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Articles filed in: Strategy
The Power of One
filed in Strategy
When you’re a big ideas person you have lots of things you want to communicate about your business vision and your brand. I know I’ve been there, done it and got the t-shirt. In your rush to get all the juicy, good stuff crammed into your pitch you wind up confusing people. Paring your business idea back to it’s essence is the answer. Easier said than done right! How on earth do you communicate all of your value clearly and succinctly?
Start by thinking about and framing just one thing. Craft a single mission. Have one goal. Solve one problem. Close one gap. Find one way to make your client’s life easier. Get really clear on how you do that and hey presto, you’ll find that your customers suddenly ‘get it’ and can begin to want it.
Every day you witness the power of one in action, being cleverly executed by some of your favourite brands like these.
Innocent wanted to make it easy for people to do themselves some good and to make it taste nice too. They wanted people to think of innocent drinks as their one healthy habit. They succeeded in creating a lovemark and building a profitable business by delivering on this single mission.
Zappos was founded in 1999 with the goal of becoming the premiere destination for online shoes. They embraced this vision and achieved their goal by doing just one thing. “Delivering wow through service”.
KeepCup created the first barista standard reusable cup and made it the number one choice for sustainable coffee consumption. The brand and product is founded on one simple belief, that reuse is the most significant environmental impact we can make.
Personal brands have been built on a single idea too. Robert McKee simply teaches people how to write powerful stories. Author Chris Guillebeau built his brand by helping people to live unconventional lives and change the world.
What’s your single mission? What one thing can you promise, communicate and deliver on?
Image by Alicakes.
20 Quotes To Read Before Starting A Business
I’ve got a confession to make, it’s not pretty so I’m going to just spit it out. I haven’t read any fiction for the past two years. My bookcases are jammed with business, marketing, personal development and some travel books. So I thought it might be fun to put all that inspiration to good use and share some of my favourite nuggets with you.
1. “Stop trying to find the formula that will instantly make your idea into a winner. Instead of being scientists the best marketers are artists. They realise that whatever is being sold is being purchased because it creates and emotional want, not because it fills a simple need.”
—Seth Godin
2. “Business is not about money. It’s about making dreams come true for others and for yourself.”
—Derek Sivers
3. “By building respect and inspiring love business can move the world.”
—Kevin Roberts
4. “The goal of business then should not be to simply sell to anyone who wants what you have, but rather to find people who believe what you believe.”
—Simon Sinek
5. “Given the chance people will buy from people who care.”
—Paco Underhill.
6. “Leaders do stuff that matters.”
—Tom Peters
7. “The most powerful narcotic in the world is the promise of belonging.”
—Kalle Lasn
8. “Don’t use language to sound like someone who knows what they’re talking about; know what you’re talking about and use language to get it said.”
—Mark Tredinnick & Geoff Whyte
9. “One must understand what people are thinking, feeling and believing in order to enchant them.”
—Guy Kawasaki
10. “The greatest competitor you’ll ever come up against is self doubt.”
—John McGrath
11. “Good is the enemy of great.”
—Jim Collins
12. “Values are meaningless without stories to bring them to life and engage us on a personal level.”
—Annette Simmons
13. “Do what you love in the service of people who love what you do.”
—Steve Farber
14. “Too many people never connect with their true talents and therefore don’t know what they are capable of achieving.”
—Ken Robinson
15. “We are still in the position of waking up and having a choice. Do I make the world better today somehow, or do I not bother?”
—Tom Hanks
16. “We relish news of our heroes forgetting that we are extraordinary to somebody too.”
—Helen Hayes
17. “Imagination is more important than knowledge.”
—Albert Einstein
18. “The person who knows how will always have a job. But the person who knows why will be his boss.”
—Carl C. Wood
19. “The market for something to believe in is infinite.”
—Hugh MacLeod
20. “You don’t learn to walk by following rules. You learn by doing, and by falling over.”
—Richard Branson
What quotes inspire you and your work?
Image by Jacob Earl.
Seth Godin On Being An Entrepreneur, Telling Stories And Making Ideas Matter
filed in Entrepreneurship, Storytelling, Strategy
It’s not every day you get to speak with one of your heroes. I had the opportunity to do just that when I talked to Seth Godin recently. Seth and his work need no introduction and I hope you get to take something away from the conversation we had about being an entrepreneur, telling stories and making ideas matter.
If what you’re doing matters, then I hope you’ll take the time to tell a story. A story that resonates and a story that can become true.
~ Seth Godin
Image by Life Supercharger.
Increase The Value Of Your Products And Services For Free
filed in Storytelling, Strategy
I discovered the most beautiful tea last week. A green tea infused with cherry blossom. I experienced it by accident and would have walked past it on the supermarket shelf. The reason I later paid over $10 for a packet of tea has everything to do with my worldview. The tea was a souvenir of my visit to the place where I first experienced it and the scent brought back memories of my first home where two huge pink cherry blossom trees grew in the garden.
