Pow! Right Between The Eyes! Andy Nulman's Blog About Surprise

What I Learned This Week--If Your Past Is Your Future, You're History

As a rule, I usually dread corporate strategy meetings for a number of reasons, including but not limited to:

• They are clichéd
• To the loudest go the spoils
• There are few concrete results
• If perchance something concrete is resolved, it is forgotten within a week

So imagine my surprise at the recent productive two-day session we had at Just For Laughs.  The jury’s still out over the long-term effectiveness, as we need further meetings to build on the foundation…but at least we came out with some sort of a foundation, one that was built on respectful (!), reflective (!) and intelligent (!) debate.

One such debate focused on the exploitation of the vast Just For Laughs catalog.  A content company with over three decades of TV history, we’ve been mining our vaults for gold for years now. One of our projects—the Just For Laughs Gags channel on YouTube—is perhaps the company’s most successful and profitable, culling hundreds of hours of content and more than four million unique visits per day into one of YouTube’s top 100 worldwide destinations.

On the surface, this is good, if not great, news.  But a little scratch reveals a chink in the armor sparked one of the meeting’s best debates, namely the one that arose when I said:

“If your future

is based on your past,

you’re screwed.”

(To be honest, I used a term a little stronger than “screwed,” but why be profane?)

The euphoria of continually going back to the well and finding it full is, in my mind, short-lived and dangerous.  And this isn’t just relevant to those producing “content.”   No matter what your business, if your dreamy current sales projections are based predominantly—or entirely—on what you’ve produced before, you are in for a rude awakening.

One can argue (and some at the meeting did) that if you are actually in the business of selling the past, my premise is invalidated.

No it’s not.

Even if you’re dealing in antiques (be it the guy down the street or the Gold family on TruTv’s Hardcore Pawn), history (like my friends at Alexander Autographs), family trees (like geni.com or familysearch.org) or non-comedic forms of previously broadcast filmed entertainment (everything from ESPN Classic to Turner Classic Movies), your future doesn’t necessarily have to be mired by your past. 

Different methods of packaging, of distribution, of presentation, or of editing can breathe new life into the past, and do so in a manner that’s so effective and fresh...

...it’s as if the past

is making its debut. 

Case in point—the new iPad app chronicling the history and career of The Doors, a passion project of former Elektra Records founder Jac Holzman that just about reinvents the music biography.  Or the one by my buddy, Pearls Before Swine creator Stephan Pastis, that doesn’t merely aggregate a bunch of his previously-published newspaper strips, but through animation, audio and video commentary and original corresponding content, gives them a new relevance…not to mention a new hope for the survival of the comic strip genre as a whole.

Selling the past can be easy, but you’re ascending a slippery slope that you’ll eventually slide down…and fast.  Re-making the past is more difficult; it’s a different story that requires a different skill set.  Yet it’s the only way if you don’t want to get caught up in the past/future conundrum shouted out in bold red above.

Perhaps the best way to summarize this week’s lesson is not just to re-use the words of philosopher  George Santayana, who said “Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it,” but to paraphrase and re-make them into:

“Those who (merely)

repeat the past are

condemned to be forgotten.”

What I Learned This Week--Chewing On Perspectively Modified Organisms

When is a food not a food?

To legions of concerned and vocal do-gooders, its when "Big Agri" steps in and toys with Mother Nature to produce Genetically Modified Organisms, aka GMOs.

But to people in the marketing biz, it's when “Big Brother” steps in and toys with definitions and behavior change to produce Perspectively Modified Organisms, aka (well, as of this sentence) PMOs.

Now this may sound somewhat ominous, but in the end, depending on the behavior being adjusted, PMOs can please both the boardroom and do-gooders alike. 

The modern PMO trend started in 2004, when Kraft (more specifically, its Nabisco division) responded to the vilification of its less-than-healthy products by shifting attention away from the foodstuff itself and onto the repackaging of it with the introduction of "100-Calorie Packs."  Instead of gorging on handfuls Chips Ahoy! cookies or Ritz Crackers with Peanut Butter, consumers could now daintily pick through wallet-sized, predetermined portions of the same.  

That was one small step for a man (or woman), but a giant leap for snack-food marketers, as they changed consumer perspective from chomping "snacks" to expending a small portion of their daily caloric intake instead; a win-win that simultaneously reduced public guilt and increased corporate bottom lines (the idea was a huge win, and because of the massive margins it delivered, was quickly adapted by other companies). 

The latest such

Perspective Modification

has not yet been put

into everyday practice...

but should be.  

And, I suspect, will be.

Right now, in an effort at consumer education for best health practices, many restaurants are providing calorie counts info on their menus. Despite some mind-numbing figures (I remember a colleague almost falling off his chair upon learning that the "healthy" Cobb Salad he would regularly wolf down at Ted's Montana Grill in New York was a 1,232-calorie fat-bomb), the end result is that people still aren't ordering fewer calories...in fact, some order an extra glass of wine to help them forget just how many they are consuming. 

However, a study released two weeks ago by researchers at Texas Christian University suggests that what would be way more powerful and persuasive than mere calorie data would be listing the exercise needed in order to burn off the food eaten.

In a nutshell, the study took 300 young adults, aged 18 to 30, and separated them into three groups.  While their food selection was the same (a standard American fare of burgers, fries, chicken sandwiches, salads, etc.), their menus were different:

• One group’s had calorie labels and food listings
• One group’s was food listings only
• And one group’s had labels of minutes of brisk walking required to burn off the calories in the food items (i.e. two hours of brisk walking to burn off a cheeseburger)

Suddenly, to one group, food wasn't food anymore.  And the results were...well, what you'd expect:  those given the "exercise" menus consumed way fewer calories than the people with or without the calorie count.

This shouldn't come as a major shock, because no matter how many calories you add up, people just don't understand the notion of them.  To most, a calorie is ephemeral intangible; what people DO understand is hard, sweat-inducing exercise...which, to many, is a fate worse than death. 

I'm an exercise fanatic and just this morning, I did a lung-busting 30 minute power-ride on an expresso.com networked stationary bike.  For all my huffing, puffing and thigh-burning, I disposed of 360 calories, which is about a slice of an all-dressed pan pizza from Domino’s, or a five-ounce petite filet from Ruth’s Chris Steakhouse. That’s not an equation tipped in my favor.  When food becomes work, I’ll think twice about what goes in my mouth.

Bang! 

Perception Modified.

It’s not just about food, either.  Last week, I had a meeting with two friends of mine who run a foundation that provides art to hospitals and other institutions of healing or convalescence.  They asked me how they could raise more money for their operation.

It’s a hard sell three ways:

• Medical people face bigger problems and are severely time and budgetarily challenged
• Art people may be off-put by the venue
• The general public doesn’t understand or necessarily care about art

Ouch.

My advice was to PMO their raison d’etre.  Like changing snacks into calorie counts, I suggested they change art into medicine by referring to what they deliver as “Visual Meds” or “Visual Tranquilizers.”

No guarantee of a win, but at least it’s a way towards a new start of a new way to think.

So what was this week’s big lesson?  In essence...

How things are seen

is way more important

than how things actually are. 

 

And the best way

to change people

is to change their perspectives

on how they see things.

Anyway, after all this writing, I’m starved.  I think I’ll go eat a TRX workout and wash it down with two-thirds of my hockey game tonight. 

What I Learned This Week--Let Go The Line

Consider this post a corollary, a sequel or at least a fairly close relative to last week’s dissertation.

However, instead of focusing on walls, fences and other so-called “barriers to entry,” this week’s post puts the spotlight on a different business contrivance that gives a similar false sense of security: The Trend Line. 

What sparked this all was a discussion I had with a colleague a few weeks ago about taking on a new partner and taking a big leap in a new direction, to which he made this point:

“Business has been good.  We’re making about $2 million dollars net profit.  We’re growing steadily every year and the trend line shows that we can grow this to about $6 million in four, five years.  Why should I take a risk, give up a half my profit when things are going so well?”

Here’s what I said:

“Your trend line is a lie.  It’s a pacifier.  It’s an optical illusion.  It’s like those legal disclaimers on financial offerings, the ones that go: ‘The information regarding the historical development of the funds is provided for informational purposes only. Historical data does not guarantee future performance.’ The past is irrelevant and the future is a prayer.”

Then I calmed down, and he called off the intervention.

Data points plotted on a graph and connected in a line tell a great story of how you got to where you are.  But in no way can they tell you where you are going.

Because the competition doesn’t listen to your trend line. 

Consumers don’t listen to your trend line.

In fact, even trends don’t

listen to your trend line; they

disrupt, even destroy, them. 

I just read an article about Moishes, a legendary steak house in Montreal that just celebrated its 75^th anniversary.  Rock solid, right?  Invulnerable!  Sure…until some new study comes out showing the beef is toxic…or perhaps vegetarianism becomes a rampant rage, or…

Okay, an improbable scenario, but life is full of ‘em.  I lived through countless seismic shifts, and continue to on a daily basis. 

At Airborne Mobile in the early 2000s, we were pioneers in content delivered to cellphones.  After a major “hockey stick” jump, our revenue trend line was a gorgeous 25-degree angle up.  Bliss!

And then, Apple released the iPhone.

Almost immediately, our sales plummeted. Our trend line, lemming-like, took a suicidal leap off a cliff, never to fully recover.

Now no company plans for its revenue trend line hitting a wall and plummeting like an anvil in a Road Runner cartoon.  Imagine trying to present something like this before a board: 

“Sales will increase 7.3% per month until July, upon which it will take a death spiral swan dive to the depths of hell because of a new product released by one of our competitors, we just don’t know which one.”

Yet it happens, and happens often. 

A case where the whole is less than the sum of its parts, a trend line is way less relevant than the individual data points that make it up.  Being able to understand success—or failure—and react quickly to either will result in further positive data points.  This will result in a nice historical memento to look back upon, but is in no means a tool to use to predict the future. 

At Just For Laughs, we trend ticket sales, and project pathways to profitability.  But this fragile line can be ravaged by the devastating effect of a bad review and the ensuing word of mouth (or, in a better-case scenario, be sent stratospheric if the show becomes a mega hit).  But we live by the moment.  No matter what the performers, the director, or the show itself did in the past has no bearing.  Everything depends on the now. 

So going back to my colleague, I urged him to take the shot.  Who knows, he may not have to give up 50% of his $2 million…or even his $6 million; he may be sharing $47.6 million.  Or he may go bankrupt, either with the new partner, or by retaining his current status quo. 

As I said, who knows?

What I do know with certainty though is that we can’t predict the future. 

If we did, we wouldn’t go to work; we’d buy a winning lottery ticket.

But the trend line can’t predict the future either.

Depending on it to do so is as sound a business strategy as playing the lotto.

-------------------------

P.S.  After all that heavy-handed craziness, enjoy this:

 

What I Learned This Week--There Are No More Barriers To Entry

Historians officially record November 9, 1989 as the beginning of the end—the tearing down of the infamous Berlin Wall.

I don’t know what day they will set for this landmark event, but it’s one that’s already upon us…for The Business Wall has fallen some time ago.  

I remember when my partner Garner Bornstein and myself started our pioneering mobile media firm Airborne Entertainment back in 2000, one of the questions potential investors always asked us was: “What are the barriers to entry?”  In other words, what makes it difficult for other competitive entities to enter the field?

Back then, our answers were:

• “Our proprietary technology.”
• “Our deep wireless carrier and media brand relationships.”
• “Our experienced management team.”
• “The cost of set-up and development.”

We had others, as well. 

We were cocky and confident. 

For we were entrenched behind, and protected by, The Business Wall.

Today there would only be one answer to the question:

“So sorry, but there

are NO barriers to entry!”

That's the cold, cruel lesson of the week...although it's probably many months late.

Today, anybody can do anything. 

And they can do it any time they want, usually for way cheaper than it was done before.

Easily-available software, net-based social media tools, guts, and a healthy ignorance of “how it should be” have now made every musician a producer, every producer a label, every craftsman an international marketer…and every current international marketer scared as hell.

Desktop 3D printers have become factories. 

Ballsy corporations, not governments, are sending citizens into space.  Instead of merely buying cool cars, brilliant, rich entrepreneurs like Elon Musk of Tesla Motors are making them (ironically, just like their predecessors at the turn of the 20^th century). 

College kids are creating companies, products, games and apps with the same speed and reckless abandon they used to expend partying (better still, they’re finding time to do both).

In my current field at Just For Laughs, young comedians don’t need the comedy club stage, or the TV show break anymore.  By knowing how to “use” YouTube, they create their own platforms, their own audiences, their own shows…and their own breaks.  And if they have any weight, like Louis C.K., or Marc Maron, or Chris "The Nerdist" Hardwick, they create their own worlds.

In fact, my greatest fear for Just For Laughs and its festivals is not death by our current competition.  It’s not being rendered irrelevant by some of our well-financed, heavily resourced peers.  It’s being accidentally conquered by two well-meaning young fans in a suburban basement who don’t know what can’t be done and certainly ain’t playing by any established set of rules. 

Call it “Inadvertent Demise.”

Depending on where you sit, this can either be exhilarating or frightening.  If you feel one of these two emotions, you’re in a good place, because you’re either being driven by it, or being driven crazy by it.

But if you’re not thrilled or you’re not nervous, if you think you’re still being shielded by some sort of barricade…then you’re in trouble.  Big trouble.

Because the walls have already fallen.  And even though the dust has not finished settling, your conquerors have already entered running.

And it’s only a matter of time before they come for you.

What I Learned This Week--Crude, Rude, Inappropriate...and Totally Effective

As videos go, it's a relatively basic one.

One fixed camera, shooting a handful of non-professional actors, the majority of them uttering only a simple word or two. 

Most of the time, these words are profane. (For those outside Quebec, “Tabernac,” the most used word in the video, is a popular curse.)

No animation, fancy computer graphics or special effects. 

Total budget probably couldn't buy a family of four dinner at a good restaurant.

Lasts all of one minute and eight seconds.

Yet it's one of the most surprisingly effective bits of marketing I've seen in a while.

First off, full disclosure--it comes from École nationale du meuble et de l'ébénisterie (roughly translated: The National School of Furniture Design and Woodworking), the college my younger son Hayes has attended for the past three years.  It's purpose is to promote the annual exhibition of the school's graduating class.  While my son appears in the video alongside his classmates (he coos "Holy fuck!"), he had nothing else to do with it. The creative force behind this piece is a guy named Patrick Bilodeau of Bill Kesr Films. 

You can see the video in its entirety just after this paragraph, but in a nutshell, it is shot-locked from the vantage point of the furniture, and simply captures the diverse reactions the furniture inspires.  At no point in the video do you actually see any of the creations the students have made, just the awestruck, expletitive-inducing responses to them.  Just when these reactions reach the point of the total absurd, the video comes to a close with a billboard that basically says "Come and see. You'll be surprised, too.

"

Expo meuble - École nationale du meuble et de l'ébénisterie from Bill Kesr Films on Vimeo.

Now I've been to a few of these closing shows in the past, and the reactions captured in the video are truly indicative of reality.  The creations are great, and all very unique.  But given that this promo comes from a woodworking school, what you would tend to expect (and what has undoubtedly been done) is a video that mixes various beauty shots of the final projects with a deep-throated voiceover saying something to the cliched effect of: "Come see the wonderful creations of a hard-working group of talented students.  Tables, chairs, cabinets and more from the next generation of artists and designers."

Instead, you get

a profane, twisted,

and--most importantly--

effective little gem.

Now you've got to commend the guts of the powers that be behind this year's show to put the emphasis on the emotions generated by the projects, and completely ignore the tangibility of them.  Remember, at no point do you EVER see the furniture.

Even more so, you've got to admire the guts of the administration of a government-operated institute of higher learning willing to sanction such a guttural, status-quo-inappropriate manner in which to express said emotions, and promote its graduating class.

On both counts, it is counter-intuitive, highly unexpected, and ultimately powerful.

I showed this video to a handful of marketing and PR people I had meetings with in Toronto last week.  Not only did they all fall in love with it, they unanimously expressed a disappointment that few--if any--of their "big name" clients would ever have the gumption to do something so outrageous, so bold and so...yup, effective.

Yet that is what's needed.  Desperately. There's so much clutter, static and boredom in the world of marketing--be it at the product, service, governmental or personal levels--that the only way to have any impact, any meaningful effect, is to kick your intended audience in the teeth.

Or in the case of École nationale du meuble et de l'ébénisterie, go against the grain.

So this week's lesson? 

If a tiny woodworking school can do it...what's your excuse?

Or put another way, "What's your fucking excuse, tabernac!"

---------------------------

P.S. Looks like I was right-on.  http://www.huffingtonpost.ca/2013/04/12/ship-my-pants-kmart-ad_n_3068977.html

What I Learned This Week--Seeing Double

As an Internet marketing transaction, it started off perfectly.

I just so happened to be in the market for a new pair of inexpensive reading glasses.  I could have picked up a pair of those bargain-bin readers at the corner pharmacy, but being the fashion victim that I am, I pined for some hip designer frames.

Almost like reading my mind, on a Facebook page appeared an ad for ClearlyContacts.ca, pushing $38 glasses.

I clicked, managed to find a smashing wood/metal pair that I liked at a pretty amazing price (a little more than $38, mind you); so amazing a price that I splurged on a second pair of different yet equally stand-out designer frames.

Within seconds, I had a confirmation email, complete with tracking numbers to follow my glasses on their journey from factory to me.  Within five days, two neat little boxes showed up, each filled not just with my new glasses (fully prescriptioned as well), but with a hard case, a mini-screwdriver, microfiber cleaning cloth and cleaning solution.

The ideal Internet transaction?

Indeed. 

Yet, it was the after-effects I found strange.

For almost as immediately as I received my confirmation email, I became stalked by ClearlyContacts.ca.  Like Mary’s Little Lamb, everywhere that Andy went, ClearlyContacts.ca was sure to go.  They followed me to (and believe me, this is just a partial list):

• Canoe.ca
• The Drudge Report
• CNN
• Facebook
• Fast Company
• DListed
• Yahoo Sports
• CTV News
• The Huffington Post
• Even here at my own blog (see above)!

Now as the former head of a digital company, and currently a guy trying to inject the Internet into everything we do at Just For Laughs, I get the concept of cookies, those little bits of code that help advertisers track your site visits and follow you on your Net travels. 

Cookies don’t bug me; they help drive a part of the Internet economy, one that needs to burgeon and progress.

Here, though IS what bugged me:

Just about EVERY one

of these ClearlyContacts.ca

ads featured—read “pushed”—

the exact two pairs of glasses

that I had just bought!

Now, as a businessman, I understand upsell.  I also understand recommendation marketing (“If you liked that, you’ll love this” or “People who have bought this also bought that”). 

So what bugs me so much about the ClearlyContacts.ca situation is the missed opportunity.  They had a clearly satisfied customer, and they tried to feed me something I OBVIOUSLY didn’t need (I am indeed obsessive in my fashion habits, but two pairs of exactly the same glasses is where I draw the line).  It’s like the old joke about the oblivious McDonald’s worker robotically asking “Would you like fries with that?” to a customer who has just ordered a large order of fries. 

The ClearlyContacts.ca problem is a lot more bothersome for them than it is for me, really.  I can always look away from any ad, no matter how many times it shows up wherever.  But the company failed to fully capitalize on a customer who was clearly satisfied; way more than merely satisfied, actually. 

I was happy,

guard was down and I was

vulnerable to any great offer. 

The one I got was irrelevant, and ultimately ignored.  Bad for biz. 

All this to say is that while I do believe that the Internet is the driving force behind the world’s economic engine, it does have a long way to go.  As long as customers are seen as algorithms rather than people, these kind of missed opportunities will propagate.  And these missed opportunities are worth billions of dollars in revenue.

Things will indeed change.  The Internet will get more “human” as algorithms get smarter, and in the thinking of Ray Kurzweil, the “Singularity” will bring upon us an era where machines will know us better than we do ourselves.

Maybe then, we’ll be rid of quaint, minor irritants like being sold the same thing twice. 

