Wednesday, 31 January 2018

Seth's Blog : Your corner of the sphere

What sort of novel do you want to write? What does your restaurant offer? What about that new record you're recording? It's tempting indeed for you to seek to be high quality, low priced, durable, with excellent service, less filling,...

Your corner of the sphere

What sort of novel do you want to write?

What does your restaurant offer?

What about that new record you're recording?

It's tempting indeed for you to seek to be high quality, low priced, durable, with excellent service, less filling, better taste, poetic phrasing, conveniently located, powerful characters and organic. All at once.

But that's not how humans process what you have to offer.

Consider some classic, bestselling novels or memoirs. Snow Crash matters because of the ideas within. Harry Potter worked because the plot kept kids riveted. The language in Patti Smith's Just Kids is perfect, and the characters in To Kill a Mockingbird are unforgettable. Of course, each book has the other elements in some measure, but it's the one thing that sticks with us.

Zappos might have good prices, but it's the service we talk about. Tom's might have fashionable shoes, but it's the pay it forward that resonates. And your iPhone might have good download speed, but it's the design and fashion that we pay for.

All a way of helping you think about the many disconnected points on the edge of the sphere in your industry. Pick one to exceed expectations in, while making sure everything else is good enough.

Screenshot 2017-09-08 09.29.22

       

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Tuesday, 30 January 2018

Seth's Blog : A country for con men

The medicine show hypester, the confidence man, the snake oil salesman… my country has a long history of marketers of ill repute. The reason is simple: we spent two hundred years spreading out over the continent, and unlike Europe, strangers...

A country for con men

The medicine show hypester, the confidence man, the snake oil salesman… my country has a long history of marketers of ill repute.

The reason is simple: we spent two hundred years spreading out over the continent, and unlike Europe, strangers were common. Everyone was coming and going, and it wasn't unusual at all to engage with someone you didn't know.

The downside of this openness are all the people who took advantage of it. A tradition that continues to this day.

In the rush to expand, people embraced the idea of the big win. They named their ranch Bonanza, or their town Prospector. They drilled for gushers, invested in penny stocks, and took expensive placebos...

The upside is that being receptive to new ideas, even those too good to be true (especially those) creates a tradition of neophilia and optimism. When someone has a breakthrough—an innovation that actually keeps its promiseit's much more likely to catch on.

The downside is pretty obvious. 

And so we have to remain vigilant, teach our friends and customers to be on alert, and push regulators to take care, because there's still a con artist on every corner.

       

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