« May 2006 | Main | September 2006 » Housekeeping Today is a bit like that insurance ad where there's good news and bad news--the good news is that I'm flat out on deadline for several clients....meaning the bad news is no post (forgive my presumption that this is bad news!) And accept my apology for taking the time to compose a post explaining that I don't have time to post.... I got a couple things for tomorrow. Posted by tom at 02:52 PM | Comments (0) Fixes that Fail; The Van and Mildred Pierce Long line at the Belmont post office yesterday. I asked the woman at the counter why this was the case, and she explained to me that as a result of a new efficiency program, everything takes much longer. She illustrated by showing me how it now took her a sequence of 12 steps to process my media mail package, whereas under the old (and presumably less efficient) system the exact same package would take 3 steps. As a famous comedian used to say, “what’s up with that?” Last week I had a frustrating experience with a store that bought many copies of my book. This was a good thing in theory—but a bad one when it took months for them to process an invoice they initially told me they would pay for with a store credit card that day. As the bureaucracy ensued, and the store finally sent me to the corporate headquarters, I asked the store manager what happened. And he told me: “Well, as it turns out we do have store credit cards. We just aren’t allowed to use them.” And what’s up with that? Over the weekend I read Roddy Doyle’s fantastic novel The Van. I rank it with James M. Cain’s Mildred Pierce as one of the finest pieces of literature to capture the rich texture of starting up a business. Both books brilliantly depict the way that a small venture often starts as a vehicle to escape, how committed individuals use their companies to get beyond where they are by making money and essentially creating a new place. And both books show how these very same enterprises eventually recreate and often amplify the very challenges the founders sought to escape or overcome. Above all, both books are delightful stories about the excitement and fallibility of small business, and how it can serve as a theater for the best and worst of what people are capable of. Posted by tom at 02:30 PM | Comments (0) Currency of Business Stories As several recent books, most notably Joseph Badaracco’s lovely Questions of Character, have pointed out, managers can draw meaningful lessons from great literature and apply them to the practice of business. I fully agree, and find the mention this week of three great works of art confirmation of this law. Yesterday’s New York Times touted Meryl Streep’s performance in Bertolt Brecht’s epic Mother Courage and Her Children, a stunning play whose protagonist is a ruthless entrepreneur earning her keep by pushing a cart through the ravaged landscape of the Thirty Years’ War. Like many entrepreneurs she seeks to capitalize on change, which in this case she achieves by meeting the needs of individuals who must rely on a pushcart vendor like herself to provide basic needs that the war has pushed beyond their reach. Brecht portrays Mother Courage as a shrewd, cynical merchant whose skill at her trade enables her to survive in brutal times—yet who must make profound sacrifices for her cart, which is all that she ends up with. Also up on Broadway: the current production of Stephen Sondheim’s Sweeney Todd, which by all accounts is a masterpiece. This is my favorite musical of all time, and while certainly less political than Brecht’s, features a ruthless merchant as a key figure. In this case, Mrs. Lovett, in a part immortalized by Angela Lansbury, is an ambitious pie-maker who finally hits it big when she finds a savory solution for the bodies produced by the title character’s madness. Just get this musical and enjoy it. And finally: this week a new release of the greatest work-related film noir ever made, Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity. Based on the novel of James Cain, this flick features the most loving and realistic depiction of the insurance industry you’ll ever find. I could go on for hours on everything I love about this movie, but will make my case instead by reproducing two speeches from Keyes, the claims man played brilliantly by Edward G. Robinson. In speech one, Keyes tries to persuade Walter Neff to trade in his sales job for a stint as his assistant: “A desk job. Is that all you can see in it? Just a hard chair to park your pants on from nine to five. Just a pile of papers to shuffle around, and five sharp pencils and a scratch pad to make figures on, with maybe a little doodling on the side. That’s not the way I see it, Walter. To me a claims man is a surgeon, and that desk is an operating table, and those pencils are scalpels and bone chisels. And those papers are not just forms and statistics and claims for compensation. They’re alive, they’re packed with drama, with twisted hopes and crooked dreams. A claims man, Walter, is a doctor and a blood-hound and a cop and a judge and a jury and a father confessor, all in one.” And if such a speech isn’t enough, the genius of the movie unfolds as Keyes proves his point by using his superior technical knowledge to crack the case. Here’s his comeback to his boss, the son of insurance agency’s founder, whose theory of the case is hopelessly wrong. When told “I was raised in the insurance business,” Keyes retorts: “Yeah. In the front office. Come on, you never read an actuarial table in your life. I’ve got ten volumes on suicide alone. Suicide by race, by color, by occupation, by sex, by seasons of the year, by time of day. Suicide, how committed: by poisons, by fire-arms, by drowning, by leaps. Suicide by poison, subdivided by types of poison, such as corrosive, irritant, systemic, gaseous, narcotic, alkaloid, protein, and so forth. Suicide by leaps, subdivided by leaps from high places, under wheels of trains, under wheels of trucks, under the feet of horses, from steamboats. But Mr. Norton, of all the cases on record there’s not one single case of suicide by leap from the rear end of a moving train. And do you know how fast that train was going at the point where the body was found? Fifteen miles an hour. Now how could anybody jump off a slow moving train like that with any kind of expectation that he would kill himself? No soap, Mr. Norton. We’re sunk, and we’re going to through the nose, and you know it.” Posted by tom at 12:20 PM | Comments (0) Refractive Heuristics, Or; Why SoaP Failed to Launch So after all the hype Snakes on a Plane enjoyed a tepid opening weekend. Number one in the box office, mind you, but far less than expected, leading the president of theatrical distribution for New Line Cinema to comment on the performance: “Now we just have to sit back and figure out how to take the lessons from it.” Here’s the lesson: the opening performance of SoaP has been a dramatic vindication of an important business law. The foregone conclusion that the movie would soar has been a result of what scientists call “refractive heuristics.” As defined to laypeople like ourselves, this is a dynamic whereby people who share and gather information in one dominant media format—such as the Internet—tend to believe that all things related to said media are more important than others, all things being equal. To wit: the vast majority of business posts on the web concern themselves with web-related business topics, such as marketing, buzz marketing, small-world buzzy word-of-mouth marketing buzz, and the like. Conclusion: not only is most business conversation on the web mostly about the web; the tenor of this talk also displays a certain awe, a belief that, come world 2.0, marketing will be the dominant business function and will in turn be dominated by the Internet. Thus, the would-be SoaP lessons aren’t limited to ephemeral cultural scraps sold to ADD-addled mid-teenage boys: they are the new power laws for the ages. But I am not doing justice to the theory here. If you want more proven scientific data on refractive heuristics, please go look it up on wikipedia. I’ll be adding an entry about this discipline sometime soon. Posted by tom at 12:27 PM | Comments (0) What Snakes On A Plane Doesn't Teach Us From all signs and symbols, Snakes On A Plane will do boffo business this weekend. And if so, God help us all. Prepare for a glut of articles and citations about the success of the pre-release Internet “buzz.” I expect these articles to be as independently-thinking as, say, each of the millions of movie-goers mobbing the theaters in the first five days. There’s going to be so much talk and analysis about the movie’s big date that