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My process: Dream – Research – Outline – Plan – Prioritize – Execute

The problem most people have is that they get lost, disheartened or tired before ‘execute’…and that last bit, is where all the proof is …

Try to think about your process and try to figure out where it breaks down, and that may help you get better results…

For example

If you’ve always wanted to get back into the gym but never seem to make it because you always get stuck on prioritizing going to the gym over doing something else, or you get stuck researching the ‘perfect’ gym that you never end up picking one…

Here is where this begins to get on my nerves (when I see this pattern in other people and how it breaks down)

I hear a lot of people around always talking about a dream but never seeing any execution. The painful fact is as follows:

To get from point A to point B you need to move away from point A and gravitate towards point B. Sitting firmly at point A and planning and dreaming and contemplating and thinking and prioritizing and hedging risks and revisiting your concept and trying to find the perfect angle …etc

When all of that is done, unless some action is taken. You are still at point A!

‘ I want to get healthier, i want to start my own business, i want to quit smoking, i want to further my education, i want to learn a new language’

I hear this a lot, especially in the middle east, when it comes to start a business. Everyone wants to start a business and everyone is an expert on the market…

The first two or three times you bring it up around me I will most likely engage you, give you feedback, try to help you (or even correct you if you’re so blatantly setting yourself up for failure), and give you my perspective on things which *I* think is valuable, weather you listen to me or not.

The next two or three times you bring it up, I will engage you differently by trying to enable you. Knowing that your ‘dream’ or concept will probably change over time, I will more likely try to get you to mentally make that leap over the barriers that exists INSIDE you. There is a reason you’re stuck and not starting. Searching for the ‘perfect business’ or the ‘perfect angle’ to attack a market is more of an internal barrier that you impose (because you’re afraid to start) than one that exists in the market.

For example: If every gym in the city is not up to your standards that means that YOU have a problem, and that the gyms are fine. Get over your fear, get in the gym and start to execute.

(If you read an undertone of self criticism here then you are correct… on so many levels I was that person, who always talked about turbocharging his car but never did, always talked about starting a business but never did, always talked about losing weight but never did …etc)

However, I find that I am extremely lucky in that I have a little too much passion in me, these ideas simmer for a long time, but then, eventually, they DO boil over, and I get to action

• I have turbocharged an engine from scratch, after 3 years of talking about it
• I have started a business from scratch after about 5 years of reading about it and talking about it
• I have lost in different times of my life over 160kgs of weight when things boil over and I get into a gym so even though I have problems maintaining my weight loss, I am somewhat of an expert ON weight loss when i choose to do it
• I have written 3 books now after years of saying one day I will write a book

What I have not done yet is move out of Saudi Arabia, and that may be coming very soon as I’m starting to boil over. Yes I’ve been talking about it for going on 5 years now… and I *think* it’s about to happen soon.

What I realise though, is that most of those things didn’t need that waiting period and that I could have done them earlier…and as you get older, and you lose your direct control of your life, as you integrate your wife and kids and family into your core identity, as you become strapped for time, and as your decisions become truly social (influenced by your family, and directly affecting your family) the odds are that unless your family has the same process that you do:

My process: Dream – Research – Outline – Plan – Prioritize – Execute

Unless they have the same dream, the same plan and the same priorities that you do… the odds are that it is never going to happen. So, the longer you wait, the less chances you get to realize your dream.

Let me close by saying this:

Reflect on the worst part of your life today. The part that pains you. The part that you’re either ALWAYS complaining about, or the part that you hide so deep inside you that you NEVER want ANYONE to know this about you, and how bad it pains you, and how much you wanted it changed….

Take that process and lay it out…. how would you change it, what is the dream, what research have you done ( do you have the right information to make an educated decision already or not?), what is the outline of what you want to do , how do you plan to do so, what are the critical parts of this plan and what things may you compromise along the way and then what would the execution be like?

Where is it breaking down?

Try doing two things….

