The glorious thing was the realization halfway through the meal that it was shaping up to be exactly that.  As such, my date and I had the self-awareness to slow down, soak in the experience and savor every last bit of food, sauce, drink, interaction, company and atmosphere the place had to offer.  We ended up at an acclaimed restaurant in Chicago called Blackbird, and from the moment we sat down, the staff got every detail exactly, perfectly right.

I’m hardly the first – or the most eloquent – to describe the chemistry of human relationships, but I’ll say that our server / bartender was among the most skilled at what she did of anyone I’ve met.  Her tone and delivery, the amount of and enthusiasm with which she described the cooking techniques and flavor profiles, her drink pairings – all inch-perfect.  We never waited a moment too long for service, we were encouraged to experiment, we were given free ‘treats’ to supplement what we’d ordered and we had a meaningful, pleasant conversation with the owner prior to leaving.

While the meal was comprehensively the best-tasting food I’ve ever had in a restaurant, the defining characteristics were service and atmosphere. Taken together, the elements of place, company, and service delivered an experience that’s both cherished and remembered and which leaves me wanting more.

Perhaps it was the food, or perhaps the alcohol, or maybe just the post-coital glow of an astounding meal, but I was left with some strong business metaphors. Good and plentiful food and drink has a tendency to do that to me. I’m currently working on a project which I believe will drastically and positively affect the client, and there are parallels in play with my meal:

1) Listen more than you talk: At Blackbird, our server / bartender was personable, but that’s a prerequisite.  Her ability to listen to us, interpret the context and apply her knowledge was what set her apart.  In my business, that’s key.  My current project features a smart, thoughtful client who takes his time to think things through, and it’s required a bit of detailed explanation on my end to portray exactly the right information to help him make decisions.  I’m lucky as well, because my technical and design partner, Nate Luzod of Grid, LLC, is as adept at translating technology terminology to me – so I can pass it on to our layman client – as our bartender was at explaining beer and duck pairings.  Understanding context and providing a truly consultative experience for a client is a direct result of one’s listening skills, and we all should do it better.

2) Don’t be afraid to create something new: Two items from our meal stood out to me.  Our amuse bouche (food nerd word for ‘a single, bite-sized hors d’œuvre’) was raw trout with watermelon and pickled cherries, and my entrée was aged duck breast with caramel sauce.  I’ve eaten well and adventurously for years, but those were outstanding.  My current client is taking a relatively big leap, marketing-wise, and had been hesitant to stray from their comfort zone initially.  To their credit, they’ve gone all-in, and I’m expecting them to be rewarded for their adventurousness with a stellar outcome. They’ve been willing to break from industry convention, be open-minded about their logo and display issues and put a human face on a relatively anonymous and dry business.

3) Service is indisputably king. Our bartender / server was omnipresent without being overbearing, insightful and eloquent in describing the menu and answering questions, pleasant and generous with us.  Never hurts to give your customer a gratis dessert after they’ve agonized about only ordering one.

In business, “service” as a concept is really hard to define – but we’ve all had experiences of terrible service.  Blackbird’s combination of fantastic product and intelligent, pleasant and gracious hospitality are a good representation of “service” in their industry, and I’m reminded that the elements of service in my business are timeliness, knowledge, listening, over-delivering, interpreting and, above all else, communicating in a way which the audience / client relates to. Whether that means providing expertise, being a shoulder to cry on, or giving things away for free, “service” means satisfying your customer, exceeding expectations they didn’t know they had and creating a warm emotion from your interactions.

All those elements combined add up to Getting It Exactly Right.  It’s a hell of a satisfying feeling to connect with a customer, judge how much hand-holding they need and deliver them something they need.  Apart from a great product outcome, the relationship formed will pay dividends for both parties long into the future. And that’s the whole point of business – whether you’re a restaurateur or a marketing consultant.

Because they Get It Exactly Right, I’m officially telling everyone I know who travels to Chicago to go to Blackbird for at least one meal.

Also: Blackbird’s restroom has a special treat for those who pull the curtain back.

With a marketplace of several hundred million potential buyers, you don’t have to look far afield before running into some advertisement for a car.  Some of them are good, some are questionable, but the vast majority just breeze through our consciousness – perhaps leaving some trace impression, which advertisers hope accrue over time into a brand preference. I was subject to two completely different marketing messages from auto manufacturers yesterday, and it left the troubling impression in me that, largely, our American automakers continue to flail around, over-reacting strongly when they should be planning and executing boldly.

Yesterday, the internet was abuzz with the news that GM’s new marketing chief had spoken from on high, decreeing that henceforth, all GM employees were not to speak to their customers, co-workers or even families of the brand “Chevy”.  It’d be Chevrolet, the proper name for the brand or else. Literally.  They even set up a “swear jar”, requiring corporate employees to drop in a quarter every time they slipped and said “Chevy.”

The press release and resulting followup were thick with face-palming moments of irony and groupthink, and GM quickly issued a clarification.  Damage done, however – I’d say that GM lost the internet yesterday, and probably reinforced the negative “empty suit” image that many people have of the company’s leadership.  Willful asininity, I say.

Contrast that to a strange, yet very compelling TV advertisement I saw in the evening yesterday during the NBA Finals for the Kia Soul – a Korean car, which is squarely aimed at a young, urban, fun-loving consumer.  The ad features animated Hamsters b-boying it up to the strains of Black Sheep’s The Choice Is Yours.

