LinkedIn etiquette: If you must cold call (don’t), at least do it well.

LinkedIn etiquette: If you must cold call (don’t), at least do it well.

Business, Technology

Someone buried under marketing email

LinkedIn is an amazing resource! Use it to find people who are selling what you want. Use it to offer or find jobs. But don’t use it for outbound sales.

It’s been open season for people spamming my inbox with unsolicited sales pitches. While I’m sometimes open to sales pitches, not on LinkedIn. It’s a platform where we go to showcase ourselves to anyone interested in what we have to offer. No one goes there to be sold to; everyone goes there to sell.

This is a really great system! If someone wants an executive coach, they search for “executive coach.” Then they reach out. Everyone wins: the customer finds a coach, and the coach deals only with prospects who are already a good match.

Outbound cold emails ruin all that. People reach out with a generic form-letter pitch. “Hi! Buy my product.” The worst thing about these form letters is that they’re so obviously form letters. I’ve even had people ask what I do. What I do? WHAT I DO? Other than pages of description, links to videos, a website with 400 articles on it, and two books, that question betrays the person as a rank amateur.

Think about it. This is LinkedIn! There are pages of information right there. All it takes is a single click, then some reading. And they choose to send a one-size-fits-all form letter. The message is loud and clear: “I don’t bother to put a modicum of thought into my approach.” If they can’t be bothered to read your profile before spamming you, what does that say about the kind of work they’re likely to do?

If that’s you, and you use LinkedIn for outbound marketing (please don’t), customize your pitch. Not by inserting some cut-and-pasted text (“I read your article [ARTICLE_TITLE] today”). Read your prospect’s profile. Read anything they’ve written. Then think. Then, and only then, write:

I read your article “What Koalas Can Teach Us About Community.” Your Eucalyptus-leaf-Like-button insight was brilliant!

… Now when you segue into your pitch, you can make it personal, so in the event they are open to inbound sales, at the very least you’ll stand out from the crowd.

If you don’t use LinkedIn for outbound marketing (good for you!), but you’re on the receiving end of those who do…

Feel free to steal this canned response

Hi,

LinkedIn is primarily a platform for people to inform the world about what they do, so they can accept inbound inquiries. People also use it to list and answer job ads. But no one comes here to be marketed to.

If you are interested in hiring me or my services, let’s set up a time to talk. If, however, you want to pitch me your services in a form-letter cold call, I’m the wrong person for you. 

By the way, a word of free coaching: on LinkedIn, you can find out a tremendous amount about someone with a single click. That means letters make you look *especially* bad. A form letter screams “I don’t bother to do my homework.” That’s not a good look, especially if you want someone to hire you.

If you’re going to pitch someone (please don’t) on LinkedIn, five minutes of homework and a minute of customization, will give you a much better chance of coming across in a way that would engender a real response.

I hope you enjoyed this automated response. It attempted to give a clear answer and an example of the kind of coaching advice I give. It’s a sign of the times that this particular coaching advice is so widely needed that a form letter works, but … there you have it.

Enjoy!

How to be productive using low tech. And why.

How to be productive using low tech. And why.

Get-it-Done Guy Blog, Productivity, Technology

How to be productive using low tech. And why.

We’re living in an interesting age. There’s an app for that. For anything. No matter how simple. We’ve turned apps and technology into a fetish and we try to use it to solve every problem, even when it’s the wrong tool. Sometimes (I daresay often), the technological solution actually makes things worse in the long run.

And that’s why some of the best ways to get things done are highly-effective low-tech solutions. You can read about some of them in the interview. Click here:  When it comes to productivity, expert Stever Robbins says keep it old school.

Skype is better, but still problematic

Misc, privacy, Technology, Uncategorized

My article on Skype exposing address books to the world has gone mini-viral. Written in 2017, it’s gotten dozens of citations in early 2019. A reporter approached me, asking if the problem still exists. After doing some research, here’s what I’ve found.

