Article in City Weekly about JetBlue founder David Neeleman. I’m always interested in what he does. He’s king of CRM and serving the customer. I haven’t finished reading it. If you do, tell me what you think.

How being passionate about what you do drives your success. Radical careering blog talks about how you propel yourself by believeing in what you do. If you put your all into something that keeps sucking life from you, move on out.

Reminds me of a blind date I had this year. Good guy, but his career bugged me. He operates a Burger King, which pays well but he doesn’t like it, for over 10 years. He’s now a single dad. He’s getting up at 4am on Sunday mornings and dealing with high school and college kids all day. It pays too well to change.

I respect bringing home the bacon, but the other part of me, is WHY put up with something you don’t like for that long? It’s not a divorce for heaven’s sake. I took major pay cuts to do what I’m doing now. But do I regret it? No way.

Work takes a lot of energy. I love what I do. Of course there are up/downs. But I love working on something so dynamic and interesting. Why people do what they do, how the internet helps them do what they do, and what I can do to influence their choices or help them. I can’t imagine doing anything that I hated that long. We live in a free country, a blessed condition, may as well take full advantage.

37 signals blogs about how when you’re starting a business, most muddle through it. They have no idea their company will one day be big. They essentially wing it.

“No one actually knows what they’re doing”

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Great article yesterday about Back to Basics. When their management reached their capacity, they didn’t get more cash by going public, they hired people more experienced in running larger companies. I respect that. I’ve worked for startups and they’ve all hit this stage. Some of them got outside help and stayed around. Most didn’t and are out of business. It’s always a pain point… success can kill you just as much as failure if you don’t manage it well.

Check out what Jonas writes about Google today. I hope people comment. Bill Gates announced that MSN paid search wants to find a way for the end user to share the ad profits. I just want them all to give us all the information, so we know the exact rules of the game. Google does have an unfair advantage by controlling access to vital information. I just wonder how MSN will pull this off.

We had blogs, then podcasts, now vlogs (video blogs). New vocabulary all the time. Changing the media stronghold. I saw the movie “Good Night and Good Luck”. It addressed the power of the networks & bemoaned the dumbing down of the medium. The networks got stale with too much power. They started entertaining more than informing. But in this case I see a bright future.

Disperse the power and the result is more creativity (capitalism in a sense). We’ll also have more control over what we see and hear. Those who want garbage can have it, but the rest of us can access a lot of history and experts in ways we haven’t been able to before. Plus we can prevent our kids from seeing trash. We can block content we don’t want. We can see the good stuff, produced by a broad range of people, on our own time.
Good news.

Yahoo! I’m writing a piece on affiliate marketing for Connect magazine. I’ll link to it when it publishes, probably in the Spring.

Affiliate marketing is a great way for smaller businesses to leverage their marketing. My friend Peter is going to co-author it with me. We’ll attend the Affiliate Summit conference in Vegas in January.

If you know a Utah-based company (less than 50 employees) that runs a successful affilaite marketing program, please let me know.

Here is a list of books to read about building your career and job searching:

Radical Careering: 100 Truths to Jumpstart your Job, your Career, and Your Life.
(Says it's good for tech people with short attention spans)

Knock 'Em Dead 2006: The Ultimate Job Seeker's Guide (a classic on job searches)

Whoops! I'm in Business: A Crash Course in Business Basics (maybe my brother should get this, he seems to be suddenly in the treadmill selling business).

Six-Figure Freelancing: The Writer's Guide to Making More Money (sounds enticing doesn't it?!)

To Be of Use: The Seven Seeds of Meaningful Work. (working for the common good and making money doing it)

The World's Greatest Resumes (published by Ten Speed Press, a good quality thinking sort of book publisher).

And I still haven't finished, Never Eat Alone! I'm reading the great dating book called, How to Get a Date Worth Keeping. My friend has dramatically improved her dating life after applying the priniciples. I like the approach. If you're not dating and are ready/want to, it's time to do something about it. They say it guarantees you'll date more or your money back. I'm not dating but someday I will.

Any book recommendations from readers out there? Put it in the comments section.

My friend John just started an entrepreneur blog. Welcome to the blog world!

I need to update my links and add him to my bloglog.