Why the Tortoise Should Be Your Mascot, Too!

Ken's Blog

The tortoise is the official SBI! mascot. S/he should be yours, too. Why?

Because the world is spinning too bloody fast and noisy! It's been accelerating for centuries, of course. The pace has picked up progressively over decades, years, months, and now it seems, each week!

The Web is perhaps the major noise and speed accelerator. And RSS and blogging have pushed "the pedal to the metal."

What's a small-business person to do? We've only got 24 hours per day and we need at least 1 or 2 to sleep!

Tortoise It!

The tortoise is the perfect mascot for today's world. Steady. Persistent. Unperturbable. A thick shell to pull into when needed. Poke your head out and look around -- take a chance, at the right time. And you know what?

They live a long, long time... and they get there!

Overwhelmed By It All?

You're not alone. Even if we limit this discussion to the world of small business information and resources, there is just so darn much. But there's a solution. First...

Relax. Breathe. Have fun.

I live by "The Three Life S's of the Tortoise," and I hope this helps you, too. Life is...

1) Short
Life is too short (even if you make it to 100 like many tortoises!) to put up with nonsense, anxiety, unhappiness. Chop ruthlessly. Drop those who drain your life. Prioritize with discipline. And live in the moment -- enjoy yourself. If you're not enjoying what you're doing, do something else.

2) Small
Each of us, even each of The Google Twins, is but a speck of sand among all the beaches on the planet. The best each of us can hope for is, in our own way, to leave the world a little better than we found it. Some get to have a bigger impact. But overall, we are all replaceable.

So keep things in perspective. Nothing you are sweating over really matters that much. So again... whatever you're doing, enjoy!

3) Slow
Life is not a sprint. We all want to get so much done, and not today. Yesterday!

This is perhaps the biggest problem of all. There is just so much...

• information coming at us from every direction -- we don't dare miss any of it
• hype and fraud -- irresistible Get-Rich-Quick copy gets you thinking, "but what if this one is real??"
• advertising by big companies that advertise "quick-cheap-easy" -- bait and switch
• hot new "must know"... trends like Web 2.0, the long tail, social this and that, yada, yada.
• to do when building a business online -- we want to do it all now!

The reality (point-by-point) is that...

• most of that information won't make an iota of difference to you or your business
• Get-Rich-Quick is always a fraud -- who in the world would really sell a golden goose!
• "Quick-cheap-easy" bait-and-switch ends up costing you thousands of dollars and a failed year of your life
• the hot new trends are only important to media companies that love to talk about what's cool, and "the cool" who love to read about it
• you can't build a business in a day. No one can. So relax and breathe. Tortoises realize it takes time. The Internet does not suspend the law of gravity, nor does it repeal basic business common sense. So stick close to the ground and realize that it takes time to build a genuine, enduring, ever-growing online business.

Like the tortoise, plot a steady course. Ignore noisy distractions and stay on course. Each day, move a little bit further ahead.

We all try to do too much, too fast. I know, I'm the worst that way. SiteSell is a beast to run. The "I want to do it all now" instinct combined with the intense noise (it is part of my business to follow it all) can roil me into an absolute frenzy.

Prior to smoke coming out of my ears, I re-read "The Three Life S's Of The Tortoise." It all comes back into perspective. I love what I do. Our customers do, too. And...

We'll get a little more done tomorrow. So...

Ignore the hares... the cool, hip, noisy, hypey hares. They are not getting anywhere, despite the very best appearances they can muster (hares are all about coooooooool).

Be a tortoise. You'll do just fine.

All the best,