On most days over the past several months, I have been enjoying a morning walk in a forest near my home.  Because I spend my days in an office engaged in the fast paced lifestyle of the “connected” world, I find that these moments help set the tone for the day.

Near the end of the walk, I get off the path, trapse down a hillside and sit on a fallen tree overlooking a small ravine.  It is there that I allow myself to be still for a few moments.  I try to drop my thoughts and let my head be quiet.  What I start to notice is that the woods are intensely alive.  They have a noise all of their own: at least 10 different types of birds chirping, bees and other insects flying around catching the sunlight on their wings, squirrels running about, and if the wind is blowing the trees themselves dance and rustle.

When we look at a stand of forest from a macro level, especially coming from our typical level of consciousness (dealing with fast paced world), it seems to be still, unmoving, and unchanging.  But when you get inside the woods – when you insert yourself into the ‘macro level’, you become the micro.  If you let yourself be silent and you adjust to this pace, you will see there is just as much energy, noise (in a good way), and change in a little stand of woods as there is in the “world around you.”

I’m not sure if there is a lesson here for you.  All I know is that it’s poetic and beautifully peaceful when I gift myself the stillness and silence to experience it.  It’s humbling really.

When you were a kid, who were the people you looked up to and admired?  Maybe it was the big name baseball player or the famous golfer.  But most likely, the people you looked up to were the ones who you experienced in your every day life – your baseball or softball coach, your Scout leader, your teacher, your big siblings or neighbors.  These were your local heros.   They could be stern, tough, young, old, cool, strong, athletic, smart, caring or any combination of the above.  These people meant something to you and they carried significant clout in your mind.

When we get older we have the ability to comprehend the larger world around us we start to admire business and thought leaders that are larger than life.  In many cases these leaders can be distant from us in terms of geographic location.  Originally we learned of them through books, and now the internet has allowed us to share information across the globe quickly so thoughts can influence us from anywhere at anytime.  I spend a lot of time reading thoughts from these people.

Recently I’ve been considering the power of local heros again in the same way I did when I was a child.  We have a lot of them here in Charlottesville.  I look around and see loads of other small business owners making positive impact on my immediate community every day.  These people inspire me as well but in a more subtle, yet more tangible way.  This thought has made me consider what I do in my local community to give back.  After a quick inventory check I realize that for all of the work I do: blogging, coaching, and working with bands- it is the relationships I have right here in my own town where I can see my life and its impact most acutely.  For example, we bring our artists to our town for a show and I can directly experience the joy it brings to friends and family.  I coach local business owners and see their work blossom in front of my eyes.  I work directly with our employees and interns and I can watch them grow.  My wife and I host pot lucks to connect friends and neighbors.

I mention this because I see in myself and many other ambitious folks the urge to connect and make a difference in the world.  But making a difference in the world doesn’t start from the largest podium or the largest voice.  Even the largest voice started in a local community somewhere.

We all have the opportunity to be a local hero.  And you never know how or when you are being the hero.  When I was younger, I didn’t tell my coach or teacher that I admired them even though I learned a lot from the best of them.  Even now if I look up to someone I don’t always remember to tell them.  The opportunity could come in even the smallest moment with a stranger.  The lingering memory or effect of that moment could last a life time though.  In all of the striving to make a difference in the larger world, we should remind ourselves that everyday we have the chance to be a hero in our immediate community.

I write to the individual because all world change starts within each of us.  You are the only entity that matters for change.

I want to see a world with no war, so I try to show you peace inside.

I want to see a world where we live in harmony with nature, so I seek to remind you of the simple joy you have while outside on a sunny spring day.

I want to see a world where people value experience more than material things, so I strive to show you that love, joy, excitement, and laughter come from experience, not the objects around you.

I want to see cities designed around pedestrians, so I encourage you feel the beauty of walking.

I want to be a part of this world, so I write to create this world and to connect with others that feel it too.

Thank you for reading and for being.

I’ve been wanting a phrase to describe our business philosophy.  Actually it’s not just our business philosophy, it’s one that I see traces of in many of the great business books including ones written by Tom Peters, Peter Drucker, Dale Carnegie, and Seth Godin.  The concept is to build a business around being a better human as much as you build it around generating profit.  The phrase that comes to my head to define this is Human-Centric Business.

To me, Human-Centric Business means that as an employer you take on the role of teaching, empowering, and growing your employees.  Running a human-centric business means that you don’t just hire employees to do a job, to delegate tasks to, or to run part of your assembly line.  You are creating a community with your business and your role as an employer is to be a mentor in business and life.  If it’s not one of your strong suits currently, get some “life coaching” (bad term, good profession) to learn how to be more self-aware.  Self-awareness generates more awareness of others and this is the single key to becoming an amazing boss.