by the time its over I’ll be begging for one extra python from the movie to end my misery. Here’s my prediction: the success of SOAP will end up being far more of a cautionary tale than an instructive one. The greater the box office this weekend, the more lessons will be shared in half-baked articles and books touting the power of Internet buzz. Business readers will suffer years of residual punditry about how to tap buzz that will have as much practical value as, to quote Patches O’Houlihan in Dodgeball, “a doodie-flavored lollypop.” Let’s try a little test here: how many people saw the Blair Witch Trial Sequel? (Crickets.) How successful were the filmmakers who “created” the blockbuster success of the original at reproducing a modest fraction of the gross with the follow-up? And for that matter, what other movies have applied the wisdom of Blair Witch Trial to their campaigns? I believe that the success of SOAP has far more to do with the confluence of planes and snakes and Samuel L. Jackson; mixed with the release date of August 2006, combined with 12.5 other factors that shall not be named, than it has to do with the specific Internet marketing tactics unleashed by the filmmakers. Sure, there’s little doubt that having an online community getting hopped up about the hype helped. But I defy one person to extrapolate from this film and reproduce the dynamics a second time. Not gonna happen. Events like this demonstrate the great disconnect between quality and popularity when it comes to pop culture artifacts, the great degree of capriciousness when it comes to spawning buzz, and the fact that most business writers vastly prefer writing about movies and tv shows when analyzing business than, says, hubs and routers, minivans, turbines, or new pharmaceuticals. Why look for a quarter where you dropped it if the light is better at the movie theater? Here’s what I consider the takeaways from SOAP. When it comes to buzz, things that have buzz are the things that get more buzz. In terms of creating WOM-fueled successes, quality rarely correlates to quality. But most of all, can we all bow to the words of screenwriter William Goldman, who has the final word on what makes a blockbuster: Nobody Knows Anything. Posted by tom at 02:44 PM | Comments (0) One Secret to Good Business Books: Good Writing Today Publishers Weekly published a great article on writing by John Hodgman, a favorite writer of mine (his The Areas of My Expertise is the funniest book published in the past year). His piece triggers a core belief of mine, which is that the one common thread you’ll find among good business books is good writing. (By the way, an analogue to this theory has to do with the remarkable success of Dilbert. Why is Scott Adams’ business humor so spit-taking good? Because he’s funny. I can’t tell you how much would-be business humor that has been inspired by his work has fallen flat, and not because the authors don’t know business well. They just aren’t funny. But I digress.) My favorite business books, ranging from Moneyball by Michael Lewis, to Good to Great and Built to Last by Jim Collins, Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? by Lou Gerstner, and even the obscure A Ghost’s Memoir by John McDonald, all share smart, crisp, prose, spurred no doubt by the ultimate goal of good writing: clear thinking. There’s good news here. Good writing can be taught. Even those artists who, use prose as the means to produce art, learn their craft first. As John Gregory Dunne once wrote: “What civilians do not understand—and to a writer anyone not a writer is a civilian—is that writing is manual labor of the mind: a job, like laying pipe.” Later this year I’ll be teaching a workshop on business writing. And the starting point for anyone wanting to improve their writing is the bible of good writing: The Elements of Style by Strunk and White. (Do NOT use the recent illustrated version of this book. It’s pretty and all, but the illustrations add as much value to the book as earmuffs on your iMac. They contradict the core message of this book, which says write simply, think clearly, and avoid distracting detritus.) The next best primer on good writing: two essays from George Orwell. Okay, everyone knows Politics and the English Language, which I think is a very good discussion of the causes and consequences of sloppy writing (again, a function of sloppy thinking.) But this essay make the most sense when paired with the piece that precedes it in A Collection of Essays. I'm talking about On Shooting An Elephant. The political essay tells you how to write well, while the elephant piece shows you precisely what he means. Clear, powerful, insightful writing that shares a deep message by reporting the right details of a meaningful narrative. “In Moulmein, in Lower Burma, I was hated by large numbers of people—the only time in my life that I have been important enough for this to happen to me.” How can you read this opening sentence and not feel compelled to continue? He establishes everything you need to know about what follows: a sense of place, a sense of narrator, and an idea of what’s at stake, all done simply and thoughtfully. I won’t say too much more about this piece, since my hope is that you’ll please read it right away. I can’t however resist sharing one more passage, buried within the essay. I would consider this the thesis of the piece, though that’s too clinical a term. The following thoughts capture the heart of the piece, the idea (or epiphany) that drives the tale. But Orwell’s genius is displayed, instead, through the deceptively simple story he tells from start to finish. “And it was at that moment, as I stood there with the rifle in my hands, that I first grasped the hollowness, the futility of the white man’s domination in the East. Here was I, the white man with his gun, standing in front of the unarmed native crowd—seemingly the leading actor of the piece; but in reality I was only an absurd puppet pushed to and fro by the will of those yellow faces behind. I perceived in that moment that when the white man turns tyrant it is his own freedom that he destroys. He becomes a sort of hollow, posing dummy, the conventionalized figure of a sahib. For it is the condition of his rule that he shall spend his life in trying to impress the “natives,” and so in every crisis he has got to do what the “natives” expect of him. He wears a mask, and his face grows to fit it.” Posted by tom at 04:05 PM | Comments (0) Great Author Websites Yesterday’s release of the new Captain Underpants book (yes, that’s right) reminded me of how very much I adore the website for this silly kid’s book series. My youngest daughter (and okay, her father) find this series absolutely hilarious. Yeah, it’s mired in the potty, but it’s also far smarter than one would assume. Here’s what has impressed me about Dav Pilkey’s website: Most online resources for business books simply try to sell you the book, or the author’s services. Not Pilkey.com. His site accomplishes what few author sites do: he recaptures the essential spirit of his books on the web, by producing a range of online features that are perfectly aligned with the book’s heart and soul. There’s no blog, no links, and of course no advertising. Instead he has posted songs and videos and games and heaps of extra stuff that is perfectly “mission-driven,” to apply a business term. His site is not an online advertisement, but a re-invention of the book’s world on the online space. Interestingly, another author who has taken her work to the web with great imagination is Jan Brett—who also writes for children. She, too, writes with an extremely well-realized and distinctive voice, and her site serves as a new platform for her work. Her books are visual treats anchored by her large, open illustrations. And the site builds on this by sharing numerous ways for visitors to download images from her many books, for starters; and also to use these images as coloring books, cards, games, murals, and much more. It’s easy for a reader of her work to lose hours of their time here, productively. I think that there’s something to the fact that each of these children’s authors has an extremely well-realized voice and overall “look-and-feel” that has helped them translate their work to a new medium with authenticity. I will look for business author sites that do the same. At the moment, the ones that comes closest in my opinion are Guy Kawasaki and Tom Peters. Posted by tom at 01:02 PM | Comments (0) The Effective Executive, for Entrepreneurs Rob May, who runs a great website titled BusinessPundit, did a very recent post that does a great job of sharing all the key points of Drucker's book. Check it