Nothing is more important for your start-up, product, service, or idea.
If you can create awe then you have created something shareable.
We just can’t keep awesome to ourselves.
We’re supposed to stand and stay in line,
keep our heads down,
stay in the box,
speak when spoken to,
color within the lines,
do it like they did it,
pass some exams,
and get a degree that gets us a job that gets us healthcare and, eventually, gets us retirement.
The problem here is that the grading system that has awarded one’s athleticism to all of this we’re supposed to do is crumbling. The MOMA is full of art that is outside of the lines and the box (and it’s being cheered for). College isn’t finding or getting us THE job it said it would. Free healthcare isn’t providing fulfillment in our jobs. And we’ve thought retirement equaled happiness, but Luby’s five days a week has proven this not to be true.
Shift gears….
…then there is what you’re supposed to do.
That thing inside of you that you can’t shake.
The things that keep you restless on the pillow, but also passionately pulls you from your slumber.
That work that feels like freedom.
That consistent whisper of ‘yes’.
The reason you’re here.
Your music.
Could there be anything worse than looking back at your 30, 40, 50, 60, or 70 plus years of doing what you’re supposed to do and seeing yourself stand in line for the retirement you never really wanted in the first place?
At the heart of marketing is the heart.
And we all have hearts, brands, and businesses that are marketing something…could be a place, a person, a belief, a dream, enthusiasm, an experience, a feeling, an emotion, or even hope.
Marketing isn’t about convincing people to buy things they don’t want or didn’t know they needed. Rather, it’s about the heart pointing at something it resonates with and, sometimes, even pointing back to itself.
I hope our hearts, brands, and businesses will point to such wondrous places.
If so, we’ll become great marketers.
Unintentionally, social media is creating a culture of addicts on the status, location, and doings of others.
This “look at their life” and “look at their stuff” and “look at their dreams” adrenaline appears to be unquenchable. Do we do this to avoid looking at ourselves? Do we do this to avoid clicking the “like” button of us? Do we do this because someone convinced us at some point that we are not @ mentionable?
We need to look at ourselves more.
Looking into a book we sort have to look at ourself.
Having tough and great conversation we have to look at ourself.
And staring at vacant canvases, trying to start/make something from nothing, makes us look at ourself.
I guess what I’m getting at is we do ourselves a lot more good to read ourselves than to constantly read others through tweets and instagrams. Not so you constantly look at yourself from a place of arrogance or pride, but so you look at yourself from a place of wonder and awe as to where you can plug into the world that is evolving, not revolving, around you.
Live your life. Don’t live someone else’s. Find things that read you and report back to the universe with that.
And while you’re at it, look up from your smart phone and experience this place.
…when doing what you are told to do is no longer effective?
That time is here.
Doing what you tell yourself you should do is where the light is. Our dreams and hopes are found in the “shoulds” we own and tell ourselves.
We tell ourselves a lot of “shoulds.”
We follow through with very few of them.
Ashton.Gustafson 