Author / Nathan Coumbe

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Posts by Nathan Coumbe

My mission is to learn, inform, inspire, and improve. I am a passionate teacher, an avid writer, a leader of people, and a strategic thinker. Wherever I am, whatever the work I am called to do, my goal is the same: make my little corner of the world better for everyone in it. To do this, I ask better questions and solve more interesting problems for those I serve. Think deeply. Think often. Keep exploring. Always be curious.
by Nathan Coumbe

Rockstars are rare (and they probably aren’t you)

The idea of being a “rockstar” is a relatively new phenomenon. Flying around in a jet, playing music in packed out stadiums for millions of dollars a year—that really only started in the 1960s. 

For most of human history, artists created simply to create. They weren’t seeking fame or fortune. The cavemen who painted the walls at Lascaux didn’t get paid for it…

As time went by, certain arts became trades—skills performed in exchange for money or goods. 

J.S. Bach was a musician, a brilliant and talented one at that. But he was a musician because his father was a musician. He went into the family business. 

Leonardo da Vinci—magnificent genius though he was—was a tradesman. He was NOT our idea of a superstar artist.

These artists were creating to create. It was their day job, but it was also what they wanted to do.

I think the “Rockstar Era” warped our understanding of what being an artist is like for most people… And what it’s supposed to be about.

And that same “Rockstar Era” has fast come to an end. It’s harder and harder for someone to become Taylor Swift or Ye. There was a window to make that happen, and it looks like it’s over. 

There will always be outliers—the artist who sells 10 million records or the TikTok influencer with 1 billion followers.

But it probably won’t happen to you. 

That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t create art. It just means you need to focus your efforts on the act of creation and on service, rather than seeking fame and fortune.

by Nathan Coumbe

Begging to pay you

Instead of relying on third-party sponsors for your work or your art, why not rely on the people who benefit from it instead?

Rather than having advertisers on your podcasts…

Or big publishers for your book…

Or a major label for your music…

…you instead did work that people loved, needed, and wanted so much that they begged you to let them pay you for it?

What would your work look like if you took that approach?

by Nathan Coumbe

Undoing bad leadership

Often, employees are so burned by the people who lead and manage them that when they’re offered a real opportunity to make a difference, they scoff at it.

They assume there are strings attached. Or that it’s not a real opportunity, but instead, a way for them to pawn off their problems because they just don’t want to deal with it.

There’s a lesson here for leaders and managers of all types: 

You have to prove to the people in your care that you have their best interests at heart. To do this, you have to consistently act in such a way that they come to believe you by your actions, not your words. 

This is why Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote:

“What you are shouts so loudly in my ears I cannot hear what you say.”

You won’t have their trust in the beginning. 

What you want to happen won’t happen the first time. Or the second. Nor the third. Maybe not even the tenth. 

And unfortunately—but not unexpectedly—if you have a track record of burning your employees, it’ll take even longer. 

But that’s what you signed up for when you took on the role of a leader. You chose to show up continuously until you got the enrollment you seek. 

It’s not easy, but it’s definitely worth the work. 

by Nathan Coumbe

Your dying day

We are all mortal, which means all of us will die someday. That’s obvious.

But there are a few questions we don’t know the answer to, such as…

How long will that be?

How miserable will our dying be?

But there are some other, less depressing questions we can ask as well. And they happen to be questions we can answer on a daily basis…

How did I make life less difficult for others?

How did I influence things for the better?

Better to focus on what you can act on rather than worrying about the unknowns.

by Nathan Coumbe

A new poet in our midst

My wife has a good friend who just published her first book—a beautiful book of poetry written from deep in her heart.

She is the perfect candidate for Seth Godin’s marketing tactic known as “First, ten“. And I told her that was all the marketing she needed to do when she released this book.

The premise is simple: find 10 people you trust, and show them your work. If they like it, have each of them tell 10 more people.

Like rings in a pond from where a stone struck, the ripples spread outward, ever larger and more impactful on the shores they touch.

Well, consider this my way of telling 10 people (quite a bit more than that actually). I urge you to check out her poetry here… And afterwards, FOLLOW HER LEAD!

Create your own art and share it with the world. Tell 10 people and let word spread. You won’t regret the effort.

(And check out her blog here.)

by Nathan Coumbe

Respect must come before respect

You can’t treat children as less than human, then expect them to give you respect in return. 

Just because they aren’t yet adults doesn’t mean they don’t deserve dignity and respect. 

“Children should be seen but not heard…” That was the mantra many adults from my parents’ generation lived by (though, thankfully, not mine).

They have tiny, yet insightful opinions. They possess creativity and vivid imaginations you’d kill to reclaim. 

And their questions are incisive enough to make even the wisest philosophers question their views.

The Golden Rule applies to our kids as well as our peers… 

by Nathan Coumbe

Are you scared?

…Or just excited? 

Fear and excitement create a lot of the same physiological reactions in your body.

Jittery hands.

Feeling clammy. 

Elevated heart rate. 

We’ve got this little thing in our brain (the amygdala) that did a great job keeping us safe on the savannah and in the jungles thousands of years ago… But now it’s keeping us from bravely shipping our art… or leading other people.

The problem is it can’t tell the difference between a saber tooth tiger (real danger) and the not-so-dangerous act of publishing your work. 

