Before I moved to Australia 20 years ago, I was seduced by Bruce Chatwin’s famous book, The Songlines. The same book also instigated my terrible addiction for Moleskin notebooks. There is a section that I always return to.
‘Sometimes’, said Arkady, ‘I’ll be driving my “old men” through the desert, and we’ll come to a ridge of sandhills, and suddenly they’ll all start singing. “What are you mob singing?” I’ll ask, and they’ll say, “Singing up the country, boss. Make the country come up quicker.” … ‘So the land’, I said, ‘must first exist as a concept in the mind? Then it must be sung? Only then can it be said to exist?’
Putting something out there, makes it real.
“We are releasing on August 22.”
“I am moving to San Francisco.”
“I am building a new kind of bank.”
Say it out load and something will happen. Don’t say it to yourself, tell everybody. Secrets don’t become real.
When I was a theatre director, I would design the brochure before the show. I would get thousands of them printed and tell everybody that this was what they would come and see in a few months. Because I did so, I needed to deliver. Because I did so, I defined my focus and something to target. Because I did so, people know what I was working on and knew how to help.
I sung the world into existence.
When we launch new businesses, we put them in front of customers as soon as possible. Normally on the first day. We will sell it to potential customers, run ad campaigns targeting potential users, create landing pages to test value. We start singing and watch the world unfold. Because we do this, we need to deliver. Because we do this, we define our focus and have something to work towards. Because we do this, people know how to help us.
We sing our song and the world starts to take shape.