Life Lesson

Pleasing 90% of your audience is easy: just meet their expectations.

Due to years of being let down by one company after another, most expect a less than average experience. So, to please the majority you just need to be average. Say hello at the door, struggle to split a check, have dingy lighting.

The other 10% is exponentially tougher to please and you can’t treat them all the same. You’ll have to work twice as hard to please 5%, four times as hard to please 2.5%, eight times as hard to please 1.25% … and so on.

So you have a choice to make. Do you appeal to the masses or do you aim to raise the standard bar by making how hard and smart you work the default that pleases the 5% or the 2.5% or the 1.25%?

If you’re in a crowded market and searching for a differentiator, lowering your prices and customers’ expectations is a race to the bottom.

It’s even a worse move if you’re trying to be in the game for the long run because despite low expectations, people want better. They always have. They always will.

The brands that embrace “better” will be the ones that don’t just survive, but prosper.

 

Stay Positive & Ignore The Map For Average, Make The Map For Remarkable

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You’ve heard the phrase “Leave your ego at the door,” right?

It’s great to leave things like an ego or a negative attitude outside the door.

More important though, is what you bring into the room.

A positive attitude? A hearty laugh? A determination to solve a problem?

How you enter a room changes the room for better or worse, every time.

Knowing that, what’s one to do?

Treat every place you go as if you’re entering a room (because, in a sense, you are) and bring the best energy possible (because, you have that option and we need you to).

 

Stay Positive & If You’re Going To Go, Go Passionately

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You know that person who has checked out of their job, but is still doing it?

Or the person who has a hobby they mingle with once every few months?

Or the partner who stays in the relationship because they think slowly backing off will make it easier on the other?

It can be easy to rationalize a slow-transition: fear of new, eases the pain for others, nothing else lined up yet, etc.

Such is often the case, our rationalizations are wrong.

Slow transitions hurt more than they help.

No one likes when the band-aid is pulled off slowly, especially if it has been there for a while.

The responsible action to take is to make a full stop, pivot and go forward on the new path; to remove the weight you’re dragging through the transition.

Ask any employer, hobby mentee and ex … They’ll always say …

“I wish they would have done it sooner.”

What’s more? They don’t say it as if they’re angry. They say it as if they’re sad–that they knew everyone would have been better off if the transition was made sooner.

 

Stay Positive & Letting Go Might Hurt, But It Also Helps More In The Long Run

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The worst action you could take when trying to change someone’s mind is to shout louder.

The next worst action is to point out their mistake, where they fall short and explain the 1,001 reasons why they’re wrong.

It’s more effective to tell a new story, one where they can be right, one that makes them feel like they can make a new decision that leads to a new narrative that leads to a new feeling of being right.

This is the beauty of watching any UN Debate. It’s not a matter of who is right and who is wrong, it’s a matter of who tells the narrative that leads another to make a different decision.

It’s less about who is less wrong and more about how to be more right.

 

Stay Positive & Let The Narrative Take Them Elsewhere

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You might have a magical idea, but if no one can relate to it, they’ll disregard it.

No one likes to work hard to understand someone’s good idea.

That’s why the practice of familiar shapeshifting is important.

The process is a simple one:

Make something. Ask what it reminds you of. Make it look like that. Repeat.

Through iterative creation, you’ll have something remarkable and equally relatable.

We’ve come a long way from thinking beer should taste like rice and music should have rhythm, but very (very!) few are willing to drink a beer that tastes like meteorite and listen to music comprised solely of random snake hisses.

It may be cool for a few and for the short run, but you’re after long-term success, right?

 

Stay Positive & You’ll Need Familiarity On Your Side

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There’s a masseuse who has built her client base for almost a dozen years. Now she has her own space and has hired someone to help it grow. These are the owner’s words about the new hire …

“She doesn’t have a lot of clientele right now. She could. She’s been doing this for years, too, but she doesn’t want to call people to invite them back.”

Too often we let outrageous stories we tell ourselves hold us back from achievements.

(Real, maybe, but also outrageous.)

Stories of introversion and fear.

Stories about others being upset with us for following up too soon. Stories that we’ll ruin our chance if we act in the wrong way when really we ruin our chances when we don’t act at all.

You’ve got the choice to be the successful masseuse or the unsuccessful one and the only difference is the easy task of making a follow-up phone call.

Such is most endeavors in life.

 

Stay Positive & Connect, That’s What People Really Want

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I’ll be the first to say it’s better to keep moving forward.

Alas, from time to time, you can actually move forward faster by regrounding yourself.

When you revisit the 101 stuff of your passion, you make fewer of those mistakes. You become reinvigorated when you revisit why you started down this path, what your story is, how you decided on this mission.

It’s February 1st.

Many new years resolutions have fallen by the wayside, but they don’t have to stay there.

Four years ago I introduced the idea of being One Bite Away: You may have slipped off your diet, but you’re one bite away from being back on it.

The same goes for the work we do, the art we make, the people we work with.

We’re one decision away from being back on the track we want for ourselves.

No need to wait until next year.

 

Stay Positive & Now Is Better

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