Molecularist

Have you ever read any of Guy Kawasiki’s books? I’ve read and re-read many of them. He’s just amazing and I adore his irreverence (do you see a pattern in the kinds of writers I like?). He’s been quite influential in my attitude towards business.

This is the last one I read: Guy Kawasaki: The Art of the Start.

When you get pregnant, you read What to Expect When You’re Expecting. When you get laid off, you read What Color is Your Parachute?. When you get entrepreneurial, you read The Art of the Start.

This book is a weapon of mass construction. My goal was to provide the definitive guide for anyone starting anything. It builds upon my experience as an evangelist, entrepreneur, and most recently, as a venture capitalist who found, fixed, and funded startups.

The book is as relevant for two guys in a garage starting the next Google as social activists trying to save the world. GIST: cuts through the theoretical crap, theories and gets down to the real-world tactics of pitching, positioning, branding, recruiting, bootstrapping, and rainmaking.

Like all his books, The Art of the Start entertained and enlightened me.

I especially laughed at the end when he said he wanted to see the book in folks’ hands, annotated, underlined, and dog eared. His previous books have been mangled by me as I keep going back to them.

It was interesting to see what I dog-eared in this last book (for various reasons, I didn’t scribble stuff in it). Only two of my dog-eared pages are not in the Proliferation section. And most of them are in the branding chapter.

True, at the time (last winter), my venture (Lifeblog) was past many of the stages in the first parts of the book, which I read anyway as a refresher. But, the pattern of dog-earing also showed where my concern was largest – marketing and branding – how to get the product into as many hands as possible.

Indeed, Guy’s slant on marketing and selling have been my biggest draw to his books. The books have inspired me to be a bit bolder than the average Nokia marketing person, and I have benefited from that.

For example, in this last venture, my boss came to me one day and said I needed a little more Wasabi in the marketing. He liked what I was doing, but wanted me to take things up a notch. That was great! For the rest of the time I was in the venture, I had three guiding principles:

– Put more Wasabi into it.
– It is easier to be forgiven than to get permission.
– Push the boundaries of what you do until they fire you.

And here are some notes I made while reading The Art of the Start:
– For partnerships, find an internal champion who can keep the partnership alive, don’t use a committee. <<< Very crucial in any endeavor.
– Learn the art of schmoozing: circulate, ask good questions and listen, follow up, make it easy to get in touch, be passionate, read voraciously, give favours, return favours, ask for favours in return. <<< It’s a give and take.
– Branding: simplify simplify simplify the product. <<< Yes.
– Recruit evangelists:ask, look for believers, let bloom,assign tasks and expect them to get done, nurture and support, give them tools <<< That’s why I had an outreach program.
– Make sure everyone can talk the walk. <<< Every employee represents your company.
– Some fun advice on marketing shirts: Not white, little text, large fonts, make it cool, and consider kids’ sizes. <<< True Kawasaki Wisdom
– Seminars for lead generation. <<< This ties back, somewhat, to the Marketing Sucks recommendations.

Thanks Guy. Keep them coming.

Have you ever read anything by Tom Peters?

I’ve only read his more recent stuff, starting with re-imagine.

Link: Tom Peters Company | wow!store | re-imagine.

Re-imagine! By Tom Peters

More than just a how-to book for the 21st Century, Re-imagine! is a call to arms—a passionate wake-up call for the business world, educators, and society as a whole.

I find him to be totally outrageous and I tend to subscribe to practically all his ideas. You need to read him.

I found a few notes I wrote about him:
– Say it in 8 words, otherwise it’s too complicated. <<< A struggle for me. 😀
– You need to have that dream. <<< Yes!!!
– Be a great storyteller. <<< Yes!!!
– The power is with the one who sets the agenda (obvious) and the one who writes the minutes (crafts the memory, controls the spin, and knows what’s going on). Volunteer to do it! <<< I found this one most enlightening, since everyone tried to avoid doing these things. But after he said it, I realized what kind of power can be wielded. Thank goodness the ones who have taken the notes so far don’t realize this.

Here are also some bite-sized Tom pieces (relatively speaking) over at ChangeThis (which I also recommend as an eye-opener).

I read this last fall and happened to find today some notes I took on it.

Link: Crown | Your Marketing Sucks..

Your Marketing Sucks.
Written by Mark Stevens

It’s written in a refreshing no-nonsense way, quite like the title suggests. I like it, since it supported many of the things I believed regarding marketing – I was non-traditional from the start.

Here are some of my notes on ‘Your marketing sucks’
– Making the sale is the only acceptable return on investment. << Obvious, but always overlooked. I kept reminding the R&D guys that sales was the end, not just the delivery of the product. I told them that they needed to ask themselves daily what they did to increase sales.
– Use many communications channels: PR, advertising, website, email lists, referrals.
-A thought I had: Become expert in something that is related to your product, which leads to talking gigs at events and using your product as an example. It’s about educating versus sellling. <<< Get your own blog!
– Sales people sell, non-sales people-types will never be turned into sales people – save money and pair up or get them to ‘educate’ rather than sell. <<< So true.
– Create demand. Command attention. Build brand. Drive consumer behaviour. Change purchase patterns. Gobble up market share. Increase revenues and profitability. <<< Oh, yeah. So simple.
– Dreamlike scenarios – the impossible, the implausible, the phantasmagoric. <<< I don’t remember what this was about.
– Link activites, repeatedly hit message. <<< And again, and again.

Read this. It’s right to the point.

Link: The Basecamp Manifesto.

This is what we believe

This is not another blog client. Futurice has thought through all the requirements to make this an easy to use mobile app with subscription and bililng issues all worked out. A good example of a mobile app tied into a Web service.

Ah, but they can do this because they own both the server and mobile app side of things. I think the skill they have on both sides of the connections helps them come out with such great end to end solutions.

Link: Futurice.

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