, with another scheduled for next week—so maybe I’m just pessimistic.” (Alistair for Mitch). 
Avocado crime soars as Mexican gangs turn focus from opium to ‘green gold’ – Financial Post . “Apparently there’s a new show coming out based on Miami Vice, called Millennial Toast, which follows the morally grey world of undercover cops and the Avacado cartels.” (Hugh for Alistair). 
Rediscovering the Lost Power of Reading Aloud – LitHub . “I pretty much met Mitch because of audiobooks (LibriVox), and it turns out reading aloud is just the way it used to happen.” (Hugh for Mitch).
No One Can Explain Why Planes Stay In The Air – Scientific American . “This is both concerning and fascinating. As someone who flies over 100,000 miles every year, I had heard this trope that ‘nobody knows how planes stay in the air.’ I thought it was some flat earthers kind of nonsense, because… science. Then, this article floats across my feed, and the source is legit. I read this article and wondered how many people know this truth. That science is often imperfect and unexplainable and it simply works.” (Mitch for Alistair).
Notes of a Chronic Rereader – The Pais Review . “I read. A lot. Nonstop. I am a chronic reader. So much so, that I will using the term ‘chronic reader’ to describe myself (it will make me sound smart, right? ;). With that, I am not a chronic rereader. Sure, there are some books that I like to refer back to and reread. But it’s a small handful. This is a beautiful piece about the glory of reading, writing, thinking, studying and all of the other things that I wish I could spend much more time doing. So, are you reader, writer and a rereader?” (Mitch for Hugh).  

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Ariane Cap On This Month’s Groove – The No Treble Podcast

Ariane Cap is this month’s conversation on Groove – The No Treble Podcast.

You can listen the new episode right here: Groove – The No Treble Podcast – Episode #62 – Ariane Cap.

Who is Ariane Cap ?

You may know her best from her Talking Technique instructional lessons right here on No Treble, but if you haven’t dug deeper (much, much deeper) on the impressive career of bassist, Ariane Cap, you do not know what you’re missing. The Austrian (now LA-based) multi-instrumentalist, educator, author, blogger, composer and bad-ass player has done it all from rock, jazz and folk to flamenco, classical and Latin Disco music. The genre bouncing has led to gigs with Cirque du Soleil, a duo with Jazz bassoonist Paul Hansen, and a collaboration called Bass Beyond Borders with Stu Hamm. The author of Music Theory For The Bass Player, is not just a contributor to several leading music instrument magazines, but currently has a new line of instructional programs happening for willing bass players. If that were not enough, Ariane is a certified Tiny Habits coach and NLP Practitioner. Interested in what it takes to become a better player, how to balance your teaching and playing and how to optimize your playing? Enjoy the conversation…

Listen in:  Groove – The No Treble Podcast – Episode #62 – Ariane Cap.

What is Groove – The No Treble Podcast?

This is an ambitious effort. This will be a fascinating conversation. Our goal at Groove is to build the largest oral history of bass players. Why Groove? Most of the content about the bass revolves around gear, playing techniques, and more technical chatter. For us, bassists are creative artists with stories to tell. They are a force to be reckon with. These are the stories and conversation that we will capture. To create this oral history of why these artists chose the bass, what their creative lives are like, and where inspiration can be found.

Make Your Complexity Invisible To Everyone Else

“Make your complexity invisible to everyone else.”

I don’t know who said that line, but I do love it (and I do use it – often).

We live in the era of third-party service providers. There are experts in, literally, everything. Because of this (and the need to scale), many brands bring on third-party providers to deliver a true omnichannel experience, or a “best in class” experience. On paper, this makes sense. As a the master brand, you can expand and bring on experts. If things go sideways, it’s always better to cancel that contract than deal with employees. From a cost perspective, these third-party providers have put in the time, training, optimization, and are usually cost-effective (the master brand saves time trying to staff up and expertise up).

It all works well… until it doesn’t (which is often).

Case in point: during this past holiday break we stayed at a hotel that we’ve been customers at for over a decade. Over the years, the hotel has slowly rolled out the outsourcing of almost everything. Parking/valet, housekeeping, indoor restaurant, beach/towel/pool crew, security, garderning, outdoor bar service, etc… It has come to the point when one hand doesn’t know what the other hand does (let alone what they are doing or who to ask). If you have an issue, and you ask someone (anyone), the response is (almost) always, “that’s not us… that’s this other company… that’s another service provider… can you ask the front desk, because if we say anything, they will just ignore us… we’re a third-party provider, and we can’t help you…” On and on.

