Keep Banging On

Craig Ferguson is one interesting dude. Do you know who he is? He is a comedian who used to be on The Drew Carey Show. But, he is better known for the ten years that he did The Late Late Show.

I think Ferguson is a genius. He is a cool dude to boot. However, about this time last year, The Late Late Show came to an end. For the first segment, of his last show, Ferguson did a musical cover of a song titled “Bang Your Drum” by the Scottish band Dead Man Fall.

In the past year, I must have listened to the song a million times. So, I figured I should pass it along. The video includes quite a number of A-Listers. Check it out! Click here to watch the video on YouTube.

Happy New Year!!

Keep banging on...

Far Niente

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post about the fact that no one is ever doing nothing. The post was titled, “Busy Doing Nothing.” Click here to read it.

What I did not mention, in the previous post, is the fact that the phrase, “Doing nothing,” is a contradiction. Perhaps a paradox, I am not completely sure.

At any rate, there exists a winery, in the Napa area, called “Far Niente.” Which, translated from Italian, basically means, “Doing nothing.” I have enjoyed some lovely wine, from Far Niente, and the name inspired this post.

The mind can be a very wild place. As the old saying goes, “An idle mind is the devil's playground.” It is for this reason people love to stay busy. Even if what they are doing is utterly useless. Soon I will post an interesting article titled, “Addicted to Distraction.” Stay tuned.

Being left alone, to our thoughts, can be quite intimidating. Have you ever thought about that? Have you ever tried to meditate? It ain't easy. That said, I am a huge fan of meditation. I think everyone should do it.

I first learned to meditate back in college. I had heard of the idea and it intrigued me. So, I bought a CD from Andrew Weil and gave it a whirl.

Quieting the mind can be a very difficult thing to do. Perhaps that is exactly what makes the practice so valuable. Meditation might be the best way to learn how to focus.

And, the ability to pay attention is the critical first step in improving the quality experience. That is a key takeaway from Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's phenomenal book, Flow.

For our purposes, we are not really concerned with improving the quality of experience, per se. If you are an entrepreneur, or a knowledge worker, your work requires some degree of creativity. And, creativity demands that we learn how to integrate information.

For this reason, I believe you need to make time to waste time. Meaning, we need time to reflect. One of the best ways to do this is with a mundane task. Showering would be an example.

That great ideas come to us in the shower has become something of a cliché. It also happens to be true. The reason is that our mind is engaged but it is doing a task that it has mastered.

Newton's First Law tells us that objects in motion tend to stay in motion. This applies to the brain. The recommendation I am making is that you do structured activities. Activities that you know how to do.

Steve Jobs was famous for the walks that he would take. Myself, I like to hike in the hills. Either way, each one of us has certainly “mastered” walking. This engages the mind but leaves plenty of computing power to think of other things.

Lots of people enjoy driving to clear their head. And, if it helps you solve your problems, I say, “Go for a drive.”

All-in-all what I am saying is that we should schedule our ideal time. The time when we do nothing. But, there is a twist.

With all due respect to wine drinkers, for most people, casually enjoying a glass offers no structure or direction. I encourage you to intentionally do easy things that have a beginning and an end.

Walks, hikes, and showering are all great ways to free the mind for integrative thinking. Yard work and doing the dishes might work as well.

I am a believer in the mundane. And, I believe we should not pooh-pooh the ordinary. Properly channeled, mundane tasks can be great opportunities for creative thinking. Provided we pay attention to the times we are far niente.

THE WINNER, AND NEW...!!!

This past weekend was a big one for sports fans. Stick with me, and let me explain, because this post contains a great lesson on effectiveness.

In this post, I will interchangeably use the words effectiveness, success, and achievement. As you might know, the two main things, that impede achievement, are fear and doubt. This post is about doubt.

Have you ever noticed that super-achievers tend to be arrogant? Do not get me wrong, once a person is successful it is smart to feign humility. Warren Buffett is an absolute master at it. But, to achieve high levels of success requires enormous amounts of confidence. Perhaps even arrogance.

The reason is simple. The reason is one word: doubt. On your entrepreneurial journey, doubt will be your ever present companion. And, it is a real pisser because doubt is simultaneously a big thing and a bad. It is a paradox.

Doubt is good when it comes in the form of a healthy skepticism. A healthy does of skepticism will help you sniff out, and avoid, the hucksters. And, let's be honest, there is a lot of snake oil out there.

The bad form of doubt is self-doubt. When things are not working out the way you had planned, doubt will be there to rush in. We euphemistically believe that doubt keeps ego in check. But, the truth is, doubt destroys entrepreneurs.

And, that brings me to this past weekend. Over the weekend, Conor McGregor defeated Jose Aldo to become the UFC featherweight champion. There is a good chance you might have heard about McGregor.

McGregor is obnoxiously confident (to borrow a phrase from Gary Vaynerchuk.) Indeed, many would call Conor cocky. He is. But, is that a problem?

Don't get me wrong, sometimes it seems Conor goes too far. He does talk trash about his opponent. Which is rough. But, the trash talk is meant to gin up controversy, sell more tickets, and make more money. As far as the fight game goes, it can be a smart move.

Aside from the trash talk, is arrogance a problem? Not necessarily. When it comes to effectiveness and entrepreneurship, confidence works much better than doubt. Have you ever heard the saying, "Often wrong, never in doubt"? Pretty wise.

As an aside, I am a big fan of Jim Collins. I think he is a smart dude. But, Collins had led lots of people astray with his notion of “Level 5 Leadership.” If you have not read Good to Great let me summarize and tell you that Level 5 Leadership is about being humble.

