Is there a pay phone around here?

Speaking of formerly strong industries that seem to be crawling slowly towards extinction (see A Philly Punk-Pioneer, below), check out this interesting bit of prediction journalism from Entrepreneur: 10 Businesses Facing Extinction in 10 Years.

The piece does sound like a bit of a downer, I’ll admit, but it’s actually a rather enjoyable read. Written by business journalist Geoff Williams, apparently the Entrepreneur editorial team got together for this one and picked ten general industries that they suspect will cease to exist by the year 2017. Among their guesses: Record stores, obviously. Pay phones. But a handful of these picks are a bit unusual. Crop dusters, for instance. And even gay bars, believe it or not. The reasoning behind that one certainly comes as a surprise; click here to read it, along with the rest of the list. 

A Philly Punk-Pioneer

Interesting story in the Philadelphia City Paper this week about a guy by the name of Mike Quinn, who runs the wildly experimental record label No Quarter. NQ releases albums by relatively obscure rock bands like Earth (that’s them in the photo above) and Circle. According to the story, No Quarter is a financially successful, in-the-black operation — no small feat in an industry where, according to Nielsen’s SoundScan numbers, “CD sales were down 20 percent in the first quarter of 2007.” (So says Andrew Parks, the CP journalist responsible for the No Quarter article.)

But here’s the really interesting thing about Quinn: Not only does he run No Quarter entirely by himself, without so much as an outsourced publicist — he also puts in roughly 90 hours a week at various survival jobs. His main gig, apparently, involves driving a shuttle bus around the Ivy League campus of the University of Pennsylvania, aka Penn. Personally, I can’t even begin to imagine how someone who works the equivalent of two full-time jobs each week — and then some — can still have enough time left over to run a record label with a relatively large following. But here’s Mike Quinn talking about his 90-hour-a-week work load; this is a quote taken directly from the CP story, by the way:

That’s no exaggeration at all. I’ve worked three or four jobs at a time before, from Spaceboy to R5 [Productions] to Penn. That way I can avoid running a record label on nothing but credit card debt.  

Wow. Unreal. If that actually is true, this guy has got to be one of the most dedicated entrepreneurs on the entire Eastern Seaboard. To read the story yourself, click here. No Quarter maintains a website, where you can purchase albums and see the current touring schedules of every band on its roster, at www.noquarter.net.

Recent work: Venture Magazine (UK)

My most recently-published freelance piece is on the cover of this month’s Venture magazine, a publication that is apparently sent to European travelers, direct-mail style, by a tour company known as Kumuka. The idea, as far as I understand it, is that after a potential customer reads a story about a travel writer’s trip to, say, Vietnam, this person will hopefully be convinced that s/he too needs to experience some of the same things in the same places.

I think this idea is actually quite clever, at least from a business point of view. Most tour companies, after all, simply put out amateurish-looking brochures that wax poetic about whatever their given product happens to be. Kumuka, on the other hand, produces a glossy, full-color magazine that is both written and edited by professional travel journalists; the magazine’s current editor-in-chief, Matt Phillips, is in fact a Lonely Planet veteran. And aside from myself, I know of at least one other LP author who has contributed to Venture in the past. In other words, the quality of the content appears to be just as high as the quality of the production itself.

Then again, all the professionalism that goes into the magazine’s creation could also be seen as slightly sneaky; I suppose it’s a fact that the entire book is essentially one big advertorial. Anyway, assuming you’re interested in seeing the magazine for yourself, you’ve got two options: Click on over to the Venture website,  and look for the blue text that says “Download e-magazine“. Or head to the Kumuka website and request a free copy through the mail.

Do you work from a home office? Read this.

I haven’t yet found myself too terribly impressed by Wired magazine’s How-To Wiki, a brilliant idea that unfortunately has not quite managed to live up to its obvious potential. And yet I recommend giving it a glance regardless, because it’s quite possible, of course, that many of the articles I found dull (not useful, in other words), might be just the thing you’re looking for.

And vice-versa.

