It was always Steve Jobs’ mantra: “Let’s make a dent in the universe”.

I liked that phrase so much, I incorporated it into theHughtrain Manifesto:

Whatever you manufacture, somebody can make it better, faster and cheaper than you.

You do not own the molecules. They are stardust. They belong to God. What you do own is your soul. Nobody can take that away from you. And it is your soul that informs the brand.

It is your soul, and the purpose and beliefs that embodies, that people will buy into.

Ergo, great branding is a spiritual exercise.

Why is your brand great? Why does your brand matter? Seriously. If you don’t know, then nobody else can- no advertiser, no buyer, and certainly no customer.

It’s not about merit. It’s about faith. Belief. Conviction. Courage.

It’s about why you’re on this planet. To make a dent in the universe.

I don’t want to know why your brand is good, or very good, or even great. I want to know why your brand is totally frickin’ amazing.

Once you tell me, I can tell the world.

Really, is there any better way to spend one’s working hours? I don’t think so…

The above was shamelessly lifted (with creative commons license) from one of Hugh Macleod‘s recent daily emails. You can subscribe here.

No one reads books any more.

No, that’s not exactly true.

Almost no one reads books any more.

Which means one of two things.

Either reading is no longer useful or it’s a phenomenal opportunity for the few people who do it.

Those who think books aren’t useful would argue that there are new places to get the same information: Wikipedia, blogs, twitter, Google—you name it, they can find what they need somewhere else.

And maybe they’re right (in part).

But the people who read books know something that the first group doesn’t. Books aren’t just about finding information, they’re about something bigger.

Like exploring ideas in depth.

Finding answers to problems.

Discovering new ways of thinking.

No one gets the same depth or breadth of thinking from Wikipedia or an article at Inc.com or TED talk that they will get in a good book on the same subject.

We’re talking about the difference between an appetizer and seat at the banquet.

Most people prefer to starve.

In 2004, the National Endowment of the Arts issued a report called Reading at Risk. In it, the NEA reported that only 56.6% of American adults had read a book of any kind (fiction or non-fiction) in the past year.

And that statistic may be inflated—40% of people in a different survey admitted to lying about having read certain books (source).

Most book readers read fiction.

Which means there is a real opportunity for anyone who wants to stand out from the guy in the next cubicle who loves to talk about what happened last night on Two and a Half Men (the average American watches more than 4 hours of TV every day).

If you read one business book a month (just 5-10 pages a day) you expose yourself to new ideas and solutions to problems that your cubical buddy will simply not get from his sit down with Charlie Sheen and the rest of the prime-time line-up.

Harvest just one idea from each book and you’ll have 12 more ideas than Mr. TV. And if you can get more than one idea from a book, or you read more than one book a month, well, the math just gets better.

So where should you start?

Here are a few lists I’ve stumbled across recently. Lots of good choices here:

• One of my favorite lists each year is from Strategy+Business.
• Business Week Online just published a new recommended reading list, here. (It’s actually a list of lists—recommendations by 30 Business Professors around the country).
• Summer Reading from Wharton.
• Six Best Books to Read for Your Career (that’s the title of the article, not necessarily a recommendation from me).
• Books that Matter 2010 (from Tom Peters).
• Must Read Books for CEOs (again, a title, not necessarily a recommendation).

And, of course, there’s always The 100 Best Business Books of All Time (check out my review, here).

Have another book or recommendation list? Please add it in the comments.

In 1998, I stumbled across Bruce Mau’s Incomplete Manifesto for Growth for the first time. I remember downloading it to my Palm Pilot so I could refer to it whenever I wanted to. I shared it with many of the creative people I have worked with over the years. In the time since I first discovered the manifesto, it has been posted to hundreds of websites, sometimes in very unique ways (like this and this). It has been plagiarized and satirized. But what Bruce wrote 12 years ago, is still applicable today. If you are interested in personal growth, this is a good place to start. And it’s this week’s friday inspiration:

1. Allow events to change you.
You have to be willing to grow. Growth is different from something that happens to you. You produce it. You live it. The prerequisites for growth: the openness to experience events and the willingness to be changed by them.

2. Forget about good.
Good is a known quantity. Good is what we all agree on. Growth is not necessarily good. Growth is an exploration of unlit recesses that may or may not yield to our research. As long as you stick to good you’ll never have real growth.

