Billy Joel and recovery

I watched the Billy Joel documentary on HBO this past weekend. There’s nothing like a good bio story about an artist who had to struggle to gain recognition and acceptance (especially from the critics). One standout moment that I can’t get out of my head occurred within the first two minutes.

Billy related a story about a time he once asked a great chef, “How’d you get to be so good?”

The chef responded, “It’s all in the recovery, how you correct your mistakes.”

Wow! He nailed life in with that one short quip.

After all, how many of us nail our goals and objectives correctly the first time through? When I was a creative director, I always told my teams, “Great work doesn’t happen on the first draft. It happens in revisions.” Applied to writing, the saying goes, “Great writing isn’t written, it’s edited.”

In life, our plans and strategies are thwarted. The only way out of it is to recover. If something unforeseen arises that negates your plan or makes it obsolete, you salvage what you can and adjust. Another words, recover.

In the arts, I’m talking manual, hand-worked art, painting, ceramics and other crafts that aren’t digital (where there is no undo button), mistakes can ruin the project if you don’t know how to recover. In painting, a single stroke can destroy the entire work.

In marketing, you test, test, test your messages. Many fall short. Many fail. But you learn from the data. You try new messages until you get the ones that outperform the rest. You recover.

That quip in the Billy Joel doc found me at the right moment. Many of my original strategies for releasing “Chasing the Fitz” are no longer valid and I’ve been mentally stuck. It hits like a combination from Mike Tyson when you realize that your strategies are becoming outdated and at first there is no recovery in sight. But life tells you recovery is always around the corner. Sometimes you can force it, sometimes you can’t. When you can’t, just ride it out.  

I took my weeks of confusion and listlessness on the chin. Sure enough, a new strategy has emerged and I’m once again ready and energized.

Another words, I’ve recovered.

At least until the next big thing mutilates the new strategy. Then it'll be rinse and repeat. And it’ll be time again to recover.