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fritalci · 8 years ago

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(Mostly) Quitting Facebook

Being off of Facebook feels awesome, but completely disappearing from it would be socially unsustainable. Turns out there’s a way to quit the worst parts while keeping the good.

I recently started a quest to see if I could keep the good parts of Facebook without suffering the bad. Below is a system of hacks, mostly done with technology, that has freed my attention without requiring me to completely quit Facebook.

For the most part, what I dislike the most about Facebook is the news feed. Let’s be clear; the Facebook news feed is designed primarily for the benefit of Facebook’s ad sales department. The more time they suck my attention into the news feed, the more chances they have of getting me to click on an ad. Plenty of others have expounded on the vices and virtues of the newsfeed, so I won’t get into them. But suffice it to say that the news feed is a net negative for me.

If you want to get to the “How To”, scroll about halfway down to see how I quit Facebook.

I didn’t want to just completely quit Facebook altogether. It actually has some great parts that make my life better. Here is what I wanted to keep.

First and foremost is the calendar. Between friends who organize gatherings on it to discovering events in my community, it’s actually a great calendar. Facebook does a fantastic job of showing me events that I might be interested in. It actually saves me time by presenting events that are either similar to those I’ve gone to in the past or events that my like-minded friends have signed up for.

Next is my friends’ status updates. “Wait, I thought you didn’t like the news feed” you might be thinking. To be clear, I care about my close friends and family. What I don’t care about is Buzzfeed’s mindless dribble, an ad trying to sell me useless junk, and the midnight musings of someone from high school who I haven’t talked to since I last wore JNCO jeans. While I dislike the newsfeed, I LOVE visiting my friends’ Facebook walls. My best friend from college and her husband had a kid last year and I love visiting their Facebook walls to see photos. My close friends are traveling the world, growing businesses, experiencing the highs and lows of relationships, and otherwise experiencing real life. I love that Facebook gives me the opportunity to see their updates and post comments. But I’d rather directly visit their walls than scrolling the newsfeed and sort the wheat from the chaff.

Facebook Messenger is also great. Granted I have a few other chat apps, but nearly everyone I know is on Messenger and it makes communicating easier.

Ad Manager. As a marketing freelancer and now a small business owner I depend on Facebook for my livelihood. I don’t want to have two Facebook accounts just for the sake of managing ads.

How To Quit Facebook

So the goal is mainly to eliminate the Facebook News Feed.

Quitting the Facebook News Feed is pretty easy on my computer. I installed News Feed Eradicator into Chrome. Now, when I’m on Facebook, I don’t see the news feed. But if I visit a friend’s Facebook wall, I can still see their updates.

My cell phone is where things got tricky. While I don’t have the app installed I can still visit it via my phone’s browser. To get around this, I hacked my password. I use Lastpass password manager to manage all of my passwords. It’s a program that stores my passwords for each of the websites that I use. I used Lastpass to change my password on Facebook so that I don’t actually know it.

Next, I visited Facebook on my phone’s browser and logged out. Because my password has been changed I now need to fish out the password from Lastpass and type it into the browser. That small inconvenience is enough to keep me from logging into Facebook on my phone. Yes, I can still technically get into Facebook on my phone, but now it’s a somewhat convoluted process. Just as one-click buying has helped Amazon make a ton of money, multi-click logging in has helped me cut back on Facebook.

Finally, I installed Facebook’s events app. This app has all of the same functions as the events tab on Facebook. This was actually the final straw that allowed me to quit using Facebook in my phone’s browser.

Facebook messenger is only accessible on my phone via the app, which I’d already installed. But it’s worth noting for the sake of being comprehensive.

FAQs

Why not just unfollow people and edit your newsfeed?

Too much work. I wanted something that would be quick and easy. This gets the job done with about 20 minutes of work.

Remembering to check people’s walls to see their status updates sounds like a lot of work. Don’t you forget about people?

I don’t like the idea of my relationships being maintained by accidental awareness. I prefer to think of myself as someone who knows what’s going on in the lives of his friends and family because he reaches out.

What about your loose relationships? The people you want to keep in touch with on an occasional basis who aren’t always top of mind.

It’s a great question and unfortunately, I don’t have a good answer for this.

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fritalci · 8 years ago

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Meditation

I initially got into meditation because of severe pain in my back that was not responding to traditional treatment. I went to a pain specialist center where they threw the book at me. One of my specialists was an MD who studies the relationship between meditation and pain. Who knew? Anyway, I found that along with the mental relaxation, my muscles relaxed and I had way less pain. I used to only be able to run 5 miles, after which my leg muscles would get super tight and my knee would be in crazy amounts of pain. Now I can do marathons and century rides like they’re no big thing.

I’ll be the first to admit that I’m pretty skeptical. I work in marketing and my focus is data analytics, so I pride myself on knowing what’s really going on. But with meditation, I’ve had to suspend all disbelief. It works. Why does it work? I have no idea. I also don’t know why 5-year aged Gouda tastes like something that fell from heaven, but that doesn’t stop me from enjoying the heck out of it.

My major takeaway from meditation has been this idea that much like a rested body is best ready to compete, a rested mind is better than an overworked one. Our minds can go on autopilot and just think all day and it actually takes some work to get the brain to just chill out. From meditation, I’ve gathered a sense of peace. It’s not happiness. Happiness is different from this. This is more just a general ease. It’s a lack of pain more than it is an addition of joy.

Here’s how I do it.

Move to a quiet room where there are no distractions. Especially important is no ticking clock. Close the doors and windows so that you eliminate as much noise as possible.

Put your phone on airplane mode and put it in front of you on a desk or somewhere that you can easily see it without moving. Set the stopwatch (not the timer) so that you can occasionally open your eyes to see how much time is passed. You don’t want to use a timer because your subconscious will nervously await the bell going off, which will defeat the relaxing effect you’re trying to achieve.

Sit in a non-reclining chair with you back against the back of the chair, your feet firmly on the ground, and your palms touching your quads. This should be a position that you can hold without actually contracting any muscles.

Turn the stopwatch on and close your eyes.

Choose a mantra to repeat in your head. It can be anything. Mine is Chateauneuf du Pape. I chose it because it’s a word that doesn’t actually have any meaning (other than the name of the wine) and I don’t have any associations with it. It’s just a noisy word for me.

Here’s the fun part. While you say your mantra inside your head, your imagination is going to start filling your conscious with ideas. That’s ok. Your task is to simply refocus your attention on the mantra. Think of this like doing reps. You’d never expect to walk into a gym, put on gym clothes, and then immediately be fit. No, you’d do a bajillion reps. Meditation is the same. Each time your attention wanders to your imagination, you gently bring it back to your mantra. Emphasis on the gently. If you get upset at yourself, you’re going to cause stress hormones to release. No bueno. The goal of meditation is to get good at quickly and gently bringing your attention to the quiet and peace.

Say your mantra inside your head over and over, notice your attention wandering, bring it back to emptiness and your mantra. Even though I’ve been meditating for years, I find that in the first 5 to 10 minutes of meditation my mind constantly wanders. I feel like I’ve learned absolutely nothing over the years. That’s ok. Your mind has spent over 20 years filling itself with things to pay attention to. That’s what it is good at. Human brains are good at alerting us to danger (watch out, there’s a saber tooth tiger behind that bush) so that we don’t die. Fortunately, there are very few real-life dangers (or sabertooth tigers) that are going to get us. But our brains don’t know that. So it invents stories and replays past experiences because that’s what it is good at. You are now teaching it to do the opposite of both what it was made for and what it has spent years practicing. This is going to take time. I often find that it’s only in the last few minutes of each session that I’m able to actually feel any progress or difference.

After 15 minutes, open your eyes. If you’re not sure of how much time has passed, gently open your eyes a little and glance down at your stopwatch. If you have more time to go, gently close your eyes again. This is why it’s helpful to have the stopwatch right in front of you and within easy reading distance. You want to do as little work as possible to be able to read it.

Here are some helpful realizations that I made along the way

The doing is the goal. Here’s what took me a few months to figure out. The goal of meditation is not to have an empty mind (or at least it’s not my goal). The goal is to notice your wandering mind, gently bring it back to stillness, and be at peace. It’s unrealistic to think that your mind is ever going to be completely empty. The goal is to be able to be the gentle master of your attention. Think of your approach as that of the old master sensei who is able to fight off attackers without breaking a sweat. He does it gently, but swiftly. There’s no fight, no struggle. It becomes easy. But he’s always swatting away the attackers. The attackers never stop. Our minds are the same. We’ll never stop having thoughts. But we can get to a place where we easily return to peace and internal quiet. Another analogy that might help is to think about the purpose of muscles. A strong muscle does reps. The stronger the muscle, the more reps you can do and the more weight you can do. Same thing with your mind. A centered and meditative mind is really good at finding the calm during a struggle much like a strong muscle is good at lifting a heavy weight. The goal is not to have nothing to lift. It’s to be able to lift the heavy weight with calm and ease.

It takes time. I took about three months of daily practice before I felt like I was getting the hang of it. During that time I felt like it wasn’t doing anything and it was a waste of time. I also had the hardest time getting my mind to just chill. It’s a lot like weight lifting. You won’t see the results or feel competent until you’ve done it many many times.

