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

Someone Is Always Watching

It’s likely not the first time you’ve heard the expression, “act like someone is watching… because someone always is” – or something of the sort.

I think it’s a damn good philosophy to follow even if it’s not necessarily true. There’s not a single person watching me write this right now, but I act as if there is.

I work as if a group of friends and influencers are behind me watching me, seeking inspiration, watching to learn how to do things the best way, not the short way.

Deep down, we all have a group of people who follow us around in our minds influencing what we do, so, in a sense, someone is always watching what you do, but who that someone is is of grand importance.

Is it all the critics who have said you’re not good enough? Is it the family member who said to settle instead of risk it for what you really wanted? Or is it the teacher who said you were going places? Or the parent who will support you no matter what you choose to do?

 

Stay Positive & You Choose Who Watches

Do You Continue To Perform?

If you performed your art on the street and three passersby tossed in money with a note attached:

The first was a one-dollar bill and a note that said: when you perform, I’m inspired, signed by someone who had once given up.

The second was a five-dollar bill and a note that said: I love your performance, thank you, signed by someone whose loved one just died.

The third was a twenty-dollar bill and a note that said: stop it.

Would you continue to perform?

 

Stay Positive & If Not $20, Then How Much?

25 Ways To Get A New Perspective

1) Talk to a homeless person

2) Go into a specialty shop, like the store that still cells cd’s and records, and ask the owner how he got into his business

3) Give someone your number

4) Ask someone from the opposite gender for theirs

5) Make eye contact through an entire conversation

6) Take public transportation

7) Go through the application process for a job you don’t want

8) Travel out of the country or just outside your town

9) Go into a store, ask a clerk what is the bestseller and figure out why

10) Ask a brewery, a farmer, a beekeeper if they could use a hand

11) Do something that you did as a kid, but haven’t in a long time

12) Visit an ethnic restaurant and order the safest thing on the menu and watch how other people eat

13) Take a walk through the nearest arboretum or botanical gardens

14) Fly in a small plane or helicopter, it’s worth the money for a birds eye view

15) Go to the movie theater alone

16) Fast for one full day

17) Make a really crappy craft and give it to someone who has never received a gift

18) Ask a group if you can join them: in frisbee, in bowling or in conversation

19) Watch a documentary this weekend

20) Bake cookies and bring them to your local fire station (ask for a tour if they don’t offer)

21) Read a poem from someone who is dead and someone who is alive

22) Ask a friend of a friend to put music on your ipod (or ask to borrow theirs for a few days)

23) Excessively tip a waiter/waitress and see how they react

24) Purge your living space of everything you haven’t used/touched in the last year

25) Write your own obituary

 

Stay Positive & Go Learn To Think About Things Differently

Does It Compound

Love compounds.

Learning compounds.

Skill compounds the more you ship.

It pays to ask if what you’re doing compounds. Failure, being right, submitting to the lizard brain doesn’t compound, so why are you spending your time there?*

 

Stay Positive & Love Learn And Practice More

*When it comes to failure, it’s impossible to compound because the more you fail, the less likely you’ll fail the next time.

Giving Is The New Advertising

Here’s advertising I think we can all get behind: advertising that gives viewers what they want.

PostIt follows you around so banner ads become a list of things you want to remember.

Businesses like McDonalds are now buying the ad space of Pandora to give you 30 minutes of no-ad listening.

Even podcast advertising is seeing the benefit of giving. It’s a podcast norm that hosts advertise products and services they use and care about – no pre-recorded voiceover here.

I did lead you astray with the title. Giving isn’t necessarily new advertising as it has always been the best kind of advertising, we’re just slowly catching on.

 

Stay Positive & No One Cares About Being Interrupted If They Get A Gift For It

All Good Marketing…

is consistent marketing.

Maintaining brand voice, which is hard, is only one piece of marketing. So is keeping up with customer service in terms of response rate.

When you demonstrate you know who your product is for by stating “people like us…,” you lock in consistency. But when you open the door to the masses, your marketing loses consistency and you customer service response rate tumbles and your brand voice is lost.

People respond to consistency. It’s how you build a tribe. It’s why they keep showing up.

 

Stay Positive & There’s No One Path To Remarkability, There’s Only Staying On A Path