The Third Billion – Women are the Next Global Economy
The Third Billion – Women are the Next Global Economy
Women in the executive workforce are finding themselves at the epicenter of a shockwave that is changing the economic world as we know it — or more correctly, as some thought they knew it.
In a recent article, Booz & Company, one of the most prestigious management consulting firms in the world had this to say about women in the world’s economy:
“A huge and fast-growing group of people are poised to take their place in the economic mainstream over the next decade, as producers, consumers, employees, and entrepreneurs. This group’s impact on the global economy will be at least as significant as that of China and India’s billion-plus populations. But its members have not yet attracted the level of attention they deserve.
If China and India each represent one billion emerging participants in the global marketplace, then this “third billion” is made up of women, in both developing and industrialised nations, whose economic lives have previously been stunted, underleveraged or suppressed. These women, who have been living or contributing at a subsistence level, are now entering the mainstream for the first time.” (Bold & Italics mine).
Stop for a moment and consider the breathtaking impact of these words.
This change is seismic. It is beyond historic. For those of us in the entrepreneurial ranks who have championed the interests of women for many years, it is electrifying.
More Good News
At the same time as the Booz & Company study, there emerged another piece of good news for women.
Fox Business News reported on December 21, 2011 that:
” Gender-diverse boards boast a 53% higher return on equity, as well as stronger stock market growth, as compared with companies that have mostly male representation in top positions.”
The article written by Marilyn Nagel, CEO of Watermark in San Francisco, California, went on to say:
“The reasons for such exceptional numbers in female-led companies are based on some recent statistics: Women make 85% of household purchasing decisions, and they hold 51.5% of all management and professional positions and 51% of the nation’s private wealth.” (Bold & Italics mine).
Women as Entrepreneurs – The Breakthrough
The Booz & Company study made an additional comment that portends a major entrepreneurial surge from women. They said:
“To date, the potential of women as economic players has been unrealized. The reasons became evident recently in a Booz & Company analysis of data from the International Labour Organization (ILO), a United Nations constituent that tracks global workforce statistics. Globally, many women could be considered “not prepared” (lacking sufficient education); others are “not enabled” (lacking support from families and communities); and a significant number are both. But as constraints are alleviated, the Third Billion’s movement into the middle class will accelerate. (Bold and Italics mine).
In my view, the upshot of this reality for women is that an increasing number of them will join the entrepreneurial ranks, and will do so with enormous impact.
The normal constraints — imposed by the lack of educational attainment and family support systems — are mitigated in the entrepreneurial environment.
There exists a winnowing process in normal corporate recruitment, based upon educational attainment; but such a filter has no place in the entrepreneurial system.
To use the ubiquitous U.S. Postal Service commercial: “If it fits, it ships.”
If an entrepreneur, (of either gender), achieves results – it is completely immaterial what level of education played a role.
As to the issues raised by a lack of family support systems, this problem has existed since the beginning of entrepreneurship — (again, for both genders) – it is nothing new.
An entrepreneur’s first and most difficult sale has always been to his or her family.
Admittedly, women have a much more difficult road in many cultures when adopting the role of prime-mover and risk-taker, but with the unparalleled levels of success being shown by women entrepreneurs – not to mention corporate CEOs and government leaders – even this shackle will soon fall off.
2012 Will Be the Year of the Woman
In Social Media, and in business generally, 2012 will be a banner year for women.
They certainly deserve it. They have earned it. In every sense, by every measure.
Over the last year it has been my honor to highlight many of their achievements and I will continue to do so. They play a major role in my forthcoming book, Trajectory.
But most important, they are truly changing the world as some thought they knew it — and it is a welcome change.
Steve Jobs – The True Measure of the Man
A Man of Consequence
Steve Jobs was indeed a man of consequence. He was the quintessential entrepreneur. But above all, he was remarkably human.
He has not so much left us — as he has simply walked from one room into another — through a doorway into his new future.
He was a man who worked very hard at what he loved, even if that meant an occasional failure – and he wasn’t ashamed to admit it.
He believed in value and beauty.
He enjoyed his success, but he lived simply.
He was loyal – to his products, of course, but also to his family.
He treasured happiness.
He gave us many a “Wow!” moment, but in the end he saved his best “Wow!” moment for his last few words.
Without diminishing his remarkable business accomplishments, there is as much to be learned from his humanity as from his professional achievement. The true measure of a man, I believe, is not what you do but who you are.
Much has been written about this extraordinary businessman and innovator, but there exists no better tribute, no more permanent legacy, than the words spoken by his sister, Mona Simpson, at his memorial service. She delivered a poignant eulogy for her brother on October 16, 2011, at the Memorial Church of Stanford University. A novelist and a professor of English at the University of California, she captured the man as few could.
Determination and Loyalty
“When he got kicked out of Apple,” his sister said, “things were painful.”
“He told me about a dinner at which 500 Silicon Valley leaders met the then-sitting president. Steve hadn’t been invited. He was hurt but he still went to work at Next. Every single day.”
“For an innovator,” she continued, “Steve was remarkably loyal. If he loved a shirt, he’d order 10 or 100 of them. In the Palo Alto house, there are probably enough black cotton turtlenecks for everyone in this church.”
Beauty
His philosophy of aesthetics reminded her of a quote: “Fashion is what seems beautiful now but looks ugly later; art can be ugly at first but it becomes beautiful later.”
“Steve always aspired to make beautiful later,” she said.
Love
Love was at the center of Steve Jobs’ life. That is a rare characteristic for an entrepreneur of his stature.
“Steve was like a girl in the amount of time he spent talking about love,” Mona Simpson said. “Love was his supreme virtue, his god of gods. He tracked and worried about the romantic lives of the people working with him.”
“Whenever he saw a man he thought a woman might find dashing,” she recalled, “he called out, ‘Hey are you single? Do you wanna come to dinner with my sister?’ I remember when he phoned the day he met Laurene. ‘There’s this beautiful woman and she’s really smart and she has this dog and I’m going to marry her.’
When Reed was born, he began gushing and never stopped. He was a physical dad, with each of his children. He fretted over Lisa’s boyfriends and Erin’s travel and skirt lengths and Eve’s safety around the horses she adored.
None of us who attended Reed’s graduation party will ever forget the scene of Reed and Steve slow dancing.
His abiding love for Laurene sustained him. He believed that love happened all the time, everywhere. In that most important way, Steve was never ironic, never cynical, never pessimistic. I try to learn from that, still,” she explained.
Grounded
Despite his fame and fortune, Steve Jobs was grounded and attached to his family.
“Steve had been successful at a young age, and he felt that had isolated him,” Mona Simpson continued. “Most of the choices he made from the time I knew him were designed to dissolve the walls around him. A middle-class boy from Los Altos, he fell in love with a middle-class girl from New Jersey. It was important to both of them to raise Lisa, Reed, Erin and Eve as grounded, normal children. Their house didn’t intimidate with art or polish; in fact, for many of the first years I knew Steve and Lo together, dinner was served on the grass, and sometimes consisted of just one vegetable. Lots of that one vegetable — Broccoli in season, simply prepared with just the right, recently snipped herb.”
Unpretentious
Steve Jobs was unpretentious and approachable. “Even as a young millionaire,” Simpson said. “Steve always picked me up at the airport. He’d be standing there in his jeans. When a family member called him at work, his secretary Linetta answered, ‘Your dad’s in a meeting. Would you like me to interrupt him?’
“When Reed insisted on dressing up as a witch every Halloween,” she said, “Steve, Laurene, Erin and Eve all went Wiccan.”
“They once embarked on a kitchen remodel; it took years. They cooked on a hotplate in the garage. The Pixar building, under construction during the same period, finished in half the time. And that was it for the Palo Alto house. The bathrooms stayed old. But — and this was a crucial distinction — it had been a great house to start with; Steve saw to that.”
“This is not to say that he didn’t enjoy his success. He enjoyed his success a lot, just minus a few zeros. He told me how much he loved going to the Palo Alto bike store and gleefully realizing he could afford to buy the best bike there. And he did.”
Humble
“Steve was humble,” Simpson explained. “Steve liked to keep learning. Once, he told me if he’d grown up differently, he might have become a mathematician. He spoke reverently about colleges and loved walking around the Stanford campus. In the last year of his life, he studied a book of paintings by Mark Rothko, an artist he hadn’t known about before, thinking of what could inspire people on the walls of a future Apple campus.”
Whimsical
“Steve cultivated whimsy. What other C.E.O.,” Simpson asked, “knows the history of English and Chinese tea roses and has a favorite David Austin rose?”
According to Simpson, “He had surprises tucked in all his pockets. I’ll venture that Laurene will discover treats — songs he loved, a poem he cut out and put in a drawer — even after 20 years of an exceptionally close marriage. I spoke to him every other day or so, but when I opened the New York Times and saw a feature on the company’s patents; I was still surprised and delighted to see a sketch for a perfect staircase.”
“With his four children, with his wife, with all of us, Steve had a lot of fun. He treasured happiness.”
Refused to Give Up
Perhaps his sister’s memories of his final battle are the most telling. They reveal a man who would never give up, who was doggedly determined to live his life to the full, and in the end, was inspiring and joyful in his own mysterious way. His sister described it this way:
“Then, Steve became ill and we watched his life compress into a smaller circle. Once he’d loved walking through Paris. He’d discovered a small handmade soba shop in Kyoto. He downhill skied gracefully. He cross-country skied clumsily. No more.”
“Eventually, even ordinary pleasures, like a good peach, no longer appealed to him.”
“Yet, what amazed me,” she said, “and what I learned from his illness, was how much was still left after so much had been taken away.”
“I remember my brother learning to walk again,” she recalled, “with a chair. After his liver transplant, once a day he would get up on legs that seemed too thin to bear him, arms pitched to the chair back. He’d push that chair down the Memphis hospital corridor towards the nursing station and then he’d sit down on the chair, rest, turn around and walk back again. He counted his steps and, each day, pressed a little farther. Laurene got down on her knees and looked into his eyes. ‘You can do this, Steve,’ she said. His eyes widened. His lips pressed into each other.”
“He tried. He always, always tried,” his sister remembered, “and always with love at the core of that effort. He was an intensely emotional man.”
