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Cartography

March 22, 2011 in Life, Success with 2 Comments

Wandering aimlessly is easy, especially if you don’t have a map. And before you know it, the hours pass into days, days pass into weeks, and weeks pass into years. Where are you going? How do you know if you have arrived if you don’t really know where you wanted to go in the first place?

This is where your cartography skills come into play. Map making.

In January, if you haven’t noticed, I changed the header’s design on my blog. I wanted to provide a few of the ideas and words I try to live by.

Make your own rules.
Draw your own map.
Live your own life.
Own it.

Last week I came across this note while making the rounds on the net (via lettersofnote.com). The note was written by Bruce Lee. Bruce wrote the letter to himself when he was 28 years old. What’s remarkable is that with something so simple, so short, so sweet, and under 75 words, Bruce was able to give himself the guiding light for moving forward.

bruce note.jpg

Here’s what it says:

My Definite Chief Aim

I, Bruce Lee, will be the first highest paid Oriental super star in the United States. In return I will give the most exciting performances and render the best of quality in the capacity of an actor. Starting 1970 I will achieve world fame and from then onward till the end of 1980 I will have in my possession $10,000,000. I will live the way I please and achieve inner harmony and happiness.

Bruce Lee
1969

Bruce drew his own map instead of wandering aimlessly; going in circles, looking for someone else’s map, secret or shortcut, and never searching for Wonka’s Golden Ticket. Instead, he put the pen to paper and wrote it down.

Have you drawn yours yet?

Be Like Henry

March 14, 2011 in Career & Work, Life, Success with 4 Comments

Henry Ford was laughed at when he suggested his world-changing plans to build the automobile using the assembly line.

“What a nut!”

“Sure, good luck with that Henry”

In the Windsor area, where I live, folks jump for joy when a new call-centre decides to open up in town. You can’t blame them, jobs are good, and we certainly need them here. The problem is we’re officially replacing factory work with more factory work and the new factories pay less.

Of course, this is merely a stall-tactic as we’d be fooling ourselves if we believed these new factories will offer the same long 30-40 year careers our parents had.

Yet, we’ve decided it’s easier to take the factory work than it is to start something new. I’m starting to wonder what we can do to get over that hurdle, because I’m not sure we can stall that much longer. So what needs to be done? Who needs to speak up?

Do I? Maybe I do. Can you hear me???

We need to find our pokers. We need to find the folks willing to cause a ruckus. We need to find the ones willing to initiate and start stuff, because poking is infectious.

What we really need are people who are not afraid to be laughed at.

I’m not afraid of being laughed anymore, but I’ve certainly done my share of hiding. I’ve procrastinated and avoided starting something when I should have. I’ve left projects in the dust because I chickened out. I’ve spent time writing but didn’t hit the publish button because I was afraid of being laughed at. That’s normal folks. We’re all a bit afraid.

But the real magic happens when you suppress the fear long enough to get something out the door. I started a new business last year that was exposed to an audience of well over ten million people in its first 60 days of operation.

We need to be more like Henry.

Being in The Right Place At The Right Time

March 8, 2011 in Life, Success with 6 Comments

You’ve all probably heard it before:

“She got to where she is because she was in the right place at the right time.”

This statement would have you believe that success is a series of lucky events. A series of coincidental occurrences just happened because someone was in the right place at the right time. If you roll the dice, you just might land on Boardwalk.

Gladwell gave us numerous examples of lucky folks who were all in the right place at the right time.

And guess what? I’ve got some amazing news!

You’re about to catch a lucky break.

Today, right now, at this moment in time, is one of those rare opportunities where the ability to create, distribute, build, design, write, photography, carve, make, produce, draw, or fabricate are closely aligned with your greatest opportunity to find amazing success in doing so.

The place is here, and the time is now. Don’t underestimate this current moment in time.

