Avoiding Stock Photography Cliches

Imagery is a huge part of effective storytelling.

In traditional stories, pictures and words are intrinsically linked.

In the original versions of Alice in Wonderland, The Wind in the Willows and Winnie the Pooh, the illustrations were just as much a part of the storytelling experience as the words. The drawings Hugh McLeod provided for Seth Godin’s early books helped reinforce Godin’s words and send an overarching message.

Magazines like Time, Life, Rolling Stone and Sports Illustrated have relied on combining great words and photography to tell compelling stories for decades. Movie posters and album covers have also relied on images and a few carefully chosen words to piqué people’s interest and convince them to buy admission to those worlds.

Today, websites and blog posts are competing for attention with the largest amount of media and information that has ever existed in the history of our planet. Yet, many websites treat their imagery as nothing more than an afterthought.

Well articulated words need appropriate images to complement them. In a perfect world, every website would use original imagery, illustrations, and photos. Ideally, these visual materials would be guided by the people doing the writing. For various reasons, this is not always possible. Stock photography is a necessary source of images for many websites. I’d like to help you avoid some common stock photography clichés that are overused, ineffective, and just plain dull. Here are the major offenders to stay away from.

The Word Cloud

Stock Photography Cliché: Word Cloud

Literally, a jumble of random words.

The word cloud image became popular in the mid 2000s when Wordle.net debuted, allowing people to create computer generated word art. This was clever when it first appeared, and is still a great tool for analyzing what words appear most on a web page. As an impactful stock photography generator, its time has passed.

Digital image creators have uploaded hordes of word clouds to stock photo sites, prompting blog writers and web designers to use them for imagery. But, putting aside the fact that websites are already over-saturated with word clouds, let’s look at the usage of word clouds from a goal-oriented standpoint.

The main reason people build web pages is to prepare the reader for some other action, by educating them about a problem, and potential solutions. To keep visitors reading, we add images — to break up text, keep readers interested, help support the theme of each page. But word clouds are not storytelling, they’re simply a jumble of words. They are chaos where there should be order. People do not read word clouds. At best, they scan them for two or three prominent words, acknowledge them and move on. The rest of the word cloud is confusion to them. Words without context are devoid of meaning, and to be avoided.

Stock Photo Cliche #1: 3D Man

“Forget Mr. No-Face guy over here.”

The digital images featuring the white 3D person are ill-advised for a number of reasons. Visually, it is uninteresting. Statistically, it is overused. Artistically, it is unimaginative. But perhaps the most compelling reason to avoid the 3D person is the inability for the reader to identify with him.

In chapter 2 of his book, Understanding Comics, author Scott McCloud discusses the icon, why simplistic renditions of people resonate with us, and how we absorb a character’s identity into our mask of self-perception. The gist of it: Messages from simple faces have a broader range of identity, as we can wear the mask of those characters more easily than those of a photo real character. However, in order to identify with a character, the character must have a face. The 3D person does not have a face, or any other distinguishing characteristics, making it difficult to identify deeply with them.

McCloud also explains that simple words and complex pictures are processed easily by the mind. Their meanings are instantly clear. More elaborate writing and simpler pictures require a higher perception level to process. What makes us absorb certain cartoon stories is when the characters are rendered in the abstract, but their surroundings and backdrops are more realistic. This is the sweet spot where we fall into the that character’s world. We process that character as an extension of our own identity, and become absorbed in their story.

The alabaster 3D person fails on two counts (besides being boring): 1) Their backdrop is also abstract, so we cannot place ourselves in that reality easily. 2) Their identity is too far abstracted. They lack a face, and therefore an identity that we can relate to.

Words On A Keyboard

Stock Photography Cliche: Words on Keyboard

“Bingo.”

This visual metaphor is supposed to represent the web (the keyboard) and whatever word happens to be on the highlighted key. Since these images are easy to produce en masse, there are about a gazillion different stock photos with this concept. As a result, there are twenty gazillion blog posts that use this type of photo. If you wish your blog posts to look the same as every other one on the internet, then absolutely, use more of these photos.

