2011

Uncategorized — 30 Comments
19
Dec 11

What To Do When AllThis Steals Your Photo & Bio

There’s a terrible new web site out there engaging in, at best, copyright infringement, and at worse, fraud. It’s called AllThis.

If AllThis targets you, they will:

  • steal your photo & bio off Twitter
  • slap it on an AllThis page, to make it look as if you endorse their system
  • put up a big yellow “BUY” button on it
  • and a teensy weensy greyed out notice, for the eagle-eyed, which admits (indirectly) that you’re not actually endorsing it… YET
  • tweet about you with @allthisfeed, claiming your time is for sale
  • argue with you when you tell them to stop stealing people’s stuff

They will remove you from their site if you threaten them. But no matter how many people do that, they continue to pretend to not “understand” why you are “upset”. And they keep on thieving from other people.

Clearly individual complaints are falling on deaf ears. They are not interested in coming up with a way to grow their business without misrepresentation and theft.

So, the best way to stop this is to enforce our copyrights. If they steal from you, don’t bother telling them to remove the profile.

Send a takedown notice to their DNS service and web host

Here’s who to write:

Web Host: GoGrid. Their email is abuse@gogrid.com.

DNS Service: Dyn.com. Their email is abuse@dyndns.com.

NEW: Asset Host: Amazon Cloudfront. Their email is abuse@amazonaws.com.

Here’s what you can send:

SUBJECT: Abuse Report – Copyright Infringement

I am the copyright owner of the photograph being infringed at: (insert URL here)

A screenshot of my image being infringed is included to assist with its removal from the infringing Web sites.

Moreover, this web site claims to represent me, has a prominent “BUY” button displayed next to my (stolen) photograph and bio, and is tweeting that people can “buy time” to talk with me on their site. I never signed up for an account, gave them my email address, or anything that would constitute permission or endorsement of this service. As far as I’m concerned, this comes close to fraud.

This letter is official notification under the provisions of Section 512(c) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (“DMCA”) to effect removal of the above-reported infringements. I request that you immediately issue a cancellation message as specified in RFC 1036 for the specified postings and prevent the infringer, who is identified by its Web address, from posting the infringing photographs to your servers in the future. Please be advised that law requires you, as a service provider, to “expeditiously remove or disable access to” the infringing photographs upon receiving this notice. Noncompliance may result in a loss of immunity for liability under the DMCA.

I have a good faith belief that use of the material in the manner complained of here is not authorized by me, the copyright holder, or the law. The information provided here is accurate to the best of my knowledge. I swear under penalty of perjury that I am the copyright holder.

Please send me at the address noted below a prompt response indicating the actions you have taken to resolve this matter.

Sincerely,

Your Name

Is this justified?

Yes, it is.

I and several others have tweeted with the @AllThis account to try to get them to change their ways, but they don’t “understand” that what they are doing is wrong. Nor will they stop doing it to other people.

More importantly, copyright infringement (and borderline fraudulent representation) like this is certainly against the acceptable use policies for both GoGrid and Dyn.com.

So, this is our last and best resort.

30x500 / Fear / Launching / Psychology — No Comments
14
Dec 11

Dealing with the Emotional Turbulence of your Launch

Guest Post header template

The voices in my head have reached a fever pitch. It must be launch time.

Launching is an emotional game.

It’s so easy to construct elaborate stories about how this or that detail will lead to terrible failure or runaway success. It’s constant. Fully detailed worlds erected by nothing but imagination.

I’m in the midst of launching Hiring Gold. Hiring Gold is an infoproduct that teaches founders & small business owners an 8-week system for hiring awesome people.

My official ship date is December 19th.

It feels like I’ve been working on this forever, but it’s been about four months in reality.

Self-Sabotage, the Launcher’s Lament

I’m confident that Hiring Gold is a great product. I know it works because it’s a process I’ve used a bazillion times.

And yet… I keep sabotaging my progress. It’s like I have a secret hope for failure so I can go back to my humdrum existence!

Here’s an example of a boneheaded thing I did last week. I nearly published a landing page written in the “royal we.”

You know that thing, when micro-business owners try to pretend they’re bigger by saying “we”? I almost pulled that douchebaggy move myself. “We” did this and “we” did that, so listen to “us.”

I’m embarrassed to even mention this. I don’t know what I was thinking. My business is me. It’s just a lie to make it seem like anything different.

And here’s where I have to thank Amy for pointing out the big giant unicorn in the room. This is what she wrote to me:

Little companies don’t get anywhere by pretending to be big companies. There’s little worse than deciding to go with a little guy only to be treated as if you were going with a big guy…impersonal language, posturing, etc.

Most people WANT to buy from people they can know and understand. So by shielding yourself behind fake “we” you are undermining your message.

And you know what? She’s right. I KNOW this.

I wasn’t thinking, after all. That poor decision I almost made? ALL ABOUT FEAR.