P.S. Two new books came out today. They both make an attempt to reiterate and hammer this very same message home - that now is the place and time. I suggest buying and reading both. Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment and Gary Vaynerchuk’s Thank You Economy both came out today. It’s a good day for reading.

2011 – The First Update

January 27, 2011 in Business, Life, Linchpin, Misc, Success with 5 Comments

Wow.

Where did the time go? I find it hard to believe that my last posting was November 23rd.

Here’s a quick update about both my personal and professional life.

First – The Personal Stuff.

Our beautiful daughter arrived on December 19th, 2010. Her name is Avalon Kate Fleming. She’s amazing. Seriously though, what a life altering event. Nobody can truly prepare you or explain to you what parenthood is actually like until you experience it.

So without further ado, I’ve included a picture of Avalon and yours truly.

My wife is doing fantastic. She felt great shortly after the birth and has settled comfortably into being a mother. She seems to be a natural.

The Biz Stuff

After spending a day with Seth Godin back in September, I arrived home energized and ready for a challenge. After all Seth, doing what he does best, provoked me and posed a challenge to me. Could I go home and ship something new this year? (Shipping is used metaphorically… it’s the art of creating something and actually getting it out into the world.)

I met with my friend Derek, who’s a crazy home-beer-brewer. He’s been brewing beer for over twelve years, and we wanted to see if we could turn that hobby into a business.

The business we decided to launch was TheBrewersMarket.com - The concept is simple. A website selling a small batch of all-grain beer. It’s a brewing system for folks who want to try making their own real beer – not like a Mr. Beer where you add water and turn on a machine; but the real deal. It will mean mashing grains, extracting sugars, and using real hops and yeast. Essentially, you follow the same process as your favorite beer maker on a very small scale. I knew nothing about making beer at home until I met Derek.

Our first official meeting was on October 5th. We sat down and filled out Seth’s Ship It Journal as our unofficial business plan.

The most important aspect of the Ship It Journal comes when you set a date. This is a date that’s set in stone and you’re basically saying, come hell or high water, we’re shipping to the world on this date.

We set a goal to launch a full-blown business within a month. November 1st was our date. Now, keep in mind, I’m talking about a full-blown business. We had one month to go from literally nothing to something special.

For example, and not limited to the following,

  • Building a website from scratch
  • Creating a marketing and launch plan (the goal was to be, not just shipping on November 1st, but making money on November 1st.)
  • Sourcing inventory and figuring out various logistics such as packaging and shipping
  • Setting up bank accounts, merchant accounts, wholesaler accounts and relationships.

The list goes on and on. When we told people about our plan, the first words were always along the lines of, “that’s impossible.” I’ll show you a few pictures of the Ship It Journal at a later date. We also used Basecamp to track our daily progress.

Anyway – skipping forward, this gives you a good idea of why my last post was somewhere in the middle of November and the one before that was in mid-October.

So how’d we do?

The business launched on November 1st as planned, but only after numerous sleepless nights. That was our first major success. At that point, I kicked into gear on an intensive marketing strategy.

This is when things got really interesting.

On December 15th, our business was featured in two major Canadian newspapers. We managed to finagle our way into The National Post in a big way and secured a mention in The Toronto Star. It was totally coincidental that they both happened on the same day. The two newspapers have a combined circulation of around four million people.

This contributed to a spike in sales almost instantly. But even more exciting was that because the story ran in The National Post, which is owned by PostMedia Network, the story was also syndicated to nearly every other major Canadian daily in nearly every major Canadian City. We assumed this meant the story would show up on their various websites. No. To our surprise, it ended up in print in literally dozens of newspapers. Our business was exposed to millions of Canadians in a single day .

A great start. But then the real magic of the Internet kicked in.

The following day, while my wife and I were driving, my iPhone started going bonkers. Taking a quick glance, I noticed these email were notifications of sales coming from the popular website Etsy. I’m talking one after another, after another, after another.

