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Knowing For Sure
What you often want is a guarantee. The sure fire thing. The one that cannot fail. You will ask, how will I know for sure? What’s definitely going to stick? You will question if you are putting the cart before the horse, then try to work out how ‘most people in your shoes’, put horses first to produce a winning product. That’s the human reaction to uncertainty and it’s also what suffocates great ideas.
The best ideas are born, from the uncertainty. Most people, in any shoes build a winning product by getting over the fear. They just start. There are no guarantees. You need to be okay with that. Your certainty must come from knowing that you want to bring something great into the world. Take that knowing and use as the catalyst for doing.
Without action in the midst of uncertainty there would be no Instagram, Discovr, Blueberry Basil Pops or Field Guide To Now.
Once you start wondering about ‘people in your shoes’ and horses versus carts, the idea stops being important enough to matter.
Wonder just enough, then go do.
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What For What
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
I gave, now it’s your turn.
Quid pro quo.
Now we’re even.
That’s how business is supposed to work.
Exchanges of like for like.
A trade.
Transfer of ownership.
Profit and loss.
Transactions that can be measured.
There’s no room for generosity in business.
Unless it’s your business.
Because that’s how you’ve designed it and that is who you are.
This doesn’t mean you give away the farm or work for coffee.
It means you practice wholeheartedness.
You work with integrity from a place of intention.
Stand up for what you believe in.
Make sure that every interaction is one that you are proud of.
Walk in your client’s shoes.
Because you can.
And because you recognise that doing business doesn’t mean you have to live by a what for what ideology.
Image by Amy Lloyd.
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Something For Everyone
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Pineapple Chili flavour ice lollies aren’t for everyone. And plenty of people hated Go The F**k To Sleep, which became a best seller by delighting parents with a particular worldview.
If everything was created for the market of everyone, there would be no room for art by Banksy, t-shirts by Threadless or $500 beats by dr dre.
Your job is to tell the best story you can to the people who want to hear it. To surprise, delight and bring joy to those people and to gently close the door on the people who don’t want to listen. Don’t worry about converting the life long Egg McMuffin eater to your Green Juice detox regime.
Unsubscribers, critics and naysayers are a gift. Say a mental thanks to them for saving you the job of working out who your right people are. Then go out and do everything in your power to woo the people who matter.
Image by Gavin Golden.
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Embrace Your Singularity : An Anthem To You
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
The secret of the most successful brands and similarly the most fulfilled people in the world, is that they know what they’ve got and they are not afraid to show it. They embrace their uniqueness and singular ideas, then tell the best story they can to the right people. Do you?
That’s how I started this post about brand story. I changed the title six times. As I wrote on, it became so much more. It morphed into an anthem to my clients, my dear friends and you.
For years I carried around the legacy of a convent education that taught me if I wasn’t a round peg, then I wasn’t good enough for university. My square peg story was my greatest asset and I didn’t even know it. My eventual epiphany? That degree I once mourned would have smoothed out my edges, given me information, not the knowledge that would serve my growth or my legacy. In the short term it might have made it easier for me to tell my story. Over time it would have made me lazy instead of self directed. Not having that piece of paper set me free. It forced me to trust my gut, to listen harder and made me embrace my singularity.
“I am always doing things I can’t do, that’s how I get to do them” ~ Pablo Picasso
Don’t be afraid to go out there and live your singular life. Be aware of what only you can do. Know that your singularity is your friend and embrace it. Allow it to embrace you. Shout it from the roof tops. Tell the world the truth you see when you look deep into your eyes in the bathroom mirror.
You really are one of a kind. Stop pretending you’re not. You are genius with a capital ‘G’. A sparkler of dreams. A muse. Gifted. The evidence is there for all the world to see. So stop being afraid to taste what those words feel like on your tongue, spit them out. Articulate your dreams, then go live them. Step into the story you were meant to live. The world so wants you to do that…. me too.
Image by Amarit Opassetthakul.
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How To Tell A Good Business Story
filed in Storytelling
Start with the truth.
Identify the worldview of the people you need to reach.
Describe the truth through their worldview.
~ Seth Godin
What picture are you painting of your business? Are you trying too hard to sound more professional, bigger, slick, more polished than the competition? Is your story riddled with jargon instead of illuminated by truth? Does it make customers feel something?
Jargon puts your clients to sleep, kills the conversation dead,
and sucks the soul out of ideas
Think of your business story as the first date. As a way to start establishing the kind of relationship that leaves people wanting more. Your story doesn’t need to give all of the information, it simply needs to foster the next conversation.
Here’s some inspiration for you;
”Skype is software that enables the world’s conversations. Millions of individuals and businesses use Skype to make free video and voice calls, send instant messages and share files with other Skype users. Everyday, people also use Skype to make low-cost calls to landlines and mobiles.”
“37 Signals ~ Goodbye to bloat. Simple, focused software that does just what you need and nothing you don’t.”
And you don’t have to be one of the big boys to do this either, tiny businesses are doing this too.
”At Sherbet we keep it simple; freshly baked goods handmade on site in small batches, using the best quality ingredients- Madagascan vanilla beans, French Valrhona chocolate, free range eggs, and fresh seasonal fruit. Inspired by the cupcake bakeries of New York city. Welcome to Sherbet.”
