Joe Gerstandt | keynote speaker, freedom fighter, freak-flag flier

A bunch of stuff seems to be touching on a common theme for me right now.  I have had several conversations in the past few weeks with friends of mine who have discovered they are not employed in the right place by the right people.  I have also had a number of conversations with speaking and consulting associates of mine who have been very well received in various markets yet are consistently overlooked and out of the loop in their local market.  And I have had conversations with fellow speakers working diligently to bring new ideas, new information and new energy to their professional association only to be consistently rejected via form letter.

I feel your pain brothers and sisters.

With the exception of my four years in the Marine Corps, I never fit in as an employee…never.  They always wanted me to be someone a little bit different than who I am.  Don’t even get me started on the topic of speaking engagements in my local market, and I hate those form letters and form e-mails also.  I have a pretty impressive collection of them.  I am wallpapering my office with those form letters.  I was recently contacted by a professional association, requesting a presentation proposal from me because many of their member requested me and they had started to promote my blog posts internally…and of course, from them as well I got a form letter rejection.  Silly rabbits.

Their loss, and I think that form letters are one of the last vestiges of 1.0 organizations doing 1.0 events with a 1.0 mindset, but I digress.

Here is the thing…

Those people have no idea what they are doing.

I am not saying that they are ignorant or stupid or incompetent.  Not at all.  They are really no different than we are.  What I am saying is that human beings and groups of human beings are incredibly poor at actually seeing, understanding and advocating for what is truly valuable.  What we are incredibly good at seeing and understanding and choosing is what is popular (and safe and predictable).  The entire fashion industry would not exist if this were not true.  There can be some overlap between popular and valuable, but not usually lot.

The future makes very little sense viewed through the lens of today.

What is next is often seen as heretical to what is.  Because it is.

Change is often seen as a threat to the status quo.  Because it is.

Outsiders are often seen as a threat to insiders.  Because we are.

We do not quite fit in for a reason.

Not fitting in is a wonderful gift, but it brings some pain as well.

Conferences that say they want something new rarely do…new stuff does not make sense to them yet…because it is new.  They really want something kind of safe and predictable.  Organizations that say they want change really don’t.  They just like the idea of change and when you come in and start actually driving change they will find something wrong with you.

Whether you are a cook, baker or candlestick maker…if you are owning your gift and doing what you are here for, it will likely not make sense to the powers that be…it will likely not make sense to the decision makers and institutions in place today.  That does not mean that it is not valuable…in fact that is evidence to me that it might actually be very valuable…it might actually be something unique…you might actually be doing something new.  And that is righteous.  And it can be thankless…but you are not the problem.

You are the solution.

Some of us are called to hard duty.

In the meantime, I am going to hold onto my rejection letters.  When these organizations and associations and events finally catch the cluetrain, I think it might be nice to attach one of their rejection letters to the big fat invoice I will be sending them.

And we keep on keeping on.  And if we do keep on keeping on, we become popular and in demand…and then we have to remember that popular rarely equals valuable…and we have to get back to work.

Be good to each other.