Big Ideas: Traditional notions of a profession are giving way to multiple jobs.

We are spending our time trying to find meaning and purpose with our lives. Many of the projects we work on are not jobs at all.

We are in an age of abundance where people are finding that more work and more consumption are not satisfying. Many of us are choosing to work less.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten has a great article, Job2.0- The End of Profession,  on The Next Web Entrepreneur .

Boris writes;

For a while now we have been moving from the Job 1.0 into the Job 2.0 phase. In the Job 1.0 era life was simple. You were born, studied something (in college or on the street) for about 10 years and then start practicing what you learned until you retired. When people asked you what you did you answered ‘Plumber’, ‘Architect’, ‘Photographer’ or ‘Dentist’ and people would know what you were talking about…
The Job 2.0 era gives us all an opportunity to have more than one profession at a time. Plumbers don’t just do plumbing anymore. They have to be in marketing and PR as well and offer more related services than just plumbing to satisfy market demand. Architects aren’t just designing buildings anymore. They also design cities, furniture, books and gadgets.

Boris believes the first reason for our shift to these multiple ‘jobs’ is;

Our tools are becoming increasingly more powerful but also easier to learn. The learning curve for a lot of skills has decreased immensely over the past years.

The second reason he mentions is the internet because;

Now, with the internet at your disposal you don’t need millions of fans to be a star. You just need a small but loyal following.

I agree with Boris that the “the learning curve for a lot of skills has decreased immensely over the past years.” However, what it really means is that there is more competition at every skill level and you have to be increasingly exceptional to standout. Everyone is good now, so good is no longer enough.

I also agree that a ’small but loyal following’ are all that is needed for decent success, although collecting those fans is getting increasingly harder. When everyone blogs, blogging is no longer enough. When everyone can get thousands of twitter followers or facebook fans then the value of those followers diminishes.

We all have access to the same tools, skills and marketing channels now. A Filipino graphic designer that a decade ago would have worked for a few dollars per hour is now competing with New York artists. There is a democratization of technology, skills and marketing channels. Hyper-competition means that there are diminishing returns to additional effort. Why work harder if it doesn’t really make much of a difference?

I would almost argue that it is not “Job2.0″ at all. We are moving away from the industrial age notion of having to work 40 plus hours a week for a living. Many of us are spending more time on projects and hobbies that have little chance of earning us a living. We are volunteering more, travelling more, learning more and experiencing more.

The Age of Abundance

We are richer than ever. Most people are no longer working for food, shelter and clothing. Obesity is a bigger problem than lack of food in richer countries. We keep moving to larger and more posh housing and we are more likely to discard unfashionable clothes than wear them out. We have an over-supply of every product and service. Even previously ‘rich’ illnesses of obesity and heart problems have shifted predominantly to the poor in developed nations.

Corporations have trained us to be consumers wanting infinitely more goods and services. Increased consumption requires more work to pay for our excesses. More purchases are not making us happier so more people are juggling multiple roles, as author Ian Sanders describes, to bring satisfaction to our lives. Much of what we do in our free time (blogging, design, music, sports, volunteering, etc.) is not about having a ‘job’ at all. We are doing things that bring us enjoyment, not necessarily income. In this age of abundance, more and more people are willing to trade income for time. I argue that we are not entering Job2.0 but actually something more akin to life 2.0. We all need to earn a living, but if we keep our expenses down work can be a much smaller part of our lives. I think this is evidenced by the increase in people retiring early or like myself, taking mid-career breaks to travel the world and work on other projects.

How much is enough?

More people are starting to realize that if they get off the consumption band-wagon they can actually work less and experience more.

Goods and services are abundant but time, attention, values and health will always be scarce. Where do you want to focus the bulk of your time? Is it more important constantly work to afford the latest trendy gadgets and fashion or would you rather spend your time doing things you enjoy with people you like? For the sake of the environment and our own sanity, I hope more people start to embrace Life2.0 rather than Job2.0.