“I realized during that terrifying time,” she said, “that Steve was not enduring the pain for himself. He set destinations. His son Reed’s graduation from high school, his daughter Erin’s trip to Kyoto, the launching of a boat he was building on which he planned to take his family around the world and where he hoped he and Laurene would someday retire. Even ill, his taste, his discrimination and his judgment held. He went through 67 nurses before finding kindred spirits and then he completely trusted the three who stayed with him to the end. Tracy. Arturo. Elham.”
“One time when Steve had contracted a tenacious pneumonia his doctor forbid everything — even ice”, she remembered. “We were in a standard I.C.U. unit. Steve, who generally disliked cutting in line or dropping his own name, confessed that this once, he’d like to be treated a little specially. I told him: ‘Steve, this is special treatment.’ He leaned over to me, and said: ‘I want it to be a little more special’.”
“Intubated, when he couldn’t talk, he asked for a notepad,” she said. “He sketched devices to hold an iPad in a hospital bed. He designed new fluid monitors and x-ray equipment. He redrew that not-quite-special-enough hospital unit. And every time his wife walked into the room, I watched his smile remake itself on his face.”
“None of us knows for certain how long we’ll be here,” she said. “On Steve’s better days, even in the last year, he embarked upon projects and elicited promises from his friends at Apple to finish them. Some boat builders in the Netherlands have a gorgeous stainless steel hull ready to be covered with the finishing wood. His three daughters remain unmarried, his two youngest still girls, and he’d wanted to walk them down the aisle as he’d walked me the day of my wedding.”
“We all — in the end — die in medias res. In the middle of a story. Of many stories”, she commented profoundly.
“I suppose it’s not quite accurate to call the death of someone who lived with cancer for years unexpected, but Steve’s death was unexpected for us. What I learned from my brother’s death was that character is essential: What he was, was how he died.”
“Tuesday morning, he called me to ask me to hurry up to Palo Alto. His tone was affectionate, dear, loving, but like someone whose luggage was already strapped onto the vehicle, who was already on the beginning of his journey, even as he was sorry, truly deeply sorry, to be leaving us. He started his farewell and I stopped him. I said, ‘Wait. I’m coming. I’m in a taxi to the airport. I’ll be there’.”
“I’m telling you now because I’m afraid you won’t make it on time, honey,” he responded.
“When I arrived, he and his Laurene were joking together like partners who’d lived and worked together every day of their lives”, she said. “He looked into his children’s eyes as if he couldn’t unlock his gaze. Until about 2 in the afternoon, his wife could rouse him, to talk to his friends from Apple. Then, after a while, it was clear that he would no longer wake to us. His breathing changed. It became severe, deliberate, purposeful. I could feel him counting his steps again, pushing farther than before.”
“This is what I learned: He was working at this, too. Death didn’t happen to Steve, he achieved it,” she said.
“He told me, when he was saying goodbye and telling me he was sorry, so sorry we wouldn’t be able to be old together as we’d always planned, that he was going to a better place.”
“Dr. Fischer gave him a 50/50 chance of making it through the night. He made it through the night, Laurene next to him on the bed sometimes jerked up when there was a longer pause between his breaths. She and I looked at each other, then he would heave a deep breath and begin again. This had to be done. Even now, he had a stern, still handsome profile, the profile of an absolutist, a romantic. His breath indicated an arduous journey, some steep path, altitude. He seemed to be climbing.”
“But with that will,” she continued, “that work ethic, that strength, there was also sweet Steve’s capacity for wonderment, the artist’s belief in the ideal, the still more beautiful later.”
“Steve’s final words,” she said, “hours earlier, were monosyllables, repeated three times. Before embarking, he’d looked at his sister Patty, then for a long time at his children, then at his life’s partner, Laurene, and then over their shoulders past them. Steve’s final words were: OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
My Personal Thoughts
The true measure of a man is not so much what he did while alive, but rather what he leaves behind. Some men leave behind a history of accomplishment, great deeds and monuments carved in stone. Others leave their monuments etched in the hearts of those they loved. Steve Jobs was such a man.
Some leave behind a list of inventions, patents and creative thought. Others bequeath a spark of genius that continues to ignite our thinking and appreciation for decades to come. Steve Jobs was such a man.
Some leave behind a finished story. Others depart this life in medias res. In the middle of their story. And that story continues to inspire us, urging us on to do more. Steve Jobs was such a man.
In the case of Steve Jobs that story didn’t come to an end in a hospital room; it looked above and beyond his final moments to further exploration, new questions and glorious answers. We may never know what captured his upward gaze in those last moments, but as we look backward at the essence of the man, as we chronicle his successes and empathize with his failures, and as we benefit from his fertile mind, we can share in his final words: “OH WOW. OH WOW. OH WOW.”
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Request For Proposal
Trajectory Selling – It’s Not Your Father’s Bottle-Rocket
Leaving the Bonds of Earth
This post introduces the exciting last element of the Trajectory Formula as provided in my forthcoming book.
Called Trajectory Selling, it is the hugely important and fulfilling end result of the Trajectory Formula.
It is that final powerful moment when all of the careful strategic planning, meticulous execution and precision management come together with maximum thrust.
Escape Velocity
In physics, escape velocity is “the speed above which an object will depart on a ballistic trajectory, and never fall back to the surface nor assume a closed orbit.”
Such an object is said to “escape” the gravity of the Earth.
To leave planet Earth, an escape velocity of 11.2 km/s (approx. 40,320 km/h, or 25,000 mph) is required. The required speed is a precise and absolute requirement. 24,000 mph is insufficient.
Once escape velocity is achieved, continued energy is less important. The object’s rise will continue unabated by atmospheric friction and gravity. Advancement is effortless.
What This Can Mean for Your Business
Trajectory will help you attain escape velocity in your business. It will generate predictable thrust that leads to sales and profits. And perhaps most significantly, it will propel you beyond a higher orbit — into a self-perpetuating and lasting upward trajectory.
In the Trajectory Formula, escape velocity is the sum total of the components of the formula, added together to give your selling effort the kinetic energy required for Trajectory Selling and guaranteed success. This immensely important section of the book is purposefully left to the end. Why? Because it relies on everything that comes before.
Think of it this way: When a rocket hurdles into space, it leaves the Earth’s gravitational force behind because the propulsion systems, avionics, aerodynamics, computer systems and a wealth of other components are acting together elegantly. Nothing is left to chance. Not a single circuit is extraneous. Every cubic inch of the vehicle is packed with applied knowledge — from Einstein’s theory to the most advanced science.
As the Space Shuttle leaves the bonds of Earth, it incorporates the dedicated efforts of countless engineers, mathematicians, computer experts and astronauts. And when its mission is concluded, its legacy remains the launching pad for the next generation of adventurers.
Hopefully, so it is with Trajectory. Nothing has been left to chance. Not a single chapter is extraneous. Every page of the book is packed with over 20 years of accumulated knowledge — from basic marketing to the cutting edge of Social Media accomplishment. When the book is published in December, it will carry with it a comprehensive formula for capturing online success. And it is my hope, that it will provide the launching pad for the next generation of online entrepreneurs.
It’s Not Your Father’s Bottle-Rocket
There are simpler ways to launch a selling effort. There are countless theories on how to sell through Social Media that will demand much less of you. There are many approaches that require less study, thought and effort. But in one man’s humble opinion, all of these abbreviated formulas are simply bottle-rockets — offering momentary flashes of excitement, but destined to fall back unceremoniously to Earth.
Trajectory has been a labor of love and profound respect for my readers. I have been delighted to pen the ideas that will give you what you really want and need — results and accomplishment.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Request For Proposal
Steve Jobs – In Memoriam
The Bell Tolls For All Of Us
When John Dunne penned his immortal words, “Ask not for whom the bell tolls, it tolls for thee,” he must have had men like Steve Jobs in mind.
With his tragic death the world has lost one of its true visionaries. In a way, we were all part of his family. He gave us the gift of imagination, the spark of genius and the conviction that there was always something quite amazing around the next corner.
Steve Jobs was the type of man that is truly irreplaceable. He was in a class by himself. He was more than an innovator — he was an amazing presence. He guided us all toward a changed and better life. It’s hard to imagine the world of technology without his brilliant light.
While I celebrate his remarkable life and legacy, I cannot help but feel a profound sense of loss.
If ever it was true of any man, when the bell tolls for Steve Jobs it will be tolling for all of us.
Goodbye, Steve — and Thank You.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Request For Proposal
Trajectory Chapter 9 – Make An Irrevocable Commitment
This is a continuation of the Strategy chapter in Trajectory.
Effective Strategy Requires An Irrevocable Commitment
You may remember from the Introduction, that there are four objectives around which the Trajectory Formula is constructed.
The first three objectives dealt with honing your Twitter strategy until Critical Mass and Trajectory take over — making your strategy effective.
Objective four was to prepare you for the emergence of new technology — as strategies, tools, techniques and Social Media venues inevitably evolve.
In April, 2010, I made a strategic decision to maximize Twitter by building a highly engaged following of 50,000 individuals.
Much more than a decision, it was a rock-solid, irrevocable commitment.
I also committed myself to the notion that I would accomplish this objective alone, so that entrepreneurs like you could look at the tangible results and remain encouraged through good times and bad. This too was an irrevocable commitment.
Why Is This So Important?
Strategy is all about commitment — and if what you’re doing isn’t irrevocable, then you don’t have a strategy you have an idea.
You have a solution du jour — something that is enjoying great but possibly short-lived popularity.
Ultimately, if you don’t commit you will not succeed, because when the going gets tough you will falter. You will give up. You will be susceptible to the next big idea, whether it is in your best interest or not.
Even worse, you may allow yourself to become a hostage to the new approach, working countless hours in pursuit of a new objective before you have accomplished the last one.
One successful entrepreneur put it this way: “I’ve always wanted to treat life like I was an invading army and there was no turning back.” This is sage advice.
What Is The Take-Away From This Notion?
It is very important to remember that Trajectory is not just a book about Twitter.
It is a book about accomplishment.
It is a book about results.
It is a book about making sensible plans — and then sticking with them tenaciously.
