What You’re Keeping Track Of

I’ve got a list of past failures. Given that I fail often, it’s a long one.

What are you keeping track of? The number of times you’ve failed, guessed wrong, invested in the wrong stock, passed on pursuing an invention?

Much more productive – and I’m working on this myself – to keep track of our successes.

Sure, learn from the failures and the paths not taken, but why hold onto them. Better to remind ourselves of when we were right, what worked, when we took risks and turned out to succeed by doing so.

It’s a tough list to make, but worth the investment of attention.

 

Stay Positive & Focusing On The Good Attracts More Good

Where The Magic Really Is

You don’t need thousands of investors, subscribers or participants to launch, to be on the path toward success.

Skillshare, one of the largest educational online platforms started their first class with only 6 participants. Look where they are now: millions of people enrolling in classes, signing up to teach, developing hundreds of creative projects – oh, and they’re making a ton of money from subscriptions.

Many would argue a lot of magic happened in the middle of their story, between their first class and where they are now. They obviously refined a lot, trashed bad features and focused on developing a minimum viable product. While there may have been passion, I don’ believe there was much magic during their progressional phases.

The real magic happened when they decided to keep providing classes and improving the system after their first class of 6 students.

Think if you were in their position: only six students in your first class you worked hours and hours on? Would you press on? Or would you be disappointed with the number who showed up? Obviously it’s not a good idea if so few people sign up at the start, right?

Poor turnout is often a passion killer, but you don’t have to let it be. Remind yourself that those 6 participants have 10 friends, and there’s an insane amount of magic there.

 

Stay Positive & Press On

In The Box Podcast

Episode 13: Mistakes, Habits, Disorder And More – Podcast

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we explored how to process mistakes, being in front of a PR (crisis) story and how to handle disorder. We also talked about a daily habit that gets us energized for the day, if less is really more, and a tad about superstitions, which turned into a discussion about Parkinson’s Law.

If you’re digging the topics, don’t forget to subscribe.

Episode 13: Mistakes, Habits, Disorder And More

Superstitions – Do you believe in any superstitions?

Less – Is less really more?

Habits – What is one habit you’ve developed that is critical to your daily success or energy for taking on the day?

Mistakes – How do you process mistakes?

In Front – How important in PR is it to be in front of a story vs. letting things develop and then responding?

Disorder – How do you handle the role of disorder in your own life?

 

Stay Positive & Have A Topic You Want Us To Cover? Email!

In The Box Podcast

Episode 11: Media Law, Earbuds, Dojo, Pilot Episodes And More – Podcast

On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we had a conversation about dojos, pilot episodes, copyright law, the nastiest four letter word out there, and generational differences in society… I mean, earbuds. Enjoy.

Episode 11: Media Law, Earbuds, Dojo, Pilot Episodes And More

Pilot episodes – Can you really tell if something will be a success after the pilot episode.

Dojo – What is a dojo to you?

Copyright, Fair Use, and other laws of the internets – Can you really overkill being cautious of copyright and other media laws?

Communication – What are your favorite forms of communication?

Food/Diet – Why is food not viewed as a good investment but a diet is?

Earbuds!! – Do you think earbuds are destroying the threads of society?

 

Stay Positive & What’s Your Dojo?

(subscribe to the podcast here.)

What A Real Impresario Needs

Balancing Impresario

It’s an odd feeling when someone tells me that they have my back because half of what I do I do to show one person can do it, that you don’t need a safety net, that one doing risky work doesn’t need someone to have their back.

What every impresario needs is not the hearing that someone will pick up the ball if they drop it, nor is it the knowing someone has their back; it’s the feeling of it all. The feeling someone is there to back you up, catch you if you fall.

Don’t tell your impresario friends you’re there if they fail. Make them feel you’re there by supporting their forward direction, appreciating their work, asking them questions that help them challenge their lizard brain thoughts.

Support is a funny thing. You don’t need an impresario to fail and fall to show your support. Giving them motivation to keep building their momentum – that’s the support impresarios need, that’s the trust that makes them continue doing work that matters.

The way an impresario sees it is this: they feel you’ve got their back when they see, hear, and feel you’ve got their front.

In the world of art, moving forward is so much more important and so much more difficult than dusting shoulders off and getting up after falling down.

Show you’re there to help forward movement and any impresario will feel you’re there to have their back, because, really, that’s the easier of the two, the safer of the two.

If your there in the front helping them do the work that matters, there’s no reason you wouldn’t be there if things were to go south.

 

Stay Positive & The Quickest Way To Become An Impresario Is To Support One

p.s. if you’re an impresario yourself, share this post with friends. they may need to read it more than you

Photo credit

Where’s Your Attention At?

It’s easy to notice the not-so-good. Easy to talk bout bad advertisements. Easy to rant about poor customer service. (Just did yesterday, oops.)

The number of blogs and conversations dedicated to the bad and the ugly are infinite.

It’s sad, really, that there’s so much bad stuff out there to comment on. Sadder yet there are those out there willing to focus so much attention on it.

You have to wonder, does it do good to focus so intensely on the negative?

The typical response is that we learn more from failure than we do success. However, that only holds true when it comes to our own actions, not others’. When it comes to others’, we learn more from their successes than their failures. (That’s why we attend seminars, to learn what works. Sure we hear a failure story or two, but it’s a lead to them saying what works. They don’t focus on the negative and we benefit greatly from that.)

Better to learn from others what success looks like than what it doesn’t. Reason being is we can dedicate our lives to seeing what doesn’t work and still not find the answer for what works.

It’s best to celebrate the success of others and attempt our own.

 

Stay Positive & Time Spent On Negative Is Time Not Spent On The Positive

Subjection

Subjection

I thought earlier today at work how I’m learning more things that are difficult to communicate to people who haven’t experienced what I have.

A lot of what I write can be read as a short cut for you. You can skip all the frustrations of going what I’ve already gone through to reach the same conclusions. Right? …I hope not.

Rather then taking the short cut, I hope you are inspired to take the journey, encouraged to subject yourself to failure, to being uncomfortable, to thinking about things differently.

I’ve made it out alive, so can you.

Sometimes I forget it’s not the finish line that makes the race, but the run all the way to it. It is nice to know there is a finish line, though, and that’s why I write, why I share so many “finish line realizations” about life, about marketing, about public relations, about connections and art.

A finish line isn’t worth it without a marathon before it, and a marathon isn’t worth it without a finish line at the end. We have to take pleasure in both.

One of the toughest questions to answer when we are on a mission of success is what does success look like?

For me it’s getting you to subject yourself to things you wouldn’t have had you not read my writing. And, hey, along the way you may do things a bit differently and reach better, bigger, brighter conclusions than me. Sounds sort of exciting doesn’t it? (it is)

 

Stay Positive & Perhaps YOU Will Start Blogging Daily