Archives for posts with tag: seth godin

Reflexões sobre a Indústria Fonográfica

February 18, 09 //
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No fim de 2007 li um artigo falando sobre a indústria fonográfica e o fim de seu monopólio sobre os métodos de distribuição nessa nova era. Hoje, vejo que o Seth Godin escreveu um post muito bom sobre o assunto. Vi idéias bem semelhantes sobre a decadência de um modelo antigo e as oportunidades abertas por isso.
Algo que já vinha pensando e gerou algumas boas discussões com um amigo.
O que me deixou pensando foi analogia com a Oprah:

The analogy I like to give is if you’re an author and Oprah Winfrey calls, you don’t say, “How much are you going to pay me to go on your show and give away all the ideas in my book?” In fact, if you could you would pay to be on Oprah. For a really long time the music industry has had two minds: On the one hand, they would pay money to be on Clear Channel or MTV; on the other hand, they would charge you money to hear their music in concert or out of your stereo.

Se continuarmos essa analogia, os autores não pagam para estar no “best sellers” ou para serem lidos no meio da praça. Mas as pessoas compram seus livros, se forem relevantes ou interessantes a elas. Assim como com os livros, as pessoas agora pegam suas referências de amigos, do Pandora, do Last.FM… o jabá do rádio não surte mais tanto efeito e, presumo, será cada vez mais difícil lançar bandas como N’Sync e afins. (Bandas super bem produzidas, mas criadas pelas gravadoras para saciar um público específico e ganhar dinheiro.)
O dinossauro desse modelo é a distribuição, controlada pelas gravadoras, que em torno, se tornam obsoletas. Só falta descobrirem um método de fazer a indústria funcionar sem as gravadoras…

Willing to be lucky

January 30, 09 //
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How willing is your organization to be lucky? What about you in your career and your marketing efforts? Or in the people you meet or the places you go or the movies you see or the books you read?

My closest friends each were found as a result of chance encounters and luck. So were my biggest ideas and some of my most successful ventures.

It’s very easy to plot a course for today that minimizes the chance of disappointment or bad outcomes or lousy luck.

I wonder if you could plot a different course, one that created opportunities for good luck?

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[Seth Godin] You’re not going to win a Pulitzer Prize

December 12, 08 //
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… and neither am I. Nor will any blogger, including those far more deserving.

The Pulitzer folks, stewards of one of the most influential and important awards in any field, have just announced their new rules. You can win a Pulitzer for commentary online now, but only if the place you post your commentary is a significant news gathering site. You know, sites like MinnPost and Voice of San Diego. So, Tom Friedman can win a well-deserved prize for writing what is essentially a blog for the NY Times, but if he goes off on his own, he’s out.

What a shame.

As newspapers melt all around us, faster and faster, the people in the newspaper business persist in believing that the important element of a news-paper is the paper part.

What an opportunity (for someone) to start taking advantage of the huge pool of talent and passion that is moving online, and to work to raise the bar. We don’t need more gossip sites from celebrity magazine editors. We need to identify and reward voices that push hard against the status quo, that report eagerly and accurately and that speak truth to power.

Here’s what we’re going to miss, and quite soon: the cost of having a printing press and the money to run one meant that there were newspapers with gravitas. Newspapers that invested for the long haul, that stood for something, that spoke up. When you can launch a blog for nothing and disappear quite easily if it doesn’t work, the gravitas is a lot more difficult to find. When the newspapers are gone (and it’s happening a lot faster than the people in the industry are able to admit) that’s what we’re going to miss the most.

The opportunity, then, is to organize and network and identify and reward that activity when it happens online. Not because the site is owned by a paper or because the founder has connections to the old media. No, because they’re doing work that matters.

If I ran the Pulitzers, I’d hand out a dozen more every year to people working exclusively online.

