messaginglab reads and writes

Steve Rubel Dissects 4 Hour Work Week Success

karl@messaginglab.com — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 20:48:51 +0000

Steve at Micropersuasion takes a look at how Timothy Ferris reached #1 best seller status not only on Amazon, but on the NYTimes and Wall Street Journal – simultaneously (go Tim!).

Steve suggests the following lessons:

Go where bloggers go
Be there with a message and a story that will appeal to their interests, not yours
Build and maintain those relationships through your own blog too

Tim himself posts on his own blog what he did to make it happen.

The one thing neither Steve nor Tim mention is: Tim plays to win. If you read about him and dig a little deeper, you can tell he is very serious about succeeding.

Guy K. Points to Hugh MacLeod’s “How to be Creative”

karl@messaginglab.com — Mon, 23 Jul 2007 02:48:42 +0000

A nice little download that I found while searching for quotations on the idea of “home.”

Macleod’s quote:

The bars of West Hollywood and New York are awash with people throwing their lives away in the desperate hope of finding a shortcut, any shortcut. And a lot of them aren’t even young anymore; their B-plans having been washed away by Vodka & Tonics years ago. Meanwhile their competition is at home, working their asses off.

Which is appropriate, since I am at home. Working.

Voki Launches Alpha

karl@messaginglab.com — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 19:01:20 +0000

To the right of these posts, you can see our Voki avatar speaking in Karl’s voice.

A few months back, we had the privilege of partnering with Oddcast to name one of their new products. The product, a talking, customizable avatar, like all of Oddcast’s products, is on the leading edge of personalized, marketing technologies and can be added to any blog, MySpace page or mobile phone.

We thought it was a fun product and really enjoyed naming it. Now it’s live and starting to show up on different online sites.

The avatar is very easy to use – you can create one in ten to fifteen minutes – and fairly easy to post – if you know how to post to a blog or how to upload an image, you shouldn’t have any problem.

We hope to see these everywhere. Try it out at www.voki.com.

Revising Our Blog

karl@messaginglab.com — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 19:04:24 +0000

It’s been a while since we’ve posted. It’s true, we’ve been exceptionally busy. But we know we should post and we know we should do it more often as a way of connecting with you our visitors.

Since we haven’t posted in a while, we’d like to ask you: What would you like us to write about. In the past, we have focused our writing on branding and naming issues, but a lot of the questions we’ve been getting lately are around marketing.

Is there a particular area of marketing you would like to know more about? Are there naming issues that you or your company have faced that you would like to share?

Drop us a line and let us know.

Is the Four-Hour Work Week Possible?

karl@messaginglab.com — Tue, 05 Jun 2007 19:27:41 +0000

I got to Timothy Ferris through a post that was on Reddit.com called “From Geek to Freak: How I Gained 34 Lbs. of Muscle in 4 Weeks.” While at his blog, I saw that he had written a book called “The Four Hour Work Week.”Intrigued, I downloaded the Audible.com file, listened to it and bought the book. I thought it was smart, has a lot of thought-provoking ideas and have told my friends the chapters on eliminating emails, phone calls and meetings are worth the price of admission.

Timothy has been on a whirlwind media tour. (In the book, he writes his goal is to be a best selling author selling 20,000 copies a week. I’ve watched the book climb the Amazon charts to best seller in business. I’m impressed.)

I had heard he was going to appear at Rich Scheferin’s information summit in July. On a conference call, Rich mentioned Tim had done 28 radio interviews in one week. Then, Annemarie Segaric pointed me to Marlene Green’s blog where she has links to two audio interviews with Tim, one at Joe Polish’s blog and another at Ken McCarthy’s.

Tim talks about mini-retirements (which is something I know intimately, having spent a year away from NYC with my family in Panama). He also talks about creating a “Muse,” an (online) business that generates revenue with minimal involvement from the owner. These are ideas are very smart and very do-able. (OK, I don’t have a muse yet, but I’m working on it.)

But perhaps what is most interesting is the timing.

I believe Timothy has fired the opening salvo in a war against “24/7 Always Available, Always On” culture. He’s not the only one, but he may be one of the first to reach the NYTimes Best Seller List with these ideas.

LinkedIn Cheater’s Guide

karl@messaginglab.com — Sun, 18 Mar 2007 19:24:19 +0000

I recently got back into using LinkedIn. I’d been using the site professionally for about 2 years, but it wasn’t until a friend suggested I start taking my network seriously that I really started using it.

To more effectively use LinkedIn, he suggested I check out Christian Mayaud’s brilliant Sacred Cow Dung. Specifically, Christian’s post called “Cheater’s Guide to LinkedIn.” It’s even versioned, v0.1. The Cheater’s Guide tells you HOW to optimize your profile, accept all requests to connect and, perhaps most importantly, get a life.

Each of the 16 Cheats includes a Cheater Principle, which summarizes the principle. Most of these are fun, see: “Superconnectors are “All Sluts” and “Everyone is valuable – until proven otherwise.”

At this point, The Cheater’s Guide is nearly two years old. So far, I have found it to be very useful and will be pointing new LinkedIn users there.

links for 2007-6-04

karl@messaginglab.com — Mon, 04 Dec 2006 07:17:09 +0000

WriteRoom – Distraction free writing.

What? Pluto’s Not a Planet?

karl@messaginglab.com — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:20:13 +0000

This was news a few months ago. Well, now apparently, The International Astronomers Union is porposing a new definition for planet. I would say, probably to clear up the controversy they created when they said Pluto wasn’t. According to The Useless Tree, this follows a very Confucian (sp?) idea that names are important.

According to Confucius: “Naming enables the noble minded to speak, and speech enables the noble-minded to act.”

Strategic Name Development: Branding Foods - New Trends

karl@messaginglab.com — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 16:15:37 +0000

The folks over at Strategic Name Development explore the naming of premium and “whole” foods in response to two other blog posts. Two trends of note:

1) Foods that are named the same as the company that manufactures and markets them.

2) Popular snack foods are investing heavily in the concept of the personalized brand experience.

links for 2006-11-17

karl@messaginglab.com — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 07:18:06 +0000

How to Change the World

Create something worth executing.You’re going to get tired of my obsession with great products but pitching, demoing, bootstrapping, and executing are a lot easier if you’ve created something meaning-full. It’s hard to stay motivated and excited about exe

(tags: personal_blogs entrepreneurs, visionaries, startups)