It won a Grammy for Best Disco song - and then the category was promptly removed. I guess you could say when they made this award-winning song they broke the mold!
Put on your platforms, and don't be afraid to get a little goofy - I certainly did!
Have a good laugh and enjoy this week's song of the week.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kiXWlbbOygk&hl=en_US&version=3&rel=0]
It's all well and good to strive for excellence, but excellence is about more than just putting in your 10,000 hours. Those hours need to be focused, deliberate practice. Without that, you'll be hard pressed to reach the full potential of your undeniable gifts.
Be warned: you can spend 10,000 hours of your life on anything, and just because you get good at something doesn't mean it's the thing you're supposed to be about in the world. I've spent thousands of hours doing things that I don't enjoy (and I got pretty damn good at them, too), because I thought I had to. I'm really good at a bunch of things I have no interest in, and that I know are not part of my great work on this planet.
If you're interested in digging deeper into finding your own great work, have a look at Stephen Cope's book "The Great Work Of Your Life: A Guide for the Journey to Your True Calling" on Amazon. If you've already got clarity on your calling, and you're ready to launch into creating a plan of deliberate practice, take a peek at the Get Your Year In Gear program. It just might help you create the space you need to do the things for which your future self will thank you.
[Editor's note: this is a re-post from January 2012. Part 4 of a series of year-end posts I write each year. When we migrated to the new site design, all the old posts were archived. Here are posts 1, 2 and 3]
Every year, I pick a word to frame my development. I also pick a "theme song" to underscore my morning mindset work. I get to dig in and rock on each morning with a tune that pretty much sets me up for the day I want to have, the life and business I want to create.
Last year, my word was "ENTHUSIASM" (yes, I decided on all caps about half way through the year) - the idea being to infuse more spirit into everything I was doing. My theme song was Matthew West's "The Motions". I would lip sync and sing and conjure my own "rock videos" in my living room - like I was going to be on American Idol or something. It was funny, but it was also a very honest reflection of the kind of enthusiasm I really wanted to imbue in every action, every effort, every everything in 2011.
This year, after a daunting 2011 (hey, I asked for it!), I figured I needed to power up a bit, and picked "brave" as my word o' the year. I also selected Nichole Nordeman's song by the same name (some of the lyrics are in the boxes below). (more…)
I was working with a client/colleague/friend* recently, celebrating her recent launch of a free worksheet she created for an opt-in on her website. She made mention that she'd gotten more response from her audience with that one freebie than she had from several other paid launches she did this past year.
And I don't mean "thanks for the free stuff!" kinds of responses. I mean her audience as actively seeking her out and thanking her for the powerful work she had just offered to them.
Before anyone jumps off the deep end about the "paid/free" conversation, that's NOT what this is about. There are pros and cons to giving stuff away. This conversation, instead, is about response vs. effort.
When she mentioned that she'd gotten such a great, positive, empowering response, I asked her, "About how much time do you think you spent working on this?"
She replied "About 30 hours, though I may be remembering too low."
Seth Godin shared this video in a recent post about his TEDx talk. While it's geared to the transformation of the education system (and specifically, his "what is school for?" manifesto he wrote earlier this year), it has a LOT of juicy tidbits for creative entrepreneurs to get us thinking about art vs. work.
What I love about Seth is his willingness to say what so many of us already fear, but won't say aloud: as a culture, we've been programmed for decades to comply to a system that was broken before, but now is decaying, dying, and actually harming artists. Our children are paying the price now, but those of us working in creative professions (or trying to) are also feeling the crushing blow that's hit us hard.
The artificial "system" we created to manage people and industrialize society left us without useful spaces to create, innovate, and inspire - unless we forcibly (more…)
A very good friend of mine has a non-profit that volunteers each year to work a booth at the Michigan Renaissance Festival.
If you've never been, it's a high time of revelry, silliness, and even a bit of debauchery all set in what's supposed to be the 16 century. But really, it's like the SCA* on steroids.
For the past few years, my friend has been responsible for the ice cream booth. In exchange for about 12% of the take, he and his band of merry marauders get to scoop their little hearts out for patrons of the festival. Situated in the children's realm, they see quite a bit of scooping. Yesterday, they actually sold out for the first time.
I'll be doing another post on the creative entrepreneurs of the festival (it's actually QUITE a profit center for some people). Today though, I want to talk about tips.
See, when my friend first started working the festival, about 10 years ago, they had a tip jar, it was prominently displayed at the cash register, and they would easily bring in $50 per day (more on really hot days). Some time in the past few years, they (and all the volunteers in other booths as well) were admonished to NOT have a visible tip jar, which essentially cut their tips by 90%. They're lucky to see $20 in tips in any given week.
That is, until I started working in their booth.
My friend called me in because he was desperate for help. This year was a difficult one to get volunteers for the booth. He had a handful of folks committed to work most mornings, but the afternoons were a crap shoot for him. Not everyone who committed to working would show. The ice cream booth needs at least three people at all times, and four is ideal. This past weekend, the lines were so long I had my head in the freezer scooping most of the time.
But of all the scoopers on any of my shifts, I consistently out earned them all in tips. Here's how I did it: (more…)