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Trends come and go, and if you learn to spot them, they can be wildly profitable. In The Wallstrip Edge, Howard Lindzon shares his techniques on making money from seemingly routine trips to the mall, drives around town and travels through airports. A great read for any observant and active market participant.

The short answer: create value that no one else is producing.

The long answer:

We exchange something of value to consume goods and services. Typically this is done with currency (though bartering is also applicable) because either way, producer/distributor and consumer are entering an agreement on an exchange of stored value.

A producer or distributor is able to set the price when they dictate the perceived value. Save strong-arming customers mafia-style, that ability turns out to be relatively simple (although generally short-lived).

To produce a marketable good with no competition begets the ability to name price.

Worth will always be relative to competition. A desired good that does what the competition does, but better, will always command a higher price than the competition. Likewise, a good of lower perceived quality than the market leader is subject to a price ceiling (equal to that of it’s more capable competition).

Without an available comparison, consumers are unable to accurately judge value.

The NASDAQ composite chart above (QQQQ) shows that during the highflying tech bubble of the late 90’s, prices were wildly high; there was simply no way for buyers to judge relative value. Prices stabilized only after the viability of business models and rationality entered the market.

Live in the third order and innovate. Commodities are subject to supply and demand pricing, while edge-facing goods can defy gravity.

Google confirms it, year after year people forget how poorly they can predict the future. I’ve seen a flurry of 2009 predictions come across my screen, which is not surprising as evidenced by the chart. However it is supremely annoying, nonetheless.

Where is the culpability? People who’s predictions pan out claim victory. The other side quietly accepts defeat, rarely calling attention to their misguided “foresight.”

I’m no longer fooled by probability, and neither should you.

Consider a game: Start with 64 participants in a single elimination tournament. Each round, participants are paired. Before flipping a coin, paired players negotiate who will win if it lands heads and who will win if it lands tails. After each flip, the winner advances, new pairs are formed and the cycle repeats. From 64 players, to 32, on down to the final 2 and eventual winner. The winner of the tournament won 7 times in a row. Was he smart? Absolutely not. He was P(1 % (2^7)) lucky!

Would you ask him how he won? His advice would be worthless. If you asked him to win again, and he does, I’d check the weighting of his coin not the weight of his words.

If you throw in enough predictions, statistics dictate that some will be correct. Those that are were on point are a gift of probability, not foresight, which make them trite.

It would be nice if people properly labeled their opinions about the next 365 days but apparently no one does:

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 The Definitive Book of Body Language will prepare you to listen to what someone’s body is shouting, while their mouth is talking. If you interact with people, it’s worth a few hours to speak their entire language.

Body Language was the second of book I’ve read by the Pease duo and it was as effortless read as the first.

The couple writes in bathroom-visit sized chunks which makes reading approachable for anyone.

Books are like wine — best enjoyed when shared — so I’m going to offer brief reviews of any books I find worthy of perusal. I hope you will find them humorous, worthwhile, and just maybe, tempting. Enjoy.

This is how Amazon.com made me grab referral links last time I used the service:

1) Open my bookmarks
2) Find my amazon associate’s link
3) Search for the book
4) Click
5) Switch the link type to Text
6) Finally, snag the link

I never did understand why my Amazon.com consumer and Amazon.com Associate accounts were treated as discrete. These were two accounts with the same (notoriously smart) company and they never talked. It was like Camp Bezos viewed me as a schizophrenic.

I’m delighted to find something has changed. Logged in associates now have an Associate Toolbar at the top of product pages. So, today I got an associate link in a single click.

Making it 600% easier for your customers to become your sales force: smart.

We may be in (what may be a long and hard) recession but a deal is still apparently a deal. Americans know how to shop.

There is a strong and growing demand for communities within distributed networks. They help new-comers immediately realize the value of these enigmatic services like Twitter. Verticals foster a conversation for eavesdropping or participation.

What is striking is how much of the conversation flows around the few at the top.

Below is a chart of the 225 most active participants discussing stocks and finance on Twitter. The orange bars represent the number of times a user was included in a tweet (an @reply in Twitter parlance). The green bars represent how many times the same user included an @reply to another user.

Not only are top disproportionately spoken about, but understandably, they are also driving the conversation by speaking to others. They disproportionately converse.

What does this mean to you on Twitter and beyond? Conversation at its root is speaking with, not at or to; both are required to build trust and presence through dialogue. Seth Godin would be proud. The top few percent really do rule this roost. The good news is that everything you need for organic growth is in place, you just have to be willing to put in the work.

At what point do you stop following?

Even after the distance grows, it is easy to focus on the same target.

Read more…

What happens to my network after I leave a company? You know all those contacts of smart people I made while on the job?

Look at Yammer. They bring Twitter to work. What happens when I quit? Can I still talk to my “friends” on your network (and who owns my chatter)?