Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
The key to letting things go is to bring them to the surface.
That’s why every recovery process begins with awareness.
When we keep things deep or when we layer distractions in front of them, they’ll stay with us.
Bringing them to the surface might be rough, it might draw a few tears, but it’s the only way you can either begin to embrace or let go (truly let go).
Stay Positive & Whenever You’re Ready
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The problem with racing to have the lowest price is that you might win.
Same with speed.
There is a limit to how low you can go and a wall with how fast.
Quality, however, still has a say in things, and quality can shine in a variety of ways.
It can be the quality of the product or the space or the community or the interactions or the online ordering system or all of these combined that make your brand remarkable.
If you’re starting a new business or taking a leadership role in an ongoing one, please don’t be distracted by lowering prices or increasing speed.
No customer or potential customer actually wants you to win at either.
And if they do, it’s because they don’t know about the sacrifices you will have to make to get there.
Stay Positive & More Quality Please
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You’ll learn more about your student’s parents by meeting them for a quick lunch than you will at a parent teacher conference.
You’ll learn more about running a business by going to lunch with someone who has run a few than by listening to a podcast.
Information alone is sort of helpful, but doesn’t often inspire enough action.
Information paired with connection and emotion and community and trust and a personal bond built with another is much more likely to lead to action.
And action is what we need.
Stay Positive & Lunch Can Be Actual Fuel If We Choose
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It’s not necessarily the business plan that matters to your work, but it certainly helps.
Same with mentorship, a good social presence and a tribe that has followed you since day one.
But, what truly matters most in your work is you.
Without you, we can find a different restaurant, a different shirt, a different phone.
We know what we would do if what you offer went away, but the brands that remain remarkable are the ones that get us to wonder how we can carry on without them.
A phone without Jobs isn’t as meaningful. A shirt brand without Johnny isn’t as remarkable. A montessori class without that one teacher? Can you imagine Tesla without Elon or Amazon without Jeff?
Better to boldly stand in front of a brand than to hide behind it.
It’s scarier, but worth it.
Stay Positive & We Choose You Because Of You
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The problem with being average isn’t that people don’t remember you.
It’s that they do.
The restaurant that has a server who goes through the formalities, the shoe company who accepts your return through an automated customer service voice system, the bowling alley that has clearly labeled signs for where to return your shoes are all instances of mediocrity and we remember not to go to them.
Instead, we seek out the ever more remarkable.
The restaurant with the server who instills a new sensory experience with our food, the shoe company that accepts the shoes and seeks out what else it can provide unrelated to the shoe exchange, the bowling alley that has a carnival-esque conveyor belt for you to hook your shoes when you’re done are all instances of remarkability and we remember to talk about them.
And that’s the difference between average and above average. One you remember, one you talk to others about.
Stay Positive & Which Are You?
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Are you curious enough to ask (and answer) what would the world be like if you kept doing something regularly, daily maybe, for six straight months?
What if you kept putting all your advertising dollars toward that shiny object?
What if you created content for only one target?
What if you kept eating cookies for breakfast?
What if you hugged your partner every day before bed?
While the things that are often worth doing are worth doing for the long haul, we don’t realize a habit is good or bad for quite some time.
But that’s not to say we can’t make a prediction regarding its quality.
It’s worth the gut check now. If you kept doing X for six months, will you be reaching and supporting your goal or working against it?
Stay Positive & Sometimes All You Have To Do Is Ask To Know
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There’s never really one purpose to a meeting. Always two.
An internal and an external purpose.
To build relationships and to leave with a stronger, better, more understood list of goals or tasks.
Interestingly, the quality of the external purpose is strongly connected to the quality of the internal purpose.
Ice breakers are magic. So are Q&As. So is an environment everyone is seen, heard and given permission (maybe even an expectation) to speak up.
Stay Positive & More Meetings Isn’t Necessary, Better Is
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