The Business of Thought

This month for our business book I read Think Again by Adam Grant. It’s not a traditional business education book, but did have some insights that can help business owners overcome some of the issues that they face, just like anyone else faces when they are on a success journey. The premise of this book is that people don’t do enough thinking, or more correctly, they don’t rethink things. When you don’t take time to think or rethink you can easily get in a rut that isn’t the best, can miss out on opportunities to improve or upgrade, and most dangerously you can fall into the trap of brushing off things that are actually a lot more serious than you make them out to be. So let’s take a look at some other insights we can learn from the book.

One of the biggest dangers that many business owners face is how overwhelmed they can get and how long it takes them to deal with all the things that have to be dealt with and how much time and how many resources are wasted because of that delay. There’s no way to add more hours into the day, but I do think we can do a better job evaluating how serious issues are, better prioritizing them to get done, and doing a better job of getting things on our to-do list done.

Something we’ve talked about recently in other posts is the value of continuing to learn throughout our lives. There’s big value in applying this concept to our businesses as well, especially with regard to our culture. Business culture is one of those important (and somewhat trendy) topics that we talk about, but one that we don’t always know how to break it down into concepts or how to make what sounds and is so important a reality in our business. Which brings us to the idea this book shared, and that’s the opportunity in having a “learning culture.” Why does this work so well for at least a starting point for building a healthy culture? Because when everyone is open to learning, it makes it safe to ask questions, to question things, to re-think, to have concerns, to be wrong, and to make suggestions.

Finally, what’s the ultimate goal of re-thinking? It’s to be on a mission to always bring your best. The idea that you’re at your best on ‘day 1’ means that there’s no room for improvement in your life or business. And if we’re honest, none of us are “perfect” on day 1 let alone at any point in time in your life. There’s always room for improvement, especially if you want to bring or be your best. There’s no shame in being wrong, the only issue is if you don’t do anything about what’s wrong. One of the reasons we are in the pickle we’re in as a world is because we didn’t think that we could face a pandemic and nothing could ever happen that would impact our supply chains or production capacity or ability to move as freely around the world as we have for many decades. I think we’ve kicked ourselves enough over the past two plus years, and now it’s a time to think about how we can do better going forward for ourselves and our world.

Do you take time each week to make sure you’re not missing any important details and to rethink the “standards” to make sure you’re putting your best business foot forward? If not, maybe it’s time to learn more about your business and the untapped potential it probably has.

The Good News about Trying Again

Recently my life has been on a bit of a ‘try again’ theme. You’ve probably seen some of that reflected in recent newsletters, social posts and blog posts. The other day I was looking for something to read and picked a book off my shelf and wasn’t really sure I wanted to read it but thought I’d give it a try. When I was done with it I remembered that anything on my shelves was there for a reason (i.e. it was always worth a re-read). As I was re-reading a book the other day that I haven’t read in a few years, it brought me back to both this reminder and the topic of trying again because in reading the book again I noticed certain details and put together things that I hadn’t the first time I read it. Part of the reason why I love rereading a great book is because when I read a book for the first time I often get caught up in the story and don’t always follow or pick up on all the details, and when I go back again I notice them which makes the story even better.

But it got me thinking about how maybe ‘trying again’ isn’t such a bad thing. When we have to try again it doesn’t mean the initial effort was a complete and utter failure (if it was it might not be worth the effort to try again). Instead when we try again we think or know we can do a better job the next time around, or we’ll improve upon what wasn’t half bad to make it better than half good. For example let’s say you do carpentry either as a passion or as a career. The first couple of cabinets you create and build once you have some skill won’t be terrible, but they certainly won’t be as good as those that you build after years of experience, right? For another example we go back to the book topic: I have some books by authors that were among the first books they wrote which I love rereading and their books 30 or 40 books later are just as good, although they are different and you can “see” them develop as a writer.

