RIP Sally Ride

Sally Ride died on Monday. She was America's first woman in space. I only know who she is because E's Science Camp is named after her. Wife told me the news last night, then added she was gay.

"That's cool," I said.
"Well, she had to hide it while she was alive," she said.
"Ok, not cool."

But, but what about the male astronauts who went in space with her? They finally thought, "Cool. A chick. A chick in space, and why is she not attracted to me?"

They're now thinking, duh, that makes sense.

A cool, cool strong woman, a role model for my girls, dies and all I can think about are the male astronauts? Yup. That, in a nutshell, is a man, or caveman, to be more accurate.

R.I.P. Sally Ride.

Not Giving Correctly

In thinking over my previous post about giving to a homeless guy, I realized that I was not giving correctly. Not giving in the right spirit. I was giving for selfish reasons. I was expecting something in return from the Universe.

But that's not right. I'm supposed to give. That's it. With no expectations. No thinking that the Universe owes me something. End of transaction.

I need to practice this Right Way of Giving.

$5 in my wallet

Today, I had $5 in my wallet.  I just haven't had time to go to the ATM. So at my freeway exit, the guy had a sign, "Help." I gave him a $1 because: 

1. The sign was simple. It was direct. It told me what to do. All those other homeless people try to put their life story, their hard-luck stories -- homeless, jobless, hungry, Veteran, need to feed kids, etc -- too much info.
2. I gave for selfish reasons. I'm reading James Altucher, who says that in giving, I'll get more back. And it felt good, too.

I try to give whatever change is in the car. But sometimes -- and I hope this doesn't make me a bad person -- if the cardboard makeshift sign has a misspelling or bad grammar, I am less likely to give. I blame my high school English teacher.

One Minute Entrepreneur notes

by K. Blanchard, D. Hutson and E. Willis.

• at any given time, we are becoming the average of the five people with whom we are most closely associated. 
• zig ziglar: "You can get everything you want in life if you help enough other people get what they want."
• If you don't love what you're doing, you will never put in the necessary time to be the best.
• Four rules of successful entrepreneur: 1. Sales have to exceed expenses; 2. Collect your bills; 3. Take care of your customers; 4. Take care of your people. 
• Let your customers know that they are the number-one priority. Make them feel loved and respected. 
• You have to give them legendary service and create 'raving fans'  -- they become part of your sales force. 
• Sheldon Bowles (Raving Fans) -- 3 secrets of creating raving fans -- decide, discover, and deliver. 
• You're going to beat the competition (not on price) but on Moments of Truth. 
• Become masters of discovering what our customers are thinking. Requires good listening skills. 
• Listen to understand, and then decide what you want to do about what you have heard. 
• Listening without being defensive is also helpful if you make a mistake with a customer. 
• Deliver. Deliver plus one percent. 
• The way to create eagles (not DUCKs) is to treat your people as partners so they feel empowered to act like they own the place. 
• To let them soar like eagles instead of quack like ducks. To do that requires owners and bosses who are servant leaders. 
• Leadership that is perceived as side by side rather than top to bottom is more likely to create high performance and satisfaction. Side-by-side leadership. 
• If you can't measure something, you can't manage it. 
• Managers often think of their job as judging, evaluating, and criticizing their people. What is really is about helping, cheerleading, and supporting their efforts. 
• that you'll never really be successful unless you help others. 
• your people are not your subordinates, they are your partners.
• Substitute strategic patience for crisis management. 

Not About the Coffee book notes

It's Not About the Coffee, Howard Behar. Now I have to read Howard Schultz's book, too.

In a nutshell, it's about the people. Your customers and your employees. Seth says the same thing, but so many companies and employees just don't get it.

