The ebook was set up by volunteers in the community - and was really well done. Highly recommended.

[ Triiibes EBook] - PDF file

• Should we redesign our website?
• What should we do to increase our search rank?
• How can we decrease our shopping cart abandonment rate?

I have well rehearsed and probably pretty accurate answers for each question, and people left very satisfied with my consultation (I ask.)  Some wanted to move forward, others didn’t.

But my attitude has been changing and I cannot ignore it.  I have been thinking of tribes, and how communities are exerting a more powerful force on the success of new ideas than ever before.  I have been thinking about what branding means.  And I’ve been thinking about the whole company-customer relationship and what it means for my clients.

How do you, as an outsider, take on the role of heretic?  Is it enough to be skilled at finding latent “movements” and helping companies catalyze them?  Where are the opportunities - what is the need?

Some initial thoughts:

• Who gets it?  Who will actively create a manifesto and attempt to unite a community?
• Who has time for it?  Tribal marketing takes a long time - and there is no way to short-cut it.
• Who is willing to give up control?  Letting the community inter-connect under your umbrella is a risky proposition.  There is a loss of control that goes with that.
• Who will postpone monetization?  By the time people contact me they are already acting on some sort of company initiative or problem.  Asking them to ignore that is difficult.

These questions are getting louder every day.

If you develop something and come up with a gimmick like Dodd Davis, CEO of LifeLock did, you really need to be sure about it.

Davis is well known for putting his personal social security number in advertisements on television to the sides of buses. It was a Purple Cow and this remarkable method of promoting the business stands out as one of the boldest advertising moves of recent days. With over 700,000 customers, growing by 3000 per day, the message seems to have hit home.

His methods caused quite a buzz among marketers, even if the business itself seems to have a questionable standing among customers and investors - not to mention some rocky antics with credit bureaus. Lifelock has had a lot of problems lately, with their founder Robert Maynard, Jr. stepping down earlier this month due to a rather messy controversy surrounding the company, and class action lawsuits being filed against the firm around the country.

He was inviting every identity thief in the world into the ring. But rather than being attacked by a financial ninja - it was a sloppy, unregulated check cashing shop in Ft. Worth that brought him down. By skipping the normal procedures for verifying the identity of a check advance customer, his identity was used for a $500 loan. The loophole bit him.

The financial networks have billions of possible weak points. The system depends on a combination of technological and human security procedures to avoid problems and for the most part works exceptionally well. If you allow an industry like payday advance to be a part of it, the entire system is at risk.

But it was Lifelock that put itself out there, boldly - and now they must do something equally good to explain it.

But from what I can tell they’re on the right track. So, since Amazon is into Wish Lists big time, let me make mine for Kindle 2.0, now that we’ve all seen the first version.

RSS Freedom - I don’t want to hear any more about a “special” RSS feed format. The ability to arbitrarily subscribe to any RSS feed is critical to me, so let’s stick with the standard XML. This way the authors can maintain blogs about their books and use standardized Blog Creation tools like Wordpress.

Blog Reading with Offline Mode - I want to be sure that I can read books on airplanes, but RSS feeds and blogs are equally important. I love Google Gears and how it works with Google Reader and hope that Kindle 2.0 will have something like it.

A Full Web Browser - Port Firefox to the thing and I’ll be thrilled. This will benefit Amazon, too so people can both shop their site and click on ads in the Amazon Clickriver system, leading to landing pages of advertisers. Ad-supported books will be a terrific concept.

Larger Screen, In Color - This will become more important for magazines, blogs, and such. I’m personally just hoping the screen gets more paperwhite, but I know its success will depend on color. If Apple does an e book, you can bet it’ll be in full, gorgeous color.

Audiobook Alternative - I would like to have Audible (protected) audiobooks and podcasts available for the device. Since Amazon already has tons of audiobooks to download they will surely be doing this for version 2.0. I already use my iPod for this purpose, but there would be something cool about consolidating the two.

Better Battery Performance - I would think that they could figure out a way to batch wireless sessions (e.g. put wireless to sleep) when it’s not needed. Charging every day is not acceptable. I would get tired of this and hope that Kindle 2.0 has better technology.

“Seafood genius Dave Pasternack achieved national fame in 2000, when he served his first plate of pristine raw fish sprinkled with crunchy sea salt and fresh citrus juice, adding the word crudo—Italian-style sushi—to the American culinary lexicon. “

Well, he’s got a new cookbook out named The Young Man and the Sea.

But we only get to choose ice cream occasionally. Our kids get it perhaps once a week in the Summer. These are serious decisions. You want to choose carefully on this stuff. Summer will end before we know it.

As we grow older we are also given just so much time to choose persuits we enjoy and can master sufficiently to be considered scarce and therefore valuable. We get only so many cones to fill.

I enjoyed Tim Ferris’ Four Hour Workweek and Seth Godin’s “The Dip” as previously posted, which both encourage introspection about life and work habits in this way, so I was really happy to find Pamela Slim’s article “I’m just not into you” - Kicking lukewarm passions to the curb“ in her ezine. It’s really a good read - and can help clarify some thinking if you find yourself muddled in luke-warm pseudo-projects that are weighing down your dreams.

