Live by the dagger. Die by the dagger.

I feel for Kevin Rudd.

Gets voted in. The country’s swinging along nicely. GFC. Decides to bet pretty much half the farm on stimulus packages to get cash flowing back into Australia. Only to try to do too much – probably trying to make the big statement – only see those stimulus packages royally rooted by greedy over-grabbing arse-wipes.

I mean, how many insulation installation companies were there before 2009?
And how many are there now?

How many school construction companies are there?
And how many before 2009?

Maybe it’s just me.

The back flip on the ETS was his own political dagger.

And the mining tax would probably have worked if he hadn’t called it a tax.

But I don’t feel that sorry for him.

He got in through some back room jiggery pokery – getting rid of Big Kim (when Big Kim could probably won the election also).

And he got ousted by some back room jiggery pokery.

What goes around, comes around.

It is for politics as it is for business as it is for life.

Isn’t that right, Julia?

How much do you yearn?

Being in business isn’t about creating money – it’s about creating meaning.

Guy Kawasaki told me that. Not personally. I saw it on a video presentation.

If you are doing something that has meaning to you, there’s a fair chance it will have meaning for someone else.

And that’s where the money comes from.

The best result? If the thing you’re doing not only has a meaning, but addresses a yearning.
You see, people will give up all sorts of things to feed a yearning.
The life they have. The wife they thought they wanted. Jobs. Sleep. Self-respect.

To yearn is to know desire.

If it answers a yearning inside yourself , you may go unfed but you’ll never go unhappy.

If it addresses a yearning inside your customers, you won’t go unfed.

Discovering what your customers yearn for – and then figuring a way to give it to them – that’s a business model right there.

But, it’s often not what they say they want.
Rather, it’s what they lie awake at night dreaming about. Find a way to find that out.
(Just be sure to ask their permission before slipping under the doona with a notepad and a microphone.)

Because, if you can answer a yearning – or, better yet, create one – they’ll gladly give up what they have to get what you’ve got.

It’s all about The Yearning.

Before looking at your business and asking about The Earn – ask about The Yearn.

You’ll be glad you did.

Is your business using a sub-woofer?

Your business is like a live band in a pub.

A great experience is one where there’s always a connection.
Cheeky banter between the band and the audience.
You make them smile. Make them cry. Get them all to sing along.
The players get it all together. And. It. Rocks.

There’s always that moment – if you’re like me and tend to leave before the band finishes playing – when you’re walking away from the pub.
And the only sound you can hear is the bass beat.
The beat you couldn’t hear while you were actually in the pub.
You just kind of felt it – while the rest of the magic was happening.

If the music was great, it’s sometimes enough to make you want to turn around and do it all again.

If the music wasn’t, it’s a sad reminder of a lost opportunity.

Your business is like that band.

When the customer leaves the immediate experience, what’s the feeling they carry with them?
What’s the Boom Boom Boom that reminds them of the experience.

It’s what remains when they can’t hear the words any more.
When they’re not there to see the visual delights – a manic frontman and two glistening back-up singers.
It’s not the free beer, or the two for one offer if anyone can name the band’s drummer.

It’s the “Oh, I really want to turn around and do that all again” feeling.

As any good rhythm section can tell you, it’s the thing that drives the music. The beat that sets the rhythm.

The bit that connects with the guts of your audience.

Does your business have one?

And do you have a good enough rhythm section to make the most of it?

I’m sorry, I didn’t have time to make this shorter

Thank you, George Bernard Shaw.

There’s something lovely about the way the brain distils anything down to the essentials – if we only give it time.

Neil French always said his secret for writing a great ad was to take the brief, and then get horrendously drunk.
In the morning – the only bits of the brief he remembered were then the ones he’d base his work on.

Because – usually – the brain will remember the bits that connected. And discard the logic that surrounds it. Allowing the person (Neil, in this case) to reconstruct the message in a different way.

So the person reading the communication gets two viewpoints for the price of one.

Allowing them to triangulate their own meaning from what they read.

Allowing them to fall in love on their own – rather than trying to force them into bed.
(Sorry. Should have given that last line the overnight test.)

Blinded by certainty

We’re a funny lot.
Humans.

So often, we can’t see the woods for our own opinions.

We’re so busy trying to prove our way is the right way, we often forget there’s more than one right answer.

Because we make assumptions.
Assumptions that, once made, frame every decision we make – and therefore stop us looking beyond the edges of that framework. Outside the square.

Take the classic nine dots problem.

.  .  .
.  .  .
.  .  .

The original challenge is to connect all nine dots – with four straight lines – without taking your pen off the paper.
It’s the classic “Think Outside The Square”.

I often use this problem in workshops – because it helps people see the assumptions they make.

There is always someone who shouts, “I know this one.”

And then either answers the question (drawing one diagonal, then a horizontal pushing past the imagined boundaries of the box formed by the dots, then another diagonal – picking up two more dots – again past the imagined frame of the “box”, and finishing with a vertical) or providing an answer that doesn’t fit the question.

For instance, often, I’ll find someone who draws four straight lines – three verticals and a horizontal – joining the dots,but taking their pen off the paper in the process. Because they heard the first part of the challenge – and didn’t listen to the next bit, or because they assumed there’s a trick, or because they answered the question – even if it meant not following the instruction.

Because they found certainty. And didn’t need to look any more.

