The good news: You don’t have to suck at email. Attend my WorkHacks session at PajamaConf this weekend and learn how to not suck at email.

See the video below for more details. Comment on this post explaining why you would like to attend PajamaConf and I’ll pick two winners.

If you don’t win, PajamaConf is only $10. Attendees will get recordings of all the sessions from an amazing group of entrepreneurs.

To quote a line from one of my favorite movies, Lock, Stock and Two Smoking Barrels… ”It’s a deal, it’s a steal, it’s the sale of the &%$#& century. 

Register here.

In just under 40 minutes, we riffed on:

• What is a tribe and why are they important?
• The critical importance of finding the first ten rabid fans for your idea.
• The benefits of Eric Ries‘ Lean Startup methodology
• How to quickly mock up your idea using a rapid prototyping tool for less than $50
• How to build virality into your startup, like Instagram did.
• Why your startup should give users a metric to be embarrassed about.
• The unique application and interview process for the Seth Godin MBA program.
• How SAMBA taught applicable business lessons vs. a standard curriculum.
• The genesis and vision for Spindows, my new startup.
• How to get your early customers to fund your startup.
• How to use search.twitter.com to find members of your tribe.

Watch the video below or over on Howard’s blog.

My friend Andy Traub is a man who ships things. He regularly ships the Linchpin Podcast, one channel of his Take Permission Media Network.

In June, Andy was nice enough to interview me for his Linchpin Podcast. The episode is pretty long at almost 90 minutes but we had a great conversation on the following topics:

• The two traits of an incurable entrepreneur (hint: you have both)
• A free website to launch and spread your idea in 15 minutes
• Why the cost of failure has approached zero
• We Work Labs – a new innovation co-working space in NYC
• How to pivot your idea for success
• The difference between ideas and shipping
• My first failed business (a non-profit involving an Atari 2600 and my brothers when I was 8 years old)
• How to finally write that book in your head (can you write a page a day?)
• How to meet more relevant people in your organization
• How Elliot Bisnow changed the world by dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip that spawned a world-changing organization.

Click here to head over to Andy’s blog to listen or click here to listen directly.

I hope you enjoy the show and look forward to your thoughts.

On Wednesday, Vinicius Vacanti, founder and CEO of Yipit, the most popular daily deal aggregator on the web, delivered an excellent session for startup founders titled, “From Idea to Product to Traction.”  The session was jam-packed with actionable nuggets.  Some highlights and a link to the full post below.

Identify a real problem. The biggest mistake most entrepreneurs make at this stage is getting excited about an idea that isn’t solving a real problem that people have.

Make sure it’s a very big problem. Vacanti used a personal example of replacing a broken remote control for one of his televisions. Problem? Yes. Big problem (market)? No. Vacanti explained that when pitching entrepreneurs need to convince VC’s they’re building a billion dollar company.

Come up with a name and setup a landing page. Collect emails while you’re working away getting a product up to speed.  To do this quickly and easily, Vacanti recommended one of my favorite new startups, Launchrock.com. He explained a few simple ways to promote the landing page, such as including the problem you’re solving and the landing page URL in your email signature.

Come up with a less than 7 word description that succinctly explains the problem you’re solving. Tumblr’s is simple, “The easiest way to blog.” Yipit’s is “All the best daily deals in your city.” The original Apple iPod was, “A thousand songs in your pocket.” The shorter the better.

Don’t add features, throw them out. Vacanti explained that by trimming features and functionality, Yipit reduced it’s production time from a year and a half for v1.0 to four months for v2.0 and then down to three days for the current iteration of the product.

You can read the rest of the post over on Yahoo! Scene here.

Last Wednesday, Mary Van de Weil was nice enough to have me back on her wonderful NY Brand Lab Radio show.

Mary is brilliant. I was her first ever repeat guest and I hope to be on her show again soon.

The show is about 30 minutes long and we riffed on some interesting topics:

• The two traits of an incurable entrepreneur (hint: you have both)
• A free website to launch and spread your idea in 15 minutes
• Why the cost of failure has approached zero
• We Work Labs – a new innovation co-working space in NYC
• How to pivot your idea for success
• The difference between ideas and shipping
• My first failed business (a non-profit involving my brothers when I was 8 years old)
• How to finally write that book in your head (can you write a page a day?)
• How to meet more relevant people in your organization
• How Elliot Bisnow dropping out of college and organizing an impromptu ski trip changed the world

I hope you enjoy the show.

LessConf, put on by Allan Branch and Steve Bristol, the supergeeks behind LessEverything, is an annual two day conference held in Atlanta, GA.

Last year, I was lucky enough to speak at LessConf alongside friends and heroes Dan Martell, Saul Colt, Cameron Moll, Chris Wanstrath, Jason Fried, David Heinemeier Hansson, Peldi Guilizzoni and Alex Hillman. I spoke about the concepts in Linchpin, Seth Godin’s seminal book.

The video of my presentation is below. It’s almost an hour long but the concepts are important.

(if you can’t see the video, click here)

This year, LessConf is in Atlanta again, April 29th – 30th and features some amazing speakers.

