We've all done it, we hate we are not perfect, and it sucks to have dropped the ball. What you do with that drop is what truly defines you and your company. It's not something any of us is ever proud of. It shows we're human, our systems we've put into place aren't perfect, and that we have a lot to learn. That statement resonates with me each and every day. I do weekly reflections on Sunday thinking of everything that happened in the past week. I also look at my previous day each day from 4-6am when I write these articles. Some days I nail out only one while other days I can nail out four articles in that two-hour span as my fingers become a machine (or I have that much running through my mind). I use this time as my personal reflection and insight to keep things fresh in my mind. Recently you'll notice that I start posting a lot of these. There are two reasons for this and I am going to explain as you read on.
I meet with two different business advisors. Both are knowledgeable, have owned businesses themselves, and give great insight that I might not otherwise think of. Often, they state that from the outside we look perfect and we do strive for that. The significance of it is people think we are machines rather than human. We have faults and we make mistakes more times than we care to count. I have yet to personally meet a perfect person, group of individuals, or company. We all have faults and stating that we look invincible shows to me we have a long way to go to show people our human side.
That is the first part of this – the human side of the equation. By acknowledging our human side, we can not only learn from our mistakes but accept them that we are that way. We always lay this to everyone of our clients that come to us. Whether they are coming from another social media manager, SEO guru, or have never done search engine optimization or social media marketing. They need to know that no one can promise them anything. We cannot nor would we ever want to control your audience. We are experts in the work we do but we can't control others behavior.
The second part of this writing is to work on my own writing. I am often talk "nerd speak" too often and writing these articles out daily allows me to remove that nerd speak and be more "human" as that is who I am talking to when I talk to new clients, when I talk in front of a set of board members, or an entire group of people when I do public speaking. This writing has greatly helped with the removal of the nerd speak for sure.
All of this has a side benefit that I am getting my articles down to a very quick read between 600-1,000 words. This helps in not being so fluffy in my talk and getting to the point. Our lives our busy enough that we don't need to spend all of our time reading articles (or writing them). Blog articles are said to be best from a search engine standpoint when they are between 1,000-3,000 characters. Those are the articles I read less of so figure I can't be the only one (or I am just being human and making a mistake). Our engagement and reach for our articles is proving that to not be the case.
In conclusion, we all will make mistakes in our lives. It is how we handle these mistakes that truly define us as a person. When we acknowledge we are not perfect I feel we become closer to being perfect. Take each day on as a new day and make yourself better than you were yesterday.