Back in May of ’09, I began managing all the Facebook marketing for Mint.com, and in four months I quadrupled (4x) traffic from Facebook–>Mint.com. Soon, more and more companies wanted me to manage their Facebook marketing… Eventually, I received so much work through word-of-mouth that I hired a few of my really smart friends and […]
Several months ago, I attended the GTD Conference, where I heard Marshall Goldsmith describe what he called “Peer Coaching”: Every day Jim asks Marshall the same 24 questions. Every day Marshall asks Jim the same 17 questions. Marshall and Jim each have a spreadsheet of each others questions where they record for each other the […]
(My secret sauce for decision-making. So simple… I must be stupid to benefit from this.) The background: For the past three summers, I’ve spent a week in the outdoors with my friends Ryan and Matt (one of those rare types with zero Google presence). We’ve gone backpacking, canoing, overseas, etc. These trips were great fun, […]
Recently Sean Murphy sent me this thought-provoking email. Perhaps you will enjoy it as well… (He gave permission to post publicly.) ———————- Thanks for the update. You are too well rounded and spiritually inclined to become a billionaire. I am confident that you are going to meet with considerable success in this life, I think you should be […]
[Purely personal post.] It’s almost summer–and I’m excited about the next six months… Visit my family, hike the Grand Canyon, etc. But it’s also time to say goodbye to a huge chunk of my life… a piece I can tell you about, but you’ll never really know. For six of the past seven summers, I’ve […]
[My apologies for the lack of artful brevity in this post. I’m just typing this one out on the fly.] I met Rollan at Pub Night–a weekly hang-out of twenty-something Christians in the Palo Alto area. Rollan was a gregarious Asian, forty-six years old, divorced, with three kids. Despite his age, he occasionally dropped by, […]
As long as we live in a resource-constrained world (time, money, etc), we will create filters to separate the top-notch from the tolerable, the Thinkpad’s from the Acer’s, the Nunatak‘s from the Campmor‘s. Most of these filters are intuitive, unconsciously acted upon. I remember hearing a basketball referee, a seasoned college-level veteran, recount how crowds […]
Two days ago, my sister and I were talking over the phone: “Jeff, I’m going to these parties with our highschool friends, and they all ask about you. I try to explain, only I’m not really sure… What is TechStars and what are you doing there?” Well Michelle, here’s the answer. (Thanks to our […]
Today begins a month and a half of traveling adventures… My upcoming itinerary: August: Boulder, CO. http://www.TechStars.org/ August 25: Road trip home. Boulder–>Seattle. Sept 2-5: Boston, MA. http://www.businessofsoftware.org/ Sept 5-12: Washington, DC. Visiting a friend/backpacking. Sept 12-17: Kansas City, MO. APICS 2008 Conference Then back to Redmond for a few weeks… I enjoy blogging. I […]
Some marketers lie on purpose. You know who I’m talking about. The rest of us are tempted. By definition, a good marketer is an expert in creating WOW experiences. We understand the importance of a great story. But sometimes… …it’s impossible to surpass customer expectations… …the competition has a better product… …the deadline won’t be […]