Merlin Mann on the creative process

“Not to go all philosophical, but I really believe that there’s a part of you that really

wants to go in this one direction to make cool stuff, and there’s another part of you that’s

terrified at how bad you’re going to be at it, and that people are going to see you

suck. And nobody likes being seen sucking. And it’s natural to observe that other people

seem to be great from the second they start typing. [But in actuality,] they’ve just gotten

really good at starting, and they’ve gotten really good at not minding that they suck. And

if you don’t believe that, ask anybody who writes professionally, or who does anything over

and over and over again. The only difference is that they’ve gotten really OK with the fact

that they suck sometimes.

–Merlin”Not to go all philosophical, but I really believe that there’s a part of you that really wants to go in this one direction to make cool stuff, and there’s another part of you that’s terrified at how bad you’re going to be at it, and that people are going to see you suck. And nobody likes being seen sucking. And it’s natural to observe that other people seem to be great from the second they start typing. [But in actuality,] they’ve just gotten really good at starting, and they’ve gotten really good at not minding that they suck. And if you don’t believe that, ask anybody who writes professionally, or who does anything over and over and over again. The only difference is that they’ve gotten really OK with the fact that they suck sometimes.” Mann, speaking about the creative process, at Maximum Fun’s 2009 MaxFunCon

“Not to go all philosophical, but I really believe that there’s a part of you that really wants to go in this one direction to make cool stuff, and there’s another part of you that’s terrified at how bad you’re going to be at it, and that people are going to see you suck. And nobody likes being seen sucking. And it’s natural to observe that other people seem to be great from the second they start typing. [But really,] they’ve just gotten really good at starting, and they’ve gotten really good at not minding that they suck.

And if you don’t believe that, ask anybody who writes professionally, or who does anything over and over and over again. The only difference is that they’ve gotten really OK with the fact that they suck sometimes.”

–Merlin Mann, speaking about the creative process, at Maximum Fun’s 2009 MaxFunCon

Click here to listen to access Merlin’s MaxFunCon lecture, on BoingBoing.

Philly’s Newest Mag Is All About Beer

Appropriately enough, Neil Harner and Scott Willey were enjoying a few pints of ale at Earth Bread + Brewery, an environmentally-minded brewpub that opened in Philly’s Mt. Airy neighborhood last year, when they came up with the idea to start their own magazine about the city’s craft beer community. To some, that may sound like a perfect plan for entrepreneurial suicide, especially considering the unfortunate fact that the publishing industry seems to be in a never-ending free fall these days. But as far as Harner and Willey are concerned, the timing of Philly Beer Scene, as their bi-monthly magazine is known, couldn’t have been better. After all, microbrews and the bars that serve them have certainly exploded in popularity throughout the Philadelphia region over the past few years, and the whole country seems to have taken notice. Our sudden appreciation for high-caliber beer, in fact, has been documented everywhere from the Sunday New York Times to USA Today to Imbibe, a small Portland-based magazine of “liquid culture.”

And yet according to Harner, who co-owns a design and marketing firm in Lower Bucks County called Inverse Paradox, none of the beer publications that can be picked up for free in bars across the country are successfully speaking to the newer and younger generation of craft beer enthusiasts. “Don’t misquote me on this one,” he insisted, during a recent telephone interview. “When it comes to the other beer publications – Ale Street News, Mid-Atlantic Brewing News, Beer Advocate — we personally love those [publications]. But if you look at our magazine in comparison to the others out there, it’s a little more fun.”

Ultimately, of course, it will be the readers and advertisers of Philly Beer Scene who decide how fun it actually is. You can decide for yourself by picking up a free copy of the premiere issue at most of the better bars and brewpubs throughout the city and surrounding suburbs. Check out the magazine online at beerscenemag.com, where you’ll find information about the June 28 launch party at World Café Live.

This article was originally published on PhillyNow, Philadelphia Weekly’s news and opinion blog.

