January 11, 2013

“Love Matters.”

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The groovy cats at Racks­pace asked me to design a new t-shirt for them; this car­toon was the first (but not the last) idea I came up with.

I know it emba­rras­ses the grown-ups to say this, but… Love mat­ters in Busi­ness, as much as anywhere else. Racks­pace knows this as much as any client I’ve ever wor­ked with, small or large.

Nothing wrong with con­nec­ting ‘Love’ with $1 billion in sales… Without Love, their whole “Fana­ti­cal Sup­port” thing (something they built their whole com­pany around) would be impos­si­ble. And I doubt there are any high-ups at Racks­pace who would disa­gree with me.

It’s nothing to do with Roman­tic love, of course. Love equals pas­sion, equals care, equals real mea­ning and good work etc. Exactly.

This t-shirt gig got us thin­king at gaping­void Cen­tral, why can’t Valen­ti­nes’ Day (a big day in our calen­dar, already) be an oppor­tu­nity to go beyond Romance, to com­mu­ni­cate to those who mat­ter to you, that they mat­ter, that you care, and that we are all in this together?

Either by the gaping­void Love Store or by the gaping­void Ins­pi­ra­tion store. Either one, it’s a great way on V-Day to express to peo­ple the stuff that really mat­ters. Exactly.

[P.S. If you’re a Rac­ker rea­ding this, please leave a com­ment below. I’d love to hear your input on the shirt, Thanks!]

January 10, 2013

“You have to decide what you believe.”

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“Ever­yone should write a blog because it makes it har­der to be a hypoc­rite. You have to decide what you believe.” Seth Godin

Every­body should start a busi­ness for that very same reason…

January 9, 2013

The Geek Princess T-shirt

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[Get the t-shirt here]

I desig­ned this T-shirt for all my favo­rite Girl Geeks that I’ve known over the years, Kathy Sie­rra, Her­mione Way, Sarah Lacy, Ale­xia Tso­sis, Arianna Huf­fing­ton, Sarah Lamb, and too many others to mention.

I love girl geeks. They make the world more inte­res­ting, pros­pe­rous, happy and fun. The world needs A LOT more of them. Exactly.

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January 9, 2013

Dan Sullivan and Babs Smith

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Awwww… We were sent this photo, a com­mis­sion for  Dan Sulli­van and Babs Smith, the hus­band & wife stra­te­gic coach team, that was done as a Holi­day pre­sent to them, from our old buddy, Joe Polish.

“Entre­pre­neurship com­ple­tes us.” Exactly.

Thanks Dan and Babs for taking the lovely photo, and Thanks to Joe for the great com­mis­sion. Awesome.

[N.B. Sure, we do per­so­nal com­mis­sions all the time; feel free to email me at hugh AT gapingvoid.com for more info, Thanks!]

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January 7, 2013

Frivolous Complexity

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Aaaargh. Don’t get me star­ted on com­ple­xity; don’t get me star­ted on “Stuff”.

Every­body wants to be suc­cess­ful. The bad news is, we are trai­ned by society to asso­ciate suc­cess with “Stuff”.

Not just in the mate­rial sense (fancy cars, big hou­ses, trophy wives, expen­sive mis­tres­ses, hot tubs, desig­ner fur­ni­ture, desig­ner clothing, desig­ner kitchens with Ita­lian mar­ble floors, fine wines, art collec­tions etc), but also “Stuff to do”:

Din­ner par­ties, ladies’ luncheons, social clim­bing, net­wor­king, cock­tail par­ties, second homes, com­mu­nity invol­ve­ment, poli­ti­cal acti­vi­sim, PTA, Soc­cer Mom’ing, com­pli­ca­ted love affairs that go nowhere, unsui­ta­ble dai­llan­ces, social intri­gues, obses­sive gos­si­ping, coo­king clas­ses, yoga clas­ses, pot­tery clas­ses, crea­tive wri­ting clas­ses, ten­nis les­sons, tango les­sons, poker games, thea­tre, sympho­nies, art ope­nings, maga­zine launch par­ties, opera, epi­cu­rian delights, horse bree­ding, eth­nic res­tau­rants, wife swap­ping, cult joi­ning, cele­brity worship­ping, name-dropping, online forums, online rants, online dating, Ins­ta­gram­ming, Twit­te­ring, Face­boo­king, blog­ging, cool hun­ting, culture-vulturing, Sum­mers in Tus­cany, Autumns in New York, Win­ters in Colo­rado, wee­kends in San Fran­cisco… a totally full sche­dule, jam-packed with “Stuff”, all day long.