Fear of taking the full responsibility for what I’m putting out into the world. Fear of the failure or success of Hiring Gold being on my shoulders alone. Fear of letting people down. Fear of being vulnerable. Fear of playing too small.

The Lizard Brain at Work

This is why launching is such an emotional game.

It’s so easy to construct elaborate stories about how this or that detail will lead to terrible failure or runaway success. Fully detailed worlds erected by nothing but imagination.

When you’re pinning your livelihood on a product, the lizard brain rears its ugly head. The lizard brain pleads for the safer option. It tells you to forget all this launch stuff and go take a nap.

But then where would you be? Without a launch. Without a product. Without a business.

A Plea for Balance

I’m learning that the trick to keeping an even keel is keeping those conversations with myself to a murmur.

Here are three things that are keeping me sane, tips I have to repeat to myself:

  1. Persevere. It sounds simple but just keep going. Don’t abandon your product. You’ll want to stop and go hide in a hole somewhere at least once a week. Be methodical about ticking off small to-dos, one at a time, and keep going even when you really really REALLY don’t want to.
  2. Keep good people around. Value people who tell you the truth (like Amy). Keep them close throughout the launch process. Having people you trust who are forthcoming (even if it hurts) helps to prevent self-sabotage and will hold you accountable. As soon as you tell others your plans, it is exponentially more likely that they’ll actually get done.
  3. Ignore the muck. Know that all the emotional stuff flying around your brain is just that: stuff. It’s meaningless. What matters is the doing. Getting your product out there will be different than any scenario you can imagine, good or bad, so put a cap on the dreams and get to work on your launch!

As I launch Hiring Gold, and as I get started on my next product for founders, The Underground Lab, the conversations in my head are beginning to feel less urgent. As things go on, I find it easier to resist the imaginary trip my ego is leading me on.

Does this mean I’ll have less emotional muck to contend with as I get more comfortable with the launch process?

Probably not. After all, you can’t run a meaningful business without actual meaning.

Editor’s note: This is a great cliffhanger! But from my experience, launching definitely gets easier. Thanks, Scott!

This guest post by Scott McDowell, an expert on designing organizations and a 30×500 alum (Summer 2011). His first product, Hiring Gold, is designed to help you hire awesome talent… and not have to learn the (very very) hard way.

Biz Book Friday — 5 Comments
2
Dec 11

Terry Pratchett’s Witches Mean Business — *Your* Business (Biz Book Friday)

Hello, and welcome to yet another Biz Book Friday! This one’s a bit late because I’m feeling under the weather. Hope you enjoy it nonetheless. There are, of course, many more to choose from — on, admittedly, more serious, actionable topics. Today I’m feeling philosophical.

All my favorite authors are dyed-in-the-wool humanists. You get the feeling from their words that they’ve looked at all of humanity… and they’ve seen the punchline. They’re laughing, even while their hearts encompass the whole world.

Terry Pratchett certainly fits that description.

In the Discworld, witches stand for stalwartness, doing what needs to be done, thinking what needs to be thought — and seeing what’s really there.

And so, today’s Biz Book Friday, I present to you excerpts from Wee Free Men, wherein our young hero (a 9-year-old dairy maid named Tiffany Aching) finds herself to be a witch.

But really, the lessons she learns apply to everything.

On the way that the world looks at competent, successful people:

People tended to leave Tiffany alone. There was nothing particularly cruel or unpleasant about this, but the farm was big and everyone had their jobs to do, and she did hers very well and so she became, in a way, invisible.

I truly believe that one of the biggest diseases infecting smart, competent people today is the belief that being smart and competent and good at your job is good enough to get you noticed. That they are, somehow, expecting more — and succumbing to anger & bitterness when more fails to arrive.

On the magical school for witchcraft:

“Can I go there by magic? Does, like, a unicorn turn up to carry me there or something?”

“Why should it? A unicorn is nothing more than a big horse that comes to a point, anyway. Nothing to get so excited about,” said Miss Tick.

I swear this is not wear my slay-the-unicorns ideology comes from… but I wouldn’t mind if it did. (In a way, this awesome series of books is the anti-Harry Potter. I know which I’d read to any innocent, unsuspecting child in my care.)

On the way that life tests you before you’ve got any business being tested:

“The thing about witchcraft,” said Mistress Weatherwax, “is that it’s not like school at all. First you get the test, and then afterward you spend years findin’ out how you passed it. It’s a bit like life in that respect.”

As in life, so in business.

On the necessity of first principles for survival:

The one thing in her bag that might have made anyone suspicious was a very small, grubby booklet entitled An Introduction to Escapology, by the Great Williamson. If one of the risks of your job is being thrown into a pond with your hands tied together, then the ability to swim thirty yards underwater, fully clothed, plus the ability to lurk under the weeds breathing air through a hollow reed, count as nothing if you aren’t also amazingly good with knots.

As in life, so in the marketplace.