It’s brilliant.  Apart from being catchy and humorous, Kia has managed to draw lines of differentiation between the Soul and the competition. Riffing off of the song’s “you can get with this… or you can get with that…” refrain, the ad presents choices: get with something appealing, aesthetically pleasing and fun, or get with a toaster, a washing machine or a cardboard box with a bad paint job – all references to the notoriously boxy Scion xB.  Which of course, is the direct competition.

A couple years ago at the LA Auto Show, Kim Wolfkill, former editor at Road & Track and MSN Autos, told me “Right now, the Japanese are as afraid of the Koreans as the Americans were of the Japanese in the 1980’s.”  I’d say so – interesting, well-built cars, quality that’s nearing Japanese/German levels and aggressive marketing.  If I were Toyota or GM, I’d be thinking long and hard about how to fend the Koreans off.

So what’s the lesson? First, it pays to be audacious and experimental rather than protective and myopic.  Second, consumers are smart – and they’re sensitive to hollow and transparent marketing strategies.  Being perceived as out-of-touch and slightly machiavellian is not a winning strategy for selling cars, or anything else.  Third, instead of actually name-dropping your competition – which only gives your competition precious impressions – cleverly and good-naturedly creating negative associations to them is effective.  To consumers who are receptive to your message, this engenders warm marketing fuzzies.

*Note: I freely admit that I’m in the crosshairs of Kia’s marketing efforts because of my demography and psychographic profile, but I find it heartening that Kia took the cars to shout out the artists whose song they used in the commercial – the brilliant Black Sheep.  Well done, Kia.

First off, a history lesson, from the 2007 12 Hours of Sebring.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Secondly, SPEEDTV’s “Last Lap” feature from Laguna Seca this past weekend.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Thrilling stuff, and arguments of professed innocence aside, it was a hell of a race.  Both the drivers know each other well, respect one another, and kissed and made up.  At least as well as Danes and Germans do, that is.

The Most Obscure (and inspiring) Plan I’ve Heard This Year

I have a friend, Steven, who works as a mechanic and ‘over the wall’ tire changer for Flying Lizard Motorsport.  He and I go back several years to a previous team, and he’s one of those people that I just inherently get along with.  I don’t think he’d object to me calling him a bit of a redneck – he’s majorly into MMA-type fight training, smokes cigarettes incessantly and greatly enjoys, uh, horticulture.  He’s a proper Northern California redneck.  We laugh and tease one another every time we see each other, but I’ve got a huge amount of respect for his attitude and his work ethic – he’s always working hard, smiling, cracking jokes, and that’s a huge change from the typically surly, clique-bound racing mechanic.  Nine times out of 10, mechanics and marketing guys don’t get along – most mechanics think marketing types are pretty boys at best, an obstacle to their to-do list at worst.

I digress. In the course of conversation with Steven during the last hour of the race from Laguna Seca, I casually asked him, as racing types tend to do at this time of year, “What’s up for you next year?”  He responded as I expected him to, with a “We’ll see, hopefully I can stay here.”  What came next though was a bit of a shock, when he said, “I’ve built a NASCAR-regulation axle and wheel assembly in my garage and I’ve been practicing tire changes at night there.”

Nonchalantly, Steven went on to explain that yep, he wants to move up to the NASCAR world, changing tires for a top Sprint Cup team.  Lots of NASCAR fans would love that as a weekend warrior-type job, but Steven’s dead set on it.  I asked him a bit more about it and he said that he’d built this assembly in his garage, bought two competition-spec wheels and tires, an air gun and that yep, he practices tire changes in his spare time.

Moreover, he’s got a career plan about it.  He told me – again, totally nonchalantly, like it’s the most natural thing in the world – that he wants to gain another 10-15lbs. of muscle because the tires are bigger and heavier, and that once he’s satisfied that he’s good enough, he’s just going to put together a video resume and attach it to his regular resume and send it out to Cup teams, and in his words, “I’ll be faster than everyone else, so the teams won’t have any choice but to hire me; I’ll just be plain better than their guys.”

Here’s what we’re talking about – NASCAR pit stops, including the tire change guys.  In an otherwise vapidly boring form of motorsport, it often provides the only real drama of the races, outside the wrecks. 

Click here to view the embedded video.

I was absolutely flabbergasted by this conversation.  It’s such an obscure, narrowly-focused goal for Steven to have, but I’d be willing to bet my entire 2009 salary that he’ll not only make it to Sprint Cup, but he’ll be one of the best out there at what he does.  I couldn’t help but be excited for him, not just because he’s my friend, but because he’s got a tangible (if extremely narrow) goal, and he’s worked out a plan for how to gain the skills he needs, but more to the point how to make it actionable.

Oh yeah, and the kicker: he finishes the conversation with “Oh, I don’t want to be in Sprint Cup for long – I hate the travel.  I just want to do it for two or three years, then come home and keep on workin’ on cars.”

The big lesson in this for me is that I – and everyone else I know in the business world – needs to take Steven’s motivation and discipline to heart.  Find something you want to do – whether it’s selling beer, changing tires in NASCAR, writing about porn or changing the way the world discovers music – and do it with an inspired plan.  Be willing to do the equivalent of working out in your garage after hours to accomplish your goal.

