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He’s riffs for a while on this idea that “dedication to the process can’t help but make you a better (whatever)” [emphasis mine]. For him, it’s photography, and the moment that inspired his post revolved around a shoe:

First, I got a couple eye-level photos of the optimistic little shoe that turned out about as badly as most eye-level shots of the ground do. But, on review [always review the first few shots and zoom way in], I thought the color looked cool on the dark street, so I got on one knee to take another. Yeah, better. But, it still looked like a lame overhead snapshot that was way too dark and noisy. So, I did something that surprised me.

I laid on the sidewalk. All the way down. On my gut on 50° of western San Francisco concrete.

For him, this is a turning point. He’s a beginning photographer, and he’s taking pictures of a show. Certainly not going to win any awards here. But what he does do is this: he stops worrying about what other people will think. The people that passed by him that night certainly thought he was nuts. And any of his “expert photographer” friends might have told him that there simply wasn’t a good shot to be had of that shoe. And in the sense of making expert photography that tells a story and captures a moment, they’d probably be right.

But the point isn’t the photo. It’s the “dedication to the process”. For him, at his skill level and with his goals, that was the best possible session of photography he could take at that moment. By most accounts Merlin Mann probably sucks at photography. But he’s courageous in his suckage, which practically guarantees he won’t suck forever.

It’s high time you and I started sucking at something. What is it you want to suck at?

Next time, hopefully, two things will be different:

1. the sun will be out for most of the day.
2. i will remember the difference between a friday and a saturday.

Anyhow, thanks for putting up with my shenanigans and making it a fun night. Special shout out to my wife for all the hard work she put in to those hand-made vegan eateries.

Oh, and thanks for the birthday song. It was cheesy but it warmed my heart.

I love you guys!

Until next time,
nic

Here’s my foundation thought: in a crowded market, a restaurant needs to focus on:

1. over-serving its best customers
2. and helping its best customers find it.

Over-serving is a “simple” matter of exceeding initial expectations. The staff and management should bend over backward to make sure that every best customer leaves feeling welcomed, paid attention to, and impressed.

But notice I didn’t say they should over-serve the entire market. That’s just a way to lose money. No, they should over-serve their “best customers”. They need to clearly define the segment of the market that they will naturally appeal most to, and make sure those people’s expectations are exceeded.

The second part is helping the restaurant’s best customers find it. Initially, this will require some traditional marketing ploys to simply get the word out to anyplace the best customers might be: flyers, newspaper ads, well placed DART ads, ad buys in local arts programs, et cetera. But the ultimate goal is to begin generating word of mouth. The best way to find other “best customers” is to get the best customers you already have talking about you.

But how do you get that coveted word-of-mouth working for you? First of all, you can’t force it. You must truly provide a unique experience. Your brand must be worth talking about. You have to over-serve your current best customers to get them talking about you.

After you’ve got that down, your next best bet is to adequately reward those best customers who find you other best customers. I see some brands take this literally and give discounts to people who, say, forward an email or retweet a particular message. That’s fine if it works for your brand (if your best customers are “best” because they’re interested in % discounts), but the point is to reward your best customers in a way that they appreciate. It doesn’t have to be a discount. Many times, people just want to be publicly recognized for their contributions.

Some other ideas for rewards: have a chalkboard with handwritten names of all your best-of-the-best customers. Put up a photo wall. Give them a special mug or beer stein, with their name on it, that you keep for them at the restaurant. Throw a party once or twice a year only for your best customers and one guest each. Put some of their names in your ads, on your flyers. Tweet about them, by name. Put up stories about them on your blog. Put together a quarterly newsletter about and for your best customers.

If you over-serve your best customers, help them find you in a crowded market, and reward them appropriately for being the best, you’ll have a strong foundation for the kind of loyalty that breeds long-term growth and stability.

I was wrong to worry. If anything, it’s gone in the opposite direction.