Road Signs With Words

Stock Photography Cliche: Words on Road Signs

“Not bloody likely, mate.”

This stock photo idea is similar to the words on keyboard meme. I know why digital artists produce these — they’re easy to replicate. What I don’t understand is why bloggers use them so much. I understand that business/life/whatever is a journey, just like a metaphorical highway, but repetition destroyed this photo cliché quickly. The road sign metaphor missed its off-ramp exit about 200 miles back.

Absurd Facial Expressions

Stock Photo Cliches: Contrived Facial Expressions

“Appears to be high on life.”

I believe the photo above was supposed to show exuberance, but the result reminds me of the creepily grinning people in the Black Hole Sun video.

Most of the time, I see these type of photos on blogs where the author is looking for a way to demonstrate a particular emotion. While these can be slightly humorous in small doses, they usually feel contrived and staged. Don’t believe me? Try searching for “people frustrated at their computer” or “money coming out your ears”. The same cheesy photos exist for thousands of different search phrases. Stock photos that are over the top can turn your messages into caricatures.

Reinforcing an emotion that you are writing about in a blog post with an image is a great idea. Just be selective about the imagery you use.

Fake Business Team Photos

Stock Photography Cliche: Who Are You Trying To Fool? This Isn’t Your Business Team!

“We’ll all stare at each other and pretend we’re having a meeting.”

Of all the stock photography cliches, the fake businessperson trope is the most unforgivable. When you use these type of photos, you miss a golden opportunity to tell the unique story of your business. Worse than that, you are telling visitors that these people are your team members. What does a customer think when they realize that you’re creating illusions about who does the work at your company? They may begin to question other parts of your company’s integrity. It doesn’t help matters when the people in the photo are ruminating intently over blank pieces of paper. Now you look lame on three different levels.

Your customers want to hear your story. People have a sixth sense for when you’re being honest and when you’re being disingenuous. Photos may not seem like a big deal, but they are. Investing in a professional photographer to take photos of your actual staff for your website will make you stand out from the pretenders.

You know what? I admire companies that use actual photos instead of stock photos in their booths.
@rachelnabors
 serious, like it'd kill companies to not take the time to do a real photoshoot. Stock photos is an immediate turn off.

This particular photo cliché is mostly perpetrated by larger corporations, where customers are unlikely to ever meet the people inside the company face to face. Thankfully, most medium-sized businesses realize that showing real employees is the best way to go.

Person Drawing on Transparent Whiteboard

Stock Photography Cliche: Person Drawing on Transparent Whiteboard

This type of photo can also materialize as a person pointing at a transparent screen. This stock photo cliché was cool at first, but became quickly overused, and lost its effect as people saw this over and over. I don’t advocate the use of this particular trope, but if I were forced to use one type of image from this list, it would be this one. While the things written on the invisible whiteboard are usually generic, occasionally you can find ones that match the basic premise of a page. If you can create your own graphic that explains what you do specifically, that is multiple times better.

Photo Ideas That May Become Cliches In The Future

There’s a photo idea that I’ve seen a lot of lately. It was cool when I saw it the first time. And the next couple hundred times as well. But the Things Organized Neatly trope is getting dangerously close to the edge of becoming a cliché, and I’d hate to see that happen. There are a lot of innovative spins on this idea that I’ve seen — let’s keep pushing creative ways to make this idea fresh.

It’s tough to come up with good ideas, articulate them in writing, and then also pick an enhancement image that hasn’t been ridden into the ground. It takes a bit longer to dig for those stock images that haven’t been overexposed, but it helps make your readers feel like you have something original to say. Make that extra effort to stand out, and you will surpass most of your competitors.

Flash Websites Downgraded In Search Results

Google announced that starting July 14th, 2014 Flash websites will be downgraded in search results on devices that do not support Flash. Presumably this would affect mobile usage only, as Flash is not supported in iOS or Android 4.1 and above. On mobile the new search results would state that the site uses Flash, and may not work on your device. In addition to the warning that the site may not render, these search links will also be smaller than normal results.

