THE DREAM IN ACTION

staying power - n. the ability to endure or last.

Some startups today seem like they’re cool features or tools (insert twitter tool here) but I just don’t see how some of them will be around in a year or 2 when their budgets dry up. I could be totally wrong and maybe Twitters tool will get bought out left and right in some mass consolidation of the market, but I doubt it. When I evaluate startups today I look for staying power. In my mind that means, how do they change the status quo such that people will not return to the norm? For example, Twitter has changed the way I think about what I’m doing. If something cool happens I share it. If I read something crazy or have an experience that I think people would enjoy sharing with me I blog about it, then tweet the link. I take pictures and tweet them, I talk with friends on twitter way more often than I send text messages. Twitter changed the way I communicate and I don’t see that changing back.

I believe that Dailybooth has staying power because it’s changing the way people communicate again. It’s moving us ever so slightly away from text. With Dailybooth you can upload images in a stream and have conversations with images. This is just Twitter with pictures you say!? Maybe. Or maybe it’s the first step away from text centric twitter to something of the future. People probably aren’t ready for full video conversations just yet (although I believe they will eventually) which is why Seesmic has moved away from focusing on video conversations. I think Seesmic video was an amazing idea but I think it just came to early. But Dailybooth may provide that smooth transition away from text in a way that adoption will be much larger. Only time will tell. What do you think?

Both Gary V and Kevin Rose are investors in Dailybooth and both of those guys have proved repeatedly that they know how to trend spot when it comes to web services. When people change the way they communicate it’s exciting and those guys might have nailed it with their investments here. The staying power of Dailybooth is right in front of your eyes. Jump on and follow me!

The images below, if you haven’t look yet, are a crowd sourced image thread of the Fresh Prince of Bel Air theme song. They start with the two images above and continue all the way down through the end of the song. This kind of image collaboration just doesn’t happen often and I do think that Dailybooth has caught onto something special here.

In a recent interview with Peter Kim of the Dachis Group, (one of hundred’s he’s done over the last 2 weeks) Gary Vaynerchuk summed up his hard work and much of his business philosophy by saying, “Talk and things happen.”

I’ve been watching WineLibraryTV for probably about a year. Gary is nuts and I won’t even argue with the more subdued folks who say they don’t like his style, to each their own, personally, I love it! He’s inspiring, honest (authentic) and passionate to no end. His transparent hard work is a great reminder just how tough building a business can be and how you really do have to “hustle” your ass of to succeed. Thanks for the inspiration Gary.

When I heard he was coming out with ‘Crush It’ I thought, I probably won’t buy that book. I’ve heard his story over and over and although it’s a great one, I don’t need to spend $15 bucks to read it. Then I took a step back, realized that 9 months or so ago when Gary came out with his first book on wine, he sent me a free copy just because I emailed and asked. Then when we wanted Gary on ActionsTalk, he happily filmed our interview and was one of our most watched webisodes :) Again, thanks Gary.

So I decided, even if I’ve heard the story, I’m buying the book. I owe it to the guy. He’s bustin’ his ass, inspiring people along the way, and I’m happy to drop 10-15 bones to help him out. Man I’m glad I did. When I dove into the book on my flight this weekend I realized that his background, although I thought I’d heard the whole story, I hadn’t, and it’s a damn good one. His love for his family and his core values that have guided much of his business decision making are rock solid, and it’s clear he’s loyal to those principles.

His story of coming up learning to trade baseball cards for some serious cash is awesome. Then jumping to wine because of his fathers liquor store business and he’s realization that peoples interest in collecting and trading cards was not dissimilar to their passion for collecting and trading wine (can you say insight). Gary’s ability to see what people value and how to extract some of that value as a business is far above the rest.

Many books give you all kinds of philosophy leaving the how-to to be desired. Not this book. ‘Crush It’ is practical and applicable to almost anyone. Whether you hate your current job and are looking for an entrepreneurial option out or whether your running your own business but aren’t enjoying it, Gary shows you how to maximize the enjoyment of your life by focusing on a topic and a business that you can wake up excited for.

