Christopher S. Penn – Marketing AI Keynote Speaker

Category: On ko chi shin

Social media success and the idea of sensei

Sensei is an interesting term in Japanese culture and the martial arts. Traditionally, most people translate it as “teacher”, and the term is applied as an honorific to doctors, lawyers, teachers, and others of high esteem. If you dissect its meaning and characters, it literally translates as “before born” in the sense of someone having gone before you, blazing the trail ahead. A sensei is someone who has gone before you and has experienced all of the things that you as a student are running into now.

For example, in a particular martial arts kata (routine or exercise) I remember stumbling over one movement time and again, and my teacher helped me to get past that because he’d made those exact mistakes when he went through the exercise. Now, as an apprentice instructor at the Boston Martial Arts Center, I see my juniors going through that exercise… and making those same mistakes, which I then help them to get past, relying on my teacher’s advice to me.

What does any of this have to do with social media? Here’s what: unlike martial arts, where you have to rely on slightly fuzzy (or very fuzzy, depending on how many times you’ve been hit in the head) memories of what someone has gone through, in social media you have a gigantic written record in our blog histories. Justin Levy made this point at SMJ Boston, and it can’t be underscored enough.

Want to know how folks like Chris Brogan or CC Chapman got to where they are today? Want to achieve things similar to what they’ve done? Look back in their blog histories. Look what they did to get things rolling – like Chris Brogan’s Grasshopper New Media (does anyone remember that?) or CC’s Random Foo productions. Look back at the original PodCamp from 3 years ago (seems longer than that, doesn’t it?) and see how that got started.

(Food for thought: if you live on Twitter, this historical record is much, much harder to come by. Keep your blog alive too.)

The end goal of a sensei in the martial arts is for a student to surpass their teacher so that they can explore, learn, and grow together as colleagues rather than in a rigid hierarchy of student and teacher forever. Once you get to a certain level of expertise, each begins to learn new insights and share them with the other so that both can flourish. Each has something to teach the other and to learn from the other.

As you develop your social media skills, as you look back at the written record of where we’ve all been and where things are going, remember to catalog your own insights so that when your juniors are coming up through the social media ranks, you can share with them all you’ve learned as well.

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March 19, 2009
A Ninja Response to Chris Brogan's Pirates

A Ninja Response to Chris Brogan’s Pirates

I of course couldn’t let the pirates win out over at Chris Brogan’s blog, so without further ado, a followup commentary on the beauty of pirate ships: one shot.

The ninja clans of old were fundamentally a mix of esoteric practitioners of mind sciences mixed with samurai who were on the losing sides of battles and didn’t feel like killing themselves for their overlord’s strategic screw-ups. Many were just young kids – Daisuke Nishina, the founder of the Togakure Ryu lineage, started out life as a ninja at the ripe old age of 16, having been enlisted in an army that lost to a neighboring overlord.

As such, ninja battle strategies focused a lot on influence, stopping problems before they became problems (because you didn’t have the resources to wage all-out war), stealth, espionage, influence and persuasion from afar, using force multipliers, and above all else, an emphasis on the practical. Much of this is still transmitted in the essence of the ninja martial arts taught today by students of Hatsumi sensei’s Bujinkan method, especially those who are students of Stephen K. Hayes.

One of the timeless lessons learned very early on is this:

You will probably only get one shot.

Whatever your strategy is, whatever your goal or game plan is, the world is changing too fast. It’s a moving target. You can’t waver or hesitate, because in the time it takes you to make a decision and stick to it, you’ll get run over by your competition in business, and you’ll lose your life in battle.

Think about it for a second. If you’re facing someone else, both of you have three foot razor blades, and both of you want to go home. In all likelihood, one of you probably won’t. If you’re especially unlucky, neither will. You have just one shot, because in sword fighting, there’s not a whole lot of parrying or dueling. A sword fight between skilled swordsmen lasts a fraction of a second.

So commit. Pick one of the strategies that Chris mentioned, or one of the many other plans or strategies you’ve got out there, set out your battle plan, and then do it. Don’t walk into your office or your boss’ office in a week with completely different plans or whatever the fad of the day is, because that’s the equivalent of trying to change up as your opponent’s blade is headed for your neck. Waver, hesitate, question yourself, fail to commit, and your opponent wins, in swordfighting and in business.

