Josiah Mackenzie

Today I read a post by Seth Godin on encountering a “sea of black suits” — students preparing for a SIFE competition. This really hit me for two reasons: 1) I personally have friends preparing for that competition right now, and 2) I used to believe in dressing “professionally” was one of the fundamental elements of success.

Here’s what Seth had to say:

Everyone is so focused on not messing up, on not blowing it, on not standing out that they all blend together instead.

It’s far more important to stand out of the crowd than to blend in.

Instead of trusting in clothes to bring you success, focus on:

• providing valuable information,
• improving your people skills,
• differentiating yourself

Work on those, and you’ll draw more attention than any suit could bring.

Recently, I’ve been shopping for a new compact car to replace my gas-guzzling SUV. As always, when I shop, I learn from the people selling to me. I observe salespeople walk through the sales process and try to close the deal. I watch how car companies try to market different cars to different audiences. It’s a very educational experience…you can learn both what to do, and what not to do.

Anyway, one of the cars I’m considering is the Toyota Corolla. When you load the page, music starts playing. (Major taboo according to accessibility experts!) The music in the background is a pathetic commercialized attempt at hip-hop or something. C’mon — what was Toyota thinking? A Corolla is about the least flashy vehicle I can think of. Is Toyota trying to turn the Corolla into the next Escalade?

But, now everytime I see a Corolla, that song keeps playing in my head — “…Ooooh…I like your Toyota…your Toyota Corolla…” So my question is: why is such pathetic music so memorable? Did I remember it because it was pathetic, or is Toyota trying to subconsiously sell me a car?

My company website is now up! Check it out at josiahco.com. It’s simple, but hopefully gets the job done. I don’t want to make it the main attraction — my product websites are where I want potential customers and clients to spend their time.

I also hired Margie Hasen of XtremeLogoDesign.com to design a corporate identity package for me.

Margie did a great job capturing the feeling I wanted expressed through the logo. I think it would look good on a fleet of company cars or on the front of my future office.

Over the past month or so, I’ve been impressed with the importance of networking. A big part of this was Keith Ferrazzi’s book, “Never Eat Alone”. That book has had a huge impact on me, but I’ll save that for another post.

There was one big problem that prevented me from building a successful network in the past. Unless I make a point of following up with new contacts, I tend to forget them within a couple days. This of course is very detrimental to building your network.

So I did what I always do when I have a problem: I created a custom product to fix it.

The new tool I created enables me to…

• save contact info
• save background info on my new contact (where we met, what he does, etc)
• save info on what my new contact is doing currently (future conversation material)
• send and track followup emails
• group by keyword for searching later (eg, writer, sales, programmer, etc)
• track my networking progress to date

That tool is called PalPad.

PalPad is…

• simple
• intuitive
• effective
• powerful
• web-based
• free…if you tell your friends

I’ve set up a prelaunch blog for PalPad at www.mypalpad.com. I need you to go there now and sign up for the “PalPad Launch List”. This new tool will be released gradually, and subscribers to the launch list will get priority access as well as other random perks from me.

Solve the missing link in powerful networking: Remember people you meet with PalPal.