Close to the customer
Company that I work in does some fantastic practices. I’ll give you one example.
We are publishing house, and our final clients are readers. Where do readers get our books? Of course in the book-stores! So every month we go to the book store (the biggest one in Moscow) and work there for 2-3 hours as a book consultants. We talk to customers, recommend them books. But understand me correctly – of course we recommend our books a bit more (because we are sure of their quality), but also we recommend ALL good business books even if they are published by our competitors.
This process involves all the people from the company, even our directors take part in it.
And what do you do to stay close to you client?
Fantastic experience
I like Harry Potter books. In Moscow sales of English version of the last book started simultaneously with all the world (it was 3:00 am). I thought there will be enough books at the store so I was not in a hurry.
The next day we came to the store and began searching – without any success. After a few minutes We’ve met a sales guy (his name is Roman) I knew and we chatted for a few minutes. He said that at night it was a fantastic show and all the books were sold in three hours! It really disappointed us but we just continued our talk. After we were sure that there are no books left he suddenly disappeared for a moment and came back with the last example of the book giving it to us!!!
He kept this book until somebody cool and cute – and this was us! It’s hard to explain what we felt that moment. He sold us much more than a book.
It’s all about the office
I do like Esquire magazine. The material is very interesting and relaxing and the same time. What I don’t like – is the amount of advertising in there. I think that it occupies more than 50% of the pages. And I don’t think anyone likes it in such amount.
But there is a decision – dear Esquire – get rid of your office. Organize your business processes so that you will not need your office, work with freelancers and pay them good money. You will get even better magazine and will not be so dependent of the advertising. At "Mann, Ivanov & Ferber" we work without office – and the result is, we are one of the leaders.
Tags: work without office, no office, new structure, business process optimization, mann ivanov & ferber
New job
I was already asked by a my international friends about my new job. I promised to write about it – and here I go. It’s 3 weeks since I am brand manager (editor) in publishing house Mann, Ivanov & Ferber. I’m proud to be manager of the "Stockholm School of Economics" book series, where Tom Peters, Jim Collins, Jesper Kunde, Jonas Riderrstrale and Kjell Nordstrem were published.
You will ask me a question – why I quit with free-agent? The answer is – I didn’t. Our publishing house isn’t a common type of company as you may think. First of all – we don’t have office. Being one of leading publishers in Russia – we don’t have office. As Michael Ivanov said to me "we are a pack of free agents, working together on one project".
We got a fantastic team – very productive, clever and simply good people. And finally books were always my passion – so working in this kind of publishing house is really great.
Tags: mann, ivanov, ferber, publishing, new job
Business opportunities for everyone
1. Seth Godin recently wrote about a company that books tables in restaurants all over the USA for $1. Do the same in your country.
2. Guy Kawasaki used Logoworks for making a logo for his new site. Use a logoworks model to do the same company in your country.
And finally – make your business even better – only than it will be "fabulous".
List of web 2.0
I’m becoming lost in Web 2.0 services. So let’s try to summarize all we’ve got for today:
1. Blogging services – Wordpress, Blogger, Typepad and smaller ones.
2. Social Networks / Blogs – Bebo, Frappr, LinkedIn, Myspace (for musicians), Iqons (for design related guys), Deviantart (for designers), Facebook, Vox, Livejournal.
3. Mini blogs services – Twitter, Jaiku. I still didn’t get what is so cool with them.
I will update this post so your contacts are very welcome – together we will be able to make a full list of new web!
Weather
Weather in Moscow these days is magnificent. It’s warm but a bit cloudy. Temperature is 22 average and it’s super comfortable for living.
What I noticed is when we are in Egypt/Turkey/any south country – 35°C and even higher is ok. But if you go for example to Moscow and the temperature will be something about 30°C – it will be very hard to stand. Moving north – the same situation. There even 20°C will be very hard for human.
So the idea is – close to equator it’s easier to live in higher temperature (and vice versa).