Next American City launch party, Wed June 17

I generally don’t post about new work I’ve had published until the work in question is actually available on the newsstand, but because Next American City is hosting a rather unusual launch party for its upcoming issue 23, I figured it would be alright to break from tradition just this once. I’ll keep the solipsistic part brief: In issue 23, I have a relatively short front-of-the-book piece in the magazine’s Buzz department. It’s about a new rails-to-trails style bike path in Detroit, and it was developed, of course, as part of the long and ongoing effort to revitalize the city.

By the way, if you haven’t seen Next American City in awhile (it can sometimes be tough to find), issue 23 is the one you’ll want to come back for. According to what I heard at the last editorial meeting for freelancers and contributing writers, this will be the magazine’s very first perfect-bound issue. It’s also going to be a full eight pages thicker, and I believe those extra eight pages are being used to introduce some sort of creative or experimental new feature.

At any rate, here’s the information for the launch party. The admission price gets you your choice of a one-year subscription to the magazine, or a Next American City T-shirt. How can you not?

Next American City is throwing a party at The Royal Theater, one of Philadelphia’s historical and architectural landmarks, and you are invited! We’ll even provide the hard hats! Come join us as we celebrate the launch of Issue 23 with food, drinks and great conversation. Publisher and editor-in-chief Diana Lind will re-cap highlights from the issue, which is packed with features including a profile of Newark’s Mayor Cory Booker, an examination of air quality in American cities, and a debate about the value of convention centers. Interviews with a young environmental justice activist, a forward-thinking web entrepreneur, and an urban theorist round out the issue.

JUNE 17, 5:30-7:30 PM
ROYAL THEATER
1524 South Street, Philadelphia, PA

Admission is free for subscribers. Admission for non-subscribers is $15 in advance or $20 at the door and includes a one-year subscription to the magazine and free entry to all NAC events.

Coming in July to Malvern, Pennsylvania: American Muscle’s First Ford Mustang Car Show

This is just a quick follow-up note in reference to yesterday’s post about Xoxide Inc., the Malvern, Pa.-based online retail company whose three owners were recently named by the U.S. Small Business Administration as the 2009 National Young Entrepreneurs of the Year. As I mentioned in yesterday’s post, Xoxide (pronounced ex-oxide) operates eight separate website “stores,” with each store selling a different category of merchandise — everything from beauty supplies to fish tanks to computer cooling systems. One fact I neglected to mention, however, is that the company brings in approximately 85 percent of its total revenue through its AmericanMuscle.com site, which exclusively sells after-market parts and accesories for Ford Mustangs.

In an effort to promote that site even further, Xoxide will be hosting its first-ever Mustang Car Show on Sunday, July 19, 2009, from 11am-4pm. The event is scheduled to take place at Xoxide’s corporate headquarters in Malvern, Pa., which is about 30 miles from downtown Philadelphia, and very close to West Chester, the hometown of pro skateboarder and notorious MTV prankster, Bam Margera. (The location’s full street address: 7 Lee Blvd., Malvern, PA 19355.)

There are only 150 spots available at the upcoming car show, so if you think you might be interested in entering your own vehicle, visit the event’s website by clicking here, where you can register online for $10. You can also register over the phone by calling 800-768-8716. 

Incidentally, for those of you who aren’t particularly thrilled by the idea of hanging out in a parking lot full of pimped-out Mustangs all day long, it’s probably worth mentioning that the event will also consist of free food and drink; various prizes and freebies; activities for kids; an onsite showroom and store; and more. The event’s rain date, by the way, is scheduled for Sunday, August 2, 2009. Again, click here to visit the event’s official website.

Philadelphia-area Xoxide Inc. owners are the SBA’s 2009 National Young Entrepreneurs of the Year

> > > I recently wrote my first article for Keystone Edge, an online magazine based right here in Philadelphia. However, Keystone Edge actually covers the emerging economy throughout the entire state of Pennsylvania, as well as the creative (and quite often young) entrepreneurs who fuel that economy. It’s owned and operated by the Detroit-based Issue Media Group, an online publishing company with a fantastically smart business model, and about ten websites under its belt. One of those sites, by the way, is the exceptionally well-edited Pop City Media, which covers the emerging econony in Pittsburgh, and which I wrote for back in November 2007. Pop City Media also covered the release of Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh, the city guide I wrote for Avalon Travel Publishing, and which I’ll be updating sometime next year.