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Bate em cheio com a teoria das Tribos e oportunidades perdidas de pessoas que só sabem proteger o jeito antigo de se fazer negócios e estão cegas para o futuro, esperando serem destronadas pela próxima big thing…

[SethGodin] The sad truth about marketing shortcuts

October 23, 08 //
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Foco e determinação sempre ganham do atalho…

Here’s the thing: 4 ounces of plutonium are dangerous and expensive, but they won’t build an atomic bomb. And even if you get 400 ounces, you can’t build 100 bombs.

Critical mass is what happens when you have enough and do enough that you connect to a tribe, one that matters. Critical mass is the pay off from focused, consistent effort. Critical mass is what you don’t get if you are constantly working the angles and looking for a shortcut.

Open a small chain of restaurants before you’ve connected enough people to make your first restaurant standing room only won’t work. And online, the results are even more obvious.

…

It made me sad that so many non-profits have precisely the same mantra. Rush to the easy money, then look for more and rush after that.

…

If you have a presence on twitter, squidoo, blogs, facebook, myspace, linkedin and 20 other sites, the chances of finding critical mass at any of them is close to zero. But if you dominate, if you’re the goto person, the king of your hill, magical things happen. One follower in each of twenty places is worthless. Twenty connected followers in one place is a tribe. It’s the foundation for building something that matters.

This is why I don’t have a podcast, a video channel, any activity to speak of on Facebook. It’s why I don’t use Twitter or travel the country visiting bookstores. There are many places to be, and it’s tempting to act like those non-profits and race after the next one. But it doesn’t work.

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[SethGodin] This is not the time to ask for money

October 21, 08 //
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I don’t know about you, but I’m getting plenty of emails asking for more money for various political campaigns.

That’s because the systems in place are good at asking for money, and that’s what they measure. They’re willing to burn out permission, person by person, just to squeeze out the last few bucks.

What a shame. What a waste.

…

If I ran a campaign, I would immediately stop asking for money. I’d ask for ideas for what to do if I got elected. I’d ask for a house party to listen in on a conference call. I’d ask for names of possible voters or I’d look for volunteers to drive to the polls. I’d get petitions signed or ask people to prioritize six ideas for the rest of the campaign or for things to work on after I got elected.

Attention can be worth more than money. Enthusiasm is priceless.

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[SethGodin] Best of one world

October 21, 08 //
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Tããããão verdade! Reflexão maravilhosa em tempos de web 2.0…

As always, the truth lies in the cliches.

“Having the best of both worlds” is something that marketers shoot for all the time. They want the traffic that a community site will give them, but they also want the control they get by only having authorized employees participating. They shoot for their favorite parts, and get nothing. Always nothing.

Instead, perhaps it’s worth hoping for the best of one world.

Compromise, by its nature, means giving up part of one thing to get part of something else. So you end up with a little of this and a little of that. The low fat of prunes and the shelf appeal of a cupcake. Sounds good on paper, but when given the choice, the diet conscious will pick a real prune and the gluttons will pick a real cupcake. And you’re left with an overstock situation.

When in doubt, maximize.

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[SethGodin] Maybe you can’t make money doing what you love

October 15, 08 //
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Adoro esse cara! Essas pérolas (regulares) dele são um ótimo exercício de pensamento.
E parece que ultimamente ele tem escrito bastante sobre carreira e dedicação ao trabalho.

Loving what you do is almost as important as doing what you love, especially if you need to make a living at it. Go find a job you can commit to, a career or a business you can fall in love with.

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[SethGodin] The growing productivity divide

October 9, 08 //
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Mais uma do Seth Godin… contra a o conformismo no trabalho

Here’s a simple quiz:

  • Can you capture something you see on your screen and paste it into Word or PowerPoint?
  • Do you have a blog?
  • Can you open a link you get in an email message?
  • Do you read more than five blogs a day?
  • Do you have a signature in your outbound email?
  • Do you have an RSS reader?
  • Can you generate a PDF document from a Word file you’re working on?
  • Do you know how to build and share a simple spreadsheet using Google Docs?
  • Do have a shortcut for sending mail to the six co-workers you usually write to?
  • Are you able to find what you’re looking for on Google most of the time?
  • Do you know how to download a file from the internet?
  • Do you back up your work?
  • Do you keep track of contacts using a digital tool?
  • Do you use anti-virus software?
  • Do you fall for internet hoaxes and forward stuff to friends and then regret it?
  • Have you ever bought something from a piece of spam?