A week earlier, I was invited to write a blog post for Etsy. I carefully crafted our message and sent in the posting. I had no idea what to expect from it nor any idea if it would actually be used.

As it turned out, the post I’d written was featured on the front page of Etsy.

THEN… things got even more interesting when only four days later, my wife and I were in the hospital, smack dab in the middle of having a baby.

I can’t thank my business partners enough who kept their cool and ensured the business ran smoothly at time where my involvement and help was minimal at best. After all, I’m not Gordon Gecko, and my family comes first. Derek and Laurie had to fulfill, literally, hundreds of orders only days before Christmas.

Needless to say, one month to launch an insanely successful business, and it’s just getting better and better by the day.

You can do the same. This is the year folks.

Enough blabbering – lots of exciting things planned for 2010. I’m going to be changing up my blog in several ways and creating a whack of new sites and products. I’ll keep you in the loop.

As for my goals in 2011, I want to be a great father and keep shipping.

Cheers!
Noah

P.S. Last but not least, there are a few people I’d like to thank who helped tremendously in the successful launch of TheBrewersMarket.com.

Josh Stipancic – Josh handled all of the branding and design for our business in a very short time. We gave Josh an idea of the look and feel we were hoping for. When he returned a short while later, he had totally nailed it. Thanks Josh. He also designs some pretty amazing stuff. I’m sure he could help you too.

Shawn Veltman – Shawn is someone who’s at the top of marketing and copywriting game in Canada. I worked with Shawn on a website a few years back offering coaching and consulting servers to the chiropractic industry. He’s around 30 years old and pretty much retired. He’s good at what he does. Shawn helped me craft press releases, write blog posts, and tweak landing page headlines for optimal performance. If you ever need advice in any of these areas, contact Shawn.

Brandon Scott Photography – Brandon is a local photographer who, my partners just happened to know, and I believed he owed them a favor. He came through to help us with product shots that didn’t look like total crap. (Starting a business in a short time gave us a great opportunity to call in favors.)

Larry Cornies - Larry is a guy who knows the newspaper industry inside and out. He offered valuable advice on how to make sure our story got to the right people. His advice was spot on.

Seth Godin – Thanks for challenging me in September to go home and ship something new and exciting before the year was over.

The Speck

September 28, 2010 in Business, Creativity, E-Commerce, Internet Marketing, Life, Success, The Speck with 17 Comments

The speck is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

When I found myself stuck in a dead-end office job five years ago, I quickly realized that trying to come up with the next Google or Facebook, in my spare time, was probably not going to happen. It looked as if I would continue working in the dead-end office job.

That’s when the idea of the speck came to me.

The idea was simple.

With close to a billion people using the Internet, I only needed to find 300 people, who shared my interests, were interested in what I had to offer, that would be willing to pay me $30 bucks a month, and I could find myself an office with a window.

My own office.

Only 300 people out of a billion. A teeny-tiny, yet extremely powerful, particle of dust. This is what I call the speck.

With a simple concept, like the speck, and a concrete goal on paper (300 x $30), I was off to the races.

I hit that target within a couple of weeks and left my job less than six months later. I haven’t been back to the windowless office in over five years.

Seth Godin talks about Tribes and the importance of finding your tribe. When I heard Seth speaking live last week in Chicago, he spoke about musicians and their ability to harness the power of the Internet to find their tribe and build a successful career at the same time.

The old model worked something like this: Write the music, take a loan out and record your demo, hope to be discovered by a record label, and keep hoping.

We could dive deeper into this old broken model, but your chances of being discovered and actually making money were next to none.

The new model: As Seth suggested, find 3000 fans who dig your music from that ever-growing pool of over a billion people. But find the 3000 who’d be willing to buy your new music for $30 bucks a year, and you’ve made it.

You’re done! Keep producing your art. Keep doing what you love, and earn a solid living at the same time.

$90,000 bucks a year is nothing to scoff at.