So this week in your success journey don’t let any frustration you feel when you have to “try again” wipe out the opportunity and excitement of being able to try again and do it even better than your first attempt. Take what you learned in that first attempt (or those earlier attempts) and invest them into your next attempt so that you do improve and do make a better attempt the next time around. Those early attempts are only true failures if you don’t learn anything from them, don’t apply those lessons going forward, and can’t take anything good from them. What have you learned from past efforts that have made your present successes more successful?

Bug Killing and Problem Solving

It’s summer but that doesn’t mean that kids can’t keep learning! I loved the opportunity to be at the library frequently and get tons of books of my choosing and getting lost in a great story that often educated me about relationships and communication and different parts of the world even if I wasn’t necessarily reading the books to learn about those things. But as I was dealing with what is frequently a summer problem for many people, flies, I was thinking about how important it is to teach our kids that there’s always more than one way to do things. Using the fly example, let’s dive into 4 options of how you can deal with them, and other things.

Sometimes, the choice you make is to do nothing. This is when you choose to let the fly go out the door or choose to just wave your hand near it to discourage it from hanging around you. Sometimes that’s absolutely the best and easiest option, that you just give it some encouragement to move on, and it does. It’s also often the right decision to make when you’re outdoors and dealing with critters and can have them rehomed or just leave them alone rather than killing them or negatively impacting their life.

Sometimes the best choice is bug killing spray. Have you discovered a bees nest on your house or in a location that you go near yet this year? It can be a terrifying experiences and the easiest (and safest) thing is to give the nest a couple of sprays of bee killer and then remove the nest late at night. I don’t always encourage using chemicals, but sometimes it’s the way to go.

Third, you can get a fantastic fly swatter (or other killing device) and squish the bugs. I am definitely one of those who tests a paint’s ability to be cleaned because I often focus more on killing the bug over protecting the wall. It does take some courage and skill to get to them this way, and it’s the most classic way of bug removal.

Finally, one of my favorite ways to remove some bugs is with the vacuum. It helps to have one that doesn’t have a removable bag, has a great extension arm, and is easy to take from one part of the house to another, but it’s a great way to avoid cleaning up a squished mess and possibly even removing them from your home to the outdoors to live another day. Again, it takes some skill and isn’t great for catching every bug, but it’s an option to consider.

No, the point of this post isn’t really about killing bugs. It’s that there’s always more than one way to tackle a problem or to do something, and while some approaches work better than others depending on the situation, the more we encourage our kids (and ourselves) to explore the options and possibilities, the better we’ll get at problem solving in all areas of our lives, the more we’ll get out of life, and the better we’ll leave our world for future generations.

Leadership Lessons: Two Baseball Greats

This month for our leadership profile being that we’re in the middle of baseball season I thought we’d look at two baseball icons who have both had a lasting impact on the game and the culture of baseball years after they stopped playing: Hank Aaron and Babe Ruth. For those who don’t know baseball, Babe Ruth was part of the earlier years of formal baseball games (starting in 1914) while Hank Aaron started playing in the mid 1950’s, both are well known in the industry, and they’re two people whose baseball cards are highly sought after. But we are here to talk about leadership so let’s take a look at what these two ball players can teach us.

Let’s start with the obvious: they’re famous because they were talented at playing baseball. Both had over 700 home runs in their career, over 2,200 RBI’s (runs batted in) and played for 22 plus seasons. They both were given awards for their contributions to the teams they played on and both won at least one World Series. Even still today, some of their records haven’t been broken, which is an incredible achievement for them to be able to claim with all the advances in training and resources that players today have. So does talent matter if you’re a leader? Absolutely.

But as you know, leadership isn’t just about the skills you bring to the table but who you are as a leader for your organization and your team on and off the field. While Babe Ruth can claim some big talent, the publicity he got wasn’t as great, because the man he was off the baseball field didn’t mirror his work on the field, and as such he wasn’t given a chance to follow the usual career path in the broader world of baseball after his playing career ended. He’s also the source of the “Curse of the Bambino” because of his trade to the Yankees from the Red Socks (who didn’t win a championship for 86 years after the trade, which was obviously good for the Yankees and bad for the Red Socks), and a big part of the rivalry between the two teams.

