I had some success in a recent meeting with a potential partner. He simultaneously complimented and threatened me in the same sentence and I was forced to deal with it. What did I do?

1)No Emotions

A threat or compliment can generate emotions both good and bad. These emotions cause me to speak, act, and judge differently. The problem is that neither are good emotional states to make decisions from. So, be unemotional to make better decisions with a clearer mind.

2) Get to the core of it

The threats caused problems with our potential deal. They were essentially senseless roadblocks getting in the way of accomplishment. I pushed them aside and got to the core of the issue and how to solve it. Do NOT be distracted. That may very well be what the other person wants.

3) Size up the other person

Just as you would at the poker take, look at posture, body language, breathing patterns, etc. If the other person is upset, you should sense it coming and dissolve it immediately by addressing what you believe is upsetting them. Don’t be afraid to profile the person. Are they a knucklehead? A whack’em all? Make judgements about people and everything they do. It will help you get what you want out of the conversation, sales call, etc. And you will have more productive meetings!

Denver International's Crazy Devil Horse

Some people refer to it as “The Apocalyptic Hell Beast.”

On the way into the airport that isn’t exactly the last image I want to have before getting on a plane.

2) Weird Indian Singing

After passing through security in the Frontier gate area someone had the crazy idea of playing weird Indian chanting over the loudspeaker. Everytime I go through I feel like I am part of a burial ritual. I am all for cultural sensitivity, but let’s not scare the shit out of the other 99.9% of people who are not Indians.

3) Horrible Turbulence

This is actually what provoked this writing. In the afternoon during the summer time you can count on thunderstorms in the Denver area. Bad ones.

Pilots either fly around them or through them and in either case it feels like a roller coaster ride. In the Marine Corps we called it the pucker factor and most of my flight into and out of Denver are definitely off the charts in the overall rankings.

As most know, many actors and musicians are more likely to vote democrat than republican. Unfortunately, many of these actors and musicians like to take controversial stands that alienate their fanbase. The Dixie Chicks and their comments overseas apologizing for our country were widely regarded as  un-American. Some things you just don’t do.

Another example, Matt Damon referring to Sarah Palin and her family as a bad Disney movie. Jane Fonda overtly trying to appease the North Vietnamese. And more recently, David Letterman and his comments about rape in regards to Sarah Palin’s 14 year old daughter, Willow.

Many Sarah Palin fans watch David Letterman and Matt Damon on TV and movies. Many conservative women bought and used Jane Fonda’s fitness routine.The Dixie Chicks have had a huge following of conservative country music fans.

So, why would these people take the overt stands they do on certain issues? In my view they have made a strategic decision to appease one group while alienating another. In return for a more rabid core group of fans they insult another group of fans. This insult also grabs headlines and promotes who they are and what they do.

Is this smart? Giving up what could be millions of dollars in ratings, movie tickets, and album sales, to make a political or sensational statement?

I can see a reason to do it that doesn’t have to do with ego or insults. A tribe of followers is sometimes more valuable than wide appeal.

First, let me say being totally transparent in the way government spends money is very noble. Every citizen has a right to know where their tax dollars are going. If only Recovery.gov gave that sort of information.

Here is a sample:

14.257	Homelessness Prevention and Rapid Re-Housing Program	$65,653,996
17.260	WIA Dislocated Workers	$58,511,252
66.468	Drinking Water SRF	$58,460,000
17.259	WIA Youth Activities	$56,158,510
16.803	Office of Justice Programs (OJP) Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant (JAG) Formula Program - http://www.ojp.usdoj.gov/BJA/recoveryact.html	$38,048,939
14.253	CDBG Entitlement Grants	$29,952,254

After looking through all of the set asides, I found the generality shocking and almost intentional. It is as if the object was to give the impression of transparency by having a bunch of programs and money allotted to them without really being transparent.

My second thought after looking up some of these programs is: what is so stimulating about these programs? When I say stimulating I mean creating value greater than the dollar spent. Some might call this the Keynesian multiplier. From my judgment it looks as though this stimulus amounts to an expansion of government programs which are notorious for their misuse of funds (over budget, delays in completion, etc). When the money is spent, all or most jobs created will be gone and we’ll be left with higher operating costs due to the increase in government largess (more highways and bridges mean more maintenance, more buildings mean more maintenance, air conditioning, and janitorial costs). In the long run, we are actually not providing ourselves any benefit and may be hurting ourselves in the end. The intent is good, but the result is predictable and inexcusable.

