The Kismetic Strategist

After switching my majors at least five times, I finished with a BA in Philosophy in 2007.  Although initially afraid of the job prospects, I don’t regret my choice for a moment. Here then are seven reasons you should major in Philosophy:

1. Dr. Frankenstein was a philosopher. Yes he was also not real, but this illustrates a key facet of philosophy: it is the fountain from which sprang Biology, Math, Chemistry, Physics, and Psychology, among others; the ability to learn these disciplines, beyond rote memorization, is fundamental to philosophy.
2. Philosophers make more money than average, according to Payscale.com.   Among graduates who don’t pursue a higher degree (and many philosophers do), Philosophers make more than most other liberal arts majors, including English and History.  The lower number, relative to more technical degrees, is indicative of the additional training that may be required for philosophy students, and the higher variance in ability among liberal arts students (as opposed to technical majors.)
3. You plan to go to law school. Perhaps because philosophy majors don’t make a lot of money initially, they tend to head to more practical programs like law.  Philosophy is an ideal preparation for law school, because it requires dense reading, dense writing, logical analysis, and the desire to argue every minute detail.
4. You enjoy business/entrepreneurship. General business requires both the ability to logically analyze, and the creativity to guess the future.  Because Philosophy mixes the symbolic logic with the big questions, philosophers are better prepared to succeed in business than MBAs.
5. You plan to learn your whole life. Philosopher, literally translated, means “lover of wisdom”.  Do you love wisdom?  If so, you will probably spend your spare time reading, long after you get your degree.  Philosophy teaches you to read difficult materials fast, break down the arguments, and find the assumptions.  The knowledge you get from a technical degree can be learned on your own.
6. You enjoy Philosophy. Philosophy often requires fewer classes than science oriented majors, but these classes can be every bit as rigorous.  If you are lazy you can get through a philosophy degree without a lot of effort (there are plenty of classes not requiring intense analysis.)  If, however, you enjoy the challenges, philosophy offers a lot of high level, abstract material.
7. You want your kids to grow up curious. Faced with the choices of a computer science degree and a philosophy degree, I chose philosophy.  Why?  I thought about the day when my kids would ask “What did you major in?” and I smiled when I thought about explaining philosophy to them.

Jean Baptiste Say

Every Tuesday I offer up a classic proverb and decide whether it is relevant to modern business.

Today’s proverb:

“Supply creates its own demand.”

Attributed as Say’s Law, this is often refuted in Economics as a complete mistake.  But there are some examples that may suggest it is true:

1. Before the Wii, there wasn’t a known demand for video games for those who didn’t already play (and they would often decry them as a bad thing.)
2. Before the iTunes App Store, was there a demand for fart noises on your phone?
3. Before Twitter, was there a demand for knowing what everyone is doing in realtime?

The truth of Say’s Law seems to be in the definition of demand.  If demand is defined as what people say they would buy, Say’s law seems to be accurate.  Or perhaps marketing creates demand.  Thoughts?

HT: motivatedphotos.com

In the Spring of 2008, I officially embarked on two journeys: the first an internship in Marketing, the second a quest to go on thirty dates in twenty weeks (and ended at 32 in 19 weeks).  From this, I realized how similar dating and marketing can be:

1. In the beginning, quantity of leads is important. Getting a number feels good, it is self affirming, and it keeps you busy.  Getting twenty numbers feels even better.
2. With a sufficient quantity of leads, lead scoring is critical. While getting a lot of leads feels great, eventually you will  have more than you can handle; at this point, you need to find a way to prioritize leads.  Rating date prospects on a scale of 1 to 10 is obvious, but this score is based on the desirability of the lead, not the chances of success; a better approach sets minimum qualifications while considering the likelihood of success.
3. Learn from your mistakes. Within the first few weeks, I began to keep a spreadsheet to track variables (location, source, etc.)  From this, I became aware of causes of failure, and considered alternatives to test.
4. Social validation is critical. Of all of the variables present, the greatest predictor of dating success was whether or not a lead was referred by a mutual acquaintance; in fact, the odds of success tripled given this source.  The people we associate with will have more impact on our successes than anything else we do.  Choose your friends  wisely.
5. Success breeds success (and it often comes after a Dip).  When I first started, I met with a lot of failure ( I am a classically awkward closer.)  Looking back, it is easy to see where I took off: after a particularly bad week of five awful dates, I stood at 15, and I decided I needed to stop; it was no longer fun, and I felt no better off than I had been before.  But then, I found a great prospect, and 15 lessons in failure become the pillars of success.
6. Confidence is key. Most people are deficient in self confidence, so sharing yours can be mutually valuable.  For a long time, I refused to offer confidence to others; when a woman would ask me the typical question “Do I look fat in this dress” I would tell her my true opinion and she knew that.  I only recently realized that confidence, like love, is a gift that is more valuable when shared.  Few people want your true opinion: most want, more than anything else, a loan of confidence to help them execute on their plan, no matter how ill fated.