3. Process is more important than outcome.
When the outcome drives the process we will only ever go to where we’ve already been. If process drives outcome we may not know where we’re going, but we will know we want to be there.

4. Love your experiments (as you would an ugly child).
Joy is the engine of growth. Exploit the liberty in casting your work as beautiful experiments, iterations, attempts, trials, and errors. Take the long view and allow yourself the fun of failure every day.

5. Go deep.
The deeper you go the more likely you will discover something of value.

6. Capture accidents.
The wrong answer is the right answer in search of a different question. Collect wrong answers as part of the process. Ask different questions.

7. Study.
A studio is a place of study. Use the necessity of production as an excuse to study. Everyone will benefit.

8. Drift.
Allow yourself to wander aimlessly. Explore adjacencies. Lack judgment. Postpone criticism.

9. Begin anywhere.
John Cage tells us that not knowing where to begin is a common form of paralysis. His advice: begin anywhere.

10. Everyone is a leader.
Growth happens. Whenever it does, allow it to emerge. Learn to follow when it makes sense. Let anyone lead.

11. Harvest ideas.
Edit applications. Ideas need a dynamic, fluid, generous environment to sustain life. Applications, on the other hand, benefit from critical rigor. Produce a high ratio of ideas to applications.

12. Keep moving.
The market and its operations have a tendency to reinforce success. Resist it. Allow failure and migration to be part of your practice.

13. Slow down.
Desynchronize from standard time frames and surprising opportunities may present themselves.

14. Don’t be cool.
Cool is conservative fear dressed in black. Free yourself from limits of this sort.

15. Ask stupid questions.
Growth is fueled by desire and innocence. Assess the answer, not the question. Imagine learning throughout your life at the rate of an infant.

16. Collaborate.
The space between people working together is filled with conflict, friction, strife, exhilaration, delight, and vast creative potential.

17. ____________________.
Intentionally left blank. Allow space for the ideas you haven’t had yet, and for the ideas of others.

18. Stay up late.
Strange things happen when you’ve gone too far, been up too long, worked too hard, and you’re separated from the rest of the world.

19. Work the metaphor.
Every object has the capacity to stand for something other than what is apparent. Work on what it stands for.

20. Be careful to take risks.
Time is genetic. Today is the child of yesterday and the parent of tomorrow. The work you produce today will create your future.

21. Repeat yourself.
If you like it, do it again. If you don’t like it, do it again.

22. Make your own tools.
Hybridize your tools in order to build unique things. Even simple tools that are your own can yield entirely new avenues of exploration. Remember, tools amplify our capacities, so even a small tool can make a big difference.

23. Stand on someone’s shoulders.
You can travel farther carried on the accomplishments of those who came before you. And the view is so much better.

24. Avoid software.
The problem with software is that everyone has it.

25. Don’t clean your desk.
You might find something in the morning that you can’t see tonight.

26. Don’t enter awards competitions.
Just don’t. It’s not good for you.

27. Read only left-hand pages.
Marshall McLuhan did this. By decreasing the amount of information, we leave room for what he called our “noodle.”

28. Make new words.
Expand the lexicon. The new conditions demand a new way of thinking. The thinking demands new forms of expression. The expression generates new conditions.

29. Think with your mind.
Forget technology. Creativity is not device-dependent.

30. Organization = Liberty.
Real innovation in design, or any other field, happens in context. That context is usually some form of cooperatively managed enterprise. Frank Gehry, for instance, is only able to realize Bilbao because his studio can deliver it on budget. The myth of a split between “creatives” and “suits” is what Leonard Cohen calls a ‘charming artifact of the past.’

31. Don’t borrow money.
Once again, Frank Gehry’s advice. By maintaining financial control, we maintain creative control. It’s not exactly rocket science, but it’s surprising how hard it is to maintain this discipline, and how many have failed.

32. Listen carefully.
Every collaborator who enters our orbit brings with him or her a world more strange and complex than any we could ever hope to imagine. By listening to the details and the subtlety of their needs, desires, or ambitions, we fold their world onto our own. Neither party will ever be the same.

33. Take field trips.
The bandwidth of the world is greater than that of your TV set, or the Internet, or even a totally immersive, interactive, dynamically rendered, object-oriented, real-time, computer graphic–simulated environment.