“This is where I am on my journey” - Similar to my first point, I’ve learned to accept whatever skill level I have with meditation (and other life skills, for that matter), is a function of how much work I’ve done to get there. I’m fairly impatient and want to be good at everything right away. But why should I be good at something that I just started? Much like how our athletic performance improves slowly over a long period of time, so too will your meditative practice. This has also helped me to become more accepting of other challenges in life.

I’ve also read a few books that bookend (pun totally intended) well with meditation.

Ego is the Enemy - Ryan Holiday - I think I’ve read it 5 times in the past year. It has helped me to focus on who I really am vs how I appear. That has been crucial in getting the monkey off of my back.

The Subtle Art of Not Giving a Fuck - Mark Manson - This was a serious gut check. It made me take a long hard look at some of my behaviors that I didn’t realize were unhealthy and destructive. It also helped me to let go.

Buddha’s Brain - Rick Hanson - Gets into the neuroscience of meditation. It helped me to accept meditation as being a real thing and not just some voodoo.

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fritalci · 8 years ago

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The Awesome Thing About Being Wrong

Most people who go through the traditional educational system in America follow a very particular way of learning.

First, we’re taught that there is a set, known ideal that we should aim for.

The all blessed A.

We then follow along with the lesson plan, do the prescribed homework, adhere to the rules, and take the test.

Though not overtly stated, the underlying message behind this is that there’s a process that we must learn and follow. Most everything has been figured out and we just have to perform the process. The quality and depth of our learning are measured by how well we perform that process.

What is overtly stated is that if we fall short, we will lose something. In the best of scenarios, it’s simply time that we’re required to spend in study hall. In the worst of scenarios, it’s a loss of confidence and a poor sense of self. If we intentionally experiment or try something different, we get sent to detention. “Stay in line and everything will be fine” is the message we hear. In the setting of a factory, this approach to learning makes sense.

But there’s a problem with that kind of learning.

First, it only works in stable environments like factories. Life is anything but a factory. Life is random and chaotic. And if you’re venturing into new territories, there’s few if any hard and fast rules.

Second, factory workers are the lowest paid, are paid less than the factory owners, and are fired whenever the factory owners can find a way of doing so.

Why does this matter?

For a while, the economy hummed along quite nicely following the factory method. We could more or less do the exact same thing every day because the world was pretty stable. What will tomorrow look like? Pretty much the same as what it looked like yesterday.

Other than a few cosmetic details, Life in 1955 looked the same as life in 1945.

But compare life in 2017 to life in 2007. Think of the huge changes in cultural norms, values, technology, economic forces, and political environments. Life today is anything but stable.

How we succeed tomorrow is going to look different from how it looked yesterday. Life is changing too fast.

What’s the alternative?

Discovery

Discoverers live at the intersection of the unknown and the experimental.

When people start their experiments, there are a ton of unknowns. Given the number of unknowns, most of their first experiments produce poor results.

They then hope that nobody noticed and that they can sweep the poor results under the rug.

BUT, there’s an important detail that I’ve only just recently begun to appreciate about those first few steps.

When they try their first experiment, they get some data. Perhaps it can be plotted on a chart.

At this point, they have no idea what this data means. It’s just data.

Then they run another experiment and get another data point.

Now they have two data points that they can compare. Maybe they can come up with a hypothesis about what made the difference. So they test the hypothesis and get another data point.

Hmmm… Looks like that hypothesis didn’t really change much from the first one. Whatever variable they changed in that third experiment didn’t change the outcome very much. The second hypothesis produced a better result than the third. So now they consider another variable and test a new hypothesis.

OK cool, we’re getting closer to the goal. More experiments, more data, and hopefully getting closer to the goal.

Here’s the thing that in all my life I’ve never heard anyone say or see anyone do.

Never have I ever seen anyone celebrate those first few data points. They’re seen as waste, as failures, as mistakes that need to be moved on from as fast as possible.

But hold up there partner, we’re missing something awesome about them.

They helped us figure out HOW and WHY we were wrong.

That is, they gave us something to start from that we could then compare our successive data points to.

The only way we could know the goodness of the variable we played with in experiment #2 is by comparing it to the variables we played with in experiment #1. Experiment #3’s variables can only be understood in relation to #1’s and #2’s.

As we experiment and gather more data, we learn HOW and WHY we were wrong. The only way we could know that was by having something to compare the data to.

When we’re in discovery mode, we NEED failures that we can compare against. Without all of the data points, we’d just have single points on the chart. One data point does not tell a story. It doesn’t give clues. It’s only when we compare data points that we can improve our hypotheses and experiments.

In the beginning, our goal should be to get data as fast as possible. It shouldn’t be to succeed. This is where the phrase “fail quickly” comes into play. Because we’re doing something new, there’s no playbook. There’s no teacher at the front of the classroom, no neatly organized and designed syllabus, no school board-approved textbook, and so on. Therefore we should have zero expectation of succeeding. Instead, we should expect to get data that we can learn from.

In a fast moving world of constant change, the value of knowledge has an expiration date. As the conditions change, what’s true one day might not be true the next. The opportunities we have today might be gone tomorrow. And the only way we can move forward is if we have a base to move forward from. That base is created when we get our first set of data. It informs our next actions.

In short, knowing HOW and WHY we’re wrong is what helps us figure out what will work.

Therefore, success depends on being wrong as quickly as possible.

I recently published the first draft of a book about how to rescue a failing Google Adwords account (Link if you’re interested) that I’ve been thinking about for a few years. The book is specifically for people who have underperforming Adwords accounts because the process only works if there’s data that I can study. How’s that for meta? Anyway. It’s the culmination of thousands of hours of professional experience and 171 hours and three minutes of writing and editing (yes, I used a time tracker). Despite all of my knowledge and experience and editing, I know that it’s far short of what it could be and what people need it to be.

The traditional factory school method would prescribe that I keep editing and improving it until it’s perfect and ready for publication.

But I don’t know what’s wrong with it. And the fastest way of finding out what’s wrong with it is to get it out there.

The response and likely criticism will simply be data that inform my edits.

Being wrong gives me the data that helps me be right.

Here’s to being wrong!

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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How to Find a Niche Online Business Opportunity

Hey digital nomad or aspiring digital nomad.

So, you want to come up with a muse business or product a la 4 Hour Work Week and you’re looking for a product idea?

Below is the process that I’ve either personally used or seen used by numerous startups and corporations. In the past 6 years, I’ve worked with startups that have raised over $24 million and I’ve personally managed $30 million in PPC spend (Google Adwords, Facebook ads, etc…). So I’ve seen a few things have worked and a few more that haven’t.

This will work for both FBA businesses as well as stand-alone e-commerce or education products.

If I were to look for a business that Tim Ferris would approve of, here’s what I’d do.

First, a warning.

The process I’ll describe below is simple and easy to do, but the emotional experience is HARD. You’re going to work really hard and wander around for an unknown amount of time. If you follow the process and are good at finding solutions to people’s problems, you WILL be successful. I’ve seen the pattern play out too many times to think otherwise. BUT and this BUT is HUGE, the emotional experience can be awful.You’re going into the unknown. You’re going to make mistakes and have plenty of learning experiences. The material below is a general guide. It is not a recipe. There are lots of small details that I cannot possibly write down because I’ve either forgotten that I know them or they only apply to edge cases. You’re going to have to figure out a fair amount on your own. If you keep at it, you WILL be successful. But it will take time and faith and hard work even when things seem to be going slowly. If you don’t have the emotional space to try and fail and try and fail and try and fail and try and fail, revisit this when you do.

OK intrepid explorer. If you’re ready to brave the unknown, let’s get started.

We want to start by finding people who spend a lot of money on things related to their business/job or their hobby. Emphasis on the “a lot”. The reason for this is that you want to find people who are accustomed to spending money related to either problems they regularly solve or pleasures they regularly create. People who already spend money are the easiest to sell to. In this document, I’ll use photographers and triathletes as my examples. Other examples might be boats, just about every sport you can imagine, and manual laborers like carpenters and plumbers. The criteria for finding the core thing is that at least one of the following describes the expense related to it:

1) The main thing itself is expensive. Cameras, bikes, boats, plumbing trucks, lawn mowers, etc… can all cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars.

2) Maintaining or repairing that main thing costs money. Boats need everything. Bikes need tires and tune-ups. So do plumbing trucks and professional-grade lawnmowers.

3) Using the thing coincides with spending money. Traveling to far off locations to take photos costs money. Racing a bicycle in triathlons costs money. Putting gas in a boat costs money.

4) There’s a world of accessories or upgrades. Camera lenses and editing software, bicycling jerseys and helmets, boat flags and dock fees, etc…

To find the people, you can take a few approaches.

First, you can email everyone you know and ask them if there’s an expensive thing either in their work or their hobbies that they spend a good chunk of change on. Or maybe there’s an activity that they regularly spend a lot of money on. Look for at least $1000 purchases. These can be one-time purchases (cameras and bikes) or throughout the year (high-quality paper and ink, entrance fees for races).

If you want to take a targeted approach, think of things that you know that your friends have purchased that were expensive. Recreation equipment like RVs, boats, dirtbikes, snowboards, etc… are good places. Business purchases can also be good. Lawn mowers, backhoes, copy machines, commercial refrigerators, etc… Send out targeted emails and ask if you can talk about those things with them.

When you talk with them, you’re going to look for one of a few things.

1) Can you tell me a story about expenses you regularly have related to those things?

a. Photographer: “I’ve broken a few lenses because I keep my camera in my backpack.”

b. Triathlete: “The best races sell out quickly and I often lose track of when registration starts. If I don’t sign up right away, I’m usually too late.”