1- Either rationalize your way around that mental block by knowing that it is immensely important to start walking away from point A to get to point B… so execution overcomes the fear of the ‘apparent’ risk… and by knowing that the dream is worth while (that the reward of reaching point B outweighs the pains of the journey…

2- Make a leap of faith. If you’re reading this you are one of my friends or fans and that means that since you are in my circle that there is some attraction or commonality between us… and that means that you are probably an intelligent, educated, creative, hardworking, lighthearted individual (because those are the kinds of people i like to have around me and associate with)… and know that if you are that kind of person (intelligent and hardworking… compared to other people that are possibly not so wise yet hardworking or intelligent but feel entitled rather than obligated to work for what they want….) so if you are that kind of intelligent,creative, hardworking person, and this is truly your dream… then that leap of faith, will eventually pan out…

Not because you made the leap …. but because you have the inherent qualities that you will need to fix things and get back on track… on that path from A to B… if you were to get misdirected

Make the leap, and trust in YOURSELF … and start executing .

I feel like the hottest man in the universe. Success brings confidence and success is sexy!

Technorati Tags: hottest main in the universe contest

The firewall, has come to popularity as an intrusion detection and prevention tool for computers and computer networks.

The history of the firewall dates back to the Greeks and the greek fire (catapults and trebuchets  armed with tar dipped boulders and lit on fire).

In preparation for battle, different moat building techniques were used to prevent the aggressors from storming your castle or city walls. Keeping the enemy off your walls reduced the amount of manpower you’d have to spend taking down ladders and ropes… and increased the utilization of your long distance weapons such as archers and catapults.

These moats and ditches varied from natural canyons and cliffs (look at Irish ruins of old castles built on the cliffside facing the Welsch-Irish waters ) and sometimes using man made water filled or ditches.

The fire wall is a moat or ditch built by the Greeks. They would build this  ditch around the city or at least on the main entry point bottle-necks of the city. Not only would it be hard for armies and aggressors to cross these wide ditches (requiring rigged road works, bridges or roping), but also the greeks went step further.

They filled these ditches with tar and debris… in preparation. Once the enemy arrived on the battle field and started attacking the city walls, these moats could be ‘fired’ from distance using fire-tipped archery. This turned the entire moat into a 2nd city wall, made of fire, and called the fire wall!

The firewall creates 2 problems for an aggressor…

1- Anyone that is inside the wall is now stuck between immense heat, and between the wall guards shooting down on them from a top the walls… these people were most certainly doomed and and had no way to retreat but into the depths of the fire.

2- The firewall prevented any future attempts of aggression by burning any existing bridges or rope work used to cross the ditch, and making the whole are TOO hot to be bare-able or workable to even attempt to construct, repair, or build any crossing ways.

Even more, this kept the enemy at a safe distance which made them perfect ‘feed’ for the catapults and archers.

When we talk about ‘competitive’ advantage in business, we usually talk about having a competitive edge that prevents your opposition from aggressing on your market. Now the thing to look at here, is that as market deregulation continues to grow, then conventional firewalls of trade agreements, monopolies and oligopolies, trade secrets …etc begin to break down.

In a faster moving world where everyone has access to capital (credit based markets) and everyone has access to information (internet) and infrastructure (a global manufacturing network available an e-mail away), then the conventional firewalls and conventional ‘barriers’ to entry begin to break down.

This is great as an entrepreneur starting up because it allows you to get into the market, get your product out to the customer, and get on track with payments and cash flows.

This is also horrible as an entrepreneur because any opportunity that exists for you can similarly be exploited and possibly better executed by someone else.

This creates a huge need for a non-conventional firewall. In business this non-conventional firewall is going to be something that you ’strategically’ deploy that allows you to keep your existing market, grow it, and prevent others from aggressing into it.

In Seth Godin’s ‘the dip’ … to be continued !

“The supercharger performance power calculator is in the transition from being a product, to being a mega product. A mega product by definition (of Frank Kern) is one that has a combination of all the best features of competing products…..”

