Author: Dan Blank

Money and Time ARE NOT Your Most Precious Resources. Creative Energy Is.

If you are a writer, trying to build your audience and have an impact on the world, where should you put your resources. Your time and your money? Your emotional energy, and brilliant thought?

Now, the easy answer is always: “create the best piece of writing possible first!” So let’s just get that out of the way so we can move beyond it. In truth, we are all creating work that is in some ways brilliant, in some ways insufficient, and always improving as we each grow wiser on our journey through life.

So where does your money go? This is the question Jane Friedman asked this week in a useful and insightful post:

How Should You Spend Your Book Marketing Budget?

I would like to dig more deeply into a few areas she touched upon.

Money is Not Your Most Precious Resource
There is something unsettling about our culture’s obsession with money. The belief that, without money, we have no options, no freedom to choose what we want. Oftentimes, the opposite is more true. The less money you have, the more you focus and leverage your other resources to create a true impact in the world, instead of spending your time managing funds and confusing payment with action.

If you want to build your author platform; if you want to spread the word about your work; if you want to become deeply engaged in a vibrant community – YOU DON’T NEED MONEY. Sure, money helps, but it is not the key ingredient. It’s actually 87th on the list, far behind essentials such as: coffee, good health, sleep, a sense of humor, and so many other things.

But yes, money helps. Money can be traded for time in many cases.

We all seem to wish we had more time. And yet, even time isn’t your most precious resource. Time is flexible. It’s also the great equalizer. We all have the same amount of time in a day. Someone isn’t more successful than you are because they found a way to conjure up a 25th hour in a given day.

But… somehow… there are individuals who do more with their time than others. Which brings us to your most precious resource: creative energy. You can also call this “motivation,” I suppose.

What I mean is this: I don’t work a full work day. Sure, I work for at least 8 hours a day, oftentimes more. But some of that time is spent moving things around, managing email, organizing, keeping the lights on. But the real work comes in bursts of creative energy.

That I will have 20 minute bursts of ideas and inspiration and work that create entire products, entire revenue streams, entirely new ways to have an impact on the world and build a legacy. That the other 23 hours and 40 minutes in the day were sort of ordinary, but those 20 minutes were somehow elevated.

So I protect my creative energy. I carefully manage my time to ensure the most creative and critical tasks are done in the mornings (when I work best) and free of distractions from family or meetings. I construct my daily to-do list to have pockets of juggling and coordination, and pockets of free space. I make sure I deal with tasks I am most worried about first, so they don’t creep into my creative time.

Invest in Communication
When considering where to spend your resources – focus on connections, not things. On results, not actions. It’s easy to order 1,000 awesome business cards. It’s hard to meet the right people, in the right way, to have those business cards pay off. We get sidetracked by representations of action. That a business card represents someone capturing our info and gives them the power to connect with us. But a representation does not equal action or results.

Focus on making TRUE connections with others, not on “platforms, “websites,” or “documents.”

Some incredibly successful people who built their entire career online have ugly websites that barely work. Simply “choosing” to leverage Twitter does not in and of itself result in any effects. HOW you use it is what matters. And buying books, self-paced courses, and other resources doesn’t mean that what the words in them say will lead to action in your life. You have to read and execute on the material. This is why so many people you know have amazing shelves worth of books, but a very limited worldview. A book that is bought but not read does not really shape your life. Sometimes, it merely shapes the image you would like to have of yourself.

So instead of investing in ‘things,’ invest in something incredibly old-fashioned: communication. How others communicate with you, and how you can communicate with others. To spread ideas, to listen to others. To negotiate. To converse. To build relationships.

Twitter doesn’t communicate. People do it by leveraging Twitter. Websites don’t communicate. People do it by working through a website.

I am a consultant (RUN AND HIDE!!!), and when you hire a consultant, don’t get all excited about the deliverables in terms of documents they provide. That you will get a 90 page this, and a 40 page that, and a 200 page something-or-other. You have to measure the benefits of who you hire based on providing clarity, on harnessing resources, on identifying amazing ideas, and on things that lead to action and results. Intangibles that give you a clear path and steps to get there.

Invest in people – those who brainstorm, push, pull, challenge, and support. Not just investing in “things.” That a website doesn’t inherently do anything. It is a tool in a process of communication. Should you spend $2,500 for a great web design? Maybe. But don’t think that a beautiful website will really bring you to your goals unless you understand who your audience is, and how to engage them. There are lots of pretty, yet lonely, websites out there.

