TALK: The 10-14 Lessons I’ve Learned as an Expatriate/ Freelancer During 12 Years In France.
Tuesday, December 13, 2016 at 19:30 at Coworkshop in Paris, France. Hosted by Johann Ouaki, Fondateur de SOTØ.
Click here to learn more!
“Assume it’s going to work; assume it’s gonna happen. And if you take the assumption it’s going to happen and race after that inevitability; you’ll get there before everybody else.”
– Jason Calacanis for the documentary We Live In Public
Lie. Lie.
I can tell [you’re lying] because you subscribe to traditional judeo christian mores of right and wrong. You’re made uncomfortable by untruth.
My commitment to Levian Satanism grants me certain freedoms: there is no good and evil, there’s only self.
Lie.
Gilfoyle on S3E9 of Silicon Valley
Start telling the stories that only you can tell, because there’ll always be better writers than you and there’ll always be smarter writers than you. There will always be people who are much better at doing this or doing that — but you are the only you.
Neil Gaiman
The amount spent, annually, by U.S. companies on field sales efforts is 3X their spending on all consumer advertising, more than 20X the spend on all online media, and more than 100X what they currently spend on social media. Selling is, by far, the most expensive part of strategy implementation for most firms.
Frank Cespedes. “Sales Still Matters More than Social Media”
There are essentially two things that will make you wise — the books you read and the people you meet.
Jack Canfield (via observando)
If you aren’t in over your head, how do you know how tall you are?
T.S. Eliot (via karenhurley)
People learn by comparison.
They learn by comparing new things to the things they already know. That’s why redefining a category is much easier than creating a new one.
When you position your product in an existing category you’re essentially saying “it’s like something you already know but better”.
When you try to create a new product category you’re essentially saying “it’s like nothing you’ve ever seen before”.
That’s a provocative statement, but hard to learn by.
Joshua Porter “How to redefine a product category” (via peterspear)
Do small things with great love.
If you want to produce special work, it’s worth collaborating with special people.
Constantly chopping and changing your specialty will hinder your success.
Having the courage and determination to focus on one subject or area of expertise gives you the solid foundation that is absolutely necessary if you’re to come up with a truly great idea, one that will be key to your future success.
Too many creative people think they don’t need to specialize, that they can have lots of ideas in lots of different subjects all of which are going to be great.
Persuasion has a bad reputation because it’s associated with selling things to people, sometimes selling them things they don’t even want.
It can be easy to settle on something that feels right. Something that seems to make sense of all the confusion.
You’ll feel relief when you get to this point. You’ll think you’ve cracked it. You’ll feel good.
But then you have to take a step back from what feels really good and ask:
But is it great?
More often than not coming up with a great idea is a rollercoaster ride of thoughts with no logical progression;
ou lurch from the interesting to the absurd to the good back again to the absurd.
To create great work you should be making up your own beliefs as you go along, changing them one day to the next, always pushing against the boundaries of current thinking, trying to escape the confines of conventional wisdom.
Respect don’t revere.
Putting anyone on a pedestal is dangerous. It implies they’re better than everyone else; but they’re not.
We’re all stepping-stones for the next generation.
It’s no good having great ideas if you can’t sell them.
When it comes time to pitch, you’ll be amazed by how powerful your persuasion skills have become simply because you understand a little more about the field and what drives it.