Posts Tagged "seth godin"

Aim High and Slowly Cook The Frog

Posted by LisaYoung in Uncategorized |

“Aimless is where we end up when we don’t care so much about where we’re going, or we try to hide and limit our contributions.”

- Seth Godin

Our brains are tricky. They like to keep us safe. Our “reptilian brains” are designed for survival. To keep us in the comfort zone of the known.

Is it any wonder we get stuck so easily at times?

Chris Guillebeau’s prompt for the #Trust30 challenge got me thinking about goals and destinations. While I’m not really talking about  my travel plans here, it aligns nicely with Seth’s quote, and how we need a destination in mind.

But when we plan destinations, those destinations aren’t a trip to “the corner store.” Our trips are designed to be memorable. Maybe not memorable or exciting for the next guy, but memorable and exciting for us. Nobody I know makes a big production out of a trip to the library. A trip to Rome, or the mountains, or the wilderness, or some “destination” almost always becomes a production on a scale at least slightly larger than said trip to the library.

In business, we don’t strive to be average or mediocre. We don’t wake up and say “I wanna be number seven!”

Yet, our reptilian brains, already comfortable with being seventh, like to trick us into staying put. 

Seth Godin might be wrong

Posted by LisaYoung in Uncategorized |

In response to his recent post about foundational modern business elements, I think I’m going to have to disagree, or at least comment on, one of Seth’s remarks.

“For example, the Scotch tape people at 3M can’t do #5, because of the structure of retail distribution and the way they mass produce and can’t track who is buying what.”

Balderdash. Perhaps they aren’t as agile, but they can private label their products, and WalMart has special arrangements with almost all their suppliers, so I find it hard to believe 3M wouldn’t be party to that. There’s just too much money to ignore.

Seth’s article is strong, though, and highlights some very powerful idea that any entrepreneur or business owner can start using right away.

To this, I would also add the necessity of creating a cash reserve. Cash flow is important, but a cash reserve (especially in hard economic times) keeps you from going the way of a company like GM. And for entrepreneurs, it’s highly unlikely you’ll be getting a multi-million dollar bailout anytime soon. Release yourself from debt sooner, and you’ll have more freedom to take advantage of great growth opportunities that come your way.

Sorry Seth, I Have to Disagree…

Posted by LisaYoung in Big Ideas |

One of my favorite authors in my known galaxy is Seth Godin. He’s a proliferate pontificate on marketing, life, and other good stuff.

Today marks the first day in my LIFE that I think the man is stright up wrong and needs a brick upside his head.

And that could just be because my life experience is markedly different than his. Who knows.

In a recent post about why you should, or shouldn’t write a book, Seth makes a fatal generalization.

He says “Out of context, a 140 character tweet cannot change someone’s life.”

WRONG and WRONG.

I have never felt my skin crawl faster. And I LOVE Seth’s work. Really. I do!

I have read brilliant tweets. Short snippets from friends and strangers that have made course corrections in my own life.

Some had only the context of knowing the author (thank you @unmarketing, @chrisbrogan, @lkr, @elizabethPW, @tomziglar) – so by knowing them to some degree, I suppose that changes the “context” of things.

But others (because I occasionally DO read my ‘all tweets’ stream) were random people that I may or may know have any inkling of that said something funny, emotionally charged, or just made a life-altering statement.

Usually in 120 characters or less, because that way you can re-tweet.

And dear Mr. Godin, if you ever USED twitter, you might understand that.

I guess the thing that irritates me is also the salve to soothe me. See Seth has never used twitter, so his sideways assessment makes sense. He’s a writer/blogger at heart, so of course he’d make the assertion that blogs impact lives.

But to summarily write off a medium you’ve never used (except to broadcast his posts – I’ll get back to that in a minute), is a disservice to his readers.

One of the things that set me apart early on as a coach was that I didn’t spout off about things I didn’t understand. If I didn’t have wordpress experience, I didn’t talk about how great it was to my clients. I stuck to what I knew. When I fell in love with twitter, I shared with my clients how I was picking up THOUSANDS of dollars in my business because of it – and HOW I was doing it.

But NEVER (at least not that I can recall) have I ‘coached’ someone to do something that I hadn’t tried myself in some way.

