Feed: Seth's Blog - AggScore: 78.0

The illusion of privacy (and what we actually care about)

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You probably have very little privacy at all, giving it up a long time ago. If you've got a charge card, the card company already knows what you do, where you go, how you spend your money, what your debt...

We can handle information density

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Memo to search engines: we're smart enough to look at more than five search results above the fold. As the web has gotten more crowded, sites regularly expose us to dashboards crammed with information. Sometimes there are more than a...

The fifth Beatle

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It's an insult. If someone (who isn't John, Paul, George or Ringo) calls you a fifth Beatle, they're not being nice. For fifty years, people have been proclaiming that they're intimates, part of the story, a key component of the...

Time doesn't scale

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But bravery does. The challenge of work-life balance is a relatively new one, and it is an artifact of a world where you get paid for showing up, paid for hours spent, paid for working. In that world, it's clearly...

Meeting vs. making

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As I was scurrying to meet someone coming in on the 11 am train, I realized that there's a huge difference between meeting a train and making one. If you're rushing to make a train, you have to be there...

Spout and scout

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Social media has amplified two basic human needs so much that they have been transformed into entirely new behaviors. Sites have encouraged and rewarded us to spout, to talk about what we're up to and what we care about. And...

The sad irony of selfishness

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More often than not, the selfish person is insecure, fearful and filled with doubt. The selfishness springs from his belief that this is his only good idea, his last dollar, his one and only chance to avoid failure. "I need...

People who know what they're talking about...

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Almost always talk like they know what they're talking about. That's why it pays to invest more time than you might imagine on the vocabulary, history and concepts of your industry. Insider language, terms of art, the ability to use...

It's never too late

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...to start heading in the right direction.

The Weird interview

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To celebrate the launch of Squidoo's new UpMarket magazine, we got permission to post an audio interview I recently did with Darren Hardy of Success. You can find it here. Thanks for listening.

Inaccurate labels and why we need them (and need to improve them)

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If I tell you, "I'm going to the baseball game," it seems as though you're likely to understand what I mean. Of course, you won't. When George Will goes to a baseball game, it's a religious experience. Me, I don't...

How do they know you're not a flake?

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Before your link gets clicked or your proposal gets read, a busy person is going to triage it to find out if it's even worth glancing at. Since everyone is now connected, the new permeability has created a deluge of...

Horizontal marketing isn't a new idea

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But it is the new reality for just about every organization. Vertical marketing means the marketer (the one with money) is in charge. Vertical marketing starts at the top and involves running ads, sending out direct mail and pushing hype...

Who is your customer?

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Rule one: You can build a business on the foundation of great customer service. Rule two: The only way to do great customer service is to treat different customers differently. The question: Who is your customer? It's not obvious. Zappos...

In search of a timid trapeze artist

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Good luck with that, there aren't any. If you hesitate when leaping from rope to another, you're not going to last very long. And this is at the heart of what makes innovation work in organizations, why industries die, and...