At 4 am in the morning, it’s easy to be defensive.
I’m staying at the Kimpton Prescott in SF tonight, and, being unable to switch time zones, I’m awake. Have been for hours.
At 4 am, I went down to the front desk and asked to use the fitness room. When I checked in last night, I was told that the room opened at 6 am, but because the website says:
On-site free 24-hour fitness facility with state of the art cardiovascular equipment, Universal gym …
They’d make an exception and let me in.
So, early this morning, I presented myself to the night clerk and asked him to let me in.
Now, it would be easy for him to get defensive. He could quote policy at me, point out that he’d worked there two years and had never let anyone in, etc. For a brief moment, I felt the impulse pass through him.
Then he realized that there was a better way, an easier way, a way that didn’t require him to exert negative emotional energy in the middle of the night. He switched sides.
He became an advocate for my cause. He said, “Well, I’ve never done that before, but if that’s what the website said, let’s see if we can make this work.” Notice the “we.”
He called the bellman, explained what we needed. If the bellman pointed out it was impossible, it would be easy for me to trudge upstairs, foiled but not defeated, unexercised but not disrespected.
The good news was that the room was easy to open. The better news is that even though customers (and prospects) can be a real pain in the neck, everyone in the organization that wants customers on a regular basis needs to take a breath and realize that we’re always on the same side. The challenge (and the benefit) is in acting that way.
Link: The Prescott Hotel – A Kimpton Hotel in Downtown San Francisco.
August 24, 2005
Check out this restaurant review. Link: Chowhound’s Chicago Area Message Board: Lula Cafe and TAC.
Doesn’t it make you want to fly to Chicago and eat there?
It’s so easy to rip into someone or something. So easy to write a negative review. Raves like this are a lot harder to write, which is on reason they’re so rare.
August 22, 2005
Some of it worth a comment.
Amazon launches a short story series with well-known authors selling digital short pieces. ( reveries – cool news of the day.) I was asked by Amazon to jump in and I declined. The reasoning at their end is simple: they should be a publisher. They have every element necessary to be a successful publisher:
a. access to readers who want to hear from them
b. knowledge of what those readers want
c. infinite shelf space
d. cash to act as a VC for authors who demand upfront money
Barnes & Noble is secretly making a fortune as a publisher (check out the front of the retail store next time you’re there) and Amazon is way, way bigger.
Alas, I think digital and I think short are the two worst ways to start. The first two ways you know if you want to buy a book is to either read part of it or hear about it from a friend. Well, if it’s short and you read part of it, you’re done. And if it’s digital, your friend ought to just send it to you.
The third way to decide you want a book is that the author is someone you know and trust. But if that’s the only thing a publisher has to offer (the famous author) then the author gets most of the money in her advance, because, after all, it’s her brand not the publisher’s that’s selling the thing. Lots of online platforms are facing this very same challenge.
I’ve been pushing Amazon to become of a publisher of just about everything for five or six years now. Alas, I’m dubious about the success of this effort. I hope they don’t give up when it doesn’t take off.
The second thing is the New York Times piece that seems to think that free ebooks were just invented and might be the next big thing. Longtime readers will be surprised at this insight. Try this Google link to see what I mean: (ideavirus – Google Search.)
The third article also comes from the Times. Once a Booming Market, Educational Software for the PC Takes a Nose Dive – New York Times. It talks about the death of the educational software market. That was my very first job, in 1984, with Spinnaker Software, the firm widely credited with inventing the educational computer game. It was a very exciting time. The company grew 10x a year, and suddenly this was a real industry.
Like most industries, everyone thought it would last forever. It didn’t. They don’t. Yours probably won’t either.
A co-author passed on this note to me:
WOW, three days in the moo pasture and I’m in love….I feel in the
spotlight, not my spotlight, but the spotlight of innovation
–remarkable possibilities– in the making.
You spoke it and I took the message with me to [my Fortune 100 company]
“There is freedom to innovatively use the book/tour for any purpose”….the implicit
message: Let’s have fun in that discovery process. What would it mean
for us to be involved…what a fun question that is. Big Moo, by
definition, is FUN….
Now I don’t know Seth (in fact know little about him) except that the
book’s very nature is contagious. And — it’s about connectivity
(yours-mine-the authors- the sponsors- the world!) Inviting
sponsorship “to combine forces…to contribute, connect and celebrate”.
And look at what has happened in so little time: you invited me into
this…and now I am connected…and inside this celebration in the making.
Now that’s contagious. All from a little book…who would have
guessed….I can’t wait to reread it again and again. I am so excited
about what might, could, will unfold as a result of all this. Thank
YOU for inviting me in. Thank you for the gift; inspiration is the
prize, the gift.
If I were a cow, I might just moooooooooooo.
