Here’s a business riddle. 

What do record labels, tour
managers, booking agents, art galleries, night clubs, museum curators, art
critics, entertainment lawyers, talent agencies, corporate buyers, event
coordinators, casting directors, album producers, angel investors, corporate
sponsors and hiring managers have in common? 

They’re gatekeepers. They control
access to the marketplace. They decide whether a given product will be distributed
by a mass medium. 

The great paradox of how they operate is:

They don’t want
you until you don’t need them. 

Only when you already have everything in place
to attract their interest do they come knocking. 

An entrepreneur friend of mine
has his own theory about this. After twenty years in business, he says that he
no longer makes sales calls. Instead, he creates enough good in the marketplace
to where people call him. 

It’s the law of value attraction. That way,
when the calls finally do come in, it’s a surprise. He actually has to reach
back to answer them, because he’s too busy creating value in the world to
pathetically sit around waiting for that one moment that changes everything. 

Don’t wait, create. Don’t kneel to the tyranny of the gatekeeper,
go build your own kingdom. Act as if they’re never coming. 

And then one day,
when you no longer need them, they will come. And you’ll have the power. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What key decision maker might be resenting your neediness?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

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Shaw famously said that the single biggest problem in communication is the illusion that it has occurred. 

But it’s not the only problem. The other challenge in communication is our interpretation about what actually did occur. Because in many cases, the message sent is not the one received. 

Drawing from my own experience as a passive aggressive, conflict avoidant, confrontation averse, codependent people pleaser, here are few examples from my relationships. See if any of these connect with you. 

What we experience as disapproval is merely directness. 

What feels like hostility is simply confrontation. 

What sounds like harsh criticism is just sharp observation. 

What comes off as rejection is nothing more than a mismatch between ourselves and others.

What appears to be rudeness is just someone who knows what they want and tenaciously goes out to get it. 

These examples, whether they apply to your communication style or not, highlight a universal edge within all interpersonal interactions. 

Figuring out what’s ours and what’s theirs. Discerning the difference between what someone intended and what we internalized. 

It’s a complicated, messy and bizarre dynamic. 

Full of assumption and projection and speculation. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What type of communication climate do you create around you? * * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

My favorite definition of celebration is, attention paid to oneself. 

It’s a regular practice we must do for ourselves. Not from a place of narcissism, but from our role as our own good friend and advocate. Just as the cobbler’s kid deserves shoes, each of us deserves the same credit we give to others. 

And when treat ourselves respectfully and with care, others will be taught by example. 

This is how we move from our condition of brokenness to wholeness. Instead of passively asking everyone to acknowledge how wonderful we are, we give ourselves credit for all that we are capable of. Instead dreaming how much more we still have to do, we acknowledge our accomplishments. Instead of neglecting our sense of progress, we celebrate each of the steps of our growth as we take them. 

Nobody can take that away from us. It’s the love we can never lose. And in a gigantically devastating world of apathy, rejection, failure and anonymity, this wholeness a deeply satisfying thing to take ownership of. 

Non recognition is a way people deny our power. But when we become congratulators, when we pay attention to ourselves first, we take one step closer to accessing our true potential. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

How will you empower yourself to step beyond the invisible web of shame that has held you captive?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.

As long as we stay in the game, we are going to be rejected. 

It’s as certain as death, taxes and rain at an outdoor wedding. 

The strategy, then, is not to avoid rejection entirely, but to process it intelligently. Not to obsess over presenting the right image of ourselves so that people don’t reject us, but to become whole on our own terms, so that when we are rejected, it doesn’t send us into an emotional tailspin. 

Take it from someone who was rejected from over three thousand job applications in two years. I interpreted that rejection as a negative judgment on my skills. And it made me question my value. For years. Because you can only read so emails that include the phrase we’ve decided to go in another direction before your confidence is crushed like bug. 

The question is, how do we move from our condition of brokenness to wholeness? 

The first thing is to remember is that rejection is often not about us, it is simply an indication of a mismatch between us and others. The other thing is not burdening anything or anyone with the obligation to make us feel better about ourselves. 

Because that’s our job. Our intrinsic wholeness is always present. We carry around the source of it wherever we go. 

