Mitch Joel's Blog: Six Pixels of Separation, page 327

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #93

93Is 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 (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

How Reddit Cost Me My License Plate - BuzzFeed . "Want a great example of the end of privacy? Try this. Get a meme-worthy license plate, then drive it around a city full of hipsters prone to over-sharing. See how long you last." (Alistair for Hugh).

China: Crowdsourced Tax Enforcement - Bunnie Studios . "China has a distributed population, with a hugely varied lifestyle --   inland farmers, coastal engineers, and everything in between. How do you fight corruption and keep taxation simple? Turns out game theory works well: they create a second currency for tax transactions, then make that currency valuable by turning it into lottery tickets. A brilliant hack on a massive scale, it smacks of the kinds of mechanics that make a modern startup go viral." (Alistair for Mitch).

Playboy Interview: Steven Jobs (1985)  "Interview with Steve Jobs , 1985." (Hugh for Alistair).

The Google We Lost - Andrew Badr . "Andrew Badr takes a dim view of Google 's recent major push away from its strength (data), and towards something it doesn't seem very good at (social)." (Hugh for Mitch).

Just the Facts. Yes, All of Them - The New York Times . "How often do you learn about someone in your space that you never heard of (but should have), who is doing something truly spectacular (to the point where you wonder if it's even a business)? This is one of those articles. It's not just about big data... it's about facts. What would the world be like if we had a Google that was filled only with facts? I've often said that the news is less about facts and much more about opinions. The social web is also a place where opinions trumps facts and it's hard to tell fact from fiction. This is one of the more fascinating projects I've seen in a long time." (Mitch for Alistair).

Clay Shirky on Internet Issues Facing Newspapers - The Berkman Center . "I had the pleasure of having dinner with Clay Shirky at this year's TED conference . Sadly, we didn't really get a chance to chat that much. We were at a private dinner with ten people, but we were seated at opposite ends (it was probably done to balance out the baldness!). Still, Shirky makes my brain melt. He's just that smart. I'm a massive fan of both of his business books ( Here Comes Everybody and Cognitive Surplus ). I'm not sure how this video from 2009 came across my desk, but it's mesmerizing to watch Shirky dissect both what digital media has brought and how painfully slow traditional media has been to catch up. The content is just as relevant today as it was ground-breaking in 2009. So much has changed, and yet it's three years later and this thinking is as fresh as can be." (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

andrew badr

bitcurrent

bunnie studios

buzzfeed

clay shirky

cognitive surplus

complete web monitoring

gigaom

google

here comes everybody

hugh mcguire

human 20

iambik

librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

playboy

pressbooks

reddit

steve jobs

story

ted conference

the berkman center

the book over

the new york times

year one labs

Horizontal Marketing

Warning: this going to sound self-serving:

Marketing has to stop being a vertical within the business and must become horizontal across all business lines. Period. End of sentence. Businesses, fundamentally see the concept of social business as a fad. As if, suddenly, the employees within the organization will no longer be connected to one another and no longer engaged on a smartphone or tablet (meaning they are not only hyper-connected but completely untethered). It's somewhat laughable that you have businesses that block their employees from channels like YouTube and Facebook, when all the employee has to do is put their hand into their pocket to be connected on those channels. From the public facing side, consumers are beyond having expectations for a business to be social. In fact, if a business isn't social, it's a non-starter. Do you do business with any companies that treat you like a number? We still do (think about banks, cable companies, airlines, telecommunications and a few others). They're doing their best to become more social, aren't they?

Why does it work for some and fail for others?

While this is painting very broad strokes, it comes down to vertical integration versus horizontal integration. When a business claims to be moving in the direction of becoming a social business, the brands that fail are the ones that have a social media department within another department (usually marketing and/or communications) and their work is predicated on things like campaigns currently in market or individual initiatives. This, in essence, is the ghetto-ization of the social business spirit and will, ultimately, lead to failure. When it's implemented horizontally, you have a top-down and bottom-up seismic shift that becomes a value-based system by which the corporation is governed. In plain English: everyone has skin in the game. It's not a campaign, it's who you are. It's a statement to the world that our business is made up of people and our consumers are people, too. People do magnificent things in business when they can have real interactions between real human beings.

