There’s a lot of noise out there. Cutting through the clutter is key. Long-term relationships do that. Often, so does a flash of creativity. Make people stop. Make people smile.

If you’re looking for a job, looking to start a new venture, take a minute and try to find a more creative solution for greater impact.

Have you seen the Google Job Experiment?

Here’s the low-down: A guy looking for a job at an advertising agency had an idea. Instead of job hunting the usual way: sending out resumes blindly, sending out resumes eyes-wide-open, applying online, hoping for the best, putting his resume and credentials in the mass of everyone else looking for a job, he took a different tack. One that totally paid off. He researched the companies he wanted to work for, and ascertained who at each of those companies would have the power to hire him. He came up with five names. (A quick LinkedIn Advanced search will get you all the information you need.)

And then he created Google ads for five top agency executives who had the power to hire him. Why Google Ads? Because a pretty good assumption is this: People google themselves. And when people google themselves, they are on the lookout for anything they see. They are especially on the lookout for anything new, or not quite right, for anything amiss. And so when you google yourself and there’s a note from someone talking directly to you, you click on it.

The Google Experiment yielded the following:

Number of interviews: 4

Number of Job Offers: 2

Employment Status: Employed at Y&R.

The total cost for this experiment: $6.

Fact: Launching a New Business Requires a Broad, Diverse Network

When I launched my next big thing (a new business) a few years ago, I new I needed to build a broad, diverse network, quickly to sustain a consulting business. I love meeting people, throwing parties, having deep one-on-one conversations. I’m a public speaker. And a fairly shy extrovert. I also hate ‘networking’. I find it awkward. I had a bit of a dilemma.

At the time,  I was being hired at the intersection of life and business coaching. I did business strategy, digital strategy, brainstorming, product naming, and creative dating coaching. I wrote online personal ads and helped people date better on one day and was engaged in creating a business plan the next. I also needed focus, but that is the topic of a different post…

Fact: Building a Broad, Diverse Network Takes Time. Patience.

One day I was browsing Meetup.com groups and Bernardo’s List of New York City events (of which there are many), resigning myself to slogging to multiple events every week when I noticed something. The person who starts a Meetup group or any group really, had visibility, instantly. To create a new network to jumpstart my new business, I didn’t need 100 business cards. I needed to give people a good experience, a chance to meet with other people. And give them something to talk about.

Why Be One in a Million Name-Tagged Attendees, When You Could Be the Host?

So, I started two events/networking groups (with friends). One was about dating. It was called ALMOST EMOTIONALLY AVAILABLE. The other, about business, was ALMOST ECONOMICALLY VIABLE (or AEV for short).

Almost Emotionally Available: I started it with two friends: Connie and Amanda. The attendees were all friends of friends. Everyone present knew someone who knew one of the three of us. Almost Emotionally Available was by invitation only, so there was trust. And because you had to know someone who knew someone, there was exclusivity, hence demand. We got a free venue (a bar) and brought our own ‘awkward corner’. A place where people could use coloring books and chill out. At the door, everyone got a nametag with a new moniker and something interesting about them–a conversation starter. It was a success. People made pornigami.

Almost Economically Viable: The business event, I started with three other friends: Robin, Joe, and Sarah. At each AEV event, we had a guest speaker, attendees raffled off their services; it was participatory. It was playful and fun. AEV grew in popularity and we eventually started making money on the event, even though it wasn’t our intention.

I don’t do either event anymore, although for fun, perhaps I could do a revival. But in addition to quickly building a big, broad, diverse network, I became known as someone who is creative and strategic and usually involved in fun projects and throws a darn good party. And all of those things are still true, all these years later.

Want to Make Your Own Impact? Give People Something To Talk About

Think about the problem you’re trying to remedy (I need a job or I need to grow my network or I need funding). And before you do the next obvious thing (send your resume to 100 people, throw yourself at networking events or apply just like everyone else), stop and think how can I get noticed, how can I have more signal, how can I stand out? How can I give someone something to talk about?

*This piece was commissioned by Mojo40.com about a million years ago. Published March, 2012.

