To the left is a box…

Now, this could be a blog entry designed to sell you boxes… it could be about moving or packaging or a variety of other things that boxes are used for…

But in this case the box is a metaphor… it’s used as a visual and mental picture to get a thought, idea, concept, story across in an easily accessible and understandable way…

When you look at it you’ll see that it’s empty… or is it?

A couple of days ago on my board someone named Mr. D posted a message concerning his frustration on what he termed “rehashed marketing rubbish“… it was a mini-rant where he expressed his opinion on material that he deemed “same old stuff” being reused as new “polish” (we have an endearing - and slightly coarse - term for this stuff… we call it “a dick with wings”)…

The post got a good amount of replies… tons of theories and ideas, stuff all over the map… one of the best responses was from Marlon Sanders who talked about the need for fundamentals and how most people have never discovered them, learned them, applied them or even paid attention to them…

This is something I’ve been talking about for a long time at seminars, teleseminars, in articles, coaching, etc…. it’s centered around the one cliche I hear people using all the time but that often makes no sense or doesn’t apply… it’s the one cliche that drives me batty…

That cliche is: “You’ve Gotta Think Outside The Box!”

Look… thinking outside the box is a fantastic and wonderful thing… I do it all the time… I ask “out of the box” questions when I’m brainstorming or developing a project or creating a product or working on marketing strategy… I force my clients and partners to think outside the box… I have my 10-year old niece use out of the box thinking and problem solving when she’s working on homework or a school project (yes, I know she’s my niece but the kid IS brilliant!)…

But here’s the problem… in order to think outside of the box you first need to know what the friggin’ box looks like!… you need to know what it’s made of, how deep it is, what it held and what it can hold… you need to understand the physics of the box, what it can do, where it can go, etc…

In other words… in order to think outside the box you need to know, understand and be able to apply the basics!… the fundamentals!… the principles!!!

Without the basics… without the fundamentals you are basing your solutions on very thin material… the basics is what drives most of everything you do… you can’t really bake a cake if you don’t know at least what steps to take… how to turn on the oven, at what temp… how to mix the batter, whether it comes from a box or not… how you want it to look in the end, how it’ll taste, etc…

The basics is the foundation for what we do, where we go, how well we succeed, what sales we make and what profits we pull in… the basics is the information we apply and use in order to “think out of the box” productively and come up with outcomes that are feasible, workable, applyable…

You don’t build a skyscraper without first laying a cornerstone and building a foundation… without that the entire structure collapses…

And you don’t go out and start thinking out of the box without first understanding the basics (yes, it is possible, but it’s rather — more often than not it’s a failure)…

And yet (and here comes the uber-rant) most people REFUSE to learn the basics!… they refuse to build a foundation… they want to jump in at the middle - screw the basics, give me the cream!

And often those are the ones that flounder the most, struggle the hardest, have the least success and eventually drown…

And to them I say bluntly and succinctly… Screw You!… if you aren’t willing to put in the work to build the foundation then you deserve the horrible results you get!

You can’t expect to swim the English Channel if you haven’t at least learned a basic stroke that will keep you afloat and propel you forward!

Listen: learning and understanding the fundamentals, no matter in what area, will help you 1000x more than not… it’ll help you move forward faster, reach success a bit easier, build your business stronger, give you the tools you can use to build on, generate ideas that work… I could go on and on and on but I think you get my drift..

Mr. D is right in some way… and for him the frustration is understandable… he’s at a point in his life/biz/career/etc. where the repetition and reiteration of the basics can be frustrating and annoying (although reviewing the basics is always a good thing… trust me, you’ll always pick up something new or useable or may generate an idea or understanding you didn’t have before)…

Marlon is dead on about the need for fundamentals, and the need to constantly be reiterating it to others… there are more people out there that don’t understand or have never paid attention to the fundamentals than those that “get it” and have the basics pretty much “licked”…

You can grouse all you want about what a pain learning the fundamentals is… how it’s not necessarily fun or sexy… how you want to be in the middle of the “action” and not learning your A-B-C’s…

You can ignore the advice that Marlon or David Frey or I give you… you can turn away and say “I’ll prove them wrong”… and I’d bet against you every time and 9 times out of 10 I’d win — pretty good house odds…

You want to think outside the box?… you want to approach outside the box ideas and strategies?… then learn as much as you can about the box first…