Cameron's Brain

Torrent of the Week

My Torrent of the Week this week is The Rolling Stone Magazines 500 Greatest Songs Of All Time. Lots of tracks in here I have never even heard of before. Lots I already have too but it doesn't hurt to have them collected together into a single playlist.

Had a surreal morning today. Was in the city at 8.30am having my photo taken by Julian Kingma, one of Australia's top celebrity photographers. We shot some stuff in Hosier Lane and some more behind Federation Square. I asked Julian what the favourite photo he'd ever taken was and he said this one of the late Rene Rivkin which he won the 1997 Melbourne Press Club Quill Award. We talked about the some of the people he's met, including Jamie Oliver, who he shot recently at the opening of Melbourne's Fifteen restaurant and says is a really nice bloke, and Samuel L. Jackson. What an interesting line of work. For the record (for you, Scott Sherman), Julian prefers shooting on non-digital cameras, although today he was using a Nikon D100.

Knowing When to Quit by Scott Adams

Tom Reynolds (the now infamous sacked Telstra blogger) sent me this link today to Scott "Dilbert" Adams' blog post on "Knowing When To Quit". It has some great advice.

So how do you know when to bail out of a losing idea?

I heard a useful rule about predicting success during my (failed) attempt at creating a hit Dilbert animated TV show. While watching the Dilbert pilot being tested on a focus group, an experienced executive explained to me the most non-intuitive way to predict success. Since then I’ve observed it to be true a number of times. It goes like this:

If everyone exposed to a product likes it, the product will not succeed.

Think about that for a minute before I explain why everyone liking something predicts failure. If you get this answer right, I’m guessing that you are already successful yourself. Tell me in the comments if I’m right about that.

The reason that a product “everyone likes” will fail is because no one “loves” it. The only thing that predicts success is passion, even if only 10% of the consumers have it. For example, I’m willing to bet that when the TV show Baywatch was tested, 90% of the people rolled their eyes and gave it a thumbs down. But I’ll bet 10% of the test audience had tents in their pants. Bingo.

Dilbert was the same way. From the very beginning, the vast majority of people who saw it didn’t care for it. But 10% who saw it not only liked it, they cut it out and mailed it to friends. They talked about it. They hung it on walls. They were passionate about it. Before the first Dilbert reprint book was sold, I heard stories of people making their own Dilbert books from newspaper clippings. Bingo.

Anyone who knows me well will recognize this story. I always say that when I speak in front of any large group of people, it breaks down like this: 10% of the audience think I'm a complete wanker, 10% of the audience think I'm terrific, and the other 80% are just bewildered. So I focus on the 10% who "get" me and don't worry too much about the rest. I'm also now working on a plan to try to get more of the 80% to at least remember my name. You learn very early in a sales career that success is all about the "doing the numbers". My first sales job involved lots of cold call selling. You would ring 100 people. 50 would meet with you. 25 would be interested in your product. 15 will tell you they are going to buy your product. 5 actually will. 5 won't. 5 will just keep stalling you indefinitely because they are too scared to tell you they are a "no". As we used to say SWSWSW - Some Will, Some Won't, So What.

Another report says Australian newspapers in massive decline

Hugh Martin reports "The Australian Press Council has just released The State of the News Print Media in Australia Report 2006...... I can't help but think there's a lot of wishful thinking going on in this report. The authors are by and large working editors, with a couple of academics thrown in for good measure."

I haven't read the report yet but this graph above (click on it to bring up the full size version) pretty much tells the true story. Look at the graph on the right. Look at the decline in circulation since 1999. Now grab a ruler and extend that line downwards. If you are so inclined, make the decline exponential.

Face it, my friends in the newspaper business. Things are changing faster than many of you care to admit. I know Hugh isn't one of those. Neither is Mark Jones at the AFR. Don't forget to buy a copy today to read about Telstra v Tom Reynolds.

Telstra pulls down Tom's blog!

This Tom Reynolds vs Telstra story I broke last week is just getting funnier by the moment. Mark Jones reports that Tom's blog has been completely pulled down off of Telstra's "Now We Are Talking" blog. Even more interesting is that I can't find a copy of it on Google's cache! What's up with that?  Mark says you should all buy a copy of the Australian Financial Review tomorrow because he's written an article on the whole deal which contains lots of quotes from Tom and Rod Bruem, Telstra's spokesman, who still denies Tom's dismissal had nothing to do with his blog, even though Tom says his blogging was specifically mentioned when he was informed, by an external employment agent, that Telstra didn't want him back in the building, effective immediately.

So, as if Telstra's NWAT experiment hadn't already lost a heap of credibility (and it didn't have a lot to start with) through this exercise, taking down Tom's blog altogether, hiding the evidence, as it were, just lowers them another notch in my book.

Now I don't know Rod but I have met Paul Crisp, one of the Public Affairs guys at Telstra involved in the NWAT experiment and he's a smart guy. Paul - why pull down the blog? Obviously we haven't heard Telstra's side of the story yet, apart from short dismissives which I am struggling to believe, but I think you would have been better off handling this a different way.

And what did you guys do to the Google cache????

Why aren't more people answering the TPN survey?

So far I've had about 94 responses to the TPN survey I put up last week. Any suggestions why the responses are so low and what I can do to get more?