The principles you will learn in these pages will make you agile, knowledgeable and fully prepared for whatever comes next. Importantly, they will teach you to be circumspect. They will make you heedful of circumstances and the potential consequences of every strategic decision. Hopefully, they will make you prudent. They will make you single-minded. They will make you resilient in the face of hardship and resolute in the face of change.
Ultimately, they will teach you that being prepared for whatever comes next is not a license to make ineffective and inefficient decisions or to arbitrarily abandon your plans for the next great idea.
Your Role As A Social Media Strategist
As a Social Media Strategist, you must be aggressive and knowledgeable — but you must also be discerning.
The only thing certain about change is that it is inevitable — and your role as a Social Media expert is to make recommendations that are in the current best interest of your various constituencies. Change for the sake of change may not always be the best approach.
Good examples are the sweeping changes that have taken place recently with Facebook and Google Plus. Recent industry press has been overwhelmed with commentary, pro and con, concerning these new series of developments.
In order to place these changes in the proper perspective, you must revisit the two keys to proper strategy:
- You must know what you are trying to do.
- You must know where you are trying to go.
You must know what you are trying to do. If after careful consideration, your strategy is to maximize Twitter for the benefit of your business, you must remain heavily involved with that strategy until it is accomplished. While it is easy to get sidetracked by other approaches as they mature and improve, a competent strategist will resist the urge to change until his original objective is met. Accomplishment, after all, is essential to success — and accomplishment is impossible without laser-like focus.
As the Social Media landscape changes, which it will and must, my humble suggestion is that you heed the advice of Thomas Alva Edison, one of the most successful and resilient inventors in American history.
He was a man of single-minded dedication.
During his career he was awarded over a thousand patents, but his overarching objective was to master the technology of the electric light — and to commercialize it.
He failed over 900 times before he finally achieved his original objective — but he never gave up. He never faltered.
He once remarked:
“The three great essentials to achieve anything worth while are, first, hard work; second, stick-to-itiveness; third, common sense.”
If the successful usage of Twitter is your goal — and if you made that decision using common sense — stick to it. Work long and hard.
You must know where you are trying to go. The Trajectory Formula presupposes that you are a confident and informed decision-maker. It also recognizes that you have certain qualities of leadership that will inspire others to follow you. Taken together, these two central themes demand that you maintain your ground.
Let’s face it, choosing Twitter over other available options for business growth is not the popular decision. Many knowledgeable men and women have taken another course. But I chose Twitter, and presumably you did as well or you wouldn’t be reading this book. Perhaps you are searching for answers, which is where I was before embarking on this strategy. Perhaps you have decided and need reinforcement.
Either way, chart your course and maintain it vigorously.
Look at it this way, all Social Media is in a state of flux. It is new and mostly unproven. But it is a major departure in the way marketing has always been conducted. It is refreshing and new. It is a complete paradigm shift in a marketplace that desperately needs change. By pushing its limits, by remaining confident and taking a position of leadership, you will be making business history.
TRAJECTORY IS COMING SOON.
My new book, Trajectory, will be published in December, 2011. If you found this article useful, you will love the book. You may read the first chapter, Overview, by clicking here.
PREVIEW TRAJECTORY: To preview the complete Mind View, (conceptual diagram), of the new book Trajectory, click here for a free download.
Trajectory Information
Anticipated Final Publish Date: December 13, 2011.
Anticipated Price: $24.95
AVAILABLE ONLINE: In addition to the book itself, buyers will receive a password to the Client Login section of this website at no additional cost, where they can view the book in its entirety online, read supplementary materials and use expanded tutorials. Importantly, as the Social Media landscape changes, additional material not available at the time of publication will be available here.
Any questions? I am here to help.
If you are a businessperson searching for answers, or you know someone who is, I am very easy to get in touch with and I am eager to help.
Don’t be shy, be effective instead. Take action.
Simply call the number below. During normal business hours, (8 AM – 5 PM Scottsdale, Arizona time), it is my direct line.
If I am unavailable, just leave a message.
If you would prefer to exchange email I would love to here from you. Just email michaelstewart@jerichotechnology.com or click the email badge below. I promise I will get back to you within 24 hours.
If you believe your company can benefit from a robust and highly professional Social Media Campaign, complete the following form for no-obligation information and an application.
Request For Proposal
The Runaway Stage and A New Kind of American Hero
A New Kind of Hero
It was 1860 and America had moved west.
Unbroken wilderness was challenging Americans to adapt.
Indian paths had become hazardous trails, trails had become dusty roads and then deeply rutted stage lines — and on this forbidding landscape a new kind of hero emerged.
He was a man of few words, who occasionally stumbled when speaking to a group larger than a few close friends.
For a while he tried ranching or sometimes farming, but his real place was on the edge — where his life and the lives of others depended upon his quick decisions, simple courage and the ability to take action.
He rode stoically through desolate territory on a Stagecoach — the reins firmly in his strong hands, eyes watching the horizon for unexpected potholes and danger.
On nearly every trip the unexpected happened: The road took a sudden turn, a wheel collapsed, or worse the horses sensing trouble bolted into an uncontrolled gallop.
There was no time to plan strategy and no time to prepare. As the runaway stagecoach reeled out of control and careened toward certain injury or death for his passengers, he had no choice but to take matters into his own hands. He uttered a silent prayer and jumped from safety onto the backs of the frightened horses.
A few moments later everything was under control, the danger averted and once again he retook his position of leadership in the driver’s seat, his passengers safe.
He would never be rich or comfortable, but as he continued his journey with his eyes focused on the job at hand, he allowed himself a moment to appreciate the grandeur of the magnificent country he saw stretching out before him.
“This is America”, he thought with fondness and he had a job to do.
Stagecoach the Movie
Many decades later, the famed Hollywood director John Huston immortalized this notion in his movie Stagecoach. John Wayne, a late arrival to the group, had taken the reins and inside the rickety stagecoach were his passengers – a drunken doctor, two women, and a bank manager who had taken off with his client’s money.
As the story and characters developed, it became clear that the essence of this movie was not simply the courage of John Wayne’s character, it was the humanity that resides in all of us.
It’s just a movie of course, but it resonated with the American audience. It made Huston the unequaled champion of the Hollywood western and John Wayne a legend.
But What is the Real Story?
America is, and always will be an adventure.
There are no pat answers, no quick fixes, and sometimes things can get dangerously out of control.
When that happens, it takes a special kind of rugged individualist to make things right.
He may not be polished or urbane, he might not be a shopkeeper or a banker, but he will be a decisive leader — a man who knows how to take action.
When times are tough and the trail is rutted by too many wheels, Americans will naturally ride with a man who will leap onto the backs of the horses.
There may be a modern lesson to be learned from this western drama.
Things in America have not changed much.
Ours is still a simple, principled and courageous country, with brave and resourceful citizens.
Place an obstacle in our path and we don’t get discouraged, we get moving.
We don’t stand on the sidelines and fret, we take the initiative.
We can be a little rough around the edges sometimes, but we generally know what to do — and most importantly, we do it.
Inspirational American Entrepreneurs (Part 1)
The Light of America
In the early 1880′s, America was reeling from an economic catastrophe called the Panic of 1873 — an event that triggered a severe international economic depression in both Europe and the United States.
The failure of two major banks in the U.S. set off a chain reaction of bank failures and temporarily closed the New York Stock Exchange.
Factories began to lay off workers and America’s railroad industry, long a powerhouse of American growth, was in serious trouble. Of the country’s 364 railroads, 89 went bankrupt.
A total of 18,000 businesses failed and unemployment reached 14%.
Construction work halted, wages were cut, and real estate values fell precipitously.
For some it appeared as if the economic light of America was about to be extinguished.
It was a dismal situation, eerily reminiscent of today’s headlines.
Liberty Enlightening the World
Against this backdrop, a young French sculptor, Frédéric Bartholdi, had completed work on a statue he called Liberty Enlightening the World.
It was determined that the French would finance the statue as a gift to America — and all we had to do as Americans was pay for the pedestal which formed its base.
A few years earlier, during a trip to the U.S., Bartholdi had fixed on an island in New York harbor as a site for the statue, struck by the fact that vessels arriving in New York would have to sail past it.
The statue remained intact in Paris pending sufficient progress on the pedestal and by January 1885, the statue was disassembled into 350 pieces and crated for its ocean voyage.
A poet named Emma Lazarus was initially reluctant, but was eventually convinced by a friend that immigrants to the U.S. would be deeply inspired by the statue and her words. She penned a sonnet with this iconic sentiment:
“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”
Politics As Usual
Committees were established in the U.S. to fund the pedestal construction, but the project became embroiled in politics as usual.
First, Grover Cleveland, the governor of New York, vetoed a bill to provide $50,000 for the statue project and the work was stalled.
A year later, an attempt to have Congress provide $100,000 — an amount sufficient to complete the project — failed when Democratic representatives would not agree to the appropriation.
The New York committee, with only $3,000 in the bank, suspended work on the pedestal.
Once again it appeared that the light of America, this time symbolically represented by a torch destined for New York harbor, was about to be extinguished.
Entrepreneurship Meets the American Spirit.
Many years earlier, an impoverished immigrant from a small village in Hungary, made the journey to America.
After a stint in Lincoln’s Cavalry during the Civil War and an attempt at whaling in New Bedford, Massachusetts, he found his way back to New York City where he was flat broke and living on the streets.
At one point he sold his one possession, a white handkerchief, for 75 cents.
Despite his many hardships, this young man was inspired by American Democracy, and by the success he believed to be attainable by a foreign-born immigrant through his own energies and skills.
He became a naturalized citizen and that same year studied law.
Throughout his career he had a mind of his own. Often having difficulty working for others, he worked as a reporter for a small newspaper but eventually decided to go into business for himself. He bought a small share of his employer’s paper — and then with a burst of entrepreneurial fervor, parlayed that investment into several more.
Eventually, as so often happens, his unfettered entrepreneurial spirit and hard work led to greatly increased success.
Finally, in 1883, while so many others were suffering from America’s economic travail, he purchased a losing newspaper called the New York World.
