Solving or Creating

In most successful business-to-business selling, the big wins come from creating problems. Once the competition is busy using your new innovation, the other companies have to buy it to keep competitive. Once other brands are using your social medium, the laggard brands do too—not because you've solved their problem, but because you've created one. The people in a traditional bureaucracy buy something new when they have to, not when they want to.

Despite the formidable and sometimes soul-crushing odds against material and critical “success,” artists are some of the most doggedly tenacious, spirited, responsive, broad-minded, emotionally honest souls you’ll ever encounter. They’re eternally striving for the next step, the next leap. Those who stick with it do so at considerable psychological cost. More than anything, they want to create objects or experiences that encapsulate their highest vision of what life can be — and maybe, just maybe, help you see the world in a slightly different light.

To be seen

The fascinating lesson about human nature is that people aren't always driven by a rational analysis of work as an exchange of labor for cash. We want to be seen and we seek to belong. It's a shame when an organization takes advantage of that and treats people unfairly. When we offer people a chance to matter and to be seen, we have the chance to offer them something magical.

The problem with Hit Radio

When you only listen to the top 40, you're letting the crowd decide what you hear. And if you consume nothing but the most liked, the most upvoted, the most viral, the most popular, you've abdicated responsibility for your incoming. Most people only read bestselling books. That's what makes them bestsellers, after all. The web keeps pushing the top 40 on us. It defaults to 'sort by popular,' surfacing the hits, over and over. Mass markets and math being what they are, it's likely that many of the ideas and products you consume in your life are in fact, consumed because they're the most popular. It takes a conscious effort to seek out the thing that's a little less obvious, the choice that's a little more risky. Popular is not the same as important, or often, not the same as good.

Happy

When I was 5 years old, my mother always told me that happiness was the key to life. When I went to school, they asked me what I wanted to be when I grew up. I wrote down "happy". They told me I didn't understand the assignment, and I told them they didn't understand life. John Lennon~

Fine Art

From an artist friend of mine - JB Berkow Fine Art is produced by dedicated artists who have honed their skill and vision until they are able to create in a unique and distinctive voice. This did not come easy. It took these artists years of blood sweat and tears to develop their voice. For all this work and sacrifice, they deserve our respect and an appropriate amount of money for their efforts. Fine Art is not mass produced. It is not dashed off by low-paid artisans contracted by design firms who only think of art as accent pieces to match the decor. It is not sold by large box stores. Fine Art is so much more than that. There are so many people who never think twice about paying several thousand dollars for a chair to sit in, but find it intolerable to spend the same amount for an original work of art. That attitude has to change or there will be more and more galleries closing their doors and less and less artists pursuing their dreams. That would be a travesty. Support fine art and the gallery system. Buy Art!

Just plain vain

Visited a gallery in Vero Beach today. Owned by 9 artists. They charge $500-600 a month for a guest artist. That's not a vanity gallery, that's a vain gallery.