One Mentor, Coming Up!

Everyone has a Mentor but Us Chickens

Wouldn’t it be great if you had a mentor? People throw out, ‘my mentor this’ and ‘my mentor that’ like mentors are just laying around and all you had to do was pick one up.

Is there a Mentor section between the pet products and bathroom essentials section at Walmart or maybe a MentorMatch.com?

To me, getting a mentor seemed like a game that other people naturally knew how to play and I was clueless. What were the rules? How do you play?

When I was a kid we were always casting about for something interesting to amuse ourselves and we played games, old ones and new ones we made up ourselves. I am a member of Generation D, that is we were told to go outside and not to come back until it got Dark and not a minute later. One day my friend, Cynthia, said she had a fun new game for us to play. She was It. She had all six of us line up against a parked car. Then she picked Suzy. She bade Suzy to run with her behind the garage. A few minutes later Suzy and Cynthia ran back to the group, announcing that Suzy was now It and she got to pick the next person. Suzy picked me and all three of us ran. When we got behind the garage, Suzy slapped me across the face. “Don’t be mad!” Suzy said. “You get to pick the next person!”

Maybe the Mentor game worked like Cynthia’s game. Did I need to stand with the group and wait to get picked? Would someone pick me and slap me? Should I be the one picking and slapping?

I felt like having a mentor would be helpful but how do you get one?

I had another concern, too. I was chicken. Would someone who was good enough to be a mentor want me as a mentee? It seemed like a secret, mysterious ritual like the Masons: Invitation only. Not having a mentor made me feel like I was not just missing out, I wasn’t mentor worthy.

Even if you could find a mentor, how do you sign them up? Mentor Wanted. Apply Here.

Eventually, the mentor thing worked for me. In case the mentor thing is not happening for you — and you think it would benefit you personally or professionally — I’ve created a quick Guide to Getting a Mentor as a starting point.

Quick Guide to Getting a Mentor

Should you seek a mentor?

Yes.

What does a mentor do?

A mentor is available to chat with you occasionally. You should be able to talk with her about a project, a potential board position, your next career move. She should listen and offer her perspective and a few ideas you would not have thought of by yourself. She should be willing to make introductions to other people who can help you. She has your back.

How to identify a potential Mentor

Don’t worry too much about picking a specific person. Just be open to asking people with more experience for their input. It helps if you like the person too. Some people are natural teachers. Natural teachers are interested in helping other people learn and grow.

I’m female and most of my mentors over time have been women. It’s not necessary to be same-sex. Don’t overlook potential mentor relationships due to differences. Differences can make the relationship more valuable. But be sure not to overlook women as potential mentors. Women in business and in the community may have faced obstacles that a male in a similar position may not have encountered.

How to test the waters with a potential Mentor

Start with a question, email, text or in person is fine.

“I have a challenge and I wondered if you could help me.”

“Do you have 15 minutes for a quick chat? I have something [personal / professional / a project I’m working on] I’d like to run by you and get your reaction.”

Build up a Bank of Conversations

Take your time and over a year or so, build up a history of conversations with your Mentor candidate, three or four should be adequate. A conversation focused on helping you more than once a quarter may be overkill. Respect your mentor’s time.

Refer to relationship as a mentor relationship

Now, if it Looks like she is full-on Mentor material — Slap Your Mentor

I’m just kidding. Don’t slap your potential mentor. But I do use a stealth move like Cynthia’s game. If I really do respect her as a mentor and if she has been willing to have several conversations over time, here’s my stealth move that has worked every time. I make it a point to introduce her as my mentor in a group or networking situation.

Here’s how it works: I’m standing talking to someone I know and my ‘mentor’ walks up. I will say, “Bill, I’d like you to meet Jane. Jane has helped me with so many things, she is like a mentor to me.” See what I did there?

Or you can say at the end of a conversation, “You have helped me so much. You’ve been like a mentor to me.”

I had someone mention me in a LinkedIn video and she said “One of my mentors, Orange Doorhinge helped me…”

It would feel ridiculous to both parties if you were to go down on your knee and ask, “Will you by my Mentor?” But you can work around it by referring to the relationship as a mentor-like relationship. That can help you solidify the relationship in your mind and in the mind of this mentor-person for whom you have so much respect. It labels it and makes it real.

Popping the Question

That doesn’t mean you can’t just pop the question, given the right circumstances.