Franky, by then, there will be some ubiquitous minor procedure that will improve our vision forever, and eliminate the need for glasses completely.

Except, perhaps, as a stylish accessory to fashion victims like me.

What I Learned This Week--Improvement By Death

My lord, is this blog post impeccably timed! 

It combines the Passover themes of escape from slavery and death (i.e. the 10^th plague, where God smites all Egyptian first-born) with the underlying raison d’être of Easter, namely the crucifixion of Christ and his eventual resurrection.   

Ah, what perfect inspiration for a business lesson of the week!  Said lesson is a simple, yet counterintuitive, one, namely:

Sometimes,

something has to die

to make it get better 

Unfortunately, I’ve seen the opposite occur way more often.  Over my career, from trying to boost circulation for a struggling Sunday newspaper to clutching at straws attempting to sell tickets to shows that nobody wants to see, I’ve seen dozens of corporate corpses kept artificially alive by voodoo-esque potions, Frankensteinian surgeries, awkward organ(izational) transplants and futile (life)blood transfusions.  In the process, I’ve also come across too many people truly believing that they were anointed saviors who could breathe life into a moribund company, product or situation. Call it the “Playing God” syndrome.

The world of business though, is not run by the same rules as the world of medicine, meaning there is no Hippocratic oath of “first, do no harm.” In fact, in business, by doing everything in one’s power to keep “the patient” alive, one may be doing it way more harm than just killing it off.* 

Over the past year at Just For Laughs alone, I’ve been called on to deal with a handful of circumstances where we faced potentially dire outcomes.  When my proposed solution was a calm “I think we should just let it die,” the astonished looks on people’s faces ran the gamut of emotions; some thought I was joking, others assumed I just didn’t care about the company anymore, still others saw me as an evil incarnate of Chainsaw Al Dunlap. 

But in retrospect, on most of these occasions, the bravery was not finding a way to keep the projects alive; it was in being able to stand by unemotionally as they unceremoniously crashed to the ground in a pile of rubble, dust and dashed dreams…and then starting all over again from scratch.

I am 100% sure that I am not alone in facing these dilemmas…and feeling that the “resurrection” decision, if taken, will eventually be regretted.  As they used to say in those cinematic Newsreels, “Time Marches On!” and the only way to ensure it does is to let some things live only as memory.  Anything less just halts progress.

I get the “This ain’t gonna die on MY watch” ego trip involved; nobody wants to be tarred with any kind of loss, never mind be crucified and vilified as the very visible plug-puller on an ailing project.

But keeping an entity alive after its due date is counterproductive.  On one hand, corporate life support sucks up capital, energy and human resources; on the other, it drives up the majestic opportunity cost of doing something else.  A lose-lose if I ever saw one. Rather than “letting my people go” to start something that has the potential for greatness, these sickly projects diminish those who work on them as slaves…slaves to ego, slaves to the past, slaves to unrealistic expectations of the future.

So as you celebrate Easter or Passover, let the ancient holidays teach you something about modern-day business:

1) If you really want to play God,

then don’t be afraid to do

some smiting once in a while. 

2) And while you’re at it,

leave the resurrection to the pros. 

 

Yowtch!

 

----------------------------------------

*P.S.  How do you know for sure when “the patient” is worth saving or better off dead?  You don’t.  But you get hints, like slipping sales, diminished buzz, social media chatter that lauds the competition (or dismisses you), lack of partner interest, employees seeking to work on other projects, etc.  And then there’s always the all-important “gut feel.”  As I’ve said before, it’s not always right, but it’s never totally wrong.

What I Learned This Week--The Necessity of "Vibe Management"

I’ve been reading marketing/business books ever since my last year of high school, and if there’s a constant among the great ones, it’s being able to distill the main message from 300 or so pages of brilliant babble into one memorable, four-word-maximum, catchphrase. 

A partial list:

• Positioning by Al Ries and Jack Trout
• In Search of Excellence by Tom Peters and Robert H. Waterman
• Good To Great by Jim Collins
• The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell
• Being Digital by Nicholas Negroponte
• The Singularity is Near by Ray Kurzweil
• Permission Marketing by Seth Godin
• The Black Swan by Nassim Nicholas Taleb
• Made to Stick by Chip Heath and Dan Heath

Yet a snappy, t-shirt friendly, concise catchphrase alone isn’t nearly enough.  To be a true “classic,” said catchphrase needs to enter the general everyday vernacular and become a label; a label that embodies a theme and earns immediate nods of recognition and relevance whenever it is mentioned.

Last week, I heard what may be the next great one…and the best part is that it is yet to become a book (which means that perhaps I can convince the guy who uttered it to let me co-author it with him).

The phrase is:

Vibe Manager

...and it was brought up by Bertrand Cesvet at a Montreal Board of Trade breakfast gathering.  Bert is the affable chairman of the Sid Lee, and during his early-morning speech, he talked about certain people at his agency whose job it is to enter offices and meeting rooms and alter the mood amongst those gathered in a positive manner.

A couple of things here.  First, I know this all sounds a tad overly “touch-feely”; and second, I’m not sure if “Vibe Manager” is an actual Sid Lee title and/or singular job function.

What I do know though,

is the absolute necessity

to have ‘em around.

In a company, "Vibe Managers" may not be the most valuable players or highest paid, but like the fringe player on a sports team who’s “good in the room,” their importance is disproportionate to their position on the org chart.  Over my years at Just For Laughs, at Airborne Mobile, or on any of the dozens of fundraising/charitable cause committees I’ve sat on, having that one special person who is remarkably able to either diffuse tension and/or infuse enthusiasm with one well-timed comment is invaluable. 

But as anyone who has ever entered a work environment can tell you, “Vibe Management” can go two ways.  Perhaps even more powerful than the enlighteners are the toxic buzz-killers who can deflate, defeat and demoralize in one fell swoop, and do so with a twisted smile on their faces.

It’s a soft science that may be too utopian for most to fathom, but given the increasing pressures of the coprorare environment, perhaps Bert is onto something with the need for professional, positive “Vibe Managers.”   These people may not be armed with the solutions to all our problems, but can at least pave the way and help make it easier for those whose job it is to find them.

-----------------------------

P.S.  Hey, look what I just found!  Guess these folks really DO exist...

What I Learned This Week--The Power of "Who's In The Room"

Given that I am one of the speakers at the upcoming C2-MTL creative conference in May, and given that my years in showbiz and in tech have provided me with a myriad of international contacts, I’ve been put on the event’s strategic planning committee.  It’s a great group. We have a 30-minute conference call early every Thursday morning, at which we usually discuss one major issue:  “Who’s coming?”

Aside from me (he says with profound humility), C2’s speaker line-up is studded with business superstars like Sir Richard Branson, designer Phillipe Starck and supermodel/entrepreneur Elle Macpherson as well as prestigious thinker/doers like Neri Oxman of the MIT Media Lab, Nicole Piasecki of Boeing and Fred Dust of IDEO.  You can see the full list here, but frankly…rarely are any one of them the subject of our weekly C2 meeting.

When we discuss “who’s coming,” it’s about who’s actually coming to the conference…namely the faces in the crowd.  Being a commercial event, the sale of tickets to public is imperative (and given my many years running Just For Laughs, you can never overestimate the difficulty of this task).  But so are the special guests, contest-winners, grant recipients, sponsors, government partners, media members and other luminaries who will also fill the seats.  The proper attendee mix is imperative.

Anyone who has ever run an event, or even attended one, knows the value of the answer to the question of “Who’s coming?”  Frankly, at many events, the value of who’s in the room grossly outweighs the value of who’s on stage.  Look at the TED conference, for example.  The attendee line-up—a hefty, magazine-sized document—is a much coveted holy grail and “wish list” for possible encounters for just about everyone going (except, I guess, if you are one of the A-plus-listers besieged by meeting requests). 

Same goes for our industry component at Just For Laughs. I remember, in the early days, so many people’s attendance commitment hinged upon the answer to the question: “Is Morty coming?” (“Morty” being Robert Morton, at the time the producer of the David Letterman Show).

This is why, at our most recent C2 encounter, I floated the following as a possible slogan/ad headline:

“JUST WAIT ‘TIL YOU SEE

WHO’S IN THE AUDIENCE!”

The “who’s in this room” principle isn’t just pertinent for conferences.  The same goes for restaurants, bars, dinner parties, show premieres, Bar Mitzvahs, retail stores…I can go on for hours.  In fact, the same day of the aforementioned C2 meeting, I was told by one of my ebullient colleagues that Brad Pitt and George Clooney would be attending the premiere of Eddie Izzard’s show we were putting on in Paris that night.  And later that eve, when I took my son to dinner at a small Greek restaurant, we marveled that our tablemates included the CEO of one of Canada’s largest media companies and the namesake of one of the country’s oldest breweries.

So the lesson of the week may not be a brand new one, but it’s one that bears repeating…and acknowledging:

The success of any 

product or service

is not necessarily defined

by the product or service itself,

but by who actually uses it.

This is why the tailor down the street flaunts framed photos of recognized names that wear his clothes. 

And why Samsung Galaxy S III deftly positioned itself as the choice of the young and hip by counter-positioning Apple iPhones as “your parent’s products” (amongst other derogatory associations).

And why we’re so committed to make sure that the faces in the crowd at C2 won’t just be another face in the crowd.

Forget who’s “on stage.”  Remember who your real stars are. 

Most likely, they’re sitting right next to you.

What I Learned This Week--How to Defeat Defeat

Last week, I was dealt a major blow of crushing disappointment proportions.

Nothing life-or-death, no major medical or family crisis, just got the answer I didn't want to receive for something I was not merely looking forward to, but really, really, REALLY wanted to happen. 

Perhaps I was unrealistically confident and upbeat in my expectations of a positive response, so much so that I projected my charmed life after the anticipated "Yes" about ten years and five giant steps forward. All this made the eventual "No" blow--delivered via email, read and re-read about 175 times--particularly painful.

Now I'm not unique, we've all been through rejections and dejections like this; wins that turn to losses, "the other one" picked instead of you, a contract un-renewed, a critical lambasting.

It ain't fun.  It hurts.  And it can be long-term traumatic.

The difference this time around, though...is that I knew how to deal with it.

Or put another way...

I knew the secret

of how to defeat defeat.

I learned it, of course, the hard way.  The circumstances aren't my favorite ones to recall, but it was at a failed speaking engagement that I greedily took only for the money (sadists who want to know more can learn further details here). Try as I might, I was a mis-fit with the audience from minute one and just couldn't connect no matter what I did. The end result was almost literally having the mic taken from my hands in front of a rapidly-depleting ballroom of people.

As I walked off stage and through "the valley of the shadow of death" (the aisle to the back of the room and the lobby to the elevator) the pain, embarrassment and humiliation was palpable.

My gut felt like it had just been kicked by a kangaroo, I broke out into an icy cold sweat, my vision was Vaseline-coated blurry and my mouth desert-dry.

But instead of letting it all get to me, instead of being devastated...I comforted myself with these words:

"Hmmm...so THAT'S

what total humiliation

feels like!"

Rather than let the feeling overtake and define me, I defined the feeling.  This examination and mental understanding of the defeat let me take control of it, and of myself.  Instead of me breaking down, I instead broke the feeling down into small component parts...the size of which made them easier to brush aside.  Three blocks away from that ballroom stage, in less than a 10-minute walk, I was laughing again, the episode and its sting behind me.

That's the big secret:  

Don't have a breakdown

over failure;

break it down instead.

It was this process, this learning, that helped me get over my most recent set-back.  The physical reactions were different (nausea instead of pain in the stomach, hot flush instead of cold sweat, a little choked up), but again, instead of falling victim to it, I took it on head-on.  A few minutes of wallowing in misery, a break-down analysis of the overall feeling into component feelings, an understanding and dismissal of them and I was back in business in a half-hour.

So great, now I know what total humiliation AND crushing rejection feel like.

AND how to defeat them.

Which are important lessons to embrace and impart, I suppose.

But frankly, next time...I hope I get a "Yes."

What I Learned This Week--Why Quebec's Language Police Are Good For Anglos AND For Business

I've been blogging for close to seven years now, and over that time, I don't think I've ever posted about politics; my subject matters have run the gamut of business, the somewhat absurd, and the generalities of life.

But when politics starts to somewhat absurdly affect business and the generalities of life, I just have to weigh in.

This week's lesson then is about a political conspiracy; a GOOD political conspiracy though…albeit a somewhat counter-intuitive one.

In a nutshell:

The recent crackdowns by Quebec's French-language watchdog troupe (officially known as the OQLF, unofficially and snarkily referred to as the "tongue troopers") is actually designed to BENEFIT Quebec's English-speaking minority (aka “Anglophones” and/or “Anglos”) and small business.

Before fully explaining said conspiracy, a little background (particularly for all of you reading outside Quebec and wondering what the hell is going on here). Over the past few weeks, the OQLF has:

• Demanded that Italian restaurant Buonanotte eliminate the Italian word "Pasta" from its menu (a Clouseau-like affair now renowned as "Pastagate")
• Demanded that a popular bistro Holder cover up the words "On/Off" on its microwave oven and the words "Redial" and "Hold" on its phone with opaque tape
• Demanded that artisan coffee bars Caffè in Gamba in Montreal and Caffe Conti in Quebec city remove one "F" from their names 
• Demanded that chef David McMillan, of Joe Beef (renowned one of the country's top restaurants) remove an antique sign from a PEI beach hanging near his bathroom
• Demanded the McKibbin’s Irish Pub remove vintage Guinness ads and decorative signage from its walls 

Conventional wisdom

sees this as repressive,

insulting and misguided.

I see it as brilliant,

forward-thinking and

economically stimulating.

Thanks to the OQLF, Buonanotte has earned about a million dollars of free publicity, everywhere from bloggers to local newspapers to CNN. The restaurant sits as one of the remaining stalwarts on St. Laurent Boulevard; once this city's hottest strip, now a near-barren wasteland of papered-up empty storefronts. Thanks to all this attention, customer traffic—even if only from curious “looky-loo” passers-by—cannot help but increase exponentially.  

Same goes for Caffè in Gamba.  "It’s a circus here today,” owner Jean-François Leduc told the Montreal Gazette, describing the flood of well-wishers who dropped in Friday to lend encouragement after he tweeted about his run-in with the language office.  He couldn’t even dream of affording an ad campaign like the one the OQLF has provided.

To top it off, reporters everywhere, from the Globe and Mail to Al Jazeera, have been in contact with McMillan’s Joe Beef, a long-time media darling that certainly doesn’t need the promotional exposure.  YOU try to get a reservation there now! 

Don't you see it?

It’s Machiavellian,

it's genius and it’s effective. 

By stepping up these inspections and demands, the OQLF simultaneously appeases the PQ’s formidable language hardliners (who demand a crackdown on pesky English, most notably via the much-reviled Bill 14), while boosting the profile of, and traffic to, primarily Anglo-run businesses (who are perhaps just looking for a break).

And given the new world we live in, the global attention generated by the OQLF will spawn a new breed of tourist, “Wordies,” who will flock here to eat, drink and take pictures in all the affected places.  

I wish the PQ—a party where I actually have a few friends—can take full credit for this, but let’s face it, the OQLF existed under the former Liberal government as well.  It’s just that THIS government has stepped up its game.  And will continue to do so, as the OQLF budget has been increased 6% this year! (This government also had the wisdom and kindness to name a special Minister for the city of Montreal and the province’s Anglophones, a man who had the gumption to stand down his old boss, the demagogue Jacques Parizeau, in our honor.)

As an added bonus, the OQLF actions have spurred on a significant ripple effect. 

Rather than people running scared to Toronto like in 1976, the latest offensive has given rise to a refreshed Anglo political spirit, one not seen since the days of the old Equality Party. For example, last week close to 1,000 rowdy Anglos gathered at a downtown hotel to mark the kick-off of CRITIQ, a new civil rights group. 

And then there’s the revitalization of the small business entrepreneur, like my friend Liz Faure, whose new company, Bad Anglo Productions is about to launch a line of t-shirts and stickers emblazoned with sweetly sardonic slogans like “Don’t Worry, Be Anglophone” and “Anglophone Was Here.”

With so much brightness on the horizon, one small dark cloud of a problem remains—even with the 6% budget bump, there are still not enough language inspectors to go around.  So how can a deserving business attract an OQLF inspecting team, and all the ensuing buzz that follows its visit?  

Perhaps the easiest way is with this foolproof inspector-magnet process:

• Copy the image below.
• Blow it up as big as you can.
• Display it prominently in your place of business.
• Then call the OQLF, report an offending English sign...and demand its removal.

Better start hiring extra staff!

What I Learned This Week--Evening Out Life's Odds

I got into a...well, let's call it an "animated discussion" Sunday night at (of all places!) an Oscar party about (of all subjects!) mathematical probabilities.

The argu...okay, "animated discussion," centered on little Quvenzhané Wallis' chances to take home the trophy (which is almost her size) for Best Actress.

My antagonist (for I am ALWAYS the protagonist) was one of those "betting guys" who scours the Net, reads the magazines and checks the Las Vegas "official line" for all things of undecided outcome, be they championship football games, high-office elections or competitions for golden statues given for appearances in little-seen films.  

He insisted--quite authoritatively, I must add--that despite her remarkable performance, the child prodigy had less than a 10% chance of winning. He based his insistence on a multitude of factors, including her age, her inexperience, her being up against media darling Jennifer Lawrence and the fact that Entertainment Weekly "had her at only 5%."

Needless to say, he was enraged when I calmly said he was wrong, and that her odds of winning were 50:50.

Cut to an obsessive friend of mine, who's up for a life-changing role in a hit TV reality show.  He was part of a final audition pool of 20 candidates, "so on the surface, it's a 5% chance," says he.  But being obsessive and over-analytical, he reduces his reality to about half that "because the producers may want to go with a minority more visible than me, or maybe with a woman to balance out the show's cast, or maybe someone older..."

I tried to calm him, to reason with him, to even compare him to an Oscar-nominated actress by saying that like darling Quvenzhané, his chances too, are 50:50.

Here's why.

Life doesn't listen

to the odds.

Life may use them as a crutch, but unlike the risk-management algorithms used in the banking and insurance industries, life's "odds" are like ghosts--wispy, ephemeral visions that emerge when we get scared.

In a competitive field of five (like Quvenzhané) or 20 (like my friend) or even 100, it doesn't matter is who or what you are up against. It doesn't matter what advantages--real or imagined--your competitors may have on you.  

All that matters is whether you win.  

Or whether you don't.

Thus, my very rational 50:50 argument.

Now I'm no arithmetic ignoramus.  I took advanced statistics at McGill and ravenously devour all sorts of media on predictive data.  It's just that, in the end, who cares what's stacked up against you?

In the end, it's either you...

or not you.

You, or not you.  This is what VCs bet on when you show them your business plan.  This is what your teammates and your fans depend on when it's that big match showdown.  It's what your family and significant other are waiting for after that big job interview.

This is what it all boils down to.

The competition is irrelevant.  So is the playing field.  So is the inclement weather, or the past history or the favoritism, or any of the intangible variables that may be held up in the end as excuses.

When the ultimate decision comes, the only relevance your ultimate position.

Standing tall, or on your ass?  Or put another way, heads or tails?

So even though she didn't win last night, kudos to sweet Quvenzhané.  I ate a handful of gleefully-delivered "I told you so's" in her honour, but I know she'll be back in contention as she blooms from child actress into a young woman...uh, just like Oscar winner Jennifer Lawrence.

Uh...51:49 for her next time, anyone?

 

What I Learned This Week--Copping Out and Muzzling the Pitbull

Sometimes, I learn by observing.  Other times by reading.  I rarely miss by listening, and often am surprised by what I pick up while actually talking.

But in my continued quest for constant learning, rarely have I had as much fun being taught something as I did during a post-talk talk late last week.

The conversation took place at a bar, a couple of hours after I had finished delivering an animated, no-holds-barred, expletitive-laced speech for F&O Public, a gathering put together by innovative Internet retailer Frank and Oak.