And we don’t just stop there! Because we now need our total, never-ending “Stuff” fix, it’s no lon­ger enough to have our per­so­nal lives cram­med with “Stuff”, we need to cram it into our pro­fes­sio­nal lives, as well:

More pro­duct fea­tu­res, more pro­duct upgra­des, more mar­ke­ting cam­paigns, more adver­ti­sing cam­paigns, more junk mail, more focus groups, more end­less mee­tings that start at 7am for no rea­son, more memos, more mis­sion sta­te­ments, more white papers, more wor­king wee­kends, more brains­tor­ming ses­sions, more blue-sky thin­king, more team-building exer­ci­ses, more Power­Point sli­des, more sharp-dressing emplo­yees with fancy job tit­les, more visually-pleasing per­so­nal assis­tants, more pres­ti­gious office addres­ses, more buzz­words, more catchph­ra­ses, more info­graphics, more inter­na­tio­nal con­fe­rence calls, more office poli­tics, more hys­te­ri­cal emails sent at 2.am.

Stuff, stuff, stuff…

Which is kinda strange, con­si­de­ring the most suc­cess­ful and happy peo­ple I know gene­rally don’t live that way. The most suc­cess­ful and happy peo­ple I know are very good at ruth­lessly edi­ting out “Stuff” from their lives. They tend to live calmly and quietly, like a New England pond on an early mor­ning in August.

Lea­ving only time for the impor­tant “Stuff”…

January 6, 2013

Starting points

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With the New Year just begin­ning, I was remin­ded of this car­toon from two years ago, one of my per­so­nal favo­ri­tes, one that carries A LOT of per­so­nal mea­ning for me. It got some water spi­lled on it; you can just see the damage in the photo.

Any­body who’s an artist or an entre­pre­neur will even­tually ask them­sel­ves the ques­tion, “Well, when do I arrive?”

When will I be suc­cess­ful or rich or secure or vin­di­ca­ted or allo­wed to relax etc.

That moment never comes. There will always be something left to do, something unfi­nished, some itch still nee­ding scratched.

And Thank God for that– as Archi­me­des poin­ted out, life is a river. Exactly.

January 3, 2013

What we can learn from Brian Eno and Frank Zappa

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Two of my favo­rite artist heroes are Brian Eno and Frank Zappa, two musi­cians who first hit the big time about forty years ago. I was first tur­ned onto them in my late teens.

Both became tra­di­tio­nal rock stars around the same time, Eno pla­ying with Roxy Music, Zappa with The Mothers Of Invention.

They could have done was most rock stars do: Make a cou­ple of records, get a cou­ple of hits in the radio, spend the next x-decades tou­ring, living on a tour bus, pla­ying the same songs night after night to ado­ring fans in towns in Cle­ve­land, Chi­cago, Des Moi­nes, Little Rock…

And yet they chose not to, after only a cou­ple of years in the lime­light. Both were highly inte­lli­gent, visio­nary peo­ple, and no much how attrac­tive the sex-drugs-and-rock-n-roll thing can be to young peo­ple, the typi­cal rock n’ roll lifestyle was boring and infan­tile to them.

So they evol­ved. Their music star­ted get­ting more and more classical/avante guarde/out-there.

And now, four deca­des later, they’re titans, res­pec­ted by the smar­test and inte­res­ting dudes in the busi­ness. Poor ol’ Zappa died a few years ago, but Eno is still thri­ving, and STILL cons­tantly evol­ving, doing inte­res­ting work.

I guess their les­son taught me that, just because you found the stan­dard win­ning for­mula, doesn’t mean it has to stay for­mu­laic; that allo­wing your­self to re-invent, evolve and push out your edges into unk­nown terri­tory is not just OK, it’s essential.

At least, it is if you want to keep things interesting.

