This audio interview is approximately 35 minutes in length and an 8.6 meg mp3 file
Some of the Themes Discussed in This Interview with Howard Include:
Why capitalism should be re-invented …
The ethical imperative of saving neighbors …
Institutional growth in the record industry ala Warner Brothers vs CBS …
How to feel great about your work no matter where you are or who you are working for …
The cost of ripping people off and Enron reflections …
Selling commodities versus selling novelties …
Getting to the heart of art, science, and everyday things …
Saving Western Civilization and the miracle fabric of kings …
The protest industry …
And, the truths behind Vision Quest Live that will change your work life forever plus more …
About Howard Bloom Howard Bloom, a Visiting Scholar at New York University, is founder of the International Paleopsychology Project, executive editor of the New Paradigm book series, a founding board member of the Epic of Evolution Society, and a member of the New York Academy of Sciences, the National Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Psychological Society, the Human Behavior and Evolution Society, The International Society of Human Ethology, and the Academy of Political Science. He has been featured in every edition of Who’s Who in Science and Engineering since the publication’s inception.
Bloom has taken an unusual approach to the study of mass moods and cultural convolutions. He started out normally enough, building his first Boolean algebra machine at the age of twelve, becoming a dedicated microscopist that same year, codesigning a computer which won a Westinghouse Science Award before he left grade school, and being granted a private brainstorming session with the head of the Graduate Physics Department of The State University of New York, Buffalo, at the age of thirteen. By sixteen he was a lab assistant at the world’s largest cancer research center, the Roswell Park Memorial Research Cancer Institute, where he helped plumb the mysteries of the immune system. And before his freshman year of college he designed and executed research in Skinnerian programmed learning at Rutgers University’s Graduate School of Education.
Then came an act of academic heresy. After graduating magna cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa from New York University, Bloom turned down four graduate fellowships and embarked on a 20-year-long urban anthropology expedition to penetrate what he calls “society’s myth-making machinery”–the inner sanctums of politics and the media. During his foray into “the dark underbelly of mass emotion” he edited a magazine which won two National Academy of Poets prizes, founded the leading avant-garde art studio on the East Coast, was featured on the cover of Art Direction Magazine, then gave up listening to Beethoven, Bartok, and Mozart to become editor of a rock magazine. Using correlational studies, focus groups, empirical surveys, ethnographic expeditions into suburban teen subcultures, and other scientific techniques, Bloom more than doubled the publication’s sales, and was credited by Rolling Stones’ Chet Flippo with having founded a new genre–the heavy metal magazine. Seeking still further ways to infiltrate modernity’s mass mind, Bloom formed a public relations firm in the music and film industry and won the confidence of those whose territory he’d invaded. The payoff in knowledge proved invaluable.
Bloom worked with Michael Jackson, Prince, John Cougar Mellencamp, Kiss, Queen, Bette Midler, Billy Joel, Joan Jett, Diana Ross, Simon & Garfunkel, The Talking Heads, AC/DC, Billy Idol, Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five, Run D.M.C., Simply Red, and the heads of many a media conglomerate. He was adept at spotting new subcultures, entering them, and helping their members achieve their goals…a skill which gave him an inside role in the rise of rap, disco, and punk rock.
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.”
Wally Amos, aka Famous Amos as in the Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie founder, was perhaps the most colorful entrepreneur I’ve met to date.
I remember him on stage at the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs beaming with tons of energy, flashing a huge warm smile, and wearing this outrageously colored, fully embroidered, denim-jacket glittering with patterns of sequins that were all things cookies and chocolate chip cookies at that. It was one of those jackets that you’d expect to find in a Broadway play like Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat, and not your typical three piece navy or gray pinstriped suit jacket worn by most panelists.
Before Wally started to give his presentation, he turned to the audience and explained the honor and joy he had in wearing his embroidered cookie jacket — because his wife had made it for him.
Wally went on to explain how important it is to have family support when embarking on entrepreneurial paths and his jacket clearly indicated his family’s enthusiastic support.
Before starting his cookie business, Wally was in the music business out in California as an A&R guy. At the time, he could not read or write and had less than a skyrocketing career, although he did represent some famous talents - e.g., Helen Reddy.
Apparently, whenever Wally called on clients and prospects, he would always bring along some homemade chocolate chip cookies to leave behind with his appointments. It was his grandmother’s recipe and Wally loved to share the cookies he baked with everybody in the business.
Prospects would teasingly say, “Hey Wally. Sorry I can’t use your services, but those cookies - they’re awesome. You should really think about opening a business selling them. They’re incredible and any chance I can get some more next time you swing through the area? And, I’ll pay!”
And so with the support of family and friends (e.g., Helen Reddy as early financial investor), Wally launched into the cookie business.
The one sad note about Wally’s story was with respect to intellectual property rights. Turns out when Wally sold his business, unwittingly to him, he also lost the right to use his own surname to promote any new food products. I recall a court battle and being appalled that his counsel did not give him better advice when he signed the sell agreement but I digress.
