Imagine starting out with two employees who laugh at your dreams and targeted projections and quit two months later.
This is what Masayoshi Son, founder of The Softbank Corporation, experienced. And note, it has been reported that he currently earns some $200 million per day from his Internet investments such as Yahoo!, E*Trade, and Ziff-Davis, just to name a few.
When queried about his path as if it had all been a successive string of successes, he replied, “I’ve made a lot of moves. I have lots of scars and am ashamed and shy when I look back.”
He went on to explain that most warriors have battle scars that remind them of pains experienced. It is often these reminders that become the greatest teachers, helping us prepare more intensely for the next round.
Masayoshi’s formula for success is tried and true: “Strongly believe in big dreams and have a strategy.”
And yet the numbers associated with his dream were huge, so I asked him, “Many goal setting experts state that we should set goals that are believable, so how does one set large goals and make them believable to the mind?”
He replied, “Start with the big picture and break it down from there. I figured out what it would take to be number one in the industry and worked backwards.”
In the end, perhaps entrepreneurial success is best defined by ongoing efforts and not merely by the results. Thus to paraphrase a Chinese proverb, “It matters not what path a person is on in life. What matters is their commitment to the path.”
This audio interview is approximately 40 minutes in length and the file is a 8.9 meg mp3 file
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Some of the Themes Discussed in this Interview with David Include:
David’s upcoming book about Herbert Feiss - an economic advisor to the State Dept during the early years of the Cold War who was a first hand witness to policies implemented that explain many of today’s middle east issues and problems we are now dealing with …
David’s book which has been in continuous print since 1972 and biography of Frank Zappa …
What it takes to be a visionary …
Aspects of Teanage Nervous Breakdown, another book authored by David …
Experiences teaching at Williams College and going for grants …
Delivering on the 1960s and how today’s yuppie is the same as the dooper of the 70s …
What it is was like to go to school with guys like W and how their arrogance compels them to surround themselves with medicore yes people …
How the CIA could change the world if they only employed comic gag writers who know how to cut …
And many other tibits re: culture, politics, society and much much more …
About David Walley WalleysWitzEnd.com - David Walley has been a critic, cultural historian and freelance editor for more than 30 years. A graduate of Rutgers University in the late Sixties he began his career as a columnist for Jazz and Pop Magazine which lead to a full-time position at one of the alternative press’s most influential papers, New York City’s East Village Other. During the late Sixties into the early Eighties, his essays, reviews and columns appeared in such magazines as Zygote, Fusion, and Changes. During a two and a half sojourn in Los Angeles, he distinguished himself as the Arts editor of the LA Free Press. His interviews with Iggy Pop and Detroit’s legendary band, the MC5 are considered classics of their type and for their time. During that period he also ghosted books on Bob Dylan, David Bowie and Bobby Darin, a classic despite itself.
In 1972, Walley published the first (and only) American biography of the avant garde musician and social critic Frank Zappa called “No Commercial Potential: The Saga of Frank Zappa” . After numerous reprints and three revisions, it is still in print thirty years later available through DeCapo books. David is known as the father of the contemporary rock and roll biography, and his book was characterized by the Village Voice’s Milo Miles as “one of the earliest rock books and unjustly forgotten”. Obviously it no longer is. Continuing his fascination with American originals, in 1975 he released, “Nothing in Moderation: The Ernie Kovacs Story” a seminal and unique biography of television’s first surrealist comedian who became an iconic and inspirational figure to the original crew from Saturday Night Live, as well as comedians like Billy Crystal, Robin Williams, George Carlin and others. Though subsequently published by two other imprints as “The Ernie Kovacs Phile”, and, much to the author’s dismay because he won’t realize one thin dime, this classic can still be purchased at more discriminating on-line used bookstores. He encourages you to seek it out anyway, it won’t hurt and you’ll laugh. Is that so bad?
Pursuing his various interests American cultural history, in 1998 Walley brought out “Teenage Nervous Breakdown: Music and Politics in the Post-Elvis Age” which, having survived hardcover hell is currently available in paperback through Perseus Publishing.