Knowing Where You Are Going Before You Get Spending
Buying clothes doesn’t make you stylish. How you wear them, and how you act in them does. Likewise, spending money doesn’t necessary solve your problems. You have to know WHAT you want to say. WHO you want to say it to. HOW to most effectively do it. And understand how your purpose aligns with the needs and interests of others.

Jane did a wonderful job of covering this, saying that before you spend, consider:

  • Who’s your primary target audience?
  • How much of your audience do you “own”?
  • What are your weak spots?

Many people have no idea where they are going. They want to “get published.” Or “reach mothers” via their blog. The translation here is vague, based more on wanting to be popular and relevant, but not really digging into specific cause and effect. To really define how they are impacting the world and building their legacy.

When you consider how you leverage your own resources, don’t look for the shiny red button. The one that promises the world for a simple price. Instead, consider how you can work with others to make new connections, and move past boundaries. Oftentimes the biggest obstacle standing in your way is not a ‘thing,’ and isn’t even outside of your own head. We are often our own biggest obstacles. Find ways to work with others that help you free up your creative energy. In doing so, you may find that you also gain other precious resources: yes, time and money; but also: immediate impact and the start of a legacy.

And of course, let me know if there is any way I can be of assistance to you. Have a great day.
-Dan

Want to Grow Your Career? Get a Mentor.

What is the one thing you can do to jumpstart your career? Get a mentor.

This holds true for writers honing their craft, as it would for a mid-level manager at a publisher, as it would for a new college graduate trying to get their foot in the door in the online marketing space.

Whenever I attend a conference, there are certain words that get people’s pens moving, and fingers tapping to take notes. Words like:

  • Hootsuite
  • Animoto
  • Tweetreach

These are tools that help us automate and more easily manage content and workflows. These are good things. I’m a big fan of them. But…

In building a successful career, it’s not what you own that matters, it’s who you know.

For many people, they get into a career rut. Meaning: they end up with a “good” position, at a “good” company, doing “good” work. I use the word “good” in quotes in order to reference the quote: “good is the enemy of great,” attributed to Voltaire and Jim Collins. That for a few years, it’s fine to be “good enough” as you get your footing in your career. But when those few years turn into a decade or two, then you often find yourself in a rut.

Going back to the conference example, it’s interesting seeing who comes up to the front of the room after a session ends to make a personal connection with a speaker or panelist. Who asks a question, shares feedback, gives their card or asks for one in return. And more importantly: who follows up a few days or weeks later. Who takes the seed of a mentoring relationship and helps it grow. That the highest value in attending a conference is not hearing the word “animoto” and discovering a new tool, but in having an insightful conversation with someone in the hallway between sessions.

Recently I wrote about how people have a greater return on investment than technology. If you are looking to break out of a rut in your career; if you are trying to do something great, but stuck in the middle of “blah,” then consider how you encourage mentoring relationships in your life.

Oftentimes these aren’t formal. You never ask: “Will you be my mentor?” No one ever says: “Luke, I am your mentor.”

What does a mentor provide, even when they aren’t aware of it? Quite a lot:

  • They inspire you
  • They provide real-world experience and wisdom, not just textbook advice
  • They hold you accountable
  • They push you past boundaries
  • They believe in you

That last one is critical. Too often, those around us see us defined by existing roles. They have a very hard time imagining that you could do something radically different. But a mentor believes in your potential, not just your current identity. They see what you could be, not just how you are defined today.

How does a relationship like this work? I can only tell you how it works for me…

I am endlessly fortunate to have several people in my life that I consider mentors. These are people who are very giving of their time to help me frame what I need to do in order to grow. For the 4th quarter of this year, I am doing a deep dive into what We Grow Media needs to become in 2012 and beyond. The process has not been driven by a project plan – a spreadsheet – but rather by conversations with mentors. Those who push me, who teach me, who help me explore.

These are the steps that I took:

  • Identify those who I am somehow connected to that inspire me.
  • Be clear about my goals and that I could benefit from their experience.
  • Setup a loose but frequent schedule of speaking together. Sometimes this is over dinner, other times virtually over Skype. 2-4 times per month seems to be a good schedule.
  • Take notes when they provide insightful ideas.
  • Illustrate to that person that their words/ideas/inspiration lead to direct action in your life. You aren’t spinning their wheels.
  • Give back as much as possible. Sometimes this is as basic as paying for dinner; It is a heartfelt thank you; Or recommending them to others.

