May 2013
19 posts
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“‘This might not work’ is either a curse, something that you labor...”
– ~ Out on a Limb
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“I treat everything like I’m the CEO of my life. CEOs have boards of directors...”
– ~ Harper Reed, Chief Technology Officer for Obama for America during the 2012 election (previously, Threadless), in an excerpt from the book Don’t go back to school: a handbook on learning anything.
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Fast Company's 100 Most Creative People in... →
1. Talk to creative people at random
“This method has a pretty high noise to signal ratio, but it’s very enjoyable. I’ll spend two hours talking to a doctor about neurosurgery or about processes in emergency rooms. You learn a lot, and you’ll go: ‘This is the coolest thing ever and I don’t know how its useful to me.’”
2. Ask questions
“In one out of every five of those conversations, something...
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Wendy Lea, of Get Satisfaction, on her addiction... →
Wendy Lea, the chief executive of a customer experience start-up.
Q. When did the entrepreneurial drive kick in for you?
A. I worked for some big companies early on, and then I worked for an entrepreneur in my early 30s, and I got the disease. It’s almost an addiction.
Q. I’ve heard others describe it the same way.
A. I can’t speak for others, but this disease for me is a combination of...
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What's really worth stealing from Kickstarter
austinkleon:
Share your process freely—before what you’re working on is done.
Collect emails.
Email people when your thing is ready to buy.
Rinse and repeat.
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“If somebody has talent and good people skills and drive, I think you can stretch...”
– “When I Hire You, I’m Hiring Your Mentor’s Judgement” - NYTimes’ The Corner Office series
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“You could actually recommend this as therapy to someone who was really in...”
– An ‘Orgiastic’ Gatsby? Of Course - NYTimes
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“#33. The goal of many leaders is to get people to think highly of the leader....”
– One of the 100 lessons/wisdom bits on Zig Ziglar’s list “What I Learned on My Way to the Top.”
My dad just emailed it to me, and I’m going to start posting some of the best tidbits. If you want me to forward you a copy, email me bri.garcia7 at gmail dot com
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What Are Your Skills? Ask the Universe to Exploit...
We all want more of something. Sadly for a lot of us, and I don’t exclude myself from this grouping, this More can fall under the Stuff category. We want more money, clothes, gourmet meals, VIP experiences, friends with noteworthy titles, and the list could go on. I find myself lusting after the wardrobes of complete strangers, envying from afar the travel experiences of my peers and wishing...
April 2013
15 posts
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“A’s hire A’s and B’s hire C’s.”
– Golden nugget from my boss.
When a company grows, the quality of people brought on board quickly makes apparent the founders’ quality of character/tenacity/confidence.
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6 ways money *can* buy happiness: →
2. Spend Money on Fundamental Feelings
If money isn’t making us happy, it’s likely because we are spending it to keep up with the neighbors, validate our wealth, or flaunt our looks, power, and status. The problem, then, isn’t in the money but in how we use it. Perhaps the most direct and most reliable way to maximize the happiness and fulfillment that we can extract from money is through...
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To Be a Great Leader, Don't Be a Genius; Be a... →
There’s a misconception that the most successful business leaders achieve greatness because they’re insanely smart—geniuses, even.
But the truth is different. Most highly successful leaders really aren’t the smartest people in any room. Rather, they have something that sets them apart. That something is sponge and stone. I’d argue that for any entrepreneur or leader, sponge and stone is the...
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Curiosity is an Incredibly Powerful Motivator →
Curiosity arises when attention becomes focused on a gap in one’s knowledge. Such information gaps produce the feeling of deprivation labeled curiosity. The curious individual is motivated to obtain the missing information to reduce or eliminate the feeling of deprivation.
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We’re not curious about something we know absolutely nothing about. But as soon as we know even a little bit, our...
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Companies that Practice "Conscious Capitalism"... →
Even today, “conscious” and “capitalism” remain unlikely bedfellows. Both are freighted words that have come to stand for fundamentally different worldviews. Capitalism is associated with individualism, personal ambition, the accumulation of wealth and power, and an identity grounded in external accomplishment. The word conscious, or more specifically consciousness, is...
