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Marketing and Movies: Hearts In Atlantis

Hearts In Atlantis is a wonderful drama that, when you finish watching it you will likely say “Wait, that was based on a Stephen King book?” It was, and it features a wonderful performance by the always brilliant Anthony Hopkins. Hopkins plays Ted Brautigan, a man with psychic powers who is being chased by a governmental group that wants to use Ted’s powers. Ted frequently moves to stay one step ahead of the government or ‘low men’ as he calls them.

But as the movie opens, we are in the present day and the studio of Bobby Garfield. Bobby has just received a package from the attorney of his childhood friend ‘Sully’ Sullivan. Bobby, Sully and Carol Gerber were childhood friends, and when they were children, Sully had once promised Bobby that he would leave Bobby his baseball glove in his will. Bobby opens the package to find that baseball glove inside. He soon learns that Sully was killed in a car accident, and travels back to his hometown to attend the funeral. While there, he meets with Sully’s attorney, and mentions that he hadn’t seen Carol yet, and that he was very much looking forward to seeing her during his trip. The attorney then informs Bobby that Carol had actually died a few years earlier. Shocked, Bobby returns to his old childhood home, and the majority of the movie is shown as Bobby remembering what his life was like one summer with Sully and Carol, and then later, when Ted Brautigan came into their lives.

One of the over-arching themes of the movie is the magic of being a child during the summer. So many of us seem to have that one magical summer of our youth where we made special friends, had our ‘summer love’ or just enjoyed being a carefree child enjoying a magical time in our lives. The movie does a great job of making us nostalgic for the summers of our youth. I’ll talk about this more in a minute. When Ted arrives on the scene, he is living next door to Bobby and his mom. Ted soon offers to pay Bobby $1 a week to read the newspaper to him, claiming his eyesight is failing him. Bobby shrewdly suspects that there’s more to the offer, and asks Ted to tell him what the REAL job is. Ted then explains that what he really wants Bobby to do is keep an eye out around town for the government group or ‘low men’ that are chasing him. One of Ted’s psychic abilities includes being able to ‘sense’ when his pursuers are closing in on him. Ted can also read minds, and when Bobby’s mom suddenly arrives home and yells for him, Bobby flinches, but Ted quickly grabs his hand and tells him “She can’t tell what you are thinking. You think she can, and that’s her power over you.”

All three of the childhood friends grow a quick affection for Ted, especially Bobby. Bobby’s father died when he was very young, and one of the subplots of the movie is Bobby recalling his love of his father. And in this scene, we find out that Bobby’s father and Ted were once at the same football game sharing another love, that of former Chicago Bears great Bronco Nagurski:

Nostalgia in marketing is very powerful, and I think it’s even more impactful in volatile times like this when we want to return to a time when things were more…pleasant. More peaceful, more normal. Nostalgia often involves us returning to our youth, and note that Ted made his story far more interesting to Bobby by involving his dad in the telling of the story.

Whenever I talk about creating content that builds awareness, I mention that you (as the content creator) need to remember that you are trying to connect with an audience that doesn’t know who you are. So you create content that focuses on what’s important and relevant to the customer. In the above scene, what if Ted had told Bobby a story about “Jim Thorpe, the greatest football player that ever lived.” Bobby’s first reaction might have been “Well he wasn’t as good as Bronco Nagurski, my dad LOVED Bronco Nagurski!” Bobby likely doesn’t know who Thorpe was, but he knows who Bronco Nagurski was, cause his dad loved him. Ted reaches Bobby by telling a story about a football player that his dad loved.

Nostalgia in marketing can be very powerful. Anytime you can tie your marketing messages to something else that your customer loves and remembers fondly, it’s a good thing. And if you haven’t, do check out Hearts In Atlantis, a wonderful movie. This quote from Ted may tell you where the movie gets it title from “Sometimes when you’re young, you have moments of such happiness, you think you’re living in someplace magical, like Atlantis must have been?”