One last benefit of mentors: helping to manage the emotional side of growth. Inherently, growth requires you go through challenges, that you confront core issues of identity, process, and make very hard choices that have ramifications in your personal life, not just your professional life. This is not easy. I don’t think I have talked to a single writer or entrepreneur who didn’t have ups and downs in trying to grow their career – to build a legacy for their work. This is normal.

When you have a mentor to work with, they help ground you. They make you feel less like you have taken a crazy leap off a cliff into an endless hole, and more like you are building something of value. That you are on a hero’s journey.

And of course, look for opportunities to be a mentor to others. To give back to those who can most use your experience and wisdom. This week I visited a school in Harlem that I have been working with since 2003. I am an advisor to their newspaper staff, and in the photo below, you can see kids making their case as to why THEY should be Chief Editor of the paper:

PS 123

Will I end up as a mentor to any of these kids? I have no idea. In the end, you rarely know who it is you effected in a positive way. Whether or not I help one of these students is not just in what I say, but in simply showing up. In taking the time to be present in their lives, in encouraging them to push past boundaries, to imagine what they can achieve.

And of course, let me know if there is any way I can be of assistance to you. Have a great day.
-Dan

People Deliver Higher ROI Than Technology

I spoke at two events this week, and today I want to reflect on common themes I found, and something I don’t think is talked about often enough:

People deliver higher return on investment than technology.

Both of the events dealt with organizations trying to leverage digital media to expand and more deeply engage their communities. First up was Folio: Show, where media companies discussed issues such as how to best leverage apps and increase revenue for digital products. My session was called: “The New Content-Creation Paradigm: Blending Production, Audience and Content.”
Dan Blank at Folio Show

The next event was a private Social Media Boot Camp for the United Nations communications staff. Here, 150 members of their staff came together for a day to discuss how to best engage in their mission via social media. My session was “Writing for Social Media.”

Dan Blank

image by Babette Ross

The more I spoke with people at each event, the more I kept considering the value of where we invest our resources. That oftentimes, we look to technology – to systems – to supercharge our mission to expand and engage, but that the most powerful resource are our own employees, colleagues, and members of the communities we serve.

Too often, we invest in technology, instead of where we should: people.

Investing in your staff can deliver far greater ROI than any system or piece of technology you build. People scale. In the right scenario – they can be exponential in their power. This is how ideas spread – how they “go viral.” How organizations can achieve things that break previously established barriers.

But I do understand that many organizations fear investing in people for two reasons:

  1. You don’t “own” the people as you would the server or software. That piece of technology is under lock and key, and can’t escape. But an employee can leave at any time. So a lot of trust is involved.
  2. People are complicated. They are not single function. They don’t all respond the same way to the same input. In reality, this is their brilliance. But for an organization, this means a lot more uncertainty in understanding what your resources are, how to manage them, and how to best unlock their potential.

At the Folio: Show I had a conversation with one editor that I seem to have with nearly every editor: how they are looking to change their website CMS – the backend content management system for all of their online content. I have rarely met any editorial team that is happy with their current CMS. So they are constantly migrating from one piece of technology to another, constantly furthering investment in the tools, instead of the people who use them.

Likewise, people often address social media with me wanting to know what tools, what new platforms, what automation or management tools they should be using. And these are all good things, and I do provide plenty of recommendations. But I feel that many people overlook the basics too quickly – how to better communicate with their audience, how to craft more effective messages, how do more research on what their audience needs and wants. Basic skills that go across any platform/media from any century. Not just ways to “say” more, but to communicate more effectively.

Another key issue I spoke with folks about is how attitude is a greater resource than skills. That skills can become irrelevant, but attitude finds a way. One of my favorite quotes says it best:

“When the only tool you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.”

In today’s rapidly changing world of digital media, change is the norm, and an organization’s roles and capabilities need to address this on a near daily basis.

What is the attitude that you need on your team? Caring. In an organization, this would translate into constantly learning more about one’s audience; being honest about what isn’t working; working outside of defined roles; experimenting when there is no certainty for success; and evolving to meet the needs of today, not last year.

The final point I want to make is about how an organization can best amplify the technology and tools that they are using. People talk a lot about the power of analytics, but often analytics and research are rendered useless for a single reason: they are rarely communicated effectively and often throughout an organization. Sales, marketing, editorial, research, events staff, and other groups all collect and use their own data to improve their performance. But this data and the insights they learn about their audience often aren’t shared across the entire organization. They die a lonely death, in a spreadsheet, instead of growing in value via conversations.