• Have a BHAG -- Big Hairy Audacious Goal.
• Serious runners visualize a 110-yard dash (in a 100-yard race). 
• We expend time, money and effort taking care of ourselves and our image rather taking care of others. We get tangled in our underwear, in our individual concerns, individual results, and individual resumes. We lose sight of why we're here and what we're trying to accomplish. 
• Critical mass and the 100th monkey. We lead and make a difference by doing what is right. You make lots of things happen if you don't worry about who gets the credit. 
• If you are not able to work on your dreams, if you're only working on work, you're not in the right place. 
• "Most of us have jobs that are too small for our spirit." -- studs terkel in working.
• The person who sweeps the floor should choose the broom.
• It's all too easy to get caught up in the following the rule book rather than meeting the true needs of the people we serve. 
• Ideally, management should never tell someone how to do something or what to feel. 
• Guidelines we need to as a set of standards or expectations. Rules drive me crazy. 
• Instead of writing manuals that lock people into dehumanizing behaviour, we should focus on outcomes we want and the reasons behind them.
• Sweeper / picks broom -- Once everyone has come to an agreement about what needs to be accomplished, then the people with the hands-on expertise can follow through in the most effective way. 
• Bruce Nostrom: about providing freedom as the primary job of the employer: freedom to serve, freedom to make decisions right on the spot, and a management willing to live with those decisions. 
• Take the time to explain what needs to be done and why.
• I ask them to think wisely but act independently. Or know why you're here and act accordingly. 
• Care. People don't care how much you know. They want to know how much you care. -- saying. 
• Care, like we mean it. 
• Caring isn't easy, and it isn't the same as being nice. It's about words and actions that everybody sees and recognizes. 
• If we have a problem, we bet on the human spirit and believe that when people come together, face-to-face, the human connection wins out.
• Small is beautiful, book -- "The fundamental task is to achieve smallness within a large organization."
• Listening. Paying attention to all the things the customers weren't saying or asking. Have your antennae up anywhere and everywhere. 
• I'd listen to the walls.
• Listening to the unspoken. We needed to meet their needs -- not our own. We needed to truly listen and care. 
• Compassionate emptiness involves listening with compassion but without preconceived notions. Full of compassion but empty of solutions.
• You get to the bottom of a lot of problems quickly by trusting the silence to reveal the heart of things. 
• When money isn't the driving force, there are lots of things you do to make the work meaningful, to make the experience better, to serve your customers better.
• A crisis demands the truth -- to ourselves and to others. It demands that we know, and remind ourselves, why we're here, what we're trying to accomplish, and where we're headed as an individual and as an organization. 
• We are always human beings first.
• Every organization can survive catastrophe if its people are open and honest and accept responsibility.
• People have always come first.
• Start finding ways to say yes as a matter of practice.
• 
  

Seth Godin Small / Big Part 3 Notes

• Verbs. People care much more about verbs than nouns. They care about things that move, that happen, that change. Nouns just sit there. Verbs are about wants and desires and wishes. Is your Web site a noun or a verb?
• Act differently if on camera? Best motivation is self-motivation. That teaching people the right thing to do is far more effective than intimidating them into acting out of fear. It's harder to find people who act the way we might like. 
• People hit the wall. A place where a huge percentage of people abandon the process. 
• Winners are those who treated their customers and their constituents with respect and did it with honesty. 
• Too many companies are afraid to admit they are in the packaging business. 
• The Web, the engineer's revenge, is all about the content and commodities, not sexiness and wrappers. 

Bonus: About Web Design.

• Big Pict #1: A Website must do at least one of two things, but probably both: 1. Turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer. 2. Talk in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story you're telling. 
• Big Pict #2: A Website can cause only four things to happen in the moments after someone sees it: 1. She clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go; 2. She clicks and gives you permission to follow up; 3. She clicks and buys something; 4. She tells a friend. 
• A Web page is a step in the process. The purpose of this step is to get you to the next step. That's it. So what's that Web page for? What about this one? 
• Don't have a home page. Have "landing pages."
• Yes, you can easily show different pages to returning visitors, and you should.
• A website is a series of processes. 
• Each step of the way, you need to stake out a position. Must say, without saying it, "the smart thing to do would be click here. best way to solve your problem is to click here." Must "wax" the lanes of your "bowling" website.
• Need to change your pages all the time. Daily even. 
• Choice is a bad thing. When faced with too many pages, people flee. Contact is good. Eliminate dead ends and error pages. 
• As a device, your page is there to get the viewer from one place to another. From stranger to friend. One or two clicks, in, then out. 
• Three questions you must answer about every page you build: 1. Who's here? 2. What do you want them to do? 3. How can you instantly tell a persuasive story to get them to do #2?