Said event's audience was a group of F&O employees, investors, business associates as well as assorted friends and family.  An almost stereotypical assembly of "the new corporation," just about all of them were under 30, net-savvy, uniquely-dressed, and paradoxically confident and insecure at the same time.

The conversation's audience was a small splinter group of the event, fully representative of its demographic, spirit, look and feel. While the larger theme was comparing the "way things used to be" to "the way they are now," the conversation focused on the collaborative nature of today's digital-based, start-up culture, and the increased irrelevance of two old-school corporate archetypes, namely the "Good Cop/Bad Cop" mix and the "Pitbull."

I'm slightly paraphrasing and protecting the reputation of some beer-inspired ranters, but the conventional wisdom amongst this g-g-g-g-g-generation is that nobody believes the good cop, nobody's afraid of the bad cop, everyone sees through their act (gotta love Dan Pirarro's brilliant cartoon above), and the Pitbull is a one-trick pony performing an outdated trick.

Snippets of the Cop conversation in essence:

• "The Good Cop is powerless, and the only fear of the Bad Cop is that he or she may eventually go postal or rogue, like Christoper Dorner."

• "We have smart phones and smart cars, so instead of a Good or Bad' Cop how about a Smart Cop that ensures mutual respect?  In the past, every time we had to endure a Good Cop/Bad Cop scenario, it ended up divisive and ultimately damaging."  

• "We don't need to be 'policed' at work, or feel that there's some sort of interrogation going on. Where I work, we don't always agree, or even always get along, but we ultimately end up explaining all sides of a situation before settling on a decision that's best for the business.  People aren't always in synch with the decision, but at least the process of arriving at it is transparent."

After another round of drinks, the topic shifted over to the office Pitbull:

• "This role may have been relevant in the days of 'Chainsaw Al Dunlap' (the ruthless corporate downsizer of the '80s and '90s), but not today.  There are too many things interconnected and at stake, and talent have too many options, for slash-and-burn tactics."

• "The bark is worse than the bit in most cases, but the scary part is that the bite is usually indiscriminate. I have two dogs, and to them, the piece of Kobe beef and the old banana peel are the same thing--food.   Put both in front of them, and they'll both be devoured, usually whatever is closest goes first.  No distinction, no subtlety, no difference. That's the psyche of a Pitbull--every problem is the same.  Just get through it as fast as possible and move onto the next one."

• "The Pitbull may get some things right, but no matter what, will make more enemies than friends.  As time moves on, these enemies will make everything harder, eventually muzzling the Pitbull and minimizing his or her effectiveness. It's so much easier working together than fighting each other."

Business ain't easy.  Maintaining growth in today's economy is an uphill battle; jeez, just maintaining an actual economy is tough.  And listening to the opinions of some sharp, young people at a bar coming off the euphoria of an industry function may not be precisely indicative of "the way things are."

But at least by talking to those understanding, reaching for and grinding out "the way they should be" gives me a lot of hope for our future.

And for the realization that there will be always plenty more for me to learn.

 

What I Learned This Week--How To STAY In

Mid-February marks a very special time in my calendar every year.  

It's a time of courtship and match-making; of romance, promises of devotion and the start of what could be a beautiful relationship.

Forget Valentine's Day; I speak of the deluge of CVs and requests for summer jobs at Just For Laughs that starts just as students write their winter mid-terms.

I could go into detail about what makes a great "hire me" pitch (back in 1999, I even put together a five-part series on the subject for CBC-TV), but more important these days is what happens to the candidate once he or she actually becomes an employee.

It USED to be that the competition was fiercest amongst those trying to get in.  These days, the tide has shifted somewhat; the REAL challenge is staying in once you get there.

With that in mind, this week's learning is actually this week's teaching; it's what I learned in three-plus decades of navigating the workforce, both as an employee and an employer, and often the hard way.  

So without any further ado, here are three simple steps on "How To STAY In"...each one so cleverly incorporating the ultimate term.

1) Be INteresting

There are thousands of ways to do this, very few of them bad.  Stand out with your clothes, with your work ethic, with the way you decorate your office/cubicle/desk.  Share your off-beat hobbies, taste in music or leftovers from last night's supper.  

Do what it takes to make your peers and your superiors notice you...and have them wonder what else this INrtriguing person has up his or her sleeve. 

2) Be a Pain-IN-The-Ass

Counter-INtuitive, yes...but necessary in the process of sticking around.  INteresting is a great starter, but this step is where one has to upset the apple cart, break a few eggs, shatter a few egos, shift a few paradigms and risk it all.  

Great employees/team members have to take a make-or-break INitiative; it adds depth and cred to the shiny object that surfaced in step one.  There are no great advances accomplished in perfect harmony.  

True, it could backfire, but without this leap of faith, you'll never get past Step 1, let alone approach Step 3.

3) Be INdispensible

A successful Pain-IN-The-Ass is tomorrow's leader; the future that bosses, subordinates, shareholders and corporate entities in general need to bank on. Once you cross this chasm, you become both INvaluable and INdespensible.  

While nobody is irreplaceable, the thought of moving forward without you is almost heresy. You don't have to be as overbearing as Steve Jobs or Larry Ellison, but a unique lynchpin-esque piece of the puzzle in your own right and style.  You become a franchise player...and in the great circle of life, the one responsible for noticing the next INteresting Pain-IN-The-Ass. 

The real beauty of this process is that it's not limited to the corporate world.  It's equally as pertinent and powerful in the world of sports (think Montreal Canadiens defenceman P.K. Subban), on TV shows (think Kevin O'Leary of Dragon's Den and Shark Tank) or in the arts (just look up Shepard Fairey, Picasso, Warhol, Damien Hirst and countless others).

What I love about these "Multi-Step" programs that infest today's media is how simple they look on paper (or screen, more likely).  I also know the truth; getting there is tough, takes time and the journey is filled with so many ups and downs that you have a hard time understanding what you've done until the years allow you the proper vantage point for reflection.  

But if you don't start looking IN to this now...you'll be looking OUT for yourself forever.

What I Learned This Week--Just Say Yes

About three weeks ago, I was asked to deliver a keynote speech.  

And I've been wavering on giving a definitive answer ever since.  

For the record, it's at a gathering of Young Chamber of Commerce Organizations, so the setting is relatively pertinent to my day-to-day.  It's being held in picturesque Quebec City on a Saturday in early June, so I can make a weekend out of it.  And the request comes from one of my cousins, so I know the responsible party is, well, somewhat responsible.

But I've been hesitant on giving him an answer for a number of good reasons, primarily because I have so much going on at that time of year and I can't be 100% sure that something won't come up to screw up the plans.

So today...I said "Yes" anyway.

Earlier last week I also said "Yes" to a series of three-year business financial projections that can be scuttled in a heartbeat by a myriad of variables way beyond my realm of control.

But I said "Yes" anyway.

That response was not merely my big learning this week, but why I will continue to say "Yes" way more than I say "No" for the foreseeable future.  Even when I am not entirely certain of the outcome.

Here's the reasoning.

No matter what the game, or the project, saying "Yes" maintains your presence in it.  Saying "No" shuts you out, and shuts things down.

Say "Yes" and you can always come back and say "No" later; the option to stop is yours.

Say "No" and you can't go back and look for a "Yes" later; the other party will most likely have moved on, making your chances to re-start or rekindle the "Yes" spark nearly impossible.  Getting to "Yes" after first saying "No" is like trying to light a waterlogged firecracker.  The spark is gone.

"Yes" keeps you alive, even if you have no idea where you're going.  Either you figure things out along the way, or things blow up in your face.  But even if it's the latter, in the end, you're rarely any worse off than you'd be had you said "No" in the first place.  

No matter how much you plan in advance, you will never even come close to fully controlling the unknown. Reminds me of a great quote:

"You wanna make God laugh?

Tell him (or her, I suppose)

your plans."

Funny, but very profound.  So don't try to control life's ups and downs by overthinking the future; ride 'em out instead on your Yes-board.

Perhaps the best way to drive home this message, and end this off with a smile, is with this true Just For Laughs anecdote of a few years ago.

A well-known comedian, who shall remain nameless, was going through a terrible bout of depression (uh, this isn't the funny part).  On a particularly horrible day, he called his manager and told him that he was about to commit suicide.

The manager wisely kept his despondent client on the phone, motioned his assistant into his office, and had her call 911 from another line.  Police cars and an ambulance crew were dispatched to the comedian's house, broke their way in, subdued the man and rushed him to the hospital.  

The manager sped over to the hospital as well.  While there, he filled out papers, called the comic's family, and spoke to a series of different doctors.  After a few hours, things settled down somewhat, so the manager called his office to see if there were any messages.  His assistant rattled off the names of a few people who had called before hitting him with this:

"Bruce Hills from Just For Laughs called.  

"They're going to press with their ads and programme.  He told me to tell you that he needs to know RIGHT NOW whether or not (the comedian) will be coming this summer.  

"They want him for a week of club dates, an outdoor concert and two different sets for their TV shows in Canada, the USA and Great Britain."

The manager told his assistant to give him a minute, and handed his cellphone to someone to hold as he made his way down to the hall to check in on his client.  Once there, he peeked into his room, and to his horror, saw the comedian violently struggling against arm restraints and a team of orderlies, all the while barking out equally violent threats against himself and others.

The manager walked back down the hall, took back his phone, took a deep breath, and calmly said this to his assistant:

"Tell him yes!" 

P.S.  The comedian ended up making to that year's festival.  And to many others since then.

What I Learned This Week--The Strange Math of Creativity

I've been doing a lot of thinking about creativity these days.

A heckuva lot.

Given my career, my past, my current job, my personality, and my inbred passion for the subject, that's nothing out of the ordinary.  But what's taking my thinking to a new level is a presentation I have to give in May at the second annual C2-MTL conference (see the ad above, one which greeted me at the airport baggage claim after my flight from Vail).  

While I'll get into more details here in upcoming weeks, my appearance amongst heavyweights like Sir Richard Branson, design God Phillippe Starck and gamechangers like TOMS Shoes founder Blake Mycoskie and Whole Foods pioneer John Mackey, is based on somewhat of an audacious (some may say foolhardy) dare.  

Rather than merely "speak" at a creative conference, what I proposed to organizers was to go one step further and actually "create" something...in this case, a fully improvised dissertation on creativity based on user-generated photos I will have never seen until they are flashed on the screen behind me on stage.  Without attempting something this audacious, without eliminating the middle ground between sink or swim, there's no way I would be able to compete for attention against the A-listers who dwarf me in importance and buzz level.

So for a few blissful hours every weekend, I gorge myself on creativity...because the only way to be able to improvise on a subject is to be submersed in it. 

During this week's cerebral swim, I stumbled across a statistic about Atlanta's Oxford Industries, the parent company of fashion brands like Tommy Bahama and Ben Sherman.  The telltale stat showed that the 13 of its stores that have taken the risk of integrating a pricey in-house restaurant among its pricey clothing generate two-and-a-half times the sales per square foot of its stores sans food. That's a huge win.

Restaurants in stores may not be new (as a toddler, I remember hitting the lunch counter with my mom in Woolworth's countless times), but the seemingly disparate mash-up of haute-ish cuisine and high-end apparel is.  Hence this week's learning:  

In creativity,

two wrongs

make a right.

Creativity Math can be likened to algebra, where a negative number multiplied by a negative number equals a positive number.  Going for the obvious never produces something eye-popping or worth talking about.  Mixing chocolate and nuts doesn't; mixing chocolate and bacon does (or at least it used to, when it WAS uncommon).

Which brings me to a pair of shoes I bought recently in Chicago.  Conservative grey suede Oxfords...with SKY BLUE shoelaces (as well as a RED pair for different moods, or if I want to mix it up even further, a one blue/one red combo).  Two VERY wrongs...but a very cool, "look at me" right.  This incongruent shoelace concept may have been born on the streets with hip-hop kids and their collector Nikes, but now, it has moved to the office...well, at least the resto/stores of Ben Sherman and co.

Taking this creative thought (pardon the pun) one step further, I suspect that sooner than later, shoes themselves will come in mis-matched pairs; in other words, I'll have one grey suede Oxford, and one navy blue.  Already the Camper shoe company offsets its pairs ever-so-subtly; the day is fast approaching when this incongruity will become more blatant...perhaps when we'll team up a grey Oxford on the left foot with an Adidas sneaker on the right.

This counter-intuitive Creativity Math may be risky, but it's vital.

In order to REALLY move the creative needle in this day and age, you've got to do something wrong.

Twice.

What I Learned This Week--Time Stands Still

By nature, I don't usually harbour much sympathy for multinational corporations or high-flying billionaires, but I must admit I was a little disappointed in the vicious reaction to Cirque du Soleil's recent announcement of fiscal losses and job cuts.  

For three decades, Guy Laliberte and his cohorts were the world's golden children.  They brought a unique brand of whimsy and magic all over the globe;, helped revitalize a moribund Las Vegas with unprecedented mega-shows and custom-built tech palaces to present them in; were gushed over by luminaries, royalty and common folk alike; and in the process, made boatloads of money year after year.

In 2012, for a number of reasons (some, like over-production, their fault; others, like Japan's horrific tsunami knocking out one of their shows, uncontrollable acts of God), they slipped.  They--and nobody else--paid the price.

But what an effin' price they paid.

In the space of a week, 30 years of shine crumbled into rusty tarnish.  Sharp knives were drawn and thrust by the international media, with some of the most ferocious stabs provided by hometown press in Montreal, the same people who pampered and were instrumental in building the Cirque's mystique in the first place.  Never mind the bloom being off the rose, the thorns were formed into a crown and jammed on company heads.  And not only was the Emperor revealed to be void of clothes, his naked body was attacked and ridiculed.

So strange.  There was no scandal.  No financial impropriety.  No Lance Armstrong-like revelation of drug abuse or bullying.  Just missing their numbers and cutting some jobs.

Is that any way to treat a media darling?  Well, obviously a former media darling.

The lesson this week then was a chilling one...especially to a guy who also runs a worldwide entertainment event 30 years old.  Put simply:

--History is irrelevant.  

--Yesterday is meaningless.

--Kill your past.  

Okay, perhaps a bit extreme.  But perhaps not.  Your history may buy you a bit of cred walking in the door, but that bit of cred is seeing its value shrink faster than Greek government bonds.  But don't believe me. This from a recent piece in Bloomberg Businessweek:

"Stressing a brand's advanced age can be off-putting to younger buyers, Audi, Volkswagen's resurgent luxury line, doesn't pitch its German heritage.  

"'People always ask me, 'Why don't you guys talk about your history?' says Scott Keogh, president of Audi of America. 'That's not what drives us. What drives us is: Man, how do we come up with the next solution?  What's the next thing?  We're, like, a restless company.'"

Wait.  It gets worse. Over and above an irrelevant and increasingly disposable past...

Nobody believes the future

People make predictions in January that are, at best, rendered obsolete by March and, at worst, ridiculed in January.  In business, it used to be easy to wow people with fancy futuristic tales and hallucinogenic  dreams of tomorrow, but with so much science fiction being announced on a daily basis--driverless cars, God particles, home 3D printers...I can go on for hours--the present is mind-blowing enough.  The future is already here, and is double-parked in front of the door.

"Used to be's" don't count.  

"Gonna be's" don't resonate.

So what if the past is worthless and the future is a lie, what do we do?

We shift to a perpetual state of now. (Or as newly-named Rock and Roll Hall of Famers Rush said it best "Time Stands Still".)  We act fast, we deliver big, and we don't let up, lest we be relegated to obsolete-land.  It's an exhausting way to do business, and to lead life, but I don't think there's much choice anymore.

"What have you done for me lately?" is just a quaint bit of old-school, hard-ass nostalgia.  

The more pertinent question is "What are you doing for me right now?"

What I Learned This Week--Un-Effin'-Real!

As you read this, I am flying home after a 10-day snowboarding vacation in Vail, Colorado; one that has left my body bruised and wracked with throbs of pain.  It’s not anything new; I’ve been doing the same thing every holiday season for the past two decades.  Granted, tearing down a mountain, knees pumping up and down, in the freezing cold is not everyone’s idea of fun and relaxation…but it’s one of mine.

And here’s what I worry about—doing something like this will be the idea of fun of fewer and fewer people as the years go on.

On one hand, that’s no big deal. 

On the other, it’s a tectonic shift

in future human social behavior.

Let me explain the scary part with a seemingly innocuous, yet telltale, story.

During my full-day lesson with legendary snowboard instructor Chris “Sando” Sandowski (see last week’s post for more details), he regaled me with the tale of teaching two sharp, good-looking kids.  The standard operating procedure when one signs up for a lesson is being asked to fill out a form establishing a level of expertise; this helps the instructor know where to start and how to guide the student.  For their self-evaluation, the kids put “Level 7,” which is relatively advanced, yet not uncommon amongst the youth who ride Vail.

When Sando eventually met the kids, he was astonished.  The pair stood over their boards as if they were foreign objects, and had no idea how to even step into their bindings.

“Uh, what gives?” a perplexed Sando asked.  “I thought you said you were Level 7!”

“We are,” they replied sincerely.  “On the video game.”

The end result that fateful day was a true lesson for the boys; one that I suspect their butts, knees and elbows still feel.  (I remember my first few times snowboarding; my teacher then described it as a boxing match…with me as a Flyweight, and the mountain as Muhammad Ali in his prime.)

So all this said, here’s what worries me—with a new generation of kids growing up with so much re-created virtually...

...what chance does

cold, hard reality have?

Quite fittingly, the day that Sando recounted the story to me—last Wednesday—was perhaps the busiest day of all at the annual CES (Consumer Electronic Show) tech orgy in Las Vegas.  Over 20,000 new products were introduced at this year’s event, each more mind-boggling than the next.  Wall-sized TVs that deliver glass-less 3D; robot cars; ovens, refrigerators, lightbulbs and soccer balls that can be controlled from your smartphone; forks that buzz when you eat too fast or too much. 

And that’s just what is here now.  Coming soon, though—REAL soon!—will be stunningly-accurate, tactile virtual reality that will simulate everything from massage to sex to suntanning…to snowboarding.

So instead of laughing at Sando’s sore students, I think that before we know it, they’ll be laughing at us behind high-tech goggles as they pull dizzying 360-degree jumps off virtual cliffs.  Yeah, they’ll actually “feel” the bumps, but they’ll do so from the warm, toasty and safe comfort of their couches. 

If I were a ski hill operator, I’d be scared.  Same thing goes for people who own beach resorts, strip clubs, yoga studios, gyms…anywhere you have to travel to for a tactile experience. Sounds nuts, but they may face extinction. Pretty soon, any experience you want will actually come to you. Today’s hi-def 3D will seem like prehistoric, scratchy black-and-white as “look and feel” literally becomes “look” and “feel.”  What’s coming is a blurring between what is digitally created, and what is real.  Go figure that with his album “Reality…What a Concept!” Robin Williams would be one of the 20^th Century’s most prescient visionaries.

So what did I learn this week?  I learned how to handle a mountain way more proficiently than ever on my snowboard…but also learned that before I know it, WAY before I want it, that lesson will probably be irrelevant.

Until that time though, I will step into a whirlpool to help deal with the hurting.  

And treasure the feeling of actually getting wet.

What I Learned This Week--The Problem With Strangers

The ominous four-word warning is a familiar one to anybody whoever had a mother. 

“Don’t talk to strangers.”

Usually uttered as we were shuffled off to school, the four words were effective at putting the fear of God into us, rendering us not just mute, but anti-social as well.

Solid advice.

But as outdated as a Philco black-and-white console television.

Thinking of strangers as the bogeyman is as effective as ignoring the hyperlinks that pepper virtually every piece of writing on the Internet. Strangers are the source of new, of adventure, of discovery and  frankly, of the future. 

Let me share a story that concluded just a few hours before I sat down to compose this post.  I was on a chairlift at Vail, exhausted after a fairly intense day of snowboarding.  For those of you non-mountain types, chairlifts take a wide gathering of humanity, funnel it down to one line of four people, which jumps on the chair as it makes its way up the hill.  Unless you are a group of four, the line-up process will toss some random person next to you to diminish the line and make the most efficient use of the chair space.

