Expertise and firmly held beliefs don’t always go together.
Here’s a simple XY grid to help us choose where to sit at whatever table we’re invited to:
Plenty of well-trained professionals have earned the right to have strongly held beliefs. These convictions save them time and error, particularly if the world is stable. Surgeons, jugglers and historians make countless decisions, and they rarely have the time or resources to reconsider each underlying factor. This makes them efficient, but can also cause a field to get stuck.
Fortunately, there are innovators. These are individuals with plenty of experience and training who have chosen to be flexible, to repeatedly ask ‘what if’ and ‘why’. When an innovator suggests a counter-intuitive or even nutty concept, it might pay to listen carefully.
For most of us, most of the time, we have the chance to be curious. We don’t have a lot of domain knowledge, but we’re able to ask intelligent questions and to listen carefully to the answers. The hallmark of a curious person with goodwill is that they’re eager to change their minds.
Alas, social media has elevated the foolish. People possessing little in the way of expertise, and generally unwilling to change their assertions or goals.
Dreams are fine. And dreams involve contradictions. We want this AND that, but both can’t happen. That’s what keeps them from being plans.
Plans embrace boundaries and reality, they don’t ignore them. Plans thrive on scarcity and constraints. Plans are open for inspection, and a successful planner looks forward to altering the plans to make them more likely to become real.
Sometimes, we’re so afraid of creation that we don’t even leave blank pages around.
If your workspace has a hole exactly the size of a creative idea in it, you’re more likely to fill the hole.
When we decrease the number of steps to begin creating, and increase the expectation that something is going to arrive, it’s far more likely to happen.
Book a recording studio. Leave the laptop open. Schedule a blog post. Make sure the whiteboard can be seen. Buy more blank canvasses than you need.
Blank pages beg to be filled, and it helps to have them around.
Some GOODBIDS auctions to consider:
Get some direct and useful advice on your project from Daymond John. Supports BuildOn.
This week is the 150th anniversary of the most important failed art exhibit of all time.
It was organized by and featured artists who weren’t even among those that had a slot at the runner’s up exhibit for artists who weren’t featured in the real Salon in Paris. Manet didn’t have the guts to join them, so he participated in the ‘Refused’ exhibit. The others understood that a real change was possible.
Monet, Renoir, Sisley, Degas, Berthe Morisot, Pissarro, Béliard, Guillaumin, Lepic, Levert, and Rourt all participated. They not only put their art in the show, they organized and paid for it.
A few lessons worth taking away:
The first exhibit was a financial and critical failure. The show received fewer than 1% of the number of visitors that the mainstream salon benefitted from, and there were few reviews, most of them negative.
They knew someone who had a building, and the empty space he offered them was enough of an instigator that it turned some maybes into yesses. Use it or lose it.
One of the most positive things to come from the exhibit was a scathing satirical piece, the one that gave the impressionists their name. The insecure critics came to regret their inability to see what was possible.
And yet, the artists persisted. Year after year, eight times, gaining momentum each time, they returned, working their way from outsiders to become the dominant form of artistic expression of their time.
But most of all, so much easier today than in Paris 150 years ago, these individual painters did two things: They picked themselves and they did it together.
Everyone wants to be picked, but no one wants to organize the collective ‘we’.
It’s the ‘we’ that creates a school of thought, a movement, a network, a culture.
Curate, connect, organize and lead. Who better than you?
PS launched yesterday, a GOODBIDS auction for a very rare signed first edition of a nationwide bestseller.
A rare signed first edition of Remarkably Bright Creatures. A beloved bestseller, this one is signed by the author with a doodle of the novel’s star.
Every competitor faces pressure, and it varies by industry, consumer/investor segment and geography. This applies to services, products, ideas, organizations, jobs… whenever there’s a choice and a market. The pressure might push you to be:
Cheaper
Simpler
Dumber
More short term
Easier
Coarse
More convenient
Hyped
But it’s also possible to choose a marketplace that rewards:
Durability
Difficulty
Elegant design
Resilience
Thoughtfulness
Higher performance and efficiency
Patience
A real challenge is in trying to bring the desires of one segment to the other. That’s difficult indeed.
I’ve heard this from presidential candidates, from small business leaders and nonprofits as well. It’s easy to believe that the goal of marketing is to shout, hype, hustle and otherwise promote.
It’s tempting to focus on your story as the top of the pyramid, and decide that your work is to share that story to everyone downstream, downwind or near you.
Hire a PR firm, run some ads, post more on social media and hype and hustle. After all, it’s important.
But that’s not how the world works, and it hasn’t worked that way since network TV started to fade a few decades ago.
Ideas that spread win. Horizontally, not from the rooftops.
When we build something that our users want to talk about, remarkable happens. Remarkable means worth making a remark about.
This is the engine that GOODBIDS is built for. A nonprofit uses the permission asset they’ve built with their existing donors to let them know about an auction. That’s anticipated, personal and relevant, and backers are delighted to hear about it.