Microsoft’s article is incorrect (probably by accident)

Microsoft explains how People You May Know suggestions are generated in this article. At the time of this writing (February 14, 2019), the article is incomplete. The article claims you or the contact must both take action to be visible to each other through People You May Know. For example, you must add each other in your address books. Or you must exchange an invite and acceptance.

Microsoft doesn’t mention the problem case: mutual connections

The problem case exists, but is not listed here: if you have a mutual connection, then you’ll show up in each other’s People You May Know list. The mutual connection is someone who fits the you-both-take-action criteria.

So if Sam is connected to Ash, and Ash is connected to Stacy, then Sam and Stacy will show up in each others’ People You May Know list even though they’ve never taken any action with respect to each other.

Sam and Stacy will see each other without a direct connection

Deleting Still Doesn’t Solve The Problem

I deleted all my contacts. Skype is still suggesting dozens of people. I don’t know any of them. As mentioned on Microsoft’s list above, Skype remembered my past connections and is still suggesting their people to me. I don’t know any of these suggested people, but now I know one of my prior contacts knows them.

This no longer works for strangers, thank goodness

When I first found this issue (Dec 2017), I created a new test account. Browsing a stranger’s profile was enough to get suggestions of people with the same last name who looked the same (presumably family members). As of today (Feb 2019), it seems like Microsoft has reined this in a bit … from my very brief testing, it seems you need a common contact to start the suggestion engine.

I still consider this a security problem, though not as bad as it was before.

You can only figure out the contacts of someone you are or have been connected with. You can’t do it to a complete stranger, you need to have one contact—invite, connection, or chat—with them first. This isn’t as big a hurdle as you might think.

Journalists still shouldn’t use Skype

Journalists beware! If you’re a journalist, using Skype can compromise your sources. JournalistChris interviews source LittleSnitch on Skype. If JournalistChris later interviews source MafiaDon, MafiaDon will have LittleSnitch suggested as a contact. After all, they both have you as a mutual contact. If MafiaDon knows about this bug, then MafiaDon may agree to Skype with you precisely to see if LittleSnitch then shows up on MafiaDon’s People You May Know list. You really don’t want MafiaDon knowing you’ve been talking with LittleSnitch.

Even with strangers, you can get some information. When you browse random profiles, Skype will tell you how many mutual contacts you have. If you only have a few contacts in Skype, you can guess with some certainty who the mutual contact is.

if MafiaDon did your interview and then immediately looked up LittleSnitch‘s profile, MafiaDon would see that they have one mutual connection—you. That might be enough to tip off MafiaDon that LittleSnitch has been talking to the press.

Lawyers and Consultants, you beware too

The problem I outline for consultants and lawyers in my article remains. If you’re BankruptcyLawyer and you chat with MicrosoftCEO, then later chat with LogitechCEO, LogitechCEO will start seeing MicrosoftCEO as a suggested contact. LogitechCEO might even Skype with you deliberately to see who else gets suggested after the chat.

Indeed, you can imagine someone doing this very deliberately. If EvilBoy seriously wants to do research they could do this:

  1. EvilBoy creates a new skype account, live:innocent_journalist2
  2. EvilBoy approaches BankruptcyLawyer and says “I’m a journalist. I wish to interview you for an article. Connect to me on Skype as live:innocent_journalist2”
  3. EvilBoy interviews BankruptcyLawyer
  4. Because BankruptcyLawyer is now the only contact in the live:innocent_journalist2 account, the People You May Know will suggest BankruptcyLawyer’s contacts to EvilBoy
  5. Furthermore, EvilBoy can now look up anyone’s profile on Skype and see if they have a mutual contact. If so, they know that person is in BankruptcyLawyer’s addressbook

This requires a concerted effort on the part of EvilBoy, and it also requires that BankruptcyLawyer add EvilBoy as a contact, accept a connection request from EvilBoy, or chat with EvilBoy at least once.