Read the rest of this article here:

Supercharger Performance Power Calculator – micro blog

Technorati Tags: Horsepower Calculator, Power Calculator, Supercharger Calculator, Supercharger Performance

A while back i was compiling a master email list for everyone that has contacted me through on of my blogs.

I make myself fairly available for interaction with my readers and customers, through blog comments forms, contact us forms, direct email, and even facebook page messages and tweets.

So in an effort to better stay in touch with everyone, I started compiling this master list that will enable me to email out updates and news to my readers and fans.

While i was doing this activity, several names and addresses popped out at me… and eventually I had to go back and re-read my conversations with my readers.

What I realize now, is that more than half of my sales, were generated from people I had talked to, helped, and advised earlier. Sometimes as far back as 6 weeks earlier (which explains why their names sounded familiar but at the same time I couldn’t exactly remember them personally).

Originally my comment is this:

“Never underestimate MY silence, because I keep a very long ‘to do’ list on my back-burner. And this list, I execute selectively and opportunistically”

This is very much true of my personality because I often perform assessments of my situation (personal, financial, emotional) and devise in my head a plan or a path towards my goal.

However, executing these plans is not always cost effective… especially when you have complex plans that require group orchestration or a group performance (weather this group is based on a group of people, or on a group of systems is besides the point).

So in classic management speak, these tasks and plans are very important, but not necessarily critical… furthermore, they may not even be POSSIBLE in the current situation.

I’ll give you an example.. say I do an analysis of my portfolio on the stock market and realise that ABC stock is undervalued by 25%. There are 4 months left till the end of the financial year, when the company will announce it’s growth in profits over last year (which I can see now from the last 3 quarterly reports and predict forward). So my purchase of this stock, although very important to the overall growth of my portfolio,  is not critical because I have from now up until the profits announcement to make my purchase.

This can be even more extreme if say I am currently fully invested in the market and have a 0% liquidity to assets ratio in my portfolio. Simply speaking, I want this stock but I can’t buy it till the situation changes… the decision is made, but the task goes on my long ‘back burner to do list’.

Here is the tricky part of this situation. Although everything I’ve said so far sounds completely reasonable, most people will not give you this much slack when looking at your performance.

The lack of trading transactions in your portfolio looks to your broker as a lack of interest in the market, just as much as a lack of busy work from you in the office looks like lack of interest from you in your job. Even if, you already have an amazing report planned for your manager, but are waiting for specific numbers you requested from the Sales department to make your case and grow the company.

People are mostly swayed by what they see, rather than what you think, have analysed or have decided to do.

Going back to the customer scenario.

A lack of sales activity from your customers, does not mean that they are not interested in the product. It does not mean that they don’t care about what you’re doing. It does not mean that they don’t trust you. It does not mean that they don’t want or need the product.

I know from personal experience (shopping for car performance parts online) that I personally my put a product in my shopping cart at an e-commerce store 10 times (yes 10 different visits to the store) before I’m finally sure that I’m ready to buy, I have the cash, it is important, and that in fact I am ordering everything I need this time around (and nothing more and nothing less).

So now if that is true for me, it must be true for my own customers, they will visit, read, browse, think, look for competitors, compare prices, rethink the situation, talk it over with their friends, google your company and product for feedback and recommendations, search you on facebook or twitter for comments and warnings, maybe hear about something negative and look you up in the better business bureau …

All of this before finally eliminating all their doubts, coming back, and clicking your ‘buy now’ button.

In a world with so many options, so many experts, so many blogs, so many reviewers, and so much information,,, it is understandable that your customers may take LONGER to commit to the sale.

Do not mistake this ‘transaction silence’ for lack of interest. Do spend your time proven to them, through constant steady nurturing, that you are in fact there to stay, to produce quality content, information, products and services, that they have nothing to worry about, and that ultimately when they do choose to purchase that they will get more VALUE back from you than the MONEY they had spent on your product or service. The occasional ’sale’ doesn’t hurt either (for those price sensitive shoppers that keep telling themselves that they would buy it if it were slightly cheaper… no reason not to call their bluff so long as it doesn’t hurt your bottom line…)

Never under-estimate silence, some of us keep a long to do list on the back burner,  and execute opportunistically.

