Every morning I read a few Daily Lit excerpts. Right now I’m reading 100 Ways to Succeed by Tom Peters and The Bootstrappers Bible by Seth Godin. There seemed to be a theme going this morning, and it seemed like a great way to start the week.

From Tom Peters:

BEGIN THE HUNT FOR HYPOMANICS!

-Reread: “These men were outrageous-arrogant, provocative, unconventional, and unpredictable. They were not ‘well adjusted’ by normal standards but instead forced the world to adjust to them. … Without their irrational confidence, ambitious vision, and unstoppable zeal, these outrageous captains would never have sailed into unknown waters, never discovered new worlds, never changed the course of our history.”

To survive competitively in the turbulent decades ahead we need to find & cherish such people. What-exactly-is your “Hypomanic Recruitment Plan?” (No kidding. It may be the most serious question you ever try to answer.)

And from Seth Godin:

For me, a bootstrapper isn’t a particular demographic or even a certain financial situation. Instead, it’s a state of mind.
Bootstrappers run billion-dollar companies, nonprofit organizations, and start-ups in their basements. A bootstrapper is determined to build a business that pays for itself every day.

(You can sign up at Daily Lit to read the whole thing for free.)

I’ll be referring back to these wise words this week when I run up against all of the Computer Says No people of the world.

I had no idea Amazon made money off of customer reviews.  Did you?

Jason Kottke linked to an article on User Interface Engineering which explains how it works:

“As we’ve watched Amazon customers make purchases on the site, we can clearly see that promoting the most helpful reviews has increased sales in these categories by 20%.(One out of every five customers decides to complete the purchase because of the strength of the reviews.) From this, we can project it has contributed to Amazon’s top line by $2.7 billion.”

The 2.7 Billion Dollar Question begs its own question: what other little steps have produced revolutionary results?

Last month a friend forwarded me a link to thisiswhyyourefat.com the hilarious and cringe inducing “junk food-porn” site created by Jessica Amason and Richard Blakeley. Then another friend. Then another. Fast forward to yesterday: HarperStudio acquired the rights to a book based on the blog, which has pulled in over ten million page-views in its first month. Amason and Blakeley are currently in TV development talks. What would their show be called? The Biggest Gainer?

Jeff Howe the author of Crowdsourcing said we should all be looking to NPR‘s business model a few months ago on a new media panel. That stuck with me. In this month’s Fast Company Anya Kamenetz reports:

Yes, it’s true: In one of the great under-told media success stories of the past decade, NPR has emerged not as the bespectacled schoolmarm of our imagination but as a massive news machine poised for what Dick Meyer, editorial director for digital media, half-jokingly calls “world domination.” NPR’s listenership has nearly doubled since 1999, even as newspaper circulation dropped off a cliff.

[fast company]

Make sure you catch Theresa Brown’s latest post on the New York Times Well blog.  She writes a touching story on a family’s acceptance of the death of a loved one, asking the question, “What does it mean to be ‘ready’ to die?”

Have you been enjoying Susan Danziger’s DailyLit as much as we have? We’re big fans at HarperStudio, and plan to release several of our books in short pieces delivered fresh to readers’ doors from her site. DailyLit has terrific books for sale, but also brilliant free offers, which is where we started reading Tom Peters‘ “success tips.” Tom is at his provocative best in this form, and we quickly became addicted. So addicted, in fact, that we thought there should be a book of these…and luckily for us, Tom agrees. So next January, 2010, please look out for 179 WAYS TO SUCCEED IN BUSINESS (OR AT LEAST HAVE FUN TRYING), a short hardcover that brings Tom’s success tips into a form that we think will be catnip for anyone who needs practical, immediately usable advice and inspiration in their business lives. And who doesn’t???

It’s all about the hash tag. Twitter‘s great, but Twitter on hash tags is even better. I’d say that’s the biggest takeaway for me after five days in Austin. Seriously, I felt Twitter move the earth again. During each presentation (and, frustratingly, there were about 15 at a time every hour and half) — you could follow what was going on in each room by the specially coded hash tags. It’s not only #sxsw anymore — now you can slice and dice your way into each panel. Take for example #sxswbp. I was in the ballroom next door watching Gary V being cheered like a rock star while my publishing colleagues were being eviscerated in the next room. I was able to cringe along as I followed every tweet.

Here’s my list of Top Five Take Aways:

1) SXSW seemed to be more about networking than breaking new ground. Not that there’s anything wrong with that. I did find myself listening to to the keynotes thinking I’d heard it all before though, and wishing I’d hear what’s next. Tony Hsieh and Chris Anderson are great speakers — and if you haven’t heard Tony’s message about customer service and company culture before, or Chris Anderson’s “Free” schpeel — you should definitely watch the videos and read their blogs. If you follow them, as I do, there wasn’t much new to learn.

2) Panels about “building community” (and there were many variations of this) were a waste of time. It all seemed to be common sense — a one minute message drawn out for an hour (or longer).

3) Interesting panels lurked in less obvious places. “Making Ideas Happen” was one of my favorites. Creativity x Organization = Impact, chemistry is more important than experience when hiring, and have “standing” (as in not sitting) meetings where everyone leaves with action items — are a few of the lessons I walked away with. “Presenting Straight to the Brain” was great too. Who knew PowerPoint could be so much fun. Trial lawyer Craig Ball was a hoot — and really informative. I will definitely be consulting his blog the next time I have to give a presentation.

4) No women keynote speakers? What’s going on with that.

5) Seeing Gary Vaynerchuk is practically a religious experience. His energy is contagious, the message is great (i.e. YOU CAN MAKE IT HAPPEN!!!) and the audience can’t get enough.

Overall, inspiring five days, a lot of fun, met great people.

I’ll be spreading the word that more publishing people should attend next year. Enough with the whole industry at the Book Expo. We need to start swimming in a different pond to stay inspired, keep it fresh, meet new people, hear new ideas.

Following on the heels of the widely publicized GAP cardigan project, the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) has been flooded with calls from Fortune 500 Companies including Delta, Ford, American Express seeking their services. The Brown Daily Herald “reports”:

Last month, a team of RISD students made a consulting trip to the headquarters of Random House, the venerable New York publishing house whose widely-publicized financial troubles earlier this year required company-wide layoffs. Random House CEO Markus Dohle extended a personal invitation to the students, who were paid a six-figure consulting fee and tasked with “re-energizing Random House’s artistic mission by challenging our notions of creativity in business settings.”

Cycling across the Manhattan Bridge © Adrian Kinloch