Today's Economy is Rewarding Ideas, Art, Innovation, Deep-Thinking and Daring… Can You Make the Change?

It couldn't have come at a moment too soon for a world economy faltering (definitely including Japan's too) that the time has come for the economy to start rewarding people for having initiative and new ideas. The time has come for our economy to start rewarding people for results and not process.

The old order of putting in long hours and sacrificing family life for work (and the time for truly living like a real human being and spending time with the family while attending to their needs) is coming to an end. The days of long hours of work in order to be "productive" (or what was confused as "productive") and actually achieving very little have fallen by the wayside. The days of process orientation at work is ending for our societies.


What I mean by that is people are starting to figure out that just sitting at the office and spending time (because everyone else is doing it) is no longer the norm. Working smart and working efficiently so that when you are working you are focused and incredibly productive is the new norm.


Last night, I received this from Seth Godin and really thought that we are on the exact same plane in this way of thinking:

Time doesn’t scale

But bravery does.

The challenge of work-life balance is a relatively new one, and it is an artifact of a world where you get paid for showing up, paid for hours spent, paid for working.

In that world, it's clearly an advantage to have a team that spends more time than the competition. One way to get ahead as a freelancer or a factory worker of any kind (even a consultant at Deloitte) was simply to put in more hours. After all, that made you more productive, if we define productivity as output per dollar spent.

But people have discovered that after hour 24, there are no more hours left. Suddenly, you can't get ahead by outworking the other guy, because both of you are already working as hard as Newtonian physics will permit.

Like I mentioned, the old order of putting in long hours to try to beat the competition are over. Do you really think you can do more and work longer and cheaper than a factory worker in China? Or an illegal immigrant from South America? I've written on this subject before. In that article, a world-famous chef was giving me advice on work and survival of the fittest. Please refer to: Quality Over Quantity, Especially as You Get Older. the chef told me:

"Mike, as you get older, you must always be concerned with these costs, but you must mostly be concerned with having your name associated with quality. When we are young, there are many in our same field of work. But as we get older, the field of people doing our job narrows down to just a few..."

...

"That's is why, Mike, as you get older, you must concentrate on quality and delivering the best. If you decide to concentrate on quantity, you will lose. Because when it comes to a quantity issue, then you start dealing with lower quality... You will not be able to beat a younger competitor... You will not be able to beat a McDonald's."

It is no longer useful, nor should it be acceptable, for someone to be sitting at the office basically watching the clock and accomplishing nothing. THat person needs to break the mold and get outside and see the real world, get real world experiences, see how the real world works and spend time with family to reattach their minds with how normal people live. These workers needs to reattach to what normal people think and what they want. They need to get out of their box.

Several months ago, I was out on a sales call with a salesman in my company. He is a very hard worker and a great salesman. I want to keep him and worry about him as my company does not yet pay him what he worth. When I met him for the sales call he looked completely exhausted. The night before he had been out with clients and didn't arrive home until 3:00 am. That happens a lot for salesmen in Japan. We went to our meeting and, after one hour, it ended. As we walked to the station I asked him where he was then headed. He answered;


"Back to the office."


"Do you have more meetings or urgent matters to attend to?" I asked. He answered in the negative but added,


"I have to go back to the office because everyone is still there."


I told him that it was ridiculous for him to do so and that doing so was actually counterproductive as he'd be still tired tomorrow (in Japanese it's called, 効率が悪い "koritsu warui" - something like results are inefficient"). I told him that we don't do things that way and instead of falling asleep at his desk, I'd prefer that when he is at work he is doing a great job and being efficient. I sent him home.

The new economy - for you and me at least - is not going to be "process oriented" (we won't beat the Chinese and Indonesians for that) but it is going to be "results oriented." Sitting at a desk for 12 hours a day being inefficient is a waste of everyone's time. Using your work time efficiently and effectively is the future - your future.


Doing a good 5 hours of work a day and actually getting something great done beats 14 hours of plodding along.


Can you make the change?

Personal Blog Passes 1 Million Page Views in 1.6 Years

Thanks to everyone. Thank you so much!


By the time I post this article, this blog will have surpassed 1 million page views in 1.6 years. That's pretty awesome if I say so myself. That may not be the record but it must be pretty close for a guy who just started blogging with no fame or corporate backing to help him out. Thanks so much to everyone. I could never have done it without you all.

Major companies can get a million page views, they have status and name-value. But for a personal blog on a very niche subject like mine (Japan, marketing and media - and in English no less), that is an incredible number. I have asked a few Internet expert friends about it and they told me that it was "amazing." I like to think so.