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Twitter’s Political Activism May End Up Costing All Content Creators

Over a year ago, Twitter launched its ‘Managing the Conversation’ initiative. This was adopted, according to Twitter, to start monitoring and moderating interactions on Twitter based on user intent or perceived intent. In other words, if a Twitter user was engaging another Twitter user in a way that didn’t break the current Twitter rules, but that Twitter felt was harassing or hostile, then Twitter would have the ability to censor that user.

This idea immediately grabbed me as being a bad one, because Twitter was creating a way to shift from one-size-fits-all rules that apply to the entire community, to Twitter having the power to make judgement calls and independently police content. It created a scenario where two users could engage in the exact same behavior, but only one of them be policed by Twitter, with Twitter saying that the first user had a a negative ‘intent’ behind his content that the second user did not.

I follow a small group of reporters on Twitter who have a track record for giving accurate and credible information. It’s how I keep up with national and political news. Earlier this year, I began to notice that they were mentioning with frequency that ‘conservative’ Twitter users were having their accounts banned or blocked for ‘no reason’. At first I didn’t really pay much attention to this, the person being banned rarely thinks they deserved it. But a few months ago, Twitter began actively censoring President Trump’s tweets.  That got my attention.

A few days ago, Pres Trump, upon beating covid, tweeted that he was now immune from catching covid. This is a claim that many doctors around the world agree with. There is no consensus, but many doctors believe that covid patients who survive do have immunity from catching it again, either for a limited amount of time, or permanently.

When Pres Trump tweeted that he was immune from catching covid, Twitter labeled his tweet as being a violation of Twitter’s rules and potentially ‘harmful’ information:

https://twitter.com/Alan46285607/status/1315347487004086273

 

And as we can see, other Twitter accounts making essentially the same claim, aren’t being censored:

 

Doubling-down, Twitter recently announced that it will be very aggressively moderating content created about the US Election in 3 weeks:

 

Twitter is saying that any content created on election day that claims that someone has won a race (either congressional or presidential) that hasn’t been called by a ‘credible’ source, can be removed by Twitter. Twitter says it will also add ‘restrictions’ to any content that Twitter deems to be ‘misleading’ concerning the election.  For instance, if on election night I tweet that ‘Wow, I really don’t think (candidate) can win’, Twitter could censor that tweet or identify it publicly as ‘misinformation’.

You can see how this creates an environment where Twitter’s team can let their own political biases cloud their judgment and literally turn the site into a platform for election interference. By creating these broad ‘guidelines’, Twitter is signaling that it can and likely will censor political content that it doesn’t agree with.  As we see above, Twitter has already shown to inconsistently apply it’s own stated guidelines toward political content.

Now, those of you that don’t like Trump or don’t like conservative viewpoints in general, I can hear you saying ‘So what? This sounds great to me!”  Here’s why you should care:  There’s a law called CDA 230.

Section 230 of the Communications Decency Act is probably the most significant law protecting speech on the internet. In general, it says that content creators, whether they are individuals, or sites that host content from users (such as Twitter and Facebook), will be treated as if they are PLATFORMS, not publishers, under the law. But at the same time, they will have the ability to censor and moderate content left on their platforms by third-parties, as a publisher could.  If content creators were treated as if they were publishers under the law, then they would also be liable for content created by their users.  For instance, under CDA 230, as a blogger, I am not legally responsible for the content that a third party might create and leave here via a comment. Without the protections of CDA 230, I could be. That’s the advantage of being classified as a platform versus a publisher. CDA 230 was designed to shield us from legal liability for the content created by our commenters or users.

In essence, what Twitter is doing is skirting the good intentions of CDA 230. They are using the protections of CDA 230 to, it at least appears, censor content that supports certain political viewpoints. As we can all hopefully agree, this is not what free speech and open discussion is about. As you might guess, both President Trump and even the DOJ have signaled that they want to re-examine the protections that sites like Twitter have under CDA 230, and possibly modify it in ways that could hurt individual content creators like you and I, as well.

