Life Lesson

The best teachers recognize, pay attention to, and figure out how to create teachable moments.

They enter situations specifically to teach someone because nothing is learned as well as when it’s experienced.

However, many teachable moments still go wrong, lessons go unlearned, students leave unfulfilled for one reason: the teacher teaches wrong.

I’ve always looked at it this way: It’s not about how one teaches, there’s no one size fits all way. It’s about how the student learns.

Lessons can’t be forced, but they can be altered to align with how one learns best.

 

Stay Positive & As With Everything, It Starts With Listening

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A friend of mine takes a dozen photos of a subject before he starts filtering and editing the photo.

Another friend works on editing the first photo she takes of a subject.

One is editing to make something better.

The other is editing to make it good enough.

One is taking something that’s lame and turning it mediocre.

The other is taking something good and turning it great.

 

Stay Positive & Careful What You’re Editing

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To create a legacy, to make something that lasts is less about investing time in preparation and launch.

Making something last is about showing up every single day, about building momentum, about keeping a promise.

Meaningful products, brands, services and relationships don’t occur with a “set it and forget it” feature.

Things that last are what we work to make last.

 

Stay Positive & As It Should Be

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When a project isn’t going your way, it’s more than likely you think too much responsibility is on the shoulders of another. It’s their fault for not bringing their A game. It’s easy to think someone else is dragging your work down.

Does that not sound like you? No? Then maybe you think it’s all on you. They’re not happy and it’s your fault.

Our work is a constant sway between the two mindsets. Our job is to keep the sway to a minimum. Too far on the other guy, and you put yourself in a silo no one wants to stand around. Too hard on yourself puts you in a downward spiral no one believes they can save.

The best we can do is pay attention; to notice which way we’re swaying and how far we’ve swayed, then to work past the obstacles to get you and the team where you need to go.

 

Stay Positive & Keep Your Eyes On The Prize

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There’s the marketer who chases after the mass, trying to be everything to everyone.

Then there’s the marketer who connects with a micro audience, even if only for a moment.

Both marketers repeat the process, but only one wins out in the end.

 

Stay Positive & Which Are You?

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A better way to gauge customer interest and loyalty than to look at how many frequent flier miles they’ve gathered and how many times they’ve bought a gift card for a friend is to notice how they feel when they walk in the door, how they feel when they make a transaction, and how they feel when they walk out of the establishment.

No change you can make from the mining of data will ever be as powerful as a person to person interaction gone right. After all, people just want to be seen.

 

Stay Positive & Are You Watching What Matters?

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“We should get together to work on this sometime.”

“Let’s grab coffee sometime.”

“I’ll get back to them sometime soon.”

We’ve heard and said these lines before.

Despite our default belief, “sometime” isn’t something that happens to us.

We decide when sometime is.

Correction: We ought to decide when sometime is.

If we don’t mean for there to be an actual sometime, then let’s not trick each other into thinking there will be.

 

Stay Positive & How About Friday At 4:00 p.m.?

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