Made to Stick - a book review

The urban legends of the kidney thieves, the gang members who cruise with no headlights, and the flesh-eating bacteria have something in common with age-old fables, nursery rhymes, and modern-day ad campaigns. What could it be? That these ideas seem to have a life of their own, a "Sticky" factor that makes people remember them, and pass them on. But where does that come from?And can it be duplicated intentionally?

Using a word coined by Malcolm Gladwell in his book The Tipping Point, Chip and Dan Heath have done exhaustive research and come up with a theory that explains why some ideas catch on, and some just wither away. They use anecdotes and stories, some familiar, some new, to describe the phenomenon of stickiness and its ancient roots in every culture.

Made to Stick unpacks the essence of very effective communication, messages that stand the test of time and pass from one person to another like the flu. One of the core ideas of the book is that effective communication is based on "Gap Theory" - pointing out things that people may be unaware that they do not know. Exploiting this gap with six very specific conditions can make your communication sticky, therefore effective. Rather than asking yourself,"What information do I need to convey?", you must shift your thinking to the viewpoint of your audience, "What questions do I want my audience to ask?" Once you know that, then you can work on getting your audience to care by providing context and appealing to their emotions. An emotional idea makes people care, and when they care, they remember.

What makes ideas sticky, and just how do you get people to care? Even more, how do you get people to take action? The Heaths use an acronym for describing the components of a sticky idea: SUCCESs.

1. Simplicity - it contains only the most rudimentary, core idea
2. Unexpectedness - what you don't know gets and keeps your interest
3. Concreteness - an example that the audience can relate to, nothing abstract
4. Credibility - vivid details that enhance the image
5. Emotions - as opposed to analytical or statistical information
6. Stories - instead of lists

These components, used in combination, can take an idea and make it viral. A sticky concept does not have to use all of the components, but stickiness increases and communication is enhanced by using more.

This book will teach you how to transform your ideas to beat the Curse of Knowledge. The six principles presented earlier are your best weapons. They can be used as a kind of checklist. Let's take the CEO who announces to her staff that they must strive to "maximize shareholder value."

Is this idea simple? Yes, in the sense that it's short, but it lacks the useful simplicity of a proverb. Is it unexpected? No. Concrete? Not at all. Credible? Only in the sense that it's coming from the mouth of the CEO. Emotional? Um, no. A story? No.

Contrast the "maximize shareholder value" idea with John F. Kennedy's famous 1961 call to "put a man on the moon and return him safely by the end of the decade." Simple? Yes. Unexpected? Yes. Concrete? Amazingly so. Credible? The goal seemed like science fiction, but the source was credible. Emotional? Yes. Story? In miniature.

The Heaths write with wit and humor, explaining the power of some of today's urban legends and successful ad campaigns, dissecting them to expose the stickiness components that made them successful. Much of the research turned up some very counter-intuitive results (see pages 211-212 on Positive Mental Attitude!), but the lesson is that a simple message with some very specific qualities can make your audience do the things that you need them to do, in order to make your message successful:

• Pay attention,
• understand and remember,
• agree or believe,
• care,
• and be able to act on it.

Whether you are chairing a meeting to explain the new TPS reports, or creating a new corporate culture, creating a message with basic, core information that appeals to emotions and can be conveyed in a credible story will be remembered, long after the last PowerPoint slide has faded from memory.

We will give you suggestions for tailoring your ideas in a way that makes them more creative and more effective with your audience. We've created our checklist of six principles for precisely this purpose.

But isn't the use of a template or a checklist confining? Surely we're not arguing that a "color by numbers" approach will yield more creative work than a blank-canvas approach?

Actually, yes, that's exactly what we're saying. If you want to spread your ideas to other people, you should work within the confines of the rules that have allowed other ideas to succeed over time. You want to invent new ideas, not new rules.

This book can't offer a foolproof recipe. We'll admit it up front: We won't be able to show you how to get twelve-year-olds to gossip about mitosis around the campfire. And in all likelihood your process-improvement memo will not circulate decades from now as a proverb in another culture.