On the other hand you have Hank Aaron who managed to play great ball while he was racially targeted and attacked because he was African American and because he was the first to be close to breaking some of Babe Ruth’s records (and actually do it). But with the support he received from many people, he chose to funnel that experience into the work he did for the Civil Rights Movement, and it was also something he built upon when he retired from playing ball and became part of the leadership of the Braves team.

The big lesson we can learn from these two men is that the skills you have aren’t usually enough to make up for struggles you have when you’re not “at work.” While you aren’t expected to be perfect as a leader, you are expected to apply the skills you have and put your best foot forward even when you’re not in the public eye. Another lesson we can learn from them is that life doesn’t have to “end” when you’re done with the “on field” portion of your work. You can have a great life and second (or third) career after that, especially if you’ve set yourself up for success in that way so that people are excited to have you as part of their team even if you’re not able to “play” as you used to. Which baseball icons have you learned about leadership from?

Use Your Voice to Make a Difference

What does it mean to be successful? It means you’ve accomplished something or made a difference. While sometimes they can be one and the same, it’s the second meaning that I want to talk about today as the last schools have finished for the year, we recognize the men and women who started the Pride movement years ago, and we recognize the men and women who fought for generations for African American men and women to be free from slavery and then continued the fight for them (and other people of color) to have equal rights. Because each of us have a choice when it comes to success: are we out to accomplish something regardless of the cost that others will pay, or are we working on success so that there’s a positive difference in our lives and in the lives of others?

The hope is that with all of the years of schooling we get we’re able to take what we’ve learned and make the world a better place through the career we choose, that we’re hopefully wiser than our ancestors were, and are better able to use the tools we have access to. Of course, with all of the schooling you get, you could choose to use it to help you evade the law (or at least try to), or build bombs to threaten and kill people. The same is true about the interpersonal and communication lessons you get over the years: will you choose to build relationships at work and be a leader worth following or will people constantly complain about working for and with you?

But maybe the biggest lesson teachers try to teach us in school is that we do all have a voice. It wasn’t always fun to be called on by the teachers to read or answer questions, but with each and every opportunity we were given a chance to speak our mind, show that we were listening, and share our thoughts and perspective with others. And each time we were told to be quiet and wait our turn, we were reminded that it’s not always time to speak, but that we should be ready when it is.

Yes we “speak” with our dollar bills when we choose where we buy stuff, and with our bodies when we choose to show up for a protest or walk or even, or in where we choose to live and work. And all of those are important when it comes to how you can be successful and make a difference. But as I’ve been learning in this month’s book (which I’ll share about next week midweek), sometimes it’s your willingness to use your voice and to know when to let others use theirs that can make the biggest difference. Speak for those who don’t have a voice, join your voice with other voices to make a stronger and louder voice, quiet your voice to let others speak and really try to understand their perspective, and ask questions not to attack but so there’s more understanding all around and hopefully progress can be made. How have your words helped you be successful and make a difference?

Try Again

You know how sometimes when you go to put the cleaned dishes away from the dish drain or the dishwasher sometimes you find dishes that didn’t quite get as clean as they were supposed to, even if you thought you scrubbed them well? I had this experience the other day, and I’m the one who does the dishes so I know I thought I had cleaned them well! But it reminded me of what I thought was an important lesson for this season of our lives, as well as all the dads celebrating Father’s Day on Sunday in the US (and the men who want to be fathers too): there’s no shame in trying again.

Does perfection (or the close facsimile of) make life a heck of a lot easier? Yes, of course! It’s always easier and less stressful if things get done right and well the first time around. It’s one of the reasons we go to school and ask questions and give an effort and learn things: so that we don’t have to redo things. But the reality is that more often than not we’ll have to tweak things or try doing things a different way or redo things. More often than not we’ll not be very good at throwing pitches to our kids when we first try, we’ll not make foods the way they like them right away, we’ll make mistakes as we change and our kids change, we’ll fumble as life intrudes on what had been a decent relationship with our kids, we don’t always get into a job that gives us the money we need to support our family, we aren’t always able to even create a family as easily as we think it should be done, and the list goes on.

