This Is How I Work (Series)

I was asked to participate in Lifehacker's How I Work Series where writers answer a series of questions on their work life. I thought I'd post my answers here. Here goes. Location: I'm based in Manhattan (live in Flatiron, office in Soho) though I'm on the road in another city about 40%-50% of the time.

Current Devices: iPhone 5S, ThinkPad T420s, Eccolo journal, Cross pen, Kindle.

What apps, tools, software can't you live without: A bunch. I use Wunderlist to manage my to-do lists, the Cal app to manage my calendars, Evernote to manage notes, TripIt to manage travel itineraries, Google Maps to navigate, Salesforce to manage client stuff, LinkedIn to manage connections and Feedly to keep up on work-related news and blogs. I use a lot of others but those are probably the apps I use most frequently for work.

What's your workspace like: I try to have a minimalist workspace so that it feels the same no matter where I am (home, office, plane, train, hotel, etc.). I try to eliminate paper and just have my laptop, phone and notebook on my desk. I do all of my calls from my iPhone with my headphones. I even try to do group conference calls from my iPhone's speakerphone. It's important to me to be equally productive regardless of where I am. A minimalist approach helps me do that.

What's your best time saving short-cut/life hack: Working offline. At least twice during the work day I’ll turn my email to “work offline” mode and close my browser so there are no digital distractions.

What everyday thing are you better at than everyone else: I'm not sure I'm better than everyone at anything, but one thing I think I do well is to take a complex situation, strip it down to the core issues that really matter and identify and prioritize solutions to improve it. I think I’m pretty good at getting through the clutter that makes situations more difficult than they need to be and coming up with actionable solutions that will work.

What's your favorite to-do list manager: I've used a ton of different to-do list tools over the years and I think (hope) I've finally found a keeper with Wunderlist. It's super simple and the mobile and desktop experiences are really seamless.

What do you listen to while you work: I almost always listen to music while I work. The music I listen to while working is pretty different from what I listen to when I'm not. Right now it's the Bon Iver station on Pandora and a couple of different playlists on Spotify -- the "Your Favorite Coffeehouse" playlist is a good one.

What are you currently reading: Lead with a Story: A Guide to Crafting Business Narratives That Captivate, Convince, and Inspire by Paul Smith and That Used Be Us: How America Fell Behind in the World It Invented and How We Can Come Back by Thomas Friedman and Michael Mandelbaum.

What's your sleep routine like: I take sleep really seriously. I freak out if I don't get at least seven hours. I try to get to bed by 11 and up between 6:30 and 7, though more often than not I go to sleep later and get up earlier.

What's the best advice you've ever received: This is a tough one as I've had some great mentors that have given me some great advice over the years. But one that sticks out is: "attitude is everything". The most consistent trait I've seen in people that are successful is that the vast majority of them have a great attitude in work and life.

Amazon Drones & Offline Spend

[youtube=http://youtu.be/98BIu9dpwHU]

There’s been a lot of hype around Jeff Bezos’ announcement on 60 Minutes that Amazon is building drones (see above) that will ship packages from warehouses to consumers’ homes within 30 minutes.  While this may seem crazy, it’s really a very well calculated strategy aimed at getting access to one of Amazon’s only untapped markets: offline consumer spend.

Offline commerce remains a trillion-dollar industry that most online sellers have yet to tap. It’s still true that most consumer disposable income is spent locally -- restaurants, bars, coffee shops, gas stations, salons, malls, etc.

Amazon and other online retailers have struggled to tap into this marketplace. But lots of them are trying hard...

Consider a company like Trunk Club that sends consumers a trunk full of clothes every once in a while, allowing the consumer to keep what they like and send back what they don’t. With free shipping.

Or Dollar Shave Club that sends razors and other toiletries each month at rock-bottom prices. Check out their brilliant promotional video that went viral a while back.

Or Warby Parker that ships you three different styles of glasses at no cost so you can try them on. And you ship them back for free. For every pair that's sold they donate a pair to a person in a underdeveloped country.

Or Groupon that sells access to local salons or gym memberships or karate lessons at steep discounts.

All of these companies have built strategies that are attempts to tap into local, offline spend -- and the Amazon drone is no different. By shortening delivery times they're hoping to keep people out of stores and in their homes buying goods online. This is a fun trend to keep an eye on.

Your Product Doesn't Sell Itself

Blake Masters posted his notes from a class that Peter Thiel taught at Stanford a while back. The class was focused on distribution for startups and the notes are awesome, awesome, awesome. I've been meaning to write about them for a while. They're a must read for start-up sales & marketing professionals. The whole thing is great but the piece I want to talk about today is where he points out that the idea that a product can sell itself is a complete myth.

