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"Launch" will build your business---fast. Whether you've already got a business or you're itching to start one, this is a recipe for getting more traction. Think about it---what if you could launch like Apple or the big Hollywood studios? What if your prospects eagerly counted down the days until they could buy your product? What if you could create such powerful positioning in your market that you all -but- eliminated your competition? And you could do all that no matter how humble your business or budget? Since 1996 Jeff Walker has been creating hugely successful online launches. After bootstrapping his first Internet business from his basement, he quickly developed an underground process for launching new products and businesses with unprecedented success.
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'Music Makes Me' music blog (tardypigeon) Re. 'Let's Put The Beatles Back Together Again 1970-2010':About the Beatles it's hard to write anything new...[Yet,] accomplished with fearless dilettantism by Jeff Walker, is the job of pruning what exists. The book is a veritable orchard of the resulting bonsai trees. To put it more crudely, this is a listmaker's wet dream.Walker structures the book around the idea that, contra Lennon's song 'God', the dream is not over. [T]here is a way to claw back the Beatles' solo careers and construct a Beatlesque canon. To do this, Walker proposes a thought experiment. Suppose the Beatles, upon officially splitting up, had made a pact to continue to group together their best solo recordings under the moniker of the Beatles Releasing Collective (the BRC) .John still dies on December 8, 1980, but he 'survives' as 'ghost-John' recording artist by virtue of having a fair bit of unreleased work in the can. They still release [solo work but] the best tracks (ie. 'Nineteen Hudred and Eighty-Five' but not 'No Words' from Band on the Run) are creamed off and packaged for the BRC.I would say [the book] is best described as a piece of conceptual art...At its heart is the notion of digging out 'Beatlesworthy' (as Walker puts it) songs from the post-Beatles period. A subjective--and subjunctive--cataloguing which is very much of our time. The idea of wresting programming duties from the artist is the sine qua non of the iPod playlist. It's a notion positively encouraged by the digital world we've surrounded ourselves with. As someone who runs what I'd like to think of as a discriminating music blog, I am all for eclecticism. Out with the overrated! Down with the merely popular (Indeed, at one point, Walker refers to to people whose appetites are sated by Best Of collections as 'cultural plebians'.) To me, this is where the book comes into its own. The BRC's Black Album, a 1973 four-record boxed set juxtaposes the former Beatles' best solo tracks. [ie.] George's 'What is Life' is followed by John's 'Instant Karma', followed by Ringo's 'It Don't Come Easy', followed by Paul's 'Another Day'. (Interestingly, Walker relates that George made very similar collection in 1971 for Beatle fan[ friends] who couldn't wait for the boys to re-form.) Walker's selections...are admittedly quirky at times: the Get Back sessions are abundantly represented [in a transition chapter]...However, I found the author's quirkiness endearing rather than irritating. Commendation must go to him for representing each of the Beatles fairly. I myself wouldn't have known where to start with Ringo.Moreover, there is a marvellous boldness to the writing and to the choices. A boldness which rests somewhere on the assumption that the Beatles' [post-1960s work is] better listened to
