Category: Ninjutsu

What Martial Arts Can Teach Us About Improving Presentations

One of the keys to being successful in the martial arts is taking good notes, storing away information. In ninjutsu, a secondary key is taking good notes in such a way that your notes are useful only to you. If someone borrows, copies, or steals your notes, they’re functionally useless to them. Yes, you may have possession of the Takagi family’s sacred scrolls, but unless you’ve been initiated into translating them, they’re not terribly helpful.

I was looking over my notes from Tuesday night’s class at the Boston Martial Arts Center, my personal notes for second degree black belt, and realized that in many ways, they’re the antithesis of a good presentation.

In my notes, I have the general prompts I need to recall something from memory, not a step by step outline of exactly what to do. I know what to do because my teacher taught it to me, but if I need to jog my memory about the setup, my notes contain enough detail to make me go, “Oh, yeah, that one!” and I’m ready to go. None of the nuance or subtlety makes its way into the notes because it doesn’t need to be there, and more importantly, can’t easily and quickly be put into words anyway, any more than you can accurately convey what a lychee tastes like in words. If you’ve had a lychee, you know exactly what I’m talking about. If you’ve never had a lychee, that sentence is devoid of context.

This is the danger, the curse of knowledge, that plagues presentations. The presenter knows what’s in their notes, and knows the subject matter, which means they risk leaving out vital pieces of information that surround their presentation, the context. The presentation may have giant gaps in it, but the presenter doesn’t know it because they don’t see their presentation – they see their experiences instead, filling in the gaps in their own head but leaving huge potholes for the audience trying to follow along.

This is why in both the martial arts and in Zen the concept of the beginner’s mind is so important, to be able to see without the past clouding our vision. As a presenter and speaker, seeing your own material with a beginner’s mind is vital but supremely difficult.

Listen carefully to the feedback from your presentations to see whether you’re failing to provide context and details in your presentation. You may find some critical points that, with just a few extra details, could radically improve your presentations.

Besides audience feedback, make sure you review video of yourself presenting, and ask yourself throughout the video if you’re making sense. If you can, have two cameras set up, one to film the audience, so that you can watch the crowd react to what you have to say, catching subtleties that you missed while presenting. It doesn’t have to be elaborate or expensive – a simple Flipcam on a tripod will do the trick. Be on the lookout especially for body language changes en masse, as well as facial expressions – these nonverbal cues can tell you when you’re being impactful – and when you’re missing the point.

As Shunryu Suzuki, a Zen master, said, in the beginner’s mind there are many possibilities, in the expert’s mind there are few. If you want to explore the possibilities of becoming a better speaker, embrace the beginner’s mind and avoid the curse of knowledge.

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The martial art that I practice places an incredible amount of emphasis on the basics of the art. Basic footwork patterns, basic abilities to hit, grapple, throw, and otherwise put the kibosh on someone trying to hurt you.

One of the things that every senior instructor at my dojo, the Boston Martial Arts Center, constantly emphasizes is the refinement and polishing of our basics. If you punch someone, you want them to stay punched. If you throw someone, you want them to stay thrown. All the fancy moves and movie-like choreography will do you no good whatsoever if the bad guy gets back up and starts griefing you again; conversely, all the fancy moves are completely unnecessary if you get out of harm’s way and deck the guy so hard that his unconceived children feel it.

What does this have to do with marketing? Simple. We forget the basics all too often. In our attention deficit society, in our 90 hour work week system, we’re so easily distracted by flashy toys and tricks that we forget to practice and refine our basics. The ability to send out an effective direct email campaign. The ability to optimize a web page for the basics of search engine optimization. The ability to design a usable interface to our information.

This is a topic I’ll be talking about more at the MarketingProfs Digital Marketing Mixer in October. We’ll explore the levels of marketing basics just like a martial art, showing you what “white belt” skills will always pay off no matter how many grades of black belt you have.

