Branson’s Advice; Newsjacking Elon Musk; Sara Blakely’s Dinner Question; International Workshops

"…keeping you great" 

HEADLINES:

Great Dinner Question —
Sara Blakely, founder of Spanx, is the youngest self-made woman billionaire in
history. She attributes her success to a question her dad asked each week at the
dinner table – "what have you failed at this week?" Take
3 minutes to watch this CNN interview with Sara for more hints to her
success – the dinner question segment is right at the 2 minute mark. Interesting
and powerful idea.

Perfect "Newsjacking" Example – kudos
to 3D printing firm Whiteclouds
for reacting quickly and taking advantage of Elon Musk's Hyperloop
announcement a couple weeks ago. The Hyperloop is Musk's sixth disruptive
technology play and his response to the outrageously expensive and relatively
slow bullet train California is planning to build between LA and San Fran.
Anyway, Whiteclouds jumped on the announcement and within 24 hours built a scale
model of the idea and grabbed a bunch of publicity for the stunt — brilliant!!
This is what David Meerman Scott means by "newsjacking" described in his book by
the same name. What's happening in the news where you can insert your company
into the reporting?

Do
What You Love? Maybe Not! — Josh Frey, EO-DC member and founder of

On Sale Promos, is featured in this WSJ
article (albeit last year) on why you need to be careful when turning what
you love into a business. It's important to be passionate about what you do
(keep trimming/delegating tasks that sap your energy) but it may not always be
best to do what you're passionate about – a subtle but important distinction. It
can end up ruining what was a fun hobby and waste a lot of resources. In turn,
solving a problem you become passionate about worked for Sara Blakely – and her
passion helped her persevere in the face of many "no's" along the way.
Nevertheless, the short article provides a useful caution worth thinking about.

Richard Branson on Mavericks — "A business needs the occasional difficult, oblique,
awkward creative person in the mix," notes Branson in his latest LinkedIn
Influencer piece (very short — takes 1 minute to read). He surrounds this
comment with all the necessary warnings – but his bigger point is that there
must be real independence of thinking within companies or the best decisions
don't get made. It's like the failure question – "how much constructive dissent
was there in the management meeting this week?"

Sydney, Brisbane, Perth, Amsterdam, Dubai, and Singapore — I'll be leading
one-day workshops in these cities this fall – and sharing our 3 new one-page
tools and updates to the rest. For info:

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