It was at this important place in his business life, as the statue languished in crates on a French pier, that the nexus between entrepreneurship and the American Spirit occurred.
It was destined to change the symbolism of American Democracy and once again ignite the light of America.
The Light of America is Finally Lit
The New York World became a thriving newspaper, and its entrepreneurial owner announced plans to take the required fundraising for the statue directly to the American people. He launched a drive to accomplish what the government had failed to do — raise $100,00 (the equivalent of $2.3 million today) and complete construction.
He pledged to print the name of every contributor, no matter how small the amount given, in his widely read newspaper. The drive captured the imagination of New Yorkers, especially when he began publishing the notes he received from contributors.
“A young girl alone in the world,” came the headlines, “donated 60 cents, the result of self denial.”
Another donor gave “five cents as a poor office boy’s fortune toward the Pedestal Fund.”
A group of children sent a dollar as “the money we saved to go to the circus with.”
Another dollar was given by a “lonely and very aged woman.”
Residents of a home for alcoholics in New York’s rival city of Brooklyn donated $15; other drinkers helped out through donation boxes in bars and saloons.
A kindergarten class in Davenport, Iowa, mailed the World a gift of $1.35.
And so it went.
Americans from every walk of life, from every section of the country and from every economic class, sacrificed for something that money couldn’t buy: The pride of being Americans.
On August 11, 1885, the World announced that $102,000 had been raised from 120,000 donors, and that 80 percent of the total had been received in sums of less than one dollar.
After the money was raised, and the shipments from France finally arrived, a courageous group of Americans — most from immigrant families like his own — joined forces with the entrepreneurial newspaper owner and began the long process of rebuilding the statue.
They climbed 150 feet into the air above New York Harbor, on a frighteningly high steel skeleton and carefully fitted the 350 pieces in place.
Finally, the greatest and most profound symbol of the American Spirit took her place at the door to New York and America, her torch raised forever as a beacon to the world.
An American Entrepreneur
The Statue of Liberty is much more than an American triumph.
It is the embodiment of what average Americans can accomplish when government gets out of their way.
It is the best example of how Americans will sacrifice when patriotism is their guiding principle.
It is the personification of what entrepreneurs can accomplish, when they are free to follow their dreams.
And it is the epitome of excellence — that special quality that always seems to emerge when American skills and entrepreneurial zeal are allowed to combine and flourish.
This Hungarian-born immigrant — this man most responsible for the iconic American symbol we fondly call The Statue of Liberty – was in the words of the prestigious medal that now bears his name, “an intense and indomitable figure … a passionate crusader against dishonest government … a fierce, hawk-like competitor … and a visionary who richly endowed his profession.”
His name was Joseph Pulitzer and he was an Inspirational American Entrepreneur.
Entrepreneurs and Politics: Get Real, Get Informed and Get Involved
What Can We Agree On?
As online professionals, (those who look to online business as a full-time profession, expecting it to make a profit), we are told to agree on one thing, if nothing else.
Never discuss religion or politics.
From a purely business point-of-view, they are roads to nowhere, or so the popular entrepreneurial wisdom would warn.
From a completely non-ideological perspective, however, it seems logical to me that standing on the sidelines benefits no one.
So, what can we agree on?
“People get the government they deserve.”
Most of us have heard the expression: “People get the government they deserve.”
That thought seems nearly axiomatic to me, but I doubt that we could even agree on who said it.
Many would suggest that it was the observation of Alexis de Tocqueville in his famous and highly complimentary book about American Democracy in the early 1800′s.
But I have also heard it said with authority that it should be attributed to Thomas Jefferson, William Shakespeare and even Hunter S. Thompson. Another likely candidate is the French-speaking philosopher, writer, lawyer, and diplomat, Joseph de Maistre.
I guess it doesn’t really matter.
Whoever said it, it strikes me as a truism — whether heard on the streets of Washington D.C. or Mainstreet USA , if not Cairo, or Kabul.
Uniformly, we get the government we deserve.
So again, what can we agree on?
Get Real, Get Informed and Get Involved
Here’s a thought: We should get real, get informed and get involved.
Get Real. With jobs, economic uncertainty and the welfare of the middle class, (that would be us), taking a paramount position in the forthcoming presidential election, can we afford the luxury of having no opinion?
Can we aspire to positions of so-called thought leadership without taking a stand?
Can we ignore being placed on center-stage in perhaps the most significant economic-political discussion in modern history?
Isn’t it time for us to get real?
Whatever our individual positions, it seems to me that we should at least get real.
We need to face the extant realities of our situation.
If we don’t create jobs in America, who should?
If we don’t care, who might?
If we ignore our central role, who loses? I guess we all will.
Get informed. We live in very complex times, especially economically.
We are confronted with myriad issues that require us to be knowledgeable.
Take for example, the national financial crisis that came to a head not too long ago.
We have heard a great deal about it, but what do we really know?
We know that we are concerned about the economy. We know that hiring workers is more than a little frightening in uncertain times. We know that there is a lot of finger pointing about who should share the blame. The answers are elusive, whatever our politics.
So, what should we do? What is our basic obligation in a free society?
One argument that makes sense to me as a baseline, is that we should all get informed.
We watch the news, listen to commentary and attend the occasional cocktail party where these things are being discussed. But what do we know intellectually?
We have heard about the Dodd-Frank Bill, but what does it provide? Is it good for middle America or not? Is it good for business or destructive?
In fact, how many of us know positively who Senators Dodd and Frank are? Why and how did they get involved in the first place?
And while we’re at it, who is Henry Merritt “Hank” Paulson, Jr., Timothy Franz Geithner, and why should we care?
We all know of Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke, but who is Brooksley Born?
We all know of the Federal Reserve Bank, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but what is the CFTC?
If you’re scratching your head a bit, perhaps I have made my point. We should all get informed.
Get involved. Whatever our political persuasion, getting involved and taking a stand for our beliefs seems to me a mandatory step.
If we don’t get involved, shame on us.
If we remain on the sidelines, then we should expect to be sidelined in the future.
If we do not have the courage of our own convictions, who will?
235 years ago last month, after signing the Declaration of Independence, Benjamin Franklin purportedly said, “Gentlemen, we must all hang together or we shall most assuredly all hang separately.”
Those were much different times and clarity of purpose was a simpler idea then perhaps, but Franklin’s message is still clear.
We must all hang together.
Whether Democrat, Republican or Independent — whether businessman or politician — whether interested and committed or disinterested and searching — we all have an obligation to get and stay involved.
What Do You Think?
This has been my first and only political comment in twenty years online.
It may be an unpopular and ill-advised step.
But I hope and trust, for all our sakes, that it was the right thing to do.
What do you think?
Trajectory Chapter 10. SUPER Motivation – The Desire to Feed Our Families
(This is Chapter 3 of Trajectory, the forthcoming book by Michael R.H. Stewart)
CHAPTER 10: SUPER MOTIVATION
There is an overarching objective in today’s unpredictable world economy — as the owner, manager or employee in a small business – and that is the desire to feed our families.
There can be no shame in that.
Of course, under ideal circumstances this should not be at the very top of the entrepreneurial list.
As Guy Kawasaki is famous for insisting, if your primary goal is to make meaning – rather than to make money — all else will fall naturally into place.
Steve Jobs is famous for similar beliefs. His desire was to change the world, not to own it.
I agree with both men entirely.
Current research suggests that we are making headway. We entrepreneurs can take pride in the fact that in recent research being conducted by the Startup Genome Project it was found that: ”Most successful founders are driven by impact rather than money.”
However, this book is intended for the overburdened entrepreneur, not the successful founder. This book is intended for individuals deeply involved in the search for accomplishment, not for those who have already achieved it.
So how do we accomplish the necessary, while aspiring toward the exceptional?
Make an Impact While Facing Reality
To completely ignore the present realities – to insist that we should be eleemosynary to the elimination of our basic obligations to those who depend upon us – is at best naivete and at worst the height of irresponsibility. We must absolutely make an impact, but we must face reality too.
Let’s call this dual approach SUPER Motivation.
Having proclaimed a strong desire to get back to the salad days of Guy Kawasaki’s thinking before the world economy started to slide, let me say that for now at least, feeding our families should be a major concern of everyone involved in business.
Bear with me on this, because what I have to say in this chapter – however it is framed – may be the most important advice in this book.
In order to feed our families, it is first necessary to learn the mechanics of motivating people – encouraging them to do what needs to be done – to buy our products and services.
But equally important is the notion that in Social Media we should soft-pedal the sales message. It should be decidedly in the back seat as we drive toward our objectives.
It is the great conundrum of business – how to motivate people, and in today’s world we must do so unobtrusively.
In this chapter, I will share the simple secret for getting this done.
Take the Money and Run
Remember Virgil Starkwell? Probably not, I suppose.
Let me refresh your memory.
In the 1969 movie comedy, Take the Money and Run, Woody Allen played a hapless hero bent upon a life of crime.
He was not very good at it.
He tried to rob a bank by handing a too-hastily handwritten note to the bank teller at window #9.
The note was supposed to say:
“Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.”
Sadly, the teller could not read his illegible note.
The teller asked, “I can’t read this. What is this? Abt natural“?
Virgil responded, somewhat annoyed, “No it just reads, ‘Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.’”
“Does it say, ‘Act natural’?” the teller asked.
Virgil responded, getting more than a little frustrated, “I, uh, am pointing a gun at you.”
“That looks like ‘gub’”, the teller responded. “It doesn’t look like ‘gun’.”
Virgil was nonplussed.
The teller asked her manager to come review the note, saying “George, would you step over here a moment please. What does this say?”
Now the manager was reading the note. “”Please put $50 thousand into this bag and… abt? What’s ‘abt’?”
(You can see where this was going, even if you don’t remember the movie).
“It says “Act,” Virgil insisted again.
Then the teller asked her manager “Does this look like “gub” or “gun“?
Virgil made one final attempt, repeating, “Please put $50 thousand into this bag. Act natural. I am pointing a gun at you.”
Finally, both the teller and the manager saw the light.
“Oh, I see, this is a hold up,” the manager exclaimed.
“Yes!” Virgil said with victory in his voice.
“Well, you’ll have to have this note initialized by one of our vice-presidents before I can give you any money.”