One of my least favorite characteristics in anyone is a bad attitude, and specifically a lack of a sense of humor.  This is especially true of public figures, and one of my challenges as a marketing professional is to get my clients to open up and be themselves in a public way.  There’s a time and a place for polish and presence, but as the story of Valentino Rossi illustrates, it’s better to have a persona than to be an automaton.

The backstory first: last weekend, MotoGP raced at Indianapolis Motor Speedway, and Rossi crashed out of the race, his first DNF since 2007. Rossi’s been about as dominant as a racer could be – comparisons to Michaels Schumacher and Jordan aren’t out of place – and to say the least, this was an uncharacteristic mistake for him.  As he put it this past weekend at the Misano press conference, “In Italy, if you make a stupid mistake we say you are a donkey. As soon as I hit the ground at Indianapolis I thought what a donkey I was. Later I thought that would make a good helmet design for my home race,” explained Rossi. “So I may have lost 25 points but I solved the problem of the helmet design for Misano!”

Now.  This guy is one of the top 10 most highly-paid athlete on the planet currently ($34m in 2008), and I have to say that I’m becoming a giant fan. Racers in general have a well-deserved reputation for being divas, and it would be no surprise to anyone if someone who’s won as many championships as Rossi has acted like a bit of an ass (pun intended) from time to time.  It always astounds me to see Formula 1 or IndyCar drivers blitz their way through huge crowds of fans, doing everything in their power to just get to where they want to go, not taking a moment to smile, wave, or even just plain acknowledge the fans in attendance.  I remember watching Dan Wheldon and Marco Andretti belligerently drive through a crowd at an IRL race once on their scooters – all it does for me is wish the worst for them.  Danica Patrick I suppose is a bit different – she’s absolutely mobbed wherever she goes, and I get that there’s a personal safety issue there, but still.  Guys like Rossi seem cut from a different cloth.

I digress.  In a world where Formula 1 drivers give monotone, rote answers to journalists’ questions, and where everyone seems intent on sticking to the corporate line, we’re blessed to get a guy like Valentino Rossi who clearly has a good grip on the relative importance of motorcycle racing in the world.

Of course, after calling himself a donkey and getting a very, very cool helmet done on short notice, the guy goes out and wins his home Grand Prix.  Just another day for a national hero, doing what an Italian national hero should do – triumph, but with drama, a sense of passion and good humor.  Thing is, though, he tops the whole helmet thing by wearing donkey ears on his head on the victory podium.  For those not familiar with the whole podium ceremony in racing, it’s normally a pretty dry affair.  There’s the “hat dance”, wherein bored racers doff ill-fitting caps for a whole slew of sponsors, attempt to smile and then spray each other with champagne.  The ceremonies can be entertaining, but more often than not they’re completely unremarkable.  However, a guy wearing donkey ears after winning his home Grand Prix is… memorable.  Sort of the stuff legends are made of.

Sidebar: one guy currently racing in Formula 1 who seems to actually have a personality is Sebastien Vettel.  He’s got a habit of naming his racecars, and earlier this year, he pulled a move that’s become an instant classic.  Our friends at Axis of Oversteer wrote about it well better than I can, which you can read here.  It’s highly recommended.

To bring the point back to business, and marketing:  I think that it’s imperative that everyone who’s determined to make a mark in the world – whether they’re a race driver, a musician, an author or a brand – do so by expressing themselves creatively.  Not everyone is a born comedian, but an air of persona can be established over time. For different reasons, journalists, fans, consumers and sponsors are seeking out athletes like Rossi, Lance Armstrong, Shaquille O’Neill, Tony Stewart, Peyton Manning and Ken Block.  What all those people have in common is a presence – Armstrong’s the heroic cancer survivor (deservedly so), Stewart’s the beer-bellied blue-collar guy, Shaq’s the lovable comedian / big lug, Manning’s the self-ironic meathead jock and Ken Block is… well, Ken Block’s just a badass driver who plain gets it.  Fans of all types are able to connect with these athletes for some reason, and I’m pretty sure that car guys the world over are giving DC Shoes some purchase consideration in light of the Gymkhana videos.  The extended version of Tony Stewart’s recent Old Spice commercial is below, and it’s a gem.  I greatly appreciate the willingness to be the butt of the joke – and it’s pretty clear that doing so is better for your public image than repeating the same tired, over-polished, boring quotes time after time.  There’s a good reason why “We run good” was Ricky Bobby’s go-to line in Talladega Nights.

My client Patrick Long has a knack for blowing people away in his public speaking gigs.  He normally speaks to ‘business leader’ types – big rooms full of affluent, decisive types – and despite the fact that he didn’t go to college (he’s been racing professionally since he was 15), he bowls them over with what I guess I’d have to call worldliness.  Patrick’s literally raced all over the world, and in his 27 years has more stories and experiences than a lot of the business leaders he speaks to.  He’s able to speak in his own SoCal/Euro voice, to all sorts of different people, because he’s at ease with himself and is self-confident.

Being an authentic person, showing your true colors – that’s the stuff that sets you apart, whether in a job interview, a client pitch or a press conference.  Certainly, it can take some years to grow into that comfort with one’s public persona, but I’m a believer that it’s just a matter of taking one’s self significantly less seriously.  Kudos to Valentino Rossi for driving that point home for me this weekend.

That’s saying nothing of the format of the music.  For most people, the solution is just a passive compromise. Terrestrial radio listening and a bit of curiosity lands them at iTunes or maybe at the shrinking CD section at Best Buy or Wal-Mart, and off they go. For me, the solution is high bitrate mp3s, played via my Airport Express through my stereo.  CDs and DVDs have become collector’s items, things to open carefully, rip digitally, then carefully place on the shelf to add gravitas to my home.

