When someone walks through your agency, reviews your strategy plan, considers purchasing your product, can they answer this question?
Do they know who decided to have yellow lights instead of white lights in the chandelier? Do they know who decided to pitch magazine publications instead of Television news outlets?
Next, is that person accessible?
Ignorance is more rooted in not having a pathway for feedback to the person who made the decision than it is them not caring in the first place.
One of my colleagues sets the work flow up perfectly for the team. She says, “Garth, I want you to own this.” If anything were to go wrong, everyone knows who decided it and they have my contact info.
On the other hand, when I go to the bathroom and see the toilet paper isn’t on the right way or when I walk to the bank and I try pushing the door open when it’s meant to be pulled, who can I talk to about that?
In a world packed with designers and decision makers, are you making it clear to the customer, the viewer, the attendee, the visitor who decided X or Y or Z?
Stay Positive & Communicate Who Owns It And How To Reach Them
Martin Luther revolutionized German culture and made a dent in standardizing their language. He would travel and read his translation of the Bible into the vernacular and ask each audience that listened, “How did this sound? Was it too banal? Was it strong? Did it sound good?”
He rewrote and rewrote and continued reading aloud until he got “yes” as a response from everyone from the baker to the welder to the merchant. His writing was a variant of German, intelligible to both northern and southern Germans, his target market solely because he had his system of feedback, he listened, he rewrote.
Note, Luther didn’t change the message of his writing, he merely changed the wording to effectively communicate the message he wanted. (He did get in some heat for adding some words when he shouldn’t have. Remember, this is a translation of the Bible, not much room for creativity.)
Even if I knew that tomorrow the world would go to pieces, I would still plant my apple tree. – Martin Luther
Who was Luther and why does he deserve this blog post? He was a constant seeker and recipient of feedback. He didn’t take criticism personally. He ignored the naysayers. If some commoner expressed a dissatisfaction with his words, Luther didn’t begin to question whether he himself was right or wrong, he merely wondered what he could do better to communicate his beliefs.
Now-a-days I see people quit, toss their business plans, and remove their books from Amazon because their message didn’t resonate with whom they thought it would. I witness speakers decide not to speak in front of an audience again because their first audience wasn’t convinced by their message. I miss out on seeing a starting blogger become influential because they stop blogging. Why continue if no one is reading, right?
Wrong.
By doing what Luther did and sharing our ideas, our blog posts, our podcasts, our business plans, our art, we have the opportunity (I mean, come on, there are more than seven billion connected people on this planet) to check whether our way of communicating is effective for the audience we’re reaching for. Why are we not doing this more often?
Why are we limiting ourselves to mastermind groups, to people who already think like us, to our idols or our best friends when it comes to seeking feedback and tweaking the way we communicate? Certainly I’m not suggesting reaching out to all seven billion people, but the group you’re now letting influence your communications can increase in size and as a result your words, your art, your message can get stronger.
Stay Positive & Send Something My Way, I’ll Give Some Feedback thegarthbox@gmail.com
* Worth a read: The social Origins of Good ideas. Essentially the best ideas come from outside communities, just as often as the best feedback.
It’s about what people keep of yours, right? They keep and hoard your books and are the first to buy one when it’s released. They keep their name tag they got at your event they attended. They keep the t-shirt with your logo you gave them. They keep remnants of you in their memory box or inspiration folder or Safari bookmark. Was any of this your goal?
I think it’s better to be talked about, to get someone to wear the t-shirt in hopes someone else asks about the logo, to encourage your tribe to share the books they buy with friends who can also benefit from them and to create an online space where like-minded followers can connect with each other.
Impact is about moving, about connecting, about shaking people into action, not about storing memories.
Stay Positive & What Are You Getting Your Audience To Do?
Humans in their entirety are under constant adaptation. It’s in our nature. We adapt in every form – mentally, physically, ideally, and in our hearts to the environment we are subject to.
The gold medalist outliers in athletics, in business, and in life, they got there through adaptation.
Most marathon runners have burned themselves out in at least 10 races or practice races before they successfully completed their first marathon.
The published writer, went through having 5 migraines and 20 different occasions of muscle spasms in her eyes and hands because she kept upping the dose of writing she did on the computer each day.
Almost all millionaire entrepreneurs, have had at least 30 overnighters and more than a third of their nights severely sleep deprived.
