Sometimes it’s hard to say “Goodbye.” About three weeks ago, I told my boss and friend I was going to be saying “Goodbye.” We had worked together to help build his small agency into a pretty impressive creative shop. The catch for me was that I was doing my part from 300 miles away in my home office.

The home office is a beautiful thing and has many, many benefits. And, by using technology like video chatting, instant messaging, and email; you can really do quite well.

But it’s hard to replace regular face-to-face contact. Some of you may be saying “Geez, I’d love to replace my face-to-face contact with some peace and quiet!” I understand.

But, as someone who was to help develop the agency both in terms of new business and internally by developing our staff, it was extremely difficult to do that solely over iChat, email, and phone.

As I wrapped up my work with Morsekode, I finished a couple projects for one of our large global clients. The team on the client side was entirely distributed. Some in the UK, some spread throughout the US, and some in Germany. Some of the meetings we had were quite good, but none as good as when we all got together in one room for 2 days and hashed out what really needed to happen.

Technology can do many things. And, do many things well.

But I don’t think it can completely replace the experience of working together in person.

Not yet anyway.

Goodbye home office. I’ll visit from time to time, but, for now, I’m leaving you for the old-school-gotta-face-the-commute-office-with-a-desk-and-actual-people-downtown.

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(This should have been posted a week ago…but I went on vacation)

I really don’t travel much for my work. Not anymore. I used to. But that’s another post.

The last 10 days have been a bit of an anomaly. 10 days, 4 countries, tons of meetings, tons of new people.

Normally, I work from home. And, for those of you who do this, you know how hard that can be. You know how everyone [who doesn’t work from home] thinks it’s so great, but they never see the challenges, the isolation, and the discipline you have to have (and which most of us do – if you want to stay credible). They also don’t see how hard it is to separate work from your home life. It all becomes one.

It’s all a part of life.

One of my visits was in Germany. My wife and I lived and worked there years ago and that experience will always be one of our favorite times. (I’m sure I’ll post on that more. . . )

Going back to Germany messes with my mind. I love the way of life. The challenge of working in another language. Working/living in another culture. You can NEVER know it all when you are in a culture other than your native culture. It’s humbling.

Even more humbling is working in countries where you really don’t know the local culture or language. I had some meetings in Brno, Czech Republic. What a cool little place. This company I was working with is filled with young, energetic, animated, and hopeful employees. Not what you might expect from the Czech Republic. I love it when my attitudes are shifted to better understanding.

I’m not sure what my point is here. I’m pensive in Philadelphia, waiting for my final flight connection home. The thrill of new people, new cultures and simply touching other lives is so refreshing that it messes with all of my “what I want to do when I grow up” thoughts.

Would I give up “what” I do just to be in a specific type of environment – almost regardless of what it was I was doing to be there? That’s an interesting question.

I’ll ponder that on my next flight. Thankfully, this trip has been smoother than my last business travel.

Maybe I’ll stop all my lofty questions when I get home, hug my wife and kids, and simply be thrilled with all the great things/work/situations I already have.

That would be something.

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I admit it. I’m a bit of a Germanphile. I’ll save my ramblings about how that came to be for now, but it is partly why I own a VW. If you own a VW or other European car, you may understand the challenge it can be (outside of Europe) to find qualified auto technicians that you can afford – and trust.

A friend of mine had a VW and came across a small repair shop on the east side of Madison, WI that specializes in VW.

It’s basically a one-man shop. I think Tim is his name – I’ll find out for sure when I go back to get my work finished up (it needed a part specific to my vehicle identification number, which meant ordering from Germany).

UPDATE: His name is Dave.

It’s not exactly as convenient to go there as it would be to go to the big auto monopoly in our area, but my friend said this guy was great – and reasonably priced. So, I was prepared to like him before I met him.

When I picked up my car, I asked Tim about his training on VW, and how it came to be that he specialized in VW. It turns out that he has a Computer Science degree. He had worked in another shop in Milwaukee and decided he just really enjoyed working on cars. He said, “it’s all problem solving, so it’s not really different from what I might have done with computers.”

