Managing the Gray – Positive Advice That Everyone Can Use to Succeed

Transcript for Managing the Gray #35 “Every Day is a Good Day”
Originally posted on June 6, 2007

C.C. Chapman: Hey everybody. Welcome to Managing the Gray. Today, it is a little different. I have missed you guys. I have missed talking to you all out there, so today there are no show notes. Literally, there is nothing written down, just some topics in my head, some things I have been thinking about. I have got some great audio comments, just a whole bunch of random things that I want to talk to you here at Managing the Gray because one of the neat things about new media, I talk about this all the time, one of the neat things about new media is that there are not any rules. It is not like a 30-minute sitcom where we have to follow some formula and everybody has to agree with you. You do not have to. That is what is awesome about what we are doing here. You make the rules. So, one day I want to do a 5-minute show. That is awesome. The next, I want to do 30. That is cool. You want to try video? You are cool when you do it. All that stuff is great. You want to call in the comment line? You can do that too. It is 206-309-4729. You can call on in and ask me anything you want.

We have got some cool audio comments today all over the map. It has been a busy — quick update on what is going on in ccville. It has been very busy. Crayon is rocking along. We have hired some new staff, which is great. I am very excited. I am actually headed to New York tomorrow with Scott Monty who is our newest crayonist. We are actually taking the train out, which would be cool. We actually hung out yesterday. He is here in the Boston area, which is great as well. He is out in MetroWest. He is brought on board as sort of an account director relationships manager. I do not know what his official title is. I personally do not care what his title is, but I just know he is going to be doing some great things for us. I am psyched to have him on board. It will be fun to ride out on the train tomorrow with him. We are getting to know each other more, which is great. That is part of the fun. I always talk about you make friends online, you meet them in Twitter and Second Life or not, but when you get to meet them face to face, it is always better when you get to that point. Now, I am to that point with Scott, which is great. Big meeting tomorrow in New York City for Crayon, good stuff. I actually got a great interview for the next Managing the Gray that I am doing this afternoon. At least I hope it goes great, let us word it that way, which should be very cool. That is only reason I had to get one of these out is because I wanted to record — because the interview that I am doing, it is time stamped, not barcode, that is the wrong word, but I am just going to push it out next week. I wanted to get something out before then to you guys and girls because I miss you all. So, all is well, still doing One Guy’s Thoughts, which is my video podcast. It has been kind of my new media playing now.

One of the things I wanted to talk about to you [unintelligible] I did get my Mac. I got a MacBook Pro and thank you to everybody who chipped in and gave me feedback. What was great was, I talked about this on crayonCast last week, Apple dropped the ball. You got to apple.com. They will sell you the Mac, they will sell you the MackBook Pro, but what they will not let you do is really compare which one you need. Now, sure, they give you specs side by side, which I love. I hate it when sites do not do that. You cannot actually get the tech specs right side by side and compare them. They do that great, but I was not sure which one I needed. I had no sell for me to know which one I wanted. So, I went to managingthegray.com. I posted a blog post, I Twittered about it, and then all of a sudden all these people gave all this great feedback. I know this one mom, her daughter is graduating from high school and wanted to get her a Mac and she had the same question. She came and she was reading all the comments. I love that my question helped somebody else get their question answered too.

That is where the power of the Internet and Google or whatever search engine you want. I am not just pimping Google, it is my personal choice, but what I mean is like last night I was working on the book and I am writing and I am like, “Wait a minute. Macs don’t have a delete key.” Yes, they have delete, but the delete key on the Mac is the same thing as backspace on a PC. I am like, “Where is the delete key? The one that takes the cursor and deletes things forward, kind of sucks it back, couldn’t find it.” What did I do? I went to Google. I am like Mac, delete, key, backspace, Windows, or something, some random keywords and I found it with one click, which was great. It is function delete, by the way, does it. Two buttons, whatever. That is pretty neat. All these connections. It was on a blog post that I found that out, by the way.

