Steve the Owl's Blog

Hi, everyone. One of the things that I have been thinking about lately is the nature of setting priorities. This was reinforced to me as I watched the movie Click on the Fourth of July. For those of you who haven’t seen this movie, it came out six years ago and stars Adam Sandler as a workaholic who can’t seem to find his way to have enough time for everything in life. When going to a Bed, Bath, and Beyond, he meets a mysterious man named Morty who offers him “a universal remote control to control your universe.” There are a few requisite jokes once he figures out what he has, such as pausing his boss to slap him around after he orders him to work over the Fourth of July weekend, and hitting the slow-motion button when a woman is running. However, if you think of this movie only in terms of the joke, you will miss the larger point.

What Are Your Priorities?

The lead character has a family that wasn’t rich, but one that was full of love growing up. Seeing other kids enjoy the material things in life, he decides to try to work to make for a better life for his kids. This takes the form of hitting the “skip” button to avoid dinner with his parents so he can focus on designing his next project. Later, he has a fight with his wife, and he fast-forwards through the whole thing.

*SPOILER ALERT* Ultimately, when he gets passed over for a promotion, and gets frustrated after having to take his kids’ bicycles back, he decides to skip to his promotion. He finds out that it takes him forward one year. *END SPOILER ALERT*

One of the key elements of the story is that, eventually, the remote starts to program itself based on the preferences of the user. Thinking that he was getting the life he wanted, he realizes how much he misses along the way, but he learns this lesson at a huge cost.

Hollow Success

This reminds me of the concept of hollow success. No matter how much people think that financial success is the end-all, be-all of existence, it is something that must take its place in a well-rounded life. After all, what good is having all of the money in the world if there is no one to share your life with? As Jim Rohn reminds us, when we neglect one area of our life, it tends to show itself in other areas of our life. So, rather than focus on only one thing in life, it is important to become a well-rounded individual. Rather than focusing on only one thing, be sure to spend time with the people who love you, and improving as a person.

What things do you do to make sure that you aren’t fast-forwarding your way through life?

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Hi, everyone. I hope that you are enjoying this Independence Day, or for my international readers, Monday. Today marks the 235th anniversary of the signing of the US Declaration of Independence from Great Britain, one of the most important events in Western history. This would redefine the previous 14 1/2 months of fighting not as a battle against imperial powers, but one where nothing less than total victory would be acceptable. Regardless of your national loyalties, the first victory by a colonial force over an imperial power since long before Columbus sailed the ocean blue is a monument that has had a lot of effects since. However, rather than look at what our Founders did, which is extremely important, I decided to spend today looking at some of the heroes in our country today who are currently under fire.

Public Servants or Greedy Leeches?

As some of my regular readers may remember from earlier this spring, I wrote about the battle to fund the government for my adopted home state of Pennsylvania. However, this fight is not limited to one state, but a microcosm of a battle that is being fought all over the United States. While the battle over the US debt ceiling may be getting all of the attention now, a lot of the more immediate battles are being held at the state level, with all but one state (New Hampshire) bound by law to submit a balanced budget.

I have argued then, as I argue now, that this is really a question of priorities for a people. However, one thing that I didn’t mention in the original post is the way that public workers, including teachers, police, and firefighters, have been so demonized in this budget process. In my job working with labor, I heard a lot of complaints from people as I walked door to door to convince people of the need to take action to fight these cuts that public sector workers are greedy and somehow getting by with a lot more than workers in the private sector. Perhaps the most notorious example of effort to turn public workers into villains comes from our neighbors to the east, New Jersey, and their combative Governor, Chris Christie.

A lot of people tend not to openly admit hostility towards people like teachers, firefighters, police, and military personnel, but this is really what is at stake in this battle over budgets. We tend to say that these people are true American heroes, and I would be inclined to agree. Unfortunately, I have noticed a cognitive dissonance with too many of my fellow citizens. The very same people who villainize public workers still insist that teachers, police, and firefighters are doing important work for the American people. However, these are the very same public workers who they are demonizing. If we really feel that these people are the heroes of American society, shouldn’t they be paid like them?