out! Posted by tom at 08:09 PM | Comments (0) More Great Books for Entrepreneurs In his wonderful recommendation of my book, business maven Jack Covert calls my list of resources “the best I have seen.” And he’s seen a lot. It’s time to update these selections. The original list of resources were meant to help you solve particular problems and to gain deeper mastery in the key areas I outlined in Startup Garden. They tend to be action-oriented guides that provide answers to specific challenges in areas such as raising finance, dealing with employees, keeping the books, and so forth. When writing the Startup Garden, I made a conscious decision about what to include and not include in terms of "payoff" material. Because so many books for entrepreneurs provide a glut of confusing information that overwhelms the reader, I chose to focus on a handful of simple principles that help people develop the skills to get the best data, and cited more technical books within these categories. Over the past few years, new books have been published, websites have emerged, and, personally, I’ve discovered gems that would have gone into my list of resources if I’d known about them at the time. Here’s a beginning. This list is by no means complete. In fact, I’ll stop at five, and do five more later this week. And then, perhaps five more, until finally the list is exhausted. Or am I. The first two books are essential texts that teach the most powerful lesson I’ve learned since writing the book. “Effectiveness,” writes Peter Drucker, “is a habit; that is a complex of practices. And practices can be learned.” InThe Effective Executive: The Definitive Guide to Getting the Right Things Done, Drucker explains precisely what these practices are. The most fascinating thing to me about Drucker’s book is its role in so many leading books of the past twenty years. Drucker basically mentions that the productivity of the knowledge worker is the most important factor for companies to succeed today—and this applies to a venture of any size. In my opinion, the legitimate heir to Drucker’s role as guru, at least in the fundamental area of being productive, is David Allen, whose Getting Things Done: The Stress-Free Guide to Productivity is more than just a how-to guide for being more effective. His system has become a cultish religion for many. Not that there’s anything wrong with it. Allen, whose website has a wealth of useful material (read some of the articles on him and his system), appeals to a wide swath of followers. He does some executive coaching, conducts numerous workshops across the country, and has a devout following among the tech-y crowd. His great appeal lies in the way his system focuses people on doing the one right thing at the right time, and doing it completely. He recognizes that unfinished loops are one of the most wasteful and distracting elements in one’s mind or on one’s desk; and his system truly proves that by dealing with matters fully so as to eliminate them, less can be more. I recommend his book highly. I touted the next book as the very first post on this blog; nothing since has lessened my enthusiasm. Jill Andresky Fraser’s book, "The Business Owner’s Guide to Personal Finance: When Your Business is Your Paycheck," (Bloomberg Press, $25.95,) is based on a simple though profoundly important insight. For the vast bulk of entrepreneurs, your personal finances and the financial life of your business are inexorably intertwined; and to ignore this link invites disaster. Accordingly, Fraser provides wise advice to entrepreneurs on tending to critical such matters as paying yourself a salary, creating a good credit history, and thinking through the tradeoffs of working at home or how to communicate with investors who are often friends and family. Naturally I am drawn to this book for recognizing the dynamic link between the individual who runs the business and the way in which this person’s behavior animates the enterprise; in financial matters the cause and effect takes on critical importance which Fraser carefully limns. Her book goes beyond keeping the books to guide one in all aspects of starting and growing a business. I rank this with "Small Time Operator" by Bernard Kamoroff, "Self-Defense Finance for Small Business" by Wilbur Yegge, and "Managing by the Numbers" by Chuck Kremer and Ron Rizzuto with John Case, as the top finance books for entrepreneurs. Harold Evans has produced one of the best books ever on entrepreneurship: They Made America: From the Steam Engine to the Search Engine, Two Centuries of Innovators. Think of this nearly 700-page book as a nightly book of entrepreneurial fairy tales to read to your inner child. This ambitious book takes on no less than a history of the greatest American innovators, including such diverse individuals as Thomas Edison, Thomas Watson (father and son,) and Ruth Handler. Because Evans focuses so finely on how inventive entrepreneurs applied their ideas, the stories are compulsively readable. They document the messy and upredictable way that entrepreneurs succeed (and fail) over time. They work as great stories above all. One of the things that makes this book so satisfying to read is Evan’s focus on the way entrepreneurship occurs in a specific time and place, and is always tied to the prevailing cultural, technical, and social trends—indeed, how the most powerful innovations don’t merely respond to these changes, but hasten them along. One of my favorite chapters shared the story of Lewis Tappan, the deeply moral entrepreneur who essentially created the credit rating—which became crucial for merchants needing a source of guidance about lending decisions at a time of huge social change. This book contains a wealth of insights for entrepreneurs with both big visions and modest hopes, and I recommend it highly. Next on the list is Arthur Rubinfeld’s Built for Growth: Expanding Your Business Around the Corner or Across the Globe. Here’s a smart and substantial book with useful instruction on how to develop the proper internal controls, values, and practices that position your company to grow real big. Rubinfeld, who was in charge of real estate and store design for Starbucks during its growth from 100 to 4000 stores, understands that growth is a function of doing the right things from the very beginning so as to be able to successfully duplicate them at any pace. He doesn’t merely argue that you must get every last detail right from the start to grow healthily; he you shows how to do so. With information ranging from how to pick the right retail location to how to make smart choices about fixtures or people, he provides the blueprint for healthy growth. Here’s a nice quote from the book. “When learning to walk, toddlers put all their energy into getting the first step right. Soon they are tearing around the house. After the first step, it is all a matter of repetition and variation. The same thing is true in retail. If you put all your effort into getting the first store to be as good as it can be, you too will soon be off and running.” Readers, as a bonus for reading this far, I continue my special offer to you. Please buy my book, The Startup Garden, directly from me, and I will send you a signed copy, AND I will include a free copy of another business book. I’ve got scores of new business books in my office and would love to share them with readers. To take advantage of this offer: go to Paypal and make a payment of $15 to me at tom@startupgarden.com. This will generate an email to me with your address. I will send you a new signed copy of my book, plus a bonus title (I’ll decide what to include.) If you have any questions just email me directly at the tom@startupgarden.com. Posted by tom at 01:23 PM | Comments (0) Buy A Ticket, or Five Reasons You Should Buy The Startup Garden Today A former client of mine was a great public speaker who could bring the house down with the following joke (shortened considerably here). Every day this poor guy curses his luck to God, complaining that he never ever wins the lottery. This goes on and on until finally, one day he hears a voice from on high replying to his lamentation. The clouds part and he hears in a booming voice: “Why don’t you try buying a ticket?” I.E. You can’t get what you want if you don’t ask for it. Always be closing. Simple, yes. Hard to remember, yes. So. My request is: please buy my book! Over the course of this week I am going to provide material that expands on the heart of my book, The Startup Garden. I wrote the book to help other people take the next step forward with whatever venture they are thinking about and working on. The book didn’t perform well in the market, for reasons which I’ll write