All these posts, people are sharing information. Sometimes when you are posting information or you are doing a video, whether it is audio, when you are putting these things out there, it is for people to find to discover and to get your questions answered months, years, and millenniums after you post it. Who knows? Think about it. All this audio that we are creating and this video that we are creating, our kids are going to see this. Our grandkids could see this. I laugh to think what my kids are going to think about when they go watch something I made with Random Foo Pictures when they are teenagers, when they can actually watch it because it is rather violent, some of the stuff. I wonder what they are going to think of their dad, but I am okay with that. That is what I am getting at is the fact — it is one of the reasons I do transcripts of all my podcasts is because that gets the information out there. Google finds it. It indexes it. It is a lot better than my show notes usually are.

So, think about that. Whenever you are creating content, it is going to last. It is going to be out there for a while. Yes, the Mac, I am liking it. I am getting used to it. It is very different. The keyboard, I am not used to it. I did get the MacBook Pro if I did not say that. My main decision? My main decision was because some people that I trusted their opinion said, “C.C., you’re gonna be running Second Life a lot, I know you are, and thus the upgraded video card that’s in the MacBook Pro is the way to go.” No, I am not mad that yesterday Apple released new MacBook Pros. You knew it was coming. I knew it was coming at some point, but I kept getting sick of waiting. Let us face it. Any computer, it is out of date the minute you get it out of the box and plug it in. This MacBook Pro has got more than enough juice for me. It has got 3 gig of RAM. It is wired. It is more than I need so I am good to go.

I am very proud. I got another homework assignment came in.

Bobby Hewitt: Hi, C.C. This is Bobby Hewitt from creativethirst.com in New Jersey. I would like to follow Jerry’s call with my homework assignment submission for you. I am in New Jersey and I did not get over to the New York PodCamp. I am so sorry. I really did want to go, but I do have a good excuse. I was on a family trip in Memphis with my wife and her family. I am calling you from Skype. This is my first Skype call and it is you. So, that says something then and that is my homework assignment, but I did also blog about my trip to Memphis, Tennessee, a little bit about branding, a little bit about marketing. You could check out my blog at creativethirst.blogspot.com. Bye-bye.

C.C. Chapman: That is awesome. See what I mean? Trying new media, it is not painful. Of course, what blew me away was at first I thought he was in the car. It sounded like you were in the car, but then to find out it was a Skype call and that that was your homework assignment… Let us face it, people. That is great! I know some people out there are going, “A Skype call?” but for that individual, a Skype call was a big step. It was something new. It does not have to be groundbreaking or earth-shattering. Business is same thing. You guys can try it. How many businesses out there have a Skype-in phone number, a voice mailbox that people can use to Skype to call, or a regular phone call? My office number is a Skype number. Nobody knows that. It does not matter. It answers with voicemail. Skype can be your thing. Congratulations for your first Skype call. I hope it was not too painful. It was good quality. That was good. Skype can barf sometimes. Who knows? That is very cool.

One thing I also want to talk about today is blogger influence or influencer outreach, whatever you want to call it. There is a right and wrong way to do it. There have been all kinds of flak happening about the Nikon D80 campaign and blah, blah, blah. I am not going to focus on the campaigns, but I am just going to focus on a couple little — it goes beyond giving gifts. I just want to give a tip to you out there listening or your business or whoever you might be who is thinking about reaching out to bloggers and podcasters because this goes beyond the Nikon thing. It goes beyond the Edwards campaign thing that happened. Make sure you know who you are writing to. That is all I am going to say. It happened this morning as a matter of fact. I got an email to the Managing the Gray account, which it was the totally wrong email to get me at because it was about music.

What bothered me about it was the fact that this was a management agency that an artist that I know very well had connected with and the management firm was sending out the email. The problem was it talked to me like, it tried to be personal, but it was totally form letter and the fact that I read the artist, I am like, all I wrote back, I did not want to slam, I just said, “Hey, man. Say hi to so and so for me,” because I know when he finds out, he is going to be like, “Wassup?” Know who you are reaching out to. Take the five minutes to do the research. If you are going to do a blanket, I am not going to call it spam, but if you are going to do a blanket outreach to bloggers you do not know, that is fine. It is okay. Sometimes you need to do that. Do not do it [unintelligible], be very good about it, be very cool about it, but know this. You are probably not going to get very good results. If you take five minutes per person you are reaching out to, to at least research them, find out where they are in the world, read some of their blog posts, listen to a podcast perhaps. Most bloggers out there have an About page, so you can get what you need in that first five minutes. Find out who you are talking to and make sure when you are reaching out to them, you are reaching out to the right person.