And before you take that as a reason to vote for Joe Biden, Senator Biden wants to go even further than Pres Trump, Biden wants to eliminate CDA 230 completely. Politicians on both sides of the isle have said they want to amend, change, or remove CDA 230 completely. As an individual content creator, that scares me.

So if you are a blogger like me, understand that your ability to create content and publish it as you have been could be on the ballot as well this November. Please educate yourself about what’s happening in regards to content moderation on social sites like Twitter and Facebook, educate yourself on CDA 230 and what it is, and finally educate yourself on what state and national politicians are proposing for the future of CDA 230. One of the most powerful aspects of the internet is that through tools like blogging, we all have a way to share our voice with the world. It’s vital that we maintain that precious freedom.

 

PS: This post gives a very mild recap of some laws regarding internet speech. This post is not offered as legal advice, and should not be taken as such. Please do your own research on these topics and consult a qualified legal professional if you have questions about how these laws might apply to you.

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Personalization Drives Revenue, Nike’s Founding Marketing Principles, WOM is Still King

Happy Columbus Day and Happy Monday! I hope everyone has a fantabulous week! I wanted to share a few marketing and business stories that caught my eye over the last few days:

My goodness, but my friend Kelly Hungerford finds so many great business and marketing articles. She’s a must-follow on Twitter. This study she shares found that businesses that personalize the marketing communications they deliver to customers see increased revenue from those customers. The study also found that the more customized the personalization, the higher the percentage of companies that realized increased revenue. So a more robust and customized personalization strategy works better, but of course will cost more. So there’s the fine line to walk between cost and benefit.

 

I love this list of the marketing principles from the first head of marketing for Nike, circa 1980. In particular, I love the first two rules:

1 – Our business is change

2 – We’re on offense. All the time.

This speaks to a leaders’ mindset. Nike is saying upfront that its marketing will be proactive, not reactive. It will set market trends rather than respond to them. I love that.

https://twitter.com/MohapatraHemant/status/1314818580198817792

 

Word of mouth is still the King when it comes to recommendations. A recent study from Bluecore found that Word of Month, Online Ads and Influencers were the top three drivers of recommendations. I did think this quote from the article was interesting: “However, when sorting by age, the results indicate that younger consumers are notably more impacted by the top three channels than older consumers. Comparing those younger than age 45 to those who are older, differences can be seen in the influence attributed to online ads (55% vs 30%), email (47% vs. 40%) and word of mouth (71% vs 59%).”  This suggests that as customers age, they are perhaps less receptive to recommendations from digital or younger sources, and more open to sources that they have had a longer exposure to?  Maybe, it’s interesting to ponder.

 

That’s it for this week, I hope yours is wonderful! Thanks for reading, see you back here in 24 hours!

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Toolbox Saturday: Writing Better Headlines

One of the best skills you can learn as a content creator is how to write better headlines for your content.  It can be a blog post title, a YouTube video title, a title for your Twitch stream. The headline you give content is vital to grabbing attention and then letting people quickly know what your content is about, and why it is interesting.

When I first started blogging, I wrote horrible headlines.  I’m fair to middlin’ now, as we say in the South. At first, I would write my post, then when the post was done, whip up a short headline that basically summarized what the post was about. The problem with this approach is that the headline is often the only thing someone sees about a post when it is shared on other social media sites. So as sharing on social sites became a more important way to boost awareness for your content, I began to get more serious about crafting better headlines.

What you want to do with your headline is give readers the most interesting parts of the post so they are compelled to click that link and read your post. If you write a boring headline or one that simply summarizes the post, your content can quickly get lost in a sea of links on social media homefeeds.

Let’s look at a few post examples and then talk about bad and good headlines you can write for that post.

1 – You are writing a post on the last decade in college football.

Boring headline – A Brief History of Modern College Football

Great headline – Rising Tide: How Alabama and the SEC Have Dominated College Football For Over a Decade

 

See how specific the second headline is? The first headline is pretty bland, it gives you a general sense of what the post is about, but by adding specifics, you can spark greater interest. Also note that with the second headline, we are honing in on a story within a story; we’ll look at recent college football history, but more specifically how Alabama and the SEC have dominated. This will interest fans of Alabama and the SEC, but it can also interest fans of programs like Clemson, who may think their program should be talked about more.