And sorry, Seth, but I think this is a place where you have no leg to stand on. You’ve never used twitter as more than a placeholder or a broadcast mechanism for your blog – which is like being part of the twitter counterculture.

That said, I also want to point out how your one tweet (which was nothing more than a broadcast of your latest blog post), which included a link DID change me. your shiny veneer isn’t quite what it once was. Now, you could assert that because it was a blog link, that there’s a context to it, and that’s true. Perhaps if you actually used twitter, I could comment more accurately.

But there are other folks, like @ThomScott or @sundaycosmetics, @retrobakery who I either barely know or don’t know at all that just happened to post a thoughtful tweet one day, intrigued me, and pulled me into their universe. That’s the grand design of twitter. How can you say that DOESN’T change your life? I purposely linked to these folks because chances are good most of my readers have never heard of them either. Heck, I just read my first post by @retrobakery this morning. But it was enough to engage me and change me.

And yes, you could say that I’m spouting off about the value of my medium (twitter), just as Seth is spouting off about his medium (books). The difference is I’m not slamming his – even incidentally. And I HAVE written books. Working on two new ones now.

Seth is correct that “you must create enough leverage to make things happen” But it’s erroneous to assume that everyone needs a counterweight the size of Mount Olympus to move the load. Some of us can get by with less than 140 characters.

It depends on your definition of “enough”, I suppose.

Diagnosis: You and Fear

Posted by LisaYoung in Big Ideas, Faith |

In working with my inaugural class of clients for The Power of Focus project, the biggest reports coming in from the field show that fear keeps rearing it’s ugly head.

“Am I doing this right?”

“How do I know if I’m doing this right?”

That old demon, fear is rearing it’s ugly head again, tyring to keep you from realizing your greatness.

The fact is, the only way to know if you’re doing anything right is by actually doing it! Otherwise, you’re not doing ANYTHING!

It struck a chord when I read Seth Godin’s blog this morning. Read Everything Is Not Going To Be Okay and you’ll understand what I mean.

We all walk around wondering, hoping and wishing for someone to tell us that we’re on the right path – and that we’re doing the right thing.

As moms, we’re especially vulnerable. I remember when I first brought my son home from the hospital (who’s now a teenager). I said to my friends, “I wish babies came with instruction manuals.”

I was met with comforting words and encoruagement that I was “going to be a great mom.” and that I “would know what to do instinctively.”

They were wrong.

I struggled and struggled at trying to figure out how to be a mom. It’s like pouring salt on a snail and watching him shrivel up. That’s how I felt each and every day of his young life. I wasn’t prepared for 2am feedings when I had to be to work the next day. I didn’t understand why I had to pay for a week of day care if teh kid was only there for three days. There was so much that was pretty much left to chance when my son was small that I began to feel like I was doing everything wrong.

So I came home, where my family offered a modicum of support.

Whether that was “the best” choice or not, I’ll never know, but it was the only one I felt I had at the time. Doing what you believe to be right in the moment is sometimes all you have to go on. Questioning that decsion only leads to indecision, stagnation, and more fear.

What happened when I returned? It was like being a child all over again – being told what to do and how I was doing everything wrong. I remember one of my aunts telling me my child would end up in prison if I kept on raising him the way I was.

Of course, that was before his diagnosis. Before the diagnosis, I was viewed as a horrible mother with a problem child. After the diagnosis, I was “doing the best I could in a situation with a special needs child”.

Funny how the dime turned, huh? I thought so, anyway.

So here’s your diagnosis: You’re doing the best you can in your given situation. Don’t let the unknowing, disapproving looks from family or friends screw with your brain. You’ll never know if what you’re doing is the perfect solution to any problem until the end of time, when you look back and assess the full value of the life you’ve lived. If you spend all your time now wondering, you’ll never live the life you were called to fulfill.

Fear likes to keep you in a space where it thinks you’re safe. Hey, you’re not dead yet, so you must be doing okay. That’s hogwash. Fear doesn’t understand that you need to take a step or a leap out of your “comfort zone” to be the person - the mom, the busness owner – you truly want to be. It only understands that you’re trying something new, something it hasn’t experienced before, and what if everything isn’t okay?