Someone has to make the call.

A marketing director wanting to implement social components into their business is unlikely to change the world. It has to come from the top. Social business touches everything from human resources and operations to business development and product development. The major record labels within the music industry are making their struggles even worse because they don't have a social business framework. They were always in control (of the artists, of the music's distribution channel, of what the fans would hear) and they took that power on with the pretentious attitude of management that is similar to how kings used to rule their lands (the rest of us were merely loyal serfs). When the c-suite makes the call, everything changes. Don't believe me? Just ask Michael Dell over at Dell or Tony Hsieh over at Zappos. These two business leaders (and there are many more) didn't sell social business through their organizations as a marketing and communications initiative. They sold it through as customer service. We're not talking about customer service in terms of the call center, we're talking about the core of customer service: why are we in business?

We are in business to serve the customer.

Nothing more. Nothing less. The more we attempt to resist social business models, the more painful these next few years (and decades) will be. We can expect, more local, more mobile and more socially-enabled consumers. Does anyone debate this? Does anyone think that this is a fad? This Blog post isn't about making a case for social business, this Blog post is about opening up all of our eyes to the reality of the future: all businesses must be social. If we don't turn marketing into a horizontal that runs pervasively throughout the organization, I worry that our competitors will. And when they do, they will not only eat our lunch, but they will marry our beloved consumers.

I think we all love being horizontal... it's time to make our marketing horizontal as well.

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business development

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business vertical

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consumer

customer service

dell

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horizontal marketing

human resources

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local marketing

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michael dell

mobile marketing

music industry

operation

product development

record label

smartphone

social business

social business framework

social business model

social media

social media department

tablet

tony hsieh

untethered

youtube

zappos

How To Get What You Want

Negotiations are the toughest part of the marketing business.

Whether you're negotiating a new contract, your salary or even a merger, getting everything to work out in your favor is never easy. How often do you hear someone say, "I got everything I was asking for... and more"? In fact, even reading that line someone just won the lottery (it's not something you hear all that often). There's an old saying in real estate that the best deals are those where the buyer feels like they paid more than they should have for the house and the seller feels that they got less than what they were asking for.

There are a few things to think about prior to the negotiation that will affect the outcome.

I've had the pleasure of sharing the stage with Herb Cohen on more than a few occasions. Cohen is widely regarded as one of the best negotiators. He's written a few books on the topic (You Can Negotiate Anything and Negotiate This!). One of his main themes to a successful negotiation is caring. He says: "You have to care... really, really care... but not that much." His point? You have to be willing to put everything you have into a negotiation, but you also have to be willing to walk away from it. If you're not willing to walk away from it, it's not a negotiation.

Finding your bottom line in two-parts:

Non-negotiables. You have to choose the components of the negotiation that are truly non-negotiable to you. If, at this point, everything is non-negotiable, you may be better off looking for another deal that doesn't involve any form of negotiation. Meaning: haggling is a part of business, so you're better off setting up the rails (the unmovable ones) well in advance. The important part here is that the prospect should not know which parts of the negotiation are the non-negotiables. This gives you play room. One commonly-held belief is that price should never be negotiable. In fact, I would argue that in setting up your rails, never make price a non-negotiable. That sounds crazy, but if you demand other things but are flexible on price, this demonstrates to the prospect that you are negotiable, simply because the overriding assumption is that price is always the hardest thing to negotiate. When I do speaking events, one of my non-negotiables is how I fly (it must be business class and a member of the Star Alliance family on flights that are longer than two hours). Some see this as me being a snob, that's fine. The truth is that I spend a lot of time in the air and being comfortable is key to both my physical and mental health. I'm of no use to anybody if I'm constantly getting sick and I'm tired when I arrive to speak (or come home). People are spending good money to come and see me speak, and I need to be at my best. With over a decade of constant travel, I know my body and being comfortable during the travel portion is paramount for me. When someone asks for me to fly coach, it's a non-starter, but because I have rails, there are other components that are negotiable, so my class of flight has never been a contract ender. You have to be strong with your non-negotiables because the minute you break down and say, "fine, this one time..." it's over.

