How do I make a mark when it seems everything that can be created, said or done has been created, said or done by someone else?

Short answer.

No field is too crowded to make a mark when you’re remarkable. Click here to tweet!

In fact, the very existence of a robust market filled with competition and a near cacophony of voices is a signpost of demand, which in business, is a good thing as long as you do one big thing…

Become the signal, not the noise.

There are two things you really need to own, hone and cultivate if you want to burst onto a massively crowded scene.

First -

Embrace your eyes, ears and filters.

The way you see the world is unlike anyone else. Put 100 people in a room, surprise them with a dramatized alarming incident, then interview them after and you’ll get 100 different stories about what happened. 100 people see the exact same thing, but experience it and process it differently. The filter you bring to any experience literally alters what you believe you see and hear. Often on the level of gross distortion.

This may not serve you well in eyewitness scenarios, but in everyday day, the unique perspective you bring to any situation can be become a huge asset. Your unique world-view and life experience makes you experience circumstances differently. It allows you to see possibilities and connections that nobody else sees.

This blends with the “fact” of a circumstance to fuel a synthesis of ideas that are unique to you and only you. In a conversation with story guru, Robert McKee, as few years ago, I asked McKee how he defines talent. His answer – talent is the ability to see how two ideas blend together to create something bigger than both that nobody else sees.

So, truth is, it doesn’t matter how many others are operating in the same space as you. They are not you. They don’t experience that space the way you do, or bring the same world-view, filters, mental models and lenses to it. They don’t see what you see, nor assemble the pieces and come up with the same conclusions.

That’s advantage number one. Our unique experience intake and synthesis process.

But it won’t get you where you want to go. There’s something else…

Cultivate your authentic voice.

This is where craft becomes a core differentiator. It’s not enough to take things in and process them differently, you’ve also got to be able to turn that into output that not only clearly expresses your unique point of view, but does so in a voice that is unique to you.

Here’s where I see so many entrepreneurs, writers, artists and creators go wrong. They have something extraordinary in their heads, but they don’t trust in their ability to share it in a compelling enough way through their own authentic voice. So, they either dumb it down, bor-ify it or find the 5 people in the space who seem to be kicking ass and adopt an amalgam of those peoples’ voices.

We all have influences we’re drawn to. And, it’s not unusual that we draw pieces from those influences along the way to cultivating our own voices.

But, long term, borrowing from others is death to differentiation. And, it’s death to the maker looking to make a mark.

You MUST cultivate both the confidence and craft to be able to express what’s in your head in a voice that is fully aligned with who you are, not with the 5 people you want to be. If you don’t, people will dismiss the quality of your ideas as derivative. Not because they’re bad, but because the voice you’re using to share them is just an amalgam of other, already known voices.

So, to wrap things up, own your lens and your process, cultivate your voice, align them with your authentic self when you bring them to the world in the glorious story that is you. Doesn’t matter whether you’re selling doughnuts, creating online content, building businesses or starting movements that change lives.

This may take time. Months, maybe years. But it’s time well spent.

So, what do YOU think?

How have you worked to emerge in a crowded field?

Share your thoughts in the comments below…

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Last March, my daughter Grace should have been twenty. She should be a sophomore in college. She should have come home for the weekend. There should have been a party and mani-pedis and some lame-ass boy or two hanging around waiting around for us to get home so he could drool all over her.

But there wasn’t. Because Grace died shortly after her premature birth. And instead of a lifetime of little girl memories, I had 32 minutes to be her mother.

People say they can’t imagine what it’s like to be the mother of a dead child, but I think they can. They can picture the whole thing. They just don’t want to.

But here’s the thing, Sweet Cheeks – sorrow, loss, illness, betrayal, economic hardship, divorce, loss of faith – these circumstances are just part of EVERYONE’S human condition. If you live long enough, you WILL have to face these and other losses.

When you do, here’s the first challenge you are likely to meet – lack of training.  In our culture, we don’t teach people how to work through loss and suffering. We acquire things, achieve things, make things happen.

It’s a woefully poor strategy for living. When we come face to face with the shadow side of ALL GAIN – which is LOSS – we are tragically unprepared.

But there ARE actionable steps you can take to find your way through. And more than that – I can GUARANTEE you that, if you work for it, you will also find a way to make use of your suffering in the best possible way — to TRANSFORM the lives of others.