[As a side note, I did find it interesting to see a mechanic all tech-geeked out with a Bluetooth wireless headset, working on his computer when I came to pick up the car.]

As to how he came to specialize in VW? He said that basically it was customer demand. He had started as serving all brands, then imports, and then finally VW. Why? Because the business was steady and reliable and he could really focus work on the things he knew about (from simply having a lot of experience).

There’s two lessons here, I think:

• Even though he was pointed in a specific direction, he chose to simply do what he really enjoyed doing – and more than likely at a loss of potential income.
• Focus – Business books like Jim Collins’ Good to Great talk about focus. I like how Tim specialized and was able to be successful because of that.

I’m reading a book by one of my old bosses – Lawler Kang. Lawler’s book is called Passion at Work. Lawler takes a very methodical view at turning your work into a something that specifically fits who you are and what you are passionate about. I’ll post more on this later as I go, but I think Tim is a good example of that.

And it’s always inspiring to me to see people living life on their own terms as Lawler writes about. Maybe this is somehow inspiring to you, too.

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Like many of you, I go through periods where I really question my job, my career, and whether I’m in “the right place.”

A couple days ago, I spoke with a client in Austria. I had a great conversation. This guy was calling me at around 11pm at night his time. He was funny, interesting, personable – (maybe he was drunk? – no, just kidding!)

It’s good conversations and interactions with people like that that energize me. Even though I had a tough time traveling last week, I met about 8 people last week that I wouldn’t have otherwise met – and they were all interesting people. (Their jobs might bore me to tears, but they were interesting people.)

For me, it’s about people.

Helping those people. People like you and I that are asking some of the same questions we are asking about our own lives. People who have families and stories and lives that mean so much more than their role at a big corporate entity. Sure we run into people that define themselves by the role they play in their company or career, but even those people have something to offer (once you can dig down and get to the real person).

I have to truly be thankful for the opportunities that my work has given me to meet great people.

Have you ever thought about how many cool people your work has introduced to you?

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(That’s about -2 degrees Fahrenheit for the metrically-impaired.)

Discipline is doing things you know you should even when you don’t feel like it. Today it was negative 19 degrees Celsius at about the time I usually go for a run. I skipped yesterday for a number of reasons. (Ok, it was only actually one – I was grumpy.)

But today was different. I slept last night. A lot. I got up early. Had time to think – clearly.

My wife has told me – more than once – “You think too much. Stop thinking and start doing!” She’s probably right (most wives are, aren’t they?).

If you’re sort of joining me on this journey to being closer to who you were made to be; if you’re trying to move towards working in areas about which you are passionate; or if you are a creative type would like nothing more than to create, then here’s the deal: you’ve got to take steps in that direction. Regularly.

And sometimes that takes discipline.

Going for a run today reminded me of that. And it felt good.

I bet you’ll feel better the next time you do that thing you know you need to do, too.

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In reading Peter Block’s The Answer to How Is Yes: Acting on What Matters, I came across an interesting revelation. It was, really, quite simple.

Ambition seeks recognition.

Block suggests we need to lose our ambition. And do things that simply matter to us. Not do things that we think others will find interesting or approve of.

How many things are you working towards right now in an effort to gain recognition? It might be working extra hard at work in hopes of a promotion, raise, or some sort of “attaboy.” It might be trying to write a book or song that you feel could be a worldwide hit. It might be trying to gain a large audience in the blogosphere.

Block argues that all of those goals put others in control of our lives.

I cannot distill it well here in a short post (without much more thought and effort). But think about it: Are you doing things that you love to do – regardless of who might notice – or are you doing them to impress or seek recognition from someone else?

It’s a scary question to ask. But it might help you align your life with the things that are truly important to you.

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Calm, but frustrated
At the tension between

What works?
and
What matters?

There’s something
- Right here
That matters

But what?

–
15 January 2007
1st comment explains what I was thinking.

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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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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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