Further to my previous post about creating your scene, before you’ve created or found your scene, you need to know what that scene is, and only gauge what you are doing against that scene.
There are three major ways that people violate the Scene.
1. People do not know who or what their scene is
Persons will write a book, launch a business or make an app, etc, then they will ask, ‘How can I find people to buy it?’
They don’t know the answers to basic questions. Who do you want to buy it? What other services are they using? Who will your core customers be? As a marketer would say, what are the big outlets in this space?
Or, possibly worse, they won’t know what the day-to-day job entails or what it takes to be a success in that role. I used to see this a lot in the fitness industry and elite football clubs.
Persons would think, ‘I don’t want to be bound to a desk every day’ and ‘I like exercising’ so they would do a Personal Trainer course. Sometimes they would even give up moderately success jobs to change careers. Then they’d get a Gym Instructor role and find out that they barely earn minimum wage and working on a gym floor is less about doing exercise, more about watching people do exercise, cleaning sweat off treadmills, doing chemical level checks on the jacuzzi and doing gym inductions.
When they finally do build up a few Personal Training clients, you know those gym bunnies in Lululemon or jacked guys you can compare supplements stacks with? They are not going to be their clients. The obese person in the old corporate team building day t-shirt who would rather not do this exercise and rather do the Inner Thigh machine, or the guy with chicken who doesn’t want to work legs because ‘I run so my legs are strong’, or the girl or skinny guy who does not want to lift weights because ‘I don’t want to bulk up’, they are going to be the average client.
They don’t know that to build a Personal Training business is less about the latest blog or article you’ve read, how big your guns are, or how many Poliquin courses you’ve been on. It’s about sales and retention of clients.
Person will have spent a year or more writing something about this topic, attending a course, and/or given up a livelihood and they wouldn’t even know the first thing about the Scene .
So, not only is the question, “Who is in your scene?” but you have to know the scene.
2. People do not know who they are competing with
You want to know your scene so that you know with whom to compare yourself.
Imagine if an opera singer thought that they were bad because they did not have the same amount of screaming fans as One Direction, telling themselves, “When Zayn, Niall, Liam, Harry, and Louis check into a hotel, they get mobbed, why don’t I?”. They should be comparing yourself against other opera singers.
If what is important to you is writing, or being an athlete, or being the best fitter and turner in ‘the game’, then that is what you need to be comparing the success or failure of your work against. You can’t be like, “But Mark Zuckerberg [substitute appropriate ‘unicorn’] is a billionaires and we’re the same age!” because you are comparing apples and… not even oranges because they are both fruit… Cavier.
3. People do not work out what is important to them.
Before you make or find your Scene, think about it. A lot. And ask questions. Find someone in the industry and send them a message (also a great first step if you do want to get in that scene).
People don’t think about it. They don’t ask questions. They just hope that what it appears like from a distance will magically be aligned.
If you are not sure what to think about or what questions to ask, start by asking yourself,
What does an ideal day for me look like?
Sitting on a beach, drinking all day, right? No, that’s not practical, all day, every day. Even for billionaires. Not if you wanna live a long, healthy life.
Here are some sub-questions you may want to consider:
- What time do I approximately want to wake up?
- How do I want to commute to work?
- What uniform do I want to wear? Suit? Overalls? Pyjamas?
- What sort of work do I want to do? Deskbound or active? Social or secluded? Team work or individual?
- What do I want to eat for lunch? When in the day will I eat?
- When in the day (not ‘if’) do I want to exercise?
What is it like when I am going through the motions and saying yes to everything and being kicked around by the universe?
What does it look like when everything goes my way; when it’s all green lights, like a James Corden Confused.com commercial? How can I get closer to that thing?
Answering these question will make it easier to work out what you don’t want to do all day and what you want your Scene to be. But this will just give you direction, not get you where you want to be.
First you need to be aware of what Scene you want to be in, and understand what that scene really means, then you can start to move in the right direction of creating your scene.
When you put on a What Would Jesus Do? bracelet, you don’t become Jesus. You are suppose to think, when you have individual decisions, ‘What would Jesus do in this situation?
– Ryan Holiday
Once you have done this, you are on your way to the Scene.
Enjoy!
Scott