But we can promise you this: Regardless of your level of "natural creativity," we will show you how a little focused effort can make almost any idea stickier, and a sticky idea is an idea that is more likely to make a difference. All you need to do is understand the six principles of powerful ideas.

Rating: (of 5)


Related:
Time Magazine Article
Malcolm Gladwell's Blog
And just for fun,
The Secret of Stickiness

Posts from the Crypt

I am pulling this link up from the distant past (last August), to share with you an interview between two of my favorite bloggers. Seth Godin answers questions for Hugh McLeod of Gaping Void. (Yes, two posts in a row with links. I spent a lot of today reading the archives, so sue me.)

Anyway, the first question and answer:

1. QUESTION: Your latest book, "Small Is The New Big", is not a narrative or a thesis in any sense, but a collection of your favorite writings from your blog and your old Fast Company column. A collection of synapse-firings, the way I see it. Is it important to you to have your work "immortalized" on paper? Do you find the internet and magazines just too ephemeral, and wanted to created something more "lasting"? Or was it just simply because, as you say, you wanted your ideas to reach beyond the blogosphere?

ANSWER: It's important not to underestimate the totem value of a book. The same way a white lab coat makes a placebo more likely to be effective (or a witch doctor's hat for that matter), a book delivers an impact that a blog can't.

While there's certainly some ego in wanting your thousands of posts not to disappear, there's also a real desire on my part to give my existing readers the ability to taunt their co-workers by handing them a book instead of emailing them a link. If my job is to make change, I need to use the best tools that are available.

It's also hard to read a blog at the beach.

I want to be clear about something I just discovered though--that there IS a theme. The title really captures what the book is about. I've been amazed that reviewers (professional and pro-am) have seemed to find something that I didn't when I was busy writing it... that acting small, treating people like people, changing like an individual, not an organization... these are attributes that are essential now, and they're on every page of the book. I think I picked the right riff for the title.

Read the whole interview. Then get ahold of the book, it is fantastic.

How to Increase Traffic and Monetize Your Blog

You manage to get a guest post from Eli at BlueHatSEO.com. Check out the NetBusinessBlog and what Eli has to say:

Hello everyone. This is your captain speaking. First I’d like to introduce myself. My name is Eli from BlueHatSEO.com. I do a little SEO here and there when needed. It’s not everyday that someone like Matt offers you an opportunity to do a guest post on one of the best internet business blogs on the net like NetBusinessBlog. So I’d like to start off by expressing how extremely honored I am for the chance to write this post and demonstrate a few things to the NBB’s community. Writing about the business aspect of SEO is not something I get a chance to do very often so I think this is a great opportunity to talk about what I think is one of the toughest business transitions in the industry. The move from affiliate to full blown E-Commerce publisher.

The reason why I say that E-Commerce is the toughest transition to make is because if you’ve ever attempted it, whether you were successful or not, you find out very quickly why it’s called the big boys club. In the affiliate market industry you have several people above you. First the manufacturers. Then the suppliers.. Next the E-commerce sites. Lastly the affiliate network. Everyone above you wants you to succeed. Your success means their success. In the E-Commerce world the model of authority changes. It is just you and the manufacturer. The manufacturers want you to succeed but not so much that it hurts their real cash cows, the local retailers who will spare no time complaining about their online competition. Frankly you are nothing more than a necessary pain in the ass.

Very nice. In fact, almost enough info to become an e-book. A less scrupulous person than myself might boost it and do just that.
Anyway, I am not doing this to sell anything, except some adspace (hint) and help other beginners work toward their dream of being ranked #606,000 of 55,000,000 blogs. /sigh.

Productivity Tools - Notebook Review

I popped into Staples on Friday and picked up a cloth-covered Rollabind Notebook, the 6" x 8.5" size. It comes with 70 pages of fairly heavy-weight paper, 5.5"x8.25", that takes the ink from my Pilot G2 very well. The paper is pre-printed, both sides, with College-ruled lines for notes and is very smooth, so pencil works well too.