Between that, between what happened with the — I realize I am talking at the podcast so you may not read the blog. The Edwards campaign reached out to me and talked to me like I had no clue what was going on in new media. Maybe it was my bad for assuming that they are reaching out to me because I talked about the Edwards campaign. I have blogged it. I have Twittered it. I have podcast and talked about them left and right, so when they contact me and say, “Hey, we’d like to talk to you about doing more stuff online.” I just assumed they had read, heard or someone had pointed it out to them, so they knew who they were talking to, but the minute I got on the phone with them, they did not have a clue. I was just another warm body to them to talk to and that was it and that pissed me off. I blogged about it, but I blogged about it constructively and the great thing is the Edwards campaign read it, stepped up to the plate, and became part of the conversation.

I hate when companies, big, small or individual do not get involved in the conversation. If people are talking about you, you need to get in there and talk back. If you do not, you will be viewed as elitist or stupid. You pick. I do not care which, but you will be viewed as one or the other. You have got to monitor the conversation. You have got to get involved. Make it personal. Make it professional, both ends of the conversation. When you first contact the person via email and when people are talking about you, you got to get involved in the conversation in all the spaces. Yes, it is going to take time. Yes, it takes commitment. Yes, sometimes there are loopholes. You got to get approval for saying certain things. I do not care. The point is you have got to get involved. If you are not involved, it is bad. It makes you look bad. It makes your company look bad. There is a ton of companies out there that I respect that just dropped the ball on this, dropped it horribly. I was psyched to see people behind the Nikon campaign and people behind the Edwards campaign getting out there and getting involved in the conversation. Some other companies, I cannot say that about because they have not. There are huge conversations happening and they are just not paying attention to them. They are just ignoring them. That is stupid. I know sometimes that is an approach for a company or an individual. I just do not agree with it.

Well, I just kind of went tangent in there, didn’t I? But here, one of the things I am a sucker for is productivity. I love any tool, resource, technique that gets me to be more productive. I am not a big Getting Things Done type of guy. I have read it. That structure does not work for me. It works for other people, but I love hearing about new tools or techniques. So, if you ever have any, send them in. This is one that I have had on my radar and I have checked it out, but I am psyched that a Managing the Gray listener both is sharing it and using it to get in touch with me.

Dave Delaney: C.C. Chapman, it is Dave Delaney calling, loving the show as always. My website is davemadethis.com. You can find all my little things, my projects there. I am just calling with a very, very, very cool tool that I cannot live without now. A friend of mine told me about it at work and I am hooked. It is called Jott.com and what it is it is a free service, and I love free things, where you get a phone number. You just sign up, you fill in the blanks, sign up for it online at jott.com and then they give you a phone number, it is like 1-800 or whatever, and you call that number and leave a message to me or myself or somebody else in your book. I only have myself. I leave myself a message and then that message gets automatically transcribed into an email and then sent to me with the built-in audio player within the email so I can hear my message again. The transcriptions are not always perfect, but it is a message you left, so hopefully you can understand what you are saying. Again, you can play it back if you totally cannot recognize what it transcribed. So, very, very cool tool. I actually just used it listening to Managing the Gray where I called myself because I am driving. I called myself and jotted a couple of notes from the episode. Yeah, it is a perfect way to remember things. I hope that is handy and it is also handy for career professionals if you just met with somebody and you want to leave yourself a note about that person that you met, another perfect way. Anyway, keep up the great work, buddy. I love your show. Talk to you later and I will see you in Second Life one of these days. I am in there now. I just got to figure out my way around, still flying naked. It is a little embarrassing. Okay, later.