Dear Readers: Have you found any other similarities between dating and marketing?

From Marketing-Gimbal:

(In 2009) the use of social media will become a more prevalent part of most B2B marketing strategies. It has to be. The value of creating a two way communication channel between you and your customers is too great to ignore any longer.

Social Media is an excellent channel to market to consumers.  It is also an excellent channel to market to smaller firms, because they behave like smart consumers: they often have only one or two decision makers, they make relatively fast decisions, and they prefer to have some type of relationship with the seller.

Social media marketing fails when selling to a larger company: the bureaucracy, process, and speed at which an enterprise firm purchases are all designed to strip away the emotions one can use via social media.  Paradoxically, it may be larger firms rely more on relationships; these relationships, however, are stronger and have more history supporting them.

So how can you use social media to market to enterprise firms?  Rather than focusing on the messaging (social networking and virally focused communications), focus instead on the strategy:

1. Find your niche(s). A diverse sales force brings with it a diverse list of clients.  Thinking about focusing on the Manufacturing industry?  If you examine your customer data, you may find a strong niche in the Southwest Manufacturing firms, or perhaps you will find Medical Suppliers are a much stronger niche.  By applying technologies to your own information, you can leverage your strengths to target specific markets.
2. Create more better content. I think Ed gets this right: “in the 21^st century marketing is really about content publishing.“  Using your niches, you now have the opportunity to create highly targeted, relevant content.  This may mean more case studies, but it also means buying a flip camera and recording impromptu customer interviews; essentially, you will be using relationship marketing, but leveraging the trust between your prospect and your current customer, without deluging your current customers with hundreds of phone calls requesting references.
3. Defend your brand. Because of the risk of fallout, enterprise customers are probably not going to initiate a tweet or blog post about your brand.  Still, there will be some conversation somewhere; it is therefore important to monitor all channels for mentions of your brand, including Twitter and LinkedIn.
4. Optimize your web presence. It goes without saying that your website should be quantitatively optimized to increase traffic and drive conversions.  Less obvious, but equally important, is the need to understand what your traffic really wants, and deliver it to them.  For example, you may find yourself on a plateau of a 3 percent conversion rate, and extrapolate how much revenue you can drive by increasing that to 4 percent.  But this implicitly assumes all traffic wants to convert.  What if a survey of your traffic found 20% was on the verge of buying, and looking for information to help with negotiations?  You could create pages touting the high price of ownership of your competition, thus driving down their profits.  What if a survey found 10% were looking for information to give to their bosses?  You could create collateral specifically focused around this segment.  The point is, you probably don’t know this today, because you don’t implement surveys.  Fortunately, like they are fast, friendly, and free.

In short: social media messaging is great for individual or partner decision makers.  If a committee is involved, avoid Twitter and focus on strategy.

Photo credit: audreyjm529

Every Tuesday I offer up a classic proverb and decide whether it is relevant to modern business.

Today’s proverb:  The early bird gets the worm.

Yes, but the early worm gets eaten.  So you have to ask yourself: are you the bird or the worm?  As an employee, who benefits from you coming in early, you or the shareholders in your company(hopefully both)?  As a company, are you the early bird, jumping into a market and on the verge of cornering the market?  Or are you the worm, digesting the garbage so a bird can come in later and eat you alive?  Many companies assume the early adopter has the advantage, but it is often the late adopter who crosses the chasm and realizes the profits from the mass market.  Which are you?

Conclusion:  Incomplete.