Hire Me Seth!

I guess that a post every day was to much. The good news is that I have three posts, all written in my head.  The problem is getting the idea from head to web.

Today I realized that Guitar Hero IV and Rock Band 2 are coming out within two months. I am a huge fan, and play right before getting into a large project. For some reason it gets me in the zone. Now it’s time for me to find $200 worth of crap to put on CraigsList so I can afford the whole Guitar Hero IV instrument pack. I have Rock Band, which is awesome. But GH comes with a drum kit that is both pressure sensitive and has cymbals. Hells Yes.

So here’s the idea. I know bars are having “Rock Band” night, but what about a club that had a stage, and every night you could perform solo or with your “band”?  Maybe this exists.

How about taking it to the next step? What if the crowd could interact with the performers? You could even have tournaments. And what about setting up polls on a plethora of cheap or free sites and have the crowd vote on a performance live with their smart phones and show those results on a tv above the stage? It’s like having a live American Idol with plastic instruments.

Someone will do this right, and someone will make lots of money doing it. More important though, it’s a great alternative to the super loud meat market up the road.

What if? That’s what I asked myself after reading this article over at Bad Astronomy. The “ah-ha” I got was that the earth is one bad-ass planet, and it’s not going to “die” at the hands of humans. We could detonate all of our weapons, nuclear and all, and the earth would scoff at us. Mainly because we’d all be dead. That’s the point.

Human life would be gone, and probably most life on the planet. Probably for a long time. So where is the what if?

What if, instead of going green and recycling “for the planet”, we realized that this statement is complete bull shit. What if we re-framed the way we thought about preserving human existence (and maybe a cute puppy dog or two)? Would the new proposition be to raw for the general public? Is it just easier to focus on the planet because of our societal fear of death? Maybe it would place an even greater sense of urgency and curtail needless waste.

I am not preaching from atop my soap box, as I create just as much waste as the guy next door. I’m just a guy posing a question.

I woke up today to look at my book cover again. Sometimes I can’t believe that I can design stuff. I never thought of myself being artistically talented. I still don’t. But I can make pretty things every once in a while.

I went a bit off my Seth program today so I could sleep, hang with Cooper (my son) and tie up a loose end with my Tai Chi school. Speaking of my school…[insert Wayne's World flashback here]

About two months ago I sat in a meeting with the school’s Master and two Sifus (high level instructors). While I felt a tad uncomfortable during this meeting, we talked about setting up a blog and what to do with it. I brought up using Ning for our social network and even set up a mock-up of what the site could look like, logo and all. We also talked about Master writing a blog with Wordpress. I know Wordpress. I made all sorts of suggestions, and sent the school’s designer a bunch of theme links from Smashing Magazine.

Flash forward two months later. There’s been a few emails, a face-to-face and lots of excuses as to why it’s not up yet. I am not even close to blame free, and I didn’t feel like I had the “authority” to get it done. Sure I could have pushed real hard to take on the project, and I would have felt pushy. But looking back, at least we’d have something online by now.

Tonight, Master called me by name as I was pushing the door open to leave. He’s a real soft spoken guy, and has never called for me. I knew what it was about, and wanted to share my frustration. Luckily, the other Sifu happened to be standing there. He took the conversation over and asked Master when he wanted the blog up. He said “Tomorrow”. I saw this as a challenge, went home, chose a theme, played with the logo and headers and sent all the instructions on how to set it all up. Without asking permission. It’s far from perfect, but it will do for now.

What’s the lesson? Sometimes we need to take the lead when it appears no one else will, even if it means stepping out of your comfort zone and onto a few toes. If you feel it in your gut like I did, listen to it next time. I know I will.

Being true to my word, I am posting for the second day in a row. I actually got a bunch done today. I started writing and outlining the resume, I put together the first draft of the book cover, ordered the shipping crate, and I’m about to go the grocery store.

