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Where do you go for creative inspiration? For me, one place is the sea. It offers extraordinary details if you’re patient and curious enough to let them wash over you. The sea reminds me that the most beautiful forms are the most simple and direct. Too often, we complicate things by seeking out lofty solutions. Most of the time, the answer is sitting right there just waiting to be noticed.
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“The sea does not reward those who are too anxious,
too greedy, or too impatient. One should lie empty, open, choiceless as a beach—
waiting for a gift from the sea.“
—Anne Morrow Lindbergh
And you? Where do you go? The museum? The shower? A bike ride?
“I want to work smarter, not harder in 2012,” a friend resolved at an annual New Years Day party where guests reflect on the past year and state intentions for the new one.
Working smarter often involves working harder at first, but not harder on the same old stuff. Working smarter means putting systems in place that conserve time, energy and money. But that work often means asking hard questions. Otherwise we would set up resource-saving systems more often.
Which brings me to marketing budgets. It’s easy to squander time and money, equally valuable assets. Read the rest of this entry »
“Ship often. Ship lousy stuff, but ship. Ship constantly.” —Seth Godin
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Diving in head first not only goes against conventional wisdom, but it goes beyond most people’s comfort zones.
We’re always told to plan, to be level headed, to be prudent, to be structured. The only problem is that our fear, doubt, procrastination, worry, perfectionism, definitions of success (add as necessary) trick us into staying put. But we believe that our delay is really prudence. Read the rest of this entry »
When one door is closed, don’t you know, another is open. —Bob Marley
With the closing of the year, December is a perfect time to consider the doors you’re keeping open, the doors you have yet to open and, often more importantly, the doors to consider closing. Not slamming. Not locking. Just closing. (You can always reopen them.)
I talk a lot about closing doors so you can open others, not because it’s easy for me to do! It’s because I know it has to be done in order to conserve energy, create success, explore new opportunities and maintain enthusiasm for your work.
We keep doors open that are better shut, and for good reason.
We fear a potential loss. We’re hard-wired to avoid loss, a concept called loss aversion. Barry Schwartz talks about it in his book, “Paradox of Choice.” Even if a loss will really be our gain, we often make decisions that don’t benefit us because the primal part of our brain kicks in. Just by knowing this, you can override that automatic response and make a different decision.
You will always have a loss, but you will always have a gain, too. The problem is, the gain is unknowable and the thing we have is knowable. It might suck, but at least it’s familiar. We also don’t want to disappoint people, another form of loss aversion.
Opening a new door takes energy and time. Yes and no. It depends on the door. Most of us are so risk averse that we’re not likely to open a brand new door so wide that an ocean of possibility rushes in that we suddenly have to deal with. And remember that we’re also closing doors.
We have to figure out what we want. Many of us work on auto pilot and we also do what is nearest or easiest or most crisis-oriented. We rarely leave time for the kind of reflection that can open up new opportunities. This affects all of us — the in-house marketing or project manager, the sole proprietor, the small business owner.
Other people are involved. If you work for or with other people, closing doors might be a little trickier. You have to justify a change. But maybe your staff plugging away at an effort that isn’t beneficial. Or you’re working with companies that don’t bring out the best in you. Maybe you can’t seize another opportunity because your time and effort is tied up elsewhere. You might need to step up and gently closes a door.
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Years ago, I got rid of a large part of my book collection. I thought it was sacrilege but I wanted to simplify my surroundings. I created three piles: Keep, Get Rid Of and Maybe. I let the Maybe pile sit for a few days. I discovered I kept books I thought I should read but didn’t really want to. They were a cognitive drain. I got clear with what I was really curious about, what made me feel expanded and what I deeply wanted to learn, which meant having to acknowledge the opposite.
Business and work decisions are more complicated than books. But most likely, you don’t need to think about which doors to close; you already know what they are. Look at your business efforts that leave you anxious, frustrated, bored, unappreciated, angry or uncertain. The doors to open? They say those will open magically, but only when you’re courageous enough to close some first.
You have good and important things to offer. You have to make sure that the right doors are open for those things (and the right people) to move freely about.
Good luck! And if you have a good door-closing story to share, I’d love to hear it.
It is always easier to do than to plan to do. We often have an internal knowing about where we’re going and what we want to accomplish, whether it’s a visionary decision or just a project. So we skip the kinds of meaningful questions that help us chart the best path.
But that’s because the questions can stop you in your tracks (proof that you’re getting somewhere!) because they’re hard to answer. They involve having to think critically about who you are and why you do what you do. They call to mind selling and marketing, which most of us avoid.
But most of all, we’re not clear about who we’re walking towards. Or we’re walking towards everyone and no one. Read the rest of this entry »
Do you plan your every step, knowing the results you want and what the destination looks and feels like? Do you work and work at something even if it doesn’t feel quite right, or because you chose that path you feel you must persevere?
Or, instead, do you coast along and hope that something appealing will snag you, or that you’ll an opportunity will drop at your feet?
Personally, neither sounds appealing, at least not all the time.
But there’s another option — a hybrid of the two. It can take some of the heat off if you feel like you fall into either of those categories. Or especially if you bounce back and forth between the two. Read the rest of this entry »
I live in a neighborhood of budding young entrepreneurs, which might be due to the socio-economic status of the parents. But as I take my daily walks, I get the shake down from five-year-olds who can barely talk but who can, at least, point to their wares such as five-cent, hand-painted popsicle sticks. I need to start carrying change with me. It’s hard to say no to a girl in Juliette-inspired dress with a lisp and waving a wand.