Oh and to the person who answered the last question with "See, this is why I have trouble with TPN. I was happy to help you out by filling out a survey, but now you are wasting my time", I'd say "GET A SENSE OF HUMOUR". Jesus. Mind you, this person isn't subscribed to any TPN podcasts, so I guess he/she isn't our target market which is obvious anyway from that answer. Bloody hell.

For those of you WITH a sense of perspective about how important you are, you might be interested to know that 79.5% of responses were for The Beatles (which means I have to get rid of the sunnies and get a long wig), 72.7% are worried about climate change, 72.4% think the "War On Terror" is a shame, and only 36.8% of you have offered me a spare bed. Can those people please email me with their location because I might need it soon. Especially if you live in LA or San Fran.

<a href="http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=826122623222">Click here to take survey</a>

Miriam needs a Productivity Buddy

Miriam needs a Productivity Buddy to help her stay on track with her GTD weekly review. Des and I came up with the idea of the Productivity Buddy (tm) system while recording our Productivity podcast last month. Basically you buddy up with someone and make sure you keep each other on track with your weekly reviews. I've been working with Michael Specht as my buddy for the last few weeks and it's working great. Michael calls me each Monday morning about 9.30 after he's done his weekly review. That motivates him to do it and reminds me to do mine. We're also in each other's Skype list and can ping each other during the week to touch base on how we are tracking. It's like having someone to go to the gym with every morning or having a "sponsor" in AA.

XDA support

Anyone know how to make a GPRS connection from an XDAii persistent? Mine hangs up after about 60 seconds of non-usage and it's as annoying as hell. I connect to Gmail and by the time I've read one email the thing disconnects and I need to wait another 30 seconds for it to re-connect. I've gone through the settings and I can't figure out anyway to change it. BTW I'm running Windows Mobile 2003 second edition.  Huh... I thought I upgraded to 2005. Weird.

Check out TPN's new "Featured Provider" page in iTunes

The nice folks at Apple have set up a "Featured Provider Page" for TPN in iTunes. Check it out. I think it looks sweeeeet.

Sigh... 36

Thanks to everyone out there who remembered by birthday today and sent me emails, IMs, called me, etc. It was quite overwhelming. Who the hell ARE all you people anyway? I got happy birthday emails from people I don't even know. That's weird. Especially when celebrating birthdays is something you try to avoid. Anyway, I appreciate it.

36.... when I moved from Bundaberg to Melbourne in January 1988, age 17, with a couple of hundred bucks I'd saved up from picking rockmelons over the summer on my girlfriend's father's farm, I promised myself I'd be a millionaire by age 25. The plan was - spend three years working out how the world works, then five years to execute "the plan". I had a high school education and was incredibly naive. I remember, after a week in Melbourne, wondering where you bought coat hangers from. I did my weekly shopping at the local 7 Eleven because I thought it was a supermarket. I lived on bread and tomato sauce for a week because I had no money.

Anyway, I didn't hit the millionaire at 25 goal. At 25 I think I was making about $40,000 a year making corporate videos. So I reset the goal to 30. When I was 27 I landed a job at Microsoft when their share price was climbing. My hiring manager told me I'd be a millionaire in 4 years.

When I was 29 I started my first internet business - it was called Golflounge and we were going to create an online system for booking a round of golf on every golf course in Australia. We even raised $3 million on the back of a napkin. This was about... March 2000. Then Ballmer busted up Bubble 1.0 and we said "hmmm no thanks" to the money. I turned 30 six months later. I was working at Microsoft, making six figure income, traveling around the world, and miserable as hell. Oh and their share price was in a nosedive it STILL hasn't recovered from. I went into a three-year depression. And I reset the millionaire goal to 35.

One year I turned 35. I was running The Podcast Network. I missed my goal again but at least this time I felt like I was doing something with my life. Finally. And you know? The "millionaire" goal suddenly seemed less important. So I didn't reset it for 40. My focus had changed from being rich to being useful. I realized along the way that what I wanted wasn't to be a "millionaire" anyway. What I wanted, what that represented, was freedom. The freedom to do what I wanted, with people I liked, when and where I wanted, and not to have to answer to a boss I didn't respect.

And you know what? That's my life today. Okay - I'll admit, I'd like to have more liquidity. That would take some of the pressure off. But it's a minor point. I feel like my life has meaning today. I am doing something I totally believe in, it's a lot of fun, and I'm working with a terrific bunch of people who I respect and admire and am proud to be associated with. I've got a loving and supportive family.

I remember being at DEMO in the US last year and hearing several people on stage say "Find something you love to do and success will follow." I'm starting to understand that.

Forget about owning the next GooTube. Forget about being a millionaire for a second. Find something you love to do and you are passionate about and you believe in. Hopefully it will also be something that can impact positively on people's lives. Then go do it.

That's my wish for you on my birthday.

Top Ten TPN podcasts for Sept 2006

Here is a list of the Top Ten downloaded podcasts on The Podcast Network in Sept 2006:
1 G'Day World
2 Claybourne
3 Digital Photography
4 Media Centre
5 Rock
6 PSP
7 Edinburgh Fringe Festival
8 Martial Arts
9 Gaming
10 Cranky Middle Manager

Congrats to the hosts of those shows for producing outstanding entertainment!