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Articles filed in: Success
The Bounds Of Possibility
filed in Storytelling, Success
Just twenty years ago, it wasn’t probable that you would launch a successful company, publish a best-selling book or get your idea funded by people you didn’t know. Twenty years ago, we operated within the laws of probability. We knew our limits. We lived, sometimes frustrated by, but mostly contentedly within pre-determined educational, geographical or societal boundaries.
And then the internet changed what was possible. The internet enabled us to share ideas. But more importantly, the internet helped us to find more of the people who believed what we believed and believed in. This changed the bounds of possibility, inviting us to think beyond the probable.
Now that we are no longer bound by the constraints of probability, we must face the fact that we have a responsibility to own what’s possible. Opportunity abounds. And that’s both a scary and empowering thought.
The onus to create the future we want to see for ourselves and others is on us. We get to own the story we want to live and tell.
Image by several seconds
What’s Your Customer Acquisition Strategy?
filed in Marketing, Strategy, Success
The owner of the new gym that’s opening down our street stands outside armed with helium balloons to attract attention, and a clipboard to sign up new members. Anyone who happens to be passing is fair game. At this stage, beggars can’t be choosers. The gym needs three hundred members to break even.
Every fledgling business feels the pressure to market to everyone. So we make compromises to get runs on the board. But it’s not until we find the courage and conviction to start serving our ideal customers that we get to do our best work. There are two ways to approach customer acquisition.
We can make something generic that we think most people want and do it faster and cheaper than our competitors. Or we can understand the unmet needs of a particular group of people we are keen to serve and intentionally create products, services and marketing messages for those people.
Successful brands and businesses don’t simply open the door to everyone and hope for the best. They know why they do what they do the way they do it, they understand who they serve best, and they tell that story to those people.
Successful selling is as much about customer discernment as it is about brand differentiation.
If you’d like to have a clearer understanding of your ideal customer, The Story Strategy Course can show you how.
Image by Anupam Mahapatra
Planned Progress
filed in Storytelling, Strategy, Success
You will do things today that you hadn’t planned to do. You will react and respond to someone else’s agenda and put the things you’d prioritised on the back burner. You will find yourself entering digital rabbit holes that distract you from doing the work that matters. Maybe you’ll get a lot done, but will those things you accomplish be moving you closer to your goals?
If you’re going to build the business or create the impact you want, then you must be intentional about how you’re going to do it. You have two choices. You can wait for the next opportunity to present itself, or you can purposely plan for the progress you want to make.
There is no such thing as accidental momentum.
What’s your planned progress strategy?
Image by Dan DeAlmeida
The Myth Of Significance
filed in Story Skills, Success
Lately, we have come to believe in the myth of significance. Put our faith in being chosen, becoming ‘the one’. Striving to be bigger, noticed or more than, while simultaneously recounting a narrative of never enough.
In our minds, significance boasts a title, resides in a corner office, speaks from the centre stage, gaining recognition far and wide.
Significance, though, hides in plain sight. Carrying out seemingly small, unimportant acts, with intention and conviction. Without permission, to rewrite the future
Image by Anders Hellberg, Courtesy of TEIA
More Vs. Enough
We’re surprised when a business that seemed to be thriving closes its doors.
The juice bar that succeeded in one location but scaled too quickly.
The online education platform with a big production budget but not enough students.
The great cause that couldn’t attract the support required to create an impact.
Our culture has taught us that we should multiply our effort to maximise our reward. But a sustainable business—one that is viable because it delights customer and creator, alike, doesn’t always depend on exponential growth.
Success isn’t only about doing all we could do.
Often, it’s about doing the best we can do, and being able to do it again tomorrow.
For many of us, that is more than enough.
Image by Amir Appel.
Always, Sometimes, Never
Doing our best work requires us to pay attention to the things and people that energise us.
One way to do this is to consider categorising potential opportunities, projects or clients into three buckets. Always, sometimes and never.
The goal is to do more of the ‘always’ work, on the projects that both energise us and serve our mission. The ‘sometimes’ work may be taking us closer to our goals even if it isn’t in our zone of genius. And the ‘never’ work is that work that sucks our time and energy—the projects or tasks we should either avoid or delegate if they are essential.
It’s true that how we spend our days is how we end up spending our lives. We can deliberately choose to spend them wisely.
Image by Clark Young
What Can You Learn From Your Competitors?
Karl’s been a successful financial advisor for many years. He’s at the point where he doesn’t need to advertise his services. Karl chooses the clients he wants to work with and generally only takes on new clients by referral. He’s intentionally built the kind of business he wants.
Karl will tell you that the secret of his success is down to one thing—learning from his competitors.
“I spent a lot of time paying attention to my competitors. But instead of worrying about what they excelled at, I wanted to know where they fell short. I found out what they wouldn’t do for their clients. And then I did the things they weren’t prepared to do for mine. Now, sometimes those things didn’t scale. They weren’t systems and processes I could easily automate. To an outsider that might have looked like a short-term disadvantage, but over time things that weren’t easy to replicate turned into my competitive advantage.”
It turns out that differentiation happens in the heads, but mostly in the hearts, of your customers.
What’s the story your competitor doesn’t want to tell?
Image by Abdullah Öğük
Thank You For Your Work
Every day, we are served and nourished by others. We are supported and guided or empowered and inspired by people who have no idea how much they helped us.
What kind of companies would we build if happy, grateful customers were our goal?
What would it take to empower more customers to say thank you and mean it?
What if we created a culture that meant more people heard that their work mattered?
What difference would connecting our effort to its impact have on each and every one of us?
We can be more grateful customers and build the kind of organisations that create them on purpose.
Image by Garry Knight
Your Company Needs A Strong Strategic Narrative
filed in Storytelling, Strategy, Success
A strategic narrative is the story that drives the choices a company makes. That narrative is the thread from which the company’s fabric—its culture and strategy are woven. Sometimes the story accidentally informs the strategy with unintended positive or sometimes, negative consequences.
It stands to reason then that we can and should intentionally leverage our narrative to achieve greater alignment and success.
The elements of a strong strategic narrative
1. Mission
Having a strong sense of purpose.
2. Values & Vision
Knowing who you are, what you stand for, who your best work is for and where you’re headed.
3. Value Creation
Understanding who your customers want to become in the presence of your product.
4. Capability
The ability to align and deliver on 1, 2 and 3.
A strong strategic narrative enables us to prioritise the opportunities, plans and behaviours that align our vision and values with our customer’s unmet needs.
Yes, we tell our story, but the story also tells us.
*Want to explore your company’s strategic narrative in more depth?
My book Story Driven will show you where to begin.
Image by Joris Louwes
Build Your Darlings
It’s often said that you should kill your darlings. This sentiment was first expressed by British writer Arthur Quiller-Couch in 1914 when he cautioned writers not to fall in love with their prose at the expense of the reader. Here’s what he said.
‘Whenever you feel an impulse to perpetrate a piece of exceptionally fine writing, obey it—whole-heartedly—and delete it before sending your manuscript to press. Murder your darlings.’
Quiller-Couch’s words are sometimes taken to mean that you should never fall in love with your ideas. But if you want to do work you’re proud of what alternative do you have? You must believe your work can change things for the better. I think what these words wisely caution us against is simply falling in love with the work itself, instead of being passionate about the change we hope to make.
So go ahead, build your darlings for the people you care about serving. Those people who will fall in love with how your work enables them to live the lives they want.
Image by Darwin Vegher