Business

Every once in a while, you come across a blog post that makes you fall out of your chair. On this Friday morning, I think I've found the best blog post I've read all year. So, I'm reposting it here.

Thanks Jonathan.  read more »

After a couple of weeks of preparation, I'm happy to annouce that starting August 1st, 2007, I'll be joining Crowd Favorite full-time.

This is a very exciting move for me. I've known Alex for over three years now, but haven't had the opportunity to work with him until now. I'll also be joining Eric, who started at Crowd Favorite a few months back.

I expect to be a very good kind of busy in the coming months.

I found this excellent Business 2.0 article via Lifehacker during my morning reading.  I don't normally like to link articles like this, but this one is truly exceptional.  If you're wavering on starting a company, check out the stories in the article after the jump. 5 ways to start a company (without quitting your day job) via Lifehacker

I've been watching several feeds I set up on the web about relationships.  I started with ICERocket and Newsvine feeds and the topics that have come across the wire are hilarious.  Everything from "How to make a Sex Tape" to "Consolidate Loans" has come through.  I'm convinced I'm missing something here. I think the missing piece is that the word "Relationship" is too broad.  With Google returning 732 million results, the enormity of this topic is definitely confirmed.  In fact, it's very interesting that the top 15 results for relationship are about romantic relationships.  It's not until the 16th result that business relationships come into the picture with a link to Salesforce.com.  In starting to blog about relationships, I now realize that I was assuming that relationships were 99% non-romantic.  If the Google results are any indication, this shows a HUGE deficit in knowledge about non-romantic relationships. So, I am going to officially define what I think of as a romantic and non-romantic relationship.  I am guessing that there are further types of non-romantic relationships, but we'll start here first. Romantic relationships are obviously with someone you are romantically involved with.  I best understand this as a relationship that includes a sexual component.  I know that sounds rather clinical, but there you go.  Normally, I'd assume only one person can fill this role at a single time.  What makes a romantic relationship interesting is that it gets the lions share of attention in our lives.  I probably spend at least 40 to 50% of my relationship effort on my wife.  I consider that time very well spent, but the fact that the minority receives a large portion of my attention is definitely interesting. Non-Romantic relationships are relationships that lack a sexual component.  Friends, co-workers, family all fall into this category.  I would say that I spend the other 50 to 60% of my relationship effort with this group.  I'm not sure I know the exact size of this group either.  My outlook contact list is about 130 individuals.  However, this includes a variety of distant family members that I may talk to only once or twice a year.  A better estimate might be around 80 to 90 individuals I connect with on a normal basis. What surprises me here is the imbalence of relationship effort to the type of relationship.  Now, if I broke down my non-romantic relationships even further, different types emerge here as well.  I would classify some friends as "Close Friends".  Of course "Family" would be a group here as well.  However, a certain effort level is applied to each of these groups as well.  As I move down the line, I spend much less effort on keeping up with distant family members rather than close family members.  Thus, I think it's safe to say that not all non-romantic relationships are equal either.  In fact, there is even an order to the amount of relationship effort spent on non-romantic relationships. Wow, my brain is spinning with this.  I'm a visual thinker, so here's a chart of how I'm visualizing this: If you apply all the long tail hype of late to this graph, some interesting things stand out.  First off, this completely validates the MonkeySphere(link 1, link 2) principle.   read more »

Do slimy salespeople turn you off?  If they do, that slimy salesperson forgot to read about how selling is all about relationships.  Tom Peters released a ChangeThis manifesto addressed directly at all those sleazy salespeople.  It's titled "111 Ridiculously Obvious Thoughts on Selling". Tom keeps the bar for ChangeThis manifesto's high with many excellent thoughts on sales and relationships.  Here's a few of my favorites: 7. The best relationships are often (usually?) not “top to top”! (Often the best: hungry divisionGMs eager to make a mark.) 8. IT’S RELATIONSHIPS, STUPID—DEEP AND FROM MULTIPLE FUNCTIONS. 10. Relationships from within our firm are as important—often more important—as those from outside—again broad is as important as deep. Allies—avid supporters!—within and from non-obvious places may be more important than relationships at the Client organization. Goal: an “insanely unfair ‘market share’” of insiders’ time devoted to your projects! 17. WOMEN ARE SIMPLY BETTER AT RELATIONSHIPS—don’t get hung up—particularlyin tech firms—on what industries-countries “women can’t do.” (Or some such bullshit.) 57. Never forget the “Law of Cousins!” In developing nations in particular, power brokers at all levels are at least cousins! Consideration for a second cousin can pay off big time. 60. REPEAT: HE/SHE WHO HAS THE MOST-BEST RELATIONSHIPS WINS.RELATIONSHIPS ARE THE ESSENCE OF THE WORK OF THE SALESPERSON. THEHARD ... AND LONG ... WORK OF THE SALESPERSON. 66. Be hyper-organized about relationship management—you are in the anthropology business. Study the great pols! Brilliant NRM (network relationship management) is not accidental! It is not catch-as-catch can. (Football analogies are cute—but deep political understanding pays the private-school tuition.) 67. Think/obsess on ROIR (Return On Investment In Relationships). 73. Listen up: “It was much later that I realized Dad’s secret. He gained respect by giving it. He talked and listened to the fourth-grade kids in Spring Valley who shined shoes the same way he talked and listened to a bishop or a college president. He was seriously interestedin who you were and what you had to say.”—Sara Lawrence-Lightfoot, Respect.(I.e., Respect is Cool.) 82. Shit happens. That’s what they pay you for. 86. GOAL #1: MAKE YOUR CLIENT A HERO—YOU ARE NOT THERE TO GET CREDIT.(“Taking credit” is for ego-maniacs. And losers.) 97. It takes time to get to know people. (DUH.) 105. Become a student! Yes, you can study Relationship Building. So, study … Technorati Tags: changethis, relationships, sales, selling, tom peters    read more »

Alex King's FeedLounge service announced it will enter public BETA on January 16, 2006! This is exciting news and I wish Alex and Scott the best.

I met a very nice guy today over at Business Pundit. He's trying to leverage the blogosphere to build a business and needs a PHP programmer! We linked up and it looks like we may end up working together. This is great news and dovetails nicely with other ideas I've had recently. If this is something that interests you, please go register over at http://www.thebusinessexperiment.com/. There's a limited number of people getting involved, and registrations are closing fast.

Seth Godin just put up a hilarious post about what he learned at Summer Camp. Seth is an author, entrepreneur and agent of change. You can find his blog here. My friend Tim dropped me a note, asking me if I had any tips as to where he might go to improve his public speaking. I was flattered that he asked, and then took a minute to think about where I learned how to speak in public. Answer?  Camp Arowhon. Wait, there's more. I also learned marketing there.  read more »

When it comes to relationships, it can feel like you are traversing a minefield at times.  But, who created those mines?   Usually, by the time I realize that the apprehension I start to feel from a relationship comes only from me, I've missed a golden opportunity. Keith Ferrazzi makes some excellent points about this topic in a recent blog post.  Keith wrote a book titled "Never Eat Alone - and other secrets to success, one relationship at a time". I believe that relationships are a fundamental key to success.  I can't count the number of people I've met, then let slip from my address book.  Does a system exist to track your communications with friends, the emails you send, the phone conversations you have?  The closest thing I've found is a CRM system, but I think that is geared too much towards driving the relationship into a profit-making sale.  Who knows, this might be a great opportunity for some home grown code in the future.

This week's Carnival of the Capitalists is up at A Penny For....