It works great on paper, but when it hits the customer experience…

The company/hotel/master brand has no idea that this is the customer experience. They have no idea how frustrating it is, when you ask the beach crew if the pool is going to be cleaned, and they tell you that it’s another company… or when you ask the poolside service for a coffee and they tell you that’s the restaurant upstairs and inside… sure, first world problems, but we’re building a quality brand and story here. This is not that. Still not convinced? Try buying insurance for a flight on the airline’s website, then watch them tell you it’s a third-party provider, and that they have nothing to do with it when you attempt to invoke it after a missed connection.

Make the brand, the brand experience and the customer experience the real story.

What’s good for the company needs to be great for the customer. These “death by a thousand paper cuts,” makes the consumer wonder who is running the show, and where is all of this money going? Maybe it’s not third-party providers for your business, but maybe it is how your departments/silos work? We live in this day and age when information, complaining and talking about this stuff is just a Trip Advisor review, tweet, YouTube video away. If one consumer can use multiple pieces of technology to seamlessly share a story like this (for free) with the world, don’t all brands need to live, breathe and be accountable in that world?

“Make your complexity invisible to everyone else.” That’s a good way to think about how to innovate and transform.

The Death of TV Advertising And More On CHOM 97.7 FM

Every Monday morning at 7:10 am, I am on air at CHOM 97.7 FM radio out of Montreal (home base). It’s not a long segment – about 10 minutes every week – about everything that is happening in the world of technology, digital media and culture. The good folks at CHOM 97.7 FM are posting these segments weekly on i Heart Radio, if you’re interested in hearing more of me blathering on about what’s happening in the digital world. I’m really excited about this opportunity, because this is the radio station that I grew up listening to, and it really is a fun treat to be invited to the Mornings Rock with Terry DiMonte morning show. The segment is called, CTRL ALT Delete with Mitch Joel.

This week we discussed:

There’s a constant meme that TV advertising is dead. Then, we hit Super Bowl season and all we talk about are the TV ads. That… and… our social media feeds are usually filled with the ads, behind the scenes and teases for what the ads will be on Super Bowl Sunday. So, what’s the truth… is TV advertising dead? Is social media more important to the advertisers than the actual TV spot? The average price for a 30-second spot this year was $4.51 million.
Everything we text is now colored with Emojis. Often, we don’t even have to type at all. The Emoji does the work. Did you know that which emojis we use is governed by the Unicode Consortium? They’ve announced 117 new emojis for 2020. “The expansion includes 62 brand-new emoji as well as 55 new gender and skin-tone variants, many of which are new gender-inclusive emoji. Other notable additions this year include the transgender flag — from a proposal co-sponsored by Google and Microsoft — as well as the new smiling face with tear, the two people hugging, pinched fingers, a disguised face, not to mention tons more animals, food items and other objects.”
With the Brexit news this past week, many missed that the EU – after ten years of discussion – has voted (in a landslide) to create a standard charging solution for all phones (and smaller tablets, etc…). The goal is standardization and an attempt to reduce waste (we all get power bricks and cables that we never use). Of course, Apple argued against the common charger, because it would stifle innovation and increase e-waste (short term) as gadget makers and consumers would be forced to get standardized wires and bricks. Is this a smart idea or an impossibility?
App of the Week: Scott Galloway – No Mercy / No Malice.

You can also listen in via I Heart Radio.

David Meerman Scott On Creating Passionate Fans – This Week’s Six Pixels of Separation Podcast

Episode #708 of Six Pixels of Separation is now live and ready for you to listen to.

The bestselling author, David Meerman Scott, wants businesses to focus more on developing fans than customers. He would know. He is a fan of live music, collecting artifacts from space, and so much more. He also happens to be a marketing strategist who has written eight books (all of which have done exceedingly well). He may be best known for The New Rules of Marketing & PR, but his body of work also includes, The New Rules of Sales and Service, Real Time Marketing and PR, Marketing The Moon, Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead, Eyeball Wars and World Wide Rave. Most recently, he published the book, Fanocracy – Turning fans into customers and customers into fans. For this book he worked with a co-author (who also happens to be his daughter), Reiko Scott. Let’s dive into how brands can think differently about their customers, and debate whether or not all businesses are worthy of having fans. Enjoy the conversation…

You can grab the latest episode of Six Pixels of Separation here (or feel free to subscribe via iTunes): Six Pixels of Separation #708.

SPOS #708 – David Meerman Scott On Creating Passionate Fans

Welcome to episode #708 of Six Pixels of Separation.

