And with many visionaries - they only really become famous after a 10 year struggle / investment.
Overnight successes are very rare and most probably an evil unto themselves.For my part, and shame, I only started learning from the master himself after 1997.
After University when the real learning begins.
By then he had done so much - and what amazes me is so much before his time i.e. pre web web stuff, pre processing graphics VR stuff.
A friend and I were laughing yesterday about how I do the same with my eco fashion idea (10 years to early) my public and private sector blend events (5 years to early) my augmented reality development (probably 3 years to early...) hopefully my next one - mobile gaming to do good will not be too early or too late for that matter ;)
My favourite part is "During this seven-year peak period of making over 100 books, my team and I got about a dozen rejection letters a week, or 500 a year, relentlessly, year after year." Amazing.
But more importantly back to Seth and all his good work!
1984—Telarium, a huge project that started my path with a flourish. I was incredibly lucky to be given the resources to create something magical by David and Bill. A story for another day, but it took me a long time to again come close to an experience like this one.
1985—Tennis and golf on VCR, British video games on floppy disk and other Spinnaker projects.
1986—Business Rules of Thumb, my first book. Followed by 900 rejections in a row, 30 projects dead, including The Fortune Cookie Construction Set and How to Hypnotize Your Friends and Make Them Act Like Chickens.
1987—The Select Guide to Law Firms, an ad-supported directory of fancy law firms given to the most elite law students in the country. I learned an enormous amount about direct mail, rejection and lawyers from this project. It ran for three editions and kept me in business during several really lean years.
1988—Isaac Asimov's Robots, a VCR mystery game. Siskel and Ebert gave it two thumbs up... This one was a leap in complexity, involving Doubleday, Kodak, Asimov, game designers, packaging designers, an editor, a union cast, and yes, robots. Or at least people in robot costumes.
1989—Score More Points, a series of VCR tapes that taught kids how to cheat at Nintendo games. I was certainly waiting for the web to arrive, but it hadn't, yet.
1990—Guts, an online game for Prodigy, launched. It was one of the most popular online promotions of its time, and it contained thousands of hand-built trivia questions incorporated into several different editions of the game. This was a chance to see how much content added to technology, and how it could leverage and spread ideas.
1991—The Worlds of Power series. It took me more than three years to get all the licenses I needed to launch this series of novels, each based on a video game that was popular on Nintendo. We sold more than a million of them.
1992—One day, I saw that Cliffs Notes had published a list of their most popular notes. Using the 80/20 rule as a guide, I realized that the top 30 titles probably accounted for more than 95% of their sales. Hence: Quicklit, a book that should have been incredibly popular, but wasn't. Betting that high school students would plan ahead was a bad idea. I also had the delightful opportunity to work with a giant, Walter Dean Myers, in creating a series of novels for overlooked young adults. Walter died last week, and his impact on millions of kids can't possibly be overstated.
1993—In between multi-year, complex projects, we found time to do things a bit more lighthearted. The Smiley Dictionary started as a phone call with my friend and colleague Michael Cader, was sold the next week and finished a week after that. Without a doubt, my time would have been better spent building a search engine.
[During this seven-year peak period of making over 100 books, my team and I got about a dozen rejection letters a week, or 500 a year, relentlessly, year after year. They were rejections from people who reject things for a living. I wasn't spamming people, I was submitting proposals to people who wanted to get them. This is a useful lesson for project creators...]
1994—This one stretched my philosophy of scaling up to take on bigger book projects. The original Information Please Business Almanac was almost 800 pages of densely-packed facts, advice, resources and more. Five full-time editors worked together (in my attic) and we built a desktop publishing system to collate and manage all the data we organized and presented. Too bad the web made us obsolete, because we were the easiest way to find the phone number for the Honolulu Public Library (open late!). We did this at the same time we built The Guerrilla Marketing Handbook.
1995—For more than five years, I patiently courted Stanley Kaplan (the person) about turning his iconic brand into a series of test prep books. After an arduous development process, we finally launched with five titles (the best part were the cartoons from Bizarro)...
