Trizle

When they both lose:

• Good Football Coach: "I take total responsibility."
• Bad Football Coach: "I blame the refs."

The former is a Florida's Urban Meyer; the latter is a coach at a big name school that hasn't been doing so well.

Why the difference?

Say you get bad grades on a test.

1. You can blame the teacher.
2. Or, you can blame yourself.

Blaming your teacher keeps your skills stagnant; blaming yourself on the other hand drives you to improve (e.g., doing more practice problems, asking more questions, getting alternative sources, etc.)

• The Bad Football Coach thinks he has the necessary skills to win, so he doesn't further his skills despite losing.
• The Good Football Coach instead takes control of his situation, and figures out how to prevent the same mistakes from happening.

Gradually, he becomes a better coach, as he rids mistakes -- and starts winning a plethora of games.

Blame no one.

BAM. That's an awesome ad.

Tricks of the trade:

• Generic brand: You = Generic.
• Boring brand: You = Boring.
• Fun brand: You = Fun.
• Happy brand: You = Happy.

Microsoft is spending over $200 million to rebrand their company. Since we don't have that mula, let's just cheat and learn the agency's approach. (YAY! HOORAY!)

The Windows 7 ad:

• emphasizes happiness
• subconciously makes people associate happiness with Windows 7 ("You will be happy using Windows 7")

Human nature makes people buy on their emotions, then rationalize it afterward with the "great features, great support, blah, blah, blah".

• Jimbob Juno Jacob buys a Mercedes because it makes him feel good.
• College Coed Chloe buys a Macbook Pro to write simple college papers because it makes her feel fashionable.

You can have the world's greatest features (e.g., the Zune, the Palm Pre), but you will see the SUCK-SUCK unless you make your prospects/customers feel good/happy/awesome /[insert-any-positive-emotion-here].

HAPPY.

(permalink to the ad: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ssOq02DTTMU)

The fitter you are, the more capacity you build to get more things done quicker. Think of approaching your work like how an athlete prepares physically for his game.

Building muscles helps you rid yourself of fatigue, and lets you perform your work optimally for ridiculously longer.

(See the chart's permalink here)

Notes:

Felt terrible for Taylor when it happened, so definitely not condoning his actions; Taylor is awesome and a great innovator.

Kanye's team though (he's done this a few times already) probably knew him coming off as an ass would ultimately boost Taylor's appeal, which it did.

Results so far?

Several million hits for their respective music videos, resulting in an inevitable (drastic) jump in record sales for the two of them -- including Beyonce's.

(Marketing Rule ^1: Marketing is a numbers game)

Headline reports on CNN, Drudgereport, Fox News, ABC, The Today Show, virtually every FM station, etc, including the blogosphere, Myspace, and Twitter will draw them millions of more viewers.

Jump in sales and fans galore.

They're all smiling now.

1. You constantly procrastinate on X.
2. You try procratination fixes, but nothing works.

BAM!

What should you do?

Procrastination tells you this:

• I dislike the work.
• I want to avoid the work for as long as possible.
• I'd rather do something else.

Becoming great at X takes years of dedication; if you're not passionate about what you're doing, you'll continually procrastinate.

That leaves you with mediocrity and limited potential, and the production of SUCK-SUCK.

1. Earning potential down the tubes.
2. Your days wasted away.
3. Your living with fears constantly reappears as you shed your sad-sad-sad tears.

What to do?

Try this: Rid yourself of whatever makes you procrastinate.

• If it's a necessary task, delegate it.
• If it's not, trash it.

Fixate your bad self on what taps your passions (and which the world would gladly pay you to do).

• If you don't know what taps your passions: Try experimenting with as many different roles as you can; you'll eventually dwindle stuff down until you find the sweetest X that rocks your passions.

You'll know you're in the right line of work once procrastinating becomes an unfamilar trait that someone else unfortunate-but-not-me-oh-no experiences.

Your work on the other hand will constantly pull you to it, compelling you to rock the krashingle out of it each and every single day for the rest of eternity.

Slap Procrastination like it just stole your lunch money and spit on your momma.

