Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
What people want hasn’t changed.
People want to be loved, cared for, respected, listened to.
They want to be put first. They want you thinking ahead of what they may want.
When you work and create and implement processes to account for any of these variables, you can’t go wrong.
But when you focus on what you want for the customer, what you want them to do, what you want from them … Well, you know what happens.
Stay Positive & Care First, Make The Ask Later
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Every morning your client, your fans, your friends, your customers need to re-hire you.
Every morning, are you waking up ready to do what it takes to get re-hired?
Stay Positive & Do Chin-Ups On The Bar Your Competitors Set
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You can justify working from home, doing only what was asked of you, shipping late, not giving it your all, needing sleep, not getting back to that voicemail, but justification isn’t the point; impact, effectiveness, and progress are.
Justification is easy. Leaping takes some finesse, courage and an understanding that justifying actions isn’t necessary when you can let your actions speak for themselves.
Stay Positive & What’ll You Do Next?
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Most likely it’s a skill.
As in, it can be learned, improved upon, practiced.
That which you’re untalented at can even become a skill. One person said he wasn’t a talented artist, but he worked at it anyway. He practiced with coffee art and became a success.
From one angle you might not be talented, but that’s shouldn’t stop you from looking at it from the angle of a skill, of learning, of an opportunity for growth.
The way I see it; it can be a skill…if you want it to be.
Stay Positive & What’ll You Learn Next?
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If you’re like me, you’ve got no problem admitting you’re wrong when you are.
Maybe it takes a little prodding and a little data to get you there, but you’re not willing to lose relationships or showcase your stupidity to more than you need to to make a point that’s wrong. No, you’re better than that.
Interestingly, though, your customers, followers, fans… are not as open to admitting they’re wrong.
That’s why marketing takes smarts.
You can’t succeed by telling everyone who walks in your door (real or virtual) that they’re wrong and they should make things right by choosing you. It doesn’t work. In fact, it promotes the opposite behavior of forcing them to search for reasons why they are not wrong, regardless of whether it makes rational sense or not. (By the way, right and wrong is rarely ever rational.)
Smart marketing is about taking two approaches simultaneously. The first approach is to focus on those who already believe what you’re selling or offering is right. Continue to show them it’s right. If you say you have the healthiest supplement drink on the market, prove that over and over. Don’t try to shine the light on the fault of other supplements, keep the positive with yours.
Next, is to market that there’s a problem to those who don’t yet believe there is one. It’s not about assigning blame, it’s about showcasing that a problem exists. Too often people market solutions to problems no one knows about yet. There can’t be a right or wrong solution if one doesn’t believe there’s a problem.
Stay Positive & Don’t Waste Your Time With The Naysayers
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Most people are waiting for you to slip up. They’ve had their trust broken before, so they’ll hold out. They’re watching to see if you show up every day like you promised.
They’re waiting to see if you lose your temper or if you move onto a different target or if you give up or if you go back on your word.
Every single person you’re trying to appeal to, they’re waiting until… they are not.
There’s no calendar or average wait-time for someone to buy into your promise, product, brand, idea, name. There’s no countdown. Seeing an ad 7 times no longer means they’ll convert.
That means all you can do (need to do) is show up. Keep your promise. Regardless of whether you see an instant impact. Be there. Every. Single. Day.
Stay Positive & Meaningful Impacts Are Rarely Ever Instant Anyway
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There’s vertical thinking and learning; it’s industry focused, extremely relatable and it’s about following the groove left by others that have succeeded before you. The woman who wants to run her own marketing consultancy? She can talk to a thousand others who have done marketing consulting.
Many an entrepreneur sticks to vertical learning, but what if there’s fewer businesses out there that are similar to what you want to do? What if you’re trying to enter a highly competitive market where those in your industry don’t want to share their insights, don’t want you to grow, don’t want you in the pool?
That’s where horizontal learning come in.
I was on the phone with a co-owner of a cigar shop five states away that shared more applicable knowledge for opening a bar than some of those who have opened bars have shared. Once you realize that lessons from any industry can be applied to yours, it makes success that much more achievable.
It doesn’t matter if no one has done what you want to do before. It doesn’t matter if your competitors aren’t willing to lend you a hand. What matters is that you understand all there is to know (universal traits) about running a successful business.
You can figure out the industry-specific lessons through trial-and-error, and still succeed.
Stay Positive & There’s No Limit To What You Can Learn (And From Whom)
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