A restaurant that's too small for its following creates pent-up demand and can thrive as it lays plans to expand.
A restaurant that's too big merely fails.
There are occasional counterexamples of ventures that fail because they were too small when they gained customer traction. But not many.
It pays to have big dreams but low overhead.
This week was completely loaded with earnings reports from some of the biggest tech companies in the world — and it was a crazy week of swings for most of the companies that reported. There’s a running theme here: growth is being heavily rewarded — and lack of growth, punished — by Wall Street. And that’s especially true when it comes to more mature companies.… Read More
Your money: Almost no one knows how to think about money and investing. Squadrons of people will try to confuse you and rip you off. Many will bore you. But Andrew Tobias has written a book that might just change your net worth.
His advice is simple: spending less is even more valuable than earning more. He is also a gifted writer, funny and dead on correct in his analysis. Highly recommended.
The brand new edition is right here.
Back story: 32 years ago this month, I had lunch with Andy Tobias. I was pitching him on a partnership, and the meeting had been difficult to get. I was intimidated and soaking wet from running fifty blocks through Manhattan (no Uber!). As I sat in the New York Athletic Club, my cheap suit dripping wet (you can't take off your jacket at the New York Athletic Club), I tried to break the ice by telling the moose joke.
I told it pretty well, but Andy didn't crack a smile. Even then, he was a canny negotiator. We never ended up working together, but his book probably did me more good than the project would have. And the story was priceless.
Your future: Kevin Kelly is the most erudite, original and prophetic futurist of our time. If you've ever picked up a copy of Wired, he's had an impact on your life.
If you hope to be working, producing value or merely alive in ten years, his new book (out in June) is essential. It might take you an hour or two to read certain pages—if you're smart enough to take notes and brainstorm as you go.
The people who read his previous book about the future (New Rules) in 1998 are truly grateful for the decade-long head start it gave them.
I've never had the nerve to tell Kevin a joke, but I did offer to do a magic trick for him.
It's rare that you can spend $33 on two books and have your life so profoundly altered.
PS new Creative Mornings podcast just up with my talk from a few years ago.
Backwards: Great designers don't get great clients, it's the other way around.
Patience is for the impatient.
Leading up is more powerful than the alternative.
...And a few more provocations. I only gave this talk once, I hope you enjoy it.
Microsoft PowerApps allows anybody to build basic business apps without having to touch any code. These apps can run on the web and on mobile (through the PowerApps apps for iOS and Android). Microsoft first announced a private preview of this project last November but starting today, it’s open for anybody who wants to give it a try. Building apps in PowerApps is mostly a… Read More
Amazon shares opened at $665.55 this morning, up 10.6 percent compared to yesterday’s closing price of $602. In other words, Amazon’s market capitalization just grew by nearly $30 billion. Yesterday, Amazon announced some blockbuster earnings. This was the company’s most impressive quarter. In particular, Amazon Web Services is growing like crazy and could generate well over… Read More
A capture of a Burrowing Owl Couple checking things out from their hole. Captured with Canon 7D Mark II and Canon 100-400 Mark II.
See more photos in my flickr photostream and/or my 500px portfolio. If you like my photography, feel free to support my
Purchase a copy of Burrowing Owls playing Peak-A-Boo for your wall
Sooner or later, tribes begin to exclude interested but unaffiliated newcomers.
It happens to religious sects, to surfers and to online communities as well. Nascent groups with open arms become mature groups too set in their ways to evangelize and grow their membership, too stuck to engage, change and thrive.
So much easier to turn someone away than it is to patiently engage with them, the way you were welcomed when you were in their shoes.
There are two reasons for this:
And so, Wikipedia has transformed itself into a club that's not particularly interested in welcoming new editors.
And the social club down the street has a membership with an average age of 77.
And companies that used to grow by absorbing talent via acquisitions, cease to do so.
This cycle isn't inevitable, but it takes ever more effort to overcome our inertia.
Even if it happens gradually, the choice to not fight this inertia is still a choice. And while closing the gate can ensure stability and the status quo (for now), it rarely leads to growth, and ultimately leads to decline.
[Some questions to ponder...]
Do outsiders get the benefit of the doubt?
Do we make it easy for outsiders to become insiders?
Is there a clear and well-lit path to do so?
When we tell someone new, "that not how we do things around here," do we also encourage them to learn the other way and to try again?
Are we even capable of explaining the status quo, or is the way we do things set merely because we forgot that we could do it better?
Is a day without emotional or organizational growth a good day?
Cortana is Microsoft’s version of Google Now and Apple’s Siri digital assistant. It’s built right into Windows 10 and, while I’ve generally not found it all that useful, it’s a core component of Microsoft’s attempt at making its operating system smarter. Starting today, whenever you use Cortana to do a search on Windows 10 that would typically take you to… Read More Amazon posted its first-quarter earnings today, and boy did they not disappoint: it beat what analysts were expecting on nearly all fronts, and the stock is up more than 12% after its huge beat. Here’s the scorecard: The company reported earnings of $1.07 per share, ahead of 58 cents per share that were expected. The company posted a net loss of 12 cents per share in Q1 2015. Revenue… Read More
After Facebook’s stellar quarter, which sees users spending massive amounts of time on its mobile apps, including Facebook, Messenger and Instagram, the company announced this morning it’s bringing this popular trio of apps to Windows 10. Facebook and Messenger are now rolling out to Windows 10 on the desktop and Instagram is arriving on Windows 10 mobile. As you may expect,… Read More
You can now purchase August’s second generation Smartlock at Best Buy and Amazon, starting today. The much-anticipated Bluetooth-enabled device allows homeowners to lock and unlock their front door using an app and joins a host of other gadgets in the August Smart Home Access System, including a smart doorbell camera allowing you to see who’s at your front door from your phone, and… Read More
"I bought the diet book, but ate my usual foods."