For instance: I’m a self-employed journalist and publisher who works from a home office, and because procrastination is an issue I’ve been battling for years, I am always on the lookout for decent time-management tips. So naturally, it was a no-brainer that I might appreciate a post aiming to explain How To Actually Work From Home When You Work From Home.

I’ll be honest here: The advice hardly altered the course of my life. Although it didn’t necessarily disappoint, either. Personally, I was partial to Tip Number Four: Create Small Deadlines. “Avoid procrastination by setting mini deadlines to break up your day and instill urgency in your tasks,” it reads. As it happens, I try this trick on a fairly regular basis, and as long as I can manage to stay disciplined and not cheat on myself, it works quite well. The idea–and I’ve read this in countless career-advice type books for freelancers–is to create small rewards for yourself, which you’re only allowed to redeem after completing a given task.

Seth Godin quotes of the day

 

Take a look at the following quotes, all of them spoken by marketing whiz-kid Seth Godin, pictured above. (And If you’re wondering why Seth appears to be drinking from a half-gallon container of Purple Cow milk, click here.)

Seth’s first two quotes are golden, especially the final sentence in the second quote: “Everything we do is marketing, whether we mean to or not.”

I personally love this idea — the idea that everything we do, from the way we dress to the words that come out of our mouths, is marketing. If you read that sentence quickly and fail to take the time to think about exactly what it means, it might sound like garbage. But if you take the time to mull it over a bit, it really does make perfect sense. Think about it like this: Now that job security is very much a thing of past generations, we are all the CEOs of our own independent businesses. Jane Doe, Inc., you might say. Or John Doe, LLC. 

What Seth is really saying, then, is that people judge us by every little thing we do and say in this life. And why is that important to remember? Well, because you never know which CEOs might be looking or listening. (Or for that matter, which potential customers might be looking or listening!)

So … what’s the best way to handle this sort of thing? I remember Anthony Robbins once saying that before he became a public figure, he simply acted the way he would act in public if he were a public figure. That way, he explained, when he actually did become a public figure, he wouldn’t have to change himself overnight. In other words: Fake it ’til you make it. Consistently act like the person you want to be, and if you stick with it and exercise massive amounts of persistence, eventually you will be that person.

Anyway, here are the Seth Godin quotes, which I found on the Jungle Media Group website:   

Only businesses that want to tell the truth should have a blog. Blogs don’t fatten the bottom line as much as they give a company a low-cost opportunity to tell a better story—in real time—to those who want to hear it.

The biggest marketing blunder of all time might have been Dick Cheney shooting an old man in the face. Everything we do is marketing, whether we mean to or not.

Google is broken. It’s too good. It gives you millions of matches for “wedding planner” when you only need a few. Squidoo.com is designed to allow human beings, experts on whatever field they choose, to take you by the hand and show you the good stuff.

I’m not entirely sure I agree with that final quote — I hardly think Google is broken — but Squidoo.com is without doubt an interesting project, if for no other reason than the fact that Seth himself is the man behind the company’s curtain. Then again, I’m not sure I even fully grasp what the site is intended to do, so you probably shouldn’t take my word for it. Take a quick look at Squidoo yourself, or pay a visit to Seth’s impressively well-designed internet home. Seth’s hugely-popular blog can be found here.

Amazon.com comments

Here’s the most recent Amazon.com comment about Moon Handbooks Pittsburgh:

For the price, this collection of tips and locations is valuable. It is not the average travel guide that a suburban family would want when visiting the area. Don’t expect to find a guide about mall and traditional shopping, and neither the usual and traditional tourism venues.

What this collection does is collect into one volume a series of tips of urban life of the young. It is not so much a walking tour guide on architectural and urban neighborhoods, but much space is devoted to individual locations for shopping, restaurant, cafe, and places to meet people, and to my surprise, included many tidbits that few know.

