Self Improvement > Success > Tony Bennett Teaches Us How To Embrace Change Successfully
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Article rating : 0.00, 0 votes. Author : John Alquist
Vaudeville was a type of American entertainment from
1870 to 1920. By 1880, half of the population had
moved from rural farm areas to towns and cities, joining
The Industrial Revolution.
These new urbanites had something new to experience-—spare
cash and leisure time. Along came Vaudeville, live
shows with clean entertainment for family audiences.
Vaudeville included animal acts, acrobats, female impersonators, comedians, jugglers, musicians, singers, dancers and comics.
Vaudeville united people of all social and economic classes.
Entertainers like Al Jolson, Jimmy Durante, Groucho Marx, Abbott & Costello, as well as George Burns and Gracie Allen, got started in Vaudeville.
If Vaudeville was so good, why did it end? Answer-—a new form of entertainment, movies, came along and replaced Vaudeville.
Since the 1920’s, we’ve been through the Big Band
era and old time rock’n’roll. They've come and gone.
How do you avoid becoming obsolete in a fast-changing
world-—a world of globalism, worldwide Internet communications, rising self-employment, increasing entrepreneurism, new technologies like nanotech, and the startling decline and/or disappearance of many large American corporations and the jobs they'provided?
Tony Bennett’s career provides answers. Born in 1926, he continues to be hip and popular as a singer and
painter.
Why wasn’t Tony discarded into the junkyard of cultural
change?
Two reasons:
First, he’s worked successfully with an array of
diverse and successful people in the entertainment
business--Bob Hope, Pearl Bailey, Mitch Miller, and
Count Basie-—who helped him along the way.
He knows how to develop mutually-beneficial relationships with successful people--a great skill in any business or career.
Second, for a time, his career did go into a painful decline. He suffered broken homes, tax troubles, drug problems, self doubt and career rejection.
But his son, Danny, a rock musician, was hired as Tony’s manager. Danny decided to reinvent his Dad for younger
audiences. It worked.
Says Danny, “We didn’t make it cool to be Tony Bennett. We put him in places where it was cool to be.”
Tony Bennett has appealed to younger audiences by appearing on The Simpsons and David Letterman. He performed with k.d.lang, Bonnie Raitt, B.B. King and the late Ray Charles. He stays
“with it.”
Tony won his 11th Grammy in 2003. His 80th birthday is in 2006.
He’s not retired and he isn't even close to it.
How do we prevent ourselves from becoming obsolete dinosaurs, living painfully in the past in a world which no longer exists?
We have to stay “with it,” too—daily! We have to show up where it's cool to be. This may involve reinventing ourselves--a little or a lot--as Tony Bennett did.
We must take advantage of globalism, the rise of self-employment, and the downfall of large American
corporations, as examples.
We must use the new ways to get our messages
out—-product sales on our websites, blogs, webinars, teleconferencing, and e-book publishing, to name a few.
Our messages cannot be a goulash of recycled,
repackaged, stale ideas which thrilled listeners
years ago.
Rather, our communications must show how to ride the tidal wave of radical 21st Century cultural, societal and business change
successfully.
We must offer clarity, hope, innovation, answers to
people’s concerns--expressed emotionally to the
heart and rationally to the head simultaneously.
If we do these things, we will not be tossed into the
junkyard of cultural change, either.
John J. Alquist, along with his wife, Shirley, own and operate Alquist Enterprises, a firm which advances self-employment in a number of ways.
Visit Shirley and John at their website, http://www.tell-it-well.com.
Or email John @john@tell-it-well.com.
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