In the end, Wally conveyed encouragement to follow one’s passions, gain the trust of family stakeholders and friends, then go for it. And if lucky enough to collect any awards along the way, not to hesitate to wear true colors - on sleeves, back, front pockets, chest, etc. - viva the Chocolate Chip Cookie DreamCoats!
Leslie Wexner, founder of The Limited, addressed an intimate audience of 50 or so after his auditorium award presentation to The Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs.
Part way into this intimate Q&A, albeit with with some mild frustration, Les stopped fielding questions and proclaimed, “As many look at my global chain of stores, corporate jet, power, wealth, I’ve sensed students today implying ‘How do I get where you’ve gotten and get what you have?’ and I must admit, I do not have the answers. I can’t tell you how to do it.”
He went on to say that he could tell us only that he followed his love for retail. From his first store in Columbus, Ohio, he loved putting the key in the door first thing in the morning and turning the lock. He loved putting the key in the door at the end of the night after sweeping and locking up. “I’m still the world’s best men’s sweater buyer,” he chuckled.
In all, he communicated that chasing the trappings of success had nothing to do with his path.
His focus was on his passion.
Les came from humble origins, with parents who weathered the depression and honored the security of postal work. So, when he received a call early in his career from a leading New York retail chain magnet, his father was in total disbelief of his son’s actions.
Apparently, this magnet invited Les to New York, all expenses paid, and offered him a staggering salary and wild perks like a penthouse apartment.
Les responded, “I’m sorry. I didn’t realize this is why you brought me to New York. I’m not interested in a job,” and proceeded to leave. When he got off the elevator, he called his father and recounted the experience.
“Now you get right back up there and tell the man you’re sorry, of course you’ll take his offer,” suggested his father.
About a year later, Les felt compelled to call the magnet and inquire as to why he had been inspired to make such a generous offer in the first place.
“Well Les, you might be a terrific retailer, but in your whole life you’ll never have more than fifteen stores without my capital.”
Les hung up the phone and was beside himself.
“Fifteen stores,” he thought. “I never thought I’d have more than six.”
This retail magnet had in effect raised the bar of possibilities for Les’s vision for himself. At last count, Les’ chain includes well over 3000 stores.
Nolan Bushnel was the founder of Atari - the wildly famous video game developers from the 1970s and early 1980s perhaps best known for their block buster games like Pong, Space Invaders, Pac-Man, plus others. Mr. Bushnel is a serial entrepreneur and is also the founder of Pizza Time Theaters, Inc. (aka Chucky Cheese) among other enterprises.
It was a springtime afternoon while sitting in a packed auditorium during an Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs presentation that I first heard Mr. Bushnel speak about how to truly start a business.
Okay, so you want to start a business. Great. Here’s how you do it.
First you call your smartest accounting friend and say, Hey Joe, gotta great idea for a business that I want to share with you and a couple other prospective key people. Can you come over this Saturday morning at my place around 10AM and can you bring some donuts?
Then you call your smartest marketing friend, Hey Sharon, gotta great idea for a business that I want to share with you and a couple other prospective key people. Can you come over this Saturday morning around 10AM and can you bring some orange juice?
Then you call your smartest human resource friend, Hey Steve, gotta great idea for a business that I want to share with you and a couple other prospective key people. Can you come over this Saturday morning around 10AM and can you bring some coffee?
Then you call your smartest engineering friend, Hey Tim, gotta great idea … and can you bring some napkins and paper plates?
Then you call your smartest finance friend, Hey Linda, gotta great idea … and can you bring some cranberry juice and a couple bottles of water?
So then on Saturday morning all your smart friends show up and say, Okay Nolan. So what’s your big idea of this new business?
Now here’s the funny part, you can say almost anything like “A new car wash.”
And your smart friends will likely boo you and say stuff like, “You got us out of the house for this - a car wash, you gotta be kidding us. We thought you had a really great idea.”
But now here’s the killer part - you turn to your smart friends and say, “Come on, we’re all smart people, we like and respect each other, so what ideas do you have for starting a business.”
Worse case scenario, you got a free breakfast and planted some seeds with your friends. Best case scenario, the group brainstorms an option to pursue and away you go!
Later that evening I had the opportunity to ask Mr. Bushnel a follow-up question regarding business and action plans resulting from a Saturday morning planning session. I forgot his exact words but it went something like this - “Chuck - this is why you have your engineering friend bring the napkins. The action plan has to fit on one napkin otherwise the business will never get off the ground. You gotta keep it simple. Your marketing friends will go through too many napkins, your accounting friends will complain that the napkins don’t have ruled lines, but your engineering friends, they can help you produce a napkin of action steps that keeps your new team focused.”
The scene was a nomination committee for the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs sitting around a large oval conference table at Babson College in 1981.