It’s clear that this is a quality product, but what’s really disappointing is that there is no story on the packaging. There are too few clues about the history, scent, flavour and the way in which I might experience it. If you’re selling a premium product, or if you want to differentiate what you do, you must get better at telling your customers the story.
The startup AHAlife, which sells carefully selected and curated items grew 600% this past year, by selling people the story behind the product. Founder Shauna Mei recognised that there was a gap in the market, that people needed to understand the passion behind the making and origins of the product in order to recognise its’ true value.
How is this relevant to your business? What if you don’t even sell a physical product?
It doesn’t matter how good your idea is if nobody knows.
~ Sally Hogshead
If you want your idea to succeed then you need to get better at telling people why it should matter to them. If you want people to understand your quality and your difference then you need to tell them about it. If you sell something that isn’t just about utility, (that’s 99% of consumer goods and services on the planet), then you need to give people more reasons to care about them and you.
It is entirely possible to increase the value of your product or service at no extra cost by telling a better story. Here are examples of businesses doing just that with chocolate, candles, website headers, book marketing and design.
You experience this every single day, now it’s time to put it into practice.
Image by Ed Chadwick.
Remember Why You Started
Jessica couldn’t believe it had been only three years since she opened the doors to the tiny clothing boutique she’d dreamed of owning one day. She remembered the excitement of finding the shabby little two roomed workshop, choosing colours for the walls and installing makeshift shelving and clothing racks where she could display all her original pieces. She wanted to make clothes that were one offs, the sorts of clothes she would be proud to own, that had a story, things that people would covet and adore.
One by one people found her. They loved the designs only Jess was making and then told their friends. The local newspaper came, did an interview and took photographs and before Jess knew it the Lady Mayor of the town was ordering a whole custom wardrobe. It was too good an opportunity to pass up even if she felt a little uncomfortable about compromising on some of the styles she was required to design. The exposure was incredible! Well healed women came from miles around looking for new wardrobes. They loved the idea of being able to have a big say in the design process and Jessica was so helpful.
Now though Jess was so busy creating stuff that other people wanted her to create she had no time to experiment with her own designs. She didn’t have time for sketching wacky ideas. She no longer had space to dream up designs for beautiful original accessories. She had email enquiries to field and phone calls to return.
On a rare Sunday stroll by the river with a friend Jess realised that she wasn’t looking forward to opening her newly extended shop on Monday. She was dreading having to sit down and work to finish the designs that Allison Joyce the local councillor had commissioned. Somehow she felt that in trying to build a successful business she’d lost a sense of her original purpose and a bit of her soul along the way. She got little joy from the ooohs and aaahs of customers wearing garments she didn’t care she had designed. The money was great but the work was soul destroying. Jess was now left feeling like she’d sold out, she’d traded her passion and her art for a traditional measure of success and that made her uncomfortable. Mostly she was angry at herself for allowing her ego to get in the way of doing what she really loved, what she’d set out to do and be. She realised that what made her a success in the first place was doing what mattered to her.
So on Monday Jess didn’t open the shop. She stopped answering the phone, went for walks and thought long and hard about what it was that made her want to do this job in the first place. Jess took time out to go to the art gallery, the local market and the design museum. It was a tough time and she knew that some people might judge her harshly for making changes. Jess also knew though that change had to happen, that the first step to helping dreams come true was putting a stake in the ground for her own dreams.
So that’s what she did. It meant not just tweaking the model she now had only to be back where she started again in few weeks time. No, Jess made a radical shift and a decision never to take on a custom design again. It just felt like the right thing to do. She had to stop being a shadow of the designer she could be by being the designer she wanted to be.
I’m sure Jess made the right decision. If you get no joy from what you do it begins to show. You can tweak the compromise a little here and there but sometimes what is required is insight and extreme bravery.
Remember why you started not just what you started.
*This is a re-post from some of my earlier work, it’s important and I wanted to share it here with you.*
Image by Steve Rhodes.
Joining The Dots Works But It’s Not Art
filed in Strategy
Or…. why I dislike writing ‘how to’ blog posts.
Do you remember as a child, when you realised that your stick men and two dimensional cats weren’t actually a true representation of the real thing? Maybe like me you tried using those join the dots books? The first time you produced a drawing by following those instructions you felt pretty good, but after doing the first few you knew that it was cheating.
Even a five year old knows that there is no soul in something that is created by following instructions.
If Seth Godin were to lay out his entire blog writing process for you with no holds barred, timings, schedules, strategies, where to get ideas, how to write great beginnings and compelling endings. Would you feel secure in the knowledge that you could make the same impact as Seth does? Even if you could write as well as Seth, would you feel like you were putting your unique ideas out into the world, or more like just a cheap imitation?
I know that ‘how to’ posts will drive more ‘traffic’ to my blog, but I rarely write them because you are not ‘traffic’ to me. My job is to enable you to bring out the best of yourself and elevate your unique ideas, not to give you a book full of numbered steps to follow. Following how tos and joining dots teaches you to count and tick boxes. They are not the foundations of ideas that matter and will never satisfy your creative, pioneering soul.
