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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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string(291) "It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a Major Hotel Chain. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do [...]"
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<p>It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a <em>Major Hotel Chain</em>. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do want to offer you something to show they care. In front of me was a friendly looking man in a Hawaiian shirt, grinning from ear to ear and rattling off the wonders of timeshare ownership. I’d slept 5 hours in the last two days, and while my eyes said I was listening intently to the benefits of this “no lose” offer, a part of me was wondering how I had ended up here.</p>
<p>I had signed up for it, of course. </p>
<p>I had signed up knowing full well exactly what I was getting into. You see, even a “free” hotel room in Las Vegas comes with a price. That price is two hours of your life, sitting in a boiler room with two dozen beaming sales people trying their best to separate you from tens of thousands of dollars of your hard earned money. It works a lot like the Casinos right down the street, but here you have slightly better odds. </p>
<p>Why would I endure something like this when I could have just as easily gotten a nearly free room almost anywhere on the Strip? Why, because I love it gosh darn it! As a <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">marketer and media guy</a>, sitting through high pressure sales pitches gives me a golden opportunity to understand how the other side lives. They also give me a chance to see what strategies work even when you know exactly what they are trying to do. </p>
<p>For the rest of the story, I’ll call the agent I sat with Dave. The first thing you’d notice about Dave if you were sitting in my seat is that he was trying really, really hard to be a human being. <strong>People buy things from people, not from pitches</strong> and Dave knew this intuitively. He asked questions, took notes, made me feel like I was just having a regular conversation with an old friend. This conversation just happened to be about real estate, but when I guy is telling you about his kids and his college you tend to forget little details like that. </p>
<p>At this point in the game the pressure is pretty lax, what they are trying to do is <strong>establish your level of resistance</strong>. This is where lots of people who end up buying candy-apple red Corvettes go wrong, they assume that if they are outwardly hostile the sales guy will back away. <strong>Good sales people expect hostility</strong>, and the more resistance you show, the more effort they put into breaking it down. You may think you’re being really clever, but understand they’ve been at this a while and most of them are really good at what they do. </p>
<p>I took a different approach. I listened, I payed attention, I allowed the pitch to follow the rhythm that Dave had set down. I learned about how much I really loved vacation travel, and how exciting it would be to be able to go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. I learned about all of the far away places I could visit and all the benefits they were willing to heap on me because I was so special. I learned about how the points of resistance I had established early on really didn’t matter because Major Hotel Chain had done decades of research to make sure they had solutions. I even learned a brief history of Major Hotel Chain’s founders and how they were really stand up guys who wanted very little more than to make me happy.</p>
<p>I listened, I smiled, I nodded and I asked questions. I showed as little outwards resistance as I could muster. </p>
<p>A sales pitch, you see, is like Aikido. The more you resist, the more times you’re going to get slammed against the ground. Dave was an artist at this kind of sale, deflecting and redirecting every one of my questions with a fluidity that was almost magic. Even with my guard up, by mid-way through his pitch he had managed to systematically dismantle each and every one of the things I’d stated early on would keep me from buying. By the time he was taking me on a tour, I was truly considering whether or not owning a little piece of Major Hotel Chain was such a bad idea after all. </p>
<p>What saved me from an expensive and hilarious mistake was when we returned to the boiler room and we passed into the third part of the sale, which I like to call <strong>informational diarrhea</strong>. Most people think they are pretty good with numbers and that they have a pretty good memory. Both of these assertions are wrong. Psychologists have proven time and time again that we are basically innumerate and that we can only hold about 7 items in our short term memory at any given time. Good sales people exploit this by throwing benefits out at you faster than your brain can process them. They explain one package while showing you the price of another. They start doing back of the envelope math to show how you’re really paying less than you think. They show you charts and graphs that seem to prove inequivocably that whatever it is that you’re buying (by this point you have no clue) they must be insane for offering it at this price. What you might also notice is that this is the very first time they show you the price at all, and oddly enough it’s slightly lower than you expected it to be. </p>
<p>Fortunately, long ago I realized that I am no less stupid than the rest of society and after hearing about 15 minutes of numbers that I could barely keep up with, I decided that even if I had wanted to buy something, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on so it might be better if I kept my checkbook where I found it. </p>
<p>Let me tell you, Dave wasn’t very happy when I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable putting several thousand dollars down on something I most definitely didn’t understand, and honestly had no real intention of buying an hour and a half before. Being a good sales person, he did what good sales people are apt to do when a mark starts to shake the line, he went to speak to his manager to get me a “lower price.” </p>
<p>From where you’re sitting it might not seem like escaping this situation would be all that hard. That’s why thousands of people buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crap every year. They underestimate the fact that human beings aren’t rational and that we make decisions, even big decision based on factors well beyond logic. Let me tell you right this second, this <em>was</em> hard, incredibly hard and I was hating every second of it. </p>
<p>Remember that Dave had spent nearly two hours making me like him, he poured his heart and soul into subverting my mind and wallet and now I’m telling him it was all for nothing. I felt like a heel. Once the manager arrived, it got worse, now there were two people staring me in the face telling me that if I didn’t buy today I would never get this opportunity again. Dave looked like a puppy I’d just kicked and the manager basically said that if I wasn’t willing to buy today it must mean that I was broke. Ego and pity were screaming at me to “just buy something small to make them stop” and all the while they kept piling on the “extra special” benefits. </p>
<p>Eventually I did manage to say no. Mostly because they had the bad luck of showing me a financing rate of 17.6% which seemed so ludicrous that it broke the spell they had spent such a long time weaving. Dave left me with a friendly handshake and a smile, the manager left grumbling about another deadbeat, I left feeling some odd mixture of triumph for sticking to my guns and mild depression for “wasting their time.”</p>
<p>That last feeling, that trace of depression is what a good sales pitch is all about. Even though I knew all the tricks that they were throwing at me, they had still managed to alter the way that I perceived the situation so completely that I actually felt bad about telling them no. Two hours of subtle manipulation had transformed me from a strong, capable uber-consumer to a shaky mass of self-loathing that really just wanted to get away from the entire thing. </p>
<p>I had managed to survive but just barely, and seeing as it was Vegas I would have put an even money bet down that given another shot in a slightly different situation they may have just had their sale. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a <em>Major Hotel Chain</em>. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do want to offer you something to show they care. In front of me was a friendly looking man in a Hawaiian shirt, grinning from ear to ear and rattling off the wonders of timeshare ownership. I’d slept 5 hours in the last two days, and while my eyes said I was listening intently to the benefits of this “no lose” offer, a part of me was wondering how I had ended up here.</p>
<p>I had signed up for it, of course. </p>
<p>I had signed up knowing full well exactly what I was getting into. You see, even a “free” hotel room in Las Vegas comes with a price. That price is two hours of your life, sitting in a boiler room with two dozen beaming sales people trying their best to separate you from tens of thousands of dollars of your hard earned money. It works a lot like the Casinos right down the street, but here you have slightly better odds. </p>
<p>Why would I endure something like this when I could have just as easily gotten a nearly free room almost anywhere on the Strip? Why, because I love it gosh darn it! As a <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">marketer and media guy</a>, sitting through high pressure sales pitches gives me a golden opportunity to understand how the other side lives. They also give me a chance to see what strategies work even when you know exactly what they are trying to do. </p>
<p>For the rest of the story, I’ll call the agent I sat with Dave. The first thing you’d notice about Dave if you were sitting in my seat is that he was trying really, really hard to be a human being. <strong>People buy things from people, not from pitches</strong> and Dave knew this intuitively. He asked questions, took notes, made me feel like I was just having a regular conversation with an old friend. This conversation just happened to be about real estate, but when I guy is telling you about his kids and his college you tend to forget little details like that. </p>
<p>At this point in the game the pressure is pretty lax, what they are trying to do is <strong>establish your level of resistance</strong>. This is where lots of people who end up buying candy-apple red Corvettes go wrong, they assume that if they are outwardly hostile the sales guy will back away. <strong>Good sales people expect hostility</strong>, and the more resistance you show, the more effort they put into breaking it down. You may think you’re being really clever, but understand they’ve been at this a while and most of them are really good at what they do. </p>
<p>I took a different approach. I listened, I payed attention, I allowed the pitch to follow the rhythm that Dave had set down. I learned about how much I really loved vacation travel, and how exciting it would be to be able to go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. I learned about all of the far away places I could visit and all the benefits they were willing to heap on me because I was so special. I learned about how the points of resistance I had established early on really didn’t matter because Major Hotel Chain had done decades of research to make sure they had solutions. I even learned a brief history of Major Hotel Chain’s founders and how they were really stand up guys who wanted very little more than to make me happy.</p>
<p>I listened, I smiled, I nodded and I asked questions. I showed as little outwards resistance as I could muster. </p>
<p>A sales pitch, you see, is like Aikido. The more you resist, the more times you’re going to get slammed against the ground. Dave was an artist at this kind of sale, deflecting and redirecting every one of my questions with a fluidity that was almost magic. Even with my guard up, by mid-way through his pitch he had managed to systematically dismantle each and every one of the things I’d stated early on would keep me from buying. By the time he was taking me on a tour, I was truly considering whether or not owning a little piece of Major Hotel Chain was such a bad idea after all. </p>
<p>What saved me from an expensive and hilarious mistake was when we returned to the boiler room and we passed into the third part of the sale, which I like to call <strong>informational diarrhea</strong>. Most people think they are pretty good with numbers and that they have a pretty good memory. Both of these assertions are wrong. Psychologists have proven time and time again that we are basically innumerate and that we can only hold about 7 items in our short term memory at any given time. Good sales people exploit this by throwing benefits out at you faster than your brain can process them. They explain one package while showing you the price of another. They start doing back of the envelope math to show how you’re really paying less than you think. They show you charts and graphs that seem to prove inequivocably that whatever it is that you’re buying (by this point you have no clue) they must be insane for offering it at this price. What you might also notice is that this is the very first time they show you the price at all, and oddly enough it’s slightly lower than you expected it to be. </p>
<p>Fortunately, long ago I realized that I am no less stupid than the rest of society and after hearing about 15 minutes of numbers that I could barely keep up with, I decided that even if I had wanted to buy something, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on so it might be better if I kept my checkbook where I found it. </p>
<p>Let me tell you, Dave wasn’t very happy when I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable putting several thousand dollars down on something I most definitely didn’t understand, and honestly had no real intention of buying an hour and a half before. Being a good sales person, he did what good sales people are apt to do when a mark starts to shake the line, he went to speak to his manager to get me a “lower price.” </p>
<p>From where you’re sitting it might not seem like escaping this situation would be all that hard. That’s why thousands of people buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crap every year. They underestimate the fact that human beings aren’t rational and that we make decisions, even big decision based on factors well beyond logic. Let me tell you right this second, this <em>was</em> hard, incredibly hard and I was hating every second of it. </p>
<p>Remember that Dave had spent nearly two hours making me like him, he poured his heart and soul into subverting my mind and wallet and now I’m telling him it was all for nothing. I felt like a heel. Once the manager arrived, it got worse, now there were two people staring me in the face telling me that if I didn’t buy today I would never get this opportunity again. Dave looked like a puppy I’d just kicked and the manager basically said that if I wasn’t willing to buy today it must mean that I was broke. Ego and pity were screaming at me to “just buy something small to make them stop” and all the while they kept piling on the “extra special” benefits. </p>
<p>Eventually I did manage to say no. Mostly because they had the bad luck of showing me a financing rate of 17.6% which seemed so ludicrous that it broke the spell they had spent such a long time weaving. Dave left me with a friendly handshake and a smile, the manager left grumbling about another deadbeat, I left feeling some odd mixture of triumph for sticking to my guns and mild depression for “wasting their time.”</p>
<p>That last feeling, that trace of depression is what a good sales pitch is all about. Even though I knew all the tricks that they were throwing at me, they had still managed to alter the way that I perceived the situation so completely that I actually felt bad about telling them no. Two hours of subtle manipulation had transformed me from a strong, capable uber-consumer to a shaky mass of self-loathing that really just wanted to get away from the entire thing. </p>
<p>I had managed to survive but just barely, and seeing as it was Vegas I would have put an even money bet down that given another shot in a slightly different situation they may have just had their sale. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[2]=>
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["title"]=>
string(30) "Anatomy Of A Failed Consultant"
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string(31) "Mon, 02 May 2011 17:33:57 +0000"
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string(283) "Other than writing pithy blog posts and tweeting, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is consult. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. [...]"
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string(4959) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/snakeoil.jpg" alt="Snake Oil" title="snakeoil" width="240" height="180" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6632" align="left" /></p>
<p>Other than writing pithy blog posts and <a href="http://twitter.com/sbspalding">tweeting</a>, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">consult</a>. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. The following is yet another part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> series, this time dedicated to shedding a little light on how consultants can fail. At one time or another I’ve done (or seen) most of these things, which is why it gives me such great joy to shine a spotlight on them. </p>
<p>Without further ado, you know you have a bad consultant when: </p>
<p>1. He absolutely, positively cannot say no to a client request, especially the most mind-numbingly outrageous ones. </p>
<p>2. He believes that pleasing the client is far more important than doing whatever it is that client hired him for. </p>
<p>3. He is convinced that freelance work is a volume business, so he competes on price to the exclusion of everything else.</p>
<p>4. He thinks that working very, very hard for insane hours is roughly equivalent to doing a good job. </p>
<p>5. He is willing to sell any service that the client is willing to buy, even if everything he knows about that service was derived from a blog post he read one time. </p>
<p>6. He doesn’t understand that many of his client’s problems are as much about internal politics as they are about business process. </p>
<p>7. He doesn’t really understand his clients much at all. </p>
<p>8. He generates piles and piles of dense documentation in an effort to appear to be working. </p>
<p>9. He makes certain that these documents are utterly incomprehensible and unlikely to be read by anyone past the executive summary. </p>
<p>10. He’s kind of unwilling to charge what he’s worth. </p>
<p>11. He’s mostly unwilling to set boundaries. </p>
<p>12. He’s totally unwilling to make certain that these boundaries align with what he’s charging, and thus spends most of his time feeling burnt out and abused. </p>
<p>13. He’ll never critically analyze why he feels this way, and will instead blame his clients.</p>
<p>14. He thinks it’s a badge of honor that he has never taken a vacation. </p>
<p>15. He thinks that all the perspective he needs can be found in his feed reader. </p>
<p>16. He’s convinced that you can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week without the slightest drop in efficiency. </p>
<p>17. He feels that if the facts are on his side he shouldn’t need to be able to communicate them, that it’s not his fault if the client is blind to the “truth.” </p>
<p>18. He doesn’t understand that clients are human beings with fears and hopes and biases that are often completely external to business and always color what they do. </p>
<p>19. When he absolutely must communicate he laces his speech with so much jargon that most people wish he’d just kept sending those reports. </p>
<p>20. He walks into every meeting convinced that knows the right answer, and spends most of the rest of his time wondering when it will be his turn to speak. </p>
<p>21. When his mouth opens his ears close.</p>
<p>22. His mouth opens far too often. </p>
<p>23. His conversations can be described by the following proportion: 45% jargon, 35% ego-stroking, 10% lies and 10% marginally useful trivia. </p>
<p>24. He treats his clients like they were very little more than signatures on the bottom of his paycheck. </p>
<p>25. He ignores any and all evidence that a solution he provided might be incorrect. </p>
<p>26. He considers anyone who changes his mind to be an utter failure.</p>
<p>27. Almost as big a failure as anyone who says, “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>28. He is deeply and philosophically opposed to failure. </p>
<p>29. He makes a habit of undermining every other member of staff for no reason greater than the fact that he can. </p>
<p>30. All of his best ideas are marked most notably by the fact that they are utterly impossible to implement. </p>
<p>31. He doesn’t believe that budget and manpower should be a concern, unless it’s <em>his</em> budget and <em>his</em> manpower. </p>
<p>32. He gets unnecessarily defensive when anyone questions one of his ideas. </p>
<p>33. He gets downright hostile when anyone points out one of his faults.</p>
<p>As a result he thinks I’m a big, fat jerk for writing this and considers everything in it to be a mindless assault. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(283) "Other than writing pithy blog posts and tweeting, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is consult. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. [...]"