At the United Nations session, it was wonderful to see the organization invest the time to address this issue: how to communicate with the communities they serve in a forum like this. The day was organized by HUGE, and allowed staff members to come together with outside experts to explore what could be, and specific tactics on how to best share their mission.

I told them that the greatest resource they have is themselves – to speak with each other about what is working well in social media in different areas of their universe. That they need to recreate this large meeting every week in tiny ways – at water coolers, via email, instant messages – anything that keeps sharing new insights.

At the Folio: Show, the luncheon keynote speaker was Mashable Founder Pete Cashmore. It was a good session, but there was one major point he made that I didn’t agree with. A question was made about the value of content companies (such as a newspaper) vs technology companies (such as Google News), and Pete concluded that those who own the technology win. That a newspaper or magazine brand can’t compete with a well developed blog or digital media site.

But isn’t it those who are best embedded within their community the ones who win, not those who own a piece of technology? Because you can always serve a community in new ways, but technology is just a ‘thing’? Yes, it is an enabler, but tell that to MySpace nowadays. Their great technology is nothing without people using it.

As to why newspapers are finding it hard to stay in business and Google isn’t – the reason is likly that newspapers spent the past 15 years focused less on the people they serve and more on the paper they produce. That inherently, their mission should have extended far beyond the format of a newspaper (or the reasonable facsimile online or in an app), and more to finding new (and yes, profitable) ways to inform and engage their communities.

And finally, as is common practice nowadays, I want to end with an insight from Steve Jobs:

“Steve made choices,” his close friend Dr. Dean Ornish told the New York Times. “I once asked him if he was glad that he had kids, and he said, ‘It’s 10,000 times better than anything I’ve ever done.’

I interpret that quote as the exponential power that people have. That creating an iPod or an iPad is creating a ‘thing.’ That thing does specific tasks, and does them very well. But in 5 years, it is still the same object, and at that point, likely to be outdated. But a kid – a person – would have created exponential value in that same period of time. It will be at once something exactly the same, and something entirely new.

I wish more companies and organizations not only understood this (they all say they value their people), but acted on it by investing more in their employees and members, and less in THINGS.

Have a great day.
-Dan

How to Become a Bestselling Author – Lessons From Eric Ries

Today I am going to review the details of the specific tactics that one nonfiction author used to get his book onto The New York Times Best Seller list. He shares what worked, what didn’t, and how expectations did and didn’t meet with reality.

The author is Eric Ries, whose book The Lean Startup came out in September. Everything listed below is directly from an interview he did with Andrew Warner at Mixergy.com, who was kind enough to allow me to outline the items discussed in the interview in this blog post. His original interview with Eric is embedded below, and I highly recommend you watch it.

The Lean Startup reached number two on the New York Times’ “Advice, How To, and Miscellaneous” Best Seller list and I have seen it at various places on the overall Best Seller list. Here are the lessons Eric shares on how he achieved this:

  • Set the Specific Goal of Becoming a Bestseller
    Eric defined his ideal audience, and felt that being on the best seller list would be an ideal way to build his credibility and reach them: managers, investors, policy makers, the people who have a big impact on the entrepreneurial ecosystem. He asked himself, “Why do we have these bestseller lists?” His answer was that most people only read a handful of books per year, and that the bestseller list is a way for people to filter what is best. These are the books people will be talking about. So he worked backwards from that goal, to understand the mechanics of how to become a New York Times Best Seller. Here is what he found:

    • All books are published on a Tuesday, because the NYT calculates best sellers as the books that sell the most from Tuesday-Saturday of each week.
    • People who pre-order books count as a book being sold on the first day (or first week.)

    With this, he set out his path: get as many pre-orders as possible. This is critical for authors, and something I talk about with all of the writers I work with: you have to define your goals and audience up front.

  • The Only Form of Payment Eric Would Accept is Book Orders
    Eric didn’t luck into being a bestseller, he spent an entire year focused ONLY on this goal. This is where his time and resources went. In fact, the only way that anyone could pay Eric for anything for the entire year was through book sales. He describes his speaking and consulting fees as “outrageously expensive,” and he wouldn’t accept payment for them for the entire year. Instead, as I will describe below, book sales were the only currency he cared about. So for many promotional efforts, he would only do them if the organizer could guarantee that a certain number of books were sold (in this case, pre-ordered.)