Included accessories for the notebook vary in quality. The business card holder has 3 slots for cards and is very cheap and flimsy. The slash-pocket divider is also light-weight, I anticipate that it will tear quickly under use. The ruler place holder and single tabbed divider are of better quality - a heavier, thicker plastic sheet that should hold up to daily use.
Finally we come to the rings that are the heart of the system. Made of white plastic, painted silver, they have some mold flash on the outer edge that restricts the opening and closing of the notebook. Turning individual pages works fine, but when you flip multiple pages or open the notebook to the center they catch. This is a big weakness, I am going to have to file the flash off so the pages will turn more smoothly.

Rating: (of 5)


What will I use it for?

This new notebook will serve as a capture device for the rough drafts of upcoming posts, @Project outlines, and perhaps the home for upcoming Review Checklists. The notebook fits into my "portable office" with no adjustments. To hack this notebook for best use, I have added 3 dividers made from 5"x8" index cards with self-adhesive tabs. I may pick up a sturdier business-card holder designed for one of those name brand systems once the original one fails. It depends on how much I use it.

I will post updates on how daily use comes along.

Related post here.

Technorati Tags: gtdgetting things done

Flagship Content

There is a lot of talk about professional blogging these days, and everyone is trying to get in on the act. This very blog is a 'journal' of my own effort to break free of the "veal-fattening pen" that is my meatspace job, and help you to do it too. Chris Garrett has written a short e-book entitled "Killer Flagship Content" that is a basic guide to putting together a blog or website that will become the go-to resource for your particular interest.
As I mentioned previously, everyone is an expert on something, and you can leverage that expertise into creating Flagship Content for your site that draws in readers again and again. Garrett is careful to differentiate Flagship Content from Linkbait, in that the Flagship Content provides long-term value. It is useful and original material that stands the test of time, because others will refer back to it, and refer more readers to it.
Now why would they do that? What are people really looking for? Well, people (and that means you, Dear Reader) are busy, or lazy, or confused, or lost. What people want is "one trusted resource, that fully answers the question, in language we understand, in a place we can easily find." Now who does not want something like that?
Garrett gives other reasons for sitting down and working hard to create this Flagship Content as a firm foundation for your site, among them:

• Brand - Your blog gets known and known for the right reasons (quality content). It is far easier to get across all the great things your blog can do for people by showing rather than telling. Give people a great resource, demonstrate your value and expertise, get your blog known for doing good things.
  
• Authority - There is so much value in being the source, tool, service or expert. Search engines love authorities as much as people do. When one resource stands out above the crowd it is that resource that gets all the attention, is seen as the go-to article and whose author gets media attention.
  
• Value - Some websites are liked. Others are loved. The most successful though are needed. Wouldn't it be great to create a blog people can't do without?
  
• Marketability - On occasion you will need a "portfolio piece" - something representative of your blog or your work, pro blog gigs, book deals, media appearances, press releases... You don't always want to use your most recent post for this. A great flagship can sell a blog or your writing skills far better than asking the person to subscribe and read a while.

Creating flagship content builds value in your site or blog, and creates context for your readers. Building value is one of the most important aspects of selling anything, and we that blog are definitely selling our points of view. Garrett advocates creating quality writing, through which one can enhance their credibility, which in turn will drive traffic deeper into their archives. It will encourage visitors to subscribe and use the tell-a-friend feature.

I am not going to give away all of the goodies in this e-book, I do recommend that you read it for yourself. Click over to ChrisG.com and follow the instructions. This is some of Garrett's Flagship Content, and it is valuable and useful.

Everyone's An Expert

A review of Seth Godin's e-book about the search for meaning online.


This e-book is mainly an exposition on using Blogs and RSS to create a new online experience, secondarily it is an "infomercial" for Godin's Squidoo.com Lens Portal.

Everyone is using the Internets to find something, and "Search" has become a billion-dollar industry. However, when you are searching for something on any of the various engines, you are likely to find thousands (if not millions) of results. In which case you haven't really "found" anything! Having too much information is only a little better than not having enough. It takes a long time to seft through all of those search results to find a meaningful answer to your query. To quote Godin:

"The engineers who built the Web believed that if they presented the 'right' answer, intelligent humans would be pleased. In fact, before you get it, before you discover the meaning, there is not right answer."

