This was written last month on a plane. I’m slow y’all.
Sitting here on the plane home (no worries, airplane mode is enabled on my iPad) and I’m thinking inspiration. My headphones are blasting Jay-Z and Kanye Watch The Throne. In addition to my intense admiration for Yeezy’s quotable quotes from life and songs, I get excited and nearly stan for Mr. West based on his evidenced passion for art: music, clothing, collecting pieces, name dropping Dali and Basqiat. Though this sometimes manifests in wearing leather aprons during performances – pause – it mainly comes through his fantastic albums and the story of grinding it out as an unknown, struggling to make ends meet. As he said, “that’s a different world like Cree Summers.”
The Vocus conference stimulated some passion for me. The overarching messages could be summed up as thus: be awesome, don’t tell everyone you’re awesome but instead tell them how your awesomeness benefits them. Never stop learning, innovate and have a good product and message. Great speakers and just overall passionate communicators. At the airport, I took the advice of one of the main speakers and fellow Houstonian Dayna Steele: take travel as the opportunity to expand your reading outside of your usual realm of comfort. For her, it was reading about NASCAR, which helped learn about new marketing tactics. Personally I agree with her; it’s men and a handful of women driving around tracks for hours on end, not sport. But they market the hell out of it!
So I picked up my first Forbes magazine. And I learned. I learned about the new Apple CEO, Jamie Dimon and the European economy. And I went on to use my American Airlines points to subscribe to Inc., Fast Company, The Atlantic (and Lucky, I still like pretty things!). It’s great to be able to hold a conversation beyond the latest pop news, both at work and with my friends and family.
So now as I move forward, not letting the “conference fire” die, where did you find your passion? And how did you keep the flames stoked?