On writing benefits into your marketing copy:

THE WONDERS OF PUNCTUATION AND SPELLING:

1. ABSOLUTE CERTAINTY ABOUT THE COMMA!
2. I BEFORE E COMPLETELY SORTED OUT!
3. THE MYSTERY OF THE SEMICOLON REVEALED!!!
4. SEE THE AMPERSAND! (SMALL EXTRA CHARGE)
5. FUN WITH BRACKETS!

Although, if you’re a student of mine, you know that even this enlivening take on grammar doesn’t go far enough.

On (not) giving people what they want:

Footnote on ‘misfortune telling’: Ordinary fortune-tellers tell you what you want to happen; witches tell you what’s going to happen whether you want it to or not. Strangely enough, witches tend to be more accurate but less popular.

The thing about business is that it is, primarily, about business. When you try to sell something people don’t want, well, you’re shit outta luck. That doesn’t mean you should, for example, go tell lies instead of true fortunes. It means that maybe you’re not cut out for the fortune telling business in general.

Til next time!

Read deep and enjoy.

Previous Biz Book Fridays:

Bootstrapping / Idea Unicorns / Slaying Unicorns — 91 Comments
29
Nov 11

Fuck Glory – Startups are One Long Con

I’m in my early 20s. Startups seem to be the only way out of 40 years of mediocrity in TPS-land for me, so I don’t really think I have much of a choice. It’s startups or nothing for me.

Or maybe I am being myopic? Are there more options to be had in life than mediocrity/wageslavery vs glory/startups?

— Random HNer

Startups are glorious! So raw, so close to the bone, so mettle-testing: 100-hour work weeks, sleeping under your desk, ramen, putting it all on the line, changing the world.

You know what else is glorious?

Glory.

“Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori,” is one of the most famous lines from Horace. You’ve probably heard it. It means “It is sweet and fitting to die for one’s fatherland.”

Here’s another one — drawn from Plutarch, allegedly said by Spartan women to their sons, as they gave the boys their shields before battle:

“Come home with your shield or on it.”

Come home with your shield — honorable, glorious — or die, for you will be without honor, and without glory.

Ancient times were all about glory. Glory’s not so big any more, but it used to be huge.

Glory was a way for fat old statesmen and generals, who never saw battle, to tempt young men to die by proxy for politics and petty schemes.

When glory failed to tempt, it was used to taunt, disdain, and guilt.

Or, as jwz puts it, “trying to make the point that the only path to success in the software industry is to work insane hours, sleep under your desk, and give up your one and only youth, and if you don’t do that, you’re a pussy.”

It’s about fucking time we talked about the fact that the worship of glorious death, and the startup mythos, are the same damn thing.

Every fucking time you see somebody using glory to hagiographize young men & women who are doing something clearly stupid, you must ask:

What is this raft of shit, and why are they trying to get me to paddle it?

And make no mistake, bartering away your “one and only youth” (jwz again) working 100-hour weeks on a web site for the promise of a big fat carrot on the end of a stick 80 million lines long, dangled by a fat statesm–venture capitalist, who will make 3x or 10x or 100x more than you, in the vanishingly unlikely scenario that you “succeed”… is clearly stupid.

So what are the motivations of the people pushing glory — pardon me, startups?

Money. Follow the money. They want a piece of you. Investors have to have projects to invest in.

The more kids who buy into the crazy dream, the more racehorses the venture capitalists can bet on, the more little soldiers the VCs can set on the board. The harder those kids work, the more theoretical chances the VC has that of one of his many investments making it big.

The harder those kids work, the less they question.

Post-hoc justification kicks in the more pain you inflict on yourself — because obviously, if you’re so terrible to the person closest to you, you’ve got a good reason, right?

It must be worth it, right?

I am tired and sick of war. Its glory is all moonshine. It is only those who have neither fired a shot nor heard the shrieks and groans of the wounded who cry aloud for blood, for vengeance, for desolation. War is hell.

— General William Tecumseh Sherman

Remember, if you question it, you’re a pussy. Startups are hard. So work more, cry less, and quit all the whining.

You’ve got no fucking shield so you might as well lay down and die.

Who are these crazy fuckers who say these things? What the hell do they get out of it?

But wait! Questioning a speaker’s motivations is an Ad Hominem Fallacy! Paul Graham says so in How to Disagree.

Oh, he did, did he? I’m not one for conspiracy theories, but isn’t that nice and pat?

As someone who has certainly studied rhetoric more than Paul Graham the Instant Expert, let me assure you:

Questioning a speaker’s motives is not only not a fallacy, it is a sign of healthy debate.

Otherwise you’re a wide-eyed sucker just waiting to be taken.

It’s especially critical to question the motives of the speaker whenever he urges you to glory, by tempting or guilting — and whenever he tries to sell you his religion.

You must be sharp, questioning, alert. You must be on your guard.

