Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
The thing about a leap is that it’s unpredictable if you’ll make it, if you’ll make wings on your way down, if someone will be on the other side to catch you, if there’s a river below or rocks, if you’ll hang on the edge …
Everything worth doing is, at the end of the day (or any time of the day), unpredictable.
That’s why we’ve been given a gut.
Stay Positive & Use It
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What people want is more. The trouble and task of elevating a brand is to figure out more what?
From marketing experience I’ve found that people don’t want less of something.
They want more of something opposite.
Powerful copy isn’t “Fear no more. Your kids will love X.” It’s, “Getting your kids X means more memorable moments to share over the holidays.”
What’s your more?
Stay Positive & Unsure? … Ask
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Here’s a great way to get a pulse on the quality of your following: If you changed your service, altered your URL, changed your logo, switched you CMS … would your customers follow?
Until you’ve made a strong enough impact on your current audience, it’s not worth changing anything solely to get new ones.
Stay Positive & Build Your Tribe First
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There’s a spectrum of work personalities you may have noticed.
On one end you have the folks who want to be liked, who are people pleasers. You might imagine them to be a bit of an air head because they’re so focused on connecting on a personal level that sometimes the work fumbles. They’re the ones that toss jokes out at inopportune times.
On the other end of the spectrum, you have people who think it’s all about the work. You’ll perceive them as bull dogs, rude and insensitive. They’ll cut you off, wrangle in any tangential conversations and be the first to speak up before you’re done talking.
While neither is wrong, it might be worth checking at the door where on the spectrum you’re at, especially if it’s a team project (when is it never?). Teams work better when they can all meet in the middle of the spectrum.
Stay Positive & The Work Gets Better When They Do, Too
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Back when I worked in painting and remodeling, I used to joke that customers paid for the prep work and the painting was free.
There were times customers would leave when we started the prep work, arrive when we started painting and then said, “Wow, that was fast” once the painting was done.
They never saw the scraping, taping and priming. They didn’t see how meticulously we organized the drop-cloths, carefully placed the plastic wrap around their valuables or our intricate setup of air flow to ensure a proper dry without the fumes.
They didn’t see us evaluating how the light was coming in and how that would interact with the stroking direction of the paint roller.
Of course, they saw it, but didn’t really see it. And that’s okay.
The brands – from painting to toilets to coffee – that live short lives are the ones that focus on the shiny, that make a show of the final product at the sacrifice of the pre-work.
Not sure about you, but I’ve noticed more and more people gravitating to brands that are clear about where it’s made, how it’s done and why they do it the way they do it.
The other unforgotten benefit of a better setup is that a better result is sure to follow.
Instead of creating an add-on, consider how to make it part of the process from the start.
Stay Positive & Put In The (Pre) Work
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Work that’s five, ten or twenty times stronger than the work you’ve done might be hard to do.
How, then, to make it easier … more approachable?
Imagine it.
You can imagine what the work would be like if it was twice as good, now double it. And again.
You’ll be surprised to find that the quickest way to getting to better work (and the best first step to it) is to imagine you can, imagine what it would look like, imagine the possibility.
Once it’s real in your mind, it’s not far from reality.
Stay Positive & Think Your Way To It
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As a brand, you’ve got a lot of power.
Power to serve, power to bend the rules, power to give more than expected.
However, just because you have the power to decide who to serve, how to serve and when to serve, it doesn’t mean you need to exercise it on a case-by-case basis or when the problem speaks to you or if your competitor acts in one way.
It might actually be better to use your power to show that everyone who reaches out to you deserves your service.
Picking and choosing when to go the extra mile for a customer isn’t what helps in the long haul; it’s showing up consistently that matters.
Stay Positive & Keep Helping Who You Can
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