1. Josh Williams – CEO of Gowalla
2. Jeff Lawson – CEO and Co-Founder of Twilio.com
3. Amy Hoy – Fearless Leader of Freckle & UnicornFree.com
4. Micah Baldwin – CEO of Graphic.ly
5. Hiten Shah – Co-founder of KissMetrics.com
6. Rhonda Kallman – Co-founder of Samuel Adams, Founder of New Century Brewing
7. Tom Rossi – Partner at The Molehill
8. Steven Walker – Lead Designer at Groupon
9. Jason Beaird – UX Designer at MailChimp.com
10. Sarah Hatter – CEO of CoSupport

Early-bird tickets are sold out. Remaining tickets (and a list of attendees) is here.

To get an idea of the buttoned-up, serious tone of LessConf, check out these videos.

Warning, language NSFW:

If you’re free on April 29th – 30th and want to be inspired, I highly recommend attending.

Photo credit: Tanja_B

Face it. Your business card is boring.

It’s sad but it’s true. I don’t care if you have those rookie inkjet cards from VistaPrint or a fancy custom die-cut card made from pressed lion’s tusk. If every card is the same, it doesn’t tell much of a story.

Enter Moo cards, where users can select a different image to print on the back of each card. The possibilities are endless.

1. If you’re a photographer, each card should show one of your best shots – you’re essentially walking around with your portfolio in your pocket.
2. If you’re a real estate agent, each card could show the properties you’ve sold.
3. If you fix up old Harley motorcycles, each card should show one of your restorations.

It’s not really about the pictures themselves but the story that they allow you to tell. My agency, Tribes Win, helps big brands lead their tribes. Some executives don’t know what I mean by the word “tribe”, so my cards each have different tribes or tribe leaders on the back. Tim O’Reilly, Tim Ferris, Ellen, Oprah, Lance Armstrong, Steve Jobs, Shai Agassi, The Green Bay Packers.

In meetings, I dump my cards on the table, picture up, and ask the client to pick their favorite. This gives me a chance to explain what a tribe is in terms they understand.

Normally Moo cards are $20 for a pack but today only, due to a special deal brought to you by my friend Jon Dale‘s innovative new startup, Moolala, you can get the $20 basic mini-card package for only $10.

Moolala itself is a brilliant startup.  It combines the group-buying phenomenon of Living Social and Groupon with referral marketing. After you sign up, you refer friends to join Moolala and you earn a percentage of what they purchase. It continues down the line into a five-level pay matrix.  A video that explains the concept can be found on Moolala.com.

What are you waiting for?  Throw out your boring business cards and instead, tell a story.

Image credit: icedsoul photography .:teymur madjderey

Why is Gary Vaynerchuk smiling?

Because his new book, The Thank You Economy, just dropped today. In a moment, I will tell you how to get a copy FREE.

The drastic improvement from Gary’s first book, Crush It! (still a NYT bestseller) to TYE is reminiscent of one of my favorite bands, 1990′s hip hop supergroup Public Enemy, maturing from a solid but raw debut record (Yo! Bum Rush The Show) to one of their finest albums ever (It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back).

The other parallels are eerie.

Both frontmen are known by a first name + last initial.  Chuck “D” and Gary “V”.

Both debut offerings had an unexpected exclamation point ! in the title.

Chuck D was once featured on a track called “Shock and Awe” and “Shock and Awe” is Chapter 8 in Gary’s new book.

I can’t make this stuff up.

Similarities to Public Enemy aside, below are are 10 reasons you should buy TYE and 4 reasons you shouldn’t.

10 reasons you should buy The Thank You Economy

1. The opening. The opening page of historical quotes on adoption of various technology brilliantly sets the tone for proving skeptics of social media wrong. Then the book does exactly that.
2. The storytelling. The book is filled with stories that all support the main point. Some are stories from Gary’s work and personal life. Some are “should have” stories and some are “what if” stories. The entire book is written in Gary’s personal, casual and engaging voice. Reading it is like being in the room with him.
3. The data. When he doesn’t use stories or anecdotes to support the points, Gary references legitimate data from trusted sources.
4. The honesty. Gary doesn’t pull any punches. He explains exactly what it takes to operate in this new world of customer engagement and marketing. He also explains times where he has made mistakes in the past and learned from them.
5. The variety of case studies. From large brands like Amazon, Avaya, Zappos and Zagat to small businesses like Boloco and AJ Bombers to individuals like Irena Vaksman, a dentist in San Francisco and Hank Heyming, an attorney inside a huge law firm, there are examples and case studies that any business or individual can relate to.
6. Chapter 3. By itself. In Chapter 3, Gary specifically addresses eleven of the top objections to using social media. As someone who also works with large brands on social media, I’ve heard every objection multiple times. Gary dismantles each one, piece-by-piece. This chapter alone is worth the price of the book.
7. The focus on culture. Chapter 4 outlines how critical the right culture is to success in this new world. A couple years ago while I was working with a large consumer electronics client on marketing, branding and social media, I could sense that their culture was badly broken and getting worse. So while we were at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, I organized a tour of Zappos for my client execs to see a world-class culture firsthand. The tour was great. The client executives were excited. But when we returned from Vegas, nobody wanted to step up and own the culture turnaround that everyone knew they needed. I pleaded with them to hire a Chief Culture Officer, a position Gary explains in detail in the book. Long story short, they ended up doing nothing to focus on improving the culture, which continued to erode. Now, just a few short years later, many people have quit or been laid off, key functions have been outsourced to China and the company is splitting up and moving across the country. Even perfect use of Facebook or Twitter is not going to change that. The lesson here is important. Culture is paramount. Chapter 4 explains how to instill a culture for success.
8. The ping pong. In Chapter 5, Gary outlines how to effectively combine traditional media and social media. The two are far from mutually exclusive and when used in concert and as part of a strategic plan, one plus one can really equal five.
9. The sawdust. The fourth part of Gary’s book is appropriately named The Sawdust…a collection of little nuggets that were leftover after sawing the content into logical chapters. Instead of sweeping it out the door, it’s included in the back…great little riffs on everything from fear to emotions, innovations to apologies and more. This part of the book is like licking your orange fingers after you polish off a bag of Cheetos. There’s not much there but it’s really good stuff.
10. The caring. Gary clearly put his heart and soul into this book. He cared enough to ship a book that mattered. The Thank You Economy is going to help everyone from executives to entrepreneurs to agencies really understand this new world we’re living in.

