Chris Bonney

Could Mad Men Be The Future?

My wife and I spent the last three months getting up to speed on the hit series Mad Men on AMC. 

We rented seasons one and two and would watch up to three episodes in one night. It's an addicting show. Donald Draper and his dark twisted lifestyle even haunted me in my dreams. I couldn't get him out of my head.

We eventually got caught up to the third season, which just ended last week. We watched the last three episodes in real-time, when it was actually scheduled to play. Who does that anymore? But we suffered through the commercials because we had to see how season three ended as soon as humanly possible.

Suffice it to say, it ended interestingly. 

So, now today as I sit here with nothing but a residual Mad Men buzz, it hits me. 

Could the seemingly antiquated method of having a girl (in today's PC world, it would have to be a "person," of course) sit outside your office and take your calls and type up your voice recordings actually be a model for the future? Could 1962 be more relevant today than ever?

Tim Ferriss already does it. In his book 4-hour Workweek he talks about using a virtual assistant for his email and virtual necessities. Does this scale?

As a client manager, what if you could spend more time creating proactive, strategic initiatives for your clients instead of manning email 24/7 putting out one pointless fire after another? Peggy! Take care of that, will you?

As a designer, what if your "girl" read Smashing Magazine for you and synopsized what she thought you'd find interesting?

What if you and your "girl" could each work fewer hours in the week and achieve exponentially more than you do now?

It's a new model of working, sure. But clearly our titans of industry could use a paradigm shift. In this knowledge worker, service-oriented country of ours maybe a new staffing model is just what we need. 

The Duration of Things

How do you know if something is too long? Is faster always better? Who decides?

As I finish up a PowerPoint deck for a webinar I’m giving today I can’t help but wonder if 44 slides are too many or too few. Sure, there are guys like Guy Kawasaki, who I admire greatly, who advocates the 30-20-10 rule for PPTs. But I can’t but think a webinar is a little more visual and needs to keep viewers attention so maybe a slide-a-minute clip is right. There’s also a great book called Presentation Zen, if you really want to learn how to use PowerPoint like a god.

But I digress; my real issue is to determine what the best size/length/duration something should be. Clearly we are in an information overloaded society, but that doesn’t quite seem to capture why we want things quickly and short in duration. It’s more of an effect than a cause. We are indeed also a measurement society, but, again, doesn’t seem to hit the mark for me on why duration matters. I’m turned off by books that are over 300 pages because I can’t imagine a writer needing more than that to make her point. I’ve read longer books, but didn’t enjoy them.

What’s wrong with your story if your book ends up 900 pages? I’d argue one of two things.
1.    You’re rambling
2.    You’ve introduced too many idea/characters for one book. Make it two…or three like Scott Ginsberg did.

How long should a song be? Well, when it comes to pop music I personally feel 5 minutes is about all you need…max. (I spent 10 years in the music industry so I feel somewhat qualified here). If you can’t get your verse/chorus/verse across in that amount of time, you’re clearly not considering the masses. Of course, not considering the masses may be part of your plan, but I rest firmly that 5 minutes is enough. Or is it? Stairway to Heaven blows past 5 minutes and still is a popular song across generations.

So…
How long should a blog post be?
How long should sex take?
How long should a movie be?
How long should a webinar be?
How long should a Twitter post be?
How long should a keynote speech last?
How long should an email reply be?

I have a vague inkling that the follow three things are factors:
1.    Method of communication
2.    Audience
3.    Intention

But how do they influence duration? How do we know when the time spent is just right?

Photo Credit: Alan2Onion

Urgency Matters

Advocacy for the devil can sometimes be a good thing and then other times not so much.

Are your intentions good when you bring a contradictory perspective to a situation or are you starting a fire that only you can put out?

Beware those who claim to be the devil's advocate as they shoot down your good ideas in a meeting. Or those that bring a Chicken Little attitude to every initiative they're involved with. They may be urgency addicts: Someone who finds themselves lost without their hair in a state somewhere between smoldering and inferno. The most common trait of these people is that they create fires for no real reason other than things seem to be going too smoothly. Also, they tend to create fires that they are experts at putting out. It puts them in control and allows them an easy tick in the win column a few weeks down the road.

Seth Godin has an excellent blog post today about urgency. It's hard to determine sometimes whether urgency is genuine or manufactured. Seth talks about the difficultly of prioritizing long-term goals over urgent matters and that fires can generally keep you from the simplest of things if you don't have a plan. It's a point well taken and leads me to three simple things to think about when it appears things must be done now. Right now.