Human-Centric also means that your business is generating something positive for the world – something with the benefit of the larger population in mind.  I recognize this is a gray area but I feel confident that if you find self-awareness the rest will take care of itself.

As I mentioned in an earlier post, your most effective marketing comes from word of mouth.  As you may also know, it is easier to retain a customer than it is to get a new customer.  Put those two ideas together and you see that it is more cost effective and efficient to keep your current customers happy so that their word of mouth will help you to gain new customers.  On top of this, mix in the benefits of the internet where word of mouth is archived and global and you can see how it is a powerful tool for marketing.

What I’d like to propose is a new form of marketing that I call “Stoking.”  Stoking puts all three of these elements together and combines the idea of “gifting” as well.  (Gifting is the practice of giving away something of value when you expect nothing in return.  The act of the gift and the pleasure it creates is the value).

So, how does ‘stoking’ work:

1.  Search the internet for your band (or business) name.  Try google, twitter, facebook, youtube, and flickr.  You are looking for people who are talking about your band.  Most likely you’ll have fans out there that you didn’t even know about.

2.  When you find some people who have been talking good things about you (archived word of mouth!) then drop them a line to say thank you and offer them a gift.  It could be a ticket to a show, a free t-shirt, a free album, or anything else you can dream up.

This simple act makes you feel great for being the giver of the gift.  It makes the recipient feel great for getting a gift and being appreciated.  And of course, it’s all good for business because you’re taking the time to be awesome and everyone appreciates that.

You can take this deeper if you want by trying to track and analyze all of the responses but I’ve found that the idea of gifting stands in contrast to all of my analytical marketing efforts.  It’s not about analysis and measuring, it’s about perpetuating the giving cycle.

Try it out.  You’ll be surprised how fun and rewarding it is.

You are right!  They are definitely wrong!  This thinking is called judgement.  As soon as you see your way as right and their way as wrong you have made a judgement.  Judgement leads to argument.  Argument leads to a bunch of other miserable outcomes.

What if you can get beneath right and wrong?  What if you can stop yourself from thinking that there is something so definite as right and wrong.  What does it mean to be “right” anyway?  Is it just an idea you are putting out there?  In that case you want to be right just for the sake of “winning.”  And if you want to be right to convince someone to be part of your team or the work you are building then you have two choices.  One you can just move on from the person that  doesn’t agree with it.  Two, you can get beneath right and wrong to see what they need to make it work for them.

Getting beneath right and wrong loosens up the lines we draw in the sand and makes way for conversation rather than argument.  Give it a try and you may find that life suddenly becomes much smoother.

My work is an expression of who I am.  I figure out who I am and what works means to me at the same time.  In other words, this is what I would be doing even if I didn’t “have to work.”  The very intentional goal has always been to make “work” not work but rather constructive play with friends and the world.

I have always assumed that this approach to work isn’t for everyone.  I’ve heard that some people just like to have a job that they can leave at the end of the day and not have to think about it.  I realized recently that I don’t really believe this.

If you enjoy the work you are doing then you are doing it for your pleasure and for the Business of You.  On the other hand, if you are miserable at work then you need to adjust something in the Business of You.

We all go home at the end of the day.  Not thinking about work has nothing to do with the work itself but rather your ability to be mindful and in the moment.

So… if you fit into this category, no more excuses.  Find the work that makes you come alive and make the work live.  We all benefit from this.

Look around and you will see many businesses “selling out.”  You read it all the time.  Some well known historical cases: Ben & Jerry’s, Stonyfield Farms, Tim Ferriss’s BrainQuicken, Seth Godin’s Yoyodyne, Derek Sivers’ CDBaby, Coran Capshaw’s MusicToday and on and on.  I haven’t gotten to this point yet with any of my businesses but I do wonder… if and when the day comes, will I sell out?

The guys at 37signals made an interesting comment when they mocked a small software company for selling out.  They believe that life after selling out isn’t better than they currently have it.  They don’t want to work for someone else or spend their time in meetings.  Their point was that you shouldn’t sell out to the big, old guys… you should just “kick their asses.”  It’s an interesting thought.  But what do they mean by this?

From what I’ve observed on the outside looking in, those who have a business that expresses them completely don’t tend to sell out (ClifBar as an example).  Many of the people listed above have sold their businesses and gone on to other projects that seem to be a more complete expression of their personalities for this time.  Seth, Derek, and Tim are all speakers and writers of some sort and Coran has a powerhouse roster of management clients.  My conclusion is that we can only “kick the old guys asses” if it’s really something we believe in, something that we feel expresses what we want to do in the world.  I think this is indicative of the era we live in.