Here it is: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #708 – Host: Mitch Joel. The bestselling author, David Meerman Scott, wants businesses to focus more on developing fans than customers. He would know. He is a fan of live music, collecting artifacts from space, and so much more. He also happens to be a marketing strategist who has written eight books (all of which have done exceedingly well). He may be best known for The New Rules of Marketing & PR, but his body of work also includes, The New Rules of Sales and Service, Real Time Marketing and PR, Marketing The Moon, Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead, Eyeball Wars and World Wide Rave. Most recently, he published the book, Fanocracy – Turning fans into customers and customers into fans. For this book he worked with a co-author (who also happens to be his daughter), Reiko Scott. Let’s dive into how brands can think differently about their customers, and debate whether or not all businesses are worthy of having fans. Enjoy the conversation…

Running time: 59:06.
Hello from beautiful Montreal.
Subscribe over at iTunes.
Please visit and leave comments on the blog – Six Pixels of Separation.
Feel free to connect to me directly on Facebook here: Mitch Joel on Facebook.
or you can connect on LinkedIn.
…or on Twitter.
Here is my conversation with David Meerman Scott.
Reiko Scott.
Fanocracy.
The New Rules of Marketing & PR.
The New Rules of Sales and Service.
Real Time Marketing and PR.
Marketing The Moon.
Marketing Lessons From The Grateful Dead.
Eyeball Wars.
World Wide Rave.
Follow David on Instagram.
Follow David on Twitter.
This week’s music: David Usher ‘St. Lawrence River’.

Download the Podcast here: Six Pixels of Separation – Episode #708 – Host: Mitch Joel.

Six Links Worthy of Your Attention #501

Is there one link, story, picture or thought that you saw online this week that you think somebody you know must see?

My friends: Alistair Croll (Solve for Interesting, Tilt the Windmill, HBS, chair of Strata, Startupfest, FWD50, and Scaletechconf; author of Lean Analytics and some other books), Hugh McGuire (Rebus Foundation, PressBooks, LibriVox) and I decided that every week the three of us are going to share one link for one another (for a total of six links) that each individual feels the other person “must see.”

Check out these six links that we’re recommending to one another: 

Before the Brief: How to do desk research – Farrah Bostic – Medium . “Two links from from extraordinary entrepreneurs this week. Hugh asked me for pointers to people who are doing UX and usability research, and one of the folks I pointed him at is Farrah Bostic. She’s forgotten more about customer research than I’ve learned, and I’m always surprised she doesn’t charge for the stuff she writes. Here’s a piece on how to find out about your clients before you go pitch to them—but the advice is equally applicable to other kinds of research.” (Alistair for Hugh).
Things I Learned The Hard Way – Emily Ross – Medium . “I loved this list of life lessons from Emily Ross, the founder of a tech marketing agency in Ireland (both Farrah and Emily were at Bitnorth late last year). Just reading them makes you want to hang with her, but there’s some good life advice in here for everyone.” (Alistair for Mitch). 
What if the Universe has no end? – BBC . “As a child, the idea that the universe was infinite occupied a big part brain while I tried to go to sleep. Every once in a while, when I take a bit of time to think about it, the infinite universe still bugs me out. Some of the latest science is still … weird as anything.” (Hugh for Alistair).
The mathematics of mind-time – Aeon . “While we’re at it, let’s go deep on how weird consciousness is.” (Hugh for Mitch).
No One Knows Amy Sedaris Better Than Her Brother David – Elle . “There’s just something about the way that David Sedaris writes, lives his life, speaks, dresses, etc… that I am completely fascinated by. His latest article (about his famous sister, Amy Sedaris, no less) for Elle magazine is a great example of why. It’s so real and always funny. You learn about the deep insides of someone’s life, as it reflects back on to you (and you wind up thinking about similar and different life experiences that you may have had). It’s just words, but it’s proof that words are magic.” (Mitch for Alistair).
In U.S., Library Visits Outpaced Trips to Movies in 2019 – Gallup . “Either people’s desire to go to the movie theater has hit rock bottom, or there’s nothing to see at the movie theater, or – and let’s hope this is the truth – people are seeing the power and greatness that our local libraries provide to the community and society. This is one of those jaw-dropping stats that gives us hope for humanity. If you haven’t been to a library in a while, make a plan and head over… it’s a great experience.” (Mitch for Hugh).

Feel free to share these links and add your picks on Twitter, Facebook, in the comments below or wherever you play.

Personal Brand 2020 – Document The World (Not Yourself)

It seems like we’re confusing a personal brand with showing off. They’re not the same thing.

Your personal brand is not a selfie. Your personal brand is not a glam shot of you working out. Your personal brand is not how you list out your personal accomplishments on social media. Your personal brand is not how much money, fame, and real estate you propose to have. Your personal brand is not pictures of what you are eating or your vacation. Your personal brand is not a speaking event that you are taking part in. Your personal brand is not a sentence from a longer piece of content that you wrote, wrapped up as a self-quote then matched with a picture of yourself.

That is just showing off your personal life. That is not a personal brand.

Your personal brand is the quality of your work, your professional output, and how it has helped another organization (or individual) improve their current business situation (or how they think/operate). It’s your domain of authority and your ability to impart value to someone who may not have that information, or will be motivated by your insights to change for the better. Does your content get shared because of how smart it is (provided value to someone else) or simply “liked” (with a compliment from someone that you know, about how proud they are to know you)?