Ok, so the grocery store has nothing to do with the project but I can’t wait to show you the finished version of the book cover in a few weeks. I’m very excited with the unexpected direction it took. I guess that’s what happens when your mind is open.

Speaking of Seth, I sent him a short email yesterday asking how often he writes. He got back to me within 7 hours and let me know that sometimes he gets three days ahead. So very cool.

And yes, that is my new Seth Godin Action Figure. He sits on my back-up drive on the corner of my monitor. So far “the Seth” has already caused an uncomfortable moment. While I was showing my landscaper his new website this morning, he noticed it. He asked who it was, and it’s almost impossible (for me) to explain it and not sound like a creep. I gave him some half assed answer, as I have the mental capacity of a 60 year old catatonic in the morning. Then we sat in silence for a moment until I showed him where his testimonials are going. Fun stuff!

Short post. Even if it’s one sentence, forcing myself to write at least once a day for two weeks. Here’s to hoping that it works.

BTW the meds are great for focus. I keep needing to remind myself they aren’t procrastiation pills and that I should find something worth focusing on first. Like Cooper, my dogs, my wife, this blog and less e-mail, Digg, ESPN, NASCAR, RSS and Trism (the most addicting iPhone App ever.)

A couple days ago, Google released Chrome (click to go to the Chrome Site) for the general public to test. A few days before that, Mozilla (FireFox) opened it’s doors to test out it’s newest plug in, Ubiquity (click to go to the Ubiquity plug in. You need Fire Fox for this).

My Review - Google Chrome

I’ve had a chance to play around with it, and here’s my take on it thus far. It’s aesthetically pleasing. The user interface has familiar Google simplicity. The tabs are on the top to save screen real estate. You can take any web page and turn it into an “application” that is launched by an icon on your desktop. This is very cool if you use Gmail, Google Docs, Twitter, Facebook, etc. The application will load up in it’s own window like it’s Outlook or Thunderbird.

Chrome is also very fast. Unofficially about 20-40% faster than Fire Fox. I also really like the universal search bar. You now use the same bar to type in a URL or use it to search your favorite search engine. It makes no difference to Chrome.

There are a few other goodies slipped in like “Incognito Mode” (read: pr0n mode) which keeps no history or cookies while surfing this mode. Another is the way that you can manipulate your tabs. Very slick.

My Review - Ubiquity

The purpose of this plug in is to change the way we interface with our browser, and how we can manipulate information. What does this mean?

First, you install the plug in like any other Fire Fox plugin. Once installed, you press the assigned keystroke (Option + Space) to bring up the contextual menu. This brings up a small window awaiting your command. If you use a Mac and have QuickSilver, it’s very close.

From this screen, you type in a contextual command. For instance, let’s say you are researching a topic, and you come across a name you aren’t familiar with. So press Opt-Space, and type in “Wikipedia” (even just “Wiki” will work) followed by the word you are looking up.Without ever leaving the page you are on, the information is served up right into your Ubiquty box.

From here, you can hit Enter and go to the Wikipedia Page, or hit Escape to close the box and return you to the tab you are currently on. Some other cool things you can do is type in “weather Charlotte, NC” and in a flash, Charlotte’s weather is in the Ubiquity box.

The way you interact with the box is very cool. If you see a picture on a web page you want to send to a friend (assuming you have Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo! Mail, etc. open) just highlight the image, open your Ubiquity box and type “Send this to (contact name)” and in a flash, the highlighted image gets put in an email addressed to the contact name.

In a very similar way, it will also translate. Highlight the text, open your U Box, then type “translate”. In an instant, you go from Mandarin Chinese to English without ever leaving the page. They have a disclaimer letting you know that it’s translation by machine so results are bound to be awkward. This is to be expected, partially because this project is in it’s Alpha state.

Who wins?

For now, Google.

It’s ready. It’s not hard for us to adapt a new browser. It’s just like what we have, but a little better. There are drawbacks though.