1. Are you just more busy or are you actually being more productive?
2. Has this fire generated more activity and no real opportunity for increased or improved results?
3. Is this an emergency or a true crisis? There is a difference.

Don't be fooled by the devil's advocate, he may simply be looking for the next fire to start.

Do you start fires?

Photo by Chilling Soul

Top 11 List: Why Being #1 Is All That Matters

As the Big Game drifts into the ether of the inevitable "Who was in the Super Bowl last year?" cloud of our collective memory banks, it's important to take away some vital business/life lessons. Here is the Top 11 List of reasons why being #1 (or striving to be that) is all that matters.

1. It's hard to measure what it takes to be #2. It's usually a failed attempt at #1.  No excuses, always attempt to be #1 - it's the only true measure.

2. People rarely remember #2 - in sports at least. Sure, people know Pepsi and Coke so we know some #2s, but in the Big Game or an important business negotiation, #2 is a very sticky pill to swallow.

3. Forget the naysayers and dream big. Why even have a game if the winner has already been determined? Follow your heart and shoot for the moon. Ask the Giants how that works.

4. Trying is failing with honor. Don't try to be #1, be #1.

5. Study the future. Perpetual learning helps you prepare for the future and hence conquer it. By being a "knower" and not a "learner" you are doomed to be stagnant. #1 is like a shark, always moving forward.

6. Know that you are the one in control of your own destiny. Don't wait for anyone else to make your team or company #1, take the reins. 

7. "Be the change you wish to see in the world." This famous quote by Gandhi rings especially loud in the ear of a winner. Lead by example. If your team or company does not have the strategy or value system or leader to be #1, step up and show them how it is done.

8. Don't wait for the planets to align. It's similar to couples that are waiting to have kids until they make more money/have a bigger house/get that promotion. There is no time like the present. If you want a kid, have one. Jump into the deep end of the pool, the water is fine.

9. Great swimmers are always in the pool. Continue to do what you're good at. Do it often. Speak on it. Write on it. Consult on it. Take classes on it. Read books on it.

10. There are no shortcuts. We are a shortcut society. We want it faster...always. Success does not come quickly, it comes from hard work and diligence and dedication.  Don't believe a soul that tells you differently.

11. Don't fear it. There is an old saying, "Be careful what you wish for because you just might get it." Buck conventional wisdom and don't fear success. Audacity and perseverance generally  win. 

Can you think of a #12? Are you always striving for #1?

Top 11 List of Ways to Drive Traffic To Your Website

I recently had a very gifted freelance graphic designer ask me to brainstorm on ways to drive more traffic to his website. I had a brain rush, and figured I'd share with you the Top 11 List (Letterman eat your heart out) that I sent him.

(Google AdWords and the same are excluded from this idea list intentionally. Let's get creative, people!)

1. Are you on LinkedIn.com? This is a great professional network to be on, especially for freelancers and consultants.
2. Check out stumbleupon.com.
3. Get listed on guru.com, elance.com and their brethren.
4. Here's a great post from a great freelance blog. http://freelanceswitch.com/finding/12-incredibly-crafty-ways-to-become-a-high-profile-freelancer/
5. Start publishing articles on sites like hubpages.com and then link to them from your site. You'll get traffic at hubpages that will direct back to your site as well.
6. Start a lens on Squidoo.com
7. Start a blog. But it has to be bad-ass and really insightful and offer value and offer some sort of wisdom. See www.copyblogger.com for a kickin' blog. Do a guest post on some other designers blog about something cool and different.
8. Start a meetup.com group of designers or like-minded people in WI and network from there.
9. Speak at the chamber of commerce (can sometimes not be fruitful, depends on your city)
10. Write a short e-book and give it to your existing clients and ask them to pass it around.
11. Offer your existing clients incentive for referrals. Can be tricky, have to do your homework on how best to do it.

Do you have a #12 for Guild Creative? Tell me what I'm missing. Is there something obvious I forgot?

Lessons In Blogging - Part 3.5

Nod to Gitomer for my 3.5.

CopyBlogger has an excellent post asking the simple question: "What is a blog?"

The answer may surprise you.

Lessons In Blogging - Part 3

As I continued getting turned on to more and more blogs over the past year, I realized going to each website to read posts wasn't really the way to do it. Being in technology, I was aware of RSS and feed readers, but honestly I somewhat feared RSS because even though one of the Ss stands for "Simple", I found the concept anything but.