The Millionaire Boys Club: The story of Malvern, Pa.-based Xoxide is that rare tale of three high school computer whizzes making millions; it is a tale of computer shells, tachometers, blow driers, bird cages, and after-market Ford Mustang parts. [Link to Keystone Edge]

> > > For Keystone Edge, I wrote about the fascinating Xoxide Inc., an 80-employee company based in the Philly suburbs. (The company’s name, by the way, is pronounced ex-oxide.) From the outside looking in, Xoxide doesn’t necessarily come across as a particularly interesting organization. It’s basically an online retail company that sells a wide range of fairly standard products, such as beauty supplies, truck and car parts, and computer cases, from about eight different websites. 

But the company has an especially fascinating twist: It was launched about ten years ago by three teen-aged high school boys. Two of them, Chris Francy and Steve Voudouris, were both 17 years old at the time. The other founder, Andrew Voudouris (Steve’s brother), was 15 years old. The company cleared more than $1.1 million in 2002, which was its second year of operation. At the time, Xoxide was operating entirely out of the home where Steve and Andrew lived with their parents. The company’s inventory was stashed in nearly every room of the house, as well as in the backyard. The garage doubled as a workshop. And as the company continued to grow and grow, the three founders would go off to school in the morning while a half-dozen employees, most of them middle-aged men, would come to work at Steve and Andrew’s house during the day. The kitchen, of course, doubled as a break room.

Incredibly, Xoxide’s bottom line grew with each successive year. Its 2004 revenue was $5 million. Its 2007 revenue (brace yourself) was $19.1 million. Today, Andrew Voudouris is just 22 years old. Chris Francy and Steve Voudouris are both in their mid-20s. And yes, they eventually moved out of mom and dad’s house and into a 45,000 square-foot building with an attached warehouse. This year, during the U.S. Small Business Administration’s National Small Business Week (May 17-19, 2009), the three founders of Xoxide were named the 2009 National Young Entrepreneurs of the Year during an award ceremony in Washington, D.C.

> > > About the photography: Photographer Jeff Fusco shot all the photos accompanying my article on the Keystone Edge site, including the photo I’ve posted above, which shows the three Xoxide founders standing inside a truck that was in the process of being filled with some of their many products. Check out Jeff Fusco’s impressive photography portfolio on his website, www.JeffFusco.net. You’ll probably recognize at least a few of the fascinating characters there. (Some of Jeff’s clients include Philadelphia magazine; the New York Daily News; Getty Images; Philadelphia Weekly; and US Air.)

> > > As you’ve probably already guessed, Xoxide is a retail company that succeeds — in part — because it offers high-quality products at a reasonable price. It also ships those products very quickly, and for free. Naturally, a few of the various other reasons for the company’s success are a bit more complicated. To offer just one example, Xoxide seems to have somehow mastered the all but  impossible-to-master online game of search engine optimization (SEO), for one. But after brushing aside all the Byzantine matters of online sales and marketing, what’s left is a company that sells a helluva lotta good stuff, and gets it to your doorstep quickly. So with that sentiment in mind, if you’ve got an AmEx card that’s currently burning a hole in your wallet, here are seven of the Xoxide “stores” you might want to visit, presented in alphabetical order:

• AmericanMuscle.com (Car parts for Ford Mustangs)
• AmericanTrucks.com (After-market truck parts)
• AquariumGuys.com (For fish fiends)
• BirdGuys.com (For your feathered friends)
• CorvetteGuys.com (After-market Corvette parts)
• Misikko.com (Women’s beauty supplies)
• Xoxide.com (Computer supplies & gaming gear) 

Follow that story: Incidentally, Xoxide hasn’t enjoyed much attention from the press over the past decade or so of its existence. But winning the 2009 SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year Champion Award has reversed that trend slightly. You can read what the Philadelphia Inquirer’s Mike Armstrong had to say about the company in a recent PhillyInc. column. Brian McCollough of the Daily Local News, a regional newspaper serving Pennsylvania’s Chester County, also covered the story. 

