As I’m approaching my first week of daily blogging for this new posterous-powered blog I’m trying to set up some guidelines and some regular features on this blog so that you - my great readers - know a little more what to expect from me.
As Friday is typically a day when everyone’s thinking about weekend already, I’ve decided that today I’ll post about the articles I’ve read throughout the week that have captured my attention.
Friday is the “stories from my RSS reader” day:
Speaker’s Tip: Don’t tell the audience you aren’t prepared - is a great article by Jason Fried about a fact that also annoys me when I’m attending a conference or any other public seminar. When someone steps up and is supposed to tell you something, is supposed to be a speaker you’ve come a long way to listen to, and the first thing they say is this:
I’m not prepared … I just did this presentation on my way here in the cab … My presentation will be boring
They think they are funny. Hell no. There’s nothing funny about not being prepared - it’s making fun of the attendees, because what they actually are saying is this:
“I got here for free and I’m supposed to talk to you about something I have no idea about, and you suckers paid big dollar to listen to me - you should ask for your money back. Now.”.
Friends, Critics and Trolls - from one of my favorite blogs by Michael Hyatt. It’s really important to be able to differentiate between the three - to make sure you know who’s your friend online, who’s your critic and who is there to flat-out ridicule you.
It’s also important to learn to take a deep breath when someone is offending you both online and offline. The ability to respond cordially and turn around is very important here. I’ll dig into this subject deeper in one of my next posts.
Does Slow Growth Equal Slow Death - from Joel Spolsky made me think about my business which at this point is indeed in a very “comfortable” state with a “comfortable” growth rate and although we’re working hard on giving more value to our users every day, we might be not doing enough to ensure a more rapid growth.
Although I also liked and agree to a certain degree with David’s response, this is something I will be revisiting with my Nozbe team and checking where we can improve and make sure we can “handle success” staying “hungry and foolish” just like Steve Jobs said.
**Question: **Are you always prepared for your presentations? Do you like it when someone is not prepared and they make fun about it? Can you handle trolls? Can you handle critique? Is your company / startup developing fast enough?