Preparing for a shark attack
A shark attack is sudden, visceral and overwhelming.
And it's impossible to be a tough guy in the face of one.
The sheer terror of it overwhelms us, paralyzing us, helpless to do a thing about it.
And, most important, and easily overlooked:
Attitude is a skill
You can learn math. French. Bowling.
You can learn Javascript, too.
But you can also learn to be more empathetic, passionate, focused, consistent, persistent and twenty-seven other attitudes.
If you can learn to be better at something, it's a skill.
"I didn't do anything"
That's the first and best defense every toddler learns. If you don't do anything, you don't get in trouble.
Somewhere along the way, it flips. "I didn't do anything when I had the chance," becomes a regret. The lost opportunity, the hand not extended, the skill not learned...
Wouldn't it be great if we knew what our regrets were when we still had time to do something about them?
"Because it has always been this way"
That's a pretty bad answer to a series of common questions.
Why is the format of the board meeting like this? Why do we always structure our annual conference like this? Why is this our policy? Why do we let him decide these issues? Why is this the price?
The real answer is, "Because if someone changes it, that someone will be responsible for what happens."
Are you okay with that being the reason things are the way they are?
Raising money is not the same thing as making a sale
Both add to your bank balance...
But raising money (borrowing it or selling equity) creates an obligation, while selling something delivers value to a customer.
Raising money is hard to repeat. Selling something repeatedly is why you do this work.
If things are going well, it might be time to sell more things to even more customers, so you won't ever need to raise money.
#WeAreAllWeird (3 contest updates)
1. You can win four books, signed by the authors, with a tweet. Rules are here. Tell us why you are not part of the lockstep masses.
2. I recently blogged about long odds (one in a quadrillion) and how hard it is to predict the future. It turns out that of the 897 people who entered my presidential bracket game, there’s only ONE contender left. Even though only two candidates have dropped out, there's already more than a 99% failure rate in predicting this future. And I think the prize is safe, because the only remaining contender has picked Christie and Bush as the next two to go.
3. Within 24 hours of recent events virtually determining the first question I surveyed, we also have an answer to the second one. Today’s the day my blog hit 500k followers on Twitter. As you can see, the crowd was off a bit on this as well. I’ve emailed the seven top entries to send them a prize.
Thanks for giving it a whirl.