Desired outcomes. Prior to negotiating make a list of five desired outcomes that you would like to have happen in a perfect world. It can be anything from price, to length to engagement to deliverables. Be very, very specific here. Write the list down, memorize it and hide it in a safe place. Once you get your final offer, compare it to your list of desired outcomes. Is it a perfect match? I doubt it. But, that's the point. Remember, this was called "desired outcomes" not "perfect outcomes." If the final offer meets three out of your five desired outcomes, my advice is to move the deal forward and make it happen. Your desired outcomes were a "perfect world" scenario and there is no perfect world. It will be hard to get to  - what I call - The Meat Loaf Scenario (aka Two Out Of Three Ain't Bad). Have five desired outcomes and getting three out of five makes it a "win" for you. The last tip, is that you shouldn't create your desired outcomes list knowing that you're going to accept three out of the five. Assume you'll get all five (just play along at the beginning), because you don't want any one desired outcome to have more weight and balance than the others (so make them all of equal importance). It always fun to look back and see which out of the three made it through.

Walk away.

The great philosopher, Kenny Rogers, once said, "you've got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em, know when to walk away and know when to run." Walking away from a deal is the hardest thing. I believe that most people wind up in bad deals because they didn't do their homework. They didn't define their non-negotiables and they don't have their five desired outcomes. I walk away from deals all of the time, simply because they were deals that weren't fair. I believe that negotiations are easy when the people negotiating know that one party is delivering a service of value while the other party is happy to pay for that service. The chasm is usually smaller than people think and it's usually the ego that gets in the way. Walking away from deals is easy for me because with the two-step process defined above, I can remove both the ego and emotion.

What are your tips for getting what you want? 

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non negotiable

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speaking event

Star alliance

you can negotiate anything

Where Do Ideas Come From?

"I keep having my ideas ripped off!"

I grew up being friends with a very successful individual. The problem was that this individual could have been much more successful (especially if you asked them). If you sat down with this individual and asked them why they thought they weren't as successful as they had imagined, it would all boil down to one thing: "people keep stealing my ideas." Sure there are patents and trademarks and other things to help protect that which is proprietary, but is an idea and/or a concept the same thing? As someone who has been Blogging for close to a decade, I'll often come across a Blog post that gets lauded for its originality and perspective, only to find out that it's a shared sentiment to something I wrote about years ago. Do I think that this Blogger stole my idea? No. Do I feel like I got the short end of the wishbone? No. Ideas come from the zeitgeist. While the thought may be (somewhat) original to me, it was inspired by the things around me (that which is being said, done and communicated). In essence, an idea is the "tip of the spear" to things that have inspired me. It would be (somewhat) audacious of me to think of it as being a purely original idea. I'm also hopeful that the content I publish inspires new ideas from others (whether intended or not).

No NDA.

People often want to meet with me to share their business ideas and get my perspective. It's a very flattering position to be in and it really does humble me. Sadly, three quarters of those meetings never happen because I won't sign a NDA (non-disclosure agreement). I would quickly have a very bad reputation if I was stealing ideas but beyond that, I've rarely sat down with someone and been show an idea that I hadn't already seen in one incarnation or another. I also worry that it's something we may be working on for one of our clients. I'm sure there are many lawyers and legal professionals who will scoff at this Blog post, that's fine: Google knows all. You see, you can claim to have an original idea, but I would recommend that you do a search on anything and everything that you would define as an idea unique to yourself. Malcolm Gladwell wrote about this back in May 2008 for The New Yorker in an article titled, In The Air. His article doesn't make my point true or valid, it simply points to this very real reality: ideas are in the air.

Steal this idea.

The other day, I saw this tweet on Twitter: "tzacchi: @netclueonline wonder what @mitchjoel and Twist Image (Six Pixels of Separation) think of your new logo. #2minds1thought." It linked to this webpage. Look familiar (especially to those who remember the first version of the Six Pixels of Separation logo)? Do I think that they stole our idea? I hope not. I'm going to assume the best in people (and not the worst). But again, Google doesn't lie. How hard is it to see that the Six Pixels logo came out in 2008? Seems pretty obvious - if anyone cares - where that one, idea came from. I also can't speak to previous brand identities that our designers may have been inspired by to get to our result. So, should you steal ideas? The answer is yes, so long as you're not stealing it - exactly. Artists have bee saying this years. Do you remember Picasso's famous saying: "good artists copy but great artists steal"?