34. Make mistakes faster.
This isn’t my idea – I borrowed it. I think it belongs to Andy Grove.

35. Imitate.
Don’t be shy about it. Try to get as close as you can. You’ll never get all the way, and the separation might be truly remarkable. We have only to look to Richard Hamilton and his version of Marcel Duchamp’s large glass to see how rich, discredited, and underused imitation is as a technique.

36. Scat.
When you forget the words, do what Ella did: make up something else … but not words.

37. Break it, stretch it, bend it, crush it, crack it, fold it.

38. Explore the other edge.
Great liberty exists when we avoid trying to run with the technological pack. We can’t find the leading edge because it’s trampled underfoot. Try using old-tech equipment made obsolete by an economic cycle but still rich with potential.

39. Coffee breaks, cab rides, green rooms.
Real growth often happens outside of where we intend it to, in the interstitial spaces – what Dr. Seuss calls “the waiting place.” Hans Ulrich Obrist once organized a science and art conference with all of the infrastructure of a conference – the parties, chats, lunches, airport arrivals – but with no actual conference. Apparently it was hugely successful and spawned many ongoing collaborations.

40. Avoid fields.
Jump fences. Disciplinary boundaries and regulatory regimes are attempts to control the wilding of creative life. They are often understandable efforts to order what are manifold, complex, evolutionary processes. Our job is to jump the fences and cross the fields.

41. Laugh.
People visiting the studio often comment on how much we laugh. Since I’ve become aware of this, I use it as a barometer of how comfortably we are expressing ourselves.

42. Remember.
Growth is only possible as a product of history. Without memory, innovation is merely novelty. History gives growth a direction. But a memory is never perfect. Every memory is a degraded or composite image of a previous moment or event. That’s what makes us aware of its quality as a past and not a present. It means that every memory is new, a partial construct different from its source, and, as such, a potential for growth itself.

43. Power to the people.
Play can only happen when people feel they have control over their lives. We can’t be free agents if we’re not free.

I am fascinated by the power of stories to stimulate change in the people that hear them. Sometimes the story is told in an advertisement that piques the interest of a customer and the result is a purchase. Sometimes the story is told by an executive who needs to get buy-in from employees on a new strategy or direction. And sometimes it comes from an author or movie maker who tells a story so brilliantly that you feel better for having read or seen their work (American author Pat Conroy has had this effect on me several times).

A story is a powerful tool.

Today’s Friday Inspiration is a few quotes about the power of stories in life, in books, in business…

“Storytelling is the most powerful way to put ideas into the world today.”  —Robert McKee

“Stories have power. They delight, enchant, touch, teach, recall, inspire, motivate, challenge. They help us understand. They imprint a picture on our minds. Consequently, stories often pack more punch than sermons. Want to make a point or raise an issue? Tell a story.”  — Janet Litherland

“Stories are the single most powerful weapon in a leader’s arsenal.”   —Howard Gardner, Harvard University

“The destiny of the world is determined less by the battles that are lost and won than by the stories it loves and believes in.”
—Harold Goddard

“If you’ve heard this story before, don’t stop me, because I’d like to hear it again.”
—Groucho Marx

The latest edition of Inc Magazine has a great article by Jason Fried (founder of 37 Signals and author of Rework) on “Business Writing” which he describes as “bad, boring, and barely read.” When I saw the headline, I thought the article was about memos, email, and what is typically thought of as business writing. It’s not.

Although he doesn’t call it this, Jason is talking about brand voice—communicating a personality through the text used by a brand. And he is right that most companies do it very, very poorly. From the article:

“If you care about your product, you should care just as much about how you describe it. In nearly all cases, a company makes its first impression on would-be customers or partners with words—whether they’re on a website, in sales materials, or in e-mails or letters. A snappy design might catch their attention, but it’s the words that make the real connection. Your company’s story, product descriptions, history, personality—these are the things that go to battle for you every day. Your words are your frontline. Are they strong enough?”

Jason goes on to describe three companies that do brand voice the right way—Woot, Saddleback Leather, and Polyface. Of course, they aren’t the only ones who do it right, but they are among the few. In fact, a good argument can be made that without their unique voices as expressed in the company’s copywriting, you would never have heard about any of the companies that Mr. Fried writes about.