["atom_content"]=>
string(4959) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/snakeoil.jpg" alt="Snake Oil" title="snakeoil" width="240" height="180" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6632" align="left" /></p>
<p>Other than writing pithy blog posts and <a href="http://twitter.com/sbspalding">tweeting</a>, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">consult</a>. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. The following is yet another part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> series, this time dedicated to shedding a little light on how consultants can fail. At one time or another I’ve done (or seen) most of these things, which is why it gives me such great joy to shine a spotlight on them. </p>
<p>Without further ado, you know you have a bad consultant when: </p>
<p>1. He absolutely, positively cannot say no to a client request, especially the most mind-numbingly outrageous ones. </p>
<p>2. He believes that pleasing the client is far more important than doing whatever it is that client hired him for. </p>
<p>3. He is convinced that freelance work is a volume business, so he competes on price to the exclusion of everything else.</p>
<p>4. He thinks that working very, very hard for insane hours is roughly equivalent to doing a good job. </p>
<p>5. He is willing to sell any service that the client is willing to buy, even if everything he knows about that service was derived from a blog post he read one time. </p>
<p>6. He doesn’t understand that many of his client’s problems are as much about internal politics as they are about business process. </p>
<p>7. He doesn’t really understand his clients much at all. </p>
<p>8. He generates piles and piles of dense documentation in an effort to appear to be working. </p>
<p>9. He makes certain that these documents are utterly incomprehensible and unlikely to be read by anyone past the executive summary. </p>
<p>10. He’s kind of unwilling to charge what he’s worth. </p>
<p>11. He’s mostly unwilling to set boundaries. </p>
<p>12. He’s totally unwilling to make certain that these boundaries align with what he’s charging, and thus spends most of his time feeling burnt out and abused. </p>
<p>13. He’ll never critically analyze why he feels this way, and will instead blame his clients.</p>
<p>14. He thinks it’s a badge of honor that he has never taken a vacation. </p>
<p>15. He thinks that all the perspective he needs can be found in his feed reader. </p>
<p>16. He’s convinced that you can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week without the slightest drop in efficiency. </p>
<p>17. He feels that if the facts are on his side he shouldn’t need to be able to communicate them, that it’s not his fault if the client is blind to the “truth.” </p>
<p>18. He doesn’t understand that clients are human beings with fears and hopes and biases that are often completely external to business and always color what they do. </p>
<p>19. When he absolutely must communicate he laces his speech with so much jargon that most people wish he’d just kept sending those reports. </p>
<p>20. He walks into every meeting convinced that knows the right answer, and spends most of the rest of his time wondering when it will be his turn to speak. </p>
<p>21. When his mouth opens his ears close.</p>
<p>22. His mouth opens far too often. </p>
<p>23. His conversations can be described by the following proportion: 45% jargon, 35% ego-stroking, 10% lies and 10% marginally useful trivia. </p>
<p>24. He treats his clients like they were very little more than signatures on the bottom of his paycheck. </p>
<p>25. He ignores any and all evidence that a solution he provided might be incorrect. </p>
<p>26. He considers anyone who changes his mind to be an utter failure.</p>
<p>27. Almost as big a failure as anyone who says, “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>28. He is deeply and philosophically opposed to failure. </p>
<p>29. He makes a habit of undermining every other member of staff for no reason greater than the fact that he can. </p>
<p>30. All of his best ideas are marked most notably by the fact that they are utterly impossible to implement. </p>
<p>31. He doesn’t believe that budget and manpower should be a concern, unless it’s <em>his</em> budget and <em>his</em> manpower. </p>
<p>32. He gets unnecessarily defensive when anyone questions one of his ideas. </p>
<p>33. He gets downright hostile when anyone points out one of his faults.</p>
<p>As a result he thinks I’m a big, fat jerk for writing this and considers everything in it to be a mindless assault. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[3]=>
array(13) {
["title"]=>
string(30) "A Critique of Small Businesses"
["link"]=>
string(64) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/a-critique-of-small-businesses/"
["comments"]=>
string(73) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/a-critique-of-small-businesses/#comments"
["pubdate"]=>
string(31) "Sun, 01 May 2011 19:03:16 +0000"
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["description"]=>
string(356) "As a part of Living in the 21st Century I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and [...]"
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string(4697) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/christmas-tree-sign.jpg" alt="" title="christmas tree sign" width="240" height="169" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6627" align="left" /></p>
<p>As a part of <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and runs into all the issues inherent in that task. The following are a few truths I’ve learned while <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working</a> with them. </p>
<p>1. You have big dreams, which is a very good thing.</p>
<p>2. You want those dreams to come true all at the same time, which is a very bad thing. </p>
<p>3. You need to be more willing to take chances, take risks and execute on plans.</p>
<p>4. Moreover, you need to be a lot more willing to show yourself off to the public, even when you know that your product still needs work. </p>
<p>5. In fact, just stop inventing reasons not to launch, there is nothing new under the Sun and all of your problems have been seen a thousand times before. </p>
<p>6. Narrow your scope, everything can be done but not everything can be done at the same time.</p>
<p>7. Set priorities and not just the fake ones that last until the end of the “product road mapping” meeting. </p>
<p>8. Stick to your guns, your pristine list of priorities has no value if every new whim manages to wiggle its way to the top.</p>
<p>9. Pick a market, trying to be everything for everyone is roughly equivalent to be nothing for no one. </p>
<p>10. Pick something to do really well, whether it’s service or features or a funny cartoon mascot of a Badger, find one thing that you can be good at and devote your energy to being <em>really</em> good at it. </p>
<p>11. Ignore most of the rest, once you know what you do well do that and let the rest fall into place in its own time. </p>
<p>12. Make better use of your money, most of your problems early on will involve it.</p>
<p>13. Making better use of your money often means pretending that you have less of it, especially when things are going well. </p>
<p>14. More specifically, save when you’re ahead so that you can spend when you’re behind and understand that almost all markets work in cycles and that the most debilitating problem you can face is to be under-prepared for when that cycle turns. </p>
<p>15. You have no idea what your customer really wants, the faster you understand this fact the better off you’ll be.</p>
<p>16. Knowing this, be willing to show your customers your product and see what they do with it, then get over your ego and change your offering to meet your customer’s needs. </p>
<p>17. Meet less and for better reasons — there is almost nothing that a 6 hour long meeting can accomplish that could not happen in 1/3rd that time if everyone stayed on track. </p>
<p>18. Talk more and for less formal reasons — continuous dialogue between members of the team is what will grow the business, don’t be afraid to say your ideas out loud, write them down and prioritize them as appropriate. </p>
<p>19. Write everything down, a useless notation today could be a key insight tomorrow. </p>
<p>20. Stop reinventing the wheel, the wheel exists for a reason and that reason is that it often works. </p>
<p>21. Focus on making one small change at a time, the first step to changing the world is changing the light bulb. </p>
<p>22. Realize that all evolution involves these tiny steps and become more comfortable with the boring, everyday improvements that lead to the major shifts.</p>
<p>23. Be less concerned with everyone elses definition of success, keeping up with the Joneses is not a growth strategy.</p>
<p>24. Be more concerned with accomplishing goals, and with setting goals that you have the talent and tenacity to accomplish. </p>
<p>25. Understand when a goal just can’t be accomplished right now, and be willing to set it aside for the greater good. </p>
<p>26. Be willing to say no to otherwise good ideas that just don’t fit into the way that your business operates. </p>
<p>27. Realize that the business you have in five years will be entirely different than that the business you have today, take joy in that fact and work everyday to stay alive long enough to see what it looks like. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sis/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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string(356) "As a part of Living in the 21st Century I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and [...]"
["atom_content"]=>
string(4697) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/christmas-tree-sign.jpg" alt="" title="christmas tree sign" width="240" height="169" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6627" align="left" /></p>
<p>As a part of <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and runs into all the issues inherent in that task. The following are a few truths I’ve learned while <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working</a> with them. </p>
<p>1. You have big dreams, which is a very good thing.</p>
<p>2. You want those dreams to come true all at the same time, which is a very bad thing. </p>
<p>3. You need to be more willing to take chances, take risks and execute on plans.</p>
<p>4. Moreover, you need to be a lot more willing to show yourself off to the public, even when you know that your product still needs work. </p>
<p>5. In fact, just stop inventing reasons not to launch, there is nothing new under the Sun and all of your problems have been seen a thousand times before. </p>
<p>6. Narrow your scope, everything can be done but not everything can be done at the same time.</p>
<p>7. Set priorities and not just the fake ones that last until the end of the “product road mapping” meeting. </p>
<p>8. Stick to your guns, your pristine list of priorities has no value if every new whim manages to wiggle its way to the top.</p>
<p>9. Pick a market, trying to be everything for everyone is roughly equivalent to be nothing for no one. </p>
<p>10. Pick something to do really well, whether it’s service or features or a funny cartoon mascot of a Badger, find one thing that you can be good at and devote your energy to being <em>really</em> good at it. </p>
<p>11. Ignore most of the rest, once you know what you do well do that and let the rest fall into place in its own time. </p>
<p>12. Make better use of your money, most of your problems early on will involve it.</p>
<p>13. Making better use of your money often means pretending that you have less of it, especially when things are going well. </p>
<p>14. More specifically, save when you’re ahead so that you can spend when you’re behind and understand that almost all markets work in cycles and that the most debilitating problem you can face is to be under-prepared for when that cycle turns. </p>
<p>15. You have no idea what your customer really wants, the faster you understand this fact the better off you’ll be.</p>
<p>16. Knowing this, be willing to show your customers your product and see what they do with it, then get over your ego and change your offering to meet your customer’s needs. </p>
<p>17. Meet less and for better reasons — there is almost nothing that a 6 hour long meeting can accomplish that could not happen in 1/3rd that time if everyone stayed on track. </p>
<p>18. Talk more and for less formal reasons — continuous dialogue between members of the team is what will grow the business, don’t be afraid to say your ideas out loud, write them down and prioritize them as appropriate. </p>
<p>19. Write everything down, a useless notation today could be a key insight tomorrow. </p>
<p>20. Stop reinventing the wheel, the wheel exists for a reason and that reason is that it often works. </p>
<p>21. Focus on making one small change at a time, the first step to changing the world is changing the light bulb. </p>
<p>22. Realize that all evolution involves these tiny steps and become more comfortable with the boring, everyday improvements that lead to the major shifts.</p>
<p>23. Be less concerned with everyone elses definition of success, keeping up with the Joneses is not a growth strategy.</p>
<p>24. Be more concerned with accomplishing goals, and with setting goals that you have the talent and tenacity to accomplish. </p>
<p>25. Understand when a goal just can’t be accomplished right now, and be willing to set it aside for the greater good. </p>
<p>26. Be willing to say no to otherwise good ideas that just don’t fit into the way that your business operates. </p>
<p>27. Realize that the business you have in five years will be entirely different than that the business you have today, take joy in that fact and work everyday to stay alive long enough to see what it looks like. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sis/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[4]=>
array(13) {
["title"]=>
string(31) "Deconstructing Large Businesses"
["link"]=>
string(65) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/deconstructing-large-businesses/"
["comments"]=>
string(74) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/deconstructing-large-businesses/#comments"
["pubdate"]=>
string(31) "Thu, 28 Apr 2011 06:51:09 +0000"
["dc"]=>
array(1) {
["creator"]=>
string(14) "Steve Spalding"
}
["category"]=>
string(8) "Featured"
["guid"]=>
string(35) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/?p=6607"
["description"]=>
string(329) "As a part of my Living In The 21st Century series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from working inside and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes [...]"