  • Build a Movement Before Writing a Book
    Eric’s book is the culmination of a movement that has been building in the tech startup, and entrepreneurship worlds: that of “the lean startup.” Basically, its the idea of building products and companies by testing ideas early, and iterating your way to success by constantly talking with your customers. He has become something of a celebrity, and is highly sought after as a speaker and consultant. The lean startup was a movement started with Eric’s ideas, but was very grassroots in how it spread. Eric shared his ideas again and again via articles, blogs, interviews, and speaking events. He gave away everything well before he wrote a book about it. He didn’t covet his ideas, saving them for “the book.” Because he gave it all way, because it was so compelling, that is what allowed him the opportunity to actually get a book deal and become a bestseller.

  • Turn Awareness Into Sales
    His strategy in growing awareness and sales of his book: “Use early adopters to drive the message to the gatekeepers of the mainstream.” He had been blogging for 2 years prior to the book and is a popular speaker. But, Eric points out that engaging people via a blog post is one thing, getting them to pull out their credit card is another – much harder – task. “It took me a long time to learn how to talk about the book in a way that it would get people to buy it without coming off as some jerk self-promoter,” he said.

  • Set Up a Website to Test What Sells Books, and What Doesn’t
    Eric attributes creating a custom website for the book as the biggest thing that worked for him. But this wasn’t just any website, it was where he tested which marketing campaigns and messages sold books, and which didn’t. So he spent an entire year running experiments (A/B testing) designed to get people to pre-order his book. Again and again he ran experiments and campaigns in order to answer the question: “what would influence people to buy the book?”

    He actually sold the book via his website long before Amazon even had it listed on their site, which he said was a lot to manage and would not recommend others do. He didn’t know what the price would be, and then had to deal with customers directly. But it was the only way to really research – start to finish – what gets people to buy the book.

    Many of his tests were about the cover and the subtitle – the two things he thought would be most impactful, and two things that are traditionally hard to analyze to determine the best of each. He describes how he fought with his publisher over “horrendous” covers that were presented to him. He was thrilled to have empirical data to show them, based on what people reacted most favorably to – what ACTUALLY drove book sales. In the end, they tested and tested until he found something that he liked, the publisher liked, and actually sold books.

    What’s more, he shared the data on his experiments, and used this too to sell books. One idea that really sold a lot of books for him was offering people to see this data if you pre-ordered a book. So Eric offered people a chance to go behind the scenes to see the book marketing testing that he was doing on the site. Due to the nature of the book, testing ideas that work, this really resonated with his audience. All the data can still be accessed on his website, including experiments and trends among his book-buying customers.

  • Don’t Rely on the Book Tour to Sell Books
    Eric assumed that if he did an in-person talk, then plugged the book, that people would immediately go online and pre-order it. It turns out, he felt that this is one of the worst ways to sell a book, and rarely works for authors that he has seen in a pre-order scenario. People either got annoyed at the sales pitch, or they chose to not pre-order because they wanted to wait until the book was out to see if others think it is good. What this taught Eric, months ahead of his actual book launch, is to not rely on his book tour to sell books.

  • Events That People Pay for Are More Impactful Than Events That are Free
    Because the book tour idea didn’t work, Eric began asking event organizers to charge $25 for admission to see him speak, and then provide the book for free. (He would include these numbers as pre-sale orders.) At first, he got a lot of push-back from event organizers who don’t believe in charging for events. For Eric though, he knew that this strategy would guarantee pre-orders, turning his personal time into guaranteed book sales.

    He would only go to events that were guaranteed to sell a certain number of books. It seems that 250 books was the number to hit for Eric. If the organizer would charge $25 admission, and guarantee 250 attendees (eg: books sold), then Eric would pay his own way to fly out to the event. He experimented in other ways too, sometimes not charging admission, but getting sponsors to pay for the books. This actually allowed him to attend events, conferences, and meetup groups that otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford his regular speaking fees, since it was entirely feasible that a small group could move 250 books.

  • The Biggest Thing he Thought Would Work, But Didn’t: Social Media Integration Tools
    Eric was convinced that building social media integration tools into his website would create book sales in a viral nature. The idea was that you could do campaigns to sell books within your circle of friends, much like someone would organize those they know to raise money for a charity race, donations, or Kickstarter project. Eric set up the site so that you could get your own personal page for the campaign, import your contact list, and reach out to your community to get involved in the lean startup movement. In the end, Eric said it looked brilliant on paper, but got no traction whatsoever.