C.C. Chapman: Okay. Quick Second Life and then I will get back to Jott. Go to your Inventory. Go to Clothing. Then you can right click or open Apple click on any piece of cloth and choose where. There. Now, you will not be naked. Get some clothes on, my boy. You fly around naked, you are going to get in trouble. Nothing screams noob like a flying naked man. That is a bumper sticker. All right. Jott. Jott is pretty cool. I checked that out awhile ago. For me, I am not a phone guy. I am just not. I do not know what it is. I am not a phone guy. Ask anybody who does business with me. If you want a quick response from me, email me at cc.chapman@gmail.com. I will respond faster than a phone call ever will.

Yes, my inbox is getting cleaner, but still a little backed up. Do not take it personally. There is nothing wrong by the way. I will publicly say it. There is nothing with you sending up a follow-up posting, “Hey, C.C. Did you get this message?” and put the text in again. Nothing wrong with that at all. That often jars me to go, “You idiot. You blew responding. Get on it.” Jott though, I think it is very cool what he was talking about. It does work very well. Literally, you get a phone number, you call in, and then it emails you. I think the little thing he mentioned there in passing was the fact if you just met with somebody, you could call and leave notes. That I think is a cool idea. Or you just interviewed someone or you met someone at a conference. There are lots of possibilities there. Personally, I am a notebook guy. I always have a notebook with me. I am not a hipster PDA type of guy. I am a notebook type of guy, paper notebook is what I am talking about, not my Mac, a paper notebook that I just write things down in all the time. I was showing Scott Monty yesterday and he was cracking up. It was funny because I was actually showing him the first page of this current notebook I have was January 9th this year. I have a checklist of things I needed to do and I put them in pink, I must have had a pink highlighter that day, and none of them are done yet. They are not “me things.” Whatever. I write things down.

What productivity things do you use? What tools can you not live without? I still have not found a really good to-do list. I would love a little applet or something that sits on my desktop that I could just — I have seen tons of them, but none of them do what I want. I just want a little to-do list that I could have as a little window or widget, whatever, on my desktop that I can just type things in, but then it also syncs on the web so when I am on the road, I can get that to-do list. Better yet, you really want to make me happy? That I could have this widget on three computers or however many computers and it is syncing up via the web or I can get to it via the web and see my to-do list. That is the dream widget. Is it out there? I have not found it, but I am thinking people would want it. There are so many possibilities there, but I am curious what your productivity tips are. If you have got them or there are tools you love, put them in the comments. This will be up on managingthegray.com. Put it in the comments, tools and links, because that way you can put the links in right there or call the comment line, 206-309-4729, and tell me what you are into right now because I always am looking for new tools that help me and a Facebook group is not going to help me.

Daniel Johnson Jr.: Hey, C.C. Chapman, this Daniel Johnson Jr. calling you from Cincinnati, Ohio. I just finished listening to your recent Managing the Gray where played a lot of listener comments and I definitely appreciated hearing everything. Also, about the — I am walking the dog here. The dog just found another dog. [It wants to run loose]. Sorry about that. One of the things I love about Managing the Gray and what Cali Lewis talks about at the voiceover at the intro, what you talk about in the show, is there are no mistakes. Actually, it reminds me of one of my favorite quotes that I have on my blog at journeyinsidemymind.com, “Do not fear mistakes; there are none.” It is attributed to Miles Davis, legendary jazz trumpeter. It is interesting because I can actually feel a lot of parallels to my attractions to jazz, specifically as it relates to improvisation and also with new media. See, in jazz, you have a melody, but a lot of it has to do with chord and chord progression. You do have some boundaries that you try out, kind of in traditional jazz I suppose, and you are able to do whatever you want to do within those boundaries, but Miles Davis was one of these cats that tested those boundaries, pushed them, tried to see where else he could go and I think that is one of the things that made him a legendary influencer in jazz music as well as music culture in general and also to me as an individual. [Unintelligible] I just want to say thanks for Managing the Gray, the podcast, and for helping us to understand more how we can manage the gray. Make it a great day, my friend.