 

2 – You are writing a post financial planning.

Boring headline – Creating a Retirement Plan From Scratch

Great Headline – The Four Things Financial Experts Say You Can Do Today to Increase Your Retirement Nestegg By Up to 500%!

 

Again, the second headline is much more specific and gives the reader a better idea of what content they will be reading if they click the link and go to your blog. With the first post, you really have no idea how in-depth the post will be or how helpful.  The second post tells you there’s four things you can do, and doing those four things can increase the amount you have for retirement by up to 500%.  A slightly less effective version of this headline could be “Financial Experts Say Doing These Things Could Greatly Increase Your Retirement Nestegg!” That’s better than the boring headline because it’s slightly more specific, but the ‘great’ headline is even more specific, so it works better.

 

Now, the one thing you don’t want to do is go overboard with your headline and make it too ‘interesting’. You never want to make a promise with your headline that your post can’t back up. There’s nothing worst than clicking on an amazing headline, then finding out that the post itself is an ad for a product or a post that’s completely different from what the headline promised. That’s the quickest way to ensure that I never click on your links again.

So when you’re writing headlines, look and post and ask yourself ‘why is this post interesting?  What’s the HOOK that will grab readers attention and make them want to click the link and read the post?’  Again, make the headline as specific and interesting as possible, but make sure your post delivers on the big promises that the headline makes. Do both those things, and you’ll see your content getting more views and more exposure!

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The Secret to Getting People to Listen to Your Idea

We are neck-deep in political season here in the US, and that means there are a LOT of political arguments happening on social media right now. I honestly haven’t checked Facebook in over a week and have no desire to do so. These arguments often follow a pattern, they focus almost exclusively on both sides talking about what they dislike about the other party or candidate. When an exchange centers on areas of disagreement, it should be no surprise that…a disagreement breaks out.

If you want someone to listen to and consider your idea, then you focus on what that person is passionate about, and then explain how your idea relates to their passions. Notice whenever I talk about the Buyer’s Journey, it always starts at the initial stage where the buyer is Unaware and I Don’t Care when it comes to your company. This is the stage at which you are building awareness.

As I always say, the key to building awareness with an audience that has no idea who you are, is to focus exclusively on that audience. If you are wanting to sell to customers, then you talk about the customers.  You talk about what’s important to the customers, what their passions are. That gets their attention, when they start to listen to what you have to say, then you talk to them about how your idea links to their passions. If someone can see how their passions are rooted in your idea, then transference happens. They will then become passionate about YOUR IDEA.

Let’s go back to political debates for a second. Most exchanges on social media don’t focus on finding a common passion, they focus on hate.  Here’s what I hate about your guy, here’s what you hate about my guy. If the exchange is focused on what both parties dislike about the other candidate, then that dislike will also transfer to the person they are talking to. I don’t like what you are talking about so as a result I don’t like you.

So in simple terms; If you focus on the things I like and am passionate about, I will like talking to you.  If instead you focus on the things I dislike, then in turn I will dislike talking to you.

If you want someone to listen to you, first listen to that person and learn what’s important to them, what their passions are, then tie your idea to those passions.

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Who is More Important; Your Employees or Your Customers?

I saw an interesting question on Twitter recently; Which comes first, you employees or your customers? I think this is an important point because so many companies are focused on better connecting with its customers, but your company also has to engage its employees in this effort. Your employees need to be involved and understand why and how you are engaging your customers. You need to give your employees ownership of the process so that they can be invested in the outcome.

A few years ago I was doing on-site training with a company’s content marketing team. We were discussing their daily workflows and as I talked to the team, it became obvious that they were getting very little feedback from management on their performance. Finally, one content manager lamented “I have no idea if what I am doing is making a difference”.

When helping companies build out brand ambassador programs, I always stress to the company that it should transfer ownership of the program to its ambassadors as much as possible. When the ambassadors have ownership, they have a vested interest in working harder to see the program be a success.