2) Can you tell me a story about something you had to learn that was either time consuming or was plain old hard to learn?

a. Photographer: “There were so many variables to taking a good photo and I didn’t really understand how to put them all together.”

b. Triathlete: “Swimming was super hard to do. I could move forward and not sink, but learning how to swim correctly and well took me a while”

Alone, these stories are not enough to come up with a solution. We need more information. To get that additional information, we use two tools: “can you say more”, “can you tell me about a specific time when that happened”, variations on “why”, and “is there anything else about that that you dislike?”. Finally, when you’ve asked quite a few questions, ask them what they would have searched for a solution to the problem.

Broken Camera

You: “Can you tell me more about a specific time when your camera broke in your backpack?”

Them: “Yeah. I was hiking with friends in NH and I fell off of a log I was walking across.”

You: “Why did it break?”

Them: “It was in my bag and not in a case”

You: “Why was it not in a case?”

Them: Cases are usually super bulky and take up too much room in my backpack”

You: “Why do you prefer to put your camera in your backpack instead of a backpack made for cameras?”

Them: “I don’t want to buy a backpack just for hiking with my camera. Plus my backpack is made for hiking and camera backpacks suck for hiking”.

You: “What would you have searched for on Google to find a solution to this problem?”

Them: “Slim camera case that will fit in a hiking backpack”

Missed Race Registration

You: “Can you tell me more about a specific race that you missed out on registering for?”

Them: “Yeah, I was traveling for work and completely forgot about it”

You: “Why did you forget?”

Them: “I usually put it in my calendar, but I hadn’t put all of my races in my calendar yet.”

You: “Can you say more about putting races in your calendar?”

Them: “Well each race has a different starting time for registration. It’s like buying tickets for movies or concerts. So I have to put them in my calendar.”

You: “What else do you dislike about that experience?”

Them: “Even if I have it in my calendar, I might not be able to do it right when the registration opens. Sometimes they start at midnight. But I have kids and a job and I need my sleep. Other times I’m traveling and due to time zones I’ll be unavailable when the registration opens”

You: “What would you have searched for on Google to find a solution to this problem?”

Them: “Early marathon registration service”

Learning Photography

You: “Can you tell me a specific story of when you were taking photos and the variables were so confusing that you didn’t get the photos that you want?”

Them: “Yeah, I was traveling in Southeast Asia to all of these locations and I tried using the presets in the camera and they didn’t take good photos”

You: “Why did they not work for you?”

Them: “The settings were really general and so the exposures were not very good. I got a few good exposures, but then the composition was pretty bad”

You: “Why were you unhappy with the compositions?”

Them: “I didn’t really know how to put together the shot.”

You: “Did you try taking any travel photography classes?”

Them: “I’ve seen some, but I don’t want to spend hours and hours learning theory. I just want to take good photos. I took a short one and did what it told me, but the photos were still not very good. I just want to know the right composition and settings for each location”.

You: “What would you have searched for on Google to find a solution to this problem?”

Them: “travel photography recipes”

Triathlete Learning to Swim

You: “Can you tell me about when you were first learning to swim?”

Them: “Yeah. I took a swim class I kept crossing my arms across my line of sight”

You: “Can you say more about that? I don’t know what that means.”

Them: “So I’m supposed to reach my arms straight forward like referees do when someone kicks a field goal. Except my arms keep crossing inward so that my hand ends up in front of my face. My hand should be more to the outside”

You: “Why didn’t that happen?”

Them: “A couple of reasons. First, I didn’t have proper arm strength. The second was that my range of motion was limited. Finally, I just didn’t have proper awareness of where my hands were.”

You: “What would you have searched for on Google to find a solution to this problem?”

Them: “Swim posture back brace”

So now we have four search queries:

“Slim camera case that will fit in a hiking backpack”

“Early marathon registration service”

“Travel photography recipes”

“Swim posture back brace”

Now we go out and search on google for these solutions. We can also come up with other ways of expressing these ideas with different words. Google’s Adwords’ Keyword Planner can be useful there. Also look at the descriptions used by the solutions that you find.

As we search, we look for a few things.

1) Is anyone selling anything related to this?

a. We want to find solutions that are being sold. This is because we want to get into a world where someone else has validated that people want to pay for a solution. If nobody is selling anything, stay away. Let someone else waste the money to find out there’s no market. As the saying goes, “You know who the pioneers are because they’re the ones with the arrows in their backs”.

2) Are there only a handful of competitors?

a. We don’t want to get into a world where there is a ton of competition. We want to be in a business where we can just show up and we don’t have to be marketing rock stars. Evidence of this is either few sellers on Amazon, few brands on Amazon, or very few Google Ads. To be clear, some ads and competitors is a good sign. But too many will be a bad sign.

3) Have competitors made sales?

a. Past sales are great indicators that people are paying for solutions. Take a look at seller ratings or product ratings and see what the relationship is between # of reviews and amount of time. If a product only has two reviews in the past year, that might not be good. But if it’s getting a few per month, that’s better. More per month is always better.

4) Existing solutions are pretty simple.

a. We want to sell something that is easy to design and manufacture. If the solution requires solving hard or expensive design or construction challenges, then we’re going to get bogged down in either figuring out how to solve the problem or spending a ton of money for specialty manufacturing. We want something that just about any factory in the world can manufacture for cheap money.

5) Niche-able

a. Often you can do quite well by customizing a physical product or education product for a specific niche. Camera cases are good, but camera cases that will fit perfectly into Deuter-brand 55 L hiking backpacks are even better. Photography classes are good, but a collection of photography recipes for each of the tourist destinations in Laos is even better. Consider this if you see too much competition or if margins are too tight in the broader category.

Taking the results we find, we go back to the people we talked to and we ask them if they would buy the solutions we found. I don’t mean this in the theoretical. I mean ask them if they’ll buy it right now.

If they say yes, ask them what it is about it or their problem made them say yes. This will help you to understand the attributes that they found attractive that others may find attractive. These will be the details that you highlight in your advertising and on your website.

If they say no, ask them what attributes it’s missing that would make them buy. When they answer you, tell them you’ll sell them exactly what they need at a price that is anywhere between 25% to X00% more than the competing product. You want the product to be more expensive than competing products to avoid getting into a business where price is the determining factor. You ONLY want to be in the value-adding business. Stay the heck away from businesses where you compete on price. If you don’t believe me, read this: http://www.slate.com/blogs/moneybox/2016/02/26/pharmapacks_makes_over_70_million_selling_miscellaneous_items_on_amazon.html

IF YOU CAN’T SELL IT FOR A PREMIUM, DON’T SELL IT

If it’s a physical product, tell them that you have a custom manufacturer who will build and ship it and all you need is the order. All you need is the order, specs, and payment RIGHT NOW. If they hem or haw, then there’s something causing them to say no. Find out what it is. Either there’s a legit reason (usually design related) or they don’t really want a solution. If it’s design related, get the exact specs and say “I’m going to take your order and design specs and your money. If the product doesn’t solve your problem, you can get a refund. But I need payment today”. The immediate payment part is important. Don’t let people say “well, I’ll pay you once I see it” or something like that. Even if it’s true (it’s usually not) what it means is that the problem is not painful enough. You want problems where they don’t care to know the exact details and that literally anything is better than whatever they’re experiencing now. If your house is on fire, are you going to hem and haw about how the fire department puts out the fire? No! You just want the fire to be put out. If people hem and haw and don’t call the fire department (ie pay you), then the problem stinks and may not be a good business. There’s an exception to this, which I describe below.

If the problem is education-based, you can do two things. If you have experience in that field and are credible, tell them that you’re currently building material (class, e-book, etc…) that solves that exact problem and that you’ll even customize it to their exact needs. If you don’t have that knowledge, tell them that you’ve started working with experts in that field to teach the material and that you’re handling production and sales. Tell them that if they’ll give you feedback to improve the class, you’re willing to discount the price from $197 to $19. Tell them that you’re taking pre-orders to validate that people want to buy it and that if you don’t sell enough to move forward on the class in the next 30 days, you’ll give them back the $19. If they hem and haw, find out why. It could be that they either learned the thing and don’t need it anymore (valid) or it’s not painful enough. If they’ve already learned it, ask if they know someone who hasn’t learned it and get an introduction.

If they say no, you may also have simply found a non-buyer, in which case advertising online will help you answer that question at scale. Tim Ferris does a good job of covering this in The Four Hour Work Week. Eric Ries also covers it in The Lean Startup. If you want to get really good at advertising on Facebook or Google Adwords, email me at teaching@ and then Frustaci and then a dot and then a com. I have some free educational material that I can send you. Education from me will always be free. Advice, feedback, and recommendations on strategy is where I charge.

About the Author: Giuseppe Frustaci is a marketing professional who focuses on digital performance marketing. Specializing in Pay Per Click Advertising and Search Engine Optimization, Giuseppe has managed $30M+ in marketing budgets for clients such as Staples.com, Procter and Gamble, and Novartis. Particularly interested in early-stage market testing methods for startups, Giuseppe has worked with CoachUp.com ($9.4M in funding), Boundless.com ($9.7M in funding), Launch Academy, Co Everywhere ($8.4M in funding), Tablelist.com ($7.45M in funding) and Statement1 (founder took last company public).

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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2016 - A Great & Terrible Year.

Was 2016 my worst year ever or was it my best?