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string(6418) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/buildingconstruction.jpg" alt="Office Construction" title="buildingconstruction" width="240" height="188" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6616" align="left" /></p>
<p>As a part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living In The 21st Century</a> series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working inside</a> and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes them. As always, this manifesto is not exhaustive but it is certainly comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. Most of your problems are political. </p>
<p>2. Those problems that aren’t purely political are exasperated by politics.</p>
<p>3. Any problem that is completely non-political can usually be solved in an afternoon over a cup of coffee. </p>
<p>4. Most of the information you need to improve your business processes already exists within your organization, what’s missing is a willingness to listen to those who have it. </p>
<p>5. Those who have it are often too far down the chain of command to really matter. </p>
<p>6. You care a little too much about your chain of command. </p>
<p>7. You’re starting to rely too heavily on outside Agencies that you neither fully understand nor fully hold accountable. </p>
<p>8. You make the assumption that when these Agencies generate reams of paper and complex reports for you, this is equivalent to doing real work. </p>
<p>9. No one actually reads or analyzes these reports. </p>
<p>10. Nor are you certain what the “real work” you’re trying to get out of them actually looks like.</p>
<p>11. But that’s OK because even if you could get them to give you useful suggestions, your organization lacks the internal expertise to effectively implement them. </p>
<p>12. You move much too slowly. </p>
<p>13. You believe that moving slowly is a virtue. </p>
<p>14. You’re incorrect. </p>
<p>15. Technological expertise is not spread evenly throughout your organization.</p>
<p>16. This lack of knowledge leads inevitably to bad, inefficient decision making — especially around those parts of your business that will drive your growth going forward. </p>
<p>17. You want to change this but the very people who must buy in are the least likely to have the depth of knowledge needed to do so. </p>
<p>18. You too often confuse bad implementation for a bad project.</p>
<p>19. Too many good projects are ended prematurely because of this assumption. </p>
<p>20. You too often confuse bad projects (especially those involving expensive, gimmicky new technologies) for bad implementation.</p>
<p>21. Far too much money is on useless, silly campaigns as a result. </p>
<p>22. You get trapped in thinking that all of your customers think the same way today as they did twenty years ago, and you’re not willing to change your product offerings to adapt to new consumer demands. </p>
<p>23. When you do change, these changes come only after you’ve already burned more than your share of time and money hoping that your customers will start thinking the way that your marketing strategy documents say that they do. </p>
<p>24. You spend $10 for every $1 a smaller organization could spend to get the same result. </p>
<p>25. This is as much an expertise problem as it is the result of the inefficiencies of running a large organization. </p>
<p>26. The real problem is that this fact doesn’t concern you in the least. </p>
<p>27. In general, it’s really hard for you to look critically at yourself, your processes and what you can do to improve them. </p>
<p>28. It’s far too easy for you to be self-aggrandizing, myopic, and willing to distribute blame for any problem so widely that it disappears into the vacuum of diffused responsibility. </p>
<p><em>Sadly, most everyone in your organization, at one level or another, knows all of this.</em> </p>
<p>29. What you need to remember is that the biggest virtue of a large business is the ability to scale development, share expertise and widen the net of distribution. </p>
<p>30. You need to start trusting more links in your chain of command, modern business demands that you gather this expertise from throughout your organization, not just from upper management. </p>
<p>31. You need to be nimble and adaptable, change happens too quickly to be bound up by bureaucracy which no longer provides value.</p>
<p>32. You need to be willing to audit where bureaucracy is still helpful and where it is holding you back. </p>
<p>33. You need to look long and hard at organizational ego, there is a fine line between believing in what you do and getting punch drunk on the corporate Kool Aid. </p>
<p>34. You need to cultivate internal expertise, while <em>everything</em> can be outsourced, not everything should be.</p>
<p>35. When you bring in outside help, you need to be certain that you have the internal expertise to hold them accountable and the insight to know when that expertise is not available.</p>
<p>36. Everyone in the organization needs some understanding of the technological trends driving your business forward, it’s never OK for decision makers to be blind to these.</p>
<p>37. When this kind of information sharing is not possible, smaller work groups need to be given the autonomy and power to act, not just the mandate to make suggestions. </p>
<p>38. You need to be willing to think like a small business, search for inefficiencies, and keep an eye on where you might be spending $1 to get $.50 back. </p>
<p>39. You need to step back from cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions and develop more nuance.</p>
<p>40. You need to realize that even in a large organization, with its variety of often conflicting motivations and incentives, at some basic level you are all working towards the same goal and that getting trapped in the politics of personal ego hurts everyone.</p>
<p>You need to realize <em>all</em> of this. Happily, at one level or another, everyone already does — now it’s only a question of gathering the power and establishing the processes to get it done. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seier/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(329) "As a part of my Living In The 21st Century series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from working inside and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes [...]"
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<p>As a part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living In The 21st Century</a> series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working inside</a> and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes them. As always, this manifesto is not exhaustive but it is certainly comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. Most of your problems are political. </p>
<p>2. Those problems that aren’t purely political are exasperated by politics.</p>
<p>3. Any problem that is completely non-political can usually be solved in an afternoon over a cup of coffee. </p>
<p>4. Most of the information you need to improve your business processes already exists within your organization, what’s missing is a willingness to listen to those who have it. </p>
<p>5. Those who have it are often too far down the chain of command to really matter. </p>
<p>6. You care a little too much about your chain of command. </p>
<p>7. You’re starting to rely too heavily on outside Agencies that you neither fully understand nor fully hold accountable. </p>
<p>8. You make the assumption that when these Agencies generate reams of paper and complex reports for you, this is equivalent to doing real work. </p>
<p>9. No one actually reads or analyzes these reports. </p>
<p>10. Nor are you certain what the “real work” you’re trying to get out of them actually looks like.</p>
<p>11. But that’s OK because even if you could get them to give you useful suggestions, your organization lacks the internal expertise to effectively implement them. </p>
<p>12. You move much too slowly. </p>
<p>13. You believe that moving slowly is a virtue. </p>
<p>14. You’re incorrect. </p>
<p>15. Technological expertise is not spread evenly throughout your organization.</p>
<p>16. This lack of knowledge leads inevitably to bad, inefficient decision making — especially around those parts of your business that will drive your growth going forward. </p>
<p>17. You want to change this but the very people who must buy in are the least likely to have the depth of knowledge needed to do so. </p>
<p>18. You too often confuse bad implementation for a bad project.</p>
<p>19. Too many good projects are ended prematurely because of this assumption. </p>
<p>20. You too often confuse bad projects (especially those involving expensive, gimmicky new technologies) for bad implementation.</p>
<p>21. Far too much money is on useless, silly campaigns as a result. </p>
<p>22. You get trapped in thinking that all of your customers think the same way today as they did twenty years ago, and you’re not willing to change your product offerings to adapt to new consumer demands. </p>
<p>23. When you do change, these changes come only after you’ve already burned more than your share of time and money hoping that your customers will start thinking the way that your marketing strategy documents say that they do. </p>
<p>24. You spend $10 for every $1 a smaller organization could spend to get the same result. </p>
<p>25. This is as much an expertise problem as it is the result of the inefficiencies of running a large organization. </p>
<p>26. The real problem is that this fact doesn’t concern you in the least. </p>
<p>27. In general, it’s really hard for you to look critically at yourself, your processes and what you can do to improve them. </p>
<p>28. It’s far too easy for you to be self-aggrandizing, myopic, and willing to distribute blame for any problem so widely that it disappears into the vacuum of diffused responsibility. </p>
<p><em>Sadly, most everyone in your organization, at one level or another, knows all of this.</em> </p>
<p>29. What you need to remember is that the biggest virtue of a large business is the ability to scale development, share expertise and widen the net of distribution. </p>
<p>30. You need to start trusting more links in your chain of command, modern business demands that you gather this expertise from throughout your organization, not just from upper management. </p>
<p>31. You need to be nimble and adaptable, change happens too quickly to be bound up by bureaucracy which no longer provides value.</p>
<p>32. You need to be willing to audit where bureaucracy is still helpful and where it is holding you back. </p>
<p>33. You need to look long and hard at organizational ego, there is a fine line between believing in what you do and getting punch drunk on the corporate Kool Aid. </p>
<p>34. You need to cultivate internal expertise, while <em>everything</em> can be outsourced, not everything should be.</p>
<p>35. When you bring in outside help, you need to be certain that you have the internal expertise to hold them accountable and the insight to know when that expertise is not available.</p>
<p>36. Everyone in the organization needs some understanding of the technological trends driving your business forward, it’s never OK for decision makers to be blind to these.</p>
<p>37. When this kind of information sharing is not possible, smaller work groups need to be given the autonomy and power to act, not just the mandate to make suggestions. </p>
<p>38. You need to be willing to think like a small business, search for inefficiencies, and keep an eye on where you might be spending $1 to get $.50 back. </p>
<p>39. You need to step back from cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions and develop more nuance.</p>
<p>40. You need to realize that even in a large organization, with its variety of often conflicting motivations and incentives, at some basic level you are all working towards the same goal and that getting trapped in the politics of personal ego hurts everyone.</p>
<p>You need to realize <em>all</em> of this. Happily, at one level or another, everyone already does — now it’s only a question of gathering the power and establishing the processes to get it done. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seier/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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string(13) "I Think I Can"
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string(351) "Today the artist, writer and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts Ophelia Chong shares with us another story of living with technology. The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to [...]"
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<p><em>Today the artist, <a href="http://www.kcet.org/socal/voices/404-city/">writer</a> and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts <a href="http://www.opheliachong.org/">Ophelia Chong</a> shares with us another story of living with technology.</em></p>
<p>The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to the bluetooth, The Kindle connected to the 3G.</p>
<p>Oh Mercy how they Scare!</p>
<p>I try to control the ambient noises around me while I work, the television set on the 562nd rerun of Law and Order, the occasional dog bark, the flutter of paper falling out of the printer; its all white noise. Except the unexpected sounds of information coming in. Pings. Pings for Skype, Seesmic, Twitter, iChat and email. I am like Pavlov’s dog, each Ping stirs my interest and I start salivating about the next<br />
Gilt special sale on gold lame platform running shoes. </p>
<p>If you are like me, you have your cell phone on your desk. I bought a Droid, even though I am a life long Apple fanatic, I left the Apple Garden and went with a Droid (also Verizon was not carrying iPhones at the time, so really I didn’t have much choice other than switching carriers). The Droid and I puttered along, the interface took a while getting used to and I was a bit envious of all the Apps my iPhone friends had. I mean they had HIPSTAMATIC! But the Droid/Verizon did have one plus over Apple. I got email on it 1 minute before I got it on my Apple powerbook. My Droid was always first to stick up its arm and say “Pick ME!!”</p>
<p>Is it Verizon vs. Time Warner, or Android vs. Apple? Most likely the network, but deep in my heart I believe its the little Droid saying to itself “I thought I could.”</p>
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string(351) "Today the artist, writer and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts Ophelia Chong shares with us another story of living with technology. The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to [...]"
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<p><em>Today the artist, <a href="http://www.kcet.org/socal/voices/404-city/">writer</a> and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts <a href="http://www.opheliachong.org/">Ophelia Chong</a> shares with us another story of living with technology.</em></p>
<p>The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to the bluetooth, The Kindle connected to the 3G.</p>
<p>Oh Mercy how they Scare!</p>
<p>I try to control the ambient noises around me while I work, the television set on the 562nd rerun of Law and Order, the occasional dog bark, the flutter of paper falling out of the printer; its all white noise. Except the unexpected sounds of information coming in. Pings. Pings for Skype, Seesmic, Twitter, iChat and email. I am like Pavlov’s dog, each Ping stirs my interest and I start salivating about the next<br />
Gilt special sale on gold lame platform running shoes. </p>
<p>If you are like me, you have your cell phone on your desk. I bought a Droid, even though I am a life long Apple fanatic, I left the Apple Garden and went with a Droid (also Verizon was not carrying iPhones at the time, so really I didn’t have much choice other than switching carriers). The Droid and I puttered along, the interface took a while getting used to and I was a bit envious of all the Apps my iPhone friends had. I mean they had HIPSTAMATIC! But the Droid/Verizon did have one plus over Apple. I got email on it 1 minute before I got it on my Apple powerbook. My Droid was always first to stick up its arm and say “Pick ME!!”</p>
<p>Is it Verizon vs. Time Warner, or Android vs. Apple? Most likely the network, but deep in my heart I believe its the little Droid saying to itself “I thought I could.”</p>
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string(305) "I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are [...]"