In a series of interconnected essays Walley examines how and why America has become hostage to the corrosive effects of an increasingly celebrity-driven consumerism, itself the result of the cumulative effects of the commercial exploitation of high school peer group dynamics. Animated by a throbbing rock and roll and hip-hop beat, this virulent form of consumerism has given rise to a multinational, adolescent-driven corporate consciousness in which MTV has become the virtual Voice of America wherein all manner of goods from tranquilizers to tanks, from insurance to politics are sold to an unconscious public. It is a book for thinkers on American culture.
One Amazon.com reader described it this way: “If you ever had the sneaking suspicion that you never escaped high school, this book explains why…This is a fascinating, fast-moving series of think pieces without boring the reader to death: Thorsten Veblen meets Camille Paglia, the most subversive book on American culture to be published since Veblen’s “Theory of the Leisure Class.” Recently the book was used as the basis for a Winter Studies course at Williams College called, “Decadent Memories: The Sixties in Theory and Practice”. It took a little while but the students finally got it. He has been a guest lecturer in Sociology at Williams as well.
During the Nineties, Walley’s words and ideas have appeared in Cosmik Debris, an on-line music magazine, and more recently in New Partisan, some of which are archived in columns.
Walley is working on another biography about another American original named Herbert Feis, a Pulitzer Prize-winning economist and diplomatic historian of the Cold War. This story of epic proportions details how a Jewish emigrant from New York’s Lower Eastside against all odds and by dint of incredible drive plus some amazing coincidences rose to be Economic Advisor in the State Department from 1931-1943, a crucial period in American history, to become an observer/participant in some of the most momentous happenings of 20th Century American history. At one time Feis was a familiar voice on foreign policy and a frequent anti-Vietnam war speaker on college campuses. His life touched many of the important intellectual figures of the 20th century, from Lewis Mumford social historian and philosopher to Felix Frankfurter, Franklin Roosevelt, and Louis Brandeis. Sample chapters for the book called for the moment” The Shackled Historian: The Life and Times of Herbert Feis can be found in Works in Progress.
David Walley is currently living in Maine and is hard at work on this project and in the future is planning afterwards to be working on a movie about Ernie Kovacs with Bob Cecsa who runs CampChaos, god help the both of them.
This audio interview is approximately 18 minutes in length and the file is a 4.3 meg mp3 file
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Links to Wilder’s Web Site
Here we talk with Wilder Baker, Principle of GPS 4 Management and Chairman of American Advertising Federation (AAF - advertising’s largest trade association)
Some of the Themes Discussed in This Interview with Wilder Include:
How advertising relates to marketing …
The ultimate marketing lessons learned from package goods companies like Proctor & Gamble, Kraft and others…
How big companies lose their way and marketing ROI …
Growth of internet as advertising medium …
How even consumer products are really business to business products …
Global marketing trends - e.g., visual first in Europe then followed by copy, whereas in US, copy usually first then visual …
A case study of success - $50 million in two years …
How to get in touch with your customers and critical importance of doing so …
A David Ogilvy story …
Driving home improtance Customer Focus vs Marketing - e.g., being in tune with your client and their needs and making that your priority …
This audio interview is approximately 17 minutes in length and the file is a 4.2 meg mp3 file
If you don’t have flash player click here to download mp3 file
Some of the Themes Discussed in This Interview with Paul Include:
The differences between trade promotion, consumer promotion, and advertising in the marketing mix …
Importance of catering to multiple consumers - such as the ultimate consumer, the trade, and your sales force …
The metrics of promotion and advertising …
Spillage with coupons, rebates and loyalty programs …
Re-evaluating a product category and lifestyle changes …
“Let go of my ego” - an account of success with Eggo Waffles …
An example of tactical priorities via Mrs. Smith Pies vs Sarah Lee …
And, a reminder, if there is a Marketing Will there is a Marketing Way …
About Paul Paul Jeffery
Paul is a seasoned brand expert and most recently a Director of Strategy & Planning for a leading sales promotion agency based in the metro NY area.
This audio interview is approximately 17 minutes in length and the file is a 4.2 meg mp3 file
If you don’t have flash player click here to download the mp3 file
