Today I would like to introduce you to one of the brightest minds on the Internet, Seth Godin. Seth is a successful author, speaker, businessman, and marketing guru. Even though we have never met, and I am sure that he has no idea that I even exist, I like to think of him as one of my mentors.
Traditionally, a mentor is defined as someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced person. And while a mentor is often thought of as someone who has a personal relationship with their student, I would argue that the advent of the Internet, and its boundless capacity to educate, has fundamentally changed the mentor/student relationship.
While there are certainly benefits to having a personal relationship, the ability to share knowledge digitally means that no longer do the mentor and student have to know each other. And while I hope to one day meet Seth in person, I am content to have him as a digital mentor, providing guidance in my life and my business through his published digital content.
Below is a blog post of Seth’s, that I felt compelled to share. I believe that it delivers an important message that’s applicable to all business owners, especially home inspectors that are new to the industry. This content was posted at Seth Godin’s blog on March 11, 2016. You can easily subscribe to Seth Godin’s blog at https://seths.blog/subscribe/
Galvanized
When George Martin first met the Beatles and became their producer, he liked their sound and their energy, but he didn’t think they could write songs. So he licensed a song, handed it to them and had them record it. John and Paul hated doing this, so they asked if they could write one. That became their first hit. Faced with opposition and competition, they became better songwriters.
Sir George didn’t think much of Pete Best, their drummer, and he said so. He wanted to hire session musicians as drummers. Faced with a loss of cohesion and control, John, Paul and George took action, fired Pete, found and hired Ringo.
George didn’t think there was a chance this Ringo guy was any good, so he had a session musician sit in for the first recording. Ringo brought his A game on the next track and that was the end of session musicians sitting in.
Often, our best work happens when we’re in a situation we wouldn’t have chosen for ourselves. The hard part is choosing to be in that sort of situation in the first place, the uncomfortable one where we have no choice but to do better work.
Find a galvanizer if you can. If you care.
One of the definitions of galvanize is “to cause (people) to become so excited or concerned about an issue, idea, etc., that they want to do something about it” (Webster’s dictionary). If you are anything like me, you have many ideas that you’d love to implement (in your personal, spiritual, and professional lives), but they often remain just that, ideas. Without motivation, a galvanizer, it’s quite likely that these ideas will never come to fruition.
So whether we’re able to provide our own motivation by writing down our goals, making them known to someone who will hold us accountable, or simply broadcasting them out to the digital world, we all need to find some way to galvanize ourselves. We need to take that first step, put our plans into motion, and see where they will lead us.
Woody Allen once said that “90% of success is just showing up.”
Show up, do something, get moving… we just may surprise ourselves.
In any moment of decision, the best thing you can do is the right thing, the next best thing is the wrong thing, and the worst thing you can do is nothing.
Theodore Roosevelt
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Thanks, Joe
