Tom Peters and Seth Godin On Stage

Two of the most interesting business thinkers around, Tom Peters and Seth Godin, were on-stage together at a recent event and jointly answered questions about "the entrepreneurial mind." Here's a page with all the labeled two minute clips. The best ones:

• Let's hear it for the blog. Seth says that blogging is not about the size of your audience but the "meta cognition" of thinking about what you're going to say and then saying it, having to explain yourself. Tom says that blogging is the most important professional thing he's done in the last 15 years. Note: Seth says "blogging is free." Not true. Blogging takes time. Time is money.
• What's first: loyal employees or loyal customers? Tom says loyal employees, and relays the story of Herb Kelleher (Southwest Airlines) writing a letter to a verbally abusive customer saying, "You do not have the right to treat my employee badly."
• Has technology killed customer service? Seth says an angry customer is an opportunity to deliver a Wow! experience.

Some other random links:

• Andrew Sullivan has a nice meditation on why he blogs in the latest Atlantic. Scott Rosenberg notes that Andrew is coming at it from the perspective of a trained print journalist, and not all bloggers are alike.
• The New York Times as a business is running on fumes. Here's one plan for how it can save itself: sell the Boston Globe, sell its stake in the Red Sox, cut 20% of the newsroom, etc.
• Is there a more articulate guy in live oratory than Christopher Hitchens?
  • In that Charlie Rose interview Hitchens says he's never had a gift for writing fiction. One proxy for fiction writing ability, he says, is a deep understanding of / appreciation for music.
• Women, have you ever made this request to your man? [Warning: Not safe for work.]
• Half of U.S. doctors use placebo treatments…and many do not even tell their patients that they're giving a placebo instead of a real pill.