This Can Still Be Awkward Personally

This is still a problem. Let’s say Ashley uses Skype to meet people for online dating. Ashley might answer personal ads and chat with Syd and Alex. Ashley probably doesn’t want Syd and Alex to start showing up in each other’s contact lists. That could be awkward, especially if one (or both) of the relationships goes farther than a Skype chat. It seems like the privacy problems here are pretty evident.

In summary: the hurdle has risen since I wrote that article. Instead of being able to reverse engineer a stranger’s address book, you can only reverse engineer someone you’re connected to or have chatted with. Once. EvilBoy can still use Skype to work mischief, but now it takes a bit more work. For some people, this may still be too much of a privacy breach from a product that was founded on the premise of confidentiality.


Cryptocurrencies for Investors and Entrepreneurs

Cryptocurrencies for Investors and Entrepreneurs

Business, Misc, strategy, Technology

How ICOs and Cryptocurrencies Work for Entrepreneurs and Investors

With Bitcoin and cryptocurrencies all the rage, I was recently invited to participate in an ICO (an “initial coin offering”). Warren Buffett made his fortune by limiting his investments to businesses and investments he understood deeply. That seems sensible, so I’ve been delving into the ICO world to understand if it’s for real, if it’s a scam, or if it’s something genuinely new.

Much to my surprise, it doesn’t seem to be a complete scam. ICOs are a fund-raising play for a business. Coin-based entrepreneurship has aspects of equity, and aspects of … something new. It decouples the value of the organization from profit. If it’s sustainable, coin-based organizations could become a way to create markets whose bottom line is genuine societal value. The “triple-bottom line” could be an actual market reality. That’s exciting!!

Or, it could turn be unsustainable, and a fancy way for unskilled or unethical entrepreneurs to walk away with lots of investor cash and no obligation to do anything with it.

As you’ll read below, while the ICO mechanism has been invented in the context of crypto currencies, there’s no inherent reason that this has to be done with cryptography. The same structures could be put in place in the physical world, without needing to buy into blockchain or virtual currencies.

What I’ve Learned so Far About ICOs

Here’s my current understanding of “coins” and initial coin offerings (ICOs). While the concepts are being developed in the context of crypto currencies, as I mention below, they can be (and have been) implemented in ways that are totally independent of crypto, or even computers.

PLEASE CRITIQUE AND COMMENT! This understanding is about two or three hours old, so it’s my very first attempt to understand.

ICOs make a different bet than stock investments

The ICO model is fascinating. Instead of betting on the success of a company, as you would with a traditional corporation, you’re betting on the creation of a market. The entrepreneur is then pitching their ability to create a market for the coin, which can be done in many different ways, depending on the company issuing coins.

This means that an ICO has two cases to analyze. While a traditional startup only needs to make a business case, an ICO needs to make a case for the creation of the coin market, and a case for the success (however that’s defined) of the organization being funded with the ICO.

There must be a market-making mechanism

The entrepreneur needs to present a compelling case:

  • that their endeavor can create a market
  • that the market created makes sense (that there’s a reason want the coin)
  • that there’s a way coins are exchanged for dollars or other value that is valuable enough that people will want to trade the coins

The primary function of the business being financed with the ICO is to create a market for the coins, rather than to make an economic profit. For example, an organization issuing an ICO may not do anything on an ongoing basis, as long as they can kick-start the market for their coin.

(There’s no inherent reason that any of this has to involve blockchain or crypto, by the way. You could be issuing frequent flyer points that are tracked in a spreadsheet in an “IFFPO” and it would basically be the same thing.)

For example, an airline could simply rename their frequent flyer points as “coins” and sell a bunch of those coins rather than issuing stock. People would want the coins because they could be exchanged for flights. If the only way to fly were by paying in frequent flyer points, then the market for the points would be created by anyone who wants to travel by air. Frequent flyer points would then be convertible to and from dollars based on the price in coins the airline charges for a flight, and the overall market demand for air travel.

But the airline would not rise and fall based on its ability to generate a profit; it would rise and fall based on its ability to keep the market for FFCs boosted. It would then presumably pay its employees in FFCs, which they could convert to cash.