The other thing they taught me, that it’s OK to be weird, that it’s OK to be smart, and that it’s OK to shun com­mer­cia­lity, even if you’re a rock star. That just because all the idiots are doing it a cer­tain way, doesn’t mean you have to, as well.

And so I try to incor­po­rate that into my own work… and you can too, even if you’re not an artist or a rock star, even if you have a nor­mal job.

Sure beats doing the long hair and span­dex cir­cuit in Cle­ve­land, Chi­cago, Des Moi­nes, Little Rock…

January 1, 2013

Can a New Web App Change How Companies Manage Employee Development ?

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Tilt helps you improve how you deal with peo­ple to get you to your abso­lute best

O wad some Pow’r the gif­tie gie us, to see our­sels as others see us.”

[Oh would some power have the gift to give us, to see our­sel­ves as others see us.”]

–Robert Burns, Scots poet

 

The most enjo­ya­ble part of what we to do is get­ting to work with great com­pa­nies. They range from mul­ti­na­tio­nals, to newly min­ted billion dollar busi­nes­ses and many startups.

When we were approached by a young star­tup, Tilt 365, last year we were intri­gued by their ser­vice. Foun­der, Pam Boney, has the follo­wing Carl Jung quote on the bot­tom of her emails, “The world will ask you who you are, and if you do not know, the world will tell you.”, and in a sim­plis­tic way, this also sums up their ser­vice:  The idea that we can cul­ti­vate our talents through cons­tant feed­back from our collea­gues and the peo­ple around us.

We all know that once a year annual reviews & 360’s that become dated within a month, kinda suck. What is their true pur­pose? Can a per­son really be expec­ted to make beha­vio­ral chan­ges just from a mee­ting every year, or quar­ter, for that matter?

The folks at Tilt have crea­ted this nifty little web app that allows collea­gues to assess per­so­na­lity pat­terns that are affec­ting others. The truth is that HR usually does a good job at hiring com­pe­tent peo­ple, but what makes them effec­tive, is all about per­so­na­lity and peo­ple skills -  a person’s nega­tive or posi­tive influence on the cli­mate around them.  Pam’s tool shows us how we Tilt in and out of cer­tain beha­viors and how it impacts the peo­ple around us.

It’s all done real time and in what looks like a pretty darn per­fect feed­back loop. It remin­ded me of this piece in Wired a cou­ple of years ago.

We’ve done quite a bit of crea­tive for Tilt, hel­ping them to visually com­mu­ni­cate the beha­vio­ral chan­ges and move­ment through the pro­cess– and we’ll be tal­king more about how this ser­vice can help affect change in busi­nes­ses, espe­cially enterprise.

Here’s to Til­ting the right way in 2013 :-)

 

December 28, 2012

Re. How most people hate their jobs, and how to avoid that

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Our latest t-shirt design is up on Tees­pring. At time of wri­ting, you’ve got 9 days left on the offer…

I got good at car­too­ning (and later, was able to turn it into a won­der­fully bliss­ful, full-time career), not because I had that much born talent (I didn’t), it was just that I loved, loved, loved, the actual pro­cess of doing it. And the bet­ter I got at it, the more I loved it…

Wha­te­ver your job or industry might be, I think if you can get your career into that loop, you’ve pretty already won the career battle.

Most peo­ple hate their jobs, poor souls, simply because that loop elu­des them.

Any­way, I hope you like the shirt :)

 

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December 21, 2012

“Cartoons Drawn On the Back of Business Cards”, 15-year anniversary

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[“Shark Bar”]

It’s a story I’ve told many times over the years:

When I first lived in Manhat­tan in Decem­ber, 1997 I got into the habit of dood­ling on the back of busi­ness cards, just to give me something to do while sit­ting at the bar. The for­mat stuck.

It was 15 years ago this week that I star­ted this adven­ture, Christ­mas, 1997.

Of all the early ones, “Shark Bar” is the oldest one on record [Backs­tory here]. Here’s a pic­ture I took of the ori­gi­nal, five minu­tes ago:

Over the years I’ve done lots of them. Ten thou­sand at last count, and that was a few years ago.

I’ve had many adven­tu­res in my career; this by far has been the grea­test of them. I am so thank­ful, there are no words.

Merry Christ­mas, Everybody.

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