This move likely signals the final nail in the coffin for Flash-based sites, as HTML5 has already replaced Flash as an animation technology. Websites that will be hardest hit will be those that are built partially or completely on Flash, like many restaurant websites seem to be.

Sorry Flash. Heavy flash sites will now get a warning & smaller link in Google search results.  - Paul Irish

Restaurants every where will wonder what happened to their SEO juice - Joseph Scott
GOOD. nothing worse than a restaurant website i can't see on my phone. - Paul Irish

Google made this move in order to provide better user experience for mobile and tablet users. Flash sites would be missing large chunks of content on iOS and most Android devices, so this announcement was long-expected.

How To Improve Page Speed In WordPress

Today, I’d like to share some tips for improving your page speed in WordPress.

Performance and optimizing for page speed are now as much a part of web development as writing code.

There are several reasons performance matters. The most important is user experience. The faster your WordPress website loads, the less likely a user will click away and go to another site.

Humans are impatient — we want instant gratification, and we expect a web page to load in less than three seconds, and if it hasn’t, then we leave.

Forrester Research did a study in 2011 that reported 47% of participants expected e-commerce pages to load in 2 seconds or less. A delay of one second in load time reduced conversions by 7%. This is why companies like Facebook, Google, and Amazon spend so much time and effort reducing load time — because they understand how important shaving those milliseconds is to their bottom line.

Why Performance and Page Speed Matter So Much

Your customers expect it. A late 2013 report by Strangeloop Networks reported that 57% customers would abandon a mobile site after 3 seconds if it had not loaded. This number was an increase from 40% in a similar 2012 test. At the same time, the weight of the average web page increased by 30% in 2012, and again in 2013, up another 32% to a staggering 1.7KB.

Search engines grade your site on it. Since Google announced in late 2012 that they would be a mobile first company, page speed has become a ranking factor. If two sites are equal in every other way, the site that loads faster will rank higher. You can see how Google rates the speed of your own web pages on mobile and desktop by using their Page Speed Insights tool. You should also check out the Page Speed Insights Guide published by Kinsta.

Google Page Speed Insights

Here’s the good news. By optimizing your site, you can gain a performance advantage over some of your competitors. This will also please your customers and deliver a better overall experience to them. Here’s a breakdown of site conditions that are most often in need of speed optimization.

Hosting

Having the appropriate type of hosting package is critical to reducing load times. If you employ all the other tips in this article, but have a shoddy hosting plan, you’re not going to get the site performance that you seek. So what type of hosting should you be using? Shared hosting is the incorrect answer.

Shared hosting is appealing to many people because it the lowest in cost ($10 a month or less), but you get what you pay for. Shared hosting servers contain thousands upon thousands of sites. To make these plans profitable, the hosting company must cram as many sites as possible into each server. All the sites share the resources of the server at the same time, resulting in poor performance and slower load times.

Shared hosting is fine for sites that are low traffic and low priority, like your cat photo blog. Do not use shared hosting for your serious business websites.

VPS (aka Virtual Private Server) hosting is superior to shared hosting. With a VPS server, there are still other websites on a single server, but far less than with shared hosting. Each VPS is given dedicated memory, bandwidth and resources of its own. Page speed improves significantly compared to shared hosting. For many businesses, VPS hosting will be sufficient.

Dedicated hosting is for businesses with heavy traffic. On dedicated hosting, it is one site to one server. These are not common for small businesses, but more common for larger sites.

Using a managed WordPress host like WP Engine or Flywheel can help you immensely, as they take care of many optimization techniques on the server itself.

Reduce Page Load by Optimizing Images

Download speed correlates to the weight of the page, and over half the weight of most web pages consists of image files. One simple thing you can do use images that are the right size for the page, and no bigger. If you usually load images directly from your iPhone to your website, you may be using images that are unnecessarily large, adding extra weight to the page. What I usually do is download iPhone images to my computer, and size them down in Photoshop before uploading them to a website. This helps improve page download speed.

