What Would Alex Bosika Do?

Yup, I’m talking about Kim Schmitz a.k.a Kim Dotcom of Megaupload fame.  Like him or dislike him, his persona has been built on persistence, adaptability, resilience, enthusiasm and passion.  No, this isn’t a discussion in support of piracy or whatever other charges has been laid.  The focus is on the persona.

SMASH! CRASH! BANG! KERPLUNK! SNAP!

He’s irritating, he’s LARGER than life, and remains masterful in the art of BIG IS BETTER and confirms that AGILITY is a key trait to success.  For a large guy, he’s proven that agility and being abominable can help you rumble in the Bronx.  Even Joe Biden, the Vice President of the United States was ruffled if the story holds true.  (See article)

He hasn’t stopped since his arrest with MegaUpload.  He keeps on ticking like an Energizer rabbit!  Heck, he even launched a music service called “Megabox”, according to GigaOM! (See article)

Look at his twitter profile. His most recent one?

Yes. Now. 

I am an artist. • I take initiative • I do the work, not the job. • Without critics, there is no art. • I am a Linchpin. I am not easily replaced. • If it’s never been done before, even better. • The work is personal, too important to phone in. • The lizard brain is powerless in the face of art. • I make it happen. Every day. • Every interaction is an opportunity to make a connection. • The past is gone. It has no power. The future depends on choices I make now. • I own the means of production—the system isn’t as important as my contribution to it. • I see the essential truth unclouded by worldview, and that truth drives my decisions. • I lean into the work, not away from it. Trivial work doesn’t require leaning. • Busywork is too easy. Rule-breaking works better and is worth the effort. • Energy is contagious. The more I put in, the more the world gives back. • It doesn’t matter if I’m always right. It matters that I’m always moving. • I raise the bar. I know yesterday’s innovation is today’s standard. • I will not be brainwashed into believing in the status quo. • Artists don’t care about credit. We care about change. • There is no resistance if I don’t allow it to defeat me. • I embrace a lack of structure to find a new path. • I am surprising. (And often surprised). • I donate energy and risk to the cause. • I turn charisma into leadership. •  The work matters. • Go. Make something happen.

— Linchpin Manifesto, Seth Godin

When you’re reasonable, you use the same strategies everyone else uses. You do things like set your goals a bit higher than last year’s, say yes to things because everyone else likes them, and pad your deadlines so you can reach them on time.

Being reasonable about your business will only bury you deeper in the pack. If you want to get out in front, you have to break away from yesterday’s conventional thinking.

Paul Lemberg shows you how unreasonable strategies can bring you unprecedented success. Through real-life case studies of successful and unreasonable businesspeople, Lemberg shows you how to

BE Uncompromising by sticking to your goals no matter what.

BE Demanding by expecting more, not less, from everybody.

BE Critical by changing old systems that just don’ t work.

BE Outrageous by creating your own Business Brain Trust.

BE Prepared for real success on your terms.

Paul Lemberg, one of the world’s leading business growth consultants, teaches top level executives and entrepreneurs how to get more out of themselves, their companies, and their clients by using strategies that sidestep the prevailing business thinking.

Being unreasonable is about assessing the situation and leaping into the unknown-not foolishly, but courageously. Only by going against the norm, and perhaps ruffling feathers, can you be competitive, innovative, and successful.

— Amazon Book Description, Paul Lemberg, Be Unreasonable

Do you have a hobby you wish you could do all day? An obsession that keeps you up at night? Now is the perfect time to take those passions and make a living doing what you love. In CRUSH IT! Why NOW Is The Time To Cash In On Your Passion, Gary Vaynerchuk shows you how to use the power of the Internet to turn your real interests into real businesses. Gary spent years building his family business from a local wine shop into a national industry leader. Then one day he turned on a video camera, and by using the secrets revealed in this book, transformed his entire life and earning potential by building his personal brand. By the end of this book, any reader will have learned how to harness the power of the Internet to make their entrepreneurial dreams come true. Step by step, CRUSH IT! is the ultimate driver′s manual for modern business.

Gary Vaynerchuk has captured attention with his pioneering, multi-faceted approach to personal branding and business. After primarily utilizing traditional advertising techniques to build his family′s local retail wine business into a national industry leader, Gary rapidly leveraged social media tools such as Twitter and Facebook to promote Wine Library TV, http://tv.winelibrary.com, his video blog about wine. Gary has always had an early-to-market approach, launching Wine Library′s retail website in 1997 and Wine Library TV in February of 2006. His lessons on social media, passion, transparency, and reactionary business are not to be missed!