After all, as I noted last week, we tend to have a lot more willingness to do things that are rewarded. Then again, there are people who don’t realize how much these heroes actually make. I’ll take my war experience as an example. I happened to mention in an off-hand comment on a message board after I came home from Iraq that I managed to save over $20,000 while I was overseas. One of the people on the message board insisted that this was an example of the extravagant salaries we pay our military personnel. What this really meant was that I barely spent any money for the year. This “extravagant” salary that I earned while I was overseas? $1900 a month after taxes, with my bonuses. And I was a sergeant who had been in the military for three years. (Before I hit my three-year anniversary of enlistment nearly three months into my activation, my pay was only about $1700 a month after taxes.) Based on cost-of-living adjustments (COLA’s) over the last eight years, this would now be about $2400 a month. Does anyone honestly think that this is our country’s way of saying that its military personnel are its highest priority? (I noticed in my six years in the military just how much money was wasted on expensive weapons systems while things for foot soldiers were severely neglected. Our country could easily find the money for our servicemen and -women simply by taking money from some of these programs that were either designed to protect against an enemy that no longer exists or weapons systems that do not and have never worked.)

For a humorous look at this situation, I remember a bit I saw Bill Maher do in an HBO comedy special called Victory Begins at Home. It was based on his 2002 book When You Ride Alone, You Ride with Bin Laden. The book was based on WWI- and WWII-era posters made by the government and released as a call to the American people to rise to a bigger vision than shopping as a response to the 9/11 attacks. One of the posters shows a schoolteacher, a police officer, and a firefighter, and it says, “We Say They’re Our Heroes” on top, but on the bottom, it says, “But We Pay Them Like Chumps.” This turned into a one-minute bit for the comedy special that is the most poignant piece, even more so today with these budget battles where the idea of paying more taxes is “off the table.” Here is a clip from the special:

The part I’m referring to starts at 4:20 and lasts until 5:19 or 5:20. Warning: some parts of the video may be NSFW. I don’t agree with every single part of the special, which includes pet causes that are not ones that I agree with, but I think that he really hit the nail on the head with this one.

What do you do to make our heroes a priority?

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Hi, everyone. Today marks a very special day for Steve the Owl’s Blog. With two humble posts exactly one year ago: one shortly after midnight, and one at 10 pm that quiet Sunday evening, I entered the world of content-driven blogging. My first post talked about some experiences that I’d had earlier that year with people insisting on “their” parking space during a blizzard, and how this only led to fewer parking spaces available for everyone. My second, fitting for something that was written on a Sunday inspired by thinking through some things on the way home from church, got to the very core of why people want to build a business, and how some have gone to a message of prosperity gospel that, in my opinion, misses the entire point of the Bible and turns God into a genie.

With these humble beginnings, I began my blog, which has to this day operated under the idea of “life, business, and so much more.” While some may argue for a more narrow niche, I’ve found that my niche has been about the everyday experiences I have had (including the books I’ve read, the music I’ve heard, and the TV and movies I’ve seen) that teach so much about our personal development and business.

There has been a lot of trial and error along the way, but I thank each and every person who has been there with my as I have worked on this labor of love for the past year. With that in mind, I would like to thank the five most frequent commenters on my blog over the last twelve months, in order from 1-5.

Coach Freddie Coach Freddie has done some wonderful work in the world of video blogging, including a lengthy and excellent series on each of the 64 success principles presented by jack Canfield. He is truly a great mind in the world of personal development. We are at the top of each other’s commenter list, and it has been a great honor getting to know Coach Freddie. Keep your eyes out for a blog exchange between the two of us coming soon.

Oliver Tausend Oliver held the number-one spot among my commenters for a pretty long time. Like me, his interests are pretty varied, with a large focus on personal development and business with a lot of stories based on his personal experiences. He has done a lot of work in several different syndication groups, so if you’ve seen him around but haven’t stopped by this blog, be sure to do so.

Karen Marrow Karen is someone who focuses primarily on personal development, with some emphasis on business. I have found a lot of great value on her blog, and I had the honor of guest-posting on her blog earlier this spring after winning a contest for a great book on personal development, Happy for No Reason.

Jayne Kopp I met Jayne this winter on the Clever Marketer Prove It Challenge, and both of us crossed the finish line together on the same day. Considering that she was pretty far behind the pace for the challenge toward the end, this shows her dedication to her blog and to her readers. Be sure to read about her experiences with personal and business development, and how she weaves them into a life narrative.