Retina Devices. If you are targeting retina devices, you can use double-sized images and Retina.js to substitute background images. If you are using thumbnails with a plugin such as Yet Another Related Posts Plugin, and need to target retina devices, you can set create a custom thumbnail that is 2x normal size, and use CSS to constrain the width and height to 1x.

Responsive / Mobile. Optimizing for mobile first is a key component in site performance. If your site is responsive, and you use display: none in your CSS to hide large images, be aware that the browser still downloads those assets. Think about what assets mobile devices would need to download, and plan accordingly. If you have a large background image on the desktop version of a site, load a smaller background image on mobile, and if the screen is larger, conditionally load the larger version of the image.

DNS Prefetch

DNS prefetching is something I first read about in Harry Roberts’ article on front-end performance a couple of years ago. It’s well worth your time to read.

The short version: Your browser downloads files from other sites as they are needed to make the page render. When you have Facebook widgets, Google Fonts, or embedded Tweets, the browser has to look up the domain name (DNS) for each of these to get the files it needs. It takes fractions of a second to look up these different domains, and after a while, those add up. DNS prefetching tells the browser to look up the domain name zone before it normally would, and this saves a little time. Once the domain has been looked up, it does not need to be done so again later in the page.

DNS prefetchs are simply links that go in your page , and they look like this:


    <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//fonts.googleapis.com">
    <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//platform.twitter.com">
    <link rel="dns-prefetch" href="//www.google-analytics.com">

Use DNS prefetch requests wisely — these are also HTTP requests, and using too many can slow the rendering of your page. These are best used for assets that will be looked up on every page of your site.

Check Your Theme, Use Only What You Need

One thing that can bog down a site is excessive HTTP requests. Each file that your WordPress theme requests adds milliseconds to the loading time. Many themes today are built for convenience first, not for performance first. It’s a trade off. Themes that allow you to set fonts via the Customizer almost always rely on Google Fonts, and load one style sheet for each font that is selected. While Google’s CDN servers are fast, these extra style sheets still need to be loaded to render the page. Check the source code on your site. How many individual style sheets are being loaded for fonts and plugins? See if you can combine all your font style sheet requests into one.

If you’re a theme developer, make sure your list of Google Fonts in the theme customizer is correct. One client site I diagnosed for slow loading times was sending a request to Google Fonts for an Arial style sheet (which doesn’t exist), causing page rendering to stall for obscene amounts of time, until the browser finally gave up and rendered the page without the file. If you’re a client, make sure your developer and you are working together to choose a base theme.

If you are building a custom theme, get all of your theme specific JavaScript in one file, load it in the footer. Load CSS in the head, as the page won’t render without that, but JavaScript can wait, as it is usually not on what the browser considers the critical path for page rendering.

Page Caching

Cache

Caching your site makes page loading much quicker. The logistics of how caching works is a bit technical, but here’s an easy way to explain it. Without caching, a browser requests the files needed to build a web page, and the server checks for each one, and then fetches it each time. With caching, the server makes copies of the files it needs to render a page, and serves those to browsers from the Cache folder instead of going back for the original files each time. In short, the server doesn’t have to work as hard to build web pages.

There are two good plugins for WordPress sites, W3 Total Cache and WP Super Cache. Most of the time, W3 Total Cache works beautifully. Occasionally, WP Super Cache is the right choice — it depends on the server you are using. Either one is fine, but for my own sites, I use W3 Total Cache. WP Rocket is a premium caching plugin that I recommend.

The caching plugins will give you options for Page Cache, Object Cache, Database Cache, and Minifying files (more on that in a second). The better your hosting, the better options you will have for serving your cache files.