In the end, no matter how fancy your marketing or martial arts, chances are in any real encounter on the street or in your vertical, you’re going to get one shot that will decide whether you make it or don’t. There’s no second place prize. The only way to be confident in that one shot is to have solid basics that you can rely on.

Ask yourself this as a marketer: what are your basics? How reliable are they? How confident are you in the results you can generate with them?

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Hat tip to Stephen K. Hayes for this gem from Japan.

Who knew?

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Manessa, Ninjutsu, and MySpace

In December 2007, I had the privilege and honor of being invited to participate in a search effort for Manessa Donovan, a 15 year old niece of Christopher Wilson, the host of Answers for Freelancers. Manessa went missing just before Thanksgiving, and regular search efforts were not generating results. Chris reached out to his network, and within 5 days had found her.

My part in this epic was small. Almost all of the credit for finding Manessa goes to Chris Wilson, who answered call after call, email after email, and endured torrents of junk and spiteful comments from petty people with nothing better to do than to slag on others.

What happened in my part of Manessa’s recovery was based on an old ninjutsu strategy called joei no jutsu. Chris knew that Manessa had a MySpace account and kept in touch with a lot of her friends there. While other search efforts were underway, I took it upon myself to create a separate MySpace profile just for this campaign, with as many photos and other information on it that I could find from Manessa’s profile, as well as the information Chris had compiled about the people she was with.

The next step, after creating that profile and ensuring the information was clear, with a sense of urgency and obvious call to action, was to start grabbing Manessa’s network. I invited every one of her friends that she was connected to, which was about 300 or so, to the profile.

Chris knew the rough geographic area that Manessa was in, so I recruited folks in her age range in those zip codes as well. Whether or not the people knew her, they had clear images and information if they ran into her in a fast food place or other public location.

The third category I recruited was the media – there were a decent number of media personalities and media outlets in the general geographic region where Manessa was reported to be.

The final category I recruited was anyone who self-identified as a member of law enforcement in the geographic region, sort of an informal, unofficial Amber Alert.

All of this took about 3 hours to do, from start to finish.

Almost immediately, within hours of setting up the profile, information began to flow it rapidly. At this point, I disconnected from the accounts and turned over all the login credentials to Chris so he could manage it directly.

Joei no jutsu is a ninjutsu strategy for managing a network in a time of war. The premise is that during a time of crisis, the enemy will recruit just about any able-bodied person into its armies because they’re short, and in doing so, they relax background checks and other procedures that they’d normally use to find infiltrators.

Ordinarily, on any social network, trying to “infiltrate” a network is difficult because outsiders are not necessarily welcome to a person’s social circle. Joei no jutsu in the age of MySpace means setting up a credible, truthful, informative, and urgent campaign, and then messaging other existing networks rapidly. People are more likely to respond, especially in a missing persons case like this, if you present a clear, unquestionable case. This tendency let me get connected rapidly with folks, get the message out, and encourage network members to spread the word to THEIR friends.

If you’re a parent of a child who participates on social networks like MySpace, you owe it to yourself and your child to learn how to use these networks and how to leverage them in a time of need.

Theme for 2008: Togakure Ryu Ninjutsu

One of the really nice things about the martial art I practice is that each year has a theme, an area of focus that helps practitioners zoom in on a particular way of thinking and set of strategies. This past year, 2007, was the year of Kukishinden Ryu, or the Kukishinden family method of warfare and protection.

2008’s theme is Togakure Ryu, a lineage founded by Daisuke Nishina of Togakure (now Togakushi), in Nagano, sometime in the 12th century. If you remember the 1998 Winter Olympics coverage, Nagano was the prefecture of Japan in which they occurred and from which Togakure Ryu originates.

Togakure Ryu is one of the only surviving ninjutsu lineages around. Its founder, Daisuke Nishina, was on the losing side of a campaign in feudal Japan and as a 16 year old, found himself required by tradition to commit ritual suicide, as his side had lost. Rather than do so, he ran like hell into the mountains and trained with a number of masters over the years in not getting your ass beat while facing overwhelming odds. The practices were codified into the Togakure school of ninjutsu.

