A month ago, I invited my blog readers to join in a new online/offline school. More than 12,000 people signed up for the rollout, and the first groups started meeting a few days ago.
The initial feedback has been absolutely fabulous. At first, people hesitated to invite others to join them in this process, but once they pushed themselves forward, many discovered the magic that comes from engaging face to face around learning.
If you were hesitating (or just busy), it's not too late to join in.
1. Click here and find out about what this is about.
2. Subscribe to the Krypton/blog newsletter and get the updates going forward.
3. Go ahead and organize a group and start, as soon as you can. Now is better than later. There will be new free courses released every month going forward.
You can catch up on the posts to date (and find the current free course) by reading the Krypton blog, from the bottom up.
Learn together.
October 4, 2013
There’s never enough time to get your message across. Even Fidel Castro, famous for giving six-hour speeches, had plenty more to add.
If you’re given 8 minutes, take 8 minutes minus 7 seconds, not 9 minutes. The extra minute is selfish. The extra minute doesn’t actually make that much of a difference in how much you are able to communicate.
In fact, it’s the non-verbal communication we remember, and if you are rushing, apologizing and stepping on the toes of the person after you, that’s what the audience will take away.
October 3, 2013
If you've got an idea or you're working in marketing, the temptation is to seek out and evangelize those that 'don't get it,' to find and sell to the skeptics.
In fact, real change comes from finding and embracing and connecting and amplifying those that are inclined to like you and believe in you.
Ideas spread from person to person, not so much from you to them. So find your biggest fans and give them a story to tell.
October 2, 2013
Of course, it started with craft. The craft of making a bowl or a tool or anything that created function.
As humans became wealthier, we could seek out the artisan, the craftsperson who would add an element of panache and style to the tools we used.
It's not much of a leap from the beautiful functional object to one that has no function other than to be beautiful.
Art was born.
When art collided with royalty, religion and wealth, a match was made. Those in power could use art as a way to display their resources and to insist that they also were deserving of respect for their taste and their patronage of the artistic class.
And that would be the end of it, except the camera and commercial printing changed the very nature of art on canvas (and mass production changed sculpture). When anyone could have a print, or a vase, or a photo, art's position as a signifier and a cultural force was threatened.
Hence the beginning of our modern definition of art, one that so many people are resistant to. Art doesn't mean painting, art doesn't mean realistic and art doesn't mean beautiful.
Marcel Duchamp created a ruckus with 'Fountain', which appeared in an art exhibit in 1917. An upside-down urinal, Duchamp was saying quite a bit by displaying it. The second person to put a urinal into a museum, though, was merely a plumber.
About forty years later, Yves Klein created 'Leap Into the Void.' Long before Photoshop, he was playing with our expectations and our sense of reality.
Between Duchamp and Klein there were two generations of a redefinition of art. Art doesn't mean craft. And art isn't reserved for a few.
Art is the work of a human, an individual seeking to make a statement, to cause a reaction, to connect. Art is something new, every time, and art might not work, precisely because it's new, because it's human and because it seeks to connect.
Once art is freed from the canvas and the dealer and the gallery, it gains enormous power. Politicians and science fiction authors can do a sort of art. Anyone liberated from the assembly line and given a job where at least part of the time they decide, "what's next," has been given a charter to do art, to explore and discover and to create an impact.
When I write about making 'art', many people look at me quizzically. They don't understand how to make the conceptual leap from a job where we are told what to do to a life where we decide what to do–and seek to do something that connects, that makes an impact, and that yes, might not work.
Five hundred years ago, no painter would talk to you about ideas, or even impact. Painters merely painted. Today, you don't need a brush to be an artist, but you do need to want to make change.
October 1, 2013
Go ahead and tweet your class, or, if you have a positive story to share about what's working, post it here in the comments, which I'll leave open for a while. [Comments now closed, thanks!] Keep making that ruckus…
I'm excited to hear what you're discovering!
Seth
September 30, 2013
Our series continues with We Are All Weird.
I'm still sort of amazed at how deeply ingrained our antipathy to this word is. It makes audiences a little nervous when I talk about the death of normal and the rise of weird. And it makes many people uncomfortable to describe their habits as a bit weird.
The thing is, though, that the only prospects you care about, the only people you have a shot of reaching, the only people who are going to use your service or join your tribe are weird. And everyone is weird, at least sometimes.
Twenty five percent of the population is a landslide in most modern elections. You don't need everyone to vote for you, just the weird people who care.
Thanks to Joe Mehnart for inspiring this riff.
Mr. Standard over there, precisely average height, average build, average job, average family… he's normal, except when it comes to fantasy football. And then he's off the charts. He subscribes to data services and scans magazines and even roots against the hometown team when his players are on some other team.
