Getting Nostalgic
This past weekend, I had a good time. I got away from the office a little bit and I went to downtown Chicago to visit my daughter, who just moved into a new apartment. It's just outside of Wrigleyville. I think it's called Lakeside. It's a big area that is in the hip upcoming north side where most of the young people live: lots of dogs, lots of strollers, lots of kids. They moved into this really super cool new apartment that has a whole bunch of amenities. Our son flew up, too. He flew up from North Carolina where he works. It was a birthday weekend for my wife, and we're going to go out to dinner and to spend a little time together.
As we walked in the apartment, I noticed that the kids were playing Nintendo. I'm not talking about Wii. I'm talking old school Nintendo, the old 8-bit, and they were playing Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles. It was cool. I haven't seen that for a while, so it blew me away that these kids are so nostalgic about their video games. It got me thinking. I'm looking over on the wall, and there's all of these DVDs, and it made me think there's gems and there's nuggets inside of each one of those DVDs, and the ones that we like the most, we take away, but I'll come back to that. After we sat there for a little while, we went out and I had a chance to get even more nostalgic.
There's a music store down the street called Chicago Music Exchange, and I walked around and I looked on the wall and I found just about every guitar I've ever owned in the course of my lifetime. I did not pull one of them off the wall because if I did, I would want to take one home, and they were, on average, around $2,500 to $3,000 and that would not have made my wife happy. Plus, I don't need more guitars. Then after that, we went and had some lunch, and walked all the way down to Wrigleyville and stood in front of the Chicago Cubs Marquee, got a picture of the family there. It turned into a great day that was very nostalgic.
I came back and started thinking. Those movies really got me going! I said, “Okay, what are my favorite things?” My three favorite things are music, golf, and I also love Sci-Fi when it comes to movies. I love the Star Wars series, Star Trek, all of those kind of things. How do I equate that into marketing or running a business?
1) This Is Spinal Tap
Let me start with the first movie. Maybe you've seen it. Maybe you haven't. It's called This is Spinal Tap. This is Spinal Tap is a rockumentary with a fake band. This is not a real band. It's made up with a bunch of actors who used to be on Saturday Night Live and things like that. They are a band in decline. They used to play these huge auditoriums, sold out crowds of tens of thousands of people, and throughout the course of this movie, they're playing at amusement parks and Air Force dances and all these just smaller and smaller and goofier and goofier gigs.
What this movie tells me is that success is fleeting. Just because you have success today does not necessarily guarantee you're going to have success tomorrow. As you're in the middle of it, make sure you loft it in and realize what it feels like because you're going to have to continue to work to maintain that. You're going to have to grow. You're going to have to change with the times. The second thing that I learned from this movie is that it takes a team. Obviously, you can't just have two people in a band. You don't have any drums or bass, or you just have two guitar players, two singers. But they had a keyboard player and then they've got roadies and lighting people and sound people. It really takes a team to put on a show. In your business, how well is your team defined? How is that team working as a group towards the success, whether it's fleeting or not?
Then finally, friends and relationships really matter. In one part of the movie, the manager decides to quit; he couldn't take it anymore and just left, so the band was flailing to book even any gigs, and the ones that they got were getting worse and worse. Then at another point, Nigel Tufnel, the guitar player, the main guitar player, ended up quitting, too, so the band was trying to play without him and they had nobody to play the lead solos, so the songs all sounded half-done. The crowds were booing and it turned into a mess. Remember that your friends and client relationships are really what matter when it comes to success.
2) Caddyshack
The next movie I want to talk about is Caddyshack. If you've never seen Caddyshack, it's about Bushwood Country Club and a bunch of goofy characters that are in this hoity-toity type of country club, and it includes a doctor and a bishop and a land developer and just a bunch of crazy characters. It's pretty funny. Anyways, what this movie taught me was that just being privileged enough to be able to join that club does not necessarily make you good. It may make you quirky, but it doesn't necessarily make you good. Just being privileged isn't necessarily the answer to success. It takes hard work.
The second thing that I learned was from Danny Noonan, who is a caddy in the Caddyshack. He grows throughout the movie. The way he does it is by serving others. He's carrying around people's bags. He's helping them pick their clubs. He's doing everything he can to be a steward to these people, and he's being a servant to these people. By that, he's starting to gain favor and starting to learn a bunch of things. By being the servant, he's learning and growing himself. Then in the last scene of the movie, there is a competition between caddies to win a scholarship and it happens to be between the adversary and Danny Noonan at the very end.
On Danny's very last shot, he has to putt it in to win. Otherwise, they go into a playoff. He puts the ball and it hangs on the edge of the cup and does not go in. What ends up happening is Carl, who is the greens-keeper or the groundsman or groundskeeper or whatever you want to call him, is trying to get rid of all the gophers — not golfers, but the gophers on this golf course. He puts plastic explosives in all the gopher holes, and then eventually, just like a Bugs Bunny movie, pushes the plunger, and all of a sudden all these explosions go off, and then the ball ends up rattling into the hole. What I learned from that is that sometimes chaos can create cash. The chaos of all of those explosions moved the ball into the hole.
3) The Matrix
The final movie I want to talk about is The Matrix. The Matrix is a movie about Neo, who is supposedly The Chosen One and is going to help a bunch of people break The Matrix. The Matrix is really made up of a bunch of people who are not necessarily living in the real world. They're actually living in these pods, and the machine is using their brain power to create this fake world. What Neo learns, after he takes the blue pill or the red pill (because one of them is going to keep him in The Matrix, and the other one is going to take him down the rabbit hole), he learns that reality is what you believe. He had to learn that The Matrix is fake and how it worked.
The second thing that he had to learn was you need help to reprogram yourself. He met Neo, and Neo is the person who is driving him through this journey and guiding him and teaching him and introduces him to a team that supports him. You need help to reprogram yourself. Then finally, he learns at the end that he can control his own destiny. You control your attitude. You control your destiny. At the very last scene, he's getting shot up and starting to die. Then all of a sudden, he realized, “Wait a minute. I'm in the middle of The Matrix. I have control.” He stands up, heals himself, and in the end beats The Matrix.
Final Thoughts
Perspective is a funny thing. Everyone listens to a song or watches a movie and gets different things or feelings out of it! I have learned how to become a better speaker by being a musician. I have learned how to become a better networker by playing golf. Many things in science fiction have changed the way we live… the iWatch, Moon Landing, Ear Buds, Electronic Paper, Real Time Translation, and so much more.
I would love to hear your stories, thoughts, and comments on this subject. Comment below and share your experiences and suggestions on how your favorite movies have helped (or could help) your business!
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