My college-age daughter, Mini Orange, has recently been interning at a small company reporting to the marketing leader. As the internship was coming to a close, they met to debrief the experience. Intern Leader and Mini Orange covered the usual stuff, what was going well and what could be going better. Toward the end, Intern Leader wanted to know: Did Mini Orange have an ‘ask?’ This is how amazing and smart Mini Orange is. She piped right up and asked if Intern Leader would be a mentor to her as she finishes up her course work and begins her career? According to my daughter, Intern Leader loved this ask. Well played, Mini Orange!

Decision Making is a Skill

Dither, Dither?

Several years ago, the leader of a small company I worked for was looking to fill an executive level position and had identified a strong candidate among a group of good candidates. The team was weighing in on the pros and cons of making an offer to the strong candidate.

After the typical scheduling delays, we had the candidate in for another conversation. Over the week end I thought about the choices. If I were asked on Monday for my recommendation, I wanted to be ready with my decision.

Business is about solving problems. Good businesses solve problems for other people. Great businesses solve problems for other businesses profitably. The likelihood of being a profitable business goes up if the business’ leaders can make decisions around solving problems inside their organizations efficiently. I’m not saying rush your decision and I’m not advocating making poor quality decision. I’m saying pay attention to how efficient your business leaders are at making decisions. It’s shocking how often business people struggle with decisions, especially since that’s what business often comes down to: Making a Decision.

Satisfying Cravings

In my twenties, I worked with an ambitious young woman and I asked her what her career goal was. “I want to make decisions,” she said.

Now that is a statement to think about. Did I crave making decisions, I wondered? The people who crave making decisions are like this young woman, they want the risk and the power. They understand that the decision is the fulcrum of opportunity, and they want their hand on the lever. They trust themselves. They see Decision Making as a skill; something that can, and must, be honed. They want to get better and better at making decisions.

Did I crave making decisions, I wondered?

A small business, or a small team in a big business, is a great laboratory with many opportunities for observing the interplay of opportunities, decisions and results. How long does it take for the people around you to make hiring decisions? How quickly do they decide to go forward with a campaign or cut an unprofitable product? There is a tendency to way overestimate the downside; we hesitate. That natural hesitation is an opportunity for you.

Become a Decision-Making Assistant

You can separate yourself from the average teammate or the average executive by learning how to do the most powerful thing you can do in business, make a great decision. Here’s how:

Crave making decisions.
Pay close attention to the other leaders in your company. Who decides what, when? Who dithers? Who makes gut decisions quickly? Who seems to always need more information?
Discover a decision that needs to be made that’s not being made.
When you get the opportunity, sort it out for yourself and make your ‘practice’ decision.
State that you have come to a decision in your own mind based on what you have learned.
Go ahead and state your decision: “If I had to make the decision right now, I would _____.” You can frame it as a ‘practice’ decision.
Practice decisions as often as you can

At best, you will be viewed as someone who makes remarkably sound business decisions who is able to act on opportunity when other people are unsure. At worst, your boss may think you are an idiot. On the other hand, you may be a very valuable idiot. Articulating your decision could spur your boss or co-worker to think differently, explore their own decision-making skills or take responsibility for the decision. Remember, decision making is the most important attribute of a business problem solver. You can be a huge asset to your boss — be a decision-making assistant.

Articulating your decision could spur your boss or co-worker to think differently, explore their own decision-making skills or take responsibility for the decision.

You will know it’s working when your bosses or other leaders start to ask you to weigh in when they have a big decision to make.

If this doesn’t happen – you can ask to be brought into the process. What did they think about what you said? What about it did they discount? Ask their help to continuously improve your decision-making skills.

At Least Pay Attention

About now, you are probably wondering if being a decision-making assistant is a good idea or not. At a minimum, it’s a good idea to pay attention to how decisions get made in your business, even small ones. What can you learn?

Decision making is a fantastic hobby. There is no equipment to buy; no club to join. There is an unending supply of opportunities to practice. You can do it alone or in a group. It’s like physical exercise, the more you work those muscles the stronger you get. Concerted, efficient decision making is weight training for your brain.

In the case of the hiring decision above, everyone was torn. It was a hard decision especially because no one candidate was perfect. On Monday, in the leader’s meeting when the topic came up, I volunteered: “You know what, y’all? I have thought about this and in my own mind I have come to a decision. I went back and forth all weekend and I am at peace with my decision. If I had a vote, I know how I would vote. I would extend an offer to the candidate right away.” A couple of weeks later, I was having lunch with the CEO. He was going back and forth about whether or not to hire the candidate. I shared my conviction with him again. The next day, the CEO actually extended the offer to the candidate. The candidate had just accepted another offer and we lost the opportunity on the hire. A leader can always use a decision-making assistant.

