From clarity to others
Thinking of “them” —your customers— comes from clarity. It’s how you choose to make a greater impact in your market. It’s about how you can focus on them so that you better serve them. It’s not about how great work you do, how cool you are, how awesome your brand is. (It helps, sure…) While you choose based on your personality, values, interest, access and more, the focus of your business is not you. It’s your customers. Being “others-focused” doesn’t take you off the equation —or means you…
Focusing on them is not forgetting about yourself
A few responses to a part of 3 Myths of personal brand were —in the background— asking: if it’s all about them/others… when do i get to think about me? Such a great question. Spoiler alert: It is not an either-or option. Here’s why While speaking to your customers, thinking of ways they can get help into what they’re after doesn’t mean you forget about yourself. On the contrary, it enables you to be more focused and scale your impact. To know what kind of “them” you want to think of starts…
Legacy branding
Legacy branding is all about bells and whistles. How YOU or your company —or worse, agencies— build “winning” brands. Because when you have a “winning” brand, you’ll stand out and everyone will care for it. That’s not the case. I have some bad/good news here: People don’t care about your brand. Your customers don’t care about your brand. They care about how they can get what they want —and if your business can help them transform and get delighted, they’re all in. Businesses can’t (and don’t)…
How not to stand out
When it’s all about yourself (and your brand), it’s hard to stand out. When you get to think —like, really think— of your customers, it changes it all. You don’t show up to sell, but to help them to buy.
3 myths of personal brand
“This is me. These are my values. This is my personality” → Me, Me, Me. It’s focused on you and not on the ones you serve. How are you to be of service and help, if you’re the most important person in the room? “You’re the product” → If you’re a product… then you have no conscience. No morals. No ethics. Because a thing can’t have those. A person does. 🙂 “You build a brand” → Not. Your customers build a brand for the business to thrive.
Being open and honest.
While underpromising and overdelivering might seem like a good tactic to delight your customers because you want to have some buffer, don’t. There’s another way. You can be open and honest —that’s the core of business, right? Being honest with your customers— and say you don’t know exactly how long or how much exactly it’ll take. That you’ll put in some buffer, just in case. Sure, you can give an estimate of the time, or even a timeline. Just please don’t lie. Friend-of-the-list Jonathan…
A spark
Today, it’s Rick Rubin who leaves the daily: “The amount of time or effort put into a work doesn’t matter.Sometimes the most meaningful projects spark suddenly and completely quickly.” I couldn’t put it better. 🙂 You can check his instegram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyJCJKArIW-/
Looking under the hood
Under promising, over delivering, over servicing are not really the problems. They’re symptoms. And they have a few drivers: Cost-based PriceAt the center of the decision-making. Will the price be attractive enough to justify what I offer? FearAt the core of making the offering. Will it be good enough so my proposal doesn’t get rejected (or worse: ghosted)? WorthAt the core of linking the offering to you. Is it a reflection of my worth? Self-worthAt the center of your offering building. If…
Selling a personal brand
You can’t have a personal brand. A brand is an asset —a quantifiable one for a business. With that, you can value it and sell it for whatever you want. A brand can change hands and —at least for a moment— keep that same value. As well as it could go up (a VC-funded startup grows its value, as Figma) or absolutely way down (x/twitter). If you were to have a personal brand (aka “become” a brand), you’d turn into an asset. An asset, as a resource or capital… is a thing. If you were to sell…
Behind the math
If you see a bit further than underpromising, overdelivering, overservicing, you’ll find that most of it is linked with one question: “Will they accept my proposal?” When people don’t understand what they’re getting, the only thing they’ll get back to (and do understand) is price. So your default to answer this questions revolves around, yup: price. In this context, it’s (hopefully) a set price (and not an estimate/rate) and about how (if) delight could happen —only after the acceptance of…