Stealing is only stealing when the ideas don't inspire.

Those who steal ideas and make something different win. Those who steal ideas and do nothing with them but steal, are thieves. I had breakfast with Chris Brogan today. He's a friend... and someone who I don't get to spend enough time with in the year. We were talking about this notion of ideas and stealing. We started laughing because we have both been caught in instances where we've found ourselves Blogging and realized that we had actually written about the exact same topic at some point in the past. Caught red handed! We're now stealing from ourselves! We both laughed, but it was a true moment of enlightenment for me. Ideas are everywhere. It seems obvious enough. But, you need humility. So many things inspire me: music, books, Blogs, people like you and more. With that, I'm humble enough to recognize that I may just be vessel here and not the source.

What do you think about ideas... and where they come from?

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the new yorker

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twist image

twitter

zeitgesit

The Start-Up Of You

Welcome to Generation Flux.

The January 2012 cover story of Fast Company magazine was all about Generation Flux. You've head of Gen X, Gen Y and more, but what is Generation Flux? Our business world has been through some tumultuous times: Recessions, financial meltdowns, the massive disruption of technology, natural disasters, nations defaulting on their debt, the Arab Spring, the Occupy Movement and much more. For every catastrophe and massive shift emerge new breakthroughs and advancements. During these past few years, we've also seen some of the most interesting companies flourish and grow (Apple, Facebook, Lululemon, Amazon, Twitter and more), we've seen medical advancements at an unprecedented pace and the introduction of new technologies that will forever change our future. In short, this is a time of flux... uncertainty. This makes it hard to chart a course - let alone pull together a five-year plan. Have you taken a look at your investment portfolio recently? Do you honestly think that there is a reliable long view out there? It is with this sense of pandemonium that Fast Company has dubbed us - all of us - Generation Flux.  

Can we thrive?

"To thrive in this climate requires a whole new approach," states the Fast Company article, This Is Generation Flux: Meet The Pioneers Of The New (And Chaotic) Frontier Of Business. "...some people will thrive. They are the members of Generation Flux. This is less a demographic designation than a psychographic one: What defines GenFlux is a mind-set that embraces instability, that tolerates - and even enjoys - recalibrating careers, business models, and assumptions. Not everyone will join Generation Flux, but to be successful, businesses and individuals will have to work at it. This is no simple task. The vast bulk of our institutions - educational, corporate, political - are not built for flux. Few traditional career tactics train us for an era where the most important skill is the ability to acquire new skills."

Are you freaked out yet?

Reid Hoffman must be some kind of oracle at this, particular, time in the history of business. Hoffman co-founded LinkedIn - the very popular online social network for business professionals - in December 2002. With close to 140 million members in over 20 countries, LinkedIn's IPO in May of last year made Hoffman a billionaire. Currently, he serves as Executive Chairman of LinkedIn and is a partner at Greylock Partners - a very popular venture capital firm. Hoffman's passion is understanding how these connected networks that we're all creating everyday as we connect, friend, like, link and follow one another creates new business opportunities. He also believes that in these highly networked times, we have to start thinking differently about business and the work that we're doing. Along with Ben Casnocha (an award-winning entrepreneur and author), they recently published the business book, The Start-up of You: Adapt to the Future, Invest in Yourself, and Transform Your Career (Crown Business February 2012).

The start-up of you...

"I was fascinated when I met people who were entrepreneurial but didn't want to necessarily start their own companies," said Casnocha via Skype last week. "That was my arrival at The Start-up of You thesis. Reid had been thinking about the idea of everyone as a business of themselves. In many ways, the LinkedIn vision is a manifestation of the intellectual idea in the book. We had both been thinking about these ideas independently... There is a convergence of two key trends happening now. First, is a trend toward entrepreneurship. People are looking to people like Steve Jobs and other business icons as the great heroes of the world. Secondly, globalization, technology disruption, unemployment, job crisis and this idea that the labor market is changing are making people feel less secure. This lack of security is  causing people to ask the question: 'what do we do about it?' So, people are looking towards the hot trend of entrepreneurship as the answer. While I think that people should start more companies, the reality is that not everyone is cut out for it. What can we do? We can learn from these dynamic entrepreneurs and figure out how to apply those lessons of success to our lives and careers."

