Here’s a question every entrepreneur must ask themselves. 

When will I have done enough to be happy with who I am? 

This thought haunted me for years. Because in a boundaryless system with no governor on my workload, no boss to answer to, and no separation between my personal and professional selves, I never put a proper limit on my work. I had zero sense of pace and proportion. I refused to stipend myself according to my own standard of satisfaction. 

And as a result, I gave in to the temptation to maximize income by working around the clock. Landing me in the hospital multiple times for stress related illnesses. 

If only I had understood the principle of elegant sufficiency. The ability to reach your personal level of enough. To recognize when more of something no longer means personal growth. To have done enough to be happy with who you are. 

I recall a fascinating article about a software company that has a strict anti workaholic policy. The founders literally punish staff members for not taking breaks. Employees are required to leave at five, putting in no more than forty hours a week. 

What’s interesting is, this isn’t a time management issue, it’s an existential issue. Developing a refined and selective sense of appropriateness under the circumstances is basic upkeep for the soul. It forces you to put yourself at the top of your own list. To remind yourself that who you already are is enough to get what you want. 

Once you arrive at that place of enoughness, there will be a part of you that’s finally resting. And from there, anything is possible. 

Remember, the pile never gets to zero. The list of stuff to do, things to learn and people to contact will continue to refill itself in perpetuity. There’s nothing you can do to stop it. No matter how many times you save the world, it always manages to get back in jeopardy again. 

And so, learn to stipend yourself according to your own standard of satisfaction. Figure out your definition of elegant sufficiency. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

When will you have done enough to be happy with who you are?LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

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Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Alder first hypothesized that the personality was the same in dreaming life as in waking life. And that the only difference was, in dreams, the pressure of social demands was less acute and the personality was revealed with fewer safeguards and concealments. 

Out in the world, though, we’re forced to put logical chains on our whimsical appetites. We face a level of accountability and rationality and practicality that’s sufficiently intense to beat our dreams out of us. 

And so, we shrink. We play small. We reluctantly accept the idea that it was irresponsible to pursue our dreams in the first place. And we stand idly by as logos wins the day. Tragic. 

Linklater’s inspiring film makes a powerful point on this very issue. The character reminisces about having job that he hated and worked real hard at. And after a long, hard day of work, when he finally got to go home, get in bed and close his eyes, he immediately wakes up and realizes that the whole day at work had been a dream. Reminding the viewer that it’s bad enough that you sell your waking life for minimum wage, but now they get your dreams for free. 

The trick, he says, is to combine your waking rational abilities with the infinite possibilities of your dreams. Because if you can do that, you can do anything. 

That’s the thing about dreams. We can’t apply logic because the world of inspiration doesn’t follow that dynamic. And so, we practice lowering the volume of our logical brains. We put whimsy on wheels. And we take action upon our intuitive leads. Even though we’re afraid to use our intuition because we’ll have to defend it and have no logical explanation to support our actions. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Why is it rational or logical that anybody should be expected to be afraid of the dream they’ve been put on this earth to fulfill?

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* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

All creativity begins with the moment of conception.

That little piece of kindling that gets the fire going. That initial source of inspiration that takes on a life of its own. That single note from which the entire symphony grows. That single spark of life that signals an idea’s movement value, almost screaming to us, something wants to be built here.

Based on my books in The Prolific Series, I’m going to be deconstructing my favorite moments of conception from popular movies. Each post will contain a video clip from a different film, along with a series of lessons we can learn from the characters.

Today’s clip comes from the hospital scene in Dallas Buyers Club:

Learn to let
the world in. Woodroof is initially hostile towards the terminally ill
transvestite. But in this moment, it occurs to him that he might be able to
help an entirely new population of patients by creating an alliance. Rayon, he
realizes, is the linchpin that can open up an entirely new marketplace of
customers who need his help. Reluctantly, he partners up and with the
streetwalker and forms a profitable membership club that they operate out of a
motel room. But over time, not only doe they begin to turn a profit, they also begin
to respect each other. Despite being shunned and ostracized by many of his old
friends, Ron treats Rayon as a friend, confidant and colleague. The two rebels,
unwilling to wait for the government’s medical establishment to save them,
don’t wait for permission, they just hire themselves and get to work. It’s a
beautiful lesson in learning to let the world in. Even if that means supporting
the very people that you once despised. This movie is a gritty example of pure
enterprise. A story about two people whose immune systems are failing, but
whose opportunity agendas are thriving. And let us not forget the story behind
the story, the one about two artists whose careers were resurrected by their
embrace of their difficult choices. Both actors transformed their bodies to
play their respective characters, both demonstrated magical cinematic prowess
in their performances, and both were bestowed with the highest awards actors
can receive. What do you see when you see
people?