The as-yet-unfulfilled promise of Web 2.0 is creating networks of meaning. Networks which are easily found and navigated in order to speed up the process of actually finding what you are searching for: a meaningful answer. Godin calls this network a place where one can go for instant context on their search, he calls it a Lens. The purpose of a Lens is to answer the question,"What do I need to know?"

"A lens gives context. When it succeeds it delivers meaning. A lens can tell you which books, records, and websites are the best way to appreciate Miles Davis. A lens can show you the ten most important things you need to know about copyright on the web. A lens can highlight the key players in the hospital crib business and give you the confidence that you need to go ahead and buy something - without worrying about whether you missed a key player or didn't understand a critical choice."

The essential point is to make the collections of lenses your starting point when you are searching for something. Because a lens provides context, rather than content. The lens is an aggregator of "pointers" on a particular subject. The components of a lens: Links, RSS feeds, Adsense Ads, all are things that "point" to content - Blogs, Websites, and even other lenses that contain trusted and meaningful information.

Here is the good news:

• Squidoo is free
• You can earn royalties $$$
• You can generate more traffic to your blog & website
• You can build credibility as a trusted guide
• Improved SEO rankings

Sounds pretty good, doesn't it? In fact it is good, and it is working. Affiliate programs have popped up all over the place to help you drive more traffic and make more money. It is also not working, in a sense, as there are quite a few people creating lenses that either do not have the time or skills required to invest in making a truly useful lens. I spent some time looking around for a meaningful Getting Things Done lens, and didn't really find a thorough one. In fact, many of the lenses, on any given topic, do not live up to their potential. My impression from reading Everyone's an Expert was that the lens would be a tool for creating a more meaningful experience, starting a new conversation and increasing the power of the Internets. Not just another sign that says "Look at me."

So I built a lens. Yes, it does have a link to this blog, but the main purpose is to give the lens value through context. The information is about Getting Things Done, and for creating your own web business and global microbrand. I also made it a very open system, with links to several other blogs that I have found to be interesting and useful. You can go to the lens and check them out, rank them by voting, and add sites that I may have missed (feel free to add your own!). You can even get the Plexo (as it's called) as a widget for your own site (see left sidebar) and increase your exposure that way.

The idea of the lens is to create a community, and give valuable information. The Ultimate Getting Things Done Index is a lens of sorts, in that it pulls together all of the RSS feeds for every blog that discusses GTD. The Hidden Dragon Lens is designed to create value, credibility, and context for the various resources that exist for Getting Things Done.

Go ahead and download Everyone's an Expert here, and get to work on your own lens. Then come back and tell about it!

This is Called Serendipity

I was reviewing the Ultimate GTD Index this morning, and I followed the link to this post ( Shift Happens ). You need to go there and watch the video. Then come back and finish reading.
It's okay, I'll wait.


You may have noticed a button on the right-hand sidebar of To Do or Else, all the way at the bottom, called Blidget Badge. The mission:

Wigetbox widgets make blogging better, smarter and easier.
We Make Widgets Come Alive

Once a widget is on your blog, you can reconfigure it to your heart’s content without going near HTML. Developers can fix bugs and upgrade your widget’s functionality without you having to re-install the HTML code.
We Make Your Blog Smarter

Widgetbox widgets can respond to your blog posts and website content. We call these widgets “Tag Aware”. Here’s some things you can do with it. We’ll be adding more smart blog features in the coming months.
Widget Panels

Widgetbox widget panel lets you drag and drop widgets onto a special panel in your blog. Never deal with widget installation again!

How very interesting. I took a few minutes to build a blidget, you can find it in the upper left sidebar. Check it out. Let me know what you think you can do with this. I will play with it some more, and give an update.

UPDATE: Lawrence Coburn at Sexy Widget posts a review of WidgetBox here:

Widget service provider Widgetbox (site, review) has just launched Blidgets – a tool that lets publishers convert RSS feeds into Flash widgets.

