It was a quick weekend at SOBCon in Chicago filled with learning, eating, sharing, networking, laughing, and of course karaoke.  Yes, I know, not a parallel verb but I don’t think karaoking is acceptable.)   Funny enough, the main lesson that I took away from this phenomenal weekend I learned at a dive karaoke bar in downtown Chicago.

I’m standing next to Chris Brogan and I ask him if he’s going to do karaoke.  Of course he is!  I however, wouldn’t be caught dead doing karaoke.  That’s just not my style.

But that, right there, the fact that I think it’s “not my style” is what my problem is.  It’s that I have a soul.

Chris told me that he does karaoke because he has no soul.  And ever since returning from SOBCon, I’m obsessed with losing mine.  Maybe it’s because I want to be as cool as him.  Maybe it’s because he made me see that that’s the only way to get by.

It’s so appropriate with what he spoke about with Julien Smith too – the message being that you must break the rules and create your own game.  You cannot win by playing anyone else’s game because they will always be on top.  Whether people want to agree or disagree with this philosophy is beside me.  What I want to focus on is that I am capable of creating my own game.  That I’m allowed to break the rules.  That if I want to succeed, I shouldn’t even acknowledging that rules exist.

My challenge is to break the rules.  For a lot of people that’s easy, but for me following the rules is comfortable.  It’s what I’ve always done, it’s what I’ve always been taught.  At the same time, I’ve always been jealous of those who break them.  Of those who make their own rules.  Of those who have no soul.

For the coming days, I want to see how much I can break the rules.  We’ll see how it goes.