For Those Who Asked… And For My Wife

Posted on August 13, 2009 by Scott Gould

Hi friends – a little something different today – it’s my wife’s birthday, and many of you have been asking for me to post some of my poetry that I’ve written. Tomorrow I’ll resume on the theme of compromsing, but today, let me share with you a very precious poem for Faye and I.

I wrote this over 6 years ago, when I was deeply in love with her but hadn’t told her. On August 28th, 2003, at 00:05am, I quoted this to her and finally told her I loved her. Enjoy.

Finding Heart by Scott Gould

I’ve always sought to find my heart,
To see it alive, as flesh or art;
But I, after I’ve seen or heard,
Find emotion is all too briefly stirred,
And further, what art can compare
To the suns set in clouds so fair?
Though, the sun’s all too short in height
‘Gainst stars that sing in darkest night,
And they’re a dream, till soon some cloud
Should come veil those eyes as a shroud.

But there are some eyes that I know
That into the night, they do not go;
And I know of hair, and oh a face,
To make the sun set in disgrace.
I know a smile that can’t be written,
And beauty, no artist could quicken;
Whose soul is vaster than the sky:
For whom my love will never die;
And a heart, that inside I find
The fullness of my heart defined.

Again, One Is Too Small A Number

Posted on August 12, 2009 by Scott Gould

Happy birthday to us. We celebrate our first birthday today. Right in the middle of recession hype, on August 12th 2008, I put paper to pen and Aaron+Gould was born.

One year later I realise again than one is too small a number to acheive significance.

One is too small a number because one year isn’t enough to do what we want to do. We believe in experience, we really do, and the frameworks that we have built contain the type of thinking that is needed not only in businesses, but in charities, churches, families, cities, orphanages, and the rest. Memories matter. And memories are made from compelling experiences. Families need to make memories. Churches need to make memories. Orphanages need to make good memories, to balance out the bad ones.

In our work with young people we find that all too many of our nation’s children’s are over exposed to abuse, drugs, alcohol and gangs – but they are under exposed to opportunity, the reward of work, culture, and even their own potential.

And so we believe the market for experience is as large as the human race.

One is also too small a number, because I didn’t do this year by myself. I signed the papers, but my team has worked tirelessly with me. But even we didn’t do this by ourselves. We did it with you. Every Exeter Twitterati, every friend from around the world, every person who comments and encourages me on this blog, every person whose had coffee with me – every one – we did it with you. And we intend to do the next year with you too.

Today at 12:00 BST, to say thanks, we’re giving out some birthday presents. I’ll be doing a Qik to announce it, and then the blog post will appear on the Aaron+Gould blog. It’s only little, but it’s well worth being there.

So, again, from the bottom of my heart, thank you.

Much Ado About Something

Posted on August 11, 2009 by Scott Gould

Yesterday, Facebook bought FriendFeed. To the Digitalls, this is a thing of hot debate and plentiful discussion. But to the Digicools and Digitools, they will have read to this point and still understand nothing I’ve said because they have no idea what FriendFeed is, nor know why it even matters that Facebook has acquired them. But bear with me just a while…

Right now, famous technology evangelist Robert Scoble is talking through all the nuances and possible outcomes of this deal. The post is worth a read. For those of you who don’t know, Scoble made FriendFeed popular among the geeks, and has promoted it tirelessly and ceaselessly, whilst spending pretty much most of his working days on there for most of this year. Now, it appears, all those thousands of hours, all those ideas, all the marketing, all the effort of his life for the past year or so, will fade into time as FriendFeed gets sucked into Facebook.

The thing I find funny about all these Digeratti, as I call them – the top innovators and Digitall elite – is that they make so much noise about every big and every little thing. Reading Scoble’s article, many things that he is now saying he simply wasn’t saying early this year. One minute they are all expending energy on one thing, and now it is being expended on another. Blogging is dead, they cry, meanwhile, the mass market hardly knows they were ever alive. So, while I was reading Scoble’se article yesterday, I kept asking myself – “Does the mass market care? Does it even matter to the mass market? Will history change for it?” Because it certainly appears that all that effort is, well, much ado about nothing.

So it appears.

Fast forward a year or so and see the then half a billion Facebook users – the Digicools and Digitools of the mass market – now grappling with more changes and updates to Facebook. See 6 months after that, when all the ‘I hate the new, new Facebook’ pages have died down, and this mass market will be using Facebook in new ways with new technologies, based on what the Digitall have been using for years prior. And all that effort from all those FriendFeed users and engineers finds its place – it was thinking the way forward into the future.

That’s innovation.

Innovation – creating new ways to do things – is all about thinking way ahead of your time, and way ahead of the mass market.

Perhaps you’ve been wondering what that picture of a chair above is meant to be doing. That, my friends, is known as the ‘Wassily’, a chair designed by Marcel Breuer for Wassily Kandinksy at the Bauhaus. I have one in my living room. Want to know when he designed it? 1925. That’s 84 years ago. Can you imagine how innovative his thinking was to create something that is beyond even contemporary design? 84 years ago people were sitting on wooden chairs but Marcel was a thinking person who saw beyond even the imaginable future.

