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The Winners Effect
When I was a teenager, for reasons I will explore in a separate post, almost every week I went shopping at Canadian discount retailer, Winners. Shopping at Winners felt like playing a lottery, because the inventory changed with time, and also varied by location. Every time I walked into a store, I felt a thrill;…
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A business model example blending creativity and expertise
The Futur founder and CEO Chris Do recently published his company’s business model: People come for the creativity (the bottom of the pyramid), and stay for the expertise. The more you want direct access to Chris’s time, the more you’ll have to pay. I also really liked this post: In other words, the more processing…
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Contentions: On Non-Coercive Marketing
Rob Hardy wrote a really great manifesto entitled, “Non-Coercive Marketing: A Primer.” Here are the principles, which he breaks down in full at his post: Optimize for aligned, empowered customers Surrender control, and embrace emergence Cede authority Treat people as ends, not means Enough is enough Play long games…
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“Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.”
People in Hong Kong have incredible taste in graphic tees. I was just running errands and saw a guy wearing a shirt that said, “Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.” This was the most thought provoking moment I’ve experienced in a mall. I instantly whipped out my phone and wrote it down. It articulates an…
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Where’s the opening?
“Low hanging fruit” has become an excuse to do boring things, so we need a new one. I liked this one I came across in therapy: “Where’s the opening?” Most action plans are set too far into the future; we must start closer to where we are right now. If you want to write a…
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Contentions: What does a vision for your company’s media operation look like?
I’d previously written, when it comes to content marketing, “ROI is meaningless with vision.” (One problem with this field: we use content marketing to describe too many things.) One way to think about this is showing people why they should be interested in the problem your business is solving: the same way DeSerres promotes art…
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Complaining vs. caring
NetNewsWire is at the top of Hacker News right now. It’s a familiar name; with a quick Google Search, I dug up an article I wrote over a decade ago for Guiding Tech that mentioned it. I didn’t have a Mac yet—I do now though, so I’m finally trying it again. It’s nice, and I’m…
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Creative Doing infographic
My publisher and I worked on three infographics based on my book Creative Doing. Each section contains a creative prompt and a very brief summary. We shipped the first one yesterday. What do you think?
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“But I haven’t been able to force myself to…”
Every time I hear the words, “Force myself,” I wince. I hear it in sentences like: “I want to do personal branding and more tweeting, but I haven’t been able to force myself to…” “I want to apply for more jobs, but I haven’t been able to force myself to…” “I want to eat four…
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Same word, different meanings
Writing. Writing a blog post is very different from writing an email, a deck, a memo, a book, or a comment. Compare this with St. Bonaventura’s description of making books: 1. Scribe: Write the work of others, adding/changing nothing 2. Compiler: Write the work of others, with additions not your own 3. Commentator: Write the…