Enter Google Reader. I set up an iGoogle page and added the Reader as one of the modules. I then easily "subscribed" to each of the blogs that I read and Voila! I have a nice list of posting headlines each day all in one spot. When you click on the feed link it pops up a bubble with the blog posting in it so you never leave the iGoogle page unless you need to. Today, I track over 10 blogs with ease. I anticipate tracking over 20 by year's end.

So, if you're not using a reader, even if you follow only one blog, you should. It saves a ton of time.

Here's a list of my top 5 blogs. Check them out and comment about them below.

1. Tim Sanders
2. Seth Godin
3. HELLO My Name Is Scott
4. 37Signals
5. Public Speaking Blog

Here are some other RSS readers as well:

1. NewsGator
2. Bloglines
3. Newz Crawler

Comment below if you find another reader better or have any suggestions on great business blogs to read.

Google Me, Google You

Okay, we get it. We need to Google ourselves. A potential new employer will, right? Fine, we get that part. Now what if you don't like what you find after you Google yourself? This is the part that very few people who give the advice to Google yourself follow through on.

And the reason they don't is because there is no easy answer. And you're not going to get one here...but, please, read on.

Go to Google and search for "Chris Bonney". Depending on what part of the world you're in your results might vary, but you'll see a result somewhere on the second page with the title "Chris Bonney is an idiot!". Hello!

Lucky for me this is a different Chris Bonney, but if you read the page where this chestnut shows up it's not perfectly clear, if you don't know me well, that it isn't me. (Of course, if you do know me well, you'd most likely assume that it IS in fact about me.) So much for me ever getting a new job, huh?

Anyone have any Google horror stories of your own? Or more importantly how you resolved an issue of a Google search result disparaging your good name? Would love to hear from you.

You can comment below.

Fast Vs. Friendly

Speed is an asset, right? Not always. Imagine if you had to choose between fast or friendly for all of your consumer transactions. At what places would you want speed and what places friendly? Fast food? Fast, right? Picking out furniture for your living room? Probably friendly. It might seem rudimentary, but it's an exercise worth considering as we blister through our lightning-fast business culture driven by Blackberrys, cell phones, and blogs. We tend to lean toward fast, don't we?

Next time you think you're under the gun, take a moment to breathe and consider whether you're being driven by the need for speed and if you're taking the people aspect out of what you're doing. Are you simply transactional? Do your e-mail responses tend to be curt? Do you tend to skip the small talk on the phone and get right down to business? There is always time for the people part and by taking the extra minute to bring the human element back into business, you'll be unique and stand out in your client's/spouse's/child's/boss's/parent's mind.

There's actually a third component to this equation and that is "quality," but I'm going to tackle that in an upcoming post.

So, what is it: fast or friendly? What are you thoughts on the topic. Any instances where you absolutely must have both?

Comment below or e-mail me.

Lessons in Holiday Cards - Part 1

There's a funny thing that happens when people send out holiday cards. For those of us with small children, we strive for the cutest snapshot of our kids and spend multiple hours, countless outfits, and wallet-emptying bribes to get it right. Great product.

Then we go to ShutterFly.com or comparable service and find just the right background and spend some mighty brain power to make sure our message isn't like last years and/or not like something someone else could dream up for their card. We need original and won't rest till we get it. Great product.

Then we fall down. After all the effort on product, getting it just right, we forget why we're sending the cards in the first place. Upload your address book to ShutterFly and it will blast your message out to all your friends and family without a trip to the post office from you. "I don't have time to personalize every single card," a relative confessed a few days ago. Can't tell you I felt too moved by their card when I got it. Great product, bad marketing.

Understand that every word you speak, e-mail you send, and Christmas card you do or don't personalize says something about you. Some people call this your personal brand and others call it your legacy. I call it simply bringing your "A" game all the time, every time. If you're going to suit up, make it a point to get in the game and give 100% while you're on the field. End of story.

Is reaching out to your family and friends during the holidays simply one of the many check boxes on your Christmas to-do list? Rethink your socially-driven, obligatory holiday gestures (dropping a dollar in the Salvation Army bucket is another one), pare down that list to ones that truly resonate with you, and don't just create a quality product but deliver it in a personalized, meaningful way to a more focused audience. You'll get praise and admiration from your friends and family. They'll wonder how you ever had the time.

This does bring up another topic: the price of exclusion. I'll address that one soon.

Do you have a product or service that has been marketed like a holiday card? Comment here or e-mail me: chris@chrisbonney.com.