I rented and watched the movie The Soloist the other day. I want to buy it now. My wife asked me if I really thought we would watch the film enough to justify buying it.
I don’t.
I just want to support a good film and have it as a reminder of its message.
This made me thing about why I buy, or don’t buy, certain things from certain places. I don’t have the same intention to seek out and support something “good.”
If we endorse what we buy, then shouldn’t we buy what we endorse? As Seth Godin said, we get what we pay for.
Some of our most cherished works of art originated from the Renaissance. Without the Medici family, many of these works would not have been created. Lorenzo de Medici supported artists from Leonardo da Vinci to Michelangelo. So, without patrons, The Mona Lisa and the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel would not exist for our appreciation.
What we need today are “many micro-Medicis.” We need small armies of patrons who recognize what they appreciate and are willing to support it. Buy from manufacturers with good labor standards. Buy from stores that support the community. Donate to churches involved in good work. Donate to candidates who not only stand on proper (however you define it) values… but prove it with the way they operate their campaign. And yes, purchase movies that communicate rich and powerful messages.
“Patronizing” should cease to connotate negativity. We should all aspire to be more patronizing.
The world continues to move at ever-increasing speed. Twitter is not going to slow down for you to catch your breath.
Not only is work filling your day, but so are non-profits. Even consumer marketing seems to be vying for your time (“Visit our website.” “Fill out this survey.” “Engage in these conversations.”) instead of directly reaching for your billfold.
We’re all busy. It isn’t going to change anytime soon. If I could visualize this phenomenon, it would look like a monstrous fitness center with people on treadmills. So many treadmills you can’t see the end of it.
What can you do? If we’re all stuffing our lives this way, how do you do anything that gets noticed? How do you define success in a line-up of people all running in the same direction, yet going nowhere?
Margin.
On a sheet of standard notebook paper, there are a few inches of space reserved along the edges where the writer doesn’t write. I remember my elementary teacher guiding us, “Write your name in the margin.” If that space were not preserved for our names, it would have been much more difficult to discern which paper belonged to which student.
It is the same in our lives today. Sure there are going to be meetings to attend, traffic jams, paper jams, invoices to create, bills to pay, meetings to attend, paperwork to fill, inboxes to empty, dinner to make, dishes to clean and meetings to attend (let’s not get carried away). But there must be space reserved along the edges of life. This is where we can leave our unique signature.
What are you doing with your margins? Are you filling them up with other’s “stuff?” Are you letting others into your margins and giving them what should be your space? Or are you writing your name? Your way. Your signature.
Create the space to be uniquely you and claim your masterpiece.
Next time you’re stuck on predictible, unoriginal ideas, try this:
Think 180°.
Ask yourself, “What is the LAST thing I would do in this situation?” or “What is an idea opposite of these?”
Make a list of the ideas that come to mind.
Read over the list and evaluate WHY each idea wouldn’t work.
Now, you may not use any of the ideas you’ve listed, but you’ve stimulated new thoughts. After you explore the opposites, you may go back to one of your original ideas with a twist. “What if we create this product, but market it to women in business instead of men?” “What if we do the seminar on these topics, but the seminar is free, we charge for lunch and sell snacks during breaks?”
Sometimes thinking outside the box is most helpful when you eventually bring the ideas back inside the box.
Last night, I attended a meeting held by my daughter’s teacher. She was explaining the structure of the class and led us through some sample exercises she uses with the students.
Occasionally, she called upon us parents for volunteers to read or give answers.
I was stunned by the silence and awkward glances downward.
The teacher shared her observation that her students were much more eager to participate than their parents.
It gave me pause to wonder – why were we so hesitant to speak up, give answers… hesitant to take even the smallest risk? Much has been said of our fear of failure, but failure was not the deciding factor here. It’s not like our success would be dictated by how well we read “See Jane run.”
How come parents paused when our children would have eagerly spoken up?
