Servant of Chaos

How to Grow Big, Better

Like many bloggers I daily receive emails pitching various products or services. Strangely enough, many are about debt and finance (it seems my "blog debt" category is a sticky search term) -- but occasionally an email will pique my interest. A while ago I received one such email about Michael Port's new book, Beyond Booked Solid. Not only was it a well written email, it was actually on a topic close to my area of interest, so I accepted an advance copy of the manuscript to review.

One of the things that I liked about Beyond Booked Solid was that it is not about the theory of business building. Sure, there are plenty of abstract ideas there -- but they are presented as building blocks that can be applied to your business. This book, for example, builds upon Michael's first book, Book Yourself Solid, which is a how-to guide for marketing your small business. But what happens after you are successful? How do you keep growing? How do you start to grow big, better?

Having worked with some large enterprise companies with responsibility for organisational change, I was pleasantly surprised to find Michael has taken proven enterprise best practices and reframed them for the small business. Not only does he provide the context for the changes that you need to make in your business, he provides you with downloadable workbooks and a series of thought provoking questions that help you understand the current state of your business. And while your business' organic growth may have sprouted a series of unusual (but now entrenched systems), the book explains the importance of standardising your processes, aligning your strategies and automating your systems -- to help you grow your business in a way that works for YOU.

I dare say that the lessons from this book may challenge many a business owner. But for those who are looking to work smarter rather than harder, reading it could well turn out to be the best business investment you make. You can buy Beyond Booked Solid here.

A Slow Start to '08

This year has started in a very different way for me than last year. As some of my longer term readers will remember, there were quite a few dramas and a few surprises at the time. Not only did I come to a new understanding of the value of life, but also the importance of family, the generosity of friends and the need to focus on creating lasting, beneficial change in a circle that is as wide as you can imagine.

This year, I took time out from all things digital to reflect on a dramatic year. I spent time with mostly with my family, but was also thinking about my friends, colleagues and those who made a big difference to my life over the past year. I responded to only a handful of emails and my most adventurous/creative effort was to pull together this Animoto to present to my family. I wanted to find a way to show how different 2008 was to 2007 ... and to remind us all to focus on the future, not to dwell on the past.

And as 2008 began, I held back from posting here. I didn't login to Twitter. I frugally checked Facebook. I held back from social media in all its forms. I chose to read instead. I read the blogs of my friends of those I admire. I discovered new, worthy, brilliant blogs (and will post links soon). I read books like Joe Jaffe's excellent Join the Conversation, John Grant's The Brand Innovation Manifesto and Ian Jones' Ned Kelly (I am sure there is a joke in there somewhere -- brands and highway robbers). I thought, read and remembered.

2008 promises to be a year of change and a year of connections ... and I hope, happiness. As Lewis Green's new book Lead with Your Heart discusses, happiness comes from a type of service -- to our families, friends, businesses, ourselves and our world. Lewis links the bottom line with doing good ... and it FEELS like the right time for such an approach. For me, the cross-over between work and play, between profession and passion, and profit and generosity fills me with happiness. I am never more excited than when I bring two different areas together, be they people, ideas, causes or businesses.

My story for 2008 will be built around this. What we started with The Age of Conversation in 2007 we will continue and grow in 2008. Lookout for another ground breaking collaborative publication this year, a meetup of epic proportions and a raft of ideas, commentary and connections on social media, branding and digital storytelling. While it has been a slow start for me, I can feel the pace, beat and energy already starting to build. Peace to all my readers and friends this 2008!

What's on top of your fridge?

On Top of the Fridge
Originally uploaded by birdw0rks.

You know eBooks and publishing has been on my mind quite a bit lately ... and I stumbled upon this rather cool site. You will see why it struck a chord ... it is a promotional site for a book -- and the site itself tells a great story about the need to create a website and get your message across in a unique way. Oh, and not spend a million dollars ...

Now, I saw this a few days ago ... actually it could have been longer, but you know what it is like in the blogosphere -- things come and go so quickly! If I remember rightly, I first saw this site by following a link from Lewis' blog over to Seth's blog ... but then I forgot about it -- not because it wasn't interesting or even remarkable, but mostly because I thought that Seth had it covered. But then, tonight, I stumbled on it again and remembered that this was, indeed, an interesting approach ... but more importantly, I wanted to blog about it because I may want to remember it again in the future ... and it is much better for me to leave my ideas here than on the top of my fridge.