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Big Ideas:

• Internet start ups require less financing.

• Angel investors are encroaching on venture capitalists.

With open source software and inexpensive technology, the start up costs for Internet businesses are much lower than in the past. Lower investment requirements, combined with an increase in angel investment are often making large scale venture capital funding unnecessary.

Jason Cohen of A Smart Bear writes;

VCs are increasingly unnecessary to get companies started, both because of inexpensive technology and marketing channels and because there are enough angel investors that founders don’t have to sell the entire farm for ridiculous amounts of cash they don’t really need.

And then, for the few companies that really do need VC-sized investments to take them from product/market fit to explosive growth, by the time they start touring Sand Hill Road their valuations are sky-high; they’ve already got all the trappings of a successful company, the major risks having been removed during the angel round.

Michael Arrington on TechCrunch concurs;

An entire generation of entrepreneurs have stopped thinking about hitting up those top tier VCs as their first step in the startup process. Many now simply begin with Y Combinator, or take a small angel round. These angels are fast and nimble and they are hanging out with the entrepreneurs at events, incubators, etc. They are in the fray, while many of the old VCs remain above it all, waiting for the entrepreneurs to come to them, hat in hand.

With start up incubators like Y Combinator and TechStars proving that substantial companies can be built with as little as $25,000 and a few months, perhaps venture capitalists are on their last legs?

Arrington goes on to say;

The VCs, for their part, fight back more quietly. They point out that very few angel funded startups end up very big or interesting. “An entire generation of entrepreneurs are building dipshit companies and hoping that they sell to Google for $25 million,” lamented a venture capitalist to me recently. He believes that angel investors are pushing entrepreneurs to think small, and avoid the home run swings. And you don’t get a home run unless you swing hard, he says. When you play it safe you nearly always lose.

Is a $25 million sell out a ‘dipshit company?’ More importantly is VC investment really necessary for ‘home runs?’ While getting a few million dollars in funding is the holy grail for many entrepreneurs, I tend to believe that a good management team, with the right mentors and angel investors can deliver more positive value to society than financially focused venture capitalists. I hope there are a lot of ‘dipshit companies’ focused on creating value for customers rather than returns for venture capitalists.

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Big ideas:

• It is much easier to add complexity than to simplify.

• Overly complex societies or systems eventually collapse.

Clay Shirky has another brilliant post with two amazing insights. The first which I will cover in this post is about the collapse of complex business models. Shirky’s entire post is a must read buy I will try to condense his ideas with these quotes.

In 1988, Joseph Tainter wrote a chilling book called The Collapse of Complex Societies. Tainter looked at several societies that gradually arrived at a level of remarkable sophistication then suddenly collapsed: the Romans, the Lowlands Maya, the inhabitants of Chaco canyon. Every one of those groups had rich traditions, complex social structures, advanced technology, but despite their sophistication, they collapsed, impoverishing and scattering their citizens and leaving little but future archeological sites as evidence of previous greatness…

In such systems, there is no way to make things a little bit simpler – the whole edifice becomes a huge, interlocking system not readily amenable to change. Tainter doesn’t regard the sudden decoherence of these societies as either a tragedy or a mistake—”[U]nder a situation of declining marginal returns collapse may be the most appropriate response”, to use his pitiless phrase. Furthermore, even when moderate adjustments could be made, they tend to be resisted, because any simplification discomfits elites….

Dr. Amy Smith is a professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT, where she runs the Development Lab, or D-Lab, a lab organized around simple and cheap engineering solutions for the developing world.

Among the rules of thumb she offers for building in that environment is this: “If you want something to be 10 times cheaper, take out 90% of the materials.” Making media is like that now except, for “materials”, substitute “labor.”

37Signals has been one of the best and most successful advocates for simplicity in business. Their focus on rapid development of limited feature web services have made them Web2.0 role models. Feature creep can delay product launches and make products and services prohibitively expensive to create and use. Intuitively, simplicity makes sense but it is often much easier said than done.