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<p>I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are 49 points that I believe make up the basis of this new system, while the list is by no means exhaustive I do believe that it is comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. For the first time in history we all have the tools to craft our own jobs and set the course of our own lives.</p>
<p>2. This does not imply that it is easy or right for everyone, different people have different paths to meaning. </p>
<p>3. All the meaning and happiness in our lives is wrapped up in doing something incredibly hard, for an incredibly long time that we can believe in right down to the core of our beings. </p>
<p>4. Our greatest failure in life is that we rarely take a moment to discover this belief — what makes us tick, what brings us meaning, the reason that we keep breathing. </p>
<p>5. There is this idea that working from 9-5, 5 days a week at a job you basically hate is the only rational path to meaning — the modern economy is proving this notion false. </p>
<p>6. The modern economy rewards those who understand that a career is an ideology, a point of view, not merely a daily grind designed to keep us in bread and beans. </p>
<p>7. The modern economy rewards those who can separate themselves from the sea of resumes by shining a light on the talents and expertise that distinguish them as individual human lives. </p>
<p>8. “Shining lights” and all that is not easy work, it requires self knowledge and a deep belief in your own value. </p>
<p>9. One of those values is that we’re all entrepreneurs, we can all be agents of change — big, small or otherwise. </p>
<p>10. Change does not necessarily mean changing the entire world, it can be just as meaningful to change your neighborhood or your household. </p>
<p>11. Most people have no idea what they’re good at and walk around blindly thinking they are boring and colorless, get over this lie and start nurturing your talents. </p>
<p>12. A job is what you <em>do</em> to pay the bills, a career is what you <em>live within</em> to improve your world, you take on one to work towards the other.</p>
<p>13. Until your career can pay your bills, it’s probably prudent not to give up your job. </p>
<p>14. Without goals however, the job will consume your life, establish goals and spend as much energy as you have available to work towards them. </p>
<p>15. If you’re not learning you’re dying, if you’re not adapting you’re being left behind, the world changes in a blink and so must you.</p>
<p>16. Be on the lookout for any technology that makes your life easier. </p>
<p>17. Be certain to ignore all technologies that don’t. </p>
<p>18. The best ideas have always been simple to explain, never get caught up in your own complexity. </p>
<p>19. Time is and has always been your currency, the thrust of life should be towards earning more of it and using what you earn more wisely. </p>
<p>20. To that end, automate everything that you can, that will leave room to concentrate on all of those things that you can’t. </p>
<p>21. Money should always be a tool and never and end in and of itself, spend it freely if it helps to grow your business your knowledge or your happiness. </p>
<p>22. The things that we do are always more memorable than the things that we have, understand that long term happiness is always drawn from experiences rather than possessions. </p>
<p>23. Your possessions should be shaped and determined by your life, your life should never be shaped and determined by your possessions. </p>
<p>24. Maintain a broad perspective on the world, learn what you can about as much as you can and bring that wisdom into everything you do. </p>
<p>25. Genius is combining two seemingly unlike things into a third in a unique way, genius requires perspective and punishes those who see the world through the mouth of a tunnel. </p>
<p>26. Never underestimate your capacity for error, being human means being irrational. </p>
<p>27. Everything, especially error and trauma has a lesson to teach, learn to treat failure as a tool rather than as a penalty. </p>
<p>28. Don’t let work consume you, a few hours of time off can grant more perspective than a few days in front of a desk. </p>
<p>29. Understand that the trappings of success are less important and less valuable to you than success itself, that the culture of fame and wealth is as much a trap as it is something to strive towards.</p>
<p>30. Never add unnecessary complexity to your life, complexity consumes times. </p>
<p>31. Never hire an employee when a contractor will do, never hire a contractor when an employee is necessary.</p>
<p>32. Your dreams of a fancy corner office with a huge wooden desk probably has little or nothing to do with the goals of your business, often we are better off giving up the former for the latter. </p>
<p>33. Learn how to build a website, put up a blog, design a mobile application, work within the context of the web — the Internet is here to stay and those skills will drive the future forward. </p>
<p>34. The only things that can’t be outsourced are clever thoughts and the brass to speak your mind. Cultivate your ability to communicate your thoughts and the courage to implement your ideas. </p>
<p>35. Accept advice willingly, seek it out — in the end you will ignore most of it, but you’ll change everything because of the rest.</p>
<p>36. Give something back to the world. </p>
<p>37. Develop an interest in the problems of others, make time for voices outside of your head. </p>
<p>38. Travel as often as you can, get some perspective on the world outside of your front door.</p>
<p>39. Learn another language, you never can tell where your next client will come from.</p>
<p>40. Nurture your relationships, your work should never become the sole driver of your life. </p>
<p>41. Save like you’re going to spend 20% of your life miserably unemployed. </p>
<p>42. Learn to invest what you save, never underestimate the power of compound interest. </p>
<p>43. That being said, an iron clad law of investing is that the more complex your strategy the more likely you will end up spectacularly poor because of it. </p>
<p>44. Never take on debt you don’t need, but understand when debt can acutally serve a need. </p>
<p>45. Like money, ideas are wealth and should be saved as you would anything else, write all of them down and store them away for a rainy day. </p>
<p>46. Build those ideas that you are capable of producing well, develop a sense of your strengths and your weaknesses, and have the courage not to get wrapped up in one to the exclusion of the other.</p>
<p>47. Ideas are your fuel and fertilizer, believe in them, embrace them and challenge them. </p>
<p>48. Challenge your perspective constantly, always assume that you are wrong and strive towards becoming more right. </p>
<p>49. In the end, be the sort of person that someone can believe in, that you can believe in, that whatever small part of the world that you care about can believe in. </p>
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<p>I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are 49 points that I believe make up the basis of this new system, while the list is by no means exhaustive I do believe that it is comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. For the first time in history we all have the tools to craft our own jobs and set the course of our own lives.</p>
<p>2. This does not imply that it is easy or right for everyone, different people have different paths to meaning. </p>
<p>3. All the meaning and happiness in our lives is wrapped up in doing something incredibly hard, for an incredibly long time that we can believe in right down to the core of our beings. </p>
<p>4. Our greatest failure in life is that we rarely take a moment to discover this belief — what makes us tick, what brings us meaning, the reason that we keep breathing. </p>
<p>5. There is this idea that working from 9-5, 5 days a week at a job you basically hate is the only rational path to meaning — the modern economy is proving this notion false. </p>
<p>6. The modern economy rewards those who understand that a career is an ideology, a point of view, not merely a daily grind designed to keep us in bread and beans. </p>
<p>7. The modern economy rewards those who can separate themselves from the sea of resumes by shining a light on the talents and expertise that distinguish them as individual human lives. </p>
<p>8. “Shining lights” and all that is not easy work, it requires self knowledge and a deep belief in your own value. </p>
<p>9. One of those values is that we’re all entrepreneurs, we can all be agents of change — big, small or otherwise. </p>
<p>10. Change does not necessarily mean changing the entire world, it can be just as meaningful to change your neighborhood or your household. </p>
<p>11. Most people have no idea what they’re good at and walk around blindly thinking they are boring and colorless, get over this lie and start nurturing your talents. </p>
<p>12. A job is what you <em>do</em> to pay the bills, a career is what you <em>live within</em> to improve your world, you take on one to work towards the other.</p>
<p>13. Until your career can pay your bills, it’s probably prudent not to give up your job. </p>
<p>14. Without goals however, the job will consume your life, establish goals and spend as much energy as you have available to work towards them. </p>
<p>15. If you’re not learning you’re dying, if you’re not adapting you’re being left behind, the world changes in a blink and so must you.</p>
<p>16. Be on the lookout for any technology that makes your life easier. </p>
<p>17. Be certain to ignore all technologies that don’t. </p>
<p>18. The best ideas have always been simple to explain, never get caught up in your own complexity. </p>
<p>19. Time is and has always been your currency, the thrust of life should be towards earning more of it and using what you earn more wisely. </p>
<p>20. To that end, automate everything that you can, that will leave room to concentrate on all of those things that you can’t. </p>
<p>21. Money should always be a tool and never and end in and of itself, spend it freely if it helps to grow your business your knowledge or your happiness. </p>
<p>22. The things that we do are always more memorable than the things that we have, understand that long term happiness is always drawn from experiences rather than possessions. </p>
<p>23. Your possessions should be shaped and determined by your life, your life should never be shaped and determined by your possessions. </p>
<p>24. Maintain a broad perspective on the world, learn what you can about as much as you can and bring that wisdom into everything you do. </p>
<p>25. Genius is combining two seemingly unlike things into a third in a unique way, genius requires perspective and punishes those who see the world through the mouth of a tunnel. </p>
<p>26. Never underestimate your capacity for error, being human means being irrational. </p>
<p>27. Everything, especially error and trauma has a lesson to teach, learn to treat failure as a tool rather than as a penalty. </p>
<p>28. Don’t let work consume you, a few hours of time off can grant more perspective than a few days in front of a desk. </p>
<p>29. Understand that the trappings of success are less important and less valuable to you than success itself, that the culture of fame and wealth is as much a trap as it is something to strive towards.</p>
<p>30. Never add unnecessary complexity to your life, complexity consumes times. </p>
<p>31. Never hire an employee when a contractor will do, never hire a contractor when an employee is necessary.</p>
<p>32. Your dreams of a fancy corner office with a huge wooden desk probably has little or nothing to do with the goals of your business, often we are better off giving up the former for the latter. </p>
<p>33. Learn how to build a website, put up a blog, design a mobile application, work within the context of the web — the Internet is here to stay and those skills will drive the future forward. </p>
<p>34. The only things that can’t be outsourced are clever thoughts and the brass to speak your mind. Cultivate your ability to communicate your thoughts and the courage to implement your ideas. </p>
<p>35. Accept advice willingly, seek it out — in the end you will ignore most of it, but you’ll change everything because of the rest.</p>
<p>36. Give something back to the world. </p>
<p>37. Develop an interest in the problems of others, make time for voices outside of your head. </p>
<p>38. Travel as often as you can, get some perspective on the world outside of your front door.</p>
<p>39. Learn another language, you never can tell where your next client will come from.</p>
<p>40. Nurture your relationships, your work should never become the sole driver of your life. </p>
<p>41. Save like you’re going to spend 20% of your life miserably unemployed. </p>
<p>42. Learn to invest what you save, never underestimate the power of compound interest. </p>
<p>43. That being said, an iron clad law of investing is that the more complex your strategy the more likely you will end up spectacularly poor because of it. </p>
<p>44. Never take on debt you don’t need, but understand when debt can acutally serve a need. </p>
<p>45. Like money, ideas are wealth and should be saved as you would anything else, write all of them down and store them away for a rainy day. </p>
<p>46. Build those ideas that you are capable of producing well, develop a sense of your strengths and your weaknesses, and have the courage not to get wrapped up in one to the exclusion of the other.</p>
<p>47. Ideas are your fuel and fertilizer, believe in them, embrace them and challenge them. </p>
<p>48. Challenge your perspective constantly, always assume that you are wrong and strive towards becoming more right. </p>
<p>49. In the end, be the sort of person that someone can believe in, that you can believe in, that whatever small part of the world that you care about can believe in. </p>
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string(313) "Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive. The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often [...]"
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<p>Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive.</p>
<p>The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often they get a chance to agree and the more persuasive you come off. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if someone doesn’t really care, then external circumstances (like speed of speech) start coming into play. </p>
<blockquote><p>…it seems we might well have reason to fear fast talkers if they are delivering a message we’re not inclined to agree with. It seems the fast pace is distracting and we may find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. Similarly when faced with an audience gagging to agree, the practised persuader would do well to slow down and give the audience time to agree some more.</p>
<p>All this assumes the audience is interested in the topic in the first place. If it isn’t relevant, people are likely to judge it based solely on much more peripheral matters, like how fast they are talking. So once again, when talking to a disinterested audience, the fast talker is likely to be more persuasive.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/11/are-fast-talkers-more-persuasive.php">Read Are Fast Talkers More Persuasive?</a> (<a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/">Via Psyorg</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive.</p>
<p>The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often they get a chance to agree and the more persuasive you come off. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if someone doesn’t really care, then external circumstances (like speed of speech) start coming into play. </p>
<blockquote><p>…it seems we might well have reason to fear fast talkers if they are delivering a message we’re not inclined to agree with. It seems the fast pace is distracting and we may find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. Similarly when faced with an audience gagging to agree, the practised persuader would do well to slow down and give the audience time to agree some more.</p>
<p>All this assumes the audience is interested in the topic in the first place. If it isn’t relevant, people are likely to judge it based solely on much more peripheral matters, like how fast they are talking. So once again, when talking to a disinterested audience, the fast talker is likely to be more persuasive.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/11/are-fast-talkers-more-persuasive.php">Read Are Fast Talkers More Persuasive?</a> (<a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/">Via Psyorg</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(321) "Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place. While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more [...]"
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<p>Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place.</p>
<p>While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more profound. The history of science teaches us one thing above all else, scientists are almost always wrong. Every theory that we have had since we learned to make theories has been proven incomplete. The entire edifice of science is based on the idea of continued, incremental improvement and monumental, continuous failure. </p>
<p>Since we have been wrong before (and for fantastic reasons that don’t take anything away from science) the real question is, which of our pet theories today will be proved to be spectacularly wrong down the road?</p>
<blockquote><p>The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler10/thaler10_index.html">Read Wrong Scientific Beliefs</a> (<a href="http://www.edge.org/">Via Edge</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place.</p>
<p>While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more profound. The history of science teaches us one thing above all else, scientists are almost always wrong. Every theory that we have had since we learned to make theories has been proven incomplete. The entire edifice of science is based on the idea of continued, incremental improvement and monumental, continuous failure. </p>
<p>Since we have been wrong before (and for fantastic reasons that don’t take anything away from science) the real question is, which of our pet theories today will be proved to be spectacularly wrong down the road?</p>
<blockquote><p>The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler10/thaler10_index.html">Read Wrong Scientific Beliefs</a> (<a href="http://www.edge.org/">Via Edge</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(315) "If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. This is not news for politicians [...]"
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<p>If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. </p>
<p>At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. </p>
<p>This is not news for politicians and other professionals who base their power on rhetoric. People love artful turns of phrase, even when those turns of phrase don’t actually amount to conveying information. </p>
<p>The takeaway here (marketers pay attention) is that if you are going to gild the lily make sure that you bring a lot of gold spray paint. People will forgive you almost anything except boring them to death. </p>
<blockquote><p>The finding: People who dodge questions artfully are liked and trusted more than people who respond to questions truthfully but with less polish.</p>
<p>The study: Todd Rogers and Michael Norton showed subjects different videos of a political debate. In the first, one of the candidates answered the question asked. In the second, he dodged it by answering a similar question. In the third, he dodged it by answering a completely different one. When the candidate answered a similar question, subjects failed to notice the switch. They also liked him better if he answered a similar question well than if he answered the actual one less eloquently.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/people-often-trust-eloquence-more-than-honesty/">Read People Often Trust Eloquence More Than Honesty</a> (<a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/">Via Simoleon Sense</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. </p>
<p>At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. </p>
<p>This is not news for politicians and other professionals who base their power on rhetoric. People love artful turns of phrase, even when those turns of phrase don’t actually amount to conveying information. </p>
<p>The takeaway here (marketers pay attention) is that if you are going to gild the lily make sure that you bring a lot of gold spray paint. People will forgive you almost anything except boring them to death. </p>
<blockquote><p>The finding: People who dodge questions artfully are liked and trusted more than people who respond to questions truthfully but with less polish.</p>
<p>The study: Todd Rogers and Michael Norton showed subjects different videos of a political debate. In the first, one of the candidates answered the question asked. In the second, he dodged it by answering a similar question. In the third, he dodged it by answering a completely different one. When the candidate answered a similar question, subjects failed to notice the switch. They also liked him better if he answered a similar question well than if he answered the actual one less eloquently.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/people-often-trust-eloquence-more-than-honesty/">Read People Often Trust Eloquence More Than Honesty</a> (<a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/">Via Simoleon Sense</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(317) "There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the [...]"
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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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string(291) "It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a Major Hotel Chain. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do [...]"
