Dave Morin

In my line of work, I have this conversation quite a bit. After I left school, having run a company throughout college, I decided to head to Silicon Valley without much of a clue what I would find. In fact, I’d never even fathomed living in California. I’m from Montana. So, in my humble and short existence here in the “Valley”. Here’s my 7 step guide to getting a great job:

1. Follow your heart. This is number one for a reason. If you stop reading now, at least heed this advice. You heart knows the path you should follow, regardless of what your head may think. Your heart always knows.

2. Know your passions. This means a couple of things. Mostly knowing what it is that makes you tick. For me, its developing world changing technology and communicating that technology to people. I also know that I love doing valuable things which have a huge impact on a worldwide scale. Secondly, its knowing what does NOT make you tick. Dig deep for your strengths.

3. Network. Now, I don’t mean attending some kind of “networking” event that your school/company puts on. Those are worthless. I mean sitting down with people who share the same passions that you do. Schedule breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Never eat alone. But, always remember, that networking is not JUST about networking. It’s about sincerely and passionately meeting and understanding people and figuring out how you can help them. NOT, how they can help you.

4. Follow up. Always follow up. I speak quite a bit, in a lot of different cities and situations across America. Everytime I speak to a group of undergrads, I give everyone my card and mention this as one of the most important things they can take from my talk. I rarely hear from 20% of the room. ALWAYS follow up. If you follow the rules in #3, you should have something from your meeting with that person to follow up on. Some kind of action you were able to take to benefit that person. Follow up with them, and talk about it.

5. Find an advocate. The more you network, the more likely you are to find an advocate who may eventually turn into a mentor. Its almost like dating. As you navigate the business world, you’ll click with some people, others you won’t. That’s ok. Keep going, following rule #1.

6. Give free samples. Whether you are a proven guru in your field, or just getting started. Business is built on trust and relationships. Give away your expertise, passion, and heart. It’ll translate into trust with your advocate, or the decision maker as they decide on supporting you.

7. Persist. I can’t put enough emphasis on this one. After you’ve followed your gut, nailed your strengths to the wall, found people in what you want to do, followed up with those people, and found an advocate, you have to make sure your advocates are fighting for you. Treat it like a project. Check in with them on an ongoing basis. You create your own opportunity.

Written from North Beach – San Francisco, California

Popularity: 9% [?]

Two new things to me over at Amazon. Here I was innocently searching out a few good reads for my Amazon shopping cart, and I stumble upon a new and interesting use for tags: concordance. Wow! What an interesting way to look at the content of a book.

Check it out.

Written from Squaw Valley USA – Lake Tahoe, California

Popularity: 4% [?]

Provide a service to writers, but more specifically bloggers, who want to evaluate their writing. This service would provide bloggers feedback on their blogs, and allow them to continue their education on evolving their voice and writing style.

Written from Cupertino, California

Popularity: 5% [?]

Guy Kawasaki just launched a new blog a couple of weeks ago. He’s one of the coolest guys around, and one of the best authors as well. He talks a lot about entrepreneurship, vc, and other cool projects he has been a part of. But, all around, he has some great advice based on a plethora of experience.

In one of his recent posts, he talked about the top ten lies of venture capitalists, then went on to talk about the top ten lies of entrepreneurs. Jason Fried offered back some solid feedback. And, Scoble already has as well.

It is great to see Guy shaking up the blogosphere with interesting ideas. But, I’d like to point back to his post on the art of intrapreneurship. Which, I think is as important for new entrepreneurs to think about as “normal” entrepreneurship.

At a talk I gave at Berkeley a few months ago, I spoke to a group of young entrepreneurs about the art of the intrapreneurship, and its relevance in the family of entrepreneurship as they think about moving into the “real world” after graduation. You don’t have to be “doing a startup” to be an entrepreneur. Sometimes sealing the internal support, budgets, resources, and just plain passion is as hard as chasing the dream with an all-new team and a set of VCs. And, don’t forget, you will have to do this all through an established and throughly rigid culture.

If you dream of fundamentally changing the way your group/division/company does business. Be an intrapreneur. It can be just as rewarding.

Popularity: 4% [?]

I’ve been running into an interesting conversation lately regarding marketing of independent artist’s music. This mostly comes from my love for local music, and a bunch of really random serendipitous meetings I’ve had recently. One on the plane last night with a sound engineer and classical guitarist who loves his music, but never really thought about how he could get it to the masses. I’ll start this quick and dirty lesson with a few fast tips to get you moving:

1) Join MySpace, start an artist page, and start talking to people about your music. This gives you a place to engage people online, talking about your music, creating a conversation channel.

2) Look into a music aggregation service which can get your stuff into the iTunes Music Store. The preferred favorite is CDBaby. I’m told, from a couple of my friends I recently referred there, that they have fantastic service (and you keep 91% of the profit!). This gets you an online buying channel.

3) Think about ways to drive back through these two channels at every single one of your live events (or even to just your friends). Use simple business cards or postcards and hand them out in the crowd. Make sure these cards tell people to join the conversation about your music at myspace.com, and to purchase your music online through the iTunes Music Store.

Make sure everyone there understands those two things before they leave: 1) where they can talk more about your music with other fans AND 2) where they can buy your music quickly and easily.

There are over 45 million members on MySpace, and the entire network was generated by giving independent artists a connection to people who may enjoy their type of music. What if you could find just 1000 (out of 45 million!) people to enjoy your music on MySpace? What if they told a few of their friends?

I love this! What a fantastic way to turn your passion into a side venture.

Enjoy

Popularity: 6% [?]