Endless online networking. Content consumption. Webinars. Long-format videos. Short-format videos. Podcasts. Joint-ventures. Collaboration. One-to-one frog kissing.
Dues. Workshop fees. SaaS. Apps. Plug-ins. Add-ons. Helpers, parsers, and all kinds of purpose-based AI. Cloud storage. Cloud backups. Cloud backup subscriptions. Authenticity fees, certification fees, continuing education fees, taxes, overhead, mobile subscriptions, Internet subscriptions, all other utilities. Website advertising. Social media advertising. Boosts, promos, placements, and pay-to-play visibility of all kinds.
CRMs. Integration with CRMs. Pay-to-access data to load your CRMs. Pay-to-access-data download fees. Lead generation. Lead magnets. Done-for-you lead generation and appointment setting. Tech support. Paid priority tech support. Time spent making it all work as it was claimed to work in the first place. Leading by example.
One hundred touch points of trust. Semi-spammy funnels. Warm market email. Building the lists, nurturing in the lists, gradually edging out your competitive list-based emailers. Free list-driver events you attend. Free list-builder events you host. Using AI to create the eleventy-one emails you’ll send to your list. Believing that it is all the right thing to do.
Overcoming resistance. Keeping a positive mindset. Showing up every time. Putting one foot in front of the other. Smiling. A lot. Nailing your elevator pitch. Niching down. A/B testing your messaging until it works. Becoming the bigger better faster meme everyone is tired of. Creating a 20,000-word sales page with lots of charts and testimonials and short video and colorful fonts and plenty of “buy now” buttons. Wondering why none of it works while also having an attitude of gratitude.
Coaches. Coaches for coaches. Seminars. Online seminars. Online workshops. Contract marketers. Website designers. Website optimizers. SEO experts. Traffic builders. Subscription builders. Monetization tricks and tips. Disciplined entrepreneurship. Good to greatness. Finding the gap where you can gain. eBooks about everything. Writing eBooks about everything, like your last coach, seminar, or workshop instructed you to do.
Convincing people. Showing people. Offering incredible value, and proving with screenfuls of how much one could save if they buy today. Unlimited guarantees. Having an incredible ironclad bulletproof no-nonsense offer. Claiming “best in class” and “best practice” and “evidence-based” and “most experienced” and “look at these case studies!” Showing endorsements from anyone better than you in your lane.
And even as you’re reading this, I know you’re wondering what I’m selling.
I’m not selling anything.
My big ask, though, is for you to stop.
Just stop. Stop all of it. Take a good, honest look around at the scene you’ve created. Re-discover yourself. Check into sustainability, especially if you’re already doing any of the stuff above.
AND
If it’s working for you, keep going. Someone has to be there to serve those under the big part of the bell curve. Thank you for doing so.
Otherwise, join me and do something else. Be brave enough to recognize that all of the stuff above doesn’t transform anything. Own your authenticity and your status as an outlier. Why? Because we are the authentic human outliers that will carry everything forward when the big part of the bell curve collapses under its own unsustainable weight.
We are the genuine creators, the artists, the poets, the musicians, the sculptors, the innovators who aren’t just making a mimicry out of what has gone before. Imagine Jo Bach in today’s world, laughing at all the AI-generated “music” that is supposed to sell. Imagine Michelangelo’s or DaVinci’s opinions on graphic novels, made-for-streaming movies, and the kitsch “art” that sells in our age.
Then, imagine yourself. Unique. Gifted. In ways that belong only to you. Imagine how your gifts fit into none – repeat none – of the shiny boxes that today’s technology dangles before you.
So stop. Stop all of the BS-based stuff you’re told to do. The stuff that doesn’t resonate with your gifts. The stuff that doesn’t light up your soul. Just stop it.
I know. You’re going to feel empty and lost. You’re going to wonder where the next client or customer or student or collaborator will come from. I promise you, they are there. They are the quiet ones who, like you, are taking a breath, stepping away from the noise, exiting the content maelstrom, and remembering what it means to be human again.
And you know what? Being human is attractive. No technology can replace human connection, human empathy, human emotion, human kindness. We thought technology would bring us together and well, the results of that belief are on display worldwide.
Your gifts don’t deserve that. They’re authentic. They’re yours. They are outliers to everything that the noisy world wants you to believe is good, productive, and possible.
Don’t waste them.
“Beyond all notions of right doing and wrong doing there is a field. I’ll meet you there,” wrote the poet Jelaluddin Rumi.
Let’s meet there.
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Over the course of more than 40 years of paying attention to how music works on us, Bill Protzmann discovered the most fundamental nature and purpose of music. For many years, Bill has experimented with what he learned through performing concerts, giving lectures, facilitating workshops, and teaching classes. For example, he first published on the powerful extensibility of music into the business realm in 2006 (here and abstract here). Ten years later, in 2016, he consolidated his work into the Musimorphic Quest. In this guided, gamified, experiential environment, participants discover and remember their innate connection to this ancient transformative technology. Also, The National Council for Behavioral Healthcare recognized Bill in 2014 with an Inspiring Hope award for Artistic Expression, the industry equivalent of winning an Oscar.