Their unique voices makes all the difference. Check out the article here. It’s worth the read.

Two unrelated quotes from advertising genius Bill Bernbach:

“Human nature hasn’t changed for a billion years. It won’t even vary in the next billion years. Only the superficial things have changed. We are “concerned with unchanging man…what compulsions drive him, what instincts dominate his every action, even though his language too often camouflages what really motivates him…if you know these things about a man, you can touch him at the core of his being.”

And…

“The magic is in the product… No matter how skillful you are, you can’t invent a product advantage that doesn’t exist.  And if you do, and it’s just a gimmick, it’s going to fall apart anyway… Getting a product known isn’t the answer.  Getting it wanted is the answer.”

Something to think about…

Every once in a while, a book comes along with enough good ideas and marketing how-to’s that I recommend adding it to your marketing tool box.

But in the case of The Brandgym (by David Taylor and David Nichol), the book isn’t just a tool to be included, it is all of the tools in the box. Reading The Brandgym is a little like taking an in-depth seminar in brand management. With it as a guide, you probably don’t need to go anywhere else for ideas, principles, or to-do-lists to help you manage a brand. (You might choose to, but you won’t need to.)

The Brandgym covers eight “workouts” that will help you strengthen your brand’s foundation and focus your branding efforts on initiatives that will generate income. It’s also loaded with ideas and techniques for creating promotions that support the brand’s position and move customers to action.

Workout #4: Build Big Brand Ideas alone is worth getting the book. I found myself underlining and marking pages to come back to again later.

But what I love most about the approach taken in this book is the focus on a brand’s substance (remarkable products, growth, and the core business), not the so-called “exciting” part of branding (new design/advertising/launch).  It’s a resource for serious brand managers. In fact, it’s good enough to replace many of the marketing books currently used in business schools.

If you’re looking for ways to grow a stagnant brand, or new ideas for stretching a brand into new product categories, or ways to co-ordinate your marketing activities to maximize your spending, this book is a good place to turn. If you are in the process of launching a new brand, it is an essential resource to help you succeed.

I highly recommend The Brandgym.

Full-disclosure: I was given a copy of the book by David Taylor shortly after it was published. But that doesn’t change my recommendation, it’s well worth the read.

Other Brandgym Links:

You can’t purchase the book in the U.S. yet, but it is available here.
Check out David Taylor’s Brandgym Blog, here.
I’ve written about another of David’s books here.

When I first started hearing about Sally Hogshead’s book, Fascinate, I was convinced she had it all wrong. Why would anyone want to fascinate potential customers when they could be engaging and selling to them? Fascinate seemed like the wrong word.

But I’m the one that was wrong.

Sally’s definition of fascinate comes from the Latin word fascinare which means “to bewitch.” When she says fascinate, she doesn’t just mean entertain, she means engage and influence the behavior of others. To quote from the book, “interest is not enough. Neither is awareness, intent to purchase, or having share-of-mind, or any of the other jargon thrown into Power Point slides…” Couldn’t have said it better myself.

This book walks the reader through seven fascination triggers (lust, mystique, alarm, prestige, power, vice, and trust) and explains how each can add interest and intrigue to your product or service—with the intention of selling more of it.

Best of all, Sally doesn’t just write about the triggers, she walks the reader through the process of identifying the right triggers, developing “badges” to make the triggers work, then gives a few tips on executing on the whole process. There’s a lot to like here (although I get the sense that working through the process with Sally in person would be a lot more effective than doing it on your own with only the book as a guide).

Interestingly, the section on developing badges reads a lot like this post about the places you can look to find a brand story. When it comes right down to it, Sally’s book has a lot to say about creating compelling stories for your brand.

It’s a book that belongs in every marketer’s tool box.

A Few Fascination Links:

• Order the book here.
• Find out what your personal fascination triggers are here.
• And check out a great Slideshare presentation here.
• I’ve written about Sally before, here, for example.
• Download a free copy of Sally’s first book, here.

From Inc Magazine’s Blogger Logic:

What’s an idea really worth?
Musician, programmer, and blogger Derek Sivers (sivers.org) writes… .