Widgetbox joins SpringWidgets and MuseStorm as providers of Flash RSS widgets, along with start pages like YourMinis and PageFlakes.

Converting your RSS feed into a widget with Widgetbox has a couple of advantages. For example, the Blidget tool makes it easy to add an image to your widget, which can be helpful for branding or presentation purposes. Publishing a widget through Widgetbox also signs you up for Widgetbox’s free stats package which tracks page views by date and page views by domain. Finally, there’s a distribution aspect as well. Publishing with Widgetbox automatically drops you into Widgetbox’s widget gallery, which in my opinion, is the most polished and well presented widget directory out there.

I had no problems finding the Blidget tool, which is located prominently on the Widgetbox home page. One very minor point that I appreciated – although I wasn’t logged in when I launched the tool, it didn’t direct me immediately to the login page. It let me build my widget, and THEN allowed me to login. Little things like this can make a big difference in adoption.

Read the whole thing, then pop over to WidgetBox and check it out.

Is Something Missing from GTD?

So here I am, doing some research for an upcoming post and I come across an article at Steve Pavlina's blog about what is missing from the GTD system:

I love the standard GTD system, but it’s a low-level system. It is absolutely wonderful for managing projects and actions. The results for me have been amazing, and I’ve gotten really good at applying it. I still use it every single day, even for my personal projects and tasks. And I love the results. My email inbox is empty. My inbox is empty. I just never let my email inbox or my paper inbox get cluttered. I get a lot of email every day, and new papers pop into my inbox every day. But I’m always processing them down until they’re empty. And I feel very relaxed and focused, able to concentrate easily without worrying about some email I need to reply to. I have no stacks of paper anywhere in my office. Everything I need to save is neatly filed. The GTD system really does work brilliantly if you stick with it. It took me a few months to really get the hang of it, but it was definitely worth the effort.

What’s missing from GTD though is the high-level part of the system. It starts at the level of projects, but where are these projects coming from? I think the assumption behind GTD is that these projects are assigned by your boss or your company. Or maybe you run your own business and just have a lot of previous projects stacked up before you ever learn about GTD. But how do you know if these projects are even worth doing at all? How do you even know you’re working at the right job in the first place? Instead of getting better and better at plowing through your existing work, doesn’t it make sense to take a step back and figure out if your ladder of success is even leaning against the right building? What about using GTD in your personal life? Where do your personal projects come from?

The "higher level" thinking that Steve Pavlina is talking about are the "40,000 feet" and "50,000 feet" levels of thinking that David Allen addresses, briefly, in chapter two of his book Getting Things Done. The 40,000 foot level is your 3-to-5 year vision and the 50,000 foot level is "the Big Picture view". Pavlina's perception is that these two levels of thinking are of vital importance, yet there is not nearly as much information in the book or system on defining these modes of thinking as there is on the lower-level realms of Thinking and Next Actions.

I agree with his assesment, but I feel the need to defend the "lack" of high-level purpose definitions. I would not say that these elements are "missing" from the system, they are simply beyond the scope of the system.

GTD is a framework for accomplishing the things that need to get acomplished in a true bottom-up fashion. The essential elements of this framework work best on your immediate responsibilities and apply to nearly everyone, and can be implemented across any number of platforms (Outlook, Gmail, Stikkit, pen-and-paper, you name it). Even the moderately higher-level areas of activity such as strategic planning and 1-to-2 year goals can be defined, codified and accomplished with the basic elements of the GTD system for nearly every user.

The highest-levels of operating and thinking, however, tend to diverge quite a bit from person to person. Pavlina touches on that here:

It makes no sense to blindly apply standard GTD unless you’ve already secured the top level elements of purpose, mission, and goals. Otherwise you’re doomed to spend your life working on other people’s goals and losing yourself in the process.

The top-level elements and motivations, the values and principles of each individual vary greatly from person to person. So this is where a book like Getting Things Done must be a bit more vague. These high level values can only be defined by each individual, and a variety of other resources have to be used. When this process has been completed, then you can procede to use the excellent tools provided by GTD to accomplish the smaller tasks that will lead to the fulfillment of your highest aspirations.