about later on this week. I’ll also take some time to review great resources that have appeared (or which I discovered) since publishing my book. Basically, every day I’ll produce something that adds more stuff, for lack of a better word, to the main ingredients of The Startup Garden. By the way, at the end of this post I have directions for buying the book from me directly. Today I’ll start by sharing an excerpt that hasn’t been posted before. Here’s the first reason you should buy my book: Jim Collins says so. We met when I had the privilege of editing some of his columns for Inc. Magazine, and I’ve always admired Jim enormously, not just for his writing but for his ability to live consistently with his values. He has been very generous with my work—including the book on his personal library, and writing a wonderful foreward, which follows. Jim, thank you so much for supporting my work, and for leading by example! Foreword by Jim Collins Many of us become entrepreneurs because we’re constitutionally unemployable. A job is nice, but we have an inner itch to do something we are truly passionate about—a need to build something we can shape in our own image, something that reflects not just want we do but who we are. I’ve always viewed entrepreneurship not just as a business concept, but as a personal concept. Entrepreneurship at its best is about creating a path that is uniquely suited to you as an individual and building a vehicle for driving down that path. Consider the story of Yvon Chouinard, one of my favorite entrepreneurs. Chouinard began his business in 1957 as an 18-year-old kid who wanted nothing more than to pursue his passion for rock climbing. He borrowed $800 from his parents to buy a used anvil and forge to create new equipment for his first ascents of the sheer walls in Yosemite Valley. With no thought at all of building a big company, Yvon banged and clanged away on his anvil until he’d created a whole new set of pitons—metal spikes hammered into cracks of a rock to secure the climber to the rock. One of Yvon’s designs, the “Lost Arrow” (named after the famous spire in Yosemite) quickly caught on with other climbers and became a standard item for big-wall ascents. Climbers everywhere wanted Yvon’s pitons, and so he began selling them out of the trunk of his car and backpack, wherever he happened to be climbing. Later, he formalized his business with a single mimeographed sheet that listed pitons and prices. This first “catalogue” told customers not to expect fast delivery during the summer months, as Yvon would likely be hanging in a hammock on the side of a sheer rock face, 2,000 feet above the floor of Yosemite Valley. Yvon’s business grew slowly, as he brought in enough cash to fund his rock climbing and to pay for making more pitons. Year after year, he gained more customers, and he made more pitons, and got more customers, and made more pitons, and so forth. He built momentum step by step, never allowing the business to become his life, but always keeping it as the vehicle for his life. In the 1960s and 1970s, he added some key people to his operation. One was Tom Frost—another climber—who worked with Yvon to systematically redesign virtually every piece of rock-climbing hardware, from harnesses to piton hammers. The other was Kristine McDivitt, who assumed operating responsibility for the little company. The operation began to build more and more momentum—a million in revenues, then two, three, five, 10 million…All the while, Chouinard climbed at least six months a year, and other team members kept an active schedule of climbing, hiking, skiing, surfing—all in the name of “product testing,” as they would say. Then Chouinard’s company made two pivotal breakthroughs. The first was a decision to marry the company to his passion for the environment. Recognizing that pitons left permanent scars in the rock, he reinvented the entire line of climbing gear—replacing pitons with metal nuts that slotted in the crack and could be removed without the use of a hammer. The second was to launch a line of outdoor clothing for serious adventurers, under the name “Patagonia.” And now you probably know the rest of the story. Chouinard gear and Patagonia clothing became the premium brands and the company took off. It was a classic “20-year overnight success story.” What was once a business out of Yvon’s rucksack became hundreds of millions in revenue out of an office complex in Ventura, California. Yet even still, Chouinard and other key Patagonia people retained their primary passion for the outdoors. Today, Patagonia stands as one of the most environmentally progressive companies in the world. It even pioneered the use of recycled plastic bottles into super-high-tech fabric for Patagonia jackets. And Yvon Chouinard, now in his 60s, surfs or climbs every week, close to home or in some adventurous location halfway around the world. I share the story of Yvon Chouinard because he is a perfect example of what Tom Ehrenfeld is writing about in this book. I am excited that Tom has finally come forth with this work as a very practical guide to help those who would like to run their own operation not just as a business, but as a vehicle for their lives. I don’t know how many times I’ve been asked by friends, acquaintances, friends of friends, and acquaintances of acquaintances, “I’m thinking of starting a business. Is there a book you would recommend to help me get going?” I’d usually give a list of books and tell them to read selected chapters from each one. Now, finally I have the one book I’d like them to read as a starting point. One of the most significant changes in the last 20 years is the transformation of entrepreneurship from a mysterious alchemy somehow practiced by superhuman visionaries into a practical discipline that nearly all people can learn. What was missing, however, was a practical synthesis that put all the key pieces into one place. In this book, Tom has synthesized the disciplines into a useful guide. But he has done it with a nice twist. This book is not for those who want to start the next Cisco Systems or Apple Computer—creating Fortune 500 companies from scratch and becoming celebrity billionaires. This book is for the rest of us. It is for those who simply want to create a vehicle for their own lives and that reflects their own personal passions. I have very few items on the bookshelves at my research laboratory—a few favorite books, a personal photo of my grandfather and father on the day my grandfather died in a test-piloting accident, and a Lost Arrow piton, hand-forged by Yvon Chouinard on his original anvil. I keep it there as a symbol of the best model of entrepreneurship I know. As one of my great teachers, Rochelle Meyers, once told me, “The point of it all is to figure out how to make your own life a creative work of art that no one else could have painted.” Entrepreneurship is about throwing out the paint-by-numbers kit approach to life and starting with a blank canvas. It’s a more ambiguous path, but it is the only way to create a masterpiece. And that is precisely what Tom Ehrenfeld is writing about with in this book. Readers (Tom here), as a bonus for reading this far, I am making a special offer to you. Please buy my book, The Startup Garden, directly from me, and I will send you a signed copy, AND I will include a free copy of another business book. I’ve got scores of new business books in my office and would love to share them with readers. To take advantage of this offer: go to Paypal and make a payment of $15 (which includes postage etc.) to me at tom@startupgarden.com. This will generate an email to me with your address. I will send you a new signed copy of my book, plus a bonus title (I’ll decide what to include.) If you have any questions just email me directly at tom@startupgarden.com. Posted by tom at 10:25 AM | Comments (0) Good Business Writing As a business writer, I’ve always cared as much about writing as I do about business. In fact, I took the discipline of writing seriously long before seeing the practice of business as a dynamic activity. Today I care about both. And so, when looking for good business writing in other outlets, I look for two things: insight into business, and good writing. In a former life I was a writer and editor for Inc. Magazine, where, for a while, I edited three columns from authorities for each issue. While the job was tough for me at first, I loved it, and had the chance to work with great folks like Jim Collins, Mary Baechler, Marion McGovern, Michael Hammer, Amy Miller, Roxanne Coady, and many others. Over time I developed a set of guidelines to help prospective authors get a head-start. Though I wrote this