Bonus #2: About Blogs

• No one cares about you. Almost no one even knows you exist.
• Three kinds of blogs: 1. Cat blogs (my blog is a cat blog, according to godin); 2. Boss blogs - used to communicate to a defined circle; 3. Viral blogs - a blog to spread ideas. 
• This is a riff for viral bloggers. It's about how to make your ideas spread far and wide and have more impact. 
• The first principle is to make your entries shorter. Use images and tone and design  and interface to make your point. Teach people gradually. 
• Good ideas, by my definition, are the ones that spread. 
• If you write something great, and do it over and over and over again, then you'll be unstoppable. Whether or not someone helps you. 
• The best blogs start conversations, they don't control them. 
• Marketing is really about two things. Talking and listening. 
• Most important kind of talking is storytelling. Not top-down dictation, but stories that resonate, stories that are authentic, stories that spread. 
• You need a committed group of subscribers, a substantial and influential RSS audience that will stick with you as you tell your story. Then, over time, take your readers on a journey. Teach them what you'd like them to know, and the rest will take care of itself. 

Damn You James Altucher

I'm reading your blog and reading three of your e-books and even purchased your lucky and hedge fund trading book and what has all this got me?

You got me hooked on online chess! Must stop playing chess.

There's good reasons I stopped playing.

Oh, well. must own up to it and not blame mr. altucher. must stop. playing. chess.

Seth Godin's Small is New Big Part 2 Notes

Hope i can finish these in two parts, but i'm only on the M's. practicing typing, too.

• The challenge of marketing is to get ideas to spread. 
• Wrong way. Companies that have decided that the best way to make a buck is to race to the bottom, to be the cheapest or fastest to the market. 
• Needle and Vice. Best marketers use both. They apply their marketing pressure so consistently and in such a measured and relentless way that sooner or later, they profit from it. 
• Finding Purple Cow. Figure out what the always is, then do exactly the opposite. Do the never. 
• Make something worth making. Sell something worth talking about. Believe in what you do because you may have to do it for a long time before it catches on. 
• Permission. That's an offer about me, not them. 
• Pigeons. The problem comes when people in power are superstitious -- when superstition becomes part of the operating system. ... these managers as examples of the current crop of fundamentalists .. they have two traits: 1. they live according to a large body of superstitions; 2. they believe they are right and everyone is wrong. Fundamentalists decide whether they can accept a new piece of information based on how it will affect their prior belief system, not based on whether it is actually true. 
• You will succeed in the face of change when you make the difficult decisions first. They refuse to make the difficult decisions when the difficult decisions are cheap.
• Sayings. Products that are remarkable inspire conversation. People don't buy what they need. They buy what they want. You're not in charge. And your prospect don't care about you. What the people want is the extra, emotional bonus they get when they buy something they love.
• In the old days, people made stuff. You don't make stuff. You make decisions.
• Respect. Companies grow by treating people with respect. By marketing to people who want to hear from you. It's not just good manners, it's profitable. Everyone wants to be treated with respect -- all the time. When we treat people with respect, they're more likely to do what we want.
• "Who benefits?" Key question. Companies that work to benefit their customers will have no trouble treating the newly picky consumer with respect. Unlike the ones who work to trick and coerce their customers. 
• What's a rift? It's a big tear in the fabric of the rules that we live by. It's a fundamental change in the game, one that creates a bunch of new losers -- and a handful of new winners. 
• Rules. Market leaders make up the rules. If you play by those rules, you will almost certainly lose. The alternative is both obvious and scary: Change the rules.
• Sales. Make something people want to buy.
• Marketing that involves making the right product, not hyping it.
• Marketing and lying. Like fiction, tell a story that resonates. Be a true liar. 
• Scarcity is value. How do you deal with scarcity? Whining is rarely a successful response to anything. What's scarce now? Respect. Honesty. Good judgement. Long-term relationships that lead to trust. Ultimately, what is scarce is that kind of courage -- which is exactly what you can bring to the market.
• Secrets of success. Desire to be three steps ahead. Do something worth doing. Connecting people to people. Keeping promises. 
• People ultimately judge only thing about you: the way the engagement makes them feel. So how do you make them feel? 
• As long as we focus on the commodity, on the sharper needle, we're lost. Sharpest needle is rarely the one that gets out of the haystack. 
• Shortcuts, no such thing. Offer something the email/newsletter that people actually want to read. Promise people exactly what you intended to give them. Create content that was so remarkable that people wanted to share it. 
• Short sentences get read. Short words are better than long ones. 
• Easy to launch stuff, hard to figure out what will work. All about choosing the right model and being remarkable. 
• Marketing is all about making changes. Good way to sell change is not with the promise of gain. It's with the fear of loss. Sad but true. 
• Start now. What if you had no choice? What if you had to start something? What would it be?
• Stop working for the factory and start building something that people will remember. 
• "we don't care, we don't have to" economy. And there's not enough competition to harm the uncaring industry leaders.
• Reset button. Switch. Directions or careers. It's easier than ever. 
• Either their torchbearers or they're not. 
• Marketers stopped acting like real people. Successful marketers showed their customers respect. The magic kicks in when the marketers are smart enough and brave enough to combine trust with respect. Treat their customers like respected colleagues or admired family members. Have the courage to make promises and keep them. Do more than promised, not just what the contract says. 
• Secrets: 1. Take responsibility. 2. Pay attention to detail. All businesses are service businesses, and experience is the product. 
• Ubiquity (success?). Before ubiquity, product or creator wasn't in it just for the money, somehow it fel more real, more special, more authentic. [Aversion to marketing] comes from people's desire to have something real -- and to get it from someone who isn't trying quite so hard to sell it. 
• Is it authentic? People who create something authentic but then sell out almost always end up unhappy. Because once you sell out, any new success you have doesn't come from your authenticity. You're in a business now. 
• Could you be happy practicing your authentic task for the rest of your life?