Your customers have ideas.

You think you have them all covered.

BAM.

You're stifling how frickin high your company can frickin soar.

In business decisions, you weigh the costs versus the potential benefits in deciding whether to move forward.

• The costs of seeking customer feedback: Minimal.
• The potential benefits? Frickin high.
• The resulting ROI? Astronomical.

Customer feedback is like a free innovation arm for your company; they tell you specifically what you can do to make their customers happier, and provide a constant flow of ideas to make your company better.

It's like you're outsourcing a chunk of the "thinking" for your company, conserving resources for your team to implement more and more ideas that customers send you.

You start saving a chunk of frickin $$$ and time, as you build an increased number of things that you know the market wants and needs, instead of speculating.

Result: WIN.

Seek feedback. Amplify ROI.

1. Johnny hears about business ideas.
2. Johnny has criticisms.
3. Johnny thinks he can do better by doing X, Y, and Z.

Yet, with his very own ideas:

1. Johnny devises plans.
2. Johnny executes his plans.
3. Johnny rarely if ever questions his assumptions.

Optimistic biases corrode his thinking, and stunts his potential -- as Johnny forgets that:

• A could result.
• B could result.
• C could result.
• D could result.
• E could result.

...ultimately destroying whatever dreams he had for his plans.

Your Biases Suck You Up

Optimism bias makes more than half of us think we're:

• more attractive than the average population
• smarter than the average population
• drive better than the average population
• perform better at X than the average population

Mediocrity results because we assume X will happen if we do Y.

How do you combat your biases?

• Start becoming your biggest critic.
• Start finding a million different ways to destroy your BIG IDEA.

If you were a competitor, how would you defeat yourself?

Questioning your assumptions -- and embracing criticisms from various perspectives -- helps you shore up those holes that will prevent your big idea from happening.

You start optimizing your idea's chances for success, while building a much better product.

Find a million ways to destroy yourself.

1. A vendor sends you an invoice for $100.
2. It's due within 30 days.

What do you do?

• If you pay it now, you're immediately out $100.

Let's say you hang onto the $100 for 30 days.

You use the $100 to invest into Product A, which you know gives you a net return of 10% within 30 days.

1. You invest the $100 into Product A.
2. You net $10.
3. You pay the invoice on Day 30.

You're up $10 by hanging onto the $100 for 30 days.

WOOOOOOOO HOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!111one

You do that many times over for every one of your business's bills, and you're up bundles-of-bundles.

The steps:

1. Wait as long as possible.
2. Invest the cash into something profitable.
3. Net extra cash.
4. Win!

Wait. Profit.

Take Jimbo.

1. Jimbo takes years to build his business.
2. The economy sours. He runs out of cash.
3. He quits business.

He gives up forever and ever.

Take Jimbalyathewinner:

1. Jimbalyathewinner takes years to build her business.
2. The economy sours. She runs out of cash.
3. She continues building her business on the side.
4. She persists.

And persists. And persists. And persists. And persists. And persists. And persists.

And eventually, she bumps into ridiculously profitable business.

• The power of persistence = trite, over-indulgent, wisdom that's mostly ignored.

But, it's one of the most powerful mechanisms to make your business succeed.

Persistence Mathematically Works

Peep this:

1. Google, P&G, 3M, and every other ridiculous innovator knows that every product they release won't be profitable.
2. They know that every product comes with a high probability of failure.

So assume this:

1. Your first try has a 10% chance of succeeding.
2. Two tries? 31.6%
3. Three tries? 46.4%
4. 10 tries? 79.4%

(The equation: Your chance of success = 0.10^(1/X) ------ where X is your ^ of tries, based on the assumption that there's a 10% chance of succeeding)

It's like this:

1. You can play a game of cards with odds stacked against you.
2. The more you try, the likelier you will succeed at least one time.

And, opposed to Vegas, succeeding in business just takes one win to establish your business for a profitable long-term.

You haven't succeeded?

Don't cry. Dry your eye. BAM.

Keep trying. You'll get there.

Persist like a chicken wing.