The Real/Fake Reality

As I am further led down the path that is Authenticity, I am led to understand a number of things I knew but could not delineate properly.

The first of those comes from Hamlet, as Polonius says to his son Laertes:

This above all-to thine own self be true
And as it must follow, as the night, the day
Thou canst not then false to any man.

As it relates to authenticity both for individuals and companies, two directions thus apply:

Be true to yourself;

Be what you say to others;

and the corollaries to business which the authors call the Polonius Test:

1) Is the offering true to itself?

2) Is the offering what it says it is?

The authors then take us through a matrix of possibilities which are

1) Real/real
2) Real/fake
3) Fake/real
4) Fake/fake

In other words depending where your offerings fall, it's OK for an offering to be fake as long as it is true to itself. Where companies get into trouble is where they project an image of themself which isn't true, or because the core product is not able to 'sustain' that image of themselves.

The other interesting point is that it is the consumer of the product who decides which category you fit into, and how 'authentically' you fit into that category....

The chapter then describes how to go about assessing where you are and what to do about it if you ascribe to a different category(i.e. that you are perceived as fake and you'd rather be seen as real). To change from one to another takes a long time unless you are a new company....

Which means if authenticity is important to you, it's a long term path, not a get rich quick scheme....do you have the persistence to stay the course or is it not worth the effort.

For me, I see it as keeping things as simple as possible.

See! I'm already doing better

First off, the books I am currently reading:

The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Greene
Authenticity by James Gilmore and Joseph Pine
White City Blues by Tim Lott
The Richard Branson Way by Des Dearlove
Georgia by John Edge
Culture Shock! Paris by Frances Gendlin
Life in the Jungle by Michael Heseltine
Absolutely American by David Lipsky
Net Worth by John Hegel and Marc Singer
Night in Grimsby(Diary of a Masochist) by Barrie Stradling
Savoir Flair by Polly Platt

I should add that on average it takes my 9-12 months to finish a book, which the readers of my posts on the book Authenticity already know....

Since I changed the name of my business to The Event Mechanic!, the business has never been more brisk. I ahve developed an infrastructure of writing and (seemingly) adding value, that things for me are going in the opposite direction from the economy.

Gas prices certainly haven't have taken traffic from the roads, if anything it's made it worse....but I digress.

SISO in Atlanta is coming soon, which if you are the events business, is a really good opportunity to network and learn a variety of things that can make your business easier and more profitable. I highly recommend it. I also have to figure out what I'll get to wear at the event(this is an in-joke and refers to the fact that when I was The Event Doctor! I wore a stephescope and lab coat)....

Enjoy the week, I'll be in touch soon.

I'm back(but not from outer space)....

Sorry for the long absence. I made a pact with myself that I would post on this blog at least once a week, and then the business took over....I am happy to say that I have two happy(?) clients and now that the dust is settling I also have the time to prospect for new business as well...

You'll notice I also changed the name of my business to The Event Mechanic! Why? For a number of reasons, but most notably because I think a mechanic better suggests what I do for my clients, which is more often than not 'rolling up my sleeves and getting stuck in" to the business at hand....

In any case, over the summer months I expect to be more faithful to you, my loyal readers.

Authenticity

I continue to read this fine book, although I imagine you are thinking that this book is taking a LONG time to read. Indeed it is, but I think it is an important enough book for me to want to disect it carefully.

In the chapter, Fake, Fake It's All Fake-Why Offerings Are All Inauthentic, the authors go on to prove the point that everything is fake. Indeed event nature is inauthentic(that is man-made or directed), since it has been crafted to meet the needs of mankind over centuries.

This brings us to the chapters and maybe the book's most important premise, that authenticity is decided upon by each consumer, that is one person's authentic is another person's fake. There lies the opportunity of each business or supplier of any product that it would like to offer as authentic: it is up to the supplier to render a product or service as authentic, as the buyer can be influenced to believing that product or server as such, that is authentic. Hmmm....

Anyway, I'll be writing soon, keep the faith in me and check back often, since I am planning to make the whole website much more of a resource for you than it already is....