There are two things I want us to take away from this: First, that there’s no shame in trying again as long as you are going to give an honest effort to do better or do it differently or wait a bit before trying again or ask for help to increase your chances of getting it right. This isn’t an invitation or suggestion to keep pretending you’re going to improve, but requires an actual effort. And second, that sometimes family relationships aren’t about perfection, but about being together, loving each other and laughing together. So maybe this weekend is an opportunity for you to give serious effort to trying again on repairing and growing the relationships you have with your family, or maybe this weekend is just another opportunity to make some memories that will last a lifetime even if they’re memorable because they were so insane. What have you learned when you’ve had to try again on something or with someone?

Newsletter Content Ideas Part 2

Last week we started a discussion about a marketing topic that challenges too many people: what content to share in your newsletter. And I get the frustration, because to a point, yes, every business in an industry shares the same content, so wouldn’t having your newsletter share the same content be boring or repetitive?. For example if you’re a realtor (real estate agent) you’d better be sharing homes for sale that you’ve listed or think your subscribers would be interested in! But the difference between what all the different realtors/agents post in their newsletter comes in with the context that’s included with the listing, and surrounding content to support those listings, not to mention it’s shared with (I hope!) your unique perspective. What you share isn’t going to be exactly the same as another person or company in your industry (unless you’ve hired a marketer to write your content for you and they just copy/paste for every person/company they work with), so don’t let that be what stops you from creating a newsletter. Let’s dive into the second half of this topic and look at some more content ideas.

Share sales: it may be hard to believe, but all too often I don’t find out about sales from authors or companies directly, I hear about it from a subscription service or news service or on an affiliate site or news article or some other way. Why wouldn’t you want to share about sales of your products and services? Is it because you’re only interested in full price sales? If that was the case you wouldn’t let anyone do sales of your products and services, and you wouldn’t do any yourself. And if you hear about a last minute sale and hesitate to send a newsletter thinking that people will be upset if you send a really short email in addition to your regular email if letting them know about this sale that won’t still be active when you send your next regularly scheduled newsletter, you’re wrong!

Share personal updates: if you don’t think that people want to get to know you on a personal level, you’d better rethink your use of social media. No, you don’t have to go into the depth of what you do on a personal level on social media, but sharing about your home life, your relationships, fun/crazy things your pets do, what books you’re reading, kitchen adventures, places you’ve visited all help build the trust relationship with your subscribers and humanize you to them.

Share what goes on behind the scenes: this could be pictures/video of your office, it could be the view from where you’re working from that day (couch, coffee shop, back yard, beach etc.), it could be staff meeting pictures, it could be shots from the setup before or cleanup after the event, it could be a delivery of boxes of new merchandise (or a stack of boxes ready to ship out to customers), test kitchen sessions for new recipes, prepping food bowls for shelter/zoo animal dinners, or any other of dozens of things that are part of what you do day in and day out but your subscribers don’t experience and would find a lot more fascinating or exciting that you might.

Share tips and how-to’s: this can be everything from full blown cooking classes for a full course meal to how to fold a fitted bedsheet to how to use one version of a dog nail clipper to a site that you recently found helpful to a product recommendation that works well for cleaning stainless steel sinks. Most of the time you’ll want to send a short and simple tip, but occasionally it can be a bigger gift and education opportunity of clips from a course, a service you provided, or a webinar. As I mentioned at the beginning of this post, make sure to include sufficient context so they know why you’re sharing about that item or event, or what they’ll learn if they watch/read it.

‘Best of’ content: one last idea (at least for now) and that’s to share great content your subscribers may benefit from. You can highlight your blog posts, podcast episodes, and social posts. You can share about content that other people have shared around the internet that you found valuable or thought your subscribers might benefit from (for example to revisit the earlier example: a guide someone else posted you found helpful about navigating buying a home in 2022 with the markets (housing and economic) as they are). This works because of how much content there is on the internet and how easy it is to miss stuff that’s great, and it makes you look good for sharing that helpful content and is a support to the greater business community too).