When it comes to blogging about Japan in English, I would venture to guess that there may not be another 3 or 4 personal blogs in the entire world that have surpassed 1 million views! It is especially rare when you consider that I never blog at all about gadgetry or gaming. (I do know that there was a very excellent ramen one that I passed by one time that did have more than a million views and I've looked for it to show you, but couldn't find it.)


I like blogging. But there is frustration... Well, I should say that blogging, in and of itself, doesn't frustrate me that much but when I am asked for marketing advice (mostly buzz marketing of which blogging is an integral component), the frustration comes in when people (especially corporate types) - just don't seem to understand... They give lip service to blogging and her sister "Organic Marketing", but when push comes to shove, they just don't "get it." They invariably will go back to old ways and pay money to have their paid advertising show their company at the top of a Google search result...


Oh hopelessly lost souls!



You've really got to stop and wonder why in the year 2012, when the Internet is so integral to our lives and thing like, say, Facebook has over 750 users that most corporations have a Marketing section whereby not a single one of them blog... 44% of Japanese companies don't even use Social Media... And those that do, do it poorly... Alas...

These sorts make great bloggers.

Blogging is like being a mad scientist in a laboratory: You are basically on your own trying out different subjects, titles, word combinations, file namings for images, tags and keywords to see what gets good results. There really isn't any textbook for doing this. The closest thing is David Meerman Scott's New Rules of Marketing and PR but that's already nearly five years old! And, in the life of the Internet, five years is ancient history! (By the way, David Meerman Scott and I have corresponded and he greatly encouraged me to start this very blog!)


Here's some of the great things I've learned through blogging over this last year:


1) How to get #1 rankings on a Google search without paying any money


2) How to do the same for images that will lead to your website without paying any money


3) Credibility is very hard to get, it is nearly impossible to buy. Blogging and Organic Marketing are truly credible methods to get the message out.


4) Merely by blogging and experimenting, you will understand more than 98% of all people - even Internet engineers - how marketing works (or doesn't work) on the Internet.

Blogging is a study experience for me. I do this to learn new techinques. Things are always changing the only way to do it is to, well, do it. Like I said, this blog is like my laboratory and I am the mad scientist. I've gotten pretty good at figuring out how this all works... But, I must admit, one thing doesn't change: In Japan, sex and cute sell. 


It frustrates the beans out of me when I write something that I think is really good and intellectually fulfilling, yet it gets few reads; but when I write something with lots of photos of sexy Japanese girls, it will get thousands of reads... Er, maybe i should say, "views" from all over the world. 


But, even that is a learning experience because I know how to take the exact same content and get a few hundred views or get 100,000 views. There is a method to the madness!  


The things that make me happy the most about blogging is getting nice mail and intelligent comments, even if they disagree, and meeting new people. 


Blogging can be exhausting, but it can also be rewarding. Through writing, I think I help myself to become a better person as writing is excellent therapy for the soul. In that way, I suppose, it wouldn't have mattered if I had never even reached 100 readers.


As an old Zen Buddhist saying goes about charcoal ink painting: "The valuable thing is the moment of painting, not the the final picture."


Absolutely the same can be said about blogging.


My next goal is to hit 2 million page views in January 2013. Thank you so very much for your visiting this blog sometimes. I do sincerely appreciate your time and most kind consideration.

NOTE: Finally, please allow me to indulge myself in this self-congratulatory message and to thank my friends who helped me to get here: First off, my friend, Lew Rockwell, who gave me my very first break in blogging in 2004; Koji Kamibayashi "Nihon wo Genki ni Shitai;" My friend Mish Shedlock over at the Global Trend Economic Analysis Blog; Yuka Rogers "Official Blog," David Meerman Scott, Tim Williams,  Jimbo "Jimbo's Japan," Andrew Joseph "It's a Wonderful Rife," Ryu Oni "Monkeyman in Japan," and so many others (especially bloggers) who have come and gone over these last 20 months. Oh and I have to thank Seth Godin for his great books and the one he autographed for me!

Finally, to my friends and to those who are thinking about blogging; Most bloggers don't last more than 2 ~ 3 months. It gets frustrating. You write your heart out and then only three people read what you wrote. In the first two months of this blog, in my archives, I have many tips on how to get more page views, if you are thinking about blogging, or want to know how to get more views, perhaps you can find something useful there. I hope so.

Or, you can do it for yourself... That, my friends, is where, I think, you'll find the real rewards.

Once again, thank you to everyone!

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