Trivia: did you know there actually were ninja pirates? It’s true.

Shameless plug. If you’re in the Boston area, and want to try your hand at learning actual ninjutsu, visit:

The Boston Martial Arts Center
The Winchendon Martial Arts Center

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October 13, 2008
Choking in clarity

Choking in clarity

Friday nights at the Boston Martial Arts Center are always interesting. It’s the night that black belts get to train and focus on material relevant to them (one of the few nights/evenings exclusively dedicated to advanced training).

This past Friday, we were looking at various choke techniques to put someone’s lights out if need be. I thought I’d point out that this is advanced training so that no one gets the mistaken idea that if you’re interested in trying out martial arts, this sort of stuff won’t happen to you on the first day you show up. Ten years after the first day, maybe, but certainly not day one!

What’s interesting about choke techniques is that when you’re on the receiving end, they bring astonishing clarity to your mind. Everything and anything else going on in your head immediately ceases to be important when you’re running out of air or on the verge of passing out. Even food and water are irrelevant because your body knows it’s in trouble if something doesn’t change real soon. The economy? Not even on the radar. Troubles at home or work? Not important.

Nothing matters because your body senses it’s in mortal danger.

Believe it or not, this is a good thing. This sort of training creates some intense presence of mind, because you can’t be thinking or worrying about anything else. Nothing else matters. It immediately narrows your focus down to the most important things in the world to you – the air supply to your lungs and the blood supply to your brain.

Sometimes it takes a shock like a well-applied choke to put the rest of life in perspective. The economy is a legitimate concern. So is the climate crisis, war, poverty, disease, etc. However, training like this helps you re-prioritize because you can’t afford to focus on anything else. You have to solve the most immediate problem first.

I’m not suggesting that you go out and have someone throttle you if you feel like you’re out of focus, but to the extent that you can have experiences which help you snap out of unfocused anxiety mindsets, you’ll be able to achieve greater clarity.

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October 13, 2008
11 years on the path, still going

11 years on the path, still going

Over the weekend, I had the opportunity and privilege to attend New England Warrior Camp (NEWC) 2008, the 11th year of the event. For those not involved in the martial arts, NEWC is a 3 day, 2 night seminar that gets together practitioners of the Bujinkan ninjutsu family for an intense amount of training. This year’s theme was Togakure Ryu ninjutsu, one of the ninja methods for self-protection.

There’s so much to be said about camp that can’t really be put into words. It’s literally training of every kind for 48 hours, sundown Friday to sundown Sunday. You wake up in the morning on Saturday and Sunday and do some fairly intensive fitness methods, from stealth running through a forest (stumbling and falling will really hurt) to hiking up Nobscot Mountain and seeing the Atlantic from 30 miles away. Training is conducted by the master instructors in the New England area, and you’re guaranteed to walk away both full of information and badly confused.

A lot of the training is what Stephen K. Hayes calls “investment training” – stuff that you learn in a very short amount of time, but then literally take years to work on and process, until much later down the path, you finally “get” what that training was about so long ago. This entire camp was a lot of investment training, working on ideas from the Togakure family method of keeping your community safe from harm.

One of the highlights of the weekend was the opportunity to do some tameshigiri, or live sword cutting. Master instructor and swordsmith Matt Venier gave us the opportunity to use live, sharp swords on bundled bamboo mats, which traditionally were used to simulate cutting against an opponent. They’re a diagnostic tool to indicate your level of precision with a sword – a clean cut with no curves or seriously ragged edges is the sign of a minimally competent swordsman. An explosion of bamboo bits all over the floor indicates that lots more practice is needed.

I’m proud to say that I’m minimally competent and have the picture to prove it, though as with everything, lots more practice is needed on my part.

After 11 years of attending these camps, after 15 years of training in this particular method of martial arts, I’m still excited and happy to be practicing, still learning, still finding all sorts of things that I can add to make myself a better practitioner. It’s equally inspiring to look at my teachers and see what’s possible, what lies ahead on the path, and know that with practice, I’ll get there, too.

Many thanks to everyone who made this camp excellent, but most especially camp organizer Ken Savage of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center for creating and organizing the camp year after year. As a fellow organizer of conferences and events, I know just how much stress and duress a community-focused event can be, and I admire him for being able to pull off better and better camps every year. I hope that PodCamp, the event I created with Chris Brogan, will be able to celebrate its 11th birthday.