Inevitably — without fail! — those who sell glory, who sell religion, who sell noble wars, will not be in the trenches with you.

And that, my friend, that is all you really need to know.

There is no Mojito Island. There is no pot of gold at the end of this evil rainbow of suffering. There is no Asgard. There are no 70 virgins.

When you die, however sweet and fitting, you are dead. As the Roman poet Marcus Valerius Martial wrote, “Glory paid to our ashes comes too late.” Glory paid to the ashes of your days, burnt and gone, comes too late.

Fuck glory.

Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori:
mors et fugacem persequitur virum
nec parcit inbellis iuventae
poplitibus timidove tergo.

How sweet and fitting it is to die for one’s country:
Death pursues the man who flees,
spares not the hamstrings or cowardly backs
Of battle-shy youths.

Hi, I’m Amy. Like this? You’ll like the rest of what I’ve got to offer: philosophy, tough talk AND practical information on what to do about it. Follow me on Twitter or Subscribe so you don’t miss anything important.

Biz Book Friday / Risk — 7 Comments
25
Nov 11

Startups & Risk: Petting Puppies with Peter Drucker

It’s that time again! No, not turkey-stuffing-cranberry-yam-and-marshmallow sandwich time. No, not pepper-spray-your-fellow-Black-Friday-shoppers time. No, silly… it’s Biz Book Friday! Today, a little change of pace: Peter Drucker. And puppies.

Who wants to start a business? You do!

Who wants to pet a puppy?

You do!

So… which puppy do you pet?

Pick a puppy! Aka The Nature of Risk

Well, that depends, I suppose.

Exactly how attached are you to that hand?

Towards a Philosophy of Puppy Stroking

Say you are an indiscriminate puppy pat-er. You see four legs and a tail and you just can’t keep your hands to yourself.

So you walk by the junkyard one day and LOOK! A PUPPY! Your tic kicks in. You slip your fingers through the chain link fence so that you can get your puppy fix. From the 150-pound, slavering, red-eyed menace. Here, boy!

One day, I expect, you will find yourself to be a very excellent one-handed typist.

But what if you practice safe pets?

What if you limit your doggy-stroking adventures to the fluffy pom used for animal therapy visits at the local preschool?

The chances are extremely good that you will die of old age and be buried with a full complement of 10 wiggly little digits.

Puppies are Serious Business™… and risk is a lie

We’re talking about puppies, but we’re really talking about your business. Get it? Whether you call it a “startup” or “small business,” a “lifestyle business” or a “baconbiz” or “my little side gig,” the facts are the facts:

Risk is not risk.

We talk about it like it’s a real, concrete, immutable thing.

But risk is like puppy-petting: it involves choices. You can choose to be smart, and snuggly, or dumb, and finger-less.

I’m not saying that there’s anything wrong with a high-risk venture. But it’s far from the only choice… and what’s more, even things you’d assume are high-risk don’t have to be.

Risk is not absolute. It depends on your choices. Yes, that’s right: you get to choose how much risk to expose yourself to. Amazing!

Fluff Ball Puppy with Top Hat & Monocole

Old school biz peeps know this — startups don’t

Entrepreneurship is “risky” mainly because so few of the so-called entrepreneurs know what they are doing. They lack the methodology. They violate elementary and well-known rules. This is particularly true of high-tech entrepreneurs.

Ahhh, the bitchslap of reality. From the past.

That passage hails from Peter Drucker’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship, published in 1985. Yes, over 26 years ago.

Still true. True-r, even.

Peter Drucker’s got a drum — a true-r drum — and he’s gonna beat it, giving us all a good what-for:

Those entrepreneurs who start out with the idea that they’ll make it big—and in a hurry—can be guaranteed failure. They are almost bound to do the wrong things.

Oh, really, Peter Drucker? Tell us more!

The entrepreneur is therefore well advised to forgo innovations based on bright ideas, however enticing the success stories. After all, somebody wins a jackpot on the Las Vegas slot machines every week, yet the best any one slot-machine player can do is try not lose more than he or she can afford.

We need to systematize, he tells us. (Sound familiar?) We need to base our entrepreneurship off research and analysis and understanding, rather than woo-woo hand-waving and hagiography and awed, prideful worship of the “bright idea.”

And, he says, people get really confused about what high-tech entrepreneurship looks like.

Junkyard Dog Alert: trying to be Fustest with the Mostest?

Drucker describes 4 basic entrepreneurial strategies. One of them is “Fustest with the Mostest,” a humorous dialect misquotation of Confederate Lieutenant General Nathan Bedford Forrest’s strategy of arriving first to battle with the most men and firepower:

In this strategy the entrepreneur aims at leadership, if not at dominance of a new market or a new industry…

That does sound awfully familiar, doesn’t it? It sounds like what everybody and their finger-crunching dog say about how to do a startup:

  1. Shoot for the moon
  2. Get there first
  3. Dominate
  4. Grow big

Being “Fustest with the Mostest” is the approach that many people consider the entrepreneurial strategy par excellence.

