Helping creative entrepreneurs learn to be more resilient. I help people get un-stuck.
I heard this on a Swiffer commercial: “Making a mess is part of growing up.”
This is a learning process. This life I mean. You’ll make a mess of it sometimes. That’s just part of growing up.
Make a mess, clean it up. Just don’t linger too long on the mess. It’s ok. Life keeps moving on. Mess and all. So be here, mess and all.
Happy Monday, my friends.
Chris
So, I clicked on a Facebook link today titled “The Beer You Can Only Get In Hawaii.” Because I like beer and Hawaii. So I thought it would be fun to watch. I didn’t expect there to be so many knowledge bombs in the video within the article about the value of slow growth and the importance of listening to the people who love your work so much that they’re willing to give you money for it. Here’s a couple here:
“…the customers have dictated the speed at which we expand our offering. “
“Basically, the people that we listen to are the people who walk through the door.”
The marketing director of The Kauai Beer Company, Larry Feinstein, goes on in the video about how most restaurants drown in debt because they try to start out fully mature. Like they’ve been open for years, breakfast, lunch, and dinner. 7 days a week. And they often fail. But Kauai focused on slow growth. Growing with their audience and expanding based on their needs. They defined what success looks like (they say in the video that they’re a craft brewery and are only interested in serving on the State of Hawaii and they want to achieve a “nice sustainable level of profitability.”) and they are focused on making that happen.
I love that definition: We’re committed to our craft. We will serve this small group of people. And we will be sustainably profitable. It’s that simple for them. So long as they’re doing this, they are successful. They don’t want to be the big dogs. They want to serve the people who are walking in the door, listen to what those people want, and give it to them. That’s it.
If you want to be successful, define what that looks like for you Then always listen to the people who are walking in the door and give them more things that THEY want. Not what other people say they want but what they actually want.
Grow with your audience.
And also, drink good beer 🙂
Here’s the video:
P.S. If you need help developing your vision, sign-up for my free 5-day email course all about developing a clearer vision so you know where you’re going and what it looks like to succeed. Sign-Up Here!
So a couple of weeks ago our pastor was at church. I know that sounds weird. But we were surprised to see him because he hadn’t been there the previous week. He had taken a pretty wicked fall on a bike ride and broke three ribs and a clavicle. But this week, there he was up front teaching in a sling.
When I saw him up there my first thought was a prayer: Lord, give me a calling that inspires me to get up and feed it, even when my bones are broken.
Later, he spoke about perseverance. He spoke about his broken bones and how he doesn’t know how God is using it but he’s grateful for it. “Am I glad I broke my ribs and have to wear a sling? No! Am I praying ‘Lord, let’s do the other side now!’ no! That would be insane.” he said, “but I’ll not waste my suffering.”
Let us not waste our suffering. Let this time in your life, be it trying or easy, let it be what it is: a teacher. May we learn and grow and continue to run in the direction we’re being lead. May we have a calling that inspires us to stand up when we get knocked down. May we always keep standing back up. Even when our bones are broken.
You know, it’s inevitable that every once in a while you’re going to be blindsided by comparison. Even if you’re practiced at avoiding it, it can still creep in. Some time in your journey you’re going to stumble across someone who is doing something similar to what you’re doing or worse, what you want to be doing. When this happens there is a flood of emotion that starts with anger and wraps up somewhere in the realm of fear. And our first reaction as humans, is to run. To give up. To look at the closeness of these similar ideas and think about how we’re not enough and how we never will be.
I want to pop this pity party bubble for you. Because I’ve been to that party today even, so you know I know what I’m talking about. I’m 100% qualified to talk about the comparison pity party. That party is LAME-SAUCE! They only serve old Cheetos and flat Bud Light. No bueno.
So here’s the deal:
First, seeing someone doing something similar to what you do is not confirmation that you should stop. It’s confirmation that you’re on to something. It’s proof of concept. It means that there are other people out there who want what you are making. What awesome news, right? Keep going.
Second, the immediate reaction to this situation is anger and fear because we think they’re taking something away from us. Like there’s not enough people in the world to like us both. This is a scarcity mindset and it will cause your ideas to fail. Usually because it will make you quit. My friend Dave likes to say, ”If I take a big breath right now, does that mean you have any less air to breathe?”
[Tweet “We live in a big world, friends. A lot of people live here. Chances are, some of them like you.”]
Third, if you want to be doing something, start. I’m writing that for myself to read later. If you’re a photographer and you want to be photographing weddings in amazing locations, start. If you want to be coaching and teaching people what you’ve learned, start. If you want to be able to work from anywhere, start. Start building the life you want because you really can design it. It’s not something that’s reserved for the people you look up to as if they’re on another level or have a “very particular set of skills” that you can’t learn. You have what you need to start.
So don’t look at other people and think “Man, I wish I was doing that.” If that thought pops into your head today, get out a pen and paper and write down 100 ways to make “that” happen. Because there’s only one thing on the list of things that are stopping “that” thing from becoming a reality: You.
Comparison happens in your head —> feeds our tendency towards safety —> which feeds our belief in scarcity —> which makes us retreat and protect.
This mindset will stop you from doing your best work. The work you are meant to do. It will keep you where you are. Don’t let it.
“If I have a hope, it’s that God sat over the dark nothing and wrote you and me, specifically, into the story, and put us in with the sunset and the rainstorm as though to say, enjoy your place in my story. The beauty of it means you matter, and you can create within it even as I have created you.” -Donald Miller, A Million Miles In A Thousand Years
This journey is an epic. There’s no clear path. There are dragons, and monsters, and mountains, and valleys. The way will never be straight or easy or have an end. There will be good and bad and stuff that makes sense and stuff that doesn’t. But that’s what you get when you wake up and there’s breath in your lungs: An epic.
So breathe it in today, Enjoy your place in the story and create within.
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