As someone once noted. Confidence is that cocky feeling you get just before you realise you’re wrong.

Anyway.

Then the workshop gets interesting.

Because I ask people to join the dots with one straight line.

And, to short circuit any cries of “Impossible” – I mention there are at least six answers.

The issue, for most people, is that they are still constrained by the first challenge. “Not taking your pen off the paper”.

But the objective changes. And so does the instruction.

It’s something I think we can all be guilty of – assuming the rules for one situation apply to all situations. So we stay neatly in our box. We don’t question anything.

It’s one reason I do like my 5 year old’s continual quest for where the boundary is.

If we get angry for him drawing on the walls with pen, he promises not to do it again.

Then we see him drawing on the wall with crayon.

And get angry.

And he gets confused. “But you said not to draw on the wall with PEN!”

See. In his world, he’s seeing the possibilities. Not the boundaries. But playing to the boundaries.

Most of us assume the boundaries, even if they’re not there.

The result, perhaps, of a lifetime of training.

And something we should all be aware of.

Don’t let your assumptions stop you from seeing the possibilities.

…

And the answers – for those 6 ways of joining nine dots.

Cut the paper into nine squares – and put the squares in a line – and draw a straight line through them.
(No one said you couldn’t cut the paper.)

Cut the paper into nine squares – and pile them on top of each other – and join the with a pin.
(No one said the line had to be drawn.)

Roll the paper into a tube and draw a continuous line around and around the paper until you join all the dots.
(No one said the paper had to stay flat.)

Draw a line through the top three dots and continue around the room until you come back to the paper and collect the middle three dots and around the room again to collect the last dots.
(No one said the pen couldn’t leave the paper.)

Fold the paper – like in the old MAD Magazine – so the outside edge of the outside dots meets the inside of the the inside dots – and you form three dots – then draw a line through them.
(No one said you couldn’t fold the paper.)

And – as one clever person said – write the word “Onestraightline” in cursive – not taking your pen off the paper – and make sure you cover every dot with the writing.
(You are still joining the dots with one straight line.)

Since when is enthusiasm a bad thing?

I’ve noted a lot of negative comment to Leo Burnett Sydney’s video.

Now. I’ve never worked for Leo’s. Not in Sydney. Not anywhere. Don’t know anyone who works at the Sydney office.
And no one there knows me. (Not a situation I care either way about.)
No vested interest. It’s an agency. Draw your own picture.

Ben Kay – author of ifthisisablogthenwhatschristmas – is a writer I respect (no, he’s never heard of me either) has a crack at how shithouse it is.
Ben writes a great blog. He has a no bullshit view of advertising – I like the way he cuts through the crap.

The Grumpy Brit does a lovely job comparing it to Leo Burnett’s “When to take my name off the door” speech.
Brilliant.

But I reckon both these gents are taking a cheap shot.

The video itself – daggy, badly mimed, minimal production values, no real “advertising” idea – has no redeeming features except one.

It shows a bunch of people who seem really enthusiastic.

Enthusiastic about their agency. And enthusiastic about the chance of working on a client’s business.

It doesn’t look like it’s meant to be clever. It looks like it’s meant to be fun.

To my mind, it looks like a video meant to be played to prospective clients.
Someone uploaded it somewhere. Which opens up a whole can of scorn from advertising people.

But (personal opinion only) might just get clients excited enough to consider appointing Leo’s.

And, if that works, who really gives a flying fuck what the rest of the industry believes?

How green is your valley?

I played rugby as a lad.

I loved it.
I was totally crap. But I loved it. (Little bit of talent. Not a lot of mongrel.)

I loved the club.

And I loved the singing.
(Get enough rugby people together, add a beer or two, and they think they’re the bloody Welsh National Choir.)

That was where I first heard Max Boyce.

He’s like the patron saint of pissed rugby players. Funny man. Sings a lot of rugby songs.
His song, The Scottish Trip, tells of a rugby tour to Scotland. Getting hammered. Then waking up on Monday morning and racing to buy a newspaper – ‘to see which side had won.”
You get the picture.
The sort of songs pissed rugby players love to sing.

And, when I was 25, and playing rugby, I was pretty much pissed every Thursday night.
Singing songs and pretending I was in key.

I also discovered Max had a less rowdy side.

He’s Welsh. Bless him. Grew up in a mining town.

He tells a story about meeting a tourist – and the tourist saying how beautiful it was that the flowers were growing on the hills.
And him having to explain how that was a bad thing – because the hills were coal slag – and the presence of flowers meant the mines weren’t running.

He wrote this song – Grey Rhonnda – about the greening of a Welsh valley when the mines shut down.

It’s a lovely piece – tinged with sad colours and harsh realisations.

And it made me think – in today’s rushing-headlong-into-tomorrow, duck-it’s-another-deadline, hustling-for-another-piece-of-business world – how green is your valley? What are the signs that your business is booming? Or slowing down?

Mine is my back yard.

I hate it that my lawn is so overgrown my three year old almost needs a machete to get to the swing.

But I’m glad I’m so busy, I have to work on the weekends – so I don’t get time to mow. So the business looks good.

And the garden looks like shit.

My lawn is, desperately looking for a link back to the start of the story, my canary in the coalmine.

Whenever I get time to mow it, I know it’s time to start looking for more work.

Have a look around.

What’s your valley?

And how green is it?