Actually, both.

Apparently, 2016 was the worst year ever for everyone I know. On new year's eve day, I found my news feed flooded with not so fond farewells to 2016. With the exception of two friends who had a baby, it seemed like most everyone had a bad year. Some of my friends shared their pains throughout the year: newly diagnosed depression, a miscarriage, desire for divorce, an ailment that caused one friend to drop out of a triathlon, a relationship tearing due to unacknowledged alcoholism, finding out a step mother was a heroin addict and had drained the family bank account. The list goes on. Some seemed to handle these stresses well (or they at least put on a strong show). Others were greatly affected. I, too, had my stresses. By all objective measures, it was my most difficult year. Seeing everyone post about what a bad year it was is making me wonder if I had a great year or a terrible year. Really. I’m not sure how to look at it.

2016 was a survival year for me. Dealing with my parents’ divorce, business cashflow issues, needing surgery, and a few other incredibly painful experiences just about put me over the edge. Though I think the weekend I spent in bed only getting up to get takeout or go to the bathroom might count as over the edge. Anyway. By all objective measures, none of the pains of 2016 were fun and I wouldn’t wish them on anyone. If I really examine my feelings, I don’t feel good about any of these things. They sucked. A lot. They took up a ton of my time and drained my emotions and energy, which I didn’t have in ready supply due to training for Ironman. By the time I got to Christmas I had zero enthusiasm for the holiday season. Anyone who knows me knows how much I love Christmas. This year I was 100% bah humbug.

On the other hand, I *think* I feel grateful for these experiences. I say think because if I’m truthful, I don’t genuinely “feel” grateful. The emotions and memories are still too raw. But when I think back, I’ve found a weird way of thinking/feeling grateful. Ironman training gave me a crazy number of hours to be alone and think. No headphones on my training rides, runs, and swims. All of that meditating time gave me the following:

“Just ship it”

I have a habit of aiming too much and not pulling the trigger soon enough. This year that habit went out the window. I was too busy putting out fires to deal with anything other than the essential. And you know what? Everything worked out ok. Things that I felt like I was half-assing ended up not needing any more than the half ass effort. I now find myself in a new venture half-assing everything on purpose. Prioritizing shipping over quality has produced more results, and better results, in less time than I would have expected. Now I prioritize shipping instead of quality and I’ve been blown away at not only how much I’ve produced, but how little the “poor” quality has had an effect. In some ways, I feel like I’m cheating. Which gets me to my next point.

“Get up. Get going. Keep going. Don’t Stop”

Pain, setbacks, confusion, and loss typically have a negative effect on my energy and effort. I seem to need a lot of recovery time. Where others thrive on chaos and disorder, I find it paralyzing. Well, this year I didn’t have a choice. Everything had to get dealt with whether I liked it or not. It feels like I developed a way to disassociate from the pain. Ironman training deserves a lot of credit for this. Training for Ironman was not fun. The hours were similar to a full-time job. I was constantly tired. Yet the schedule demanded I train even if I was tired. “You feel tired? Fuck your tired feelings. Get up, get going, keep going, and don’t stop until you finish your training plan.” I thought I knew how to push myself. But I had no idea I was capable of this level. Learning how to push myself in my most exhausted state is something I’ll forever be grateful for. Even if the experience totally sucked.

“Whatever happens, I’ll handle it and I’ll be ok”

Thus far, I’ve generally tried to stick to things that are within or at least near my core competencies. I’d like to think that things that are outside of my wheelhouse get extra attention and focus. Though if I’m being honest, what really happens is that I avoid those things and only do them if I absolutely have to. That whole “build the wings as you fall” thing might work for other people, but it doesn’t work for me. Or so I thought. Turns out I’m actually a good enough mid-flight mechanic. Constantly facing issues that were outside of my comfort zone redrew the borders of my comfort zone. Now, I feel like I can handle anything. It might not go perfectly, but I’ll be fine. Even if I totally fuck it up, I will be totally fine.

Flexing the “No” muscle

With my plate more than full, I simply didn’t have the bandwidth for much extra. I failed some of my friends. I worked less than usual. But what’s most memorable about that full plate is how it forced me to say “no”. I’ve never been comfortable with no. I once worked in a restaurant where the managers used to hammer into our heads a service saying that sticks with me to this day: “the answer is yes, what’s the question?” Well, that’s fine and good if you’re working in a restaurant that charges more money for dinner than most people spend on their car payment. But it is a recipe for disaster in most other parts of life. So much so that I once got fired from a job because I never told my boss no and ended up sinking under the weight of the responsibility. In 2016 that all changed. I developed a phrase mid-training run that changed everything for me: “that doesn’t work for me.” If someone wants something from me that I either don’t want to do or can’t do, I just use that phrase. Admittedly, saying “no” would be more direct. I’m not there yet. But that phrase allows me to basically say no without the negative feelings that usually come from it. Is it perfect? No. But it fits the “just ship it” ethic and gets me what I need. Problem basically solved. Keep going.

“That’s not my problem”

Much of my ability to “say” no also stemmed from deciding, as Mark Manson would say, what to give a fuck about. All around me, there are problems. Friends with problems. Clients with problems. Shit, a whole city/state/country/world with problems. Some of those problems are mine. Most are not. So I deal with what I can and leave to fate what I cannot. The alcoholic’s prayer comes to mind. “God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference.” This left me with a lot of guilt. I felt guilty for not being super proactive and helping everyone as much as I would have like to. And you know what happened? Nothing. Nothing bad happened. I didn’t help and everything worked out just fine. In the process, I learned a new way of helping. First, I wait to be asked. Sometimes people just want to vent. And then if/when they ask for help, I can truly evaluate if I want to instead of just automatically trying to be some sort of uncalled for superman.

“What needs to be done by me?”

My limited bandwidth and energy also helped me realize how much time and energy I was spending on things that I didn’t personally need to do. “Can I pay someone to handle this?” became my new favorite phrase. I hired freelancers. Some sucked. Some were great. Two, in particular, blew me away with their talent. Stephen Covey talks about Roles and Goals in 7 Habits. 2016 gave me a chance to put it into action. “Your goal is this. Here’s your budget and timeline. Call me if you have issues.” That was basically my HR strategy last year and it worked like a charm. Do I personally need to oversee packing the moving van? No, the friends who are helping me have moved plenty of times. Do I personally need to buy supplies for the house? No, I can just give someone in the house authority to just buy stuff and send me receipts for reimbursement. Now, before I do something, I ask myself if someone else can do it “good enough”. Not “do it as well as I’d do it”, but “do it well enough so that I can focus on what only I can do”.

There were a few other smaller lessons, but these are the most memorable.

So now I’m left with seemingly conflicting emotions. On the one hand, the emotional experience of 2016 sucked. I basically slept all of December and am riding through January mostly on the excitement of my impending trip to Asia. I lack the literary powers required to describe how tired I am. On the other hand, I do genuinely feel grateful for these lessons. I’m incredibly grateful for the ways that I grew and matured. F. Scott Fitzgerald once said, “The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.” I don’t know about that F., but I get where you’re going with it. My ability to function certainly improved. And maybe, much like the training pain required to grow as an athlete, emotional growth requires emotional pain. It also requires healthy recovery. So, if you’ll excuse me, I have some vacation planning to finish and some gratitude to express for my many frequent flier miles.

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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Wright and Wrong

The story of the invention of powered flight by the Wright brothers is famous and instructive for many reasons, but perhaps what’s most important about what we can learn from the brothers has more to do with what they got wrong than what they got right.

In 1903, the first flight lasted 13 seconds.

In 2016, the longest commercial flight takes 17 hours and 20 minutes on Qatar Airlines’ route from Auckland NZ to Dubai UAE.

As compared to today’s planes and control systems, the Wright brothers were wrong about practically everything. We would never design a plane today the way they designed it then. But here’s the thing; at the time, they were less wrong than other people.

As the brothers continued to improve their designs, the figured out where their designs were wrong and made changes.

How they got there, though, is what’s most interesting.

When they started with their designs, the went against the prevailing thesis that power was the problem to solve. While nearly all other competing players in the space were trying to figure out how to make airplanes more powerful (and thus hopefully make them fly better), the Wright brothers thought that such an approach was wrong and instead focussed on flight control.

“Hey everyone working on this problem, you’re wrong”.

Next, they came up with a bunch of designs that were wrong. The early stuff they designed didn’t work. They were wrong. Each design was wrong. But they kept going.

So they experimented, collected data, and kept being wrong.

What courage that must have taken. To not only think that everyone else was wrong but to also keep being wrong over and over.

Eventually, their design was not wrong enough to be not wrong for 13 seconds of flight.

As they improved, they got progressively less wrong about how to design and fly a plane.

Typically, when I think of design and experimentation, I’ve always thought about how to get things right. Through that lens, success and failure are binary. Which, among other things, can be emotionally draining. Failing to achieve success feels terrible.

What if instead of focussing on success, we changed our focus to be wrong? Or, better put, to be less wrong.

When the Wright brothers started working on the problem of controlled flight, their first works were completely wrong. They didn’t know how or why they were wrong.

So what did they do? They kept being wrong, but wrong in different ways.

As they kept being wrong, they found that some ideas were less wrong than others. Small changes, maybe a little more lift here or a little less instability there, and over time they began to see patterns about what worked less poorly.

As they progressed, they could see the difference between their old wrong (oh god, that was awful) to their new wrong (well, it’s not quite what I want, but it’s better than before).

