The Story Creates The Customer

Have you ever noticed what happens at the organic cafe? As the customer places an order he asks what’s in it. This happens almost every single time. The experience, our posture and products—the story, create the customer. When we encourage people to believe something matters, we attract the kind of people who care about that…

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The Importance Of The First Stroke

The coach leaned forward on her handle bars and across the bike path at the side of the lake. The four girls in the boat who had been training since sun up hung on her every word. “I want you to focus on the first stroke, nothing else. Just keep thinking I am going to…

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If We Build It Will They Come?

This is precisely the wrong question to start any project with. A better way to begin is by asking: Who wants us to build it and why will they come? *This photo of Walt Disney showing the Disneyland plans to Orange County officials was taken in Dec 1954.* Walt knew where to start. Image from…

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Before You Create Marketing

Recognise that’s it is not your job to create marketing. It’s your job is to as Peter Drucker said, to create and keep a customer. Before Nespresso people paid for coffee by the jar or went to Starbucks. Before iTunes people waited for CDs to be released and shipped. Before Kindle we needed bookcases and…

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The Relationship Between Curiosity And Business Growth

Whenever I visit the tiny local florist I am the only customer and the most bizarre thing happened when I stopped off there last Friday evening. The entire floor was filled with buckets and buckets of multi-coloured roses. It was so full there was barely room to navigate to the register to pay. I thought…

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Getting Your Message ‘Out There’

When I was fifteen it cost fifty pence to go a see U2 play live to a tiny audience in the function room of the Rathfarnham Inn. A group of girls from my school who were die hard fans and too young to get into a pub at night applied three layers of eyeliner, half…

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The Best Marketing In The World

It’s easy to know why the features you built into your products and services are important, but it takes a particular skill to understand and communicate why they should matter to people. The best marketing in the world doesn’t remind people how great the company is or how many features have been added to the…

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How Everything Truly Great Is Inspired

This is the story of a trap we all fall into. Every single entrepreneur or creator without exception is thrown off course by following a similar pattern. It doesn’t matter if you are on the board of a Fortune 500 or a designer trying to get her blog off the ground. The same struggle happens…

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The Meaning Business

In the past most businesses gained competitive advantage from size, scale or dominance. Whoever the biggest marketing budget and could sell the most stuff won. Success was more about what you did and much less about the way that you did it. But today it’s the way that you go about your business and how…

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