Things I'm Thinking About (2.24.10)

Cultivating weak relationships and the rise of social networking:
You have 2,000 friends on Facebook, 3,000 followers on Twitter, hundreds of connections on LinkedIn, etc, etc, etc. What are you really? I surmise you are either incredibly good at marketing your own brand or you spend way too much time cultivating weak relationships that have virtually no importance. The rise of social networking has certainly allowed people to connect and stay connected with people all over the world—but have we then marginalized ourselves into a steady stream of thousands of weak connections? In the past, relationships were formed and cultivated through very personal forms of communication (e.g., telephone, handwritten letters) on a much less frequent basis for a variety of reasons. Now, however, less personal forms of communication are shot gunned worldwide, 24/7, with the press of a button (e.g., email, text messages, Twitter, Facebook). Is it better to write three handwritten letters and talk on the phone to your best friend for two hours each week or send them 10 text messages per day? My point is that we spend less and less time communicating with our strong relationships (family, best friends) and in many instances, have relegated these relationships to one line of text i.e., “Haha! That was crazy. Lol.” I have made my decision, which is why one of my New Year’s resolutions is to send one handwritten letter to my 10 strongest relationships.

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Can You Teach Entrepreneurship?
Entrepreneurship is a passion of mine and most things I am passionate about I can readily explain to you in Lehman’s terms. Entrepreneurship is different. The bottom line is that it is incredibly difficult to teach entrepreneurship in schools. In fact, most undergraduate and graduate level business programs really struggle to develop curriculum. Fake projects and fake start-ups only go so far. One of my friends and mentors at Loyola College in Maryland is doing the only thing that works (in my opinion): Real students working/advising real start-ups. It is very difficult to capture the essence of entrepreneurship with a textbook. Why? Because there is no magic formula to ensure entrepreneurial success—something that drives highly technical people crazy.

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A Great Way to Begin a Speech:
Most people would agree that the best way to begin a speech is to either make fun of yourself, or tell some kind of light humored joke tailored to the audience. I would agree. However, another good way is to tell the audience you plan to release them 5-10 minutes early depending on their level of participation. You create instant buy-in because the audience believes that you value their time as much as your own.

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Theoretically speaking, if news media companies were not-for-profit, what kind of news would they report? This dives into philosophy a bit, but I suppose the news would be much more idealistic in nature. Probably less negative too.

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Why don’t airlines sell advertising inside the airplane rather than charge for bags?
Millions of people travel on airplanes every single day. Why don’t airlines sell advertising space inside the plane? I.e., bathrooms, on top of the fuselage. In fact, the flight attendants could promote a specific product or service for one to two minutes before giving the in-flight safety brief.

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One of the secrets of world-class public speakers:
You have just heard a speech by one of the most dynamic, fluid, and persuasive public speakers in the world. You sat, entranced for nearly an hour by this persons extraordinary ability to captivate an audience. Never, you think, could I do that. Maybe not, but what you don’t know was that behind this flawless delivery was the complete memorization of every single word in the speech. That’s right—the world’s most talented public speakers have every single word of their speech memorized. If a professional has every single word of their speech memorized, maybe we all need to spend a lot more time preparing…

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Billions of people claim they believe in God? Why, then, do so few people act like it? I'm guilty of this as well. I suppose because it's human nature to sin and ask for forgiveness later. Back to the instant gratification society. Hat tip: Cameron Schaefer.