The success of Apple computers can be largely attributed to design and simplicity. Design is obvious; beautiful laptops carved out of a single piece of aluminum are art worth paying a premium for. As consumers, we still don’t value simplicity in the same way as physical attributes, features or price.

Apple computers are easier to buy with much better service. Try choosing a PC among dozens of vendors and dozens more configurations. By the time you make your final decision it is quite likely new technologies and configurations will be on the market.

There is huge value in purchasing simplicity. It is easy to buy a Mac. With Apple your computer decision is based on four criterion: portability, monitor size, cost and speed. Do you need a power house with a huge monitor or do you want a tiny computer that you can take to a cafe? There are compromises in between but anyone can make the decision quickly and easily.

Simplification is all but impossible for larger bureaucratic organizations. Complexity requires people and time. That means more jobs.  Workers at all levels of organizations instinctively resist simplification because it puts their own job and control at risk. In traditionally structured organizations pay and span of control depend on more procedures, systems, features and rules. In the ideal, simple organization employees would not be needed. That is a hard sell for people struggling to hold on to their jobs.

Action Items

Can you simplify your business or idea to a single concept? Simplicity reduces costs and therefore prices for consumers. The greatest benefit of simplification efforts is that your target market will better understand your offering and will more easily communicate this value to others. How many websites have you visited where you have no idea what they sell?

Simple is cheaper, faster and offers a clearer message that can spread.

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Companies are flocking to social media and crowdsourcing platforms in the hopes of finding cheaper or more effective ways to market their wares. This is understandable for we all need to make a living, however, I think the real promise of social media is bigger than just a financial transaction. People give their time and money for reasons above and beyond financial gain.

Crowdfunding site Kickstarter is a great example of non-financial motives for giving. Kickstarter is a platform to fund creative ideas. It is not investing, project creators retain complete ownership of their projects.

“Project creators inspire people to open their wallets by offering products, benefits and fun experiences.”

The great thing is that people do fund projects for “fun experiences.” There are many people completely willing to part with a little cash in order to play a small role in a community. And yes, each project is a community because like minded individuals are connecting around a single idea.

At the time of writing this post, Bud Caddell has attracted $6377 in funding from 88 backers for his book project, The Bucket Brigade: How Everything in the Attention Economy Actually Works and 10 Rules to Profit from it. Pledges of $25 or more get their name and URL in the book. More than $100 earns editorial membership. Backing of more than $500 gets “special attention from me (Caddell) far beyond the production of this book.”

Think about that for a moment, if you donate more than $100 you also get to edit the book for free. Caddell’s successful funding proves that money isn’t the only motivator. I think this is a positive and very powerful cultural advancement. Some professional connections and engagements are more valuable than a mere financial exchange.

That to me is the real power of social media. We are connecting around ideas and beliefs and not only trying to sell each other something. As we develop as societies and continue to climb Maslow’s Hierarcy, money is becoming less of a motivator.

Caddell was only asking for $5000 in funding, which is not a lot of money to write, edit and publish a book. Clearly it is not only about the money for him either. Lumi Co. on Kickstarter said,

“Kickstarter is an incredible platform. Its obvious purpose is funding, but we find ourselves gaining so much outside of collecting pledges. For us, Kickstarter has been a powerful tool to connect with a community passionate about our work.”

Many of us blog, upload videos and pictures, contribute to open source projects like Wikipedia and Linux with little or zero financial benefit. There is definitely more to life than money. Being part of a community and connecting with fellow humans has value in and of itself. We really are putting the ’social’ into social media.

Thanks to Edward Boches for inspiring this post.

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It has been almost 600 years since Gutenberg invented the printing press, so next generation books are long over due. I have written several times about the inevitable revolution in book publishing. The introduction of Apple’s iPad is a major advancement  in the transformation of the idea of a book as printed words to a full multi-media experience. There is now an iPad application for three interactive children’s stories.

TheNextWeb has a great post about the interactive experience of games and animations within books.