For those of you considering taking up the martial arts – any martial art – give it a try. Give yourself a month and see how it fits you. Martial arts training isn’t for everyone, but if you never set foot on the path, you’ll definitely never know for sure. And hey, if you’re in the Boston area, there’s always the Boston Martial Arts Center, too, where I train.

11 years on the path and still going…

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October 7, 2008
The Wheel of Time Turns

The Wheel of Time Turns

Fall is coming around again, and as it does, the echoes of autumns past come with it. Nostalgia for times past are inevitable as the growing season ends and we buckle down for winter’s arrival; Halloween in older traditions is said to be the day when the veil between living and dead is the thinnest. This brings to mind an expression one of my teachers, Ken Savage of the Winchendon Martial Arts Center, talks about at the beginning of every autumn’s New England Warrior Camp.

If you look only at the calendar, time looks like a loop. It’s September again, it’s your birthday again, it’s this or that again. History repeats itself, and except for maybe feeling a little bit older when you blow out the candles, time doesn’t feel different.

If you look away from the calendar as a loop and see a day as a notch on a wheel, then you can look past the cyclical repetition that permeates our days (“Monday again?”) to a more broad perspective. Like the wheel of a wagon on a trail, the same day, week, month, or year mark comes around again and again, but we forget to look at the progress the wheel makes on the road behind and in front of it. We forget to take a moment to see how far we’ve come in one turn of the wheel, and to look ahead for what adventures await us on the path in front of us.

Take a moment right now to reflect on your journey so far. How far have you traveled and how much have you achieved in the last year? How much different is your life in one turning of the wheel?

Stephen K. Hayes has an especially powerful insight into the familiar Zen painting of a brushed circle. From a limited perspective, it’s just a circle, signifying completion and no end or beginning, but if you delve into it, you see that it’s a spiral being observed from the top down. The brush is illustrating your ascent up the spiral towards achievement, and though it may look like a circle, it’s so much more if you have the broadness of mind to see past the surface.

Life is all too easy to let slip away in meetings, appointments, and routines, only to wake up one day and realize the wagon wheel is at the end of its journey. Know now that though the wheel returns to the same notch every so often, it only travels on any given part of your life’s trail once. Be sure to enjoy the trip before it’s over.

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August 26, 2008
Manessa, Ninjutsu, and MySpace

Manessa, Ninjutsu, and MySpace

In December 2007, I had the privilege and honor of being invited to participate in a search effort for Manessa Donovan, a 15 year old niece of Christopher Wilson, the host of Answers for Freelancers. Manessa went missing just before Thanksgiving, and regular search efforts were not generating results. Chris reached out to his network, and within 5 days had found her.

My part in this epic was small. Almost all of the credit for finding Manessa goes to Chris Wilson, who answered call after call, email after email, and endured torrents of junk and spiteful comments from petty people with nothing better to do than to slag on others.

What happened in my part of Manessa’s recovery was based on an old ninjutsu strategy called joei no jutsu. Chris knew that Manessa had a MySpace account and kept in touch with a lot of her friends there. While other search efforts were underway, I took it upon myself to create a separate MySpace profile just for this campaign, with as many photos and other information on it that I could find from Manessa’s profile, as well as the information Chris had compiled about the people she was with.

The next step, after creating that profile and ensuring the information was clear, with a sense of urgency and obvious call to action, was to start grabbing Manessa’s network. I invited every one of her friends that she was connected to, which was about 300 or so, to the profile.

Chris knew the rough geographic area that Manessa was in, so I recruited folks in her age range in those zip codes as well. Whether or not the people knew her, they had clear images and information if they ran into her in a fast food place or other public location.

The third category I recruited was the media – there were a decent number of media personalities and media outlets in the general geographic region where Manessa was reported to be.

The final category I recruited was anyone who self-identified as a member of law enforcement in the geographic region, sort of an informal, unofficial Amber Alert.

All of this took about 3 hours to do, from start to finish.

Almost immediately, within hours of setting up the profile, information began to flow it rapidly. At this point, I disconnected from the accounts and turned over all the login credentials to Chris so he could manage it directly.