  • Challenge Your Own Beliefs: Choosing the Subtitle
    For the subtitle, Eric was CONVINCED he had the right tagline for the book: “The Lean Startup: The movement that is changing how new products are built and launched.” It turns out it did worse in testing than anything else they tried. He kept insisting they test again and again, and other subtitles always lead to more book sales. It turns out, Eric’s favorite subtitle didn’t have key words that would resonate with his audience, such as “innovation” or “entrepreneurship,” and that the term “movement” means different things to different people. Also, his subtitle didn’t state a direct benefit to the reader. The subtitle they eventually settled on: “The Lean Startup: How Today’s Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses.” So you can see the key words in there, and the direct statement of benefit to the reader.

  • The Value of Bundling
    Eric copied the “landrush” strategy from author Tim Ferriss. The idea is that you create a limited-time promotion right before the book comes out, by finding partners who will offer free promotions in exchange for how many books you buy. For example: access to a free webinar if you buy 10 books, or a free speaking event with Eric if you buy 1,500 books.

    Eric did a lot of bundling experiments over the course of a year, preparing for the “landrush,” assuming that it would push him onto the best seller list. In reality, Eric found he sold more books via the bundling experiments than he did in the actual “landrush” promotion at launch. Driving awareness of the bundles was “way harder” than he thought it would be. He assumed a great offer would spread virally, but instead, most people were confused as to what the offer was. In fact, a logistical problem meant that most of the books bought in his landrush didn’t even end up counting for the first week’s sales numbers.

Something Eric mentions a couple times in the interview is that if he had put all his eggs in one basket – the landrush promotion, the book tour, the social sharing integration tools, or any other strategy he was convinced would work – he would not have made the best seller list, because each didn’t work as he expected. Overall, it illustrates how even good ideas will not guarantee results.

In fact, he found that directly asking his audience to simply buy the book was one of the best tactics that actually sold books.

Are each of these things “rules” that you should follow? Nope. This is just Eric’s experience after spending a year experimenting on his topic, with his book, targeting his audience. I encourage you to try your own experiments.

Clearly, not everyone will have the time and resources to devote that Eric did. But his story does underly that the book business is just that: a business. Yes, it has amazing and wonderful effects on our culture, our legacy, our future. But when having a successful book needs to become the cornerstone of one’s career, there is the very real need to attract attention, and convert that attention into sales.

This sounds like a brutish way to talk about books. But sometimes I feel that there are too many unicorns and butterflies surrounding the idea of a book, which almost belittles how multifaceted and powerful they are. A book is many things, including a business. Also, Eric’s story underscores the amount of work that can be required to go from being a “writer,” to becoming a “bestselling author.”

What I like most about the interview with Eric is that his passion seems undaunted, even though he clearly illustrates that none of this was easy. He spent considerable time and money to earn his achievement. He went through bouts of what have been frustrating experimentation and choices. And the result goes far beyond having his name on some list. It is clear that this passion is what drove a true movement to form in the first place. That his work extends beyond the list, beyond the book, beyond revenue.

His work will clearly have a legacy. And I imagine this to be the highest calling of any writer.

Please check out Eric’s book: The Lean Startup, and other incredible interviews Andrew has with entrepreneurs on Mixergy.com.

Here is the entire interview with Eric:

Wistia

Thanks.

-Dan

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Who You Surround Yourself With Helps Determine Who You Will Be

I work with a lot of individuals who are trying to grow their writing career, transform their identity and build a legacy. Recently, I have been considering barriers to writers achieving those things, and WHO in their lives either helps or hinders these accomplishments. Today I want to discuss the power that others have in you achieving your dreams.

We are each surrounded by people who keep us grounded in the present. In the now. In what already is, not what could be. For those of you who are trying to reinvent yourself, to follow your long-forgotten dreams, to achieve something exceptional, these relationships can be difficult. These people who surround you, they can sometimes work very hard to keep you defined as you are. As you were. Rarely as what you could be.

You see, these people have already defined you. They have categorized you, filtered you, labeled you. They have made you “safe” to their worldview. They do not want you to change, because it challenges them in ways you don’t intend. When your identity changes, it forces others to reassess how you fit in their world. It forces them to reassess their own identity. This does not sit well with many people, because most people don’t like change.

