someone wrote a great blog post the other day about marketers spending too much time consuming, studying, and theorizing, but not enough time doing. There’s a flip side to this problem, too – marketers who spend all their time doing, so much so that they’re stuck with the same solutions they’ve been using for problems…
DJ Waldow asked: We talk/preach a ton about “advanced email marketing” yet so many folks are stuck on basics. Refocus conversation? Thoughts? And Amber Naslund also commented: I wonder how much of our quest for “what’s next” is really centered in our uncomfortable misunderstanding of the basics. These are closely related. In the martial arts,…
What your personal brand can learn from the legend of the ninja The ninja warriors of old were greatly feared by their adversaries – shadowy operatives with superhuman powers that could single-handedly turn the tide of battle or bring clandestine death to their enemies. The ninja were capable of nearly any feat, from vanishing in…
There are fundamentally two types of secrets in the world. Exoteric secrets are surface level secrets. They’re the kinds of secrets that are easily transmitted, easily learned, easily shared, and thus easily stolen or imitated. Examples of exoteric secrets are things like the Colonel’s 11 herbs and spices or the formula for Coca-Cola. If the…
One of the “secrets” that one of my teachers, Ken Savage of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center, says is that if a technique is not working, something in the previous step went wrong. If a throw isn’t working, perhaps your footwork or positioning in the entry was wrong. If a kata (pre-arranged routine) isn’t working…
So much of what we perceive is defined by subtle cues and clues. Ever heard the cliche that clothes make the man? Like many cliches, it’s mostly true. The clothes you wear do indeed change the perceptions of others, controlling at least the initial impression, the blink, that you make. That’s just the tip of…
Mitch Joel recently highlighted the army of clones out there that are all trying to use the same personal brand, thus more or less killing personal branding. He’s dead on. Go search for the number of social media experts on Twitter to see just how much personal branding has turned into Attack of the Clones.…
Why Serendipity Shouldn’t Matter “Serendipity is the effect by which one accidentally stumbles upon something fortunate, especially while looking for something entirely unrelated.” – Wikipedia I’ll be contrarian to my good friend Chris Brogan in saying that serendipity shouldn’t matter to you. Here’s what I mean. There’s an interesting expression in ninjutsu: banpen fugyo. Literally,…
“When bad men combine, the good must associate; else they will fall one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.” – Edmund Burke Go read this story on CNN about a two and a half hour rape of a 15 year old at a San Francisco high school function as nearly two dozen…