Here are eight basic steps to overcome hardship and transform TRAGEDY into TRIUMPH:

1. Decide.  When tragedy strikes, ultimately, you have just one decision to make that will determine the whole of your remaining life – Will you get bitter? Or better? Your future happiness depends on the choice you make. Ironically, the choice to heal is not as simple as it may sound. It means letting go of the immediate reward of the attention your suffering brings for the “mayhaps” promise of future insight. It is a risk that all who heal take and is not easy while you are in the hell of acute loss. I urge you to make it nonetheless.

2. Heal.  Reach out to any resource you need to get better. Be extraordinarily loving to yourself while you are “in process.” Grief has an energy of its own. It will have its way with you, until it doesn’t. But you can help yourself through (If you’re interested, I have a written a mini-tool kit for healing. Details are at the end of this piece). Set boundaries around your suffering. Make appointments with it, in fact. Carve out moments where you focus on reclaiming your joy and your light.

3. Let Go of Your “Story.”  If you want to transform your life, you must let go of “your story” of loss.  You have to be willing to let go of all attention you get for your suffering. In fact, you will have to let go of your story again and again and again throughout all of your life. There’s just no way around it. The price of martyrdom is joy.

4. Understand What Loss Is, and Is NOT. Loss is the shadow of joy.  It intrinsic in ALL happiness.  Endings and beginnings are simply the yin and yang of change. One can NEVER be present without the other. If you choose to spend your life with someone else, you also “lose” forever the freedoms of your single days. Loss is the bill that comes due for the price of loving. Accept that and you are free.

5. Connect with Others Through Your Loss.  Pain connects you to others in a way that joy never could. Here’s why — while you may feel happy for another person, you can’t really feel their joy as your own. Sorrow, on the other hand, creates deeply shared feelings of empathy, compassion, and connection. Lean into the sharp edges of your suffering. Allow it to whittle away what you don’t need.  Most of all — don’t suffer alone.  Others are waiting for you and NEED to be part of your story of healing.

6. Appreciate Everything.  Train yourself to appreciate everything – even the hard things.  ESPECIALLY the hard things.  When you keep your heart open in this way, you will see the beauty in everything around you. You won’t BELIEVE THE EXQUISITE beauty of life once you have learned to harness the transformational power of loss and suffering!

7. Claim Freedom from Fear.  Once the “worst thing” that can ever happen actually happens, you get to live your life FEARLESSLY!  After all what else could possible befall you? But what if the worst thing hasn’t happened to you personally?   Can you still live free from fear?  Absolutely!  Here’s how: Determine that, if your “worst thing” ever happened, you would make a study of how others have triumphed over that thing. Once you make that decision, you have a “worst case scenario” action plan in place.  You are now free to live fearlessly!

8. Share Your Wisdom.  Your losses will make new discoveries, new soul-places, new visions available to you that WERE NOT POSSIBLE before.  In fact, your losses make you UNIQUELY QUALIFIED to be a source of healing, hope, and joy. Other people need to know about your story of triumph.  Because, soon enough, it will be there turn.  Let the grace and light of your newly healed heart be a beacon of hope for everyone you meet.

After pain there is Grace — if you work for it.

Decide to get better.  Choose to heal.  Look for ways to share your newfound wisdom with others.  And, if I can help, please let me know.

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Dive into more of Jennifer’s works at LifeAfterTampons.com. She’s also written a five-part series called Get Bitter or Get Better. If you’d like her to send you a copy, register here (It’s free. Because you’re priceless.)

It’s no different with me. I learned to write response-driven copy in part because I wanted to learn how to sell more stuff, but even more because I’m fascinated by the process of influence and action.

How can you craft a set of words or images, in print, on screen, on video or audio to move people through a psychological process that triggers a specific behavior?

That’s my real fascination. How can I inspire someone to start meditating, eating better, moving their body, embracing a calling, act in the face of uncertainty? And if there’s some way I can help them along this path, how can I show them the value of my assistance on a level that makes the decision to buy a mandate in their minds?

It’s like a giant psychological puzzle for me.

Insanely complex, one part craft, one part science, one part Hail Mary.

To help accelerate my learning, I’ve ended up studying many of the greatest copywriters and marketers in the world, dead and alive. If you look at my book shelf, you’ll see as many books from before 1950 as you will after.