Everything you do should lead to something else you
do. This movie is about an
entrepreneur who diversifies and expands his offerings. Business schools should
show it in their marketing classes. Because it teaches us to constantly
reexamine the smallest revenue centers of our enterprise. To pose the crucial
leverage question, now that I have
this, what else does this make possible? Years
ago when people started asking to work with me one on one, I created a service
called Rent Scott’s Brain. The program was unsystematic and unpolished, but it
still created value for people. And it became a solid revenue stream for my
company, despite its imperfections.
Awesome. What’s interesting is, after several dozen coaching engagements
over the years, I started to experience dimensional shifts as a service
provider, as we all do. Since there were personal skills and wisdom I wasn’t
tapping into to create value and build my business, I decided to diversify. To
expand on my current offering with better and more sophisticated variation of
my one on one service. Now the program is much more comprehensive. A unique
combination of coaching, mentoring, consulting and strategizing. That’s what’s possible when we put our
diversification caps on. With some reinvention, each of our revenue centers can
become a entirely new business unit. Each of our offerings can give our artistic voice another outlet and
therefore activate a new market segment. And each of our services can become
another option for our clients to become involved with us in an inexpensive and
accessible way. That’s how businesses evolve. We build organically, but we
leverage strategically. What could we do
today that would be a complete step forward in your brand’s evolution?

Turn your creativity loose. For the true artist, there is no vacation. If their
eyes are open, they’re working. Always scanning the horizon, always panning for
gold, and always ready to build a home for the next great idea that appears
somewhere in the world. But they also understand that observation alone can’t
always single handedly operate the machinery of creativity. And so, they
reserve a portion of their minds for inspiring themselves. They build an
environment around themselves that allows their creativity to erupt. Joni
Mitchell comes to mind. What I loved about her was, she invented everything
about her music. From performance style to lyrics to genre to guitar tunings to
chord progressions, there wasn’t an element of her art that wasn’t original.
That’s why she became her own adjective. And so, if we want to follow her lead
and turn our own creativity loose, we ought to think about building a system of
our own. Making things that help us make things. This past year, I spent six
months developing a framework
for being prolific. It’s an
entire curriculum. A master class on creativity. A robust intellectual property
development system that demystifies my own creative process. Interestingly,
since I started to put more rigor around my own systems, it has released new
levels of output and expression in my work. Funny what happens when we embrace the
privilege of having ourselves as a client. Where
will your creativity find access to you?

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What did you learn from this movie clip?

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* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

The industrial education complex isn’t interested in students whose talents don’t fit into what the examination systems require. Because it’s a giant factory. And if a student’s gifts don’t conform to the dictates of whatever core curriculum is in place, they’re kicked to the curb. 

Thiel’s book on startups summarizes it perfectly:

If we overachieve and end up learning something that’s not on the test, we won’t receive credit for it. But if we sit in a row and follow the rules and memorize facts and do exactly what’s asked of us, but a bit better than our peers, we’ll get an a. 

What a dangerous and disgusting way to condition people to enter the real world. And so, our mission is to engage in alchemy. To do work that can’t be categorized and cauterized. To turn base metal into gold, so to speak, creating something special and significant out of nothing, using only our imagination. 

Because despite our society’s deeply embedded factory mindset, we really do exist in a culture that encourages and attracts alchemy. It’s just not advertised. You have to dive into the nooks and crannies to find the entry points. 

But look around. Everyone who is making real progress in today’s economy isn’t doing something with a certified skill. Rogers actually predicated this more than thirty years ago. In his definitive treatise on human potential, he said we must face the fact that in dealing with human beings, a certificate does not give much assurance of real qualification. In every area, medicine, nursing, teaching, bricklaying and carpentry, certification has tended to freeze and narrow the profession, has tied it to the past and discouraged innovation. If we were less arrogant, he said, we might also learn much from the uncertified individual, who is sometimes unusually adept elsewhere. 

Further proof, that those working without a map, those willing to create something out of nothing, and those prepared to bring life to what might be, are the real a students.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What valuable skills do you have that can’t be certified by a governing body?

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* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

When you become chronically concerned with remaining the way you are, convinced that it’s impossible for you to exist in any other way, it will never occur to you to take any actions beyond that state of being. 