Some of the themes in Togakure Ryu are considered “secrets” – not because they’re particularly esoteric, but because they’re so hard to actually do. For example, one of the “secrets” is – only fight battles you can win.

Not much of a secret, huh?

Until you take a step back and look at your life and realize that you take up fights and battles all the time, literal or metaphorical, that you cannot win. Whether it’s office politics, marital relations, or facing an opponent in a dark alley, if you engage in a battle in which you know you can’t win, then you’re either hooked by your ego or you’re an idiot. Instead, your plan had better be to run like hell until you can set things up so that you can win.

What other lessons do the ninja have, nine centuries after the lineage was founded? Lots. Tons. More than enough to fill a lifetime and then some. If you’d like to learn more, go visit my teacher’s teacher, Stephen K. Hayes, or if you’re in the Boston area, visit my teacher, Mark Davis, at the Boston Martial Arts Center.

“Ninjutsu is the way of attaining that which we need while making the world a better place. The skill of the ninja is the art of winning.” – Toshitsugu Takamatsu, 33rd headmaster of the Togakure Ryu

A Ninja Perspective on Racism

I had an amusing experience on Friday as I was bringing my lunch – Chinese food from the place on the first floor – back up to my office. On the elevator ride up, the guy in the elevator commented, “Man, that smells good. Where ya delivering to?”

He had mistaken me for a delivery service, simply because I was an Asian guy carrying Chinese food.

What I found more interesting was the reaction of folks on Twitter when I made mention of the incident. Seems they were a lot more offended than I was.

Racism, whether explicit or implicit, is harmful, but from my perspective, it’s an important insight into a person, and a very public display of their weakness. Racism is a weakness, a character flaw that a skillful practitioner of ninjutsu can take advantage of. We have an expression – kyojitsu tenkan ho – which roughly translates as “truth as a lie, lie as truth”. Any character weakness can be turned against you, any preconceived notion about a person can be used to distract and divert your mind away from the reality of a situation, ultimately to your detriment.

In the case of this guy, his remarks told me that if I ever needed to infiltrate his office, say as a competitor to steal some confidential information off his computer network, I could show up with a bag of Chinese food and if I ran into him, he’d make a false assumption that I was working as a delivery boy.

If you find yourself the subject of false assumptions – blondes are airheads, blacks are criminals, Jews are stingy, anyone Muslim is a terrorist – ask how you can turn those assumptions to your advantage.

Some silly fun for International Day of the Ninja.

[youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPm3VQgZs4g[/youtube]

If you’re in the metro Boston area, come celebrate International Day of the Ninja at the Boston Martial Arts Center tonight at 6 PM (event on Facebook) with a free class! If you’re outside of Boston, check out Stephen K. Hayes’ web site, SKHQuest.com, for training opportunities near you.

• An-Shu Stephen K. Hayes
• The Boston Martial Arts Center

For every shadow there must be light

Mark Yoshimoto Nemcoff coined the slogan “For every light that shines, a shadow falls” as part of his audio drama, Shadow Falls. The reverse is true and worth thinking about. For every shadow, there must be light, else it’d be pure darkness.

This past year was a tumultuous year. Next year promises even more change, some chaos, and economic harbingers that are less than comforting. That said, the coming year can also be the very best year you’ve ever had. We’ve talked about it recently on an episode of Marketing Over Coffee, and I’ve talked about other advance preparations on the Financial Aid Podcast.

Ultimately, when times are bad, when things get ugly, you have three basic choices:

1. Do nothing and hope that the river of life doesn’t send you over a waterfall.

2. Deny that anything’s wrong in the hope that your delusions will become truth.

3. Take positive action to prepare others and yourself for trouble and find ways to leverage the troubling times.

I’m shooting for camp 3. I’ve outlined the dangers ahead – with 3 trillion –5 trillion possibly at severe risk (bear in mind we are an economy of roughly $14 trillion), you have to prepare for rough times. Cash is king, debt is your enemy, liquidity is an advantage, tied-up assets are not. Mobility is important, as is network reach. Always have a backup plan.

