“The best way I made things happen was by saying I could and then it forced me to do it. It’s one thing to keep it to yourself but if you say it to everybody, then you have no choice. It was either that or get out of the business. When you put yourself out on a limb- there’s no choice but to win.”

“If you have the confidence in yourself that you can pull off anything and if you leave yourself flexible enough to bob and weave where you have to... the goal stays the same... How you’re going to get there may change but “Here’s where the journeys gonna end”- How we’ll get there we’ll have to figure out along the way.”

"Everything in life is sales."

Lee Arnold

Today's image: Bare Trees by Fred Winston. Beautiful. Thanks for sharing.

Today's quotations, all by rock radio raconteur Lee Arnold, are from a new writing. The true story of how one gifted radio program director and his staff, with nothing more than a great idea and their own relentless passion, made national news and history bringing The Who to their town. Sex, drugs, and a generous helping of wireless swagger, that radio surname magic one should properly call only by its given name, rock and roll...

WHOoPLA: The Greatest Rock Radio Stunt Ever by V. Scott Beddome. Highly recommended here. Closed circuit to Beddome: When casting for the big screen accept no other player than Johnny Depp to play the role of rogue warrior Arnold. (FD: In the previous century I served as valet, defense attorney and part-time concierge to the great Mr Arnold)

Bonus: Do you own a rock radio station? If you manage a rock station, should you be in charge of programming, sales or promotion for a rock station, consult or sell anything whatsoever to a rock station (or have need to arrest the attention of the rock radio audience), you'll benefit from getting Lee Arnold involved. This is not to suggest he will be available. Please, don't blame me if he ain't interested. It is only my best counsel for how to end 2008 much better off than you are ending this year, no matter how well you think you're doing. Rock on and good luck. You may find Lee here.

Bonus videos: Seth, Dr Dave and ten other thinkers share their video picks. Well worth the time, check them out here. Kudos to the gang at Twist Image!


Ex-dead tree guy gets it: Bravos to Jeff Jarvis for making the obvious, obvious...

"A newspaper (or, for that matter, TV or radio) company needs to set up a new, hyperlocal company that is designed to go after those 1,000 $100 ads. Let the big, old newspaper and online divisions keep serving and saving those big advertisers. Start a new company that makes small, local advertising its sole focus. That means they need to set up automated systems to accept and place highly targeted local ads and directories. That means they need to come up with new means of selling without on-the-street sales staffs: outbound phone sales, direct response, even local sales network (instead of citizen journalists, citizen sales people), making aggressive use of the promotional power of the newspaper while you still have it. That means they need to have lots of targeted local content without large editorial staffs. That means they need to set up networks with local bloggers and others and they need to encourage more people to join and the way they will do that is by sharing revenue and so these need to be both content and ad networks. This is unproven but I know that this won’t happen in the existing structure from print or even online staffs. It’s hard and its new but — as the Journal now well proves — if you newspapers don’t do it, your online competitors will."

Read Jeff's entire post with comments here.