That’s the thing about innovation – it takes place years, and even decades before it makes sense.

Before it makes sense. Ah, there’s the rub.

There’s something that I do that, to some, doesn’t quite make sense. I run an Experience Agency. I talk about compelling experiences. But it’s ahead of where the mass market is right now. And when you’re ahead, what do you attract? Criticism. Misunderstanding. Just plain mockery. And you experience fear. You make mistakes. At times, you even doubt whether you’re even on to something at all. But then you reach down to the innovator’s compass inside of you. Your gut. And you know. You know that, given 5 years, it’ll be all the more relevant. Make it 10, and they’ll all be kicking themselves that they weren’t listening. Give it 20, and it’s a non issue.

Know that your innovation and your thinking is not much ado about nothing – but just like Scoble and FriendFeed – it’s much ado about something, the reward just comes later.

The decision you have, then, is to continue to innovate or imitate. Do the daring. Do something new, or line up and be the next cheap copy of a great original. But if you are doing something new, then beware that all the effort you put in will not have immediate return on investment. Understand that people will look at you and think what I was thinking about Scoble – “Will it work?” “Does it matter?” “Who even cares?” My recommendation, if you do innovate, is to buy yourself a Wassily chair. And every night when you sit in it and reflect and think things through, realise you are sitting in someone else’s innovation, and one day, others will sit in yours.

So here’s to all the innovators in the crowd. We are the future. My chair tells me so.

What are you are innovating?

A Time For Peace, A Time For War

Posted on August 10, 2009 by Scott Gould

In running Aaron+Gould, and in a leadership role at my church, I have a fair few battles to deal with on a weekly basis – all around people. People are the most wonderful thing in life, yet they are also the most complex. Whether it’s work, family, marriage or friends, there are always battles in your relationships. We all have critics, complainers, contenders and competitors.

Battles aren’t wrong. Disagreement, fall outs, and then making amends is like breaking a bone – when it heals, it makes the relationship stronger.

What I’ve been pondering this weekend is how do you decide what battles to fight, and which to leave? Is leaving a battle the same as loosing it? Or do you only loose if you fight and don’t win? Furthermoor, what makes a win?

I’ve always considered that you only go to war when the spoils are worth the endeavour.

That means you need to assess the scale of the battle and the potential scale of the outcome. Battling to get my wife to stop buying more shoes probably will take a lot of my emotional energy, and doesn’t have any spoils in the short term because she just doesn’t see the hundreds of shoes in the closet! However the potential long term outcome of the battle could cost me thousands of pounds over the coming years.

Determining long term spoil from short term spoil requires you to play the ‘what if’ game. What if we carry on spending money on shoes every month? What if I continue letting my child have their way even if it’s a small thing. What if I continue letting my critics go unchallenged, even though no ones listening now? What if I stopped that bully at work always forcing their opinion?

Playing the what-if game requires you know yourself and your goals pretty well. You don’t need to be precise, but you can’t be vague.

What do you guys think? How do you decide what to fight for?

One Is Too Small A Number To Achieve Significance

Posted on August 6, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’ve just got home from the Exeter Tweetup. An incredible evening. An unforgettable experience.

What a triumph to have so many of Exeter’s Twitter users get together. We must’ve made up a third or so of the audience at TBX1′s networking event. On the left is a photo of 14 of us at the after party, whilst a good 20 of us were at the networking event before hand.

We laughed, talked, shared ideas and experiences, got to know each other that little bit more, and gave advice and support to each other. It was amazing to listen to the conversations of people who were meeting in person for the first time, and watch them have such interest and desire to help one another. If you haven’t read it, then this is an example of the lessons I’ve learnt from Twitter in action.

Other highlights included Michael Greenland’s insistence that in any social group, everyone can be compared to a different character from Star Wars. Any ideas who you are?

Getting more serious… My take away from the evening, though, was this: that one is too small a number to achieve significance. Sure, I could talk about the revolution this means in business and networking, or the breaking down of social barriers. But for me, I sat there and kept thinking “what can we do, together, than will cause change for people in this world?”, because after all, it’s all about people. And tonight, I was with people whom I love.

Here’s the Qik I filmed:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tOkPVPUY2pU&fmt=18

This is a list of almost everyone who attended. If you’re name isn’t here, please let me know ASAP!

@Rokkster – Adam Stone
@Bluegrass_IT – David Thomas
@Computerselaine – Elaine Issac
@spidersandmilk – Matt Ryden
@colinwinstanley – Colin Winstanley
@babblestorm – Ross ‘Babblestorm’
@timburley – Tim Burley
@vmcconville – Vince McConville
@toucanmarketing – Emma Tallac
@greenlandstudio – Michael Greenland
@bubblegumdesign – Gemma Stringer
@lindabennett – Linda Bennet
@clarewhiston – Clare Whiston
@AndyCollyer – Andy Collyer
@ricktimmis – Rick Timmis
@orviwan – Jon Barlow
@rc55 – Ruairi Fullam
@jonathanalder – Jonathan Alder
@tbx1 – David Barr
@growwithorganic – James Moffat
@scottgould – Me

Finally, thank you all. I can’t wait to see you all again, or speak to you in 5 minutes on Twitter!