So what are your favorite newsletter sections in the newsletters you read?

Making Educated, Informed Success Plans

What happens when the decision you make about the direction to take isn’t the popular one? As personal as success is, I do think it’s important to take into consideration the successes (and failures) of others, the opinions of others, the trends people are moving towards, the resources you do and don’t have access to any longer. Because when you don’t take into consideration how your success desires will be impacted by others (and will impact others), or how successfully you’ll be able to complete those desires, or if the rules you’re planning to operate by are completely outdated, or if those desires will move you forward in the world or end up taking you so many steps back, does it really make sense to put in the effort? Sure, 8 Tracks, Pintos, telephone booths, the Pony Express and typewriters are cool, but do they really work in this world we live in now, can you really get your hands on any of them or be part of them, and would anyone else really want them from you if you sold them or invited them to join you?

So it’s not even a question of if it’s a “popular” decision, it’s about making healthy, smart, educated, informed decisions, especially when they impact your future or the lives and futures of others. It may turn out to not be a popular decision either, but plenty of people have made what looked like unpopular decisions that were actually the right decision to make. But again, I think that goes back to their knowledge and wisdom and the research they did to get to that decision and make sure that the plans they’re making, rules they’re following, and dreams they have make sense for the world of the present and future.

It all brings us back to the point that learning is essential to success, as is doing your research. Because when you share with people about the success journey you’re so excited to start and ask them to either encourage you or join you, if it’s a journey that really only belongs back in 1900, you’ll have a very hard time gaining the support you will end up needing at some point in time. Why would you try to bring back to life relics from a previous experience if they don’t have a clear role in our present and future? I’m not saying don’t do it, but really make sure you’ve done your homework before starting out, because why would you want to start a success journey that will end up in a failure, if you could have that knowledge before you even started? Think about the consequences and the impact of your success would have before you strike out on your own just to “prove everyone wrong.”

Honest About Emotions

I’ve been thinking a lot about honesty and emotions this month, in part because it’s Pride Month. Also, all schools have or are wrapping up for the year as well, which is also the perfect time to reflect back, although at this point most kids are happy to just be done and don’t really want to think back, while parents of those who are graduating especially feel a whole range of emotions from pride to disbelief that their kids are that old already. There are many important lessons we should be imparting on the next generation, and one of the more challenging is about feeling and navigating through your emotions in general and with regard to the twists and turns that life takes you on.

Before there were computers and before going to therapists was acceptable, if you wanted to share your emotions there were diaries or journals you could fill in private, and some conversations were had with your closest friends. I’m thankful that at least that was (and has almost always been) acceptable, and while I wish it had happened sooner, I’m thankful that now it’s accepted to talk with therapists, share honestly with the greater world in social media groups and other private chat rooms, and even share the truth on podcasts and blogs.

But experiencing the emotion and sharing that you’re feeling those emotions is only the first step. The next step, and a very important one at that, is about how you’re going to work through, respond to and live with those emotions and the things and people that evoked them in you. If you really want to be the best person you can be, it is necessary to not only feel your emotions but navigate through them honestly. Sometimes and in some situations it will take you a lot longer to process those emotions and accept the changes or happenings in your life. Other times it seems easier to navigate the situation, possibly because you’re looking at a mostly good situation instead of something challenging you, although that isn’t always the case.

The worst things you can do are to refuse to feel your emotions, let them poison you, let them build up, let them scare you away from decisions and living, or shame others for feeling and expressing their emotions. Yes, emotions can feel big and overwhelming, but that should be an indicator of how big of a deal something is or how much something matters to you, not be the big warning sign that makes you stop and run in the other direction. So the next time a big emotion shows up in your life, take the time, however long it takes, to process it. Maybe for you that processing is done through thinking while you take walks, maybe it’s journaling, maybe you blog or podcast about it, maybe you talk with your therapist or maybe it’s something you talk about with a friend or your partner. Processing will give you the time and space to work through what you’re feeling and why, and help you decide on next steps or at least the person or people you’ll need to talk with about what the next steps look like. And don’t forget to be willing to give everyone else the space they need to process their emotions too, supporting them as they explore those feelings and being available to help them take next steps or just encourage them in their journey. What advice do you have about navigating emotions?