On these treks up, some which can take as much as 15 minutes on a mountain the vastness of Vail, there is very little to do to pass the time.  You basically are faced with two options:

Ignore. 

Or Engage.

Given that the bearded guy next to me was holding a mascara, I decided to opt for the latter.

And jeez, am I glad I did.

The story was that the mascara was not his, but something he found in the lift line.  He joked that maybe it would help him find a date that night, which morphed into a tale about how some girl had once chosen him over a ski instructor at Breckinridge (another well-known Colorado mountain resort).  I asked him what he did, and with less than a minute left before the lift discharged us at the top, he replied “I’m a snowboard instructor!”

Ding!  What serendipitous luck!  Earlier in the day, I contemplated upping my game by taking my first lesson in years.

“I’ll take a run with you and give you some pointers,” he graciously offered.  Despite my fatigue, how could I say no?

Anyway, two invigorating, advice-and-challenge-filled runs later, I exchanged business cards with Chris “Sando” Sandowski, former pro skateboarder, former railroad worker, world traveler (see what two further chairlift trips reveal?) and the guy who teaches TEACHERS at Vail.  And later this week, MY teacher for a full day of improvement and enlightenment. (Check him out on the video below.  Crazy.)

What’s more, this guy’s network is a snowboarder’s wet dream.  Who he knows is who I dream to know.  And come later this week, well…who knows?

And that’s just the point with strangers.  As long as they stay strangers, we’ll NEVER know.

The catch is that most people are fundamentally shy.  Trying to break the ice doesn’t just require a big sledgehammer, but the type of confidence that can shrug off a cold shoulder. 

That’s what’s so great about the chairlift.  You have NO choice.  The choice is made FOR you, completely at random.  It’s like Chatroulette without the nudity, like LinkedIn live.  And worst case scenario, you never see each other again once you disembark a few minutes later (unless, of course, your mother’s words come back to haunt you and your seatmate tosses you off at the ride’s highest point).

So over and above what Sando teaches me, what I learned this week is that we should borrow the chairlift process for other controlled random human pairings.  It would work wonders in the dating world, and would be invaluable in business, to name just two different hemispheres of potential influence. 

This type of forced encountering works.  Some of the best dinner parties I’ve ever been to are the ones where they split up the couples, and oblige you to sit next to someone you hardly know, or never met before.  And I remember a few years ago being tossed into a group of strangers putting a benefit musical show together; today, some of these people have become extremely close friends, valued colleagues and creative inspiration.  Yet it took me until dress rehearsal to actually talk to any one of them.

The problem with strangers

is NOT that they are strangers;

the problem is

if they REMAIN strangers. 

Uh, sorry Mom.

 

 

What I Learned This Week (Special New Year's Resolution Edition)--Listening To The Smartest Person You Know

The question was asked most eloquently.  

It was posed during a recent speaking engagement at a tech company, one I did as a favor for a friend.

I won't do the preamble justice, but the gist was:

"Given your 36 years in business,

what was your worst mistake?"

It took me just a few seconds of pondering to land upon the right answer; quite the feat give the profundity of the query.  

Frankly, the setting of speaking in front of an audience helped speed-dial the response and, more importantly, the story that went with it.

The answer?

"My worst mistake was

any time I did something

just for the money."

The story that went with it was actually two-pronged, and focused on a pair of speaking engagements that I agreed to do, knowing full well that the audience was not necessarily  "mine."  One was for a Cardboard Association (not a euphemism, an actual association of cardboard manufacturers), the other a gathering of residential real estate agents. On the "get-to-know-you" call with each group, I felt something was wrong; for the former, they were WAY too conservative for me at every level (even insisting on calling me "Mr. Nulman" on the phone), and as for the latter, a two-hour webinar (!) explaining me the ins-and-outs of their agent web tool had me pulling my hair out.

Yet instead of listening to the obvious incompatibility warning signals ringing like WWIII air-raid sirens, I bravely soldiered on with the gigs...solely because the money was so good.

"Just grin and bear it," I told myself both times.  "It will soon be over and you'll be many thousands of dollars richer."

End result?  Unmitigated disasters both times.  

What's even worse is that both times, the client was so pissed that I didn't up getting paid at all. So the two times I took a speaking gig "just for the money" not only netted me nothing...they cost me.

And what's even worse than worse is that I committed the cardinal sin of making the same mistake twice.

There are a couple of learnings here.  Learning #1 is that "Sometimes, It's Not You...It's Them."  Or put another way, you can't fight incompatibility. Go figure, the same speech format that bombed with the realtors destroyed with the tech people.  A mega-hit.  

Learning #2 goes back to the answer from the tech speech question: "Don't Do Anything Just For The Money."  Trust me, this will save you so many headaches...and actually MAKE you money in the long run.  (Ironically, when asked how much I charged, my answer was "Whatever you have will be accepted with gratitude."  There was a different reason for my "Yes"--as a favor to someone 3,000 miles away.)

But this week's major learning is about listening to the smartest person you know: Yourself.  

It's amazing.  We KNOW what's right, we actually FEEL what's right, but somehow question our own judgment and seek validation elsewhere.  In my two speaking disaster examples, I knew going in that something was wrong.  The disconnect was palpable.  

Yet I just didn't listen to myself. I ignored the smartest person I know.  And I only have myself to blame for the end result.

In a recent interview in Bloomberg Businessweek, Apple CEO Tim Cook (sounds strange, I know, but...) talked about how he makes the hard calls.  

"The most important things in life, whether they're personal or professional, are decided on intuition.  

"You can do a lot of analysis. You can do lots of things that are quantitative in nature.  But at the end of it, the things that are most important are gut calls."

There's a reason why our stomachs are called our "second brain."  Yet even with two of them, both which ache when you're going down the wrong path, we look to others for guidance.  So many of us continue to look outward instead of inward for the answer. This lack of intra-trust has led to a whole industry of motivational speakers and self-help books.  

But if you really want

to help yourself,

help your self.

(There is a difference.)  

Listen to you.

So not only is this my Lesson of the Week, but my segue into a New Year's Resolution I'd like to share with all of you:

In 2013, I'm gonna start listening to the smartest person I know.

Moreover, I'm actually going to act on what he tells me.

Starting with:  Have a happy New Year.

What I Learned This Week--The Imperfect Gift

By the time most of you read this, you'll be able to answer the question:

"So...whaddya get?"

Unlike many, I don't mind the commercialism of the holidays.  The season gets people interacting, even if only online, and keeps the economy running.  Okay...dribbling.  

The one thing that actually does bug me about the holidays is that it heats up the hyperbole, giving merchants the license to tout their scarves, blenders, water purifiers, coffee table books, thermal socks, gift cards (from entities as enormous as Esso to as miniscule as L'Oeufrier, my corner breakfast place) and whatever else can be reasonably be exchanged for cash or credit as "The Perfect Gift."

This year, someone thought that my "Perfect Gift" would be another protective case for my iPhone. The person who bought it for me was quite astute, noticing that the protection on mine had broken at its weakest point, namely the thin bar under the phone's main button and above its plug input (anybody who ever owned an iPhone case knows of what I talk), and was kind enough to offer up a replacement.

But what bugs me about this "Perfect Gift" is the need for it in the first place. This is my THIRD case this year, and I'm not someone who treats his smartphone with reckless abandon.  At about $40 per case, that's $120 bucks a year--$10 a month--just to protect the damn thing.  I'm sure I could get a better deal from insurance giant Chubb...or from our society's other great provider of protection, the Mafia.

So at first glance, this calls for a better case, right?

Look again.   

Frankly, this calls for a better iPhone.

I read of its tumultuous design origins in the Steve Jobs biography this summer, and while the iPhone's glass-meets-metal flushness is aesthetically pleasing, it's ultimately impractical.  

And as much as I love my iPhone for what it does, the truth is that it is not just a flawed product, but an INCOMPLETE product.  The fact that for common day-to-day use, I have to augment it with a ridiculously-priced, plastic-and-rubber shell lest it end up looking like the photo atop this post (an actual iPhone of a younger colleague), is an outrage. If Apple is indeed looking for it’s next mega-product category, it can start with a shatter-proof iPhone.

The iPhone is not alone.  There are so many products and services where the harsh reality of the end result is overshadowed by the excitement of the purchase...like a home, a puppy, or tickets to a New Year's Eve party.  We buy the instant "wow" with glee, and end up dealing with the less sexy, follow-on consequences somewhat less enthusiastically, even begrudgingly.

For a gift, or for any product or service to even approach the warm, Holy Grail glow of perfection, it has to balance out the excitement/reality relationship, and extend its timeline.  Granted, you need the sizzle to sell the steak, but it had better taste good going down...and not come back up on you later.

So this week's lesson is combines the elements of promise, delivery, completeness and reliability, and wraps it in a neat little package, tied with a bright red bow, and topped with a silver bell. 

It may be a big, fat cliché, but what I've learned is the following:

The Perfect Gift is indeed

the one that keeps on giving...

and stops taking.

What I Learned This Week--How To Speed Up The Decision-Making Process

The old adage about real estate is that the three most important things are "Location, Location, Location."

Well, when it comes down to business in general, the adage morphs into "Decisions, Decisions, Decisions."  That's why the men and women on top of the corporate food chain (or the public one, for that matter) are paid the big bucks; they make decisions that can change lives, the future, the stock market, the environment, not to mention countless careers...most notably their own.

At Just For Laughs, I have to make dozens of decisions every week, on things as mundane as the wording of a TV show voiceover to as game-changing as where to invest this year's R&D budget.

Over and above all this management of the day-to-day are the new offers. Never mind the email spam or the telemarketing (of which there is an overabundance), but at least once a day--each and every day, including weekends--I receive some sort of legitimate business offer.  Phone calls, written presentations, PowerPoints, chance encounters, referrals from friends, being cornered at Christmas parties...these offers come in all shapes, sizes, forms, formats and speeds.  Frankly, I could do nothing else all year other than absorb and size up these offers, and it would be more than a full-time job.

Until recently, we had no set procedure to evaluate this deluge of pitches, projects and promises.  Each one was given a little bit of love, and in trying to be open-minded with our thought process, most ended up being given way more consideration than they deserved.

Now I know this sounds a tad elitist, but stay with me. There is no constitution chez nous that states that all projects must be treated equally. This is not to devalue the projects; new ideas are the lifeblood of a company.  But sometimes, as good as they may be, they're not for us.  And other times, well...they suck badly.  

So what we did to save time--well, perhaps to more efficiently use our time--was develop a simple Offer Evaluation Tool, an askew four-square grid designed to properly place each proposal into one of four boxes of what we need as a company going forward.

The reason I used the qualifier "askew" is that this isn't a standard, straight-line grid that cuts in four equal parts.  The Just For Laughs grid is weighted, with slanting lines creating tilted quadrilaterals of differing sizes and ensuing importance.  They are:

RECURRING REVENUE (45% weight)

Recurring revenue is the oxygen of any business.  The more it flows, the easier and longer you breathe.  This is a valuable lesson I learned at Airborne Mobile.  While we were building our company with prestigious work-for-hire contracts for blue-chippers the likes of Disney, Fox, Maxim, the NFL and HBO, we were only as good as our last deliverable.  Once we entered into long-term agreements with major wireless carriers, that guaranteed revenue monthly on an ongoing business, THAT's when we became truly valuable in the eyes of the market, our bankers and our ultimate purchaser.

CASH GRAB (35% weight)

Okay, so it doesn't flow, but comes in a sizable chunk.  Cash is still valuable.  Helps pay the bills, build a war chest and finance other activities.  This is NOT to say whore yourself out for money, but there's nothing wrong with delivering a big show or big deal...and then walk away.

RELATIONSHIP BUILDING (15% weight)  

Yes, yes...I know that relationships are vital building blocks to most businesses, a la "it ain't what you know, it's who you know."  But you know what I know?  I know that a lot of relationships are wonderful, but never pay off.  I also know that a relationship--no matter how great--won't save a shitty product, a bad deal, poor execution, or any other major corporate stain, more than once.  Then it ruins the relationship. So it's not that investing in relationships is bad, but it's like any other investment--there has to be a payoff.

BRAND BUILDING (5% weight)  

W-w-what? Only 5%? But what about Apple, or Google, or Mercedes-Benz, or McDonald's, or...  Wanna know the truth? The best brand-builder in the world is a successful product or service.  One that you can be proud of.  One that does something special and/or great.  And hopefully makes money. In my book, any project green-lit solely for the purpose of brand-building had better have a map to the land of Recurring Revenue or Cash Grabs...and hopefully, with some short-cuts along the way.

So you know what happens now when we get our next offer?  We pull out the Grid.  And here's how the conversation goes:

"Recurring Revenue?  

"Yes?  Welcome home! 

"No?  Well, is there a nice immediate payoff?

"Yes?  Pleased to meet ya!

"No?  Hmmm...well, will this build a relationship that will pay off in the near future?

"Yes?  Well...okay I guess.  Let's move forward.

"No?  Uh...does it do something un-effin'-believable for our brand?

"Yes?  Alright, tell me what I'm going to have to do.  And make it easy.

"No?  Next offer!"

Granted, this may not be for everyone, but I think it's starting to work for us at Just For Laughs.  It may work for you as well, with adjusted weights or added/subtracted criteria.

But here's what I learned this week--if I don't have a system of simplifying my decisions, I'm not just going to make less of them...I'm also not going to make the most of them.

What I Learned This Week--The Need to Create New Clichés

I am writing this post while flying home from Chicago...which is really too bad, as I am missing an interesting, important and inspirational meeting as I do so.

Said meeting is to introduce Montreal's new Quartier de l'innovation (I suppose "Innovation Sector" is as good an English equivalent as any), and present its team of ambassadors, of which I am one...alongside such heavyweights as Cirque du soleil CEO Daniel Lamarre, Sid Lee President Jean-Francois Bouchard and Martine Turcotte, Vice-Chair of Bell.  We ambassadors are aligned and assembled to represent and bang the drum for this McGill University/ETS-led project that aims to establish a creative/tech/knowledge hub in Montreal's burgeoning lower downtown/Griffintown area. (An aside--I think I have already set the record for the amount of /slashes ever used in a blog post.)

This is the second such effort of "re-branding" Montreal I've been involved with lately; the other being the city's 375th Anniversary celebrations, a project being led by my friend and partner Gilbert Rozon.

Now I tell you this not to brag about the fascinating nature of my extra-curricular activities, but to explain the common goal and underlying theme of these two projects--breaking free of handcuffing, handicapping stereotypes. 

Studies show that when people think of Montreal, the images that pop up are those of its Mount Royal centrepoint, the St. Lawrence River, snow, Celine Dion, bagels, the Olympic Stadium, as well as the artery-hardening delicacies of poutine and smoked meat.  Sadly, this is no joke.  Not that there's anything wrong with the mountain, the river or cheesy french fries doused in sauce, but they're hardly the makings of international awe.  Perception is reality, and such is Montreal's reality on the world stage.

Even more striking is that these deeply-engrained clichés are also Montreal's reality within Montreal.  In fact, in the preliminary positioning documents for the 375th, there was much talk of focusing on many of the above-mentioned landmarks and pockmarks.

Yikes.

The good news about all this is that during our first get-together, the 375th group rallied and rebelled against the stereotypes...and the Quartier de l'innovation never even mentioned them.

So what I learned this week seated in the intersect set of these two groups is a new need for the city of Montreal--and for any business, group or person trying to make its mark, for that matter:

The need to

create new clichés.

Clichés and stereotypes get a bad rap, but they exist and are perpetuated largely because they are based on truth--well, at least a modicum of it--or on perception, which we have established as reality earlier on in this post.

You can fight common clichés, but where's the win?  Saying Montreal's NOT about winter or greasy, calorie-packed, high-cholesterol food? 

The win is in the convincing otherwise, and the art of convincing rarely comes from the negative or exclusionary "This is what we're NOT"; it comes from the "This is what we ARE."

I say this after spending a weekend in Chicago, a city I've been visiting for 30 years, and which is one of the cornerstones of the global Just For Laughs Festival circuit.  Three decades ago, the city was still shedding its gangster/meat-packing/pizza past.  These days, you think of Chicago and top-of-mind images include majestic green space (Millennium Park), public art (Cloud Gate, aka "The Bean"), unparalleled nouveau cuisine (Alinea and others) and quirky neighborhood "scenes" (like Lincoln Park or Old Town) that were once the proprietary shadings of cities like London or New York.

These images and their positioning power rarely come naturally; usually, they are the result of guts, vision and tenacity that can push an agenda of long-term planning through ignorance, political opposition and indifference.

Which brings me back to clichés.  Once you're putting the time and effort into changing perceptions, you'd better be sure that the change you're putting in place will not merely say what needs to be said in a confident, defining manner, but actually stand the test of time.

So I don't know where Montreal's 375th will ultimately take us (we still have three years to prepare), but suffice to say that one of the primary goals will be to create the clichés that will not only mark the city, but make it remarkable (as well as create the unmistakable visuals that will be shared around the world via social media).

And if one of the clichés we create is the shiny image of Montreal's tight-knit Quartier de l'innovation, all the better. 

So forget what others think of you; think of what you WANT others to think about you.  Then distill it down to its most common root and exploit that root in a most elementary, basic way. 

You'll be creating a new cliché. 

And an easy way to define your destiny.

---------------

(P.S.  The image above is from my great friend Terry Mosher, one of the world's great editorial cartoonists.  This was his response in the Gazette in February upon learning that Celine Dion and her husband Rene Angelil actually bought the legendary Schwartz's Deli, that serves the globe's most renowned you-know-what.  Terry, I hope you don't mind me reprinting!)

What I Learned This Week--The Solution is NOT The Answer

It was a bold challenge from a young entrepreneur.

He identified a weak link in an important aspect of my business ("It kind of sucks" was his actual prognosis), and offered his services to fix it.

Now I get this type of come-on all the time at Just For Laughs, and I suspect a similar refrain is oft-heard throughout corporate corridors everywhere.  I wasn't put off by him; the challenging of the status quo was this person's job, and how he made his living.  And because I'm always trying to embrace anything that will make my business better and more profitable, I gave the young man a chance to make his pitch.

At the meeting, he summarized the problem: a portion of our social media output was weak and underdeveloped.  It needed to be re-thought, and bolstered.

He then stated the solution: hire him and his company to do the bolstering with additional manpower and manhours.  Male-dominant terminology aside, I paused when he was done and looked him straight in the eye.  I was kind, I was polite (I really like this guy), but I was also direct as hell in my response.

"Tell me something I don't know" was how I started.  And then, the floodgates opened.

"I hope you don't think I'm stupid, but do you really think I don't see the problem, or know the solution?  If I had the money, I would ramp up and staff up; that's the solution. I didn't need you to tell me that."

What I needed was "The Answer."

How do I do this without additional labor costs?  Are there new tools that could make things easier?  Is my overall strategy messed up?  And if more people are an unavoidable inevitability, where/what do I cut to provide for them?  Tell me something I DON'T know.

He had no answer for my search for one.

Although they're seemingly

cut from the same cloth,

there's a gaping divide

between "The Solution"

and "The Answer." 

"The Solution" is usually obvious.  It's freezing cold and you have to go outside, so what do you do?  You wear a coat.

"The Answer" is not a simple problem-solve.  Let's say you don't have a coat.  Or can't afford to buy one.  What do you do then?  What options are at your disposal?  And do you really even have to go out?

These days, people are getting smarter and business problems are getting tougher.  Unfortunately, "The Solution" doesn't solve things anymore.

For example, take the much-discussed Fiscal Cliff scenario being faced by the U.S. Government.  

"The Solution" is easy--Change the laws.

But that's far from "The Answer."

"The Answer" to the Fiscal Cliff may never be found, but it's going to require tough action, opinion swaying, people skills, new paradigms and courageous leadership to even come close.  

In other words, "The Answer" is what separates the contenders from the pretenders.  

"The Answer" requires profound research, critical thought and usually a mindbending creative swing to tie the two together with a plan of action that actually confronts and defeats the problem.

Put another way, "The Solution" is surface, school-book theoretical; "The Answer" is deep, street-level action taking.