I’ve just finished up ‘Crush it’ this morning and it really is inspirational. The biggest surprise is that there really is a ton in the book that is outside of Gary’s normal schpeal. Even for the avid WLTV and Gary fan it’s a great read. It’s original stuff that is very motivating. Please, I encourage you, got out and pick up this quick read that is guaranteed to inspire and be well worth the $15 bones.

(Gary this picture of you should be titled, seduction. :)

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Now you can comment on this blog and it will post to Friendfeed. There are many great conversations going on over on Friendfeed and I’m happy that I’ll be able to reach and engaged that community with this blog.

During a talk with Robert Scoble and Gary Vaynerchuk at CES, Scoble mentioned that Friendfeed has a lot of big things coming. A recent blog post I read entitled ‘Friendfeed could kill Twitter‘ (sorry couldn’t find a link) lead me to believe that Friendfeed does have some really great stuff down the line. I’m pumped for that platform to grow and I think it’s great, but for now it’s still a little too early adopter-ish. I’d love to help them get more main stream which is why I’m happy to be on the early side of integrations like this.

I’ve long been a proponent of opening the conversations up and minimizing platform dependability. I also like services that are platform transparent, meaning they don’t need you to know where or how the conversation is happening, but are more focused on the fact that the conversation is happening. Disqus seems to be that way. They are making partnerships that will take their added value and share it with others. The are closer to the source of the value (the blog) and they know that if the conversations they “own” or host are on more platforms their value will increase as well.

Great work to the Disqus and Friendfeed folks for making this happen.

Below is a view from Friendfeed:

One thing I’ve noticed is that it does not appear that a comment made on Friendfeed will come back to post on this blog. I’m not sure if it should and didn’t or if they don’t have that worked out yet but this must occur for there to be significant platform transparency and value add.

Instead of making big New Years Resolutions for 2009 I decided last November that I would attempt to call out and meet 12 specific people in 2009. I figured those relationships would be much more valuable than any half ass’d resolution. So, over the last few months, up to the night that I posted this I worked to identify 12 people that I respect and could learn the most from, so here they are. If you’re on the list, please contact me…we’ll be in touch.

Nate Westhiemer, Rose Tech Ventures, NYC - I’ve been following Nate on the web since right around the time when he shut down his company BricaBox. He built a product that helped people make there own mash-ups that was a great idea but in the end the customers weren’t quite there like he thought. Why I really would like to meet Nate, and what inspired me so much from his experience, is first, his ability to learn from mistakes and second, his ability to communicate those mistakes. I’d love to have lunch or beers with Nate and share with him some of the entrepreneurial ventures I’ve taken on and share whats working and what’s not. I’m sure he’d have some valuable advice. Nate now serves as the EIR (entrepreneur in residence) at Rose Tech Ventures, “the entrepreneurs dream job”. (The idea for the 12 people I’d like to meet post came from Nate, so he deserves to be listed first)

Loic Lemeur, Seesmic, SF – Since the earlier days of my social web craze when I tried to put everyone on video, I began using Seesmic. I became an avid member of the Seesmic community and created a lot of great relationships on there. Loic is the CEO and founder of Seesmic and an experienced entrepreneur and blogger. He is know as a/the leading tech entrepreneur in Europe and runs the LeWeb conference. I’d love the opportunity to meet Loic because I envy his ability to one, always stay happy through the entrepreneurial process (even when he had to lay-off a large portion of his team he remained positive). Secondly, I respect the respect that others have for him. He has an ability to coordinate and truly build, whether that’s a technology product or a community.

Jason Fried, 37signals, Chicago – Jason founded 37signals doing web design and development on a contractual basis. I started SocialDreamium doing community building on a contractual basis. Jason, although he is a self proclaimed, “non-techy”, like myself, has been able to create products that millions of customers love, and pay for. I hope to accomplish that as well. Jason has a sense of clarity to his business philosophies that other either don’t have or aren’t able to communicate. I’ve always thought that the “get a million eye balls” business model is flawed and Jason would share that belief. I’d like to meet Jason because of his ability to stick to what he and his team believe in regardless of the critics. His thoughts are clear and simple, just like his products, and I’d love to have some of that clarity rub off.

