Once upon a time in the land down under in Sydney, Australia, there was a young man who found himself in a Gracie Jiu Jitsu Academy training up to 5 or 6 times a week. And by training, I mean getting dominated each and every time by those twice as big and/or having 4+ years more experience on him. But he kept going, despite never winning.
His goal, was for the time to run out, for there to be a draw. He became a master escape artist, often frustrating those bigger and better than him. But if there ever came a moment (which came only once in a while) to pull a kimura or triangle choke, he pounced, often times shocking his opponent and getting the tap out (aka #winning).
As you can guess, that person was me (I’m on the left):
That was the peak of my exploration of what I consider the fullest expression of my masculine “yang” energies. Beef (lamb, kangaroo, etc.), booze, hanging with the guys, comparing bench press and squat PRs, etc.
(If I offend you with a grossly inaccurate portrayal of yin/yang, apologies).
Fast forward a few years, and all of a sudden I’m in a vegan, sustainably farmed, yoga retreat center in Bali talking about feelings, doing yoga handstands, and intense self-reflection–exploring to my fullest extent possible, my feminine “yin” energies.
(I’m the one helping another with his first handstand)
To the cynical, this is a quintessential example of the millennials feeling a need to “find themselves”
Well guess what…
I did. And it was amazing.
Am I vegan now? No.
Do I now do handstands everyday while living on a sustainable farm? No.
Will I do it again? Probably not.
But, from these amazing experience, I was able to set parameters of the extreme energies. I didn’t have to watch some MMA fight to pretend to know what it was like to fight. I didn’t have to follow someone’s Pinterest feed of his/her journey through South East Asia to pretend to know what it was like to be at peace in a beautiful landscape.
Through my authentic experiences, I am able to calibrate what level of yin and what level of yang I need to harness in different situations. It enables me to find peace in a chaotic world, nurture and grow members of my team, complete bold objectives and lead myself and others towards amazing shared visions.
The same is true for building an online following. As Gary Vaynerchuk demonstrates and discusses in his book Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook, building an ROI on your following is about engaging through heartfelt service and social media.
The ineffective way of engaging is like a slug fest everywhere you look with “buy this thing” & “do this now” type of advertising online.
Instead, create your tribe and loyal users by creating a continuous story line with many jabs before a right hook, or as I would put it, utilizing yin (feminine) energy to enable yang (masculine).
- Prepare your story like a great boxer: study, analyze the analytics
- Jabs: lightweight content that makes audience/team laugh, sneer, ponder, feel appreciated, or escape
- Right hooks: call to action that benefit your company/vision
- A great story is one that eventually sells by creating emotional appeal at the time most likely to buy-in
- It isn’t powerful enough to just lead them to water, you have to make them drink it
- Content is not intrusive, rather it brings value to platforms, consumers, and feels natural
- Different platforms allow you to highlight different aspects of your brand identity, respect the nuances
- The Call-to-Action needs to be simple and easy to understand what exactly you want from them
Whether it’s the metaphor of yoga vs. jiu jitsu or jabs & right hooks that resonate more with you, to build a better tribe of engaged members, followers, advocates, you need to employ differing tactics.
The balance of such tactics is where the art of leadership lies.
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