For starters, do we really need another browser? We have IE, FireFox, Opera, Safari, Flock, Camino, and a slew of others. It seems like this market is already very competivite, and throwing out another “me too, but just a little better” makes little sense. Yes, there will be Google Fan Bois and Grrls by the boatload who’ve probably already made the switch. There will be those sick of FireFox’s memory leaks and the early adopters wanting to be the first on the block to use it. There will be those that find the new features convincing enough to make the switch.

I would imagine from Google’s standpoint, stand to learn a ton from the data. That’s what they do best. I use GMail, Google Apps and Grand Central. I love these services.

In the long run, Mozilla, maybe.

Ubiquity has a long way to go. It’s not difficult to use at all. The issue is that we now have to re-learn how to interact with the machine. Even though it’s more natural, we are still using keyboards that suck at efficient typing, but at least our letters won’t get stuck.

The ball is in Mozilla’s court to run with this project and adjust it. To listen to the crowd but not blindly follow it. To break the rules but not go so far as to alienate everyone in the process. It’s a very fine line, and I think Mozilla is a great company to try and walk that line. Only time will tell.

After waking up this morning, eyes burning and all, I managed to drag my tired ass off to my Tai Chi class. There’s nothing like waking up, driving a half-hour and sweating your face off all morning. Nothing.

I decided to take my meds after class, as I have much more energy and brain power at night. I think that the Vyvanse is much cleaner than the Concerta, with no crash at night. The anxiety has subsided, and my focus is making a comeback. I actually volunteered to go to Home Depot Expo today to pick out the rest of the lighting for my house. I’ll have pictures of the lights after I install them.

Another notch hatched on my belt: Doorbell installed. There’s been a few firsts this week. I replaced a toilet. I still can’t believe that one. I also replaced the faucet in the downstairs bathroom.

As I told Heather tonight, anyone can be handy. It’s just a matter of reading and following the directions.

I just finished reading this article over at Ars. To sum it up, artists like Kid Rock have been pulling their albums from iTunes because consumers are downloading singles, not the whole album.

“In so many ways it’s turned our business back into a singles business,” Kid Rock’s manager Ken Levitan told the Wall Street Journal today, referring to iTunes as “part of the death knell of the music business.”
-via ArsTechnica

The Artist’s POV

I get why the artist wants the fan to listen to the whole album instead of singles. They spent plenty of time and money writing, recording, mixing, pressing, distributing the work in it’s entirety. There is a reason for the tracks being there, having made the cut. There is a reason for the order as well, as the tracks should flow into one another.

I am a huge music fan, and I rarely use my shuffle button. 95% of my listening is to albums. From start to finish. I don’t have playlists. I don’t download singles. If I hear a song I like, I’ll find it and get the whole album. Call me old school. I should also state that my music is entirely on my hard drive. So for me to pick the best out of the bunch is a simple task. Unfortunately for the artist I am the exception, not the rule.

It’s a Business

I also know that I am the exception to the rule. At the end of the day, the music business is just that, a business. The musician getting rich off record sales is going the way of the dinosaur. It’s not a sustainable or justifiable model anymore. Plenty of artists will still earn some big paychecks while the industry is performing it’s last encore for sure. That will also become the exception, not the rule.

The Labels Vs. DIY

GarageBand. iTunes. P2P. BitTorrent. Social Networks. Creative Commons. These are the real “death knell” to the music business. If I can play the shit out of my guitar, croon like Frankie and Dean-o, drum like Neil, you bet your ass I’m laying a track down and putting it out there for the world. The problem lies in the Long Tail. With near infinite choice, getting found becomes the mission. In this technology transition, many clever artists are figuring out how to work YouTube (Soulja Boy) Pod Casts (Matthew Ebel) and niche marketing (Jonathan Coulton). And they are building a fan base that buys their album, show up to their shows and tells all their friends about the artist. Without the labels, it’s not a matter of if it will work, the question is how.

