You are a genius.

You are a genius. You don't think you are? Well Seth Godin does (he thinks I'm one too) and this is how he opens his new book Linchpin. After reading it you will see that you are, in fact, the genius he claims you to be. The only question that remains is whether you will choose to overcome the resistance.

This book is about art, politics, gifts, education, money, economics, business, society, fear, talent, love, evolution and leadership. I consider it an honor to have had the opportunity to read this book before it's public release on January 26th, and I'm humbled to be part of the crowd that is posting reviews.

Seth explains that much of what is happening in the world today is because we're in the midst of another kind of industrial revolution. Suddenly, success doesn't depend on fitting in, doing well in school, or landing the perfect job. Success now is loving what you do, creating art, and then (here's the hard part) showing it to the world by shipping it.

You don't do art? He's not talking about painting, or photography, though he certainly could be and does at times. He's talking about taking what you do, and doing it amazingly well. Doing it with emotional labor. Doing it in a way, essentially, that makes you irreplaceable.

Linchpins don't worry about a 15% unemployment rate. We're needed now more than ever before. Are you replaceable? Why?

We live in a world, Seth explains, where we are all manufacturers. The barrier to entry in the new factory of production is now a high speed internet connection and a computer. We have only just begun to see the transformation of our economy, and our society; and that this thing we call the internet is still in it's infancy. We live in a world where we can now, all of us, make something. We are all creators. We are all inventors. We are all artists.

We are all amazing.

Let me ask you a few questions. What if the education you received was designed to prepare you to work in a factory that no longer exists? What if instead of being rewarded for doing work you were rewarded for creating art? What if the "safe" thing was dangerous and the "dangerous" thing was actually safe? What if part of your brain was constantly working to hold you back?

Seth explains in Linchpin that these aren't "ifs", but instead outlines how we are, by in large, a people who have had the artist beaten out of us. We were trained to be replaceable cogs in a giant factory optimized for efficiency. A factory that, by the way, can be a row of cubicles in New York just as easily as it can be an assembly line in Detroit. Pretty much everyone in your life who has told you to fit in, that your idea was silly, that you should have a backup plan - they've all conspired to keep you from being amazing.

And then there's your lizard brain. This part of our brain controls our "fight or flight" response and other basic instincts. It's what kept us safe, alive and evolving. Now however, our Lizard brain is actually holding us back.

"Trust me", Seth seems to be saying, "you will not be eaten by a tiger if you publish that book, pitch that idea, give that speech, or write that book review."

Probably my favorite thing about this book though is the way it makes you feel about your ideas. I think the way Seth Godin would put it, is that he presents his ideas in a way that allow you to see them through your worldview. The result is, you don't feel as if you've just been given a bunch of ideas by someone, or that someone else has injected their beliefs into your brain. Rather, it's as if your own ideas have simply been shaken loose.

The skill this takes as a writer is almost beyond my comprehension.

What Seth Godin has done with Linchpin is motivated his reader to see their ideas, understand why they hold themselves back, and most importantly challenges us to create and ship.

There are few books in the world that can make you think you can be a better spouse, parent, artist, and business person all at the same time. His book is a gift to all of us, and I highly recommend you check it out.

You can buy Linchpin starting Tuesday, January 26th by way of Amazon, a regular book store, on the kindle, or as an audio book.

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In case you're interested in how I came into an early copy of the book, Seth gave his blog readers the opportunity to join him in a bit of an experiment when he wrote this post, giving us the first chance to review his new book before anyone else.

In 48 hours, Seth Godin gave away 3,000 copies of his book and raised over $100,000 for the Acumen fund.

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This post is also being published, verbatim, on another blog I write on at http://blog.duarlander.com

Duarlander Update

Readers of this blog know that a little while ago we launched Duarlander, a community based approach to application testing for the Android Operating System. In the past few days we've gotten a little press and have gained some nice traction.

We still have a ton of work to do to get the word out, but the past few days have been really exciting.

I'm also writing on the Duarlander Blog, so you may want to consider stopping by there every now and then or subscribing to that RSS feed as well.

New year, new direction, new website

I've mentioned previously that I was making some changes with my business this year, and along with this is the launch of a new website. The old site was feeling kind of out dated, and I didn't think it really shared the company's direction any longer.

When I started thinking about a site redesign, I kept coming back to the idea of having images that I could click on and then see the text from some of my favorite blog posts. I had actually started the search for someone to work with to redesign my site, but ultimately it turned out that I was going to have to do this myself. I've no doubt the people I was talking to would have done an awesome job, but I had to limit the amount of money I was going to spend.

Much to my delight, I came across a very minimalist template on ThemeForest that I liked quite a bit. ThemeForest allows you to download all the .css files, .html files, images, etc. For the non-technical of you, it's basically a pre-built website, but where you can edit the text and the images.

This template was great also because it demanded a bare minimum amount of content. It forced me to keep everything very short and to the point. My old website was filled with content, so this gave me the opportunity to see how something that's the polar opposite of my old site would perform in terms of people contacting me after visiting.