And I realize that my problem as a child is that I was *way* ahead of my years, socially. This ostracized me from kids my age at the time, but prepared me well for life beyond school. As a homeschooler, I learned how to interact with people of all ages, how to accept people who were different, and how to be independent and confident. Each of these abilities were unnoticed and/or ridiculed as a child, but have served me well as an adult.

Interacting with people of all ages is an incredibly useful skill in the real world. It’s allowed me to land some job opportunities that I’m confident I wouldn’t have without this ability. In my younger days, other kids didn’t like the fact that I was respectful of and comfortable around adults. And they thought it was dumb that I treated younger kids like real people. Today, my ability to interact with children is a major strength (bosses like you even better if their kids like you). And certainly my ability to interact appropriately with my elders is regularly appreciated.

Accepting people who are different is an obviously helpful ability, especially in a big city. As a child, many kids got a kick of excluding those who were different. The fact that I accepted everybody soon meant that I, too, was an outcast. What once was a liability is now a major asset.

Independence and confidence, paradoxically, is a major component in developing good relationships. They sound like self-centered elements, but they actually instill a sense of security in the other person.

I believe that many people, despite how they may act, learned throughout childhood to be insecure and dependent on other’s approval. I imagine this is to be expected if you spend your entire day surrounded by other children who have understandably not discovered their own meaning and source of self-worth.

By contrast, I was taught at home from the beginning that self-worth is not dependent on what other people think. This was reinforced over and over again for many years — believe me, lots of people had lots of different ideas about me and my family; we simply found our worth outside of other’s perceptions.

I never expected, growing up, that I would one day argue that homeschooling can prepare you *better* for a healthy social life. I mean, I knew a wide gamut of homeschoolers, each with their own set of “problems” that made them socially awkward kids. And while I can’t deny that some of those kids grew up to be truly socially awkward adults, a surprising percentage ended up better prepared for the adult world than might have been possible in another schooling situation.

Thanks Mom.

I hope for that to come later. For now, this blog acts as a personal “FriendFeed”. It collects content I post on other sites and aggregates them here.

Thus, the occasional weird formatting or oddball post is to be expected. Just thought you should know.

trust me, it sucks without an audience. singing it to myself didn’t make me laugh at ALL.

anyways, this one’s slightly revised and expanded, and includes the roasting of several new people! take THAT, backstage crew!

here’s a link to download the mp3:

http://www.pfostpfilms.com/music/NicMusic/matt-came-back.mp3

and if you like bad recordings of me singing songs that are sort of funny, you might like this one, too:

http://www.pfostpfilms.com/music/GetReal/07%20Coffeecoffeecoffee.mp3

[it's a song i wrote about coffee].
in fact, you can hear alot of my music at my silly, ad-ridden soundclick page. i warn you that there aren’t any other funny songs. sorry:

http://www.soundclick.com/bands/default.cfm?bandID=161444&content=music

Thing is, it’s not a good argument at all. The apps in the bundle are great (at least several of the ones i’ve played with). But I never would have known that without this bundle.

It’s not that I never download demos. I know most of these apps had free demos. It’s that I simply *never would have known about them*.

This promotion, while it essentially cost the developers money, has brought at least two apps front-and-center in my brain. I already love them. I’m already an evangelist. Is that kind of marketing a good strategy for a developer, mac or otherwise?

Absolutely it is.

marco:

I’m not interested in arguing the specifics of the MacHeist deal with developers. I’m sure that nobody will argue the core of it: these applications are being sold at a _steep_ discount. My point is whether it’s a good idea, as conscientious consumers, to accept such steep discounts on the products that we use and love. My argument is that it’s not.

The tables *are* a little funny, with their plastic-y covers, and the place…

i’ve just finished hooking up my own personal stream of activity to this blog, so you can see most of what i’m up to around the web in one central place. i still intend to break out of “breakfast blogging” mode and start making good things with good ideas again. hooking up these external sites lets me do that from just about anywhere.

thanks for putting up with me.