Can you imagine someone who works in a factory that processes metal not knowing how to use a blowtorch? How can you imagine yourself as a highly-paid knowledge worker and not know how to do these things… If you don’t, it’s not hard to find someone to teach you.

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[SethGodin] Is effort a myth?

October 8, 08 //
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People really want to believe effort is a myth, at least if we consider what we consume in the media:

  • politicians and beauty queens who get by on a smile and a wink
  • lottery winners who turn a lifetime of lousy jobs into one big payday
  • sports stars who are born with skills we could never hope to acquire
  • hollywood celebrities with the talent of being in the right place at the right time
  • failed CEOs with $40 million buyouts

It really seems (at least if you read popular media) that who you know and whether you get ‘picked’ are the two keys to success. Luck.

The thing about luck is this: we’re already lucky. We’re insanely lucky that we weren’t born during the black plague or in a country with no freedom. We’re lucky that we’ve got access to highly-leveraged tools and terrific opportunities. If we set that luck aside, though, something interesting shows up.

Delete the outliers–the people who are hit by a bus or win the lottery, the people who luck out in a big way, and we’re left with everyone else. And for everyone else, effort is directly related to success. Not all the time, but as much as you would expect. Smarter, harder working, better informed and better liked people do better than other people, most of the time.

Effort takes many forms. Showing up, certainly. Knowing stuff (being smart might be luck of the draw, but knowing stuff is the result of effort). Being kind when it’s more fun not to. Paying forward when there’s no hope of tangible reward. Doing the right thing. You’ve heard these things a hundred times before, of course, but I guess it’s easier to bet on luck.

If people aren’t betting on luck, then why do we make so many dumb choices? Why aren’t useful books selling at fifty times the rate they sell now? Why does anyone, ever, watch reality TV shows? Why do people do such dumb stuff with their money?

I think we’ve been tricked by the veneer of lucky people on the top of the heap. We see the folks who manage to skate by, or who get so much more than we think they deserve, and it’s easy to forget that:

a. these guys are the exceptions
and
b. there’s nothing you can do about it anyway.

And that’s the key to the paradox of effort: While luck may be more appealing than effort, you don’t get to choose luck. Effort, on the other hand, is totally available, all the time.

This is a hard sell. Diet books that say, “eat less, exercise more,” may work, but they don’t sell many copies.

With that forewarning, here’s a bootstrapper’s/marketer’s/entrepreneur’s/fast-rising executive’s effort diet. Go through the list and decide whether or not it’s worth it. Or make up your own diet. Effort is a choice, at least make it on purpose:

1. Delete 120 minutes a day of ’spare time’ from your life. This can include TV, reading the newspaper, commuting, wasting time in social networks and meetings. Up to you.

2. Spend the 120 minutes doing this instead:

  • Exercise for thirty minutes.
  • Read relevant non-fiction (trade magazines, journals, business books, blogs, etc.)
  • Send three thank you notes.
  • Learn new digital techniques (spreadsheet macros, Firefox shortcuts, productivity tools, graphic design, html coding)
  • Volunteer.
  • Blog for five minutes about something you learned.
  • Give a speech once a month about something you don’t currently know a lot about.

3. Spend at least one weekend day doing absolutely nothing but being with people you love.

4. Only spend money, for one year, on things you absolutely need to get by. Save the rest, relentlessly.

If you somehow pulled this off, then six months from now, you would be the fittest, best rested, most intelligent, best funded and motivated person in your office or your field. You would know how to do things other people don’t, you’d have a wider network and you’d be more focused.

It’s entirely possible that this won’t be sufficient, and you will continue to need better luck. But it’s a lot more likely you’ll get lucky, I bet.

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