The Cycle Of Striving
Are you stuck in a cycle of striving? Busy brainstorming, creating, iterating, going for it, launching, succeeding and then doing the rinse and repeat routine.
Sometimes we get so caught up in our projects and wanting to make everything work, that we forget to stop for breath, or come up for air. We adopt two postures. One is waiting for the starters gun and the other is striving. Going for it for all we’re worth towards the finish line. And what happens when you get there, when you finally achieve your audacious goal, have the ‘big win’? You probably just turn right around and start again, without even looking up.
When you get stuck in the cycle of striving and don’t give yourself permission to celebrate you eventually burn out and lose longer term momentum. I know I’ve lived it and I’ve seen it happen to countless other ‘driven’ people. I also know that you’re driven, that’s why I’m putting this out there.
When you do great work it needs to be acknowledged and celebrated by you, not just the rest of the world. It’s okay to stop, drape the flag around your shoulders and stand smiling on the podium.
Image by Matt Hinsta.
Stop Waiting For Google
You’ve probably heard marketing gurus talking about ‘warm traffic’ and ‘cold traffic’. They’ll tell you that you need plenty of ‘cold traffic’, in order to improve your chances of staying in business. They will argue the case for buying traffic so that you can sell more of your ‘standard vanilla whatevers’.
Is that really how you want to build your business? Obsessing over this is stopping you growing your business in a way that’s right for you.
Are you waiting for Google to pick you? Or paying them to pick you perhaps? More than 2 million Google searches are performed every minute and yes, over time you might make a tiny dent in the backlink universe. Then what?
Will you be engaging the kind of clients you want to work with? The kind of clients you would kill for don’t judge you by the amount of backlink muscle you flex. They don’t find you this way either.
Google can’t optimise the best of you. It can’t optimise what makes you and your work unique. And most important of all, Google can’t really optimise for what the non-average, exceptional, client wants to invest in.
Google can’t optimise your purpose, your heart or your soul, your art or judgement, your professionalism and enthusiasm
Google is terrible at defining your talent and your edge, your clarity of vision or communication skills.
Google SEO will rarely demonstrate your work ethic and dedication, your inspiration or your ability to solve problems and overcome obstacles.
Google can’t tell clients who will be the icing on their cake, or the best in their world. Only you can do that.
It might be an idea to stop competing for average and just concentrate on being great
I just sent out a beautiful workbook to my newsletter subscribers today, because I appreciate them being here. I’m building my business by creating value for others, shining a light on what they do and making lasting connections with my audience.
Are you still waiting for Google?
Image by Kachina Daze.
There’s Something You’re Forgetting To Tell Us
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
It’s time for me to get really honest with you and let you know that there’s a reason why people are not crossing the street or the Inter-webs to buy from you, and it has nothing to do with how good your idea is. People might be noticing you left and right, but you’re not giving them a good enough reason to go beyond simply paying attention. Forgetting to do this one thing means that you are sabotaging your chances of being a leader, or an influencer. It stops people from trusting you enough to care about your idea. It makes them hold back and keeps their credit card firmly in their wallet.
I want you to stop telling people what you are, and start showing them what you are not.
You need to start telling people why you’re and showing them how you’re different
Do you know? Have you given much thought to what makes you and your idea extraordinary?
It’s not enough anymore to say I’ve got an MBA, a really reliable product or a bazillion twitter followers, plenty of other people have those badges of honor too. You need to do more than just wear your ribbon on the opposite side to everyone else. You’ve got something more valuable than all those credentials put together, you’re just keeping it hidden.
Your gifts are too precious, your ideas too important, don’t squander your opportunity to make a difference.
Once upon a time, an amazingly gifted client of mine thought she was an Etsy store owner and a decorator, when what she was all along was a stylist and interior designer. She just wasn’t telling people.
Are you up for the challenge? Deep down you know what makes you different it’s time to start articulating it.
Image by Emar.
Take Off Your Little Black Dress
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Maybe you look amazing in a little black dress with no help from anyone. Very few people can pull it off without at least a leg wax, high heels and an airbrush tan. Think about why you wear that dress in the first place. Is it to make you feel good about yourself? Possibly…..or is it to attract attention?
You know deep down that you won’t attract the right kind of attention with your little black dress.
When will it be time to show the best of your real self, not just in your life but in your business too?
Are you spending so much time working on the ‘how to attract people’ part, (tactics); that you’ve stopped focusing on making a difference to people, (objectives)? Have you forgotten the unique value of your own message?
You have something important to share, but if you’re wearing the equivalent of a little black dress to attract people to your idea, blog or your business then you’re doing yourself a disservice. You are diluting your idea and making yourself invisible to the people who need what you have.
You are one-of-a-kind, your story is what makes your idea unique, and that idea it is going to make a difference to someone. Don’t bury it by dressing it up in 10 inch heels and covering it with lipstick.
Image by Zar Cor.