That is what the start-up of you looks like.

We no longer live in a world where young people are looking for job security and a pension (there are no gold watches in their future), but rather governing their careers and guiding their future by the lessons learned from some of Silicon Valley's most successful entrepreneurs and innovators. Famed business and marketing leader, Seth Godin, has a well-worn aphorism: "the safest thing you can do is be risky... and the riskiest thing you can do is be safe." It turns out that it was a prophetic statement about our workforce (both the newcomers and the veterans). As more and more people leverage the thinking of The Start-up of You to build their own, powerful, networks, turn to proactive risk taking (and don't see it as a risk, but rather an opportunity) and get very adaptive to the economic realities of a world where big business is no longer the preferred and revered career path.

Is small the future of big business?

The above post is my twice-monthly column for the Montreal Gazette and Vancouver Sun newspapers called, New Business - Six Pixels of Separation . I cross-post it here with all the links and tags for your reading pleasure, but you can check out the original versions online here:

Montreal Gazette - Gen Flux, where being risky is safe and safe risky .

Vancouver Sun - yet to be published.

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amazon

apple

arab spring

ben casnocha

big business

business book

business column

business icon

business model

career

crown business

entrepreneur

entrepreneurship

facebook

fast company magazine

frontier of business

gen x

gen y

generation flux

genflux

globalization

greylock partners

hr

human resources

innovation

job security

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linkedin

lululemon

marketing leader

montreal gazette

network

new business

newspaper column

occupy movement

online social network

postmedia

reid hoffman

seth godin

silicon valley

skype

steve jobs

technology

the startup of you

twitter

vancouver sun

venture capital

workforce

Marketing Philosophy (It's Squiggly Too)

This is how I think... or, rather, how I'm thinking about things today.

I'm a big fan Chris Taylor over at Actionable Books. He does some of the best and most interesting in-depth conversations with some of the business world's biggest thinkers. I was truly flattered that he wanted to sit down with me the day after The Art of Marketing event in Toronto earlier this month. This is a forty-minute sit down where I discuss everything from careers and content to marketing strategies and a little peak into my next business book, CTRL ALT DEL. I do realize that this may be a little too self-promotional for some (feel free to skip it, I won't be offended), but it turned out to be one of the better conversations I've had about marketing philosophy.

Here it is: "Squiggly Careers = Happiness" with Mitch Joel...

"Squiggly Careers = Happiness" with Mitch Joel from Goose Educational Media inc. on Vimeo.

Tags:

actionable books

business book

chris taylor

content

ctrl alt del

goose educational media

marketing

marketing philosophy

self promotion

squiggly careers

the art of marketing

video interview

vimeo

The Future Of Television Is Social

Episode #298 of Six Pixels of Separation - The Twist Image Podcast is now live and ready for you to listen to.

We used to watch TV at night and discuss it the next day around the water cooler at work. Thanks to Social Media it's becoming increasingly more popular to share those magical TV moments on places like Facebook and Twitter while you're watching the show. The problem is that now with time-shifting and more and more people watching their favorite TV shows by downloading them from iTunes or watching them on Hulu, it's becoming abundantly clear that TV is becoming a very different medium. In their new book, Social TV - How Marketers Can Reach and Engage Audiences by Connecting Television to the Web, Social Media, and Mobile, marketing and communications professionals Mike Proulx and Stacey Shepatin from Hill Holliday look at the fascinating new world of TV and its convergence with Social Media. 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 - The Twist Image Podcast #298.

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ad age

advertising

blog

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cast of dads

cc chapman

chris brogan

christopher s penn

david usher

digital dads

digital marketing

facebook

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hill holiday

hugh mcguire

hulu

in over your head

itunes

julien smith

librivox

managing the gray

marketing

marketing over coffee

media hacks

mike proulx

new marketing labs

online social network

podcast

podcasting

pressbooks

social media 101

social media marketing

social tv

stacey shepatin

strategy

trust agents

Take A Breather

Don't have time to relax?

