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Articles filed in: Entrepreneurship

The Best

The best teacher isn’t always the one who has a class full of students that get the best results.
The best designer isn’t always the one who knows the exact amount of white space to leave.
The best brand isn’t always the one that makes the most money.
The best athlete doesn’t always win.
And the best ideas aren’t always the ones that succeed.

Far better then to focus on being ‘the most’ you can be to the people who matter, than to work on being that little bit better, using a yardstick created by somebody else.

Image by Michael Goldrei.

Make More Room For Bravery

When you’re itching to do the thing you really want to do, but don’t, what stops you?

The answer is usually fear. Fear has a habit of getting in the way. Fear that people might laugh at you. Fear that your success so far was nothing but luck. Fear that you’ll fail. Fail in whose eyes?

If you’re spending the majority of your time worry about what the world will think about you, and the rest working out how to make the world think the ‘right thing’, then what’s left for the story you can tell yourself about what’s possible? What’s your allocation for imagination?

What if you made more room for bravery? What if you nudged worry aside for the few seconds longer it takes to just go? What if you didn’t need the map? What couldn’t you start then?

Image by Zilverbat.

Why Startups Stall

It’s easy to start something today. Now that the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can start a business. You don’t need a big staff on payroll or a factory to get the work done.

So more people are starting things.

There is no shortage of great ideas. The path to success though, is littered with great ideas poorly marketed. One of the biggest marketing mistakes new businesses make is neglecting the intangibles. Fledgling entrepreneurs and startup founders often concentrate all their effort on the tangible —the product, the business model, production, funding, and on and on. What sometimes gets forgotten are the ideals on which the business is founded.

While they are busy focusing on execution they neglect the fundamentals and forget to find ways to communicate that unique purpose to the people they want to reach.

A great product and a good business model can get you so far, but a purpose around which to build a brand framework is what makes businesses and brands thrive.

It turns out that what distinguished the 50 fastest growing and most valuable brands of the last decade was an ideal. A reason for being. The intangible that was the foundation of the brand’s culture and story.

“Great brands and businesses do more than make great products and services. Great brands and companies change peoples lives.”
—Jim Stengel
Former CMO Proctor & Gamble

Apple, Zappos, Starbucks, Amazon, Innocent, Red Bull, Pampers, Google and Coca Cola are all on the list, but tiny emerging brands made the cut too. Even empires of one can succeed because they have a purpose beyond what they sell. And huge ones can fail when they forget the reason they existed on the first place.

Image by Mike Ambs.

Why Bother?

Why bother having a customer care line that informs of a thirty minute wait and asks people to call back later?
Why bother selling an awards based credit card, then capping the points your customers can earn?
Why bother creating cheap for the masses, when you can deliver quality to the few?
Why bother saying you’ll call if you don’t?
Why bother pressing send if you don’t care about the outcome?
Why bother asking if you don’t really want to hear the answer?
Why bother giving your restaurant a million dollar fit out only to cut corners on staff training?
Why bother saying you’re different when you’re clearly average?
Why bother telling me you care if you don’t?
Why bother lying when the truth works just as well, if not better?
Why bother showing up if you’re not going to leave the world better for your having been here.

Why not to be the best to the few and not just average to everyone?

Image by Montgomery County Planning.

When Will You Draw The Line?

When my mother left school aged just 14 she was sent to the Royal Candy sweet factory, to dip caramel by hand into big vats of icing, (pink or white). On the evening of her first day she told her widowed mother (who was raising 11 children single-handed), that she hated it and she wasn’t going back. She pleaded to be allowed to take up sewing, something she loved and was good at. But sewing didn’t pay so well. And four years later, when she turned 18 she was still dipping caramel at Royal Candy.

Years later everything changed.

But most people didn’t. They stayed inside the lines of the factories and gave the gatekeepers permission to write their stories and map out their destinies.

Today the Internet allows you to shape your own journey. And the only permission you need to tell a story that matters is your own.

“It’s important that we all take a breath, look down and realize that the clay is in our hands.
We can make it what we want. Not just the work,
but our future”
– Andrew Keller

What’s stopping you drawing your own lines?

Image by Whole Wheat Toast.

20 Questions To Answer Before Asking How Much Money Can I Make?

1. Why do I want to do this?

2. What do I care about?

3. What brings me joy?

4. What am I good at?

5. What’s scarce?

6. What problem can I solve?

7. Who needs me?

8. How can I make a difference?

9. How can I deliver value?

10.What can I change?