1996—At Yoyodyne, we built an organization that excelled at inventing and launching projects. We created the first million-dollar online sweepstakes, as well as a growing series of promotions from American Express, P&G and others.
1997—The Bootstrapper's Bible was a great idea, and after a few years, I got the rights back and decided to share an abridged edition online for free.
1998—This was a peak year for project craziness, with books and online projects coming out at a feverish pace. At one point, I did project presentations in three different states in one day. I finally (and painfully) realized that entrepreneurs were different from freelancers, sold my companies and shifted gears.
1999—Permission Marketing was, after creating and launching 120 books, seen as my first 'real' book, a solo effort that was marketed the way most books are. I also started writing columns for Fast Company, a monthly launch discipline that suited my need to invent and ship.
2000—Unleashing the Ideavirus was launched, no publisher, no bookstores, no revenue. I went on to quickly create and self-publish a hardcover which became a bestseller, proving to me that the world of projects was going to be different from now on.
2001—I spent ten hours a day, just about every day, researching and writing Survival is Not Enough.
2002—The CD patents were expiring, and Sony launched SACD but forgot to produce original music in that format. I launched Zoomtone records as an experiment with some passionate and talented musicians. Alas, the high-end stereo community wasn't interested.
2003—My first TED talk, Purple Cow in a milk carton and Really Bad Powerpoint all shipped.
2004—This is the year, a decade ago, when this blog really hit its stride, and when it became clear that connecting people online was a useful and powerful platform. I launched the Bull Market ebook as well as Free Prize Inside, a book about how to make a purple cow. The book came in a cereal box, which probably gilded the lily and certainly didn't make bookstores happy. Also! As a summer project, launched Changethis.com, which thrives to this day.
2005—All Marketers are Liars is published, a lousy title for a really important idea. We started Squidoo as a summer project.
2006—This is Broken, a talk I gave exactly once, took months to create. I'm glad Mark filmed it.
2007—The Dip, my shortest book, with the most impact per page by far, launches.
2008—Launched Tribes, a significant shift in my writing focus. If marketing is everything that an organization does that changes perceptions, then leadership is the most important marketing tool. Doing the right thing is at least as important as knowing what the right thing is.
2009—The six month MBA. What a project, one that continues to weave a web of friends, passion and change. We sat together in my office every day for six months, and it directly led to significant shifts in thinking for all of us. Also, unrelated, mini me went to the Minnesota State Fair.
2010—Linchpin was published. This might be my book project that has had the biggest impact. Followed it up with a self-organized event in NYC and then Chicago. Once again, the world says to the project creator... go ahead, pick yourself.
2011—Started as a summer project in 2010, 2011 was devoted to launching a dozen Domino Project books. Each was a bestseller, with special editions, letterpress and experiments in design, pricing and distribution. Publishing the master, Steve Pressfield, was one of my all-time career highlights. After a year of launches, the books remain, but new work goes elsewhere.
2012—The key project of the year was my Kickstarter project, launching four books at the same time (this is not recommended). I learned a lot in closing the circle and turning the reader into the middleman. Writing, designing, marketing and trafficking the four books required most of what I've learned in thirty years. If you're considering a Kickstarter (just one book, please), I hope you'll read this first...
2013—On time, The Icarus Deception, V is for Vulnerable, Watcha Gonna Do With that Duck and the behemoth shipped. The craft of a project is sometimes daring to write a short little book about Smileys and let someone else print it, ship it, promote it and keep it in print for a decade, and sometimes it's about touching every element of the project by hand, hauling boxes, renting storage units and making sure the box got to New Zealand... Thanks to Bernadette Jiwa and Alex Miles Younger for being critical elements of this insane plan. Also, as a bonus, I worked with a fabulous team to build and launch Krypton Community College. (Here's a curriculum on shipping, the heart of the project life).
2014—My Skillshare courses on Entrepreneurship and Marketing both launched and became Skillshare's most successful. The HugDug project launched, raising money for charity: water, Acumen, Save the Children and other worthy causes.
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Truly amazing and a testimony to his work and perseverance.
I am off to watch This is Broken as never seen it... very excited.
What do you take from the last 30 years of his work? What lessons does this teach you?
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