“It’s so funny when I hear people being so protective of ideas. (People who want me to sign an NDA to tell me the simplest idea.)… The most brilliant idea, with no execution, is worth $20. The most brilliant idea takes great execution to be worth $20,000,000. That’s why I don’t want to hear people’s ideas. I’m not interested until I see their execution.”

A few weeks ago, I posted my long-delayed thoughts about The 100 Best Business Books of All Time by Jack Covert and Todd Sattersten. In the weeks since, I’ve had the opportunity to exchange a few emails with Todd and asked him about writing the book and what he gleaned from the process. What follows is a slightly edited version of our discussion:

Me: Thanks again for your willingness to talk/write a little more about your book. I’ve been following your projects (More Space, The 100 Best, CEO-READ blog, Fixed to Flexible) for something like seven years now, but for those who don’t know, what’s your story? And what’s the story behind The 100 Best?

Todd: What’s my story? I grew up in a small town in southeastern Wisconsin and went to Michigan Tech to get mechanical engineering degree. I was fortunate to get a job with General Electric, where I spent the next six years learning most of what I know about business. I joined my father in 2001 working in his small sheet metal fabrication business. I learned even more about small business.  I picked up an MBA from Marquette University along the way.

In 2004, I started working for the business book retailer 800-CEO-READ. I spent six years working there and had an awesome time. What I spent most of my time doing was pushing out the message “We are the experts in business books.” The 800-CEO-READ Book Awards, stewardship of ChangeThis, and the creation of InBubbleWrap all were in support of that mission.

The 100 Best Business Books of All Time was the best example of putting our stake in the ground and saying we know a lot of about business books. The book itself was something I tried to convince Jack, my co-author, of from almost the moment I got there. “We sell books, which means we know people who buy them. Should we write one?” It took 18 months to get the concept right and our publisher Portfolio was really helpful in that regard.  We signed a deal in April 2007, delivered the manuscript April 2008, and the book came out in February 2009. The book has done great. We are on our 6th printing and it has been translated into nine languages.

Me: Congratulations on the book’s success. What did you learn from the process of writing the book? What did you learn that was completely unexpected, if anything?

Todd: Things I learned writing The 100 Best:

1. You need to be able to tell someone else about your book in three sentences or less, about 50 words. There were all of these crazy complicated ideas for the book originally. We couldn’t get an agent interested.  We went directly to a publisher and they said the same thing: “Why don’t you just do The 100 Best Business Books of All Time?” I said it had been done before. They said everything has been done before and the people who do it right, own it.  They get to own the category. That was enough for me, except that the book had to be more than a list.

2. Great books also have nuance. Great books are easy to tell someone else about, but you remember them for how they capture you. Often, it is the style.  Sometimes, it is hearing a company story for the first time.

In the case of The 100 Best, we went way beyond the initial list.  There is almost 300 additional books that we recommend beyond The 100 Best. We tracked down the cover art and pulled a quote from every book.  There are 20 or sidebars with recommendations on case studies, children’s books, and fiction in a business setting.

3. Writing is a practiced, team sport. Great writing doesn’t happen without revisions or an editor. I don’t know anyone who just creates perfect prose. Listen to anything any writer has every said about writing and they will tell you that you write and rewrite and rewrite again.  And it could be that I am still a cub in this world of writing, but it is essential to have some one else working with me. I write better just knowing they are there.

The unexpected was that I would have never guessed I was a writer. I chose the college I attended based on the least number of english classes I needed to take. That is something I have worn as a strange badge of honor for years. The 100 Best had a profound impact on how view what I need to do with the rest of my life and it is impossible to accomplish that (‘that’ being connecting business ideas in new ways) without being a writer.

Me: I am curious if there are any books that have come out since The 100 Best that you would add to the list today? Which would be out?

Todd: It’s only been a year since The 100 Best came out, so I think it would be premature for me to start replacing titles on the list. I did like Tribes by Seth Godin and 800-CEO-READ named it Business Book of the Year in 2008, but we generally only let each author get one slot (Drucker and Charan were the exceptions).

The Effective Executive by Peter Drucker

Getting Things Done by David Allen

The Four Conversations by Jeffery Ford and Laurie Ford

Purple Cow by Seth Godin

Financial Intelligence by Berman and Knight

Want to know more about Todd? Check these links:

ToddSattersten.com
Todd’s Twitter Stream
Download Fixed to Flexible, here.