In the end, "The Solution" is the difference between "What's Wrong" and "What's Right"; "The Answer" is the difference between "What's Right" and "Here's How to Make it Right."

Keep looking.

-----------------------

And P.S.  If you're trying to understand the relevance of the photo atop this post, click here. 

What I Learned This Week--Where Charity Begins...And Ends

One more week and the month of November finally comes to an end. 

Check that.  Small typo.

I meant to type Movember, as the mustache-growing fundraiser for men's prostate and testicular cancers has hacked the calendar and has usurped the former 11th month of the year in attention, importance and ultimate positioning.

Not that there's anything wrong with this.  Movember is one of those true win-wins; a marketer's dream in terms of awareness, and a financial windfall for men's health charities.  Outstanding tell-tale visual symbol, too; in fact, in my office alone there were about a dozen guys outwardly flaunting their hairy upper lips (okay, just slightly hairier in some cases).

But here's the slight problem.  

I asked most of them if they've ever been checked for prostate cancer.

The no's were unanimous.

Same thing for the handful of other encounters I had with the temporarily 'stached.

It's one thing to raise

money for a cause.  

But it's another

to actually do something 

for it...or for yourself.

Here's what I mean.  In a stroke of brilliance, Montreal radio station 92.5 The Beat twisted the Movember movement to a stunningly simple logical--and ultimately necessary--conclusion.  Instead of just growing another mustache, morning man Cat Spencer last week offered male listeners the chance to win a free prostate exam at a local medical clinic (to be inclusive, co-host Sarah Bartok offered free mammograms to female listeners at the same time).  What's more, Spencer actually underwent an exam himself and broadcast it live on-air from the event.

Compare this to the common radio promo drivel of having listeners do something trite or dopey to win concert tickets or a cheap t-shirt, or having shock jocks humiliating themselves or others in an attempt to pump ratings.  Much kudos to The Beat.  

Allow me to further my point by indulging in a personal tale.

Last week, my wife and I invited 45 people into our home to hear the tale of Shea Emry, the Montreal Alouette All-Star middle-linebacker.  Shea opened up honestly and painfully about his bouts with depression.  The event was an awareness-raiser for AMI-Quebec (Action on Mental Illness), a group that attempts to de-stigmatize mental illness and act as a support for those affected by it in some way. My wife sits on its board of directors.

No great hoopla, no gimmicks, no talisman to wear, just eye-and-heart-opening talk to those who can benefit from it, or help pass the message.  Nobody left unaffected or unaware of said message. (A previous AMI event starred Howie Mandel, but walked the same path.  Rather than a "benefit concert" in which he performed his standard show to raise money for a cause, Howie told his personal story about dealing with OCD in a way that shocked and delighted the crowd, and initiated immediate action from those gathered as well.)

Now, I give a lot of money and a lot of time to charitable causes.  Yet many times I find myself dressed up in some black tie ensemble, surrounded by dolled-up beautiful people at some luxurious venue, sipping champagne, nibbling on shrimp...and wondering "Just who/what am I raising money for tonight?" I'm sure the same goes for many who don the t-shirt, walk the walk-a-thon, wear the ribbon or bid at the auction. And even if you "get" the cause, what are you doing--like The Beat--to add relevance to your good deed? 

Giving to charity is admirable.  (In fact, as a Jew, the religion actually expects it of me.)  But if you give without thought, without conviction, without understanding what you can REALLY do to help, what are you really giving?

My late mom used to always say that "Charity begins at home." Not literally in the house, but that it begins inside you. And her lesson was one I re-learned this week by listening to, and admiring the actions of, Cat Spencer and Shea Emry.

So as Movember ends and the "official" Holiday season begins, don't just be part of a charitable cause.  

Let it be a part of you. 

What I Learned This Week--The Ignoramus in the Room

They say that November is the cruelest month.

Well, "They" must be attending our current slate of annual budget/strategic planning meetings at Just For Laughs last week.

The antithesis of the exhausting-but-euphoric time that marks us delivering our flagship event in July, our meetings are equally as draining, but with very few of the joyful moments that make delivering a Festival so rewarding.  Our November meetings are judgment days where far-reaching decisions are taken, where budgets are slashed or rewarded, where colleagues jockey for power, where one's elevated objectives are set in stone; in essence, who shall live, who shall die, who shall be exalted and who brought down.

Put another way, it's kinda like Yom Kippur...except that we can eat.

As evils go though, our November meetings are indeed a necessary one, as what eventually emerges from them does provide us with a roadmap and expectations.  Good luck running a business without at least one of those two.

So who are the lucky meeting attendees?  Obviously, leaders of each of our sectors, plus key members of their staff.  But joining the experts in attendance are some company "generalists." These people, from accounting, or operations, or upper management, only see each sector from a bird's-eye-view, and thus their understanding of it is rudimentary at best.

Equally as obviously, they are the ones who ask the most uneducated, ignorant and ultimately infuriating questions.  The type that don't just make you roll your eyes or slap your forehead, but force you to tighten your stomach like a vise and clench your anus like fist.

So here's what I learned this week: At such meetings...

 

The Ignoramus

is a necessity.

 

Ignorance isn't such a bad thing.  The word is given a bad rap.  Unlike stupidity, ignorance can be cured.  And that's the beauty of the "Ignoramus in the Room."  Their general understanding--or mis-understanding--of the facts, the situations, the business, the history, the players, the what-have-you acts as a catalyst for discussion and discovery.

At worst, the Ignoramus makes one explain things that have been over-explained ages ago.

But at best, the Ignoramus brings what I used to call Virgin Contact Lenses to a situation--they see things differently and force us to take this "greenhorn" vantage point.  Their outsider status may make them most hardened veteran see something new, or re-examine a decision long engrained as "this is how we always do it" in their psyche.

Don't ban them from your meetings; invite them in!

Don't believe me?  Just think--whom would you rather spend a dinner with: a bunch of know-it-alls, or a group of know-nothings?

Sorry, no specific examples to share with you; I take this stand to protect the innocent, and the guilty.  But trust me when I say that at last week's meetings, just about every exasperated sigh of "Oy..." was met with an equal contemplation of "Hmmmm...."

Let's hope I can say the same for the ones that are going on as you read this.

So to close this tribute to the Ignoramus, I leave the last word to Lou Dinos, a Los Angeles-based comedian with whom I used to share a room on the Howie Mandel American tour I produced way, way, way back when.  A happy-go-lucky guy whose off-beat brilliance is grossly underappreciated, Lou would always make me laugh when he tossed off this non-sequitur in his act:

"They say that ignorance is bliss.

I don't know what that means...

but damn, I'm happy!"

 

What I Learned This Week--The 100% Solution

I was filling in as a guest professor at my friend Pinny Gniwisch's Digital Marketing Class at McGill last Tuesday evening. Given it was a night class, the student body was composed primarily of those actually working in the digital sector, which happily served to elevate the level of understanding and the depth of the back-and-forth conversation.

At one point during the class, while I was outlining my strategy of tweaking and adjusting of the Just For Laughs flagship hahaha.com website away from content to focus on sales, a student raised his hand and asked:

"What conversion rate

are you looking for?" 

Without blinking an eye, I responded immediately.

"100%!"

The class laughed, and so did I, but I quickly admitted that I was actually quite serious.  "I know that I'm probably NOT going to get it," I said, "but it is truly what I am LOOKING FOR."

Ah, the joy of semantics!

Upon reflection later that night, my "100%" reply lessened as an off-the-cuff flippant remark and took on added importance and relevance. 

As I walked home from McGill, I passed by blocks of closed retail stores...granted, most closed because it was after 9:00 p.m., but many because they had gone out of business, leaving ugly, barren storefronts in their wake.  I thought about the oft-used shopper defense mechanism of "Just looking!" when approached by a sales rep, and I realized that if I owned a store, I would be pissed if someone came in and didn't buy anything.  It's like being rejected at the high school dance; like what, I'm not good enough for you?

The sad part is that indeed, for the most part, we are not good enough.  By accepting anything less than 100% conversion, we are not aiming high enough, and settling for second best, or third best, or 18th best.

So damn right I speak the serious truth when I say I want 100% conversion.  Why in the world would I want anyone to come to my site and NOT buy?  When I go to Amazon, it's rarely to "browse."  Same thing with iTunes.  Once I've landed, its rare that I take off again empty-handed. Why shouldn't I demand the same from MY customers?

So with all due respect to Sherlock Holmes and his 7% Solution, I'm banging the drum for upping the ante to

The 100% Solution.

In a nutshell of a manifesto, The 100% Solution says that everything we do should be focused on converting every visitor into a customer.  This involves microscopic attention to detail, obsessive gathering and crunching of analytics, and a constant flow of change...not for change's sake, but for success's.

Back to retail.  If that were my line of work, like in politics, I would conduct "Exit Interviews" to inch my way towards 100% conversion.  I'd run after people down the street if I had to, and find out why they left without buying.  Was the music too loud? Were the prices too high?  Was the merch hard to find?  And then I'd study the Apple Store, which perhaps comes closest to achieving The 100% Solution in the market today. 

Over to e-tailing.  On the Web, there are thousands of software tools, gurus and case studies that we all can use to lessen the distance to the holy grail of 100%. Trust me, I am overwhelming myself with them in my quest.

But it's not just business.  The obsession to getting that "Perfect Score" can apply everywhere.  When I work out at the gym, I try to ensure that every single rep--every one!--I do is the best that I can do.  No slacking off or working at 75% capacity.  Same thing when I play hockey: every on-ice shift is played full-out, balls-to-the-wall (sure helps when your linemates are half your age and twice as good).  

Even this damn blog post is being written, re-thought, fine-tuned, shuffled, sculpted and honed with the (somewhat egomaniacal) thought that everyone who reads it should love it, immediately share it with countless others, and wait impatiently with bated breath for my next one.

Yes, I know life doesn't always work like that, or hold itself to those ideals.

But that doesn't mean we shouldn't strive for the ideal.

And until someone invents a fourth dimension where the whole is greater than itself, the only ideal is The 100% Solution.

And now...back to the top of this post for one more edit/re-write.

What I Learned This Week--The Value of Storms

Quite coincidentally and somewhat ironically, I was reading the harrowing coverage of Hurricane Sandy when my iPad beeped to inform me that I was being invited to three major brainstorming sessions to conceive celebratory ideas for the city of Montreal's upcoming 375th anniversary.

I hate brainstorming sessions for many reasons. Not merely do they waste time, they are usually stultifying and counter-productive.

Why?

Because they are as far from "storms" as anything can get.

Most brainstorming sessions I've attended are comfy, happy-face events, usually held in posh boardrooms, fuelled by a sumptuous buffet and limitless coffee and "stimulated" visually by walls of whiteboards and flip-charts.  They come with polite, democratic rules like "There is no such thing as a stupid idea" (which in itself is one of the stupidest of all) and tend to treat all participants as equal.  

Yeah, just like the real world.

The end result is usually a namby-pamby pandering to the consensus, or if you're lucky, to the most insufferably boisterous person in the room.

Brainstorm sessions are ultimately doomed because they are not storms, but dumps.  Most of those that I've attended are marked primarily by people once again unloading preconceived notions they have held inside their cerebral reservoirs for years.  If accepted, hallelujah, room for perhaps a new idea.  If not, they are sucked back in, ready to be dumped out at the next idea session.

When I was co-running Airborne Mobile, my oft-chanted adage to our creative types was "Get off the floor and out the door" when seeking the new and innovative.  The idea was to let the real world inspire them, and let some random sighting or haphazard event inspire change and ignite the lightbulb over their heads. The objective was to react to a random, unexpected catalyst.

Which brings us back to Hurricane Sandy.

Now by no means am I demeaning the suffering and the tragedy wrought by this horrific natural disaster.  While spared the brunt of this beast, I lived through the 1994 Northridge Earthquake and the 1998 Ice Storm, so I know what it's like to (thankfully) survive Mother Nature's fury.  

But to use Sandy to draw an analogy, we will soon witness the positive results of this (b)rainstorm.  This catalyst will bring about change in municipal infrastructure, in innovation, in the way people deal with each other, in ways that are not yet imagined.  There will be new ways to prevent things like this from ever being as catastrophic (check this piece on waterproofing power grids, for example), new products invented, new companies started, and new areas of towns developed as others are abandoned.

To wit, a New York Times piece about "Getting Back To Normal" quoted Stephen M. Sweeney, president of the New Jersey Senate, speaking about the battered Jersey Shore:

“We just can’t rebuild it the way it was. The worst thing to do is to have this experience and not learn from it.”

That's what storms do.  

They destroy, but they lay the groundwork for rebirth.  

They reveal weaknesses, but they teach.

They toughen us up, and give survivors a sense of pride in the stories they spawn.

So again, without making light of a serious situation, here's what I learned this week:

Storms poke gaping holes 

in the status quo

and force its iminent change

Ultimately, THAT's what a brainstorm should do.

So at the very least, at the upcoming sessions for Montreal's 375th anniversary...I'm opening up the windows and setting off the sprinkler system.

What I Learned This Week--Why We Need a 365-Day Hallowe'en

Although this may make me come off as a spoil-sport and (I love this term) a party-pooper, I have a confession to make:

I'm not a "Hallowe'en Guy."  

Never was. Never got off on being costumed. Even as a kid being peer-pressured into trick-or-treating, I donned the most minimal of appearance-changing accessories as a perfunctory disguise.

When I reveal this little-known personal factoid to others, the usual reaction sounds something like: 

"Well how can that be, given how wildly you dress every day?"

And that's just the point.

My everyday wardrobe explodes with color and/or walks the boundaries of what's new (even my Wikipedia entry mentions my "eccentric attire" in its first sentence).  Top it all off with about five pounds of jewelry (earring, neck chains, five bracelets, at least three rings and a heavy watch), and my sartorial presence speaks volumes.  A costume seems so anti-climatic.

In fact, a couple of weeks ago, I was part of a live, one-on-one interview series headed by McGill Marketing professor Karl Moore at a Homecoming event.  During our session, he asked me:

"We're about the same age.  How come you're so much cooler than me?"

I looked at Karl, his personality sucked up into a black hole of business suit and tie.

"I guess it's the stuff I wear," I laughed, as I shook my right wrist with a clank. Given the audience, I had "dressed down conservatively" that day in a purple cashmere sweater and vintage Levis. 

"Oh, I could never wear that," Karl said.

To which I replied, not just to him, but to the entire audience watching us:

"When was the last time you tried?  I suspect 'never'."

I was right.

Now I didn't ask him, but I strongly suppose that Karl had no problem getting into vampire garb or pimp costume or what have you for any of the parties he was invited to over the weekend.  Same thing for the multiple dozens of disguised people I saw walking down Sherbrooke Street Friday and Saturday during my late-night dog walks.

Well, THAT's the real point.

Hallowe'en gives people

a "License to be Different"

The Hallowe'en License makes it okay to stand out, to go wild, to shock, to make people laugh or gasp. 

Problem is...it only happens once a year.

Which is why the "holiday" is no big deal for me.  What has made me "me," what has allowed me to succeed greatly, and also, to be frank, what has allowed me to fail spectacularly, is the fact that I have taken Hallowe'en's two-or-three-day "License to be Different" and converted it into a lifetime membership.

Let me take this post into the homestretch with a little anecdote from my childhood.

Like many others I suppose, I once asked my mother, "Mom, there's Mother's Day and Father's Day...how come there's no Children's Day?"

She smiled warmly and answered, "Every day is Children's Day!"

So what did I learn this week?  

For the world to progress, for people to be more fulfilled, for the benefit of our economy and our spirit, and for the enjoyment of us all...EVERY DAY should be Hallowe'en.

There's nothing stopping you, especially when you are your own license bureau. 

What I Learned This Week--Real-Speaking Guiding Principles

It was a very fulfilling way to cap a very busy week: watching CBC's George Stroumboulopoulous interview Cirque du Soleil's Guy Laliberte, American Apparel's Dov Charney and Aldo Shoes' eponymous leader Aldo Bensadoun about the importance of corporate social responsibility.  

This high-octane panel discussion--one that would headline the type of business conference that rolls into town and charge about $1,000 or so a head to attend--was the fitting culmination of a 10-day celebration that marked the shoe retailer's 40th Anniversary.

A special event for a special man, because when anyone ever mentions Aldo, they talk about his goodness first and his success second. In fact, in a newspaper article about him earlier in the week, Aldo outlined his three business principles:

• Love
• Respect
• Integrity

Jeez, is this any way to run a global corporation?

I suppose so, given Aldo's 1600 stores gross close to $2 billion every year.

As a corporate mission statement, Aldo's three little words may be somewhat idealistic, but at least the message is clear...particularly when compared to the usual dreary, cliché-filled, jargon-overflowing bullshit that impresses nobody and is remembered by even fewer. 

Ah, the principles/mission/vision statement. It's one of the great business lies. Most people I know roll their eyes at best, gag at worst, at the first mention of their company's version. And if one is that cynical from the get-go, things ain't gonna get much better moving forward.  

Aldo may not give his employees a mouthful, or Wall Street the standard operational verbiage they expect, but what he does provide is something to believe in. And something to live by.

What made this even more fulfilling was that at Just For Laughs, we are in the process of doing the same thing.  In other words, we're trying to distill not merely what we stand for, but what we're aiming for...and doing so in the most precise, real-speak, easy to buy into and easy to follow doctrine.  I'm kind of sick of the "We want to be a global leader in..." diatribe that I encountered ad nauseum in the tech biz and still see to this day in annual reports of companies across the entire spectrum of business.

At Just For Laughs, we have locked down the following 11 words over three principles.  They apply to everything we do, whether its an international TV show, a pitch document for a sponsor, an ad campaign, a major new event in someplace far away, or the mere press release announcing said major new event.

• Don't be boring
• Must be great
• Gotta be proud of it

Even though I was remiss starting the principles off with a negative, the difference between "Don't Be Boring" and "Be Exciting" is subtle, but important.  People have different definitions of "excitement," but I feel that boredom rears its ugly head more thoroughly, hence my choice of instructional words.

As for the other two, being un-boring is not enough.  Every action or product must skim the outer reaches of unbelievable.  And in the end, if you're not willing to show it off and shout it from the rooftops, well it's probably not all that great and not worth doing in the first place.

When I first showed this around (which I thought both great and un-boring), one of the questions that popped up immediately was "Yeah, but what about profit?"

Believe me I know, profit is corporate oxygen.  But as I explained:

"You make sure everything you do ain't boring, that it's great and that you're proud of it, and trust me, the profit will come in tidal waves."

So will Just For Laughs ever be as big as Aldo?  Who knows?  What's more important though is that we at least borrow from the best.  These real-speak principles are one of my first steps.

So what did I learn this week?

Business or person, you've got to stand for something.  And the clearer you make what it is you do, the easier it will be to lead others to do the same with you and for you.

Speaking real is the first step in being real.

And, I suspect, in being really profitable, too.

What I Learned This Week--The (VERY!) Giant Screen

Strange phenomenon.

I was recently invited to the launch of the second annual C2-MTL Conference, an event put on by the ballsy ad agency Sid Lee in conjunction with Fast Company magazine.  At it, live on stage, a personable and glib host interviewed organizers, presented government officials and introduced the conference's speakers line-up (including luminaries like designer Phillipe Starck, model/entrepreneur Elle McPherson, Blake Mycoskie of TOMS shoes shoes and, although my light may be of lesser lumens, even yours truly!).

Given the bleeding edge guest list of techies, hipsters and marketing types assembled, aided by the liberal passing of quite passable wine, the assembly was rather--shall we say--animated, making the launch's host compete (well, sometimes fight) for their attention.

THAT wasn't the strange phenomenon.

What WAS, was how the chit-chatter of the gathering uniformly and instantly quieted down when the host turned to interview people not at the event itself, but elsewhere via webcam on a giant screen.

In a very general observational nutshell, the behavior was:

• Dismiss the Live
• Worship the Screen

This may be one extreme example, but its a trend I find fascinating...and expanding.  Given the fact that our eyes spend more time glued to screens than ever before (what used to be just TV has now mutated into desktop, laptop, tablet and mobile), the respect given to them versus the actual source material is puzzling...if not disturbing.