Some might argue that as the overall size of the group grows, it becomes harder and more complicated to find your speck.

3000 out of a billion.

300 out of a billion.

100 out of a billion.

In Tribes, Seth stressed that in many cases, the tribes have already been formed and they’re simply looking for a leader. “We need you to lead us”, the book’s tagline read.

I see it like this. You can find your speck faster than ever before. Your speck might even find you. There’s a good chance people on line are looking for you, or someone just like you. They’re ready to cling to you like dust mites on your Grandmother’s dining room table.

Finding 3000 people who like your music out of a billion may be easier then you think.

Finding 300 people to pay you $30 bucks a month for a service or product that you’ve poured your heart and soul into, and created just for them, is easier than you think.

Who knows, maybe your speck is even smaller. Maybe you only need a hundred people, or you may need more.

It doesn’t really matter. The whole point is this - in the big scheme of things, all you probably need to achieve success, beyond your wildest dreams, is nothing more than a tiny speck of people.

Back in 2005, I found a speck, organized them, and signed them up within two weeks. Done.

Five years later, the two weeks it took me to connect a speck of people can potentially happen a heck of a lot faster today. Maybe even overnight. All it takes is one good sneeze.

The speck is a small but insanely powerful concept for mapping your plan for success. As the size of the number of connected Internet users grows, your chances of actually finding your speck increases tremendously.

It worked for me, it can work for you.

Who says?

August 17, 2010 in Business, Success with 0 Comments

Who says you can’t do that?

It’s becoming clear to me that one of the greatest secrets to a successful business, and success in every other aspect of life for that matter, is doing things that don’t just go against the grain, but doing things that totally disrupt the status-quo.

The biggest successes, the ones we hear about, seem to come when someone takes something, that was accepted as the norm, or “just the way things are”, and flipping it like a pancake.

Sirius Satellite Radio is a great example. Nothing was really wrong with regular radio. And it was free! Yet millions of people now pay to listen to the radio. I know I do. Go figure.

The iPod is another example. People said the iPod would fail because no one would want to carry all that music in their pockets.

And then people said electronic books would fail. People wanted the sense and touch of a real book. And yet, Amazon is now selling more electronic Kindle books than printed paper books.

There are some people out there that want you to do something disruptive, even though others (and most people) are telling you you can’t.

Most people like things to stay just the way they are or the way they’ve always been. Most people don’t like it when things change. Most people are resistant to change.

If your business is struggling, or your career isn’t moving as fast as you’d like it too, then maybe it’s time to stop talking & listening to “most people”.

Overflow the cup.

July 27, 2010 in Life, Success with 2 Comments

Today, my wife and I had an ultrasound. And for the first time we were able to see a very clear picture of the cute little baby hanging out inside my wife.

It gave me the day to reflect on this post.

You’ve all heard the saying; the glass is half-empty or the glass is half-full. In my opinion, it’s all about the choices you make and the way you choose to perceive the glass.

For me, I always try my best to focus on the glass being half-full. But I wonder if we could do better?

After all, as gifted and as privileged as we are to live in a society and area where most of us have the ability to eat on a daily basis, drink clean water, see a movie when we want, or eat a Big Mac, almost all of us can find problems within our own lives.

We can almost always find something to complain about.

Lots of people spend all their lives focusing on the glass. For many, it’s not even half-full, the glass is nearly empty, if not bone dry.

These people are nearly always the unsuccessful people who feel they were dealt a poor hand.

And maybe they were. I’m not one to say what your glass looks like. It’s a personal choice.

The most successful people I know are the most positive. They always see the glass as half-full. The best part of this type of attitude is they approach the glass knowing that filling it to the top is within reach.

Here’s a guarantee I can make to you.

Become a half-full glass type of person. Focus on not just maintaining your half-full glass, but make the sucker overflow. Today, my glass is flooded.

I guarantee and promise you’ll see positive results.

Overflow the glass.