This is nothing short of a revolution in children’s books. The adult can read while the child plays with the screen’s attractions, making reading not only a fun, but also an interactive experience.

This is just the beginning of what I have been calling unbooks. The real advancements will come when readers connect and form communities around the ideas in the books. Perhaps they will be ’social books.’ There are problems with using the word ‘book’ because these interactive experiences will be part book, part video, part discussion, part website, part curation, etc. I don’t know if the old idea of a ‘book’ encapsulates the new concepts accurately. One thing is certain; there are some exciting opportunities for authors and forward-thinking publishers.

More Links

Vook – Interactive books

TheUnbook A print based concept of the future of books as regularly updated and improved publications.

My Posts
The Future of Books
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How do you market your business in this age of social media? There is no denying the impact of online marketing and social media but I think many companies are doing it wrong. The best social media strategy in the world is not going to help a poor quality business. On the other hand, companies that deliver amazing service probably don’t need to invest much in social media because their ardent fans will market their business for free. I think the Canadian printing company JukeBox Print Shop is one of those fantastic companies doing everything right.

I just ordered a rush order of business cards from JukeBox Print Shop and was completely amazed at the quality of service at every stage of the ordering process. This level of customer service and quality were so out-standing that I sent an email to thank them. Here is the text of that email:

Hello,

I am thoroughly impressed with the entire process of getting my rush order of business cards.

1. Your well designed and clearly organized website was the first surprise. There are so many graphic design companies who don’t even bother to maintain an appealing and updated website.
2. Your customer service staff were  very knowledgeable and helpful. I needed the cards quickly so I called several times to see what my options were and that it was possible to deliver by my short deadline. Your staff knew your product very well and clarified everything. It is so rare to find customer service reps that actually know and care about their company’s products.
3. Despite sending in my designs just before closing on a Friday, I still received the PDF proofs for verification minutes later.
4. Your email notifications and website kept me updated on exactly what stage my order was in. A minor misunderstanding was corrected in my order within minutes online.
5. The cards were delivered on time, exactly as promised, for half the price of local printers. Even the card stock you offered was thicker at this already discounted price.

You have a fantastic company. I have no doubt that you will be very successful. Congratulations on everything you have accomplished.

A very happy customer,
John Bardos

I was already extremely satisfied with my order of 250 of their inexpensive business cards, however JukeBox Print took it to the next level. In order to thank me for my email, they have offered 1,250 premium business cards for free.

I told my story with JukeBox Print in a presentation in front of 80 people, I have written this post, I have told everyone who will listen and I tweeted about the company several times with more to come. Is my promotion worth 1,250 free business cards? I am already planning my next order and several of my contacts are interested in using JukeBox Print in the future. I think their generous offer will pay off many times in the near future.

The key lesson is that social media is about the conversation. Real support from dedicated fans can be invaluable promotion and it can’t be faked. Companies should focus on delivering great products with exceptional customer service, then the online marketing will almost take care of itself.

Now go order some business cards or other print products, you won’t be disappointed. Of course, I am not getting paid to say any of this. JukeBox Print Shop is that good.

What do you think; should companies invest in great customer service before social media?

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Here is short animation poking fun at our excessive preoccupation with productivity. Some of us spend so much time reading books and blog posts to try to be more productive; isn’t that defeating the purpose?

While it is important to be efficient I also think that real creative breakthroughs can’t be time optimized. So much of our lives are spent in front of screens that we can sometimes lose focus on what is important.

Please take a look.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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Here is a fascinating video by the BBC called The Century of the Self. It is about public relations master and nephew of Sigmund Freud, Edward Bernays. Bernays was instrumental in creating our consumerism culture, invented PR, advised governments and was a key influence on the propaganda of Nazi Germany.

Edward Bernays took Freud’s ideas about the primitive aggressive and sexual forces driving people and used them to manipulate the masses.

He showed American corporations, for the first time, how they could make people want things they didn’t need, by linking mass-produced goods to their unconscious desires. Out of this would come a new political idea of how to control the masses. By satisfying people’s inner selfish desires, one made them happy and thus docile. It was the start of the all-consuming self which has come to dominate our world today.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Here are some high-lights of the video.