The Market

Like any other business, the market determines the success of an industry. If there is no demand, then there are no sales. So instead of fighting the very people that put food on your table, try listening to them. They are sending a message. They’ll pay for songs if they can pick which ones. If an artist can’t make a compelling argument with his music on why you should buy the whole thing, why pay for crap? Instead of gaining a potential fan by letting them try out a track for a small investment and making a buck for doing so, you now get nothing. No potential fan. No dollar. Nothing. To prove what?

The Future (is Unwritten)

The record execs should be happy that they’ve made bank over the past 50 some years and quit being whiners. Don’t get pissed off at the people who aren’t buying your product the way you wished they would. Do listen to the people and get creative.

Give the music away for free. Make it available online (for the cost of almost nothing). Build a community of fans. Organize and execute an amazing tour. Make it such an awesome experience that you develop a real buzz. Have tryouts a few weeks before the concert to play with the band. Have a killer sound and video system so the people far away get the chills when the singer settles into that power ballad. Then you can justify a bigger markup on the tickets. You’ll also have a few thousand people who want to remember the experience with a t-shirt or poster or photo with the band. They’ll gladly pay a premium as long as it’s authentic. Make it policy to show the breakdown of how much of your souvenir money goes to support the band.

Some one is going to figure it out, and make a killing.

Being diagnosed with ADHD when you are 27 is a strange experience. Being put on the same medication that they give hyper school children when you are trying to eek out a living can be surreal. It’s been a life changer, for sure. It’s also been an adventure.

After reading a few books on Adult ADHD I gave a Psychiatrist and an “ADHD Specialist” a shot. I realized that it would be better for my sanity to ignore them completely. I went to my family doc instead. He lets me try new meds, and he gives me suggestions. Here’s the rundown of what I’ve tried and the effects they’ve had so far:

Ritalin: Works like a charm. The problem is the short acting ones last four hours, and the 12 hour ones don’t work for me. Worse than having to eat pills like tic-tacs is the crash after they wear off. Imagine the kind of crash you’d get from shot-gunning four cans of Red Bull then chasing that with a thermos full of Starbucks Premium Roast. It’s like that.

Adderall: This stuff is dangerous. I know that most ADHD drugs are a form of speed. This one really felt like it. It was a total rush, and was fun for all of two hours. Hours three through six felt like being on the front of an out of control fright train with no brakes. I gave it four days and gave it up.

Focalin: I tried this for about a month. It didn’t really help me, nor did it have any side effects. Spending $40 per month on nothing is a bad investment.

Straterra: As bad as my experience with Adderall was, this was worse. This one was not like the others. It took up to a month before it “kicked in”. I wrote the month I took Straterra off as a complete and total loss. I spent over 12 hours every day sleeping. Since I was working at home, I could. And I did. My focus sucked, and I felt like I was on another planet.

Concerta: I really like this one. I spent over a year on this, and got some amazing stuff done. I grew my company, raised some money, read a ton of books, did the dishes, paid my bills on time. It was great. I messed with the dosages and settled in on 36mg. Then, like most ADDers, I got bored.

Modafinil: Holy crap. This is the stuff that was designed for narcoleptics. It was later tested it out on soldiers in the field doing 48 hour watches. I can see why. This stuff is completely amazing. A real game changer. I tried it for two weeks and was more productive and focused than I’ve ever been in my whole life. I even tried a couple all nighters just to see if it lived up to the hype. It sure did. 36 hours of being awake and productive followed by eight hours of sleep and back to my normal schedule with no nasty side effects. I would have been on this for a while if it hadn’t been for my entire throat closing up. Productive, yes. Talking and feeling like there is a 6″ hoagie in my throat? Not so much. Back to Concerta I went.

I took a two month break to remember what it was like to be with out my “mind glasses” and it was both unproductive and calming. I had just moved, so I had a ton of house projects to work on, so focus wasn’t a must. There was always short-term tasks to complete like hanging a ceiling fan, painting a room or building a tv cabinet. I got a chance to remember life BM (Before Meds) and it really wasn’t so bad. That is, until the tasks ran out and I had to work on some other things, like “What am I going to do for the next forty years?” and “I can’t really spend all day playing with my son and surfing Digg all day, can I?”