Virgil got arrested and served his time, regretting that he had not stood his ground with the teller and manager. He became very highly motivated not to repeat that blunder.
What’s the Point?
The point of retelling this story is not Virgil’s embarrassing plight.
Rather, it is to lay the groundwork for a later scene in which Virgil, now a convict on a prison chain gang for another crime, has become very highly motivated to prove his courage and resolve and not to cave in to the prison warden.
The movie narrator describes Virgil’s chain gang experience this way:
“The time drags by an endless grind of backbreaking labor. Brutal discipline is common under the hot sun. The men aren’t even permitted to faint without written permission.”
“Virgil complains and he is severely tortured.”
This is where the key to motivating people is described.
The narrator continues:
“For several days Virgil is locked inside a sweatbox … (a deep pit in the exercise yard, topped by a steel lid) … with an insurance salesman.”
“Hi, I’m Joe Green, I represent Ajax and Widget Insurance Company,” the insurance salesman begins. “I’d like to talk to you about a little insurance… You’re about 30, right?”
Virgil screams under his breath, barely maintaining his resolve.
“I think the best thing to do is get straight life then a little term… and… how about dental and medical?”
Virgil’s resolve begins to dissolve.
“We got a great deal on dental,” the persistent salesman concludes.
Virgil finally loses it.
He has lost his motivation completely, and the warden has won.
Fade to black.
A Pleasant Surprise
Having spent many years as a senior executive for one of the largest insurance companies on earth, this scene has always made me cringe a little. But there was no denying that this torture seemed to work.
Is this the answer to motivating people? To make the alternative too unbearable to contemplate? Well, no, but it puts the subject in stark relief.
Motivating the prospective buyer has always been a necessary evil, whatever the means.
The debate has always been how to motivate the buyer, without permanently destroying the rapport between buyer and seller.
Of course, there are answers to this marketing conundrum. Marketing texts are full of them. Business schools delight in explaining theories and possible approaches.
But here’s the pleasant surprise, provided by the miracle of Social Media.
Here is the punch line – the advice I promised you before telling the story of Virgil Starkwell.
Because in Social Media you have the gift of very large potential numbers, it is no longer necessary to motivate people.
The secret is simple and powerful.
Instead of motivating people … find people who are already motivated.
Do this, and you will no longer have to drag your potential buyers up the steep cliff to where your products reside — they will scramble to the top themselves. Give them what they want and need and they will do the difficult climbing mostly without you.
The New Motivation Model
What can we learn from Virgil Starkwell and his unfortunate hold-up note?
What can we learn from the pit in Virgil’s exercise yard?
What can we learn from typical marketing approaches that attempt to motivate our potential buyers, even when that approach seems not to work?
The simple answer is this – motivating buyers is a thankless, ineffective and inefficient process – so don’t do it.
Don’t do it? How else are we to progress in our businesses? No one enjoys the process, but isn’t it essential?
Ask yourself this important question: Is traditional marketing still relevant in today’s world?
Let’s take a step backwards in time to see where this motivational process came from – and let’s check it for reasonableness in today’s world.
In 1890, American transportation was in a state of flux. There were over 13,000 businesses that sold various accessories for the “carriage industry.” A famous example was the buggy whip manufacturer.
One of the stalwarts in the buggy whip trade was William Durant — who ultimately founded both General Motors and Chevrolet. He worked for a carriage maker, and was one who spoke out against cars as being “smelly, noisy and dangerous.” But when he realized that the world was moving towards them, and that his current company wouldn’t be able to adapt due to preconceived notions about product, he jumped ship to Buick.
Before this important choice, he could have taken two approaches. He could have ignored the fact that the American transportation industry was changing fundamentally, as he continued to beat a dead horse with his buggy whips. He could have continually upgraded his buggy whip, his marketing material, his sales force and his motivational techniques. He didn’t. He chose to adapt instead.
There have been many examples in our history of choices similar to this one.
The steamship and railroad companies — successful for decades when they had a virtual monopoly on moving the public from one place to another — when faced with the advent of the commercial airplane could have easily clung to the status quo as they sailed and steamed away from reality and into obscurity. Some did, but many did not. They chose to adapt instead.
The software and computer industry — having not existed at all a few decades before — when faced with the advent of the DOS operating system, Windows and Microsoft, could have easily clung to the status quo as they clicked and whirred away from reality and into obscurity. Some did, but many did not. They chose to adapt instead.
These were monumental paradigm shifts in buyer preferences, but did we learn from them? In some ways we did, but in important ways we did not.
We still believed, and we continued to teach in our colleges and universities, that motivating the unwilling buyer was still the key to successful marketing.
We believed that marketing was a push technique. If you continued to bombard your buyer with the reasons to buy your product, irrespective of his wishes, you would eventually prevail.
It was just a matter of modifying the sales pitch, we stubbornly believed – we just needed to be sure our brochure said “gun” instead of “gub”.
It was a continual unwelcome message, but like placing the buyer in a pit with an insurance salesman, we believed that he would eventually give in. The alternative – staying in the pit listening to an unwanted sales pitch – would eventually wear the buyer down.
The dominant sales thinking was simply, never accept “no” for an answer.
Today we have seen a paradigm shift that makes the aforementioned market changes seem trivial by comparison.
That shift is Social Media.
Importantly, we suddenly have the luxury of a virtually unlimited source of motivated buyers from around the world. We need not motivate a small group of potential buyers, because we can accumulate motivated buyers in large quantities simply by casting a much larger net. They are out there waiting, eager to buy our products and services; we just need to find them.
Marketing in today’s Social Media world, is or should be a pull technique. If we simply learn to listen to our potential buyers – if we learn to give them what they want instead of what we want to sell them – motivating the buyer will no longer be necessary.
Social Media Has Changed Everything
Products and services change, economic environments improve or get worse, but it is a rare event indeed when everything changes at once.
Social Media is one of those events.
Social Media is neither a tool nor a vocation, as it is often mischaracterized. It is a complete paradigm shift — if ever that term was appropriate.
Old solutions have become obsolete. Old approaches have become irrelevant. Old methods — even those memorialized by the passage of time — have lost their effectiveness and efficiency.
Social Media requires a new mindset — new principles — new ways of doing things.
Most important among these changes is the fact that motivation of the buyer has become less of a nightmare and more of a blessing. It is no longer necessary to cajole and convince. It is only necessary to locate and inspire.
25 Secrets For Solving BIG Problems In Your Business
How To Solve Your BIG Problems
Some problems you face in business are small ones that can easily be solved. You’ve seen them before and you have ready-made solutions that require little or no thought.
For example, suppose you have a temporary cash flow problem. From past experience you realize that there are two obvious solutions:
- Sell more.
- Improve the way you handle receivables.
But suppose you encounter a large and unwieldy problem that you have never struggled with before.
Suppose none of the obvious solutions seem to fit?
What should you do? What’s the secret?
The simple answer — the secret to solving your BIG business problems — is simply this: Use your intellect.
When you are faced with a problem that’s too big to handle, you must marshal all your intellectual resources — the resources that got you this far already — and craft a new problem-solving regimen.
Sounds simple, right? Well it isn’t.
Using your intellect to solve problems does not mean just thinking about them. It’s an intellectual process. It’s using your mind creatively, to place you in an intellectual environment where the BIG problems can be solved.
Win Wenger, PhD, of the Renaissance Project, has developed an intellectual problem-solving process that I find useful. Here it is, with my embellishments.
(Note: Wenger’s comments are in bold below — my embellishments are in normal type.)
25 Secrets: Solving BIG Problems In Your Business
In order to solve BIG problems you must:
- Want to solve the problem. Sounds obvious? Well it isn’t. Before you tackle a major problem, you must first be sure that you really want to. Many entrepreneurs continue the fight for their business when the truth is: It’s no longer viable. Deep in their hearts they know, or suspect, but habit forces them forward. Sometimes it is better to admit that the business, or the market, or the product was a mistake — and start over. Thomas Edison failed over 900 times before he commercialized the light bulb. If you persevere, while at the same time adjusting your approach, you will succeed eventually.
- Have wide-ranging interests, and feed them. Many businesses fail in the long term due to a lack of innovation. To innovate in the 21st century you must have a wide-ranging intellect. Far too many entrepreneurs become so obsessed with their businesses that they ignore everything else. That is a serious mistake. Develop your mind in other ways: Art, music, history, literature and mathematics, to name a few, can be well-springs of creative energy and problem-solving power. Use them. And as you develop other interests, feed them by taking the time to involve yourself.
- Entertain ideas and inspirations from outside the box. I don’t mean merely thinking outside the box. I mean removing yourself from the box entirely. Leave your comfort zone. Get out into the real world, not your business niche. Listen to others less accomplished than yourself, it’s remarkable what you can learn. Inspiration, the fuel that will keep your enterprise going, often springs from the most unexpected of sources.
- Learn from any and every source. Wenger puts it this way: “Anyone can learn from someone wise….it takes someone pretty wise to be able to learn even from fools.“ Personally, my faith tells me that there are no coincidences. People from all walks of life and all levels of intellect, cross my path every day. And yes, some of them will turn out to be fools. But I believe that every single one of them is there for a reason. There is a quote from Corrie Ten Boom, the Christian Holocaust survivor who helped many Jews escape the Nazis during World War II, that makes this point well: “Every experience God gives us, every person he puts in our lives, is the perfect preparation for the future than only He can see.” Whether spiritual guidance or pure pragmatism is directing your problem-solving, be sure you pay attention and learn from any and every source.
- Keep coming back to the problem from different directions. Some entrepreneurs are myopic. Their nearsightedness causes them to look at their problems from one point-of-view. To be adroit at solving problems, you must view them diligently from every angle. Give it your best, then stop. Now approach the problem again from a completely different place and give it your best again. Keep this up until you arrive at the solution.
- Let go of it between times, and deal with other matters. Not taking a break from the problem-solving process can be debilitating. It can sound the death-knell for your business. Build some variety into your business life. And if you can’t find another business requirement to occupy yourself, heed Wenger’s advice:
- Tend the garden
- Wash the dishes
- Meditate
- Experience or ‘do’ in the arts
- Take inordinate pleasure in little things—sometimes that’s all you’ll have, sometimes those become big worthy things.