“For what gives value to travel moving is fear. It breaks down a kind of inner structure we have. We can’t cheat any more – hide ourselves away behind the hours in the office or at the plant (these hours against which we protest so strongly and protect us so surely against the suffering of being alone) … Travel Moving takes this refuge from us. Far from our own people, our own language, wrenched away from all support, deprived of our masks…we are completely on the surface of ourselves.”- Albert Camus, edited by Melea

I moved May 1 from twelve frenetic, challenging, fun and growthful years in New York City to what has been 56 days of quirky, fun, wonderful, quiet and disorienting largely habitless days in Portland, Oregon. Moving, like travel, offers an external opportunity to be in wonder of the world, seeing it all fresh, while searching for home. I strive to balance wonder and belonging everywhere I am. It’s hard.  Hello, human condition.  

In Portland, the past and the future meet at a point that isn’t quite the present, there is so much to wonder about and wander into. More on that, soon.

I thought I moved for this:

But I think I may have moved for this:

And what I’m actually getting is more of this:

I’m seeing with new eyes. Although, after 56 days, habits set in either on their own–or mindfully–with some input from me. Without designing for serendipity and wonder, you get only your routines. Only your habits. And you stop seeing tigers on the train. In the presence of a tiger, you carry on, read the paper, lean on the pole, you wear red boots that say, “Look at me!” so you can stay silent.

Habits help us create great work. Habits help make difficult things to start–like running or writing–difficult to stop. But to be alive and engaged, I think, habits should be designed to also create room for stumble, for serendipity. In pop social science book land (read: New York Times columnists on sabbatical), I would say HABIT is the star of 2012. 2011 was the year of the radish, or possibly the chicken sexer.

But I digress.

When someone from my past life asks, “Are you settled in?” I hear, ‘Have you started the slow march toward death?” The idiom of course means, “Are you comfortable?” And I am. I have a killer mattress. Being somewhere new is unsettling. Change is unsettling; it makes growth. And a good movie arc. Shaking things up, uncomfortable as it is, is necessary.

Far from my own people, my own language, wrenched away from all support, deprived of my masks, I’ve been able to see the life I made in New York City from a distance. I’m proud of the relationships I have and the stuff I built. I’m shedding, again. This time feels a bit like my 2005 hiatus from the usual–when I lived my life by a few rules, gifting myself space to hold onto things that are precious: connection, writing, my people, The Bird*, and the creative projects I’ve suppressed in the interest of staying busy, keeping comfortable, settling in.

More soon, but let me ask, “How do you design for serendipity?”

Use #serendipityux – I can’t believe no one else has. 

And speaking of serendipity, the sixth day as a new resident of Portland, I met Thor Muller, author of GET LUCKY: How to Put Planned Serendipity to Work for You and Your Business. I recommend his book. 

The World Domination Summit (WDS) is a provocative conference with a provocative title put on by Chris Guillebeau, an understated provocateur who runs the website, The Art of Nonconformity. The first WDS happened last June. The second WDS happened this weekend. Both were excellent.  And yet I felt conflicted about being there for two reasons.

1. I’m an interloper; I don’t join anything. I participate, I engage, I play. I lead; people join me all the time.  But when I’m not leading, I sit on the sidelines and I watch. Because I am cool scared shitless.   Thank you, Brene′ Brown.
2. I hate that word domination. It sounds like oppression, colonialism, misogyny. I thought, ‘here we are a bunch of white people going to Portland, Oregon to dominate the world’. How familiar. How quaint and fucked up.

Having said that, I love Chris Guillebeau’s work. The man is visiting all 196 (or 193, depending on who you ask) countries in the world before he turns 35. He is the gentleman of the internet. His output is terrifically motivating and makes me feel bad about myself in a way that feels good. I also enjoy the hell out of the inspiring and amazing projects people from Chris’ network are working on. I told myself, I would just go watch. I would interlope, like I do.

But I’ve been walking around gobsmacked and changed since the conference this weekend. Chris wrote a book called the $100 Startup. In 2008, I started my business with $40.00. And I have been gainfully self-employed ever since.  Many of the people at WDS are self-employed also. But they are also doing amazing non-business social stuff.

The last fifteen minutes of the conference, Chris announced a surprise. He had a surplus of $100,000 and rather than bank it, he gave everyone at the conference — all 1000 attendees, a crisp $100 bill. Talk about reframing social capital. Talk about putting your money where your mouth is.