Some time ago, I went through this process of self-definition, (not easy at all) and put together a statement of sorts that encompasses the highest-level of principles and values.

My own higher level statement.

My current practice, then, is to accomplish my tasks and projects and goals in a meaningful way. As Pavlina concludes:

Before you can get things done, you must consciously choose those “things” you want to be doing. Before you put yourself into a state of readiness, you must consciously define what you want to be ready for. Knowing your life’s purpose is the answer. It provides the context for readiness and for action. It turns generic readiness into “ready to speak,” “ready to write,” “ready to love,” etc. Purpose turns “getting things done” into “giving life meaning.” When you ultimately work at the level of projects and actions, they’re infused with purpose. Your purpose. Your mission. Your very reason for existence. Every paper you shuffle, every word you type, every project you complete — they now mean something. They’re a part of a larger whole, a deep expression of who you truly are. But those very same actions, blindly assigned by someone else for no great purpose, become lifeless. Just things to get done instead of a great purpose to be fulfilled.

Exactly.

Intellectual Property for Sale

Here is a fantastic opportunity for a Web Entrepreneur- the Odeo website is for sale:

In the last few months, we here at Obvious have been increasingly focused on Twitter. As a result, our original product, Odeo, has not gotten the attention it deserves.

It does not cost us much to run—in fact, AdSense covers the hosting—but on the web you need to constantly improve, or fade away. We've put too much into Odeo to want to see it fade away. And it still has tons of potential. But we're not improving it fast enough.

It seems likely Odeo is worth more to someone else than it is to us at this point, so we're looking for a new home for it. We've been having some conversations with potential buyers, and this is our attempt to put the word out more widely in the most expeditious way (and without involving investment bankers and the like). If we don't get any attractive offers, we'll continue to run it.

To clarify, what we're talking about is selling odeo.com and studio.odeo.com, including all code, the domain, brand, database of three million MP3s, etc. Not a company, but a site and platform that could be ramped up to something much bigger.

Odeo is (from the website): "3,001,268 mp3s from all over the web, which have been played from Odeo 12,775,375 times.

You can download or play them straight from here for free. (You can also put them on your web site.)

And like 252,684 other people, you can create an account, so you can subscribe to things and save the stuff you like."

And it is not just music. In fact the tags for productivity and technology led me to be able to install the nifty widget you see to the right, with Merlin Mann's interview of David Allen, the author of Getting Things Done.

In fact, with 3 million MP3s from "all over the web" , Odeo has the potential to be a vast resource that Web Entrepreneurs can leverage for their own sites, or a time-eating nightmare if you aren't careful about the surfing.

People You Should Know

Remarkably, from CNN.com:

By David E. Williams
CNN


(CNN) -- Management consultant David Allen is a best-selling author, runs a multimillion dollar company and travels the country teaching executives to be more productive.

Allen, 61, is best known for his book "Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity." The book, published in 2001, was the 46th most popular book on Amazon.com on Thursday.

He may seem like an unlikely Internet hero, but legions of bloggers have embraced his timesaving methods. A quick Google search for David Allen and "Getting Things Done" turned up more than 1.3 million hits.

Allen said "Getting Things Done," or GTD, is "just advanced common sense," but he said it took him about 20 years to figure it out.

My Inspiration - A Review of The Cluetrain Manifesto

Let's begin with a quote from the Introduction: "Because the Internet is so technically efficient, it has also been adopted by companies seeking to become more productive. They too are hungry for knowledge, for the intellectual capital that has become more valuable than bricks and mortar or any tangible asset. What they didn't count on were the other effects of web technology. Hypertext is inherently non-hierarchical and anti-bureaucratic. It does not reinforce loyalty and obedience; encourages idle speculation and loose talk. It encourages stories.

