Coloring (and Marketing) Outside the Lines.
There’s plenty of room to push outside the lines. You just have to be the one to do it. As we get older and more knowledgable, we become layered with a variety of rules on what good business looks like.
No, I am not saying we should toss those strategy plans out the windows. Please hold onto them. We will need them shortly.
One of my very first jobs, in my early twenties, was as a personal assistant for a prominent philosopher. I was in charge of everything from food delivery to organizing registration for events. A typical assistant job in New York City. One day I was writing out a very long and colored coated to-do list. My boss was giving me a somewhat subdued disapproving look. I turned to invite the comment. Very poised and with no judgement, she said, “you have to be careful to not over organize. You will lose the whole point.”
I understood it, at the moment, to say that I was taking too long to color in the days of the week. And that held immediate truth.
Now, I understand it to say that if we are too busy with lining things up, we begin to make everything systematic. Yea, there is good cause for that. If we didn’t have that strategic plan to go by, we might be throwing things against the wall to just try it or we don’t do anything at all.
But once that is made, we need to make sure we get into the action without the rules. Blow up the idea, you can always let some air out. See what happens when you explore like a kid…without judgement or bias.