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<p>It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a <em>Major Hotel Chain</em>. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do want to offer you something to show they care. In front of me was a friendly looking man in a Hawaiian shirt, grinning from ear to ear and rattling off the wonders of timeshare ownership. I’d slept 5 hours in the last two days, and while my eyes said I was listening intently to the benefits of this “no lose” offer, a part of me was wondering how I had ended up here.</p>
<p>I had signed up for it, of course. </p>
<p>I had signed up knowing full well exactly what I was getting into. You see, even a “free” hotel room in Las Vegas comes with a price. That price is two hours of your life, sitting in a boiler room with two dozen beaming sales people trying their best to separate you from tens of thousands of dollars of your hard earned money. It works a lot like the Casinos right down the street, but here you have slightly better odds. </p>
<p>Why would I endure something like this when I could have just as easily gotten a nearly free room almost anywhere on the Strip? Why, because I love it gosh darn it! As a <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">marketer and media guy</a>, sitting through high pressure sales pitches gives me a golden opportunity to understand how the other side lives. They also give me a chance to see what strategies work even when you know exactly what they are trying to do. </p>
<p>For the rest of the story, I’ll call the agent I sat with Dave. The first thing you’d notice about Dave if you were sitting in my seat is that he was trying really, really hard to be a human being. <strong>People buy things from people, not from pitches</strong> and Dave knew this intuitively. He asked questions, took notes, made me feel like I was just having a regular conversation with an old friend. This conversation just happened to be about real estate, but when I guy is telling you about his kids and his college you tend to forget little details like that. </p>
<p>At this point in the game the pressure is pretty lax, what they are trying to do is <strong>establish your level of resistance</strong>. This is where lots of people who end up buying candy-apple red Corvettes go wrong, they assume that if they are outwardly hostile the sales guy will back away. <strong>Good sales people expect hostility</strong>, and the more resistance you show, the more effort they put into breaking it down. You may think you’re being really clever, but understand they’ve been at this a while and most of them are really good at what they do. </p>
<p>I took a different approach. I listened, I payed attention, I allowed the pitch to follow the rhythm that Dave had set down. I learned about how much I really loved vacation travel, and how exciting it would be to be able to go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. I learned about all of the far away places I could visit and all the benefits they were willing to heap on me because I was so special. I learned about how the points of resistance I had established early on really didn’t matter because Major Hotel Chain had done decades of research to make sure they had solutions. I even learned a brief history of Major Hotel Chain’s founders and how they were really stand up guys who wanted very little more than to make me happy.</p>
<p>I listened, I smiled, I nodded and I asked questions. I showed as little outwards resistance as I could muster. </p>
<p>A sales pitch, you see, is like Aikido. The more you resist, the more times you’re going to get slammed against the ground. Dave was an artist at this kind of sale, deflecting and redirecting every one of my questions with a fluidity that was almost magic. Even with my guard up, by mid-way through his pitch he had managed to systematically dismantle each and every one of the things I’d stated early on would keep me from buying. By the time he was taking me on a tour, I was truly considering whether or not owning a little piece of Major Hotel Chain was such a bad idea after all. </p>
<p>What saved me from an expensive and hilarious mistake was when we returned to the boiler room and we passed into the third part of the sale, which I like to call <strong>informational diarrhea</strong>. Most people think they are pretty good with numbers and that they have a pretty good memory. Both of these assertions are wrong. Psychologists have proven time and time again that we are basically innumerate and that we can only hold about 7 items in our short term memory at any given time. Good sales people exploit this by throwing benefits out at you faster than your brain can process them. They explain one package while showing you the price of another. They start doing back of the envelope math to show how you’re really paying less than you think. They show you charts and graphs that seem to prove inequivocably that whatever it is that you’re buying (by this point you have no clue) they must be insane for offering it at this price. What you might also notice is that this is the very first time they show you the price at all, and oddly enough it’s slightly lower than you expected it to be. </p>
<p>Fortunately, long ago I realized that I am no less stupid than the rest of society and after hearing about 15 minutes of numbers that I could barely keep up with, I decided that even if I had wanted to buy something, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on so it might be better if I kept my checkbook where I found it. </p>
<p>Let me tell you, Dave wasn’t very happy when I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable putting several thousand dollars down on something I most definitely didn’t understand, and honestly had no real intention of buying an hour and a half before. Being a good sales person, he did what good sales people are apt to do when a mark starts to shake the line, he went to speak to his manager to get me a “lower price.” </p>
<p>From where you’re sitting it might not seem like escaping this situation would be all that hard. That’s why thousands of people buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crap every year. They underestimate the fact that human beings aren’t rational and that we make decisions, even big decision based on factors well beyond logic. Let me tell you right this second, this <em>was</em> hard, incredibly hard and I was hating every second of it. </p>
<p>Remember that Dave had spent nearly two hours making me like him, he poured his heart and soul into subverting my mind and wallet and now I’m telling him it was all for nothing. I felt like a heel. Once the manager arrived, it got worse, now there were two people staring me in the face telling me that if I didn’t buy today I would never get this opportunity again. Dave looked like a puppy I’d just kicked and the manager basically said that if I wasn’t willing to buy today it must mean that I was broke. Ego and pity were screaming at me to “just buy something small to make them stop” and all the while they kept piling on the “extra special” benefits. </p>
<p>Eventually I did manage to say no. Mostly because they had the bad luck of showing me a financing rate of 17.6% which seemed so ludicrous that it broke the spell they had spent such a long time weaving. Dave left me with a friendly handshake and a smile, the manager left grumbling about another deadbeat, I left feeling some odd mixture of triumph for sticking to my guns and mild depression for “wasting their time.”</p>
<p>That last feeling, that trace of depression is what a good sales pitch is all about. Even though I knew all the tricks that they were throwing at me, they had still managed to alter the way that I perceived the situation so completely that I actually felt bad about telling them no. Two hours of subtle manipulation had transformed me from a strong, capable uber-consumer to a shaky mass of self-loathing that really just wanted to get away from the entire thing. </p>
<p>I had managed to survive but just barely, and seeing as it was Vegas I would have put an even money bet down that given another shot in a slightly different situation they may have just had their sale. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02/">Images</a>)</p>
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["summary"]=>
string(291) "It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a Major Hotel Chain. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do [...]"
["atom_content"]=>
string(8807) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/lasvegas.jpg" alt="Las Vegas" title="lasvegas" width="240" height="165" class="alignleft size-full wp-image-6642" align="left"/></p>
<p>It was a Friday afternoon and I was sitting in a surprisingly comfortable chair in a set of offices tucked away on the ground floor of a <em>Major Hotel Chain</em>. I was gripping one of those tiny bottles of water they give out when they are not really interested in seeing you hydrated but do want to offer you something to show they care. In front of me was a friendly looking man in a Hawaiian shirt, grinning from ear to ear and rattling off the wonders of timeshare ownership. I’d slept 5 hours in the last two days, and while my eyes said I was listening intently to the benefits of this “no lose” offer, a part of me was wondering how I had ended up here.</p>
<p>I had signed up for it, of course. </p>
<p>I had signed up knowing full well exactly what I was getting into. You see, even a “free” hotel room in Las Vegas comes with a price. That price is two hours of your life, sitting in a boiler room with two dozen beaming sales people trying their best to separate you from tens of thousands of dollars of your hard earned money. It works a lot like the Casinos right down the street, but here you have slightly better odds. </p>
<p>Why would I endure something like this when I could have just as easily gotten a nearly free room almost anywhere on the Strip? Why, because I love it gosh darn it! As a <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">marketer and media guy</a>, sitting through high pressure sales pitches gives me a golden opportunity to understand how the other side lives. They also give me a chance to see what strategies work even when you know exactly what they are trying to do. </p>
<p>For the rest of the story, I’ll call the agent I sat with Dave. The first thing you’d notice about Dave if you were sitting in my seat is that he was trying really, really hard to be a human being. <strong>People buy things from people, not from pitches</strong> and Dave knew this intuitively. He asked questions, took notes, made me feel like I was just having a regular conversation with an old friend. This conversation just happened to be about real estate, but when I guy is telling you about his kids and his college you tend to forget little details like that. </p>
<p>At this point in the game the pressure is pretty lax, what they are trying to do is <strong>establish your level of resistance</strong>. This is where lots of people who end up buying candy-apple red Corvettes go wrong, they assume that if they are outwardly hostile the sales guy will back away. <strong>Good sales people expect hostility</strong>, and the more resistance you show, the more effort they put into breaking it down. You may think you’re being really clever, but understand they’ve been at this a while and most of them are really good at what they do. </p>
<p>I took a different approach. I listened, I payed attention, I allowed the pitch to follow the rhythm that Dave had set down. I learned about how much I really loved vacation travel, and how exciting it would be to be able to go anywhere I wanted, anytime I wanted. I learned about all of the far away places I could visit and all the benefits they were willing to heap on me because I was so special. I learned about how the points of resistance I had established early on really didn’t matter because Major Hotel Chain had done decades of research to make sure they had solutions. I even learned a brief history of Major Hotel Chain’s founders and how they were really stand up guys who wanted very little more than to make me happy.</p>
<p>I listened, I smiled, I nodded and I asked questions. I showed as little outwards resistance as I could muster. </p>
<p>A sales pitch, you see, is like Aikido. The more you resist, the more times you’re going to get slammed against the ground. Dave was an artist at this kind of sale, deflecting and redirecting every one of my questions with a fluidity that was almost magic. Even with my guard up, by mid-way through his pitch he had managed to systematically dismantle each and every one of the things I’d stated early on would keep me from buying. By the time he was taking me on a tour, I was truly considering whether or not owning a little piece of Major Hotel Chain was such a bad idea after all. </p>
<p>What saved me from an expensive and hilarious mistake was when we returned to the boiler room and we passed into the third part of the sale, which I like to call <strong>informational diarrhea</strong>. Most people think they are pretty good with numbers and that they have a pretty good memory. Both of these assertions are wrong. Psychologists have proven time and time again that we are basically innumerate and that we can only hold about 7 items in our short term memory at any given time. Good sales people exploit this by throwing benefits out at you faster than your brain can process them. They explain one package while showing you the price of another. They start doing back of the envelope math to show how you’re really paying less than you think. They show you charts and graphs that seem to prove inequivocably that whatever it is that you’re buying (by this point you have no clue) they must be insane for offering it at this price. What you might also notice is that this is the very first time they show you the price at all, and oddly enough it’s slightly lower than you expected it to be. </p>
<p>Fortunately, long ago I realized that I am no less stupid than the rest of society and after hearing about 15 minutes of numbers that I could barely keep up with, I decided that even if I had wanted to buy something, I couldn’t make heads or tails of what was going on so it might be better if I kept my checkbook where I found it. </p>
<p>Let me tell you, Dave wasn’t very happy when I told him that I didn’t feel comfortable putting several thousand dollars down on something I most definitely didn’t understand, and honestly had no real intention of buying an hour and a half before. Being a good sales person, he did what good sales people are apt to do when a mark starts to shake the line, he went to speak to his manager to get me a “lower price.” </p>
<p>From where you’re sitting it might not seem like escaping this situation would be all that hard. That’s why thousands of people buy hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of crap every year. They underestimate the fact that human beings aren’t rational and that we make decisions, even big decision based on factors well beyond logic. Let me tell you right this second, this <em>was</em> hard, incredibly hard and I was hating every second of it. </p>
<p>Remember that Dave had spent nearly two hours making me like him, he poured his heart and soul into subverting my mind and wallet and now I’m telling him it was all for nothing. I felt like a heel. Once the manager arrived, it got worse, now there were two people staring me in the face telling me that if I didn’t buy today I would never get this opportunity again. Dave looked like a puppy I’d just kicked and the manager basically said that if I wasn’t willing to buy today it must mean that I was broke. Ego and pity were screaming at me to “just buy something small to make them stop” and all the while they kept piling on the “extra special” benefits. </p>
<p>Eventually I did manage to say no. Mostly because they had the bad luck of showing me a financing rate of 17.6% which seemed so ludicrous that it broke the spell they had spent such a long time weaving. Dave left me with a friendly handshake and a smile, the manager left grumbling about another deadbeat, I left feeling some odd mixture of triumph for sticking to my guns and mild depression for “wasting their time.”</p>
<p>That last feeling, that trace of depression is what a good sales pitch is all about. Even though I knew all the tricks that they were throwing at me, they had still managed to alter the way that I perceived the situation so completely that I actually felt bad about telling them no. Two hours of subtle manipulation had transformed me from a strong, capable uber-consumer to a shaky mass of self-loathing that really just wanted to get away from the entire thing. </p>
<p>I had managed to survive but just barely, and seeing as it was Vegas I would have put an even money bet down that given another shot in a slightly different situation they may have just had their sale. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22746515@N02/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[2]=>
array(13) {
["title"]=>
string(30) "Anatomy Of A Failed Consultant"
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["pubdate"]=>
string(31) "Mon, 02 May 2011 17:33:57 +0000"
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string(14) "Steve Spalding"
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string(35) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/?p=6631"
["description"]=>
string(283) "Other than writing pithy blog posts and tweeting, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is consult. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. [...]"
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string(4959) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/snakeoil.jpg" alt="Snake Oil" title="snakeoil" width="240" height="180" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6632" align="left" /></p>
<p>Other than writing pithy blog posts and <a href="http://twitter.com/sbspalding">tweeting</a>, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">consult</a>. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. The following is yet another part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> series, this time dedicated to shedding a little light on how consultants can fail. At one time or another I’ve done (or seen) most of these things, which is why it gives me such great joy to shine a spotlight on them. </p>
<p>Without further ado, you know you have a bad consultant when: </p>
<p>1. He absolutely, positively cannot say no to a client request, especially the most mind-numbingly outrageous ones. </p>
<p>2. He believes that pleasing the client is far more important than doing whatever it is that client hired him for. </p>
<p>3. He is convinced that freelance work is a volume business, so he competes on price to the exclusion of everything else.</p>
<p>4. He thinks that working very, very hard for insane hours is roughly equivalent to doing a good job. </p>
<p>5. He is willing to sell any service that the client is willing to buy, even if everything he knows about that service was derived from a blog post he read one time. </p>
<p>6. He doesn’t understand that many of his client’s problems are as much about internal politics as they are about business process. </p>
<p>7. He doesn’t really understand his clients much at all. </p>
<p>8. He generates piles and piles of dense documentation in an effort to appear to be working. </p>
<p>9. He makes certain that these documents are utterly incomprehensible and unlikely to be read by anyone past the executive summary. </p>
<p>10. He’s kind of unwilling to charge what he’s worth. </p>
<p>11. He’s mostly unwilling to set boundaries. </p>
<p>12. He’s totally unwilling to make certain that these boundaries align with what he’s charging, and thus spends most of his time feeling burnt out and abused. </p>
<p>13. He’ll never critically analyze why he feels this way, and will instead blame his clients.</p>
<p>14. He thinks it’s a badge of honor that he has never taken a vacation. </p>
<p>15. He thinks that all the perspective he needs can be found in his feed reader. </p>
<p>16. He’s convinced that you can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week without the slightest drop in efficiency. </p>
<p>17. He feels that if the facts are on his side he shouldn’t need to be able to communicate them, that it’s not his fault if the client is blind to the “truth.” </p>
<p>18. He doesn’t understand that clients are human beings with fears and hopes and biases that are often completely external to business and always color what they do. </p>
<p>19. When he absolutely must communicate he laces his speech with so much jargon that most people wish he’d just kept sending those reports. </p>
<p>20. He walks into every meeting convinced that knows the right answer, and spends most of the rest of his time wondering when it will be his turn to speak. </p>
<p>21. When his mouth opens his ears close.</p>
<p>22. His mouth opens far too often. </p>
<p>23. His conversations can be described by the following proportion: 45% jargon, 35% ego-stroking, 10% lies and 10% marginally useful trivia. </p>
<p>24. He treats his clients like they were very little more than signatures on the bottom of his paycheck. </p>
<p>25. He ignores any and all evidence that a solution he provided might be incorrect. </p>
<p>26. He considers anyone who changes his mind to be an utter failure.</p>
<p>27. Almost as big a failure as anyone who says, “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>28. He is deeply and philosophically opposed to failure. </p>
<p>29. He makes a habit of undermining every other member of staff for no reason greater than the fact that he can. </p>
<p>30. All of his best ideas are marked most notably by the fact that they are utterly impossible to implement. </p>
<p>31. He doesn’t believe that budget and manpower should be a concern, unless it’s <em>his</em> budget and <em>his</em> manpower. </p>
<p>32. He gets unnecessarily defensive when anyone questions one of his ideas. </p>
<p>33. He gets downright hostile when anyone points out one of his faults.</p>
<p>As a result he thinks I’m a big, fat jerk for writing this and considers everything in it to be a mindless assault. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/">Images</a>)</p>
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["summary"]=>
string(283) "Other than writing pithy blog posts and tweeting, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is consult. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. [...]"