And that’s fine.  For those of us more curious about what’s outside of terrestrial radio and the Billboard chart, life’s an adventure, and there’s always some new platform to learn – first it was Napster, then Limewire, then Kazaa (remember that?) and God knows what else.  My friend George put it well recently, when he said “new music seems to travel well based on who’s online now.”

Think about that.  For me and my friends who are serious about finding new music – really avid consumers of music – it’s possible to miss out on what George thinks is interesting, just because I’m not around when he chooses to share it.  With so much clutter and so much media out there to consume, I think there are two choices:

1) Submit to information overload and become myopic in how you receive music.  Pandora’s a great example of this.  It’s a wonderful service, and will actually recommend music to you based on what you’re listening to now, and what you’ve listened to in the past.  Algorithms are wonderful things, but they seem very, very impersonal to me.  I already find it creepy that GMail feeds me contextual ads based on the content of my email account – I don’t know that I want a robot telling me what’s awesome, musically.

2) Get music from your friends.  I trust my friends’ taste, because we tend to have similar tastes.  I believe that taking advice from my friends means that I get a really good filter on what’s out there.  I might never have heard of spaz-rockers extraordinaire Lightning Bolt if not for my friend Matt, and that’s a shame.

The solution, I think, is one my friend Eddie Aten came up with: why not develop a method to share music easily, ubiquitously, and using an existing communication platform?  By learning lessons from the ongoing RIAA madness (see: the Muxtape debacle),  listening to feedback from fellow music fans and consumers and learning a bit about actual buying habits of consumers, we’re developing a system that we believe is the best of all worlds.  For music fans.  For musicians.  For labels.  To encourage promotion of interesting music, by real people, and to encourage people to listen to their friends.

Announcing Swift.fm

Swift.fm is, at the heart of the matter, a free service that lets users leverage Twitter to create infinite playlists. Leveraging the simplicity and ubiquity of Twitter, Swift.fm lets users build playlists of what they think is interesting, and perhaps more importantly, instantly find out what their friends are listening to.

To use the service, all that’s required is to log into http://swift.fm/login using your existing Twitter credentials; the system automatically looks for people you’re following on Twitter and loads the last 30 days’ worth of posts (or, “swifts”) they’ve made.  Thus, instant playlists, programmed by your friends, not robots.

To post a song, users are tweet from ANY Twitter app (i.e. TweetBerry, TweetDeck, Twitter.com) using three bits of information: 1) song description, 2) a working .mp3 link and 3) the tag “@swiftfm”.  At http://swift.fm, users can search for existing .mp3s on the internet, or upload a song directly to the system, then use the familiar Twitter text box and text counter to stay within the 140-character limit.  That’s it.  Simple.

To listen to the playlists of folks you’re following on Twitter, just go to http://swift.fm/USERNAME , or click the username from any individual post you see.  We’re working on a design update that automatically shows you links for your Twitter friends’ playlists, too, for ease of browsing.

Swift.fm is currently in what we’re calling “soft” beta, and we’re asking our friends and colleagues to log in and give it a shot.  There are a ton of features in the development pipeline, but we’re happy to take all the feedback we can get.

The Future
Apart from being what we think as a really useful tool for aficionados of music to learn what their friends think is cool, we see Swift.fm as something that record labels, musicians, music bloggers and media outlets can use to quickly, simply promote or discuss their recent finds.  The specter for me of getting some of my favorite artists to use Swift.fm is not only cool from a professional / I’d-be-proud-of-that perspective, but I’m genuinely interested to know what Milosh or Dabrye or Thom Yorke or Jamie Lidell has on blast at present.

Dreaming a dream, what if some prolific Twitterers started using Swift?  I mean, anyone who follows @lancearmstrong knows that he listens to a lot of “americana”, but wouldn’t it be cooler if his followers were able to click a link and listen a playlist that he uses to cool out after a stage of the Tour de France?  Or, wouldn’t it be awesome if @THE_REAL_SHAQ posted links to hip hop songs he’d guest MCed on?  I can think of one specifically awesome Fu-Schnickens song that he’d be obligated to Swift – you can check that out here.

M+C’s role in Swift.fm is to help the company figure out its promotional way forward, to evangelize the service, and to get bloggers, musicians, labels and regular joes to use the service.  It’s a rough job to have to listen to lots and lots of killer music, but  I’ve got 500 watts and an Energy ESW-V10 Subwoofer to help me cope.  I have more than a thousand albums, an open mind about music, and a big desire to hear what’s next and mindblowing.

So, please check it out and give us some constructive criticism by emailing us here.  Or, if you’re a jerk, just regular criticism.  We need all the help we can get.

Oh yeah, and to hear what’s been on my stereo lately, check out: http://www.swift.fm/shane_mahoney/

That is all.

First though, an story, which really got this particular idea started for me.  I was asked to think critically about some of my favorite albums for Sam, and quite literally, my list of “favorite albums” is one album long.  To me, the most perfect album ever published is Morphine’s Cure for Pain. I listen to all types of music – classical, dubstep, “viking” metal, old country and western, spaz rock, and what I’d consider to be “intelligent” alternative.  Certainly, any number of Radiohead’s albums, or R.E.M.’s, or the Pixies’, would end up in my personal top ten list, but I have a special relationship with Morphine, and particularly their sophomore album, Cure for Pain.