He shouldn't be ashamed of this passion–it's a passion, it makes his life interesting. And the marketers that seek him out shouldn't waste one minute on people who don't like fantasy football when there are so many people just like him.
And Ms. Normal over there, precisely fitting in on every measure, well, she's weird about Kiva. She is entranced by their model and loves the feeling she gets when she donates or finds a loan repaid. She gives her friends Kiva gift certificates and chats about them online…
Is it weird to find so much energy and connection over an online charity? Weird in the sense of not in the mainstream, sure. But there's no shame in finding your passion–in fact, it's those that seek to be normal at all times that have an issue as far as I can tell.
The thesis of my book is simple: in a world of mass production and mass advertising and mass conformance, the only smart strategy was to make average stuff for average people. But in a world of the long tail, of micro-tribes, of passions amplified, there are now more weird people than ever before.
Amazingly, despite the obvious proof that the weird are your potential market, we still spend most of our time talking about reaching and keeping the masses happy.
All that pressure from middle school (don't stand out!) combined with all that pressure from Wall Street (be like Walmart!) means that our instinct is to serve the disinterested masses by making something that's pretty average. The problem is that the disinterested masses are ever better at ignoring your ads, and they won't seek you out because, of course, normal people have no trouble satisfying their average needs.
The future increasingly belongs to those that care enough to make products and services for those that care.
Fit in or stand out.
Do what works now or build what works later.
Avoid criticism or seek it out.
Follow the manual or write the manual.
When you define the category, when the category is you and you alone, your marketing issues tend to disappear. At least they do if the category is one that enough of the right people want to engage with.
Faced with the opportunity to become the category of one, we almost always hesitate, almost always compromise, almost always dumb it down to play it a little bit safer.
You may very well become a category of one in a market that's devoid of customers. But you will never become a category of one if you run with the pack.
The person who invented the banquet table, the round table for ten, wasn’t doing it to please those at the banquet or even the banquet organizer. He did it because this is the perfect size for the kitchen and the servers. The table for ten is a platonic ideal of the intersection of the geometry of bread baskets, flower arrangements and salad dressing. Bigger and you couldn’t reach, smaller and there’s no room.
But, here’s the thing: the table for ten isolates everyone at it. You can’t talk to your left without ignoring your right, and you can’t talk across the table without yelling. And so, the very thing you’ve set up to engage the audience actually does the opposite. This is even true if you're taking nine people out for dinner–ten at a table undermines what you set out to do.
Worse, if you’re brave enough to have a speaker or a presentation at your banquet, you’ve totally undermined your goals. Half the audience is looking in the wrong direction, and there are huge circles of empty white space that no microphone can overcome.
In my experience–I’m sharing a hugely valuable secret here–you score a big win when you put five people at tables for four instead. Five people, that magical prime number, pushes everyone to talk to everyone. The close proximity makes it more difficult to find a place for the bread basket, but far, far easier for people to actually do what they came to do, which is connect with one another.
Thousands of speeches later, I can tell you that the single worst thing an organizer can do to her event is sit people at tables for ten.
If you want to let the banquet manager run your next event, by all means, feel free. Just understand that his goals are different from yours.
September 29, 2013
"This plane is headed to Dallas. If Dallas isn't your destination, this would be a great time to deplane."
After a decision is taken and the organization is moving forward, it's fun and easy to be the critic, the rogue and the skeptic. Easy because the chances that you will have to actually take responsibility for your alternative view of the future are slim indeed–the plane is already headed somewhere, it can't go both places and you missed (or bungled) your chance to change the decision.
No, the time to speak up is before the decision is made, when not only do you have a chance to change where the organization is going, but you have the responsibility to deliver on your vision.
We don't have time to revisit every decision our organization makes. We merely have the time to do the best we can to execute on what we've already committed to do.
Rooting for your team to fail is as bad as it sounds. Even if you said early and often that this path was a stupid one, that this destination makes no sense–if you're on the plane, if you're in the meeting, if you decided to play the game–then once the journey starts, your job is to get us there, safe and sound.
And then come to the next meeting with a better plan about the next decision.
September 28, 2013
They will push you to fit in, to dress alike, to use the same tools, to fit the format.
They are the high school English teacher in love with his rubric and the book editor who needs you to fit in with the program. "That's the way we do things around here." They are the well-meaning productivity guru who wants you to get faster, not better, and the social media consultant who is driving with his rear-view mirror.
The safest thing you can do, it seems, is to fit in. Total deniability. Hey, I’m just doing what the masses do.
The masses are average. And by definition, we have a surplus of average.
Don’t be different just to be different. Be different to be better.
September 27, 2013
