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Hello there,
I have COVID this week, which goes along with the groundhog’s prediction of 6 more weeks of winter.
Oh well. At least we’ve been taking advantage of the snow with some skiing weekends.
And our baby girl has started to enjoy our cross-country ski outings from the trailer behind us!
i. The Importance of Being a Meaningful Specific
One of the world’s greatest marketers, Seth Godin, has written dozens of terrific books, including my favorite marketing book, Purple Cow, on how to stand out in business by being remarkable.
Last week I listened to Seth Godin on the Rich Roll podcast and he delivered more wisdom than his usual interview. (And that’s saying something!) My favorite ideas ranged from how to write a book to
Elevator Questions, not Elevator Pitches
Seth’s answer on how he describes what he does really made me scratch my head. He doesn’t like the 30-second self-summary, so he simply tells people he’s an author.
Don’t think of your elevator pitch – no one ever bought anything in an elevator – instead aim for an elevator question, so the other person wants to follow you out and keep talking.
Inspiration, Walking, Writing
Seth Godin’s first book, Permissionless Marketing, broke all kinds of records without meaning to. He wrote the book to get attention for his first internet business, Squidoo. But he sold the business before the book launched and then the combined success crippled him.
With no business to run and checks coming in from his best-seller, Seth sat around unmotivated to write or research.
Then he got a message out of the blue from an unknown author (at the time) and received a galleys copy of The Tipping Point by Malcolm Gladwell. The book “opened the spigot” for Seth to keep creating, and he completed his next book in two weeks. Malcolm Gladwell wrote the front cover blurb.
Surround yourself with other people performing at a high level in your field and you’ll never run out of encouragement and inspiration.
What’s Seth’s advice if you want to write a book? Start by going on walks with someone you like and teach them something useful. When you record the conversations and turn them into a transcript you’ll end up with a great starting point for a book.
Universal Law of Meaningful Specifics
“We have created an entire generation of wandering generalities instead of meaningful specifics… if your slogan is you can pick anyone anywhere then someone else is going to win. You want to be in and of yourself the one and only version of that. So I think that’s a universal law.”
If you want to stand out among the competition you need to pick your niche and figure out how to do amazing work in that niche.
ii. The Power of Jell-O and Lollipops
I’ve been meaning to read The Happiness Advantage for a few years and this month feels like the perfect time to learn how positive psychology fuels success.
Studies have shown that January is the least productive month of the year, so I injected a few encouraging stories into mine.
How can Lollipops and Jell-O increase performance at work and in life?
Negative emotions put blinders on us to hone in on fight or flight mode, but positive emotions open us up to more ideas.
In a study of four-year-olds asked to complete learning tasks, they showed the power of positive thinking by asking one group to remember something that makes them happy.
At their young age, the children mentioned things like “my jell-o lunch” and afterward outperformed the control group.
Even in a study with experienced doctors, they saw similar results. When running through medical school exercises with hypothetical patients half the doctors were given a gift of candy before the questions (to eat later).
This group identified the correct diagnosis twice as fast as the control group and showed half as much anchoring, meaning they more easily let go of their initial diagnosis.
Ok ok, maybe you’re extending zero-sugar January for another month. But you’re in luck – just imagining a happy moment can improve your creative outputs and how much you see / observe.
“One study found that people who just thought about watching their favorite movie raise their endorphin levels by 27 percent.”
Maybe you can’t go out to see a movie or a concert tonight, but you could put something on your calendar for the next few weeks. Whenever you need a bit of extra happiness, remind yourself of that event!
iii. Top Brass Nuggets
One Thing from Me
We had a series of in-person meetings last week with my work colleagues. The get-together cultivated wonderful team energy and provided an opportunity to present our work to high-level leadership.
I came away from the week with one enormous challenge standing out in my mind. As my teammates presented their work I observed a wide range of skills. Some spoke very clearly while others could have done better at explaining the importance of their work. How do you measure effective communication and leadership?
The secret ingredient of rapid learning and improvement lies in the feedback loop. When you see what works or doesn’t from your efforts you can adjust immediately.
If I train properly in climbing, I’ll see results when I can do the moves I couldn’t do the month before.
Unfortunately for leadership or driving innovation, the feedback loops require a longer time horizon to measure success. I offered some suggestions to my teammates on communication, but it still feels difficult to measure.
One option could be getting outside coaching. Or perhaps soon we’ll all send meeting recordings to a server for artificial intelligence suggestions. I can’t wait to be told to “relax the glabella skin between your eyebrows and forehead” and “smile every 6.5 seconds” – hah!
Thanks,
Jono
PS – the next level in artificial intelligence is… CatGPT
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