I think somewhere between 3rd grade and our 3rd year of college, we have been beaten, chiseled, hardened and restrained by perpetual criticism. We’re a cynical society. We make snide remarks all the time about someone’s speech impediment, religious affiliation, choice of wardrobe or choice of friends. The constant wear has made us paranoid… even as adults.
It’s obvious in politics. Candidates like McCain, Palin, Obama and Biden know the very words they speak will be used in an attempt to hang them later. But should they let the critics dictate their speeches, let alone their policies?
How about you? Are you paranoid because of living among critics? And how much power do you give them over your life?
We esteem independence. Our society celebrates freedom. As we should. But, do we miss the point?
We’re not seeking absolute independence. Well, we may be seeking it, but we won’t find it. It cannot be obtained.
We want to free ourselves of dependency on foreign oil. In order to do so, we become dependent on something else (i.e. biofuel, coal for electricity and/or our domestic supply).
It is not independence. It is a transfer of dependency.
Consider the recent demise of Bear Stearns. SEC Chairman Christopher Cox said the collapse of Bear Stearns was due to a lack of confidence, not a lack of capital. Even one of the largest brokerages in the world is dependent on something as uncontrollable as our confidence.
This global truth funnels down to you and your business as well.
What is your business dependent upon?
Vendors?
Trends?
Investors?
Is your dependency upon something trustworthy? Is it a healthy dependency?
What about you? What are you dependent upon?
The security or status of your home?
The love of your family?
The convenience of credit cards?
The comfort of food or drinking?
The trust of a friend?
The strength of your faith?
Is the object of your dependency worthy of your faith in it/them?
What is the result of your dependency? Does it help you build on your life, or dig a hole? Does it undergird your hope, or chain down your dreams?
Earth’s crammed with heaven,
And every common bush afire with God:
But only he who sees, takes off his shoes,
The rest sit round it, and pluck blackberries…
Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Aurora Leigh
A friend shared the poem above with me recently. I had heard it before. In fact, I had memorized it. Still, I had forgotten the principle within it: Find Beauty!
Sounds too simple and obvious, doesn’t it? But think about this a moment.
We’re Busy
We all admit we live in an accelerating culture.
As society continues to speed up, it becomes increasingly difficult to pause long enough to see the beauty around us. We don’t have time to pluck blackberries, let alone notice a burning bush.
In April of 2007, The Washington Post performed a test. They set out a burning bush to see who would notice it. You may have seen the story or the video of the event. World-renowned violinist Joshua Bell performed some of the greatest music ever composed, playing a $3.5 million violin. 1,100 people passed him. A few dozen noticed him. Beauty was overlooked in favor of rush hour.
Beauty is Hard to See During Ugly Times
Lieutenant Colonel Mervin Willett Gonin was among the first British soldiers to liberate the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in 1945. While waiting an excessive number of days for relief supplies to arrive, he witnessed droves of former prisoners continuing to die. They needed food, water and medical supplies. Instead, the first shipment they received was a very large quantity of lipstick. Here is the account from his diary:
I don’t know who asked for lipstick. I wish so much that I could discover who did it, it was the action of genius, sheer unadulterated brilliance. I believe nothing did more for these internees than the lipstick. Women lay in bed with no sheets and no nightie but with scarlet red lips, you saw them wandering about with nothing but a blanket over their shoulders, but with scarlet red lips. I saw a woman dead on the post mortem table and clutched in her hand was a piece of lipstick. At last someone had done something to make them individuals again, they were someone, no longer merely the number tattooed on the arm. At last they could take an interest in their appearance. That lipstick started to give them back their humanity.
History has recorded few things as ugly as the Holocaust. Yet, something as simple as lipstick brought beauty (not just the cosmetic variety) to an ugly tragedy.
Maybe you, or someone you know, are in the midst of some pretty ugly stuff. Beauty is easy to see when life is good. But what about when it is hard or painful? Is there something simple, which can bring an element of beauty into the camp? You may be surprised how little things can make a huge impact.