I’ve also keyed in on the marketing and launch processes of the best marketers online. I subscribe to their newsletters and every time they launch a new solution, I track their processes from beginning to end. Often creating folders filled with screenshots, video and copy.

I don’t so much do this because I’m interested in what they’re selling (though, I occasionally do buy if the solution compels me). Rather I’m interested in zooming the lens out and examining the steps they’re taking to bring a solution to life and inspire people to buy.

I geek out over the seeming nonchalant copy and scripting (which is always anything but). Over the integrated use of video, audio, images and design to create a coherent, compelling and irresistible experience. One where you know you’re being sold something, but you’re also being provided such extraordinary value along the way, you treasure the process and feel empowered, understood and served, not manipulated.

Over the last few years, though, I’ve unsubscribed to many of those newsletters…

Reason being, it was just too much of the same thing. Same niche, same approach, same target market and essentially the same product. Innovation had more or less left the building.

But, over that same time, a few new thought-leaders have emerged who are really shaking things up. Pushing the envelope in a major way and making me think and learn again.

One of these is my friend, Marie Forleo.

We are very different people, but we both geek out over the same stuff. And she’s a great example of someone who’s pushing the marketing envelope from a place of genuine desire to serve and solve for a very specific community.

Right now, she’s a few days into the launch of her RHH B-School.

If you care at all about launching a product or service or building a business online, you need to go over there right now. Watch the first brief video, then sign up for the rest. Not because you intend to buy what she’s selling. You may or may not, that’s not why I’m sending you. But, because you will learn so much by watching what she’s doing with her marketing process.

You’ll see how she’s:

• Sequencing each step to create an intended state of mind and action
• Speaking to a very specific market segment that’s been horribly underserved
• Creating extraordinary educational content and giving it away
• Scripting powerhouse copy, where every word has an intended effect
• Creating a multi-sensory video, text and audio experience
• Integrating beautiful, high-touch design
• Incorporating direct and social proof
• Closing the deal ethically, yet powerfully

Watch what Marie’s doing and also ask yourself what she’s NOT doing and why. Take notes. And while you’re at it, you’ll also learn a ton from the educational content she’s created for the launch.

School is in session, and if you’re paying attention, you’ll be able to learn a ton just by taking notes.

Go visit the RHH B-School website now.

[FTC Disclosure (because being transparent should be fun, dammit!) - You should always assume that pretty much every link on this blog is an affiliate link and that if you click it, find something you like and get it, I'm gonna make some serious money. Now, understand this, I'm not talking chump change, I'm talking a huge windfall in commissions, bling up the wazoo and all sorts of other free stuff. I may even be given a mansion and a yacht, though honestly I'd settle most of the time for some organic dark chocolate and clean socks. Oh, look, a squirrel.... K, I'm back. And if I mention a book or some other product, just assume I got a review copy of it gratis and that me getting it has completely biased everything I say. Because schwag is like a drug to me, put it in my hand and you own me, you've been warned (disclosure to the disclosure, that was a joke, or was it?). Huggies and butterflies. Oooooh, shiny...]

This is a question I’ve been working on for years. Exploring models, strategies, ideas and tactics. Through it all, one overriding ideal keeps bubbling up to the top. It’s, at once, ridiculously obvious, but at the same time extraordinarily difficult to execute on.

Because it means removing ego from the picture. Inserting faith. And focusing on service, empowerment and exalting relationships.

The fastest way to expand your own power, freedom and impact is to relinquish control, to trust and empower others.

Simple to say. Obvious in every way. Yet brutally hard to execute, especially when the baby you’re birthing is a manifestation of who you are.

So, my question is…

Who can you trust and empower today to help you turn your dream into a collective movement?

One that accomplishes your end game, allows others to share in the ownership and the outcome and affords you the space to be with the people and do the things that make you come alive?

That, from the mouth of highly sought-after speaker, entrepreneur, strategist and author, Danielle LaPorte.

The words tumbled out during the filming of an interview for my soon-to-launch web series, Good Life Project TV (don’t ask, more on that soon). We sat facing each other on the floor of the yoga studio I founded in 2001, talking about her killer new book – The Fire Starter Sessions. She was sing-songing her way through a longer answer to a question I’d posed about her success.

Wait! I said. You can’t just do that. You can’t drop something like that and not explain. What do you MEAN you decided to radiate? How do you DO that?