Fortunately, there’s no organic lemonade. Stands are, if admirably solid, still lacking polish, making them more appealing than if they looked as though an over-achieving parent had slaved to craft a mini Starbucks.
These kids have a natural business savvy. Many of us business owners bang our heads trying to figure out how to convince someone to hire us or even what specifically we sell. We look for just the right persuasive words. We wait to till our message is perfect before putting it out into the world. Only perfect never comes.
The most basic things really work:
• Meeting people where they are
• Delivering good service
• Being enthusiastic about your product or service
• Having a niche (lemonade or rocks or popsicle sticks, not all three)
• Create incentives to keep them coming back
On the way back from the market one day, I came across three boys. “Rocks for sale!” the youngest one yelled as he ran around a tree. “Spend five dollars and you get a coupon!” he shrieked.
A coupon for what, I asked the little boy. A coupon for more rocks, of course.
These three boys had a relaxed moxie and an air of confidence about their product, of which I found myself almost envious. A particularly interesting fossilized shell would set me back $1.50. I offered a dollar and they accepted—a little too quickly; their only weak point. But then I found a bright pink polished beauty that was only fifty cents. Still, I offered the dollar.
“I guess that makes me a pretty stupid customer,” I said.
The bouncy little boy yelled a little too loudly, “No it doesn’t. It makes you a smart customer!” He couldn’t say why when I asked him, but his sureness won me over and I was satisfied with being a smart customer.
No wonder they’d managed to amass over forty dollars in a few days. Fortunately, I’m not trying to sell rocks because the competition is stiff down the street.
When asked the question, “What do you do?” most of us reply by reciting a role we play. When you think about it, if you say, “I’m an accountant,” you haven’t really replied to the inherent action part of the question. The doing part. Most of us see ourselves in roles—mother, barista, graphic designer, farmer—which is really just a set of clothes we wear most of our waking hours. It says nothing of who we are, what we care about, what our talents are, how our work makes us feel, what we think we give to the world.
Off and on for the last year or more, I’ve been evaluating my business and asking myself if I’m following my passions enough, serving the people I really want to serve, and putting things out into the world that are a good representation of my skills and talents and values.
In all the resources I’ve come across, one of the most often cited aspects of this exploration is learning how to say what you do without putting people to sleep. “I’m an accountant,” is a surefire way to put someone to sleep. No offense to accountants.
If that accountant were to say “I make one of the most unpleasant days of the year easy for people and sometimes even pleasant,” he or she would have your attention. Everyone wants an unpleasant day to be easier and even pleasant. They’d be curious to know which day you were talking about. Then they’d be curious enough to ask, “Well, how exactly do you do that?”
Now you’re having a conversation because you’ve captured their attention with a need they can relate to. People want to see themselves in there somewhere.
Even if you were a member of a circus, which sounds infinitely more interesting than what most of us do, you’d still cut your listener off. A role as an answer is a dead end. There’s nowhere go. “I take people out of reality to a magical place,” is the kind of answer that starts a conversation.
Recently, at a party, I met a woman who was a third grade teacher. I liked Pam instantly. I was working through exercises myself to answer that very question, “What do you do?” When I asked her what she did, she answered like most of us do.
“Can I help you reframe that?” I asked. “Here’s what you really do. You help shape young minds to thrive in this world.”
Her face lit up and a smile spread across her face like I’d just planted flowers along her career path. We were in a room full of web-savvy people. If she had said “third grade teacher” to anyone in there, she probably would have received only polite nods.
Just then a young woman walked up and introduced herself. When she asked Pam what she did, Pam stood up straight and threw her shoulders back. She looked at me and whispered with a smile, “I’m going to try it out.”
So, what do you really do?
Have you ever been through or watched someone go through a short but intense romance? One that resembled a tug of war where each person’s fears and desires yanked the other this way and that.
Even when things are good, the rush of infatuation is often powerful enough to throw us out of whack, making us forget who we are, what we stand for, or even that we can stand. As I watched a friend recently go through this kind of discombobulation, I recalled a phrase my tango instructor said in class one evening:
Be easy to move, but hard to knock over.
We’d been going over a subtle but powerful exercise in finding that right balance between movement, connection and resistance, to flow with our partner. Easier to feel than be taught, but it does help to hear the words — and hope that the body will follow. When it works, two dancers move in unison applying just enough resistance to create energy, and therefore, movement. If one person is off their axis the duo becomes unstable, which can happen because of too much movement or surrender. The flow is lost. Likewise, if there’s too much rigidity, movement can’t happen. Again, the flow is lost. Read the rest of this entry »
This month marks the final installment of a “Year of Produce” in which I charted my fresh produce purchases in illustrated form for a year starting in April 2010. I was curious to see if I put my money where my mouth is about eating locally and, by definition, seasonally. Yes, 2010 was so last year. But April is so now! Which means you can start all over again if you missed the whole thing. Scroll down for March as well as a mini image of each month that links to that month’s post. Each one has some combination of recipes or recipe links, preparation ideas, thoughts on eating locally and other good stuff. So please explore!
With this final post I offer:
• A tally for the year
• Thoughts on what is local
• My observations on the project
• March recipe links
• How to eat seasonally, affordably (prompted by a question someone asked me) Read the rest of this entry »