Music Note: On a somewhat unrelated note, Keystone Edge’s editor, John Davidson, heads up a fantastic Americana/roots music band called The New Time. Fans of very early American blues will absolutely love these guys, as will most fans of the modern alt-country/y’alternative sound, as documented in the late, great, and very much missed No Depression magazine. You can learn about The New Time and listen to some of its music at newtimemusic.com. Davidson has graciously posted MP3s on his MySpace page as well, which can be accessed at myspace.com/johndavidson. Enjoy.

 

Where I’ve Been

Young Pioneers Media:

>>> Good God it’s been a long time since I’ve managed to post anything new on these pages. Sorry about that! For those of you who might have wondered where I’d gotten off to, and what I’ve been up to, that explanation is simple enough: Instead of simply blogging about the unexpected fringes of the new creative entrepreneurship culture, I’ve been busying myself over the past few months with the process of putting together a print magazine that concerns itself with the very same topic. Interesting time to be launching a new magazine, right? I know.

Which is why I’ve also been working on putting together the pieces of an especially ambitious business plan that includes not just a single printed magazine, but rather an entire publishing, multimedia and merchandising company. In other words: I’ve got lots of unusually fun stuff in the works, business-wise.

Then again, I don’t have a lot of money, and I’m not particularly thrilled with the idea of taking on investors or getting myself deeper into debt than I already am. So it’s quite likely that Young Pioneers Media, as C. and I are calling this company, won’t exactly explode into existence, so to speak, but will rather seep its various products and services out into the market, slowly, until one day it seems nearly impossible to believe that, just a few years ago, it didn’t exist at all.

That’s the big plan, anyway. We’ll see how it actually all works out, of course, over the coming months. And like I mentioned above, our introductory product is going to be an actual print magazine. Or to be more specific, a professionally-designed, newsstand quality magazine about creative and alternative entrepreneurs, which will be published quarterly during its first year, and probably bi-monthly throughout its second year. As of now, the master plan includes going monthly by year three, if not somewhat sooner.

Johnny Cupcakes:

So. With all that said, I’m still not entirely sure just how much I actually want to reveal about the content of the premiere issue just yet. I will say, though, that we were lucky enough to convince none other than the incredibly successful T-shirt mogul Johnny Cupcakes to act as the magazine’s very first cover star. The entire process of working with Johnny, by the way, has been an incredibly fortuitous experience for me, especially because, as far as I can tell, Johnny’s brand seems to appeal to a number of different youth demographics, none of which I really have anything to do with: Hip-hop culture, skateboarding culture, etc. And that’s probably why I’d never heard of the guy before randomly stumbling across his boutique on Boston’s Newbury Street last summer.

I wrote a little bit about the pure joy of discovering the Johnny Cupcakes brand in a previous post, so I’ll restrain myself from going on and on about that experience here. If you continue scrolling to the very bottom of that post, you can read a bit about my last trip to Boston, where I had a chance to see Johnny give a brilliant lecture about entrepreneurship at an area college. The following day, I met up with Johnny and his photographer, Dave Green, at the company headquarters and warehouse in Weymouth, Mass. We ended up spending the better part of the afternoon shooting photos of Johnny, who posed with an enormous cupcake that had actually been baked the night before by a friend of the photographer. Check out the photo on the left, which is a great example of the work Dave did that afternoon.

Dave Green and Adoorable.org:

Incidentally, Dave also works as a freelancer, so if you happen to be based in or near the Boston area and you’re looking for a very capable and friendly photographer, I simply can’t recommend him highly enough. You can find his portfolio and contact information on his website, Adoorable.org. (Tell him Dan from YP Media sent you!)

One more thing: If you’re interested in learning more about exactly who else and what else we have planned for the first issue of the magazine, you’ll want to check back here every now and again, as I have plans to blog about some of the premiere issue’s brilliant entrepreneurial superstars over the next few weeks. And once we have a solid release date set in stone for the print edition of the magazine, I’ll undoubtedly be making a good bit of noise about that, right here. And for what it’s worth, I’ll also be doing my best to occasionally post updates about some of the other YP Media products that are currently in various stages of pre-production, including books, calendars, T-shirts, guidebooks, and other top-secret fun stuff.  So do stay tuned.

