by Nathan Coumbe

Who’s your Zig Ziglar?

Zig Ziglar (a native of my very own Mississippi) is practically the grandfather of all motivational speakers. 

He spent years of his life giving incredible speeches on stage. But he also recorded dozens of audio programs to help people change their mindsets and learn his signature theme:

“You can have everything in life you want if you just help enough other people get what they want.”

Seth Godin used Zig Ziglar as a mentor when he started off as a book packager in the 1980s. He had multiple Zig Ziglar audio programs that he listened to on repeat for 3+ hours a day. And it helped him overcome 900 rejections in a row!

Seth is a huge advocate for listening to the same people over and over again as often as you can.

But it’s not necessarily because “positive thinking” can help you get everything you want in life.

Instead, it’s to help you rewire your self-talk so you can…

  • Be more effective in your daily life, 
  • Overcome obstacles and setbacks
  • Be positive when the bad stuff inevitably happens

His advice: find someone who speaks to you in the right way and listen to their messages over and over again… Until you come to believe it yourself. 

Seth Godin is MY Zig Ziglar. 

  • I’ve listened to all of his podcast episodes (200+) at least twice, if not more
  • I’ve watched all his TED talks multiple times 
  • I’ve tried to find every podcast he’s ever been a guest on
  • AND I own just about every one of his books

I wonder: who’s your Zig Ziglar?

Who is someone whose message resonated so much with you that you can’t get enough of them? 

If you’ve found someone like that—in a podcast, audiobook, TED talk, or YouTube channel—I urge you to put them on repeat and rewire your self-talk. 

And if you haven’t, find someone who could do that for you… Seth Godin. Zig Ziglar. Buddha. Tony Robbins. Robert Kiyosaki. Jesus.

The “who” doesn’t matter all that much.

Just find someone and adopt them as a mentor from afar.

by Nathan Coumbe

Fix your complaining

I learned a great technique from Dr. John Berardi which has really helped improve my outlook on life. 

Here’s what I learned from him:

“It feels silly, but every time I find myself complaining, I immediately stop and list off three good things about my day.”

Read the article about this gratitude technique here, then try it for yourself and let me know how it goes.

by Nathan Coumbe

The road is better than the inn

Miguel de Cervantes (author of Don Quixote) once said this:

“The road is always better than the inn.”

The journey we’re on is always more interesting and more satisfying than the destination to which we’re heading.

What happens when we get to the end of the road anyway? Inevitably, we think, “What now?”

Soon after, we decide on another goal to achieve. Another trip to take. Another journey.

We’re like a dog chasing a car—we wouldn’t know what to do with it if we finally caught one. 

Enjoy the journey, however bumpy it is. The destination is never all it’s cracked up to be.

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?