Walt Ribeiro, The Internet’s Music Teacher, Philly - If you want to find just a good guy with serious talent and great passion for what he does, you probably won’t find anyone better than Walt. He’s a stud on the web who helps people learn music. He’s the internets music teacher and does so by holding live streams of music lessons. I started watching, and we connected via Seesmic, then he sent me a necklace with a Ustream guitar pick on it. Awesome. I’d like to meet Walt mostly just because I know we’d have a blast together. I like nice people. Walk is a nice guy!

Daniel Debow, Rypple, Canada – Daniel is in one word, impressive. We’ve never met in person but I have spoken with him on the phone quite a bit.  Daniel is co-CEO of Rypple and a Huffington Post featured blogger. Daniel and and I first hooked up through my blog when I wrote about Gen Y. His company, Rypple, helps Gen Y folks (and others) in the work force improve communication with their bosses and get better feedback in the workplace…much needed.  Since that initial conversation I’ve helped beta test Rypple, and learned a ton about the software building and tweaking process. Daniel is a true entrepreneur, and will likely serve on the SocialDreamium Advisory Board. You may think that this is a cheat but my success here will be to actual spend time with Daniel in person.

Dharmesh Shah, Hubspot, Boston

I respect Darmesh because he’s a creator. There is a huge divide between people who use the web, those who create and those who consume, Darmesh is the former. One of my favorite stories is how Darmesh coded the ever popular Twitter Grader in one night and tweeted about it as if it was no big deal. It ended up being one of Hubspot’s core marketing tools. Darmesh is a developer to the core and a whiz at that. I have a lot to learn from Darmesh.

Mike Volpe, Hubspot, Boston

Mark is the VP of Marketing at Hubspot and is a true marketing guy. What I envy about Mark and what I try to emulate is his transparency online. He openly admits that he’s learning the do’s and do-not’s of social media. He recently lead a campaign to pay .50cents for each to twitter follower to a charity. Surprise, surprise, it worked. Hubspot is a true marketing company with some great developers to support them (see Darmesh Shah above). Mark is building a great team at Hubspot and I’d love to talk with Mark about recruiting and marketing stuff. No company can survive without any marketing…Mark understands how to do powerful marketing on the cheap.

Gary Vaynerchuk, WLTV, NYC

I started following Gary way back, on WineLibraryTV. I wasn’t one of the first or anything like that but I did realize this guy was going places well before he went “big” (Conan, Ellen, & MadMoney). After finding out that Gary was going to release a book on wine I emailed him asking if I could get a copy and I’d blog my thoughts… about a week later he responded saying, “books on the way, hope you enjoy!” @garyvee understands the power of using the web to connect with people better than most. He once said that he’d like to meet everyone in the world, yes everyone. So I’d like to help him out.

Fraser Kelton, AdaptiveBlue, NYC

A few months ago I contacted Fred Wilson asking him about one of his portfolio companies. He put me in touch with Fraser and I’m so glad he did. Fraser is the VP of BizDev at AdaptiveBlue in New York. He’s helping drive the GLUE product to become a huge success as a Firefox ad-on and he even co-founded AdOnCon, a conference for browser ad-on’s that was well attended by almost every browser company. Fraser seems to be about 2 years ahead of me in the startup game and although we’ve spoken on the phone, an in person conversation needs to happen. Fraser’s a stud.

Dan Patterson, ABC News & Creepy Sleepy, NYC

I don’t know Dan at all. We’ve spoken maybe once on Twitter and I’m apart of his #bkrev group on Facebook where he religiously holds conversations around books he’s reading and books others are reading. Dan is the Digital Audio Manager and reporter for ABC News, and produces the internet radio program Creepy Sleepy. He also understands web connections and has the official and unofficial experience to back it up. As you can see many of these folks are in NYC, I guess there’s a trip in my future!

A.J. Jacobs, Author ‘The Year of Living Biblically‘, NYC

The fact is that as I write this post I’m only half way through AJ’s second book “The Year of Living Biblically”. He writes about his life experiments where he fully submerges himself in something and writes about the experience. His first book, “The Know-It-All” was a huge success as he called it quest to become the smartest man in the world by reading the entire encyclopedia. I’d really like to meet AJ because, he first is nothing like me and I believe there are huge benefits to learning from people who are not similar to yourself. Second, he’s a phenomenally entertaining writer and I strive to improve my writing daily (it’s one of the core reasons I started this blog). And lastly, because he fully emerges himself in his work, even at the expense of his personal life. I envy that thoroughly.