Quick background: my folks are very serious about music, and have been my whole life.  Both natives of Detroit (@meatyobject can tell me whether the proper way to say that is Detroiters or Detroitians or whatever), they both grew up in the heyday of Motown, and then came of age in the 1960’s.  They’ve both got great taste – my Mom is more partial to Motown, R&B, country and folk, while my Dad’s way more into 60’s/70’s rock, but the point is that I was exposed to good music, and lots of it, from a young age.  Despite that, I made some questionable choices about what to listen to as a kid – from Def Leppard to Young MC to Bon Jovi.  I’ll cop to that, because just like I’d never wear the same hairstyle I had as a kid, I’m pretty sure I couldn’t have ended up where I am, musically, without bottoming out first.  I still know all the words to “Bust a Move”, however.  Not proud, but still.

Mark Sandman, two-string fretless bassist extraordinaire.

There was a place near my house when I was 13 or 14 called Video Update, and I’d go to peruse their new and used CD stacks from time to time.  I went in there one day and was flipping through new CDs when I found a really interesting looking cardboard jewel box, from a band called Morphine.  I liked the cover art, and since it was on sale (new!) for $1, I took it home, not expecting much.  I put it in my archaic CD player – I had no stereo, just headphones and a long-ass cable – and by the 0:30 mark of the album’s second song, my mind was blown.  The bassline, the pacing, it’s just astounding.  The album came out in 1993, and while like everyone else my age I was swept up in Nirvana and Red Hot Chili Peppers, I quite literally didn’t listen to anything else for a solid month.  I found out the next spring that Morphine would be coming to Minneapolis to play the legendary club First Avenue, which of course my parents forbid me from going to – it was in Uptown!  and Uptown is full of scary people! – but I snuck out of the house during a blizzard and caught Morphine live with maybe 100 other fans.  The show was amazing and intimate – the lead singer, Mark Sandman, talked back and forth with the audience when the drummer broke his kit.  In some ways, I think I got ruined on live shows at that point and have become a snob because if there’s no intimacy at a show, I’d just as soon be at home, listening to whatever on my (very nice) stereo.

To this day, I know every single word on that album, in order, and could sing it unaccompanied in a sensory deprivation tank if I for some reason needed to.

What It Means To Me
Despite all the problems that the larger music industry has at present, it could be argued that there’s been no better time for individual artists to promote themselves.  The rise of sites and services like MySpace, HypeM, Last.fm, Twitter and Facebook allow artists to promote themselves on a one-to-one basis with their fans.  There’s some great examples of that in action, including the case study of Imogen Heap which I discussed in a previous blog post.  The problem is, how do artists and their labels make any money off of the connection to fans, apart from constant touring?  In a world of free .mp3s (whether given away by artists or outright stolen), I think the solution is coming together: give consumers something they’re proud to have.  Inspire a little bit of “gimme gimme gimme!” in them.

Warp's rediculously desireable 20th Anniversary Box Set

There’s a couple fantastic examples of this that I’ve seen lately.  First and foremost to me, is Warp Records’ 20-year anniversary box set.  The thing is absolutely unreal – a “collector’s edition” par excellence.  Sure, it’s $150, and that’s a hell of a lot of money for something that I’ll be able to torrent or just plain download (illegally) a week after it’s been released, but there’s a whole artifact aspect of it that I think resonates with people who are serious in their fandom.  Similarly, the Pixies are coming out with an over-the-top box set called Minotaur that comes in various versions, the platinum version going for a cool $495.  Lordy.  Less conspicuously, Warp is about to release Hudson Mohawke’s debut LP as a package deal – you get an LP or CD, limited edition t-shirt and sticker, all wrapped up in a butter tub! The album’s called “Butter”, thus the gimmick.

For me – and I’d categorize myself as a connoisseur/snob/enthusiast, so this probably doesn’t apply to Lil’ Wayne or the fucking Jonas Brothers or whatever – any new artist that wants to get me to do anything other than stream their music had better come up with some way to make it worth my while.  I’m not really that into Imogen Heap, but her self-promotion makes me curious.  I’m way more likely to go see her live knowing what I do about the dedication that she puts into promotion.  Likewise, any band or record label that can get me to engage – whether it’s Nosaj Thing tweeting about what he thinks is hot shit (which clues me in to new stuff I wouldn’t have heard of) or it’s Ghostly International inviting me to their 10th anniversary party in an email or tweet – is going to get my attention. On the one hand I feel badly for the amount of work that’s got to go into those promotions, but conversely I think it opens huge doors for artists and labels to really carve out an identity and a passionate following for themselves.

Bottom line: there’s a ton of great music out there, and (s)he who promotes themselves most creatively and effectively will win.  On a business note, M+C is just getting going on a project that’s very close to this whole topic.  Stay tuned!

As your reward for reading all the way to the bottom of this (quite long) post, here’s another banger from the 1990s.  From what might be my 2nd favorite band ever.  The few times during high school that anyone asked me what I wanted to do after college, my smart-ass reply was always “I wanna grow up to be a debaser.” They’d invariably just roll their eyes.