Reach
It’s impossible to bend and reach your toes if you have never stretched before. It’s impossible to write 60 hours a week while carrying a full-time job if you haven’t even wrote for 20 hours a week. It’s impossible to stay up two nights in a row working on a business plan if you have never had less than 7 hours a sleep in a night. As much as you want to fight it, life has its limits and becoming a gold medalist, becoming indispensable, becoming an artist, and becoming successful is not an overnight occurrence. It’s not something that can be reached the first try, the second try, or even after 50 tries.
The successful become the successful because they bounced back from injuries, headaches and sleepless nights the quickest. They stretched. They crashed. They adapted to it. They (now, like you) understood that their body is in a constant state of adaptation whether you want it to be or not. It tries to adjust to the moment – every moment.
Plateau
If you are not constantly improving with your muse, you are plateauing. If you are plateauing, you are getting worse, because everyone else, they are getting better, thus raising what the average is and putting you below the line. (Not where you want to be)
However, plateauing is key. Again, you can’t reach your toes the first try, even if you stay reaching for them for 5 hours straight. When you plateau, you allow adaptation to catch up and make the improvement you made the average so you can once again go after improvement. A person can reach their toes with 5 hours of effort, but only if they stretch, relax, adapt, and stretch again.
There are two variables of plateauing
1. How many times you plateau determines how excellent you will be. The more times you give yourself time to relax and adapt, the quicker you can accelerate becoming an expert at what you are doing. Who knew the amount of success is based on the number of times you actually don’t work for it?
2. How long you plateau for is the essential factor resulting in either progress or decline. If a weightlifter curls 50lb dumbbells, and then plateaus for two weeks, he is certainly not going to be lifting 50lb’s again right away. His plateau made his abilities decrease. Then again, he won’t get anywhere if he curls every single day, twice a day, leaving no time for adaptation (or improvement).
Like many games, Super Mario taught us an important lesson. When you reach the top of the ladder, you can always jump to another and get even higher. – Success.
Ever realize that just by properly stretching, your able to reach further? But so few stretch.
So many people stop before they reach their goal. More often than not, one easy stretch before they achieve it.
How To Reach Further
There are two types of reachers in this world. Those who don’t reach and those who don’t reach far enough.
And there is a single method that can improve the reach, the possibilities and the rewards of both types of people.
The simple method: make huge ridiculously unreasonable goals.
People Who Don’t Reach
Whoever said to do the hardest thing on your to-do list first, was wrong. Every small goal you complete adds to the length of your reach. The next goal you can reach a bit further and get a bit bigger of an award. The trouble with non-stretchers is that they have the choice to either do small reaches (small goals) or not reach at all (no goals). As it was expressed, it’s in our nature to do the easy thing first. In this case, for a non-stretcher, that would be doing nothing. (Yes, from time to time we may read something and be inspired to tackle the biggest baddest item on the to-do list first, but tomorrow is a new day and a new list and a new BIG thing. Is it rewarding to do the BIG thing first, yes. Does it last, no.) Non-stretchers never try hard, they will reach, but only for the easy things. They do the minimum. As a result, if you make a non-stretcher create enormous and outrageous goals, their options are to do the BIG goals, or the small goals. And folks, you have to agree with me, small goals are better than no goals.
When you get to that point, if you are not already there, you are considered a person who doesn’t reach far enough.
People Who Don’t Reach Far Enough
People who don’t reach far enough are those that stop running at 5k when they know they can run another kilometer. They will complete their goals but not take it further. It’s like the story of training fleas. You can put a handful of fleas in a jar and close the lid. They will keep jumping and hitting the lid. Eventually you can remove the lid and they won’t jump out, they will keep stopping at the height that they hit their heads at. People who don’t reach far enough are those fleas. They reach the goals they set, but stop themselves from jumping any higher.
Don’t get me wrong, people who don’t reach far enough do plenty of good in the world. They get a good education. They get a good job. They get a good home and car. They get a good family and personal relationship. Reasonably, they get a good future.
But “good” is not enough.
When have you ever heard a person getting hired as the new CEO for being good enough? When have you seen a President get chosen just for being good enough? When has the noble peace award been given to someone who was just “good”? What author has gone down into history for just being “good”?
Good, just isn’t enough. You have to do more, go the extra kilometer. The only way to do this is to create massive goals and when you have done all of those goals, make bigger ones. You know the saying there is always someone somewhere better than you or their soon will be? There is always a bigger goal that you can achieve and as you stretch further and further you will end up in a successful life, not one just good enough.
Reach and Take The Universe From My Hand, It Is Yours