This is true.

Indeed, if one were to go by the popular books on entrepreneurs, one would conclude that being “Fustest with the Mostest” is the only entrepreneurial strategy — and a good many entrepreneurs, especially the high-tech ones, seem to be of the same opinion.

Right you are, Mr. Drucker!

They are wrong, however… monocle tweak

What’s that you say? WHAT??

“Fustest with the Mostest” is not even the dominant entrepreneurial strategy, let alone the one with the lowest risk or the highest success ratio. monocle polish On the contrary, of all entrepreneurial strategies it is the greatest gamble.

Oh no! The greatest gamble? I don’t believe it! But it must be true… you have a monocle!

Do go on.

And it is unforgiving, making no allowances for mistakes and permitting no second chance.

Argghghg, why?

“Fustest with the Mostest” is very much like a moon shot: a deviation of a fraction of a minute of the arc and the missile disappears into outer space.

BUT… isn’t that good?

The entrepreneur of so much of the popular literature or of Hollywood movies, the person who suddenly has a “brilliant idea” and rushes off to put it into effect, is not going to succeed with it.

In fact, for this strategy to succeed at all, the innovation must be based on a careful and deliberate attempt to exploit one of the major opportunities for innovation that were discussed in Chapters 3 to 9.

AWWW, NOOOOO, EVERYTHING I KNOW IS WRONG. TELL ME WHAT TO DO, PETER DRUCKER. Just give it to me straight. I can take it. cringe

["Fustest with the Mostest"] will fail because the will is lacking. It will fail because efforts are inadequate. It will fail because, despite successful innovation, not enough resources are deployed, are available, or are being put to work to exploit success, and so on.

While the strategy is indeed highly rewarding when successful, it is much too risky and much too difficult to be used for anything but major innovations, for creating a new political order… or a new approach…

It requires profound analysis and a genuine understanding of the sources of innovation and of their dynamics. It requires an extreme concentration of effort and substantial resources.

In most cases alternative strategies are available and preferable — not primarily because they carry less risk, but because for most innovations the opportunity is not great enough to justify the cost, the effort, and the investment of resources required for the “Fustest with the Mostest” strategy.

NOOOOOOOOOOoooooOooooOoookay.

In conclusion: Peter Fucking Drucker says,

Back away from that junkyard dog

…unless you’ve got a mesh body suit with anti-flammable padding, a cage, a taser, pepper spray, a whip, a lion tamer sidekick, a djinn, and also ovaries of pure tungsten carbide*.

Your entrepreneurial mission, should you choose to accept it: find and snuggle a friendly pom. Mind the top hat.

And: Buy and read Innovation and Entrepreneurship. You’ll have to read it with the eyes of a soloist or tiny team in the 2010s, and interpret what he says to help you with your situation… and you’ll learn a shitload.

Happy petting.

** Tungsten carbide: the hardest metal that isn’t, in fact a diamond. Psh. Everybody knows diamonds aren’t metal.*

Uncategorized — No Comments
24
Nov 11

South Asian? Know South Asians? Help save my friend this Thanksgiving!

Hi, there.

I originally intended to avoid a Thanksgiving post. Why? Everybody does it. It gets spammy. It’s a little rude and a lot cliché.

But then I realized something important:

If I had to choose between pissing people off, and NOT getting this message out, I’ll pick the message all the damn day long.

My friend Amit Gupta desperately needs your help.

If you don’t know who Amit is, he’s the founder of Jelly (casual coworking), PhotoJoJo, many other movements & parties & things… Amit has touched SO MANY of us in the tech community, even if we don’t realize it.

He’s also one of those rare people who’s always up for helping a stranger. He’s a friend to everyone, and manages to make you feel special and listened to, no matter who you are.

And he was recently diagnosed with acute leukemia.

Did you know that, to survive leukemia, you need a marrow donation? Probably, right? I knew that. Leukemia seems like it’s a cancer we can cure.

Well, Amit is South Asian.

Did you know that the chance for a perfect match for a person of South Asian heritage is a whopping 1 in 20,000?

ONE in TWENTY THOUSAND

That sounds like a death sentence.

But you can help Amit beat the crap out of those odds.

If YOU or SOMEONE YOU KNOW is of Pakistani, Indian, Bangladeshi, Sri Lankan etc. descent…

YOU can help save Amit (and others!).

All you have to do is spit into a little tube, or show up at a donation drive and rub a lollipop stick in your cheek.

IF you ARE a match for Amit, there are people ready to help you pay for travel to donate.

Thanks to medical advancement, donation is pretty much just like giving blood (it just takes longer).

If you’re thankful for anything…

If you’re thankful for anything this Thanksgiving, PLEASE consider helping save my friend Amit. Because he’s got so much more awesome in him to give to this world.

PLEASE swab, if you’re of South Asian heritage.

