Business Lessons from a Bank Robber
written by Allan on August 07, 2009
Johnny Depp, playing infamous bank robber John Dillinger, delivers the line
John Dillinger knows one day he'll be caught, the fun will stop the good times will stop rolling. But he's not looking to get out right now, he's enjoying the ride. Nothing is broke, so why fix it? In this economy everyone is struggling and I know plenty of talented people searching for work. Why? They didn't market themselves 6-24 months ago. These people got comfortable grinding out work and making money. For these people today was good, today they were making money and who doesn't love making money? It's easy to get caught up in the cycle. The grind will cause you to forget. You should never stop marketing yourself.
But Allan, you handsome bastard, I don't know how to market myself.
You should be blogging, contributing to open source projects, tweeting, talking to others and attending conferences. These actions have a long tail marketing effect. Do you think Steve and I write these tasty blog posts for fun? No I write them cause you monsters love them and retweet the link which brings new people to our apps. Going forward spend 20% of your week marketing yourself. One day you'll lose those clients, the tide will change, you will be left high and dry. Put yourself out there, being awesome is long tail.
Now go tweet the link to this article and follow me on twitter.
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Allan loves his family more than breathing. He lives in Panama City, Florida & grew up washing cars at his family's car washes. Oh and Allan hasn't worn underwear since 2004.
5 Comments
I thought you were going to suggest we give up and rob a bank.
Never mind.
Oh Boy, Such a sweet advice, But you know what? “Being Awesome” is a tough job and on-going process, For geekish guys when building products in garage, is always good to disconnect from distraction of writing and reading blogs…?
I thought another great piece of business advice to come out of the Dillinger story was to avoid working with someone who’s desperate.
For bank robbery it’s another story, but in our line of work it’s a first-class ticket to a never ending project full of poor decisions and nickel and dimery (yeah, I made that up).
@Adrian, thats how many companies get seed funding :)
@Eric, you just ruined my next blog post.
@allan, please write it anyway. I’d love to read it. I might beat you to it, though ;)