Which led to a whole conversation about the immense power of working from a place not of force, but of ease. Of building a sense of integrity, authenticity, alignment, confidence and raised energy that literally draws people to you like moths to a light. One that attracts them by standing in your truth so fiercely and publicly, you begin to radiate…and others want to know how…and do it themselves.

Sounds cool. But, for realz?! You can build a serious career that way?

Answer is…yes!

This is the place Danielle works from, and the response has not only been palpable, but profitable.

When Danielle LaPorte walks into a room, you don’t have to look. You just know she’s arrived.

In the handful of years since she made the shift from selling with force to attracting with radiance, Danielle has attracted a massive online community of friends, followers, fans, colleagues and collaborators that line up to participate in nearly any experience she chooses to give intention, attention and life. Witness the 500 or so people that packed her book launch party in NYC. “No,” I could hear her saying earlier in the day, “the wait list is not some marketing B.S., there really is just no room left.”

The Fire Starter Sessions started as a digital training that embodied and taught Danielle’s approach to business and life. Now as an expanded major release book from Crown, she continues to offer her unique and often provocative approach. And, once again, the immediate success of the book is testament not only to it’s inspired, valuable content, but Danielle’s ability to teach from a place of personal experience and public proof.

Much of her book hits home for me, and then there are some things that make me say hmmm (You’ll see us mix it up in a loving way when her episode airs in May). Which is cool with Danielle. Because she cares more about creating the conversation than she does winning the point-of-view war.

One other thing. I’m a freak about visual design. I never bought the old “the medium is not the message” line. The medium can, in the right hands, give substantial context, energy and emotion to the content and, in doing so, become a part of the experience of consuming it.

Which is why I loved the fact that The Fire Starter Sessions is also a striking visual experience.

Highly-recommended for the soulful, creative entrepreneur in all of us.

Any parent has witnessed the stage, it happens with every kid.

Your little one has her first play date. The kids get along swimmingly, playing with toys, giggling, yammering. And then you notice something, they’re sitting right next to each other, fully aware of each other, happy to be positioned in the proximity of another human of similar knoodlosity. But, they’re actually not playing with each other. Instead, they’re playing by themselves in the presence of each other.

Fancy kid-gurus call this parallel play. It’s, apparently, a perfectly natural evolution for infants. A stage they all go though that helps prepare them for the more genuinely social, and deeply-engaging phase of play where you actually play “with” the other kid. The phase that sets in motion the cultivation of legends and stories that make life so yummy.

But, over the few last  years, an odd thing has begun to happen…

Parents, grown-up, tweens and teens are reverting to screen-driven parallel play.

Two people, ostensibly in serious like or love, siting close to each other, comforted by the other’s presence, while being completely absorbed in the whizbang stream of bits, colors and sounds screaming from their screen-bound devices of choice. But it’s actually worse than organic parallel play. Because that’s done in the presence of a playmate with awareness of their existence. And it’s something you quickly grow out of.

When we parallel screen-play as adults, we often remain physically present, but are, in every other way – emotionally, spiritually, psychologically – somewhere else. We’ve slipped so effortlessly into the digital abyss, we don’t even notice our playmate. Nor they us, having similarly dissolved into their own plain-view private screen life. Neither person realizes when the other’s left, because each remains physically installed, though for all intents and purposes, they’re brains have left the building.

Just yesterday, The Boston Globe reported on a 2010 study by the Annenberg Center for the Digital Future, that revealed:

“Over the last decade the amount of time family members in Internet-connected households spend in shared interaction dropped from an average of 26 hours a week to less than 18 hours. Meanwhile, complaints of being ignored at times by family members using the Internet soared.”

I wonder if it’s time to reign in parallel screen play, to set aside daily screen sabbaticals? Deliberate windows where we don’t process side-by-side, but rather engage, eyes-to-eyes, words-to-ears, soul-to-soul. I wonder if the very thing that’s flattened the world and enabled relationships on a global scale is now inspidly degrading the ones that exist in our own backyards.

What good is connecting with the world if it disconnects you from the soul sitting next to you?

Intuitively, this doesn’t strike me as a constructive thing.

What do you think?

I’d just signed my first book deal, and being a maven and a marketer, began to devour everything I could find about book marketing.

Over the next year and a half, while writing the book and running my full-time brick and mortar company (yes, they still exist!), I spent a ton of time tracking, deconstructing and reconstructing the best launches, and talking to many of the people behind them.

