I ran across the "Ask a Ninja" podcasts on iTunes sometime this past fall and thought it was a hoot. In fact, I showed one of the videos to my teammates in my Strategic Management class, and it was such a hit we took 'Ninja' as our theme for the final paper and presentation for the class. I an not sure our instructor liked it as much as we did, but at least we had fun putting the thing together.
If you're curious, this was the �NINJA� strategy we developed:
Narrative � Is our strategy compelling and easy to communicate? If not, something is wrong.
Innovative � How will we keep being better than our competition?
Nimble � Anticipate and embrace change. Be where the competition is not.
Journey � The journey will not be the same at each point along the way.
Assess � Always be asking: How does this help reach our strategic objectives?
At any rate, it was nice to see that the AaN team is getting a nice payday for their efforts:
The folks at Ask a Ninja are pretty excited. I spoke with Kent Nichols today and he says that he and Douglas Sarine, the other madmen behind the year-old video blog, just signed a deal with blog network Federated Media that guarantees them a contract for sales in the low seven figures this year.Basically, the two have agreed to work together in wooing advertisers. In exchange for the right to sell ads for Ask a Ninja, FM promised the video blog it would bring in a certain amount of revenue. Whatever FM sells, the two split, with Ask a Ninja taking the majority, Kent says. And if FM doesn't sell that much? Well, Ask a Ninja then simply can walk out of the contract.
My favorite is still the "Pop!Tech" episode.
