Marketing is about knowing what you want to tell and who you want to tell it to–and doing it only in the most captivating and honest way possible.
That’s from an interview with Ryan Holiday, Director of Marketing at American Apparel. He’s one of the smartest, most hard-working guys around, and when he talks, we should all listen.
Read the whole interview here.
Ilan Bouchard has a great post up at his personal blog called On Reading and Progress.
I never read anymore without a pen and highlighter. I highlight passages that stand out and scribble notes in the margins; when I finish a book, I set it aside for a month or two. Then I return to it and transcribe all the highlighted passages and notes into a word document, marking their page numbers. This allows me to review the book and fixes its main concepts in my mind. If I want to review a quote, I can search within the word document for a few words or phrases from the passage, and jump directly to the quote in question, even if I can’t remember who wrote it or which book it came from.
I can’t stress how much doing exactly this has helped me. I’ve only done this with maybe 15 books since I started doing it a few months ago, but it’s already helped me massively. If you want to do the same, here’s some great resources:
These are more for learning on your own time, and if you want something a little more structured, MIT’s Open Courseware is awesome as well. They have lecture notes and presentations and recommended textbooks for all the courses that MIT offer, for free. It’s fantastic.
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Tagged books, ilan bouchard, ocw, reading, ryan holiday, tim ferriss, tucker max
On the main page of this site is a list of blogs and websites that I read on a regular basis (in fact I subscribe to them all via RSS and read them in Google Reader). I’d recommend all of them, but thse are the three that I think are the best.
I’ve written about Ryan a couple of times before, but his site is fantastic. Ryan is PR director for Rudius Media and also does work for a big Hollywood management company and the author Robert Greene, among others. Aside from the huge fact that his site is the inspiration for mine, the guy works for Tucker Max, and he reads like his life depends on it. His reading list is packed with great books (I’m working through them now). Ryan is only a year older than me and yet seems so driven, motivated and mature, it’s incredible. If you’re under the age of 25 and aren’t reading his blog, you should be. Here’s some posts of his from my delicious bookmarks:
Seth’s blog is a fantastic blog on business and marketing. He is one of the most respected business thinkers in the world and, if I remember rightly, his blog is the most read business blog on the internet. His common sense approach to business is great. If and when I start a business in the future, this post will be my manifesto. Some other posts of his that I like:
I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
This is the production blog for Tucker Max’s first film, I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell, and is written predominantly by Tucker, but with posts from his executive producer and co-writer Nils Parker, and a couple from his assistant Greg and the lead actors. Obviously I’m a big fan of Tucker Max, but I never really appreciated how hard the guy works or how smart he was until he started this blog. The archives stretch right back to pre-production, and Tucker talks about finding a director, casting, making the financing deals and so on, before moving onto the actual shooting of the film. It’s now in the post-production process, with editing and test screenings and so on, and it’s scheduled to be released in 2009. I can’t wait. If you have any interest in filmand want to know more about what goes on behind the scenes, you should definitely check it out. Here are some of my favourite posts from the IHTSBIH production blog:
Of course I’m always looking for new sites to read, more content to devour, so if anyone knows any other good blogs or websites they think I should be reading, fire away in the comments section. I’d love to hear what other people are reading, or what they think of these choices.
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Tagged blogs, i hope they serve beer in hell, ryan holiday, seth godin, tucker max
A couple of guys that I read regularly like typing or writing out their favourite quotes from books that they’ve read, for reference, inspiration and the like. I think it’s a good idea, and I’m going to do the same. Eventually I’ll consolidate them all into one page on this site, but for now, here’s a few of my favourites to get started with. These are all from The Autobiography of Malcolm X.
“Malcolm’s life finally demonstrates difficult and perennially unfashionable notion that people are not fixed or closed products of their circumstances.”
“Children have a lesson adults needs to learn, to not be ashamed of falling, but to get up and try again. Most of us adults are so afraid, so cautious, so “safe”, and therefore so shrinking and rigid and afraid that it is why so many humans fail. Most middle-aged adults have resigned themselves to failure.”
“Anyone who wants to follow me and my movement has got to be ready to go to jail, to the hospital, and to the cemetery before he can be truly free.”