The same logic applies to your employees. They need to be given as much feedback as possible on their efforts so that they can accurately see and understand the impact that their efforts are making toward the larger goals for the program they are working on. A great example of this is how GE utilized its employees to help attract better candidates for open positions. GE’s employees were empowered to play an active role in the process and they understood the value of their contributions. Additionally, they knew that there was a clear benefit for them if they performed well, ie they would have better and more qualified employees to work alongside.

Additionally, the most employees who are invested in a program and who understand the value of that program, the more likely it is to enjoy success. Here’s another example; A few years ago I worked with a senior marketing manager and her team to put together a robust brand ambassador program for her software company. This was something that the product’s users had communicated an interest in having. The manager and team were fully engaged and saw the value in the effort.  Unfortunately, the CEO wasn’t completely sold on the effort. I worked with the team to create the framework for the program, and we presented it t the CEO. The CEO, however, only wanted to use the parts of the program that he saw as immediately and directly impacting sales. This, of course, completely diluted the value of the program, as all the components needed to be in place and working together to realize maximum value. Obviously, this was very deflating to me, as well as the manager and team, who saw this as a sign that the CEO really didn’t understand or appreciate the value that the team could bring to this effort. Needless to say, the CEO’s plan to move forward with a piecemeal approach didn’t work.

When you are designing your customer engagement programs, remember to engage your employees as well. Keeping your employees engaged and aware of what’s expected of them and how their contributions are making a difference, is vital to the program’s success. Your company should do everything it can to equip your employees with all the information and feedback they need to evaluate and improve their efforts. And perhaps most important, your employees need to be able to clearly understand how their efforts are making a difference and impact in the execution of the program. We all want to know that our work is valued and appreciated. By communicating to your employees and recognizing the value they create, you are giving them the incentive to become more invested in the success of your programs. And the more invested your employees are, the more likely that they will work harder and smarter to see your programs be successful.

So engage your employees first so that you can better engage your customers.

 

PS: Apologies for not having a post up yesterday. I have been dealing with a cold the last few days and decided to take yesterday off and rest. I’m feeling much better today! See you tomorrow!

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Marketers Now Prioritizing Customer Retention over Customer Acquisition

I started to include this story in yesterday’s Marketing Minute post, but it’s so important that I wanted to expand on it a bit. Research is showing that marketers are shifting from focusing on customer acquisition to focusing on customer retention. Some of this is attributed as a reaction to the pandemic, as marketers believe customer acquisition will be easier as buyers are seeking out sellers, especially online. But also, most of us are wanting a return to normalcy and are more likely to stick with brands we know and trust. This just stands to reason.

But the debate over customer acquisition vs customer retention is one of my favorite topics, because so many companies completely mismanage the acquisition of new customers. One of the key teachings in my book Think Like a Rock Star was the difference between how rock stars acquire new customers, and how most companies do.

In short, most companies attempt to acquire new customers via advertising, while most rock stars acquire new customers via their current customers.

Now would be a good time to review The Loyalty Graph:

For The Loyalty Graph, the x-axis is Brand Loyalty. At the left there is 0 Brand Loyalty, as you move all the way to the right, Brand Loyalty is at its highest levels. These would be your ‘Fans’.  The y-axis is Size of Market. At the bottom there is no market, at the top there is a massive market. Let’s look at each customer segment:

New Customers – These are customers that have bought from your company for the first time, or potential customers.  Their Size of Market is massive, but they also have little or no Loyalty toward your brand.

Existing Customers – These are customers that are currently buying from your company. Note that the size of this group is much smaller, but levels of Brand Loyalty have gone up slightly.

Some Brand Affinity – These are regular customers, who have some affinity for your brand. They buy regularly, they probably like your products enough to endorse them to other customers, even if infrequently. The size of this market again shrinks dramatically, but loyalty levels also rise.

Brand Advocates – These are your ‘fans’. The customers that love your brand, that buy your products constantly, that promote those products endlessly to other customers. The size of this market is very tiny, but their loyalty levels are at maximum.