Sleepless in Albuquerque,
mari
: The Big Moo by The Group of 33:: Galley Offer.
August 21, 2005
Here’s some profound marketing thought from Bootsy Collins.
"You have to bring some funk to get some. You just can’t walk in a place and expect to get some funk. If you ain’t bring no funk, then you can’t get no funk… Another thing is, you can’t fake the funk or your nose will grow."
Mike Sellers (Terra Nova: Fun Is What You Make It) quotes me:
Seth Godin said something like "the good news is, everyone’s visible online. The bad news is, we’re all three inches tall."
Thing is, I love this quote. It’s the sort of thing I wish I had said. And in fact, I’m going to start saying it. However, to be fair, I can’t find the quote on Google or in my files. It seems like the sort of thing Lisa Gansky would have put on a t shirt in the old days.
So, if you know who really said it (even if it was me), please let me know. Am I getting old or is it my imagination?
August 19, 2005
There are two ways to catch a plane. The first, which happens to be the most common, is to leave on time, do your best to park nearby, repeatedly glance at your watch, and then start moving faster and faster. By the time you get to security, you realize that you’re quite late, so you cut the line ("My plane leaves in 10 minutes!" you shout). You walk fast. As you get closer to your gate, you realize that walking fast isn’t going to work, so you start to jog. Three gates away, you break into a run, and if you’re lucky, you barely make the flight.
The second way is to leave for the airport 10 minutes early.
The easiest way to deal with change and with all the anxieties that go with it is not to deal with it at all. The easiest thing to do is to allow the urgency of the situation to force us to make the decisions (or take the actions) that we’d rather not take. Why? Because then we don’t have to take responsibility for what happens. The situation is at fault, not us. The beauty of the asymptotic curve is that at every step along the way, running ever faster for the plane is totally justified. The closer we get, the more we’ve invested ourselves. The more we invest in making our flight, the easier it is to justify running like a lunatic to make it.
Years ago, I published a directory of law firms. No fewer than 70% of the firms sent their payment the night before it was due, by FedEx. Eight of the firms sent their payment by messenger–at an expense that was equal to about 10% of the entire cost of their listing. Obviously, there was no need to waste all that money. Law firms spend millions every year on last-minute deliveries because, like most of us, they confuse urgent with important.
Urgent issues are easy to address. They are the ones that get everyone in the room for the final go-ahead. They are the ones we need to decide on right now, before it’s too late.
How can you tell if you’re too obsessed with urgent?
Do senior people at your company refuse to involve themselves in decisions until the last minute?
Do meetings regularly get canceled because something else came up?
Is waiting until the last minute the easiest way to get a final decision from your peers?
Smart organizations ignore the urgent. Smart organizations understand that important issues are the ones to deal with. If you focus on the important stuff, the urgent will take care of itself.
A key corollary to this principle is the idea that if you don’t have the time to do it right, there’s no way in the world you’ll find the time to do it over. Too often, we use the urgent as an excuse for shoddy work or sloppy decision-making. A quick look at Washington politics (under any administration) is an easy way to understand how common this crutch is. No responsible business (or diligent family) would spend money and resources the way our government does when faced with an "emergency." Urgent is not an excuse. In fact, urgent is often an indictment–a sure sign that you’ve been putting off the important stuff until it mushrooms out of control.
The most important idea of all is this one: You will succeed in the face of change when you make the difficult decisions first. It’s easy to justify running for your plane when it’s leaving in two minutes and you’re only five gates away. It’s much harder to justify waking up 10 minutes early to avoid the problem altogether. Alas, waking up early is the efficient, effective way to deal with the challenge. Waking up earlier may seem foolish to the person lying in bed next to you, but when you enjoy the benefits of a pleasant stroll to the gate, you realize that your difficult decision was a good one.
Organizations manage to justify draconian measures–laying people off, declaring bankruptcy, stiffing their suppliers, and closing stores–by pointing out the urgency of the situation. They refuse to make the difficult decisions when the difficult decisions are cheap. They don’t want to expend the effort to respond to their competition or fire the intransigent VP of development. Instead, they focus on the events that are urgent at that moment and let the important stuff slide.
A quick look at the gradually failing airlines, retailers, and restaurant chains we all know about confirms this analysis. They’re all content to worry about today’s emergency, setting the stage for tomorrow’s disaster. Better, I think, to wake up 10 minutes early, make some difficult decisions before breakfast, and enjoy the rest of your day.
(Thanks to Rick Terrien for pointing me to this article. I wrote it more than a year ago in Fast Company, then things got urgent…)
August 18, 2005
We’re all clueless. That’s the best word I can use to describe the state of the art of marketing.
