1. Apply early. Turn in all your stuff as soon as you possibly can.  If you wait until the last day, you’ll have missed out.  Seth rewards those who show up first.
2. Have a compelling story. Seth always talks about how we live in a story-driven world.  Take this into account when you’re creating your application.
3. Demonstrate that you can, have, and will continue to lead. Prove that you’re ready to change the world.

Don’t waste your time trying to be uber-creative and thinking of different ways to stand out.  Just do those three things and you’ll have a much better shot.

Also, don’t apply to this if you can’t fully commit.  Seriously.

“The obligation: don’t settle.  To have all these advantages, all this momentum, all these opportunities and then settle for mediocrity and defend the status quo and worry about corporate politics — what a waste.”

I was extremely lucky with the circumstances I was born into.  If I don’t build something great, I won’t feel sorry for myself.  I’ll just be unbelievably embarrassed, knowing I didn’t capitalize on my situation.  I won’t have any excuse.

Settling for mediocrity (i.e. the status quo) is wildly unappealing to me, and I hope it always will be.

I disagree with Steve.  Apple has been steadily rebuilding their brand’s image for the last decade, and now it’s one of the coolest companies on the planet.  They have a cult-like following and are notoriously secretive to their benefit.

While some may love the credibility and trust that comes with being more open, it can actually weaken a business to an extent.  Being extremely open sets a company up for immediate and constant criticism.  This can result in an endless discussion where the company is pandering to its consumers instead of staying focused on providing value to them.  And I don’t think ‘pandering’ and ‘providing value’ are mutually exclusive – I just think that pandering can make companies lose sight of what’s important.  Sure, it might ultimately be better for the consumer, but it can be extremely compromising for the company.

Apple’s gotten away with being secretive because people absolutely love their products.  Half of the fun in being an Apple fan is the speculation that comes before their next product release.  It creates a wild sense of curiosity all over the web.  Then when the products are finally released, people go crazy.  They literally tear the products apart to see what they’re made of and post tons of close-up shots.  It’s like technology porn.  Few corporations in the world have created this kind of madness so many times.  And this mega-hype is a result of Apple being so private.  They manufacture their brand’s mystique and they’re very good at it.

Seth Godin and Tucker Max, two great marketing strategists, have very recently reminded me that if you have a hammer, everything will look like a nail.  Basically, if you have one tactic that has worked well for you, then you’ll be apt to believe that it will work in every situation.  Being open works for Google because it’s consistent with the company’s brand.  Opening up Apple, however, would be detrimental to the brand they’ve created.

There will always have to be some degree of openness, and Apple might benefit from a bit more.  But what they’re doing right now is working very well for them – it’s aligned with their strategy.  Their main problem, in my eyes, is managing the expectations of their customers.  They’ve literally changed the face of the computer, music, and phone industries.  And now it seems like any new product they come out with that doesn’t change the world is a letdown.

Being known as the innovator is tough.

I also invite you to:

• Subscribe to this site
• Email me
• Download a single copy of my PDF here: charlie_hoehn_pdf.

But that doesn’t mean I won’t acknowledge that he is an OUTSTANDING marketer.  Seriously, the guy is still way ahead of every comedian when it comes to marketing.  He’s an incredibly savvy businessman.

What has separated Dane Cook and made him so popular?  He makes his fans feel appreciated.  Comedians typically come across as cynical and introverted; basically, they lack an air of approachability.  Not Dane Cook.  Before his career took off, he was instant messaging with his fans when he wasn’t performing.  And when he was performing, he was staying after shows to talk and take pictures with people.  The guy genuinely tries to make you feel like he’s your buddy; it doesn’t feel fake. Even with the huge amounts of people who go to his shows, you get the feeling that it wouldn’t be that hard to go meet him afterward.

Even though Dane will never EVER be regarded as a great comedian by his peers’ standards, he will always have die-hard fans.  In the MySpace world, he literally has millions of friends.  But he acknowledges each and every one and builds a relationship with them. He doesn’t treat them like customers, he treats them like friends.  He doesn’t perform for an audience, he tells stories to his buddies.  Dane has worked hard to create that kind of atmosphere, and his fans appreciate it.  What’s even better, he makes them feel like a tribe because he’s given them a hand signal to show that they’re part of the in-crowd.

In Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink,” the author talks about why certain doctors get sued while others don’t.  It has relatively little to do with the doctor committing malpractice or injuring the patient.  The key factor was that the doctor talked down to the patient.  The doctor would spend less time with people, and show less concern.  Basically, if the doctor was unlikeable, he was much more likely to get sued.

This is a lesson every single marketer needs to understand.  If you don’t treat people like they’re human beings, they won’t like you.  Customers are selfish: they care about themselves and they expect you to care more about them.  You have to respect that.

Why do you think people love Robert Scoble?  Why do you think people love Seth Godin?  These guys are in high demand, but I could call either of them up on the phone right now and they’d probably answer.  No pretentiousness.  No air of importance.  They’re just regular people who make themselves available to you.

Online marketing can seem so difficult because you can get an enormous wave of customers that all want your attention and respect at the same time.  It’s easy to spam them.  It’s even easier to ignore them.  But you have to remember that there is a human being on the other end.  It’s hard for them, too.  They know that you are getting hit with hundreds of emails each day.  Competing for your attention is hard, and they can feel insignificant if they can’t get to you easily.  But you must always acknowledge that they’re not customers, they’re people.

200 Nipples – Their pricing system is ingenious.  They make about $800 by the time they sell 40 shirts, but if they sell all 100, they’ll make over $5,000.  Pretty amazing.

Bubble Calendar – Again, this company’s profit margin is ridiculous.  $50 for bubble wrap?!  I need to think of a way to capitalize on Styrofoam peanuts and used airline cups.

Who’s influenced you?

When a sales rep says, “You know, after hearing your situation, I think you’d be a lot better off with my competitor’s product instead, here’s her number,” it actually creates positive word of mouth and long-term growth.

It seems counter-intuitive to some.  “Why should I recommend my competitor?  It’s all about sales.”  No, it’s about marketing – getting people to know, like, and trust you (as John Jantsch says).  Treat your client like they’re a friend you want to help out.   If your product or service isn’t the best fit, tell them.

• Come up with a list of ten ways to change your product (not the hype) to make it appeal to a sliver of your audience.
• Think of the smallest conceivable market, and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there.
• Outsource. If the factory is giving you a hard time about jazzing up the product, go elsewhere.
• Build and use a permission asset. Once you have the ability to talk directly to your most loyal customers, it gets much easier to develop and sell amazing things.
• Copy. Not from your industry, but from any other industry. Find an industry more dull than yours, discover who’s remarkable (it won’t take long), and do what they did.
• Identify a competitor who’s generally regarded as at the edges, and outdo them. Whatever they’re known for, do that thing even more. Even better, and even safer, do the opposite of what they’re doing.
• Find things that are “just not done” in your industry, and do them (e.g. a plastic surgeon could offer gift certificates). Stew Leonard’s took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the customers pick their own – and sales doubled.
• Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything you don’t do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, “Why not?”

One of the ideas Seth really tries to drive home is to create something worth talking about. He wants us to create “master lenses” on his Squidoo site. I had made a few lenses, and they hadn’t been doing too well. My partner, Aidan, and I are focusing on the Movie/TV category, so I was trying to think of new ideas. I’d been watching MTV’s “Real World” regularly, so I thought I’d make a biography lens on the craziest cast member, Joey. But a regular bio page isn’t really remarkable; it’s not worth talking about unless you have something really impressive or entertaining…

So I decided to take a different route: I wrote the entire lens from Joey’s exaggerated perspective. Everything I say on the lens comes from Joey’s mouth (according to me). This made my lens much more enjoyable for the reader. It also made it worth talking about, and people are more likely to forward my lens to their friends.

No one cares about the effort you put in. I learned this the hard way. If you’re going to put something on the Internet, people that don’t know you have to recognize right away that your content is going to entertain or be useful to them.