Continued in Part 3.

Seth Godin can do no wrong

Just finished Small is the New Big.  I've always felt like such a cog in the machine. I'm using 5% of my brain and 1% of my creativity at work. I was meant for something more, something bigger, more meaningful.

I've been feeling it's too late for me and putting my hopes on my children, but maybe just maybe there's time for me yet. I need to get off this cubicle train.

Here are the notes, quotes that resonate for me from the Godin's book. I've read about four or five of his books and he's not written at bad book yet. He's one of my gurus/mentors.

• Aretha was right. Respect is the secret to success in dealing with people.
• Do something that matters.
• Markets engage in conversations, but marketing often doesn't. The reality is that most brands are actually monologues, not dialogues. A conversation might create a better, more robust, more useful brand but, alas, most organizations can't handle that truth. So they do their best to do it the old way.
• A true brand is something where the self-esteem value far exceeds the utility.
• Hard work is where our future job security, our financial profit, and our future joy lie.
• Working hard is about taking apparent risk. ... far more conservative than sticking with the status quo.
• Hard work is about risk ... dealing with things that you'd rather not deal with: fear of failure, fear of standing out, fear of rejection. 
• Purple cow = remarkable. It's just something worth talking about. 
• Marketing is a show. Designed to satisfy wants, not needs. Take it less seriously. 
• Competence is the enemy of change. Competent people resist change. "Competence" is too often  another word for "bad attitude."
• Marketing is stories.
• Sorry: most of the time, most of your customers will cut you slack if you just acknowledge that the outcome isn't the one they (they they) deserve. Most people have a hard time saying they're sorry. They don't want to acknowledge the feelings of the other side. 
• Example apology: "You must feel terrible about what happened. I know I do. If there were any way I could figure out how to make this better for you, I'd do it."
• You're free to pick the projects that make you happy.
• Do it for the learning, not for the grades. 
• There are two ways to grow: by stealing from the competition or by growing the market. The first path is slow and painful and difficult. The second path is where the magic of fast growth kicks in. 
• Feedback. The first rule of feedback is this: No one cares about your opinion. What i want instead of your opinion is your analysis. Accurate analysis is a lot harder than opinion because everyone is entitled to his or her own tastes. The second rule? Say the right thing at the right time.  Try to figure out what sort of feedback will have the most positive effect on the final outcome, and contribute it now. Third rule? If you have something nice to say, please say it. Last rule: Give feedback, no matter what.
• Marketing/Selling by Flipping the Funnel: a) Turn strangers into friends; b) Turn friends into customers; c) And then ... do the most important job: Turn your customers into salespeople. 
• Give your fan club a megaphone and get out of the way.
• They don't care (they don't have to). Most of your friends and customers don't talk about you. It's because they're unimpressed. 
• You need to give your fan club some leverage, an amplifier -- a megaphone.
• Be authentic. Create products that are genuinely worth talking about. 
• Interactions are a million times more powerful than interruptions (the more traditional form of marketing.)
• The reason for a lawn? To demonstrate wastefulness. 
• What makes you remarkable is being amazing, outstanding, surprising, elegant, and noteworthy.
• How to sell or change minds. 1. Sell to people who are already in the mood to flip. 2. Start a cascade of small flips. Being right, being persuasive, and being with the right person when that person is predisposed to change their mind -- that's when things happen. 
• Local Max. Most people get stuck at the Local Max because changing strategy in any direction leads to poorer results. The problem is that to get to the Big Max, you need to get past point C, which is a horrible and scary place to be. 
• Local Max, mistakes. There are two mistakes that satisfied Local Max folks make: 1. Believing that they can get to the next Max in a linear, pain-free way; 2. Believing that the best way to get there is with brute force (more products, more salespeople, more ads...). In fact, the opposite is true.