YOU…

Seriously. I’ve found over the past 6 months that Twitter enables a lot of connections, but those are only connections. The real relationships begin when you can have a phone conversation or hopefully meet in person. Then you have something to base your connection off of. You have things in common and an experience to refer to.

If I learned anything in 2008, I learned that you can never know too many people and the connections you make may be more valuable than the skills you learn. Thanks to all of you for making my social web experiences over the last year so much fun. If you’re one of the folks that I’d like to meet…we’ll be in touch.

Today was awesome. I had a productive day at work, I started early (about 6:50am), got to work on some video editing which was fun, got news about a potential stint in Paris, and left a hair before 5 (always nice). Then when I came home I realized that it was an awesome “social media day”. That may sound a little “douchy” but I’ll tell you, it was awesome.

For a blogger, at least for me, its all about quality and quantity. I want tons of people to come to my site, and I want big names to come to my site. Often times big names can mean tons of people, if they share. Plus, they’re big names for a reason…they’re awesome! Two of my favorite blogs are…

• Fred Wilson AVC.com
• Gary Vaynerchuk garyvaynerchuk.com

… and both of those bloggers came to my site today!

Fred Wilson’s blog is probably top of my must read list so having him read my stuff is quite an honor…he’s got a style that is second to none. He has over 150k readers of AVC.com and has grown that by simplifying the mysterious world of venture capital for the everyday entrepreneur and investor. He respects his readers and he understands community (he replies to almost every comment I make).

Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV is one of the largest personalities on the web. At the very least he’s the most energetic! He hosts a 20 min wine show 5 days a week and is the icon of personal branding. ActionsTalk will be having Gary V on next week so don’t miss it!

The list doesn’t stop there…

Blake Samic - co-founder of ActionsTalk and all around bro

Joe Budde – my college roommate from sophomore year that I haven’t talked to since (sorry Jbud1)

Dave Cohn – an ActionsTalk contributor and good friend who runs Spot.Us

Soren MacBeth – founder of StockTwits.com

Frank Gruber – founder of TECH Cocktail (I’m going Nov 6th in Chi) also SomewhatFrank

Gregory Ng – a social web brethren – check out Gregs new frozen food site FreezerBurns.com

So, in growing a blog its all about the community and the content. Celebrating the small victories like this one are important. They are what keep you writing and excited about you blog…so really those victories are what keep your blog awesome. Thanks to all the readers…without you I’d quit!

As many of you well know I’m a huge fan of Gary Vaynerchuk of WineLibraryTV. Gary is authentic and uses that authenticity to build great businesses. A few weeks ago I reached out to Gary for a spotlight on ActionsTalk, my start-up that features great entrepreneurs and allows them to tell their story to our viewers.  We sent Gary the topic questions as a guide for his spotlight and he filmed this week. During filming and thinking about growing a business he decided to address the topic of small business growth and this video was posted on his personal site garyvaynerchuk.com.

Then Loic Lemeur chimed into the conversation (and referenced a conversation I earlier had with Loic!) with his thoughts on  content, community, and an intense step by step focus.These are the people that I listen to closest when fighting through the trials that come along with building a start-up. Their experiences and opinions are invaluable to my development as an entrepreneur.

Over the last month I have been reading Gary Vaynerchuks ‘101 Wines guaranteed to inspire, delight, and bring thunder to your world’. Yes the book has taught me about 101 wines but most importantly it has begun to teach me how to talk about the wines that I taste. Gary has the ability to draw pictures in my head with the adjectives he uses when describing wine. He talks about the baseball mitt that he grew up with when tasting leather in a dry chard.  He pulls out flavors like, plum or bacon, without even cracking a smile (thus, its not bullshit). Gary’s passion for wine is so obvious in every word of the book that it can’t help but to spill over onto the reader.

