Jeff Pulver Sent Two BIG Ideas My Way

Filed Under Community, Successful Blog | 9 Comments

What’s His Big Idea?

I enjoy watching Jeff Pulver take on life. He’s a guy with BIG ideas. He also makes them happen, This week via email and a couple of blog posts, Jeff passed two of his great ideas on to a few folks that he knows. I was lucky. One of those folks happened to be me.

What’s Your “bestof”?

Friday, Jeff wrote about blog posts he’d like to make “sticky.” His idea seems simple enough — we might all consider it. His thoughts were that we mark certain signature posts with the same tag so that first-time readers could find them easily. After an email conversation, the appropriate tag chosen was “bestof.” Tom Evslin, offered to program something that would tie the posts together — if it rains this weekend. (I didn’t want to hope for rain, but the code will be nice. I’m guessing Chris Brogan, Jeff Jarvis, and Kfir Pravda — all part of the same conversation — might have been thinking the same thing.)

Imagine the value of this “bestof” tagging convention, if it caught on — readers would know to Google a name and “bestof” to find the work that defines a writer’s viewpoint. Reporters and other bloggers could find a blogger’s expertise with ease.

I’m updating the About Liz page in the sidebar to include a “Bestof” section that will include a handful of posts that I think fit this category.

BlogDay2007 Tag from Jeff Pulver

bloggy tags small

Three years ago, Nir Ofir started blogDay. As he says,

I initiated the blogDay in 2005 with the belief that bloggers should have one day which will be dedicated to discover new blogs and expose them to the world.

blogDay 3 is August 31.

Today Jeff Pulver launched a game to encourage folks to join the celebration — BlogDay Blog-Tag: A Game to Celebrate BlogDay3. He asked me to play. Jeff offers these simple suggestions for how to make it work seamlessly.

[R]ecommend five blogs, preferably Blogs that are different from [your] own culture, point of view and attitude. The goal of this version of blog-tag is for the readers of our blog posts to find themselves leaping around and discovering new voices and Blogs to explore. This in turn will help celebrate the discovery process of finding new people, their voices and their blogs.

When creating your BlogDay blog entry, please try to follow these instructions:

1. List five Blogs that you find interesting and if you can tell, include the city/country where they are from.
2. Identify five Bloggers to tag to join in this game with you. I recommend emailing the bloggers you tag to give them a heads up of you tagging them.
3. Use the tag: BlogDay2007 in your blog post.
4. (Optionally): Contact the owners of the blogs you shared as your “blogs to take a look at.”

I can do that.

I wonder who Ann, Sean, Chris, Troy, Phil might also recommend as world blogs we might explore.

Thanks, Jeff, for getting me to stretch in these ways.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Work with Liz!!

Hope Seth Doesn’t Mind if I Go Even Further

Filed Under Analysis, Marketing, Successful Blog | 16 Comments

If You Can’t Keep a Secret . . .

Finding Ideas Outside of the Box
I hadn’t really thought about the Harry Potter leaked ending, except to shake my head at the industry that used to be my home. To spend $20M on a secret that couldn’t be kept seemed such a waste . . . How I remember the thoght process that gets companies to do that sort of thing.

Then this morning Ann Michael and I were discussing Seth’s insight on publishing and the Internet. He pointed out what I would have never thought.

Five hundred year old technology (books) is just too slow for the Net. The act of printing, storing and shipping millions of books takes too long for a secret to ever be in a book again.

He suggests that, well, read Seth’s post for his brilliant solution. He advocates using the Internet to control the secret. I sure hope Seth doesn’t mind if I use my publishing experience to take his idea just a little further.

Fact: As Seth said, the secret was in always in jeopardy — from the moment the manuscript was written. The company should have seen that $20million, $40million to protect the secret was playing to a weakness.

One thing I’ve learned from Seth is that every weakness can be a strength. Here’s what I would have proposed, had someone asked my opinion. . . . Don’t worry, they didn’t.

How to Release the Harry Potter Secret OR How Choosing for the Customer Is Choosing for the Company

The problem wasn’t having the secret where people could get to it. The problem was the company thought of the secret as a problem rather than an opportunity,

Strategy always begins with the customer. In this case, the customers are kids (of every age) who grew up with the series. $20million of security was choosing for the company not the customers.

If I think about the kids, here’s where I end up.

Ready?