You Can’t Climb Your Mountain of Personal Growth — Without Pulling Up the Stakes Holding You Down

That fool stake

There was a person who lived on a mountain. He wasn’t a mountain climber per se. Yet he lived on the mountain and it seemed that it would be somehow better if he could get even a little higher up the mountain. It would seem like progress, like he was getting somewhere, and — he thought — the view would surely be better. He began every morning with the intent to make it higher up the mountain. Every morning he would look around, think about how great it would be to have a better view.

He put a good bit of effort into the project. He would push and pull on the tent to get it to move and sure enough he could get it moving and with enough effort keep it moving. There was one problem. Without realizing it, he was only pushing his tent around and around in a circle. He could not really understand why he wasn’t getting to a better place. People would walk by and sometimes he would ask them, why do you think I can’t seem to get higher up the mountain? “That’s easy,” they would say because the answer was so obvious to them. “You still have a stake in the ground. Your tent can’t move because you need to pull up that stake,” and they would walk on. “What are they talking about?” the mountain guy would ask himself. Finally, one of the passers-by walked over to the stake in the ground and pointed directly at it, “There. That stake. You cannot move your tent higher up the mountain until you pull up that stake. Otherwise, you will just spin and spin around that fool stake.” Do you know what the mountain person said? He said, “No fucking way. That’s my stake in the ground. No way am I pulling up that stake.”

“You cannot move your tent higher up the mountain until you pull up that stake. Otherwise, you will just spin and spin around that fool stake.”

Everyone has a mountain they are climbing, even if it is not very steep, we are all on our journey up our mountain. Everyone brings along his or her tent; we love our tent because it’s our comfort zone. When we want to rest, we pitch our tent.

To get anywhere, we have to be willing to pick up the tent and move on up the mountain. That sounds pretty easy. Just pack up and go. Unfortunately, picking up the tent is much harder than we realize.

Picture this: here’s a person at base camp and for whatever reason, maybe she’s been fired, or maybe she just had a baby, but the whole mountain seems to have changed around her and she has to move her tent. She picks up the stakes and gets moving. But guess what? There was that one stake in the ground that she refused to pull up, that one ‘has to be’ that she won’t move. She really won’t move up the mountain, she won’t grow, because she has that one core belief, that one value or standard that she believes is crucial to who she is. So she never really grows; she never really gets anywhere. In fact, she believes that she is doing all the right things to move forward and yet she is not growing up the mountain; her tent appears to be moving yet all it is doing is spinning around that one stake in the ground. In this case, her stake, her core belief, is that since she went to law school she has to be a lawyer. Perhaps she is not suited to be an attorney; perhaps she doesn’t even like the work or the working environment. She might grow more if she were willing to consider pulling up that stake.

What’s at Stake?

From where I sit on my mountain, it’s so easy for me to watch my fellow climbers and see when they are not making progress on their journey. I can see so clearly — they have that one stake in the ground that they refuse to give on. They are clinging to the one belief, the one truth they are not willing to give up. And as I talk with them about their frustration at not being able to on and move up, I think to myself, well she is stuck because she refuses to let go of anger at her mom. If she would just forgive her mom, she could move on to a new place. But that anger at her mom roots her; it’s a core belief: “My anger at my mother is justified and righteous and I should not have to let it go. So I am not going to. Ever.”

“Our beliefs and values are our stakes in the ground. Our perceptions are also our stakes, as are our grievances and resentments.”

Our beliefs and values are our stakes in the ground. Our perceptions are also our stakes, as are our grievances and resentments. The stories we tell ourselves about what happened in our lives and why those things happened, those are also our stakes. These stakes help us be stable and safe. They can pin us to our comfort zone bulletin board, or they can keep us pinned, like a wrestler, unable to escape; flailing ineffectually, wasting effort and going nowhere.

It not that easy for me to observe myself and see where I am pinned. I started asking people who knew me well: what is it that you see me doing that is obviously holding me back? “If the Orange Doorhinge could only see ____. If she would only _____.” How do you finish those sentences when you are talking behind my back? What do you think is holding me back from being happy, I asked, from growing, from being the most mature, mentally healthy person I could be? What is my stake in the ground, my blind spot holding me back, that I cannot see? The stakes of the Comfort Zone tent must be in the ground pretty good, I thought.

While I knew exactly what I would tell them (maybe what they say behind my back is that I am always telling them about their blind spots?), they had nothing for me. Well. That either meant that I was perfect or that they were way too scared to tell me (maybe my blind spot is that other people are afraid to give me feedback).