Coin-based financing may resemble ongoing equity financing

This scenario resembles a company that is financing itself on the strength of its equity, by selling stock to pay any ongoing expenses, rather than financing itself on its underlying business fundamentals.

For an airline, which needs to pay salaries and has high ongoing expenses, it probably wouldn’t work. But as Amazon shows, a company can consistently generate lackluster business results and have its “coins” (shares of AMZN stock) continue to be valued quite highly.

Coins can fund one-time projects as long as they create ongoing markets

The thing about coins is that the organization that did the ICO might not be an ongoing business at all, but a one-time fund raise, as long as it kick starts the market. For example, if the coins created are done so as the only currency that can be used to access some resource, like time on the Hubble telescope, then one organization can create the coins and the protocol that requires them, while completely separate organizations accept the coins and thus generate demand for them.

[One historical example that comes to mind is the currency of green stamps, which survived for decades but eventually failed. An ICO could be likened to an Initial Green Stamp Offering.]

Coins dilute … the market

Coins are like equity in that issuing additional coins dilutes the value of the coins already in circulation. The one ICO I’ve seen closely puts a cap on the number of coins that can ever be issued, to preserve the coin scarcity. That makes sense for an ICO that finances a one-time, transient organization. But if coins will be used, rather than profit, as an ongoing source of an organization’s funds, then having a hard cap on the number of coins will put a cap on the total amount the organization can raise over its lifetime.

In the social enterprise world, coins could be issued to finance social good, as long as there were some mechanism to drive the demand and market for the coins. Rather than having social enterprise rely on constant begging, a social enterprise could drive demand for their coins by striking agreements with businesses or other organizations to use the social coins as a currency. To fund a social enterprise for years on coins, however, would require a substantial initial ICO or the ability to keep issuing coins when funds are needed, so the coin used for the funding probably shouldn’t be capped.

It’s fascinating! And I have no idea how to value a coin, or whether this will prove to be sustainable in any meaningful way.

Safety warning: if you use Skype, your contacts may now be exposed

Business, Misc, Technology

UPDATE: February 14, 2019: Since writing this article in late 2017, Microsoft seems to have made a change that makes it a bit harder to reverse engineer someone’s address book, but most of the problem remains. You can read my update on how Skype still exposes your contacts in problematic ways.

A quick public service announcement for anyone who uses Skype. Executives, VCs, journalists, researchers, and anyone who cares about the privacy of their contact list should read this.

I don’t usually post about computer security, but in this case, it seemed quite serious. It’s also the kind of thing we’re used to from Facebook and LinkedIn. But it could have very serious consequences, since people use Skype differently from those social platforms. People use social media with an expectation of public transparency, while many use Skype with an expectation of privacy.

As of a couple of days ago, the new Skype tells other people how many contacts you have in common. It also offers your contacts as potential new contacts to everyone else in your contact book. This is a surprisingly serious privacy breach.

This means if you use Skype for anything where your contact list is sensitive (conference calls with clients, planning a protest over the skyrocketing price of kitty litter, coordinating your monthly meeting of people relax by knitting exciting underwear), your contacts can quite possibly deduce who other contacts are. Furthermore, if they know about this new “feature,” they can make some smart deductions.

For example, you’re a mergers & acquisitions consultant. You are in talks with MergeMe, Inc. A prospect from WeMergeToo calls you. Immediately after you accept their contact request, they start seeing suggestions that they might know the MergeMe Inc CEO. They don’t, but they know they just connected to you —> they can quickly figure out MergeMe Inc is talking with you also.

I also just discovered I can look up a profile of someone I don’t know (they’re neither a contact nor a friend), log out and back in, and Skype will start suggesting their contacts to me as potential contacts of my own. (I can tell because those contacts have the same last name, physical resemblance, etc.) So this can be used by stalkers, bullies, harassers, and people who wish to research someone and learn who they know.

(This feature can be used for much more targeted research. I won’t go into details here. Suffice to say that you can get pretty specific.)

Microsoft’s support page says they’re considering changing this behavior someday. Of course, by that time, much damage will have been done.