For example, that you can loan for free a bicycle on the Heritage Trail on the South Side. It also describes organizations where to meet people, like the Hash House Harriers. I was surprised a bit by the little exposure it gave to the steps of Pittsburgh, but then, on page 48, it referred correctly the reader to another publication that is entirely dedicated to the public steps in the city of hills. Definitely my kind of style for travel, for a cheap two day tour, it mentions rental of a kayak and [the possibility of seeing] the city from water level (although at $15/hr it isn’t exactly cheap), this publication does well [at exposing] the current state of the city and what it has to offer. But it is very city-centric: beyond the city lines, the author does not venture much.

Free Wireless Shadyside

It’s just after 4 p.m. on a Saturday afternoon, and although I usually update this blog while sitting in front of the home-office desk, or while propped up on my bed with the help of a half-dozen pillows, this morning I felt the need for a slight change of environment. So instead of a desk or a bed, I’m right now sitting at a small, round table inside a popular Pittsburgh coffee shop. The shop is located smack-dab in the middle of Walnut Street — the main thoroughfare of a neighborhood known as Shadyside, which along with being an upscale residential area is also one of Pittsburgh’s busiest shopping districts.

Here’s a question for you: Does this cafe sound at all like the sort of place you occasionally end up in yourself? (Trendy cafe in trendy neighborhood; young and attractive staff.) If so, you’d probably make the assumption that I’m able to access the Internet and maintain my blog here because of the shop’s free Wi-Fi access. That’s certainly the assumption I made the first time I walked into the Coffee Tree Roasters, which is the name of the cafe I’m in now. After all, these days it almost seems as if every coffee shop in the western world provides free wireless access just as readily as it offers free stirring straws or packets of Sugar in the Raw. But this particular shop, regardless of its location, or its popularity, or even its apparent success, does not offer a complimentary wireless service at all.

Aside from making an educated guess about the frugality of the Coffee Tree Roasters’ ownership, I really have no idea why this is. And regardless of the country’s usually incorrect perceptions of the city of Pittsburgh, this is actually a very wired town. But except for the fact that pointing a finger at poor examples of customer service happens to be something of a hobby of mine, that’s completely beside the point. The point is that although one of my favorite local cafes — the one I’m in now — has no wireless access, I’m able to get online at no charge regardless. And no, I’m not a hacker, and I’m not hopping onto a nearby neighbor’s account. I’m instead using a rather unusual service known as Free Wireless Shadyside.

FWS is the latest project of a local small business owner by the name of Jonathan Plesset, and the truth is that it’s really nothing more than a powerful and neighborhood-wide wireless network that allows anyone in the immediate area to surf online for free. What makes it unusual is the fact that Plesset had the connection installed as a tribute to his late father, R. Jeffrey Plesset, who passed away in 1999.

The elder Plesset was the owner of a local business known as the Shadyside Inn, a place where average hotel suites are sometimes rented on a long-term basis to out-of-town celebrities, or to actors who happen to be in Pittsburgh for a film shoot. (Paul Newman and astronaut Buzz Aldrin have both been guests.) The Shadyside Inn still exists today — you’ll find it at 5405 Fifth Avenue, which is just steps from Walnut Street, where I’m sitting now.

According to his son, R. Jeffrey Plesset was a fairly serious neighborhood booster. This is how the younger Plesset explained his unusual tribute to his father in the July 11, 2007 issue of Pittsburgh Tribune-Review:

“My father was very into giving back to the community, so this seemed like a more fitting memorial than a fountain or a plaque … I’m a very strong believer that the Internet should be free. It’s the collective knowledge of the entire world — why should someone who can’t afford it not have access to it?”

And in the July 18, 2007 issue of Pop City, an online magazine covering general Pittsburgh news, the younger Plesset, who today is a co-owner of the Shadyside Inn, is quoted saying this:

“My dad didn’t like to draw attention to himself … With this wireless network you get a splash screen and a little description that honors him. Maybe he wouldn’t have liked that either, but he would have overlooked it. Plus, I wanted to give people another reason to come to Shadyside.”

Smart idea, no? A tribute that actually teaches for free — and that freely gives itself to others — hundreds of times each day. Maybe even thousands. Now that is a true example of innovative thinking. It’s also an example of a true and honest altruistic action, and a move that creative entrepreneurs everywhere would be wise to think about emulating. Bravo, Plessets.