Seeing innovation as innovation
There are 2 (among many other) ways to approach innovation: → From looking at it as a siloed activity. → From breaking things knowing they’ll affect the whole business. If you’re looking to break things into the innovative side, while looking for a siloed, efficient, safe approach… you might be doing it the wrong way. Look at innovation like The Beastie Boys (check their documentary on AppleTV+). do things. break things. reinvent things. go with your gut and jump against what you find…
Customer Failure
There’s this new discipline called Customer Success. I take that is opposed to whatever everyone else does: look for ways the customer fails. Was there something called Customer Failure? As in, we the business will do everything we can to make you fail and don’t get a return on what you’re paying? That’d be a scam, right? It just seems a given. That you want your customer to succeed. Or is there something else?
How fast can you…?
A prospect reaches out to you and says “I want a strategy by the end of the week. How fast can you deliver on it?” Since you don’t do magic, you might have a few questions to ask: Who’s your ideal client? What’s your market segmentation? What’s your most and least profitable product? What’s your most and least sold product? What’s your goal for the year? How would you define a good year? How would you define a “Meh” year? What would a home run year look like? Etc. Here’s the thing If you…
The opposite of self-conscious
Unaware of caring That can make you do things you think you’re not prepared for. To go and jump into the pool —and invent water on the way down. To ship and do. To care about your clients and how you could help them. To make a change that’ll improve their lives and businesses. Focusing on this will help you stand out. Just like a kid unaware of caring in the early 70’s. His name is Anthony Kiedis [TS 08:15].
Good intentions, crap approach.
Some of the answers to yesterday’s email brought up some intense feelings: Confusion, disrespect for their work, concern, lack of professionalism, lack of taking things seriously. Now, here’s the setting for it: You need work. I’m getting you work. Free work. But work at the end. It will build your “personal brand”. It will be an investment of your time. You’ll have a return on this work (reputation, value, brand, etc.) You’ll show your value and they’ll pay you what you ask next time. The…
What’s a personal brand?
It’s the belief of how one can control the way they want to be seen and perceived by others. Can you really control how to be seen and perceived by others? Unless you’re Obi-Wan Kenobi, Yoda or Luke Skywalker, it’s very unlikely. You might influence the perception, but can’t control. This false fixation on control will distract you from what’s important to you: serving the people you care for. And when you stop focusing on you, to focus on your customers, you stand out.
Personal branding 101
There’s no such thing as personal brand. Brands are artificial. Artificial can’t be authentic. The choice is yours.
How many people…
If you’re running a customer satisfaction or customer service-driven business, how many people with a background in hospitality have you had involved in it? Or how many of your people (or yourself if you run a solo biz) have been involved with hospitality? Here’s the thing. Seeing things through a hospitality lens shifts the way you think and act towards your customers. It goes Beyond customers, guests. What’s the minimum, going the extra mile. Thinking ahead of them, not to what they need,…
Vortex
Broad in interests and inputs, specific and specialized in the application. To stand out in a world of sameness, you need to feed yourself of a broad range of what’s going on around you and beyond. Creativity is the ability to see (opportunity). Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi And originality is a reflection of it (you can see more of this on The Originality Arc here, here and here). The more information and knowledge you have access to, the more chances to imagine and see different realities. Once…
How to see different
Ads are pretty much the same —most of the times, at most of the places. Be it Peru, Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, US, Germany, Netherlands, India or Sri Lanka. Different brands, different markets and ads look the same. They share the same perspective, the same sales pitch, quite similar concepts, same stories… heck, even same colors. How can they stand out if it all looks and feels the same? How can YOU stand out in a world of sameness? Being a vortex.
