The Practice of Self-Rejuvenation and why your life depends on it
Last Sunday, I celebrated my 56th birthday with my family and friends, including Johnny Walker Blue. At $300 a bottle, it’s a treat reserved for the most special occasions. As you can see, it’s also finished. But together with its Red, Black, Green, Gold and Platinum siblings, Johnny Walker is the world’s most valuable premium spirits brand. It’s almost 200 years old and it’s becoming more popular every year. Not a bad role model, if you know how to handle it responsibly.
The challenge facing Johnny Walker is the biggest professional challenge facing all of us: how to be Always New, especially when we’re not new.
Once upon a time, everyone is new. We arrive on the scene with new energy and ideas. We are hot and sexy. We have something to prove and we prove it. We dazzle and delight our customers and colleagues. We are the bright, shiny thing.
Then the seasons pass. We earn others’ respect and loyalty. We build our personal franchise. We develop our habits. We operate in our zone of competency and comfort. We start to defend what has taken us years to create.
That’s when the crisis hits. Circumstances change. A new breed of players, with a brand new value proposition, suddenly appears. We hit a turning point and the trend is not our friend. A new game begins that is defined by a very different set of rules. Overnight, we go from being the leader to playing catch up. Instead of setting the pace, we scramble to stay relevant. And then we fall off a cliff, or we learn to fly. We rejuvenate ourselves to win or we resign ourselves to merely surviving.
Where are you in the ageing cycle? Are you new? Are you about to be horribly surprised? Or are you already playing catch-up? Wherever you are, it’s time to practice self-rejuvenation as though your life depends on it because it does.
Practice is the most important word in the vocabulary of champions: It is defined by the Random House dictionary as: “repeated performance or systematic exercise for the purpose of acquiring skill or proficiency; condition arrived at by experience or exercise; the action or process of performing or doing something.”
When I immigrated to Canada from South Africa fourteen seasons ago, I was the hot, new thing. I tantalized clients with stories out of Africa and international illustrations of excellence. By 2008, I was among the top twenty motivational speakers in North America by annual revenue. Then the great recession hit, technology changed dramatically and waves of outstanding new speakers entered the market. I went from being a leader to being just another contender in an overcrowded marketplace.
I knew I had to rejuvenate myself or move on. But as Zack Mayo said to Drill Sergeant Foley in Officer and a Gentleman, “I’ve got nowhere else to go”. So over the past four years, I’ve studied the Practice of Self-Rejuvenation. I’m literally writing the book on it. I’m at the top of my game and I’m playing full out every day.
To help you stay Always New, especially when you’re not new, here is Lipkin’s Eight-Step Rejuvenation Practice:
- Realize you have to make yourself new again. Create your own crisis but sustain your confidence. Age and experience are great allies; youth and enthusiasm are merely states of mind.
- Review your market, your customers and competitors. How are they changing? Who is making the right moves? What do your customers want? What do you need to do to?
- Resolve to be exemplary – the benchmark of excellence in your category. Commit publicly to being preeminent beyond the point of no return.
- Reinvent your offering. What is your essence? Mine is enthusiasm. What is your mission? Mine is to move people into action. What is your motivation? Mine is great conversation. What is your Action Plan? Mine is to design and deliver powerful messages through every medium available to me. This video is just one way I’m reinventing my offering as often as I can.
- Reproduce yourself. Find a way to increase your scale, consistency and presence. Success is about frequency, repeatability and ubiquity (being everywhere at once). The tools are all around you. My greatest resources are Apple and YouTube. I’m producing this video on my iPhone and distributing it through YouTube at zero marginal cost to me.
- Recruit others to your cause. Communicate your offering in a way that stokes other’s passion for it. Show them how you can enhance their wellbeing and happiness. Become a conduit for their success. Make it a pleasure to be around you. Encourage reciprocity through your reward and recognition of their roles.
- Recover from the inevitable setbacks. As the great Rocky Balboa said, “It ain’t about how hard you hit, it’s about how hard you can get hit and keep moving forward, how much you can take and keep moving forward. That’s how winning is done.” So prepare to win but be prepared to lose. Failing isn’t failure; it’s just the first action in learning. Condition yourself like an athlete in the game of life.
- Reinvest all you can in becoming all you can be. Back yourself. Bank in yourself. Your real opportunity is your capacity to create opportunities for others. If you want to be busy, get busy growing.
I hope I’ve moved you into action. Whatever time you’re in, it’s time for renewal. As you move forward, you inspire others to do the same. This is Mike Lipkin and I really approve this message.
