I noted on Facebook, that generally, I do not celebrate Fathers Day. My response has always been that every day is Father’s Day. But I was reprimanded by someone (a few someones) that this is selfish. It robs those who love me of their chance to have a day to celebrate me. So I admitted that I would give in. Yay Me! (and other Fathers too).

To that end, some thoughts and reflections on being a father, our peaceful home, and the pain of apologies.

Parenting is Not Babysitting

I’ve told this story before but it is worth repeating today.

Many years ago, I was at the park with my children. They were much younger. While we played on swings, slide, etc., I older woman and I got to talking. She said, “It’s nice to see you babysitting your kids; giving mom a break.”

I responded, “I’m not babysitting them. I’m parenting them.” I didn’t respond to her in anger or even much annoyance but I want that message out there because I heard similar things all the time.

I didn’t (and do not) take my kids hiking, to the beach, to the park, etc, to give mom a break. I took them there because that is what I most enjoy doing. And I certainly wasn’t logging the hours to either be paid or divvy up time in some mathematical equation.. ie: “I had them 6 hours yesterday, it is your turn to give me some alone time.”

But I’ve heard such things from fathers… It’s bizarre to me. STOP IT!
Story: The Science of Fatherhood

Peaceful is funny

Yesterday we went to the beach. A friend of one my kids joined us and on the drive home, she commented that she liked our home. She said it was “peaceful.”

This caused my youngest and I to burst out laughing. Peaceful is NOT how we, who view it from the inside, picture our home. This may be the same for your family; for many families. Families live with themselves and have to balance both the dirt and shine that others might see. Families of divorce might be working to balance that even more so.

Interestingly enough (“interesting” is my euphemistic term for almost anything – here it could mean sad), a disagreement between my kids right as we dropped of this friend, resulted in a heated exchange and some hurt. The friend didn’t really see this but it was an ironic demonstration of why her perception of peace was funny to us.

The end result was an apology, a hug, a promise to try to do better… love is a sometimes forced action but that is okay!

Something about apologies

Earlier in the day, one of my children responded to me “pushing niceness” with some annoyance. I responded, annoyed and then angry. I went to the store, and came home; then I apologized. They did too – and all was well.

During the heated moment first mentioned to above, as we dropped off the friend, I was speaking to one of the parties involved and I talked about my earlier apology. Their response was that by apologizing, the other person would think they are right. To which I said, “If that is in fact true, so what?”

I’m being intentionally vague about the who’s involved because the who matters far less than the what.

“In your relationships with one another, have the same mindset as Christ Jesus: Who, being in very nature God, did not consider equality with God something to be used to his own advantage; rather, he made himself nothing by taking the very nature of a servant, being made in human likeness. And being found in appearance as a man, he humbled himself by becoming obedient to death— even death on a cross!” – Phil 2:5-8

Apologies are hard! I mean true apologies. It is a bit dramatic to say that apologies are like being nailed to a cross; but for the sake of discussion let’s just say that they are. Apologies hurt our egos and require us to become nothing – even if for a moment.

The bible passage above is very intense. Your “rightness” or your position is meaningless. Boo hoo on you. You DO NOT get to consider yourself. The passage continues to explain that the result was that Christ was exalted. Our apologies and our willingness to make them, has a similar result.

For some reason, people (by people, I mean ME) love carefully qualifying their apology. We are careful to create a clear demarcation of what it is we are apologizing for. Heaven forbid we apologize and accidentally give any ground or room that our apology is broader than this small slice of ground!

“I am sorry for getting annoyed” and “I’m sorry for getting angry,” are better than, “I’m sorry for getting angry.. it is just that your words hurt me.”

The second is an explanation of why you are apologizing. You are really saying, “I apologize that I responded to your jerk behavior with anger but please make note of your jerk behavior because that is why I responded in this way and therefore, you caused my need to apologize.” You are pointing out why THE OTHER PERSON NEEDS to apologize.

Hint: Your apology is not/should not be contingent. Whether the other person should or should not; does or does not; apologize is meaningless. That is for them to work out.

In fact, “I’m sorry for hurting you.” Or “I’m sorry for being a jerk.” – might be better than “I’m sorry for getting angry.” The latter seems to leave too much open – ie: why was I angry?