Vicki Berry Vicki is someone who has several blogs, and the blog where I know her the best is the one that I linked to. She offers some great advice on business and blogging, with an emphasis on SEO and copywriting. If you want to learn about how to build a business and how to learn the rules of the road for creating a great blog, I can think of no better place to start.

Thank you to everyone who has read my blog and commented. I will never forget you. I hope to provide even more value in the second year of this blog than the first.

Hi, everyone. I don’t know if you’ve had the chance to watch The King’s Speech, but I finally saw it tonight, and I must say that I was blown away. If you haven’t seen it, I cannot recommend it highly enough. It is the movie about the future King George VI and his efforts to overcome a stammer and inspire the British people during World War II, as they prepare for a fight against a charismatic leader from Germany, Adolf Hitler, as he tried to take over Europe.

The Accidental King

Born in 1895 as Albert Frederick Arthur George, the Duke of York, he was the second heir to the throne of England as the younger brother of Edward, the son of King George V, which meant that his chances of becoming king were relatively remote. If Edward had any children, Albert would fall farther and farther down the line of succession. However, in 1936, just a few months after becoming king, Edward VIII fell in love with twice-divorced Wallis Simpson and decided he wanted to marry her. In order to marry her, however, as the head of the Church of England, he was not allowed to marry a divorcee because the church’s teachings on divorce, so he gave up the throne instead, forcing his younger brother into the position.

Overcoming Difficulties

Of course, in the radio age, the new king, who adopted his father’s name (because of concerns about the name Albert at the time), King George VI had to overcome his stammer to be an effective king and rally the people of England. As a left-handed child who was switched to right-handed, he had to completely rethink his approach to speaking. It was not a perfect transformation (Toward the end of his life, his speeches had to be pre-recorded.), but title event of the movie, the speech announcing the British effort in World War II in 1939, will really get you going. If you would like to hear the real King George VI delivering a speech, here is one that I found online:

What efforts to overcome obstacles have you accomplished in the name of duty?

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I must admit that I usually don’t watch singing contests on TV. I love playing Karaoke Revolution on my PS2, and I listen to a lot of music, but there was just something about a lot of the singing contests that didn’t have an appeal to me at all. While I’m familiar with American Idol from its place in pop culture, I’ve only ever seen two episodes in their entirety: one when my brother’s then-girlfriend won the battle for the remote, and another while in a hospital waiting room, and enough bits and pieces of episodes from clip shows like The Soup for another episode or two. However, my wife is a huge Kelly Clarkson fan, and I found a lot to like in her third album, My December, which I reviewed here last year.

Then, while watching one of my favorite shows, Community, I saw an advertisement for a singing competition that was very different from the standard fare on TV. This one was called The Voice. What is different about this show is that the judges only get to rely on listening to the singer when he/she auditions. It turns out that the judges aren’t even judges at all, but they are instead coaching the singers, in essence performing as A&R people for the contestants. They sit in chairs with their backs to the stage, and if they like what they hear, they press a button to try to recruit the singer to their team. If no one pushes the button before the song ends, the singer is eliminated. If more than one pushes the button, the coaches lobby the singer to join his/her team.

Lessons for Business

What I think is so interesting about The Voice is the fact that it is, on the surface, similar to shows that look for the next great singer, and with the king of the hill in decline, there is a question about whether or not the market is saturated. However, they changed the idea just a little bit, and turned it into a very inspiring and amazing reworking of a tired format.

How many times in the world of blogging and online marketing do you know of people who try to be like everyone else? The problem with that is that the people who started already know what they’re doing pretty well, and you’ll just be a pale imitation. This is why it is so much better to look for foundations, but look for ways to innovate and build upon the foundation to make something even better.

If you would like to see the potential of this show and how the format works, here is one of the contestants completely reworking a song by my favorite, favorite band, Nirvana. The fact that I m a Nirvana fan and say that she did a great job with this song says a lot about potential, but I think that the interplay with the format of the show, and watching two music superstars compete for this new talent is inspiring to watch:

How have you found reworking a format helping you to great things?