Find a Guide
I attended an arts conference at Willow Creek last year. Dewitt Jones was one of my favorite speakers. A photographer for National Geographic, he talked about doing what you love… or sometimes loving what you do.
He traveled all over the world for National Geographic. When he arrived someplace foreign to him, he would find a guide. Not a guide to show him around. “Those were easy to find.” He said. He found guides who were in love with the area, because they had something to share: their own unique stories.
Maybe you have a hard time finding beauty. Find a guide. They will help you see the beauty which surrounds you. The bush afire with God.
May you find that earth is indeed crammed with heaven.
One of our children broke an arm two weeks ago (hence the missing post that Friday). As people found out about it, I heard many stories about how they or their children had similar experiences. After having these stories shared with me, I felt a sense of fraternity with a new group of people. It reminded me of something I posted on my first blog, which wasn’t about marketing or business… just life. I thought I’d re-post it here today:
Scars
The other day I was shaving and ouch!! I cut my chin. I looked in the mirror and realized that I cut myself because of a scar. The skin was raised a bit by the scar and the blade just nicked it. This scar was the result of an incident when I was two or three years old. While running through my grandma’s kitchen, I tripped and bust my chin open on her linoleum floor. Most people don’t even know I have a scar on my chin. It is on the bottom of the ball of my chin and isn’t noticeable unless I raise my lower lip upward dramatically. I don’t even notice it very often. I hadn’t thought about it in ages, yet it was still there waiting for a hasty blade to bring it to my attention.
We all have scars. Some are from childhood incidents like mine. Others are even harder to see. They’re emotional, psychological, or spiritual. Nevertheless, they are still scars and they wait for some hasty action, ill-spoken word, or reminder of the past to reveal them.
As a volunteer drama director I see this happen occasionally with actors. We will be working on a scene and something triggers an emotion… the actor loses it. We usually take a break and I talk with the actor. Often, something in the scene or about the character revealed something to actor about his/herself. Not surprising since that is what most writers attempt to do. They want people to relate and respond to the story and/or the characters.
My wife Tammy and I were watching Message in a Bottle one evening. Although it is a rather drab movie with suspect acting, there was a moment that shot me to pieces. (Warning: Possible spoiler if you haven’t seen the movie.) One of the characters receives a phone call to find out that a loved one was killed in an accident. On the surface this seems like nothing incredible. This happens in other movies. This time though, I fell apart. The phone call reminded me of one I had received a few months before. A call telling me two friends of ours had died in a plane accident. The scar was reopened without warning and quite abruptly.
What do we do? We can’t walk on eggshells around everyone worrying that we might unwittingly tear open what time has worked so hard to heal. This would paralyze our ability to communicate and ultimately connect with people.
The best answer I have comes from Lethal Weapon 3 (not a typical fount of wisdom, but give me a moment). There is a scene in this movie where Mel Gibson and Renee Russo’s characters start showing their scars to each other. They take it to extremes by beginning to disrobe, but that’s beside the point. They share their stories through these scars. This is where they fall for each other. Why? Because he relates to her. She understands where he’s been. They connect. What if that’s the point?
What if we have the scars so we can share them with others? So we can relate to one another. Sharing our hurt and hopefully our healing with people who may have similar stories of their own. It’s hard. There’s a fear that people may be disgusted by our scars or maybe they will reopen the wound somehow. That fear however, should not impede us from sharing with the right people at the right moment.
It may be worth a nick on the chin to engage someone’s heart.
I’ve loved, I’ve laughed and cried
I’ve had my fill, my share of losing
And now, as tears subside, I find it all so amusing
To think I did all that
And may I say, not in a shy way,
“Oh, no, oh, no, not me, I did it my way“
- Frank Sinatra, My Way
As popular as it is, I know there’s a lot of people who don’t like that song. They find it arrogant and self-centered. And, left to itself, I suppose it is.
But, isn’t there something inside you that says, “Yeah, that’s what I want.”?