On my way out of the conference I took an envelope with $100, a simple missive, and a metaphorical mirror. I opened the envelope and I thought, Go start something. My inner conflict about domination, what I outline above, unfounded. I was wrong. 

While I still hate war metaphors, Chris’ small army and this revolution aren’t really about dominating people. The World Domination Summit is about dominating a system that doesn’t serve us.

How do you live a remarkable life in a conventional world?

• You create more signal than you do noise.
• You give people possibility.
• You lead by example.
• You start something without waiting for permission.
• And you join in.

Well, I’m all in.

When I first started my business, rather than spend money on business cards, I gave everyone I met a dollar bill with my name on it–The first forty were done with a typewriter. After that, I bought a rubber stamp. I’m still without business cards and in need of a new rubber stamp.

I just moved from New York City to Portland, Oregon. I moved in favor of more time and more space and less busyness so I can get down to business. I’m writing a book called The Age of Accountability. And I’m working on giving Board of Us away because connection and inspiration should be like water: Free and available to all.

I have so much more to say and I will. In the meantime, for recaps on #WDS2012, go here for photos, here for quotes and more, and here for heart. 2013′s World Domination Summit will sell out fast, Go. Get on Chris’ list. I’d love to host you in Portland. I have a guest room.

For the last six months or so I’ve been working on helping Karen Steinberg at the Possibility Practice create her website and brand and tell the world more of what she does, which is excellent executive coaching and therapy in Manhattan.  I’m proud of what we did together. We made a manifesto. Everyone should have one of these. Even you.

Karen is doing a public workshop coming up very soon, this SATURDAY, June 9th. It’s all about creating possibility in your life. Here is the description from The Possbility Practice:

What if you could turn your greatest obstacles into discovery and possibility?

Are you having difficulty enjoying your life?

The Possibility Practice is a place where people like you can develop the emotional-intellectual-social muscles you need to grow, and live your life joyously in an ever changing and uncertain world.

It is a practice, an exercise, that enables you to develop your capacity to create your life.

With The Possibility Practice, practice makes possible. It is a practice that helps you to develop the ability to see anew, to ask new questions, cultivate curiosity, and create possibility.

If you would like to cultivate curiosity and create possibility in your life, join The Possibility Practice Founder Karen Steinberg for a 2 hour introductory workshop on Saturday, June 9th from 11 – 1pm. Sign up here. 

Last month, I moved 3,000 miles across the country. Well, 2,910 miles really, but who’s counting?

In February I started researching my move and in the span of about six weeks, I became a big consumer of products and services I previously had known very little about. As someone who regularly advises businesses and artists on their web marketing, on their grand stories, on their content strategy, it was an interesting user-experience exercise.

What worked? What didn’t? What made me buy? These were big purchases, from $300 (boxes and twine) to $25,000, (a new car), often researched and purchased completely on line. I even chose a house, sight unseen.

Googling “Cross-Country Move” is a little like going to WebMD and searching, “White Spots on Tongue” or “Tingling in Left Calf”. All signs lead to “Brace yourself. You are in for a terrible experience.” You have sickle cell anemia and all of your things are about to be lost, broken, held for ransom in Utah, or worse.  The company you chose to move everything you own won’t return your calls. And neither will your insurance company. Yelp is the WebMD of consumer spending. It is a freak show.

In the micro-decisions and big decisions I made as I navigated the web, “Should I do a full-service move or use Pods? Should I DIY this? Absolutely not. If I were to do a freight or POD move, which company would I use?” I realized that what separated the reputable and the no-way-in-hell-would-I-use-this-service websites, was one thing: video.

Video created trust. Video told me, “Relax. We do this all the time. We will break it down into small, bite-sized steps and tell you exactly what to expect.” The company I went with to move me, they even created a DVD packet that they sent me in the mail. I tweeted them MAIL?! That’s stupid. Have you heard of the internet? And they tweeted me right back. They had heard of the internet. And they have their DVD packet online too. Relax. I was showing my high strung New Yorkiness. They were showing their excellent customer service.

