The path to small success with 1,000 "True Fans"

What if you could find and bond with 1,000 "true fans" who would spend $100 a year on your works? Interesting look at how an artist or content creator might not have to become a mass-appeal star to make a living. From Kevin Kelly's blog (thanks to the9513.com for bringing it to my attention).

Taylor Swift - online and clued in

Nice piece in Billboard with Taylor Swift.

How's this for an artist being in touch with fans:

"I spend so much time on MySpace. It's the best way to figure out what your fans and what your friends and these people that helped you get where you are, what they're going through and what they want to hear from you, what they're liking, what they're not. My MySpace is something that I made. The background that you see on there, I went to a Web site and copied the code and copy-and-pasted my "about me" section. I upload all the pictures, I check the comments, I am in charge of everything on that page."

Taylor knows who she is and LOVES her fans. They feel it, and big things continue to happen for her.

Are you experienced? If so, does that mean you're good?

This story from Time magazine is as inspirational as anything I've seen on why we can never coast. The piece talks about how experience alone doesn't make someone good at something:

"...rather than mere experience or even raw talent, it is dedicated, slogging, generally solitary exertion — repeatedly practicing the most difficult physical tasks for an athlete, repeatedly performing new and highly intricate computations for a mathematician — that leads to first-rate performance. And it should never get easier; if it does, you are coasting, not improving."

Guess that means I should fire up Brain Age on the DS again (the activity in the the first edition of the game where you quickly count people running in and out of a house makes my head hurt just thinking about it).

So there it is - the "secret" to success. Work on the hard stuff.

A new appreciation of Left-Brain / Right-Brain

Thanks to my wife Linda Thomas for alerting me to Jill Bolte Taylor's truly unique presentation from the TED conference. A tour of our gray matter from brain researcher who survived a stroke. Profound.