”Future Shelter products are designed by Adam Coffey and Jane King. We are driven by the need to create new and interesting products that are not mass produced but carefully hand crafted and locally made. It matters to us that our products experience a happy life from start to finish. We produce them lovingly in our workshop with care and attention to detail. We like to choose environmentally friendly ingredients (either recycled materials or reclaimed from local businesses) but we also consider the life of the product too. We want our products to last and be passed down through future generations.” [retired copy]
”Ristretto Perth’s Coffee and Espresso Specialists. Source, Roast, Share. Doing good things to good coffee in the Perth CBD.”
“The gifted people at Rochelle Adonis create a decadent feast of cakes and confections that will close your eyes and widen your smile.”
Does your business story make your best people breathe a deep sigh of relief, as they whisper;
“Thank God I’ve found her, where do I click, how do I book, when can I buy?”
Image by digitalexpress.
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The One Thing To Remember About Website Traffic
Of course you want more ‘traffic’ to your website. After all;
MORE EYEBALLS = MORE AWARENESS
MORE AWARENESS = MORE AUTHORITY
MORE AUTHORITY = MORE SUCCESS
MORE SUCCESS = MORE CHOICES
Behind that ‘traffic’, every statistic, every blip on your analytics, every search term that brought them there. Behind every Tweet, Like and +1 is a person just like, you who wants to matter.
Think about that for a second. They too scraped ice off the windscreen this morning, took their kids to soccer practice last night and commuted to work so they could pay next week’s grocery bill, or next semester’s college fees. And they found you by sitting on the other side of this screen searching for something beyond information.
Remember them every time you sit down to post, design a product, or open your shop doors and you’ll do your ‘best work’, the kind of work that earns more than just traffic and eyeballs and authority.
Bonus — 56 tips on how to get traffic to your blog from Seth Godin.
Image by crazy stitch.
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You Really Are The Heroine Of Your Own Story
filed in Worldview
Yes it’s December alright. You know this because your to do list just got longer in all the craziness and extra obligation that is this time of year, (*truth*—however much you love holiday season). You feel it in the tightness across your shoulders and you make room for it, with less sleep every night.
Imagine then, how I was stopped in my tracks, before a single vinyasa, outside my new yoga class this week by a sign that read;
I create my calm
Now I’m a girl who is used to creating opportunity from nothing, somehow though, the thought of having the power to create my own calm, in that moment, hit me like a crosswind and I’ve been thinking about it ever since. Here’s the thing, you actually have the keys to your entire kingdom, not just one room in the castle. You are directing your life, one tiny frame followed by another.
We are all living parallel stories,
but we each get to script our own ending
You are free in each moment to be aware, to process, to decide and to take action on every single thing that happens today. You don’t simply create intentions and results. You really and truly are the director and heroine of your own story.
Image by Mojoey.
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If : A Love Note To Entrepreneurs
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
If you’re doing your best work.
If you touched one person.
If it makes a difference to a handful.
If you’re building a legacy, not just an empire.
If your values are front and centre.
If you’re launching ideas from the heart.
If you understand why you’re doing this.
If it doesn’t have to matter to everyone.
If you care.
If you can see the world as it isn’t.
If passion is your master.
If possibility feeds your soul.
If meaning is your currency.
If you embrace failure alongside success.
If permission doesn’t get in your way.
If understanding the problem to solve matters.
If people are your inspiration.
If you could change one thing.
If you know the questions to ask and aren’t afraid of the answers.
If you could ask for anything today, would ‘this’ be it?
If not this, then what?
Image by Tram Painter.
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What Makes Ideas Matter?
Ideas are formed in the mind, but triumph in the heart.
Your fabulous, worthy, well thought out ideas might have logical foundations. Logic though is not what will convince people to rally to your cause or click the ‘Buy Now’ button.
So begin everything from where your audience is. Set out to deliver to them the feelings they want to feel. Your idea must matter to them, not just to you.
Image by Madridmobs.
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Why Learning To Say No Matters
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
When you started out you were so glad to get email enquiries, calls and visitors. Getting people through the door, even a virtual one was the best feeling! Someone was interested in what you were doing. Your idea wasn’t going to flop, your services were needed and more importantly wanted. You weren’t going to fail and starve. You were so overjoyed to see and hear from these clients that you forgot to set boundaries. “Just email me anytime.” “No problem.” Your fear of failure created a monster. A never-ending stream of questions, requests and demands.
Now there are days, lots of them, when you feel you are suffocating under the weight of your inbox. It’s not the client’s fault, they are just doing their best to manage their own emergencies and so the cycle is never broken. Unless you do something about it that is.
When was the last time you said, “no”? What’s stopping you? Maybe you’re afraid that your reputation will be hurt, that people will stop coming back or go somewhere else. Perhaps they’ll tell their friends and that will be that. The work will dry up and you’ll be out of the game.
The thing is if you allow unnecessary admin, (the kind that you can clear up by managing client expectations), to suck all the joy out of your work, then you’re going to kill your ‘art’, and your business slowly anyway. Your impatience with clients and staff will eventually show, and your resentment will mean that you never do your best work.
If you are overwhelmed by mismanaged expectations, then you leave no space. No time to think, create, design, brainstorm, make maps and come up with ideas worth caring about. No time to say, “yes” to the right things, and no time for the thing that brought people to you in the first place.
Image by Joe Shlabotnik.