PLEASE forward this to any friends or acquaintances you know who may be.

PLEASE forward to this to any cultural centers or communities with Indian, Bangladeshi, Pakistani, Sri Lankan, etc., ties.

Click here to tweet.

Click here to email this to your friends.

Click below to like this on FB and share with your friends:

If you or they register as a marrow donor, you will be helping NOT ONLY Amit, but so many other innocent, wonderful boys & girls, men & women who might otherwise NEVER have a chance at a match.

Remember: 1 in 20,000. You can help beat those odds.

Please Hurry — Here’s How

To be in time to help Amit, the marrow registry needs your swab very soon — by about November 30th.

Here’s how to get it there:

  • SWAB AT A DONATION DRIVE – FASTEST & EASIEST WAY!
  • ORDER a home testing kit

ATTEND A DRIVE

There are drives coming up in:

  • Bangalore
  • Chicago
  • West Michigan
  • NYC
  • Maryland
  • North Cali
  • Cambridge
  • Bay Area
  • Boston
  • San Francisco

Click here for the full list & details.

AND for more information on how you can help, even if you cannot donate marrow for medical reasons.

SWAB AT HOME

Here’s the information for swabbing if you are…

Thank you for reading.

Please don’t just leave this in a tab. Please don’t just fave the tweet and move on.

Please take action now.

Thank you.

5-Second Slayage / Time — 9 Comments
23
Nov 11

A Dead Simple 3-Minute Tip for More Time: Bomb Your Inbox!

List of useless newsletters

Lost time is never found again.
– Benjamin Franklin

It’s no coincidence that “email” has 75% of the same letters as “time.” Or maybe it is. Hell, I dunno.

Isn’t it about time you fight back?

The Unsubscribe Bomb

Drop a bomb on your inbox… clear that #!@$ out. Here’s how:

  1. Open up your email client (5 seconds)
  2. Search for “unsubscribe” (2 seconds)
  3. Open each email, Cmd+F for “unsubscribe” in each one, click the links (2 minutes)

Then, presto! Way less mail.

Rule #1: Do it now

Don’t fave the tweet that sent you here. Don’t click “Read Later.” Don’t go “Hmm, I’ll do that tomorrow” and close this page.

You know you won’t come back to it.

Do it now. It takes 3 minutes, max.

Rule #2: Be brutal

Resist the urge to be a digital hoarder.

If you really love the newsletter, keep it.

But don’t keep it around because you might miss out on a great deal! or because you read it… sometimes… when trapped by snowpocalypse in a remote woodland cabin, surrounded by zombies. Because, let’s face it, that only happens once a year. Twice, maybe.

Unless you devour the newsletter just about every time, you won’t miss it, and you’ll feel better when it’s out of your life.

When in doubt, unsubscribe.

If you really think you’ll miss that particular newsletter, set a little reminder about it on your calendar for a month later. If you still miss it then, you have my permission to re-subscribe.

A penny saved is a penny earned… until you blow it on Groupon.
– Benjamin Franklin

Rule #3: Enjoy the blessed silence

Cuz I am. It’s glorious.

How do you carve out time for your projects?

Share your tips! Especially if they’re related to email!

Biz Book Friday — 1 Comment
18
Nov 11

Startups are a Boy Band (Biz Book Friday!)

Welcome to Biz Book Fridays! I’ve got a whopper of a biz book habit and I’ll read ‘em so you don’t have to. I bring the juiciest morsels straight to you.

Whoooo! After those 3 straight weeks of pricing, I thought we could ALL do with a little change of pace.

And so this week on Biz Book Friday, we’ve got… well… a book that’s not a biz book at all, and instead an excellent novel: Lost in a Good Book: A Thursday Next Story.

Everything’s a Boy Band

“Remember, Thursday, that scientific thought, indeed, any mode of thought whether it be religious or philosophical or anything else, is just like the fashions that we wear—only much longer-lived. It’s a little like a boy band.”

“Scientific thought a boy band? How do you figure that?”

“Well, every now and then a boy band comes along. We like it, buy the records, posters, parade them on TV, idolize them right up until—”

“—the next boy band?” I suggested.

“Precisely. Aristotle was a boy band. A very good one, but only number six or seven. He was the best boy band until Isaac Newton, but even Newton was transplanted by an even newer boy band. Same haircuts—but different moves.”

“Einstein, right?”

“Right. Do you see what I’m saying?”

“That the way we think is nothing more than a passing fad?”

“Exactly. Hard to visualize a new way of thinking? Try this. Go thirty or forty boy bands past Einstein. Where we would regard Einstein as someone who glimpsed a truth, played one good chord in seven forgettable albums.”

Some things are eternal. Just about everything else changes in cycles.

Some of those cycles are pendulums, swinging back and forth between two extremes. Examples: ornamentation and minimalism in design, or religion and reason. The thing about these cycles is that one actively leads to the other, because it’s a rebellion! Then that rebellion becomes commonplace and then people have to rebel against that.