These new conversations online - whether on the wild and woolly Internet or on (slightly) more sedate corporate intranets - are generating new ways of looking at problems. They are spawning new perspectives, new tools, and a new kind of intellectual bravery more comfortable with risk than with regulation. The result is not just new things learned but a vastly enhanced ability to learn things. And the pace of this learning is accelerating. In the networked marketplace it is reflected in the joy of play. On company intranets it is reflected in the joy of knowledge. But it's getting difficult to tell the two apart. Employees go home and get online. They bring new attitudes back to work the next day. Enthusiastic surfers get hired and bring strange new views into corporations that, until now, have successfully protected themselves from everything else. The World Wide Web reinforces freedom. The Internet routes around obstacles. The confluence of these conversations is not only inevitable, it has largely already occurred".¹

The Cluetrain Manifesto is one of the concepts that inspired me to start this project late last year. I was already interested in blogs, mainly as a source for news that I wasn't able to get from the MSM. In the process I discovered that there were blogs and websites for every conceivable interest. I used it as a resource for my own hobbies, information on authors and books that I like to read, research for my work, and so on.
Eventually I started posting my own blog and began to get ideas about starting a web-based business in order to break free of the shackles of the 9 to 5 world: ties, Suits, and Corporate Dictatorships.

I am, of course, still working on that part. I first attempted to use the Internet as a sort of soapbox or billboard, and it didn't work the way I expected. Then again, I really didn't know what to expect. After I found The Cluetrain Manifesto, I understood some of what to expect, and why the billboard idea didn't work. The future of Internet-based business (and soon there will not be any business without an Internet component) is in two-way communication, a conversation: provider to customer, customer to provider.

Business is just a word for buying and selling things. In one way or another, we all rely on this commerce, both to get the things we want or need, and to afford them. We are alternately the workers who create products and services, and the customers who purchase them. There is nothing inherently wrong with this setup. Except when it becomes all of life. Except when life becomes secondary and subordinate. At the beginning of the twenty-first century, business so dominates all other aspects of our existence that it's hard to imagine it was ever otherwise.²

The original marketplace was a "commerce-zone" set as the central part, the essential heart of every village, town, and city. The larger the population, the greater the variety of goods available. Yet there was always one common "product" in every market, sought out by everyone, everywhere in the world.

Conversation. News. Gossip. Stories. Human interaction. Call it what you will. This marketplace is where information was exchanged.

Information - frequently more valuable than any commodity or trade good.

Commerce is a natural part of human life, but it has become increasingly unnatural over the intervening centuries, incrementally divorcing itself from the people on whom it most depends, whether workers or customers. While this change is in many ways understandable - huge factories took the place of village shops; the marketplace moved from the center of the town and came to depend on far-flung mercantile trade - the result has been to interpose a vast chasm between buyers and sellers.³

No more conversations. The sales clerks in the retail stores of today's shopping malls have no idea what is happening in the places where the products they sell come from, nor do they know who made them, or why.

Once an intrinsic part of the local community, commerce has evolved to the primary force shaping the community of nations on a global scale. But because of its increasing divorce from the day-to-day concerns of real people, commerce has come to ignore the natural conversation that defines communities as human.⁴

Globalization and Mass-production - creation of any & every product by a virtually unskilled and possibly even illiterate worker - have silenced the conversation and destroyed the niche worker, the skilled specialist, the cottage industry.
For a very long time industry was based on the scale and scope of the cottage. The Industrial Revolution changed everything about manufacturing, and then about selling, and finally the marketplace itself.

These changes were gradual at first. Even early on, "economies of scope" began to be perceived. General Motors broke Ford's run on the Model T - an impossibly long product cycle by today's standards - by offering cars that were not black, and even came in different styles to suit different tastes and pocketbooks. [...] Consumers began to have a wider range of choice, and they warmed quickly to their new options.⁵

Suddenly, the consumers began to drive the market, supporting some options, rejecting others. The "scope", or the perceptions, of both producers and consumers changed, and now businesses all over the world were competing with each other.

Competition is healthy, we'd been told from birth, because it breeds greater choice. But now competition was out of control and old-guard notions of brand allegiance evaporated like mist in the rising-sun onslaught for Japan, Southeast Asia, and Europe. Choice and quality ruled the day, and consumer enthusiasm for the resulting array of new product options forever undermined the foundations of yesterday's mass-market economy.⁶

Now these remarkable (for some, earth-shattering) changes that came to manufacturing and the marketplace have come to the Service Providers and Information Workers. Choices and competition are nearly beyond comprehension.

