Even the best hairdresser... can't cut the back of their own head.
This is possibly one of my favourite sayings (and you've probably heard me say it to you). I use it when I explain why you can't always see your own Thing. I also use it when I have conversations with super-smart people (who are, of course, everyone I speak to!) about why they can't see it–they just can't see clearly what it is they do that's brilliant. It's an especially poignant phrase when I'm speaking to a fellow marketer or coach or mentor as they think "Hang on, I do this for OTHER people already so why can't I do it for myself?". And the answer is simply "because you can't". We all see ourselves differently to how others see us–just like we can't see the back of our head in the right way to give it a good haircut!
It's actually ironic to realise a LOT of my Thing finding clients are 'just like me' which also makes sense (at the same time of annoying them!). Because if you are a hairdresser and you want your hair cut, I'm thinking you'd want to go find someone 'just like you' to cut it, right? So the same principle applies when you're looking for help with your business or marketing: ask someone who is as brilliant as you (including myself in this now!).
So when I look around and see all the brilliant marketers, coaches, trainers and mentors who choose to find their Thing with me, there are a lot of haircuts going on–which, once they 'got their head around it', they realised made perfect sense. You can fight it all you want (after all, logic says you 'know' this stuff, and you 'do it' all the time, so DIY surely is the way to go?). But if you accept that we all need a hand with the blind spots and the parts we can't reach, you'll get there a whole lot quicker (or, in the case of the haircut, with no wonky bits at the back!).
Be okay with asking for help. Be very okay with asking someone 'like you'. Never worry that you're not learning anything new–what matters is you SEE and DO something differently. Very often it's not what you know but what you do with it... personally, if I'd had a £ for every time a coach or mentor of mine had told me to do something only for me to think "Hang on, I told a client to do this just the other day" to realise that it's hardly ever what you know but what you do with it that counts... yeah, it's true–action trumps everything.
So if you're not going where you want to get to, not getting there fast enough, easily enough, or whatever it is enough, look for someone who'll help you see what you can't–then do it!
Want to talk more about this?
Leave a Reply