Archive for August, 2005
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 29 Aug 2005, 11:06 PM - 5 Comments
Many people ask me if there is one thing that they can learn quickly
that can make a significant impact on their lives. We all know that
there are no shortcuts to success. However, at the risk of “over
simplifying”, let me make a statement
“One
simple thing that you can learn easily and that can make a significant
impact on your lives is – working hard to keep the promises you make to
yourself”
Think about the above statement – many times it’s easier to keep
promises that we make to others than to keep promises that we make to
ourselves. In fact, many of the promises that we make to ourselves is
not known to anybody else. Something like “I will finish reading this
book by the end of the week” is known only to yourself. Weeks pass by
and the book is not complete yet. Nobody knows that you made a promise
to yourself and you feel a bit guilty for not keeping the promise but
you are smart enough to justify why you were not able to keep your
promise. Most often, the justifications for not keeping the promises to yourself are more compelling than the promises themselves.
On a lighter note, you can afford to NOT keep your promises to yourself
because you can’t fire yourself. If you fire yourself where will you
go? 
You can fix this – make small promises to yourself and try to keep
them. Keep doing this until it becomes a habit. It should become your
second nature to keep the promises you make for yourself. If this not
working, partner with a friend and share the promises that you make for
yourself with this friend. Ask for his help to hold you accountable for
these promises.
When was the last time you made a compelling promise to yourself and
worked hard to keep it? What if you practiced this for the next thirty
days? Would that make a difference – you bet!
Posted under Distinguish yourself, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 26 Aug 2005, 6:45 AM - Leave Comment
This one I picked up from the book Guerilla Publicity
. This quote
reminds us of the importance of execution. Even the most brilliant
ideas can fail if not followed by superb execution.
“An idea can turn to dust or magic, depending on the talent that rubs against it”
- William Bernbach
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 25 Aug 2005, 5:25 PM - Leave Comment
Portals
are great. With the right automation, it’s easy to maintain them too.
You can get feeds from multiple data sources and keep the content fresh.
While automation saves us time, there is a risk element associated with
this. Take a look at the jobs portlet today on the cover page of San Jose
Mercury News (a widely respected newspaper in the bay area) and see
what are the top jobs in the bay area.
I am sure this was an oversight but it can send the wrong signals.
Posted under Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 25 Aug 2005, 11:41 AM - Leave Comment
I am of the firm belief that email is still the killer app and there
are many more killer apps that will come out based on email.
Feedblitz is one of them. In a nutshell, Feedblitz provides a painless way to get blog content into an Inbox. Brad and Phil helped me setup an email delivery capability for my blog in less than three minutes. It was that simple.
If any of you want to receive this blog content via email, there is a signup form on the left sidebar powered by Feedblitz.
All the best Phil.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Wed 24 Aug 2005, 4:35 PM - Leave Comment
This quote is courtesy of Mauri Schwartz at Career Insiders. This reminds us to take action to move towards our goals.
“The way to gain a good reputation
is to endeavor to be what you desire to appear.”
- Socrates
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Mon 22 Aug 2005, 1:00 PM - Leave Comment
This little quote reminds us that change begins with us. First we need to change before we aspire to change the world around us.
“In the power to change yourself is the power to change the world around you”
- Anwar Sadat
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Sun 21 Aug 2005, 10:44 PM - Leave Comment
This one is from my friend Greg Winston of Sales2Sales. This little
quote reminds us to set higher standards for ourselves at all times.
“Our very business in life is not to get ahead of others.. but to get ahead of ourselves”
- Thomas Manson
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Fri 19 Aug 2005, 12:12 PM - Leave Comment
Every company is different when it comes to agility. There is a
viewpoint that as the company grows, companies become less agile. There
are bigger companies, though, that demonstrate agility.
I am here at the Blog Business Summit and Beoing, one of the sponsors of the conference are pitching their service – Connexion by Boeing.
Connexion by Boeing is a business unit of The Boeing Company that
provides real-time high-speed Internet and entertainment services to
airline passengers in flight.
What an amazing service offering by a company whose core business is to build planes. Hats off to Boeing.
The other company that I am fascinated (when it comes to agility) is Amazon.com.
Starting off as an Online book store (Remember the tagline – earth’s
biggest bookstore), Amazon has morphed into so many things and become
an Internet power house. Here are some things that I could think of:
* Morphed into an online superstore with a ton of items (books are one category now)
* Sold ecommerce infrastructure to Target, Borders etc.
* Launched Search Engine A9
* Launched Amazon Stores – allowing other folks to setup stores using the Amazon infrastructure
and a lot more. For me, Amazon is an example of what could be done in online commerce.
In summary: Agility is important and
it’s important no matter how big or small your company is. It may be
easier for smaller companies to be agile but it’s not impossible for
larger companies to be agile.
Posted under Innovation, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 18 Aug 2005, 5:28 PM - Leave Comment
Indefinite Articles has a post titled “The power of myth” where there is a critic on one of the quotes that I posted recently by David Thomas
“We have the strongest opinions on things that we have the least knowledge of.”
The analysis on the quote was beautiful. Thanks for that and I think I
have to take responsibility of not setting the context right. In order
to do justice to David Thomas, here is more explanation on the quote.
————-
Imagine there are ten areas that matter to you. You are an expert in
eight of them and you have basic knowledge on the other two. David’s
point was that we will have strong opinions on the two subject areas
(amongst the ten) where we have only basic knowledge.
————-
This is debatable, I agree – but it is definitely food for thought. Makes us think. I want to thank JB at Indefinite Articles for the critical analysis.
Posted under Great Quotes, Main Page.
By Rajesh Setty on Thu 18 Aug 2005, 12:32 PM - 3 Comments
Blog Business Summit has been great so far. I am here attending a session by two of my good friends Dave Taylor and Robert Scoble on building traffic for your weblog.
Here are some tips that I collected:
1. Headlines are important – they will determine whether someone will click and read your post.
2. Participate in other’s blogs – You need to participate in the
conversations that others started. Take time to visit other blogs and
if there is anything something worthy of sharing post comments there.
3. Track bloggers – Use a newsreader (such as Newsgator) and track what
some of the cool folks out there are writing about and respond with
comments or posts in a timely fashion.
4. Word of mouth is important – Design does not matter much. Design may
make someone subscribe but most often people subscribe for the content.
So focus on the content.
5. Link to others – It’s a give and take policy.
6. Provide full feeds –
Most people will unsubscribe from partial feeds (says Robert)
Dave had mixed opinions on that.
My take – Provide full feeds as by providing partial feeds
even if you are missing only a few subscribers why risk it – anyway
what will you gain by providing partial feeds (a few cents on ad
revenues)?
Bob Wyman had a
great point – if you are going to have partial feeds, don’t let the
system decide what the partial feed is going to be – take time to write
good summaries.
7. Participate in conversations offline – Attend meetings and networking events. You can’t miss the analog world of connections.
8. Link to items in your industry and marketplace.
It was a truly cool Dave and Robert show!
Posted under Main Page.
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