set of rules years ago, they still pass along most of what I know and believe about business writing (or simply, writing.) So this late Friday seems a good time to share. The following guidelines are copied word-for-word from the copy I would send people (along with a handful of our best columns to demonstrate what we wanted by example): Each month we publish three columns by entrepreneurs, policy-makers, and other small business authorities who have something to say to the Inc. audience. These columns are designed to open up the magazine to a range of voices and to allow our readers to speak directly to one another. Unlike the more descriptive, prescriptive, or narrative-driven feature articles, these columns are generally written in the first person, designed around an argument, and address a broad range of topics related to the new economy. We tend to work on columns about four months before they are published. Some columns of a more timely nature can be worked on closer to publication, but we will never be current. Topical, but not current. Columns run from 750 to 1200 words. We hope you will produce a great column for us. Here are some rough guidelines that may help. Write about what you know. What have you learned about the process of growing a company? And how did you learn this lesson? Those are the two most important questions you will address in your piece, and they are directly related. There must be a sense that no one else could write your column. Your conclusions must come from direct experience or from observation. Your beliefs and ideals are important, yes, but it is crucial that you defend them in a business context. Speculation doesn’t belong here. You are writing to businesspeople who will always be asking, “where’s the beef?” Columns are structured simply. In the first two or three paragraphs you should tell the reader what the column is about. What are you going to prove? Then you will spend the rest of the column elaborating your message. You will say what you know, and then you will show how you know it. Finally, sum up with a conclusion about what you have learned. Know your audience. Never forget that you are writing for businesspeople who read Inc. to learn about and to celebrate the process of growing a business. It’s okay to talk about personal stuff like divorce or impersonal issues like national health policy—as long as you keep the audience in mind. One CEO wrote a column describing her foray into professional boxing, because it taught her a lesson about growing her company (that growth must be managed and goals must be set internally). One attorney wrote about a new theory of economic returns. The common thread is that they had something to share with our audience. There must be a sense that your column is running in Inc. because Inc. is the perfect—only—fit for it. Surprise us. We don’t want to hear that top managers must get involved and that people are your most important asset, that regulations are stifling economic growth, or that every company should set up a web page in an increasingly global economy. Think “man bites dog.” The best columns are surprising, provocative, counterintuitive, orginal. They start a conversation rather than end one, they provoke an argument among smart businesspeople. If you want to tackle a current debate, ask yourself what new thinking you’ll bring. Many of the columns set up a straw man in the beginning—an assumption that they want to attack. We really don’t care what position you take. We don’t have a party line. We only care about publishing good material that brings new thinking to a relevant subject. About writing. Don’t worry about how your column will sound. Worry instead about what you have to say. Of course we want well-written essays in the magazine. But the most important thing is that you have something to say. Focus your attention on the question: What is your message? Simplify, simplify, simplify. The best columns are the most direct. Don’t worry about your voice. It cannot help but emerge when you tell your story. Don’t be self-conscious. Just say what you have to say. We can always help you structure your message—but finding out what you have to say is your job. Here’s what you can expect from us. Because the bulk of our columns are written by people who don’t write much, we often edit them aggressively. If you column arrives in pristine condition, we won’t touch it. If it needs cosmetic work, we’ll trim the adjectives and make the tenses correct. For those people who have something to say but no time to write it, we might interview you, tape the conversation, transcribe the chat and edit it into a column that you will then review. Our preference is always to do the least amount of work—not because we are lazy, but because the best columns tend to be those where the writing is primarily done by the author. We will however do everything possible to make your column work, including sending it back to you for major revisions if necessary. Some columns, unfortunately, will not make it—even after work on your part. We don’t like when that happens. But it does. Here’s the best way to insure that your column will work: read and study what we have already published. Enclosed with these guidelines are a handful of columns that have worked in the past. We would love, in the future, to be sending out one of yours in this mailing. Posted by tom at 07:43 PM | Comments (0) How to Fix the Auto Industry A few quick thoughts so I don’t miss a day so early in the month. (Must. Post. Daily.) Last week the New York Times ran a story with the headline “Ford to Examine Troubled Brands.” And I thought, gee, why don’t they start with….Ford. And if GM recently completed a huge program of paying individual employees payouts of more than 100K to leave the company, and it was deemed a success, how about they try this one on for size? I propose they pay me double that amount for saving them the expense of ever paying me a salary. That’s right, GM should pay me a preemptive buyout. About $300K sounds good to me. And for that I pledge never to work for the company, therefore saving it decades of salary, and permanently eliminating the burden of my legacy costs. And finally, if all else fails, I’ve got one more solution….For that I will reproduce a piece I wrote that was intended for the radio, but never aired. Here goes. The real answer to GM’s woes is new ownership, and I’ve got just the white knight: Exxon. Exxon has annual profits topping 36 Billion dollars. In the last quarter alone, it made TEN BILLION DOLLARS, the largest operational profit ever tallied. GM's market value fluctuates around $12 billion, so Exxon could finance this deal without burping. Exxon could pay retail for General Motors on the open market, and still have enough cash leftover to buy at least two, or even three, shares of Berkshire Hathaway stock. Why do this? Well, natural synergies…just think razors and blades. Gillette invented this famous business model 100 years ago. The company sold men on the idea of a safety razor—which generated huge profits from sales of disposable blades. Exxon should steal a page from this playbook. Think of cars as the new safety razor—the Mach 3 system you eagerly replace when a Fusion-Hybrid Mach Twelve (LX) comes along. The big money isn’t in the big thing anymore. Think of gasoline as the high-margin software if you will, the disposable blades that generate crazy profits for the parent company. Other companies have scored by migrating into higher-value adjacent-cies. Just look to IBM: when profits waned selling big boxes a decade ago, Big Blue successfully shifted its focus to services. GM would sell fewer cars with worse gas mileage, and still rack up greater profits for the parent Shell—I mean Exxon. It’s a thing of beauty. It’s a sad commentary on the state of manufacturing today when Exxon can earn in three months virtually enough to buy GM on the market. But like they say: when life hands you lemons, make gasoline. Posted by tom at 08:59 PM | Comments (0) Yankees Suck Business poobahs sometimes refer to an entrepreneurial ecosystem, which I think of as a particularly fecund company that spawns numerous startups, many of which surpass the original. I know of countless companies in New England that came out of Digital Equipment Corp, for example, while one of the biggest progenitors of all is IBM. (Here’s an Inc. article I wrote on the phenomena.) But, sheepishly, I must cite a story that appeared in the Boston Globe yesterday which made me realize that I too, created an industry, though it’s one that today I’m fairly ambivalent about. The story was about two enterprising guys who took the money from their t-shirt business selling