Anxiety, stress, panic... we all have varying degrees of it from life, don't we? I deal with my little devils on a constant basis. Recently, Chris Brogan blogged about the book Spontaneous Happiness by Dr. Andrew Weil. While I'm a massive fan of self-help and personal development books, I had never read any of Dr Weil's writing, and knew of him mostly because I had seen (but never watched) his specials on PBS. I found the book to be an interesting holistic look at what makes us happy and how to deal with those more depressive moments. In the book, Dr. Weil talks about ways to relax and relieve stress. One technique he offers up is a simple 4-7-8 relaxation breathing technique. I have to say, it works amazingly well. It's like a mini meditation. Now, you might be asking yourself, "when did this marketing blog become a blog about mediation and anxiety?" Fear not... it has not. That being said, I spent a few years volunteering for the non-profit organization called, NABS (National Advertising Benevolent Society), and I can tell you - first hand - that burnout due to stress is a more-than-common by-product of being a professional marketer. A critical part of your health is your mental health (and awareness of it). I think doing this simple (and short) breathing exercise a couple of times per day may, in fact, change your life for the better. The best part about it? You can do it during a meeting or even when someone is talking to you.

This is the 4 - 7 - 8 breathing exercise:

Step 1: breathe out. Let it all out.

Step 2: breath in through your nose and fill your belly with air (let your belly push out) for 4 seconds.

Step 3: hold you breath for 7 seconds.

Step 4: release your breath slowly through your mouth for 8 seconds. Make sure that your tongue is resting behind your top middle teeth and you should pucker you lips and make a "blowing out" sound.

Step 5: repeat this 4-6 times.

Feels good, doesn't it?

Here's Dr. Weil explaining it...

Pass it on.

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stress

Six Links Worthy Of Your Attention #92

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 (BitCurrent, Year One Labs, GigaOM, Human 2.0, the author of Complete Web Monitoring and Managing Bandwidth: Deploying QOS in Enterprise Networks), Hugh McGuire (The Book Oven, LibriVox, iambik, PressBooks, Media Hacks) and I decided that every week or so 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:

'Religious Freedom Act' gets OK from Kentucky Senate panel - The Miami Herald . "This seems like a pretty mundane headline, but it has fascinating implications. Particularly, in an era where personal freedoms are being hotly debated in all areas of our lives - from online conduct to contraception. The Kentucky senate recently voted to put a freedom act on the ballot that 'prohibits any human authority from burdening actions that are based on religious beliefs, except in support of a compelling governmental interest using the least restrictive means to further that interest.' Will we see a spate of Rastafarians and Timothy Leary devotees fleeing persecution for their drug use? And, if the bill leaves it open for non-human authorities to burden actions, who speaks for those authorities? Interesting times indeed." (Alistair for Hugh).

Hacking is Important - Rands In Repose . "Want to understand how Facebook thinks? This is a good start. I recently met a bunch of Facebook ex-pats (the guys behind memsql ) at a startup event, and they were cocky, smart, and a bit manic. They had a vibe about them that was hard to grasp: young, driven, and enthusiastic, but something more. This piece by Michael Lopp nailed it. They're hackers. 'They just have to go fix it -- often in the face of people who say it's impossible or are content with the status quo.' Every great company starts with a clever hack, but every great company that fails to maintain managed chaos and a hacker mentality will, eventually, fall to new hackers." (Alistair for Mitch).

Riding the Booster with enhanced sound - YouTube . "Watch and listen as the booster rockets from the space shuttle take off, and then descend back into the ocean." (Hugh for Alistair).

Girls first Ski Jump - YouTube . "Watch and listen as a young girl psychs herself up to do a ski jump. Then watch as she does the jump." (Hugh for Mitch).

Stop Talking About Social and Do It - Yes And Know . "My friend, Nilofer Merchant , has a magnificent series of Blogs posts for the Harvard Business Review on the power of social business and how social media is (really) changing everything. See, this little thing called 'Social Media' winds up having very little do with media and much more to do with how these technological and social implications should change business models. Nilofer is traipsing into the white space of my next book, CTRL ALT DEL , so I'm probably going to have to interview her and dig a little deeper, but in the meantime, this one is a gem!"