Think I'm exaggerating?  Go to a concert or a sporting event, and watch the watchers.  Check the angle of their eye-lines.  If they're not too busy fixated on their phones taking pictures or video (another, previously ranted, beef of mine), they're watching the hi-res, internal broadcast of the event on giant screens above rather than the event itself below. 

If this were the only fallout of pixilation fixation, so be it. 

But frankly, the way people are watching live content is influencing the way live content is being produced.  I remember running into a videogame executive at the NHL All-Star Game a few years ago who told me that TV producers are trying to replicate videogames in the way they present live sporting events. In other words, they were trying to make the football TV broadcast look more like the Madden game, the hockey one more like NHL20-whatever. 

More recently, at TV meetings for Just For Laughs just last month, network programming execs asked for shows that were conceived "mobile-first."  And given Google's foray into eyeglasses, ones that morph the magnifying lenses into literal in-your-face broadcast screens, things are only gonna get crazier.

Let's face the facts; this ain't a calamity, but merely another step along the evolutionary scale of technology and human behavior. 

But as a content maker and deliverer, it has important ramifications for me.

So the lesson this week?  Maybe "Phoning It In," the derogatory term for a lazy performance, is taking on new, more positive meaning. 

Perhaps the next time I have to present something live, I'll do so via a giant screen from somewhere else...even if it's simply behind the screen itself.

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P.S. Here's a look at what C2-MTL is all about.  Hope you can see me there live-ish ;)

 

What I Learned This Week: Me Finding You

Ahh, the life's lessons I learn!  Some are profound, some are arcane, and some are practical.  This week's is most definitely the latter...and may save you a helluva lot of hassle.

So last week, leaving work at about 6:45, I found a wallet outside my office.  It belonged to a freshman McGill University faculty of science student. 

No cash inside--either by design or prior act of larceny--but a bunch of receipts, a student ID and residence entry swipe card, bank/debit card and most importantly, attached by a thick metal ring, a set of house/apartment keys.

What was missing was any fast and easy way to contact this person.

Now maybe I'm old school, but me separated from this kind of stuff sets me into panic mode, so I assumed it for this person and took it upon myself to find a way to contact her.

What was supposed to be a relaxing supper and work session at home was thrown askew by me trying to track this person via Facebook (she's probably still wondering who this stranger is trying to befriend her) and then by phone.  I called the number on the residence card, but it led to a voicemail and rebound instructions to a website.  I went to said website and left an email at the "info@" address.

Knowing that neither would be attended to until the morning, I clicked over to the List of Residences on the McGill site and picked one at random.  Obviously, they couldn't tell me whether this student lived there, but after checking to confirm that she didn't, they gave me another number to call, McGill Central Security.

Doing all this while eating, I dialed Central Security who suggested I drop the wallet by their offices, which was only about 10 blocks away on the same street where I lived, but there was only so far I was going to go with the immediate dinner interruption I explained.

"No problem," the woman said. "Just drop it by tomorrow."

"But I have her keys."

"Well, you can also drop it by the nearest police station.  They have better ways of tracking this person down."

Great.  So now, two-and-a-half-hours after I'd found it, this cursed wallet had become some sort of millstone around my neck.  

I cajoled the Security person to do some of her own research, take my number in case they find the wallet's owner, and call me if there is any success.

At 11:11 p.m., the wallet's owner texted.

"Hey.  I heard u found my keys n ID.  

Thank u!  Where could I get them back?"

I called the number on the text, and spoke to someone who was surprisingly less concerned with the matter than I was.  End result is that I left the wallet with my building's doorman, and I think it has been picked up.

Not that I mind terribly, and I know it adds to my karmic account, but I spent the good part of four hours trying to track down someone who lost her wallet. Her problem became mine.  I'm sure there are others that would've said "Screw it," and tossed the wallet back on the street for someone else to deal with.

So here's the lesson.  

Emblazon anything you value

with an easy way

to contact you

I have my email and phone number on the back of my iPad, my iPhone and inside my written journal.  I have at least one business card in my wallet, my briefcase, in the pockets of favorite jackets and coats, and inside and outside every piece of luggage when I travel.  My dogs are tagged.  There's even a little sticker inside high-end umbrellas.

Yeah, maybe I'm anal-retentive about it.  But at least I'm not a burden on someone else if MY stuff gets lost.

Identify all your important stuff.  (Or as they say in the Tom Peters-ian marketing world, "Establish your personal brand.")

Make life easy for you.  

AND for someone who may become inadvertently connected to you.

It may be the difference between found...or lost.

What I Learned This Week: The Secret Ingredient (!!!)

Note:  This is a VERY Jewishy post.  Racists and anti-semites may want to skip over to their next favorite blog ;)

Last week marked Yom Kippur, the day of atonement, the most solemn and important day of prayer for Jews the world over.  Combined with two days of Rosh Hashana--the Jewish New Year the week before--the pair make up the "High Holidays," a period that draws Jews to synagogue like no other time of the year.

For the uninitiated, services for the High Holidays are long, and it can get hot and somewhat uncomfortable jammed in a room next to hundreds--or in the case of my synagogue, thousands--of others for hours on end.  Because of this, unless one is ultra-religious, the majority of those attending seem to arrive late-ish and leave early-ish.

So imagine my surprise when looking around the hall at the termination of services this year and seeing it STILL about 80% full. Not one time, but on all four major High Holiday days (two Rosh Hashana, two Yom Kippur).

Wasn't like that last year. 

Or the two, three years before.

The difference?

The Cantor...or more specifically, the Cantor's demeanor. (P.S. For all you non-Jews or non-practicing Jews out there, the Cantor is the member of clergy who leads the congregation in sung prayer).

Over the past few years, my synagogue employed a cantor who had a fine and capable voice, and was competent in his role.  Did the job, nothing special.

This year, the role was filled by an Israeli named Boaz Davidoff, perhaps one of the finest, friendliest and most upbeat personalities I ever met.  Yes, he too had a fine and capable voice; the difference was in the way he used it.

Boaz didn't just sing, he beamed and radiated as he did so.  He gesticulated, undulated, and moved his body to the beat of the music.  He didn't just use his vocal chords, but also his hands and his head to deliver his songs.  And when he sang, as he put it, he wasn't just playing to he crowd, but communicating one-on-one with the big man upstairs.

The end result of all this palpable enthusiasm?  Well, the choir, buoyed by Boaz below, bellowed with new fervor.  This, in turn, made the rabbi visibly happier, which translated into a refreshed energy, enabling him to better relate to his congregants. This double-whammy made the services fly by quicker, and judging by the increased amount of those who stayed until the very end, made the entire event more enjoyable to all.

So the (very spiritual) lesson this week?

The secret ingredient

to success in any field

is showing enthusiasm.

It's intangible, but makes a marked difference in those whose souls it touches.

It can be read, but the true benefit is in how it is felt.

I remember a lengthy stretch of coming into the office in a foul mood.  After a few weeks, one of my staff came to me and told me that even though I was basically sequestered in my office, the bad vibes were being felt by--and adversely affecting--the team.  That's the viral power of one's mood.  And over the years, I've come to find that the positive uplifts even stronger than the negative bums people out.

So whether you're leading a congregation, selling shoes, driving a bus or giving a medical prognosis, doing so with an increased degree of enthusiasm will positively affect those you are doing it for. 

Best of all, it's infectious and inspires a snowball effect in its feedback loop, paying off big-time to the one doing the enthusing...namely you.

What I Learned This Week: Everything New is Inherently Broken

Last Friday, September 21, marked the debut of one of the most widely-anticipated, anxiously-awaited technological breakthroughs of the year; one which was met with long line-ups of passionate fans.

Oh no, not the iPhone5.  

I speak, of course, of JFL42, the new Toronto-based Festival of Comedy, Intrigue and Quirk put on by us at Just For Laughs and our partners at LiveNation.

The eight-day event was born less than a year ago in a gathering of some of our younger and hipper staff (thankfully, they let me in) in a stark meeting room at Montreal's Hyatt hotel.  The goal was to re-launch a comedy-heavy event in Toronto following the failure of our previous festival there.

The finger-pointing for said fail can go off madly in all directions, but in essence, we were trying to put together a clone of the Montreal event, albeit much smaller, with lesser bang and ultimately lesser appeal.  It was a recipe for disaster from the get-go.

Rather than repeat the mistake, the new mandate was to do something completely different and create the NEXT breed of Festival; one that takes advantage of the latest in technology and social media, one that appeals to the next generation of Festival-goers, one that has none of the markings of either of its partners, most notably the ubiquitous Just For Laughs green "Victor" character. 

Thus the team changed everything.  No hard tickets.  Instead, 42* of the coolest people and things on the planet all accessible for a one-price pass that downloads to a smartphone (including, naturally, the iPhone5). This pass got fans a seat at one of four Louis CK shows at the Sony Centre (nobody bigger in comedy right now, TWO Emmy Awards, and to make the opportunity even more desirable, his only Canadian dates of the year), and four "credits" for any of the other 41 events. Fans then used these credits to reserve a spot at a show and once in attendance there, would "check in" to open up an additional credit to yet another show.  In essence, the more you saw, the more you could see.  

All this for $99.

Bold.  Daring.  And very, very different.

The end result launched last Friday to the type of social networking buzz never before seen at our company.

And unfortunately, it wasn't 100% positive to start.

Why?  Well, the initial fan response was so overwhelming around venues on Friday night that the check-in and credit system was slow.  Add to that the small-but-crucial hitch of having to enable GPS in one's mobile browser to check-in made for some tense opening hours and restrained outrage:

Gulp.

The team could've panicked, but didn't.  One of the major benefits of an event built on the backbone of social media is the instantaneous, one-to-one and one-to-many reply time.  Web and IT staffers from Montreal and Toronto were on standby with the people from TwistImage, the people who helped us develop the JFL42 technology from the get-go, and they jumped into action:

By the time the evening was over, the team had turned things around.

The euphoria was short-lived though; the next two days brought similar, and different, hiccups.  But nonetheless, the team was upbeat, positive and cutting down problems as if they were playing a massive, real-time, multi-player war game.

Watching them in action taught me this week's most important lesson.

Everything New

is Inherently Broken

No way around it.  

No matter what your product, your business, your website, your service, your show, your TV network, your whatever, it needs to get off the ground at some point.  These days, that "some point" is always sooner than later.  Even the most strident of pre-launch tests cannot take into account the inexplicable variables that arise and bust things up when the real world gets it hands on your baby. 

Face it: if you ain't broken, you ain't alive.  

You can leave things in the lab or on the table and tinker with them until they're seemingly perfect, but the delay inevitably means that someone else will beat you to the punch.  And it's easier to fix what's broken than to bury what's dead.

The world's great new stuff is never, ever truly "finished."  It's always in a state of flux, of repair, of upgrading and adaptation.

Of course, our new event isn't perfect.  But at least it IS.

So as I watch JFL42 over the rest of this week, I watch what can get fixed in real time...and ponder how to fix the bigger stuff when our post mortem comes.

And I do so with the pride that we did something great.

Something new.

And something broken.

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*Uh, why 42?  Because that's the "Answer to the ultimate question of life, the universe and everything" in Douglas Adams' The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy.

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P.S.  It ain't just us!  Looky-looky at this iPhone review.

What I Learned This Week: A Cross Between NASCAR and TMZ

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Faithful readers of this blog know by now that I spent two weeks on a safari vacation in Kenya.  It was eye-opening and heart-warming for many reasons. Last week's post showed the more poignant and reflective side of my sojourn; this week's showcases the more ridiculous.

Most of my days were spent on "Game Rides" where a rugged, three-level truck (two seats on driver's level, with two more levels of two behind) takes you on even more rugged roads in search of wild animals like zebra, lions, elephants, giraffes, baboons et al to shoot...with a camera.  

Now calling the terrain on which we drove "roads" is wishful thinking; they were directional guidelines that were pitted, muddied, rock-strewn and were reminiscent of the lunar surface in their un-eveness. The ensuing result was a bone-jarring, inner-organ jolting voyage that tossed the heavy duty Toyota Land Cruisers about like a rubber duck on a tsunami.   No wonder that every driver called each foray an "African Massage."

Needless to say, the sights were majestic...but I won't bore you with the standard pix of landscapes and/or wildlife.  

What truly knocked me out were the human reaction to the above, particularly the wilder side of the wildlife, which is why I found the Game Rides to be a cross between the mad paparazzi of TMZ and the fan base of NASCAR.

For Exhibit One, check the photos above and below.  In the one above, to the extreme right, you can find two cheetahs enjoying a nice supper of freshly-killed antelope or impala or some other poor soul that could not out-run them. Like any fine celebrity couple, the two were trying to enjoy a nice meal together...until they were discovered by a Game Ride truck. Now a stopped Game Ride truck multiplies like rabbits in heat; rapidly and exponentially.  These mechanical beasts keep moving until there's something to see, which in turn, attracts other moving vehicles, which results in a simple meal exploding into the type of media attention usually reserved for A-List stars or Great American tragedies (see photo below).

As for the NASCAR analogy, I take you to the great Wildebeest Migration, where millions of the creatures (by the way, they could really use some re-branding, because they are kind of regal and strangely cute) make their way from Tanzania to Kenya from July to October.  One of the hurdles on this voyage is the Mara River, which most of these beest can cross with limited difficulty.

But as any great reality show programmer would have it, on the banks of said river are hundreds of snarling, starving crocodiles.  Once the wildebeest start to make their way across, the crocs spring into action, and unbridled carnage ensues.

Now despite my cries of "Turn back!" and my lobbying to build a modest pedestrian bridge for the wildebeest, I understand that this is nature's way, and part of the inevitable "Circle of Life" that many of us first learned of in the animated feature The Lion King.

But here's what I don't understand--the people who travel for miles, for hours, to watch this cruel, gladiator-type mismatch of a slaughter (well not just "to watch," but to capture it on film and video)...and are then crestfallen, heartbroken and disappointed when the wildebeest decide to postpone inevitable death and delay their crossing for a day or two.  Put another way that strikes closer to home, "I don't care who won the race, but man, you should've seen those multi-vehicle pile-ups!" 

Ironically, just after arriving from Kenya, I headed off to Toronto to take in a few days at TIFF, the city's start-studded, over-the-top film festival.  In the end, the parallels between the two were ironic and obvious.  

So this week's lesson is more puzzling than profound, but what I've learned is that my four-legged African friends are very much like anybody else in the limelight--they're gawked at, they're exploited and they attract some pretty weird followers.

Ahh, it was fun to be away, but It's good to be home ;)

What I Learned This Week: The Earth's Most Valuable, Most Natural Resource

After spending a couple of weeks traipsing throughout the astonishing wilderness of Kenya, what impressed and amazed me most was not the diverse vegetation, the awe-inspiring views, the profound ancient culture, nor the selection of exotic, wild animals.

Coming from a privileged lifestyle in North America, I was awestruck by coming face-to-face with, and re-discovering the value of, the planet's most valuable and precious, most natural and most fragile resource.

No, it's not water.  

Not clean air.  

Not the eco-system.

It's our children.

To explain, while in Africa, I had the chance to witness a rare Samburu Warrior coming-of-age ceremony, one that takes place once every 14 years or so.  To get to it, we had to leave our camp--which was plonked somewhere in the middle of nowhere--and drive about 90 minutes even deeper into nowhere until we came to a makeshift, sticks-and-mud village smack dab in a desert.

In this village gathered about 750 people, many who walked hours just to get there. The newly-of-age warriors danced and jumped; the Samburu women undulated in time with the music and chanting, their heavy beaded necklaces bouncing in a rhythmic wave; the elders drank "Jungle Juice," ultra-potent homemade liquor; dogs and goats roamed free and a recently-slaughtered cow roasted over an open fire.

And in between all this ran about 50 kids ranging in age from about one to 10.  None wore any shoes, many went without pants, and all sported dresses or t-shirts that were colorful, but bore the tell-tale signs of consecutive days of wear without change.

Every one of these kids was gorgeous, curious and entirely natural.  Despite the obvious language barrier, we hit it off immediately. We imitated each other's walks and facial expressions. We played silly juvenile games like "peek-a-boo" and "I'm gonna get ya!" We laughed lots. 

Most of these kids had never seen images of themselves, so when I pulled out my iPhone, it was as if I was an alien from another world (which, in essence, I was) with some sort of sci-fi magic in hand.  The joy and glee at seeing themselves was palpable, and equally as astounding was how rapidly they learned the iPhone's swipe, pinch and double-tap functions as they enlarged and played with their digital likenesses (see photo above).

Despite the once-in-a-lifetime color and pageantry of the ceremony surrounding me, the kids were my entire focus that day (one of our guides overheard an elderly Samburu women commenting "I don't know who that white man is, but I hope he sticks around to take care of the kids during mealtime").  

They were also my most valuable learning of my two-week trip.

And this is what they taught me:

Like water and air and greenery, kids are the same all over the world. No matter where they are--big city, small town or remote wilderness. They laugh at the same silliness.  They stare at the same things in wonderment. They play the same goofy games.   They are pure, innocent and unspoiled in their element...until they get older. Like water and air and forests, kids start out pristine, but get polluted and cut down fast.  In fact, as a species, and this is so sad, but kids are universally tainted as they up.    

So whether you need a bush plane and a Toyota Land Cruiser to find them in the African wilderness, or whether they're being pushed in a stroller through Central Park, remember:

The planet's children are

its most important and

valuable natural resource.

Do right by them, educate them properly, give them room to grow and eventually they'll clean the dirty water, scrub the polluted air and re-stock the vanishing forests.

And, best of all, maybe they'll hold onto the unique, unspoiled qualities of being children just a little bit longer...before passing it along to their own offspring.

P.S At least one more African lesson next week. Until then, here's the result of our photo-taking session above:

What I (Re-) Learned This Week--The Magic Car

This one ran just about five years ago, end of September 2007 to be exact, when I was still at Airborne Mobile.  The reaction to the car has only intensified since.  I still marvel at what it does to people.  Driving it is one of my life's great pleasures and relaxants, and what's more, its lessons ring truer every day.

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Forget the season's solstice; there are two key events that truly, officially mark the beginning of Fall:

1. My biz partner Garner wears shoes instead of sandals to the office
2. I finally acquiesce and put my beloved Corvette convertible away for the winter

I can't speak for Garner, but I know I try to postpone the inevitable for as long as possible.  But over the past week or so, the increasingly chilly weather made it hard to drive the 'Vette at night and morning, and even on sunny afternoon, there's a substantial bite in the open air.  The end is near for '07.

Now, people who know me can't believe I can be so attached to a piece of metal (well, fiberglass in my case), 'cuz I am not one of those obsessive creatures known as a "car guy."

I'm an aesthetic guy, a surprise guy. 

And that's what makes my convertible such a great companion. 

That's it atop this post, parked outside Montreal's fabled summer hot rod hangout The Orange Julep, with my son Hayes in the driver's seat, in all its glory.

You see, it's more than a mere automobile. 

It's a Magic Car.  Really. 

No matter where I go with it, it brightens people's moods. It inspires upbeatness.  Everyone smiles.  

Ev-er-y-one.

From burly, menacing Hell's Angels to curious Chassidic Rabbis.  From little old ladies to major babes. From gearheads to eggheads.  Kids ask to pose for pictures with it ("It's a superhero car!" one kid cried), and producers have asked to use it in movies (Yeah, right! Like I'm gonna let you drive it...).  I can't tell you how many times people have asked to buy it.

And no matter where I go, people stop me, roll down their windows, shout from balconies and ask me the same three questions:

"What year is it?" 
    (Answer: 1960)
"How big is the engine?" 
    (Answer: No clue...whatever you say)
"Is it the original paint?" 
    (This one kills me....I just say "Yeah")

What's more, the Vette inspires no envy.  People tend to adopt it and treat it like it's their own.  Once, outside a restaurant, my son and I watched as some guy admired the car, then reached inside to pick out some of the early autumn leaves that had fallen on my seats.  Another time, outside a chi-chi designer's store, a girl ripped into a guy who just so happened to park his Ferrari behind my car.  "If you wanna impress someone, park behind a Chrysler mini van," she screamed for some bizarre reason.  "This car beats your car's ass!"  Thank God he didn't beat hers...or mine.