To keep us all boxed in, these people obsess over the details of the everyday. Over keeping the status quo. Over encouraging a sense of being overwhelmed by the now. The email, the laundry, the meetings. They encourage a sense of just getting by. That we are all just lucky to have a job. That it’s better to stay where we are. Who we are. Where we know it is “safe.”

Pardon my language, but this is bullsh*t.

These people perpetuate a feeling of always being behind. Always trying to catch up. That there is never enough time. That they would stretch themselves, spread their wings, if only…. there was more time. If only… this project wasn’t on deadline. If only… they had more money.

This too is bullsh*t.

These people focus on the wrong things: the tasks, the tactics, the immediate, the stuff, the things.

So if you are trying to achieve a dream. One that pushed you past boundaries. One that breaks the carefully defined ways that people see your identity. Then you need to surround yourself with a different type of person.

Those whose attitude enables action, not inaction. A person who sees the future, and not just the past. Who is building what does not yet exist, what is not yet proven, what is not yet cool, what is not yet safe. Someone more interested in capabilities than definitions. Someone with vision – who creates enough free space to allow wings to spread.

This is why great companies don’t just hire for skills, they hire for attitude. Those who are motivated, aligned to your purpose and style, who will grow, who will deliver greater than 100% of potential value. Who will spread their passion and encourage others.

Not those who take. Who demand. Who push against in negative ways. Those who suck the motivation out of others. Suck more energy than they give.

For your goals, you need to build a foundation for conversations that are strategic and forward thinking. That paints a picture of what could be, and then plans the steps to get there.

On a personal level, I have seen this done in a few ways in my life recently. Past students of my author platform courses have asked for ways to stay connected, so I created a mastermind group for us to connect each week. This serves three functions for a group of individuals trying to reinvent themselves and create a powerful body of work:

  • Accountability.
  • A roundtable of like-minds that can help brainstorm ideas to work through challenges.
  • A support group for the emotional ups and downs that are pervasive in the process of creation.

For myself, I am beyond lucky to be friends with so many talented, visionary, and giving individuals. Those who help me look ahead, laying a solid foundation for the future of my business at We Grow Media, and my life overall.

And it should not go unmentioned, the most important person who is responsible for my own success: my wife. Without her support for me leaving the safe corporate world, leaving a six-figure salary a month before we had our first child, for taking risks to establish We Grow Media – without her – none of this would be possible. She is giving me the space I need to challenge what is, and enough runway to create what I feel needs to be.

For the body of work you are building, the identity you are shaping, the legacy you are creating, are you building this foundation of support with those around you?

Many writers have told me how those closest to them offer the biggest challenges to growth. In these cases, their friends and family seem to have the least to gain by you changing. They see you as one thing: accountant, wife, husband, provider, caregiver, athlete, etc. Changing that means breaking patterns that have developed for years. It means expanding their definition of you. It sometimes means a direct challenge to how they have crafted their own world. That by you changing, it means a direct effect on them, on how you support them now, and a potential risk that with your role changing, your level of support will change.

These close relationships are, of course, very personal and complicated things. I cannot assume how your moving through a transition would or wouldn’t effect the attitude of your friends and family. But I can say that when you are pursuing a change to your identity, building a body of work, and growing your legacy, you need to connect with like-minds to push past boundaries. These may be new conversations with people you already know, or forging new relationships with those as visionary as you are. This means becoming a part of, or helping to establish, a community where others help you become who you need to be, and you help others with their own goals.

Recently, I was introduced to the lobby of the Ace Hotel in New York City by a friend. This is a place where creatives and entrepreneurs of all types seem to grab a space and work feverishly off of free wifi and good coffee. There is an energy in that lobby of people doing something they are passionate about. I have been considering the effect of working surrounded by that energy vs working in a gray office cube. Of working near others who are building vs working alone in a room.

Oftentimes, who you surround yourself with does effect who you can become.

One final note: with all this talk of what could be, I do want to give proper credit to the value of what was, and what is. I agree with Gary Vaynerchuck that we seem to live in a culture where we don’t appreciate the wisdom of our elders as much as we should. We tend to be too drawn to the new and shiny, the young and beautiful, the bold idea from the brash individual.

When I look to the future, it is always with an appreciation of what we can learn from the past (both good and bad), and a respect for the wisdom of those who have gone before me. And with everything that we build – it must be with a focus on building a legacy and value that lasts beyond our own lifetime.

-Dan