fly fishing, conservation and politics.
Blog rolls are a treasure trove whether you are a seasoned blogger or just getting started. You can surf around from site to site and quickly find many informative and entertaining blogs. Our favorites usually wind up in a blog roll on our site.
On of the problems with blog rolls is their static nature. No more! thanks to The Outdooress you can find the most entertaining blog roll you will have have the pleasure to peruse! Check out Fly Fishing: The Confectioness!
I am a student of leadership so when this showed up in my @tenkaraguide twitters this morning:
I hit the youtube link and watched. You can too. It is 3 minutes, worth watching, very entertaining and visually delivers an important leadership lesson.
A leader needs the guts to stand alone and look ridiculous. But what he’s doing is so simple, it’s almost instructional. This is key. You must be easy to follow!
Now comes the first follower with a crucial role: he publicly shows everyone how to follow. Notice the leader embraces him as an equal, so it’s not about the leader anymore – it’s about them, plural. Notice he’s calling to his friends to join in. It takes guts to be a first follower! You stand out and brave ridicule, yourself. Being a first follower is an under-appreciated form of leadership. The first follower transforms a lone nut into a leader. If the leader is the flint, the first follower is the spark that makes the fire.
A little more research took me to Derek Sivers. He put up the video and narrates it. It is on his blog along with the transcript: Leadership Lessons from Dancing Guy.
The take aways for me:
1) Someone has to be the dancing guy, that is leadership but it is overrated. we can’t all be leaders.
2) The first follower is courageous and is the real ignition for the movement.
3) It takes time to build a movement and followers may come and go (read the comments).
Sivers summation works for me:
The best way to make a movement, if you really care, is to courageously follow and show others how to follow.
When you find a lone nut doing something great, have the guts to be the first person to stand up and join in.
The whole tenkara thing fits the first follower model hence @tenkarausa’s tweet to a couple of us early adopters.
Important keys to success in creating a movement are the leader embracing the followers as equals and the first followers showing others how to follow.
While calling the adoption of tenkara in this country a movement may be a stretch at this point, it clearly is gaining followers. The lessons of the Dancing Guy are pretty evident. Most importantly those early followers are showing others how to follow. Tenkara will continue to grow because of this willingness to share the knowledge and encouraging others to try tenkara.
There is a lesson here as well for those of us in the fly-fishing business:
From what I have seen the successful fly-fishing businesses can answer yes to these questions. Those who don’t look at new ideas and ways of doing business are not helping to build the fly-fishing movement.
Tenkara may be a good case study on how to help fly-fishing grow. It starts with the first follower theory.
What do you think?
I get some pretty cool gigs as a fly-fishing instuctor and one of my favorites is teaching the MSU Fly Gals each year. Just spending time with these wonderfully accomplished ladies is a joy in and of itself.
This year, one of my former students, Corey Higley, dazzled me with a very special gift!
Corey crafted this exceptional work of art with all natural materials. The detail is stunning!
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Last month I was asked to participate in a focus group for Montana Fly Company. The focus group was organized by those clever Outside Media folks who ran it on Facebook. It was a very entertaining way for those of us in the group to look at pictures, answer questions and make comments. Our moderator, Sammi, did a great job of keeping us on task while offering some very amusing commentary.
The chance to look behind the curtain a bit at some future offerings from Montana Fly Company and have some fun with Sammi was a treat in and of itself, but the deal got a whole lot better when MFC sent us some really nice tools as a reward for our participation. The gift box that arrived at The Middle River Group world HQ included a set of gold end nippers and a zinger (already attached to my Fly Vines lanyard); a stonefly/nymph box and a large waterproof fly box.
While I can’t tell you what we worked on, you just might want to keep an eye on MFC to see what the fruits of our labors produced.
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Disclosure: Neither MFC nor Outside Media asked me to write this post.
OK, so I am not much of a fly tyer. But I chipped in a comment on OBN and wound up winning some sweet tying tools from Montana Fly Company.
They sent me three spools of premium thread, a River Camo Hair Stacker, and a River Camo ceramic Bobbin. They also sent me some Scissor Forceps and a fly box that immediately got put into service.
More after the jump [Read more…] about Things that Work: Fly Tying Tools from Montana Fly Co.
For those of you following the Stormy Kromer cap saga, the good news is the llama has been spared.
Just another reason we love our SK caps.
More details as they become available. Stay tuned!
In the meantime check out this episode of Under the Radar Michigan. The Stormy Kromer caps story starts at about the 11 minute mark
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