And then what happens?
If the auction is interesting to friends or colleagues, the supporters happily tell the others about it. They do it to earn free bids, or they do it to help a cause they care about, or they do it because spreading the word about something interesting, worthwhile or fun feels good.
In the last four days, GOODBIDS users have shared our initial auctions with tens of thousands of people… not because someone made them do it, but because they wanted to.
Today’s auctions:
An official NASA Apollo 11 shoulder patch, identical to the one that Armstrong wore on the moon. It comes with a signed, limited edition of David Meerman Scott‘s brilliant book on the marketing of the race to the moon.
It also comes with a letter of authenticity. The patch is untouched, unflown and uncut. It will make your heart race and remind you of just how much we’re capable of when we work together with focus. Meeting Neil years ago made me cry, and I hope you’ll check this one out.
[Relevant aside: If you get this blog by email, apologies for the glitches of the last few days caused by my provider. If you ever see a broken link or something that doesn’t render, you can visit the blog. It always has the latest version, typos fixed. It’s much easier to fix the blog over time than it is to re-send an email due to an error. The irony of ‘live’ in this post is not lost on me. Thanks for your patience.]
Charity auctions are an odd hybrid. They take a lot of focus, and when done live, a lot of logistical support.
It’s all of the charity’s best “customers” in a room, at the same time.
Not just in a room, but at something that’s supposed to be a party, an event that’s not only supposed to be fun and demonstrate hospitality, but one that might involve our feelings around status, insufficiency and perfection.
As a result, months are spent making sure everything is just right. Date certain has baggage. Sign up to host live events with care.
That’s time and effort the nonprofit could be putting into engaging with donors directly. Or even in connecting donors to one another in a way that’s generative and useful.
If something goes wrong, plenty of people are triggered. And the responses have to happen with urgency.
GOODBIDS positive auctions can bring some of the real-time energy and urgency of a fundraising event, but without the emotional or labor overhead.
Yes, the auction is happening right here and right now. Bidders can’t snooze or they miss out. The clock is ticking, but not at the expense of the hardworking folks at the nonprofit. It’s working for them instead.
“What’s it for” is a question that’s worth asking, again and again.
Also, this Bob Dylan Slow Train Coming official tour jacket. It’s hanging in my office, and has been for a month or so. It’s magical and I’ll miss it. Thanks, Greg.
The first rule of GOODBIDS is that we create the conditions to talk about GOODBIDS. Ed Norton donated a signed Fight Club movie poster…
What kind of culture will we build? At work, in our community, online?
Compliance
Quality
Inquiry
Inclusion
Consumption
Possibility and/or
Fear
Each of us builds culture every time we interact with anyone else. Opting out isn’t possible, all we can do is decide what sort of impact and contribution we’re each going to make.
It’s tempting to say, “they” build culture, and to see that some have far more leverage than others. But it’s actually a “we” thing.
When someone starts a business, they spend a bunch of time with a business plan, working to raise funds and get it off the ground. After that, though, the purpose of the business is completely aligned with the idea of not running out of money. We run a business to make money, not to spend it. If done well, there’s no more fundraising after a startup period.
On the other hand, nonprofits sign up to do at least two things.
They’re here to solve a problem, to address trauma, to enrich the culture, to do the difficult work that we’re not always able to do on our own.
And yet, at the same time, we require them to raise money. Not just for a little while, but all the time.
The more successful they become, the more money they need to raise.
Along the way, it’s not unusual for a nonprofit to spend 50% of the money they raise on the expense of raising more money. That’s not because they’re inefficient, it’s because we are.
We demand a gala, or an emergency, or artfully written fundraising letters. Donors want personal attention from the folks who are ostensibly doing the front line or strategic work of the nonprofit, and treat regular donations as an exception, not the standard.
When the internet arrived, it dramatically lowered the transactional costs in a wide variety of industries. You can buy an airline ticket yourself faster and with less intervention than through a travel agent. You can buy stocks for transaction fees that are a tiny fraction of what a broker used to charge. But creative and effective nonprofit fundraising has been stuck in a cycle of risk, galas and uncertainty.
GOODBIDS is making it easier for a nonprofit to create an event that might capture the attention of regular donors as well as new ones. It still requires some effort to secure the prizes, but our tool significantly leverages the work of the nonprofit and the fee we charge the nonprofit is a tiny fraction of what it usually costs to do fundraising.
Today’s new auctions are rare collectibles donated by special friends:
Apple sponsored these luxurious jackets for the crew on the original movie. Guy signed his for you, making it doubly collectible.
I hope you’ll check out how positive auctions are working for charities you care about.
PS bonus tip: Each Goodbids auction has an end date and time, but the auction is automatically extended when someone bids near the end of the window. That means that there’s no benefit to waiting until the last minute, because there isn’t a last minute–the auction keeps running until the bidding is done.
April 12, 2024
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