Three examples:
I’m at the supermarket yesterday. I run into my friend John, not someone I often see at the Food Emporium. John has a list. Standard grocery list, "here honey, please go out and get this…" But John wants to show me something on the list. It says,
1 woman’s razor that matches our bathroom.
Wow. Gillette has been making razors for almost a hundred years, and you wonder how many hours and how much money they’ve spent trying to answer that want… probably .0001% of what they spend on blade technology.
Then, this morning, I head to the bank. Poor guy is arguing with the "customer service manager". The problem? He had $4 in his checking account as he was waiting to close it. The bank charged him a monthly $5 service fee. The fee bounced. Then they charged him $30 for bouncing the fee on an inactive account.
The manager was trying to explain the policy, but the bottom line is that all the real estate, all the ads, all the marble, all the computers… all wasted… because they were enraging the guy. Over $4.
And finally, leaving the bank, I saw the most amazing interaction (yes, this is true.) A woman is first in line. She’s withdrawing $1,000 from her account. The teller pushes away from the desk and goes and gets her signature card (this is a neighborhood bank) to match it against the woman’s signature on the withdrawal slip.
The customer tells me that:
1. the teller has been working there for twenty years.
2. the customer comes in at least once a week.
3. they always check her signature
and, ready for this…
4. she’s been a customer at this bank for seventy years. I am not making this up. She is very proud that she’s nearly (nearly!) their longest-serving customer. The account is more than seventy years old. And they check her signature.
Clueless.
Marketing is now officially about wants, not needs. That’s what Liars is about and what your entire day should be about. Your church, your company, your restaurant, your blog. Doesn’t matter. Give me what I want or I’m out of here.
August 16, 2005
In eight weeks, my last traditional book project hits the street.
I have 32 co-authors this time and 100% of our royalties go to charity.
This time, we’re shooting for the big time. And we need your help.
The book is called: The Big Moo by The Group of 33. Our goal is to sell a million copies before the end of the year and to raise millions for three worthy charities. Our bigger goal is to transform thousands of organizations–corporations, non-profits, community groups, whatever.
Here’s where you come in.
I’ve found that most business books don’t get bought. Those that do, don’t get read. Those that do, make a difference, but only for those that read them. Every once in a while, a business book breaks through because organizations buy it by the truckoad. When a group buys 100 or 1,000 copies of a book, it gets talked about. It becomes a touchstone, something that people can refer to, use as a shorthand and take as a common foundation.
When I pitched Tom Peters, Malcolm Gladwell, Guy Kawasaki, April Armstrong, Julie Anixter, Marcia Hart and dozens of other big thinkers on contributing to a book that was designed to change the way organizations dealt with being remarkable, they all said yes. No hesitation, just yes.
Now it’s your turn to say, "yes."
For the first time that I’m aware of, we’re selling the galleys to a book. The galley is the very expensive pre-publication not-quite-paperback version of a hardcover book. The galley is created to give reviewers a chance to read the book before everyone else. I persuaded my publisher to print 10,000 galleys, a huge number. And we’re selling them at cost.
Here’s the catch: I only want to sell the galleys (50 at a time) to people who will give them to people who will buy a lot of the $15 hardcover. (Sell isn’t really accurate. The fine print is that we’re actually giving them away, but you need to spend $100 on postage and handling to get them… we promise to handle them very carefully.)
That’s complicated, so I’ll type it slowly:
I only want to give the 50 pack of galleys ($2 a copy s&h) to people who will turn around and give galleys to people in organizations with the will and the ability to pre-order a dozen or more copies of the final hardcover.
This means that if you buy a bunch of galleys and give them to people who don’t do anything, you’ve killed the project and turned me into a publishing pariah.
If, on the other hand, I’m right and every galley turns into 10 or a hundred pre-sales, we just hit a home run.
So, there’s only 100 or so sets of these galleys left (my co-authors bought most of them to distribute) so I apologize in advance if Jack at 800 CEO READ runs out. If he does, don’t despair… just pre-order the hardcover. Not for me, for you. For you and your organization and your friends and our charities.
Here’s that address again: The Big Moo by The Group of 33.* Please don’t order a set unless you know the right sneezers/connectors/influencers. And thanks.
*At the site above, you can order galleys, pre-order the hardcover
from various sites, see the bios of the authors and read about our
charities. (Did I mention that Hugh Macleod is doing the illustrations?)
August 14, 2005
This site featuring cheesy furniture (FedexFurniture.Com) would have essentially no traffic–except for the fact that Fedex sent a cease and desist letter and claimed it violated the DCMA (that and Kinko’s refused to print cards for the site’s owner, because, of course, they’re owned by Fedex!)
No, it probably won’t hurt Fedex’s business, but it’s sure not worth the hassle, is it?
August 11, 2005
