6 year Connie Talbot Britains got Talent

Apples, Bombs and Billionaires

Below is an article I wrote in conjuction with a class on innovation.  I had forgotten about it until I recieved the above video from internet networkmarketing trainer Mike Klingler at Marketing Merge.  A little off my normal spout but pertinent just the same.  What does it take to make it in internet marketing?  Much the same as any other business.  One factor for sure is tenacity.  Below may be some insight into a billionaires mindset.

Apples, Bombs and Billionaires. What’s a Dent in the Universe got to do with Innovation?

Ok, you got me.  You got me.  As a marketing geek I couldn’t resist pulling some pieces from the text to formulate a headline.  The article I scrubbed is, “Never Settle! Secrets of an Innovator. Apple CEO Steve Jobs exemplifies lifelong learning and creativity.”  I have been a Jobs fan for 20 years so thought an article about one of the undisputed Kings of innovation would prove enlightening.  Alexandra Starr, the author of this piece took a different approach in talking about innovation.  In fact, she didn’t cover was I was hoping for which was a peep into the slight disarray of various synopsis called “his brain”.  While I found it an inspiration I truly would not have had to go further than the headline to realize one of  Steve Jobs “secret”; never settle. 

I like Alexandra’s writing style.  She slammed me in the very beginning with a very cool thing about innovation and Jobs that many may subconsciously realize but most haven’t verbalized. Jobs is a contrarian.  “Don’t waste time living someone else’s life” (1) is wise council to anyone.  Those power packed words were spewed to students at a Stanford commencement address a few years ago.  I love it; I can see parasitic corporate gurus squirming all the way to the sound board to silence his mic lest the wayward independent collegiate get the wrong take on conformity.  Hail the white shirts and red ties! Ok, so maybe that was uncalled for. Truly though,  a great point in that if one must fit into a specific box specific to social moiré’s for business dress where that does leave an open mind for innovation?  Just a thought. 

Failure; Another area common to serial entrepreneurs and to most innovators.  Eddison comes to mind. Two of my favorite Thomas Edison Quotes are, “I have not failed. I’ve just found 10,000 ways that won’t work” and “Many of life’s failures are men who did not realize how close they were to success when they gave up.”(2)  So Steve Jobs is a failure?  Yeah right.  But truly at several points in his life he failed.  There is a difference though.  He is not afraid to fail and even after a failure such as getting fired from the company he founded, in this case Apple, he bounced back.  It took some tenacity to continue especially as Nextel really didn’t fly like I am sure he had hoped. Still, Jobs plodded on.  You get the idea, very cool.  To get an overview of the timeline of Jobs and Apple check this out. http://news.cnet.com/2009-1041-6054524.html

The next real point that I grabbed is down a few paragraphs and hidden in the gobbety gook of “inner sensibility”.  Whatever.  Jobs point is you have to have some sort of foundation, true North, from which you can bounce your goals and aspirations.  There has to be a congruency there, something that you can trust in that doesn’t change.  The author seemed to gloss over that point perhaps because she was writing for a “politically correct” editor or she didn’t want to broach one of the deadly sins of non-biased journalism with even a hint of an opinion that could cause a flurry; There is a God.  So with a simple statement one of the potentially more important aspects to Steve Jobs’ incredible insights to innovation was dropped without further testament.  I was left with the question where does he stand spiritually? 

From that juncture I can see the next bullet point in my note taking blitz, commitment to excellence.  Evidently he is a difficult taskmaster according to some research our author found. “Jobs didn’t just cajole and inspire, but also harangued and occasionally abused underlings. In 1993, he nabbed a spot on Fortune magazine’s list of toughest bosses ever.”  (3) But having said that I can also point out that Apple currently ranks number one in its industry for people management according to CNNMoney.com (4).  Perhaps the difference is a “then and now” scenario alluded to further in the article.  Jobs mellowed with age, marriage, and children to become one of the top CEO’s that can inspire creativity and has built a culture of excellence.