The stimulus plan should have done something truly stimulating like a capital gains tax holiday which would encourage private investment and job creation. Another suggestion would be to lower the corporate tax rate, one of the highest in the world. Instead, we get more regulations ( ie CAFE standards), increased taxes (ie mileage taxes, cap and trade, healthcare benefits), nationalization of large companies (ie GM, Chrysler, AIG), and quadrupling our national debt. All within six months of being in office.

Some describe this administration as being “historic.” Unfortunately, in my view, it is for all the wrong reasons.

Intense Debate, like many consumer web apps, was and remains a free to use plugin or add on. One simply downloads it and activates it to use. I always found it funny when I received angry emails from users who couldn’t wait for a new feature or felt compelled to threaten us with using another service if we didn’t give into their demands for new/random features within their suggested timeframe.They were the first to blog or tweet their issue.

Why did I find it funny? First, because I knew we were offering a superior product to what the competition was offering. Intense Debate has always set the standard in the commenting realm and continues to do so today with the user created comment plugins. More importantly, we were offering a FREE service that gave users more pageviews, kept visitors engaged longer on websites using Intense Debate, and significantly upgraded the commenting functionality. In the long run, we were going to win, but we couldn’t win over everyone all the time.

I see this scenario play over and over–People jumping on a soapbox to complain about the newest webservice in order to draw attention to themselves. I saw it yet again the other day when Twitter announced their future TV show. Michael Arrington posted a rant on TechCrunch about things HE wants before a TV show (note: I think Michael is a decent fellow, but he is wrong here). The comment section turned into a complaint festival full of negativity. Robin Wauters, a writer for TechCrunch, said “a business model” in referencer to what he would want Twitter to work on. Please. Twitter will decide what is best for Twitter, but what concern is it to you whether they have a business model or not? It’s a free service. Plain and simple. Leave those decisions to Twitter Execs and Investors. You can go back to tweeting about hot dogs, farts, and whatever else.

The majority of people who use Twitter barely know how to use it let alone want a group feature, notice downtime,  are worried about a business model, etc. This is the disconnect of the early adopter crowd. Once a product does gain a small amount of traction it no longer needs to cater to the blowhorn crowd. Belief in your core product and its acceptance by your ideal user is more important (more often than not it isn’t the editor of TechCrunch).

A non-web example is Adam Lambert’s loss on American Idol. The Hollywood Elites all thought he had it wrapped up. Of course, the people in flyover country thought differently. Now people like the esteemed Kim Kardashian are speaking out on how they thought Adam should have won. As if all of Kris Allen’s Voters are somehow one step away from farm animal intellect.

Opportunity is out there. Listen to people with blowhorns at your peril. Let your sales numbers do the talking.

(Note: This is not to suggest that “The Blowhorns” do not make good suggestions at times. For example, Marshall Kirpatrick, makes lots of excellent points at times. To all “The Blowhorns” please do not read the name as a pejorative. A lot of you are good people)

Growing up I had great examples to follow. My parents, coaches, teachers, professors all impacted my life positively. Later in life I entered the Marine Corps and was mentored by several higher ranking Marines. Later still, after starting Intense Debate and getting into TechStars, I was absurdly lucky to go from meeting to meeting and visit with people like Alex King, Brad Feld, David Cohen, Todd Vernon, and several others. A lot of Intense Debate’s success is drawn from outstanding mentorship.

Having taken a break from the consumer web business and entering a more conservative industry (natural stone), I found myself in need of a new type of mentor.

The way you find a mentor is kinda like how you might find anything else. You look for it! There is no magic. Search for one, two, or however many suits you.

I found that mentor last Summer. Since then it has been a similar experience to the “Rich Dad, Poor Dad” books. Every week there is a new lesson. Each lesson is backed up with stories, structured reasoning, and most importantly, numbers.

This week’s topic was looking at a potential distributor scenario. We fleshed out numbers, a breakeven analysis, and role played a negotiation scenario. After it was over he told me to come up with 50 ideas. I said, “For what?” He said, “For every question you have. What channels are there to market? What Marketing Materials are needed to reach those channels? What content goes into the marketing materials? Everything.”

He went onto say “You see, you don’t truly know your business until you can come up with 50 ideas. It isn’t an arbitrary number. If you can’t come up with 50 ideas for everything, then you don’t know your business” (your customer, your channel, your marketing, etc).

I found this advice tremendously relevant to my business and I just wanted to share it with you

It is interesting to hear a sales guru ignore the maxim in sales Always Be Selling (ABC).

