All posts in Culture

Average americans breathe 16-20 times per minute.

Your body was designed to breath about 6 times per minute.

Sit for a minute and take 5 deep breathes. 10 Seconds each.

You’ll find that, in our culture, pausing to simply breathe is one of the most subversive acts you could do.

what happened to you?

when you were a little kid, you didn’t care about paying the mortgage or insurance or making sure that your car was nice enough so you wouldn’t be looked down upon.

you weren’t worried about being criticized by mediocre people

in fact, for you,  the voice in your head that keeps you from doing something awesome didn’t even exist yet.

you used to feel, act & talk like this…

Either you’re a cog in a machine or you produce, create, invent & problem solve.

Either you spend your time going playing by the rules and following instructions, or you spend your time seeking opportunities, coloring outside of the lines & changing the way the world works.

1. You could under-deliver and be paid MORE than you’re worth.
2. You can be paid exactly what you’re worth.
3. You can over-deliver and be paid less than what your worth.

The ONLY way you’ll be satisfied with being paid less that what your worth is if you’re doing something that really matters.

Lisa wrote an article that totally drilled the Columbus Dispatch.

Got me thinking that I’d share my thoughts on what newspapers could do to reinvent themselves (disclaimer – i’m speaking to something out of my league right now).

• give away the paper for free. charge more for adds/classified/etc.
• set up a blog for each person on staff, give them 15 minutes a day to write whatever the heck they want (obviously they’ll need some parametere like, “don’t complain about other employees, etc).
• set aside 1 week and give your employees the option to work overtime on dreaming up ways to re-invent your company. sometimes the people doing the work are nearer to the problem than management sitting around a conference room. use that to your advantage.
• Redesign your paper. Jacek Utko saved several papers by making them beautiful. You paper is probably not beautiful.
• After all this work, realize that you’re probably going to have to migrate your stuff online. The Columbus Dispatch (and the TV stations of Columbus) have clunky, ugly sites.
• Make your sites SO SO SO much more search friendly. Both from google and within the sites themselves.
• Pay bloggers to write articles. Maybe. Bloggers can be pretty lousy journalists but pretty terrific writers.
• Speaking of bloggers, scour local Columbus blogs, hand-pick articles that you’d like to run. Get the blogger’s permission (they’ll always give it as we bloggers very, very much like to see our own words printed). Also, they’ll probably do it for free.
• and here come the last & maybe most important idea….
• Cover articles that make people care more than make people scared. Every single news organiztion covers the homicide that happened last night near the 7-11. There are MUCH more compelling stories in the world today. There are stories happening locally, nationaly, and internationally that YOU have the power to connect people to. The stories you choose to run can make the world a better place. If you’re making the world a better place, people will buy your paper (and if they don’t and you go bankrupt, at least you’ll have something to be proud of.)

Lets say you’re trying to raise money. Lets say you’re trying to raise $100.

It’d be simple and easy to go to a wealthy person who is already pumped with your cause and share a convincing story about why you need $100. She’ll probably give it to you.

It is a much greater hassle to go to 100 people and tell them a compelling story and simply ask for $1.

But they’ll probably give you more than that. And out of 100 people, there will be some who will tell their friends, family, church or drinking buddies about your cause.