Life’s too short to fight the forces of change. Life’s too short to hate what you do all day. Life’s way too short to make mediocre stuff.
Abundance is possible, but only if we can imagine it and then embrace it. Will.
Service to the change they seek to make. Willing to tell a story that resonates with a group that they care enough to serve. There could be an overlap. It’s possible that it’s the way you feel right this minute, but it might not be. The version of you on offer might run many layers deep, but it can’t possibly be all of you, all the time.
There are fewer and fewer good jobs where you can get paid merely for showing up. Instead, successful organizations are paying for people who make a difference and are shedding everyone else. Just.
It’s foolish to expect that one exposure to your message will instantly convert someone from stranger to raving ideavirus-spreading fan. So plan on a process. Plan on a method that takes people from where they are to where you want them to go.
It’s all a risk. Always. That’s not true, actually. The only exception: it’s a certainty that there’s risk. The safer you play your plans for the future, the riskier it actually is. That’s because the world is certainly, definitely, and more than possibly changing.
Being open is art. Making a connection when it’s not part of your job is a gift. You can say your lines and get away with it, or you can touch someone and make a difference in their lives forever.
When we try to drill and practice someone into subservient obedience, we’re stamping out the artist that lives within.
A group needs only two things to be a tribe: a shared interest and a way to communicate.
People don’t believe what you tell them. They rarely believe what you show them. They often believe what their friends tell them. They always believe what they tell themselves. What leaders do: they give people stories they can tell themselves. Stories about the future and about change.
The Dip is the long stretch between beginner’s luck and real accomplishment.
We’d like to believe that efficient, useful, cost-effective products and services are the way to succeed. That hard work is its own reward. Most marketers carry around a worldview that describes themselves as innovators, not storytellers.
Don’t worry about your stuff. Worry about making meaning instead.
One way to become creative is to discipline yourself to generate bad ideas. The worse the better. Do it a lot and magically you’ll discover that some good ones slip through.
Scarcity, as we’ve seen, is the secret to value. If there wasn’t a Dip, there’d be no scarcity.
They say the best way to complain is to make things better.
Yes, the Internet is a discovery tool, but no, you’re not going to get discovered that way. Instead, you will make your impact by uniting those you seek to serve.
What happens when the world cares more about unique voices and remarkable insights than it does about cheap labor.
The only thing that makes people and organizations great is their willingness to be not great along the way. The desire to fail on the way to reaching a bigger goal is the untold secret of success.
Do you have the email addresses of the 20 percent of your customer base that loves what you do? If not, start getting them. If you do, what could you make for these customers that would be superspecial?