IF A THING IS WORTH DOING IT'S WORTH DOING BADLY

"We're not looking for the correct method, we're looking for the incorrect method."

                              ~ Keith Richards

    I found this Keith quote in Seth Godin's wonderful new book, The Icarus Deception.

    His quote is a great refresher for anyone attempting to create anything (a service, a product, a business, a life).  Creativity thrives when it is fearlessly unaware of whether I am doing it right or not.... creativity and quality-of-product thrive when they have a lot of heart and very little head.

     That was Nassim Taleb's point about being willing to make a mess of things in the name of making something that will be timeless and popular and sell like crazy... like the Bible (which is disorganized to say the least) or any of the great books that follow no formula or outline or ANYTHING bureacratic or thought-out-in-advance or planned carefully.

    Kathy and I once went to a talk given by Lee Child in a little bookstore in Scottsdale. He is the author of the wonderful, colorful,  bestselling Jack Reacher series of books. He said he never plots or outlines his stories. He never knows from one page to the next what's going to happen in the book. He just wakes up and pours his heart into it. A controlled explosion.

    Taleb compares the messy beauty of an emerald forest with the carefully organized-and-planned freeway system in L.A.  

     One is beautiful and timelessly alluring and the other is a repulsive hell on earth. Messy wins again. Because organic has heart.  Synthetic loses again.

    No one wants to read your book if it's organized like a textbook or business book. No one wants to feel that fear that was in you when you put it together, editing even before you wrote it. Trying to use the brake pedal to drive with.

     Most people I coach try to "create" that way. With one foot on the brake and the other foot amputated by a premature quest for acceptance.

    It's the classic HOW TO taking all the steam out of the WANT TO. I created an audio program that addresses that issue....why be modest...solves that issue. It's a mess of a program. No script. Clearly ad-libbed. You probably think I am going to now try to sell it to you.

   That would be the correct thing to do, because all the marketing gurus tell you how to sell and grow rich. I am just going to give it to you, it's called The How To versus the Want To. Email my business partner and audio publisher Maurice at [email protected] and he will send it to you.  

     By the way, the clients I coach do not use their brake pedal to drive with for very long.  I help them see how ineffective it is.  

     Try it with your car.

     Then sit in your car for an hour or two and ask yourself if you've been living your life this way. With this abundance of caution.

   I know I did that. But only for about five decades. Then it hit me as I slowly pulled my foot off the brake: I'm not getting anywhere this way.