The “But I have to’s”

The things we don’t want to change in our life become our tent stakes. My values, my standards, my vision of how my life should be are all the tent stakes anchoring me where I am. These core beliefs are my “have to’s” or my “should.” What are your ‘have to’s” or “shoulds?” Do any of these resonate with you?

“I have to live close to my family”

“I have to work for a corporation”

“I have to work for myself”

“I have to have children”

“I have to live in a certain neighborhood”

“I have to go to college”

Some of these ‘have to’s’ are important. They represent values and your goals. Sometimes I can look at other people and it’s so obvious that their ‘have to’s’ are making them miserable or holding them back from growth because they refuse to see that pulling up that stake will help them move their tent.

Someone close to me had this core belief: if I don’t have a love interest in my life, life is not worth living. I can see how strongly he believes that and I can see how deeply important that could be to someone’s feelings of self-worth. Yet, for him, it’s a debilitating core belief. I have watched as he has invested time into toxic relationships, time that he could have spent learning or giving.

Unthinkable, Unbearable, Unacceptable

I had just wrapped up some marketing contract work that had not gone so well. It was a troubling experience. The CEO was a good friend, but, somehow, I was not a fit and the Exec team was not interested in extending my contract. What did I do wrong, I wondered? More broadly, I wondered: Am I doing the right things, in general, in my life? To get to the next level in my life, what could I be doing differently? How could I be thinking differently? What, if anything, is holding me back?

“I really questioned every aspect of my life. Especially the things I took for granted, like my marriage and my kids going to college.”

I asked myself the Tent Stakes question. What are the things in my life that, to me, it would be unthinkable, unbearable or unacceptable to give up? I began my list on a scrap of paper.

“I have to ignore my health..”

“I have to lose weight.”

“I have to please my bosses.”

“I have to give up on my dream of a second home.”

“I have to put up with this health issue.”

“I have to keep all my stuff.”

“I have to be a prisoner of my habits.”

“I have to feel bad about my career.”

“I have to be afraid I don’t really add value or know what I am doing.”

“I have to be marginalized.”

“My kids have to stay at their private schools.”

“My kids have to go to college.”

“I have to be married.”

“We have to stay in this house.”

“We have to live in Atlanta.”

“We have to have cars.”

“We have to have a certain amount of money for retirement.”

“We have to own a house.”

I really questioned every aspect of my life. Especially the things I took for granted, like my marriage and my kids going to college. I questioned aspects of my life I had never questioned before to discover what might be keeping me stuck. I stowed the list in the top drawer of my vanity so that I could look at it frequently. My vanity drawer, ha ha ha.

As time went on, I would pull out my list of Tent Stakes and contemplate it. Was there anything I needed to add? I added:

“I have to make as much money as I make right now.”

“I have to work.”

“I have to work in my current field.”

Which of the items I listed were holding me back? Which items on the list were inviolate to me? In other words, no way, no how, would I let go.

As I looked at the list, I would imagine letting go of each item. What if we needed to leave Atlanta? Was I willing to pull up that Tent Stake? Yes, I told myself. I pictured myself pulling up that stake and flinging it aside. Okay, what if my son didn’t go to college? What then? This one was harder. I really wanted my son to go to college. I pulled that one up and laid it down gently in case I felt I needed it back.

I went through the list. There was one that I said to myself, no how, no way, absolutely not giving it up — my marriage. That is my one “must have.” All my values, all my sense of character and integrity, dictated that my marriage was the one thing I would never toss aside. It was the one certainty in my life, worthy of my giving up any opportunity or managing through any calamity. My marriage, I felt, was my opportunity for self fulfilment and growth. It was my treasure and where I needed to invest.

This list helped me put my life in perspective and freed me from silly notions. I freed myself of core beliefs that were not necessary. I made different decisions free from unnecessary constraints.

Some of these changed my perspective:

I have to lose weight – Nope. Fuck it. My body would never be perfect anyway. Let go. I put that burden down and stayed about the same weight.

I have to be a prisoner of my bad habits – This one got my attention immediately after I wrote it. I definitely wanted to get rid of this Tent Stake. Thinking about myself as a prisoner of my habits made me want to escape versus willingly dragging this nasty Tent Stake along behind me day after day.

Some of the Tent Stakes made me think, re-evaluate. Some made me act: Picked up the dang phone and made an appointment with a dermatologist; accepted a new job; bought a bike and started cycling to work.

Then What Happened

I don’t know how much you know about String Theory. My understanding is that if String Theory is true, there is not a Universe, “uni” meaning single. There are parallel multi-verses, each Verse a version resulting from every possible permeation of every last thing.

