Business Development

God, I Love My Work

In the space of about two hours, I had two visits to Marketing Nirvana. It's like looking into the future. I am so incredibly privileged to do what I do and to see what I see.

I remember, in 1997, in the very first stages of the Internet bubble, standing in a window of the old warehouse that was the headquarters for our startup, and watching a trenching machine go down the middle of Townsend Street in San Francisco. The neighborhood, South of Market, was Ground Zero for Internet startups, and every single one of them needed bandwith, and lots of it. Pacific Bell could not lay fiber optic cable fast enough, and this enormous machine was tearing into the middle of an old street in what used to be a neighborhood of warehouses and garages to make it all happen.

And it's still happening. Today I was in the Palo Alto, California Apple store. It was around 4:00 on a Sunday afternoon. When I was growing up, everyone would be indoors, watching football, or reading or something. The streets would be quiet.

But the store was PACKED. And it was jumping. An absolutely gorgeous retail space, filled with cutting-edge computers, ipods, monitors, and there must have been a hundred people in there just learning about what they could do.

And now, I'm blogging from the Starbucks in San Bruno, California, down Route 101 from Palo Alto. It's around 9:30 on the same Sunday. And this place is packed, too. There are a lot of people in here working on laptops. The guy next to me is writing code. The guy on the other side is, I think, studying chemistery. He's got lots of highlighters. And thanks to Apple, I'm working away, too, while listening on my iPod to Jackson Browne sing "These Days" which, as all us old people know, was then covered by the Allman Brothers.

And another really fascinating thing about both of these places -- they're not filled with white people. In fact, as I look around this place, I'm one of only three white people here. Everyone else is something else, or some mixture of something else -- Asian (which could be Chinese, Vietnamese, Japanese or something else), Mexican, Black,everything. I'm a pretty large guy, but there's a Samoan guy in here with his girlfriend who's got to be at least 6'5" and 300 lbs. The guy, I mean, not the girlfriend. The Apple store was the same way. Now, granted, the Bay Area is pretty ethnically diverse -- that's part of why I live here. But fifty years ago, there's no way you could have had all these people of all different races in here in the middle of the night without a riot.

Andrew Carnegie had libraries. We have the Internet, wireless, Starbucks and Apple stores. And it all works, it's all possible, because of marketing. Because someone listened to what people wanted, and delivered it, and well, here we all are.

And now, thanks to TypePad, wireless Internet, a Dell laptop, an iPod and some kind of slushy drink that the barista assures me contains no caffeine, so are you. Virtually, that is.

If You Raditate Suspicion, Hostility and Fear, Nobody Is Going to Want to Be Your Client

Every morning, I go on a long hike. Today, I encountered a guy on the trail who sort of shocked me, which is hard to do, and as with almost everything, held a BizDev lesson.

I was hiking along, and he had come up behind me. I stood aside to let him pass and get in front of me. We started a casual conversation, which lasted for about ninety seconds, during which he shared the following:

• He was old.
• He was originally from Brooklyn.
• In Brooklyn, when someone comes up behind you, they're usually out to harm you.
• Someone came up behind him in Huddart County Park (another park around here) and as a reflex, my new friend almost pushed him off a cliff.
• Had he pushed him off the cliff, the next question would be, do I go down and finish him off, or just keep moving?
• There are a lot of women hiking alone in the park. They don't make eye contact, and they're crazy -- it's dangerous in here.
• I was holding a weapon (in fact, it was a wooden stake).

Now, this guy was a nice-looking, sixtyish man in shorts and sneakers. He was reasonably polite -- no screaming or yelling, no threatening gestures. But the content of this little conversation, which was between two complete strangers in the middle of the woods, amazed me.

I don't think he even realized how he came across. But rest assured, it was completely unrelated to the actual situation. Yes, I am very large. Yes, I hadn't shaved in three or four days (hey, I work alone). Yes, I was wearing muddy boots, and yes, I was holding this wooden stake. But come on.

My point: monitor your own behavior or assumptions, or ask a friend to do it for you. See how you come across. Law in particular is a very stressful profession, and if the stress has gotten to you, and you're being sarcastic, harsh, angry or something else without knowing it, then your chances of becoming an effective business developer are approximately zero. Not going to happen.

Make sure the inside of your own head is a reasonably pleasant place. That is, or should be, the First Commandment of business development.

We Don't Need No Stinkin' Books (by David Maister or anyone else)

"We Don't Need No Stinkin' Badges!"
-Popularly misquoted line from The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, starring Humphrey Bogart (1948)

David Maister has a post in his blog today about business books. He's written several. I've recommended them to clients. But no longer. Never again. Maister can go pound sand.

On a visit to Daddy's office (Daddy's one of my clients), Peyton, 4, wrote it all down. Although this is a draft, I think any variations from this document will be purely ministerial -- she's unquestionably hit on all the key management objectives for a professional services firm.

Here is how you run a law firm:

Translation:

Rules!

• First time is yes
• For core values
• Keep your voice low
• No sillies in serious times
• Hands to yourself

If I can succeed in hammering out a deal with Peyton's agent, my first book is definitely going to be "No Sillies in Serious Times". Maybe I'll let David write the introduction.

A Visit To The Other Side of the Brain

Given our clientele, legal marketing is usually all about the left brain. Analytic, logical, thorough, patient, and so on. Doesn't that get a little old sometimes? Well, meet my friend Alexandra Watkins, proprietress of a naming consultancy called Eat My Words. She is the Queen of the Right Brain.

