Cool Friend Dan Roam says that a picture is worth a thousand words, but only the first thousand you'd need to get briefed on the issue at hand. He helps big name clients solve complex problems by using simple pictures like the one above. In his new book (out today!), The Back of the Napkin: Solving Problems and Selling Ideas with Pictures, he explains that you don’t have to be good at drawing to use visual thinking for communicating ideas. Find out more by reading the interview. You can also visit the website of the consulting company he founded, Digital Roam Inc., or read his blog.

Professor Kanter explains why you should be a change agent for the world in her new book, America the Principled: 6 Opportunities for Becoming a Can-Do Nation Once Again, and in her Cool Friends interview here.

Dan's the founder and president of Sensory Logic, Inc., a scientific, research-based consultancy that specializes in psycho-physiological consumer insight testing and sensory-emotional branding. His first book was Body of Truth: Leveraging What Consumers Can't or Won't Say, and he joins us to talk about his second one, Emotionomics: Winning Hearts and Minds. Read the interview; we know you'll like it.

We're assisting Bill and the National Braille Press by announcing their Hands-On Gala, on October 26, 2007, in Boston. Jay Leno will be Master of Ceremonies and J.K. Rowling will make an appearance by video. To become a corporate sponsor or simply make a donation, please contact: Tanya Holton, National Braille Press, 6l7-266-6160 x15, tholton@nbp.org; or Jennifer Stewart, 6l7-266-6160 x36, jstewart@nbp.org.

... she's the author of Marketing to Women.
... she's the coauthor of Trends, one of the Essentials Series, with Tom.
... she's the founder and CEO of The TrendSight Group, "the premier provider of Marketing to Women insights and ideas."
... she's a cofounder of the Women Gurus Network.
... she's a recognized authority on targeting your business to those who spend almost all the money, that is, women, and her recent focus has been on an especially well-heeled group ... PrimeTime Women™. She's even trademarked the term.

Erik talks with her about her newest book of the same name, PrimeTime Women™: How to Win the Hearts, Minds, and Business of Boomer Big Spenders, and you can read her Cool Friends interview here. You might also like to visit her blog, TrendSightings. Welcome back, Marti!

Read her Cool Friends interview here. You can also visit her website, www.penelopetrunk.com, and blog, blog.penelopetrunk.com, to read more.

With his book, Bit Literacy: Productivity in the Age of Information and E-mail Overload, Hurst explains why it's a good idea to learn more about your computer than how to turn it on and run a few Microsoft Office programs. He's an expert on making people more productive with technology. Get started on your own journey to weightlessness. Visit the website of Creative Good, the user experience consulting firm that he founded, and now runs with Phil Terry. Or check into his other (Wow!) projects, Gootodo.com, the Gel conference, and GoodExperience.com.

We hope you'll enjoy reading Mark Hurst's Cool Friends interview.

Q: What is "the dip?"

SG: It's the hard spot; the place where most people quit. It's organic chemistry on your way to being a doctor. Lots of people announce that they're pre-med. Their grandmother gets excited and they have fun until they take organic chemistry.

Q: You say that there's a simple way to tell if you should quit.

SG: There are some things that are a dip and other things that are a dead end. Once you understand that quitting is a choice, that quitting in the dip is the worst moment to quit, you'll quit a lot less because you'll fall in love with mastery. You'll fall in love with becoming the best in the world by investing enough resources to get out the other end. Figure out how many resources you have and pick a dip that matches them. It's foolish for a startup to say, "We're going to make a better search engine than Google," because the dip's too big.

The dip is your friend, because if the dip isn't there, you're on a dead end. There is no dip for a longshoreman. There is a dip for making a profit by selling your product at Wal*Mart. Once you get through that dip, on the other end is success.

Q: Val Willis recently posted here about projects that are doomed to failure. People don't have the patience anymore to work on something when they realize it's dead in the water.

SG: Cycles are shorter. People twenty years ago said, "This may be doomed, but it's going to be ten years before they figure it out. I'll be fine." But now people realize that it could happen in sixty days. The opportunity cost of sticking around at the wrong place is too high. If you're working on a dead end, you're wasting your personal brand and your resources.

What we've written here is almost the ultimate design book, because it's about how to design yourself ... how to create a winning and attractive personality ... how to get to "yes" in an argument or presentation. So, the book is about the self—communication, self-presentation, and how we create impressions. It's a book about design, but design that is applied to people and ideas ...

And, having been the first chief executive of London's Design Museum, Stephen knows his topic. You can read the rest of his Cool Friends interview here. Or visit his website, www.stephenbayley.com, and his book website, lifesapitch.uk.com. Welcome to the Cool Friends, Stephen!