How can you tell if your former “burning flame” is now a “smoldering ember?” (details removed…go read it!)

• When you sit down to work on it, you don’t feel much of anything.
• You find yourself justifying its value or purpose, but don’t really believe your own reasons.
• When you step back to view it in the context of your long-term strategies or goals, it either doesn’t fit or has a minor role.

To those of you who have not read Seth Godin’s new book “The Dip” I recommend that you immediately find a copy. It’s listed in my recommended books section.

Godin explains the “dip” as a barrier between where we are and the rarefied territory of superstars who’ve made it across to reap the disproportionally rich rewards offered them. These folks have been faced with many options, most likely, and “quit” all but those they knew they could conquer. To maintain tangental, medocre projects that you aren’t really leaning into is to suck the life from your ability to rise to the top.

• In your web project, do you have parts that dead-end, with little chance of making you the best in your industry?
• Are there areas you should focus on in hopes of reaching the other side of the dip, joining the elite players of your business?
• Are you ready to sort those out, focus on the ones that matter and discard the rest?

If so, let’s do it, systematically, and determine which are the real “dips” you’re facing - and which are the cul-de-sacs. I’m going to be doing it, too.

One of the most promenant “dips” faced by my clients is the one encountered during testing. It’s excrutiating to wait for research or a/b split results. It’s often unpleasent to learn that what your intuition told you about a products’ opportunity doesn’t bear out. This process is the dip. It’s not easy, it’s not fast. To quit within this period is to throw out the essence of “Finding the Sweet Spot.” - all is lost.

To learn which opportunities are dead-ends and which are just dips to be crossed is a skill posessed only by the best.

Which is the winning strategy?

Not only should my potential clients ask them these questions - but so should I. Each entrepreneur or company I encounter piles a new set of ideas and projects on the table - each with their own profiles, opportunities, closeness to the goal. And I also plot my business’ interest in those goals, choosing clients as they choose me, based on what they lean into, and what they quit.

So, I am going to be isolating the cul-de-sacs in my business. There are parts that shouldn’t be taking my time or energy. Others need more. I could be doing much more in Social Search Marketing if I wasn’t dealing with certain technical hassles related to areas of my business that simply shouldn’t exist. I am already listed in Seth’s roster of quitters, and now … I’m doing some more of it.

What are the areas I want to be the best in the world? Where should I simply quit? Where am I providing “average” service, and where am I extrodinary? Lots of big questions that I think will push my firm ahead. Your ideas and suggestions are always appreciated.

“What are we looking for?” Â
  … “we need some quitters!”Â
“Yes… yes, but how do we get them???”

Seth Godin, my favorite author by far, just published a list of quitters (people who have quit one path and shifted to another, and found even more success) that includes people you’ll recognize, such as Jeff Foxworthy, Tom Peters, Bill Gates, me.  WTF? Well, I left the Silicon Valley scene for Kentucky and it was just wierd enough I guess.  But the escape from the cubicle-rut let me do what I love in such a beautiful place… and to get really good at it.”

“I was working cubicles in the Silicon Valley, working on software that would never see the light of day, for people who didn’t care one way or another. I worked with great people, but we all sort of did the work for academic reasons… preparing ourselves for something later.  The pattern was always the same. New manager. Corporate Offsite. New vision statement on coffee mug. Lots of coding.  Late nighters. Project changes. Ship, dilution, or cancellation. Bug fixing. Is anyone using product? Does anyone like it? Repeat.”

….I quit that, and now do this.

But Seth is asking people to look inside for a path that suits them. I’ve heard many times that you should “do what you love and the money will follow.” I think Seth is saying that you should “cut your losses” quickly and find the groove you belong in. It’s not a defeat to quit. It’s not the end of the world, and you are not going to shrivel and die. It’s like testing on the web a bit. You are probably NOT going to get it right the first time. You will have to observe what is happening around you, you’ll need to make a call. But make it. Get out from under the losing situations and try until you get it right.Â

I find the story is told in Pink Floyd’s “Time”:

Tired of lying in the sunshine staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long and there is time to kill today
And then one day you find ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run, you missed the starting gun And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but its sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
The sun is the same in the relative way, but youre older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death Every year is getting shorter, never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the english way
The time is gone, the song is over, thought Id something more to say…..(Dark Side of the Moon - Pink Floyd)

The fun thing about was thinking back about some of the engineering grunt work that I did starting my career as Steve talks about his own. Woz starts by discussing his work on the MOS6502 processor (I wrote assembly language for that processor, like he did) and then talking about squeezing insane amounts of power out of small, compact chips (Some of my career was doing this too.) He talked a lot about the Apple II and IIc, which I never owned. I took the Color Computer Route (TRS-80) in High School as the Apples were simply too expensive for me.

Woz’s book gets surprisingly personal, also - he talks about his marital difficulties and quite a bit about how he struggled personally with life.

I enjoyed every bit of it, and strongly recommend the book. I’m looking forward to seeing Steve speak at the Idea Festival this fall.