the status quo.
What creative people need, Godin believes, “is a quieter lizard brain.”
Of course, it is extremely difficult to override our biological and psychological tendencies. To confidently quel the resistance triggered by our lizard brains, we must choose our projects wisely and then execute without remorse. By committing to always shipping regardless of success or failure, Godin is able to battle the barrage of excuses thrown at him by his primal self. He is comfortable with the risk of failure because he knows that such comfort is, in fact, the key to being able to execute. As a result, Godin has made ideas happen again and again. The price he happily pays for his successes is having a lot of failures along the way.
The Tao of the Follow-up
A big part of execution is persistence. When we rely on others to drive momentum, our projects are at their mercy. Sometimes, to keep moving our ideas forward, we need to relentlessly fol ow up with others.
Jesse Rothstein, an energetic and charismatic sales representative at Procter & Gamble, radiated the enthusiasm and col egial spirit bred during his days as a star athlete playing a starting position on Cornel University’s lacrosse team. Working for Procter & Gamble, Rothstein spent much of his time on the road, traveling from store to store along the East Coast, meeting with the corporate buyers of Procter & Gamble’s products.
Many of the managers and buyers at Wal-Mart, Costco, and BJ’s Wholesale Club knew Rothstein—and they al loved him. But, while he knew everything about the trends and margins on toothpaste, mouthwash, and laundry detergent, Rothstein was best known for what he did when he didn’t know something. He would seek the answer and ruthlessly fol ow up until he got it. Simple, right?
Fol owing up is easy when the answer is a phone cal away. But what about finding information that requires responses from multiple people? What about pursuing an answer that lies only at the very end of a long chain of frustrating and tiresome actions?
Rothstein’s gift is his ability to navigate corporate bureaucracies, multiple time zones, and various rungs of the corporate ladder to find information and serve his clients. He has no MBA, no souped-up technological solutions, and no magical powers. What Rothstein has is perseverance and a simple conviction that he adheres to with an almost religious fervor: he fol ows up like crazy.
“I’m starting to believe that life is just about fol owing up,” Rothstein confided to me on a hot August evening at a Thai restaurant in New York City. “There’s this one guy that I was paired up with to lead a recruiting project. It wasn’t his real job, and it isn’t mine, but it’s something you do in a company to help out. It’s corporate citizenship. The problem was that this guy didn’t real y care. I would send e-mails and a week would pass before a response. I would send drafts of a calendar for him to review and get no response. He obviously didn’t care much, but the project had to get done. At one point, more than a week passed without any feedback or col aboration. So, I forwarded the original e-mail again. Then, two days later, I reforwarded the forwarded e-mail. Then three days later I printed the e-mail out and I sent it FedEx overnight, with my quick notation at the top: ‘Just wanted to fol ow up.—Jesse.’ He final y got back to me, and he did quite a bit of the work himself.”
Rothstein’s relentless commitment to fol owing up distinguished him in the eyes of his clients and his employers. This simple conviction, he claimed, is at the core of his ability to pursue sales leads, relationships, and other ideas. Even outside of his work at Procter & Gamble, Rothstein put his fol ow-up principle to work. He started a nonprofit organization that runs an annual dinner fund-raiser cal ed the 21 Dinner, in honor of a former lacrosse teammate who tragical y died on the field. He was able to secure
What creative people need, Godin believes, “is a quieter lizard brain.”
Of course, it is extremely difficult to override our biological and psychological tendencies. To confidently quel the resistance triggered by our lizard brains, we must choose our projects wisely and then execute without remorse. By committing to always shipping regardless of success or failure, Godin is able to battle the barrage of excuses thrown at him by his primal self. He is comfortable with the risk of failure because he knows that such comfort is, in fact, the key to being able to execute. As a result, Godin has made ideas happen again and again. The price he happily pays for his successes is having a lot of failures along the way.
The Tao of the Follow-up
A big part of execution is persistence. When we rely on others to drive momentum, our projects are at their mercy. Sometimes, to keep moving our ideas forward, we need to relentlessly fol ow up with others.
Jesse Rothstein, an energetic and charismatic sales representative at Procter & Gamble, radiated the enthusiasm and col egial spirit bred during his days as a star athlete playing a starting position on Cornel University’s lacrosse team. Working for Procter & Gamble, Rothstein spent much of his time on the road, traveling from store to store along the East Coast, meeting with the corporate buyers of Procter & Gamble’s products.
Many of the managers and buyers at Wal-Mart, Costco, and BJ’s Wholesale Club knew Rothstein—and they al loved him. But, while he knew everything about the trends and margins on toothpaste, mouthwash, and laundry detergent, Rothstein was best known for what he did when he didn’t know something. He would seek the answer and ruthlessly fol ow up until he got it. Simple, right?
Fol owing up is easy when the answer is a phone cal away. But what about finding information that requires responses from multiple people? What about pursuing an answer that lies only at the very end of a long chain of frustrating and tiresome actions?
Rothstein’s gift is his ability to navigate corporate bureaucracies, multiple time zones, and various rungs of the corporate ladder to find information and serve his clients. He has no MBA, no souped-up technological solutions, and no magical powers. What Rothstein has is perseverance and a simple conviction that he adheres to with an almost religious fervor: he fol ows up like crazy.
“I’m starting to believe that life is just about fol owing up,” Rothstein confided to me on a hot August evening at a Thai restaurant in New York City. “There’s this one guy that I was paired up with to lead a recruiting project. It wasn’t his real job, and it isn’t mine, but it’s something you do in a company to help out. It’s corporate citizenship. The problem was that this guy didn’t real y care. I would send e-mails and a week would pass before a response. I would send drafts of a calendar for him to review and get no response. He obviously didn’t care much, but the project had to get done. At one point, more than a week passed without any feedback or col aboration. So, I forwarded the original e-mail again. Then, two days later, I reforwarded the forwarded e-mail. Then three days later I printed the e-mail out and I sent it FedEx overnight, with my quick notation at the top: ‘Just wanted to fol ow up.—Jesse.’ He final y got back to me, and he did quite a bit of the work himself.”
Rothstein’s relentless commitment to fol owing up distinguished him in the eyes of his clients and his employers. This simple conviction, he claimed, is at the core of his ability to pursue sales leads, relationships, and other ideas. Even outside of his work at Procter & Gamble, Rothstein put his fol ow-up principle to work. He started a nonprofit organization that runs an annual dinner fund-raiser cal ed the 21 Dinner, in honor of a former lacrosse teammate who tragical y died on the field. He was able to secure
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