["atom_content"]=>
string(4959) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/snakeoil.jpg" alt="Snake Oil" title="snakeoil" width="240" height="180" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6632" align="left" /></p>
<p>Other than writing pithy blog posts and <a href="http://twitter.com/sbspalding">tweeting</a>, a big part of what I do to pay the rent is <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">consult</a>. Over the years I’ve become a lot better at it and have, through trial an error, gathered a few nuggets of wisdom that have helped me become not quite as awful at my job. The following is yet another part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> series, this time dedicated to shedding a little light on how consultants can fail. At one time or another I’ve done (or seen) most of these things, which is why it gives me such great joy to shine a spotlight on them. </p>
<p>Without further ado, you know you have a bad consultant when: </p>
<p>1. He absolutely, positively cannot say no to a client request, especially the most mind-numbingly outrageous ones. </p>
<p>2. He believes that pleasing the client is far more important than doing whatever it is that client hired him for. </p>
<p>3. He is convinced that freelance work is a volume business, so he competes on price to the exclusion of everything else.</p>
<p>4. He thinks that working very, very hard for insane hours is roughly equivalent to doing a good job. </p>
<p>5. He is willing to sell any service that the client is willing to buy, even if everything he knows about that service was derived from a blog post he read one time. </p>
<p>6. He doesn’t understand that many of his client’s problems are as much about internal politics as they are about business process. </p>
<p>7. He doesn’t really understand his clients much at all. </p>
<p>8. He generates piles and piles of dense documentation in an effort to appear to be working. </p>
<p>9. He makes certain that these documents are utterly incomprehensible and unlikely to be read by anyone past the executive summary. </p>
<p>10. He’s kind of unwilling to charge what he’s worth. </p>
<p>11. He’s mostly unwilling to set boundaries. </p>
<p>12. He’s totally unwilling to make certain that these boundaries align with what he’s charging, and thus spends most of his time feeling burnt out and abused. </p>
<p>13. He’ll never critically analyze why he feels this way, and will instead blame his clients.</p>
<p>14. He thinks it’s a badge of honor that he has never taken a vacation. </p>
<p>15. He thinks that all the perspective he needs can be found in his feed reader. </p>
<p>16. He’s convinced that you can work 24 hours a day 7 days a week without the slightest drop in efficiency. </p>
<p>17. He feels that if the facts are on his side he shouldn’t need to be able to communicate them, that it’s not his fault if the client is blind to the “truth.” </p>
<p>18. He doesn’t understand that clients are human beings with fears and hopes and biases that are often completely external to business and always color what they do. </p>
<p>19. When he absolutely must communicate he laces his speech with so much jargon that most people wish he’d just kept sending those reports. </p>
<p>20. He walks into every meeting convinced that knows the right answer, and spends most of the rest of his time wondering when it will be his turn to speak. </p>
<p>21. When his mouth opens his ears close.</p>
<p>22. His mouth opens far too often. </p>
<p>23. His conversations can be described by the following proportion: 45% jargon, 35% ego-stroking, 10% lies and 10% marginally useful trivia. </p>
<p>24. He treats his clients like they were very little more than signatures on the bottom of his paycheck. </p>
<p>25. He ignores any and all evidence that a solution he provided might be incorrect. </p>
<p>26. He considers anyone who changes his mind to be an utter failure.</p>
<p>27. Almost as big a failure as anyone who says, “I don’t know.”</p>
<p>28. He is deeply and philosophically opposed to failure. </p>
<p>29. He makes a habit of undermining every other member of staff for no reason greater than the fact that he can. </p>
<p>30. All of his best ideas are marked most notably by the fact that they are utterly impossible to implement. </p>
<p>31. He doesn’t believe that budget and manpower should be a concern, unless it’s <em>his</em> budget and <em>his</em> manpower. </p>
<p>32. He gets unnecessarily defensive when anyone questions one of his ideas. </p>
<p>33. He gets downright hostile when anyone points out one of his faults.</p>
<p>As a result he thinks I’m a big, fat jerk for writing this and considers everything in it to be a mindless assault. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/wfryer/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[3]=>
array(13) {
["title"]=>
string(30) "A Critique of Small Businesses"
["link"]=>
string(64) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/a-critique-of-small-businesses/"
["comments"]=>
string(73) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/a-critique-of-small-businesses/#comments"
["pubdate"]=>
string(31) "Sun, 01 May 2011 19:03:16 +0000"
["dc"]=>
array(1) {
["creator"]=>
string(14) "Steve Spalding"
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["category"]=>
string(8) "Featured"
["guid"]=>
string(35) "http://howtosplitanatom.com/?p=6626"
["description"]=>
string(356) "As a part of Living in the 21st Century I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and [...]"
["content"]=>
array(1) {
["encoded"]=>
string(4697) "<p><img src="http://howtosplitanatom.com/wp-content/uploads/christmas-tree-sign.jpg" alt="" title="christmas tree sign" width="240" height="169" class="alignnone size-full wp-image-6627" align="left" /></p>
<p>As a part of <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and runs into all the issues inherent in that task. The following are a few truths I’ve learned while <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working</a> with them. </p>
<p>1. You have big dreams, which is a very good thing.</p>
<p>2. You want those dreams to come true all at the same time, which is a very bad thing. </p>
<p>3. You need to be more willing to take chances, take risks and execute on plans.</p>
<p>4. Moreover, you need to be a lot more willing to show yourself off to the public, even when you know that your product still needs work. </p>
<p>5. In fact, just stop inventing reasons not to launch, there is nothing new under the Sun and all of your problems have been seen a thousand times before. </p>
<p>6. Narrow your scope, everything can be done but not everything can be done at the same time.</p>
<p>7. Set priorities and not just the fake ones that last until the end of the “product road mapping” meeting. </p>
<p>8. Stick to your guns, your pristine list of priorities has no value if every new whim manages to wiggle its way to the top.</p>
<p>9. Pick a market, trying to be everything for everyone is roughly equivalent to be nothing for no one. </p>
<p>10. Pick something to do really well, whether it’s service or features or a funny cartoon mascot of a Badger, find one thing that you can be good at and devote your energy to being <em>really</em> good at it. </p>
<p>11. Ignore most of the rest, once you know what you do well do that and let the rest fall into place in its own time. </p>
<p>12. Make better use of your money, most of your problems early on will involve it.</p>
<p>13. Making better use of your money often means pretending that you have less of it, especially when things are going well. </p>
<p>14. More specifically, save when you’re ahead so that you can spend when you’re behind and understand that almost all markets work in cycles and that the most debilitating problem you can face is to be under-prepared for when that cycle turns. </p>
<p>15. You have no idea what your customer really wants, the faster you understand this fact the better off you’ll be.</p>
<p>16. Knowing this, be willing to show your customers your product and see what they do with it, then get over your ego and change your offering to meet your customer’s needs. </p>
<p>17. Meet less and for better reasons — there is almost nothing that a 6 hour long meeting can accomplish that could not happen in 1/3rd that time if everyone stayed on track. </p>
<p>18. Talk more and for less formal reasons — continuous dialogue between members of the team is what will grow the business, don’t be afraid to say your ideas out loud, write them down and prioritize them as appropriate. </p>
<p>19. Write everything down, a useless notation today could be a key insight tomorrow. </p>
<p>20. Stop reinventing the wheel, the wheel exists for a reason and that reason is that it often works. </p>
<p>21. Focus on making one small change at a time, the first step to changing the world is changing the light bulb. </p>
<p>22. Realize that all evolution involves these tiny steps and become more comfortable with the boring, everyday improvements that lead to the major shifts.</p>
<p>23. Be less concerned with everyone elses definition of success, keeping up with the Joneses is not a growth strategy.</p>
<p>24. Be more concerned with accomplishing goals, and with setting goals that you have the talent and tenacity to accomplish. </p>
<p>25. Understand when a goal just can’t be accomplished right now, and be willing to set it aside for the greater good. </p>
<p>26. Be willing to say no to otherwise good ideas that just don’t fit into the way that your business operates. </p>
<p>27. Realize that the business you have in five years will be entirely different than that the business you have today, take joy in that fact and work everyday to stay alive long enough to see what it looks like. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sis/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(356) "As a part of Living in the 21st Century I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and [...]"
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<p>As a part of <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living in the 21st Century</a> I wanted to take a closer look at small businesses. I’m not talking about freelancers and independent contractors right now, I’m talking about your friendly neighborhood “startup.” The type of business that brings together a small group of clever people to tackle some hard problem, and runs into all the issues inherent in that task. The following are a few truths I’ve learned while <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working</a> with them. </p>
<p>1. You have big dreams, which is a very good thing.</p>
<p>2. You want those dreams to come true all at the same time, which is a very bad thing. </p>
<p>3. You need to be more willing to take chances, take risks and execute on plans.</p>
<p>4. Moreover, you need to be a lot more willing to show yourself off to the public, even when you know that your product still needs work. </p>
<p>5. In fact, just stop inventing reasons not to launch, there is nothing new under the Sun and all of your problems have been seen a thousand times before. </p>
<p>6. Narrow your scope, everything can be done but not everything can be done at the same time.</p>
<p>7. Set priorities and not just the fake ones that last until the end of the “product road mapping” meeting. </p>
<p>8. Stick to your guns, your pristine list of priorities has no value if every new whim manages to wiggle its way to the top.</p>
<p>9. Pick a market, trying to be everything for everyone is roughly equivalent to be nothing for no one. </p>
<p>10. Pick something to do really well, whether it’s service or features or a funny cartoon mascot of a Badger, find one thing that you can be good at and devote your energy to being <em>really</em> good at it. </p>
<p>11. Ignore most of the rest, once you know what you do well do that and let the rest fall into place in its own time. </p>
<p>12. Make better use of your money, most of your problems early on will involve it.</p>
<p>13. Making better use of your money often means pretending that you have less of it, especially when things are going well. </p>
<p>14. More specifically, save when you’re ahead so that you can spend when you’re behind and understand that almost all markets work in cycles and that the most debilitating problem you can face is to be under-prepared for when that cycle turns. </p>
<p>15. You have no idea what your customer really wants, the faster you understand this fact the better off you’ll be.</p>
<p>16. Knowing this, be willing to show your customers your product and see what they do with it, then get over your ego and change your offering to meet your customer’s needs. </p>
<p>17. Meet less and for better reasons — there is almost nothing that a 6 hour long meeting can accomplish that could not happen in 1/3rd that time if everyone stayed on track. </p>
<p>18. Talk more and for less formal reasons — continuous dialogue between members of the team is what will grow the business, don’t be afraid to say your ideas out loud, write them down and prioritize them as appropriate. </p>
<p>19. Write everything down, a useless notation today could be a key insight tomorrow. </p>
<p>20. Stop reinventing the wheel, the wheel exists for a reason and that reason is that it often works. </p>
<p>21. Focus on making one small change at a time, the first step to changing the world is changing the light bulb. </p>
<p>22. Realize that all evolution involves these tiny steps and become more comfortable with the boring, everyday improvements that lead to the major shifts.</p>
<p>23. Be less concerned with everyone elses definition of success, keeping up with the Joneses is not a growth strategy.</p>
<p>24. Be more concerned with accomplishing goals, and with setting goals that you have the talent and tenacity to accomplish. </p>
<p>25. Understand when a goal just can’t be accomplished right now, and be willing to set it aside for the greater good. </p>
<p>26. Be willing to say no to otherwise good ideas that just don’t fit into the way that your business operates. </p>
<p>27. Realize that the business you have in five years will be entirely different than that the business you have today, take joy in that fact and work everyday to stay alive long enough to see what it looks like. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/sis/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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[4]=>
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["title"]=>
string(31) "Deconstructing Large Businesses"
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string(329) "As a part of my Living In The 21st Century series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from working inside and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes [...]"
