You hear what you want to hear
If you’re focused on what you’re going to say next. On how to make your argument more solid. On how your point is the valid (and true) one. No matter what your counterparty says, you’ll hear what you want to hear. You’ll listen to either reply or present. And that’s no conversation. The same is with your prospects and customers. If you don’t meet them where they are, if you try to convince them —or influence them— and they’re not at that stage, they won’t hear you. Here’s a work around: Focus…
Surprise
To Sting, the essence of all music is surprise. Sting. Interview w/ Rick Beato. And in business, it goes the same way: the essence of all (meaningful) business is surprise. Marty Neumeier in his book Metaskills sustains: “While it’s possible to define beauty, it can’t be reduced to a pat formula for the simple reason that one of the components of beauty is surprise. In everything we experience as beautiful, there is a moment of surprise when we first encounter it. If there’s no surprise,…
Your job is to be an orange
“While the client always wants to level the playing field and compare “apples to apples,” your job is to be an orange. Do everything you can to show why you’re different.” Tim Williams Be the orange when they’re trying to compare apples. Be a square showing your edge, in a world full of circles. When they’re waiting for you to convince them, show them the way they can do best —even if that means it’s not you who does the gig. When they’re waiting for more of the same, bring the surprise. And…
Teach the game in verse
Friend-of-the-list and daily emailer Kevin Freidberg sent this message “Teach the game in reverse”. And I read “Teach the game in verse”, which also makes absolute sense, since his writing sounds like that to me (do go check him out). You can think of how you share your thinking in a sense of poetry —verse. Trying (to see) that will push you into some boundaries: space, time, ideas. This will get to be more on point on what you wanna say. And without the need to fill in the things with tons…
Not being the expert
Not behaving like the expert can take many forms. One of them: trying to avoid pushback, arguments, or resistance in your relationship with clients. It can hurt you more than help. You can be in the order-taking business, if you prefer. And that’s fine. The impact that comes from it, though, will be smaller. You can be in the service business, where your impact will be higher. Or you can be in the transformation business, and help them achieve the potential your customers have. How you want…
Everything is sales.
You heard that right. Everything is sales. But doing sales is not (necessarily) selling. It’s helping to buy.
Maybe you need help
If you were thinking of writing, publishing and share your POV in your industry so that you can help your customers, doing it solo is ultra hard. And maybe you need help. (Maybe not, and that’s ok, too) I know I did. And I found it, after 5 —or was it 6?— attempts of starting and quitting in different ways: programs, cohorts, solo… It didn’t stick. I didn’t stick. I couldn’t. But, here’s where E365 came in, led by Jonathan Stark. The guidance, and especially the way you get interactions and…
Thought leadershit
“You can produce thought leadership.”It’s bullshit. That’s like saying that you can produce leaders. A step-by-step process where you get a person in and, like an output, they return being leaders. That can be anything but leadership. Just think about it: if it were the case, why don’t we have more, better leaders? Leadership is the personal decision to help others to do and be at their best. It’s not about having followers, but to open the path for others so that they can lead. First,…
DIscomfort
To lead, you need to feel discomfort. And to be cool with it. More than feeling comfortable in discomfort, it’s about feeling discomfort and still going through it. It’ll frustrate you. It’ll stretch you. It’ll for sure scare the shit out of you. And that’s awesome. It means you’re trying things that are not guaranteed. You get creative. You get to see different alternatives. Even new ones you never thought of before. The practice and getting used to seeing thigs through that lens is what…
A truthbomb
Friend of the list, daily emailer and author, Shweta dropped this post on thought leadership —and on thought leadershit, too. “No one can create thought leadership content for you, except you. You have to have worked in your “field of expertise” long enough and deeply enough to have your own unique ideas/angles. That’s what thought leadership is.I, or any other writer, can help you polish the piece, but the core thought must come from the “leader” themselves.” The core thought has to come…
