There’s a lot of feeling risk and fear and vulnerability and uncertainty.
But there’s a trick to making them easy and it has to do with something that’s easy too: listening.
Listening to the story of those you seek to impact and then decide what’s best for them. What does your target care about? Does deciding A instead of B help them achieve the change they are seeking to make?
Decisions are hard when they’re about us, but that piece is controllable.
Decisions get easier when we make it about those we seek to serve.
You might have an idea that will trigger something meaningful in someone.
You might be holding onto a book which contains a thought that someone is out there looking for.
You might have something on your to-do list that would set a positive chain reaction rippling through your community.
In reality, you probably have a lot of these. A lot of gifts.
The result of holding them in, keeping them to ourselves isn’t just that we don’t have to feel scared or vulnerable or stupid for sharing.
The other result when we don’t share them is that we hold others back, we lower the average, we lose the opportunity to ignite a series of positive impacts bigger than we could have imagined.
Stay Positive & The Best Thing To Do With A Gift Is To Share It
The stories of workers working a little extra usually go something like this.
The bakery is owned by John. He’s behind the counter every day, counting how many pastries he’s sold and needs to sell to provide for his family.
Alex, a summertime assistant is trying to make a name for herself, so she goes outside and polishes the sign of the bakery every day. She washes the windows so it’s easy for people to see in. She assorts the pastries in a way that you can’t walk by without stopping to take a look. From the outside, the bakery looks incredible and it’s all due to her extra elbow grease and eye for detail.
But there are details getting missed. The story goes deeper than the face of the bakery.
The pastries aren’t baked to perfection. The equipment is rusty, some of it breaking frequently. There’s no delightful surprise or smile with each transaction. No remarkability. Nothing’s polished inside.
The arch that’s wrong with this storyline is that Alex (and John, obviously), are missing the fact they need to be giving as much care to the inside of their business as they do the outside.
A polished sign and pastry display might get someone in, but what happens once they enter will be what either keeps them coming back … or not.
Consider an actual vehicle, for example. You can be given any four wheeled automobile, but it’s not until you get in it and begin to drive that you feel. When you use what is named, that’s when you begin to associate memories and power and ideas with it. The name becomes something more than a name.
Sure, what you see and how it sounds and how it feels to the touch sends a signal, but signals are merely associations of the brain, not the heart.
At least, not the heart in a way that a meaningful experience can have. Signals give you an idea of what to expect, but only by going through the experience do you truly know.
You have an idea of what Airbnb is because people talk about it, but people talk about it because they have experienced it or know those who have. A name without an experience doesn’t carry much weight.
So go ahead and come up with a good name by the standard of one that sends a nice signal, but understand that the real meaning of it won’t come from the name, it will come from what people experience because of it, what it lives up to each and every day, and how it makes people feel.
A vehicle for meaningful impact, the gateway to memories, the touchpoint to something remarkable, that’s what a name is.
Stay Positive & For Those Who Need Help Coming Up With A Name: Wordoid
If you want to make an idea work, there are two critical connections you need to be making.
The first is connecting with as many people who have executed the idea or something close to your idea.
If you want to open a restaurant, talk to the top 100 restaurants in your country. If you want to open an Airbnb, talk to 100 owners of one. If you want to make and sell your jewelry, open a landscaping business, become a barber, write a book… you know what to do. You’ll be amazed at how many want to help you succeed.
The second is connecting with as many people who you think will pay, sign up, pre-order your idea.
If you want people to come to your restaurant, start talking to them now about it. If you want people to stay at your Airbnb, start talking to travelers and interacting with couch surfers. If you want to make and sell your jewelry, go to markets and fairs and connect. You get the idea.
Two types of connections. Time-consuming, yes, but simple.
There is no meaningful progress without discomfort.
There’s no connecting more strongly with a target or offering up something that people will actually tell others about without you feeling uncomfortable in connecting or offering.
This isn’t simply an observation, it’s the law. Same as gravity.
The difference, however, is that discomfort is temporary, at least the discomfort you’re feeling now. It’s a bittersweet law – the moment we feel comfortable in one area, we’re uncomfortable in another.
But the fact is progress is being made, change is being made, impact is being made. And that’s worth all the discomfort in the world, isn’t it?
Stay Positive & It Never Get’s Easier, But It’s Always Worth It
Most deserve to have some slack cut for them. They’re doing their best, trying their hardest and overwhelmed with life just the same as anyone else.
So, a little slack along with trust can go a long way to helping them feel happy, establish a connection and focus without guilt or shame.
But slack, without direction, without tension or leadership is dangerous.
It’s like letting go of the rope of a rock climber entirely – it makes the work more scary, the risk greater and actually proves that people will do less than what they were doing before because of it.
Loosen the reins, but understand they are still reins.
They need your freedom and trust as much as they need your leadership.
Stay Positive & Send The Signal That You’re A Leader