And why would it? As long as you think you’re playing the game effectively, you don’t question the need to play it. 

But the pathway to new power is putting at risk the success you’ve become. Burning everything down, salting the earth, zeroing out your board and having faith in yourself that you can rebuild once again. 

I recently spent two years enmeshed in this very process of reinvention. And the story unfolded in a beautifully unexpected way. First, I accepted the fact that I was bored, burned out and lonely working as a freelancer. And so, I wrote myself a ten page letter of resignation. Then, I went on sabbatical for three months. Next, I got a day job at a marketing agency while maintaining my own business on the side. 

A year later, I got married. Shortly thereafter, I became restless again, realizing that everyone I worked with was a total asshole. So I quit my day gig. Then I spent the next four months applying for more than twelve hundred different jobs, getting rejected from every single one of them. At which point I accepted the fact that companies don’t need a creative visionary. 

And so, I recommitted to my own enterprise, but with greater perspective, stronger boundaries, and a more sustainable approach to working. Then I made a concert documentary about the entire process, coming out of music hibernation after more than ten years. 

And now, two years later, I feel like myself again. Only more complete. More whole. Fully integrated. Leaving no asset unharvested. It’s as if I’m myself, but at a higher vibration. Whew. 

What a ride. Turns out, shattering your beliefs about what your life is supposed to look like is exhausting. Because it’s a death, really. That’s the nature of personal transformation. Changing requires mourning and letting go of a portion of your identity. 

But the good news is, every change offers us a new canvas. It’s simply a matter of picking up that brush and painting again. Cook said it best in his book about the curves of life: 

A spiral is always growing, yet never covering the same ground, not merely an explanation of the past, but its also a prophecy of the future. 

And all we have to do put at risk the success we’ve become. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How are you creating an environment in which resistance to change can dissolve?

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For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

I have a drummer friend who’s stuck in creative limbo. 

He’s fighting his lack of excitement around not having discovering something worth doing, struggling with his inability to turn himself over to a new creative project. 

But he’s fully conscious of his creative predicament. In fact, he even has a helpful mantra for trudging through the resistance. I have to put myself in a state of risk again. 

What a beautiful way to challenge yourself . What a perfect incantation to bring your creative work into new territory. Because without that mindset, you resign to taking on riskless projects. And where’s the art in that? 

Besides, risk is relative. It’s whatever scares you. And so, you don’t have to jump off cliffs or invest millions of dollars or uproot your life and relocate across the country to do something risky. In fact, sometimes you simply need to ask the question, what is the emotionally riskiest subject I dare approach? 

When I was in preproduction on my second movie, the fear was hitting me hard. Because unlike my first film, which was a concert documentary about creativity, identity and belonging, that project would break thematic ground for me. The film had a completely different tone and message and posture and purpose. Much more educational. A musical slash motivational master class on how to follow your dreams. 

And that’s what worried me. Because I’m not a teacher by nature. Who am I to tackle that subject? Where do I get the audacity to educate people how to dream? That’s not my thing. That’s not what my audience knows me for. 

And so, I fought to silence my inner saboteur that kept me from taking risks. I trusted that the world would be rewarded for the leaps I took. And along the way, I honored myself for the bravery of taking them. 

The words of my friend come back to haunt. I have to put myself in a state of risk again.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How are you making risk a constant practice in your life?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Miyagi once said that the best way to block is to not be there. 

It’s counterintuitive, but it works. We can’t get it hit if we’re not there. Evasion is the highest form of blocking. And although he was referring to the world of martial arts, his karate principle applies to the business world too. 

Because there isn’t a company in the world who doesn’t want to become a monopoly. Who doesn’t want to evade the competition. Gates said it best in his interview about achieving corporate dominance. 

Accept that your true aim is to be as near to a monopoly as you can and the law allows. 

Zappos is the prime example. Not only are they the best at what they do, but they’re the only at what they do. And that’s precisely why they have wider latitude to obsess about their workers and products and service and culture impact on the wider world. Because monopolists can afford to think about things other than making money. They’re not burning valuable calories trying to control and manipulate and compete with anyone. And that frees up their energy to focus on what matters. 

The challenge, then, is bursting outside of the boundaries of our business preconceptions. Rejecting the widely accepted gospel that competition is the best structure invented by humankind. 

It isn’t. Competition is a waste of time. It’s a misappropriation of assets. It’s grounded in scarcity thinking. What’s more, it’s a tell. A projection. Look around. If a company is pathologically obsessed with defeating its rivals, it’s probably because their product has no substantive differences to focus on. 