What he said.

From the Vintage Media Files: A 1953 Pressroom Training Film from the Los Angeles Times

Thanks to Philadelphia Daily News journalist Will Bunch, who posted this incredble Los Angeles Times pressroom training film from 1953 on his much-loved local blog, Attytood.

Journalist and media pundit Jeff Jarvis gets credit for posting a link to the film first, via Twitter. Jarvis’ Buzz Machine blog, by the way, consistently remains one of the smartest and engaging journalism blogs out there, as far as I’m concerned. And since it’s been around since July 2005, there’s an incredible wealth of journalistic knowledge in its achives. Highly recommended.

Best quote of the film? It’s at the 2.38 mark: “One of the first things a new man on the job wants to know how to do is make a paper hat. Sounds kind of funny at first, but it really helps to keep you clean!”

Even better: This film is but one part of a four-part series. Click here to view parts two, three and four.

Breaking: Legends of Dashboard Publishing to Relaunch Monk Magazine?

LOOK DEEPER:

>>> For those of you not already familiar with the 1980s-90s-era magazine and multimedia pioneers known as the Mad Monks, click on over to their Wikipedia listing for a brief explanation. Unfortunately, you won’t find much online documentation about these two former residents of San Francisco, who famously chose to drop out of the City’s corporate rat race in the mid-80s, with the sole intention of criss-crossing the United States together in an RV. Almost by accident, the two Monks, as they called themselves — James Crotty and Michael Lane – began documenting their travels in magazine form, thanks in large part to a solar-powered Macintosh they’d been wise enough to bring along. Monk Magazine was the eventual result, and to this day, the Monks are universally recognized for having published the country’s first all-mobile magazine. (Cometbus actually pre-dates Monk by roughly two years, although I wasn’t able to determine whether or not the issues published during that zine’s first two years were published in the same mobile manner for which it eventually became known. If any readers can reliably supply this information, please do so in the comments section below. The premiere issue of Dishwasher, by the way, was published in Jan 1992.)  

THE MAD MONKS TODAY:

>>> It’s probably also worth mentioning that Monk was indeed a standard-sized newsstand magazine that was eventually distributed throughout the country, and that it also carried big-name advertisers. This was no photocopied cut-and-paste job, in other words. And I point that out not to disregard homegrown zine culture, by the way, which is a scene for which I have nothing but the utmost respect. I mention it only to emphasize how incredibly groundbreaking and truly unique Monk really was. Considering the sheer number of publishing and media barriers they broke back in the 1980s and 90s,  it’s a shame, as far as I’m concerned, that James and Michael aren’t better known in the indie-publishing universe. As it happens, the two are operating an incredibly bad-ass creative services company these days. The organization is known, appropriately enough, as Monk Media, and among other creative work, they’ve designed scores of ridiculously sick websites for organizations like American Ironic, Apryl Miller Studios, Boyntunes Inc., Forty Weeks, and Von Piglet Productions. And through March 15, 2009, they’re offering an incredible discount on web design work for independent companies — send a note to info(at)monkmedia(dot)net for the full details, and tell ‘em Dan from Young Pioneers Media sent you! 

A MONK MAGAZINE RELAUNCH?

>>> And what about the relaunch? Well, I was lucky enough to interview both James and Michael for the first issue of a magazine about independent travel culture I published back in 2004, and at the time, Monk Magazine had been out of commission for about seven years. But as James told me:

“[Monk] never officially ended. When we bring Monk back it’s going to be in a different format, because we do want travel to be a big part of it, but Mike and I — sort of like how Rolling Stone uses music, we use travel as a lens to look at a lot of different things. And we felt a little hemmed in by being a consumer travel magazine. We think our forte – especially my forte — is social commentary, and Michael’s forte is storytelling. And together we do profiles, but we each have our unique abilities. There’s just a magical coming together because we each supply each other with things we don’t have, so when we bring Monk back we want to open it up to other writers. We want to make it a little broader. The new slogan is going to be Monk: Look Deeper.”