If String Theory is true, maybe there is a Verse out there where my husband loves and cherishes me. Maybe one where he never fell in love with someone else. Maybe one where he kicked her to the curb instead of me.

Without my permission, life yanked up all the stakes. My Tent, the stakes, even the extra weight – all gone now.

I took out my list from my vanity drawer and added:

“I have to be alone.”

“I have to be financially insecure.”

“I have to feel rejected.”

“I have to settle.”

How to go for a run at 6AM when you hate running and you hate 6AM

Sometimes you have to lose ten pounds. And the quickest way between you today and you a few pounds lighter is a formidable cocktail of vegetables, exercise, and good sleep. Six months after the birth of my second child, I told myself I had to lose ten pounds. I’m a short person and ten pounds makes a big difference on my frame. Plus, I was always worried that at just a little over five feet, it would not take too many pizza pies for things to get out of hand.

Restricting my diet to reasonable choices and smaller portion sizes was depressing but doable. If you don’t eat it, it can’t make you fat, right?

As a mom, getting good sleep was not as doable. Good uninterrupted sleep? Probably not happening. That meant the exercise component was crucial. I needed a fast, cheap and sustainable exercise choice. Running was clearly the most efficient option. Of course, I hated running. Running, itself, was depressing to me. I’m slow. It made my knees hurt. I had no wind and no natural faculty for running. As I said, I’m short, and my stride is pitifully short too. Running, however, does not require a gym membership or special equipment. You don’t need a trainer. It’s not expensive. The time required is minimal – no time expended getting to and from a class. Just thirty minutes, shoes and legs. And motivation.

Now twenty years later, I still run. Every week I consistently put in a dozen miles. My knees, surprisingly, have held on. And somehow, I’ve managed to restart the running habit after every intermittent breakdown in routine that comes with sickness, work, travel or life changes — and despite never growing to even like it.

Here’s My 10-step process for how I did it.

The alarm goes off. I tell myself, I’m not really going to go for a run, I’m just trying to regain consciousness.
I tell myself, I’m not really going to go for a run, I’m just sitting up.
I tell myself, I’m not really going for a run, I’m just putting my feet on the ground.
At this point, I say, I’m not really going to run, I’m just putting on some warm clothes
And by the way, I’m not really going to go for a run, I’m just putting on my shoes.
Etc
Etc
Etc
Of course, I’m not really going for a run, I’m just stepping outside and walking to the mailbox.
Well, I realize, now that I am headed up the driveway, I might as well go for a run.

I know that Tony Robbins says to achieve something you have to take massive action. I know he says that the only thing that will bring change to your life is to raise your standards; that you don’t get what you want to have, you get what you have to have. I believe him.

I also believe that if you have a big challenge, break it up into doable chunks. Even a small goal sometimes needs to be broken up. In my mind, I had to lose those ten pounds. I had to find a way. I started where I could. I started taking micro-actions. Putting on my shoes. Unlocking the door. Closing the door behind me. It still took effort and determination. I didn’t like it.

Twenty years later, those ten pounds have been lost and found over and over. Who cares? Who cares if you or I am thin or fat, or super fit, or just barely logging enough miles to get out from under the unhealthy black cloud of a sedentary life. What matters is standing outside, with the door closed behind you, with your running shoes on and taking a step toward the mailbox.

Is this the Hill I’m Going to Quit On?

Introducing: The 17 out of 20 Rule

There are long hills, there are steep hills and there are damn hills. Each is a challenge in its own way.

The path I run has a section with a long low hill, followed by a steep hill. The steep hill levels off to cross a road and on the other side of the road the hill takes back over and climbs on. It’s that third section of the hill that makes me want to quit. With every step, I have to consciously tell my brain to think “Yes. Go,” instead of “No. Quit.”

When I come to the third hill, the ‘damn’ hill, I am spent. My quads are oxygen depleted and complaining as vigorously as they can to get me to quit. Since I don’t want to give up, I’ll look around and if no one is coming up or down the trail, I’ll cheat: I turn my body sideways and grapevine up the hill. With this method, I use different muscles that are not in anarchy. I get the psychological benefit of not quitting and it’s not only less painful, it works out a new set of muscles.

On a hot day last week, I spun to my side and began grapevining up, twisting my hips and arms back and forth with each grapevine step, really going at it — if I’m going to grapevine, I’m going to get the most out of it. On this day, just as I swung my arms from pointing down the hill to up the hill, I smacked right into a man running downhill. “Sorry!” I gasped and offered a bit more explanation, “I didn’t see you, and was just, you know, grapevining because.” He ran past, apparently more interested in getting down hill than in my explanation.