Huge thanks to Bill Labus of labusdesign for this great design. I'm really happy with how it turned out, and would love to hear what you think about it.

Time is not money

Over the next few weeks I'll be announcing some changes I'm making with Ideal Project Group, many of which are based on the following question: "If software can be a service, how can a service company be more like software?" A key component of answering this question is to charge a flat monthly fee for my services (and the results they help produce), as opposed to charging for my time by the hour.

This change is significant for more reasons than just answering the question above, and I think they're important to address in more detail.

Your supply of time is unknown

For a long time, and up until very recently, I subscribed to and bought into the notion that "time is money". I've realized lately however that this thinking is flawed.

Time is a finite resource, of which we all have unknown quantities, and it is therefore impossible to value accurately.

The simple economics of supply and demand can't even work because the supply is unknown. To make up for this, we guess at how much time we have and live our lives accordingly. We certainly try to put a dollar amount on it, but it's never really correct.

Saying "time is money" improperly devalues time by an extraordinary amount, as it's the one thing you can't make more of. You can make money, along with a host of other things, but you cannot make time.

Hourly pay penalizes efficiency and rewards inefficiency

Hopefully, as we become better at what we do, we also become more efficient. And if we're good, whatever it is we're producing is also of higher quality. The effect is we can produce better results with less effort and/or time being spent on a particular task.

This should be awesome, but if you're paid hourly, you're actually being penalized. You now need to continue spending the same amount of your one unknown resource just to remain in the same spot financially, even though you may have produced the same product/result.

Hourly pay is risky for people that are paying people hourly as well though. If you're paying someone to do a job, but paying them hourly, if they're prone to making mistakes or are just simply slow at what they do, you're being penalized. It's crazy, but there are multiple people I know who have told me stories of companies that let go of one person making $100/hr and ultimately ended up replacing them with 3 people that are paid $40/hr.

Value should be placed on what you help produce

The answer to all of this is to charge (and pay) for services the same way SaaS companies charge for their services. A flat monthly fee. By doing this, you place the value of your service where it belongs, on your results.

A month is still a unit of time of course, but instead of charging for the time itself, you begin charging for what you produce during a given time period. I think this is a world of difference.

If you're paying someone this way, then you don't need to care how much time they spend on whatever it is their working on. You only need to know that they produced what you were expecting and feel that you paid a fair amount for that result. If they were slow and it took them 50 hours a couple weeks you don't get penalized.

If they were fast, efficient, and produced a quality result, then they get a little more time to do whatever it is they please.

Aligned Incentives

The idea behind all this is that the incentives are more properly aligned. The person buying the services is protected a little more because they're buying a result, not a unit of time. And the person who's producing is being rewarded, as they should be, for doing quality work in a shorter period of time. Again, they're being paid for what they produce, not a unit of time.

This is not fixed bid

The last point I want to make about this is that it's not the same as fixed bid pricing. A lot of contractors are scared of fixed bids, with good reason, because it requires that everything about a project to be known up front which is pretty much impossible.

Instead, this pricing model simply embraces the new reality of software development (and other types of projects) by allowing two parties to agree on what the results of one's efforts should be over the course of a month and a dollar amount that those results are worth.

There are a host of other reasons I am moving to this model, including the way in which it helps provide greater clarity for a project team while also making it more flexible, that I intend to write about as well.

It is sufficient to say in the meantime however that I think this may very well be the future of the entire professional services industry, and it's the direction I'm taking my company. If you're intrigued, I hope you'll consider joining me.

Working like it's 1999

It's almost impossible for me to get through new year festivities without thinking of Prince's 1999. This year though it made me realize something; a lot of people are still working like it's 1999.

Seriously, think about how you communicated in the office 11 years ago. You were probably using Microsoft Word, email, the telephones and fax machines to communicate. You were probably going into work every day, commuting, attending meetings, and doing whatever it is that you do.

Are you really working any differently than you did in 1999?

You may work on a faster computer, with a faster internet connection, and you might be making cooler stuff. You're certainly being distracted in new ways and talking to your friends in new ways. But most likely, when it comes to communicating and collaborating with people on your projects, there's a good chance you're doing it the same way you did a decade ago.

Why?

In a world where my mom who "hates computers" is video chatting with my kids over Skype, why don't more companies have a distributed workforce? Why does your conference room have a phone instead of a video phone? (If you even need a conference room at all.) Why are contracts still signed with ink? Why are we using fax machines for anything? Why isn't everyone in a company using some sort of collaboration tool for everything? Why doesn't every department inside your company have a blog about the things they're working on?

We all have amazing tools at our disposal that allow us to get more done in less time. They can can free us from daily commutes, allow us to search for (and work with) talent from around the world, and in so many ways improve every aspect of our daily working lives.

Maybe if we start working like it's 2010, we'll be able to party like it's 1999.