The Sebastian

Google blog has announced today (see Finding government info) the release of their new tool Google U.S. Government Search.


Just for the fun of it, I've ran a few searches:


"google's privacy policy"

white house scandal 2006

june 2006 gas prices inflation CPI economy fed stock market

karl rove CIA

white house blog

budget 2007



Now more seriously, the engine seems pretty powerful. Hopefully it will remain (?) unbiased and uncensored.

I've just finished reading Keith Ferrazzi's book entitled Never Eat Alone a few weeks ago. I loved it and find myself applying the ideas from the book in my everyday life, over and over again. Each time I do it, they keep making more and more sense while his theory keeps getting validated.

It feels somehow as if each little step I take compounds with the previous one. This is no surprise. I think that's how its supposed to feel if you are doing things right. My friends are loving it too. Think about a tree. Or, if you are good with math, think about combinatory and set theory:

How many unordered pairs can one take from a set of N elements?. That's N times N - 1, divided by 2. How many new relationships can get established by adding one element to a set of N? That's [ [(N + 1) x N] - [N x (N -1)] ] / 2 = N. What? You don't believe me?

In a set of 3 elements, there are 3 x 2 / 2 = 3 different unordered pairs. In a set of 4, there are 4 x 3 / 2 = 6. In other words, adding just one element to the set of 3 increases the possible number of relationships among the elements by 3! Exactly the same happens with social networks. When you meet someone new, you can introduce her to (read: she can benefit from) your whole network and so creating new N relationships! In other words, the total number of relationships in a network grow exponentially with the amount of people you know (hint: as long as you are connecting them with each other!).

I must mention some of Keith's ideas come to me as common sense. However this is, in part, what makes the book so valuable. Growing your network of contacts and becoming successful is not just about approaching a few things differently here and there, or making a good move from time to time; it is about helping others, about being professional, about being persistent and being smart about it too. You can't afford just leaving it open to chance! (well, may be Paris Hilton can, but not me )

So yes, I was already implementing some of the ideas before reading the book, but I think following the whole, complete set of ideas and processes as presented by Keith is really what makes the big difference. Call it being serious and organized about it if you wish.

Anyway, Mark Goulston has posted a great summary with the main ideas at their blog (check out Never Eat Alone made simple). If you haven't read the book, I strongly recommend reading the article (and of course then buying the book if you like the article). If you have read the book, you should still read the article!

On a similar line, although more simplistic, there is also a change this manifest available for free: The caring and feeding of your network.

I forgot to mention them in my previous article. A blog is a fantastic tool to develop your network and boost your career. Here is another reason why.

Professional individuals such as Realtors (TM), contractors, freelancers, financial advisers, insurance salesmen, consultants, writers, composers, teachers, sport stars, researchers, actors, musicians and artists alike, among others, usually need to take care of growing their own business (by growing, I don't necessarily mean obtaining a financial improvement but rather achieving a measurable improvement towards reaching their goals and objectives).

This is the foundation to this series. I'm writing to you, the ambitious professional or small business owner who wants to get to the next level but has limited resources to get there.

I strongly believe focusing on your Marketing activities is the best, natural way to achieve this. Wikipedia makes freely available different Marketing definitions which should help backing up my point. For example, let's take this one:

...Marketing, as suggested by the American Marketing Association, is "an organizational function and a set of processes for creating, communicating and delivering value to customers and for managing customer relationships in ways that benefit the organization and its stakeholders"

This is kind of a traditional definition. For individuals and small businesses, a fresher approach like that of relationship marketing fits better. Again, from Wikipedia:

...On the other hand, Christian Grönroos, in the context of a move to relationship marketing, summarized a rather different European view in his definition: "Marketing is to establish, maintain and enhance long-term customer relationships at a profit, so that the objectives of the parties involved are met. This is done by mutual exchange and fulfillment of promises"

I've supposed above that your resources are limited. If that's the case, then implementing successful marketing campaigns can be pretty challenging. This is when Technology comes into place. I believe blogging is today's ultimate tool for you to implement a good part of your marketing activities. Some of the reasons are:

• It is a great channel to communicate with your potential and existing customers. It allows them to better understand your business and interact with your network (feel part of it).

  
  

• It is very inexpensive.

  
  

• It is simple and fast: allows you to have that quick reactivity your contacts expect from you and also differentiates you from the slower and bureaucratic big guys.

  
  

• Freely sharing your content makes you an authority on your subject. It helps you differentiate from your competition and clearly define your value proposition.

  
  

• It allows you to reach a global audience and leverage on existing social networks (read propagate buzz) that you might have not even though about.

  
  

• It is also a great way to create exposure to other important people, such as existing and potential partners, angel and venture capital investors, the press, team members and future employees, associates, etc.

  
  

• It is flexible: for example, if a given article doesn't work out well then you don't need to continue writing on it, or you may even choose to edit it (compare this to an expensive ad campaign)

  
  

• It helps you leverage on freely available and existing technology. The technology behind blogs makes them the perfect networking tool. Pings, tracebacks, comments, feeds and sites like boing boing illustrate this (more about the technology will come later on the next parts).

  
  

• It connects you with the early adopters. They love blogs. Connecting with them is one of the keys to your success (mostly if you are offering products to the end consumers).

  
  

• If you have great content and keep updating your blog regularly, your audience (read prospects, customers, potential partners, etc) will keep growing and coming back again and again.

  
  

• It helps you building your brand. Think Nike (more about this later).




• Because of the informal nature of blogs, they allow you to be more relaxed on your writing style. You are suddenly more human, have emotions and feelings. This will help you reach and connect with your audience on a more intense and personal level than, for example, the one achieved by a white paper, a press article or even by a traditional website.

OK, that was long. I'd be surprised if you are still with me. In any case, I would like to hear from you . Thanks for reading!

Welcome to my fresh, new blog on Entrepreneurship, Marketing and Technology. In the spirit of segmentation and orientation, and after thinking about it for a while, I have decided to segregate this content from my personal blog: Chez Sebas, which I intent to keep on a more personal level and mainly focused on my family, friends and other social activities.

This space, on the other hand, should give me a better opportunity to overtly explore these fascinating business-related areas. My basic goals behind this new experiment are:

to research and learn while writing and sharing content

to closely relate and connect with an audience interested into these very specific topics

to initiate an open and rich community of like-minded individuals providing plenty of feedback and interaction while helping each other succeed

to make new friends and associates

to share exciting experiences

and I could go on and on...

I hope you will like this new initiative and participate with your own thoughts and feedback through comments, tracebacks and e-mails. You may want to have a look at this page to learn more about me.

Please feel free to e-mail me at any time at seb@thesebastian.com, I would love to hear from you.

To complement the ideas above, I have decided to make the contents of all articles posted on this blog licensed under a Creative Commons license which allows you to (certain conditions met) freely use the contents of this site, as opposite to the more traditional "All rights reserved" approach. For more details on the particular license model I have chosen, please click here.

Thanks for visiting and, once again, I hope you will enjoy the site, keep coming back and let your friends know about it!