Making it up as you go along
Just wondering: Is there any other way to make it up?
Four videos about noise, social and decency
Here are four new videos from the Tom Peters Amex/Open session I did last year. Enjoy. (If you want to, you can press all four at once and it will sound like a UN debate)…
The reason riding a unicycle is difficult
…is because it's sudden. 
All the time you're practicing, you aren't actually riding. You're falling. Then, if you don't give up after all this failure, in a blink, you're riding. No in-between. Failing…riding.
Learning things that are binary like this is quite difficult. They are difficult to market because people don't like to fail. They're difficult to master because people don't like to fall. "You don't get it, but you will," is a hard sell.
Here's a great parenting tip: the best way to teach your kid to ride a bicycle is to wear Rollerblades. I can teach just about any 7 year old to ride a bike in ten minutes using this technique. The reason? For ten minutes, they are riding the bike while I hold them up. Once they get over the speed and steering hump, it's easy. The hard part was the falling.
If your goal is to have a mainstream service or product, then your opportunity is to create non-unicycle moments for your customers, employees and students.
Am I the only one distracted by apostrophes and weird “quoting”?
When I get a manuscript or see a sign that misuses its and it's and quotes, I immediately assume that the person who created it is stupid.
I understand that this is a mistake on my part. They're not necessarily totally stupid, they're just stupid about apostrophes.
It's a moral failing on my part to conflate the two, but I bet I'm not the only one. What else are your customers judging you on?
It's not just about being a grammar stickler. The fact is, we're constantly looking for clues and telling ourselves stories based on limited information. It shouldn't matter, but it does.
Social norms
The math for handshakes is difficult. You have to stand, look, squeeze, time and end in just the right way or it's weird. Skip the handshake or do a six-second version and people look at you funny.
Interpersonal relations have had thousands of years to develop. Online, there's been no time.
There are people who tweet in a way that rubs you the wrong way. Marketers who build businesses that seem scammy to you, or build websites that feel wrong. I get plenty of email from people that just doesn't feel right, whether it's in ALL CAPS or just difficult in tone or approach.
How do norms get formed? I think it's simpler than it looks: we interact with people who use the norm we use. We follow or read or hang out with people who use the same social constructs we do.
There might be people at the party down the street who are quite comfortable with each other and the things they're doing with or to each other… but you'd hate it. So you don't go.
Cliques form, which become communities and then, eventually a norm arrives. People like us like people like us.
If you're not attracting the people you want to be attracting online, perhaps you're not acting the way they do.
Welcome to island marketing
If you run a business on a small island, every interaction matters and every customer is precious.
There's a finite number of people you're going to be able to sell to, and every person you interact with knows everyone else, so you always have to be on your best behavior. You can't say, "tough" and then go on to the next person. You can't run ads that churn and burn through an endless supply of naive prospects. You only get one chance to make a first impression, and on the island, that impression matters.
Consider an airline in Chicago that can bully and bluster and greedify its way through an endless supply of business travelers, and compare them to a short hop carrier on Martha's Vineyard. The Vineyard airline knows that people can always switch to the other short hop airline or the ferry, and they also know that the folks they serve have power, because there aren't an endless supply.
As you've probably guessed, like most things in our ever shrinking world, all marketers are now on an island.
The island perspective is the Zappos model. Every interaction is both precious and an opportunity to delight. Marketers no longer have the money or the platform to harass and promote their way to success by burning through the market. Instead, we have to act like we're on an island earning and then nurturing a permission asset.
Through this lens, banner ads and various pop ups make even less sense than they used to. So does the insane act of outsourcing the random dialing of businesses to do telemarketing spam. We used up those resources a long time ago.
When you buy Zappos, what do you buy?
Amazon just announced that they're spending $800,000,000.00 (looks better that way) to buy Zappos.com.
But wait.
Amazon already has plenty of shoes.
Amazon already has great technology.
Amazon already has relationships with Fedex and UPS.
What you buy when you spend that kind of money is what matters now. And what matters is:
- A corporate culture that's not the same (and where great people choose to work)
- A tight relationship with customers that give you permission to talk with them
- A business model that's remarkable and worth talking about
- A story that spreads
- Leadership
These things are available to organizations of every size. If you want them and choose to work for them.
Ishita’s here
Please welcome Ishita Gupta, who now doubles the size of the team here at my tiny version of a company.
Ishita is our newly appointed Head of Hoopla. She's working with me on strategy, new projects, digital detailing, publishing and coordination. She's one of the most generous, most connected people I've ever had the chance to meet, and I'm lucky to be able to work with her.
If my name is on it, it's still from me… every word is still mine, every email too. Ishita is going to agitate, cajole and coordinate new projects and help me market, focus and be in the right places at the right time. And just in time, too.
A few other housekeeping notes:
This blog doesn't accept ads and I don't do paid endorsements. I get a new box of socks every year from Little Miss Match, but that doesn't really count. If you send me a book or a chocolate bar, it's unlikely that I'll blog it, but it never hurts to try, especially if the chocolate is dark chocolate. Books and other goods mentioned on this blog often carry affiliate links, and the money earned from these is donated to Room to Read or the Acumen Fund. I don't actively invest in the stock market or in startups, so if I mention a company, it's because I want to, not because I have an investment. I'm the founder of Squidoo.com, and if I mention them, it's because I believe in what we're building. This blog doesn't have comments but I read all non-anonymous email–and if I write back, it's me.
Death spiral!
You've probably seen it. The fish monger sees a decline in business, so they have less money to spend on upkeep and inventory, so they keep the fish a bit longer and don't clean up as often, so of course, business declines and then they have even less money… Eventually, you have an empty, smelly fish store that's out of business.
The doctor has fewer patients so he doesn't invest as much in training or staff and so some other patients choose to leave which means that there are even fewer patients…
The newspaper has fewer advertisers, so they can't invest as much in running stories, so people stop reading it, which means advertisers have less reason to advertise which leaves less money for stories…
As Tom Peters says, "You can't shrink your way to greatness," and yet that's what so many dying businesses try to do. They hunker down and wait for things to get better, but they don't. This isn't a dip, it's a cul de sac. It's over.
Right this minute, you still have some cash, some customers, some momentum… Instead of squandering it in a long, slow, death spiral, do something else. Buy a new platform. Move. Find new products for the customers that still trust you.
Change is a bear, but it's better than death.
Winning on the uphills
Interesting business lesson learned on a bicycle: it's very difficult to improve your performance on the downhills.
I used to dread the uphill parts of my ride. On a recumbent bike, they're particularly difficult. So I'd slog through, barely surviving, looking forward to the superspeedy downhill parts.
Unfortunately, I had a serious accident a few years ago (saving the life of a clueless pedestrian by throwing myself onto the pavement). Downhill might be fast, but it's crazy.
Lesson learned. Now, I look forward to the uphill parts, because that's where the work is, the fun is, the improvement is. On the uphills, I have a reasonable shot at a gain over last time. The downhills are already maxed out by the laws of physics and safety.
The best time to do great customer service is when a customer is upset. The moment you earn your keep as a public speaker is when the room isn't just right or the plane is late or the projector doesn't work or the audience is tired or distracted. The best time to engage with an employee is when everything falls apart, not when you're hitting every milestone. And everyone now knows that the best time to start a project is when the economy is lousy.
Most of your competition spend their days looking forward to those rare moments when everything goes right. Imagine how much leverage you have if you spend your time maximizing those common moments when it doesn't.