As hot as this car is, it's a simple piece of work.  No power anything.  Roll-down windows that don't roll down all the way.  Steering that's a better workout than my gym regime.  All powered by an engine, while big and roaring, that's positively Flinstonian compared to its modern-day brethren.

Still, this car turns heads whiplash fast.  And there's a lesson to be learned from all this:

It Pays To Stand Out.  PAYS!

"Generating Surprise" is a tactic. It's an incredibly effective one, and the inspiration for this blog, but just a tactic.  It belongs to the greater strategy of "Attracting Attention."  And that's a key strategy to survive in today's hyper-competitive biz world.  Other than the CIA, I don't care what business you are in--going unnoticed is the highway to going broke. 

Back to the Vette for a second.  My office at Airborne has an underground garage with a dangerously steep driveway that peaks and opens onto a bar-and-restaurant-filled pedestrian mall called Prince Arthur Street.  I have two cars, a black Jaguar X-Type and the aforementioned Vette.  When I roar up the driveway in the Jag, nobody gives me a second look (unless I almost run someone over at the top).  I am anonymous. 

But when I do the same in the Vette, all the action on the street freezes.  The car is a retina-magnet, a conversation starter, a target for pointed fingers.  People instinctively gather around, start to chat, give me the thumbs up (for some strange reason).  It adds at least five minutes to the journey every time I leave work.

Such is the power of drawing attention, of standing out.

And remember, this car is close to a half-century old.  Most people on the cusp of 50 are starting to slow down, to gravitate towards beige and boring.  The Vette shows that audacious old guys can still cut it.  To that end, I saw two older gentlemen this week.  One wore a shapeless pair of khakis and an off-white, long-sleeved polo shirt.  The other wore a navy blue sport jacket, red flower in his lapel, and an aqua blue cap. 

• Who do you think attracted more eyeballs? 
• Who would you think has better tales to tell? 
• Who would YOU rather hang out with?

Rhonda Byrne made a fortune with her book The Secret, which she says "reveals the most powerful law in the universe."  That law is one called The Law Of Attraction.

But as much as you wait for it, Attraction doesn't come on its own.  You have to draw it out.  You have to be the worm on the hook, jiggling for the eyes to bite.

And the only way to do that is to stand out from the crowd.

Not everyone can drive a classic Vette.  Or wear a turquoise hat.

In fact, it can be quite intimidating trying to stand out.  But it can be done. 

Lemme put it another way--it MUST be done.

I'm taking the weekend off, but next week, I'll be back with a short primer telling you how to do it.

Right now, I'm off to take the car to its winter resting spot.

What I (Re-) Learned This Week: The Curse of Scotch Tape

Here's the first repeat "Best Of" post.  It ran last year, March to be exact, but it's since become one of my--pardon the pun--sticking points.  Keep seeing it and it keeps making me madder.  P.S.  Life is good if THIS is one of my pet peeves.

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It was a gorgeous spring weekend, and I spent most of it walking downtown... which is why today I come to you with the confession that I hate Scotch Tape.

Yes, a strange confession.  But not without justifiable explanation.

In countless store windows, I saw Scotch Tape support crookedly-hung, crudely-made messages of "We're closed for inventory," "Washrooms for customers only," "Please ensure door shuts tightly behind you" and the like. 

In restaurants, I saw Scotch Tape repair ragged and battered menus, and affix daily specials to others in slightly better condition.

In elevators, I saw Scotch Tape cover up a hole where a basement button used to be, and trace the crack in a mirror in an effort to keep it from cracking even more (and from passengers to slice their fingers, I suppose).

What's worst of all, on my way into the office this morning, I saw Scotch Taped signs all over the front door windows of our now-defunct museum building next door.  Oh the horror, the horror...

In a nutshell, and with all due respect to the 3M Corporation, I think Scotch Tape sends an awful message.  It's inelegant and used with reckless abandon.  It improves nothing.

Frankly, when you see Scotch Tape on just about anything, you know that something's gone wrong.  Even worse, it usually means things have passed the point of no return.

Now I know that everything can't always be perfect and pristine, and that fixing things is part of the creative process. 

But the way I see it, when Scotch Tape is used as a repair tool (or as a means of presentation or communication), what's really being said is that at best, "Things are beyond the state of repair," or at worst, "Hey, we just don't give a shit anymore."

On a literal basis, Scotch Tape (as well as its brethren Masking Tape and Duct Tape) may be an eyesore and the embodiment of throwing in the towel, but figuratively, the message is even sadder.

In other words, I know of too many people and too many businesses who use Scotch Tape metaphorically. "It costs too much," or "It takes too much time," or "I don't have enough energy to change things the way they should be going, so I'll cover up the problem with some Scotch Tape (which, being transparent, makes this even more pitiful) and hope it holds until somebody else is responsible."

There's always a better way. Signs can be hung a myriad of less obtrusive, more graceful and eye-pleasing ways.  Menus can be replaced. So can elevator buttons, glass and mirrors...and people who are reluctant to do things better and more imaginatively.

So, the lesson-du-week:  if you're relying on Scotch Tape, you've probably already lost your grip on things. 

What I Learned This Week: A Mime on Red Bull

At three separate occasions over the past two weeks in the office, certain people we deal with at Just For Laughs were described as "All Talk/No Action."

In all types of business this archetype is a pain-in-the ass, but because showbiz is a business of many promises made and relied on, this type of behaviour is even more aggravating...and damaging.  

Making live shows and television shows are hampered by what I tend to call a 3-D Domino Effect; in other words, something small tumbling here today rapidly festers into something chaotic and potentially catastrophic somewhere else tomorrow.  

That said, when someone makes you a promise, you'd like to put it behind you and depend on it as you go about building the fragile house of cards that is the ecosystem of show business.

No wonder we're so disdainful of those who re-neg, or just as bad, never deliver on their supposed words of honor.  Now, no names (sorry gossip mongers!), but suffice to say that a few people made our lives much more difficult since the arrival of August, with its tight post-production TV schedules and mad pre-production of our Sydney, Australia and Toronto events.

During the aforementioned separate occasions, we discussed the behavior we long for; in other words the opposite of All Talk/No Action. I mentioned that when I was at Airborne Mobile, I had a sign printed and hung over my door so that any time someone entered or exited, I would be forced to read it.  The sign read:

Never Promise More

Than You Can Deliver;

Always Deliver More

Than You Promised

This spawned the need for an icon, a prototype, a mascot for someone who is All Action and No Talk, the antithesis of our nemesis.

And that, in turn, spawned this week's learning--the creation of our new hero, one who embodies the behavior and reputation for all of us to aspire to:

A Mime on Red Bull

Long may he (or she) live!

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By the time you read this, I'll be on some safari in a distant somewhere of Kenya.  Amazingly, I am taking a vacation of two weeks, and instead of going radio silent, I've decided to re-publish two of my favorite posts from the six years that I've been doing this.  

With over 1,000 posts to choose from, it wasn't easy to pick just two, but I chose a couple whose lessons were re-learned over the past month, so at least there's a relevance.

And with that, I now board my flight to Nairobi via Istanbul to enjoy a new adventure or two...and perhaps a couple of new lessons for us.

What I Learned This Week: There's Something in the Air

Disneyland, take a back seat.

I’ve just come back from a visit to the REAL “Happiest Place on Earth.”

It’s called Mountain Equipment Co-op (MEC to members and fervent followers).  I’ve been there twice, in two cities—Montreal and Toronto—over the past week.  Nowhere else and never before have I experienced a happier group of employees and shoppers congregated in one area, feeding off each others' passions and knowledge in a pulsating, glowing snowball effect of euphoria.

From the floor staff to the checkout folks, everyone was ebullient.  Even greater still was the buzz amongst those waiting in line, who all seemed to be chomping at the bit to get outside and put their purchases to use.  As Thunderclap Newman once sang, “There’s Something in The Air.”

I wish I could understand it.  Jeez, even more so, I wish I could fully partake in it.   But at least it was the source of this week’s learning.

Now I ain’t the most “outdoorsy” type which is why I've never really been to the place, but I had to stock up on a couple of items for a safari trip to Kenya, and MEC seemed like the best spot to do so.  I was right…for reasons other than the $81 plus tax worth of goods I purchased.

First of all, from two different obsessively helpful people, I received the equivalent of two complete Masters dissertations in a $25 flashlight and a $46 knapsack (marked down from $90).  Amongst other fine discoveries, I learned about the lumen power of LED, and why hidden backstraps and multiple handles may be best suited for a guy who will probably never again bear the burden of a knapsack once he returns home from the Dark Continent in September.

I got this type of detailed product explanation a few weeks ago.  But that was from the guy who sold me my new luxury coupe.  You expect this type of attention when you’re laying down the equivalent of a good year’s salary on a car.  But it’s quite the pleasant shock to get when the aggregate total of your purchase wouldn’t pay for a passenger’s side rear seat winter mat for said new car.  And truth be told, the customers at MEC seemed way happier than those at Mercedes-Benz.  Go figure…

I tried to figure.  So I decided to test MEC against two other “Gold Standards” in customer-centric retail on Saturday—Lulu Lemon and the Apple Store.

The former had equally-as-chipper sales people, helpful beyond the pale, yet despite being in the same family as MEC, the customer base didn’t have the same buzz.  Maybe yoga karma makes a different noise.

The latter was jam-packed with people as usual; all served by young, energetic, uber-knowledgeable sales and service staff.  But once again, the customer sensibility didn’t hold a candle to the MEC rapture.  Perhaps the fact that about a third of customers were there having some sort of problem attended to, and that the very nature of technology brings up more questions and stress than the great outdoors, made the Apple visit efficient and enjoyable, but not euphoric.

So what did I learn?  Like the proverbial tree falling in the forest not making a sound unless there’s someone there to hear it, a truly great retail experience is something completed by both customer and store. 

As hard as a store tries,

as great as a store may be,

there’s an intangible

"je-ne-sais-quoi" gap

between a great retail experience

and an experience, period.

Is MEC any better than Apple or Lulu Lemon or Mercedes-Benz?  Probably not.

So what’s the difference?

Wish I knew.   I could make a mega fortune.

Guess I just gotta get out more ;)

What I Learned This Week: The Changing Conceit of Permanance

After a month of obsessive focus on all things Just For Laughs, I opened my eyes differently on my way to work last week, trying to once again see the forest for the trees.

What I noticed over the five days may not actually produce this blog’s most profound post, but I found the learning intriguing nonetheless.  So here we go.  If you like it, I’m happy; if you don’t, blame it on the fatigue. 

On my brief drive to the office, at the corner of Sherbrooke and St. Urbain streets, beside a red light I always seem to hit, sits a majestic building (that's it above). This building houses this province’s Office de la langue française (if you’re a Quebecker, you know what I’m talking about; if you’re not, you don’t want to).  I know that this building houses said office because a sturdy, yet transient, blue sign affixed to the wall next to its front door tells me so. You can spot it just above the burgundy car. 

Yet above the front door, literally carved in stone, are the words “Ecole des beaux-arts,” words that demark the building’s original raison d’etre and occupants (it was a fine arts school). The Quebec flag on the building actually juts out from it.

In a city as old as Montreal, you see this frequently—ornate, artistic, “hard-coded” descriptors/branding of heritage buildings, engraved in cement, stamped in brass or twisted out of wrought iron.  Not all of ‘em are hoity-toity throwbacks to the high life either.  Case in point is the city’s Parisian Laundry, an old clothes-cleaning factory with another doorway-topped, engraved sign that has been resurrected as an art gallery called, well, Parisian Laundry. (That’s it down below.)

So what went through my mind was wondering what went through their minds—the builders, that is—so many decades ago.  These people had a headspace, almost a conceit, of longevity and permanence; their structures, and their structures’ purposes, would live forever.  Go tell the builder of the elitist art school that one day his mighty edifice would be home to an awkward agency that would harbor complaints about the use of the English language and the size of printed English words and he would think you were from another planet.

Despite the previous sentence, this is not a political rant, but a social one.  These days, “naming rights” on stadiums and buildings are big business, but the corporations or causes they represent can be altered in a day or two. Replace the big, glowing neon sign on top, unscrew a few things and screw in a few others, and voila—a new identity and a new intent.  Our current buildings have become mere shells, fleetingly taking on the personality of their tenants until the next ones roll in. 

Indelible branding hasn’t entirely vanished though; it just seems to have moved from buildings to people.  I can go into a whole separate discourse on the tattooing (more than a quarter of the entire American population has at least one tattoo, and that’s a stat that is six years old), but the point is that perhaps we consider ourselves more eternal and built to last than our buildings are. In other words:

The conceit of grandeur

and living forever

has become personal.

To put a button on this post, every morning, directly across the street from that building at Sherbrooke and St. Urbain, at that red light I always seem to hit, I come across a group of homeless Native Canadians.  Nice guys down on their luck, they are usually through their first beer when we trade a few words and they hit me up for some spare change.  

And wouldn’t you know it…in one way or another, they’re all sporting some sort of tattoo.

What I Learned This Week--A Masterclass From The Muppets: The Power of Identity and Character

 

When I say I had the pleasure of working with the Muppets last week as they hosted two Just For Laughs Galas, I say so in the most extreme form of understatement.  Watching my childhood unfold and come to life not merely in front of my eyes but being able to touch and converse with it, well...there's a moment for the ages. (Check out this very thorough recount of the shows by one major Muppet maven.)

The lessons of professionalism and hard work (learned a new term: "Hands down!" as in puppeteers letting their hands drop for rest during strenuous rehearsal sessions) were many, but none more staggering than the power of a strong identity.

The people who bring the Muppets to life literally live the characters; their faces and body language below reflect the persinality they breathe into the characters above.  Check the photo below of our writing team taking a picture with "Fozzie Bear" and note the similar facial expressions between the beloved furry comic and his human partner. 

Said power of identity was profoundly on display each time a new Muppet character made its way onto our Gala stage.  The arrival of Animal, Miss Piggy, The Swedish Chef, Bunsen and Beaker, Fozzie Bear et al were met with squeals and shrieks from fans of all ages, but the eruption of Beatlemania-esque joy when Kermit The Frog stuck his head through a red curtain and yelped "It's the Muppet All-Star Gala!" was unlike anything I've ever experienced in three decades at Just For Laughs.

Each character was unique, easily identifiable and most importantly, had some personality trait that resonated with its fan base.  Everyone had at least one Muppet to which he or she related to in some personal manner.

The precision definition of each character was a godsend to our creative team, making it (relatively) easier for them to write and create situations for them.  Knowing who a character is, what his/her voice is (both figuratively and literally) simplifies the arduous task of writing to it...and against it, for comedic effect.

Great character definition puts things into stark black-and-white contrast.  There are no grey zones.  A Kermit line is different from a Gonzo line is different from a Miss Piggy line is different from a Pepe the King Prawn line.  There is no crossover...except if you want to mix things up for comic purposes.

The sheer beauty of this is that the gold that comes from the mouths of these characters would be considered cliched or cornball if uttered by a human.  Consider this intro that Rowlf the Dog delivered for comedian Tom Papa:

"Our next act is Tom Papa, and I've been told that he don't preach, he was a rollin' stone and after he went shopping today, he's got a brand new bag.  Ladies and gentlemen, Tom Papa."

You or me or Howie Mandel or Lewis Black say that and people roll their eyes.  Rowlf says it and people roar.  Clear, strong identities make an "okay" line "good"; a "good" line "great"; and a "great" line Incredible,"

Such is the benefit of creating powerful, unique characters.

Before I wrap this up in a business context, consider the genius of Jim Henson.  He created not just one world of characters--more than 30 original Muppets--but two, when you consider the dozens more from Sesame Street. (Almost as impressive are the species created by Matt Groening with The Simpsons and Seth McFarlane with Family Guy, American Dad and The Cleveland Show.) 

As marketers, as business people, we are in the same boat with products or services.  But luckily, we usually can narrow our focus on a spectrum that ranges from a single brand to a handful of them.

Nonetheless, becoming "identifiable characters" instead of merely brands makes it easier to write meaningful and influential advertising, makes it easier to design stores and displays and packaging, makes it easier to ultimately stand out.

The lesson from the Muppets is powerful and simple in theory, but a beast to apply:

Be uniquely recognizable.

Be immediately identifiable.

Be a character.

Or be irrelevant.

Your choice.

What I Learned This Week--The Ultimate People Magnet

What's the secret to a successful restaurant, store, apartment complex, you name it?

Conventional wisdom used to be the trio of "Location. Location, Location."

No more.  Put simply, the trio is now "You.  Me.  Them."

Or put another, more obscure reference way, like the secret to Soylent Green...it's people.

People go where people go. It's that elementary to explain...and inversely, that difficult to ensure.

It's the difference between Google and Yahoo. Between eBay and eBid.  Between Facebook and Google+. And between two nights at our Charlot Club at Just For Laughs this week.

This pre-and-post Gala show encounter spot has been moved to the ground level of Place Des Arts, just outside the main entrance of its main theater. Last week on Thursday night--opening night--it looked just what it was: a cold, stark underground room, albeit well-equipped and funkily designed.  Atop this post is a picture that shows it in final stages of construction, but not far from the reality of Thursday.

Given that passes to the Charlot Club are traditionally some of Just For Laughs most valuable assets, the barrenness of the lieu was puzzling, and alarming.

A late-night meeting and all-hands-on-deck push the next day rectified matters somewhat, as the photo below will attest.  In the space of a week, it went from a troubling desert to a welcoming oasis (so welcoming that I am currently composing this post there, sipping wine on a late Friday night).

The major change?  People.  

I see the same thing in our clubs, theaters, and especially outdoors in our street events.  People beget people. People laugh harder, smile more, drink more, spend more and generally enjoy more when in the company of others.

All this reminds me of a great Yogi Berra line that sums up the relationship between people and success so brilliantly.  Asked about Ruggeri's, a popular St. Louis restaurant during his playing days, Berra said:

"Nobody goes there anymore.  

It's too crowded."

Berraisms aside, if I owned a restaurant, the best marketing I could probably do is hire a gaggle of film/TV extras to populate my place in the downtimes...to ensure uptimes ahead.

So the lesson this week?  

We have an incestuous relationship with each other.

People attract people. 

Everything else pales in comparison.

What I Learned This Week: The Importance of Everyone's Hidden Story

Last Tuesday, opening night at the Just For Laughs Nasty Show, someone shot me a "Pssst!" as I was ordering a drink at the Club Soda bar.  Sitting alone in the corner seat was a sympathetic-looking guy with a well-trimmed grey goatee.

"Evil Kanahdian," he smiled.

"Ah, we finally meet in person!" I smiled back.

Evil Kanadian is a Just For Laughs fan I've been conversing with on Twitter for the past year or so.  We've exchganged Tweets, messages and emails, but until that moment, we'd never met face-to-face.

Looking at him, I'd remembered that during a Twitter exchange I'd dared him to "brand himself" with the Just For Laughs "Victor" mascot logo.  A few weeks later, he sent me a picture as proof of the deed done, but I was still skeptical. I mean, it could be a picture of anyone, or a marker drawing, or...

"Got the tattoo?" I asked. "Lemme see."

He answered affirmatively, and pulled up his shirtsleeve.  Seeing one of our Festival Photogs at the doorway, I called her over to capture the above moment for posterity.  And since we were in full social media mode, I Tweeted and Facebooked the following:

There are fans and then there are SCARY FANS.

Check out @EvilKanahdian.

And yeah, the ink is real and indelible.

People at Just For Laughs couldn't believe it.  Reaction ranged from "Wow! That's incredible!" to "Jeez, what a nutbar."  I just thought that, unlike so many more rational others, some random fan took me seriously on a dare and actually called me on it. 

And that was all I thought about it...until I received an email in my inbox Wednesday afternoon with "A Lengthy Thank You" as its subject line.  With permission from Evil Kanahdian (obviously not his real name), here it is in its entirety: 

It was great to finally meet you at the Nasty how and show you the JFL tattoo. But I think I should clear up why I actually got that specific tat. 