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I won’t limit myself. It’s all done there to entertain me. Why would I be so stupid as to wear blinkers and cut off that sense of fun?That’s too narrow. Far too many people do that. They don’t read for the same reasons, because it doesn’t fit into the lifestyle they’re trying to imitate. Be your own man.- John Lydon

One of the biggest things that we need to learn in life is the importance of expanding our vision in life. When it comes to music, I must admit that I have a tendency to be a music snob. I have the prerequisite albums that sold very few copies but seemed to be devoured by other musicians (such as all four of The Velvet Underground albums and Marquee Moon by proto-punk band Television) and the vast majority of music that I listen to falls into the genre of rock, and the majority of that falls into the hard/grunge/punk/proto-punk categories. Yesterday, I posted a story on my blog about this type of music.

However, this is not all of the music I listen to. It might surprise a lot of people who know of my love for that type of music to know that the most recent music CD I bought or got as a gift was a CD by Sarah McLachlan. (I don’t buy CD’s that often. I got this one last year for Christmas.) Because of the type of music that I tend to prefer, one type of popular music that I tend to like least is electronic music.

That being said, I don’t think that it’s all bad. I do like Moby, and I think that what he does with music is very interesting, especially considering the way that he blends more natural instruments with electronic instruments in a way that most in the genre do not. Then, around New Year’s Day a couple of years ago, while playing around on YouTube, I happened to stumble upon a video by a band called Opus III. They were a dance band from the early 1990′s, and with their iconic front woman Kirsty Hawkshaw, produced a very optimistic sound of music that is very different from the drone and focus solely on the beat that seems to plague most dance music. (Although I must admit that I also like “Blue Monday” by New Order even though it is a very mopey song.) While listening to one of her songs, I clicked on one of her other songs, called “Hand in Hand,” and it was very tranquil and gave me a sense of calm that is a nice break from songs that tend to rely on nervous and/or angry energy. If you’d like to listen for yourself and hear the departure from some of my other favorite music, here is a taste:

What I found interesting is that a lot of men, especially macho men, tend to enjoy things that are often mocked as being only for women. Example: one of the most popular DVD box sets in our unit in Iraq? Sex and the City. I kid you not. We watched each of the first four seasons while we were over there and we loved it. One of the most beloved professional wrestlers of the last 20 years, Mick Foley, wrote a fan piece last year for Slate Magazine about his favorite artist: Tori Amos. I thought two things were interesting about it: the ways that her ethereal sound inspired him in the ring, and the fact that his favorite Tori Amos song is also my favorite Tori Amos song (“Winter”), although I like it for the sneaky rhythm of the verse and the riff, and he likes it primarily for the voice.

I have definitely found a lot when I was willing to expand my vision, and I would’ve never discovered personal development had I not been willing to expand my vision. So, go out there and listen to some songs that are the exact opposite of what you normally listen to. It might surprise you and help you grow as well.

What ways have you expanded your vision?

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Recently, I’ve been thinking about the importance of a vision and a plan. One of the ways that this really shows itself is through the most important musical movement in the last 25 years, and arguably the last one to ever catch the music industry off guard: the Seattle explosion of the early 1990′s, often known as “grunge.” In the late 1980′s, popular music was dominated by hair metal and pop acts. In 1990, for the first time in decades, no rock band had a #1 album. Some thought that rock was dead.

However, there was a movement bubbling underground that would ultimately be unstoppable. While there were rock albums that hit #1 in the charts in 1991, they were all from established acts. That fall, a band from Washington State would release its second album (and major-label debut). That band was Nirvana, the album was Nevermind, and the rest was music history. However, what a lot of people miss is the groundwork laid by their time in the underground, and the work done by their independent label Sub Pop that took advantage of the clamor for something new in the world of music.

A Marketing Idea

The story of Sub Pop starts with two failed musicians, Jonathan Poneman and Bruce Pavitt. In the mid-1980′s, they tried their hand at music, but they realized that they would not ever be successful musicians, so they decided to pool their resources together, and they ultimately formed the record label Sub Pop. Before they started the record label, Bruce Pavitt ran a fan-zine that focused on local Seattle bands, and they made very few copies to make the records collector’s items. Ultimately, they talked a lot of the hard rock bands into joining their label, and most of the bands that they recruited had a similar sound.

