It’s not often I’m at a loss for words, but I have been struggling for a better way to convey something I think & use to guide me every day. If you’re going to be something, be it. If you’re going to do something, do it. Not very profound; I know this. I feel like it belongs up there with, “We know the knowns, but we don’t know the unknowns.” Someone actually said that in a meeting a couple years ago (I’ve definitely heard it many times from others since) & I think I almost flew out of my chair.
Seth Godin’s post Avoiding the Passion Pop Gulf could not have illustrated my thoughts any better. All too often, I see businesses getting stuck in the middle. They seem paralyzed by indecision, as if all available options are the best. Without capable decision makers providing clear direction you end up settling. By chance, you may end up achieving a modicum of success, but you will just be another consideration among a plethora of options.
When you compromise your goals, you end up with an incoherent plan & many confused people executing it. There is no strategy or your strategy is not sound; that is no way to compete. Don’t make me quote Sun Tzu again!
If you want to be all things to all people, you run the risk of being nothing to no one.
Or Sunday afternoon…whatever. The main point is that I have no point right now & you should just check out what’s below. I’m going outside. And by going outside I mean doing five loads of laundry & cleaning my apartment before heading to San Diego for four days.
- Marvin…wtf?
- Mike Schmidt (my favorite baseball player, EVER) has his own wine. Can someone tell charitywines.com that spell check is a great tool & that scrolling left to right is so Web 1.0?
- Cubans are going to love home computing &, maybe someday, the intertubes.
- I wish I could be this consistently funny.
- I’m not really that into cars, but holy shit.
- Coldplay joins the likes of Nine Inch Nails & Radiohead, embracing the digital space. Note to the music industry: it will all make sense later; stop staring from the sidelines & do something! My friends & I are always going to find ways to get free music. If you get creative you might be able to trick us into paying for it sometimes!
- Speaking of…NIN just stepped it up a notch. I have a small list (mostly because I never write it down & then end up forgetting) of people’s brains I’d like to pick. Trent Reznor is one of them.
- This sucks. So much for creating & posting interesting mixes. Today was going to be Breakfast with the Beatles.
- I was at game 4 of the Flyers/Canadiens series. IMO, the NHL Playoffs is the second best post season tournament going. March Madness gets my vote as the best. Why should you care about this? Because the NHL regular season is not that interesting. Long-boring-lacking-personality morphs into electric-atmosphere-fueling-arena-rattling-celebration. Even more so in a great hockey town, like Philly. It’s the same, yet compelling, story told over & over again; hot goalie standing on his head & keeping his outshot team in games, adroit playmaker setting his team up for chances, the Detroit Red Wings choking, & an unlikely hero scoring timely goals. The NHL will never be as big as the NFL, NBA, or MLB, but few sports bring out the raw fan in you like hockey. They need to harness this; I’d start by hiring whoever is in charge of marketing the Flyers.