In the end, apologies are a big thing though; one of the biggest things.

Peaceful with a passion

Back to someone referring tour family as peaceful… Jess and I talked about it a bit. Our family is NOT peaceful… partially because everyone is passionate and opinionated. Discussions can and do escalate! But the love is fierce too! It needs to be! It had better be or else we are sunk!

When I think about my child’s friend who considers us peaceful, I am left thinking a couple things.

One: She would discover different if she lived with us.

Two: Safe may be a better explanation of what she sees/saw.

Our family is safe. Not safe is some barricaded, no danger sort of way. Life isn’t like that. Safe is more representative of our fierce love and desire to love. It is, hopefully, represented by our willingness to forgive each other.

We are all jerks in our time. We need grace and in our family we seem intent upon proving this point often. In the end, and up to this point, we have been willing to give it.

If your family doesn’t need grace – and if apologies are not needed or given frequently – than your family is doing great.. except for the lying.

For Father’s Day, I want peaceful with a passion. I want to apologize more quickly and completely. I want our home to be safe because we need and we give grace.

The post Father’s Day 2013 appeared first on Author, Coach, & Songwriter Matthew Moran.

A quick note about home recording

I’ve been playing around with Reaper lately. Both to get some acoustic demos recorded for the band and also to have an acoustic CD for those coffeehouse gigs. See About Reaper Below.

Make You Feel – the song

I used to announce this song by talking about James Taylor’s song, Handy Man. That was until my guitarist at the time, Elliot, pointed out that Mr. Taylor didn’t write that song. It was written by Jimmy Jones and Otis Blackwell. I modified my intro to “made popular by James Taylor.”

The song is sort of funny.. Women find it sexy (hell, I find it sexy) but when you really break it down, it is about a schmuck telling women to send their friends to him.. he’ll fix their broken hearts.. all of them. He’s busy 24 hours a day! Sheesh! We are talking stamina and vitality.

That’s the thing about songwriting..  you can write a song that is non-virtuous and totally fictional, and create an image that is somehow appealing.

When i wrote “Make You Feel” I wanted to write about the same guy! I’m happy with how it turned out. This is an acoustic rendition but we love doing it as a band as well. I hope you enjoy!

MAKE YOU FEEL
Copyright © Matthew Moran – 2007 (this recording 2013)

About Reaper

Reaper, in case you don’t know, is a DAW (Digital Audio Workstation).. aka: recording software. It is basically like ProTools, Cubase, Logic, and others. They provide a free download eval copy that NEVER runs out.. But, if you are going to use it, pay for it. It cost either $60 or about $300 depending on whether you are a full-blown studio or an individual or non-profit.

It accepts every plug-in I’ve thrown at it and has great instructions – both a downloadable PDF and online community.

The post The Story Behind The Song – Make You Feel appeared first on Author, Coach, & Songwriter Matthew Moran.

Unfortunately, in the crowded, and often loud world, of social media marketing, this amounts to annoying static. It rarely results helping the shouter grow their business in any significant way. In fact, it turns people off.

Become a teacher and say, “Learn from me.”

Instead of a social media marketing plan, you need an education plan. You need to change what you are saying from “Look at me” to “Learn from me.”

And I don’t mean, learn about my products or my services.. that’s just a disguised form of “Look at me.”

Often, when I try to direct some clients or peers on using a “Learn from me” model, what I find is they end up with something that looks like/sounds like:

• Here is the best ways to use our product.
• Here is how our services can best serve you.
• Here are 10 unique ways that our customers use our products.
• Let us educate you on how our services differ.

Again, another form of “Look at me!” It’s awful to watch – embarrassing really.

Give information away so that, if they are capable, they can do it without you! In fact, educate yourself out of a job! I promise it works.

A lesson from the consulting world

Several years ago, when I had my first consulting company, I used to give a lot of free workshops. I’d cover network scripting, office automation, web applications, group security concepts, and other technical know-how.

When I gave these presentations, I provided the real knowledge – behind the scenes / under the hood – what you should be doing. I gave my presentations away with samples. I didn’t hold information back for the “real workshop” – the $299 but get it today for $199 bait and switch. I hate those seminars! You do too.

The result is that I can track our 4 largest clients over 2.5 years as having come directly from one of these free workshops. Additionally, we won several smaller clients as well. These, in turn, became referrals to other clients.

