7 Interesting Things, Including 2 Offbeat Christmas Gift Ideas….
1. Sean D’Souza of www.psychotactics.com is by far one of the most original and forward-thinking marketers I’ve met in my travels. Earlier this year he was here from New Zealand and we had dinner together. Fascinating conversation.
He gifted me with a great book, “Inside Steve’s Brain” which is a penetrating look at Steve Jobs, CEO of Apple, and literally how he thinks. How he develops products, his absolutely ruthless commitment to simplicity; the cult-like work
Inside Steve's Brain by Leander Kahney
environment that he creates at Apple, and how he turned the company around. Remember: Just 11 years ago Apple was on the ropes; now it’s a high-flying techno-wonder. Nobody could have predicted. (If only they could find someone to do the same thing at GM.) I really enjoyed this book.
It’s bargain priced on Amazon right now and it would make a great Christmas gift for Apple lovers, techies, or anyone who loves stories about interesting people:
Inside Steve’s Brain by Leander Kahney
2. There’s the “Jocks and Prom Queens” version of the Internet – that would be the stories of companies like Ebay and Google and Yahoo and Amazon and Jeff Bezos and Mark Andreesen and all those guys.
But then there’s the gearheads, geeks and kids-smoking-cigarettes-across-the-street-from-school-grounds version of the Internet. (The version of history you’ll never read about in Time magazine.)
Click Here to Order by Joel Comm & Mark Joyner
Remember, for every high school Homecoming King, there are 20 gearheads. And if you’re more interested in racing cars than winning popularity contests, the gearheads might be able to teach you a thing or two.
Joel Comm and Mark Joyner’s book “Click Here to Order” is that geeks-and-gearheads version of the history of the Internet. It’s about people like, well, you and me. I even get a few pages myself. Joel sent me a copy, and I found as I flipped through it I kept stopping and wanting to read whatever was on the page I just found. (Which is pretty much my litmus test for any good book.)
“Click Here to Order” by Mark Joyner and Joel Comm
3. David Fagan of Infusion Software came to my home a few weeks ago and ‘audited’ a 2-day 4-man intensive. He shot 15 minutes of video, posted it and wrote about the experience on his blog. About 7-8 minutes in, I give an explanation of how Google tries to expand the exposure of your ads on the Content Network,
how that grows like tentacles and why you need to watch your conversions as it goes:
http://www.infusionblog.com/events/a-few-moments-with-perry-marshall/
By the way I have 2 seats left for the January 21-22 Intensive:
http://www.4manIntensive.com.
4. I am endlessly fascinated by the tiny little subcultures of the world. Note that the root word of the word culture is the word ‘cult.’ (Note that I also used that word in reference to Steve Jobs and Apple just a minute ago.) Well I’ve got this friend Ross McDermott who traveled the country for a few months on a most unusual expedition. It’s called “The American Festivals Project: The search for America’s small, hidden and bizarre festivals.”
He’s a fantastic photographer, he captured stories and beautiful photos of things like….
-The Red Hat Society Convention in Grand Rapids, Michigan
-The Quiet Festival in Ocean City New Jersey (that’s right, it’s a festival of quietness)
Get your mug shot in front of a fire or explosion, at the Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot
-The Knob Creek Machine Gun Shoot in West Point, Kentucky – concerning this shindig, Ross writes:
“This event is absolutely crazy. It’s hard to describe in words or even photographs. In addition to the big guns, the shooters use tracer bullets which leave beautiful red and yellow streaks in the sky. There are also barrels of gasoline for the shooters to hit and explode. When this happens, it sends a ploom of firey smoke shooting a hundred feet in the air. From where I was taking the pictures, almost a football field away, I could feel the heat of those explosions. The night sky lit up with flares, tracer bullets, explosions, camera flashes, and a beautiful moon resting over the valley.”
Check out Ross’s beautiful pics and stories at http://blog.americanfestivalsproject.com/
…and remember, most of what really “sells” on the Internet is just as weird, quirky and nichy as these festivals. Including, most likely, what you sell. (I still have yet to meet even one single “normal” human being. What’s normal, anyway?) The Internet is THE place where such festivals happen 24/7/365 and the best online marketers are the promoters of said festivals.
Oh, and this is also Christmas Gift #2, because Ross sells his prints – see the link on the upper left side of his blog.
5. If you’ve read any of my travelogues (search ‘Brazil’, ‘Africa,’ ‘China’ or ‘India’ on my site) you know I have a passion for helping people in developing countries. One of Laura’s favorite websites is Kiva. On Kiva you can use your credit card to loan $25.00 to a retail shop in Bolivia, they are then scheduled to pay your money back 5 months from today… and when it comes back you can then loan that same money to an embroidery company in Afghanistan:
By the way this too can be a GREAT Christmas gift for the person who has everything: “On your behalf I loaned $50 to a farmer in the Dominican Republic, here’s a link to the page….”
6. The charity nearest and dearest to my heart is Children’s Relief International. I’ve personally visited most of their
A little goes a long way in India and Africa
projects – Mozambique, Kenya and India. In Summer 07 I visited the Rajah Boys home in Rajamundry, India.
Two brothers, Ananth and Isaiah, were taking excellent charge of 20 orphan boys. See pics and a slide show here… and sponsoring an orphan is a great Christmas idea if the people you love feel like they’ve already got enough “stuff”:
http://www.childrensrelief.org/rajah_boys_home
There… you got four Christmas gifts, not two. I try to over-deliver…
7. One of the most useful web services I’ve ever used is www.99designs.com. I used them to re-design my logo and two websites recently. Professional results and VERY inexpensive.
Here’s how it works:
- You post a graphics / layout / design project request and a bid price
Designers start to post proposed ideas, which they make in Photoshop
You give feedback on their ideas - By the end of the project you may have gotten literally DOZENS of submissions
- Designers riff off of each other’s ideas
- You only have to pay the winner
- You get a PSD (Photo Shop Document) of your project.
I spent $300 and got a GREAT design for one of my websites. We then had the design converted to HTML. Some people have spent $50K for work like this, now you can get it done for a few hundred bucks.
Here’s an example of a project I submitted, you can see the entire progression of my project from start to finish. 86 submissions, one winner:
http://99designs.com/contests/13621
Here’s to hoping your pre-Christmas insanity stays manageable…. and: Before the New Year comes, make sure you get some time to yourself to have your own Personal Quietness Festival and watch the snowflakes fall.
Perry Marshall
About the Author
Entrepreneur Magazine says: "Perry Marshall is the #1 author and world's most-quoted consultant on Google Advertising. He has helped over 100,000 advertisers save literally billions of dollars in Adwords stupidity tax."
He is referenced across the Internet and by The Washington Post, USA Today, and the Chicago Tribune.
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