At the top of the hill, I saw a good, old friend walking her dog and stopped to talk to her. A minute or two later along comes the same guy back up the hill. Right after he passed us at the top of the hill, he turned and picked his way back down the hill.

As my friend and I chatted and I continued to catch my breath, two more times he ran up, turned and skipped down.

On the fourth time, as he ran past me, I clapped my hands and yelled “Go! Go! Go!”

On the sixth time as he jogged down the hill, I shouted, “How about one more! You have one more in you, don’t you?”

Over his shoulder he said, “This is seventeen out of twenty.”

For a couple of years, I have been running this same track, struggling up the same hills and every hill was a struggle. Yet, I was determined. Even when I wanted to walk, was desperate to stop, I wouldn’t. My mind would be pleading “No! Quit!” and I would correct it “Yes! Go!” I might grapevine, but I kept going. And still every time, with maybe one or two exceptions, that hill kicked my butt.

As I watched him run back down the hill I realized that I didn’t begin to know what it meant to run up that hill. I was just playing at it. He was committed.

Now when I want to be better at something I ask myself, are you going for 20? Have I put in 17 out of 20 effort? Or am I really just doing the equivalent of one trip up the hill every few days?

So now, I tell myself: that damn hill, in fact, any damn hill in my life, can kick my butt all it wants. But it’s going to have to kick my butt three times this run, and four reps each run next week. Until I get to twenty.

What else am I truly 17/20 committed to?

Dear New Parents: A Warning

I was one of the few people I knew who didn’t find out the sex of my child before she was born. My rationale: humans have had to wait for the moment of birth for thousands of years, why not me? What is the benefit of knowing against a mystery that connects you to the very earliest parents buying a crib for their cave? Having the room painted the right color from the spectrum? A closet full of tiny pink dresses on tiny pink hangars? So people would ask if I knew whether I was having a boy or a girl and I would say, “Nope.” It was funny to watch their faces droop for that split second while they tried to make sense of my answer. “Well then,” they all said every time, “All that matters is that it’s healthy!”

Through all the amnios, and sonograms, and blood tests, and examinations of the contents of my growing belly, the question was silently asked and answered. Was my baby healthy?

I remember thinking please just let this baby be delivered healthy, like it was a sailboat on a harrowing but exhilarating nine-month trip around the world with the hope it would drift safely back into port.

Waking up in my hotel room bed in an unexpected pool of blood: Was my baby healthy? In the ambulance ride to the hospital: Was my baby healthy? Lying in a hospital bed a few hundred miles from Atlanta after being told I may have to spend the next four months in a hospital in Washington D.C.: Was my baby healthy?

And then I was sitting on the bed in her room, holding her swaddled body in my forearms. Her head cradled in my hands, her face was red and chubby under the hospital beanie. “I waited so long for you,” I husked at her scrunchy little face. “And you are finally here.” And in that same moment, in that nursery with the deep blue painted walls, I looked at her and the horrible truth came upon me. The whole “healthy baby” thing was a scam, a crock of shit. Was every human who had ever had a child in on the joke? I imagined all the people who had mock-assuringly said “all that matters is that it’s healthy” waiting until my back was turned to give each other a yuk-yuk vaudeville wink.

I looked at her and realized that I would never take another breath without the specter and terror of her death hanging over me. I knew then that in every breath – in my last breath – I would be worried about her fucking health. This was no wavy sailboat navigation around the world, I had just been placed in the command module of a spaceship hurtling into space on its way to Planet OMG with absolutely no knowledge of any of the dials or instruments.

All right all you parents-to-be out there, don’t say I didn’t warn you.

The Theory of the Brown Couch

The Brown Couch

“When you try to be everything to everyone, you get the brown couch.”

Growing up, I always believed our home was beautiful. My parents had lived in Japan early in their marriage and our living room was accented with Japanese chests and pottery, an old hibachi served as their coffee table. The hibachi could be partly disassembled: the rectangular wooden base included a set of three tiny black drawers on each of the long sides and the center cooking section was lined with copper. A thick wooden collar fit on top of the base like a serviceable shelf. The collar was remarkably heavy with each side about five inches square of solid wood. A removable glass top fit into the collar turning the cooking pit into a table.

My father’s grandfather was a rockhound, meaning he spent his spare time in the desert near his home searching out rocks and minerals. He had a rock saw and a polisher and when he found a rock with geode potential he would cut it open and polish it. His workshop overflowed with specimens of obsidian, malachite and quartz and dozens of geodes from his expeditions.

