“Aspiring leaders work hard to live up to others’ expectations, and so the qualities that made them special to begin with — those that helped them excel and feel engaged — tend to get buried. They behave more like everyone else, which saps their energy and ambition.”
“I happily don’t know what I’m doing. I feel that it’s an artist’s responsibility to trust that.” — David Byrne
I knew I was doing it too much.
It was easy to justify checking my phone constantly — especially since I write a weekly newsletter that features a collection of valuable ideas found through hours of searching the web and browsing my social feeds.
But a couple weeks ago, I recognized I had fallen into a dangerous loop and that my phone use —especially the time spent checking email and social media feeds — was out of hand.
So I did something about it.
We can learn a lot from the Piano Man.
I went to my first Billy Joel concert last weekend and in addition to a great show, it was a master class on how to connect with an audience.
No matter whether your audience connects with you in a stadium or in their Facebook feed, there’s a lot to be learned from what Billy Joel did on a warm Los Angeles night.
Here’s what I noticed watching Billy that can help you connect to your own tribe.
“Stories are a ‘write API’ for humans — that is, a channel for inserting beliefs into other people’s brains.”
“Maybe we’re all looking at our boomer parents’ social media strategy (if you can call it that) the wrong way. Lack of gratitude for their love aside, maybe it’s refreshing that they don’t ‘get’ it, that they have no interest in curating some fake proxy version of themselves on the internet. It’s possible that they’re the last vestige of real purity online, and that’s probably why they make us so uncomfortable.”
“It may be obvious that printing presses don’t make much sense with the Internet, and most websites have moved to ad networks for the obvious reasons; in fact, though, nearly all of the content in most newspapers is not just unnecessary but in fact actively harmful to building a sustainable future for local news.”
“Promises are like debt — they accrue interest. The longer you wait to fulfill them, the more they cost to pay off.”
“Generally, if someone tells you he will pay you back, he will not pay you back. The more assertive the promise, the more likely he will break it.”
“For the past eight years, I’ve sent quarterly personal updates. Every January, April, July, and October, I send out an email to about 200 or so of my friends and colleagues.”