I’m helping a new college graduate right now to make connections that may lead to a job. She’s far more used to excelling at school assignments than making connections, so she asked me a basic question: what is networking and how does it work? For those of us who’ve been in business for a while,…
Newsletter 34: Who tells the truth, authors back a new publishing model, Spotify’s audiobook subscription, plus three people to follow, three books to read, and chance to meet other authors in Northern Cal. Says who? Trump advisor Steve Bannon once described his communications strategy this way: “The real opposition is the media. And the way…
I’d love to meet and swap stories with some nonfiction authors. Join me at Il Fornaio in Burlingame at 6:30pm on Thursday, April 25, 2024. A few notes. If you plan to attend, you must RSVP using the form below. And this is Dutch Treat — each of us will be paying for their own…
I frequently advise nonfiction authors to be planners, not pantsers (that is, seat-of-the-pants writers). Unfortunately, that doesn’t always work. True, some people have a conception of the whole book in their heads. This allows them to set down a table of contents and, after doing research, create a fat outline before writing each chapter. But…
A friend of mine just received the following direct email pitch: Re: Crush the Competition: Seize Their visitor who view their website by Dominating Their Audience Attention Prepare yourself for total dominance. Our goal is to destroy your competition and establish your brand as the undisputed leader, not to be diplomatic. Our ruthless [name redacted]…
People making a point tend to cite statistics. And with simple tools like SurveyMonkey, anyone can create a poll. But if you don’t know how statistics really work, you can seem like a fool. I don’t trust people who use statistical tools in a misleading way. Do you? What’s wrong with this poll on LinkedIn?…
Newsletter 33: How to be suspicious of shiny objects, self-publishing bestseller pirated, China skews the Hugos, plus three people to follow and three brand-new books to read. The curse of the new We live in a world where newness generates attention. I learned this emphatically and repeatedly in two decades as a technology analyst. Every…
After an extended outage on February 22 that left around 50 million mobile customers (including me) without service for many hours, AT&T is crediting some people’s accounts by $5. Is that the right compensation? What went wrong AT&T says the cause of the problem was an error in installing software — and there is no…
I’ve met thousands of people over my long career — colleagues, clients, direct reports, bosses, executives, and “influencers” of every stripe. I also have a really poor memory for people. So I’m a decent test case for the question, “Who will remember you?” If I remember somebody after decades of work, they were truly memorable….