20 years ago – Joshua Tree

Yeah, I was a 20-something — about 20 years ago.

I just got a big flashback reminder of those “golden years” earlier today with the announcement of U2 remastering Joshua Tree – a quintessential masterpiece I rocked out to in my first (and hopefully not last) IPO, Good Guys.

Those summer days in the late 80′s were where I refined the fine craft of salesmanship: greeting, establishing rapport, qualifying (today known as being an active listener and asking great questions), presenting, proving value, overcoming objections, and closing the sale. We’d have a chance to do 20-30 transactions a day. The sales cycles are longer now — 2-5 months, not 20-50 minutes, and the value of each sale is substantially higher. In my 22 years of selling, I’ve come to realize zeros are just placeholders, and at the end of the day we are rewarded for solving a problem or meeting a need.

There still is a great need to end world hunger. Have a look at freerice.com. It is a very clever site that will donate grains of rice for each successful word definition you answer correctly. You will have a chance to stretch your mind, learn new words and word meanings, and I think you will be amazed at how fast you can fill a bowl up to feed a starving person somewhere in the world.

Here’s is a great clip from iLike with Bono singing “Wave of Sorrow”, which was conceived during the recording of Joshua Tree, but was just recently completed, and will be included in the remastered Joshua Tree. It is an incredible story of Bono’s first hand experience of Ethiopia during the famine of 1984-85. Have a listen:

Lumiere video – Chicago: July 2007

In homage to the Lumiere Brothers who were some of the earliest filmmakers, Andreas from solitude.dk made a call for submissions to the videoblogging community to replicate the conditions in which they filmed. Notably: less than one minute (most were about 45 seconds long); fixed camera; no zoom; no sound; no editing; and no effects.

Here a my Lumiere video, recorded in Chicago July 29, 2007

Network Delay

Here at Millions of Us we are under constant deadline and relentless pressure! However we always have time for a little antics. Today we time travel with Lauren Lamonica in “Network Delay”. – update: I was asked to make this video private. Perhaps a little too goofy for public consumption. Apologies all around.