It’s All About People

Posted on August 5, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’ve had two interesting interactions with people I’ve met for the first time over the last three days. On Sunday I was preaching at our church in Barnstaple, Devon, and afterwards I was talking to a very sweet lady who came for the first time called Wendy. A woman who had obviously been through a fair bit of life, I was undone as she shared just a little of her heart with Faye and I. As I listened I realised that all my examples, doctrine, memorable phrases and effort was for one thing and one thing only: people. People like Wendy.

Fast forward to yesterday as Tom Lord from Bluegrass IT was at the office getting our PC’s to work (I’ve become PC incompetent after 5 years of Mac). As Tom was making this whole thing work properly for the first time in a year, I was watching him and had the same thought. He isn’t some machine tweaking some other machine to help machines as if we’re living in the Matrix – this whole thing is about people, and it’s helping people. [Disclosure: @Bluegrass_IT did a sweet job of getting our PC's in gear. And no, they didn't offer their help to me in return for PR.] The way Tom was dedicated to helping us, the fact that the computer was a tool to assist our work for people – the setting was an office and a Dell server – the input and the outcome was all about people.

Back in the spring I was sharing a marketing ‘formula’ I’d concocted with @kriscolvin , and what she said to me has been ringing in my ears since: “the thing that’s missing with your formula, Scott, is people.”

Wow. People. I wonder how many:

Individuals are living a life that’s missing people
Businesses are selling a product and building a brand, but missing helping people
Bloggers are writing to impress others, but not empower people
Opinionated critics blow hot hair but can’t lend a hand to people
Churches are running a ministry but have forgotten about the people
People like myself, that consider themselves to be helping people, but haven’t in the last week really got down in the trenches with people.

Perhaps if we stopped what we are doing and asked ourselves, “where are the people?”, then we’d be far more satisfied. I know that for me, meeting, helping and engaging with people is the most refreshing thing I do.

It’s all about people. Isn’t it?

Life Never Closes Its Doors

Posted on August 4, 2009 by Scott Gould

I loved reading Leonard Speiser’s words on TechCrunch on Sunday: “Business hours are dead. 24/7 is the new 9 to 5.” As an often too-connected individual, I must say I am glad that I’ve embraced this principle and moved my agency from time constraints to a non-geographically bound entity with international clients.

Whilst I’m only beginning to grasp what this global village is all about, most of us know that life, unlike business, never closes its doors. Putting your feet up at the end of day might mean your colleagues aren’t watching you, but your partner and/or kids certainly are. And whoever it is that you are in a position of influence with – children, friends, colleagues – the fact is that they always have their eyes on you.

George Ambler put it this way: Leaders live in a fish bowl. There’s always the human, or the cat, looking in to see what you’ll do next. Life doesn’t close is doors.

Now I think we need down time. And for sure, we’ll let people down because no-one’s perfect. But that doesn’t make me shun or despise the fact that people are watching me. To be given influence in that way is a privilege, and I’m of the opinion that if someone wants to watch me, then I want to make it worth their while. For me? No. For them. Because if they’ve granted me the honour of their attention, then I want to give them the honour of mine.

Leading 24/7 is hard. But if I have something to give, then I want to give it. If I can add value, then I want to add it. Like Roosevelt said:

It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena…

So, whether people are watching you to see how you succeed, or are watching in the hope that you’ll fail, decide that you’ll give them a good show. Or, should I say ‘a great experience‘?

Switching Off

Posted on August 3, 2009 by Scott Gould

I’m currently reading The 4 Hour Work Week by Tim Ferris, and amidst the mixed reviews I’ve received, I’ve been enjoying it and found this gem while I was skim-reading last Saturday:

An abundance of information has created a poverty of attention

Now being a marketeer I love ideas that spread, so a saying that rhymes like this is right up my street. But I also find it overwhelmingly true. In my rant last month on the commoditisation of content, I made the ascertion that we are drowning in content. Tim says it far more beautifully, and reveals the consequence of our high level of media consumption: attention poverty.

So let me get down and get real. I wake up at 6am every morning and, as you know, pray and read my bible. But recently at 6am, I wake up and I’m thinking ‘blog’. I actually have a rule for no work between the hours of 11pm and 7am which I call the ‘eleven-to-seven’ rule – but last month I have all too often worked during those hours. When I’ve picked up a book to read, or fancied going for a calming walk, I’ve ended up flipping open the laptop and going through my to-do list.

In short, I’ve found that I’ve been unable to switch off. And it’s because I have so much information during the day, my mind is buzzing when I want to rest.

The whole point of me blogging is to sharpen my thoughts by using them to help others, and I know that you learn just as much (if not more) from the scars as you do from the successes. In exchange for my vulnerability, and the jabs and pokes I’ll get for my honesty, I’m asking a favor from all of you who read this – whether by RSS, as a note on Facebook, by email, or if you’ve stumbled here by mistake…. I want you to leave a comment and share with me how you switch off.

So if you’re not on my actual website, then click here, and let’s talk about this!