Minify Your Files

We just mentioned minifying your files as an option with caching plugins. Minification is when all the white space is taken out of source code files. This saves some extra kilobytes, reducing page weight. I recommend testing your particular site before minifying every file on your live site. While CSS files are usually fine, minifying JavaScript files can sometimes cause unpredictable results. I have also experienced RSS feeds breaking with HTML minification. Minify whatever files you are able to without affecting the page rendering.

GZIP and HTTP Compression

HTTP compression works similarly to zipping a file on your computer. HTTP compression takes the code files that make up a web page: HTML, CSS, JavaScript, XML, and SVG — and compresses them before serving them to browsers and uncompressing them again. This can be done via PHP or your .htaccess file. How this works is not important to the majority of us; what you need to know is that it makes your site faster.

WP Super Cache or W3 Total Cache (with CDN integration) takes care of this automatically. You can easily test to see what files are GZipped on your website at GZIPwtf.com.

CDNs

CDN: Content Delivery Network

CDNs, or Content Delivery Networks, help make your site faster by allowing you to download files from multiple domains at once. When a browser requests a web page, the server can only download from one domain at once. But browsers can download from different domains at the same time. CDNs serve your selected site files at the same time as your home server, from a global server network. The CDN chooses the server location closest to the requesting browser, and sends files from there, saving additional time.

Some popular CDNs are Amazon Web Services (AWS), Akamai, and MaxCDN. WordPress also offers its own CDN service, Photon as part of the Jetpack plugin. Photon uses the servers at WordPress.com to store and serve images. This feature is free if you connect your site to WordPress.com, but has certain restrictions. For instance, Photon will not serve images larger than the original, and only archives images in posts, pages, and thumbnails. Photon will also not archive new versions of images — to change an image, you must rename and upload it again.

Amazon Web Services is a popular CDN, but the initial learning curve can be confusing. MaxCDN is what I am using on this site, as it is integrates with W3 Total Cache. The WordPress hosting at WP Engine also has integration with MaxCDN. The important thing is to be comfortable using whichever content delivery network you choose.

Conclusion

There are tons of ways you can improve your page speed in WordPress, and performance is going to continue to be a point of differentiation. I’d like to hear about steps you have taken recently to improve your page speed and what the results were.

Importing Large XML Files in WordPress with WXR Splitter

Importing large XML files in WordPress can be a pain. Fortunately, there is a great tool, WXR Splitter, that allows you to split a cumbersome XML file, and import multiple smaller files.

Why might you need to split your XML files in the first place? When migrating a site from staging to live deployment (or vice versa), I normally use a plugin like Duplicator, WordPress Move, WP Clone or BackupBuddy. For 99% of websites, this works smoothly.

Every so often, site migration via these plugins won’t be a smooth process. Usually this occurs when you are moving a larger than normal blog or e-commerce site — several thousands of pages deep — and the destination server has timeout limits set that cannot be overridden easily. Most servers have a time limit that background processes (like installing a clone of a huge site) are allowed to run. In this scenario, What might you do?

If you suspect you’re going to be in this situation at all, you should do a test migration to a dummy site before the big day. This will inform you of any upcoming calamities to avoid. If the normal migration plugins are not going to work, you’ll need to do a few things. First: take an inventory of everything that will have to be moved. Figure out where you are going to store these for quick deployment. These should include your theme files; uploads folder; XML files (we will get to this shortly); and all the Settings for your theme, including menus, theme options, and widgets. Theme files and uploads can be migrated via FTP in these special cases, XML files can be both exported from staging and imported to deployment via the WordPress Importer. But with a gargantuan site, one or more of the XML files will surely be too large to import in its natural form. The WordPress Import plugin will not let you import an XML file larger than 8MB. (Until recently, you could only import 2MB or less with this plugin.)

WXR File Splitter for Windows

This is where WXR Splitter comes in. Version 1.52 of WXR Splitter runs on Windows 7, Vista, or XP with .NET 2.0 installed. Simply choose the file you want to split into chunks and how large you would like your chunk files to be. Moments later, your XML files are ready for importing.