I think we all have that. I also believe we were each created with a unique purpose in life. And if we truly seek out “our way” we will have to tap into that purpose we were given… not just selfish desires.
Very few of us do, though. Instead, we look for some sort of standardization to make us comfortable. What would a good business leader do in this circumstance? What would a good mom do here? What would a good husband say now?
We look to the generic.
We even ask “What would Jesus do?” or WWJD for short. Maybe asking this is a good step in the right direction toward finding a moral compass, but I don’t know what a first century carpenter would do about managing his email inbox or explaining the birds and the bees to his daughter.
Models, mentors and case studies are great. But it seems like we’re starving for a means of expressing “our way.” We personalize our iPods, coffee, t-shirts, Scions and stuffed animals. I think it’s because we’re living generic lives.
Have you ever asked, “How was I created to deliver this presentation?” Or “What talents and experience can I use to show my husband how much I love him?” Maybe you’ll choose a personal story over a PowerPoint slide. Or you’ll eschew the Hallmark card in favor of writing a song from your heart.
May you say, not in a shy way, you did it Your Way.
I was doing research on an upcoming project recently. While looking for examples of the eHarmony.com ads, I came across this post on Adfreak.
Maybe I’m naive, but I had no idea people found the eHarmony ads so offensive/repulsive.
Here’s a comment from a viewer YouTube:
They are annoying beyond belief. The people in them are a bunch of yuppie losers who like to show affection on TV and rub it in everyone’s faces. They all need to die.
Wow! I knew some people didn’t like the Apple vs. PC ads, but this really throws me.
What are your thoughts? Do you like these commercials or hate them? Do you have any idea why someone would hate them enough to make an implied death threat?
I missed blogging last week. There’s a story behind that.
I play basketball at 5:45 AM every Tuesday and Thursday. It may sound crazy to play basketball that early, but it allows me to do something I enjoy without interferring with my family time in the evenings.
Last Thursday I didn’t feel very well after basketball. Maybe fatigued because I stayed up to late Wednesday night, or maybe I was dehydrated. Either way, I didn’t do anything about it. Business as usual.
By Noon, I had developed a bad headache so I took a 20 minute nap. It didn’t work. By 3:00 PM, I had a migraine. Then I felt nauseated and began to have cold sweats. I pulled off my sweater since I was wearing my button-down shirt underneath. My hands started trembling and I felt very light headed.
I went to my partner’s office and told her what was up. She looked worried. “You have no color in your face. Are you OK? Do you need to see a doctor?”
My doctor was out of town and the other physician in his practice was booked tight. They recommended minor emergency care.
At this point, the whole office is involved. Prodding me to drink fluids and rest. They all seemed very concerned and I was actually a little embarrassed about the office coming to a halt because of me. Still, it was nice to know they cared.
I opted to take another nap in my office instead of going to minor emergency care. I woke up an hour later, a little groggy but without any migraine symptoms.
There’s more to this story than just the reason I didn’t blog last week. There’s more than just bragging on our staff and their compassion.
I think we all have moments like this. We have a nagging sense that something’s wrong (physically, emotionally, spiritually), but we go on with business as usual. The nagging sense develops into a headache – an argument with our spouse – mounting financial issues – and we try to handle it quietly, acting like everything is “fine.” If we’re unfortunate (or maybe we’re truly fortunate in the long run), our problem manifests into something debilitating. Knocking us out of our rhythm. We can no longer ignore it. We want go on with business as usual. We ask for help. Hopefully we receive it.
Where are you right now? Do you have that nagging sense? A headache? Maybe you’re on the verge of a minor emergency. Business as usual won’t cut it. Don’t be afraid to be honest, be real, ask for and receive help.
I’ve grown quite fond of my old-style hats. I have a fedora and a willis hat. When I wear theses hats I get comments from people (and sometimes stares). Yet, these were the hats everyone used to wear. Now, it seems like a very new thing to do.
You’ve probably heard of the prodigal son, and you probably also know it originates from a story Jesus told. (you can read it here)
What you probably don’t think about is how it relates to your company.