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<p>As a part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living In The 21st Century</a> series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working inside</a> and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes them. As always, this manifesto is not exhaustive but it is certainly comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. Most of your problems are political. </p>
<p>2. Those problems that aren’t purely political are exasperated by politics.</p>
<p>3. Any problem that is completely non-political can usually be solved in an afternoon over a cup of coffee. </p>
<p>4. Most of the information you need to improve your business processes already exists within your organization, what’s missing is a willingness to listen to those who have it. </p>
<p>5. Those who have it are often too far down the chain of command to really matter. </p>
<p>6. You care a little too much about your chain of command. </p>
<p>7. You’re starting to rely too heavily on outside Agencies that you neither fully understand nor fully hold accountable. </p>
<p>8. You make the assumption that when these Agencies generate reams of paper and complex reports for you, this is equivalent to doing real work. </p>
<p>9. No one actually reads or analyzes these reports. </p>
<p>10. Nor are you certain what the “real work” you’re trying to get out of them actually looks like.</p>
<p>11. But that’s OK because even if you could get them to give you useful suggestions, your organization lacks the internal expertise to effectively implement them. </p>
<p>12. You move much too slowly. </p>
<p>13. You believe that moving slowly is a virtue. </p>
<p>14. You’re incorrect. </p>
<p>15. Technological expertise is not spread evenly throughout your organization.</p>
<p>16. This lack of knowledge leads inevitably to bad, inefficient decision making — especially around those parts of your business that will drive your growth going forward. </p>
<p>17. You want to change this but the very people who must buy in are the least likely to have the depth of knowledge needed to do so. </p>
<p>18. You too often confuse bad implementation for a bad project.</p>
<p>19. Too many good projects are ended prematurely because of this assumption. </p>
<p>20. You too often confuse bad projects (especially those involving expensive, gimmicky new technologies) for bad implementation.</p>
<p>21. Far too much money is on useless, silly campaigns as a result. </p>
<p>22. You get trapped in thinking that all of your customers think the same way today as they did twenty years ago, and you’re not willing to change your product offerings to adapt to new consumer demands. </p>
<p>23. When you do change, these changes come only after you’ve already burned more than your share of time and money hoping that your customers will start thinking the way that your marketing strategy documents say that they do. </p>
<p>24. You spend $10 for every $1 a smaller organization could spend to get the same result. </p>
<p>25. This is as much an expertise problem as it is the result of the inefficiencies of running a large organization. </p>
<p>26. The real problem is that this fact doesn’t concern you in the least. </p>
<p>27. In general, it’s really hard for you to look critically at yourself, your processes and what you can do to improve them. </p>
<p>28. It’s far too easy for you to be self-aggrandizing, myopic, and willing to distribute blame for any problem so widely that it disappears into the vacuum of diffused responsibility. </p>
<p><em>Sadly, most everyone in your organization, at one level or another, knows all of this.</em> </p>
<p>29. What you need to remember is that the biggest virtue of a large business is the ability to scale development, share expertise and widen the net of distribution. </p>
<p>30. You need to start trusting more links in your chain of command, modern business demands that you gather this expertise from throughout your organization, not just from upper management. </p>
<p>31. You need to be nimble and adaptable, change happens too quickly to be bound up by bureaucracy which no longer provides value.</p>
<p>32. You need to be willing to audit where bureaucracy is still helpful and where it is holding you back. </p>
<p>33. You need to look long and hard at organizational ego, there is a fine line between believing in what you do and getting punch drunk on the corporate Kool Aid. </p>
<p>34. You need to cultivate internal expertise, while <em>everything</em> can be outsourced, not everything should be.</p>
<p>35. When you bring in outside help, you need to be certain that you have the internal expertise to hold them accountable and the insight to know when that expertise is not available.</p>
<p>36. Everyone in the organization needs some understanding of the technological trends driving your business forward, it’s never OK for decision makers to be blind to these.</p>
<p>37. When this kind of information sharing is not possible, smaller work groups need to be given the autonomy and power to act, not just the mandate to make suggestions. </p>
<p>38. You need to be willing to think like a small business, search for inefficiencies, and keep an eye on where you might be spending $1 to get $.50 back. </p>
<p>39. You need to step back from cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions and develop more nuance.</p>
<p>40. You need to realize that even in a large organization, with its variety of often conflicting motivations and incentives, at some basic level you are all working towards the same goal and that getting trapped in the politics of personal ego hurts everyone.</p>
<p>You need to realize <em>all</em> of this. Happily, at one level or another, everyone already does — now it’s only a question of gathering the power and establishing the processes to get it done. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seier/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(329) "As a part of my Living In The 21st Century series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from working inside and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes [...]"
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<p>As a part of my <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/news/living-in-the-21st-century/">Living In The 21st Century</a> series, I wanted to take a closer look at some of the issues I’ve found from <a href="http://howtosplitanatom.com/hire-me/">working inside</a> and speaking with large businesses. These problems are so universal you have to wonder whether it’s individual organizations or the culture of large business itself that causes them. As always, this manifesto is not exhaustive but it is certainly comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. Most of your problems are political. </p>
<p>2. Those problems that aren’t purely political are exasperated by politics.</p>
<p>3. Any problem that is completely non-political can usually be solved in an afternoon over a cup of coffee. </p>
<p>4. Most of the information you need to improve your business processes already exists within your organization, what’s missing is a willingness to listen to those who have it. </p>
<p>5. Those who have it are often too far down the chain of command to really matter. </p>
<p>6. You care a little too much about your chain of command. </p>
<p>7. You’re starting to rely too heavily on outside Agencies that you neither fully understand nor fully hold accountable. </p>
<p>8. You make the assumption that when these Agencies generate reams of paper and complex reports for you, this is equivalent to doing real work. </p>
<p>9. No one actually reads or analyzes these reports. </p>
<p>10. Nor are you certain what the “real work” you’re trying to get out of them actually looks like.</p>
<p>11. But that’s OK because even if you could get them to give you useful suggestions, your organization lacks the internal expertise to effectively implement them. </p>
<p>12. You move much too slowly. </p>
<p>13. You believe that moving slowly is a virtue. </p>
<p>14. You’re incorrect. </p>
<p>15. Technological expertise is not spread evenly throughout your organization.</p>
<p>16. This lack of knowledge leads inevitably to bad, inefficient decision making — especially around those parts of your business that will drive your growth going forward. </p>
<p>17. You want to change this but the very people who must buy in are the least likely to have the depth of knowledge needed to do so. </p>
<p>18. You too often confuse bad implementation for a bad project.</p>
<p>19. Too many good projects are ended prematurely because of this assumption. </p>
<p>20. You too often confuse bad projects (especially those involving expensive, gimmicky new technologies) for bad implementation.</p>
<p>21. Far too much money is on useless, silly campaigns as a result. </p>
<p>22. You get trapped in thinking that all of your customers think the same way today as they did twenty years ago, and you’re not willing to change your product offerings to adapt to new consumer demands. </p>
<p>23. When you do change, these changes come only after you’ve already burned more than your share of time and money hoping that your customers will start thinking the way that your marketing strategy documents say that they do. </p>
<p>24. You spend $10 for every $1 a smaller organization could spend to get the same result. </p>
<p>25. This is as much an expertise problem as it is the result of the inefficiencies of running a large organization. </p>
<p>26. The real problem is that this fact doesn’t concern you in the least. </p>
<p>27. In general, it’s really hard for you to look critically at yourself, your processes and what you can do to improve them. </p>
<p>28. It’s far too easy for you to be self-aggrandizing, myopic, and willing to distribute blame for any problem so widely that it disappears into the vacuum of diffused responsibility. </p>
<p><em>Sadly, most everyone in your organization, at one level or another, knows all of this.</em> </p>
<p>29. What you need to remember is that the biggest virtue of a large business is the ability to scale development, share expertise and widen the net of distribution. </p>
<p>30. You need to start trusting more links in your chain of command, modern business demands that you gather this expertise from throughout your organization, not just from upper management. </p>
<p>31. You need to be nimble and adaptable, change happens too quickly to be bound up by bureaucracy which no longer provides value.</p>
<p>32. You need to be willing to audit where bureaucracy is still helpful and where it is holding you back. </p>
<p>33. You need to look long and hard at organizational ego, there is a fine line between believing in what you do and getting punch drunk on the corporate Kool Aid. </p>
<p>34. You need to cultivate internal expertise, while <em>everything</em> can be outsourced, not everything should be.</p>
<p>35. When you bring in outside help, you need to be certain that you have the internal expertise to hold them accountable and the insight to know when that expertise is not available.</p>
<p>36. Everyone in the organization needs some understanding of the technological trends driving your business forward, it’s never OK for decision makers to be blind to these.</p>
<p>37. When this kind of information sharing is not possible, smaller work groups need to be given the autonomy and power to act, not just the mandate to make suggestions. </p>
<p>38. You need to be willing to think like a small business, search for inefficiencies, and keep an eye on where you might be spending $1 to get $.50 back. </p>
<p>39. You need to step back from cookie-cutter, one-size-fits-all solutions and develop more nuance.</p>
<p>40. You need to realize that even in a large organization, with its variety of often conflicting motivations and incentives, at some basic level you are all working towards the same goal and that getting trapped in the politics of personal ego hurts everyone.</p>
<p>You need to realize <em>all</em> of this. Happily, at one level or another, everyone already does — now it’s only a question of gathering the power and establishing the processes to get it done. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/seier/">Images</a>)</p>
"
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string(351) "Today the artist, writer and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts Ophelia Chong shares with us another story of living with technology. The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to [...]"
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<p><em>Today the artist, <a href="http://www.kcet.org/socal/voices/404-city/">writer</a> and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts <a href="http://www.opheliachong.org/">Ophelia Chong</a> shares with us another story of living with technology.</em></p>
<p>The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to the bluetooth, The Kindle connected to the 3G.</p>
<p>Oh Mercy how they Scare!</p>
<p>I try to control the ambient noises around me while I work, the television set on the 562nd rerun of Law and Order, the occasional dog bark, the flutter of paper falling out of the printer; its all white noise. Except the unexpected sounds of information coming in. Pings. Pings for Skype, Seesmic, Twitter, iChat and email. I am like Pavlov’s dog, each Ping stirs my interest and I start salivating about the next<br />
Gilt special sale on gold lame platform running shoes. </p>
<p>If you are like me, you have your cell phone on your desk. I bought a Droid, even though I am a life long Apple fanatic, I left the Apple Garden and went with a Droid (also Verizon was not carrying iPhones at the time, so really I didn’t have much choice other than switching carriers). The Droid and I puttered along, the interface took a while getting used to and I was a bit envious of all the Apps my iPhone friends had. I mean they had HIPSTAMATIC! But the Droid/Verizon did have one plus over Apple. I got email on it 1 minute before I got it on my Apple powerbook. My Droid was always first to stick up its arm and say “Pick ME!!”</p>
<p>Is it Verizon vs. Time Warner, or Android vs. Apple? Most likely the network, but deep in my heart I believe its the little Droid saying to itself “I thought I could.”</p>
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string(351) "Today the artist, writer and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts Ophelia Chong shares with us another story of living with technology. The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to [...]"
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<p><em>Today the artist, <a href="http://www.kcet.org/socal/voices/404-city/">writer</a> and ever entertaining thinker of thoughts <a href="http://www.opheliachong.org/">Ophelia Chong</a> shares with us another story of living with technology.</em></p>
<p>The Droid con-nected to the Verizon, The iPad connected to the Wifi, The powerbook connected to the network, The iPod connected to the earphone, The landline connected to the bundle, The keyboard connected to the bluetooth, The Kindle connected to the 3G.</p>
<p>Oh Mercy how they Scare!</p>
<p>I try to control the ambient noises around me while I work, the television set on the 562nd rerun of Law and Order, the occasional dog bark, the flutter of paper falling out of the printer; its all white noise. Except the unexpected sounds of information coming in. Pings. Pings for Skype, Seesmic, Twitter, iChat and email. I am like Pavlov’s dog, each Ping stirs my interest and I start salivating about the next<br />
Gilt special sale on gold lame platform running shoes. </p>
<p>If you are like me, you have your cell phone on your desk. I bought a Droid, even though I am a life long Apple fanatic, I left the Apple Garden and went with a Droid (also Verizon was not carrying iPhones at the time, so really I didn’t have much choice other than switching carriers). The Droid and I puttered along, the interface took a while getting used to and I was a bit envious of all the Apps my iPhone friends had. I mean they had HIPSTAMATIC! But the Droid/Verizon did have one plus over Apple. I got email on it 1 minute before I got it on my Apple powerbook. My Droid was always first to stick up its arm and say “Pick ME!!”</p>
<p>Is it Verizon vs. Time Warner, or Android vs. Apple? Most likely the network, but deep in my heart I believe its the little Droid saying to itself “I thought I could.”</p>
"
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string(305) "I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are [...]"
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<p>I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are 49 points that I believe make up the basis of this new system, while the list is by no means exhaustive I do believe that it is comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. For the first time in history we all have the tools to craft our own jobs and set the course of our own lives.</p>
<p>2. This does not imply that it is easy or right for everyone, different people have different paths to meaning. </p>
<p>3. All the meaning and happiness in our lives is wrapped up in doing something incredibly hard, for an incredibly long time that we can believe in right down to the core of our beings. </p>
<p>4. Our greatest failure in life is that we rarely take a moment to discover this belief — what makes us tick, what brings us meaning, the reason that we keep breathing. </p>
<p>5. There is this idea that working from 9-5, 5 days a week at a job you basically hate is the only rational path to meaning — the modern economy is proving this notion false. </p>
<p>6. The modern economy rewards those who understand that a career is an ideology, a point of view, not merely a daily grind designed to keep us in bread and beans. </p>
<p>7. The modern economy rewards those who can separate themselves from the sea of resumes by shining a light on the talents and expertise that distinguish them as individual human lives. </p>
<p>8. “Shining lights” and all that is not easy work, it requires self knowledge and a deep belief in your own value. </p>
<p>9. One of those values is that we’re all entrepreneurs, we can all be agents of change — big, small or otherwise. </p>
<p>10. Change does not necessarily mean changing the entire world, it can be just as meaningful to change your neighborhood or your household. </p>
<p>11. Most people have no idea what they’re good at and walk around blindly thinking they are boring and colorless, get over this lie and start nurturing your talents. </p>
<p>12. A job is what you <em>do</em> to pay the bills, a career is what you <em>live within</em> to improve your world, you take on one to work towards the other.</p>
<p>13. Until your career can pay your bills, it’s probably prudent not to give up your job. </p>
<p>14. Without goals however, the job will consume your life, establish goals and spend as much energy as you have available to work towards them. </p>
<p>15. If you’re not learning you’re dying, if you’re not adapting you’re being left behind, the world changes in a blink and so must you.</p>
<p>16. Be on the lookout for any technology that makes your life easier. </p>
<p>17. Be certain to ignore all technologies that don’t. </p>
<p>18. The best ideas have always been simple to explain, never get caught up in your own complexity. </p>
<p>19. Time is and has always been your currency, the thrust of life should be towards earning more of it and using what you earn more wisely. </p>
<p>20. To that end, automate everything that you can, that will leave room to concentrate on all of those things that you can’t. </p>
<p>21. Money should always be a tool and never and end in and of itself, spend it freely if it helps to grow your business your knowledge or your happiness. </p>
<p>22. The things that we do are always more memorable than the things that we have, understand that long term happiness is always drawn from experiences rather than possessions. </p>
<p>23. Your possessions should be shaped and determined by your life, your life should never be shaped and determined by your possessions. </p>
<p>24. Maintain a broad perspective on the world, learn what you can about as much as you can and bring that wisdom into everything you do. </p>
<p>25. Genius is combining two seemingly unlike things into a third in a unique way, genius requires perspective and punishes those who see the world through the mouth of a tunnel. </p>
<p>26. Never underestimate your capacity for error, being human means being irrational. </p>
<p>27. Everything, especially error and trauma has a lesson to teach, learn to treat failure as a tool rather than as a penalty. </p>
<p>28. Don’t let work consume you, a few hours of time off can grant more perspective than a few days in front of a desk. </p>
<p>29. Understand that the trappings of success are less important and less valuable to you than success itself, that the culture of fame and wealth is as much a trap as it is something to strive towards.</p>
<p>30. Never add unnecessary complexity to your life, complexity consumes times. </p>
<p>31. Never hire an employee when a contractor will do, never hire a contractor when an employee is necessary.</p>
<p>32. Your dreams of a fancy corner office with a huge wooden desk probably has little or nothing to do with the goals of your business, often we are better off giving up the former for the latter. </p>
<p>33. Learn how to build a website, put up a blog, design a mobile application, work within the context of the web — the Internet is here to stay and those skills will drive the future forward. </p>
<p>34. The only things that can’t be outsourced are clever thoughts and the brass to speak your mind. Cultivate your ability to communicate your thoughts and the courage to implement your ideas. </p>
<p>35. Accept advice willingly, seek it out — in the end you will ignore most of it, but you’ll change everything because of the rest.</p>
<p>36. Give something back to the world. </p>
<p>37. Develop an interest in the problems of others, make time for voices outside of your head. </p>
<p>38. Travel as often as you can, get some perspective on the world outside of your front door.</p>
<p>39. Learn another language, you never can tell where your next client will come from.</p>
<p>40. Nurture your relationships, your work should never become the sole driver of your life. </p>
<p>41. Save like you’re going to spend 20% of your life miserably unemployed. </p>
<p>42. Learn to invest what you save, never underestimate the power of compound interest. </p>
<p>43. That being said, an iron clad law of investing is that the more complex your strategy the more likely you will end up spectacularly poor because of it. </p>
<p>44. Never take on debt you don’t need, but understand when debt can acutally serve a need. </p>
<p>45. Like money, ideas are wealth and should be saved as you would anything else, write all of them down and store them away for a rainy day. </p>
<p>46. Build those ideas that you are capable of producing well, develop a sense of your strengths and your weaknesses, and have the courage not to get wrapped up in one to the exclusion of the other.</p>
<p>47. Ideas are your fuel and fertilizer, believe in them, embrace them and challenge them. </p>
<p>48. Challenge your perspective constantly, always assume that you are wrong and strive towards becoming more right. </p>
<p>49. In the end, be the sort of person that someone can believe in, that you can believe in, that whatever small part of the world that you care about can believe in. </p>
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string(305) "I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are [...]"