As a therapist friend of mine likes to say, if I can just point out how broken you are, I don’t have to deal with my own pain.

And so, never limit your vision to serve petty competitiveness. Do everything you can to block the punch by not being there. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you making war with the competition or making love to the customer?

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For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Just when hope seems
unreachable, as your hand slips from the cliff of life, all it takes is one
thing to keep your grip strong. 

And more often than not, that thing takes human
form. A person, who looks at you with a tender gaze and a beaming heart, places
a magnifying glass on the things you’re good at and says, hey, you should do
something with this. 

Through them, you see a vision of how you could live
differently. And that moment becomes enough to reinstate your hope about the
future. 

What’s exciting is when you get to be that person for someone else. My
entire career launched after a chance encounter with a man on a bus, who passed
my business card along to the editor of a local newspaper, which ended up
running story about my first book. 

That was my moment of conception. It was the
reason my eyes were alive with hopes for the future. And I never forget how
good that felt. 

And so, I go out of my way to do the same for the people I
encounter. To respond to their dreams with relentless affirmation, reckless
generosity, instant encouragement and radical acceptance. 

Because you never
know when people are hanging off that cliff. You never know what type of
hopelessness they’re trying to outrun each day. 

Remember, there’s no upside to
not believing in people. Every little fragment of hope we stumble across is
real.

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

When you leave the room, do people have more hope than when you walked in?

LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Dilbert once said that strategic planning was hallucinating about the future and then something different happens. 

His insight hit a nerve with corporations worldwide. Because the majority of them spend thousands of hours and millions of dollars on that very process. When the result is often an expensive, time consuming way to placate executive egos, preserve the illusion of productivity, pretend to be useful and mitigate fear about a future that can only be guessed at. 

Stanford actually published a fascinating essay on the life and death of strategic planning. Their researchers found that the classic approach to strategic planning, first adopted from the military world, was a reasonably good fit for much of the business world from the fifties through the eighties. But with the rise of high tech tools and increased globalization in the nineties, the world began to change. Rapidly. 

And now that the future is no longer reasonably predictable based on the past, the trusted, traditional approach to strategic planning is based on assumptions that no longer hold. 

The strategic plan is dead. 

It’s a sobering reminder that nobody, person, company or otherwise, can predict their direction. They can only take their opportunities as they come. They can continually scan for blips on life’s radar screen, and when a blip looks interesting, they investigate, execute, and watch what happens. 

It’s not exactly planning, but it’s certainly strategic. Just not in the way we’re accustomed to. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

When was the last time you even looked at your company’s business plan?LET ME SUGGEST THIS…

For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!

Einstein never actually said that humans only use ten percent of their brains. 

It’s an urban myth. An accidental misunderstanding of nineteenth century neurology that was perpetuated by the human potential movement of the sixties and seventies. 

What is a plausible claim, however, is that most people only meet a fraction of their full potential. That the majority of our skills and talents and gifts and assets are going untapped. 

And it’s heartbreaking, because every organism has only one central need in life, and that’s to fulfill its own potentialities. 

Indigenous people are the model. Hundreds of years ago, they used every part of the buffalo. Meat, tail, buckskin, hooves, horns, hair, dung, sinew, innards, bones, tallow and rawhide. There wasn’t a part of the animal that went to waste. Everything had a purpose, everything had a home. 

What an inspiring vision of human potential. Leaving no asset unharvested. Firing on all cylinders, making use of everything we are, keeping all of our passions in play and using all of our strengths to create meaning in accordance with our values. 

What holds us back is fear. Fear of owning our full potential. Fear of actualizing all corners of the heart. Because that might entail responsibility. That might mean no longer watching thirty hours of television a week. And have you seen some of the shows that are on cable right now? 

The point is, living according to the tendencies of our inward forces in a scary proposition. But the opportunity to make use of everything we are, to become the buffalos of human potential, that sounds much more satisfying to me. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you only satisfying a narrow band of your capabilities?

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For the list called, “99 Ways to Think Like an Entrepreneur, Even If You Aren’t One,” send an email to me, and you win the list for free!

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

Author. Speaker. Strategist. Inventor. Filmmaker. Publisher. Songwriter.  

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

Never the same speech twice. Customized for your audience. Impossible to walk away uninspired.

Now booking for 2016-2017.

Email to inquire about fees and availability. Watch clips of The Nametag Guy in action here!