I flew across the country, paid top dollar for giant book marketing events, bought books, subscribed to newsletters, read, watched and listened to everything I could find and talked to anyone who said yes. Some of the ideas and strategies were valuable. Most were not. And some were not only devoid of value, but potentially harmful to the success of a book, an author (and their reputation) and their bank accounts.

My first book, Career Renegade, launched literally on the worst week in the history of publishing in 50 years.

January 13th, 2009. The economy was crashing fast. More than 4.5 millions jobs had already evaporated. My publisher (a Random House imprint that became a casualty soon after) went dark for two weeks before my launch. Which wasn’t all the inique, the entire publishing industry was in free-fall (some might say it still is, but for different reasons now).

And I was coming out with a book that essentially said “quit your job to do what you love,” at a time when there was mass panic in the streets and those who had jobs, hated or not, clung desperately to them. By all rights, the book should have been DOA. We couldn’t buy air-time on TV if we wanted. “We love Jonathan and it’s a great book,” we were told by producers, “but this message won’t fly with our viewers right now.”

It should’ve been dead. But it wasn’t.

Career Renegade missed the New York Times bestseller list, but because of the campaign, the relationships and the platform I’d developed, it still sold well, won awards, landed huge online and radio coverage, locked in #1 in it’s category on amazon for weeks (which is actually a really silly metric that gets you nothing). And more importantly, the book helped thousands of people through a very dark time.

The entire process, along with the year and a half before it, taught me a ton about what works, what doesn’t and how rapidly things are evolving in publishing and book marketing.

Once the dust settled later that year, I decided to write a post with the intention of sharing what I’d learned, laying a lot of myths bare and, without outing anyone specifically (not my style), showing how a variety of strategies, campaigns, products and services, many of which cost thousands or tens of thousands of dollars, were total bunk.

After 2,000 words, I wasn’t nearly done, so I kept writing…for 29 pages.

That rant turned into a manifesto called The Truth About Book Marketing. In it, I revealed the ugly underbelly of what became known as “Amazon bombing” campaigns, showed the real (meaning “frightening”) math behind advertising and book launches, talked about publicity and more and then shared some things that worked phenomenally well for me, along with presenting other major launch case studies.

I hit publish on the manifesto, and wowzers, it seemed to hit a nerve!

The manifesto was downloaded thousands of times. It led to conversations not just with authors, but with marketing heads at two of the big 6 publishers and even led one to want to sign me for my next book.

And it made me realize how huge the need was for real, intelligent, current, tested information and strategies for authors, aspiring authors and publishers. Not stuff designed to game the system for an hour in the name of fake glory or things that worked by throwing a ton of money against a wall or scoring mainstream media in a paradigm that no longer exists.

So, I decided to launch a book marketing educational venture and website, Tribal Author, and soon after breathed life into a hands-on, intimate book marketing workshop in New York City called Tribal Author Camp.

The speed at which that first camp filled, with very little promotion, was proof of demand. It was clear that at least a part of the author population was done with ginormous pitch-fest events, non-replicable strategies and old information. The feedback was great and we repeated that workshop 6 months later in an expanded 3-day format and began to build a blog around the idea.

By we, what I really mean is…me! LOL. And that was a problem.

What started as a rant, demanded to become a business.

And though I really enjoyed sharing what I’d discovered in the live Tribal Author Camps, I had other ventures to take care of, books to write and people to play with. Building out Tribal Author wasn’t where I thought I wanted to be spending the major part of my time. So, I took on a collaborator – book marketing guru, Jayme Johnson of Worthy Marketing Group – to lend her expertise and help handle the reality of the “business growth demands” and operational execution.

Bringing on a new person meant giving up a solid chunk of the revenue, but it also allowed me to continue to grow and evolve the business in a way that allowed me to be present with my family and focus on my mindset and health. That’s a trade-off I’m happy to make. It would also allow me to grow the business much faster and serve more people, so I’d be taking a smaller piece of a pie that was much bigger than I’d have ever made it. I’m good with that, too.

Around the same time, I realized that, with attendees flying in from around the world, it cost some as much as $2,000-$3,000 for the workshops, when you included the cost of travel and accommodations in New York. Some authors and aspiring authors, especially business-minded ones, could afford that. They considered it an investment in their businesses. But, many others couldn’t. The barriers, both financial and geographic, kept away the vast majority of people who wanted to come.