As I work on re-writing my product (a software application) for one of my websites (affectionately known as the supercharger site)… and I embark on the journey of learning yet another tool to build my e-presence, I can’t help but think about Launch pads.

Just a few days ago I bought stock for my mom, and in doing that I looked at the near history of that company’s performance, realized they would post about a 30% growth in profits this year compared to last year (if the trend they’ve set in the last 3 quarters holds true) and that this mega profits announcement will come sometime in Jan of 2010.

Since our stock market is heavily fueled by news and announcements, then buying into the stock now, 2 months before the speculators and 3 months before the announcement seems like a no-brainer deal.

I think it’s easy to pick ‘winners’ based on previous performance… great directors are allowed to pick to work on greater movies, fast horses get access to better training and more interesting competition, great companies attract the best talent and so forth..

However, when you want to look at a smaller company… maybe even a tiny dot on the dot come circle (such as my company) … you have very little good news, past performance, or track time to judge yourself or your position based on.

This can be very frustrating if you’re surrounded by naysayers telling you that you will fail, and that your recent history will be a mould for your future and that more of the same failure is almost sure.

Frustrations aside… there are a few ways to gauge where you are and where you’re going even if you don’t have much to show for it at present.

1- In a cool startup presentation I watched on youtube, one of the presenters made a great point of illustrating demand ‘by proxy’.

For example, let’s say you’re building the first ever TV that allows you to order take out food through your remote control… you turn to the food guide, choose a food channel (restaurant), look at the program guide (food list) and choose something to eat… click ok and confirm and your order will be placed and fulfilled within 45 minutes.

Maybe it’s very difficult to show that such a TV actually has a market or demand for it. However, in illustrating demand by proxy, it is reasonable to do what follows:

Say you have very reliable data that shows that most people that do order take out, order it while they’re in their lounge at home watching TV (reasonable assumption).

Say that even more so, you have the ability to demonstrate that calls to food delivery joints spikes on on the quarter-hour, half-hour, and on-the-hour, for a duration of 5 to 7 minutes (which highly corresponds to typical commercial schedules in most TV shows).

If you can provide data for both of these items then it is a reasonable assumption that ”dinner and a movie” are highly correlated, and that creating a televised / net based solution to ordering delivery through your TV actual has a market.

You have just proved demand by proxy… for something that pretty much has no proven track record.

Since I like this example so much, I’m going to take this one step further… If you can somehow link commercials for Domino’s pizza (and say their monday night football double cheese special) to a certain button combination on the remote (click 53 to order this combo now) … while having the TV and Dominas already integrated with your delivery and payment information… then you could create something that not only has demand, but also has the incentive (ease of use) to shift potential customers off of the old system (look for the phone number, remember my customer ID with dominos, remember my order, try to find cash or change…etc) into a newer, faster, and easier to use system.

Awesome.

Now back on topic…

2- Another way to assess a company that doesn’t have strong past performance data and the main topic of this post, is assessing their ‘platform’.

Let’s look at two great examples…

A- Apple has a great platform in itunes. itunes is not a music sharing program, it’s a content delivery platform. Through itunes you can get books, music, programs, podcasts, radio shows…etc.

Maybe all of these channels were not built into itunes when it first came out, but if you were to assess a then infant itunes, and were able to recognize it as a potentially strong content delivery platform , rather than a music sharing program, you would’ve been in a better position to predict the growth and future potential of apple and itunes.

B- Another great example of a strong platform is Google.

Some one like me, who uses google everything for his business (mail, adsense, adwords, docs, groups, talk, search engine traffic and customers, trends (to scope out new markets), google web toolkit and google app engine …etc) feels a huge amount of debt to google.

Google is not a search engine. Google , I’d like to argue is a small business  ’empowerment’ and ‘enablement’ platform.