- Keep or build your stamina and follow-through. This is a tough one for many entrepreneurs. How many times have you heard yourself saying, “I know I should take better care of myself, but I don’t have the time?” Certainly it requires discipline to build up your stamina, but without doing so it is likely that you will be too tired to follow-through effectively. This is a crucial business requirement, not a luxury.
- Keep your health. Similar to number 7 above, this secret to solving BIG problems is difficult for many entrepreneurs. Difficult or not, it is also a crucial business requirement, not a luxury. Remember, that when you eventually solve the problem that is nagging you, you’re going to want a bit of celebration. And if health problems make that impossible, you have stolen one of the priceless benefits of being an entrepreneur. Stay well and prosper.
- “Keep your day job.” This secret can be twofold. If your business cannot support you financially, that is a much bigger problem than the current problem you are trying to solve. If you need to keep it, keep it. On the other hand, if your business can support you, never lose sight of the day job that got you there. Think of it as an intellectual fall-back position. If you know that there is another secure job waiting for you if the business fails, not only will that provide encouragement when things get tough, but it will make failure less likely. Problem-solving is always easier if you know it is not a matter of life or death.
- Keep your sense of humor. This is sage advice. It’s hard to lose your positive attitude if you belly-laugh once in a while. You can always find something to chuckle about, even when enduring BIG problems. Smile. Laugh. Share your sense of humor with someone else. You will feel better — and you will do better.
- Be fully creative, then fully critical, then fully creative. You can’t be both creative and critical at the same time. But they are both important. Give the full force of your intellect to both creativity and sensible criticism, but alternate them. You will find that you can do both with effectiveness and efficiency. Try it. You’ll find it works amazingly well.
- Raise and keep up your level of ongoing tinkering. Tinkering is a very useful intellectual exercise. It is restful by contrast to full-fledged intellectual activity. Tinker with your problem by tossing it mentally up in the air. It won’t seem as heavy. It might even float back to your mind resolved. Tinker with your ideas as well. Take them apart and put them back together again. See how they fit together. You’ll be surprised at the positive result.
- Be opportunistic. This is huge. Solutions can flit in and out of your mind like butterflies, hardly making a sound. Watch for them, listen for them, and grab them. Solutions are often targets of opportunity and need to be treated as unexpected gifts you need to take immediate advantage of. You don’t need a water-proof voice recorder for use in the shower, but you do need to develop the mental discipline necessary to be constantly vigilant.
- Fiddle in other creative activities, keeping those further resources of yours in the picture. Engaging in other creative activities, and bringing all of your other talents into the effort, can yield a very positive result. Steve Jobs once attended a calligraphy class at Reed College, and became very involved in the artistry of the various fonts. Later in his business career he fiddled with fonts quite often. The result was the innovative fonts used in the MAC computer. Now all computers utilize sans serif fonts and proportional spacing
- Work in creative bursts; don’t 9-to-5 it. This is an exceptional idea, that sadly, I have not been able to execute myself. I will do better. I will convince myself with this argument: If you are only 75% effective, let’s say, after working 9 to 5 without a break – but you are 95% effective after working 9 to 5 with three twenty minute breaks to stimulate creativity, you gain almost an hour more of effectiveness when you work in creative bursts than when you make yourself an indentured servant to your computer.
- Fly on inspiration as fast as possible before the pattern dissipates. Inspiration can be gossamer thin, like the wings of a butterfly. It comes rarely and disappears quickly. So when it does make an appearance, embrace it, and fly on it.
- Fly fast on inspiration as long as possible, then climb right back on and go up again. Despite the fact that inspiration is fleeting, it will return if you welcome it. When it does, take advantage of your luck. Climb aboard. And fly as long as possible. Never give up the reins unless you must. If you fall off, or if inspiration disappears, get up and get back on. Inspiration is far too precious to waste.
- Be willing to dog-plod some of the task, on some sort of scheduled regular basis of production, but do as much as possible inspired. We have all done our share of dog-plodding, regular or otherwise. And we will undoubtedly do more. But it is infinitely better, more palatable, if we are doing it inspired. If you are short on inspiration at the moment, at least turn on Pandora and listen to music while you work.
- Don’t wait for inspiration, find it. Waiting for inspiration is a fool’s errand. It’s like waiting for a winning lottery ticket: It’s theoretically possible, but highly unlikely. We were given our intellects for a reason beyond simple self-preservation. It seems unlikely that we were given intelligence just so that we could recognize an unresolvable problem to worry about. It seems more plausible that we were made sentient beings so that we would have a power within us to search out and capture inspiration. We should appeal to the “better angels of our nature,” as President Lincoln said it his First Inaugural Address in 1861. Whatever we call it: Inner Self, Karma or Divine Guidance from God — few would dispute the fact that in the small hours of the night, inspiration often comes. Stay alert and pay attention.
- Build high self-esteem. If we have little respect for ourselves, it is axiomatic that others will have little respect for us. We have all been endowed with intrinsic worth, so we should build upon it.
- Reinforce your confidence by being self-critical from time to time. Only a fool listens to his own judgement exclusively. We all make mistakes and fall short of our highest capabilities. There can be no shame in that. Being self-critical is not a short-coming, it is a basic human advantage.
- Search hard for everything that might be wrong with your idea-theory-discovery-invention, then: “Damn the torpedoes, full steam ahead!” If we don’t root around in the closets of our mind, seeking to find our own inadequacies, then someone less sympathetic surely will. It is infinitely better to find our own flaws and correct them than to wait for others to fill in our intellectual vacuum. We should be scrupulously honest with ourselves, find what’s wrong and fix it — and with this accomplished, start anew.
- Do your homework, keep on getting better informed in the context. There is no substitute for hard intellectual effort. Learn, learn, learn — and when you’re through, learn some more. We live in a business world, that to use Bill Gates’ words, changes at “the speed of thought.” We cannot solve today’s problems with yesterday’s solutions. Don’t waste your time trying. And remember that in the Internet Information Age, there is a solution out there somewhere, to even the most intractable problem.
- Pat yourself on the back on some of those many occasions when no one is going to do that for you. Just as surely as you must be your own worst critic, you should also be your own most ardent evangelist. The simple fact that you are reading this article, indicates that you care about what you are doing — and that by itself is a laudable trait. Congratulate yourself. Pat yourself on the back. Look back over your business and personal life and contemplate your past successes. Sadly, unless you are a philanthropist showering charitable causes with your largess, or you find yourself on the cover of Fortune Magazine, there will never be a line forming to praise you. Do something praiseworthy — and then praise yourself.
- Find others also doing something worthwhile and pat them on the back. A small but definite percentage will reciprocate. Our’s is a big world — and if you are alert you will find countless others searching for meaning by benefiting others. Like you, they deserve an occasional pat on the back. Reward good works with unselfish admiration and respect. Give to others and they will give to you.
Albert Einstein once famously remarked, “We can’t solve problems by using the same kind of thinking we used when we created them.” Since most of our BIG problems are self-created, we need to take Mr. Einstein’s advice and change our thinking.
Steve Jobs – The Quintessential Entrepreneur (Pt.3)
The Wisdom of Steve Jobs
This article is — unashamedly — a tribute to the wisdom of Steve Jobs.
His is not the kind of ephemeral wisdom you learn at Harvard, Yale or MIT. It is the wisdom you learn by living your life, paying attention and setting your priorities in the best possible way.
His wisdom is not merely business acumen, it is a far more rare commodity indeed: Human understanding, concern and unselfishness.
His wisdom is not founded on the ideas of others, it is based upon his life-long quest to follow his innate curiosity and intuition.
His wisdom is not based upon following business principles, it is based upon doing what you love — and surrounding yourself with people who love you. It is about returning that love with extravagance.
In His Own Words
On June 12th, 2005, Steve Jobs, (perhaps the most famous college drop-out of all time), delivered the Commencement address at Stanford University. At the time he was the CEO of Apple Computer and of Pixar Animation Studios.
Imagine how proud and thrilled the graduates would have been had his speech been delivered today. Imagine their excitement to hear in his own words how Steve Jobs had built the largest company on earth.
But in 2005, no one — especially Steve Jobs — could see into the future.
He famously remarked, “You can’t connect the dots looking forward.”
A lesser man might have taken the opportunity to chronicle his business successes, but not Steve Jobs. Instead he chronicled his life in three very personal stories.
He began with characteristic humility: “I am honored to be with you today at your commencement from one of the finest universities in the world. I never graduated from college. Truth be told, this is the closest I’ve ever gotten to a college graduation. Today I want to tell you three stories from my life. That’s it. No big deal. Just three stories.”
Well, it was a very big deal. In fact, I would opine that if every entrepreneur took these three simple stories to heart our world would be a much better place.
His First Story Was About Connecting the Dots
Here it is, in his own words:
“I dropped out of Reed College after the first 6 months, but then stayed around as a drop-in for another 18 months or so before I really quit. So why did I drop out?
It started before I was born. My biological mother was a young, unwed college graduate student, and she decided to put me up for adoption. She felt very strongly that I should be adopted by college graduates, so everything was all set for me to be adopted at birth by a lawyer and his wife. Except that when I popped out they decided at the last minute that they really wanted a girl. So my parents, who were on a waiting list, got a call in the middle of the night asking: “We have an unexpected baby boy; do you want him?” They said: “Of course.” My biological mother later found out that my mother had never graduated from college and that my father had never graduated from high school. She refused to sign the final adoption papers. She only relented a few months later when my parents promised that I would someday go to college.
And 17 years later I did go to college. But I naively chose a college that was almost as expensive as Stanford, and all of my working-class parents’ savings were being spent on my college tuition. After six months, I couldn’t see the value in it. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life and no idea how college was going to help me figure it out. And here I was spending all of the money my parents had saved their entire life. So I decided to drop out and trust that it would all work out OK. It was pretty scary at the time, but looking back it was one of the best decisions I ever made. The minute I dropped out I could stop taking the required classes that didn’t interest me, and begin dropping in on the ones that looked interesting.
