Blogger Stories: Shel Israel

Shel Israel was one of the first to reply to my email request for a blogger story. Shel is the co author of the book Naked Conversations how blogs are changing the way businesses talk with customers. He blogs at Naked Conversations. He and co author Robert Scoble included my story in their book and it seems appropriate that Shel should kick-off Blogger Stories.

Without a doubt Shel's story will entertain as well as inspire you. He's a funny guy and that humor, that doesn't often shine through in his blog writing, comes out in his story. By the way, if Shel and Robert had not hooked up to write Naked Conversations Shel Israel might have given The Manolo a run for the money on the red carpet walk of shoes.

Blogger Story Teller: Shel Israel, Naked Conversations

When people ask me how Robert Scoble and I came together to collaborate on Naked Conversations my short answer is that I was desperate. They’re sure I’m joking, but I’m not.

I had been a journalist and loved everything about it, except the vow of poverty it required. I figured I’d just do PR for a few years until I could buy a new car and live in an apartment that had a spare bedroom.

I had been a journalist and loved everything about it, except the vow of poverty it required. I figured I’d just do PR for a few years until I could buy a new car and live in an apartment that had a spare bedroom.

Years went by. In the 70s, the sidebars sideburns cultivated in my college days receded.  In the 80s much of the rest of the hair followed. I kept vowing I’d get back but I was good at PR. I was good for a few reasons, but I think the main part was that I thought like a reporter. I thought in stories. I saw the editors as my customers.  The clients they were the just manufacturers who had a byproduct of news. I simply never considered lying to or misleading an editor.  My reputation was what I had.  Clients came and went but the editors were the constants.

Te legendary Regis McKenna, Inc. brought me into Silicon Valley.  It was at or near the epicenter of Silicon Valley.  It became the University of Regis. About two dozen new PR agencies were spawned by recent graduates.  Regis taught a strategic game.  It wasn’t about smiling and dialing from a Bacon’s or Media map list.  It was about maintaining relationships with influential people. Back then, I needed to rub about 15 pair of elbows, maybe 20 to move the needle for a client.  A hit annually in Business Week or Fortune magazine was half the game.  A nice mention in PC Week in PC Magazine, and you were golden with the client for at least six months, maybe a year.

The money kept getting better. I owned my own agency for 17 years, specializing in startups and had a decent string of successes. Vacations started including Maui and even Italy. In the 90s, I bought my first home and it had three spare bedrooms. Every time I thought about returning to journalism. I would take two aspirin and call it off in the morning.

By the time of the great bubble, people were lining up at the door waving money at me. I started seeing clients about the same way the old Indian saw white men in the movie “Little Big Man.” There was just no end to them.

But the business had changed.  It had become a game of creating buzz, which is the last thing you hear before getting stung. In the 90s there were too many elbows to rub and buttocks that demanded kissing. Had worked with a steady stream f brilliant people who had visions of how the world could be improved by the way the arranged 1s and 0s in binary fashion. Now, I was meeting a new breed of entrepreneurs.  Herds of MBAs in short pants were sitting at the conference tables in high chairs, shrieking if I disagreed, that I just didn’t get it.

Sometimes I didn’t get it.  But I was afraid “it” was contagious.

In 1999, I became a grandfather and I was starting to fear that I would lumber away the majority of my professional life running an efficient smile-and-dial factory that was starting to not be very different from all the other smile and dial factories. So when the bubble popped and SIPR’s revenues dropped by over 90 percent in a two-month period, I was secretly relieved. Of course that was before I found out what the phrase “personal guarantee” on a lease and a bank loan actually meant.

Anyway, I sold what was left of SIPR to a team of employees and decided to kick back and enjoy a summer of gardening, sailing and pondering the seemingly endless fountain of opportunities for Silicon Valley tech consultants.  That was in May of 2001.  I gave myself until Labor Day to prove that a great tan wouldn’t prematurely age me. 

I decided to start spreading the word of my availability around at a tech conference.  It went very well on Day #1. That was Sept. 10, 2001.  The next day started quite badly as most people will recall. But it would take a while to understand the correlation between acts of horror at the World Trade Center and what would be a long precipitous downward spiral for aging startup consultants in a valley that would not have startups to consult for the next five years.

Hell, I figured. This could be a great opportunity. If I’m not going to make any money, I might as well go back into writing where I had always been happy not making money. I started bopping around newspapers and magazines, talking sometimes to editors who had known me for years. I had not been a working reporter for more than two decades. My best clips were about people who had died and companies long since forgotten.

At this time, some other laid off Silicon Valley denizens were hanging out in coffee houses where the coffee was cheap and the broadband free.  They started screwing around with something called a blog.

