This is one of my favorite quotes from Jim Collins’ books. He is talking about business. I’m talking about life.

One of my friends and I talked about this a bit recently. He is between jobs and trying to figure out the right next step. One step would involve going back to school to get an advanced degree in a discipline that he says he “could get excited about.”

But he’s got something else that burns within him already – music. My question to him was

“are you settling for good, when you should be shooting for great?”

Damn it’s hard to be a good guy (or gal) and try to make a living as a musician (artist, writer – fill in your own creative passion here).

Over my career, I made a lot of choices that led to more money, more resume clout, and more bragging rights. But none of those choices led me closer to my passions.

A lot of those moves led me to jobs where I was good – even really good – but never great.

Like Collins, I believe passion is one key ingredient that enables us to achieve greatness. Sure, we have to be skilled, work hard, etc., but without passion we’re just posers, faking our way through life. I realize that may sound a bit harsh.

I cannot tell my friend what he is passionate about. Nor can I tell him how to feed a family while working towards his passions. That’s the struggle for most of us creative types – finding that balance of moving in the right direction and taking care of our responsibilities at the same time.

I don’t really have the answers to this. Just a hypothesis. And I’m still trying to prove that myself. It’s really a lifelong experiment.

Without encouraging you to take harmful risks, allow me to suggest that shooting for great, while likely involving some risk and surely some challenges, is worth it.

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At a Christmas party this weekend, I had the pleasure to talk with a writer (non-fiction) who was making the final edits on a book that will be coming out in 2007. It was an excellent discussion and I was very interested in the topic as well. The author was extremely humble about his expertise and the success of landing the publishing deal.

I’m not going to mention the author nor the topic because of a unique dilemma the author is facing.

He’s a tenure track professor.

It turns out that maybe 90 percent of this Ph.D’s day-to-day job responsibilities revolve around research that is unrelated to the topic of his book. To be clear, the book IS related to his area of expertise, but a different, niche facet.

He faces an interesting problem – to keep his head down, get tenure, and THEN work on trying to gain more exposure for the ideas in his book, or to say, “look, this is my passion, I’ve got to go after it!” and risk potentially negative consequences at his workplace – the consequences of a faculty and board who may not see the true value of this published work.

I know, I’m being a bit vague here. I don’t want to compromise his situation.

What would you do? Risk potentially losing tenure by trying to share with the world concepts that could impact lives, sharing concepts you are most passionate about? Or would you “play it safe,” not heavily promote your work, and hope for a clean path to the magic land of tenure?

I told him to tell the world about his book, to secure speaking spots at relevant conferences, and start following his passions – now.

Are you “playing it safe” in your own life?

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When I was in high school I worked at a place called Donutland – yes, that’s right – Donutland. I’ll just let that sink in for a moment.

I don’t really want or need to go into detail about that. Let’s leave it at this – it was a short stint.

[sidebar – For you non-Americans, I’m not sure you all even know what a doughnut is. I’m hoping this wikipedia entry on donuts can help.]

I was visiting my inlaws one weekend and my mother-in-law had some donuts available for our breakfast. It turns out, those donuts were made by my old bosses (Bob and Bonnie) who have since left the retail donut business and gone wholesale.

In retail, you produce what you think the market will purchase. In Donutland’s case, they filled their donut cases as full as they thought they needed to be to sell a day’s worth of donuts – but they never knew exactly how many they would sell each day.

In their new wholesale business model, Bob and Bonnie only produce after they have received orders. So there is no wasted production. The sale is made before they even have a finished product. Granted, they have proven themselves to the market prior to orders.

Applying Retail vs. Wholesale Mentalities to the Pursuit of Dreams
When it comes to pursing our passions (and especially for creative people) some believe the wholesale route is the way to make it. That is, you create a sample (demo tape or maybe a few chapters) and hope to find a market (publishers or record companies) to buy before actually creating it all. In the retail model, you would simply create and hope to find someone to buy it after it’s created.

In business, I like the wholesale model because it mitigates risk. It’s safe, you know how much to produce and you already have the orders before you invest in the production.

In Life and Pursing Passions, I like The Retail Model
In life and pursuing passions, I’m leaning the other direction. Sometimes I think we let the market dictate whether we do what we are good and passionate about.

That would be the position of the so-called realist.

I’m a bit of a realist, but a realist who dreams and has faith in the purpose behind your gifts and passions.

I don’t believe you should let the existing market (or the markets you are aware of) be the sole dictator of whether you pursue your passions. Sometimes markets open up that were never possible in the past. You could not have known or predicted them. I believe the Internet has afforded many of us creative folks that opportunity.

Five years ago, maybe seven, I told one of my good musician friends that “the Internet is going to open possibilities for independent musicians like never before.” He disagreed and pointed to the entrenched music distribution model, record labels, etc. I believe he even said, “That will never change.”

iTunes blew that theory out of the water and continues to. Brilliant. (See the link under my blogroll for a catalog of online music distributors.)

Furthermore, just the other week, in the Wall Street Journal, Peter Buck from REM (I think it was Peter) commented on how broken the traditional system of music distribution is. Interestingly enough, that article was on how artists are leveraging the Internet to create hits without the corporatized, sanitized, and sterilized format of traditional radio (I should point out that, obviously, the lyrics of most popular music aren’t exactly “sanitized”).

Beyond iTunes, the music genome project (www.pandora.com) is another great example of how the music market is evolving.

Keep Creating, Keep Your Eyes Open and Be Ready

I’m going to explore and expand on some of this more in the future, but for now let me simply encourage you who are creative to do your best to keep creating – work out your craft, your niche in whatever art form you excel at and enjoy.

And keep your eyes open. Markets move.

When a market specific to your craft and your unique approach hits, will you be ready?

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I was thrown an incredibly tight deadline today. For an incredibly large client. And while I generally find myself a fairly non-corporate guy in spirit (you wouldn’t know that from my resume), I am actually looking forward to this.

Why?

There is a woman in Asia holding a training session and she desperately needs materials/information/guidance to allow her to succeed – or even survive. And she would be grateful for any help we offer.

The Cynics Response
Sure, you could say “Why did she wait until the last minute?” I’ve certainly asked that many times in situations like this over the last 10-15 years. But answering that question won’t help her in the short-term.

For me, there is no greater satisfaction than in helping someone – especially someone who is truly grateful. (And her situation is likely not her fault anyway.)

I’ve struggled for years over whether “helping” needed to be in a non-profit organization. And, maybe I could help people with greater needs in a non-profit. However, as long as I am making my money in the business world, it is great to find opportunities to help real people – even if they are just a cog in some big corporate wheel. They are still people.

Could You Help Someone?
Maybe you’re a bit like me and you still dream of changing the world. Is there a way you could help others in your job? There are probably more opportunities than you think.

A Little ManagerMustard
Managers, you might take note of what motivates each of your team members. Every person is different. For some it may be acknowledgment or public praise. For others it may be about the difference they can make. Find out what motivates your team members and play to those individual drivers. You’ll see results. Trust me. For more on this, read Marcus Buckingham’s The One Thing You Need to Know.

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It’s 5:22pm

I want the day
to be over

but it’s not

I haven’t
finished

and I don’t want to start

I want to swap

but for what?

–
17 June 2004
1st comment explains what I was thinking.

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