These are the talks that left me in tears, one way or another.
Benjamin Zander: Music and Passion
Salman Khan: Let’s Use Video to Reinvent Education
Kamal Meattle: How to Grow Fresh Air
David Logan: Tribal Leadership
Rory Sutherland: Life Lessons From an Ad Man
Wade Davis: Dreams From Endangered Cultures
Seth Godin: Sliced Bread and Other Marketing Delights
Which others are your favorites?
It’s stunning how much information can be gathered for $9.00 - about anyone. Here’s a sample of what Intelius shows in a background report.
So, here’s how to delete yourself from most of the retailers of your information.
If you’ve already installed OS X 10.7, you discovered that the installer self-destructs after it’s installed. This isn’t the greatest for those of us that want to create a bootable disk for hard drive restores, or if your download failed with this descriptive and common message: ’An Error Has Occurred’
Here’s how to re-download Lion from the App Store:
Notes:
- If you want to save a copy to create a bootable disk from, find ‘Install OS X Lion.app’ in your Applications folder simply press Command-D, then move the copy to a preferred folder.
- Copies will not install on other systems unless you log in with the same Apple ID.
I get Appsumo’s deals every day. Because they’re really good deals. If you don’t know them, it’s Groupon for web apps. But I’m tired of reading Noah’s snappy sales copy and special deals on web-things every. single. day.
So I clicked Unsubscribe today.
And I was surprised to find an amazing page. A page that engaged me with @Appsumo’s Twitter account, allowed me to change my email frequency, and helped me hone in my mail preferences… in a non-annoying way. This page doesn’t scream “We’re trying to trick you into staying a subscriber” like most corporate unsubscribe pages.
So, if you’re going to lose subscribers (you will, it’s a good thing) - engage them on another platform or on another topic. Without being sneaky.
Appsumo’s unsubscribe page: (click to make it bigger)
“When you train your employees to be risk averse, then you’re preparing your whole company to be reward challenged.” - Morgan Spurlock
“Cowperthwaite’s most important reason for playing Scrooge through the 1960s was to keep down taxes. He thought high taxes slowed economic growth. Low taxes would eventually produce more revenue than higher ones, he argued, because of the growth they would encourage. Fast growth would also benefit the poor by boosting demand for labour and pushing up wages. Fast growth produced “a rapid and substantial redistribution of income”. Successful capitalism benefited the poor.”
—Lessons from Hong Kong (This is a fantastic example of how the US could reverse strategies that are benefitting the 1% while still being business-friendly.)8:30pm, Thursday night: My phone rings, it’s a California number, and I answer.
It’s someone from @Chargify. The day before, I had inquired about their CEO’s cryptic statement in a blog post about a ‘sexy new way’ to integrate their recurring billing service into a sales funnel.
Imagine my surprise when I discover it’s the Chargify CEO, @LanceWalley, calling back. Ten minutes in, he’s answered all my questions and I know I will be a customer for life.
When the CEO of a company returns phone calls from home at 8:30pm, I know two things:
- They’re hungry to grow and Lance is approaching it the healthy way: leading the charge with a commitment to stunningly good customer service.
- I will never encounter problems with Chargify that I’m forced to face alone. Lance is on it.
After we worked through my Chargify questions, a thought popped into my head: “I’m on the phone with the CEO of a company I respect, who has done things that I want to do … what can I learn from him?”
I started asking Lance questions and he told me the story of moving from Consultant -> Consulting business owner -> Having enough time each week to work on launching Engine Yard -> leaving Engine Yard to pursue his own path -> becoming CEO of Chargify.
Here’s what I learned:
1. Use a home-made video on my front page, explaining what I do, what my niche is, and who my ideal customer is. Don’t make it too fancy. Example.
Why this is genius:
- Experienced enterprise salesmen know how much they can sell to a corporation based on the decor in their lobby. And this goes the other way - when you are a small business working with large corporations, it’s positive and beneficial to the relationship to be a normal human being instead of trying to represent yourself as more than that.
- The video, and the minimum contract length specified above it, rule out all the potential clients that aren’t a perfect fit. Lance used this to gain rapport with great clients, and turn away those who didn’t fit.
2. Social is what everyone wants but doesn’t mention. Lance focused his consulting business, Quality Humans Inc., on providing on-site contractors that are friendly, personable experts. Their technical skills were never lower than 7/10, but their personalities had to match. This led to his business being a matchmaker/recruiter as much as a tech consultancy, and to a lot of happy clients.
3. There’s a lot wrong with the “drop everything, go into debt, and launch your startup” mentality. It’s not sustainable and it’s not a healthy mental/emotional approach to business. It’s based on unproven conjecture about your future earnings. Lance and I are in complete agreement that having a steady, sustainable income is an important milestone in getting your startup launched. Even if you’re earning it working at a copy center!
“Overnight success” comes after years of hard work in the trenches and close attention to tweaking the offering. Think of the “hockey stick” graph where the startup is a nearly flat line with small growth for a while, then starts going viral, getting notoriety, and really hits its stride. This is the case for most successful businesses. Notice that most of the companies that shoot up like fireworks tend to explode at the end of that rise.
You can read more from Lance on Twitter: @LanceWalley
Spring Water in the snow at Mt Shasta (Taken with instagram)
1. Determine that qualifications/skillset match. Agree on rate. Sign a contract.
2. Set a clear guideline for maximum time to be spent on the project. Never approve more than 5 hours with a new contractor until you have established a working relationship.
3. Agree on a clear deadline for every aspect/phase of the project, and how frequently the contractor will report back.
4. Shutting down email and Skype to avoid distractions? You must be available for at least one hour every workday for Office Hours. It’s crucial that your contractor can ping you with questions and clarifications - and if you like to be focused and undisturbed while working/traveling, you must commit to being available during this scheduled time. (Thanks for the inspiration on this one, @TropicalMBA)
5. After approval of initial work completed, take away EVERY possible impediment to contractor’s work getting done. (Except time deadline and time budget.) The greatest money and time suck is bureaucracy, and the more you empower the contractor, the less money and time and heartache you will expend. Be willing to make mistakes.
—James Joyce, Ulysses