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<p>I’ve spent more than my share of time staring at the problem of living effectively in the digital age we find ourselves in. In that time a few core ideas keep popping up, basic concepts that I think will become the foundations on which the next stage of our economy is built. The following are 49 points that I believe make up the basis of this new system, while the list is by no means exhaustive I do believe that it is comprehensive. </p>
<p>1. For the first time in history we all have the tools to craft our own jobs and set the course of our own lives.</p>
<p>2. This does not imply that it is easy or right for everyone, different people have different paths to meaning. </p>
<p>3. All the meaning and happiness in our lives is wrapped up in doing something incredibly hard, for an incredibly long time that we can believe in right down to the core of our beings. </p>
<p>4. Our greatest failure in life is that we rarely take a moment to discover this belief — what makes us tick, what brings us meaning, the reason that we keep breathing. </p>
<p>5. There is this idea that working from 9-5, 5 days a week at a job you basically hate is the only rational path to meaning — the modern economy is proving this notion false. </p>
<p>6. The modern economy rewards those who understand that a career is an ideology, a point of view, not merely a daily grind designed to keep us in bread and beans. </p>
<p>7. The modern economy rewards those who can separate themselves from the sea of resumes by shining a light on the talents and expertise that distinguish them as individual human lives. </p>
<p>8. “Shining lights” and all that is not easy work, it requires self knowledge and a deep belief in your own value. </p>
<p>9. One of those values is that we’re all entrepreneurs, we can all be agents of change — big, small or otherwise. </p>
<p>10. Change does not necessarily mean changing the entire world, it can be just as meaningful to change your neighborhood or your household. </p>
<p>11. Most people have no idea what they’re good at and walk around blindly thinking they are boring and colorless, get over this lie and start nurturing your talents. </p>
<p>12. A job is what you <em>do</em> to pay the bills, a career is what you <em>live within</em> to improve your world, you take on one to work towards the other.</p>
<p>13. Until your career can pay your bills, it’s probably prudent not to give up your job. </p>
<p>14. Without goals however, the job will consume your life, establish goals and spend as much energy as you have available to work towards them. </p>
<p>15. If you’re not learning you’re dying, if you’re not adapting you’re being left behind, the world changes in a blink and so must you.</p>
<p>16. Be on the lookout for any technology that makes your life easier. </p>
<p>17. Be certain to ignore all technologies that don’t. </p>
<p>18. The best ideas have always been simple to explain, never get caught up in your own complexity. </p>
<p>19. Time is and has always been your currency, the thrust of life should be towards earning more of it and using what you earn more wisely. </p>
<p>20. To that end, automate everything that you can, that will leave room to concentrate on all of those things that you can’t. </p>
<p>21. Money should always be a tool and never and end in and of itself, spend it freely if it helps to grow your business your knowledge or your happiness. </p>
<p>22. The things that we do are always more memorable than the things that we have, understand that long term happiness is always drawn from experiences rather than possessions. </p>
<p>23. Your possessions should be shaped and determined by your life, your life should never be shaped and determined by your possessions. </p>
<p>24. Maintain a broad perspective on the world, learn what you can about as much as you can and bring that wisdom into everything you do. </p>
<p>25. Genius is combining two seemingly unlike things into a third in a unique way, genius requires perspective and punishes those who see the world through the mouth of a tunnel. </p>
<p>26. Never underestimate your capacity for error, being human means being irrational. </p>
<p>27. Everything, especially error and trauma has a lesson to teach, learn to treat failure as a tool rather than as a penalty. </p>
<p>28. Don’t let work consume you, a few hours of time off can grant more perspective than a few days in front of a desk. </p>
<p>29. Understand that the trappings of success are less important and less valuable to you than success itself, that the culture of fame and wealth is as much a trap as it is something to strive towards.</p>
<p>30. Never add unnecessary complexity to your life, complexity consumes times. </p>
<p>31. Never hire an employee when a contractor will do, never hire a contractor when an employee is necessary.</p>
<p>32. Your dreams of a fancy corner office with a huge wooden desk probably has little or nothing to do with the goals of your business, often we are better off giving up the former for the latter. </p>
<p>33. Learn how to build a website, put up a blog, design a mobile application, work within the context of the web — the Internet is here to stay and those skills will drive the future forward. </p>
<p>34. The only things that can’t be outsourced are clever thoughts and the brass to speak your mind. Cultivate your ability to communicate your thoughts and the courage to implement your ideas. </p>
<p>35. Accept advice willingly, seek it out — in the end you will ignore most of it, but you’ll change everything because of the rest.</p>
<p>36. Give something back to the world. </p>
<p>37. Develop an interest in the problems of others, make time for voices outside of your head. </p>
<p>38. Travel as often as you can, get some perspective on the world outside of your front door.</p>
<p>39. Learn another language, you never can tell where your next client will come from.</p>
<p>40. Nurture your relationships, your work should never become the sole driver of your life. </p>
<p>41. Save like you’re going to spend 20% of your life miserably unemployed. </p>
<p>42. Learn to invest what you save, never underestimate the power of compound interest. </p>
<p>43. That being said, an iron clad law of investing is that the more complex your strategy the more likely you will end up spectacularly poor because of it. </p>
<p>44. Never take on debt you don’t need, but understand when debt can acutally serve a need. </p>
<p>45. Like money, ideas are wealth and should be saved as you would anything else, write all of them down and store them away for a rainy day. </p>
<p>46. Build those ideas that you are capable of producing well, develop a sense of your strengths and your weaknesses, and have the courage not to get wrapped up in one to the exclusion of the other.</p>
<p>47. Ideas are your fuel and fertilizer, believe in them, embrace them and challenge them. </p>
<p>48. Challenge your perspective constantly, always assume that you are wrong and strive towards becoming more right. </p>
<p>49. In the end, be the sort of person that someone can believe in, that you can believe in, that whatever small part of the world that you care about can believe in. </p>
"
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["title"]=>
string(52) "Fast Talking More Effective For Ambivalent Audiences"
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string(313) "Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive. The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often [...]"
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<p>Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive.</p>
<p>The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often they get a chance to agree and the more persuasive you come off. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if someone doesn’t really care, then external circumstances (like speed of speech) start coming into play. </p>
<blockquote><p>…it seems we might well have reason to fear fast talkers if they are delivering a message we’re not inclined to agree with. It seems the fast pace is distracting and we may find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. Similarly when faced with an audience gagging to agree, the practised persuader would do well to slow down and give the audience time to agree some more.</p>
<p>All this assumes the audience is interested in the topic in the first place. If it isn’t relevant, people are likely to judge it based solely on much more peripheral matters, like how fast they are talking. So once again, when talking to a disinterested audience, the fast talker is likely to be more persuasive.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/11/are-fast-talkers-more-persuasive.php">Read Are Fast Talkers More Persuasive?</a> (<a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/">Via Psyorg</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(313) "Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive. The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often [...]"
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<p>Interesting bit of news for the communicator trying to decide whether a deluge or words or a careful turn of phrase will be more persuasive.</p>
<p>The answer, according to researchers, is that it depends. This study shows that when someone is already apt to agree with you the more slowly you speak the more often they get a chance to agree and the more persuasive you come off. </p>
<p>On the other hand, if someone doesn’t really care, then external circumstances (like speed of speech) start coming into play. </p>
<blockquote><p>…it seems we might well have reason to fear fast talkers if they are delivering a message we’re not inclined to agree with. It seems the fast pace is distracting and we may find it difficult to pick out the argument’s flaws. Similarly when faced with an audience gagging to agree, the practised persuader would do well to slow down and give the audience time to agree some more.</p>
<p>All this assumes the audience is interested in the topic in the first place. If it isn’t relevant, people are likely to judge it based solely on much more peripheral matters, like how fast they are talking. So once again, when talking to a disinterested audience, the fast talker is likely to be more persuasive.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/2010/11/are-fast-talkers-more-persuasive.php">Read Are Fast Talkers More Persuasive?</a> (<a href="http://www.spring.org.uk/">Via Psyorg</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/laffy4k/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(44) "What Scientific Beliefs Have Been Flat Wrong"
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string(321) "Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place. While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more [...]"
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<p>Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place.</p>
<p>While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more profound. The history of science teaches us one thing above all else, scientists are almost always wrong. Every theory that we have had since we learned to make theories has been proven incomplete. The entire edifice of science is based on the idea of continued, incremental improvement and monumental, continuous failure. </p>
<p>Since we have been wrong before (and for fantastic reasons that don’t take anything away from science) the real question is, which of our pet theories today will be proved to be spectacularly wrong down the road?</p>
<blockquote><p>The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler10/thaler10_index.html">Read Wrong Scientific Beliefs</a> (<a href="http://www.edge.org/">Via Edge</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(321) "Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place. While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more [...]"
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<p>Father of Behavioral Economics Richard Thaler asks Edge contributors what long-held scientific beliefs were later proved to be flat wrong. He follows this by asking why they were held for so long in the first place.</p>
<p>While this is an interesting question in itself from a historic perspective, to me it is a lot more profound. The history of science teaches us one thing above all else, scientists are almost always wrong. Every theory that we have had since we learned to make theories has been proven incomplete. The entire edifice of science is based on the idea of continued, incremental improvement and monumental, continuous failure. </p>
<p>Since we have been wrong before (and for fantastic reasons that don’t take anything away from science) the real question is, which of our pet theories today will be proved to be spectacularly wrong down the road?</p>
<blockquote><p>The flat earth and geocentric world are examples of wrong scientific beliefs that were held for long periods. Can you name your favorite example and for extra credit why it was believed to be true?</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/thaler10/thaler10_index.html">Read Wrong Scientific Beliefs</a> (<a href="http://www.edge.org/">Via Edge</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Images</a>)</p>
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string(315) "If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. This is not news for politicians [...]"
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<p>If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. </p>
<p>At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. </p>
<p>This is not news for politicians and other professionals who base their power on rhetoric. People love artful turns of phrase, even when those turns of phrase don’t actually amount to conveying information. </p>
<p>The takeaway here (marketers pay attention) is that if you are going to gild the lily make sure that you bring a lot of gold spray paint. People will forgive you almost anything except boring them to death. </p>
<blockquote><p>The finding: People who dodge questions artfully are liked and trusted more than people who respond to questions truthfully but with less polish.</p>
<p>The study: Todd Rogers and Michael Norton showed subjects different videos of a political debate. In the first, one of the candidates answered the question asked. In the second, he dodged it by answering a similar question. In the third, he dodged it by answering a completely different one. When the candidate answered a similar question, subjects failed to notice the switch. They also liked him better if he answered a similar question well than if he answered the actual one less eloquently.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/people-often-trust-eloquence-more-than-honesty/">Read People Often Trust Eloquence More Than Honesty</a> (<a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/">Via Simoleon Sense</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>If you’re going to lie, might as well do it with style. </p>
<p>At least that’s what I study by Todd Rogers and Michael Norton shows. They have shown that often people will trust a speaker who ruefully dodges a question more than one who stumbles through an honest answer. </p>
<p>This is not news for politicians and other professionals who base their power on rhetoric. People love artful turns of phrase, even when those turns of phrase don’t actually amount to conveying information. </p>
<p>The takeaway here (marketers pay attention) is that if you are going to gild the lily make sure that you bring a lot of gold spray paint. People will forgive you almost anything except boring them to death. </p>
<blockquote><p>The finding: People who dodge questions artfully are liked and trusted more than people who respond to questions truthfully but with less polish.</p>
<p>The study: Todd Rogers and Michael Norton showed subjects different videos of a political debate. In the first, one of the candidates answered the question asked. In the second, he dodged it by answering a similar question. In the third, he dodged it by answering a completely different one. When the candidate answered a similar question, subjects failed to notice the switch. They also liked him better if he answered a similar question well than if he answered the actual one less eloquently.</p></blockquote>
<p><a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/people-often-trust-eloquence-more-than-honesty/">Read People Often Trust Eloquence More Than Honesty</a> (<a href="http://www.simoleonsense.com/">Via Simoleon Sense</a>) (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/turtlemom_nancy/">Images</a>)</p>
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<p>There is a simple formula I use when determining how much money a startup should spend on display advertising in its first year. First, I take whatever budget they had arrived at through careful modeling of estimated traffic, revenue goals and sundry and then I proceed to multiply it by zero. The result is the new budget. </p>
<p>Unless you’re selling Yachts or luxury vacations, a few extra dollars in design, PR, SEO, content development or even (rarely) Adwords will go significantly further than trying to generate positive returns off of banners. Even if you happen to be selling Yachts or luxury vacations, you’d probably have just about as much luck handing out flyers at your next mixer. </p>
<p>Save the banners for when you have exhausted every other channel and still have a few dollars burning in your pockets, at that point the awareness generated might be worth the negative financial returns. (<a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/x-ray_delta_one/">Photo Credit</a>)</p>
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