What was so interesting about their efforts was the fact that they did everything they could to promote the label and the sound rather than the individual bands. In order to do this, they used former Skin Yard guitarist Jack Endino and his tiny Reciprocal Studios because he worked cheap and produced a sound that they liked. For the cover art, they used Charles Peterson, whose black-and-white photography with its intentionally blurred and double-exposed imagery to create something that they knew would easily be identifiable.

Taking a Risk

Sub Pop enjoyed moderate success, but they were surprised to notice that a lot of their records sold relatively well in England. In response to this, they paid for a plane ticket for Melody Maker journalist Everett True, and they invited him around to see some of the local bands. Everett True liked what he heard, and he wrote a glowing review of the Sub Pop scene, giving England its first taste of the Seattle explosion.

Ironically, what happened was that most of the famous bands broke after they left Sub Pop. However, without that early support and vision, the major labels would have never come to Seattle to see what musical acts were there, and music would be dramatically different. Here is a brief video that talks about the history of Sub Pop Records:

How have you used your vision to find something no one else did?

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I don’t know how much you pay attention to the Internet trends, but one of the biggest sensations, for better or for worse, online right now is “Friday,” a song performed by 13-year-old Rebecca Black written and produced by Ark Music Factory, a company devoted to finding the next teen star a la Britney Spears and Miley Cyrus. As of the time I type this, it has received over 39.5 million views on YouTube (when my wife watched it last night, it was at 35 million, so it may very well hit 50 million by the end of the week or 100 million within a month), but it became famous when Comedy Central’s Daniel Tosh posted an article critical of the simplistic song lyrics. So, as I think about this song that I probably won’t be able to get out of my head for a while, I have been thinking about what this teaches us about Internet etiquette and about poise under fire.

Where Do We Draw the Line?

Probably the most shocking thing about this whole thing is the fact that there were people who told a 13-year-old girl that she should kill herself or get an eating disorder to look pretty. Regardless of how you feel about the song, I think that it is safe to say that no one should say that kind of stuff to another human being, especially a 13-year-old girl. Looking at the Daniel Tosh article, I think that he handled things in a much better way. If you’ve ever seen his show Tosh.0, you will know that his humor often falls in the NSFW and “Did he just say what I think he did?” category, but I think that he showed some restraint in his blog post. He called his post, “Songwriting Isn’t for Everyone,” which very clearly puts the onus of the criticism on the people who wrote the song and auto-tuned her voice into something completely unrecognizable. To me, this says a lot: there is a lot to criticize about the song, but Tosh does not get personal here. His criticism is focused on the lyrics.

Also, I think that the fact that Tosh is not anonymous tells us something else about hiding online: he knew where to draw the line, because people knew exactly who he was. Sometimes, I think that the anonymity of the Internet leads people to say things that they would never say in polite conversation. So, I think that one of the rules of online conversation (especially when the subject is a child) should be to only say things that you would say if people knew who was saying it. Also, can we draw a distinction between being critical of someone’s art and being critical of someone else, and think about it even more when the subject of criticism is underage?

Poise Under Fire

With this in mind, I think that something that is inspiring about this story is the response of Rebecca Black herself. I saw an interview that she did for Good Morning America where she talked about her experience. She was excited about the fact that millions of people have watched her video, even though there were a lot of people who didn’t like it, and she admitted to being hurt by some of the more extreme comments. She kept everything in perspective and acknowledged her singing abilities by simply saying,

I have talent on some level. I know I’m not the best singer in the world, but I’m not the worst, either.

I think that this is something that is good for people to remember. Chances are, no matter what you do you, there will always be someone better and there will always be someone worse. To me, this is comforting, because it says that you can just do your best, and when you do that, and work to get better, you can accomplish great things, even if it doesn’t involve 40 million people watching your video. Here is the segment where she talks about her experience and the response from viewers:

What are rules that you try to keep when thinking about Internet etiquette?

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Over the weekend, I watched the movie Young Einstein with my wife. If you have never seen the movie, or it sounds like something you may have heard of, but can’t quite place it, Young Einstein was the first movie by Australian filmmaker Yahoo Serious and it re-imagined the life of Albert Einstein as he formulated his most famous theories (as well as inventing rock and roll). I will admit that there are parts of the movie that are obviously dated (the movie was made in 1988, and released internationally the next year), but I think that there are some elements of the movie that not only stand the test of time, but they teach us something about life and the power of imagination today.