Others are linear, fad giving away to fad, like in physics. (Can’t imagine us returning to pre-Einsteinian physics, can you?)

Boy Band Denial

If you’ve ever read a history book (or watched The Hitler Channel), you know this is true.

But even so… we never prairedog out of our little holes and go “Gee, this is just a cycle.” Nope. We say, “Aha! This is how things should have been all along. The way they will be. And rightly so!”

And… yet… we know that all those long-dead people in the history books thought exactly the same thing. About everything.

Boy Bands: They’re Everywhere!

In software development and design, we have Agile, scrum, pairing, test-first, test-never, lean, customer development, BDD, tooling, personas, no personas, action theory, beauty is function, ornament is a crime, user experience, user centered, undesign.

In business, we have Taylorism, Fordism, TQM, Six Sigma, follow your passion, dig in the muck for the brass, offshoring, outsourcing, home sourcing, human resources, team building exercises, incentives, no incentives, the customer is always right, the employee is always right, hug your customers, work is play, work is work and if you don’t like it there’s more where you came from, collective bargaining, every man for himself.

And then we have startups. Whether they’re funded big, or funded small, angel, VC, seed, institutional backers, pitch contests, startup weekends, liquidity events, go big or go home, “build stuff people want,” “build software that’ll get college students laid,” analytics for pirates or lead from your heart, Maslow, Mojito Island, founder as hustler, founder as hacker, founder as hagiographical hero, lifestyle business, 4-hour-work-week, sixteen-hour-work-day, IPO track, private sale, and of course, invent-your-own-accounting-standard.

These are all boy bands. All of them. Especially startups.

It’s boy bands all the way down.

History shows us that management theory, software development theory, design theory, and most importantly, startup ideology are all extremely faddish. But we treat each new boy band like they’re handed down On High.*****

And things get bloody dangerous when we confuse the boy bands of today with Mozart.

****** We all know the only boy bands handed down on high were The Beatles and The Dead. Maybe The Scorpions. Nuff said.*

Oh yeah. You want more. You wanna subscribe. Doooo ittttt. And follow me on Twitter while you’re at it.

Hard Work — 3 Comments
14
Nov 11

Success: The Boring Way! The Only Way

Boring Art - “I Will Not Make Any More Boring Art” by John Baldessari (probably a lie!)

One of the things I keep telling my 30×500 Product Launch Class students is this:

Success is boring.

A Peek into the Success Sausage Factory

Imagine a movie made from my daily biz life over a period few weeks… I guarantee you, the time lapse would bore you to tears. Even with popcorn.

All you’d see is me doing what works. Over and over. Because that’s what it takes to create a success:

Design a live class.

Email your list. Sell seats.

Write a blog post. Sell seats.

Give the class.

Revise the class.

Email your list. Sell seats.

Write a blog post. Sell seats.

And give the class again.

And give the class again.

Take the class and turn it into a self-serve product.

Get people to sign up for the announce list.

Get people to sign up for the announce list.

Get people to sign up for the announce list.

Email your list. Make sales.

Write a blog post. Make sales.

Email your list. Make sales.

Write a blog post. Make sales.

Ship it.

Email them.

Email them.

Rewrite the sales page.

Tweet about it.

Email them.

Email them.

Ask them how they like it.

Make it better.

Email them.

Tweet about it.

This is my life, folks. For serious.

Yawn.

How Do You Get to Carnegie Hall?

Excuse me, how do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice, practice.

carnegiehall.png

Hey! It’s Carnegie Hall! Somebody musta practiced! cc t_a_i_s

So. This boringness?

It’s the fact of life for anyone who strives for awesome — the concert pianist, the public speaker, the teacher, the basketball player, the dancer, the painter, the writer, the chemist, the doctor.

Boring is not boring.

It’s system, it’s practice — it’s a game, always trying to out-do yourself, and money is one of the ways you get to keep score. (A particularly fun way.)

For every improvement you make while pracitcing, you get to enjoy the thrill of signups, sales, and emails from happy customers.

Boredom’s the Way to Go

Contrast this to the what the Legends of the Startup Founder Heroes tell us: excitement, thrills, near-death misses… straining, and huffing, and puffing, and not sleeping. Big dreams and bigger dramas. Elation and depression.

Waiting & dreaming of the big payoff.

And almost always, eventually, the failure.

No. Thank. You. I’ll take boredom any day.

Biz Book Friday / Pricing — 4 Comments
11
Nov 11

Will Low Prices Help You Sell More? (Biz Book Friday!)

Welcome to Biz Book Fridays! I’ve got a whopper of a biz book habit and I’ll read ‘em so you don’t have to. I bring the juiciest morsels straight to you.

Let’s talk about castles.

What do you need to build a castle?