Let’s check this out! What is the best temperature in your location?
p.s.: image taken from intellicast.com
Tags: weather, moscow
Back from Turkey
Hello my friends! I’m back from 1 week holidays in Turkey. Before a hardworking second part of the year it was necessary to relax a little bit and get some sea power. =)
More posts coming soon!
Best regards, Dmitry.
update
I’m not posting a lot last days. This is because I’m rethinking a lot of things.
The first result was the previous post – about absent of rules. Suddenly, reading a business book, I realized this very clear. I just took the statistics of what does the great businessmen did to get to the top? And the only thing was – they were innovative and work hard. Of course luck was also important and environment and many many other things. Anyway – I didn’t find that they read business books or graduated in famous business schools.
And then I just stop reading business literature. Of course – there are a few more books on my shelf that I will finish with in a few months. But now I mostly read fiction and news. And you know what – I feel different. My imagination starts to work harder, I got new ideas, new thoughts.
Let’s see what’s next…
Tags: no rules, literature, success
No rules
The only rule is – there are no rules. It’s so hard to understand! You always seek for some magic recipe or scheme of what to do in order to be happy/rich/famous etc. But the only thing you can do is to work hard and get what you want!
And forget about the rules!
Different realities
There are a lot of ways of doing things. Some managers are growing inside the corporations and then blast, other organize their own business and blast. But in general – they are all in one reality.
Another realities, such as financial or governmental, also exist. But we will not talk about them right now. What we will talk is the Virgin reality created by Richard Branson. This is also management and corporate world, but it seems to me that Richard found something very very different from everybody else.
I’ve finished reading his second book and this is not a book about business or management. It’s about a man, about being strong, about dreaming and willingness to change the world. Richard has a dislexia – but it didn’t impede him. Books aren’t the matter of his success. What is? Maybe his revolutionary behavior, maybe character, maybe something else. What I think – he was always honest to himself, and this helped him in his life.
What I think – this reality is very important. I even not think about it – I feel it. And I’m very thankful for the books Richard wrote – because they make you feel, they make you understand that the rules are only in your head!
Tags: realities, Virgin, Richard Branson
People management
In Tipping Point, Malcolm Gladwell wrote about a man, who had enormous amount of contacts. And this thing worked for him, because he was a link between them, connector.
It’s good to have a lot of contacts but it is also very important to stay online with even the weakest links (that finally can give you even more). And here comes the People management. And the question is – how you manage your contacts?
For me contacts are like projects, you have to fulfill promises, given to them, say hello at least once in a few months and remember their birthdays. Does anyone of you use some kind of a system to make this work easier? Or maybe there is software for such tasks?
Tags: people management, contacts, gladwell, tipping point
Just want to say Hello!
It’s been a while I’ve installed Google Dynamics on my site. Today, checking up the geo statistics I was amazed of the amount of countries!
Just want to say Hi to all my readers – and please don’t hesitate to write your comments and your thoughts! You can also contact me directly on any ideas or just to chat 
.
Shouts go to:
USA (especially California – 9 visits "It’s been HUGE" )
Saudi Arabia – nice to see you here!
Malaysia – hello guys)
Bulgaria – трябва до черпишь
France – Bonjour cheres amis!
Germany – welcome guys!
And all other lonely readers from all over the world – Lithuania, Italy, Macedonia, Slovenia, England, Denmark, Switzerland, Australia, Canada and anyone I missed – you are very very welcome!
Best regards, Dmitry.
Tags: Hello World, Dmitry Linkov, google analytics
indexed style graph
Tags: indexed, myspace, livejournal, graph
Fabulous wordpress theme
This concerns all Wordpress users and apple fans – iTheme.
Theme is made by N-design studio – the one who made current theme of this blog. Enjoy it!
P.S.: now Wordpress is looking like Mac – what’s next?
Tags: wordpress, iTheme, apple, mac, n-design studio
