You aspire to excellence. And you know you have it in you. But some days you wonder… So let’s clarify why many good people never break free of mediocrity.
They follow “recipe” advice without understanding why it works.
We all need the occasional expert opinion. But how can you tell if the advice you’re getting is based on true wisdom or regurgitated platitudes?
One day I decided to create an audio preview for a public seminar I was doing. If the group’s members could hear me for a few minutes, I reasoned, it would make them more likely to attend.
Of course, it could also turn them off, so I sent the podcast to an acquaintance and asked for his opinion.
“Like everything you do,” he said, “it’s too long. People won’t listen to it.”
Well, yeah, I have a tendency to go on a bit. But length is only one factor in determining whether someone will listen. And this podcast was less than six minutes long. If people find it stimulating, provocative, relevant or entertaining, they’ll listen for an hour.
“How long should it be?” I asked, trying to gauge where his advice was coming from.
“Sixty seconds or less.” He went on to recommended I read someone’s ebook about selling online.
Well, I concluded he was parroting back a “recipe” he had heard somewhere without really understanding what he had heard.
“An online video shouldn’t be longer than three minutes,” one expert will say. “Make your sales letter short,” says another. “No one reads the long ones.” And a social media “expert” with tens of thousands of followers tweaches (tweet + preach) this: “Spend a 1/3 of allocated blogging time commenting on other blogs & you’ll see engagement on your blog skyrocket.”
Advice like this is one reason why comments on so many blogs are mindless and fawning agreement.
Think about it this way: The amateur cook and the master chef can both follow the same recipe. But the master chef will produce a far tastier dish.
What’s the difference?
The amateur follows a recipe. But the master understands the properties of each ingredient and how they interact with each other. He understands what kind of pot or pan is best for what. He understands how to substitute. And so his results are superior.
There are thousands upon thousands of people out there telling us what we need to do to get rich, be successful, and so on. Often they boil it down to a recipe. Do this, that and the other thing and you’ll be successful.
Many of our naïve and fearful comrades, eager for a quick salve, gobble this stuff up as if it were something magical.
To say that a podcast shouldn’t be longer than 60 seconds is missing the point. Length is only one factor and a relatively insignificant one. People listen to podcasts that are thirty minutes long, watch movies for two hours and audio books that can be thirty hours long.
It’s not the length. To know if something is likely to interest people, you need to understand the underlying properties. Does this podcast have the ingredients that will catch someone’s attention and draw then through the end?
If it’s relevant or entertaining they’ll listen to the whole thing. If it’s a good story they’ll read all 963 pages.
As you build your business, be very wary of people offering blanket recipe-style advice. Ask lot of questions to determine if you’re hearing from an amateur cook or a master chef.
Don’t assume they know something you don’t. The opposite is probably true: You probably understand something about which they don’t have a clue.
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Dov