Thank about Google checkout in that context as well, although I don’t use it yet since it’s not available in my location or residence.

When you add in Youtube, Picasa, and blogger to the mix (also owned by Google) you realise how that , for free, Google allows you to get yourself, your company and your product online for little to no startup cost.

Ridiculous. … Genius

So how do I assess TerraFirms ?

Since I started this ’sabbatical’ I’ve learned the following (which can all be considered TerraFirms competences)

1- Search engine optimization

2- PHP coding and the wordpress platform

3- Flash content

4- Video and image marketing

5- Web2.0 integration into blogs and web 2.0 marketing strategies.

6- SQL databasing

7- Custom applications (Java /MySQL / Google Web Toolkit / Ajax)

8- Internet Marketing market research techniques, and using different market assessment tools.

9- Paid online advertising campaigns, techniques, and optimization.

So let me rephrase that in simple terms.

My current websites suck in terms of overall income generation potential. But, my platform is strong in that I can find a better market, a better idea, a better concept, and re-apply exactly all the same competences to launch a professional site, grab traffic, promote products, create custom applications, manage data and databases, and create both value for my visitors / customers and profit for my company.

Let’s think about that for a second… past performance, modest at best. Future potential, huge.

I know most people don’t want to gamble their hard earned money on ‘potential’ … but if the platform is there, then managing that platform and seeing it to maturity is all it takes to make it big.

There’s a great video on Youtube from TedTalks about the 5 levels of ‘tribes’ …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xTkKSJSqU-I

This kind of talk really interests me for a few reasons.

1- I consider myself more of a motivator, rather than a leader. I don’t like to tell people what to do (even when I was in that ‘role’ in previous jobs, before I quit to build my own business). I rather like to setup the emotional , technical, and informational conditions that allow for the right things to happen, and push that with motivation and ‘goal oriented’ decision making.

2- I work really well alone, both because I can take on things with a steep learning curve and consume them very rapidly as well as because I have a way of about me in following my instincts, any data or statistics I can get my hands on, and having an overactive brain that can see any issue from many points of view… and so I have a constant internal dialog that is equivalent to a group meeting (Sans the group think and intimidation).

So group dynamics and group work has always interested me.

As I look back at things, my old Job at the power company was with a level 2 tribe…

The power company always thought ‘if we were a different utility, like telecom, we’d be able to be profitable off of cell phones, DSL subscribers, and fiber optics… but since we aren’t then our life sucks.”

Thus the type of work always done there was substandard, since we knew for sure that it would never result in profits (you can’t make profit on a fixed price product that is government subsidized and sold at 25% it’s actual delivered cost).

I resisted the atmosphere in the place and came out at level 3 tribal mentality often … “I’m good, and you’re not…” which was met with agreement on their part of yes “Our life sucks” …

This was really frustrating… but then… I broke away.

I am now in a new relationship with one of my old friends where we build custom websites for small business. This is not my main business focus as it’s hands on work that I have to do , that doesn’t generate auto income like my other e-commerce sites.

Even though this isn’t a scalable business model for me, I’m enjoying this new kind of relationship at ‘work’.

You take an artist that can’t do web development but can shoot great photo/video  &

You take me, a web developer that can’t fill his websites with high quality rich media content….

You put us together and you have a strong development house.

This takes both me and my friend from being isolated experts in our individual fields (namely level 3 tribes) and starts to create a new attractor at level 4. The thought that us, together, are stronger, than either of us alone is both exciting because it expands our incomes and our reach, as well as humbling as you are reminded daily that you are in a symbiotic relationship where your thrive is dependent on your partner and visa versa.

So in true TED Talks fashion, if I had to sit back and extract the ‘higher meaning’ of our relationship I would say this… when you look to expand your business, it may be a healthy thing to look at what kind of tribe you will be creating through your expansion…

Are you moving from level 1 to level 2 ? Where you are shifting your operating base from a location that is in crisis (where everyone around you is also in crisis) to a new location that is not… where you realize that your situation sucks, but there are other opportunities elsewhere to capitalize on ?