I went through and deleted some of my contacts by hand this morning (it takes forever… in a triumph of “good for Microsoft, bad for the user” they make it super easy for you to give them your social graph, and super hard for you to take it back). Even deleted, Skype kept suggesting prior contacts to me. That suggests that they continue to keep that data — and probably call history and chat history as well — for use in “helpfully” building their social graph.

Important note: deleting your contact book isn’t enough. If your associates have you in their contact book, someone can still use the same mechanism to figure out the connection.

My reaction was to cancel my Skype account altogether. But because Microsoft cares so much about me, the best I can do is schedule it to be closed in 60 days. So for the next 60 days, like it or not, my contacts are going to continue to be exposed.

See: the Microsoft Skype support article

Also note Danida_U’s response from Microsoft: there’s no way to disable this short of opting out from being contactable at all. And no, there are no plans to remove the “feature.” They want to make it easier for friends and family to find you. My suggestion: if you want your friends and family to find you, tell them your Skype ID. Problem solved.

I recommend http://zoom.us or http://appear.in as alternatives that don’t “help” you by exposing your contacts to the world.

Social media and the deliberate life: is divorce in the cards?

Social media and the deliberate life: is divorce in the cards?

Life balance, Life planning, Productivity, Technology, Time management

There are two ways to live your life: you can drive it, or be driven. Today, I’m not talking about driving your life in a grand, spiritual sense, but in a micro-sense.

You can never replace time. Once it’s gone, it’s gone. You can never get it back. You have a limited supply (though with no fuel gauge, you don’t know how much you have left. And in every waking second, you get to choose your actions in that moment.

Friday was a passion day! Someone was wrong on the internet, and it was my Higher Purpose to make sure they knew it. Six hundred words into commenting on their status update, it hit me: I waste an unbelievable amount of time on Facebook. I log in 3-5 times a day, sometimes for as much as 20 minutes at time. Let’s be very optimistic and assume that it’s only 5 times a day, 6 minutes each time. That’s 30 minutes a day, or using the 3/30 rule, three weeks a year. On Facebook. And that’s being very optimistic.

Technology is making us reactive, rather than deliberative

Now make no mistake: Facebook is engineered quite deliberately to be addictive. If someone were to engineer a physical substance to be that addictive, we would outlaw the substance and throw them in jail. As it is, Facebook being a Silicon Valley success story, we celebrate it instead. But Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, iPhones, notifications—these have trained us to react rather than deliberate. And then, rather than living our own lives, we just become random Dopamine-driven reaction machines.

Where is life getting sacrificed

Many years ago, I wrote a lot! My article ideas file has about 300 ideas waiting to be turned into articles. It hasn’t been touched since Facebook came along. My free writing time has vanished into status updates, cat picture comments, and pointless political arguments that aren’t going to convince anyone of anything.

The toxic 2016 election discussions finally got to me this evening. My friend Tim has changed my Facebook password for me, and I’m going without until after the election is over. But I’m not abandoning writing. The time that would have gone into the Book of Face is now going to go into writing articles longer than 140 characters.

I’m very curious to experience the result. It may well be that my ideas begin to become articles. Perhaps I’ll try rock climbing. Or pursuing inventing. Or take a class. Or binge-watch Black Mirror. Whatever the decision, it will be deliberate, not reactive.

It’s your turn

  1. Choose what to stop. Where are you spending your time out of habit or addiction, yet getting little joy from it? Does your time on social media give you enough joy to warrant the time? Are there hobbies that you’ve outgrown? Friends who have diverged? TV shows that just fill time?

    Eliminate one. Just for a few weeks.

  2. Start something better. Replace it with something that brings you joy, that moves your life forward. Maybe something old that would bring you joy to revisit. Or something new you’ve wanted to do but never gotten around to.

You do your experiment. I’ll do mine. And in a couple of weeks, let’s compare notes. We only have a limited amount of time on this planet, and it’s up to us to use it in ways that make our life somewhere we want to be.

Good luck!