@boardofus I apologize for any confusion. The same video clips are available on our YouTube channel (& site): bit.ly/gQOXMf

— ABF U-Pack Moving (@ABFUPackMoving) February 17, 2012

My partner and I watched the “how to load your stuff in the bulk head video” over and over again. It was like what I imagine going to a lamaze class is, a preparation for the big event, so on the big day, we would know what to do and how to breathe. We had the video queued up and ready on our phones for our movers to watch as they loaded the bulk-head. They had done this before. They rolled their eyes. Turns out, they have videos on their website, too.

When I felt overwhelmed, I would watch a how-to pack video, a how-to load everything you own into thirteen feet of space video, what car should I buy in 2012 video. For six weeks, before I went to bed, I would watch a video produced by a company I was about to hand over a bunch of money to.

Dear business owner, there is a lesson for you in this.

Video is more important than ever. It is ubiquitous, it is shareable, it puts a human face — or faces — on your brand. Videos can be instructive, funny, create levity for a stressful experience, be helpful, and help me make it easy to give you all of my money with a smile on my face. Assure me. It also means I spend less time dialing your 1-800 number trying to talk to someone. It’s like using the TV as a babysitter for your customers. Video can save you money.

As you’re thinking ahead to your video content strategy, think to yourself,

1. What story can I tell in two minutes that gets at WHY I DO WHAT I DO?

ABF — the moving company I chose — succinctly tells the story of why putting your stuff in a freight truck makes a crazy amount of sense. Cheaper, more reliable, easy.

2. How can I break down the product or service I offer in a way that is helpful to answer the needs of my customers?

3. Are there any customers who would be willing to GIVE ME A VIDEO TESTIMONIAL?

I bought a car based on video reviews of others who had just bought the same car. And they gave tours. Lots of them. With no buyer’s remorse.

4. What content do my customer service reps or do I give to potential customers over and over again?

5. What expertise do I have that isn’t directly related to selling my product or service, but is related to helping my customer in the moment?

Videos on how to pack pictures, videos on what to think about as you set up in a new city, all of that content was related to me creating a connection with the brand. And hanging out on their website for longer than necessary.

Now I’m settling into a new life on a new coast in a new city (Portland, Oregon). Yes, I have heard of Portlandia. I watched it on YouTube before I bought Season Two.

This piece was originally published — and commissioned by Mad Bear Productions, a storytelling and video production company. 

I love having things to look forward to. And I love good habits. I also love the detritus of any creative process. And I love peeking behind the scenes. I love a serialized experience, when something happens like clockwork on a given day or at a given time.

I also love the follow-through of a well-set-up expectation. I love art dressed as gifts. I love regional mythologies. And I love it when people use the totality of a questionable [y cold] situation to create something amazing. All of these reasons are why I love Rabbit Rabbit Radio.

Artist Carla Kihlstedt and Matthias Bossi made one of the coolest things on the interwebs, y’all. Carla and Matthias are two totally talented musicians who also happen to be married. To each other. They live with their wee daughter in Cape Cod where it is very cold off-season. Since being on the road is hard, they made a membership site for their fans to sustain them and let them make music. And it is super. And it happens on the first of every month, which is happening. Like super soon. In honor of April 1, perhaps they will say rabbit rabbit backward: tibbar tibbar oidar.

I also love Carla’s voice–and the hand-craftedness and the care that goes into stating an intention and following through. And February’s song HUSH HUSH played loudly when I’m deep in a spiral of email shame does the trick. More on that soon. Here’s a little something about the project from Carla and Matthias. And be sure to watch the video. It’s so well done.

Last night I read Austin Kleon’s STEAL LIKE AN ARTIST. He gives this advice: Find your own genealogy of ideas.  I know vaguely how the family idea tree — for me — might look. And I planned to draw the tree–to make my creative lineage sometime soon, when I could find the time. And the markers. And the headspace. But the time found me because I just can’t sleep.

Number one on my family tree: Adrienne Rich. She died today. Well, yesterday. It’s now the middle of the night.