P.S. It’s a girl.

Is it really “Fear of Failure?”

July 26, 2010 in Success with 6 Comments

The moment you become unafraid of the crowd, you are no longer a sheep, you have become a lion. ~ Osho

Those of us who are in business, thinking about starting a new venture, or just looking to increase our success, often hear something referred to as the “fear of failure.”

Every single success and motivational book you’ll read will talk about the “fear of failure” as one of the, if not the top most debilitating fear, when it comes to stepping outside our comfort zones.

When will we start being honest and start calling it what it really is? Let’s call a spade a spade.

It’s really the “fear that our friends, family, and co-workers will talk about us behind our backs about their opinions of us.” We fear what they will think and say.

The good news is that your friends, family, and co-workers already talk behind your back, but you rarely hear about it. And when they do talk about you, they’re doing so because they are really the ones who are afraid.

They’re afraid because you’ve ventured off the path of easy-street.

They’re afraid because you’ve gone astray and started creating your own map.

They’re afraid because you’ve left the comforts of mediocrity.

They’re more fearful than you will ever be, because they’re scared shitless that you might actually succeed.

And even when you FAIL, and you will, they become even more fearful, and even more resentful, because they see you rise up and try again.

The super-successful understand that failure only makes them stronger.

Once you understand this, what is left for you to really be afraid of?

Venture on.

Even sadder

July 23, 2010 in Business, Career & Work, Life, Success with 3 Comments

tho_only_people_1006a.1.jpg

From Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid.com and his book Ignore Everybody

Merit can be bought. Passion can’t.

The only people who can change the world are people who want to. And not everybody does.

Human beings have this thing I call the “Pissed Off Gene”. It’s that bit of our psyche that makes us utterly dissatisfied with our lot, no matter how kindly fortune smiles upon us.

It’s there for a reason. Back in our early caveman days, being pissed off made us more likely to get off our butt, get out of the cave and into the tundra hunting wooly mammoth, so we’d have something to eat for supper. It’s a survival mechanism. Damn useful then, damn useful now.

It’s this same Pissed Off Gene that makes us want to create anything in the first place- drawings, violin sonatas, meat packing companies, websites. This same gene drove us to discover how to make a fire, the wheel, the bow and arrow, indoor plumbing, the personal computer, the list is endless.

Part of understanding the creative urge is understanding that it’s primal. Wanting to change the world is not a noble calling, it’s a primal calling.

We think we’re “providing a superior integrated logistic system” or “helping America to really taste freshness”. In fact we’re just pissed off and want to get the hell out of the cave and kill the woolly mammoth.

Your business either lets you go hunt the woolly mammoth or it doesn’t. Of course, like so many white-collar jobs these days, you might very well be offered a ton of money to sit in the corner-office cave and pretend that you’re hunting, even if you’re not, even if you’re just pushing pencils. That is sad. What’s even sadder is that you agreed to take the money.

From Hugh MacLeod of GapingVoid.com and his book Ignore Everybody

P.S. Enjoy the Weekend!



Discipline hurts less

July 22, 2010 in Business, Life, Success with 1 Comment

Than what?

That thing you’ve been putting off for months now. That new business venture you’ve been talking about. That great idea for an iPhone app you thought about. That exercise program you’ve been thinking about starting. The nutrition plan you were going to stick with. The marketing course you were going to take.

The discipline of starting something now, and sticking with it, can be painful. It’s painful because it requires some sacrifice. No success comes without some sort of sacrifice.

Sacrifice might mean having a salad while everyone else has pizza, or you might have to work Friday and Saturday nights go get that restaurant going. You may even need to sacrifice money and buy less, or live a little more frugally.

All this sacrifice can hurt, but that’s just the beginning. You need to build up self discipline and stick with it to get through the dip.

I know, I know… The pain can be unbearable at times.

I’ve got a feeling though, it will hurt a hell of a lot less than regret.

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