So, we pulled the live programs down and restructured them into a hybrid online, live-call format that ran on a quarterly basis. We relaunched in the new format last summer…the same week I launched the trailer for my second book, Uncertainty (which was the official opening shot in a 2 month, very complex launch campaign).

Listen to these words…Do. Not. Ever. Do. Something. Like. That!

Launching two substantial ventures at the same time, just plain insanity. I didn’t have any bandwidth to give to launching the new Tribal Author Camp. So all we did was put up a post announcing it, offer an early-bird discount, and share it around social. Once again, the still rabid demand for a very different experience, bundled with the new format that eliminated travel and reduced the out-of-pocket costs drove fast, strong enrollment.

To keep with our quarterly calendar, we then started enrolling the final season for 2011 the week after my book released. Again…do NOT do this, lol! And, again, demand only kept growing with nearly non-existent promotion, based largely on the uniqueness of the training experience and content, the expanded accessibility of the program and word of mouth.

Time for major evolution number 3…

As 2011 wrapped, we realized there was something much bigger going on, almost despite our marketing negligence, we’d created a constantly evolving educational experience that had turned into a very real solution…and a very real business. Now, it was time to take one more giant step forward.

We’d had enough people in the program to be able to generate a lot of feedback. Most of it was great, but as someone who’s always looking to do better, we also made a point of soliciting feedback that would help us refine and evolve the program. The content had been built into many hours of video training and live Q&A calls. And it spanned topics from platform and enterprise building to the highly tactical launch steps that need to happen before, during and after a book launch.

Our students loved the content, but we learned that they also divided into three distinct phases:

• Those with plenty of time who wanted to focus on platform and enterprise building
• Those who were comfy platform-building, but needed to learn how to tap if for maximum launch impact
• Those with a 12-18 month horizon to do both

We also learned that our training videos were chock full of information, but they were too long, so some people were suffering from information overload and not taking action. We discovered that the compressed 9-week timeframe was too intense for some people and we found out that people wanted to start the day they were searching for a solution, rather than have to wait for the next quarterly semester to begin.

So, for the second time, we pulled the program down and completely revamped both the content and the delivery format.

The new expanded online programs solves all these problems.

We split the original program into 3 different trainings to allow people to pick the precise training experience for where their author journeys were. We re-edited all the training videos down to 5-15 minutes each. And, along the way, we also discovered that it was now way easier for us to keep expanding the training library with new shorter videos every time we developed new channels, ideas and strategies.

We also created a new automatic online delivery format that allows you to sign up and begin your training experience within minutes. Even though we provide a fairly intense recommended training schedule, we give access to the library for substantially longer window to accomodate those who want to proceed at a gentler pace. And we made monthly live Q&A calls available for a full year, realizing many people won’t have questions until after they really dig into the execution side of the equation, and that often takes some time.

We battle-tested the new format, content and back-end systems, then refreshed the information and registration page (truth is, it still feels a bit tired to me, so we’re going to do a major redesign over the next few months, both of the camp page and the entire site).

And, today, we re-launched the new, expanded online Tribal Author Camps.

I could easily have just posted today about the new camps and said, “hey, run over and sign up.” Many of you have been asking me when they’ll go live again for months. And, I did a fairly straight-forward post like that over at the Tribal Author blog.

But this is the place where I like to take you guys behind the scenes, share the back-story, reveal my learnings and processes with the intention that it’ll in some way help inform or inspire you to take that idea or emotion out of your head, into real life and build something real around it.

Now, go rock on with your bad selves and build something that lights you up and helps a lot of people!

[P.S. - If you're an author or aspiring author and the Tribal Author programs sound cool, we're giving a 25% discount off the first installment for the first 100 new students this week. So head on over and reserve your spot.]

A small group of us stood on the roof of a beaten down warehouse, looking back over the Manhattan skyline as the sun set, wind sweeping all shoulders upward. The place was 5Pointz, also known as “The Institue of Higher Burning,” one of the world’s great epicenters of graffiti and street art. Two hundred thousand square feet of jaw-dropping, aerosol expression on walls, floors, roofs, doors and windows.

We’d spent the last two hours on a private tour, led by the self-appointed curator and artist extraordinaire, Meres One.

The depth of work floored me, full wall pieces “burned” by teams of artists from around the world that seemed to envelop you.