Vyvanse: I still don’t know how to pronounce it. It’s new, I needed to get back on track (at least for a little while) and decided to try it. Today is day one. Ah, the fun feeling like someone is going to squeeze your heart out of your chest. Feeling like you need to stand up and run, or cry, or vacuum the house. After ten minutes of deep breathing, all systems back to normal with the benefit of focus.

We’ll see how long it takes for the side effects to go away. I hope that this one works well, because I have lots of work ahead if I want to work for Seth. I have to bring my A-game and not be distracted by shiny stuff.

Lots actually.

The ancient Chinese art of Push Hands dates back to the 1600’s. A few times a month in my Tai Chi class we do push hands exercises. I line up facing my partner and push their wrist. My partner takes my energy from the push and redirects it (tonight it was up) as not to fall over or crumple. Then your partner pushes back and you deflect it. Back and forth it goes until the Sifu (teacher) has us roll the line after a few minutes and work with someone new.

I’m cartainly not the most athletic, strong, flexible or coordinated person in the class. For some reason though, I am good at push hands. It comes very naturally to me. And it’s much like marketing. Here’s how:

Focus

You won’t be a very good partner if you are doing your push hands and thinking about dinner, your kid at day care, the client complaint in your inbox or the voice mail that’s probably waiting for you after class. You need to give 100% attention to your motion. You need to remember to keep your arms rounded, shift from a forward stance while pushing and into a back stance while reflecting. All while making sure all movements are generated from your waist, not just your arms. And that’s only half the battle.

Listening

If you don’t listen to your partner’s energy, it’s a mess. The goal is to stay connected at the wrists the whole time. If you don’t react properly to their energy, you can’t stay connected. Here’s where the problems begin. You are focusing so hard on getting the movements correct you often become stiff and rigid. Nothing in Tai Chi is stiff and rigid. To remain relaxed you must feel the other person’s energy. Sometimes it’s feather light, sometimes it’s quick, sometimes it’s passive, other times aggressive. Done correctly, you match. The two energies become one, and the movements get amazingly fluid.

Time vs. Skill

As my Sifu Dale said tonight, “It’s not about making leaps and bounds over night. You make little improvements over time and they add up. That’s all you can do. Get a little better every day.”

I sucked when I started. My body was super stiff, my motion jerky, my hips cemented in one place, and I had a terrible time keeping my wrist connected. After six months, my hips freed up and I became relaxed. My listening skills were still awful. I always dropped contact and tried to control the speed.

Three months later, I get great feedback from my partners. The newbs thank me for my suggestions and the veterans praise my smoothness or my ability to keep up when we pick up the pace.

How does it all relate?

The comparisons should be obvious by now. Multi-tasking sucks and does not work. If you are working a marketing strategy, commit your time and focus to it. If you keep getting distracted by the shiny things, your in box, new concepts, social media, etc. you’ll end up sucking at all of it. By giving your full attention to the project your working (or should be working) your chance of success skyrockets.

If your campaign is aimed at a particular demographic, and your response is below your expectations and projections what should you do? Should you talk louder or push harder? My money is on listening to the feedback. What do people think of your campaign? Are they listening? Is there a clear call to action that they are missing? Are they interested? If they aren’t pushing back, adjust your actions.

Finally, don’t beat yourself up if you don’t hit a home run your first time at the plate. You won’t. You always hear about the overnight success. You don’t hear about the five years of failures and small victories that proceed the break out. The more you get out there and try, fail and learn the better you’ll get at listening, focus and all the other nuances that come with the art.

–
If I’ve piqued your interest in push hands at all, check out Josh Waitzkin’s amazing book The Art of Learning. Josh was the boy that “Searching for Bobby Fisher” was about. After leaving chess he decided to master the art of Push Hands. It’s a great inside look into that, championship chess and the art of learning.