This approach shifts the focus away from the failure/success dichotomy, which can be emotionally crippling, to a gentler wrong/less wrong attitude. Even when we think we’re right, we’re still wrong. Someone can always improve on what we’ve come up with. Airplanes today are completely different (or less wrong) than the Wright brothers. Our work just helps us figure out ways of being less wrong. It also replaces the search for binary rightness with one of incremental less wrongness. If we expect to be wrong and embrace it, we can allow ourselves the emotional space to keep going at it and collecting the data on how to improve.

Through this lens, major advancement seems to depend on making two choices.

The first choice is to question the prevailing wisdom. Unless if we have a solution that works, odds are high that our choice is going to be based on something other than hard empirical data. We have to decide that everyone or most everyone is wrong.

The next choice is to get really comfortable with data telling us we’re wrong and keep pressing and focussing on getting less wrong.

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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Is “Clever” Overrated?

A friend and trusted advisor recently used a phrase while we discussed a challenge I was experiencing. I proposed an idea that I’d spent considerable time hashing out, controlling for all of the variables.

"You can do that. That would be clever".

If I’m honest with myself, I was trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. My friend knew that, and he very gently called me out for it.

"Clever" stayed with me during the long bike ride I took after breakfast. I get more thinking work done on my bike than in any office you could design.

Lately, I've been thinking about how with just about everything I've seen be successful in my time, cleverness was never present. What works ends up being incredibly simple and is more of a reflection that the time has come than that I or anyone else really "made" something happen. This should not be confused with hard work.

Imagine two farmers.

One tries to grow food in the desert with a drip irrigation system, tarps to reduce the intensity of the sun, special fertilizers to deal with the nutrient-poor sand, and a whole host of other technologies.

The other tries to grow the food in an area where there's abundant rain, nutrient rich soil, and the right blend of sunny and cloudy days.

Each will work hard, no doubt.

I would guess the desert farmer will have to work much harder and invest much more to achieve the same outcome.

The 2nd farmer will work hard, but for the most part his goal is to let nature take its course and prevent the farm from failing.

Nothing is every easy. But the 2nd approach is simpler and less likely to fail.

I've begun to wonder if our jobs as entrepreneurs are less about building than about discovering.

When I think of Steve Blank and his approach to startups, I wonder if it's actually about discovering what will work and a market whose time has come. Much more so than it is about making something work and creating a market where there was never one to begin with.

There's a line often (and probably apocryphally) attributed to Michaelangelo where when he was asked how he carved the statue of David, he said he simply removed all of the stone that wasn't David. Similar to Edison's line that "“I have not failed. I've just found 10,000 ways that won't work.”

Do we just figure out what doesn't work and then not do those things?

Discovery seems to be the process of figuring out what doesn't work. Most experiments end in failure.

Cleverness seems to be the process of designing for success. But it assumes that we know all of the variables and we can control for them.

The financial crisis, the failed wars in the middle east, and the BP oil disaster were all caused by people who thought they were more clever than they really were and had more power and control than they really had.

In contrast, Warren Buffet has amassed a fortune by investing with many simple rules. The most interesting to me is the following:

Pick a company that (and I quote) “your idiot nephew could run.”

Investors talk about how they only invest in teams, not ideas or markets.

I call baloney.

I would be willing to bet real money that if you summed all of the money ever made by all investors, more investors made more money by following markets than by creating them.

Take McDonalds for example.

I doubt that McDonalds invented the hamburger, soda, french fries, drive through, or just about anything else they used.

They simply found a market idea and figured out how to not screw it up.

Then, other hamburger shops did the same thing. See Wendy's, In-N-Out, Burger King, and so on.

Or how about Zara, the fast-follower fashion clothing company, that figured out it’s easier to follow trends than to create them. A strategy that made the founder a billionaire multiple times over.

When I reflect on 10 years in the business world and startup space, I cannot think of a single clever startup that did better than a fool-proof startup. This, of course, is distinct from the technology. The tech is completely different from the business.

Microsoft created technology for word processing, operating systems, etc... That required being clever.

But Microsoft's business grew because it simply inserted itself into every computer and given the power of network effects, that monopoly is hard to change.

eBay started with a crappy product and figured out how to not mess it up.

Craigslist is dead simple and despite the fact that it is ugly and they did no marketing, it works and is profitable.

Getting back to the idea of discovery, eBay and Craigslist are the best examples of doing a simple thing and discovering that an idea's time has come.

Yes, Piere and Craig both worked hard. But they weren't geniuses. They were smart enough, worked hard, and were in the right place at the right time. They were the farmers who had rich soil, plenty of sunlight and rain, and they worked the land.

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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When Women Act Like Men*

I’m not a woman (shocking news, I know). But recently, I’ve experienced women behaving in stereotypically male ways.

I don’t know what it’s like to be a woman and I never will. If my dating experiences recently are any indication of what it is really like to be a woman, I’ll be all the more grateful for being born a man. Much like Louis CK once said about being white, it’s not that men are better. No, not at all. It’s that the experience and reality of being a man is better. Being a woman seems to be tough. Really tough. If you’ve not watched the video of a woman being harassed while walking through NYC for 10 hours, I highly suggest it.

I’ve dated many wonderful women. Strong, stable, healthy, smart, and doing their best as humans to keep it all together in a hostile world. But recently I have had some dating experiences that range from the bizarre to the disgusting.

The woman who sent me the most vile and graphic texts about seven months after we’d last spoken, inviting me to do things that were not even remotely close to what we’d done before. If we had a history of kink with each other, I might understand. But we didn’t. Not quite a dick pic, but it wasn’t that far off either.

The woman on Tinder who I’d been talking to for a week who blew up my phone with more vitriol and anger than you’ll ever see at a political rally. My infraction? Saying I wasn’t interested in meeting up because it seemed that we wanted different things. Or the woman who messaged me multiple times trying to change my mind after we met up and I said that given our differing lifestyles, the most we could hope for would be casual dating and that I wasn’t interested in something like that. Not that I’m a casanova (I’m not and it’s not the point of this piece), but isn’t “no” enough of an answer?

The woman who used me for sex and for emotional support all the while letting me believe the relationship could go somewhere and not communicating to me that what I said I wanted was different from what she wanted. In the process, I learned to trust behavior and not assume. Now, more than ever, Mark Manson’s Fuck Yes or No has become a guiding light in making sense of people’s behaviors. To be fair, I should own my behavior and letting things go on too long without getting what I wanted. I’m no victim there and I could have done things differently. But at the very least I didn’t get honesty. At best she obfuscated her truth in order to get from me what she needed.

The woman who felt that it was ok before even meeting to question and challenge my lifestyle, values, and priorities and to nit pick at many things I said. Totally fine if you’re not into what I’m into. But why try to change me and criticize me? PS we never ended up meeting.

The woman who wouldn’t make plans more than 24 hours in advance and was angry when I didn’t want to just have sex with her as a late night booty call. I’m more than just a penis. Did you know that? If you want to get off, masturbate.

*In truth, it’s both inaccurate and unfair to say these women are acting like men. Yes, they fit the stereotype of nasty male behavior. The title of this piece is a misnomer, though I used it for effect and with purpose.

Let’s dig deeper.

There’s a larger issue in all of this. It’s not that I’m seeing behavior that I don’t like. Different strokes for different folks, as they say. It’s that the common denominator behind all of what I’m seeing is pain.

Deep, deep pain.

The following is a summary of what the women had told me about their lives.

The woman who sent me the graphic texts were severely mistreated by past boyfriends and learned that she could placate her emotional needs by using her body to get men to give her attention.

The woman who tried to change me before we even met had recently divorced her alcoholic husband, had been abandoned by her father when she was young, and endured many hardships as a youth.

The woman who wanted last minute sex has avoided real relationships her entire life due to reasons she never fully made clear.

The woman who leaned on me as an emotional and sexual crutch had experienced some of the most horrific emotional trauma I could ever imagine. The details don’t matter here. Trust me, it was awful.

I don’t know why the Tinder woman got so angry at me or why the other online dating woman wanted to change my mind. We never got close enough to find out.

Notice a common theme here?

Trauma. Pain. Abuse. Mistreatment.

The more I date and learn what it’s like to be a woman in our society (and likely is similar to other societies), the more I understand the “crazy” woman.

Life is hard for everyone. We could easily devolve into a debate about people doing the right thing, if black lives matter more than blue lives, if people should change or if laws should change, and so on. We could have that debate and we would likely end up back in the same place. At least I would.

Or we could try something different.

When I see behavior like what I’ve described above, I’ve learned to understand that there’s a reason for it. Not an excuse, but a reason. Other than true psychopaths and sociopaths, most of the unhealthy behavior we see comes from a place of pain. This is my belief anyway. I don’t have data, and frankly, I don’t really need it because the solution, or at least the choice we can make, doesn’t require it.

The choice we can make is compassion and kindness.

When someone is coming from a place of pain and does something that hurts us, throwing hurt back at them will neither solve the immediate disagreement nor will it “fix” whatever is really broken inside of them. It will just reinforce whatever the person has learned about the world. “Hey look, I was open and honest and yet another person being a dick. I should double down on my anger because the world sucks and is out to get me and the best way to survive is to kill everything” is how our response will be interpreted.

Turn the other cheek.