4 reasons you shouldn’t buy The Thank You Economy

1. You don’t care about your customers and you don’t want to.
2. Your culture is negative and broken and you don’t care to fix it.
3. You make too much money and you would like to make less.
4. You’re retiring. This week.

Win one of ten copies

I believe so much in this book that I’m personally buying 10 copies to give away to my readers. To get a chance at snagging a copy of The Thank You Economy, you must do the following two actions:

1. Leave a comment below. Tell me why you want this book. Be creative.
2. Tweet a link to this post. You can do so automatically by clicking here. If you don’t have a Twitter account, you can use Facebook.

On Friday, March 11, 2011, I will select 10 people, based on my evaluation of their comments. If you are one of those selected, I’ll personally contact you to ask for your shipping address (or Kindle version if you prefer). If you don’t hear from me, you can assume you didn’t win.

Question: Why do you want a copy of this book? If I give you a copy, do you promise to read it?

If you made it this far, thank you. A few final points. I was fortunate enough to get sent an early galley of this book. The links to purchase the books above are affiliate links. I plan to beat Gary in a pencil war at SXSW. If you’re going to SXSW, please track me down and say hi.

Seth certainly understands the power of the medium for both good (engaging and leading a tribe) and evil (acting as crack cocaine for The Resistance, distraction from doing emotional labor and shipping). The latter is a main reason Seth has decided to personally stay off of twitter.

Until now.

Yesterday, Friday March 4th, Seth took to a twitter chat to discuss and answer questions about Poke the Box (affiliate link), his amazing new book from his new publishing venture, The Domino Project.

Unfortunately, I had a conflict and missed the chat, so I used a neat service called Storify to curate the tweets from the session. I only pulled in the questions and Seth’s answers. You can view the curated tweets below or on Storify here.

Based on Seth’s previous aversion to twitter and his last tweet below, this may be a one-time only show. Enjoy!

image credit: @heyamberrae

(Seth Godin’s new book, “Linchpin – Are you Indispensible?” just hit the New York Times bestseller list. It’s an amazing, life-changing book and my review is coming soon. If you don’t know the term Linchpin yet, you will. Until then, read this. Now, on to Vinny)

You don’t have to be an artist or a musician or a creative to be a Linchpin.

Sometimes all it takes is a waffle.

My client Altec Lansing is based in Milford, Pennsylvania and when I’m there, I stay at the Hampton Inn & Suites in Matamoras.

There is a self serve breakfast buffet just like at every Hampton Inn & Suites. Except this one isn’t like every one. And Vinny makes it so much more than self-serve.

I’ve only met Vinny three times but it only took once to realize what kind of guy he is. He waits on you hand and foot, transforming the experience from a self-serve breakfast buffet into a four-star restaurant.

Every time, Vinny enthusiastically lets me know what the hot dish of the day is. Sometimes it’s pancakes, sometimes it’s a eggs on a bagel sandwich. Vinny sells it and somehow, I’m always convinced it’s a good choice to start my day.

Vinny makes small talk if you’re interested but it’s never probing or bothersome.

Vinny insists on making your waffle for you, even though the machine is self-serve.

Vinny bustles around, making sure every item at the buffet is stocked completely at all times.

Vinny always wishes everyone a wonderful day but it’s his actions that ensure they start the day delighted.

Vinny doesn’t do his art only on good days. He does it every day.

It’s pretty clear Vinny doesn’t do this job for the money. He does it to give a gift and because he enjoys making people feel special.

To be a Linchpin, location doesn’t matter. Neither does title or how big your office is.

If Vinny can be a Linchpin working at a Hampton Inn & Suites breakfast buffet in Matamoras, what’s stopping you?