However, most "e-commerce" plays today look a lot like General Motors circa 1969 - looking for that next lucrative mass market just when markets have shattered into a million mirror-shard constituencies, many asking for something altogether different from the mindless razzle-dazzle of the tube. Marketers still drool at the prospect of the Net replicating the top-down broadcast model wherein glitzy "content" is developed at great cost in remote studios and jammed down a one-way pipe into millions of living rooms. TV with a buy button! Wowee!⁷

Today's consumer has the power to re-direct the direction of the content, to stop the one-way flow of "content" from the provider. Then they can turn and have a conversation with the entire world, discussing, critiquing, and mocking the content force-fed to them. Similarly, today's worker has the power to communicate with everyone else in the world, without going through the filter of the "official" PR line. In addition, both consumers and workers have access to information that would have been unimaginable only a generation ago.

So, where do this take us? Where does it leave the information worker, the service provider, with this sea-change in the marketplace of ideas?

Knowledge worth having comes from turned-on volitional attention, not from slavishly following someone else's orders. Innovation based on such knowledge is exciting, inflammatory, even "dangerous", because it tends to challenge fixed procedures and inflexible policies. While collaboration has been paid much lip service within corporations, few have attempted it beyond their own boundaries.

[...]

...the future business of businesses that have a future
will be about subtle differences, not wholesale conformity; about diversity, not homogeneity; about breaking rules, not enforcing them; about pushing the envelope, not punching the clock; about invitation, not protection; about doing it first, not doing it "right"; about making it better, not making it perfect; about telling the truth, not spinning bigger lies; about turning people on, not "packaging" them; and perhaps above all, about building convivial communities and knowledge ecologies, not leveraging demographic sectors.⁸

This is to be the ultimate purpose of this blog and web suite, to join/create a new community, where Internet entrepreneurs and enthusiasts can gather to share ideas, participate in the new revolution in the virtual marketplace. Welcome to the Future. I look forward to building it together.

(All Notes: The Cluetrain Manifesto)

Knock, Knock by Seth Godin

This is first in a series of reviews on free PDF downloads that can help you with your internet business. "Knock, Knock" by Seth Godin is a set of instructions for setting up your website for maximum efficiency. Godin sets two "Big Picture" goals for the website:

Number one:A website must do at least one of two things, but probably both:

• Turn a stranger into a friend, and a friend into a customer.
• Talk in a tone of voice that persuades people to believe the story you're selling.

What does this mean? Your website must be user-friendly and have a purpose. What is the logical purpose of a website? Well, to sell, of course. Everything is selling, whether you are selling ideas, products, services or just attention. Even a personal website for photos from your family vacation needs to be constructed so that people will "spend" their time looking at your photos. For a more commercial application, your website (or front page) needs to have a purpose, and that purpose is to prepare the viewer for the next step. The first 'click' that you get needs to lead to a place that does the exact same thing, it is a step in a process that leads to the next step.

"And soon (as soon as possible), your web pages lead people to do the thing you wanted them to do all along, the reason you built your web site in the first place."

That reason can of course, be anything. Are you looking for email addressess? contact information to send a mailing or catalog? a donation for your charity?

This brings us to Big Picture number two:

"A web site can cause only four things to happen in the moments after someone sees it:

1. She clicks and goes somewhere else you want her to go.
2. She clicks and gives you permission to follow up by email or phone.
3. She clicks and buys something.
4. She tells a friend, either by clicking or by blogging or phoning or talking.

That's it.
If your site is attempting to do more than this, you're wasting your time and money and, more important, focus."

This e-book is loaded with advice and guidance on reviewing your website and/or constructing your website to accomplish this goal. It's a "less is more" philosophy that definitely applies. Just because you can have a spinning, flaming logo flash animation, doesn't mean that you should.

Keep it simple, get to the point, and you will be able to lead your viewer where you want them to go.

Download "Knock, Knock" here.