This weekend I went to a wine tasting where everyone brings two bottles of wine. The party drinks one of each pair  and everyone votes at the end for which wine was the best. With a little bit of applied knowledge (from a wine class in college) and a little luck my wine won the tasting and I walked out with 11 (should have been 14, but I’m not greedy :) ) bottles of wine!  (Ryan G TV forthcoming!)

I definitely wouldn’t consider myself any kind of expert on wine yet but ‘101 Wines…’  is a book that gives the reader the tools that they will need to eventually become that expert. With a little wine flowing and a little inspiration from Gary and ‘101 Wines…’  I was able to talk about the wines I was tasting with a descriptive, imaginative tone. Gary’s book is much more about how to experience the wine you are tasting than what wines you are tasting. He encourages the reader to try new wines all the time and build up the experienced pallet that you need in order to pull the taste ‘honey suckle’ off of the tip of your tongue during a tasting.

I first want to encourage any wine taster, drinker, chugger, or alcoholic to go out and pick up Gary’s book (just click the picture) and stop being afraid of the wine world. Take a tight grasp on it and dive right in. The best part is as Gary says, “you should never have to spend more than 10 bucks” for a good bottle of wine.  So start today and start together, have a wine tasting and experience many wines back to back so you can begin to experience the differences. What do they make you think of? How does each make you feel?
Second, I want to urge you to learn more! Study it, taste it, enjoy the great things that come along with the wine world. Don’t be a wine snob thinking that one wine is better than the other, just continue to share and experience the differences between the wines. It will no doubt grow from there!

This weekend I attended my first Jimmy Buffet concert at Alpine Valley, WI.  In the words of my dear mother, “Everyone needs to see Jimmy at least once”. Jimmy Buffet, like no other musician that I’ve ever seen in my life, draws a very diverse fan base. Based on what I saw this weekend, literally anyone can go to a Jimmy Buffet concert and love it. There is no racial divide, no economic divide, no gender divide and definitely no age divide between the Parrot Heads.

As a blogger I obviously follow my audience fairly closely and like to know who enjoys reading or watching the content I create. Also, it may be obvious that I would like that number of people to grow. If that number grows the purpose of my blogging also grows, not to mention it makes me feel good. With that said, I think I, and bloggers like me, have a lot to learn from Jimmy Buffet. His open and all-inclusive style is one worth emulating. Gary Vaynerchuk is another web personality that masters this open and inclusive style.

Studying how Jimmy and people like him create such a following, I’ve come up with 2 main ingredients that feed this diverse following:

The strongest characteristic of Jimmy’s all-inclusive personality seems to be that he is always happy! Inherently people want to be happy, so when a person is happy and fun others are much more likely to be interested in being around or in this case following that person. There isn’t anybody that is sad at a Buffet concert. People are carefree and on the whole in great moods. If you go to a sporting events or other places where there are large crowds you often see fights and angry people. Even with the inevitable over consumption of alcohol, I didn’t see one fight all day. Jimmy is happy, the mood is happy, and people love happy.

Also, Jimmy’s music also reminds people of vacation, it takes them away from the routine of their “normal” lives and people are attracted to that “get away” feeling. Jimmy knows how to help people have fun; he has completely embraced the tropical mood of a vacation into his personality and musical style. He has done a wonderful job at managing his image in this way. People love doing something different than the norm and a Buffet concert is no doubt outside of the norm. Help create the feeling of ‘getting away’ and people are bound to follow.

So as you blog, speak, or create music remember that if you create a place for people to get away and create a happy aura and a happy mood your fans will increase, become more engaged and you’ll find that the impact of what you create will drastically increase.

Yesterday Gary and Kevin were together in Vegas and took an hour or so just to answer questions people had on Seesmic. A few notes on this:

• Seesmic is obviously sweet and is going to last. The big names are buying in.
• Kevin and Gary combined have phenomenal insights into building web companies and communities.
• I’m pissed I caught this late and didn’t ask a question.

I watched most of the question and answers and chose to post this one because of its relevance to start-ups. However, many questions were totally random and I loved that. One question was about how to sneak out of the house!? This question is about how to bring more people to a company as it relates to employees and as it relates to funding. Here is Kevin and Gary’s answer.

These guys are awesome. Look soon for my review of Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book: 101 Wines Guaranteed to Inspire, Delight, and Bring Thunder to Your World.