You can also be a source of inspiration and power in your community, whether offline or online.

Now is the time to step up your community involvement if possible. Get out there, be visible, be involved. Have involvement with as many people as possible – as Mitch Joel says, DO talk to strangers, because the ninja method advocates having as many people in your network as possible so you can get different perspectives, have your ear to the ground, and see things coming from very far away.

Be on top of changes – know what’s changing, know who brings the harbingers of change. Subscribe to lots of blogs and read the best quality ones voraciously, because when winds shift, you want to be in front of the change, catching the wind and sailing past danger.

Grow and develop your sphere of personal power. In your community of friends, do you know what their superpowers are? How can they complement you, and more importantly, how can you complement them?

The ninja of old were renowned for their seemingly supernatural powers, chief among them the ability to foretell the future. Most of that wasn’t supernatural – it was having a strong network. You have access to a network that the ninja grandmasters of old would have traded their right arms for – a global, decentralized, instant information network. What does it tell you – and if it isn’t telling you what you need to know to avoid danger and embrace prosperity, how can you change your network to fulfill that function?

For every shadow there must be light.

Are you ready to shine?

Side bar: The Chinese word for crisis, weiji, does not mean “danger and opportunity”. Kennedy screwed that one up, that cliche about the word for crisis meaning danger and opportunity. Weiji means danger and a crucial point. It’s more like the point at which you’re in a barrel approaching the waterfall’s edge. You’re just about to go over. You don’t think about trying to go fishing for opportunity – your goal is not to die.

Once You Step Up, You Can Never Go Back

One of my fondest memories of PodCamp Boston 2 was sitting at lunch on Sunday talking with one of my martial arts instructors, Dennis Mahoney, about profound knowledge and Sisyphus vs. stairs. I’m constantly in search of profound knowledge, which, as Anthony Robbins defines it, is knowledge that once you understand it, makes an immediate impact and difference in your life.

Sisyphus, for those who slept through mythology, was a king punished for trickery by the gods to a hellish fate: push a large rock up a hill, only to have it roll back down, and be forced to repeat that task for eternity.

Most people’s lives can be described as Sisyphean. They wake up, go to work, come home, drink and watch TV, fall asleep, and repeat the next day until one day when they don’t wake up any more. Many activities are the same – working out, for example, is Sisyphean. You benefit as long as you keep pushing, but the moment you stop, the boulder starts to roll down hill.

Stepping up is different. Profound knowledge enables stepping up. Once you understand something, once you grasp profound knowledge, you can’t go back to the person you used to be. You are forever changed, forever better, and nothing except extreme forgetfulness can ever force you to step back.

The example I cite often is the rule of thirds in photography. Look through your camera viewfinder, draw a tic-tac-toe grid on it, and position your subjects at the intersections of the vertical and horizontal lines. Immediately, anyone who doesn’t understand this technique will take better photographs if they practice it. There’s of course still tons to learn, from lighting to composition to aperture, etc. but just this one piece of profound knowledge changes you forever, and you can’t go back.

What are you doing in life that is Sisyphean, and how can you convert more of your life from pushing boulders to stepping up, making breakthroughs? What profound knowledge have you acquired in your life that you can share here in the comments?

Everybody Needs A Ninja

I have the good fortune in life to have access to lots of very, very talented people. It’s my pleasure to be able to bring their works together and present them as best as I can. In this case, I present the music of podsafe music superstar Matthew Ebel and the martial talents of Stephen K. Hayes and many of his senior students demonstrating their skills at the SKH Quest Fall Festival in Dayton, OH.

Click To Play

Buy the song Everybody Needs a Ninja in MP3 now!

For more information:

Stephen K. Hayes To-Shin Do martial arts

Matthew Ebel’s new album, Goodbye Planet Earth

To place this on your web site, visit the Blip.TV player page and follow the directions for Share.

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