Yankees Suck shirts, and then visiting another region with a fierce and bitter rivalry, namely Iraq. At any rate, here’s a piece I wrote several years back, before the Red Sox won the World Series, and which never ran as a print piece. I did it as an NPR commentary. Unsaid in this piece is the fact that after writing The Startup Garden, many people would ask me if I ever started a business myself. The fact is, I did, and it succeeded. Here’s the story: With Opening Day comes hope, and in Boston comes more than that. In Boston, and throughout these six leafy states called New England, Opening Day brings blind faith, renewal, cliches galore, and the prospect for salvation as our boys roll back four-score-and-four years of last place, middle place, and worst of all, the short end of four hellish Game Sevens. Opening Day brings the chance and the prayer that after more than a lifetime of not winning the World Series, the Red Sox will, this year, do it. For me, of course, Opening Day brings another, less grandiose goal. I hope that this is the year that the fans will stop chanting “Yankees Suck.” You’ve probably heard the phrase. If you’ve ever been to a Red Sox game you’ve heard the crowd pick up the chant when Derek Jeter strikes out or Manny Ramirez sends a Mussina fastball over the Green Monster. The problem is that the chant doesn’t stop there. It’s become somewhat of a yahoo mantra in this town. These days whenever the Red Sox win a game, whenever they even take a lead, the highest form of collective appreciation takes voice in the chant. When the Patriots won the Super Bowl last year, guess how the loutish clods at the parade expressed their joy? Well, it rhymes with Blankees Tuck. What’s next? After a conducting the BSO to a rousing rendition of Mahler’s Fourth, conductor Keith Lockhart climbs off the podium, throws his arms in the air, and screams “Yankees Suck” to the bluebloods at Symphony Hall? Enough, already. It’s time to move on, to find a new way to give voice to our collective passion. Believe me, this is more than a simple plea for decency and civility, a hope for higher aspirations from my people. My hope for a G-rated (okay, PG would do) chant is personal, and selfish. You see, I invented the phrase Yankees Suck. In 1978 I was a 17-year-old high school senior who loved the Red Sox maybe more than girls. This was three years after the epic World Series of Carlton Fisk charming his homer fair, and a couple of years after watching the Yankees become World Champions once more. The Red Sox-Yankee rivalry was epic, heroic, rooted in deep tribal passions like a blood knot. And one night early in the season, hearing folks curse the Yankees, the phrase just came to me. Sure, I won’t claim to be the first to ever say Yankees suck. But I was the first to put it on a t-shirt. My older sister and I printed up 300 t-shirts with the phrase on them. We obtained a permit from the city to sell wares. And when we took them out to sell at the first Yankees series, we sold every one that first night. And I felt a strange kind of pride well up within me when the chant was picked up by the boisterous crowd at Fenway. As waves of Yankees Suck came rolling over the folks, it felt like a huge roar of affirmation, an exciting, comforting, vindication of my hopes and passions. By the time of the next series later that summer, there were more than five others selling shirts with the same phrase. We re-ordered, and did fine, but by then the phrase had entered the public domain, and was no longer mine. It didn’t matter to me. I felt much more ownership in seeing thousands of others wearing the shirts and chanting the chant. The phrase took, and has continued to root itself in the fan’s collective mind. Twenty years have passed. The Yankees have won six world championships in that time. And the Red Sox? They’ve had several postseason appearances; and of course there was 1986, a World Series eternally characterized by Bill Buckner’s muffed grounder. In this time it feels that the curse has only settled deeper into the Red Sox psyche. This year I’d like my fellow fans to quit the chowderhead chant. I’d like fans to see that to revel in the Yankees flaws is to cling to our flawed and frustrating past. Part of this sentiment has to do with my turning 40. Part of it has to do with my plans to take my ten-year-old daughter to the game this summer. But mostly this feeling has to do with the notion of a legacy. I’d like to be remembered by something other than giving voice to a mass feeling of frustration with the baseball gods and all they control in the cosmos. I’d also like to help create a new attitude about this queer form of worship. All of it—the curse, the phrase, the legacy of schadenfreude—all must pass. Come Opening Day we remember our dark past and hope that change and triumph will come in the future made now. Yet Opening Day fools us. Each year we look to the first day of baseball as a clean slate, another chance to toss off history, change the past, and finally win. But in Boston we know all too well that every fresh chance carries the gene of failure; and that our hope to escape the past is mere folly. So I don’t want to forget the past. I’d just like it to not suck. Posted by tom at 10:42 AM | Comments (0) Tax Holiday? Here in Massachusetts we’re preparing for a few days of mass (or Mass, take your pick) idiocy this coming weekend. In what is becoming an annual traditional, we will have a “tax holiday” on August 12-13, joining a number of states that are providing a brief window of summer shopping exempt from sales tax. Here’s what to expect during this new event: *Perky reporters will invariably report that shoppers and merchants are “giddy” over this “Christmas in August,” and will find pedestrian marks to mouth their cute and contrived notion that consumers are buying on these days as a form of “civil disobedience.” *Newspapers and television stations will run images of sweaty consumers crowding Best Buy, Sears, and other retail meccas. *Our moronic (n.b. I am not commenting on his religion) Governor will hold a cheesy media event where he inspects refrigerators and flat-screen tvs, gives a wooden sales pitch, and urges individuals to buy without fear of pouring any money into state coffers (where it could be used for programs such as, say, consumer education.) I say that if having a tax holiday is such cause for celebration, then we should honor the event in civic tradition, with a big honking parade. And all the floats should be powered by Visa, and MBNA, and Capital One, and every other member of the credit industry that is benefiting from a new excuse for individuals to buy mindlessly. At our parade, however, let’s not count on any police or fire-fighters to handle crowd control or safety precautions, since in order to compensate for fewer state-shared funds we’d need to give them all an “unpaid” holiday. (Yeah, I know that police and firefighters are paid by the municipalities not the state—yet any diminution of state funds to local education or other programs has an impact. And who pays for the salary of the state police?) I mean, the more you think about this the less it makes sense. How much money is the state spending to promote a holiday celebrating the fact that consumers are lessening the state’s coffers? Is the state so ashamed of collecting taxes that it feels the need to make a day of amnesty a great celebration? If so, couldn’t we have some better name in the tradition of Cinco de Mayo or Boxing Day? Like Maxed-out Midsummer Madness, or Fees for Freedom Fiesta? State officials and retail executives estimate that while the state will lose about $10 million from these two tax-free days, much of that revenue will be offset by more taxes collected from the extra gasoline sold to consumers making the pilgrimage to our state. Gee, that’s just what we need. More profits to Exxon spurred by completely unnecessary driving. The mind reels. So in order to save 12 bucks on a new iPod, some folks in Rhode Island will be buying 10 gallons of gas at 3 bucks per gallon, spending 12 dollars for parking, and then dropping an extra double sawbuck for the mall meal. They don’t call it Christmas in August for nothin. The thing that really kills me about this stupendously half-baked idea is the wealth it generates through transaction costs, interest charges, and more financial mischief from retailers and creditors. Folks estimate that at least half of the more than $500 million spent during the holidays will be “impulse buying.” Hmmm. How do people pay for impulse buys? Cash? I don’t think so. They use or take out new credit to pay for these goods. So for the Targets and Sears’ and other retailers making much of their profits from their credit business, this holiday will be a gift that keeps on giving. It’s a sleazy state scam like the Lottery. Only the state isn’t getting the money. Here’s what I propose: if we really want this event to benefit individuals, then at the very least ask all creditors (the merchants and the credit card companies) not to charge any interest or fees on these purchases for the first six months. And we should take the bump in state taxes from gasoline sales those days and put that money into upgrading public transportation. And we should ask the yahoos on the hill who spent God knows how many days crafting the legislation to spend a commensurate amount chasing down the shady debt collectors recently spotlighted in The Boston Globe.