-- To be continued.

The Lone Wolf Start-up (Day 4)

Connecting people. Communications. That's the biz model for the modern life. Facebook. Linkedin. Internet. Phones. 

Joining people. Meetup.

No wonder I can't come up with a successful start-up. I am one anti-social SOB. Maybe there's a biz for lone wolves like me?

Someone is Trying to Tell Me Something (Day 3)

Or there is no such thing as coincidences.

1. The other day in jj, upper belt was warning about being more careful about my neck, a couple of warnings actually.
2. Waiting in a parking lot for the car ahead of me to me, I sat there in the car with the family as a parked car started to back out and right into my passenger door. I honked as he continued to come out. Frantically, I honked again several times til finally he stopped. A few INCHES from my car.
3. Today, 4th of July, swimming, I dived and hit the side of head on the bottom of the pool. Then I see the No Diving sign. And I had my eyes closed as I went in. Stupid. Ego.

As Steve Jobs said, if this is the last day of my life, is this the way i want to spend it? Yelling at my kids, stressing about money?

Need to change some things in my life. What?

Fear of the Abyss of My Thoughts (Day 2)

If I didn't have any books to read, or blogs to read or internet or if I wasn't thinking about chasing money or cleaning the house or or or ... any other distractions, then I would be alone with my thoughts.

How scary is that?

I did meditate before, so it's not that frightening, but still.

What do I do with myself? What engages me?

How Much Money is Enough? (Day 1)

That's the question of the day and will begin Day 1 of the Write Every Day Project. We'll see how many days I can keep it up.

Because I have enough...for now. I have enough money for most things. I could pay cash for whatever I wanted now. Today. (Would I do it? No. But I could.)

I don't have enough money to quit the day job. I don't have enough saved for the kids' college fund. (Then again having found James Altucher and his views on college, I'm really rethinking the whole needing to go to college myth.).

Well, I could stop working for a little bit. So... the answer is I have enough, but not enough-enough. But let's say I have enough-enough, WHAT WOULD I DO WITH MYSELF ALL DAY?

Play poker? Play chess? Day trade? Start a t-shirt company. Make soap. Make toys. Make kids' furniture.

I need to answer this question, and I need to start figuring it now because I have enough money now and the time to explore. Otherwise, 5, 10 years from now, I'll have even more money and will have to start answering the question then.

What do I want to do all day?
Stop chasing the money and think about: what do i want to do all day? what makes me happy?

I like to read. To write. To make things. To travel with the kids. Train JJ. Learn to surf.