M+C has happily, proudly been representing Patrick Long since 2005, and working with him literally from the time of his first professional race in America.  From an objective (okay, not entirely objective, but at least external) perspective, he’s an interesting mix of talent, charisma, and good fortune.  Racing professionally for Porsche, he gets opportunities to go places and drive cars that most racing fans only ever dream about.  He handles it well, and more importantly, he carries himself well.  At this point, we’re in contract negotiation with a company that’s square in the middle of the wine-and-cheese demographic that Porsche occupies; when we get the deal finalized, it’ll be the culmination of more than 16 months of talks, patience and a whole lot of shifting targets.  Patrick has a very good mindset about the entire process – rather than stomp his feet about a lack of immediate sponsorship dollars, he gets the value in building long-term relationships and slowly accruing influential and powerful businesspeople in his network. It’s definitely hard as an entrepreneur to take the long view (particularly in regard to getting paid!), but for Patrick to have the foresight and ability to take on such a deal is a testament to his business acumen.

It doesn’t really hurt that much that he and his teammate Jörg Bergmeister have won 5 of 7 races to date in the American Le Mans Series thus far; with three races to go they’re sitting pretty in the championship.  Anything can happen, but the future’s so bright at the moment, they’ve gotta wear shades.  So to speak.

Speaking of Jörg Bergmeister, he’s made the transition from friend of M+C to client of M+C.  We’ve been representing him now for just over a year, and similar to Patrick’s deal, we’re in the closing stages of discussions with a very, very nice potential sponsor for him.  It’s all on the DL for now, but in the event that it comes together, it’ll be a very nice deal financially for Jörg and more importantly, a big deal professionally for M+C. In racing, it’s like what Janet Jackson said: “what have you done for me lately?” Having a couple of public successes will help M+C grow its future business.

PLong / Bergmeister en route to victory @ Mid Ohio. © Rick Dole 2009

Racing is a funny business.  There’s so many people that drift in and out of it – drivers, money guys, crew guys – that it sometimes feels like a revolving door.  Add to that equation all the detritus – the scammers, used car salesman and pyramid schemers – who pop up from time to time, and it can start to feel like a pretty sketchy place to do business.  Keeping that professional momentum thing going is really key to a company like M+C.  The simple concept of ‘face time’ – showing up to a race and walking back and forth up and down the paddock – is the only way for people to really remember you exist, outside the few key relationships one builds.  It’s staying top of mind with stakeholders, customers and potential clients that all of us could bear to spend more time working towards.

Speaking of staying top of mind, I was forwarded a really interesting article lately about a musician who I’d heard of, but had never paid much attention to: Imogen Heap.  The article details how, nearly at the beginning of the Twitter phenomenon, she grasped how it might be used by her to connect with fans, gain new ones, and truly interact with them.  The article is most definitely worth a read, and is continuing to give me ideas about how to think clearly and creatively about growing a brand or fanbase.

On that tip, fans of Sam Benjamin (author of Confessions of an Ivy League Pornographer) take note: that shit’s about to drop in print form.  Thanks to the late nights and long hours pulled by Nate Luzod and Anna Tes at Grid, LLC, Confessions is about to be ready to be purchased in real, tangible form. M+C is readying the next phase of the PR for the project, to be launched with vigor and determination in very short order.

For no reason other than it’s an amazing photo from an amazing place, here’s a shot courtesy of Art Gimbel of Mavericks breaking on November 30, 2008.  Thanks to @kjbeadling for not getting upset that I used the photo without permission.  It’s meant as a tribute.  And on that note, the Mavericks 2009/10 contest period is opening soon!

Battered and Bruised
As outdoorsmen with ample experience in Montana, Wyoming, Idaho, Washington and Utah, we both felt prepared to handle whatever Eric and the Eastern Sierra could throw at us; as athletes, we both felt that we were strong and tough enough to carry some luxuries with us on our trip – beer, comfortable clothing and extra food, specifically.  As it happened, this lack of foresight, combined with a bit of overconfidence, made our trip a pretty intense one, physically.  The Eastern Sierra is a dramatically vertical place – we estimate that in the course of our 30 mile loop, we ascended and descended a total of 20,000 feet – and every bit of it was over 8,900 feet.  Beyond that, the footing is varied – it’s either unstable small rocks/gravel, unstable but slightly larger rocks, somewhat stable boulders, or snowfields/glaciers.  It’s not exaggerating to say that we both paid very close attention to each step we took so as not to roll an ankle.  Even so, we both were physically torn up by the trek – shins, elbows, forearms and hands are scraped, cut, blistered and bruised.

As this is ultimately a website about business, I need to sprinkle in some business metaphors here.  To paraphrase Peter Griffin here, I may answer that question with a story.

Up Shit Creek Without A Paddle
We knew we had to cross the Sierra Crest via South Fork Pass, which our description told us was a Class-Three climb, which has been described as “Imagine climbing a steep narrow staircase outside of a tall building without benefit of a railing: scary but easy.” To which I say: shenanigans.  South Fork Pass turned out to be a ~60° couloir full of snow/ice, with a very narrow and equally steep scree slope starting approximately halfway up.  Without truly understanding the implications, B and I started digging into the snow slope at the top of the snowfield below, approximately 300 yards above a very imposing boulder field.  Step by step we went up, with only boots (Asics trail running shoes in my case) and retractable trekking poles as equipment.  I’d be remiss not to mention the 50lb.+ packs on our backs, too.