Joei no jutsu is a ninjutsu strategy for managing a network in a time of war. The premise is that during a time of crisis, the enemy will recruit just about any able-bodied person into its armies because they’re short, and in doing so, they relax background checks and other procedures that they’d normally use to find infiltrators.

Ordinarily, on any social network, trying to “infiltrate” a network is difficult because outsiders are not necessarily welcome to a person’s social circle. Joei no jutsu in the age of MySpace means setting up a credible, truthful, informative, and urgent campaign, and then messaging other existing networks rapidly. People are more likely to respond, especially in a missing persons case like this, if you present a clear, unquestionable case. This tendency let me get connected rapidly with folks, get the message out, and encourage network members to spread the word to THEIR friends.

If you’re a parent of a child who participates on social networks like MySpace, you owe it to yourself and your child to learn how to use these networks and how to leverage them in a time of need.

January 7, 2008
For every shadow there must be light

For every shadow there must be light

Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff coined the slogan “For every light that shines, a shadow falls” as part of his audio drama, Shadow Falls. The reverse is true and worth thinking about. For every shadow, there must be light, else it’d be pure darkness.

This past year was a tumultuous year. Next year promises even more change, some chaos, and economic harbingers that are less than comforting. That said, the coming year can also be the very best year you’ve ever had. We’ve talked about it recently on an episode of Marketing Over Coffee, and I’ve talked about other advance preparations on the Financial Aid Podcast.

Ultimately, when times are bad, when things get ugly, you have three basic choices:

1. Do nothing and hope that the river of life doesn’t send you over a waterfall.

2. Deny that anything’s wrong in the hope that your delusions will become truth.

3. Take positive action to prepare others and yourself for trouble and find ways to leverage the troubling times.

I’m shooting for camp 3. I’ve outlined the dangers ahead – with $3 trillion -$ 5 trillion possibly at severe risk (bear in mind we are an economy of roughly $14 trillion), you have to prepare for rough times. Cash is king, debt is your enemy, liquidity is an advantage, tied-up assets are not. Mobility is important, as is network reach. Always have a backup plan.

You can also be a source of inspiration and power in your community, whether offline or online.

Now is the time to step up your community involvement if possible. Get out there, be visible, be involved. Have involvement with as many people as possible – as Mitch Joel says, DO talk to strangers, because the ninja method advocates having as many people in your network as possible so you can get different perspectives, have your ear to the ground, and see things coming from very far away.

Be on top of changes – know what’s changing, know who brings the harbingers of change. Subscribe to lots of blogs and read the best quality ones voraciously, because when winds shift, you want to be in front of the change, catching the wind and sailing past danger.

Grow and develop your sphere of personal power. In your community of friends, do you know what their superpowers are? How can they complement you, and more importantly, how can you complement them?

The ninja of old were renowned for their seemingly supernatural powers, chief among them the ability to foretell the future. Most of that wasn’t supernatural – it was having a strong network. You have access to a network that the ninja grandmasters of old would have traded their right arms for – a global, decentralized, instant information network. What does it tell you – and if it isn’t telling you what you need to know to avoid danger and embrace prosperity, how can you change your network to fulfill that function?

For every shadow there must be light.

Are you ready to shine?

Side bar: The Chinese word for crisis, weiji, does not mean “danger and opportunity”. Kennedy screwed that one up, that cliche about the word for crisis meaning danger and opportunity. Weiji means danger and a crucial point. It’s more like the point at which you’re in a barrel approaching the waterfall’s edge. You’re just about to go over. You don’t think about trying to go fishing for opportunity – your goal is not to die.

November 23, 2007
Exile
In a few private conversations today, some folks have wondered – what’s the most painful thing you can do to someone in new media? There is the example of the modern day pirates off the coast of Sumatra, who will tie your children to a boat anchor and slowly submerge them, then cut off your fingers joint by joint, but electronically, there’s not much that has an impact except a very, very old punishment – exile. In any kind of community in the old days, exile was tantamount to a death sentence, since it meant you had to forage and survive on your own.

