The Irony of Blogging

I find that when I write something I’m not really proud of, I usually write a lot more posts to bury my crappy post as fast as I can. But if I write something I think is pretty good, it’s a lot harder to follow. I end up worrying about what to write next and it usually screws up the flow of things.

The big irony in all this is that I guess I should be more excited when I write something terrible, because it means I just might push myself to try something or learn something I wouldn’t if I felt like the stakes are a little bit higher.

The funny thing about screwing up is that almost anything that follows will probably feel like a success.

Lemons, Lemonade, & Lululemon

So it’s no secret that the mall is in trouble. A number of factors have put this american institution in hot water; the current economy, changing consumer preference, renaissance in boutique shopping, the internet, you name it. The farther we seem to progress as a society, the smaller the mall seems to grow in the rearview mirror.

Tonight I had some errands to do, and having not been to a mall in probably a year, I decided to check it out. I’m not a fan of malls at all, but on a Thursday night I knew it wouldn’t be too bad. In general everything was pretty empty. Sales associates lounged around waiting for the night to end. There were a few uncomfortable situations where the people that work the hair extension carts were shaking down random passers-by, but mostly things were pretty dead. Then I walked past the Lululemon store.

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The Magic Bite

I caught up with Dan Bomze this week in the office. Now I don’t know Dan that well, but I notice that every time I catch up with him I always walk away pretty inspired. He’s a amazing thinker, a good listener, and an all around great guy in my opinion. He’s also a pretty inspirational business personality – he along with a few others founded Cleanwell.

Today Dan told a great story around this personal maxim he calls The Magic Bite. The idea is that when your get chinese food (or any meal really), you always have one more bite of food than you should. After that last bite you feel too full, you’ve eaten too much, you’ve spoiled a good thing. The Magic Bite is that next to last bite of food. It’s about know when you’ve had just enough of a good thing.

Those are some wise words that go way beyond food…

Back to the Craft

An interesting thing happens to people who becomes ’stars’, many times they stop doing the thing that made them special. Star employees are often promoted to management. Star artists become celebrities first, artists second. Successful authors spend more time becoming PR machines. I guess none of this is inherently bad, but I often wonder why people lose touch with their craft. I’m sure there’s a host of reasons, but I wonder if you truly love that thing you do, why would you stop doing it?

I was pretty excited to see Beck taking on a pretty interesting project. Beck’s basically collaborating with different artists to cover songs he loves, and then he’s giving it away on his website. This is one of those little moments where you go, ‘yeah, ok, so…” and if you let it sink in a little, you see the genius.

Putting out an album is a huge ordeal. There’s lots of investments of time, money, and sanity. Releasing an album lets you connect with your fans and make some money touring. But how could Beck stay relevant when he doesn’t have a new album out? And in today’s market, months between albums can feel like years. People are bombarded with a million times more content than before, it’s easy to fade into the noise. By no fault of your own, time could passes and you just become irrelevant. I’d even argue the lower you are on the celebrity musician chain the more dire this situation is. A flash in the pan burns brighter and quicker than ever before.

So what’s Beck’s way around the problem? Stop playing everyone else’s game. Invite some people over you’d like to work with, cover old songs in one take, and post them to your site. Now, with just a little coordination you have artist exposure, fresh content for your fans, collaboration and inspiration for yourself, and you can elevate older artists you enjoy and share them with the world. I don’t think you’d get to the place Beck seems to have found if you didn’t care more about the craft than anything else.

DFW Rant

As I was writing my immediate vs. relaible post, I wanted to refer to DFW’s convocation speech that’s been posted online since 2005 here. (You can find it preserved in a web archive here.) I’ve forwarded this bit to dozens and dozens of people. For me, it was/is an extremely inspiring piece. Being able to share it with people who would care about it was a really special thing. It’s wonderful writing, an inspiring message, and a large dose of humility in about 8 pages of text

Since DFW’s death the speech has been committed to print. Which, I guess in the long run is a good thing. However, the lawyers of the publishing companies sent a cease a desist order to the person who originally hosted the passage. It was from that site that the text went viral for the whole world to read and ultimately created the market for the book that is now on the shelves. I wouldn’t be surprised if the now publisher originally read the passage on that site. Now, because someone needs to make money, everyone has to pay to read it. Three months ago it was free. The whole passage is 8 printed pages. For some reason on Amazon the book is 144. They put one sentence per page, how clever. I’m very sure the artist who wrote a 1104 page tomb that sells for less that this book would be over himself with joy.

I’m pretty happy that the web preserved it in a way that everyone could read it b/c it’s meant to be read – part of the reason I’m even linking it here now. It’s nice to see our own systems making sure we do a little less harm to each other. Still though, the whole idea makes me really angry.

And to you petty publishers standing over a cold dead artist shaking his bones so that $15 increments fall out one SKU at a time, may your hell be hot. You should keep one of those books close to your bed stand as a reminder of why your industry is hosed.

Experience: the biggest lever you don’t know you have

Springwise has a post about a concept called Charlie’s Burger’s. It’s an anti-restaurant of sorts that does dinners by private, sporadic invites. One thing that caught my eye was that people weren’t emailed directions when the event was happening, they were directed to a satellite location to pick up the actual dinner location and directions. In the rave days, that sort of maneuver was called a “map point”. Some guy hanging out in car or a record shop with the actual directions to an underground party. You didn’t get directions to the party, you got directions to the map point and you would go from there. (There’s other variations, sometime it was a phone number with a voice recording.)

Can you imagine how much this dials up the experience for the diner? Instead of wading through a crowded restaurant to speak with a stressed out greeter, you’re going on an adventure. Even better, once you arrive at the venue, you have a shared experience to share with 20-30 other people.

I think a lot about how to flip business models on their head to build something different. I’m beginning to think I’ve been going about things all wrong. I’m beginning to believe business models happen only when you create a compelling offering or experience. (I’ll blog more about that next.) I’m starting to think you that you have to start by to flipping the experience around, then figuring out what kind of business model could deliver that experience. I think building models for the sake of building models doesn’t get you to the right place.

game theory + predictions

Man, I loves me some game theory. I was lucky enough to take several classes on the subject in school and I learned from some brilliant minds. I had tried to study it before through books, but it’s all very theoretical and gets very tangled very fast. The only way I ever managed to grasp the concept was to see things run in simulations. There was a dreadful phenomenal class I had where my entire class ran competing companies in a massive simulation that lasted like 8 weeks. Possibly the hardest thing I’ve ever done (since then, Tepper has made the course non-manditory, so I’m pretty sure it’s reputation will force it’s own extinction, which really depresses me).

ANYWAY…to the point.

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