The committee was comprised of a mixed sort of twelve-plus voting attendees, most of whom were either business school professors, college administrators, and/or Academy stakeholders (e.g., representatives from Business Week, Fortune Magazine, Wall Street Journal). And then there were the two students - one undergraduate, the other a graduate - who sat at the table with equal voting consideration.
In front of us was a list, a rather long list at that, of world class people who were to be considered for the following year’s induction into the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs.
As way of background, The Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs is the world’s first entrepreneurship hall-of-fame established in 1978 to annually honor and recognize the top three or four “entrepreneurs who have contributed significantly to the development of free enterprise throughout the world.”
And since this is a blog I’ll jump to the point.
Jim Henson’s name came up (i.e., famed muppeteer responsible for Big Bird, Ms. Piggy, Kermit the Frog, Oscar the Grouch, etc.) and a robust discussion ensued.
Was Jim an artist, an entertainer, a puppet guy, and could he really be considered an entrepreneur?
On one hand I was stunned that the question was even raised and on the table. Up to then, I had innately supported the idea that entrepreneurs were born and came in all shapes, sizes, colors, disciplines, backgrounds, ages, etc. Furthermore, I had a special appreciation for those creative entertainment-entrepreneurs who cut new grounds in memorable and exciting ways.
Yet part of the echoes I recall from that meeting stirred with voices of contradictory spirit like, “Come on … This is business and we are a business school … Business sticks to the facts and has to keep it black lined, balance sheet approved, otherwise we’re sunk - how could we follow the slippery slope of muppeteers as entrepreneurship … Okay, sure he runs a production company, has licensing deals and other business dealings, but he hangs with the likes of Ms. Piggy … PLEASE! … We have lots of other serious names to consider so can we continue … Besides real entrepreneurs are the likes of Ben Franklin and Andrew Carnegie - legendary people who kick it big in marketplace …”
In the end, that nomination committee helped set the pace for the three entrepreneurs who were ultimately officially voted into the Academy for 1982, including: Wally Amos - The Famous Amos Chocolate Chip Cookie Corporation; William Norris - Control Data Corporation; and Carl Sontheimer - Cuisinarts, Inc.
A lot has changed since 1981 and somewhere over the years I once heard the definition of an artist as someone who makes the unknown knowable - e.g., takes that which was previously unseen and makes it see-able.
Like the artist, I think this vision also applies to entrepreneurs in that they provide a service where one was missing or void, they bring higher quality deliverables at more efficient pricing to markets that were unknown before, etc.
During the next couple of days in this blog, I will share reflections of various world class entrepreneurs I met along the years of participating in front rows with the Academy of Distinguished Entrepreneurs.
Okay, I won’t name drop but tidbits forthcoming in this blog include entrepreneurs like the founders of Federal Express, H&R Block, Peoples Express, Famous Amos Cookies, Winnebago Industries, Atari and more
This audio interview is approximately 33 minutes in length and an 7.6 meg mp3 file.
Some of the Themes Discussed in this Interview with Birgitte Include:
The global loss of vision and role of artists and poets
The media industry as a cultural force and its current cancerous state
Good money vs bad money and how Wall Street needs to change too
How Michael Angelo never would have made a David if he did media research first and the slippery slope of research metrics for those who lose touch with their art and audiences
Green Washing vs Blue Washing and the real job of media
A call for everybody to be active media consumers and aware
and how content is not king but is queen and perception is king
plus much more …
About Birgitte Rasine Birgitte Rasine, CEO, LUCITÀ Inc. The founder and primary driving force behind LUCITÀ, Birgitte Rasine is a writer, producer, journalist and a tireless thinker and innovator. Deeply committed to positive change in the media industries, she drives and personally oversees all of LUCITÀ’s major inhouse projects and initiatives, such as the recently published report The Colors of Perception and the upcoming Project Tsunami. A passionate speaker on socially conscious media and related topics, she has most recently spoken on a panel on social responsibility in the media at New York’s Stern School of Business, and gave a keynote on the topic at WIN 2004 in Geneva, Switzerland. She has been interviewed by NPR in the U.S., and the Australian national radio.
In line with her diverse media career that spans film production, journalism, publishing, marketing and public relations, Birgitte has worked with civil society, business, government and the scientific community. In her previous career, Birgitte wrote for two of the media industry’s top publications, The Hollywood Reporter and Daily Variety. Her articles have also appeared in Business Week and Diálogo Mediterráneo. Prior to that, Birgitte was a visual effects coordinator, camera assistant, and electrician on Hollywood and independent feature films. She worked for companies such as PDI/Dreamworks, ILM/Universal Studios, HBO, and Disney, and credits them for giving her time in the trenches.
An award-winning poet, Birgitte speaks 5 languages and has lived in 6 countries. She holds a BA in Aesthetics of Film from Stanford University and has completed a professional graduate course in cinematography at the American Film Institute in Los Angeles, and a professional masters degree program in International Relations at the Instituto Universitario Ortega y Gasset in Madrid, Spain.
This audio interview is approximately 40 minutes in length and the file is a 8.9 meg mp3 file
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.
