Depending on how much you like old-school hip-hop (or current electronic dance music in an “everything cycles back around” kind of way), you might have heard the phrase drop it on the one.
It refers to the DJ bringing in a new song or sound at the beginning of the next bar of music…i.e., the one beat. When I started DJing I realized how scary it is to drop it on the one – because if you are offbeat everyone is going to hear it.
I’ve often let an old song play on too long because I wasn’t sure of my mix and I didn’t know if I was going to make something awesome or awful.
Taking Chances
In the same way, life and business are full of opportunities to drop it on the one, and we don’t grab most of them because we’re afraid of missing the beat and screwing up.
(It’s possible I’m writing this after looking at the visitors to my newly launched website – that’s me taking a chance with rebranding – and finding that it had exactly 0 visitors yesterday.)
But every good DJ will tell you that you do the best you can and you keep going for it. In the end you don’t remember the flubs and the missed tempos; you remember the ones that work. So this week I’m going to continue to drop it on the one and take chances as I strive to create something fantastic.
Where can you take a little leap this week? Let me know.