Under the glass of the hibachi coffee table, a small collection of Grandpa Harry’s rocks was arrayed making the hibachi coffee table even more unusual and exotic in its living room home on Chesterton Drive in 1970’s Dallas.

So, I thought my home was beautiful and fascinating. I took pride in the way my mom made our sets of Great Books and Encyclopedias and my dad’s collections of jazz and big band albums seem elegant, and admired the charming, cheery turquoise color she had selected for the kitchen. From the wall of the den, hanging kabuki masks looked down on our flower-power print couch, grimacing at the outlandish upholstery and smiling on my mother’s flair in pulling it off. We had taste and flair.

No one else had kabuki masks in the Ethan Allen world.

My father’s career had us leapfrogging across states, landing in this city for a few years, and that city for a few more before the next jump. Almost every move seemed to require a new family room couch, to suit the carpeting or the shape of the room, or the style at the time. The flower-power couch was overtaken by the blue and green plaid sleeper, which abdicated to the tufted pleather cigar-bar couch and love seat combination, in its turn ousted by a couch and love seat covered in a slightly dizzy pattern sampling the Country-with-a-K motif of the eighties.

Enter the next couch regime.

The most important thing about the next couch was that it be perfect. Maria and Larry had a long list of musts. It must have a skirt. The pillows had to be unattached. The arms had to be this big and not that big. The seat cushion had to wrap in front of the arm. The height, the firmness of the cushions, the trim; these were all precisely proscribed. The requirements were as exact as one of those sixty-page software requirements documents I was never good at writing.

The actual fabric to cover the couch, however, was uncertain. Swatches were ordered. Swatches were held up to the walls and the rugs and the framed Carl Gorman drawing. My brother and sister and I were called to frequent summits to examine photocopies of furniture catalogue pages exhibiting couch candidates and to opine on Swatch A versus Swatch B. Swatches were returned.

There were lots of summits. Sometimes all three of us would be required to attend. Sometimes, it would be just me and I would learn that my sister had already picked the stripes but they just weren’t sure. What did I think? Were the stripes too stripey, they wondered? And I would be advised: don’t tell your sister we asked you about the stripes. Okay, I would promise dubiously; we were a truth-loving family. Did I need to keep it on the down-low with my brother too?

This was getting out of hand.

I decided to close the sale. The next time I was called in for a consultation, in my most confident voice, I laid out the value prop for Couch #AB89873 in Fabric Category H, Tweed Surprise. I laid out the benefits and advantages while they nodded yes. When I heard them express in their own words a future incorporating Tweed Surprise into their daily life, I announced. “Great! It’s settled then! Glad to know that all this diligence and careful consideration has come to this glorious and final end. As in Final Final, right?” “Final!” they chorused.

Not So Fast

“Your father needs you to come up to the house tomorrow,” my mom said. This isn’t, I asked, about a couch is it? “Of course not,” she lied. The kabuki mask winked.

In the end, they bought a plain brown couch. It’s not that they couldn’t make up their combined mind between couches. It was that they had so many requirements and so many opinions that they couldn’t resolve to any choices. Nothing could fit all the requirements and encompass all of the options

The Theory of the Brown Couch: When you try to be everything to everyone, you get the brown couch.

The Brown Couch is in the room every time a group gets together to approve a new logo or write copy. When it comes time to select a tag line, everyone parks themselves on the couch.

If everyone can agree then I am confident that it will not be memorable. It will never be Seth Godin’s Purple Cow. If the new idea doesn’t make almost everyone a little uncomfortable, it’s will bore everyone down the road. It it doesn’t sting, it won’t sing.

When I work with a designer and they are showing me a few proposed options, whether it’s swatches for a couch or a website project, I listen to their pitch and at the end, I always ask which they like best. That helps me see the design from the designer’s viewpoint which is usually holistic and the purest one, the version least hampered by my long list of requirements.

And then I say, now show me the one you liked that you were afraid to show me; the one you loved but thought I would hate. That’s the goldmine. Even when you do hate it, there will be treasure in it. It wasn’t built to please you and your long list of must’s. I want to see what the designer dreamed up without pre-editing their idea to meet group taste. By the way, this is one of the best ways to educate yourself about design on the fly and will help you learn more about how to speak design and get the most out of your designers.

Be not afraid. Resist.