It FEELS dangerous… But it’s not. And yet we get the same physiological reaction. 

So maybe you aren’t scared. Maybe you’re just feeling excited about possibilities instead. So when you feel those feelings, you should ask yourself, “What am I excited about?”

Is this the kind of fear that is keeping me safe from harm? 

Or is this the kind of fear that is keeping me from being at my best?

by Nathan Coumbe

What if you HAD to start your own business?

I clicked the “Random” button on Seth Godin’s blog yesterday and landed on an old post from 2002.

One passage punched me so hard in the gut that I had to share it with you today in its entirety. 

“Imagine for a second that you just lost your job. Further, imagine that the industry in which you’ve been trained and are working in has just disappeared.

What are you going to do? Are you going to go out and look for another job?

What if there were no choice… what if you had to start something? Anything. What would it be?“

Here’s the thing: your current job is crazy, risky, and unstable, probably more so than any entrepreneurial venture you might start. Why? 

Because you could be fired at any time and lose your sole source of income.

He continues:

“Is it scary? Well, just for a second, consider the alternative. You could work for Motorola or Adelphia or even AT&T, always wondering when the company was going to downsize you at the same time you were busy doing whatever the boss asked just to be sure you’d be the last to be fired…

Sounds to me like running a tiny business is totally safe in comparison.”

You don’t have to mortgage your house or get $500,000 in venture capital to start a small business… 

You can build a tiny business, one that makes a difference for a small group of customers or clients at the same time it secures your income. You don’t even have to quit your job today to get started.

So I repeat the question:

What would you start if you had to?

by Nathan Coumbe

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic…

Denis Waitley was wildly optimistic about the future when he recorded “The Psychology of Winning” in the 1990s.

Here are just some of those predictions:

  • Hydrogen-powered cars that cleaned the air as we drove them by 2010.
  • 100% online, virtual education for all students everywhere. No need to drive to classes anymore when you can just access everything online.
  • Supersonic and hypersonic planes used as our normal mode of transportation. Any major city within a three-hour flight no matter where you are on the planet. 
  • High school seniors flying to Hong Kong for their senior prom in two hours. Don’t sneak over to Australia for the afterparty—and make sure you’re home by 1am!

Denis also predicted that by the year 2000, women would have equal pay with men and be equally represented in business schools, law schools, and entrepreneurial startups.

Like I said, wildly optimistic. It might even seem laughable, like something out of a futuristic 80s movie.

And yet…

We are so busy trying to get back to normal after this pandemic, we’ve somehow lost all the opportunity to actually make these happen.

Because of COVID-19, we already did 100% online, virtual education for a year and a half. It wasn’t perfect (far from it). But it worked. It’s been shown to be possible. 

But we were so busy being focused on “getting back to normal,” we seemed to have missed the opportunity to push it further and make it better.

I don’t know the first thing about hydrogen scrubbing and powered cars. But I do know we have the technology for all-electric vehicles that don’t pump pollution and toxins into the air on a daily basis (multiple companies have this tech). 

But instead, we’re buying bigger, badder, less efficient, gas-guzzling, pollution-admitting, tank-like vehicles, all in an effort to make a statement about our political views or our masculinity.

And here we are, 22 past after the year 2000… And women are still fighting for equal pay, equal representation, and control over their own bodies, not to mention all the other genders and races fighting for the same things.

So yes, Dennis was wildly optimistic. But it’s understandable why.

Because even back then the technology was coming online, the possibilities were there, and he saw them and thought, “Surely the world will embrace all of this—right?”

Yet here we are. Rejecting all of it out of hand. 

Yes—some of these wonderful possibilities were forced on us by a horrible situation… Yet they were still wonderful opportunities. 

But we were so desperate to go back to normal that we looked them in the face and said, “No thank you.” 

We’re operating with 21st-century technology and possibilities while trying to stay in a 20th-century world. Why?

Because it’s the world we know. It’s the status quo. It’s “the regular kind.”

I feel like we missed a big opportunity here. And now I’m worried it may be years or decades before what’s possible actually comes to fruition.

by Nathan Coumbe

“That’s not the right way to do that…”

Have you ever looked at someone and said to yourself, “That’s not the right way to do that…”

Maybe you were watching someone do an exercise at the gym. And you just couldn’t figure out why their pushup form was so different from yours.

Your first thought probably goes to their ignorance: “They just don’t know the right way to do it. I could show them how…”

The thing is… You have your own lens through which you look at the world. You have your own experiences, education, and biases that dictate the “right” and “wrong” way for you. 

And they have theirs too. 

Even when it comes to something as simple as a pushup. And even when there might be an objectively “right” way to do something.

But there might be a specific reason they’re doing their pushups in that way. 

Maybe they have an injury that prevents them from using “proper” form.

Or maybe they read a new study that taught a different way of doing it—one that helps them meet a different need.

Or maybe it really is simply ignorance of what’s right. 

But the fact remains, you don’t know why they’re doing it. 

Perhaps a better thing to do, instead of jumping to conclusions about right and wrong, would be to change the statement to a question.

“I wonder why they’re doing it that way?”

At that point, you have the basis for empathy and understanding.

And those qualities give you a much more stable platform to engage in dialogue… Or even enact change.