>>> And although that conversation took place almost five years ago, James mentioned to me recently (in an email) that his plans haven’t changed much, regardless of the current depressed condition of the publishing industry, not to mention the economy itself. Again from the 2004 interview:

“The way we’re going to do it is, we’re going to take summers off, and periodically throughout the year — for a week or so — we’re going to go and dig deep into one place. So… we’re not sure, but it’s going to be somewhere in Europe. We’re either going to do Iceland, or we’re going to do Germany or maybe even just Berlin — and we’re going to live there for two months. We feel like we’ve exhausted the United States of America. So even though there’s still more to do, we really want to expand to the rest of the world.”

Of course, whether or not this will ever happen in anyone’s guess. But for those of you who happen to be interested, stay tuned: I’ll be posting any updates or tidbits of information right here. One exciting Monk-related development I can announce, however, is a new column James will be writing for my own soon-to-be-published magazine about creative and alternative entrepreneurs, which, just like my currently sleeping indie travel magazine, will be called Young Pioneers. James hasn’t signed a contract yet, so nothing’s set in stone, and in fact we still have to decide on a topic for the column itself. If any readers have potential ideas they’d like to share, I’m all ears, and I imagine James would be open to suggestions as well. Feel free to post a comment below, or contact me directly at dan(at)youngpioneers(dot)com. 

Rich Like Them: Why didn’t I think of that?

I’m going to assume that just about everyone who reads this blog has lived through at least one truly awful “Why didn’t I think of that?”experience. You know what I’m talking about: Let’s say you stumble upon an unbelievably cool project while you’re flipping through a magazine, or killing time online. Maybe it’s a documentary film that seems particularly bizarre, or maybe it’s an odd new reality TV show, or whatever. But instead of actually being excited about your new discovery, you instead begin to feel overwhelmed with crushing regret. Why? Well… because someone else came up with the brilliant idea before you did! Bad times, right? 

The last time I experienced one of those moments was about two weeks ago, when I first heard about Ryan D’Agostino’s new book, Rich Like Them: My Door-to-Door Search for the Secrets of Wealth in America’s Richest Neighborhoods (Little, Brown and Co.) Ryan (that’s him in the photo above) currently holds down a day job as the articles editor of Esquire magazine, so I’m not really sure I understand how he found the time to do the research for Rich Like Them, but anyway, here’s the basic idea behind the book: Ryan wanted to truly understand how the wealthiest and most successful people in America actually got that way. So he took the direct approach:

“He picked the 20 wealthiest neighborhoods in America,” according to a recent review of the book in Publisher’s Weekly, “and went door to door, garnering interviews with 50 very wealthy, very different individuals — including doctors, art dealers, real estate moguls and one shrimp-peeling–machine manufacturer.”

Ryan’s book, as it happens, is a near-perfect example of the sort of ‘conceptual journalism’ projects that seem to pop into my head all the time. So naturally, I wanted to kick myself to death for not having thought of it first. I was actually disappointed with myself, for real. This went on for days. And then, almost out of nowhere, I remembered a great quote about ideas, and about how good ideas aren’t really worth shit, because after all, almost everyone has good ideas all the time. Right? 

Anyway, the great quote about ideas goes on to say that what really matters, when it comes to great ideas, are not those people who simply dream them up. What matters are those people who actually act upon their great ideas. And that’s something most people rarely do. Most people who dream up wonderfully smart ideas end up talking about their idea to death, long before the real work actually starts. And that can be dangerous, because eventually, they might end up talking themselves out of it. Or maybe their well-meaning friends or family will talk them out of it. Believe me: I know this from personal experience. I’ve done it myself, more than once.

And then what happens to that great idea? Well, it never happens, of course. It flaps its wings and flies off into the ether, and into someone else’s head — someone else who may or may not actually take that great idea and do something great with it.

You see what I mean?

Ryan D’Agostino, in this case, did something truly great with his great idea. If you’d like to learn more about the guy behind the book, check out this well-done Q&A interview on the website of The Lattice Group. Here’s a review from the Austin American-Statesman. And here’s another from RealVail.com. Enjoy. And let me ask you this: Has anyone else out there read Rich Like Them? If so, what did you think? Did you learn anything useful or worthwhile about the process of successfully accumulating wealth?