WXR Splitter for Mac

Don’t have access to a Windows machine? There is also a Mac OS X version of WXR Splitter, written by another programmer, and open-sourced on GitHub.


If your normal site migration workflow is thwarted, what is your backup plan? I’d love to hear about it in the comments below.

Seven Business Lessons From Pro Wrestling

Here’s something that my close friends know about me, that most people don’t — I’m a huge pro wrestling fan.

I grew up right when wrestling was becoming big in the late 1980s.

I watched the WWF and NWA on Saturday afternoons, stayed up late to watch Saturday Night’s Main Event, and would watch pay-per-views when they were released on VHS.

Later, I was a fan of RAW, Nitro and ECW on cable, and read “insider” newsletters that revealed what happened backstage when the cameras stopped rolling.

Though pro wrestling today is a billion dollar media and merchandise machine, its traditions go back over a hundred years, to when it was a brotherhood of traveling toughmen. Certain trade secrets and business lessons from pro wrestling have been passed down from generation to generation. Some of these made a lot of sense to me, and I’d like to share ones that are especially relevant today.

It’s All About Storytelling

It’s All About Storytelling

While wrestlers use the squared circle and microphone as their canvases, everything they say and do is part of telling a story. They establish who their character is and what they believe in. They tell their story through their mannerisms and words, their ring gear, and their actions. The wrestler must show the audience who they are, and most importantly, make the audience care about them. Characters force the audience to choose what values they identify with. Successful characters are loved or hated, but never evoke indifference.

Think about your own branding. Is your company message clear? Do people know what you stand for and what differentiates you from all of your competitors? Most importantly, do you have customers who your message resonates with? Has your business built a tribe? An initial part of storytelling is establishing the character of your business.


The most memorable storylines in wrestling history use common themes that elicit visceral emotions. Recurrent themes include betrayal, jealousy, revenge, deep-seated fears, family rivalries, patriotism, friendship, love, overcoming obstacles and transformation. We relate to characters that undergo challenges and eventually overcome them. The best stories occur where the protagonist and antagonist have logical motivations and they both believe they are right. The viewer becomes emotionally invested as the stories move forward. The more nuanced and slower the story unfolds, the better.

The goal is to get your prospects and customers emotionally invested in your business. Ideally, they will follow you as you overcome adversity and grow. If they identify with your story, they can become your advocates. This is the holy grail of brand storytelling.

Use The Time You Have To Make An Impression

Use Your Time On The Card To Make An Impression

A solid reputation takes time and experience to build up, both on a wrestling card and in the arena of business. In both cases, trust isn’t given right away—decision makers will see if you can prove yourself with larger and larger tasks, until your reputation is firmly established. If you are a new business, or fledgling entrepreneur, you are competing for attention and trust.

Prospects are unlikely to become customers right away. They must hear your name, and see examples of your expertise several times before they decide to make an initial purchase. Like a wrestler climbing the ranks, newly launched businesses must use whatever time they get in front of their audience to show poise, attention to detail, and passion for their craft. Your business may not be a main event brand yet, but if you look and sound professional each time a customer finds you online, eventually they will trust you and buy from you. Use whatever time and attention you do receive to convey the personality and benefits of your business.

Make the People You Work With Look Good

Make The People You Work With Look Good

In the wrestling world, there’s an unwritten rule that you don’t “bury” anyone that you’re working a storyline with. Two opponents can have a beef, but they should never, ever verbally deprecate the skills or accomplishments of their opponent. Storylines are designed to elevate both competitors at the end. While one must ultimately win and the other must lose, the audience must see both grapplers as being on a comparable level. They must see each confrontation as a competitive battle. If one person in the story continually diminishes the other person, the audience sees that second person as a lesser star and eventually, a joke. If a wrestler defeats an opponent who is not in the same league as them, it elevates no one, and the feud is waste of time.