• Sold World War I to Americans.
• ‘Propaganda’ was the word used by Nazis so Bernay re-named it as Public Relations.
• He persuaded women to smoke by branding them as ‘torches of freedom’ and linking smoking to the suffrage movement.
• Helped link products and services to emotions and feelings and how people wanted to be seen by others. It was a shift from purchases based on needs to desires.
• Created the idea of cars as symbols of male sexuality.
• Started the shift from the notion of active citizens to passive consumers.
• Helped popularize President Coolidge by linking him to movie stars.
• Popularized Freud’s ideas in the US.
• Key influence to  Joseph Goebbel, the Nazi propagandist.
• Created the vision that democracy was only possible in a free-market capitalist society in the 1939 New York World Fair.

Here is a link to a free PDF version of  Edward Bernay’s 1928 book, Propaganda. (You may have to right click and save as to download to a PC.)

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What does it take to find a job in this economy? Does sending out generic emails out to hundreds of companies work? How about using the popular employment sites and applying for all jobs vaguely interesting? You can’t differentiate yourself by doing what everyone else is doing.

$6 on Google Adwords to Get Your Dream Job

Alec Brownstein landed two job offers for his dream job with a $6 investment in Google Adwords advertising targeting the names of top New York creative directors. Watch the short video to see.

Create your Own Dream Job

Any sane business owner will happily offer employment to anyone who can prove they can offer more value than they cost. Unfortunately, larger businesses are not particularly sane. Focus on smaller, entrepreneurial companies and you just may be able to create any job you want. Check out Charlie Hoehn’s free SlideShare ebook to see how he managed to work with Seth Godin,  Ramit Sethi of Iwillteachyoutoberich.com, Tim Ferriss of The Four Hour Workweek and movie director Tucker Max.

Forget a Resume

Seth Godin wrote in his latest book Linchpin

Having a resume begs for you to go into that big machine that looks for relevant keywords and begs for you to get a job as a cog in a giant machine.

Godin goes on to say,

If you don’t have a resume, what do you have?

How about three extraordinary letters of recommendations from people the employer knows or respects?

Or a sophisticated project an employer can see or touch?

Or a reputation that precedes you?

Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?

Some say, “Well , that’s fine, but I don’t have those.”

Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have these things, what leads you to believe that you are remarkable, amazing, or just plain spectacular?

It sounds to me like if you don’t have more than a resume, you’ve been brainwashed into compliance.
Great jobs, world-class jobs, jobs people kill for – those jobs don’t get filled by people e-mailing in resumes.

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Here is a fantastic hand drawn animated explanation of Dan Pink’s latest book Drive by the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures and Commerce (RSA)

I have selected some excerpts of the animation but I highly recommend the 10 minute video for the content and the entertainment of watching the artist illustrate in fast motion.

For simple, straight forward, rudimentary tasks, bonuses work as expected; the higher the pay the higher the performance.

When a task gets more complicated, requiring some conceptual, creative thinking; larger rewards lead to poorer performance.

Money motivates people only if you don’t pay them enough to want to do the work.

There are three factors that lead to better performance and personal satisfaction:

• Autonomy – our desire to direct our own lives
• Mastery – our urge to get better at stuff (Like playing a musical instrument.)
• Contribution – making a difference (Linux, Wikipedia)

More and more corporations have a transcendent purpose. Partly because it makes coming to work better and partly because it attracts better talent.

We are purpose maximizers, not just profit maximizers.

I think we are all looking for more meaning in our work and lives but the research that Dan Pink offers is somewhat counter-intuitive on the surface. Money turns out to not be a very good motivator for more creative and cognitive work.

The question for each of us is whether or not we can create inspiring projects and businesses that attract talented employees and volunteers while giving everyone the freedom to choose what they want to work on. Could you create the next Wikipedia or Linux?

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