As a recap I picked out words that can be used as positive affirmations; driven, committed, visionary, inspirational, determined, just to name a few. I would like to have gotten an inside perspective of what fueled the drive but that was not readily apparent.  Overall though a nice article with some specific take away points that can be used as comparative study.  “Make a dent in the Universe” is a saying Jobs used to encourage his Apple team with, sage advice for all of us contrarians.(5)

References

(1) http://www.aarp.org/aarp/live_and_learn/Cover_Stories/articles/Never_Settle__Secrets_of_an_Innovator.html?CMP=KNC-360I-GOOGLE-LAL&HBX_OU=50&HBX_PK=apple_innovation, para 2

(2) Thomas Edison Quotes, h1 = document.getElementById(”title”).getElementsByTagName(”h1″)[0];h1.innerHTML = widont(h1.innerHTML); By Simran Khurana, About.com, http://quotations.about.com/od/stillmorefamouspeople/a/ThomasEdison3.htm

(3) http://www.aarp.org/aarp/live_and_learn/Cover_Stories/articles/Never_Settle__Secrets_of_an_Innovator.html?CMP=KNC-360I-GOOGLE-LAL&HBX_OU=50&HBX_PK=apple_innovation, para 20
(4) http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/mostadmired/2008/snapshots/670.htmlJobs, Standford Commencement
(5) http://www.aarp.org/aarp/live_and_learn/Cover_Stories/articles/Never_Settle__Secrets_of_an_Innovator.html?CMP=KNC-360I-GOOGLE-LAL&HBX_OU=50&HBX_PK=apple_innovation

Rick Warren on Lifes Purpose

This, like much of the stuff I end up publishing here, ended up in my email box. I wish I could give proper attibution but I cant trace the originator of the printed version. It is from an interview with Pastor Rick Warren by Paul Bradhsaw in early 2006. The information on the health of Ricks wife kay, is not current. Here is a comment from Pastor Rick, “You reference Kay’s having cancer, but I wanted to assure you that the interview/article you cite is a few years old, and Kay is healthy and in remission. Would you kindly make note on your site that Kay is currently cancer-free and that the article was not written recently? (And I agree that there are definitely points in it that are timeless!) As you can imagine, when people read that “Kay is ill,” they are burdened for her health, unnecessarily so, and it causes much confusion. Rick Warren”

As a side note it is usually not a good idea to use content that is not original on your site, at least from an SEO perspective. Google has ways that you are penalized in rankings for content that is re-cylced somehow and not original. The obvious second area is that of a character or integrity standpoint. If I dont write the content, every effort is made to give you the originator for proper recognition of that persons effort. As the reason for this site is not just monetization, I do use many other peoples content and just deal with the serach engine penalties if they actually exist.
So there you have it, enjoy.

You will enjoy the new insights that Rick Warren
          has, with his wife now having cancer and him having ‘wealth’
from the
          book sales. This is an absolutely incredible short interview
with Rick
          Warren,
‘Purpose Driven Life ‘ author and
          pastor of Saddleback Church in California.  In the interview by
Paul Bradshaw
          with Rick Warren, Rick said:

People ask me, What is the
          purpose of life?
And I respond: In a nutshell,
          life is preparation for eternity. We were not made to last forever,
          and God wants us to be with Him in Heaven.
One day my heart is going to
          stop, and that will be the end of my body– but not the end of
          me.
I may live 60 to 100 years on
          earth, but I am going to spend trillions of years in eternity.
This is
          the warm-up act – the dress rehearsal.. God wants us to practice on
          earth what we will do forever in eternity.
We were made by God and for God,
          and until you figure that out, life isn’t going to make
          sense.
Life is a series of problems:
          Either you are in one now, you’re just coming out of one, or you’re
          getting ready to go into another one.

The
          reason for this is that God is more interested in your character
than
          your comfort; God is more interested in making your life holy
than He
          is in making your life happy.

We can be
          reasonably happy here on earth, but that’s not the goal of life.
The
          goal is to grow in character, in Christ likeness.
This past year has been the
          greatest year of my life but also the toughest, with my wife, Kay,
          getting cancer.
I used to think that life was
          hills and valleys – you go through a dark time, then you go to the
          mountaintop, back and forth. I don’t believe that
          anymore.
Rather than life being hills and
          valleys, I believe that it’s kind of like two rails on a railroad
          track, and at all times you have something good and something
bad in
          your life.
No matter how good things are in
          your life, there is always something bad that needs to be worked
          on.
And no matter how bad things are
          in your life, there is always something good you can thank God
          for..
You can focus on your purposes,
          or you can focus on your problems:

If you
          focus on your problems, you’re going into self-centeredness,
which is
          my problem, my issues, my pain.’ But one of the easiest ways to get
          rid of pain is to get your focus off yourself and onto God and
          others.
We discovered quickly that in
          spite of the prayers of hundreds of thousands of people, God was
not
          going to heal Kay or make it easy for her- It has been very
difficult
          for her, and yet God has strengthened her character, given her a
          ministry of helping other people, given her a testimony, drawn her
          closer to Him and to people.