 

What’s fascinating about this graph is to note that companies and rock stars focus on opposite ends of the Brand Loyalty axis.  Companies focus almost all their attention on marketing to New Customers, while rock stars focus almost all of their attention on Brand Advocates.

Why is this important? When you see that New Customers are by far the largest market, it’s easy to see why most companies focus on this group. But while the size of this group is massive, notice that New Customers have almost no loyalty toward your company. So most companies are literally marketing to a group that has no interest in hearing their message. This is why advertising is so expensive, because you are paying for the fact that your message is interrupting people that don’t want to hear that message. Also note that most companies spend little or no attention to their current customers and fans, who actually have an interest in hearing their marketing messages.

Now notice that rock stars focus almost exclusively on their Brand Advocates. Brand Advocates are by far the smallest market, but notice they have the highest levels of loyalty toward the brands they buy from. Also, think about what brand advocates do: They advocate for your brand. Brand Advocates acquire other customers for you! They promote your brand to other customers and encourage them to buy from your brand. And unlike New Customers, Brand Advocates WANT you to market to them! They are desperate to hear from your brand and have more contact with that brand.

So think of the contrast: Companies spend billions to market to a group (New Customers) who does not want to be marketed to. On the other hand, rock stars only attempt to connect with the group (Brand Advocates) that wants to hear from them!

Companies spend billions on advertising to acquire New Customers, rock stars market to their fans and let their fans acquire customers for them.

Which method is less expensive?  Which method is more effective?  Obviously, letting your current customers acquire new customers for you the better and smarter play.

So why don’t more companies do this? Because by acquiring new customers via advertising, companies have far more control over its marketing messages. This need for control over marketing messages shows that most companies don’t trust their customers to market to other customers. Rock stars completely trust their fans, and empower them to market for their favorite rock stars.

Interaction leads to understand, leads to trust, which leads to advocacy. Rock stars constantly interact with their fans, so they understand them, and trust them. Most companies have little to no interaction with their customers, so they don’t understand them, and don’t trust them.

Your current customers are your best available tool to acquire new customers.

 

PS: I want to thank everyone who is reading and subscribing and I appreciate all the kind emails as well! Yesterday’s traffic was up 32% versus last Monday, so thank you for your support!

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Monday’s Marketing Minute: Driving Customer Loyalty, Consumers Trust Ads Alongside Content

Happy Monday, y’all! Ready for another great week, if you missed it check out my blogging recap for September, traffic up 21%!

 

Interesting data from XM Institute on how customer loyalty is impacted by CX. In short, they found that a very good customer experience greatly impacts how likely that customer is to purchase from and recommend a company. “The vast majority of consumers surveyed who rated their experiences with 319 companies tracked as very good indicated that they would purchase more from the company (94%) or would recommend the company (94%). Some 9 in 10 (89%) would trust the company after very good CX performance, while more than three-quarters (77%) would forgive a bad experience after such an experience. On the other hand, just 13% of those studied who reported a very bad experience with a company would recommend it.”

 

 

More than a third of consumers say their trust in brands grows after seeing its content alongside news. Additionally, the study from IAB found that 84% of consumer said their trust in brands grew or was unaffected when viewing this content. The larger question I would have is how is trust in the regular news content affected by seeing ads inserted alongside the news content? Personally, I tend to view sites as less credible if they are constantly mixing in ads alongside news.

 

Great recap of shopping trends for the Holiday season from Adobe and Avantis. I agree that shoppers are desperate for a return to normalcy, but also will be looking for deals and want an order online/pickup in stores option. Covid is absolutely changing shopper and consumer behavior, and smart companies are tracking these changes and adapting their service, support and offerings.

There’s your Monday Marketing Minute, hope your week is off to a fantabulous start, see you tomorrow!

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Toolbox Saturday: Using Topic Buckets to Create Better Content

You’re at a conference (pretend it’s 2019 back when we went to conferences), and you’re leaving the breakfast area to go up to the 3rd floor where the session you want to attend is about to start. A guy runs on the elevator with you and you both are on your way.  He asks what your company does. Now what do you say?  What are the 3 or so things that your company does that you would mention to this stranger? What do you want your company to be known for?