I can't stop reading this analysis of Gawker's editorial strategy - Nieman Journalism Lab . "Linkbait, killer headlines and ridiculous content rules. Sorry. This story will either depress you or make you laugh (or both). Regardless, what does it tell you when videos of babies farting will generate millions of more pageviews than the content you're reading right now?" (Mitch for Hugh).

Now it's your turn: in the comment section below pick one thing that you saw this week that inspired you and share it.

Tags:

alistair croll

bitcurrent

complete web monitoring

ctrl alt del

facebook

gawker

gigaom

harvard business review

hugh mcguire

human 20

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librivox

link exchange

linkbait

managing bandwidth

media hacks

memsql

michael lopp

nieman journalism lab

nilofer merchant

pressbooks

rands in repose

story

the book over

the miami herald

year one labs

yes and know

youtube

Embrace The Squiggly

How did you get here?

I'm fascinate by people and their career paths - especially the marketing professionals. Do you know what I never hear? I have never heard a story that goes like this: "I always knew that I wanted to be in Marketing. There was never any doubt in my mind. All through elementary school, all I could do was daydream about marketing campaigns and working on a company's overall strategic vision. While other kids were outside playing, I was busy drawing up logos for imaginary companies. In High School, I started the marketing club and could not wait until our Economics teacher touched - ever so-slightly - on the topic of marketing. Right after high school graduation, I interned at an advertising agency and could not wait to pursue my MBA with a focus on marketing." Nobody sets out to be a Marketer. Most marketing professionals don't have a very linear career path. It's actually very squiggly.

The reality of decisions.

You can contrast that fictional story above with a friend of mine. This individual was never really sure what they wanted to do. There was no clear desire or talent for one, specific, area of interest. In her final years of high school, a guidance counselor recommended engineering or the sciences because she had above-average math grades. From there, my friend studied engineering through university and squeaked by. Never truly passionate about it, she got her ring and entered the workforce. I had lunch with her a few weeks ago and she confessed that she was miserable because of her work, but could not figure out why. She had followed the rules: did well in school, advanced in a field that typically enables you to be both employable and paid well. Being an engineer was supposed to be a good life. We talked for a bit and then I half-jokingly said, "it's crazy that your current life is based on a few random decisions you made when you were sixteen. Can you imagine that? What did we really know at sixteen?" Her face became pale and flushed. She sat before me - jaw-dropped - and said, "that's it! Why am I leading this life based on the decision of me as a sixteen year old?" 

Embrace the squiggly.

Here's the thing: people want guarantees: if I go to school and get a degree, I get a good paying job, right? If I work hard my whole life, I'll have a pension, right? If I do everything my boss tells me, I'll get that promotion, right? I've been fortunate enough to have met some of the most fascinating musicians, artists, thinkers, authors, business leaders and politicians. I don't take that gift for granted. If there's one thing that has become abundantly clear to me, it's that the most successful people I know have had very squiggly careers. No linear paths and no constant and consistent ascents. It's been bumpy, weird, strange, funky and all-around fascinating.

Isn't that cool?

What I see as cool, most people read as terrifying. I can't quantify why I think like this (and I recognize that these are first-world thinking philosophies), but I have never been motivated by things like promotions, salaries or titles. I was working as an Editor for a community magazine when I suddenly agreed to become a sales representative for an online search engine start-up (and, we're talking about a search engine that came out long before Google existed). Why did I make that decision? It made no sense. I never even really liked the ad sales part of the publishing business. Yes, I was both intrigued and fascinated with the Internet, but it was risky, unproven and not a skill set of mine. Regardless, it felt right. In hindsight, it was one of the best career choices I have ever made. Interesting how those squiggly lines work out. What some might call jumping around, I might call following my professional muse.

What about you?

Being a marketing professional must have been a squiggly journey for you. You may even feel like you're still not one hundred percent certain of where you're at in your career. You may be nervous to quit to try something new or you may be chomping at the bit to get your hands into the next project. All of these are common feelings. We all feel like this. The idea here is not to always look at things in a linear fashion. Try thinking a little more squiggly and let me know how that works out for.

Squiggly just sounds like more fun, doesn't it?

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