— Amazon Book Description, Crush It!, by Gary Vaynerchuk

To be successful in the market today, you must possess two strategic assets: a compelling product and a meaningful platform. In this step-by-step guide, Michael Hyatt, former CEO and current Chairman of Thomas Nelson Publishers, takes readers behind the scenes, into the new world of social media success. He shows you what best-selling authors, public speakers, entrepreneurs, musicians, and other creatives are doing differently to win customers in today’s crowded marketplace. Hyatt speaks from experience. He writes one of the top 800 blogs in the world and has more than 100,000 followers on Twitter. His large and growing platform serves as the foundation for his successful writing, speaking, and consulting practice.

..snip…

— Amazon Book Description, Mike Hyatt, Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World

Somehow, I think Kim Dotcom knows what he is doing.  

He’s got:

• Platform!  
• Is #crushing it Vaynerchuck-style.  
• Is completely #unreasonable.  
• And is a #linchpin.

Above all, he’s the abominable snowman because he’s scaring the begeezus out of a lot of folks.  In Charlie Sheen-style, he may be #winning the platform wars!

The chatterbox tends to agree!

More on the Dotcom here:

• See Rick Veitch

FINALLY!

When I managed a games portfolio product for Bell, I learned about “windowing” as a content industry mechanism to “squeeze out” as much profit from core IP (content assets) as long as the industry could do it.

At the start of 2006, the gaming industry’s windowing system was just as intense as Hollywood’s film creators.  Games followed a lengthy distribution/release model of console (Xbox/PS2), PC, portable game players, online full digital sales, game rental, flash-based game for online portals, subscription products (like Bell’s GamesMania - similar to the Netflix model) and if we were lucky, Apple’s Macintosh platform.  

Note: I give some flexibility to the theory that the game publishers were open to online digital (retail) sales (e.g. EBGames Online), game rentals and subscription services.  They were nasty as hell in licensing this stuff out easily — especially publishers with FPS hit titles that were unbelievably old (2-3 years, average age)

So it was to my surprise when I saw the following trailer on Apple.com’s trailer site:

Stuck right underneath the film’s enhanced title (Last Ride), I saw:

In theatres and available on iTunes JUNE 29

WOW! They did talk about this a few year’s back.  However, it is finally here!  This is ground-breaking.  

• People are busy.  
• Long hours at the office.  
• Families to feed and care for.  
• The expense of time and cost to “get out”.   

Now in the comfort of one’s home, individual and family filmgoers can forego the travel and cost and stay home to watch a current release film through entertainment portals like iTunes.

But denying customers the films they want, on the devices they want to watch them, when they want to watch them is not a great business model. It leads to piracy, as we have discussed here many times, but more importantly it also leads to the loss of a transaction to a competing form of entertainment.

…

I’ve argued this point many times with film executives. They insist that they need their windows. They argue they need to manage access to their films to extract every last dollar from the market. That just doesn’t make sense to me. If they went direct to their customers, offered their films at a reasonable price (say $5/view net to them), and if they made their films available day one everywhere in the world, I can’t see how they wouldn’t make more money.

Fred Wilson, VC, Union Square Ventures (article here)

Hollywood “thinks” it can control distribution today.  It cannot.  Either Hollywood gives consumers the options they want today or they run the risk of revenue loss (through piracy!) from gated, old paradigm, monopoly world views that serve no one.  Operating principles which focus purely on greed through control and thus profit maximization may keep your shareholders happy… for a while.  Then piracy changes the numbers.  Consumers won’t be happy.  Shareholders won’t be happy.  Film companies and publishers won’t be happy.  The studios won’t be happy.  

So embrace technology and enable choice that customers want.  Give them what makes sense to them in these complex, modern times.  Shift with the trends or the trends will force you to shift.

Personally, I am not sure how long iTunes (Apple) has been involved with current release content but I think it is a great move by Hollywood.  Afterall, most people probably would have not considered the movie in the theatre until the rental window.  Now, they can see it sooner than rental.

Game-changing.  Better late than never.

For additional views on content ecosystems, here’s a good article by Robert Tercek.

The subject of piracy is a complex one. Old world views dictate the matter as a copyright problem. However, in a recent engagement with Robert, he correctly suggests that the industry faces a business model problem. It is a point of view that I’ve been completely aligned for more than a decade.

Robert says:

“My view on piracy remains the same: when content is made available at a reasonable price in the format that consumers desire, piracy immediately declines. The problem that the content industry faces in the digital network is a business model problem, not a copyright problem. The outdated practice of “windowing” content simply doesn’t work in two-way networks.”

No doubt about it. Available cheaply, easily and with less restrictions, MORE people would pay for instant, streaming, less windowed content. Alex.