And if we want build an environment that conveys it to the world, the onus is on us. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

What will make you the proud owner of your wholeness? 

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

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Goldsmith’s provocative book about behavioral triggers contends us that human being are geniuses at inventing reasons to avoid change. And we often sabotage lasting change by canceling out its possibility. 

For example, one of the stories we tell ourselves in this area is that we have all the time in the world. That time is open ended and sufficiently spacious for us to get to all of our goals eventually. 

Which sounds like a noble, phlegmatic and prosperous approach to doing our work. Clearly we trust the universe and believe in ourselves and allow life to unfold according to its natural plan. 

But it is precisely this kind of faith in time’s infinite patience that triggers our procrastination. It becomes the soothing narrative, the convenient excuse, for why we haven’t moved our story forward. 

Years ago, during the early iteration of one of my corporate training programs, my colleague suggested consulting with a trademark attorney before going public. 

You’ve got to protect your intellectual property, he warned. 

It felt like overkill to me, but it was worth a quick email to a lawyer friend of mine. Turns out, however, that the trademarking process would have taken six months and cost several thousand dollars. 

Which would have been nice, but not necessary. 

And considering the small scope of the project, going the whole legal hog would have only given me another valid reason to not ship my work. 

Thanks but no thanks.

In the end, there was no trademarking. There was no paperwork. The program launched as originally scheduled. And within a year, several of my clients hired me to implement the new program at their companies. The work made me feel proud, satisfied, and made me money too. Clients raved about it. And in time, it contributed to my portfolio and prepared and positioned me for new and exciting work in the future. 

The best part is, nearly ten years later, there have been exactly zero legal issues. Ever. Because it didn’t matter. Only shipping did. Meanwhile, the colleague who suggested trademarking in the first place, hasn’t created anything new or interesting in years. 

Proving, that we don’t need to make a few more phone calls, we need to made a decision. We don’t need to make excuses to justify our procrastination, we need to make things and put them out into to the world. 

May we all become more aware and less tolerant of our tendency to postpone what can and needs to be done now. 

May we all be sensitive to points in our life that require us to take action. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you putting off action to a day that never arrives?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

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Crossing over from one thing to another tricky proposition. 

When you try your hand at a new medium of expression, a new job title, a new career, or a new identity completely, there is always pushback. 

This resistance starts internally. Because to operate from a fuller sense of self, you have to let go of how you defined yourself in the past. You have to mourn the death of who you have known yourself to be. And that takes real courage. 

But it is doable. In fact, the phrase try your hand is a perfect for initiating this transition on a low threat scale. Trying your hand means to do an activity for the first time in order to find out whether it interests you, or whether you’re good at it. 

It’s an attempt. It’s a taste. An experiment that might not work. 

And if it doesn’t, so be it. It was worth it a shot. 

But if it does work, if you find a new vein to bleed from, and it fuels you to achieve fuller and farther vision of what you want to be, then you don’t ever have to look back. 

Of course, that’s when the external resistance comes full force. Because it usually takes a little while for people to accept you in that different context. 

Like the successful actress who decides to try her hand at a music career. The public thinks to themselves, oh good lord, it’s not enough for her be famous on the screen, now she wants to drop an album too? Just another egotistical performer fighting to feel relevant again, scared to death that she doesn’t matter. 

Yeah, or, maybe she just likes to sing. Maybe there’s a part of her heart that has not yet had room to express itself on screen. For all we know, music was her first love since age ten and she only acted in movies to pay the bills and bankroll her more meaningful creative projects. 

Crossing over creatively always invites resistance. First within and then without. 

And that’s the point. Change is scary and complicated and that natural response is to preserve the status quo. But if you want to try your hand at something, first you have to give yourself permission to leave behind everyone else’s definitions. Or else you will drown in them. 

LET ME ASK YA THIS…

Are you limiting yourself just because people won’t accept the fact that you can do something else?

* * * *

Scott Ginsberg

That Guy with the Nametag

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

[email protected]

www.nametagscott.com

It’s the world’s first, best and only product development and innovation gameshow!

Tune in and subscribe for a little execution in public.

Join our community of innovators, artists and entrepreneurs.