Friends of Dave #348: avoiding foolish options
Mashups in life and business are the key to success.
Quick note: if you missed or skipped the preamble last week, you may want to go back and read it as this one is a follow up.
For the record, I have just listened to the Wu Tang x Led Zeppelin mashup again, in it’s entirety, for maybe the 12th time or so over the last month….I know most of you ignored that suggestion, but surprisingly lots of you were intrigued by the Metallica and Huey Lewis collab.
All I can do is paraphrase a popular meme from earlier this summer:
And…I’m…telling you…right now…
And you can believe it or you can not believe it..that Wu Tang x Led Zeppelin mashup…that Wu Tang x Led Zeppelin mashup IS REAL.
You hip-hop/rock FoDs can read these preambles and continue choosing poorly or you cannot….I’m not going to.
Okay, aside from sharing some entertaining, potentially earworm worthy links, what was the whole point of last week’s intro about mashups?
It was an important reminder. Friends.
Everyone has talents. If you work hard at them, those talents can bring value. If you work really extra hard at them, you might get lucky and those talents can also bring success.
But no matter how talented you may be, neither are easy to sustain. Particularly on your own.
By the way, this doesn’t just apply to individual people. It’s also true for groups, organizations, products, companies, and even nations.
Just because you were lucky to capture lightning in a bottle once or for a period of time before doesn’t mean you are guaranteed to do it again. And just because you may have not created the value or achieved the success you expected to get on your own, doesn’t mean it isn’t possible.
Yet we get so wrapped up in our own vision for how things “should” be that we close our minds to other possibilities. Sometimes we don’t realize that all we need is a partner, an ally or collaborator to help unlock the next level of success.
That’s where we can turn to mashups as a pleasant wake up call and more proof we need to reserve judgement.
Look, someone had to be the first to figure out that chocolate and peanut butter might make a nice treat. Just like someone had to have the intestinal fortitude to suggest that pineapple and ham on pizza could actually make money.
Who would have thought to pair a washed up, drugged out rock band like Aerosmith with an young, urban, ambitious rap group like Run DMC? Certainly no one with established success in the music industry. Definitely not the managers for Aerosmith. It took someone with vision like Rick Rubin to imagine that.
Before last week’s preamble, in your right mind you would NEVER think Metallica and Huey Lewis and the News or AC/DC and the Bee Gees could EVER sound good together. But someone else saw the possibility and tinkered with a few tracks and experimented with tempo and tone. And even if you were not a fan of either group, you tried it, and I’ll bet you liked the end result.
The producers of those mashups were successful in finding a way to create more value from the songs they dared to combine together. Along the way, they essentially extended the life of those songs with their mixes.
Partnerships, alliances, collaborations and mashups all have the capacity to do just that — they can enable us to extend our talent and value beyond what we could imagine on our own. We just need the courage, the will, the creativity and, most often, the humility to get outside of ourselves to discover it.
We need to understand where our talents truly lie (aka “what we do better than anyone else on the planet”) and what inherently makes us valuable. We also need to be able to identify and, more importantly, accept where we are not strong.
Then, we do what we can to hyper focus on exploiting our strengths and having the vision to seek and align with complementary partners to help us mitigate risk, extend those strengths adjacently or complement us where we are weak.
The better we understand ourselves and the more open minded, creative and courageous we can be in seeking those partners, the greater the chance that together we might create something special. Perhaps even more special than we could do on our own.
Think about how this can apply to various facets of our personal and professional lives. Also think about how often we can forget how powerful a good mashup can be.
So the next time you find yourself stuck in a rut and in need of a shake up, think about The Sugar Hill Gang. Think about Aerosmith and Run DMC. Think about Nelly, Justin Timberlake and AC/DC. Think about how someone could conceive and successfully arrange the absurd combination of Metallica and Huey Lewis or Survivor and Adele. Think about how you could find that collaborator or missing piece to create your own perfect mashup.
Then, if you are still really stuck, just Google “Wu Tang Led Zeppelin”….trust me, you’ll thank me later.
XOXO
Dave
And now a few things to make you smarter…
This infographic uses data from the International Organization of Vine and Wine (OIV) to visualize where wine production is concentrated in the world.
As shared here before, avoiding stupidity is easier than seeking brilliance. It doesn’t take a genius. Only a few simple ideas.
Quick read from Bertrand Russell that offers some advice, which will not keep us from all error but will help us navigate away from obvious error.
The $4 million project at Fisk University will help house students while a new residence hall is under construction.
Why concertgoers keep throwing things at celebrities and no one can shut up at the movies.