  • I would ask J.K.Rowling to reveal the ending to me as soon as she was able. I would spend a fraction of that $20million building a cool online video game with seven levels to match the seven questions of the Harry Potter Campaign. I’d spend the security there. Fewer people involved, much more control.
  • I’d release the game that reveals the end of the story, three weeks before any pre-launch copy.
  • To register to play the game, I would ask that each player sign in with a name, and a parental permission with verifiable email address (if the player is under 13).
  • The game would be as difficult as any game on the market. It would also have cheat codes and book with hints as salable products. It would take hours– whatever is the industry average — to complete successfuly.
  • When a player made it through the last level, he or she would reach a Howart’s Honor Code screen. The screen would announce the success and point out how difficult it was to achieve it. The Honor Code would leave the question to winner to hold or pass on the answer as they honor their own work. They earned it. People value what they earn.

It’s as Seth said, no one can keep it a secret — but we can control how it gets out. The company could have made finding the answer part of the Hogwart’s World. It could have been an experience. It could have been fun. Besides, I’m not sure that if I worked 10-20 hours to find out an answer that I’d give it away, . . . well, maybe secretly.

Who knows? I might play the game again and again — even after I read the book.

If I knew what I was talking about I’d still be working in that industry . . . right? I’m probably just confused. That comes from thinking like a kid.

–ME “Liz” Strauss

1.2 WHY Doing What We Love Is Solid Business Thinking

Filed Under Inside-Out Thinking, Perfect Virtual Manager, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 22 Comments

Not Self-Indulgent, Good Business

inside-out thinking

Did I really mean to say the word? Yep.

Love. Not like, enjoy, or get kick out of, but have a passion for, live for, hold in highest esteem. Every person needs a quest, a cause, and a purpose.

That’s right. One — that one simple question.

What businesslike thing do you love doing?

is critical to your business.

Why?
Because it’s how we’re wired as humans. We bring our best to whatever challenge we face. We’re better when we’re inspired by deep feeling. We’ve known that since we were kids.

Any less is inauthentic, second-best, didn’t try, plan b, was absent that day, ho-hum, phone it in, stand in right field and let that pop-fly pass us by instead of saying the game . . . we might as well be out!

There’s a reason that so many folks — on TV, in IT, in academia, in every career — say the same thing. . . . find your passion, do what you love.

They’re not promoting self-indulgence. They’re supporting solid business sense.

WHY Doing What We Love Is Solid Business Thinking

What makes loving our work solid business thinking? Why is it more critical now than before?

In his book, A Whole New Mind, Dan Pink points out that “high concept” and “high touch” values (design, story, symphony, empathy, play, and meaning) have become as important as linear thinking, detailed analysis, and spreadsheets.

On his blog, Doc Searls recently said this about how business is doing. It was part of an interview with Shel Israel.

In the original website version of Cluetrain, Chris Locke wrote, “we are not seats or eyeballs or end users or consumers and our reach exceeds your grasp. deal with it.”
Recognizing a situation and dealing with it, however are two different things. The “dealing” has barely begun.

In this Internet, global economy we deal direct — no middle man. Conversation and relationships matter as much as schedule and budget do.

In plain and simple words, thinking and doing what everyone has thought and done no longer work. Now it’s think and love what we do — That’s the only way to draw customers to us.

Think hard. Thinking alone doesn’t solve every problem. Some problems are human. Some require empathy and finesse. Some situations call for more than intelligent reasoning. Before you talk yourself out of what you love doing . . . think about the reasons we need to bring all of yourself to your business — head and heart.

7 Reasons WHY Doing What We Love is Critical

When we bring all of who we are, full engagement of head and heart, we bring 7 deeper values and higher outcomes to our work.

  1. Complete presence — focus. We’re all there — the all thinking business is no longer sufficient. Computers can’t smile. Computers can’t listen to the spaces between words. People buy what we sell.

  2. Peak performance — productivity. We invest more, do more, go further for the work we love.

  3. Tolerance — perseverance. We have more patience, time, and energy for problem solving when we directly reap the benefits.

  4. Value and Appeal — compelling story. To compete a product or service has to be useful and beautiful. Simple and elegant, for to the adult and the kid in each one of us. Bringing logic and emotion to a business outdistances the world view of logic alone.

  5. Total Differentiation — identity. The uniqueness of our being shines through in concept and execution when we start from what we love.

  6. Fully Invested and Worth Investing In — market value. Rolling all of the above values into one, nothing beats the 360 degree investment of brains, money, and dreams all in the same direction. Any VC worth his or her salt looks for that combination when funding a small business.