Are you moving from a level 2 to a level 3 by moving sideways into a new position where you are no longer disadvantaged but rather getting a lead on your competition with a new strategic partner, an inaccessible (to others) distribution or marketing network, a new patent protected product or service …etc ?

Are you moving from level 3 to level 4 ? By merging with your ‘competitors’ to create something larger than your current self ? What if we could merge Sega and nintendo back in the early 90s ? What if we could create 1 gaming box using the experiences from both manufacturers to create THE ULTIMATE gaming experience ?

In business, it’s very common for competitors to polarize. If I’m competing on size, you may compete on value, if I compete on simplicity and ease of use, you may compete on extensive advanced features.

After several iterations of market segmentation and each business polarizing itself to hold a position in the market (and a strong brand positioning with the customers) you find that the two resulting business, although technically competitors, go about things very differently.

What happens if for some reason we take the best that business A has learned about simplicity, design, ease of use and combine it with the intricacy, features, and technicality of the products produced in business B?

Couldn’t we create a level 4 ‘tribe’ and a new ‘mega product’ that combines features that are at first glance improbable or impossible to exist in the same product (ex. a faster car that gets better mileage… these things are possible even though they at first seem to be polar opposite… and are exactly what ‘innovation’ is all about).

Are you moving from level 4 to a level 5 tribe ?

The cause based business model is a very powerful one.

Wikipedia and craigslist are two strong examples of business that have high customer attachments due to a higher ideal truly running the business.

You have to think about these things not just in a personal sense in your self and your connections, but rather think about the ‘tribe’ of customers and how they see your business and utilize your products.

Are they buying your product because their life sucks and you are the only thing that they can afford (and thus you are serving a level 2 tribe ???)… Or are they buying your product because it enables them to move up the hierarchy by getting more informed, more connected, more experienced…etc

Interesting thought.

I wonder what happens when all my dreams come true. Do I stop working towards them, or do I start a new!

I wonder what people do, when tough times become true. Do they pick up and leave, or do they forge on through ?

I wonder why when I had a job, I worked so little and made alot.

I wonder why, I work so hard now, yet my faith in myself is all I’ve got.

The question that comes every day … is this more good money after bad ? That would be utterly sad ? Or am I so close I can almost taste it, I’ve come too far now, so why erase it ?

These limiting thoughts, they get in the way. They busy your brain and drive you a stray.

A moment of silence is all that’s required and some visualization technique is highly desired.

To shift the focus from why and how… from the what is now to what it’s about.

It’s about living a wonderful life, where you wonder, and work, and build and grow.

I think that, if I stopped wondering, I would be dead. And I’d be afraid of the silence within my head.

To swim upstream and against the current.

Bring your strength and bring your courage.

