Frank Chimero on Marketing

I don’t expect to reach or change anybody I don’t already know. I realize there’s potential for that, but I don’t expect it.”

Frank Chimero

This has been rattling around my brain since I’ve heard it. In Fizzle I keep encouraging folks to think small, small, smaller. If you think about women who ride unicycles to work in north portland you can a). find those people easily (there are 10 of them), b). study and serve them well in small and meaningful ways that c). make a serious impact on that crew.

But in our online growing stuff — marketing stuff — for Fizzle and ThinkTraffic and, shit, even this blog, my mind defaults to “i need more people” mode.

Getting in front of new folks.

Making a good impression on them.

Creating an emotional experience with them on the page.

Making it easier and more enjoyable for them to find us.

But when I heard Frank say this I knew it was True™.

We still need to grow (maybe that’s another question to explore), but we can do it more like a family or a neighborhood than a “startup.”

Frank Chimero on the Bounty of Success

I now know that the work doesn’t last—and if it somehow does, it lasting doesn’t have much to do with me. The work went far because other people carried it. Disabusing myself of the idea that I did anything important or special has been really good for me. If the bounty of success is attention, and you feel like you don’t deserve that attention, then you have no responsibility to it. It has no power over you. That frees you up to take risks. If those risks pay off, then great. If they don’t: c’est la vie. At least you’re alive, tried something, and lived a little.”

Frank Chimero

Wow, what a great read. I have liked Chimero’s words for a while. Hearing some of his story, how he’s processing grief as a creative worker, only makes me a bigger fan. Here’s some other Frank posts I’ve written about.

Shawn Coyle on The Known & Unknown Motivators

We don’t know that we’re searching for something called “self-actualization,” we just find ourselves perplexed by the fact that we have every “need” checked off our list, but still we find ourselves lacking. No matter what we chase as a “want” to solve that emptiness, we’re left unsatisfied. What Steve calls Resistance is a force that pushes us away from the big questions. […]

So stories of depth and meaning are those that progress to this ultimate mystery, this ultimate need. The lead character may consciously desire a want, but it is his unconscious need for self-actualization that pushes him to the limits of human experience. […]

But remember, like their human counterparts, your fictional protagonists will distract themselves in innumerable ways from contending directly with them. They chase wants not needs. And in most instances, they will not consciously understand or reconcile the need to know themselves (who they really are) until the very end of the story.”

Shawn Coyle

I love studying story so much because it a) helps me understand my own motivations, needs, and wants, b) helps me understand people in general better, and c) helps me make things and communicate about those things in better ways, ways that resonate harder.

Transforming Ourselves

In jazz You can spend 8 hours a day blowin through a copper tube and I promise you, after 10 years, that tube will not change but you will be totally transformed. We’re transforming ourselves here. And you can’t do it if you’re not in public. If you can’t make your mistakes in front of people it doesn’t matter.”

Ben Sidran

This was a phenomenal episode of the WTF Podcast.

Listener emails Marc, “hey, you should interview my dad.” Marc says, “I don’t know your dad.” Kid says some more stuff. Marc says, “fine.” And it ends up being a phenomenal conversation (Marc calls it one of the best he’s ever had).

I loved this quote. I’ve fallen in love with “business” because of how much it’s taught me about myself.

(I think I fell in love with Jesus for the same reason… I guess it’s all about me. Maybe why we broke up?)

I said in a recent interview my favorite ever game to play is “build a business with Chase Reeves.” Making something with the goal of earning a living through it engages so much of my stuff… the bits I’m good at, the bits I want to get better at, the bits that are unabashedly me.

And the carrot on the end of the stick is finding out more about me and the people I serve through the things I make.

Now, I can hear how selfish this is. Count the me’s and I’s i’ve written so far. Sense the inward “all about me” gravity.

First of all, I realize I’m extremely prone to an unbalance, an overly “me” orientation. We all are, but maybe me more so than others… my wife will confirm.

Secondly, we gotta become ourselves, get comfortable in our own skin, get to a place where we’re confident about who we are, proud and grateful about the accomplishments and experiences that make up our DNA… we can’t love or serve or make sustainably without stepping into some kind of coherent sense of self.

I’m grateful that business has been both the canvas and the anvil. I express myself on it. It expresses itself on me.

Anyways, I loved this interview and this quote is the lil’ sliver I show you to get into it.

Joseph Campbell on Uncertainty About Our Lives/Careers

If the path before you is clear, you’re probably on someone else’s.”

Joseph Campbell

Of course you’re uncertain.

Of course you don’t know which is best of two possible goods.

Of course you’re not sure how to best spend your time.

Can you accept this as a necessary part of the whole thing, of your life and all of our lives, and have a little more fun in the deciding?

Maybe even collect a sense of adventure about it?

Because if you go looking around for the right answer all the time, if you need a sense of absoluteness, if you worship certainty, you’ll never know enough.

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