Those are your topic buckets.  Those are the areas you should focus on when you create content. Typically it’s best to pick around 3 areas that relate to your company, that you want to be associated with your company.

For instance, I have three main topic buckets for my content here; Customer experience, customer service/support, and customer loyalty. I want every piece of content I create to touch on at least one of those areas or buckets.

By using this system it makes it much easier to not only create a content calendar for your blog, it also makes it much easier for you to focus your content. The more defined your content is, the easier it will be for your readers to understand what you are writing about AND it will be much easier for search engines to understand what content identifies with your site.

For instance, when someone asks you “Hey what’s a good site to learn about Chinese cooking?”, then you will point them toward sites or blogs that you know cover Chinese cooking.  When someone goes to a search engine and asks “How do I get started with Chinese cooking?”, the search engine will point that person toward the website that it thinks best answers that question. In other words, it will be a site devoted to Chinese cooking.

Topic buckets can also help you fill and set your content calendar.  Let’s say you have committed to writing three new posts a week on your blog. If you have three Topic Buckets you want to focus on, then simply write a post for each Topic Bucket, once a week! Bam, three posts a week!  You can follow this schedule and over time you can track the performance of the posts in each Topic Bucket.  You may find that the posts in one of your Topic Buckets usually perform much better than the other two. This is likely a sign that your readers want to see more from you on that topic.  So you can adjust your content schedule, maybe write two posts a week from that Topic Bucket, then rotate your third post between the two remaining Topic Buckets.

 

I love using Topic Buckets because I am all about anything that simplifies the content creation process. Anything that we, as content creators, can do to create good content, faster, I’m all for it! Hope using Topic Buckets helps you with your content creation efforts! Have a great weekend, see you on Monday!

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Why We Worry and How to Stop It

I think most of us can agree that one of the biggest sources of stress in our lives is worrying. For the most part, we worry about the future.  We worry about tomorrow. We worry about how we will deal with something that is either coming in the future, or that we suspect will happen in the future.

And that’s important to note, because often, we find out that what we were worried about happening, never did.

I recently linked to an interview that Kobe Bryant did shortly before he passed away. It’s a great interview on many topics, one of which was playing for legendary NBA coach Phil Jackson. Phil is known to be pretty quirky, and Kobe was discussing some of the ‘odd’ things that Phil would do during practices, teaching breathing exercises, having meditation sessions, holding certain poses to release stress, etc. Kobe said that at first he thought all this was crazy, but then he noticed that Phil had completely bought into these teachings, so he decided to give it a try. Kobe said that he eventually realized that what Phil was teaching the team was how to live and play in the moment. Don’t worry about what will happen in 5 minutes, focus on running and executing the current play to the best of your ability. Kobe added that if you watch Phil’s Lakers teams or his Bulls teams with Jordan, that they never get rattled at the end of the game. They are always focused on the moment and they don’t let what could come next overwhelm them.

These comments reminded me of what Alabama football coach Nick Saban says he always stresses to his players. He says that he tells his players that “every play has a life of its own” and to never look at the scoreboard. He teaches his players to execute each play to the best of your ability, then immediately drop it and go to the next play. By doing this, he’s teaching his players not to focus on the last play or what they need to do on the next play. Focus on THIS play.  Focus on the moment.

My uncle has a condominium near the beach, and every time I visit, I always look forward to walking on a nearby beach. It’s incredibly relaxing for me. In thinking about what Kobe and Saban said about ‘playing in the moment’, I realized that when I walk on the beach, I completely focus on the water.  Watching it come in, watching it go out. In other words, completely living in the moment. So I’ve been trying to do more of that in my day to day life, focusing more on what I can do today, versus worrying about what will happen tomorrow if I don’t do what I need to do today.

So that’s what I plan on doing from now on, focusing more on the walk on the beach, and worrying less about how I will get home.