A couple years later, I partnered with Gary Bolles on a newsletter called Conferenza Premium Reports. A subscription in the first year was $99, after that it went up to $199. It went okay for a while, but then these guys started showing up in the room. Buzz Bruggeman, JD Lasica, Ross Mayfield, Doc Searls, David Weinberger would sit next to me, behind me and in front of me, start typing and before the speaker had left the dais, they had published it. We thought we were doing just great if we could get Conferenza out in a week.  Okay we could compete with that part.  But these guys, these bloggers—they were just giving it away. How the Hell did airfare get covered, if they were going to just give it away?

Not only were these guys a clear and present danger to what I was doing, but I liked them. I started reading their stuff and it was good. It had a style that was, well, transparent.
One day Ross Mayfield wrote something with which I disagreed. I sent him an email. “You should have made that a Comment,” he retorted. “Better yet,” he added, “You should blog it.” This guy was telling me I should criticize him in public?

But I hesitated. There were a few cool bloggers but most of them were geeks, like this guy who had just moved to Microsoft who called himself a geek blogger and started organizing geek dinners. I had no desire to spend my time talking techno weenie minutiae with a bunch of out-of-work developers. Then again, Buzz Bruggeman wasn’t a techno weenie.  Not really.  JD’s blog was starting to influence me and shape my views about digital rights.  Ernie the Attorney had become a new friend and he had this simple, humorous, clear way of writing that I just loved.

None of that got me blogging.  What got me blogging is I wanted to get a job writing or editing for a newspaper or magazine. I needed fresh writing samples that I could show to the traditional press, so that I could get a real job and stop writing furshluggener blogs for free.

My time, once again proved to be extraordinary. Journalism had started to go through a more dramatic and apparently more enduring consolidation than had tech startups. From the point in 2003 when I began to blog until November 2005, when Robert and I had our first one-on-one conversation, more than 75,000 reporters and editors had lost their jobs.  Most would not find new ones in their fields.  Most of the editors who had told me to get fresh clips in 2002 had been laid off to be replaced by less experienced, less expensive help by the time I circled back in 2003.

I kept trying some angle. I pitched Dave Sifry to hire me as a company blogger. He was gracious in turning me down.  He didn’t explain that that was not how blogging worked. I kept picking up little projects—writing websites.  I started coaching CEOs on presentation skills.  I kept taking in laundry, but the opportunities kept getting sparser and the pay was getting worse.

By 2005, I was running out of ideas. I applied for work at numerous places including Microsoft, Google and Yahoo. I asked personal friends for jobs and they responded, with obvious embarrassment, that the slot was not right for me.  They said I was talented and experienced and they were sure it was going to turn out just right for me. I spent a lot of time gardening. I turned 60. I had not had an employer (except for one brief bizarre fling in 1995) since 1987.

My best friend, Charlie O’Brien had suggested I write a book. It was also his thought that I should collaborate with a more famous person than me, so that we could get a bigger advance and the book would sell better. I approached three other people.  They each considered it seriously before turning me down and telling me they were sure I’d find someone and it would work out.

I had no religion for blogging. I was a writer and wanted to make a living as a writer.  To me being an author was something noble, something special. I had always thought I’d write a book or two.  After Charlie died, I thought I’d write one of my experiences traveling and working and sailing with him. But first, I needed to partner with someone and get myself established.  I had become too old for another vow of poverty.

One morning in September 2005, Andy Ruff, a brilliant and likeable young Microsoft employee was taking a shower when he started thinking about his friend Scoble, who he thought should hedge his bets with Microsoft by building his personal brand.  He checked his calendar and remembered he was having dinner at my house that night with Buzz Bruggeman. He spoke to Buzz. Buzz called me and told me about Andy’s idea and asked if they could bring him along to dinner.  I immediately agreed, then spent a good part of the day reading Scoble’s blogs. I was not yet one of his subscribers and decided to be less than transparent about it until this very moment.

That night, we pitched Robert.  He didn’t have much to say. He didn’t even blog about the dinner, which would imply the idea fizzled, if you know how Robert operates.

So I decided to go see Robert in Seattle and pitch him again on the day after Thanksgiving. Robert had just bought a new red couch. I became the first houseguest to be offered a seat on it. I lowered my buttocks down onto it and began talking.  I kept talking for several hours and it was not entirely clear to me how I was doing. We ran out and met with Steve Brobach who wanted Robert to be his keynote for the first Business Blog Summit. We went out for Sushi and I talked some more.

Then it was time for me to catch a flight home.  We were in the parking lot and I asked him nice again if he would do this project with me.

“Sure.  It’ll be cool,” I recall him saying. I wasn’t sure he meant it, and there were some very interesting curve balls before he and I were in synch and the incredible blogging experience that became Naked Conversations got underway. But he had said “cool,” and that meant I could table the next-to-last option I had on the day after Thanksgiving 2005.

The last one was selling shoes as Christmas help at Nordstrom’s.

Technorati Tags: Blogger_Stories, Shel_Israel, Naked_Conversations,

Comments

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[Shel Israel]

Thanks Toby. Those sidebars should have been sideburns. But it has been a pleasure being "your first."