Been looking at all these new fancy 2019 Cyclocross bikes, pictures of guys in muddied up lycra carrying their bikes over the rough stuff. This is John Tomac. He was my 80’s downhill mountain bike hero. Drop bars CHECK! Disc wheel CHECK! Way ahead of his time. He didn’t finish many races (mostly due to flats back then, a flat and you were out!) but he rode so aggressively and stylishly no one cared!
#GETBACKONTHEBIKE
Baby Steps.
“What About Bob?” (1991) was a hilarious movie to me as a 16yr old teenager. It’s even funnier to me now at 43. In the movie Bob (Bill Murray) gets given a book written by his psychiatrist Dr. Marvin (Richard Dreyfuss) called “Baby Steps” (a book that I, and surely many wish actually existed!).
Bob: Baby Steps?
Dr. Marvin: It means setting small reasonable goals for yourself one day at a time. One tiny step at a time. Baby steps.
Bob: Baby steps.
Dr. Marvin: For instance, um… when you leave this office, don’t think about everything you have to do in order to get out of the building, just think to what you must do to get out of this room, and when you get to the hall, deal with that hall, and so forth… you see? Baby steps!
A lack of any kinda of consistent pattern in how I lived my life for a few years eventuated in 6 solid months of smoking an ounce of weed a week, not getting off the couch, not eating right and most important of all, not sleeping well. The lack of sleep made me crazy. It all became obvious to me when I was watching serial killer documentaries; all these guys were pretty normal until they didn’t sleep for 3 days, and that’s what I believe drove them mad enough to go through with their evil plans.
Impatience is a curse.
Wanting to hurry things up once you’ve had enough of feeling sorry for yourself and thinking too big isn’t great when you’re down, as the last thing you want to do is disappoint yourself even more. When I was at my worse I couldn’t even get up off the couch to piss in the bathroom (I’d piss in a mountain dew bottle instead), people were suggesting I get back on the bike, or go for a swim at the rock pool, but they didn’t understand that those most mundane every day things were the hardest things to do.
Taking a deep breath is a small step. It’s amazing how the small tiny little steps have been massive for me lately. It’s like when Dad died, he just had complications on top of complications until he was, well… dead, but man if he was to have had any tiny little baby step forward, we would have taken it, no matter how small a step, as it might just have been the sign we needed to turn the tide.
I’m in a really good place right now, and I’m already starting to develop some big plans. I feel I’ve gotten back on track by A) getting some sleep and B) setting myself up with some very small goals which I’ve absolutely smashed out of the park.
Comedy or not; “What About Bob?” made an impact on me as a teen, and the simple concept of “Baby Steps” is one that I will for sure utilise from time to time in future.
Jane’s Addiction: “I’ve been caught stealing. Once when I was 5”.
Did anyone else shoplift when they were kids? I stole a LOT and never got caught (I’m sure I’ve paid it back in karma tho?!).
A good school mate who lived in my area and I used to catch a bus into the city most weekends. We went so often, his parents thought we must have had girlfriends and that we were going in to the movies on dates every weekend. Little did they know that we were actually shoplifting.
We would both wear big coats and backpacks. You could very easily roll magazines into your arm sleeves. I had a jacket I wore under my coat that had zippers all over it (everything bought in Hong Kong on holidays had zippers all over it at the time!). I used to shove POSCA PENS in the zipper pockets (which were fake pockets that just dumped the pens into the jacket lining allowing me to carry a LOT of stuff).
We got more and more brazen and started to do some legitimate shoplifting. We would take a 10 pack of TDK blank cassette tapes from Woolworths on George Street and simply go down the escalator, with goods in hand, and exit via the QVB Exit. scot-free.
On one weekend we thought we’d head into Chinatown to lift. Big mistake as my mate’s tall, and white! The first shop we went into I loaded up, got out and crossed the road to wait for my mate to come out, but he was stopped. I saw him lift his arms and all these pens just fell out onto the street.
I never saw that mate again on weekends. I’m sure his parents busted his nuts. Didn’t stop me though, I just went on to new heights.
One weekend we got a crew together to check out this huge CD & LP sale at the Hordern Pavilion (The Hordern is where all the big rock and metal bands play in Sydney). We pooled our cash together and with it I bought a few hundred dollars worth of LP’s and CD’s, walked out, emptied the goods and walked back in with the receipt.
Any one of us could then walk in, get whatever CD’s and LP’s we wanted to so long as the value was the same as the original receipt. If security asked to see a receipt for the goods in hand you’d just produce the receipt we started out with earlier that day.
Porn mags were sold like crack cocaine in high school. I remember some of my guys throwing porno mags into the year 7’s playgrounds for free, only to hook them into buying new editions each month.