11.How can I make meaning?

12.What do other people care about?

13.How can I start small for next to nothing?

14.Who are my heroes and what would they do?

15.Who would I kill to work with?

16.Who exactly am I going to serve?

17.How can I get from where I am to where I want to be?

18.What’s stopping me?

19.What’s my definition of success.

20.What will be my legacy?

Find the answers to these questions and the money will come.

Image by Brian Mensching.

They Miss Us Now We’re Gone

The shopping malls are empty and the big department store owners are worried. They’ve finally got the memo. They realise that they can’t out-stock Amazon, or price match the guy from Seoul selling wallets on eBay. So they’re trying to woo us back with loyalty cards, air miles and faster ways to checkout our less than five items.

They miss us now we’ve gone, to buy a hand-crafted necklace from Megan, or a one-of-a-kind lamp from Philippa.

We’ve moved on without them, while they kept buying double-page spreads in the local newspaper.

The world has changed. You don’t have to compete with the big guys. They are the ones at a disadvantage now. You have everything you need to bring your ideas to life. To do work you care about, and to tell the story about what you do to people who want to listen.

It might be too late for the big guys to matter, but it’s not too late for you.

Image by eskimo jo.

The Sure Thing

If you’ve ever watched surfers you’ll know that they spend far more time reading the waves, than riding them. And despite all of the waiting, watching and experience, they still sometimes choose the wrong wave to ride. In the end they take their best guess, commit and go.

And so it goes for ideas too.

Did the Pintrest founder Ben Silbermann know back in 2009, that he was building what would become the fastest growing social network? And did Kevin Systrom have any idea that his Instagram app would be acquired by Facebook for a billion, just months after Kodak died?

Nobody knows for sure. There is no certainty. No such thing as a ‘sure thing’.

So once you’ve done the preparation, there is no reason not to take your best guess and go.

The people who succeed, are the ones that put the need for certainty aside, to focus on riding the best wave they can. They don’t wait for the tide to be perfect tomorrow.

Image by Mike Baird.

How To Charge What You’re Worth

The days when you clocked in and out, and got paid by the hour for dipping squares of caramel into big vats of icing, (pink or white—a job my mother did for years), at the factory, are largely gone. You don’t get paid for showing up. And yet that’s how many creative entrepreneurs try to charge for their art.

How is it possible for Johanna to charge Starbucks by the hour, for the joy drinking in the London store surrounded by her hand designed wallpaper? What about the time in took to get there? The years of practice, of putting her bum in a seat, the knowing exactly where to ink?

If you’re a coach, consultant, writer, designer, teacher, leader or muse how to you charge for the ability to change everything?

You do two things.

1. Acknowledge what you’re worth to yourself first
Really sit and think about this for a second. I work with a slew of creative geniuses (writers, coaches, designers, leaders and on and on), who have trouble acknowledging what their work is worth. Mostly to themselves. “It only took me half an hour”, or “That’s what everyone else charges”, they say.

You don’t work on the assembly line.

Your art is not billed by the hour, it’s billed by the impact it creates.

2. Frame your scarcity
Don’t be shy about telling the real story. Point out how your designs brought a brand to life. How your coaching helped someone to do the thing they’d always wanted to do. Tell people the story of how your work changed how people feel. Show them how you take people from where they are to where they want to be.
Find the right words. Set yourself apart.

Then hold your head high and double your prices.

Image by Fred Hasselman

The Story Makes The Product Better

For three decades, 10% of the population of the tiny Welsh town, Cardigan, made jeans.

35,000 pairs every week.

Then one day the factory died, and the jean artisans could no longer practice their art.

They simply had no way to do the thing they did well, until Hiut Denim was founded.

Now the company’s ‘Grand Masters’ make a handful of jeans each day. Each pair has a unique number, and a ‘History Tag’ that the owner can register on the website, to begin adding the memories associated with wearing their jeans.

Hiut are telling the story of a product built to last, and they are encouraging their customers to consume less by attaching meaning to the things that they love.

“We make jeans. That’s it. Nothing else. No distractions. Nothing to steal our focus. No kidding ourselves that we can be good at everything. No trying to conquer the whole world. We just do our best to conquer our bit of it. So each day we come in and make the best jeans we know how.”

Hiut didn’t just make an average product, then try sticking a marketing story on as an after thought. They made the story part of the product, and the story makes the product better.

Image by Don Shall.