Sharing inspiration from BJ Gallagher

TGIF! This in from BJ Gallagher's friend and Chellie, who is featured in It's Never Too Late to Be What You Might Have Been. May it inspire you!

“The world isn’t interested in the storms you encountered, but whether or not you brought in the ship.”—Raul Armesto

The marketplace is unforgiving. People want the goods and services they pay for to be delivered as ordered, on time, and at a reasonable price. They want it to be the best solution to their problem or the best benefit they can afford and work as advertised. If you fail in any of that, they will find someone else to provide it.

They don’t care if you’re sick, you’re in debt, you had a problem with your boyfriend, you’re stressed about the state of the economy, you’re afraid you might lose your house or have already lost it. They don’t care that you were late because there was traffic on the freeway or your computer crashed or your childcare didn’t show up on time. As fellow human beings, they will sympathize and pat you on the back—for a short while. And then they will find someone else to fulfill their needs. They have to in order to survive themselves.

They also don’t care if you are invested in an old business model that is quickly being replaced in the marketplace by a new one. The post office is failing because email has largely replaced expensive snail mail. Newspapers are failing because people can get more up-to-the-minute news from the internet—for free. Too bad if you bought a One Hour Photo franchise – digital cameras have made them practically obsolete. Joel Barker produced a video years ago “The Business of Paradigms” in which he said that “When the paradigm shifts, everyone goes back to zero.”

When Henry Ford invented the automobile, I don’t imagine the horse-and-buggy crowd were too thrilled, especially if they were invested in making buggies and raising and selling horses. They were about to go out of business. When Thomas Edison threw the switch and lit up a building in New York for his investors and formed General Electric, the makers of gas lamps were doomed. Unless they could shift their own paradigm and start making electric lamps instead!

Here are some amazingly blind-to-the-future quotes:

“The phonograph is not of any commercial value.”—Thomas Edison, inventor of the phonograph

“Who the hell want to hear actors talk?”—Harry Warner, Warner Brothers Pictures, 1927

“There is no reason for any individual to have a computer in their home.”--Ken Olsen, President, DEC Computers, 1977

“Sensible and responsible women do not want to vote.”—Grover Cleveland, President of the United States, 1905

So where are you in your thinking today? Are you trying to hold on to a business model that has been replaced by a new one and so is no longer sustainable in its present form? Has all the doom and gloom in the news got you complaining about the way things are and what’s happened like a Tuna instead of looking to the future and figuring out how to make something new happen like the Dolphin you truly are? While so many of the big publishers today are struggling and trying to figure out how to maintain their business in this new day of the internet, my publisher, Sourcebooks, led by the amazing Dominique Raccah, has embraced the new media. They are creating e-books out of all their backlist, and adapting them to smart phone apps. As a result, they are more profitable than ever before!

So instead of moaning about what’s lost, embrace what’s new! I declare the recession is over - for all of you who are my Dolphins. Yes, change is hard, and you may have gotten hurt by all the turmoil in the financial markets. Hey, me too, but so what? Crying about failure isn’t going to get you where you want to go. It’s time now to return to optimism, invent new products, services, and strategies for achieving your dreams. It’s an exciting new world – embrace it!

Seth Godin, author of “The Idea Virus” and many other books, writes in his blog:

All the evidence I've seen shows that positive thinking and confidence improves performance…it's been shown over and over again that it improves performance over negative thinking.

Key question then: why do smart people engage in negative thinking? Are they actually stupid?

The reason, I think, is that negative thinking feels good. In its own way, we believe that negative thinking works. Negative thinking feels realistic, or soothes our pain, or eases our embarrassment. Negative thinking protects us and lowers expectations.

In many ways, negative thinking is a lot more fun than positive thinking. So we do it.

If positive thinking was easy, we'd do it all the time. Compounding this difficulty is our belief that the easy thing (negative thinking) is actually appropriate, it actually works for us. The data is irrelevant. We're the exception, so we say.

Positive thinking is hard. Worth it, though.

Spend no more time crying over the lost paradigm - the one you were comfortable with, that made you a comfortable living…in the past. The world has changed, and there are customers waiting for you to bring in the new ship. Don’t waste any more time longing for the ship that has sailed. Ship #1 sank, so go build Ship #2 – or 5 or 20! Build new ships and send them out. There are still riches and happiness galore for you to find!

People are praying for you to show up with something that will meet their needs. Create it and find them. That’s your business.