Given all of the focus on product lately – particularly in the consumer internet space – you might be surprised to hear this from Peter Thiel. But he’s spot-on. Here are the key paragraphs:

People say it all the time: this product is so good that it sells itself. This is almost never true. These people are lying, either to themselves, to others, or both. But why do they lie? The straightforward answer is that they are trying to convince other people that their product is, in fact, good.  They do not want to say “our product is so bad that it takes the best salespeople in the world to convince people to buy it.” So one should always evaluate such claims carefully. Is it an empirical fact that product x sells itself? Or is that a sales pitch?

The truth is that selling things—whether we’re talking about advertising, mass marketing, cookie-cutter sales, or complex sales—is not a purely rational enterprise. It is not just about perfect information sharing, where you simply provide prospective customers with all the relevant information that they then use to make dispassionate, rational decisions. There is much stranger stuff at work here.

To emphasize his point, he uses this framework:

Consider the quadrants:

Product sells itself, no sales effort. Does not exist. Product needs selling, no sales effort. You have no revenue. Product needs selling, strong sales piece. This is a sales-driven company. Product sells itself, strong sales piece. This is ideal.

If you believe that your product is so great that it can sell itself you’re either delusional or your aspirations aren't nearly high enough – and it’s great to see a hugely successful, product-driven investor make that point.

The Perfect Social Network

I don't consider myself to be all that active on social networks, though I'm registered for lots of them -- you can see the full list on my About page. I use Foursquare and Instagram fairly frequently, I use LinkedIn for work often, I occasionally Tweet and almost never post to Facebook. That said, there are two social networks where I'm really, really active -- much more than all of the above networks combined. Those social networks are two iMessage threads on my iPhone -- one between a large group of high school friends spread out around the country and another with a group of friends in NYC (mostly former co-workers). On average, I message my high school friends several times a day and my NYC friends about every other day. It's a great way to keep in touch.

That said, it goes without saying that the iMessage app provides me with an extremely sub-optimal social networking experience. It's annoying that the place where I do the majority of my online sharing has absolutely none of the features of a good social network. Many, many people have these ongoing iMessage threads with their friends so I know there's a product opportunity here.

With that in mind, I'm recommending a product that I think would be extremely useful to millions of people. Here's the feature list -- iMessage, with:

  • Searchable archives (with advanced search capability by sender, keyword, date and date range)
  • Photo logging -- all of the photos in the thread should be compiled, easily accessed and searchable
  • Check-in -- instead of having to tell people on the thread where I am, I should be able to check-in to the location and it should message everyone (I think Foursquare has an API for this now)
  • Cross platform -- it should work with Android, BlackBerry, iOS, etc.
  • Group calling feature -- it should be easy to click on a few names in the thread to start a conference call
  • Payment feature -- if I owe money to a friend on the thread or we're planning a trip somewhere that I need to front the money for I should be able to easily transfer the dollars (the app could sync with PayPal, Google Wallet, Bitcoin, etc.)
  • Self-destruct option -- for privacy purposes, there should be an option to have a specific photo or text disappear from everyone's phone after it's been viewed for a short period of time (similar to what Snapchat does now)
  • Share buttons -- it should have the option to share specific text or media on other social networks
  • No download requirement -- if one of the people on the thread doesn't want to download the app, it should work with iMessage (they'll see the texts and media without the added features)
  • Reporting -- this isn't critical, but it would be neat to see how many texts have been sent, by who, over a given time period

I realize that WhatsApp has much of this functionality now but it's still missing a lot of useful features.

I think traditionally there's been some hesitancy around building apps for small, closed-loop social networks such as a text message thread because it's only offered to a limited number of users and it doesn't scale well. That may be true, but what's lost in scale is made up for in engagement. I wrote a post a while back about the success of Snapchat and the demand for discreet social networking. Since I wrote that post, Snapchat has exploded -- their users now share 400 million photos per day (more than Facebook and Instagram combined).

I'd argue that if and when Apple, WhatsApp or another app builder releases an enhanced version of text messaging like the one I've described above, they'll see comparable success.

Sell The Concept Before You Show The Data

The other day I wrote about how I believe that salespeople should go easy on the data in their initial sales presentation. I feel this way because 1.) I think the right approach is to sell people on your product's concept first and then back it up with data and 2.) in that initial meeting most people aren't going to take your data seriously -- they don't trust you yet and they know that data can be manipulated to tell any story you want. Seth Godin recently wrote a two sentence post titled, Belief is more powerful than proof. This is really what I'm trying to say. That is, get your prospects to believe what you're saying -- to "buy" your concept -- and then back it up with proof.

For example, if you try to tell people that fewer and fewer people are using the internet, no matter how much proof you show, nobody is going to believe you. It doesn't make sense. They won't believe it.

But, if you tell people that mobile is the fastest growing internet access channel, due to increased Wi-fi access, the growing prominence of the "mobile-only" user, increased processing speeds, etc., people will believe you. They'll buy the concept. It makes sense.

Only after you've confirmed that your story and your concept make sense to the prospect should you show them the data (data that validates and drives home the point). Something like the chart below. Concept first, data second.

Mobile is eating the world