So my advice for future Me or anyone else in this situation is to sell out if you feel you can’t do your best work through your business any longer.  But think hard about this before doing it, because you without a larger expression of yourself will be a big change.  Be certain that there is something more complete waiting to be nurtured on the other side.  Lastly and most importantly, continue to create deep value for yourself and thus for the world.  That is all I want for you.

The Artist Farm and I have created a gift for our community – a pledge to eliminate litter at concerts.  You can read why you should sign this below, or you can go directly to the pledge here: www.cleanconcert.org

~~~~

I think we can all agree that the world would be a better place if we humans could be zero waste. No more trash, and everything used or decomposing in a healthy cycle the way all other animals do it.

The entire ecosystem of packaging, creation, use, disposal, recycling, and all that… it’s big- too big for most of us to comprehend. But there is something simple you can understand. You.

What can you do to affect any change here?

The answer starts with a simple task. When you purchase something, the cycle of disposal is yours with that ownership. In other words, if you consumed it, it is your responsibility to dispose of it properly. For bodily waste, we have toilets. For consumer waste, we have bins. Much like you wouldn’t put your bodily waste all over the ground, you shouldn’t put your trash their either.

Unfortunately, the current thinking goes that if you paid money for a ticket then someone else should clean up after you; that it is your right to litter. There is a better way!

If you want to change the world, you must first change yourself. You can start by not externalizing your responsibility. You can start by embracing sustainable values that apply everywhere (at home or camping in the woods) over situational values (that somehow it is ok to litter at concerts). You can start right now.

I have created a pledge to keep concert grounds clean, to take responsibility for your own trash, and therefore to contribute to a cleaner environment for all.

This Clean Concert Pledge is about more than littering. It is about:

• assuming your personal responsibility.
• recognizing that you are the door to change in the world.
• seeing your connection to all those around you.
• not having to worry about sitting on a paper plate covered in mustard… because grass is so much better.

I hope you’ll agree, that you see the wisdom in this, that you’ll sign the pledge here: www.cleanconcert.org, and spread the word.

Let’s keep changing the world one person at a time.

It could be argued that offering free streaming of your music is a replacement for radio.

Consider that radio played music at no cost to the listener.  In most cases radio had tremendous reach into the community.  If your song happened to get on radio and was successful, your song was heard for free by thousands of people every week.  After getting to know a band’s product (i.e – the song on the radio) a listener may be compelled to become a customer of the band.  But it took that exposure to the free sample to sell the product.

Streaming your music for free isn’t really a new concept then.  The web is just replacing the radio as the broadcast medium.  You stream your music with the hopes that enough people will hear it, get interested in the free sample and like it enough to buy the product.

What’s different is that radio served as a brand, a broadcaster, and a filter.  There was a symbiotic relationship here between bands and stations.  Cool new music strengthened the radio brand and the radio brand strengthened the clout of a band in that market.

By simply streaming your music away on your site, you lack a branded filter.  In other words, each band is like it’s own mini-radio station.  But with hundreds of thousands of them across the web.  Hoping a new consumer finds your band is like a finding needle in a hay stack.  You aren’t identifying with a symbiotic relationship.

The web is wonderful for its ability to distribute content at low cost.  But the power of a branded filter is still real and needed. Look to all of the great blogs as an example – they become filters for content on certain topics.

If you’re reading this and thinking of how you can be involved in music – consider the act of being a filter for a genre or your local market.  The medium of broadcast has been the only definite change.  The need for branded, broadcasting filters is still real indeed.

Update: A reader rightly pointed out to me that I didn’t provide any advice on how to act here.  I reread the post and clearly see their point.  So… there are two action items here.

1.  If you aren’t an artist but you are interested in getting involved in music in some way here’s an idea: become a web-based filter.  The benefit of the web is that it’s less expensive to start a hub there than it is to start a radio station, it’s less regulated, and you can play whatever you want.  This last point is a benefit to bands as well because many great artists aren’t “radio friendly.”  That’s no problem on the web if you become a filter for your specific genre niche or your market.   Artists and managers still have a need for filters to associate with but there aren’t that many out there.  Go start one and drop me a line when you do or drop me a line if you already have one.

2.  If you are an artist or manager – I’d keep your eyes out for the local filters that aren’t radio stations, especially if you aren’t a “radio friendly” band.  When you come into a market, drop a line to your best fans in that area and ask how they find out about shows.  In most major markets I have found underground message boards, blogs, and connectors through communicating with our hard core fans there.  These connections can be more effective than traditional broadcasters for the power of “Word of Mouth” they offer.

Here are a few examples of various size and style:

1. Charlottesville Indie music – http://www.nailgunmedia.com/blog/
2. San Francisco Indie music – http://www.playinginfog.com/
3. Orlando Blues music – http://www.meetup.com/roadblockbluesjam/

——————

If you liked this post please let me know your thoughts below, share it on twitter, subscribe to our feed or email list.  Thank you!