You have
          to learn to deal with both the good and the bad of
          life.
Actually, sometimes learning to
          deal with the good is harder. For instance, this past year, all
of a
          sudden, when the book sold 15 million copies, it made me instantly
          very wealthy.
It also brought a lot of
          notoriety that I had never had to deal with before. I don’t
think God
          gives you money or notoriety for your own ego or for you to live a
          life of ease..
So I began to ask God what He
          wanted me to do with this money, notoriety and influence. He
gave me
          two different passages that helped me decide what to do, II
          Corinthians 9 and Psalm 72.

First, in
          spite of all the money coming in, we would not change our lifestyle
          one bit.. We made no major purchases.

Second,
          about midway through last year, I stopped taking a salary from the
          church.
Third, we set up foundations to
          fund an initiative we call The Peace Plan to plant churches, equip
          leaders, assist the poor, care for the sick, and educate the next
          generation.
Fourth, I added up all that the
          church had paid me in the 24 years since I started the church,
and I
          gave it all back. It was liberating to be able to serve God for
          free.
We need to ask ourselves: Am I
          going to live for possessions? Popularity?
Am I going to be driven by
          pressures? Guilt? Bitterness? Materialism? Or am I going to be
driven
          by God’s purposes (for my life)?

When I
          get up in the morning, I sit on the side of my bed and say, God,
if I
          don’t get anything else done today, I want to know You more and
love
          You better. God didn’t put me on earth just to fulfill a to-do
list.
          He’s more interested in what I am than what I do.
That’s why we’re called human
          beings, not human doings.
Happy moments, PRAISE
          GOD.
Difficult moments, SEEK
          GOD.
Quiet moments, WORSHIP
          GOD.
Painful moments, TRUST
          GOD.
Every moment, THANK
          GOD.

Fables and Fortunes

Fables and Fortune Hunters

Ok, I have a pet peeve I am gonna vent about. Business Planning or lack there of. Alright, maybe its not so much as a pet peeve but rather a point of contention specific to most people who teach business planning. At least these folks believe there should be some planning and that gets some big props. But the challenge is if you dont project, goal-set, dream and plan for specifics you may have a successful business regarding cash-flow and income but in reality that is a only a part of the whole picture. What if you end up working 80-100 weeks which is fairly common in many industries, especially in big dumb corporations. (actually in industries across the board 75 hour work week is the norm). Is that what you want? Is it your definition of success? That is what I mean because everyone has there own idea here of what success is to them. The point is if you dont know what you want, specifically, you most likely will get down the road and find yourself unhappy. Also if you know exactly what you are trying to build, and more importantly why, it allows you to design patterns of success based on being extremely effective not just efficient. Efficiency is good but if the task we are so efficient at is not necessary to be effective towards our goal…it is still a waste. Right? This story I saw a few years back illustrates it perfectly have seen this story around before but could not lay my hands on it. While I was reading Tim Ferris’s book, The Four Hour Work Week, he had this story profiled in his book. While I am still not sure where the original came from here is it excerpted from Tim’s book.

An American businessman took a vacation to a small coastal Mexican village on doctor’s orders. Unable to sleep after an urgent phone call from the office the first morning, he walked out to the pier to clear his head. A small boat with just one fisherman had docked, and inside the boat were several large yellow fin tuna. The American complimented the Mexican on the quality of his fish.
“How long did it take you to catch them?” the American asked.
“Only a little while,” the Mexican replied in surprisingly good English.
“Why don’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” the American then asked.
“I have enough to support my family and give a few to friends,” the Mexican said as he unloaded them into a basket.
“But…What do you do with the rest of your time?”
The Mexican looked up and smiled. “I sleep late, fish a little, play with my children, take a siesta with my wife, Julia, and stroll into the village each evening, where I sip wine and play guitar with my amigos. I have a full and busy life senior.”
The American laughed and stood tall. “Sir, I am a Harvard M.B.A. and I can help you. You should spend more time fishing, and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. In no time, you could buy several boats with the increased haul. Eventually, you would have a fleet of fishing boats.”
He continued, “Instead of selling your catch to a middleman, you would sell directly to the consumers, eventually opening your own cannery. You would control the product, processing and distribution. You would need to leave this small coastal fishing village, of course, and move to Mexico City, then to Los Angeles, and eventually New York City, where you could run your expanding enterprise with proper management.’
The Mexican fisherman asked, “But, senor, how long will all this take?”
To which the American replied, “15-20 years. 25 tops.”
“But what then, senor?”
The American laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time is right, you would announce an IPO and sell your company stock to the public and become very rich. You would make millions.”
“Millions, senor? Then what?”
“Then you would retire and move to a small coastal fishing village, where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, take a siesta with you wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your amigos…..”