I get that phrase now. Turn the other cheek is about interpersonal problems. It’s about not making the pain worse for the other person. It’s about giving them hope that not everyone wants to hurt them. That the world is not a scary and hostile place, full of uncertainty and threats. That people can express their truth, their pain, their insecurities and needs and that they will be met with openness and kindness.

I’ve adopted this approach since the beginning of 2016. In that time I’ve had more people tell me more deep dark secrets than you could possibly believe. I’ve heard more stories about pain than you’d ever see on Lifetime TV.

We are all responsible only for our own behavior. We can’t change anyone. Frankly, we shouldn’t try, lest we get codependent on each other. The best we can hope for is to provide space for each other to feel safe. We can’t change anyone who doesn’t want to change. But we can be kind and at the very least not be threats.

Worst case scenario, we avoid getting sucked into someone’s world of pain.

Best case scenario, we provide the fertile environment for them to heal.

Which will you choose?

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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Don’t Just Do Something, Stand There

Intellect, an inclination toward action, and problem-solving skills can all be a double-edged swords. Anyone who works in consulting knows this problem. When advice and "help" are welcomed and desired, we can have wonderful results and be praised by clients. But when unwelcome in other parts of life, it can feel like criticism. Sometimes the best thing to do is just listen. But learning how to turn it off and sit with, but not act on, the desire to analyze, tell, and fix can be quite difficult.

If all we think we have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. If we're rewarded (emotionally, financially, socially) for hammering, consciously choosing to not pick up the hammer can be difficult. It has been so for me, anyway. Some problems require a different tool, which we may be clumsy at using.

The more I think about it, the more I'm seeing the various layers. Does this problem even need my fixing? What does this person really need? Better yet, what do they really want from me? Maybe their problem needs fixing, but what they need or want from me is compassion. Do I even need to respond? Do I give them advice, or would we be better served if I simply helped them get clarity on the problem? Broadly, what will be my role? Sometimes, and often if I'm really honest, we don't even need to have a role.

Reading a book on Monday about Charlie Munger, Warren Buffet's investment partner, there was a line that resonated; "Don't just do something, stand there."

Yesterday, on a client conference call, I listened to a tornado pass. Major disagreements not only about how to solve the problem, but what the problem even was. I just sat quietly. By the end of the call, the team figured out which problem to solve and how to solve it. They didn't need me to say anything. Resisting the urge to say something and fix the problem was no easy task.

Daily, if not hourly, we receive messages that there's something that requires our attention. "Be outraged that this thing happened." "Did you see what this Presidential candidate said? This needs to be fought against." "Climate change, campaign finance, poverty, social injustice, Peter Thiel and the Gawker suit, college affordability and student loan crisis, North Korea, China debt crisis, election fraud". I literally pulled that list together by scrolling through my facebook news feed. The implied, and sometimes explicit, message is that we need to get involved, have our voices heard, take action, do something.

But where's the message to listen? To give space? To sit with?

Remember when we were told that doing nothing would get us an A in the class?

How about that time when we were told to not see the doctor, not take medicine, and just wait.

To let the kid go through the phase and let kids be kids?

Me neither.

God, grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change,

Courage to change the things I can,

And wisdom to know the difference.

Missing from that prayer might be the following; The patience to sit with and not try to solve.

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fritalci · 9 years ago

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Can Economic Growth Last?

I recently read a fascinating post by a physicist on the physical limitations of economic growth. TLDR: improvements in efficiency and quality of physical goods eventually runs up against physics. Over time, improvements in quality and efficiency starts to flat line. Basically, the growth curve flattens out. He states that if we can expect the economy to keep growing, the growth would have to come from non-physical value (services, software, experiences). But he states it with skepticism.

From the paper:

“The artificial world that must be envisioned to keep economic growth alive in the face of physical limits strikes me as preposterous and untenable. It would be an existence far removed from demonstrated modes of human economic activity. Not everyone would want to participate in this whimsical society, preferring instead to spend their puffy paychecks on constrained physical goods and energy (which is now dirt cheap, by the way, so a few individuals could easily afford to own all of it!).”

As someone who works in marketing and studied psychology, I take exception to this.

We actually already life in that whimsical society he envisions. When we buy clothing, only a small portion of the sales price goes to the physical elements (growing the cotton, making the fabric, shipping it, etc...). The VAST majority of the price is based on perceived value that comes from marketing. I believe, and I think we've discussed this a few times, that we don't buy physical goods anymore. Or at least not like we used to. At one point in time, or maybe at certain income levels, we buy things for their utility value. The price, or maybe the cost of goods sold, is based on that utility. The thing is basically a commodity, but due to scarcity, the company can make a profit despite selling a commodity. Over time though, as choices increase, the only way to make a profit is to convince someone that the thing they're buying is worth more than a competing product. In essence, I would argue that perceived value starts to grow at a rate that is greater than the cost of goods sold. On day 1, the t-shit cost $5 to make and sold for $10. On day 100, the shirt cost $10 to make but sold for $50. As our base level needs are satisfied (his mainly applies to people with disposable income) we spend more of our money to achieve the higher level psychological needs. The shirt provides us with $10 of utility value, but because it says Nike or Armani on it, it provides us with $50 to $200 worth of social and esteem value.

Now this is where it gets really interesting for me. Convincing someone to pay multiple times the utility value was easy when there was little to pay attention to. Only a few brands telling me that their thing was better than the other brand. I can feel certain that I'm making the right choice because I keep hearing it over and over. But, what happens when I am absolutely inundated with messages non-stop? My attention is split between so many things. Now the brands have a way way way harder job. The competition is getting exponentially more difficult.

Where I wish he would have continued is in thinking about value that is not constrained by physics. Mind you, this is where I'm heading with my work. Take video games for example. Near zero marginal cost of selling additional units, and the utility is constrained only by electricity and time. Experiences will be where we see growth. Now, this is key. Will it be additive growth or replacement growth? That is, if we add the value of physical goods and experiences, will the whole be greater tomorrow than it is today? Or, will we see costs drop (real vs nominal) for physically constrained value and be replaced by non-physically constrained value such that the sum total does not increase.

In such a scenario, I see the economies of scale for non-physically constrained goods becoming even stronger. Additionally, firms in that game will increase their investment in marketing at a rate that is greater than their investment in physically constrained goods. Though I will note there is a giant caveat to my thinking here. Will the creation of that digital good require ever more advanced workers who cost more and more money? Which will provide the better ROI; Investing in knowledge workers who will create real value (write the code, design the script, do the research, etc...) or marketing to either acquire new customers (over time the customer acquisition cost will increase) or marketing to retain existing customers and extend the amount of money the customer pays to the firm over time (basically loyalty spending)?

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fritalci · 10 years ago

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Are Women Selfish Enough?

Serious question. Please read before commenting.

Over the past few years, and especially over the past 6 months, I've interacted with a number of young women in a professional context. Mostly interns, but a few in their mid to late 20's. I've also interacted with numerous young men in that time, mostly as interns and many as colleagues. The contrast is striking.

In those interactions with women, I've watched many women sacrifice themselves and their interests for something or someone else. I don't just mean putting in extra hours. I mean flat out not stepping up to the plate, not pushing, not asking for or taking what they can get or are due. They sacrifice themselves for no benefit.

I almost never see this behavior in men.

It's getting to the point where I want to talk with the women and point out how they're severely short changing themselves. I want to buy them Lean In.

BUT, and this is a big BUT, it is THEIR lives.

Here are the questions I’m considering:

Is it my responsibility to say something? Who am I to say something? Or am I exactly the one (as a boss, supervisor, mentor, etc...) to say something?

If I say nothing, am I complicit in helping women not get what they deserve? Or if I say something, am I being patronizing?

Who am I to tell someone they should change? Maybe they’re doing the best they can?

How do I balance seeing ways in which they're short changing themselves with respecting their identity and their path? Is it about delivery, or does delivery even matter?

Do I simply point out what I am seeing? Simply say "hey, I see you doing this thing. I never see men do that, and in my experience, here's how that behavior typically plays out" or something like that?

Should I even bring in the gender element? So, say what I have above, but leave out the fact that I never see men do the same?

I’d really love your thoughts on how to approach this.

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fritalci · 10 years ago

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My Favorite Gift? A Parking Ticket.

Of all of the gifts I’ve ever received, my hands down favorite of all time was a parking ticket.

Yes, really.

It’s not for lack of quality gifts in my life. When my best friend in college made me a birthday cake with chocolate ganache instead of frosting because I don’t like frosting, I was truly touched. The Nutella cookbook given to me by my best friend from college showed how much she knew me. As someone who loves writing hand written notes, the embossed stationery my Mom gave me for Christmas one year was absolutely perfect. There have been many more.

But the absolute best gift I’ve ever received was a parking ticket.

A few years ago, around the time I shut down my first startup, I received a parking ticket for $145 for “allegedly” parking too close to a fire hydrant in NYC.

“Thanks universe” I thought to myself, “it’s not enough that I’m shutting down this thing that I’ve worked on for two years for no pay and lots of stress. A parking ticket is the perfect parting gift.”

Luckily I had a measuring tape and camera with me and I measured out and photographed how my car was beyond the distance that the city required. I documented everything and mailed it all in.

A few weeks later, the city of New York replied.

I don’t remember the exact wording, but it was to the effect of “Yeah right buddy, you’re from out of town and dollar pizza slices don’t buy themselves, so pay up.” Or something like that.