Suppose you were to exile someone from the new media community? What would that look like?
- Immediate deletion from your address book
- Immediate deletion from every form of contact you have with them – defriend them on Facebook, stop following on Twitter, remove Google Alerts about them
- Add their email addresses to your spam blacklist, sift through your WordPress/Typepad comments and flag all their comments as spam
- Remove or rewrite any links you’ve given them on your blogs to someone else or digital oblivion
- Fire off a note to anyone you’ve connected them with on LinkedIn or similar reputation/trust services, telling the connection that the person has been exiled from your community and you can no longer vouch for them or consider them trustworthy
- Delete their name and any relevant content from your blogs, sites, and social networks, unsubscribe from their materials and presentations
- Block them on your instant messenger services by using the block or abuse feature
- Most important of all, team up with the rest of your personal network and ask others to exile the person as well
Exile from the digital community might or might not have an impact on the person’s life, but some measures (flagging things they do as spam, for example) might have tangible effects. Obviously, digital exile would be reserved only for the most serious violations of community standards, just as it was in pre-modern times. You’re essentially declaring the subject a non-person.

Food for thought.
October 25, 2007
Awaken YOUR Superhero Powers : Power 10 of 10 – Realization

Awaken YOUR Superhero Powers : Power 10 of 10 – Realization

Chi
Jnana Paramita
Realization

As part of my every thought, word, and action, I am inspired by the heroic ideal of spiritual intelligence. I pursue highest knowledge!

The last aspect of the superhero is perhaps the most important, because it makes all the other powers make sense. The power of realization is the power of leaving behind everything that isn’t true, everything that clouds your vision and makes you doubt yourself, your powers, and your ability to make positive change in the world. The power of realization is the garden hose that washes the mud off the windows and lets us see things clearly.

I reflect often on the motto given to Superman’s ultimate quest – a never ending battle for truth and justice. (the American way came later) If all the other powers describe things you’ll need on your heroic quest, the power of realization reveals to you where you’re going – or where you need to go, as well as what holds you back or threatens to steer you off course.

Imagine what a reality of all truth, nothing false would be like. Your GPS would get you to your destination every time. The news would be timely, relevant, and completely accurate. Your thoughts, words, and actions would be in complete sync with reality – and how effortless life would be.

Commit today and every day towards taking steps to achieve a life of all truth, nothing false, beyond the pull of distraction and confusion, knowing exactly where you’re going and how you’re going to get there. Bring all your powers, skills, and friends to your aid as your heroic quest begins.

Thought: Where are you going? Where do you know, deep down inside your heart, that you need to go? Are they different?

Word: Examine what you’ve said about your life. How can you use more accurate, more clear words to describe where you need to go?

Action: Assemble your ten powers of a superhero and put them ALL into action today.

Endnote: The powers themselves are translated by Senior Master Instructor Stephen K. Hayes from the Enlightened Warrior Gyoja Practitioner Recitation Handbook, published by the Kinryuzan Golden Dragon Mountain Kasumi-An Dojo.

October 7, 2007
Ninja Wisdom on Power

“When there is chaos at the bottom
there is order at the top.
When there is order at the bottom
there is chaos at the top.”

– Stephen K. Hayes

someone pointed out one of many articles about degenerating race relations in America today. Along with severe economic shocks, it’s looking like things are somewhat grim for America entering election year 2008. Foreclosures of homes skyrocketing, tainted imports, collapsing pension funds, pick your poison. What does it all mean?

A piece of wisdom from one of my teachers’ teachers, Stephen K. Hayes, started off this blog post. Simply translated, when the general population of a country is struggling to just get by, living paycheck to paycheck and making no progress, dealing with spikes in crime and a feeling of general malaise, it’s much harder for them to revolt or even realize what’s happening in the true power centers of a nation. Sate their minds with pointless entertainment, get them to care about things that are completely irrelevant (celebrity news comes to mind), and with the skill of a sleight of hand illusionist, you as someone in power get to do pretty much whatever you want to do, because no one’s paying attention. Chaos at the bottom means order at the top.

Reverse the situation. When the people of a nation unify, when the people of a nation have their basic needs met and have access to good information, at the very least they’ll push for progressive change and for overall improvements in their society’s health, wealth, and condition. The downside is that it’s much harder for a few select individuals to consolidate power and wealth in an open, democratic society because the general population will call bullshit on them, and possibly run them out of town. Order at the bottom means chaos at the top.

When you step back and take a look at the many influences acting on society at large, ask yourself which strategy is being pursued by the people of your nation and by its leaders and influencers. Who’s running the show, and who’s benefitting from it?

October 4, 2007

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