Ah, the arrogance of us sometimes. It brings out a specific point though and that is starting with the end in mind. I have a podcast that I originally put on my artmarketingbuzz.com site, it is addressed to artist but conceptually it applies no mater what your profession or business niche. So what does all this have to do with social marketing, attraction marketing, social media marketing, or personal development? Everything. If you don’t spend the time defining the “why” of putting your business together it wont work. What if you get down the road and find out you would be happier doing something other than wohat your are trying to acheive now? What if you really want to work 2 days and just hang with your family the remaining time? Most of us plan and goal set according to previously defined social moire’s. Why? I think because we don’t spend the up-front time to really defined what “our” perfect life would look like. I am guilty of this…. bigtime. Next-time we can pick this up again and take a look at some other issues pertaining to the “why” of your business.

The Power of Visualization; Victor Frankl

The Boy That Could

Its about Shaya, a learning disabled boy
in Brooklyn.

On weekends, Shaya and his dad like to go
for walks. As they do they like to stop and
watch the neighborhood boys play baseball.

One Sunday afternoon as they approached the
ball field, Shaya looked up at his father
and asked, Dad do you think they would
let me play?

——————————————-
DAD HAD A TOUGH
DECISION TO MAKE
——————————————-

He knows his son is learning disabled, very
uncoordinated, and has never played baseball
before.

But Dad also knows the neighborhood boys have
always treated Shaya with kindness.

And he feels that if he, his father, doesn’t
speak up for Shaya, who will?

So he walked over to one of the boys and
asked, What do you think of letting Shaya
in the game?

The boy didn’t know what to say and looked
around to his teammates for guidance. Not
getting any he took matters into his own
hands.

He said, Well, we’re about to start the
eighth inning, and we’re losing by six runs.

I don’t think we’re going to win this game
so what’s the difference?

Get him a glove and he can play behind second
base, in short center field, which Shaya did
with a big smile on his face.

In the bottom of the eighth inning Shaya
team rallied and scored three runs. But they
were still losing by three.

In the bottom of the ninth, they rallied
again. They had three runners on base,
two out and…

——————————————–
IT WAS SHAY’S
TURN TO BAT!
——————————————–

His Dad wondered, Will they even let him
bat? But without hesitation one of the boys
yelled, Shaya, you’re up,  and he was handed
a bat.

But as he stood at home plate it was obvious
to everyone that Shaya didn’t even know how
to hold the bat, let alone hit with it.

So the pitcher for the other team moved in
a couple of feet and lobbed the ball very
softly so Shaya could at least make contact.

Shaya swung and missed by a wide margin.

Before the second pitch, one of Shaya’s
teammates called out, Hold on, let me
help him, let me show him how to bat.

This boy came and stood behind Shaya, and
put his arms around him so the two boys were
now holding the bat together.

The pitcher moved in a few more steps and
lobbed the ball as softly as he could.

The two boys swung the bat together and
managed to tap a soft grounder right back
to the pitcher.

Shaya’s teammates yelled…

——————————————–
RUN SHAYA! RUN TO FIRST!
——————————————–

And he took off for first base.

But the pitcher instantly pounced on the
ball and could have easily thrown him out
at first, ending the game.

Instead, the pitcher took the ball and, with
obvious intention, threw it on a high arc
way over the first baseman’s head, all
the way into the outfield.

Shaya was safe at first. The first baseman
for the other team turned him toward second
and said, Run, Shaya, run to second!

By then, the right fielder had chased down
the ball and he, too, could have easily
thrown Shaya out at second base.

But he understood what the pitcher had done.

So he threw the ball not just over second base,
but way over the third baseman’s head, so far
that nobody was going to retrieve it.

As Shaya chugged into second base the kid
playing shortstop ran towards him, turned
him towards third base and shouted, “Run,
Shaya, run to third!”

Of course, by now the three runners who had
been on base had scored.

The game was tied, Shaya represented the
winning run, and his teammates were
screaming with excitement.

As Shaya rounded third base, every boy from
his team and several from the team on the
field were all running behind him, cheering
him home.

And as he put his foot on home plate, both
teams gathered around him, lifted him on
their shoulders and cheered him as the
hero of the game.

——————————————–
HE HAD JUST HIT A GRAND SLAM
HOME RUN AND WON THE GAME!
——————————————–

These boys not only gave Shaya the thrill of
his life, but also something more precious
than that — their acceptance!

All 18 of them who let him play that day have
cracked the code and figured out the true
meaning of happiness.