Incredulous but not defeated, I took my pen to the enclosed reply form and forcefully checked off the box indicating that I wanted an in-person appeal. In Manhattan. Even though I lived in Boston. I thought to myself “A full day’s travel be damned, I’m in the right!” Motivated partially by my a pride that had been bruised by shutting down the startup, and partially by the fact that the startup left me broke as a joke, I had nothing to lose.

Little did I know, I had even more to gain.

Around this time a friend recommended a book to me that sounded impossible. My friend, a man who has perfected the art of laziness to the point of incredible efficiency, recommended a book that was as much about entrepreneurship as it was about life and philosophy. Of course I didn’t know that at the time. At the time all I knew was that it promised to teach me how to work less and make more money. Having worked more while making less money, I didn’t know what I was doing, so I thought maybe this book could teach me something.

On the road down to NYC and back, cramped into a Chinatown shuttle, as the driver swered the motorcoach in and out of traffic and the passengers silently prayed that the wheels didn’t fly off of the bus or spontaneously combust, I devoured the book.

In the book’s pages I saw not just why my startup failed, but larger lessons that illuminated deep errors in my judgement, priorities, and how I had been not just running my business, but leading my life.

The Lesson.

“Fail Quickly.” It’s a common refrain in the startup world. Back then, it was as foreign as any idea could be. I came from the world of planning, organizing, and getting everything right so that I get the A on the paper and the test. This book introduced me to a startlingly simple concept; find the thing that is most likely to fail and that can kill your endeavor, and solve for that first. If you can solve it, move on to the next most likely to fail thing and solve that. There’s a great TED talk that mirrors this lesson, given by the creator of an incredibly complex and entertaining music video. Discussing his experience creating a Rube Goldberg device that was designed to percuss and move in sync with music, Adam Sadowsky gives a wonderful explanation of how he and his team applied this lesson.

youtube

In the world of most startups, the thing that is most likely to fail is not your ability to build the thing. Unless if we’re talking about biotech or space travel, programmers can build a technical solution to just about any problem. Frankly, if you look at most of what is being built today, there’s very few unicorn startups that have deeply complex technical challenges. Experienced programmers laugh at how easy programming has become, with a multitude of technical tools available to slash the hours required to get a website working. And should any product truly require a herculean effort, there’s billions of dollars of investment capital available to hire the people to build the products.

So if building is not the hard thing that is most likely to fail, what is?

Customer Acquisition.

The trick is getting people to actually buy the thing. Building a thing and selling it to nobody is not a business - it’s a hobby. My efforts to recreate the ambient artistic stylings of Mark Rothko might be the cathartic release I need after a long week, but the only gold they’ll ever bring in will likely come in the form of a star given in loving mockery by a friend.

For the author of the book, in one of his first ventures he created all of the products and when he went out to sell, nobody bought. In his next venture, he posted ads and flyers like crazy and waited to see if anyone called. When they did, he set up the business and developed the product. Had they not contacted him, he wouldn’t have set anything up. A couple hundred dollars and a few hours was all he was willing to experiment with to find out if the idea had legs.

Entrepreneurs don’t have the same luxuries that artists have. While Picasso may have been willing to starve over selling out, venture capitalists don’t think quite the same way.

As capital accumulates in the hands of investors, they pour it into businesses. Once a potential market opportunity is found, VCs chase after “me too” offerings that look so similar, you’d be forgiven for not remembering their names or differentiating features. Heck, there are even investment firms that run on the simple thesis of “it worked in country X, so lets go build it in country Y. Rocket Internet being one of the better known examples. So, the number of offerings is growing, and given all of the capital, the number of offerings seems to grow at an exponential rate.

Exponential growth of offerings leads to a problem worse than regular old competition. It leads to noise. in 1975 there were about 9000 products in the average US grocery store, serving about 216 million US residents. Today there’s about 47,000 products for 319 million people. Product count grew by 422% while the population grew by 48%. Source. Similar statistics exist for just about every product category. Malcolm Gladwell gave a fascinating talk about this in a TED talk.

Today there’s not only more products available to solve problems, there’s also more products available to pay attention to and get distracted by. Whereas the number of product offerings is growing exponentially, the amount of attention available to give is growing linearly and slowly. Beyond a seemingly infinite number of products and services we can buy, we also have the distractions of social media updates, text messages, clickbait, every tv show and movie that’s been catalogued online for your easy access, and an endless stream of facebook event invitations.

That spread between product availability and attention has now become the hard thing. The hard thing is the valuable thing. The valuable thing is where the money will be made or lost.

So, in what was one of my darkest personal hours, I saw not only why my startup failed, but why most startups fail. It is not for lack of product quality. It is for lack of an ability to get the customer’s attention and have them give that attention for long enough to validate (by trying to buy the thing) that you’re solving the right problem. If they don’t try to buy, they don’t care enough to solve it. If that’s the case, keep moving.

With this insight, I completely changed my direction and approach to working. I decided to focus on marketing. I got a job working for a marketing agency, learned everything I could, and haven’t looked back since. While it hasn’t been easy, startup marketing has been a hell of a ride and has kept me very comfortable.

That book, The 4 Hour Work Week, helped me see not only how to succeed in business, but insights into how to succeed in life. More on the latter another time.

Would I have read the book if I didn’t have a full day to kill sitting on a bus? Probably not. I only brought it because I figured it would be a light read and something that didn’t need a close and careful reading. Chinatown busses were not known for their smooth and quiet rides, so I needed something I could use as a distraction. Would I have killed that day if not for the parking ticket? Definitely not. I was so focussed on trying to figure out what went wrong with the business that I was immersing myself in more serious sounding business books. And at the time, the serious business books were prescribing a different lesson.

When I think of all of the things I didn’t expect that had a positive impact on my life (aka gifts), that parking ticket created the perfect opportunity to make a major change. That book, more than any other, completely changed my life. So, thanks NYC parking enforcement. I’ll be forever grateful.

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fritalci · 10 years ago

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“Aunt who sued her 12-year-old nephew says insurance rules forced her hand”

People jumped to conclusions about this woman before getting all of the facts. Due to insurance rules, she HAD TO SUE the nephew first. I see this on a regular basis, where the news media reports something incendiary and then rolls in the advertising money as people click and share and comment. Perhaps we all need to listen a little more, be patient, and give each other the benefit of asking questions instead of jumping to conclusions. Can you imagine how it must have felt to be this woman, vilified by millions of people for a situation that was out of her control? Perhaps you too have been on the receiving end of uninformed or prejudiced actions and words. With that empathy, maybe we can all change.

I recently started using a meditation when confronting something that upsets me. “Is this my problem? Does this threaten me?" This gives me the emotional space to calmly and carefully consider whether I want to get involved and if the situation requires my attention. Sometimes, things that are not my problem are still an opportunity to do good. Sometimes issues resolve themselves. Figuring out the difference requires me to check in with my values and ethical standards. It also requires I actually know what is going on, which requires gathering information.

I want to be a good person who is supportive and compassionate. Being that person requires understanding where someone is coming from and gathering as many of the facts as I can. It also requires I turn my lizard brain off, turning my patience on, and making sure that before I act or speak, I know what the hell I’m doing.

Maybe in our humility and patience we will find the real issues and villains that need our attention. Like, say, insurance companies regulations and a court system that forces people into awful situations.

As my idol Warren Buffett once said, "Don't just do something, stand there."

We can all learn something from this. We all have two ears and one mouth. Perhaps then we should listen more than we speak?

Link to news article explaining why she had to sue her nephew and not the insurance company. http://wapo.st/1NezICd

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fritalci · 10 years ago

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The Future of Job Security

I hate accounting. I’ve always hated sending out bills and cashing checks. I’d much rather live in Gene Roddenberry's utopia where money doesn’t exist and everyone can just do whatever they’re most passionate about without thinking about accounts receivable. Or at least outsource it to the Ferengi.

I started my first business when I was 13, mowing lawns around town. By the time I graduated from highschool, I was earning more than my Dad. Getting up at the buttcrack of dawn? No problem. Coming home smelling like grass (the legal kind), gasoline, and dirt? I didn’t mind. But taking 10 minutes to drive to the bank to cash checks was my limit. Customers would call me to complain that I hadn’t cashed their check from two months ago. It’s true. I’d rather do the thing I was passionate about. No, mowing lawns was not my passion. Spending hours listening to audiobooks and thinking was my passion, but more on that another time. So I found someone who was passionate about accounting and check cashing. Yes, I said “passionate” and “accounting” in the same sentence.

Job security in the baby boomer generation only required two things; showing up and working hard. Job titles were pretty static and responsibilities were straight forward. There was a job spec, and if you followed the job spec, you’d make money. Nobody really cared if you liked it, and for a great many jobs, it didn’t really matter. For most jobs, your labor was an undifferentiated commodity. But then we made a switch to the services and knowledge economy, and everything started to change. Including the definition of what a “safe” job is.

When my parents started working, nobody cared if they were passionate. Their work output looked the same as anyone else’s. But today, one accountant’s work and work identity can look very different from someone else’s. Their social media profiles can have links to articles they’ve read about accounting. Their blog shows things that they’ve thought about regarding accounting. Their LinkedIn shows endorsements from clients and colleagues, along with certifications, courses, and trainings. With the rise of online classes and the resultant drop in the cost and barriers to getting the knowledge, the difference in skill between two accountants will be based on which one was more interested in the advance topic and was willing to work extra hours each week to finish the class.