Go look at any B2B website and typically you will have no idea what they actually do. The final approval committee for the messaging is too afraid to narrow the scope. You would think they would have done their Moore’s Positioning homework and they probably did. But fear crept in. The fear of being too specific. The fear of leaving out a use case, or a revenue stream, or a product line; this tagline, this copy, this logo has to encompass everything we do. I call this the “But What Abouts.” But What Abouts kill creativity and specificity. Think of it this way: an Oreo cookie doesn’t have chocolate chips or macadamia nuts or peanut butter, which are all great cookie ingredients.

I’m just proposing that what you leave out of your design, your podcast, your portfolio, your couch or your cookie might be the most important thing about it. Everyone will be pushing you to fit more in, to make everyone happy, to meet everything on the checklist. Resist.

I once worked on a billboard campaign for a non-profit. The provocative idea we came up with was simple. Everyone hated it. It was hugely successful.

The Junior League is a well-known women’s service and leadership organization with 10,000 members internationally. Most towns in the US have a chapter founded in the last century by women of substance and social standing. In the following decades, League members invested their time and creativity into understanding and addressing issues that impacted the broader community outside of their families. Like most chapters, the League in my town actively partnered with other community groups, business leaders and non-profits to make good things happen in our town. Our organization had a sterling reputation; or maybe not. In fact, we found, we had image problems. As the head of marketing that year, I decided to re-brand our League and developed a multi-pronged plan, complete with a new, provocative tagline to remind the community of our positive impact over the years. I presented the plan to the incoming president who had strong reservations. After all, our image, one of being an effective force in the community, was on the line; years of commitment, work and effort were being forgotten or discounted and being replaced with a less than impressive reputation and worse, we were being perceived as irrelevant. She was nervous and my idea was risky. Was I really going to plaster that tagline billboards? “No,” I said, “Not if you truly hate it. But if you are willing to take a risk, let’s get the Board’s approval and go forward.

It turns out that with that billboard campaign I single handedly destroyed the League in our community. “Did you know,” I was asked, “That my boyfriend and I were out to dinner with a group and everyone was saying that those Junior League billboards were awful. They make the League look terrible.” Really? I was intrigued: “Did you and a group of men and women really spend time at dinner talking about the Junior League? Let me ask you, did you passionately share with them the history of our League and what we have done and are doing in our town? Did you make sure they knew that the Junior League was much more than do-good snobby women wearing pearls? Yes, she emphatically had. “How many other times,” I asked her, “Has your dinner conversation centered on the League’s work?”

“None,” she replied.

If we had drawn up a list of requirements for how to get the League back in the conversation we would have failed. If our billboard campaign idea had been put to a vote by the membership, it would have been shot down. Two months after the first billboard went up, I was talking to the executive director of a fledgling non-profit in our community that was just on the brink of thriving, one that addressed the needs of children being emancipated from the child-services foster system. She looked me in the eye and said, “My goal is for our non-profit to be featured on one of those Junior League billboards.” The Junior League provided significant funding and leadership talent to found and support that organization. That’s So Junior League!

The Purple Cow Corollary: Boring Never Works

Seth Godin helped marketers everywhere when he wrote about the The Purple Cow: If you were driving down the road and saw cows, you might think “There’s a cow” But if you were driving down the road and saw a purple cow, you would say to your friend “Hey did you see that purple cow.” You might even take a picture, or talk about it at dinner later. A purple cow is remarkable; it’s something you would likely remark on. Seth’s point is simply, if you want to people to talk about you, be remarkable.

You may be picking out a couch. You may be creating a new logo and website. You may be waking up a community to a new perspective; consider this: If it’s worth doing, it’s worth not boring everyone.

You really have to influence the “But What About” people. Show them examples of how weirdness, a big sloppy, flower-patterned couch or an out-of-place hibachi filled with rocks could make it beautiful. Talk to them. Say if you really hate it, we will kill the idea, but what if we gave it a chance. Sure, it may not work. But here’s something you can confidently say to get them on board with the purple couch: Boring Never Works.

But Wait

Something that is everything to everybody can never inspire wonder. It will never be wonderful. So does it follow that wonderful is always great? Is there a place for a Brown Couch?

That question brings around a word of caution on the Boring Never Works rule: it’s better to have one Wonderful Thing at a time. A truly remarkable couch may not need remarkable pillows.

I was working with a decorator on a room in my home and we were choosing paint colors. Should we go with something bold? Orange? Or my parent’s old faithful, Navajo White? She said, “You know, this room has a lot going on.” She was right. It’s not that everything must be wonderful, it’s that at least one piece of the whole must inspire.

Choose where you will invest and strike there with boldness. Every outfit, letter, room or garden; every project plan, project launch or sales pitch should have one focal piece that inspires. To inspire, it should not be everything to everyone. It should include a risky step out on its own.