Adrienne Rich said this thing:

Responsibility to yourself means that you don’t fall for shallow and easy solutions–predigested books and ideas…It means that you refuse to sell your talents and aspirations short…It means that we insist on a life of meaningful work, insist that work be as meaningful as love and friendship in our lives. It means, therefore, the courage to be “different”…The difference between a life lived actively, and a life of passive drifting and dispersal of energies, is an immense difference. Once we begin to feel committed to our lives, responsible to ourselves, we can never again be satisfied with the old, passive way.”
― Adrienne Rich

Norton was her publisher since the mid-1960s. And Norton was where I grew up and took my first step toward living my life actively on my own terms. I was a Traveler there starting in 1997 and left as an Editor in 2004. Adrienne Rich was as adamant about writing for an independent, employee-owned publisher as I was working for one. I’ve never seen myself as part of a creative lineage–there is something safe about always remaining on the outside. Lately, I’ve been an interloper in most of my pursuits. The danger in that is it easy to have a constant dispersal of [energy]“. Consulting work can easily become ‘empty calories’, predigested ideas — if you’re not intentionally building for sustainability. But I digress.

As Austin Kleon says, “The great thing about dead or remote masters is that they can’t refuse you as an apprentice. You can learn whatever you want from them. They left their lesson plans in their work.”

Indeed. And what a terrific body of work. Adrienne Rich, you will be deeply missed, but not forgotten.

A few months ago I got a phone call out of the blue from a private investigator. Her initials were JO. Said private investigator is probably reading this right now, aren’t you? Hi.

Anyway, when she called with her blocked phone number, I didn’t answer my phone. I never do because I only return calls on Thursdays. But for this call, I made an exception. I was intrigued. I wanted to know more. I called her right back.

This private investigator had seen me in a photo–on Facebook–or maybe it was Google Images. She couldn’t remember. In the photo I was smiling. It was casual. I was with ____________   ______________, one of my former students and she wanted to know how I knew him.

I said, “He was my student. And now he is my Facebook friend.” She wanted something juicier. She asked me for his number. Or his email. “When did you last see him?” “Could you get a message to him?” She told me–in explicit detail–why she was calling, what he had allegedly done.

I think she misread the photo. She took our chummy, camped-out queerness for a heterosexual blossoming love interest. Or maybe I misread her intentions. It’s hard to tell. But regardless, she was mistakenly leveraging my student’s apparently strong ties for the purposes of humiliation. It’s terrible. And likely her tactics are extremely effective. Imagine a collection agency or PI contacting your inner social circle. Oh wait, that happens all the time.

This week I read The Power of Habit: Why We Do What We Do in Life and Business by Charles Duhigg. There is an entire section on Social Habits, essentially how movements happen. Duhigg takes the Montgomery Bus Boycott and analyzes and deconstructs the whys: why Montgomery, Alabama, why Rosa Parks, why December 1, 1955?

Duhigg explains that Rosa Parks wasn’t the first black passenger jailed for breaking segregation laws. But she was the first to turn an individual act of defiance into a significant social movement. She was the first person deeply respected in her community — and embedded in multiple horizontal networks. She was well liked and she knew everybody. She was the secretary of the local NAACP chapter, was part of the Methodist Church, volunteered at the Lutheran Church, spent weekends volunteering at a shelter, knit blankets for a local hospital, and did dress making for wealthy white debutantes. She had membership in dozens of social networks.

Before apathy set in in the community as a whole, Rosa Parks’ weak and strong ties — her friends and friends of friends created movement. And that movement created A Movement with a capital M. It was a social movement created out of social ties and also, in a sense, false perception, which is kind of what social peer pressure is. And what Facebook is all about.

Thinking about multiple social networks and the transparency of them to others, the effects of social peer pressure, the rapidity by which a social group can form new social habits is mind boggling. Because the prism of [false] perception make up so much of our online lies/lives. Right?

Because of the life-span-friend-collection of the apparatus of Facebook, it is by nature helpful in creating networks across horizontal lines: from multiple and heterogeneous parts of our lives. Our behavior on Facebook can mimic strong social networks. We can all create the illusion of a life well-lived, can’t we?

Do we?

Yesterday morning I saw two tweets juxtaposed in my Twitter feed. I found them so jarring I took a picture. One was offering a free e-book. The other, breaking the news (to me) that a US soldier had killed 16 civilians in Afghanistan.

I noticed it. And then I went to my first session of the morning — where the word “war” was used flippantly and out of context — again. It was the third session of seven I had been to in two days that used war: #techwars #storywars or #warstories as a hashtag. Anyway, this storify story is about that. Disclaimer: Amber Case was brilliant. She really did “kill it” but why can’t’ we say she was brilliant?