Newsletter Content Ideas Part 1

As you may know one of my all time favorite marketing tools is the newsletter. I’ve loved newsletters since I was a kid, getting them in the mail from missionaries and places we visited as a family was something I always looked forward to, and when email came around it became that much more inexpensive for businesses and organizations to send them out and keep many more people up to date at a fraction of the cost.

Before we get into the actual topic of today’s post, I did want to throw out there that some people use a blog as a much less formal “newsletter,” and if that’s how you’re more comfortable and if you’re actually willing and able to keep up with the consistency, that’s OK, and I would prefer you did that than pretended you were willing and able to keep up a newsletter and don’t actually do it. How you keep people updated about what’s going on, whether it’s the informal blog posts or the very formal news releases, is less important than the fact that you consistently do so. But today I thought we’d talk about the biggest challenge most people and organizations have about doing newsletters and that’s the content. What do we share anyway? For the next two weeks we’re going to dive into a bunch of different industries and ideas and why they work.

Highlight products: I got a newsletter the other day from a company that sells lots of health products and in this newsletter they highlighted a specific product I didn’t know they sold but had been thinking about buying recently. Of course I clicked the link to see more about those products, and while I didn’t make a purchase that day I now have in the back of my mind that they do sell them and when I’m ready to make that purchase I know I can go to them for that product. So what is product highlighting? It’s exactly what it sounds like: letting people know exactly what you sell from newest to oldest, and from favorites to selectively purchased. If you’ve got a catalogue of hundreds of products in theory you could send out a newsletter every day of the year with a different product in it and you would have at least a year’s worth of content to share about before you would have to repeat it. Of course you’ll want to include at least a picture and brief description of the product along with the link to the product on your site (or state that it’s now available in your retail store at the front display or wherever it may be). You can highlight products whether you sell books, sushi, vitamins, makeup, you offer landscaping and gardening services (and share about the plants people may want you to plant), or host health and fitness classes (and highlight the individual classes and instructors).

Highlight people: In your newsletter you can feature customers, team members, and recipients of your non-profit services. By celebrating customers you let subscribers know that you are making sales, and each customer testimony or story helps people get to know your business better. Team members are great to feature because it helps people get to know them and feel like they’ve got a friendly face when they come to shop and the team members can also highlight their product or service stories and experiences which helps people get to see your business from a different perspective. And of course there’s nothing like knowing where donor dollars are going, and by featuring recipients, even as a check-in years down the road, you’re giving people a way to see how you contribute and exactly the impact you have.

Share samples: while we haven’t yet figured out how to get food, beverages, smells or sweet puppy kisses through the screens yet there are still lots of samples we can share. We can share video clips from seminars or tutoring or cooking lessons, we can share chapters from books, we can share pages from recipe books, . This is not only creating product/service awareness, it’s giving people the ability to get a taste of what you’re offering which makes a huge difference in convincing people that what you’re offering is worth whatever you’re charging for it (or at least they’ll put it on their list of things to buy when it’s on sale).

Do contests/giveaways for subscribers only: some people and organizations invite subscribers to join them on social media to enter the contest or giveaway, and while there is a place for sharing about what you’re doing on social, if the goal is to create a newsletter worth subscribing to you should do newsletter-specific contests/giveaways. The ‘how’ of it is fairly simple and mostly consistent: people can be entered to win simply by opening their newsletters, you can have a simple Google form they fill out to be entered, and you can have a button they click that enters them and takes them to your website. I do recommend requiring them to do something to be entered because otherwise they may win a prize they don’t want but someone else very much does.

I’d love to hear your favorite newsletter sections, and next week I’ll share more newsletter content ideas.