Posted by tom at 10:21 AM | Comments (0) Some recent writing of mine One thing I’ve failed to do on this blog is keep up-to-date with my writing over the past few years. Since writing The Startup Garden I have also written numerous pieces of my own, yet have never made them available on this site. So here are links to a number of pieces I’ve written. Given that the focus of this site is largely on the startup mentality, I’ll start with posts I’ve done for my friends at 800-CEO-READ, which is the best site on business books around. For that site I’ve conducted lengthy interviews with Peter Senge, Jack Bogle, Elizabeth Warren and Amelia Warren Tyagi, Financial Times business editor Andrew Hill, and novelist Joe Finder. I’ve also used the site to tout books I love, like the Warren’s All Your Worth (where I discuss other personal finance books), and Phil Dusenberry’s Then I Set His Hair on Fire. Finally, I’ve posted numerous thoughts on biz books there. A tribute to Peter Drucker’s work and influence. Musings on good business books. Praise for books about the IRS, under “Why Bad Companies Spawn Good Books”. One of my intended posts for the site, which took Raytheon CEO William Swanson to task for plagiarizing his popular biz pamphlet, grew, at Todd Sattersten and Sally Haldorson’s urging, into a changethis manifesto. It’s called The Unwritten Rules of Management, and while the article critiques Swanson’s behavior, the broader goal is to point out a few lessons that his rise and fall spotlights. As for fun writing, I’ve had the pleasure of filling in for my friend Ellen on her Answergirl site for a couple of spots in the past few years. These pieces are at the site in the weeks of February 6-13 of last year mid-January of this one. If you have the luxury of being able to suddenly lose an hour or two go to the launch of her blog and see how well she has taken two impossible challenges and completely owned them in her own voice. I’m somewhat in awe. All right, enough about me! More stuff later today and this week, when I’ll explain why I’ve spent most of my professional focus in the past two years helping produce material about lean manufacturing. Posted by tom at 11:32 AM | Comments (0) Go Dad! Today my father John has a great article published on the Changethis website. In it he "proposes a radically different conversation about sustainability, one that moves away from mere problem solving, demands a new definition and envisions infinite possibilities." This piece shares some of my father's radical, and important views on the limits of sustainability today--the way in which the current conversation is woefully insufficient to create the change that's needed. Please read and share this piece! Posted by tom at 11:23 AM | Comments (0) Ten Blogs I Love I’ve always felt that writers, like runners, work best at specific distances. You’ve got star sprinters, superb 1500-meter runners, and born marathoners. It’s rare, though not impossible, to find someone who excels at more than one race. Likewise with writers. Some folks are better suited to write a certain lengths, or, to be more precise, in certain formats. My point is not to argue that folks who write good short pieces shouldn’t try novels, or that genre masters like Stephen King couldn’t, say, write a tremendous book on writing titled On Writing that’s one of my favorites. I’m just saying that it’s a delight to read someone writing in the format that fits them perfectly, which serves their voice dynamically. Which brings us to blogs (and by the way, is it just me, or do other folks think the word “blog” should only be said by Steve Carell, and only in his goofiest tongue-wagging voice?) While it’s commonplace for people to post links to other sites, they rarely explain why they are sending you to someone else’s cyber-place. Which both intrigues and bugs me. So here’s a bunch of blogs I read and enjoy regularly. They fit my criteria of calming me down rather than making me feel nervous. Each site invites me naturally into a conversation rather than makes me feel shut out. They continually surprise and delight me. And hopefully they’ll do the same for you. Check em out yourself: Tom Peters! By Tom Peters runs an exuberant blog that channels his boundless enthusiasm for great ideas and excellent business. I think of Tom Peters as a spitter, a guy who gets so excited about his topics that if you were at a speech of his he’d hock on you by accident. If anyone can wear an exclamation point well, it’s him. I love his blog for the way that he uses the format to his advantage: he tends to have a rush of ideas, some big, some small, some written, some slides, some photos. And he finds a way to get them up on the board so people can talk about them. It’s a wonderful realization of what the various channels of a blog can do. Pause by Jory des Jardins. I think of Jory as a grown-up, professional Angela Chase. Her site chronicles her life as she gets a business and marriage going. Reflective, smart, and willing to worry a personal topic until she gets it right—to the delight of herself, which satisfies you the reader. To me the key feature of this blog is the writing itself, which is wonderful, and keeps you going as you discover what Jory does. Design Observer by a gang of several writers. The best site for good thinking, writing, and linking to cool design. Lean Manufacturing Blog by Mark Graban. Great sites often have great links, and Mark’s serves as a tutorial on staying current with a topic that’s in the news. I don’t know where he gets the energy, frankly. He blogs on all things lean, and if you don’t know what this term means, then a) visit his site, and b) wait till later in the month when I discuss it (can I do a link to a future post? Don’t think so. Memo to self: think of a nifty way to create a link to a future post.) Mark (who now has a great conspirator Jamie Flinchburg) manages to post at least once a day, and few (actually, none) of the pieces are filler. I see his site as a great example of someone with authority and insight on a specific topic, but who provides the greatest value (for me, that is, as a reader) by creating the links, raising the questions, and letting people think through the meaning of the material themselves. By Ken Levine by Ken Levine: man, this guy just enjoys writing. A veteran television writer, he’s got a lot to say. And a lifetime of great stories to share. And clearly not enough places to write what’s on his mind. Hence the awesome blog. I always want to read what he has to say, and he obliges by posting daily. Jane Espenson by, duh. Another television writer’s site. Again, a joy to read because of the sharp, funny, and insightful writing. What I love in particular about this blog is her devotion to craft. Espenson provides a daily lesson on problem-solving in writing, always making her case with great examples that teach by, well, example. Answer Girl by Ellen Clair Lamb. I confess: the author of this site, Ellen, is one of my best friends in the world; and I had a slight hand in getting it launched several years ago. No matter, since even if I didn’t know her I would have been hooked on day one of her initial year’s postings: she took the conceit of citing one great movie line every day, saying where it came from, and then related it to her life. After a year of that, Ellen did a daily exercise of explaining and relating to a technical term that has crept into the lingua franca. She’s on hiatus this month (go through the archives, you will lose yourself for hours) and starts a new vehicle on the site come September. The Warren Reports by Professor Elizabeth Warren and crew. My next book deals with the epidemic of debt plaguing our country. This site has the best and most meaningful commentary and links about what’s happening. And Warren is one of my favorite writers about economic issues. 