It won’t be okay. It will be uncomfortable at best and excruciatingly painful at worst. Just know it, accept it, and plow through. There’s fear in the doing, but most often, hen we come out on the other side of the doing, we are much better for the experience.

It’s In the Way That You Do It

Posted by LisaYoung in Big Ideas |

My grandfather was a highly skilled carpenter. He built many of the homes in my community, but also had finish skills that probably rivaled Jesus and Joseph (I’m guessing here, but he was pretty dang good). Even into his seventies, this guy was building picture frames, building boxes, framing walls. His planes were all sharp, and more than one door in my mom’s house had seen his masterful smoothing technique.

The man had crazy mad ‘skilz’.

Strive to be the best at whatever you do.

Grandpa used to joke about a guy that hired him for a job. The guy kept trying to hang something and it wouldn’t stay on the wall – something like that. So Grandpa went in, did a few measurements, tapped on the wall a couple of times, drove one nail and the thing (a shelf I think) was perfectly aligned and flawlessly hung.

They guy was impressed, until he got the bill. Grandpa had charged him what seemed an exorbitant sum (I think it was like $50). The guy said, “All you did was drive one nail! I’m not going to pay this bill. When you can bring me a more reasonable bill, I’ll pay it.”

So Grandpa took back the invoice, drew a line, scribbled a couple of words and numbers and handed it back to the man. It read as follows:

Driving one nail: $1

Knowing WHERE to drive the nail: $49

The man paid up.

When I read Seth Godin’s post on craftsmanship this morning, I was reminded of Grandpa’s little joke. Whether or not it actually happened, i was never able to discern, but the fact of the matter is that my Gramps was amazing. He built a home for a doctor who insisted on having a solid, plate glass wall running down the middle of the home. Gramps was leery about building it because the guy had small children – and this was before tempered glass. But build it he did.

It was so strong and so well built that when the tornadoes blew through Flint in the 1950′s, the only piece of the doctor’s house that was still standing was that glass wall – flawless an untouched.

Yeah, Gramps rocked it as a carpenter.

Like Seth’s blog indicates, it’s not about what you choose to do in your life – it’s in the way that you do it. You don’t need to be perfect, but you should certainly strive for excellence. If it’s not worth doing right, why do it at all? As grown ups, we can make a lot of choices for ourselves. We can decide that which we’d like to do.

So why don’t you do it?

And when you do it, do it well. Don’t half-ass it as my Mom would say (pardon me, I think you can tell I’m a bit passionate about this). There are people all over this country that are jobless, feeling hopeless, and yet there’s never been a greater opportunity all around us for people to find their passion and follow it to the ends of the earth. Heck, what do you have to lose? ESPECIALLY if you’ve already lost everything?

If you’re a mom, be the best dang mom you know how to be. Really care about your kids. Stop and be more aware of what your life is like because of your children – the joy and the pain – and recognize the gifts you’ve been given for being a mom.

If you’re a business owner – be the best dang business ower you can be. Really care about your work. Stop and be more aware of what your life is like because of your business – the joy and the pain – and recognize the gifts you’ve been able to create because you’re an entrepreneur.

I’m learning that in many ways, being a business owner is a lot like being a mom to a special needs child. Both take extreme amounts of focus, energy and effort. Both are rewarding on so many levels.

As a human being strive to be the best dang human being you can be. Everyone comes to this world for different purposes, on different socioeconomic levels, but that only means you’ve been given a greater opportunity to be the you that God has called you to be. And it doesn’t matter if you believe in God or not, because in this instance, it’s still about being the absolute best you can be – and who wouldn’t want that?

My Mother in Law (hi Mum!) told me the other day that she reads my blog religiously. As far as I know she’s the only family member that’s ever read any of my blogs. The funny thing is, though, that it didn’t change the way I write or the message I’m trying to convey. It didn’t make me want to write better or say things more eloquently, because I already know I’m giving this everything I’ve got. I’m striving to be the best dang writer I know how to be. It doesn’t change depending on the day or my mood or the color of my hair.

My family drove the point home at an early age that half way doesn’t cut it. Everything you do, say and are is reflected in your daily actions and choices. It’s all in the way that you do things. Actions speak louder than words and whatnot.

Who and HOW do you choose to be? Decide with conviction and live with conviction – and do it all with craftsmanship.