In short, what determines the value of each worker’s output will not be the traditional barriers of job training and difficulty of identifying differentiation. Instead, income will be driven by enthusiasm. My accountant, the woman who seemed to get all giddy by balancing books and organizing deposit slips, will outearn those who begrudgingly do their jobs. She’ll have more skills. She’ll attract more clients. When faced with choosing between two people who appear to have the requisite skills, the one who shows passion will get more work.

Now, and quite ironically, “safe” jobs are quickly becoming the riskiest. The risk lies in hoping that your competitors won’t be passionate about the work. Some people hate keyword research for SEO and Google Adwords. Me? BRING IT ON! Really. I actually enjoy thinking through the hierarchy of words and meaning and how all of that relates to consumer intent. I’ve been doing it for so long that it’s become a game. I’m almost at the point of getting into what Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi calls “flow”. It’s a point at which a difficult challenge is met with skill and focus. I don’t love it because I particularly love Adwords or advertising or even money (see above). It’s because I find words and emotions to be so interesting. My curiosity about the emotions that drive and motivate behavior are what drove me to study psychology in college. Now, through online marketing, I found a profitable way of feeding that curiosity. It’s what has allowed me to build a name in the startup world and sell clients. They hire me because I appear more enthusiastic and knowledgeable than anyone else.

In an age when job skills can easily be learned, the worker with the most knowledge will be the one who is constantly teaching themselves. As information becomes accessible to billions of hungry (emotionally and physically) people, job competition is going to heat up. Not only will there be someone who loves doing that seemingly boring thing, but they also live in a part of the world where life is a lot less expensive and they can charge less than anyone else.

Labor is quickly moving to reflect Michael Porter’s thinking. You either beat your competitors by providing a high degree of “service” and quality, or you beat them on price. Service and quality come from enthusiasm. Think about how enthusiastic Ferrari and Porsche are about speed. Or how much Toyota and Honda care about quality and safety. Now think about Tesla. Tesla is so passionate about building perfect cars that they broke the testing machinery that tested its safety, broke Consumer Report’s testing metrics for quality, and developed speed that can beat supercars that cost far far more. Safer, nicer, faster, and cheaper. Tesla hasn’t yet figured out how to combine all of those elements into one car, but they’re getting there. And so are the people who are competing for your job.

Tesla will win for one very simple reason. They’re not just punching the clock to earn a paycheck. They’re driven to be the absolute best. They’re passionate.

Job security is not in numbers; it’s in passion.

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fritalci · 10 years ago

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How to Survive Your Early 20′s

You're going from the syllabus-defined and guidance counselor supervision contained life, to being given all of the options and none of the guidance. Oh and you need to figure out how to make it work and pay the bills and not be miserable and answer questions about life. 22 through 25 sucked for me. I fell into a major depression. So did a lot of my friends. We had all of these expectations and hopes and pressures and a lot of what we tried didn't work. What I wish I knew then was that all of the stories of people who strike it rich and get on the news at 22 or who were doing really well in their careers were mostly lucky or were following a well-worn path. The 24 year old billionaire? One in a bajillion. The pre-med student who is also volunteering at a hospital? She's beyond miserable, but takes comfort in the fact that this worked for millions of other people. The person who is not motivated by money and social status, but feels the pressures of money and social status? Emotionally fucked. You've chosen the proverbial road less traveled. Literally. It's not even paved! What helped me most was making my life really small, especially financially, building a six month buffer of cash, and pouring myself into a world I found interesting (startups) while building a skill that I found interesting (search marketing). That, of course, was after trying on a bunch of worlds and skills that I ultimately found uninteresting. The other thing that helped was realizing that I can't have it all right now. There are laws in nature that physically cannot be violated. There's no such thing as balance in your early 20s. Abundance is even harder to come by. The MTV dream is just that - a dream. High incomes and fulfilling work and an easy schedule and perfect friends and constant emotional highs and perfect teeth and all that shit, it's not real. It's on TV because it is an escape from the reality of shitty pay and boring jobs and hectic schedules and friends who fail you and the emotional roller coaster and toothaches.

If I had to do 22 through 25 all over again, here's what I would do.

1) Focus on developing a skill in a known ecosystem. When I say known ecosystem, I mean either a software, a job title, or a certification. Hubspot, ghost writer, inbound certification. Or Salesforce.com, Implementation Expert, Salesforce Certified. Quickbooks, book keeper, CPA. I got Adwords certified in about a year. After that year, I never had to worry about finding work. Mind you, I got Adwords certified during the lowest point of the recession.

2) Make lifestyle choices that allow you to live really simply, especially financially. I don't recall 99% of the shit I bought when I was 22. I do recall being able to do whatever I want because I knew I had enough in the bank. When I was 22, enough was about $12,000.

3) Take care of your emotions. You need alone time. You need down time. You need to spend hours per week just reading on a hammock. This isn't fluffy BS stuff. This is need. You need sleep and food, right? Well, your emotions need to be taken care of. This is not self indulgence. This is NEED. Fuck anyone who criticizes your need for sleeping and being alone and taking care of yourself.

4) Read everything. Read all of the self help books. Don't waste your time with blogs. Blogs sell eyeballs to advertisers. Smut gets more eyeballs. Bloggers are under pressure to get more eyeballs, so they'll write things that get attention but aren't necessarily good for you. Read the best sellers that have done well over the past 50 to 100 years. Start with How to Win Friends and Influence People and then read all of the suggestions that Amazon says are similar. Read them multiple times. I'm probably on my 4th or 5th reading how HTWFAIP. The bullshit marketing self help world wants you to think that all of your problems and needs are new, and that only new "breakthrough revolutionary game changing" and other hyperbole products are the solution. They're not. Your problems are the same as what everyone has felt before. And these books helped. Innovation is good for new problems that need new solutions. But when it comes to timeless problems, go for timeless solutions. You can get a good dose of sanity and problem-solving skill for about $600 worth of books on Amazon.

5) Expect it to take a while. Trees don't produce fruit over night. What you're going through is normal and will take a few years to sort out. A phrase that has helped me immeasurably is "this is where I am on my journey." Would I get pissed at myself if I can't run a 4 minute mile? No, look at my body. It doesn't look like a body that can do that. I would need to train for a year to run a 4 minute mile. Would I get pissed if it's snowing out and I'm in Boston in January, but I want it to be 90 degrees out? No, that's what's normal for Boston in January. I would need to be in a different place to expect 90 degree weather. I would need to wait a few months or travel a great distance to get 90 degree weather in January. At 22, you have no right to expect to be perfectly happy and having a high income and all of the MTV dream ideas. You're not there yet. You're at an earlier stage in your journey. If you accept that you are where you are, you can let go of unrealistic expectations. This is different from drive and desire. You can desire to achieve a high income. That's great. But expecting it right now is unrealistic. "Desire in the future" is different from "expect right now."

6) Be aware of the moment. We create so much stress just through our thoughts. Right now, in this moment, what is lacking? Are you unsafe? Are you starving? Are you cold or experiencing anything external to you (a person, weather, etc...) that is threatening or disturbing your peace? If the two bottom rows of Maslow's hierarchy are being satisfied right in this moment, then any stress or anxiety you're feeling is being allowed into your consciousness by you. Read the Power of Now. Read it a couple of times. I didn't understand it the first time I read it.

7) You're not special. I mean this in the positive way. Somehow in the 80's and 90's and 2000's, we replaced "loveable" and "worthy" with "special". You can be totally average and normal and non-special, and totally be loveable and worthy of love and acceptance. This is the major downside of the everyone-gets-a-trophy thing. The subtle implication of all of the trophies is that if you're not getting a trophy, there's something wrong with you and you're not ok. This is bullshit. In getting all of these trophies, we learned to equate what we're doing and how well we're doing it with who we are and our value as people. This took me years to realize. I have two identities. There's the constant me. The me who is a human being. The person who just is, regardless of society or roles or jobs or anything outside of me. Then there's the outside me. The me who needs to do a job, interact with people, be a citizen. I can totally suck at a job, fail a friend, and be a loser according to a politician, but still be a good human who needs love and acceptance. Once I started seeing myself as two people, I learned to differentiate between "who I am" and "what I do". If I suck at juggling, am I a bad person? If I suck at reading maps, am I less worthy of love? If I get fired from a job, does that make me a loser? No, it all just means I don't have skills in those areas. I can chose to get better, or I can chose to quit and try something else. I can also choose to identify my "self" as separate from my skill. This is where the shit you're getting from your parents right now totally sucks. When people withhold their love and kindness because they disapprove of your behavior, emotional garbage ensues. To be fair, that is a really hard thing for everyone to do. To be angry or disapproving, but still loving, is hard. Which brings me to...

8) Everyone is doing the best they can, and often the best they can sucks. Nobody really knows what they're doing. Trained, professional doctors who have learned more about medicine than the average person, are still capable of failing and killing people. If the most overtrained professionals are capable of failing, what does that mean for people who are doing things they weren't trained for? Like, say, being parents or friends or bosses? We're all moving through life, getting into situations we're not trained to handle, trying the best we can, failing a lot. When you see people as they are, untrained and underskilled, it becomes easier to accept them and forgive them. I've never taken a class in how to manage people. Yet here I am, managing people. If you accept people "where they are on their journey", you learn to accept the reality of people in the moment and that no amount of anger or wishing will change them and their skill, you will find some small amount of peace. You will also find yourself attracting people who appreciate your acceptance. But that's another topic for another time.

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