Why Try To Get Out Of Your Box, When You Can Use What's In It?
You can’t satisfy everyone. You can’t perfectly appeal to all the masses. But you can choose your customers, and for them, every rule is made to be bent or broken for the sake of creating a loyalist.
That is, every rule can be bent for those customers who matter most.
You can’t break every rule for everyone, but those who you do break it for strengthen your core tribe.
Stay Positive & Customers Choose The Best Companies, Why Not The Other Way Around Too?
I just finished up reading a few dozen essays from 13-year-olds for a contest a client is running. It opened my eyes up to the realization they write like many adults do. Here are some tips for impressing and delighting your readers, no matter your age.
1) Write less and say more. People are human and everyone only has 24 hours in a day. They don’t want to spend more than they need to reading what you wrote.
2) If there’s a prompt: follow it. After you write a sentence, go back and ask if it answers the prompt. If not, cut it. See tip 1.
3) Write to one person, but don’t be too specific. You might know things about the reader, but you don’t know the reader.
4) Be personal. That means answering “why” until you write something inspiring to anyone who reads it. Otherwise known as real, truthful, and authentic.
Stay Positive & We Could All Write A Bit Better
People get scared and think they can’t possibly treat large groups of people in a remarkable way, a way that leaves them in complete delight. It’s much easier one-on-one, but that’s not sustainable for a business, so many try reaching for the mass.
Instead of treating differently people differently, they sacrifice value, connection, surprise, and trust to appeal to the mass. It’s easier to do that, isn’t it?
“Yes” is the lie we tell ourselves to get out of doing work that’s risky, but ultimately matters, ultimately has an impact, ultimately delights more people.
Value, trust, surprise, connection, and delight are like any muscle in that the more you exercise them, the stronger they get and the easier it is to please more people at your door in a meaningful way.
Like any exercise (if you’re focused on growth), it never gets easier, but it continues to be more worth it.
Anyway, the mass isn’t as appealing as they sound.
Stay Positive & Start By Delighting A Few And Then A Few More
I see it over and over again, people giving up, changing course before any concrete conclusion.
They work months at building their business and selling their idea, but give up because they’re let down from the lack of interest.
People pitching stop calling and emailing when those they pitch to don’t respond.
In other words, we give up too early.
I’ve tried to land a story with one journalist for the last month and a half. I sent 5+ emails and tried calling him every few days on the phone. I wanted to give up. There was no way he was interested. He would have responded if he was. But hey, he didn’t say no yet, so I sent another email. And wah-lah.
There’s two rules of thumb I try to follow when facing the decision to change course or keep going.
1) If I haven’t gotten a clear “no,” then the ball is still live. I wouldn’t have landed the pitch if I thought silence meant the ball was dead.
2) When it comes to competition, we get in the mentality that we have to stick with something forever, when, in reality, we only need to hold out longer than the other person. I have won many-a-arm-wrestle with this.
Stay Positive & It’s A Lot Less Overkill Than You Think It Will Be
You lose loyalty when A and B happen at the same time.
A) unsatisfying/disappointing service from you
B) satisfying/remarkable service from your competitor
It’s easy to know where to put your energy because you only have control over A, not B. And it happens that by default when you provide inadequate service, your competitors appear all the more appealing. You don’t want that, do you?
Stay Positive & Focus On Delight
On this episode of In The Box Podcast, we took a stab at answer questions about making art for others or for yourself, one way to gain clarity when faced with a decision between two options, why people fear their ideas getting stolen, one way to handle a heavier workload (likely due to a promotion) and what to do when engaging with a narcissist. Enjoy.
Episode 22: Stealing Ideas, Working With Narcissists, Making Art For Yourself And More
Art – Make art for self or others?
Decisions – One way to gain clarity when confused about making a decision?
Stolen – Should people fear their ideas being stolen?
Responsibility load – What is one way to handle being given more responsibility (think like getting a promotion)?
Bonus – One way to deal with interacting with a narcissist?
Stay Positive & Remember to subscribe
What you can expect when someone says “Can do, will do”: thoughtful questions that help them do it right, no plea for more bandwidth to do it, no complaints, that they’ve got the basics down and you don’t need to train them, and motivation to please you (perhaps overdeliver).
From my experience delegating tasks, those who respond with the affirmative also teach me something along the way too.
Surround yourself by “can do, will do” attitudes and you’ll not only offer opportunities for growth to others, you’ll learn a thing or two as well.
Stay Positive & As Is The Art Of A Mentor/Mentee Relationship
