At the beginning it’s “hard work, and saying yes to just about everything”. This is how you succeed.
You move to working less, and saying no to almost everything. Hard work you replace with creativity (the ability to see opportunity) plus risk (the willingness to go for it). And instead of saying yes to almost everything, you work on saying no to almost everything.
There is SO much more to question asking (and answering) than we realise. As the owner of a creative agency whose purpose involves understanding our clients better so we can help them create better marketing…asking questions is one of the most important skills we have.
How we ask questions and how we listen, can entirely change the answers we receive.
Last week we had a 3 day team retreat, and it was amazing and inspiring and difficult and challenging and we did things wrong and we did things right. As a team, we read the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar…
“I just trust my gut”, you think. You hire someone you feel right about, and reject to the ones you don’t. A new prospect says and does a few things which feel dodgy, but seems like a nice guy, so you take him on as a client anyway. Many weeks or months later something happens and you think, “I knew it. I KNEW IT.”
When you hear yourself (or someone else) say this phrase, it’s actually all over. The supplier. The company you hired. The employee. The strategic partner. The accountant. The client. The advisor. The minister. The author. The influencer. The lecturer. The date. The….whoever. I have heard this phrase used by so many people for so long,
This image is me. In every major achievement in my life, I’ve gotten cold feet or slowed down or hesitated or got sick or something, right before the end. Depending on how significant the achievement is, it might be a day or a week before I get there, or it might be a few months.
Want to get better at something? Do it every day for 100 days. That’s it, that’s the Note. Okay…you know me, that’s not completely it. Naturally I have more to say. But if you read nothing else, grasp that. If you’re going to get better at something – writing or recording video or posting on
When I was younger, in America, we used to play a game called “red light green light”. Everyone would line up at one end of the field, or the room, or a wide open space. One person would stand at the front, staring ahead and not able to see those behind them, and shout “green
You’re exhausted. Some of you have literally taken only a few days’ holiday in the entire year (or since March anyway). It’s time for a rest – a real one. An honest to goodness, don’t check emails or Slack or messages or even social media or your phone, rest. It’s the difference between being “off”…
Right, you’re going to be serious now. You’re going to focus your energy and attention on marketing a bit more (maybe this is your 2021 plan). But you know marketing always gets put off. You plan an hour or some time to “do marketing” and then you get emails and messages and phone calls and