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Stop working (so hard) →
The Hustle™ is bullshit, and a poor way to accomplish anything of lasting value.
There’s a pervasive and toxic way of thinking ‘round these parts that you’ve gotta out-hustle your competitors; that you have to pull all-nighters and throw away weekends to ship that new feature; that, by working double- or triple-time, you’ll execute better and pull ahead of the pack.
Nope.
Nowadays, I’m working...
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March 2013
12 posts
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“Money is cheap. I mean, there’s a lot of it—trillions upon trillions of...”
– From “What are the top 10 things we should be informed about, in life?” on Quora.
This answer is one of the best I’ve ever read, and every single one points out something true (at least true in the sense that it deeply resonates with me). This one is worth reading and then...
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How Spanx Came to Be: A Girl Was Allowed to Sit... →
“I think recreationally! I have periods of time where I turn off my TV and sit on my couch and I think.” This habit has bred a confidence in her own ideas, and is a clear indication of the independent spirit that powers Sara’s work. She doesn’t need others to validate what she knows to be true; she just does it, knowing that any failures will eventually improve her efforts in a way that...
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Bonobos, branding and ecommerce →
Bonobos used to spend more on online marketing — particularly social — but it just didn’t scale. It wasn’t getting them their best customers either. The best customers spend $300 in their first orders and repeat shop, and they almost never came through display ads. In an attempt to get off the “growth crack,” he’s cut marketing from 30 percent of net revenues in 2011, to below 20 percent in...
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“Some people know at 16 what sort of work they’re going to do, but in most...”
– Revisiting “Cities and Ambition” - Paul Graham on his blog.
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“We systematically overestimate the value of access to information and...”
– Clay Shirky via SwissMiss’s SWSW Keynote
Perhaps the greatest upside of the internet is not the low barrier to information but the low barrier and increased returns to, from and for each other.
#warmandfuzzy
(via loyalcx)
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Ditching Ambitions of Inbox Zero
I rarely find the inspiration to write anymore. I could blame this void on a number of things: being soooooo busy, working a lot, tiredness, even laziness. But if I want to be honest, I can attribute my lack of dedication to one culprit: the almighty e-mail.
I spend so much of my day crafting delicately worded emails and responding to e-mail chains that when it comes time to use my right brain to...
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Why Are We So Obsessed with Authenticity? →
What we get in an “authentic” cultural product is still a simulacrum.
…The middle-class admiration for authenticity is predicated on the patronising condition that the little man shouldn’t get too big for his boots.
…The authenticity-obsessed want something to be real, but they’re on a hair trigger to cry foul if it seems too real to be true.
The cult of authenticity, in other...
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Condé Nast Invests in e-Commerce →
Condé Nast lads $20MM investment in e-commerce site Farfetch.com.
Farfetch, founded by Mr. Neves in 2008, puts its e-customers in touch with 250 boutiques globally, seeing itself as a curator of the 82,000 chosen products. It said that its 150,000 customers in 140 countries spent $680 on average per order.
Note: would be interesting to see comparison of number of Farfetch customers vs number...
February 2013
10 posts
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Commerce technology is a massive oppportunity (and... →
As compared to other large trillion dollar industries, ecommerce is only the sector expected to grow at a double-digit growth rate.
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1. There are significant portions of the ecommerce technology value chain that are still unsolved by startups or legacy vendors.
We talk to hundreds of CMOs a year and they outline for us the set of challenges and opportunities for which they would love...
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Who's Selling Out Who at the Fashion Circus? →
But if blogging really wants to take itself seriously (forget others taking it seriously), it needs to do something beyond serve as a mirror that’s too often pointed at the author. Menkes and Horyn have taste, but they also have a breadth of knowledge and sense of historicism that too many bloggers lack and don’t seem to have the curiosity to discover. Bloggers are doing the Industry a...
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Branding ≠ applied to a product, considerate... →
pieratt:
The idea of selling a brand independently of a product is somewhat new, and a bit jarring, so I thought it’d be useful to clarify my thinking a bit:
…there’s no reason designers shouldn’t be able to create designed product packages, and then sell them to entrepreneurs.
All of this stems from some larger thoughts I have about the false-walls we’ve put up about what can be sold...