It wasn’t all romantic. I didn’t have a dorm room, so I slept on the floor in friends’ rooms, I returned coke bottles for the 5¢ deposits to buy food with, and I would walk the 7 miles across town every Sunday night to get one good meal a week at the Hare Krishna temple. I loved it. And much of what I stumbled into by following my curiosity and intuition turned out to be priceless later on. Let me give you one example:
Reed College at that time offered perhaps the best calligraphy instruction in the country. Throughout the campus every poster, every label on every drawer, was beautifully hand calligraphed. Because I had dropped out and didn’t have to take the normal classes, I decided to take a calligraphy class to learn how to do this. I learned about serif and san serif typefaces, about varying the amount of space between different letter combinations, about what makes great typography great. It was beautiful, historical, artistically subtle in a way that science can’t capture, and I found it fascinating.
None of this had even a hope of any practical application in my life. But ten years later, when we were designing the first Macintosh computer, it all came back to me. And we designed it all into the Mac. It was the first computer with beautiful typography. If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts. And since Windows just copied the Mac, it’s likely that no personal computer would have them. If I had never dropped out, I would have never dropped in on this calligraphy class, and personal computers might not have the wonderful typography that they do. Of course it was impossible to connect the dots looking forward when I was in college. But it was very, very clear looking backwards ten years later.
Again, you can’t connect the dots looking forward; you can only connect them looking backwards. So you have to trust that the dots will somehow connect in your future. You have to trust in something — your gut, destiny, life, karma, whatever. This approach has never let me down, and it has made all the difference in my life.”
What’s Important About This Story?
It may seem somewhat out of place in a business article, but the central theme surrounding this story, and the two that follow – the part that makes them human and quintessentially Steve Jobs – is love.
When you are trying to connect the dots in your life, it is essential to place love at the center.
What about career, success and money?
If Steve Jobs is any example, connecting the dots in this way with love at the center — surrounded by concern, trust, unselfishness, sacrifice and belief — is the path to true fulfillment.
If you follow this path you will have no regrets.
And the added benefit is that the money, in abundance beyond your dreams, is likely to follow. It did for Steve Jobs, and it can for you too.
His Second Story Was About Love And Loss
Again, in his own words:
“I was lucky — I found what I loved to do early in life. Woz and I started Apple in my parents garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation — the Macintosh — a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.
I really didn’t know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away from the valley. But something slowly began to dawn on me — I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had not changed that one bit. I had been rejected, but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.
I didn’t see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.
During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went on to create the worlds first computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current renaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.
I’m pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is as true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And, like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle.”
What’s Important About This Story?
When you place love at the center — love for your business, love for your family, love for your fellow man and, importantly, love for yourself — the inevitable trials you will face in your life will be manageable, even surmountable.
Connecting the dots in your life does not guarantee a smooth road ahead.
It does, however, guarantee equanimity under pressure.
It guarantees inner strength.
And when you inevitably slip and fall, it guarantees that those who love you will be there when you need them most.
Defeat, failure, loss, business reversals and outright mistakes will undoubtedly occur. But you will be ready. You will be resilient. You will be determined. And with love as your core principle, you will rise above them.
His Third Story Was About Death
Finally, in his own words:
“When I was 17, I read a quote that went something like: “If you live each day as if it was your last, someday you’ll most certainly be right.” It made an impression on me, and since then, for the past 33 years, I have looked in the mirror every morning and asked myself: “If today were the last day of my life, would I want to do what I am about to do today?” And whenever the answer has been “No” for too many days in a row, I know I need to change something.
Remembering that I’ll be dead soon is the most important tool I’ve ever encountered to help me make the big choices in life. Because almost everything — all external expectations, all pride, all fear of embarrassment or failure – these things just fall away in the face of death, leaving only what is truly important. Remembering that you are going to die is the best way I know to avoid the trap of thinking you have something to lose. You are already naked. There is no reason not to follow your heart.
About a year ago I was diagnosed with cancer. I had a scan at 7:30 in the morning, and it clearly showed a tumor on my pancreas. I didn’t even know what a pancreas was. The doctors told me this was almost certainly a type of cancer that is incurable, and that I should expect to live no longer than three to six months. My doctor advised me to go home and get my affairs in order, which is doctor’s code for prepare to die. It means to try to tell your kids everything you thought you’d have the next 10 years to tell them in just a few months. It means to make sure everything is buttoned up so that it will be as easy as possible for your family. It means to say your goodbyes.
I lived with that diagnosis all day. Later that evening I had a biopsy, where they stuck an endoscope down my throat, through my stomach and into my intestines, put a needle into my pancreas and got a few cells from the tumor. I was sedated, but my wife, who was there, told me that when they viewed the cells under a microscope the doctors started crying because it turned out to be a very rare form of pancreatic cancer that is curable with surgery. I had the surgery and I’m fine now.
This was the closest I’ve been to facing death, and I hope it’s the closest I get for a few more decades. Having lived through it, I can now say this to you with a bit more certainty than when death was a useful but purely intellectual concept:
No one wants to die. Even people who want to go to heaven don’t want to die to get there. And yet death is the destination we all share. No one has ever escaped it. And that is as it should be, because Death is very likely the single best invention of Life. It is Life’s change agent. It clears out the old to make way for the new. Right now the new is you, but someday not too long from now, you will gradually become the old and be cleared away. Sorry to be so dramatic, but it is quite true.
Your time is limited, so don’t waste it living someone else’s life. Don’t be trapped by dogma — which is living with the results of other people’s thinking. Don’t let the noise of others’ opinions drown out your own inner voice. And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary.”
What’s Important About This Story?
Given Steve Jobs’ resignation for reasons of health, this is a personally difficult way to close this article.
But to ignore the last section of his speech at Stanford would be to dismiss his courage and resolve.
It would diminish the magnificent way he has conducted his life.
It would leave his message unrepeated at a time when he wishes it to be remembered.
He would hope now, as he did so many years ago at Stanford, that we all might embrace his wisdom when it was most clear.
Death is inevitable. It is unavoidable. But fear is neither.
In fact, the inescapable nature of death can be inspiring, illuminating and transcendent.
It can foster intellectual renewal.
It can encourage better choices.
And it can invoke fearlessness — if love is at the center.
A Conclusion For Now, But Not An Ending
This is not the final story for Steve Jobs.
I wish him a complete recovery and a continuing distinguished career — as I’m sure we all do.
His life continues to inspire me.
I will leave it to this truly remarkable man — a man who personifies boundless character and depth of human feeling — to continue his personal narrative, in his own words, far into the future.
If you would like to see a video of Steve Jobs’ speech, click here.
Steve Jobs – The Quintessential Entrepreneur (Pt.2)
IN SEARCH OF EXCELLENCE
This is Part 2 in a brief story of Steve Jobs — a truly remarkable man.
There can be no doubt that he has had a material impact on our world — perhaps more than any other businessman in modern history.
He has revolutionized the computer industry; changed forever the way we communicate; and with the iPhone, iPod and iPad he has brought a spark of genius to technology that makes all of us proud and improved.
But his lasting impact will not be on the way we communicate with one another, but rather on how we impact each other and the human family.
He has redefined excellence — by making it a human quality not merely a business practice.
Few men enjoy the power and insight necessary to find true excellence. Steve Jobs is one of those men.
He has also redefined leadership.
For more than two hundred years before Steve Jobs’ brilliance lit up the technology sky, the classic definition of leadership was getting others to do what you wanted them to do. And primarily that objective was to make money.
Through his unique form of leadership he was able to change that definition.
Today, many of his friends and employees see a much larger objective. They see leadership as getting others to WANT to do what you want them to do. And primarily that objective is to change the world.
Perhaps no one exemplifies the best qualities of Steve Jobs better than his original company evangelist Guy Kawasaki. A writer, speaker and renown thought-leader in his own right, Kawasaki moves his audiences with his view that making money is not nearly as important as making meaning.
This approach to business is vintage Steve Jobs, and it redirects our ambitions toward what is truly important.
In a recent lecture Kawasaki explains:
WHAT ELSE CAN WE LEARN FROM STEVE JOBS?
Steve Jobs’ career is not black and white.
He doesn’t fit the traditional mold.
To learn from him, you must look closely at his entrepreneurial DNA — his best qualities that have made him so unique.
If you examine his life and career, there are many more important but obscure lessons we can learn. Here are just a few:
- Striving for excellence is not a one-time event. It is an approach to life. In 1986 Steve Jobs had already made his mark. But he wasn’t through. He was still looking to expand his horizons. He purchased Pixar from George Lucas for $10 million. Of course this was a very good business idea at the time, but it was much more than that. Jobs explained it this way: “We don’t get a chance to do that many things, and every one should be really excellent. Because this is our life…Life is brief, and then you die, you know?”
- If you strive to change the world, the money will come later. And it will come in abundance. In 1995, Jobs became a billionaire after Toy Story was released, and Pixar went public. “I was worth over $1,000,000 when I was 23, and over $10,000,000 when I was 24, and over $100,000,000 when I was 25, and it wasn’t that important because I never did it for the money,” Jobs famously said.
- In pursuit of a worthwhile objective, you should first work hard — and then get others to work hard with you. In 2000, when Jobs became Apple’s permanent CEO, (a position he has held for over a decade), he said this: “My job is to not be easy on people. My job is to make them better.”
- Adversity can make you stronger and more focused. In 2004, Steve Jobs ran into major adversity. He was diagnosed, and underwent surgery for Pancreatic Cancer. It’s hard to imagine adversity with more sting. But he remained strong and focused. By concentrating his will on the next challenge and by encouraging his people to execute his vision, his most amazing accomplishments were still in front of him. He has said of this period, “So when a good idea comes, you know, part of my job is to move it around, just see what different people think, get people talking about it, argue with people about it, get ideas moving among that group of 100 people, get different people together to explore different aspects of it quietly, and, you know–just explore things.”