C.C. Chapman: Miles Davis, teaching us about new media, of course, and Daniel Johnson, Jr., long time home fry and Managing the Gray listener. I appreciate it. Walking the dog. See? That is what is cool about new media. I was actually working on a chapter last night called Burn the Suit & Buy a Laptop, that is the name of the chapter, and one of the things I was talking about is the fact that that phrase is part mental and part physical. The mental part is you can create and consume new media from anywhere in the world, anywhere you might be. It is getting easier and easier as phones pick up podcasts and download music and all this stuff. Have you seen the new Verizon — of course, it got my attention because it involves Prince who I am a huge fan of. I kind of laughed about it and then I went, “That’s cool,” where there is this new Verizon service called Song ID where you hear a song on the radio or in a television commercial, you hear a song somewhere and you are like, “Oh, that’s cool. What is that song?” You hold up your phone — I have not used this service yet. I am assuming it is an application you run or you call a number or something, but what you do is you hold it up and basically your phone hears the song and it IDs the song and tells you, “Oh, this is so and so.” What is cool is, the way they are using it is Prince’s new single. You could hear it on the website, hear part of it, and then buy using the service to ID it, of course, what you can do, you can buy the tracks, but in this case you get it for free. You get the new Prince tracks. I thought that was really cool. There is another example of where — what would be really cool is you could be like, “Oh, what’s that theme song they’re playing on that podcast?” or “What’s C.C. playing on Accident Hash?” Would that not be cool? I bet you they do not have podsafe artists yet in the database, but you are getting there where the fact that we are consuming and creating everywhere we go.

You do not think I am serious? You go on vacation. You are taking photos, right? You are uploading those photos. Maybe you are uploading them right away. I saw a guy the other day, a friend, a guy I met at PodCamp New York. He was uploading photos from Jamaica and I think he happen to just take all the photos off his card and just upload without editing them first because there was someone there I do not think he wanted public and they disappeared later, some very nice pictures of his beautiful girlfriend. I do not think they were supposed to be on the web, but that is what I mean. Media was being created. He was in this little hut in the ocean that obviously had an Internet connection. Maybe he was doing it via his phone. Who knows? But you can create media wherever you are.

It looks like microphone boom has decided that it wants to start letting the microphone drop. Maybe it is getting a little old. Anyways, that is what is on my mind today. This has been Managing the Gray and I would really want to thank you guys for tuning in, wherever you are. That is a question I have not asked a lot. I asked it on Accident Hash awhile ago. I am curious where you listen to Managing the Gray. Is it a gym thing? Is it in the car commute thing? The three places I assume people listen to podcast the most is exercising in some form whether it is walking the dog like Daniel Johnson or the bike or something like Mitch Joel, either exercising, at your desk on the computer, or in the car. Those are probably the three most prominent places people listen to podcast, but where else are you listening? Is there some place? On a plane? Any type of commuting? Any sort of traveling? Let us word it that way rather than just a car. Exercising, traveling, working, desk, sitting, sitting at desk, maybe you are not working, maybe you are goofing off. I am curious where else you are listening to Managing the Gray. If you are really determined, take a picture of your iPod or wherever you are listening to. I love getting pictures of where people are listening to stuff. It is always fun to see. I will put it up on the blog or I will put it on Flickr, all that stuff.

Until next time. I am C.C. Chapman. The call-in line is 206-309-4729. I have been told I do not say that enough so I am saying it more, Mr. Rutter, there you go. Things are going good and I hope they are going for you too. If they are not, listen. I woke up this morning kind of in a grumpy mood. I will leave you with some wise words that the medicine man from the Crow Nation out in Montana said to me once, said to our class in college. He said, “Any day you wake up that you’re not sick is a good day,” and whenever I get up and I am having a bad day, [right off the bat] I say that, I think about — literally, this morning, that popped in my head. I went, “You’re right. There’s no reason to be mad today or be grumpy. It ain’t worth it.” Get out there. Create media. Have fun. Try new things. Interact with people and help build this community. Make the new media playground full of more toys and I will talk to you next time. See you soon and have a good one.

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