because next time they will be a little better.
Stay Positive & Isn’t That Enough?
Success
Your Success Story
It doesn’t need to be how you starved for years before people bought some of your art.
It doesn’t need to be how you read thousands and thousands of books as a child before you realized you were a writer.
It doesn’t need to be who your family is connected to.
You know these stories because of their popularity. They were once rare, which made them famous stories at the time. Now a starving artist is expected, writers are expected to read a lot, and if you have a lot of money, people first wonder who you’re related to, not how you did it.
These don’t make for good stories anymore, so why try replicating them?
By all means, learn from the already-accomplished, have idols, imitate morning habits if you want to, but make your success story your own.
Stay Positive & Tell A Story No One Has Told Before
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The Great Discourager
Here’s the sitch when it comes to going down the path of your passion: you’re not the only one, and nearly all the others down the same path are much, much better than you.
Want to be a beer writer? There are so many others better than you, more experienced. Steve Hindy, Maytag, Heather Vandenengel, Robin Shepard, this list could run a thousand.
Want to be a graphic designer for fortune 500 companies? The slots are already filled by someone bigger, taller, stronger, faster, and with a better stretched and exercised imagination than you.
Even something extremely specific, like a crêpe artist. There’s someone already more artistic with crepes who others will choose over you.
Unless.
Unless you tell a better story. Your story is the leverage you can have over someone more excelled than you. Your story is how you not only get a bite out of the stranger pool, but you turn the strangers into friends. Your story is your competitive advantage.
The decision you need to realize you’re making when you start following your heart and putting your passion to practice is that there will always be someone better than you, more skilled, more talented. You can’t let that be the great discourager.
The world can never have too many stories nor too many artists.
Stay Positive & Those Who You Feel Discouraged Be Can Be The Most Encouraging
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What Do You Want To Do?
Answer that question in as few words as possible.
Do you want to surprise people?
Save trees?
People may resonate with your work, but they will resonate much more if they know what your goal is.
Not to mention, people generally want to help you accomplish it. All work is a teamwork sort of thing as long as the team knows your goal.
Stay Positive & Go Share Your Story
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Horizontal Prioritization, A Better Method Of Prioritizing
Perhaps you’ve heard of the six F’s (family, friends, finances, fitness, faith, and fun) or something similar. Every success mentor always suggests making these lists, and I agree, not just in life, but in business as well. They allow you to divvy up your focus on all the important matters. However, the way they are often presented is vertically.
Family first
Faith second
Finances third…
The problem with prioritizing your life this way is that it gives you an excuse to not tout as much effort in the bottom categories. By prioritizing vertically, you’re forcing yourself to weigh the importance of each group, when, in fact, the reason for writing the various groups (whether you go with the six F’s or some other type of categorization) is that they are all equally important.
Success and balance aren’t easy to achieve, but trying to achieve them using vertical lists and actually prioritizing one important theme or category over another is a sure indicator of always lacking sufficiency, efficiency, and quality in the bottom-most themes or categories.
Prioritize horizontally. Then feel free to list goals and tasks below those, vertically.
While finances and fun are both equally a necessity, how you go about achieving each is not.
Go ahead. Try it.
Stay Positive & Design Matters When It Comes To List-making
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Two Ways To Start A Business
One way is to start with your own idea, build a business plan around it, and shout, shout, shout with hopes people hear you, switch from competitors to you, and give their attention. To be successful with this, you have to change the way people think, act, and feel.
Damn difficult to do.
Another way is to start by searching for a niche, an area that’s been untouched, perhaps listening to more than a million complaints of people until you come up with a solution. The method: you find a small problem and you provide a small solution.*
To be successful with this, you gather a tribe of like-minded people who have the same complaint, the same problem and you give your solution to them. Instead of changing the way people think, act, and feel, you’re listening, understanding and reacting to how people think, act, and feel.
You can shout, advertise and sell or you can connect, gather, and give.
Two ways to start a business. I think you know which way is better.
Stay Positive & Either Way, Have Fun With It
*All big problems have been solved with big solutions. Times have really changed. Think the taxi industry. Big solution for big problem. Then think of Uber and Lyft. Small problem. Small solution. Huge success.
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All Talk No Action, Serious Advice
I had a professor who wouldn’t let anyone pitch their story until they talked to two others about it. The writer could talk to their friend or an expert on the subject, it didn’t matter.
Call it help or assistance; I just call it conversation.
Talk to a friend, a family member or call an expert about whatever it is you’re working on. The who doesn’t matter. And I don’t consider talking as inaction. Conversation is very much an action
I would never have gotten as good as I am without talking to people about what I was working on, and I’ll never get as great as I want to be unless I continue to talk to others about what I’m working on before I see it all the way through.
All talk and no action is a great way to start.
Stay Positive & Just Be Sure You Don’t Stay There