800ceoread blog. Guilty again of nepotism. I helped in a minor way to get this site launched, and I contribute as often as I can. It’s the closest thing to a second home I have on the web. The Unofficial Apple Weblog, or TUAW. Perfectly functional. I can’t name any of the specific authors at this site for all who love all things Apple, but I can certainly identify the voice from twelve flat screens away. The guys who post here all love their Apples, and what I love is that despite the fact that I am an absolute amateur (despite spending my computer life on Apples), I read every last thing here, coming away with the impression that yeah, if I really had the time I could this stuff. Posted by tom at 02:28 PM | Comments (1) What Would Hooch Do? A great article in the Sunday Times about Tom Hanks’ production company reminds me of how much I admire his take on creating creative work. The guy has a great approach toward the business of art, and, I suppose, the art of business. And it all comes down to Turner and Hooch. Really. Really. Here’s what Tom Hanks has said about the importance of this particular movie to the success of his career. From a five-year-old Esquire article: “It was a huge hit,” says Hanks, who toiled arduously to make it smarter than the studio cared for it to be. “We just worked ourselves into the grave, and, in the end, I thought, Did I really work this hard and invest all of this care for a move called Turner & Hooch? And the fact is, you do. It became this big deal for me. But, you know, you only learn from bitter, bitter compromise.” And then just this summer, in Esquire, once again: “You know, I thanked Hooch at the Academy Awards. Actually, there were three dogs playing Hooch….Hooch taught me a lot, mostly about how free-flowing a movie can be. It doesn’t have to be: the phone will ring, and you’ll pick it up with your right hand and say, Blah, blah, blah. “If I had to give Hooch a bath, I didn’t know what he was going to do when I tried to put him in the tub. And nobody could tell me, because who knows what Hooch will do? You can go in literally without a script—all you need is a scenario—because you weren’t acting; you were reacting off Hooch. "Turner & Hooch freed me up quite a bit. And you can see it on the beach when the bombs go off in Saving Private Ryan. You’d be surprised at how often I can trace work I did in other films back to Hooch.” Personally, I’m partial to the film because of a strange sense of taste and a love of sloppy dogs. But I think most people would find the movie more charming than a formulaic “messy-dog-warms-heart-of-uptight-cop” buddy flick should be. And it has to do with the way in which Hanks executes. Again, really. It’s a good lesson in life, especially for most startups. Get off the script and focus more on the scenario, and if you want to make it great, when things get tough, ask yourself: What would Hooch do? Posted by tom at 03:19 PM | Comments (0) Sartre, at Staples There’s only one existential retail question that’s tougher than “debit or credit?”, and that would be: “Did you find everything that you’re looking for?” I was at Staples recently, late afternoon, and I was tired. A guy rushed into the store and asked the employee at the cash register, “Can you tell me where I can find Staples?” And I thought to myself, dude, you are more than clueless. There was a long pause and it was all I could do to not say anything….until the cash register guy said, without even looking over, “Aisle Seven.” Oh. He meant, “Can you tell me where I can find staples?” not “Can you tell me where I can find Staples.” Oops. Still and all, is there any question more meaningless than “Did you find everything that you looking for?” Especially when you consider that the person asks you this question AFTER YOU'VE DONE YOUR SHOPPING and have made it to the cash register. Wouldn’t it make more sense if someone had asked that question, say, in aisle seven, when you’re looking for staples? Or Staples? What do they expect you to say at that point? “Well, I was looking for world peace in the refurbished toner section but couldn’t find it.” Or, “Yes, I just need a bit more help locating a virtually new Treo 650—the one I lost a couple weeks ago downtown.” Sometimes, just to play with the programmed cashiers a bit, the moment they start to ask the question they’ve been trained to ask spontaneously, I’ll interrupt and say, “I found everything I’m looking for.” That often leaves them speechless, doing the gaping fish-mouth thing of opening and shutting wordlessly. “But did you REALLY find EVERYTHING you’re looking for?” is about the only reply they come up with to that. At which point we’re back on the trek for total consciousness. Posted by tom at 01:29 PM | Comments (0) What Good Blogs Are For It’s been so long since I’ve written, really written on this blog. And I think that one of the key reasons has to do with the fact that I’ve used the purpose, or mission, of this blog, increasingly as an argument for NOT writing on it rather than a reason to produce. And so, over time, this site has become a promise that I haven’t kept, both to readers and to myself. It’s damn hard to post on a frequent basis. At least it is for me, and I’ve got my reasons. Part of it has to do with an unwillingness to share drafts. Another part has to do with a hidden confusion about what exactly this blog is for. I guess the topic brings to my mind one of my favorite poems, by Tom Wayman, titled “What Good Poems Are For.” I hope that I’m not violating any copyright law here by reprinting it in its entirety. I couldn’t find a link to it anywhere on line. Here goes: What Good Poems Are For To sit on a shelf in the cabin across the lake A person is speaking in a world full of people talking. Yeah, that pretty much says it all to me. That’s what I want other blogs to do for me, and above all, that’s what I aspire to do here. To me the vast majority of blogs are good ideas gone bad. So much noise and clutter and self-techno-love of what can be done rather than what should be done. So much tagging and linking and spinning and flashing and just not enough speaking. They make me feel anxious when I visit them, fearful that I’m missing the point, or don’t have the time to visit the links, or won’t download the coolest new viral piece-o-intellectual-detritus. I’m not anti-technology, nor anti-fun geeky features. I just believe they should be used proportionally, instrumentally. Few blogs realize the promise of the medium, and I don’t have the time, patience, energy, or concentration to keep up with the cacophonous blogosphere. And as a result I’ve also put less and less mind and material on this site. Recently Seth Godin commented that blogging is the new poetry, which is a scary thought. That would mean that the only people who earn a living are those who teach the craft as opposed to those who excel at it. It would mean that the majority of the work is sentimental, inscrutable, pretentious, and generally irrelevant (and this from a guy who loves poetry.) And while he may believe that the main reason that most bloggers blog is “not for commercial gain or to find a large audience of strangers. Instead, it’s a form of self-expression, a chance to be creative or share some ideas,” go out and find me one serious poet who wouldn’t kill for commercial gain or widespread acclaim. I think great blogs should do a few simple things: serve as a medium for individuals to speak in their own voice. They should start conversations. They should realize the promise of the technology. For this site, I have a few goals in August: --Realize the promise of this website. To any and all of my readers, I welcome and thank you for visiting this site and reading my stuff. Let’s see what we get going this month. Posted by tom at 10:38 AM | Comments (0)
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Recent Writing Fixes that Fail; The Van and Mildred Pierce Refractive Heuristics, Or; Why SoaP Failed to Launch What Snakes On A Plane Doesn't Teach Us
THE BOOK
Read or print the Intro and
Read some book reviews at Inc, 1-800-CEO-READ, and the Miami Herald. Read the publisher's press release. Visit the companies that Tom discusses in the book Hear a recent lecture by Tom on the Startup Garden STARTUP RESOURCES Read about other books and web sites about starting your own business. TOM'S WRITING Just Managing – articles that Tom wrote for The Industry Standard and some Business Articles written for Inc., Fortune Small Business, Harvard Management Update, and other places. BUY THE BOOK To buy directly from me, simply go to Paypal and send 15 bucks to Tom@startupgarden.com. I'll take care of the rest. If you have any questions, email me at that address. |
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