  7. Sense of Worth — authority. We value what we earn and what we love.

Can you see why it’s only sense that a strong business is built on doing what we love?

Got questions yet?

Next: 1.3 WHAT IF you don’t know what you love to do?

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Is your business stuck? Check out the Start-up Strategy Package. Work with Liz!!

Related
To follow the entire series: Liz Strauss’ Inside-Out Thinking to Building a Solid Business, see the Successful Series Page.

Change the World: One World-Sized Idea

Filed Under Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog, The Big Idea | 33 Comments

Are We Afraid We Would Make a Difference?

Change the World!

A lucky part of being who and where I am is that I get have conversations about people’s passions and dreams for the future. I hear their heads describing their skills and talents. I hear their hearts explaining how they long to follow their calling.

The wish is always there, often unspoken — sometimes from fear of it, sometimes from a lack of ownership.

Yesterday, I had a conversation with a young man. He had some idea of his future, but not yet a whole one. He asked my experience. I said is that, if he were going to make one mistake, I suspected that he would not think big enough.

“Not think big enough,” he pondered that phrase.

“Yes, I don’t think I’ve heard anyone think too big for years, maybe forever.”
He asked for more. I elaborated in this way.

We make our ideas smaller by thinking we weren’t meant to do something. Other folks were meant to change things. We were meant to live with them. Why do we argue for that? Isn’t the opposite an equally valid argument?

Why do we shy away from what we long to be doing?

Are we afraid that we actually could make a difference?

Nelson Mandela knows.

“Our deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure. It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us.

We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented, and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be? You are a child of God.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you. We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us.

It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone. And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.”

Ghandhi
Mother Teresa
Martin Luther King

They were each one person with a refusal to follow their fear.

Your playing small doesn’t serve the world.

One person can change the world with belief in a world-sized idea.

This is not talk. I truly do . . . plan . . .. to . . . Change the World.

With capital letters.

Why not me? Why not you? Why not all of us?

We can change the world — just like that.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Mandela’s speech was written by Marianne Williamson.
______________
If you’re ready to change the world, send me your thoughts in a guest post. Feel free to take the gorgeous Change the World image up there that Sandy designed back to your blog. Or help yourself to this one.

Change the World!.

Email me about what you’re doing or what we might do. Let’s change the world one bit at a time together. Together it can’t take forever.

Personal Identity: What Is Humility?

Filed Under Branding, Motivation/Inspiration, Successful Blog | 104 Comments

Can we talk about . . .

humility.

Once when I was about eight, I saw this sentence written in an open space on a church bulletin.

The funny thing about humility is the second you think you have it, you don’t.

Obviously that sentence stayed with me. I revisit it often. I still see it. The original had been typed on the master sheet by a manual typewriter. As I reflect on the image, the sentence itself looks humble compared to what we look at now.

This morning, Karin and I talked about the meaning of humility, which started me thinking again.

I reflect on one idea every time I encounter that word humility It’s been the same since the day I first saw that sentence.

We get ourselves into weird shapes and strange configurations chasing after humility.

Humility is the recluse star of the virtues. It starts with the same H as halo.

I can tell you what I know about humility. Then maybe you’ll tell me more. That would be useful, because the ellusiveness of humility means we know more about what it is not than we do about what it is.

In fact, what humility is not is a good place to start. Humility is the absence of many things that we can do without.

Humility is not about deprivation. Humility is about more, not less. A humble heart gives more, has more room, sees more good, and is more generous.

Humility doesn’t make itself less. It doesn’t think of itself at all. So less cannot happen.

Humility does not bring itself down. It raises others up higher yet. A humble heart can hold up a chin. For a heart to do less would be to devalue everyone. Humility is about giving value, not taking it away.

Humility is not false. It doesn’t pretend to something it’s not. It doesn’t deny the truth about what is good. A star needs to shine fully bright to remain a star. A humble star knows that shining is what it does well and is generous with its light. Falsehoods in any form, are not humility. They are a denial of the truth, that’s something else.

Humility is without guile. It needs no plot, no plan. It has no needs at all.

Humility is not about me. It doesn’t make me bigger or smaller. It’s about everyone else.

We don’t know when we have it, because when we look at ourselves it is gone.

–ME “Liz” Strauss
Check out the Work with Liz!! page in the sidebar.

Related
Change the World: Truth and Humility

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