It wasn’t until my little sister got caught shoplifting that I stopped. Mum and Dad had gotten a call from a store to say they had my sister, and that she had been caught shoplifting. This hit my parents pretty damn hard as they themselves ran a retail store in Centrepoint Tower (now Sydney Tower). My little sis copped it pretty bad from Dad, so bad that I never ever wanted to have Dad that mad at me… so I quit!
I’ve mostly enjoyed marketing on Facebook over the past decade. With ZEN Garage (est. 2011) we’ve had high highs and low lows but right now, we’re at our lowest low.
When Facebook added us to their “recommended” lists, they showed us that we could reach millions of potential customers each week through this medium, but like many ‘too good to be true’ things, it all went pear shaped pretty damn quickly; the boosting came to an abrupt end which then forced us to pay to reach the larger audience we had acquired.
Transparency as a theme for life is still very much in motion for me. Lately I’ve been posting on the ZEN Garage business page in a more personal manner; as me, one person, and not as a brand, company or whatever entity that some people might expect us to be.
Some of our recent shared posts have reached over 40k people, our own original content is getting anywhere from 2,000–15,000 and the engagement percentages are high. It’s amazing how much feedback I’ve gotten from the diverse posts made. Considering we left Facebook for a year and have only just come back on in the past month shows that the medium still helps you to reach a lot of people.
Ideally I’d like to run ZEN in the same way I run my Facebook profile. To run ZEN more personal than business. What would happen if I shut the ZEN Garage Facebook Page and instead ran ZEN from my own personal Facebook profile? All of this got me thinking about how Facebook could actually be hurting my business in the following ways:
– Facebook takes traffic away from blogs and hosted sites.
– Facebook requires that you cater to your audience, rather than allowing you to shape your audience.
– Facebook has too much control over content and marketing.
– You’re building an empire on someone else’s land
– Facebook connects you/your business with people you don’t actually want to market to.
– Facebook fans consist of people who actually aren’t customers anyway.
– Facebook can create a negative brand image of you from people posting negative crap on your page.
OK, so the negative points above are pretty damn depressing, but in reality it depends on how you look at it and how you choose to make it work for yourself. Right now we’re gaining in traffic. People are liking, commenting, and visiting. We’re getting traction and that’s a good thing.
Also; I enjoy Facebook, so really, wearing my marketing hat whilst on Facebook isn’t so hard, especially since I’m not trying to be anything but myself!
In conclusion: So should we delete our Business Facebook Page?
Probably not.
Discussions soon with my current Australian Infront business partners Damien and Zann. Are we going to put more energy into it, or is our work done? Since 1999 the Australian INfront has worked hard to inspire a community of Australian creatives to take inspiration from our own backyards instead of simply looking overseas to make it. Here are a few photos of Damien, Zann and I at work. It might be another lifetime ago for me, but INfront moments, including all who were the original founders with me back in 1999 are special moments.
Our work is done – Australian INfront – 1999-2019.
I caught up with old Graphic Design mate Sean Torstensson yesterday, we’ve been friends since I launched the Australian INfront in the late 90’s. Sean was a founding member and he was on the stage beside me when we presented INfront at Semi-Permanent too.
Sean’s always been the young picture of potential to me, but over the years I felt the kid needed to pull his thumb out of his bum and turn attitude into genuine confidence. I’m sure I deal “tough love” harder than most, so I know Sean’s copped it hard from me over many years… funny then that even after all these years I find myself once again kicking him in the bum!
One of Sean’s inspirational quotes came up on my feed and I lost my shit:
I wrote in response: I’m in NO WAY AT ALL responsible for what comes out of other PEOPLES (why ppl?!) mouths Sean! I say everyone should take more responsibility for what comes out of their mouths, no? Your quote is in 2 parts, first part is hella confusing, 2nd part is pretty logical. IE: listen to people, if you do you might find greatness (also, why use the money related term of ‘gold’ here Sean? Very curious as to why people’s good words need to be associated with money?).
Sean dodged my response, which really took me by surprise (you can check the to-and-fro post responses here. After much blasting was done Sean thought it would be better to catch up in real life instead of Facebook. I agreed and yesterday I gave it to him even harder, no filter.
“As a Designer you’re a communicator Sean and you should know better than to completely confuse, or in this case, misuse words for no good reason. There’s nothing left-of-field about the first part of the quote, it represents victim blaming! You gotta stop caring for the fans who just put love hearts under every post and understand that the people who have taken the time to write long constructive posts are the real fans… and WTF you still using this light blue flowers background shit since the late 90’s?!” etc etc.
Amazingly Sean sat there with a grin on his face and just deflected the lot with “well that’s your opinion Justin”.
I give up! In the words of the great Elon Musk: “If you can’t beat them, join them!”. Sometimes acceptance might be the only way forwards? Less expectations, more rock pool.