Your personal brand is value not vanity.

Your personal brand is not vanity. It’s your thinking. A better way to decide about what kind of content you are publishing is this: Are you trying to be on the cover of a magazine, or are you trying to create the compelling content in that magazine that will make the reader better, smarter and want to buy that magazine again? Document the world… not yourself.

My rap on the bad rap that personal branding has…

Personal branding has a bad rap. Most people who claim to be “building a personal brand” are simply wrapping paper. True personal branding is the gift that is inside. Want to truly build a real and profound personal brand? Provide gifts. Gifts of knowledge. Gifts of information. Gifts of education. Gifts of answering professional questions that prospective customers have about your business or the industry that you serve. Make people come to you, because you are creating value by shining a light in an area that they could not see, that they didn’t know existed, and that they need help with. Instead, most people are simply shining a light on themselves.

Your personal brand is not the fame (or perception of it) that comes as a result of your success.

Your personal brand is the thinking behind the work. It’s the knowledge, experience and perspective that got you to where you are today. Branding is a function of marketing. It’s not marketing, if all you do is try to demonstrate to the world how great (or famous) you are. It’s not even personal branding. It’s just showing off (and inflating your own tires/puffing your chest). Marketing (and personal branding) is providing value to clients (and potential customers), and the creation/curation of content based on your domain of authority. Look, I get it…

Facebook (Instagram, LinkedIn, Twitter, etc…) are all places where we show the world the person that we want the world to know us as.

It’s almost too easy. But, all of those vanity posts are not marketing. It’s not even personal branding. It’s just showing off… and it doesn’t make you an expert (or have a domain of authority) in anything but vanity and narcissism. Look, I’ve been guilty of doing a lot of the above in the past (the recent past). I’ve been changing (and thinking about it a lot), because I realize that bragging is not marketing or personal branding.

Let’s not allow our personal vanity to ruin personal branding. Having a strong and valuable personal brand is too important.

Brand Lag – The Worst Customer Experience

Thank you for your patience.

There is one person ahead of me at the deli counter. It takes close to twenty minutes to get a handful of slices of turkey. It’s a major chain. Everyone knows the deli counter. It’s notorious. It’s an inside joke that everyone is in on. And the only resolve is the somewhat airport like announcement from the employees working behind the deli counter to shout out, “thank you for your patience,” in that passive – aggressive tone that clearly shows a lack of thanks or care or baseline understanding that no customer on line is patient (or the fact that there is actually just one person in line – they are talking to me but acting like there is a hoard of hungry sandwich people). It might as well be, “we don’t care about your frustrations. This is how we do our jobs and nobody (including us) have any care about how much time this takes, because my job isn’t about moving fast and being efficient for you, it’s about simply being here.”

Performance tied to paycheck is a funny thing.

Sometimes it works. Sometimes it doesn’t. Most often, there are unintended consequences that make it not work. But there is an answer: the people behind the deli counter need to move as fast as the people restocking the shelves, those who work the cash and – most importantly – the customers. It’s about the overall pace and flow of the business (and that business includes the customers). If one area of the business is much slower than another (regardless of that department’s output) it creates a brand lag. If one area of the business isn’t moving at the pace of their consumers, it creates a brand lag. That brand lag then changes the overall brand experience. “It’s a great supermarket, but the deli counter is a place where time and space collapse into a Dante like circle of hell that has no exit time or knowing.” So, what exactly is the brand experience then?

Where does speed go to die in your business? Where is the brand lag?

Fast isn’t quality or performance, but it’s a good indicator of energy and excitement and respect for your customer. All work requires time and focus, but those that do this with an energy (and speed) that matches their consumer’s pace creates an ever-lasting impression. And that leaves a mark… a brand mark. When you’re great and fast, there’s a unique and powerful pace that unfolds. It’s becomes a truly unique position and proposition.

Don’t let your business become the deli counter. Do you even know which part of your business is the deli counter?

The other side, is that the rest of your team can (easily) become infected by the attitude, pace and output of the deli department. If the deli people can just bellow out a “thank you for your patience,” why should other employees have to restock or handle the checkout differently? This is a corporate cultural social disease. It is malignant and needs to be eradicated. This doesn’t mean firing the people working at the deli counter. It does mean figuring out a solution that keeps pace with the rest of the business, instead of the rest of the business suddenly sounding like a bunch of TSA agents asking you to remove all laptops and liquids, as if they are a recording that is being looped every three minutes.

What areas of your business sound like that looped recording?

How can you stop it? Kill it dead. Make it better. Get it aligned with how the rest of your business keeps flows. The main goal: Impresses your customers instead of depressing them.