The Mindset
The world is massive, and it’s tiny. We are superheros, and we are invisible. We are the creators who light up the stage, and we know darkness. As creatives, we exist in a world where conformity has been instilled since kindergarten.
You still know what and how to reply to a teacher when she says, “good morning boys and girls”, right? Of course, you do! School was always about the rules, the steps to follow, the order in which you got your answer, the fear that if you didn’t do it right, you’d be punished and someone else would be rewarded.
This was originally a perfect design. Created in order to prepare youngsters for their unavoidable future – working in a system that required rules, steps, order, and hierarchy.
So as adults, in addition to sneaking out of the system so that we can create our widget, we are required to then show up and sell that creation to the masses – the ones who, for the most part, followed the rules and stayed between the lines. And there are people who can do it for us: agents, brokers, managers, etc – but we still have to face the moment of truth when we sell it to them, or a random audience, or a target market, or a bunch of strangers who have gathered to do something else. There’s a point in our journey when someone else has to see it and say YES or NO.
With our project in mind and knowing why we do it, who it’s for, what it’s for, when and how to do it, we are left with one question: where do we do it?
Today we will take fast-action on deciding exactly where we must pitch our offers because, just like the other questions we answered, the right places will see us instantly as what they’ve been waiting for while the wrong ones are wondering why we didn’t just stay in school.
Video
Audio
The Fast-Action
- Use our feedback loop to assess the job you’ve done in the past for exploring “where”
- What did I do well and why was it good
- What generally and What specifically could I have done better and why Why would that have been better
- List some of the favorite places you currently do, or can easily sell
- Use the feedback loop on your overall performance in these opportunities
- List some of the outlier opportunities you’ve had in your life – maybe wrote off as a fluke
- Use the feedback loop on your overall performance in these opportunities
- Gather the name(s) from at least one of each category
- Connect with that person in some way – perhaps our “Memory” or “Event” template from Day 5
- Maybe a phone call
- Maybe a text video greeting and offer to connect – Maybe a combo of the template in a text greeting?
- Listen to what they have happening in their life that matters
- Don’t overthink it or start imagining a future you know nothing about
- The “where” determines who sees our work and how big we can go
- Challenging yourself to up that game is exactly what you have been doing since you jumped into the entrepreneurial world.
- I’m asking you to take a fast-action today that will throw some fertilizer onto a dormant patch of your history so that it can bloom into a future harvest.
Photo of the Day
That fear of what might happen is our jail. It keeps us tucked safely inside. In today’s fast-action we looked at what happens when we shift the perspective and consider the opposite. What if doing the work – regardless of what might happen – is our key to freedom.
Chat Roll
00:00:26 sara kunz: morning!
00:00:26 Kyle Gresham: morning
00:00:35 James Perry: good morning
00:00:49 Kyle Gresham: Let’s go!
00:00:55 Danny Orleans: good morning. homework done!
00:05:49 Conjuror: “Acceptable to me as a creative.” Awesome!
00:08:34 Kyle Gresham: Great story! Turning down TED. 🙂
00:10:57 Danny Orleans: I just did a show at a type of venue I’ve never done before. Wanted to pass on it because of FEAR that audience wouldnt be paying attention. It was a family show for 100 people in the lobby of an auto dealership. SHow went great. Paid $1000. Never pitched dealerships before. Action is now to contact dealerships for next holiday season.
00:15:12 sara kunz: actually, can’t think of an outlier :/ homework!
00:21:11 Conjuror: That is a GREAT QUESTION
00:21:19 Colin Campbell: It has been terrific!
00:22:05 Danny Orleans: throwing fertilizer on old relationship today with large IT company. Contacting a woman who I met 8 years ago, because I just did a show for another division of her company. GOing to get the guy who hired me to do testimonial email to her about my great skills as a corporate magician. Connecting dots!!!
Resources
Seth Godin’s remarkable live talk (look for the episode called Stop Stealing Dreams – sorry, no direct link available) about the school system that highly inspired this lesson. I suggest hearing it for a lot more insight that I extracted for today’s Mindset piece.