I glanced down to steady my footing on the old tar-cloth roof, and that’s when I saw it. In white paint on black tar. Brooding with the grit of mission and intention…

I can’t read the tag, so I don’t even know the name of the author/artist to attribute it to. The quote, however, is an edited version of one attributed to Mother Teresa that reads:

“We the willing, led by the unknowing, are doing the impossible for the ungrateful. We have done so much, with so little, for so long, we are now qualified to do anything, with nothing.”

The words, the message, the urgency and sense of mission that pours from them.

That’s the place where epic journeys are birthed. This one was more than a decade in the making. The impossible vision of one man who started a movement to elevate, then preserve an artform…

Nothing is beyond reach when you align vision with soul and action…

According to my genius friend and founder of Riddle & Co. (recently acquired by Retargeter), Jeff Riddle, businesses are going about growth all wrong. They spend every waking hour and huge line items in their budgets on customer acquisition. Then, once a prospect becomes a customer, they all but forget about them. The common ethic, in fact, is to do the minimum necessary to keep an existing customer from leaving. That’s where the “sad state of affairs” bar has been set.

How messed up is that?

Not just from a feeling good about what you’re doing and how you’re treating others standpoint, but according to Jeff, it’s horrible for the bottom line, too. Analyzing large volumes of data, he was able to determine that 70-80% of new customers were generated not by formal acquisition and marketing initiatives, but by word of mouth from the 5% of existing customers who were most delighted with the product or service.

Newsflash – when you blow peoples’ minds in unexpected ways on a consistent basis, give them more than they expected and – check this out…actually treat them like you’d want your mom (assuming you love your moms) treated, guess what happens? They can’t shut up about you! And when they tell someone exactly what you’d say in an advertisement, it carries about 1,000% more credibility.

I’ve taken this approach in business over and over, it’s extraordinary how well it works. And how much more fun it is building a business based not just on the drive to acquire, but on the quest to delight. In my recently launched venture, Good Life Project, I have a line-item in my budget for delight. And I have a Director of Delight. Serve, solve and delight, in fact are among the core ethics in the culture I’m helping to cultivate, and it’s also one of the 10 Commandments of Epic Business.

But, here’s the thing, this isn’t just about business, it’s about LIFE! YOUR LIFE!!!

When we look at the key relationships in our lives, we often do the exact same thing. We spend all of our time, energy and money on acquisition, then once we’ve converted someone we shift into “minimum maintenance mode”…and wonder why everything falls apart.

Think about it. When you’re single, you really take care of yourself, you go to the gym, exercise, eat better, dress better, engage in activities that make you come alive. You leave little notes, text sweet messages, create surprise meetups, try things you’d never try in the name of finding new ways to connect, make time for dates, walks, hand holding and more.

You are in full metal relationship acquisition mode and you do everything you can to create the best marketing impression possible.

You start to attract interesting “prospects” and eventually “convert” one to boyfriend, girlfriend, lover, spouse or partner. You keep the same high level of engagement up for a bit, but then what starts to happen? You start to feel a little too secure. You take the relationship for granted. You stop thinking about how to attract and delight that person any more and just work on the assumption that everything’s pretty much locked and loaded.

Except, it isn’t.

Nobody likes being treated like a foregone conclusion.

We thrive on knowing that the person with whom we’ve chosen to dance WANTS us in their lives, thinks about us all the time, loves to be with us, cares about us and loves seeing us delighted. And not because we demand it, but because they light inside at the thought of making us light up inside.

So, what might happen if you respositioned “relationship acquisition” not as an end, but an invitation.

An opportunity to consistently surprise and delight the person with whom you’ve connected? In ways they’d never see coming? Even the smallest ones, just enough to let them know “I’m thinking of you, you matter to me, I appreciate you!”

In business, your marketing, sales and acquisition costs would plummet. In life, the quality, depth and duration of your relationships would take off.

And, rather than spending all your time trying to figure out how to get peoples’ attention, you get to spend your time plotting and scheming ways to blow their minds. And inspiring your teams and tribes to do the same. What do you think would happen to employee turn-over when the single overriding purpose of every person on your team is to serve, solve and delight?

Sounds cool, right?

But what about the habituation situation?

The what?

Habituation. Our stunning ability to absorb good and bad into a new equilibrium.

Picture this…

It’s a Friday night and the spouse brings home flowers unexpectedly. Wow, what a delight.