  1. thick, unscalable walls
  2. places to withdraw your bridge
  3. places to drop hot oil, foul water, alligators, etc.
  4. a moat, for preference, and
  5. turrets, lots and lots of turrets

When it comes to making a product, the recipe is just the same. Only with a product, these fortifications have names like:

  1. positioning
  2. Unique Sales Proposition

And so on. The goal is the same: prevent your competitors from breaching your castle and stealing your serfs.

You know, the stuff that makes you different from the other guys.

Stuff they can’t just copy.

In other words: anything but a low price.

Competing on Price: Fools Only

And so, the clever authors of Pricing with Confidence tell us, Low Price is a Dumb Tactic.

Price competition is a fool’s game because any fool can play it.

Yup, anybody can lower a price. Anybody can compete on price. They don’t have to build a castle first. They also don’t have to face the hot oil and/or angry fishwives.

When you lower your price, you stand out… for a moment.

Tomorrow, somebody else less competent, less skilled, can come in, undercut your price, and steal that positin from you.

There’s no sustained advantage to be had through price competition.

…if you do win the order, your satisfaction is quickly undermined by the sneaking suspicion that what you have won is a Pyrrhic victory (another such victory and we are done for!).

That is the power of pricing: a bad price can transform a victory (woo! all those sales!) into a disaster (zomg, the overheads!).

In fact, the authors of Pricing with Confidence assert,

… weak competitors have an advantage in price competition because they’ve got little to lose and nothing else to leverage.

“Little to lose” and “nothing else to leverage” — not labels you want applied to your business, are they?

Why Price Low in the First Place?

Three reasons:

  1. Fear & ignorance. You’re afraid of asking for money, so you think the thing to do is to ask for only a little. It feels safer.
  2. Everybody else does it. (See below)
  3. You want to grab a bigger slice of the marketshare pie. (See below)

I’ve already written about fear & ignorance a bunch of times. (For newbs who got the fear, the D&D test, cake-and-icing pricing, and when customers bitch.) Read on for more of #2 and #3.

Everybody Does It… Don’t They?

Our clients tell us, “We have no choice but to discount because our competitors are nuts.” In fact, the competitors just look like they are nuts because they have the same addiction. By the way, we always tell our clients, “Your competitors are saying the same thing about you, and for precisely the same reason.”

By now you are shaking your head. Of course, you think. It’s obvious now.

When one competitor cuts its prices, it’s exactly like when a customer says you charge too much. We talked about this last time:

When a customer says, “Your price is too high,” your instinct is to respond to it as if it were really a discussion about price. To keep talking about price.

But that instinct is wrong — wrong when it’s a customer conversation, and wrong when it’s a competitor’s action, too.

It’s not about price — it almost never really is. The trick is to remember that, and not get tricked by your lizard brain into reacting without question.

To Grab a Larger Market Share

So maybe you’re too worldly and cynical to price low out of fear or competition. But you’re still tempted. Your considered, logical reason to price low is: to increase market penetration. (Fuck yeah!)

There’s just one problem with this sexy, aggressive tactic:

Does it work?

That’s a question that rarely gets asked. And, as it turns out, it doesn’t:

Elastic markets are quite responsive to changes in price. Inelastic markets are not. Elasticity research tells us when price decreases are going to bring us more revenue.

Do you know if you’re in an elastic market, or an inelastic market? This is important, because it turns out they behave in completely different ways.

A market is only elastic if a lower price convinces more people, total to buy — from you, or anyone. It doesn’t count if a lower price convinces a person who’s already someone else’s customer to switch to you.

Make sense?

Only price low if there’s a chance to capture sales that would never have otherwise happened, ever.

In fact, because of the effects of derived demand — remember, lower prices don’t increase total demand — penetration pricing is poison if you are competing in a mature market.

I wouldn’t go so far as to say that ebooks, screencasts, and web apps are mature markets just yet. They are still growing, and will continue to grow.

But they are based off mature markets. With ebooks & screencasts, there are direct corollaries to books and video training from before (and simple comparisons to live training as well).

With web-based software, the vast majority of your potential customers have already used or bought web-based software.

For customers who have not yet bought ebooks or subscribed to a web app, the hurdles are not cost or price, but a different way of looking at software & education.

If a person hates the idea of paying monthly for software he could “just buy at CompUSA,” no price will convince him otherwise. If a person thinks it’s morally wrong to pay for one person’s well-orchestrated “bits” instead for a 3lb paper book with 42 authors on the cover, it’s not the price that will sway her bias.

So let other people blaze trails with low prices and unsustainable overhead. And let them suffer the consequences.

What to do? The best response is to skim price for high margins at the top of the market and use a neutral pricing strategy for mainstream and low-end market segments.

Charge a higher price, earn more from fewer customers, and serve those few customers better with your limited resources (e.g. your time). Go for the margins, don’t go for broke.

Be like Apple: with 4% of the mobile phone market, they have nearly 50% of all profits.

That’s a great place to be.

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