At some point, it occurred to both of us that there was literally no option but to continue up; this happened more or less when we left the snow and started scrambling up the scree slope, and then ran out of literally anywhere to securely place more than two of our limbs at once.  We both made it to a relatively stable rock that supported our collective weight, and after catching our breath, came to the conclusion that our only safe option was to remove our packs, climb higher to a larger rock, then ferry our packs up with a rope.  B went up first, but we found ourselves woefully under-equipped – neither our footwear nor our rope was really up to the task; I’m absolutely certain that the only thing that allowed us to successfully get the packs up to us safely is sheer willpower.

At this point, we had what I’d term a moment of clarity: it was impossible to ascend any further using our ferry system (the terrain and fragility of the rope wouldn’t allow it) and descending was completely out of the question, because “descending” in this case meant a very sudden acceleration down the snowfield followed by an inevitable and equally sudden deceleration into the boulder field, 300 yards below.  Literally, the only option was to just sack up and pick our way up the slope above us, with our packs on.

Now.  I’m a very fit guy, as is Brendan.  Later in the trip, I had to do a pullup wearing my pack with one and a half hands, so to speak, to get myself off a very small ledge, and I’ve run plenty of fast marathons, but the last 100 vertical feet of South Fork Pass was quite literally the most physically demanding thing I’ve ever done.  Perhaps it was the stress of knowing that really serious injury was at stake, but the action of pulling myself up hand-over-hand up a steep, unstable face while scared utterly shitless was a new experience for me.  When we got to the top of the pass, we both got a little emotional – and then we realized it had taken us fully 90 minutes to ascend 150 feet up that couloir.

The Lesson
It’s a cliche, but truly, you can overcome whatever obstacle is in front of you with a heavy dose of willpower.  When faced with no other options, success is fairly easy – it’s a matter of just plain doing it. Rarely in business are there literally no options other than success – because unless you’re doing some seriously illegal, Bernie Madoff shit, “failure” is normally just not achieving what you set out to do.  The business lessons I took from my experience climbing South Fork Pass are these:

1) Emphasize planning.  Really, truly, deeply understand what your needs are, and what your strategy is.  Brendan and I failed at this part by thinking a tad too highly of ourselves and not listening closely enough to our friend’s advice about gear.

2) Be willing to change course if need be.  We had to ditch two parts of our trip because we underestimated the energy we’d expend on other parts – we literally wore ourselves out, and missed some spectacular, achievable opportunities because of it.

3) When all else fails, bear down on the task at hand relentlessly.  In business, this might mean really long hours, or some tough confrontation with an employee or a client.  In my experience – in athletics, life and business- there is no substitute for hard effort.  Of course, when failure means a 300-yard slide at 50mph into a boulder field, that goal becomes a tad more, well, focused.

Finally: if you want to look at more pretty pictures of the trip which we’re calling “That Which Does Not Kill You 2009″, you can check out M+C’s Flickr.

today's context-free metaphor: be ready to demonstrate excellence.

Two great examples of people doing unusual things to get to the top of the pile:
1) I’m no NASCAR fan – I really only keep tabs on it so that I can keep track of people I know in the sport, but there’s a driver called Carl Edwards who deserves a lot of credit for the sheer force of willpower with which he started his career.  Having seen plenty of drivers do the walk of shame through the paddock, practically begging anyone to let them drive a race car, my perspective is that those who are willing to submit to more embarrassment are more likely to succeed.  Carl Edwards famously took out print ads in NASCAR trade papers with a schmaltzy photo of himself and the tagline, “If you’re looking for a race car driver, you’re looking for me,” or “Put me in your race car this weekend, have helmet will travel.”  He handed out THOUSANDS of business cards with the same information on it, and eventually, he got his shot.  The rest is history, and now he gets to do his (rather annoying, to me) backflips off of his car when he wins races.  Dude’s a showman, but kudos to him for having the sack to put himself out there like that.

2) I read this article in today’s San Francisco Chronicle about a Giants pitcher named Ryan Sadowski.  Basically, he’s another no-name pitcher who’s finally got his break in the bigs after getting no love in college, and attracting very little scouting attention.  He’s having a nice little debut in his rookie season, but what he did to garner attention for himself really astounds me.  He literally had his mother call the scouting department of all 30 major-league teams, get the number of the local pitching scout, and say “I’m Ryan Sadowski’s mother. Please phone my son. He can pitch and he’d like a chance to show you.”

Now that is some next-level shit.

There’s a lesson to be learned from Carl Edwards and Ryan Sadowski – if you want to stand out amongst a very crowded field, you have to do something creative and be willing to take risks and look like a fool.  The Big Important Lesson, however, is that once you’ve got someone’s attention, be ready to demonstrate excellence and exercise strategic patience.  For my client Patrick Long, for instance, we’ve been constantly dripping on the same organization now for more than a year, trying to put together a wide-ranging partnership.  Though we started the process on top of the pile – a personal introduction got us there – there’s been plenty of times we’ve NOT been on the top of the list.  As a result, we’ve had to continue to find reasons to share good news and developments, to keep the momentum going.  I’m happy to say all indications are that we’ll sew the deal up soon, but it’s really been a learning experience for me and the other folks involved.

So, if you’re in a pickle with your business, or are stuck not making progress, figure out a way to do the equivalent of having your Mom call to advocate for you.  It’s a good lesson for us all, easier said than done, but most assuredly rewarding.  It’s a very healthy trait – both as a person and as a professional – to have to take some strong medicine and acquire some forced humility sometimes.

