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Articles filed in: Strategy
The Apple Store, Belonging And Love
What’s the one thing you never find at an Apple Store? That thing you probably found in your hotel room when you checked in. The poorly expressed intention to customers, that guarantees they will never come back. Oh, and it’s most likely laminated and taped up in several places.
Ah yes….. a list of rules.
I found that list pasted four times around our ‘holiday getaway’ recently. Every poorly considered word told us what we couldn’t do in the outdoor spa and what we must do. Every time we saw that note we knew that we weren’t trusted and didn’t belong.
The Apple Store is a place without rules. No glass cases. No velvet ropes between the product and the customer. Everybody’s welcome. That’s part of the reason it’s the busiest store in your city. Every single contact point invites you to experience and start getting intimate. To explore, to touch, to play, to linger and belong. There are no barriers to intimacy. And that’s exactly what your customers want from you.
Your customers want to know they belong
Before they can allow your designs, copy, books and products to belong in their lives, they need to sense your intention. They want to trust you and feel that you trust them too.
Your clients want to be welcomed like a friend and wooed live a lover. They can feel your intention at every point of contact. It’s your job to communicate that with all your heart and soul. Doesn’t matter if you sell shoes, coffee, design, copy or connection. Making rules is lazy. Building trust and expressing intentions isn’t easy, but it’s worth it.
Have you found ways to create intimacy with your clients either online or offline? Tell me more about the businesses and brands that you love and how they do that?
Image by Dimas Barquilla.
Take People Where They Want To Go
The products that sell, made by the companies that succeed wildly have one thing in common.
They take people to where they want to go.
It’s an elegant business philosophy. The ultimate brand strategy.
Neither push nor pull. Just pure magnetism.
Understand where your customers want to go, then find ways to take them there.
Image by Victor Nuno.
21 Ways To Nurture Your Ideas
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy, Worldview
Your mountain is waiting.
So… Get on your way. ~ Dr Suess
1. Create an idea saving system.
Find tools that work for you, Moleskine or Evernote anyone?
2. Be ready to capture ideas anywhere.
J.K. Rowling tells the story of how Harry Potter “fell into her head” on a train journey.
3. Step away from the computer.
Pick up a pen, doodle, mindmap, take photos. Use both sides of your brain.
4. Understand your creative process.
Be aware of what drives you. Reflect on how you make things happen.
5. Use tools that inspire you.
Leather journals, coloured pens, scrapbooks, green ink….
6. Be on a mission.
Why does the idea excite you? Why this idea, why now? What difference will it make in the world?
7. Begin with the end in mind.
Visualise the end product, the colour of the book cover, the texture of the paper, the graphics on the packaging.
8. Stand in the shoes of the people you want to impact.
Now create the thing that makes the biggest difference to them.
9. Set goals.
Have milestones you can reach. A launch date. Write them down, then stick to them.
10. Don’t set goals.
Just go.
11. Follow hunches.
Trust your gut. Act on your wildest dreams.
12. Find quiet space.
Meditation, walks, getting closer to nature, time to journal. What works for you?
13. Plan meticulously.
Map out desired outcomes, skill sets, milestones, resources.
14. Work quickly.
Start to finish in a day.
15. Practice blue sky thinking.
Ask what if.
16. Resource and outsource.
Play to your strengths. Learn the skills you need to execute and get help when you need it.
17. Try and fail.
Today’s mistakes are the foundation for tomorrow’s successes.
18. Focus.
Limit distractions.
19. Do the work.
Hit publish, press send, hang the picture or launch the website. An idea without execution is just an idea, it has no impact on the world.
20. Do what it feels good to do.
Ideas that get you up early and keep you up late are the ones that live.
21. Remember that You Are The Map Maker.
Don’t let fear stop you from doing the things that matter.
How do you nurture your ideas? Over to you in the comments.
Image by Bethan.
Change How People Feel Not What They Do
Every marketing decision you make should be prefaced with this question;
“How will it make her feel?”
Of course you want people to do, but you need them to feel first. When people feel they act. The feeling is what leads to the doing.
Think about the websites and cafes you love to visit, the book titles that attract your attention and the things that you own or covet. They have found a way to tell a story that short-circuits the connection to your heart.
It turns out that changing hearts not just minds, is a great business strategy.
Image by gak.
If Only
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
If only there were 26 hours in each day.
If only they understood.
If only the competition didn’t compete.
If only there was more space.
If only the economy wasn’t in such a mess.
If only chocolate didn’t taste so good.
If only the gym wasn’t so far away.
If only they hadn’t launched first.
If only holidays were longer.
If only you didn’t have to take so much time off.
If only people still cared.
If only the margins could be moved by two pixels.
If only you’d read the instructions first.
If only you hadn’t waited.
If only they’d paid attention.
If only she hadn’t noticed.
If only that, not this.
If only then, not now.
If only you had [————].
If only you could do [————].
Nothing to stop you.
If only you could let go of if only.
P.S. If only the media uploader was working you’d see this gorgeous image….. seriously!
Image by Jamie Henderson.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Why Knowing What To Leave Out Matters
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
The secret of any great book, movie, business, product, or service is in the editing. As an entrepreneur or creative, your understanding of what to leave out is just as important as what you decide to leave in.
Christopher Nolan will no doubt leave hours and hours of carefully crafted shots and scenes from
The Dark Knight Rises in the cutting room, and the movie we see will be so much the better for it. It doesn’t matter whether you’re designing an app or a shoe, framing a photo or a company, creating a course or a website, your editing decisions are the key to pulling the whole thing together. Like the perfect final cut, your product and brand story needs just the right combination of carefully selected elements.
The act of editing out is what makes a good story an epic
Taking a metaphorical blue pencil to your ‘thing’ isn’t easy. Sometimes you’re too close to the work to understand what details really matter. And sometimes it’s just too hard to toss hours of creative energy aside.
Take a step back and pretend you’re not you, stand in your audience’s shoes. And above all, don’t wait for the day when the whole thing is perfect to bring it to the world. Even Christopher Nolan makes mistakes and lives to create another day.
Over to you, how do you self edit? How have you made something you’ve created better by taking a step back?
Image by Thomas Milne.