In the past few weeks, I’ve come across 2 VERY interesting visuals.

The first is a visual guide to where your federal tax dollars go. If you click the image or here, it will link to a larger version online. You can even buy a print version. Cool.

Next is a visual showing how the GPD’s of COUNTRYS match up to the GDP of STATES in the US. You can click the image for a larger version. This post
talks more about it.

Hat tip to Blake Snow for pointing the GDP map out.

I hope you watched that interview with Bill Gates and Steve Jobs from Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference.

While I watched it, there were 2 things that Steve Jobs said that I liked so much I typed them out so I could share them with everyone. Steve and Bill were asked by an attendee what advice they could give him to continue to find success at his 100 employee new digital media company. Steve said:

People say you have to have a lot of passion for what you’re doing, and it’s totally true and the reason is because it’s so hard that if you don’t, any rational person would give up. It’s really hard. And you have to do it over a sustained of time. So if you don’t love it, if you’re not having fun doing it, and you don’t really love it, you’re going to give up. And that’s what happens to most people actually. If you really look at the ones that ended up being ‘successful’ in the eyes of society and the ones that didn’t, often times it’s the ones that are successful love what they did so they could persevere when it got really tough. And the ones that didn’t love it quit. Cause they’re sane. Right? Who would want to put up with this stuff if you don’t love it. So, it’s a lot of hard work. And it’s a lot of worrying constantly. And if you don’t love it, you’re going to fail. So you gotta love it, you gotta have passion. And I think that’s the high order bit.

The second thing is you gotta be a really good talent scout. Because no matter how smart you are, you need a team of great people. And you’ve gotta figure out how to size people up fairly quickly. Make decisions without knowing people too well. And hire them and see how you do and refine your intuition. And be able to help build an organization that can eventually just build itself, cause you need great people around you.

When he said those things, I said to myself, “Amen brother Steve!” Especially the part about having the passion. And perseverance. And even about how sane people quit. So I guess that means it’s the insane people that keep going then. And I’m still going, what does that say about me?

Finally, they were asked by another attendee about how science fiction deals with concepts like the metaverse, the Matrix, and other sort of far-out science fiction type stuff and what parts of this they thought would be a reality in the next 5-10 years. His answer was great:

I don’t know, and that’s what makes it exciting to go into work every day. Because as we talked about earlier, this is an extraordinarily exciting time in the industry. And lots of new stuff happening, so I can’t even begin to think of what it’s going to be like 10 years from now.

Great thoughts. Great time to be alive to watch all the extraordinary changes happening in the world. Love him or hate him, Steve Jobs is one cool and wicked smart dude.

Whether you hate Apple and love Microsoft, or hate Microsoft and love Apple, or hate them both (I don’t think many people would love them both), you need to watch the joint interview of Bill Gates and Steve Jobs that they did at the Wall Street Journal’s All Things Digital conference a few weeks ago.

Here are two guys that have such a history together. They have changed the world and the lives of Billions of people. I watched this last night and I found myself thinking back to when I got my first computer, a Franklin PC 8000. I remembered when the computer lab at Burley Jr. High was full of Apple IIe’s and my friend Nate and I were lucky enough to have the teacher (Mr. Waite) let us be the first students to use his PC that he brought in from home and stuck in the corner of the room. And when we used that PC to write our first computer program in GW-BASIC. (A game based on the Domino’s Pizza advertising campaign of Avoid the Noid). And when I saved all my money from my various summer jobs to buy the latest greatest 386 computer at the time. And then the time freshman year in college where everyone was talking about how cool it would be when the Pentium computers started shipping. And the time almost 2 years ago when I ‘converted’ to Mac and haven’t looked back since. And really about 1,000 memories that made me realize how intertwined my life and everything I do have become with technology and computers and software–and that Bill Gates and Steve Jobs and their innovation, passion, and ideas are behind a lot of this intertwining.

Anyway, you can download the Podcast right to iTunes. You can also click on the icon of Steve and Bill on the All Things Digital home page.

Enjoy, it will bring back memories.

I’m back from Boston and eBay Live! this week.

The conference was great! Lots going on, here are some photos and some highlights:

My book eBay Inventory The Smart Way for sale in the eBay Live! Book Store.

Doba booth filled with people. Met lots of new people, caught up with lots of others.

Adjusting my mic on stage at the 2nd session of our presentation on Product Sourcing that I do with with Lisa Suttora from What Do I Sell and Rob Cowie from Worldwide Brands. Why am I adjusting my mic you might ask? Well, Tuesday night last week I went to a Boston Red Sox game. Major league ball players (and probably others too) get what they call walk up music. As the batter approaches the plate, they play a clip of song of the player’s choice. Some pick country. Some pick rap. Some pick rock. No one picks Celine Dion. Anyway, I’ve always wanted walk up music. I present last, and I worked with the AV guys to play my walk up music so I could warm up for my part of the presentation. And during the walk up music, I jumped off the stage and onto the chairs in the front row to get people a bit crazy. And my mic fell off. Not sure if most people get crazy enough at a presentation such that their mic flys off and about puts out their eye, but that’s how I roll. Especially when my walk up music was the first 30 seconds of Guns and Roses Welcome to the Jungle.

Q&A after the presentation is over.

Perfection. Let me explain. We have a 90 minute session. We present for 60 minutes, 20 minutes each. And then do Q&A for 30 minutes. I started my watch timer for us keep track of time while at the podium the second Lisa started talking. She finished, then Rob went and finished. As I was closing my presentation, I said, “Now we’re going to take some questions.” and at that second, without looking down, I stopped my timer. It shows 1 hour exactly. 60 minutes to the second. If my watch would have tracked hundredths of a second, it would be to the hundreths of a second. Folks, last time I checked, that’s pretty spot on. That’s perfection.

I’m looking forward to eBay Live next year in Chicago. Maybe I’ll see you there.

As I continue my whirlwind travel schedule I find myself in Boston this week for the 5th annual eBay Live event that starts tomorrow.

For the past 2 years I’ve been involved in a panel presentation that covers the basics on how to find products to sell on eBay. I present with Lisa Suttora from What Do I Sell and Rob Cowie from Worldwide Brands. This year, “Product Sourcing - Find Products Buyers Want.” will be presented twice, once on Thursday the 14th at 3:00 p.m. and again at 9:00 a.m. on Friday morning the 15th.

(You can watch my part of the presentation from last year’s eBay Live in Vegas by clicking on the Sourcing Success chapter.)

If you are at the show I’ll be at those presentations and then around the Doba booth #417 off and on throughout the show.

And next week, I’m actually at the office in Utah for an entire week!