Where's the Loot?

giddy girlie dotcom
Originally uploaded by giddygirlie.

Remember the dotcom boom? It was a giddy time of energy, ideas and technology for its own sake. There was not a business model to be seen (or very few), and the gold-rush style staking of domain names was big business.

In Australia (as in many parts of the world) there were vast sums of money made and lost. An old buddy of mine, Grant Butler, spent some time documenting the rise and fall of the dotcom era in Australia in a book called "Where's the Loot". And while some of the events and personalities have slipped from our memories, there are some salient lessons that could easily applied to the current technology/business world (especially in the mobile space from what I have seen).

The book has now been made available as a free download. If you feel like a walk down amnesia lane, or simply want to learn what NOT to do this time around ... check it out here.

Citizen Marketers

I love these neat little web tools that generate pictures. I saw this over at Russell Davies' blog and thought it was PERFECT for the MarketingProfs Book Club. I KNOW I have already raved about it ... but this fun little tool was too good to pass up.

Check it out!

Image Counts

Sometimes the best strategy does not win. Sometimes, no matter how much work you do or how much thinking you put into a project or pitch, the results just don't come to you. The question is not what you missed, but what was your customer expecting that you did not deliver.

Mike Wagner from Own Your Own Brand has a great post on the linkage between teaching and brands that got me thinking. It reminded me of a couple of things in my own life. In my university days  I was certain my career would be in directing theatre or film. I remember directing a play and noticing the difference in the style, presentation and effectiveness of the performances based on how I dressed. When I dressed in a blazer the performance was better than when I turned up in ripped jeans. After a couple of bad performances, I just decided to dress "up", more conservatively, and more obviously attentive to my appearance. I must say that the changes were remarkable.

It was pretty clear to me that if I wanted to achieve a high level of team performance, I needed to dress a certain way. This, in itself, was quite strange -- as the work we were performing was considered avant-garde, non-conventional and self-consciously artistic. But the more that the performers were pushed, the greater was their need for a solid and dependable base (which was me). And the more conservatively I dressed, the better the performance was. The troupe and I were building an unspoken, but deep trust.

When it comes to brands, sometimes your clients are the ones who need YOU to look the part. They need to be able to trust in your approach and your reliability -- especially when you are pushing their brand to its creative limits. Remember, it is not about YOU, it is about delivering the results for your clients. But equally, sometimes, it is about making your clients feel comfortable with you and your approach. It is a matter of trust.

S.

Laws of Lifetime Growth

Sometimes it helps to be reminded of the need to be gracious. And what strikes me about the laws of lifetime growth (as summarised by John Moore over at Brand Autopsy) is that the laws emphasise the need for grace -- they challenge us to see the bigger picture, to out-think a situation or problem and to focus on innovation as an extension of our own personal development.

And while there is nothing earth shattering in the list, the challenge as always is about how you go about implementing these things in a meaningful way. But the best thing about this post, is that it led me to the Dig Tank. I particularly like the Business Brick Yard and some of the practical things that we can do to make our customer's experience of us better. Oh, isn't that marketing? No, it is Law 2 -- "Always make your learning greater than your experience."

S.

A Eureka Moment

So he has finally done it! Noel has his own blog, and is posting copies of his creative writing ... all downloadable for free. Check out the first instalment -- The Death and Life of Eureka O'Reilly.

The Secret

Travelling always makes me quiver. There is something profoundly existentially unsettling in moving across borders.

So as I am perusing the book shelves at the airport, I am naturally attracted to a book with familiarity. But it is not just familiarity, it is an empathy with the writing of the author that I am attracted to.

Eva Hoffman's The Secret was a book I had never even heard about. Whenever I am in a bookshop I always look for her work, usually finding only copies of books I already have. So this came as a surprise.

I am still reading through it from the hotel room and have deduced already some of the plot. But is that a problem? It is not the story that holds me, it is the manner of its telling.

Eva Hoffman's stories generate organically from a deep sense of personal history. The narrative she follows forms points of collision - where real and imagined histories coincide with her story. It is this depth, this layering, that makes her writing so compelling.

Again, I return to the primacy of narrative. Without the story, we have nothing to say. When we meet someone, we tell them our story (about our life, work, family) so that they can come to some knowledge of "us". What is your story? Can you tell it well? I think there is a secret to storytelling and it has something to do with authenticity. More to come on this!

S.