An Imaginative Movie for an Imaginative Man

Albert Einstein was born in Germany and lived most of his early life in Germany and Switzerland. Einstein was a late bloomer, failing math as a young man, not learning to speak until the age of three or tie his shoes until the age of twelve. However, once he got working, he really caught on quickly. Inspired by a daydream where he rode a beam of light toward the end of the universe at the age of 26 (while working at a patent office), Einstein began working on the special theory of relativity, the work that would make his name synonymous with “genius” for the next century, even though his ideas were seen as ridiculous when he first proposed them.

Einstein never took himself too seriously, and Young Einstein, while intentionally getting a lot of facts wrong (For example, I’m pretty sure that E=mc2 was not a result of “splitting a beer atom.”) definitely got the rebellious spirit of Einstein right. The movie shows how people thought he was crazy (even getting locked up in a mental asylum with other scientists) and how he just couldn’t get the hang of the doldrums of working at the patent office. However, when the time came, he truly changed the world, and he did so in a generous spirit.

In some ways, I think that an iconoclast like Yahoo Serious was perfect for this role. With his wild hair and joie de vivre, Yahoo Serious plays someone who gets bored on his parents’ apple farm (where he never quite fits in), and he starts using his spare time to think about the universe, as evidenced by falling on a seesaw with a crate of apples on the other side. When the crate hits him on his head, he exclaims, “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction!” As someone from the world of academia, I really appreciate the wonder at which Serious shows Einstein’s joy at discovering his theories.

In addition, this movie took advantage of the media of its time, experimenting with the format of the music video, as evidenced by this clip of the movie, a three-and-a-half minute montage set to “Great Southern Land” by Icehouse, turning the song and the movie into a love song to his native Australia. As you can see below, it holds up well 23 years later:

How has imagination powered you to success?

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Recently, I went to the Temple Library, and I saw a copy of the movie Glengarry Glen Ross. Because of the movie’s reputation, I decided to pick it up for rent. I haven’t watched the movie yet, but I have seen the famous scene where Alec Baldwin’s character gives his memorable speech to the people of Premiere Properties. I don’t know if you’ve seen it or not, but one of the most famous lines comes from the acronym ABC, or Always Be Closing.

Is It ABC?

I’ve heard a lot of people talk about this movie and how it really inspired them at work. (One of my friends who worked in high-dollar sales ventures said that everything about Alec Baldwin’s monologue, even going as far as “first place, you win a car; second place, you win a steak knife; third place, you win ‘you’re fired’” is very accurate.) However, the more I thought about it, the more that I realized that there is something that people fundamentally misunderstand about this way of thinking. While I personally prefer more of an attraction marketing/natural selling type of approach, I know that there are people who try to do everything that they can to force people to make their final decision and push towards the sale, because of Baldwin’s character’s $970,000 income and the motto “Always Be Closing.”

However, this just does not work in the world of online marketing. After all, if all we did was pitch a product or a business opportunity, no one would want to come to our website, and no one would talk to us. (Personally, on Facebook, I never directly mention my business opportunity on my profile. I will do it on a fan page, but that is different to me because those are people who went to it specifically for that reason, and the of the 750+ friends I have on facebook, over 90% are not from the business community.) I think that in this way, we cannot Always Be Closing.

It Can’t Be NBC, Either

However (and I realize that I am guilty of this as well), it can’t be Never Be Closing, either. While those of us in the Internet marketing world are trying to many things, such as education, or simply sharing our views, if you have a primary and/or affiliate programs, you are here because you are trying to make money. If you don’t tell people what you are doing, and why you are doing it, you will never get anyone to buy. My answer to the famous Zen metaphor is that, of course, a tree falling in the woods makes a sound even if no one is there to hear it. However, if no one knows that we are doing business, no one will ever buy our products or services, or join our business.

Then again, I realize that some people feel uneasy with direct pitches. For this reason, I wonder if there is another way to do things to seek balance? For those of you who feel that you have found your balance (and I know about the 90/10 rule and full disclosure), what things do you do to help people find the services you wish to provide?

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