“All I had done was to improve on their strategy, and it was the beginning of a very important lesson in life – that any time you find someone more successful than you are, especially when you’re both engaged in the same business – you know they’re doing something that you aren’t.”
“I was going through the hardest thing, also the greatest thing, for any human being to do; to accept that which is already within you, and around you.”
“My homemade education gave me, with every additional book that I read, a little bit more sensitivity to the deafness, dumbness and blindness that was afflicting the black race in America. Not long ago, an English writer telephoned me from London, asking questions. One was, ‘What’s your alma mater?’ I told him, ‘Books.’”
“‘Don’t condemn if you see a person has a glass of dirty water,’ [Mr Muhammed] said, ‘just show them the clean glass of water that you have. When they inspect it, you won’t have to say that yours is better.’”
My favourite quote in bold. This is a great book, one that I should probably read again some time. I’ll put it back in the ever-growing pile next to my bed. More book quotes to come soon.
I’ve decided to start this blog based on the indirect advice of several people, who have hugely influenced me over the past year or so.
Ryan Holiday, PR director for Rudius Media, the media company established and run by Tucker Max, is probably my main influence in this area. He talks about creating a new media presence, and believes that in order to get places, to do the things you want, you need to put yourself out there, educate yourself, make connections, and so on. I started reading Ryan’s blog over a year ago now, and it is fantastic. I can relate to a lot of what he says: Ryan is sort of like a successful, smarter version of how I see myself at the moment (although whether that’s just wishful thinking on my part, I’m not sure). A lot of the stuff he talks about is to do with educating yourself, improving your thinking and setting yourself up to be successful in the future. Probably my main influence at the moment.
Ryan has also posted what he considers to be the 3 best blogs on the internet. His number one is business guru Seth Godin, who’s blog I also subscribe to. He constantly emphasizes the importance of going the extra mile with customers, creating meaningful relationships and doing remarkable things to make you and your company stand out. He wrote this brilliant post on Why bother having a resume?. His main point is here in the latter half of the blog post. Instead of a resume:
“How about three extraordinary letters of recommendation from people the employer knows or respects?
Or a sophisticated project they can see or touch?
Or a reputation that precedes you?
Or a blog that is so compelling and insightful that they have no choice but to follow up?Some say, “well, that’s fine, but I don’t have those.”
Yeah, that’s my point. If you don’t have those, why do you think you are remarkable, amazing or just plain spectacular? It sounds to me like if you don’t have those, you’ve been brainwashed into acting like you’re sort of ordinary.
Great jobs, world class jobs, jobs people kill for… those jobs don’t get filled by people emailing in resumes. Ever.”
Honestly speaking, I read that article once or twice, thought it was cool and that he was right, and then ignored his advice and carried on as I had before. But I’ve decided to actually do something about it now. The third and final motivator for my action was another Rudius Media writer Ben Corman, who has written a fantastic piece about this sort of thing, called In the future we’ll all be art students. Ben mentions a great quote from a Wall Street trader he met in the mid-90s, who was frustrated at the lack of quality of graduates applying for jobs at his firm. He said:
“All of these kids tell me that they want to be traders. So why aren’t any of them trading. Why aren’t they taking a few grand and creating a portfolio? Or if they don’t have the money why aren’t they giving themselves an imaginary budget, “buying” a few hundred shares of different companies then tracking that for six months? I’ll hire the first kid who shows me initiative even if he’s lost money. I can teach trading strategies, I can’t teach hunger.”
I’d love to say that his advice really resonated with me, and I had an epiphany and realised that this was the future, the gold-paved road to success. But that’s not true. It took several weeks for the message to really sink in, and I’ve read all of the articles that I’ve linked to several times. But I think I finally understand, or at least am beginning to understand, what all these people are talking about.
Which is where this blog comes in. This will be where I write about what I’m learning, what I’ve discovered, how I think I’ve developed myself personally, and so on. This is my portfolio.
Massive thanks to everyone mentioned in this post: Ben, Seth and Ryan. I have a feeling I’ll be linking to them a lot more in future. And I am undoubtedly indebted to Tucker Max, as without his influence and advice I literally wouldn’t be the same person that I am today. Although I still have a ridiculously long way to go.
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Tagged ben corman, blogging, career, life, ryan holiday, seth godin, tucker max