Same thing next week on cue, how lovely.

Same thing next week, nice color.

Same thing next week, whatevs, put ‘em in a vase.

What began as a delight has been demoted to an expectation.

Human beings have a remarkable ability to habituate both up and down. What elevates us in the beginning becomes baseline over time. So if we’re striving to always delight, doesn’t this create a bit of a hedonic delight treadmill, where we’ve got to keep raising the bar higher and higher to deliver the same hit?

And if so, how do we stop that from happening?

CAN we stop if from happening or do we have to just work with funny little quirk of human nature?

How can we make this all work in business and in life?

As always, I’ve got some thoughts on this, but I’m keen to hear yours, too. Both on grappling with delight habituation and on the whole concept of building substantially more unexpected delight into relationships in business and life.

Share your thoughts in the comments below…

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“How do you like your Macbook case?” I asked the attractive stranger at the neighbouring table.

“What’s that?” he replied.

“Oh, I like it. It actually saved me the other night, when my roommate spilled his drink all over the place.”

We kept chatting. His name was Stephen and he played the cello.

Contrary to what you might be thinking, I was not trying to pick him up. I wasn’t even all that interested in his computer case.

Starting conversations with strangers is a practice that I’ve adopted to help me overcome fear and doubt in my work.

Yes, you heard me right. This was about productivity.

I learned this trick a while back, when I was in an entrepreneurial competition and had to give a terrifying presentation to some big name CEOs. Like many people, I’d always despised public speaking. But this talk was important.

I decided to prepare by shoring up my confidence beforehand. My logic was that if I was going to be expected to step onto The Stage — a place of supreme uncertainty — then I would practice feeling nervous first, by embracing uncertainty in small ways throughout the day. I dubbed these “mini-risks.”

When it was finally time to deliver my speech that afternoon, I felt far more confident than I would have, had I passively gone about my day, waiting for the big moment to descend on me. It felt as though I had created my day. I’d taken charge, just like I was about to do in that speech…!

I repeated this experiment several times, and continually found that on the days when I took a number of mini-risks, I was far more productive. I was able to focus on my work, and not get as distracted by fear or self-doubt.

Here’s what’s involved, and how the practice works:

Mini-risks can involve making eye contact and smiling at people on the street, asking your waiter a question about their life, or even standing in the center of a room at a party, where people might actually look at you(!) The degree of risk involved varies from person to person. What makes a really shy person nervous may seem like no big deal for someone who’s more extroverted. That person will have to take “bigger” mini-risks.

The key is to take actions that make you a little queasy, but are still doable, and aren’t truly harmful in any physical, or long term sense. Gauge where your current comfort levels are, and push yourself just a bit further than what feels safe. Start small, even if it means simply making eye contact with a stranger on the street.

An easy way to begin implementing this practice is to go about your day, and whenever you notice an opportunity where you could be assertive, take the lead, speak, or move, do it. From spreading out on a couch, to complimenting a friend’s shirt, to illustrating a point by diving into a personal story and opening up emotionally, there are a million tiny moments throughout the day when you have the choice between taking action or remaining passive. Start noticing these moments and begin choosing action.

See each mini-risk that you take as a win, regardless of how other people react. This is important. The practice must be action-based, not results-based. You take the risk, you win. Period.

Most importantly, stack those wins. Congratulate yourself each time you take a small assertive action. See each risk as an accomplishment in and of itself, and then stack each win on top of the next, building up your confidence.

When it comes to emotionally high stakes scenarios, like pursuing a business idea that everyone thinks is crazy, or performing your first stand up routine, we often feel like our success or failure is beyond our control.

Taking mini-risks reminds you that you indeed have control over your performance and the amount of output you generate in the world. It reestablishes a sense of trust in your own ability. You demonstrate to yourself that you can handle whatever is thrown your way– that while you may not have all the answers now (you may even be a complete beginner), you’ll find a way to make it work.

And so, no, I wasn’t interested in Stephen in that way (though he’s awesome, and we have since become friends). By jumping into a conversation with a total stranger, I was proving to myself that I could handle awkwardness and uncertainty, both in social situations and in my life more generally.

After chatting for a few minutes, I settled into my seat with my Sencha tea, smiled, and began working on whatever frightening project was in my heart that day.

What do you think?

Do you ever take “mini-risks” in social settings to help you move past fear and self-doubt in your work?