"I filled the prescription, but didn't take the meds."
"I took the course... well, I watched the videos... but I didn't do the exercises in writing."
Merely looking at something almost never causes change. Tourism is fun, but rarely transformative.
If it was easy, you would have already achieved the change you seek.
Change comes from new habits, from acting as if, from experiencing the inevitable discomfort of becoming.
In an entirely unsurprising ruling, a federal judge has sided with the FTC in the agency’s lawsuit against Amazon, which had said that the company did not do enough to safeguard customers against unauthorized in-app purchases made by children. According to the FTC’s original complaint, Amazon billed its customers millions of dollars in these charges. The problem came about… Read More
Let’s say, for example, that you decide to become the world’s fastest runner in the 100m race. That’s a lofty goal, but unless you are born with a very specific set of genes and start training very young, the probability of meeting that goal is pretty low. That said, there’s nothing stopping you from pushing yourself to become faster than you were yesterday or last week.
If you aren’t the ‘best’ at something, does that mean you can’t win at that something (or at life)? Not at all. Even the absolute best have bad days. Underdogs win all the time, which is why you should always continue to improve and become better than you were because you never know when your chance might come to be ready when the ‘best’ falters.
If you’ve not seen or read Moneyball (the book is here, the movie is here), you are missing out. The book talks about how the Oakland A’s baseball organization took the ‘B’ players and built a baseball franchise around them. I don’t recall if there were any of baseball’s “best” players on the Oakland team at the time, but I do recall that there were a lot of the ‘also rans’ that many teams didn’t think were good enough for their team.
Many people will argue that the real story behind Moneyball is how statistics and data analysis can play a really important role in running a business. These people are correct…these things are important and they were an important part of the Moneyball / Oakland A’s story, but the part of the story that many miss is that these ‘B’ players also worked really hard to become better at what they did. They didn’t just relegate themselves to be also-rans…they kept pushing harder and harder to become better than they were.
The same is true for corporations. Maybe you don’t have a team comprised of the most talented and skilled employees, but if you and your leadership team continue to push yourselves and your people, you (and they) can do wonderful things. If you build a culture of improvement where the smallest failures aren’t punished and show your team(s) that you are constantly improving yourself – and expect the same from them – your team and company will be able to compete. You may not win every time, but you’ll be around for the long-haul.
You can win if you aren’t the best. Anyone can. You may never be considered the best, but if you continue to try to get better, you’ll always be better than you were.
That said, just imagine if you don’t push yourself or your team to constantly improve? If you and your team are OK with being average, you’ll never have the chance to win.
Xamarin, the cross-platform development platform Microsoft recently acquired, is holding its annual developer conference today. No developer conference would be complete without a large number of announcements and Xamarin — almost as if to show that the Microsoft acquisition hasn’t stalled its momentum — is launching updates to almost all of the core features of its… Read More
Amazon is spreading the Alexa love. The voice service is now available on the Triby. This small, family-focused message board, internet radio and VoIP device is the first device available for purchase not made by Amazon to feature the company’s clever voice service. Using the Amazon Alexa Voice Service (AVS), Invoxia, the maker behind the Triby, built the voice capability into the device. Read More
Twist Bioscience, a startup making and using synthetic DNA to store digital data, just struck a contract with Microsoft and the University of Washington to encode vast amounts of information on synthetic genes. Big data means business and the company able to gather a lot of it is very valuable to investors and stockholders. But that data needs to be stored somewhere and can cost a lot for… Read MoreIt's often about asking, not about what's needed.
Years ago, when I lived in California, I'd go to the grocery store nearly every day. I usually paid by check. Each time, the clerk would ask me for my phone number and then write it on the check.
When I ran out of checks, I decided to be clever and had my phone number printed on them. You guessed it, without missing a beat, that same clerk started asking me for my driver's license number (and yes, I did it one more time, and we moved on to my social security number).
The information wasn't the point. It was the asking, the time taken to look closely at the document.
It's tempting to listen to our customers ("why aren't there warm nuts in first class?") and then add the features they request. But often, you'll find that these very same customers are asking for something else. Maybe they don't actually want a discount, just the knowledge that they tried to get one.
What's really happening here is that people are seeking the edges, trying to find something that gets a reaction, a point of failure, proof that your patience, your largesse or your menu isn't infinite. Get patient with your toddler, and you might discover your toddler starts to seek a new way to get your attention. Give that investigating committee what they're asking, and they'll ask for something else.
They're not looking for one more thing, they're looking for a 'no', for acknowledgment that they reached the edge. That's precisely what they're seeking, and you're quite able to offer them that edge of finiteness.
Sometimes, "no, I'm sorry, we can't do that," is a feature.