- Charting new territory will lead to occasional mistakes — that’s a certainty. But when you persevere, future successes — and bigger ones — are also a certainty. There were a few serious bumps along the way for Steve Jobs, both professional and personal. But he never gave up. He never stopped innovating. And in 2010, he gave birth to the iPad, a remarkable device that is truly changing the world. In medicine, education, and the restaurant industry its impact is already being felt. In the truest sense, Jobs’ latest innovation is changing the world. And as promised, when you search for meaning money will follow. In less than two years, nearly 30 million units have been sold. “Sometimes when you innovate, you make mistakes,” Jobs has said. “It is best to admit them quickly, and get on with improving your other innovations.” Steve Jobs, with modest beginnings and little formal education, built his company to the largest on the face of the Earth.
- Endings can become new beginnings. In January of this year, Jobs took a leave of absence from Apple citing health issues. All of us who admire him were shocked and dismayed. He resigned this month from Apple, but will remain chairman of the board. He has faced this ending with dignity and integrity. He told us: “I have always said if there ever came a day when I could no longer meet my duties and expectations as Apple’s CEO, I would be the first to let you know. Unfortunately, that day has come.”
Like countless others, I can truly say that Steve Jobs — through his brilliance, innovation, excellence and leadership — has had a permanent impact on my life and business. I am proud of his accomplishments and grateful for his incredible contributions. I will pray that this current ending will become a new beginning, for Steve Jobs and his magnificent company.
Steve Jobs – The Quintessential Entrepreneur (Pt.1)
The Perfect Example
An enormous amount of digital ink has covered the Internet in the last few days — about Steve Jobs.
It is rare that one individual garners the attention of so many.
It is richly deserved.
Far too much has been written about the future of Apple without Jobs at the helm. Unless you are deeply invested in Apple stock, these discussions are mostly irrelevant.
I am much more interested in Steve Jobs the man and the entrepreneur — and what we can learn from him.
Quintessential is defined as the perfect example — and to my mind, Steve Jobs exemplifies perfection of the entrepreneurial spirit, vision and innovation.
What Can We Learn From Steve Jobs?
Steve Jobs’ career is not black and white.
He doesn’t fit the traditional mold.
To learn from him, you must look closely at his entrepreneurial DNA.
If you examine his life and career, there are many important but obscure lessons we can learn. Here are just a few:
- True entrepreneurs often spring from modest beginnings. In his youth, Steve Jobs was decidedly not an elitist. He wasn’t born with a guarantee. He didn’t attend an expensive prep school in New York, Connecticut or Massachusetts. He didn’t have an illustrious family. His parents were not endowed with the wealth, or position, or promise that anticipates wild success. In fact, this man who would one day lead the largest corporation on earth, was adopted by Paul and Clara Jobs, a machinist and an accountant, in Mountain View, California.
- A quality education is not a prerequisite. Steve jobs is not a PhD. He is not a masters degree recipient. He didn’t graduate from MIT, or Harvard or Yale. In fact, after one semester at Reed College, he dropped out of school altogether. He went to work at Atari as his first job, but left soon afterward and traveled through India. During his short educational stint he didn’t set Reed College on fire. He set no records, didn’t write a book, didn’t learn much science or business practice. But he does recall a calligraphy class that would have an impact on his later innovation at Apple. In his words: “If I had never dropped in on that single course in college, the Mac would have never had multiple typefaces or proportionally spaced fonts,” he has said.
- The role of Angel Investors was — and is — crucial to entrepreneurial success. Were it not for Mike Markkula, an angel investor who cashed in stock options from his tenure at Fairchild Semiconductor, we wouldn’t have the iPhone, iPod and iPad today. Markkula invested $250,000, (a princely sum in 1976), in Steve Jobs’ and Steve Wozniak’s fledgling idea — and Apple Computer was born.
- The perceived competition is often arrogant and myopic. In those days, Hewlett-Packard and Atari were the perceived competition. Like so many dedicated, but youthful entrepreneurs looking to pee in the tall grass with the Big Dogs, Jobs and Wozniak went calling on Atari first, and later HP. The lackluster response they received from the titans of technology was underwhelming. With remarkable self-absorption and nearsightedness, Atari dismissed the future technology wizards. Jobs explains: “So we went to Atari and said, ‘Hey, we’ve got this amazing thing, even built with some of your parts, and what do you think about funding us? Or we’ll give it to you. We just want to do it. Pay our salary, we’ll come work for you.’“ Atari responded with an emphatic “No.” Undaunted, the future billionaires went to Hewlett-Packard. In an act of arrogance and myopia that HP most assuredly regrets today, HP belittled the young entrepreneurs saying famously: “Hey, we don’t need you. You haven’t got through college yet.”
- The fertile mind of a quintessential entrepreneur often states the obvious — but with a spark of genius. Seven years later, in 1983, a still youthful Steve Jobs was looking for senior executive talent to bolster Apple’s ranks. He set his sites on John Sculley, a powerhouse Vice President at PepsiCo. Their conversation is legendary in the annals of American business. Jobs was no doubt a little apprehensive as he looked for a solid argument to convince Sculley to leave his secure and lucrative position at one of the world’s most famous companies. Sculley was no doubt dubious of this young man, despite his obvious success. In a spark of genius, that has made the pages of many marketing books and countless speeches, Steve Jobs stated the obvious: “Do you want to spend the rest of your life selling sugared water or do you want a chance to change the world?” The real spark of genius was not the clever question — it was the fact that in his entrepreneurial soul, Jobs knew that his company would do just that.
Please join me tomorrow for Part 2.
Fascinating New Women Entrepreneurs – April Morris
The Race To Prominence
It has been over twenty years since Congress passed the Women’s Business Ownership Act, legislation that was enacted to give women entrepreneurs recognition and resources.
Since that time, women have been tirelessly running the race to prominence — in heels no less.
Especially now, women are playing a pivotal role in business — particularly online.
There are an estimated 8 million majority-owned (51% or higher), privately held women-owned businesses in the United States.
Women-owned businesses contribute nearly $3 trillion to our national economy and create or maintain 23 million jobs. Pay attention President Obama.
The bottom line? Clearly, women entrepreneurs play an important and much needed role in the U.S. economy.
I have highlighted some of the more successful and prominent women in recent weeks on this blog, but what about the new and fascinating women who are just starting out? Like the rest of us, they are the ones who are placing one foot in front of the other, running the race to prominence. They deserve attention and accolades as well.
For this reason, I have inaugurated a new and very popular series, Fascinating New Women Entrepreneurs, in an effort to give credit where credit is due. Thousands of visitors have joined me in praising these remarkable women.
If you have someone in mind for this series, please leave a comment below.
April Morris and THINgloss – No More Red Lights For Her
Even in the worst of economic conditions — faith, determination, perseverance and innovation can have extraordinary power.
If you need proof, ask April Morris.
Like so many other fascinating women entrepreneurs, April’s story began with discouragement. At a Christmas party in 2002, two guests referred to April as chubby. It was a cruel and insensitive remark, but ultimately it changed April’s life and catapulted her to fame and success.
At first indignant and hurt, April decided to try diet pills, but the continuing side effects made matters worse. She remembers thinking, “Gosh, I wish there was a way to curb my appetite without having to a swallow a pill.”
Later, while sitting at a traffic light reapplying her lip gloss, everything changed.
Some would call what happened to April an “Aha!” moment. I prefer to think of it as an epiphany.
Whether it was pure luck, or Divine intervention, April left that intersection in her life with a new spirit of determination and a spark of innovation.
“What if there’s a smell or herb or something you can put in lip gloss to curb appetite?,” she recalls thinking.
The answer to that extraordinary question became, THINgloss — and April Morris accelerated through that traffic stop to the covers of magazines.
Her demoralizing Christmas party became a launching pad to national television.
From chubby in 2002, she soared to “Best Innovation of the Year” in 2007 and “Inspiring Woman of the Year” in 2010.
There would be no more red lights for her.
But It’s Never Easy, Is It? – Detour Signs Ahead
The red lights were gone — but there were plenty of detour signs ahead.
April Morris had always dreamed of owning her own business — but a recession is not the best climate in which to capitalize on innovation.
Even the best idea languishes when there are no available funds.
“I didn’t even know where to begin,” April remembers thinking.
But she was tenacious and determined.
She believed that even in a recession, her dream was still possible.
To earn enough money to support her two children, pay the bills and save for her new business, April came to another crucial intersection in life.
She entered the real estate industry, with the same fighting spirit she invested in everything she did. In 2006, she earned $9 million in sales and was named Salesperson of the Year.
But then life intervened with numbing ferocity.
April’s daughter was in a serious auto accident. She survived but sadly her friend did not.
THINgloss Is Finally Born
Such an unexpected and heart-wrenching event would have ended most new businesses, but instead April took another course. She determined from that day forward that her kids would come first.
With remarkable fortitude, she opened Express Effects three months later. In time, her new company began manufacturing her THINgloss creation, a lip gloss that suppresses appetite.
The April Morris story could easily have ended with that accomplishment. She had not given up and her idea was now a reality.
But April Morris, now a Fascinating New Woman Entrepreneur in her own right, was not finished. She had just begun.
From that fateful moment, when she unselfishly put the needs of her family ahead of her own, she rocketed to national prominence. She has been rightfully featured on Fox Business, Fox News, NBC, ABC Sharktank, US Magazine, Florida Today, the Los Angeles Times and the Indianapolis Star.
Her website, Express Effects is online and destined for greatness. THINgloss is turning heads all across the country. And she has become a sought-after motivational speaker through her second website, AprilMorris.com.
And for the record, April Morris, our newest inductee to the ranks of Fascinating New Women Entrepreneurs, is no longer chubby.
Gabby Giffords – A Miracle Within A Miracle
Like so many other Americans, I sat transfixed over the weekend watching democracy in action as our elected representatives began confronting our national debt.
By itself, that seemed miraculous.
I expected political theater — mixed with progress, hopefully: What I got was a miracle within a miracle.
As an Arizonan and as a politically involved American, my heart swelled with pride and a tear or two fell to my cheeks, as I watched Gabby Giffords cast her vote.
Her courageous comeback from senseless violence says so many important things about America and Americans. We are resilient, intensely loyal to our country, capable of great accomplishment and, most importantly, we never give up.
I am very proud of Gabby Giffords. She makes me proud to be an American. She makes me proud to be a member of the human family. And she reminds me to believe in miracles.
