One of the reasons I love academia is the crazy talented people you come across. Naturally, everyone has their own area of hyper-specialization, which is what we think...
If I can't dance, I don't want to be in your revolution.
-Emma Goldman
"Trust your gut," my friend and mentor says, when I am trying to make an important decision. My method has always been to imagine what it would feel like, deep in my gut, if I did NOT make a certain choice. But she tells me to think, instead, of which choice makes me feel like I'm flying; which choice makes me feel like laughing out loud; which choice makes me feel like dancing.
Really?
Apparently.
Now listen: this goes for anything. Sure, yes, life decisions, choosing a school, a job, a city to live in... but it goes for business decisions as well.
Deciding whom to hire or promote to an important position; determining whose advice to seek out, whose advice to trust; projecting sales in an uncertain economy; deciding how much to spend on a marketing strategy; and whether that marketing strategy should be purely traditional, or if it should include new and explored territory like social media...
...and how you will go about doing business in an online world where squishy concepts like "trust" and "authenticity" are thrown about with such reckless abandon...
So much about marketing, in particular, is reduced to spreadsheets and numbers. But so much about social media is about trust and reputation, which are pretty tough concepts to reduce to numbers.
Don't get me wrong: I am all about the quantitative analysis and the gathering and crunching of data. But once you've got your budget and you've got your spreadsheet and you've projected your figures, be honest: Doesn't there come a quiet moment when you take a deep breath, calm your mind, and listen to your gut?
And don't your customers do the same thing, too?
This is why I'm curious about how this process works, and under what circumstances we trust one another.
How does it work for you? How do you decide whether or not to trust, to choose, to commit? What sensations do you look for? Do you prefer to follow the sense that what you are doing is absolutely right, or are you more in tune with what feels dead wrong? Does your intuition attract you to the good, or repel you from the bad? Does it use a carrot or a stick? I'm curious.
Also: What makes you feel like dancing?