Obviously, getting things accomplished and building success in business requires the work of many people.  In my business – sports marketing and more recently, book PR – I’m always reliant on other people to judge the merits of my work, respond, collaborate, make decisions.  That’s nothing unique, but it sometimes can feel like an uphill battle to be heard, be taken seriously, have my projects considered.  That can be frustrating, but at the same time, it’s the nature of marketing and PR work.  I keep telling Sam Benjamin that getting media exposure is a slow process, and one that inherently snowballs with time and strategic pressure.  Drip drip drip, as Dave Chappelle (as R. Kelly) said.

It’s been interesting to track the progress of Sam’s book out in the world.  We’re truly starting from zero – we’re built a brand, and are now building awareness of Sam’s product and of him, as an author, individual by individual.  We’re not modifying someone’s existing perception of him, we’re literally starting from scratch.  That’s really rewarding for a number of reasons, but the progress can feel slow.  Instead of getting down about the slow progress though, we’ve celebrated small victories and shared in the excitement of our first substantial media (and corresponding sales) hit.  Now that we can see the beginnings of growth, we need to maintain our momentum, not mistake the beginnings of success for actual success, and continue working the plan.

the beginnings of success. a feel-good story.

A Real-World Example of ‘You’re Doing It Wrong”
I used to work for a guy who typified the whole smarmy sales guy schtick.  His idea of momentum was “if I can just get them on the phone, I’ll be able to talk them into going my way.”  Truly, he was a force of nature – phone call after phone call, at all hours of the night, endlessly.  I once participated in a pitch meeting that finally ended – more than 5 hours after it’s scheduled ‘hard stop’ – with him extracting twice the money he had committed at the beginning of the meeting.  I remain in awe of that meeting and of the guy, simply because he wore people down until they capitulated.  It was exhausting to work for him, even to come into contact with him, and he taught me a great lesson about how not to conduct myself.  He remains successful today, but his path to success is littered with former friends, burnt-out colleagues and a pretty distinct reputation.  The lesson remains: don’t be a jerk.  It’s just not good form.

The Practical Application of Momentum
On the other hand, I got a very interesting lesson in how to win 24 hour races from Patrick Long the other day.  Specifically talking about the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a particularly grueling race done on one of the fastest tracks in the world, Patrick talked about the need to set his car up not to sprint, but to be reasonably quick for every single minute of the race.  Patrick and his team worked very hard to find this compromise on their car – low drag aerodynamically but tuned so that it was malleable in the slow stuff – and set about the race knowing that they’d have a fast average pace.

Momentum to Patrick means quite a few things: in the short term, it means brake less and more smoothly and average a higher rate of speed around a given track.  Spend time in preparation to make sure you’re the best equipped for the task at hand, and think ahead of your current position. In the long term, it means don’t get flustered, hit your marks, don’t make mistakes, and above all else, be mentally prepared to change your strategy halfway through the race.   There’s that whole adage of “it’s a marathon, not a sprint,” and I know from personal experience that in marathons, going out too fast or simply not being able to focus or maintain energy in the crucial parts of a race means failure.

Another practical application of momentum is Eau Rouge at Spa, in Belgium.  The corner – driven in anything from a 911 RSR to a Formula One car, is taken flat out, and is so steep that you can actually hear an engine slowing down as it fights gravity.  Carrying maximum momentum through the corner is important for stringing together a great lap, and takes balls of steel.  Below, Kimi Raikkonen gets it done.

Be Pleasantly Obnoxious*
Professionally speaking, one of the keys to momentum is knowing when to push and when to let up.  I constantly run into the problem of people not responding to me as fast as I’d like (or sometimes at all), but taking baby steps and reveling in the small victories assures you of making progress.  I had a boss in college who always said that his expectation for all his employees was to move every single project they were on forward by at least one step every day.  That’s a great starting point – do something to progress or advance your goals, every single day.  I’ve had a great deal of practice in the fine art of being pleasantly obnoxious over the years, and think of myself as being fairly advanced in the art of nuanced obnoxiousness.  Find your way to the top of someone’s pile by not being discouraged at setbacks, un-returned phone calls or half-assed responses.  Keep a smile in your voice, so to speak.

Channel Your Inner Axl
Like Axl Rose said: “All we need is just a little patience / said sugar make it slow / and we’ll come together fine / all we need is just a little patience…”  Despite the fact that Axl was probably talking about some aquanet afro’d groupie rather than the fundamentals of business, that’s applicable.  Just as you don’t win the 24 Hours of Le Mans by getting anxious and taking unnecessary risks in the first corner, getting all in a huff about non-immediate results and subsequently reacting poorly won’t get you anywhere either.  There’s a balance to be had between some reward immediately and a wide base of opportunity in the future.  Taking the long view and staying calm and measured in your decisions, communications and actions enables that long-term success to start closing in a bit.  On the other hand, don’t do a Chinese Democracy and exercise just a tad too much patience.

A context-free list of business jargon which will get the point of this post across for the short of attention span:

Things to do: Pick your spots.  The tortoise beats the hare. Be patient while being awesome.** Get to the top of the pile. Drip drip drip.  Fish or cut bait.  You gotta know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em.

Things not to do: Be a jerk, Spit the Dummy, move the cheese.

* Thanks to Dick Siler for the mantra, as well as a lesson on how to conduct oneself.
** Thanks for Reilly Brennan for the new pantheon-quality jargon.