Alexandra is wickedly smart, funny, brimming over with energy, and as she will be the first to confirm, by many standard metrics, just plain crazy. She's also a brilliant copywriter, and an expert in the excruciating subspecialty of marketing known as naming. She thinks up names for things.

Sound easy? Try it. It's about as easy as mining coal. Either you have the spark -- or, in Alexandra's case, the mushroom cloud -- or you don't. Her brain is full of fireworks -- beyond that, she's indescribable. Read her blog, visit her site, and if you ever need a catchy name for something -- be it a laundromat ("Brainwash"), a transformer company ("Pacific Crest Transformers") or nail polish ("Harder, Faster") give her a call.

We now return you to your right brain and your regularly scheduled professional services marketing activity.

Life, Death and Random Numbers

You are a British intelligence agent. You're in North Korea. Because you're of Korean descent, and speak fluent Korean, you blend in, but your papers are forged, your identity is false, and you are as alone as it is possible for any human being to be.

It rains constantly. You are always afraid. You know that if anyone ever even suspects you, you will simply vanish. You will be taken to a "facility" somewhere, you will be tortured for weeks or months, and eventually, you will be shot. The British government will deny any knowledge of your existence. You are a nonperson, and you are in constant, desperate danger.

Sometimes you wonder if the constant fear will drive you insane. You have only one link with your home. Every night, at 3 in the morning, you awaken. You turn on your portable shortwave radio, using an earphone to insure that nobody can hear. You take out a notepad and a pencil, and turn the radio on. And through the static, and the interference, and the maddening distortions caused by the atmosphere -- there is a storm over the Sea of China tonight -- you strain to make it out. A weirdly disembodied child's voice, repeating what sound like meaningless numbers, endlessly.

You write them down. You click off the radio. You wonder if you're going mad. And you remember that one night, those numbers will lead you to a field, a waiting SAS insertion team, a submarine, and home. It's all you've got.

Okay, that part, obviously, is fiction. But I just learned about something absolutely fascinating -- numbers stations. These are shortwave stations around the world that broadcast ... numbers. Human, or computer-generated voices, that simply read out strings of numbers.

These stations, although it has never been proven, are operated by government espionage agencies all over the world. They're a simple, foolproof way to send coded messages to spies around the world.

And the sound of the reading itself is absolutely eerie. Listen:

Download numbers_station_broadcast.mp3

Why I Do What I Do

It's Friday afternoon. I am happy. I am happy because I just received the final copies of an RFP resoponse I have spent the last eight days helping a client generate.

I have three small daughters. One of the things I talk to them about constantly is the special feeling of a job well done. I don't really care what kind of grades they get, or what anyone else thinks. I want them to focus on the feeling you have when you've done something really well. It's sometimes hard to describe, but it's very recognizable, and I think it's essential for kids -- or me -- to be able to spot that feeling, and to cherish it when they experience it.

This RFP is 20 pages long -- single-spaced, beautifully written, and in parts, really technical. This wasn't easy writing. Working with the client, and a designer, we got it done in an incredible eight days. If this had been done by an agency, it would have taken three times as long, and cost at least three times as much.

This thing is beautifully designed and illustrated. It's gorgeous, really. It's center-stapled, with a really nice cover illustration. Think of a really good annual report -- that's what this is. And we did it in just over a week. I wrote most of it sitting in a shelter at Huddart County Park, in Woodside.

And it's a tremendous piece of work, period. I am really proud of it. That glow -- the feeling of really having done a great piece of work -- is my greatest reward in this work. I am tired, and kind of wrung out, but working closely with a client I respect and partner with, and a designer who's a real pro, we cranked out a first-class piece of work fast.

Happy Friday.

Time for Some Nostalgia

I'm completely addicted to iTunes, and my iPod. Right now, I have exactly 5,557 songs -- over three weeks worth of music. My iPod lives in not one, but two cases -- a hard shell, with another neoprene case on the outside.

And what's on right now is Play, by Moby. If you go to Moby's site, right on the homepage is a stunning picture of New York City at night. Take a look.

I lived in New York for three years, from around 1984 to 1988. I had just gotten out of college. I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. All I did know is that I really wanted to move to New York, which I did. The biggest town I'd lived in up until then was about 10,000 people.

And Moby's music takes me right back to that time. It was an incredible place. New York has a magic that no other place on the planet can match. There's an awful lot wrong with it, and by the time I left, I could not wait to see that place in my rear view mirror.

But while I was living there, I had some incredible experiences, and have some incredible memories. At that time, Madonna was just becoming a big deal. Her music was everywhere. I remember, sadly now, standing at the base of the World Trade Center, looking up, and just being awestruck. I remember how the A train, the express subway line between 125th Street and, I think, 59th Street, was like riding a rocket in a tunnel.

New York city is so vast, so old, so complex, and so broken up that it's basically ungovernable. But it governs itself beautifully. The laws everyone follows are not the ones in the books, they're the ones that evolve. And the place had a sense of energy, of possibility, of adventure. I always had the sense that literally right around the corner, anything could be happening. Anything at all. You could see a murder, or fall in love, or find the best Chinese restaurant in the world. I did all three.

I have to get back to New York. Only a visit, but I want to see what's become of it.