How does this relate to design? If you are a designer, and you constantly vent about your clients on social media, it diminishes their value, and eventually makes you look poor for working with them. Even if you do not name these clients and you are making snarky comments about them, it makes you both look foolish, and it makes you look like a glory hound.

Wrestling has been able to continue for decades because each generation of stars helps to elevate the next generation. If you are a designer, it is your job to do that same job of elevating your client. Even if they do not know what they are doing, even if they are not ready for it—it is your job to educate them and establish them to the best of your ability. Never do or say anything that will diminish your client in the public eye. Making them successful will make you successful, so be mindful of your words.

Be Authentic, Be Interesting

I've been thinking about that a lot. Being 100% authentic, but also being interesting, telling a compelling story. John Locke, May 1, 2014 via Twitter

A saying you’ll hear a lot of wrestlers say is that the best characters are an extension of the real person, but “turned up to 11”. A wrestling audience responds to a character that feels authentic, not contrived. The communications on your website should also be authentic. It is easy to get caught up in saying things you think people want to hear, or phrasing things in the same way that others do. Page copy that is loaded with industry jargon is disingenuous, and makes your business seem the same as everyone else.

Instead of mimicking the rest of your industry, you’ll have to work to find your own unique voice. If you find writing difficult, try recording your speech, and writing that down so it sounds like you. Don’t like writing? Try making a video series or launching a podcast instead. Close the gap between how you sound in person and how you present information online. Be authentic, not a vanilla clone that is devoid of personality.

It’s not just what you say, it’s how you say it. Writing website copy is like cutting an effective promo in the ring. In order to move people to action, you must speak with a combination of conviction, logic and emotional appeal. Talk like you would if you were face to face with a customer, bringing your knowledge and passion for your craft with you.

Find One Person, and Speak To Them

Finding a market for a product or service is something many businesses struggle with. This process usually begins with interviews, surveys, and other research to determine a problem that needs solving. Sometimes products are created to fill the needs of a specific person the founder knows. Instead of creating avatars of ideal customers, a product targets an actual person, and their need is also shared by other people in a similar situation.

Jake “The Snake” Roberts, considered to be a master of ring psychology, talks about this concept in this clip from the 1999 documentary, Beyond The Mat. Listen to the section from 3:04 to 4:04 on how everything he does in front of the crowd is designed to tell a cohesive story. He talks about choosing one person in the audience, and melting them into their seat. By focusing on performing for just one person, the belief and emotion that is generated spreads through the crowd organically. That is powerful stuff.

The Road Will Own You

The Road Will Own You

Journeyman wrestler Buddy Wayne has a saying, that “the road will own you”. This refers to the rigorous schedule wrestlers must keep, driving to a new city every day, checking into the hotel, getting a workout in, finding a nutritious meal, arriving to the arena, doing their match, and repeating the process every day. For main event stars, this schedule becomes even more demanding. Even highly disciplined wrestlers can have a hard time coping with burnout.

As entrepreneurs and business owners, we often push ourselves to extremes in order to succeed. We need to realize that we are not automatons, and we need to budget time for rest, exercise, nutrition, and our relationships if we want to avoid mental and physical burnout. The 14 to 18 hour days that are glamorized in startup culture can chew us up and spit us out if we are not careful. Be wise, and don’t let your own personal road own you.

It’s Not What You Make, It’s What You Keep

It's Not What You Make, It's What You Keep

Most wrestlers have a limited time in which they will achieve peak earnings. If they’re lucky, they will spend years sacrificing their bodies and building up their popularity so they can have a few good years where they can capitalize. Because of this, a well-known saying among wrestlers is, “It’s not what you make, it’s what you keep”.

This should be a lesson for everyone.

What I get out of this is that you need to be intentional with how you allocate your money. A person who earns a large amount, but spends it unwisely can end up worse off than someone who earns far less, but protects their earnings. Money is a resource, once harvested, it can be invested or it can be squandered. Make every dollar count for something, and take nothing for granted.

Do you have a useful lesson from another industry that you’d like to share? Let me know in the comments below.