The "dare" component wasn't what really made me decide on doing it. If you are getting inked for life, the reasons behind such decisions must be more than only skin deep.

Four years ago, I lost my wife to cancer. During the last years of her life, one of the things that would relax her enough to go to sleep was watching Craig Ferguson on CBS. She would laugh throughout the show and would fall asleep during the end credits. I always was thankful to him for that. Seeing her sleeping peacefully somewhat reassured me all would be alright. 

After she passed away, I needed time to grieve so I moved to Morin Heights and isolated myself from the rest of the world. Since I can do most of my sales calls through telecommuting and was in a depressed mood, I began developing some type of agoraphobia. Not a great thing for someone who's in sales. I could go weeks without physically interacting with people. To put it simply, I really didn't care anymore.

But when I saw the Ferguson gala promos last year, I thought my wife would have loved to see this. So I decided to face my fears and go. Kind of a posthumous final date with my wife.

I went on the site and bought my ticket. Then I saw the ComicPro ads, decided to get one. Then read about the conference, so upgraded my CP pass to Industry. This led to talking with people at shows and conferences, sitting in the middle of crowds at Place des festivals and an unexpected ending of my grieving period.

At that point, I was already toying with the idea of a tattoo in her memory. So I finally decided to get 3 tattoos in the same session:  

1. The first is the initials of my wife, to remind me of our times together and to aspire to be a better man. 
2. The second is a Craig Ferguson quote "Between safety and adventure, I choose adventure" to keep reminding me to push the limits I set for myself and live life to the fullest.
3. And the last one is the JFL logo, to remind me that, even if all looks dark and bleak, salvation might come in an unexpected way.

Last night, all these thoughts flashed through my head when you extended both hands out to me. I know you probably expected a big "double handed 'fuck yeah' power slap" but I was just overcome by a severe case of the verklempt so you only got an awkward double hand shake.

So thank you for creating something that had that much impact on my life. If I had known, I would have bought that first ticket sooner.

I shared the above with some of my colleagues around the office, all of whom were moved to tears.

So the lesson of the weeK?

Everyone has a reason for their actions; their "story" so to speak.

Don't assume you know it.  You never know.  You never know.

Instead, find a way to learn it.

I'd bet anything you'll be profoundly surprised.

--------------------------------------------------------------

P.S. Bonus Lesson #2 of the Week?  

What we do here at Just For Laughs is far from frivolous.  

A noble cause, my friends, a noble cause.

What I Learned This Week: Taking Hard Decisions

A couple of tough days at the office this week as the 30^th Anniversary edition of Juste pour rire/Just For Laughs kicks into gear.

Last Saturday, Gilbert Rozon and I attended the first true end-to-end run-through of Post Mortem,  a non-verbal show created specifically for (and with, I suppose) us.  This show had been in the works for a couple of years and was scheduled to make its world premiere this Thursday, July 12.

There were some stunning visuals (including the stage being converted into a multi-sprinklered human fountain), some touching moments and the essential framework of a show, but at close to two hours PLUS an intermission, it was way too long.

After a late-night backstage meeting and 60 hours of miraculous overhauling, we sat down again in the theater on Tuesday night.  What we saw was a massive improvement, but still not there yet. 

This time backstage, the tables had been set—literally, in an imposing square—for another meeting of the minds.  And what started out as a very detailed, very constructive criticism of the show soon morphed into the ultimatum “come to Jesus” moment when a very hard decision had to be taken.

After a lot of circling around, we crash-landed on the reality.

The show wasn’t ready.

We all knew it.

And finally, we all agreed to take the hard decision to put it on ice until it was.

Hard decisions are never easy.  And considering that I once had to deal with the decision to take a parent off life-support, the stoppage of a show pales in retrospect.

But still, taking that step from white into black, with no grey zone, is a tough one.

It stings, it bites, it thuds, it hurts...but it's necessary.

Had we not been able to face up to reality, it would’ve been worse.  We would’ve opened with a show that’s not ready.  If we knew it, so would the critics.  And if they knew it, so would the public, which would’ve resulted in sour word-of-mouth, leading to thin houses, the need to “paper” rooms (massive ticket giveaways to people who don’t want to see the show anyway), a depressed group of actors and directors (including a couple of mega-stars in Quebec showbiz), a financial bloodbath and an indelible stain on our 30^th anniversary.

Instead, after dealing with the initial shockwaves (including dealing with a friend who had bought 500 tickets and had planned an event for opening night), we have at least mitigated our immediate losses, and now have a much more defined direction, a more expansive timeline and a chance for what really is a unique show to breathe, finds its footing and ultimately succeed.

So this week’s very tough lesson? 

We are faced with hard decisions often.  Putting them off doesn’t help; the ensuing fallout makes things worse.  Much worse. 

Having the courage

to take the hard decision

doesn’t come easy. 

But it’s necessary. 

And ultimately, it's always

the right thing to do.

By taking one this week—and this sounds so ironic—Post Mortem is still alive.

Time to toughen up even more…’cuz I suspect there will be a few others before this Festival is through!

What I Learned This Week: The Need to Kick The Hornet's Nest

How do you spark interest in a show so successful that most people overlook it because they think it’s already sold out?

Such was the conundrum at Just For Laughs this week as we pondered our marketing strategy for The Nasty Show, the longest-running show series in the event’s history.

A returning show of such popularity is a double-edge sword.  On one hand, it has a built-in audience and heritage, particularly now that its original host, Bobby Slayton, is returning to ringmaster the fray.  On the other, it becomes “part of the furniture,” and suffers from a “been there, done that” malaise, especially when compared to the shiny, new sexy things it’s up against, both within the Just For Laughs realm and our ever-increasing outside competition.

Running an event that has hundreds of little events within it makes it a challenge for any one to stand out.  Luckily, being the X-rated celebration of depravity that it is, The Nasty Show enjoys a built-in hook that we can bring out…if we have the guts.

And that’s what this week’s lesson is all about—the necessity of kicking the hornet’s nest every now and then.

The bold step we took to put the show into overdrive was to break away from the usual “pizza-styled” print ads we place (i.e. large-scale surface with multiple ingredients/shows on top) frequently in the Montreal Gazette and have Slayton and “hijack” the ad with the show’s requisite bad-ass attitude. Here’s the result:

 

Well…that wasn’t the only result.

I got immediate email from some of my media partners saying that if we ever run an ad like this again, we should remove their logos from it.  The Gazette is now demanding a 48-hour approval on any Nasty Show ad we run henceforth. 

More importantly, the ad was quoted, and read verbatim (albeit bleeped), on morning radio shows.  I got calls asking how we got away with it.  And when I attended a political cartoonist’s conference later that day, a representative from the Gazette came up to me and jokingly chided me for the full-page affront, while a number of others commented “I saw the ad.”

Most importantly though, we more-than-doubled our usual daily sales.

So we’re not stopping with “the ad.”  Slayton and the Nasty Show are readying to “hijack” our website, our Facebook and Twitter feed in days to come.  That’s media we control, and are subject only to our own rules.

But sometimes, despite that power in our hands, we are our own worst enemies.  We play by rules that are self-imposed.  We self-censor and hold back on letting loose.

Ironically, one of the guests at the aforementioned cartoonist conference was Barry Blitt, the renowned New Yorker cover artist, who had dinner that night at my place.  Over overcooked tuna (his choice), we talked about his longtime history of kicking hornets’ nests.  Undeniably the star of Francoise Mouly’s new book “Blown Covers: New Yorker Covers You Were Never Meant To See,” Barry is responsible for iconic images like the one below…and the ensuing brouhaha they raise.   But as The New Yorker knows, they sell copies of the magazine…and re-prints of the covers suitable for framing.

Yeah, kicking the hornet’s nest may sometimes result in a few stings.  That’s life. 

But worse than a few stings is the dull numbness of complacency.

Look around.  I’m sure you can find a few of your own hornet’s nests that can use a solid boot.

Still resisting?  Then I’ve got a great way to loosen your inhibitions.

Head to Club Soda and take in The Nasty Show.  Starts next Tuesday ;)

What I Learned This Week: Bring Links To Life

Last weekend, when I pulled into the parking lot of my gym, I couldn’t help but notice the neighborhood street festival that had overtaken the surrounding city blocks.  While not necessarily my optimum way of passing the time, I decided to go for a little walk through it as a reward for two hours of grunting and groaning (or “The Sunday Schlepp and Schvitz” as I am apt to describe it to my older friends). 

Good move.

And here’s why. 

I didn’t need anything. 

And I didn’t buy anything other than a fresh David's Tea iced tea.

But I happened to run into a friend and his wife and set up dinner plans. 

I bumped into an artist friend who offered to custom-paint a white shirt…as long as I supply the shirt. 

I marveled at the dichotomy of a thrash metal band pounding out machine music to an awkward group of little kids and senior citizens next door at the Dairy Queen patio. 

And I bumped into an old high school girlfriend and reminisced with much laughter.

Totally random.  Nothing planned out.  Yet what emerged from the 15-minute walk was immensely satisfying; not just for what happened “in the moment” (ex-girlfriend, thrash band) but for future plans made (artist and dinner).

As I made my way back to my car, my first thought was that that the Internet has kind of eradicated this type of occurrence…but on second thought, I realized that I had just lived through a pseudo-Live Internet experience.  Stay with me on this for a second.  The walk was my destination/starting point, sort of like a blog post, news story or search item.  But everyone I met, or the things I saw, were the highlighted links that took me in different directions. 

Whether online or offline, digital or brick-and-mortar, the discovery offered by random links are important…perhaps even imperative.  Knowing where we are going is not necessarily an asset; it is often a lie.  Being open to random discoveries, directions, sights and encounters are what make life, and the Internet, so damn interesting.  You can’t believe the amount of people I meet, and the opportunities that have arisen, just from my nightly walks down Sherbrooke street with my two dogs.

One of the pearls (yeah, “pearls” he says pompously) of wisdom I’ve offered over the past few years when speaking to students, artists and young entrepreneurs is to “Get off the floor and out the door”; in other words, let yourself be inspired by chance encounters that can only happen outside closed doors.  I cite this example all the time:

I love to read, and when I’m on the road is one of the few opportunities I have to spend some quality time with a book.

I could do this reading in the privacy and sanctity of my hotel room, but other than an incremental increase in knowledge, nothing special can evolve from it.  Nothing.  Nobody’s going to knock on my door and say: “Andy, here’s an opportunity!”

However, if I do this reading in a hotel lobby, or restaurant, or bar, there’s a chance—albeit a slight chance, but a chance nonetheless—of something “linked” happening. 

It might be a serendipitous encounter with an old friend or acquaintance passing through.  Maybe someone has read the same book and starts to talk about it.  Maybe I’ll notice something that sparks an idea.  Maybe something incredible will happen that I would’ve never noticed behind the barricades of my room.

Maybe.

Yeah, there are no guarantees, but the point here is that given the busyness of our lives and the jam-packed natures of our schedules, we are giving ourselves fewer and fewer opportunities to exploit the random.

So the lesson this week?

Nothing happens if you don’t give things a chance to happen.  Take that walk, try that new restaurant, take the subway instead of the car, read on a park bench…bring links to life.

Make things random,

and you’ll make

things happen.

What I Learned This Week: Enjoy The Moment, Now!

I spent three days in the Windy City last week as Just For Laughs rolled out its fourth annual event there, and in between my last meeting and my flight home, I snuck in a 90-minute visit to one of my favorite places on earth—the Art Institute of Chicago—to take in the grandiose Roy Lichtenstein exhibit.

Whether or not you are an art aficionado, you know Lichtenstein’s work; his comic book-infused visions are the embodiment of the pop art movement, and perhaps next only to Warhol, are the most recognized imagery of the genre.  For example:

Now most people—including me, I suppose—have only born witness to said imagery on coffee mugs, t-shirts, repro posters or other souvenir-ish tchotchkes.  (Some of us have even borrowed from it to come up with logos for our books and blogs, see top of page and bottom of post…but I digress). So having the rare opportunity to take in Lichtenstein’s eye-popping colors, bold lines and unique technique up close—Mere centimeters away! So close you could smell the paint!—was indeed a treat.

So how did most of my contemporaries visiting the Art Institute that day choose to enjoy said treat?

Through the lens of a camera, smartphone or iPad.

It was an incredible sight.  Despite the pleading signage saying “Please.  No Photography!” next to virtually EVERY piece, most people viewed the 130-plus pieces of the exhibition with some sort of electronic, image-grabbing apparatus between their eyes and Lichtenstein’s work.  Ironically, when I tried to snap a picture of THEM taking pictures, I was immediately interrupted by the one Dudley Do-Right security guard actually enforcing the rule of law…who asked whether or not I could read the signs.  Gee, thanks.

What makes this behavior even stranger is the fact that a Google search of “Roy Lichtenstein Images” brings up over 2,000,000 of them, many in dazzling high-res. Add to that fact the Institute was selling a comprehensive souvenir catalog with every image in the show that you could take home and snap away at to your heart’s content.  And then there were the t-shirts and mugs and posters and…well, you get the point.

About three years ago, I commented on this phenomenon in a post that I will gladly link to here, and urge you to read, as I could not say it any better today. 

Since then (hope you came back after reading it), the technology has improved, but the people haven’t.  What we are now choosing to see through lenses and screens changes not just the way things are being experienced, but presented.  For example, this quote from Chris Rock in Time Magazine this week, when asked if it’s harder to be funny when famous:

“If anything, this time of YouTube and cell-phone cameras makes the process of creating stand-up comedy harder.  I want to go on tour next year, and I’ve got to figure out how I’m going to prepare an act without it getting out.  It’s like any time you tell a joke, somebody’s got a camera.  The beauty of jokes is the surprise.  Plus, when you think you’re being watched like that, you’re less likely to take chances.”

Chris has a choice.  He can adapt, albeit begrudgingly. 

Lichtenstein doesn’t.  He passed away in 1997.

But, luckily, we all do.

So the lesson of the week may be re-hashed from myself three years ago, or as I like to put it, it's a summer re-run, but here goes:

Put down the camera and

enjoy the live experience live. 

Yes, you may not

capture it forever,

but frankly, some things

exist better ephemerally.

Forget about re-living the moment.

Live it fully as it happens.

What I Learned This Week: Tough Crowds

Last week, I agreed to be the auctioneer at a fundraiser for a private school.  I’ve performed services such as these countless times in the past, usually because of a personal involvement or affinity for the charitable cause, but I agreed to this one for a different reason: The Challenge.

You see, instead of glibly and fluently bantering in my native tongue to a group of contemporaries and peers, I would be speaking almost entirely in French to a gathering of strangers. 

Well, strangers to me, as these people knew each other well, hadn’t seen each other in a while, and would much rather chat amongst themselves than listen to me valiantly try to sell them large-scale murals painted by children of the school, for prices in the mid-to-upper thousands of dollars, through a rickety microphone and distorted sound system that perhaps was last used by some underground broadcaster on Radio Free Europe.

And, to top things off, I would be doing this all while hopping on one foot.

Okay, just kidding about the hopping, but said challenge was indeed more daunting than first expected. Not only was selling this stuff like pulling teeth with an eyebrow tweezers, but I had to do it three times—six paintings per session!—in between courses of a lengthy meal.

When it the final “Sold!” came down on the 18^th piece and I was mercifully relieved of my duties, the woman who recruited me for the evening met me with perhaps the understatement of the year when she said succinctly:

 

“Tough crowd.”

 

On the long walk home down the Boulevard of Broken Dreams (okay, a little melodramatic…), I thought about what she had said. 

 

Of course they were

a tough crowd. 

They weren’t mine.

 

Every crowd is tough if they’re not yours.  If people have paid or assembled to see you, to hear your message, to drink your Kool-Aid, they’re easy…or at least relatively so.  Not only are you a part of their expectations, you are the primary reason said crowd exists in the first place.

But if you’re the sidebar, the opening act, the necessarily evil that is the M.C. or the auctioneer, you have a battle ahead of you.  You are an obstacle between what the crowd wants, and what they are going to get.

Some people—like me—get off on this.  Many careers have been made by “winning ‘em over,” from turning a collection of cold outsiders into a group of warmed followers.  I’ve seen it happen at concerts, at professional conferences, in academic settings and particularly at Just For Laughs, where I’ve heard the refrain of “I bought tickets for Performer X, but the act I really loved was Performer Y” thousands of times over my career there.

But I’ve also seen it happen in boardrooms and offices, which switched on the lightbulb to this week’s learning.

In most cases, the difference between success and failure in business relies on one’s ability to winning over a tough crowd.   Whether you’re trying to land a contract, open a door for new business, raise VC money for your start-up, you are facing a tough crowd. This crowd may be just one person, but it’s a crowd whose day you are interrupting and who would rather be somewhere else, talking or listening to someone else.

Go ahead—hop on one foot. Good luck.

But hop we do, because the alternative is worse.

And even when we succeed, there’s no guarantee that the crowd we just won over stays conquered. 

Yes, like me climbing onstage in front of contemporaries, the business crowd that has bought into you gives you the benefit of the doubt.  But one slip, and in a runner’s heartbeat you’ll see how tough that crowd can get.  Just ask the band whose recent release didn’t do as well as the last one.  Or the speaker who bored the audience.  Or the comedian who had a rough set.  Or the agency that lost the client.

So this week’s lesson?

Life, particularly business life, is a series of tough crowds. 

Don’t be afraid to seek ‘em out.

And win ‘em over continuously.

Because even if the crowd is yours now, there’s no guarantee it’s yours forever.

What I Learned This Week: The Truth vs. The Sell

I learned a little lesson from Howie Mandel ages ago when I co-promoted his first-ever North American tour.

We were in his hometown Toronto doing the rounds of TV, radio and print interviews, and during one Q & A session, he was asked whether he was a jokester on the set of NBC's St. Elsewhere, a show on which he co-starred.  To that, he spun a tale of hijinks, practical jokes and wild fun, creating the vision of a  frathouse as his daily environment.

On the ride to the next interview, I asked him if it really was that crazy.

"Are you kidding?  They would kill me!," he replied. "It's a business.  If I wasted time on set, it would cost a fortune.  It's work, real work...long hard hours of it!"

"So why did you tell them it was like a circus?"

"Do you think they really want to know the truth?  That's boring. This is what they expect to hear, and what they expect of me."

And with that, I learned that in showbiz, or in any biz for that matter, interviews are not about facts, they're about the sell. Unlike the famous Jack Nicholson line in "A Few Good Men," it's not that the audience can't handle the truth...it's just that "the sell" is way more palatable to them.

So cut to an interview that was published last week on the website IdeaMensch. About a month ago, I was sent a list of questions, and checked out the site, which featured dozens of really, REALLY bright people.  Most of them were handed the same questions as I was, and subsequently answered them diligently, intelligently...but in the end, mostly ho-humingly. 

Because of this, I let the questions fester in my inbox for a few weeks.  If I were to follow the same route as the rest of 'em, why the hell would anyone--other than family and friends out of eye-rolling obligation--want to actually read mine?  I mean, who cares what book I recommend?

And that's when the memory of Howie kicked in.

What I decided to do was throw caution to the wind, eliminate any filters, and be entertaining rather than be purely factual.  The end result is that I had a blast doing the actual work...and was such a wise-ass that I seriously thought that they would never publish it given its irreverence and attitude.

But publish it they did, and although not the most objective evaluating tool on earth, it earned more Facebook "Likes" than virtually any other IdeaMensch interview in recent memory.

An interview is an opportunity to sell.  It's a platform to entertain, to convince, to state your case or position.  For pure facts...well, there's always Wikipedia ;)

Howie's old lesson morphed into a new one, namely this week's learning, which permeates all interviews I do now, including the ones for Just For Laughs:

Forget the facts.

Instead, tell people what

they WANT to know.

And do so in an entertaining way.

Do this, and people will always come back with more questions.

And more questions mean more opportunities to sell.

To paraphrase an old catchphrase from the TV show The X-Files, "The truth may be out there...but being 'out there' may be more valuable than the truth."