I really like his sample journalist outreach letter.
A few that jumped out at me:
3. You must go through the motions of being creative…The more times you try to get ideas, the more active your brain becomes and the more creative you become.
6. Never stop with your first good idea.
10. You do not see things as they are; you see them as you are.
11. Always approach a problem on its own terms. Do not trust your first perspective of a problem as it will be too biased toward your usual way of thinking.
12. Learn to think unconventionally. Creative geniuses do not think analytically and logically. Conventional, logical, analytical thinkers are exclusive thinkers which means they exclude all information that is not related to the problem.
“Expectation, as it turns out, is just as important as raw sensation. The build up to an experience can completely change how you interpret the information reaching your brain from your otherwise objective senses.”
A fantastic post by my friend Avand Amiri from Sqoot, an API for daily deals
“How to Measure the Metrics that Determine Real Progress” By Trevor Owens on Oct 3, 2011
The best list I’ve seen of prepackaged company names with the domain. At $250 the price is also great too.
My biggest takeaway: Get a team of advisors (They had 25 advisors for a 4 person startup) who are people you want to have associated with your product. “Who’s your entourage?”
“What could I build that would be a like a dream come true for independent musicians?”
What an extraordinarily universal way to construct a product, a service or a business. Notice that dreams are rarely “within reason” or “under the circumstances.” No, dreams are dreams. If your business is a dream come true for customers, you win. Game over.
“
| — | Seth Godin quoting Derek Sivers of CD Baby |
Right. Just like Microsoft stopped AOL from winning the early online wars. And AOL stopped Yahoo! from winning the Internet portal wars. And Yahoo! in turn killed Google when it came to search. While Google stopped Facebook in their tracks when they built a social networking company. And Facebook stomped out Twitter from building an open social network. And we know how Facebook stomped out FourSquare.
And on and on. eBay / StubHub. Amazon / Zappos. Twitter / Instagram.
Focus wins.
“
| — | Mark Suster |
My favorites:
2. If you can’t be first in a category, set up a new category you can be first in.
3. It is better to be first in the mind than to be first in the marketplace.
4. Marketing is not a battle of products, it’s a battle of perceptions.
5. The most powerful concept in marketing is owning a word in the prospect’s mind.
6. Two companies cannot own the same word in the prospect’s mind.