A long time ago , all we had on the web was HTML And SMTP (webpages and email) … and based on those two ‘free’ and ‘open’ platforms the first and oldest forms of e-discussion were created; namely, discussion boards and mailing lists. The key here, is once a person had a point of contact (his email), then asynchronous communication was allowed to take place all over the world through a series of messages linked to their owner by nothing more than an email address and a nickname. As the discussion continued to grow, the person would get an e-mail reminding them to check back and see what has come of their original thoughts. So here the e-mail was the ‘hook’… As of 2007, the hooks of the internet have changed…. a study presented by “AddThis” which is a button that can be embedded in any website to easily link and share content and news between multiple ‘news sharing’, ’social bookmarking’ and ’social networking’ sites, showed that in the period studied (the first 9 months or so of 2008) that e-mail was the #1 way that people shared things on the internet with a usage of around 50%, followed closely by facebook at around 20% and then trailing off dramatically…. The same study performed with later data (covering late 2008 to mid 2009) was very interesting…. in that short period of time facebook had grown from a 20% share to almost 60% … with email following closely with around 30% and the rest trailing off for other e-services. These numbers are astonishing for a few reasons: 1- The fact that people would rather use facebook than email to share things they like online means that most of the people that they’d like to share this with are already on facebook… If I had 10 friends, with 9 outside of facebook, then I’d probably share things by email… but if 9 out of 10 of my friends are on facebook then that’s more likely the platform that I’m going to use. 2- Facebook has worked hard at making content sharing a more pleasant experience, by including it in their search (when in the past you could only search for people and groups / business) and allowing you to like, unlike and comment on these things. The 1 feature that seems missing from Facebook sharing is rich responses such as responding to a video with a video… for at the moment any external link in your response is just represented as an off-page link unlike the primary posted content which CAN play within facebook. These responses are ‘communal’ in nature and can be seen by friends or friends of friends… whereas email sharing is more private and more threaded which does not promote healthy discussion. 3- That kind of internet wide growth for a platform, and to take down something as ‘rooted’ as e-mail is just astonishing (albeit expected) and goes to show that anyone not seriously interested in social media for their marketing efforts is seriously making a mistake. …. Now my most successful online project so far is Supercharger Performance which is present on both Facebook and Myspace (the world’s largest two social networks) with all of my blog posts automatically feeding into those pages via RSS. More interestingly I have also integrated those pages with twitter such that anything I post on either of those (or on my main blog) propagates over to my twitter account. This interlinked effort of networks allows me to post on one platform (my main blog) but to multiply that effort into 4 different networks (RSS, Facebook, Myspace & Twitter) and allows people that are interested in that niche to stay in touch without having to check my website on a regular basis. So when you think about marketing in the future… there are really two approaches to do this: 1- Follow the crowd: and the crowd is definitely using social networking to stay in touch, share, and recommend things to each other… decisions about a car used to be between you and your close friends… now a post about that car to your status gets your friends and their friends responses on the product … which can add great value to your decision making process if used wisely. It can also be a lead in to a sale for you as a company if you are present, active and engaged with your consumer base, and it can give you great insight into the kind of things that they like be pre-testing their responses to ideas, products and pitches before you spend a significant amount of money developing them. 2- Be intimate. Now that social networking is all the rage… if you look at your email box (like I do mine) you find that very rarely do I get anymore personal emails in my email. People that want to talk to me who are in my generation can talk to me on facebook, facebook chat, twitter or myspace… and email is left for spam, emails from people like my parents or uncles (who have not yet adopted social networking because they are comfortable with simple e-mail) and last but not least e-bills and credit statements and the likes. Now let’s say you have a really good spam filter, and let’s say you have automated most of your bill payments… what this does is it leaves your personal (non-work email) rather quiet and deserted. Think about this ? If your customer is constantly being bombarded by media and ideas and debate on facebook and myspace and what not… and then they come on e-mail to get away from it all and to see if they have a personal contact from their parents, distant friends or traveling friends who can’t get on facebook …etc How powerful do you think a personal contact letter from you (the small business owner) to your customers would be ? Do you think that if your letter were 1 of 6 e-mails they got today (vs 1 of 1000 interactions they had on facebook)… do you think that your message would be more likely to reach them through email ? or would facebook still be the weapon of choice? Summary: I’ve just kind of contradicted myself … telling you to move over to rich media, to ‘announce’ publicly everything that you’re doing, reading, and everything that you like, and are working on to your public through your FB, MS, and twitter status updates… at the same time I’m telling you that you can still reach your customers personally by e-mail. I don’t think there’s contradiction here… you just have to appropriate every medium for it’s proper use. A customer service request my better be placed and answered through email. A new upbeat video of the next unveiling of your latest product may be best served through facebook (to be shared and reviewed and communally critiqued). I think the change in e-mail and the lower ‘clutter’ in email is to our advantage as niche marketers trying to reach our readers. I also think the rich interaction provided by social sharing is great for delivering a ‘mental image’ or an impression to your prospects in a quick 2 to 3 minute video. I’d love to see where we get when both of those ideas merge with google wave… a new platform that mixes the one-to-0ne personal and intimate aspects of email, with the possibility for more expansive and branching out ‘waves’ in the internet.