Listen, now is neither the time nor place to get into a thorough discussion on the complexities of human beings. Suffice it to say people can be simultaneously confident and humble. To cut to the chase, I disagree with Collins on his conception of leadership.

Leaders might choose to present themselves as humble. But, believe me, under the surface, a successful leader is very confident. If Level 5 Leadership is so necessary, how do we account for people like Steve Jobs and Donald Trump?

Anyhow, back to Conor McGregor. Saturday night Conor took the belt from Jose Aldo. If you are not familiar with mixed martial arts you need to understand that Aldo had not lost a fight in ten years. Ten years! And, Aldo was widely considered the best fighter in the world, pound-for-pound.

I think we have all heard that quote, attributed to Henry Ford, “Whether you think you can, or you think you can't–you're right.” It is mostly true. But, one thing that is certainly true is that you cannot beat the best fighter in the world if you do not believe you can.

Belief, faith, confidence. These are the antidotes to doubt. And, doubt is an insidious problem. For this reason, I think we can forgive people for going too far with the confidence thing.

Life is not black and white. It is a gradient, not unlike a dimmer switch. We need to concern ourselves with tendencies more than absolutes. I am talking about leaning in certain directions. And, if you ask me, when it comes to entrepreneurship, I think it is wise to err on the side of too much confidence rather than too much humility.

Don't be an ass. But, do believe in yourself. Unapologetically. 

Busy Doing Nothing

If you are an entrepreneur, you are a salesperson. Period. Full stop. How does that feel? If you object, we might need to iron your brain out a little bit.

You see, if you are to build a successful business, you must get attention. Lots and lots of attention. On this point, sales trainer Grant Cardone is spot on. Here is an image I took from Cardone's website:

This is where a lot of people fall down. The reasons people fail to get the necessary attention are numerous. Some people do not know how to get attention. Others do not like the idea that they will be judged. While some do not like interrupting people. It is this last reason I wish to focus on in this post.

Let me make an important and unequivocal statement. When you aim to get people's attention you will always be interrupting. Always. That statement is a tautology.

The first job of a salesperson is prospecting. Prospecting is simply the act of searching for something of value. In the case of an entrepreneur, prospecting means searching for customers and distributors.

Recently, Jeb Blount wrote a book titled Fanatical Prospecting. In the book Blount agrees with me. He says that we must always be interrupting people. Let us expound upon the idea.

One way to get attention is with the cold call. For various reasons, a lot people would sooner die than make a cold call. Many do. And, while I do not agree with everything Grant Cardone teaches, one point we definitely do agree on is the value and importance of making cold calls.

Back to my tautological statement. Whenever you endeavor to get a person's attention you will be interrupting that person. To put it in different terms, nobody is sitting around doing nothing.

Think about it. I can think of a great activity which is meant to do nothing. That activity is meditating. However, even people who are meditating are not doing nothing. What are they doing? They are meditating!

As you might be able to tell, I have spent some time thinking about this concept. Can you think of a person who is doing absolutely nothing? It is harder than you might think.

A person who is "Keeping Up with the Kardashians" would appear to be doing nothing. But, what would they say they are doing. They are watching television, of course.

The best example I could come up with, of a person who is busy doing nothing, is the image of a person sitting on their front porch, sipping on a cold glass of iced tea. Now, is that person doing nothing? No! S/he would tell you that s/he is relaxing!

The irony of the whole thing is, what do most people say when you ask what they are doing. “Nothing,” right? It is so funny.

Fun and games aside, it really is true that everyone is always doing something. So, whenever you try to get a person's attention you are necessarily interrupting that person.

And, here we run into a big problem. Most of us were raised to believe that it is rude to interrupt people. That belief is not necessarily true, but we have all been taught it. The problem occurs if we take the lesson too literally.

The fact of the matter is that sometimes it is completely appropriate to interrupt a person. Let us come up with an example. Imagine that a couple of neighbors are chatting it up on one of their driveways. The conversation gets pretty interesting and they lose track of their small children.

Now let us imagine you come walking by and notice that the child has gotten into imminent danger. To take an extreme example, the child is playing with some downed power lines. I do not know if that ever really happens but I want to drive the point home.

What would you do? Would you not interrupt the parent's conversation to ask if that is their child? Of course you would! And, would the parents be upset with the fact that you interrupted? Quite the contrary, it is much more likely that they would thank you for the interruption.

The fact of the matter is, it is completely appropriate to interrupt people. The key is to have something of great value to say. In sales we speak of the importance of relevance. What we have to say is valuable if it is relevant to the prospect's life.

In fact, the company MarketingSherpa found that 92 percent of B2B buyers are open to cold calls if the salesperson is relevant. I think this finding is not too surprising. But, it is nonetheless important and it bears repeating.

I am always amazed at the number of people who flat out refuse to make a cold call. It is sad, really. As I have mentioned, one of the main problems is a fear of interrupting people. And, I hope this blog has done at least something to help allay that irrational fear.

It is important that we all learn how to make a cold call. Because, as Grant Cardone would say, “Strangers have everything you want.” It is a cute little statement. It is easy to remember and it drives home the point.

Personally, I prefer the way sales trainer Mike Bosworth puts it. Bosworth says we need to be searching for latent pain. This is especially true of entrepreneurs. True entrepreneurs solve new problems, or fix existing problems in new ways. Either way you will need to get attention. You will need to interrupt people.