Books

6 Mind-Blowing Learnings From The Grateful Dead (and How They Can Help Your Business)

by Roy Osing
Author of Be Different or Be Dead

Invaluable things you can do to BE Cherished by your Fans

1. Mix it up. Constantly innovate. Give your Fans a different look (value packages, promotions, events, fun) as often as you can. The Dead decided what songs to play when they began each concert – songs “on the run”. Risky? Yes. Original? Yes. Did their Fans love them for it? YES!

2. Enable your customers to fulfill themselves. Do what THEY want. The key here is the “Serving” mentality. Find out what they want and desire and take them there. The Dead created a bubble for their Fans and allowed them to reach emotional highs.

3. Focus on the experience not the product. The Dead did not try to sell records. They wanted to create mind-blowing experiences for their Fans. And guess what? (They sold lots of records).

4. Save the best deals for your best customers. Using Special Promotional Deals to entice people away from their supplier is a fool’s game in any event. What makes you think that if someone takes your Special Offer they won’t leave you in a heartbeat if someone else gives them one as well? You can’t grow your business by catering to the “promiscuous” crowd of constant switchers. Furthermore, what will your loyal customers say when they find out that you are not offering the special deal to them? (I can see their taillights already). The Dead ALWAYS saved the best ticket prices, seats and deals for their Fans. The result? The most successful touring band in history.

5. Do the opposite of what your competitors are doing. Observe ‘em and do a 180. You can’t stand-out if you copy. The Dead allowed their Fans to record their music in concert. No other band did. The 180 strategy created uniqueness and remark-ability that made them unforgettable.

6. Communicate with your Fans incessantly. AND figure out how to make it easier for them to communicate with one another. The Dead were fanatics when it came to having conversations with their Fans before Social Media arrived. Their Fans responded by not only attending concerts and other Dead Events, but also by talking up The Dead to their friends. The Dead virus spread…

You can learn a great deal about business from the most interesting and surprising sources.

Check out The Dead.

You can purchase a copy of Roy Osing’s book Be Different or Be Dead by following this link.

As Interest Rates Fall, Civilizations Rise

By Todd G. Buchholz,
Author of Rush: Why You Need and Love the Rat Race

As an economist, the best measure of time I can find is the prevailing interest rate. When interest rates are high, it tells us that tomorrow counts for less. It is not worth investing today. From a business point of view, very few financed projects will payoff if interest rates are high (the “hurdle rate”). However, when interest rates are low, it tells us that we should invest today because any return will be prized more in the future. During the German hyperinflation of the early 1920s, prices and interest rates jumped higher each hour. The price of a cup of coffee could go up as the waitress was pouring. Teachers got paid at ten a.m. and brought their banknotes to the playground so their relatives could pick them up and then buy things immediately. Likewise, the hyperinflation of Zimbabwe in recent years acted like a neutron bomb on the economy. Coincidentally, in 1919, when Yeats wrote “things fall apart; the centre cannot hold,” interest rates were jumping sharply, the British pound slid in value, and Europe was preparing for a terrible bout of post-World War I inflation. Elsewhere, I set out “the Buchholz Hypothesis,” arguing that the crime rate is importantly a function of interest rates. This solves the puzzle of the Great Depression. Most commentators on crime say that a lousy economy leads to crime. But during the Great Depression, crime rates fell, as they did in 2008 and 2009. Why? Because interest rates fell, too. People did not give up on tomorrow, even as they suffered economic distress.
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Braille Book Goes on Sale Before Print Edition

It’s not often one reads of a Braille edition of a book being released before a print copy; in fact, it may never have happened before.

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Dethroning the King

I have never wanted to crack open a Budweiser more than in the past few days as I read Julie MacIntosh’s Dethroning the King, a page-turning account of the hostile 2008 takeover of the King of Beers by Belgian-based brewer InBev.

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Books: Vordak the Incomprehensible: How to Grow Up and Rule the World

When was the last time anyone said something nice about a super villain? (Bill Gates doesn’t count.) Naturally the last label Vordak the Incomprehensible would want attached to his name is “nice”; nevertheless, in his latest tome, “How to Grow Up and Rule the World”, the infamous bad guy charitably imparts wisdom attained from decades of super villainy onto the youth of today.

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