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Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

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Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#11
If you break up the presentation into sections: - Hook with related humor (great song by Jonathan!!) - Acknowledge the issue at hand briefly - Show the positive side first, back up with hard data, show the bigger picture - Trivialize the negative side, back up with hard data - Ensure that people know that you take even trivial problems too seriously and act for your users - Still uplevel the game and offer generous solutions to what you deemed were trivial problems - Sandwich the problem with good news at the end again and promise a brighter future

There is a good wisdom in there about the way to handle big corporate crisis. Clearly Steve had not left half of his family back in Hawaii for a trivial issue !!

Thanks Shawn & Jonathan for reminding us of this great lesson in history!

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#12
It's funny that artist have to go through the exact same experience as entrepreneurs.

No one believes in you, everybody tells you to get a job. But no, you believe in your ideas and just knowww that one of them will be a hit.

So you publish the next app and the next, some of them completely fail, but some get a bit of traction. Then you improve and you improve and bam, after several years of hustling you're the "overnight" success. ::)

Exchange apps with songs for musicians, paintings for painters, novels for writers.

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#13
post #12

It's funny that artist have to go through the exact same experience as entrepreneurs. No one believes in you, everybody tells you to get a job. But no, you believe in your ideas and just knowww that one of them will be a hit. So you publish the next app and the next, some of them completely fail, but some get a bit of traction. Then you improve and you improve and bam, after several years of hustling you're the "over…

Yeah but they are telling you to get a job for a reason. Because chances are, you'll never make it big as a writer, painter, or entrepreneur. And te ones that do make it are so dedicated that nobody can change their mind anyway.

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#14
post #10

The key bit? Those songs were number two-hundred-and-something and number four-hundred-and-something. There's a lot of value to doing one of something every day. I'm busy working on terrible music. If I do a few hundred, I might suck less too.

That's why I try to write some code (or at least read about it) every day, even if just for a little bit. I'm not sure where I'd be, skill-wise, without it.

That sounds like the lead in to a joke, "Every day I write some code ... if I'm feeling lucky I try to compile it."

I agree though that it is insanely amazing what happens if you do a bit each day.

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#16
post #12

It's funny that artist have to go through the exact same experience as entrepreneurs. No one believes in you, everybody tells you to get a job. But no, you believe in your ideas and just knowww that one of them will be a hit. So you publish the next app and the next, some of them completely fail, but some get a bit of traction. Then you improve and you improve and bam, after several years of hustling you're the "over…

Yeah but they are telling you to get a job for a reason. Because chances are, you'll never make it big as a writer, painter, or entrepreneur. And te ones that do make it are so dedicated that nobody can change their mind anyway.

Yes, but how many people with loads of potential give up too early? Something to think about. I generally encourage people to shoot for the stars. You may never make it big but at least you gave it a shot.

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#17
Jonathan Mann is great -- he was actually inspiration for a business I've been working on. The idea is to keep working on things steadily and continuously. As he says, 70% of what you do will be mediocre, 20% will be crap, but that 10% will be golden. Work the numbers and do something every day. I like that philosophy.

I think Jonathan Mann's spirit is very positive. I do think his skills have plateaued tho -- I'm hoping he can make a breakthrough soon. He once did some work with a bunch of other artists in a collaboration and that stuff was really awesome. Check out that work at http://jonathanmann.bandcamp.com/album/song-a-day-the-album

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#18

The key bit? Those songs were number two-hundred-and-something and number four-hundred-and-something. There's a lot of value to doing one of something every day. I'm busy working on terrible music. If I do a few hundred, I might suck less too.

I just listened to the song and it is quite remarkable he put that together so quickly.

Rivers Cuomo from Weezer has claimed to have a very prolific songwriting approach as well, apparently at least for periods of time doing a song per day.

Apparently during the first couple years of The Beatles' songwriting career John and Paul would knock out songs very fast, within hours - they actually 'scheduled' time to work together in a time-boxed fashion, so they could fit in songwriting time around their otherwise hectic schedule. Now they didn't produce that many throwaways, but in a period prior to this over several years they learned ~500 songs by ear. They learned these songs well enough live and used them as tools to figure out how to light up a crowd, and more or less had a foundational vocabulary from which they moved forward with.

Re: Steve Jobs Danced To My Song

#20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah but they are telling you to get a job for a reason. Because chances are, you'll never make it big as a writer, painter, or entrepreneur. And te ones that do make it are so dedicated that nobody can change their mind anyway.

Yes, but how many people with loads of potential give up too early? Something to think about. I generally encourage people to shoot for the stars. You may never make it big but at least you gave it a shot.

You gotta shoot for the stars if you wanna land on the moon! :)
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