In this economy, I see a lot of companies vacating positions and different industry segments are becoming less crowded as non competitive companies exit businesses for more productive uses of capital. Take the newspaper industry as an example. After all, this is what is supposed to happen.

Creating businesses in this environment is antithetical to the lay person, but it does make sense to the next producer class. The people recognizing opportunities now will surge in prosperity as the economy corrects itself and begins a new growth period.

I am very optimistic on the future. I just wish the government would let private enterprise create the recovery and not some ridiculous spending plan that creates unsustainable government managed programs that already saddle us with more debt than George W did in the previous eight years. So much for “Change.”

Cheers.

The theory of “post scarcity,” or abundance, is largely a futuristic vision of a world where the cost to create is zero and the access to the means of creation is in ample supply.

In the “Social Media” world there is an abundance of supply. The cost to create in this world is reduced everyday with new introductions of blogging software that makes it easier to publish, widgets making it easier to spread ideas, websites created with templates or pagecreators. One can use Rent A Coder or Odesk to find a developer to work for below minimum wage. In Technorati’s most recent “State Of The Blogosphere” they stated that 122 million blogs have been created since 2002.

There are numerous social networks like Myspace, Facebook, and Bebo with millions of profiles. We even have social networks inside of social networks with Facebook and Myspace Apps like “Favorite Friends” and groups. Then we have social networks for segments of people and things like older folks (Eons) and Dogs (Dogster). We even have free software to create any social network for any concern or group with Ning. Even at work we have social networks and media with LinkedIn, and Yammer. When I am off work I’ll switch to Twitter to see who just farted, or had a hot dog, or read a good book. There are social networks in blog comments corralled by companies like Intense Debate. Last, we have social networks for our social networks with SocialThing, FriendFeed, Profilactic, and others.

Being social online is inescapable. My Blackberry tells me my location and my friends’ location with Google Latitude. If I want someone to know what I am doing at that location I’ll use Brightkite or Loopt. I’ll leave a review for later with Yelp.

I can subscribe to just about any stream of information’s RSS feed  or create my own with Dapper if an RSS feed isn’t readily available. More Ovaltine information, please!

It is endless.

We are living in a post scarcity world when it comes to social media. What all the makers of social media aspire for, that which is very scarce, is our attention.

We are told by the personal branding gurus, and I mean no disprespect to people like Gary Vaynerchuk and company, that we should use them all to extend our personal or company brand. Place our avatar on every new social site. Lock up our login name wherever we are so our online presence is continuous (mine is jpmorgan wherever possible). If this takes place, the inevitable erosion of our productive time is predictable. Even social aggregators like Friendfeed display too much information coming from too many sources and still don’t have ALL of my social networking allegiances covered. It isn’t my one stop shop. My attention is still scarce. I don’t even know if I want a one stop shop. I enjoy the experiences of several different sites and find it worth some extra time to float from site to site. My bookmarks are my method of grouping and segmenting.

Following this line of thought, I draw two conclusions:

1) The inevitability of “free” media

2) The eventual consolidation of social presence

Number one needs no explanation as the meme on “free” is well documented. Low cost of production and barriers of entry lead to increased competition and substitutes. When this happens with great scale, prices are squeezed to near free or what might be considered relatively free.

My belief in the eventual consolidation of social presence is, I believe, destined to happen. Why? I believe that personal branding is, more or less, a fad that will be carried out by very few people who execute a personal branding strategy well. Few people will do so because of their scarcity of attention in keeping track of all forms of media. For example, Seth Godin is one of the most respected marketers of our time. He is a champion of the internet. Yet, he does not use Twitter. He doesn’t even have blog comments. His simple mission is to write “remarkable” things on his blog so his ideas spread.

Seth Godin is a marketer. Gary Vaynerchuk is a salesman. There is a difference. A salesman will sell anything to anyone at anytime. A marketer has a specific product for a specific customer who purchases it at a preconceived time and location.

I believe that people will be forced to become smarter and more productive with their time. They will become marketers and not salesman/woman. They will come to know exactly what their product is and exactly who their customer is out of necessity. One can still be successful being a salesperson, but my feeling is that most people do not have the stamina/fortitude/ability to do so and therefore are smarter to plan, target, and attack.

Note: I may be mischaracterizing Gary’s position and if so, that is not intended.

The Wall Street Journal Market Data Center when you can get just about any macroeconomic number you want, as well as stocks, interest rates, etc.

Whether it be US stocks, international stocks, ETFs, commodities, etc, they have everything.

I am just going to be keeping it open as a tab on my browser. Hours of fun are about to ensue.