Oh boy, does it.
Here are lessons from this story that we can apply to business today:
1. The son wanted instant gratification. ‘Father, I want right now what’s coming to me.’
It’s part of human nature. We want what’s coming to us NOW. Employees are no different. Don’t expect them to easily embrace long-range goals and rewards.
2. The father let his son make a mistake. “So the father divided the property between them.”
We spend so much time, energy and other resources saving people from their mistakes or preventing them from failing that we keep them from learning the lessons that come along with the experience.
Counter the question, “Can I afford for him to make this mistake?” with “Can I afford for him to not learn the lesson?” Mistakes are investments.
3. The son knew he could return.
“I’m going back to my father.”
We join this story in the middle of life. The father has raised his sons with a knowledge of who their daddy is. He is not unforgiving. He will let them return.
Do you instill that same confidence in your employees? Do you dispense grace or punishment?
4. The son was greeted before he got to the door. “When he was still a long way off, his father saw him. His heart pounding, he ran out, embraced him, and kissed him.”
In the culture of Jesus’ time, someone like this prodigal son would be shamed as he tried to re-enter his home town. The father knew this. He beat the accusers to the punch by running to his son before they could judge him.
Do you leave your employees to the wolves when they make a mistake? What if you beat the accusers to the punch? Show acceptance before they can judge.
5. The father did not demote his son. “Put the family ring on his finger and sandals on his feet.”
If we assign someone to a role in our company, does one mistake (even a huge one) mean they would perform better in a lesser role? Like lesson #2 states, maybe they learn from the mistake. Maybe now they’re even better suited for the role they’ve assumed.
6. The older brother was embittered. “The older brother stalked off in an angry sulk and refused to join in [celebrating his brother's return].”
Be prepared. Forgiveness may upset competent coworkers. Those who feel they don’t need grace may not be happy when others receive it.
7. The return was celebrated. “We’re going to feast! We’re going to have a wonderful time!”
Do you celebrate the lessons learned? Do you celebrate risks taken? Mistakes do not necessitate failures. Celebrate growth. Celebrate the community that stimulates growth.
We’re not satisfied with fast food customer service, politicians, football officials, nor the price of gas.
Most of all, we’re not satisfied with ourselves. Not with our weight, our salaries, our homes and cars. We’re not satisfied with the time we have for exercise, for fun, for friendships and family.
And we’re ready to change.
What does your product do to change me? How does your store, church, firm, agency, book, movie, music, PowerPoint preso, shoe, gym… help me make the changes I so badly desire?
I think most don’t help us change. I think too often, they simply manage to help us maintain the status quo.
We love stories of redemption. I think it is something wired within us. It is something we all inherently yearn for.
We love the idea of something new. I think it is something we’ve been trained to desire.
New is sexy and mysterious.
New is full of potential.
New has no scorecard of history to hold it back.
Once the familiar has let us down, we start looking at the new. Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice…
In life, none of us want to play the role of the fool. So, we sacrifice to the idol of the ideal.
Yet, I believe we have to risk being viewed as a fool in order to play a part in a story of redemption.
Would it be foolish to sign an unemployed substitute teacher to an NFL team? Would you do it? I doubt I would. Yet, Invincible was last weekend’s top movie. We love the story of someone rising from the ashes.
This isn’t just all warm fuzzies though. I think there is true innovation found through redemption.
Like redeeming someone’s immune system to fight cancer. I think this is just the tip of the iceberg. The opportunities are all around us, if we’re willing to risk being foolish.
I'm a marketing consultant serving Tulsa, Houston and Dallas markets.
I can provide these services to you:
• Copywriting
• Creative Direction
• Turn-Key Marketing/Advertising Solutions
“Dustin Staiger has proven to be one the top talents I have ever met. He has a unique ability to understand your business objectives and create marketing tools that are professional, creative, and make a terrific first impression.”
Ben Hilborn
VP, EasyTEL Communications