Learn from me by the numbers

Let’s examine the numbers. Now, this is largely by memory, so it is not a scientific analysis of the effectiveness of this method of “marketing.” And make no mistake, it is marketing. I’ll explain the psychology of the effective workshop below.

I knew that if 20 people attended my workshop and I covered a specific technical discipline, that between 3-8 of them could run with my information and start using the technology immediately. They didn’t need me. In fact, some of those people became resources – stretching the technology more than I had in a short period of time. That’s great! I’m glad to have been of assistance and they were grateful I’d shared the knowledge.

Another few would never hire me either. They simply didn’t have the need or the money. Again, that’s okay. At a minimum, those people knew I had knowledge and that I shared that knowledge. That doesn’t suck for sure!

But, out of our theoretical 20 people, there were 8-14 that were very interested in having me speak to them. Between 2-5 of them were ready to do something right away. And even if they had the in-house talent, they didn’t have the available time to allocate to the project. These became clients.

They didn’t just become clients for that technology, however. Because, once we were in the door, we found other places we could help. We started with logon scripts using kixtart for one client and ended up doing more than $150,000 in additional projects in our first 6 months. That’s pretty good pay for a 1 hour free workshop.

The Podium Imparts Credibility/ The psychology of the educator

Let me explain why being a teacher/ workshop leader/ educator is a great marketing strategy.

People buy on trust and in knowing that you can make their problem go away.. or something like that. I’m talking services but there is a reasonable equivalent with products.

I work with a number of entrepreneurs and executives on their presentation skills. Some are nervous that they won’t share some dramatic new information with their audience. They are afraid that most of the audience will know a good deal about their topic – and there are times this is true.

However, I explain that the “podium imparts credibility.” If you give a decent, high-energy, presentation and you are telling the bulk of your audience things they already knew, you are considered pretty smart. Because, well, your attendee knows he is pretty smart and you reinforced what he knew… therefore, you are an expert.

And you are bound to share one small piece of information, either hard knowledge or a perspective that is new to many of those attending. The combination of this small bit of new knowledge and those ideas you reinforced that they already knew, establishes you as a bona fide expert.

You almost cannot lose!

Don’t be boring

Al Gore learned this – you can too. I won’t discuss in detail but whether a public presentation or content for your blog, website, or social network, boring is a kiss of death!

Go forth and educate

You want a powerful social media presence? You want people to return to you again and again?

Give them true knowledge. Enough knowledge that they won’t need you..

When you do that, they’ll need you!

The post Change “Look at Me” to “Learn From Me” appeared first on Author, Coach, & Songwriter Matthew Moran.

I mention Ron Finley’s TED Talk about turning food deserts into food gardens. Worth watching for sure. And my daughter writes about Hope House Farms and why she needs the farm more than it needs her.

Takeaway ideas.

1. Get Gangsta with your shovel
2. Unwilt someone today. It unwilts you in the process.
3. I’m giving away FREE BOOKS and FREE MUSIC.

The post What Tomatoes Can Teach Us About Encouragement appeared first on Author, Coach, & Songwriter Matthew Moran.

At one point, he was discussing a change that involved some reconstruction. One of the people on the site responded that, given the timeframe, it would be difficult.

His response was, “Difficult we can handle. It is impossible that takes a little extra work.”

I’ve known this person for 20 years and can attest to the fact that he, in fact, thinks and accomplishes this way. One of the reasons his clients return to him year after year is that he simply solves their problems.

In fact, many years ago, he told a piece something that, while simple, may be the best advice I’ve received as a consultant. He said, “I will happily pay someone to make my problems go away.”

In contrast, I speak with people in challenging situations; life, career, relationship. Some of these people block every attempt or piece of advice to help them see a way past their problem. It can be frustrating as a coach because, in their mind, their problem is unique and has virtually no solution.. and yet, to myself and others who provide this type of coaching, there are some pretty clear solutions and principals that mitigate the precise problems they think are so unique.

They aren’t really that unique…

Pretty simple. Solving problems has tremendous value. Finding problems has no value.

Are you a problem solver or a problem finder? Hmm….

The post Problem Finders versus Problem Solvers appeared first on Author, Coach, & Songwriter Matthew Moran.