Is defining your category the same as creating your category?
Friend of the list, great illustrator and digital brand builder, Rad Co came back with this insightful question re: Category Creation. Here’s my answer (shared with permission) Is defining your category the same as creating your category? It depends on the meaning, although they’re two very different things from where I stand. For example, while some say that online/digital writing is a new category, it in fact is a sub-category. It belongs to the category “Writing”. Competitive-wise, digital…
The opposite take
Are you stuck trying to articulate what’s your “special sauce”? In a conversation with James Turner, we got to this point. (shared with permission) All good stuff to ponder as I circle and circle my own differentiation. Who do I work with? What do I offer? What problem do I solve? Here’s an easier start to get you in motion: Who do you NOT (and won’t) work with? What DON’T you offer? What problem you’re NOT interested in solving? What type of problem you DON’T want to solve? Fellow daily…
Filipino cuisine & Positioning (under 7 seconds)
A friend of mine just got his restaurant into the top 50 of Asia. If you plan to visit Philippines, this would be a great place. 🙂 Anyways. You know what stood up while going through their posts? Their boldness [in their positioning]. This is their post: What we serve.An 8-course menu that explores ideas around Filipino cuisine. A selection of natural wines, cool cocktails and crisp craft beers.The flavors are Filipino. There will be patis, soy sauce, bagoong, bold, funky, pungent and bitter…
99 problems but a b*tch ain’t one
Do you BATCH your thinking? How do you know what ideas are worth pursuing or not? One way it has worked for me has been daily writing. (Thank you, Jonathan Stark!) Daily writing has its challenges, but one that is not is getting ideas —and writing (almost) 24/7… Start Batching Batching ideas comes as a process of putting them down and either making an outline or brain dumping what comes to mind. No judgement. It is what it is. And it’s always a good start. This process becomes a “living”…
RE: What’s “Immersive” [from Making The Museum daily mail]
This email from friend and daily mailer Jonathan Alger from Making The Museum reminded me of the Diving series. In diving, you don’t use “go for a dive”. You use “immersion” as the technical term. Ideas 4 and 5 really hit home. 4. Immerse originally meant “to dip”.Immersion comes from in-mergere, 14th century Latin meaning “to dip”. Like into a fluid. Immersive experiences “dip” you.5. Immersive is temporary.Dipping is an action, temporary by definition. Fish aren’t dipped in water, they’re…
Trout & Bass
Jonathan Stark and Ed Gandia had this talk on Ditching Hourly about positioning, niching down and fishing —in the ocean v in a barrel. And they talk trout and bass. [,,,] You’re [fishing] in the ocean or standing next to a barrel full of trout. […]Would you rather have the thousand trout that you can see right there, that are jumping into your hands?Or would you rather be out in the ocean in a dinghy with a single hook? You don’t get a big net. That is for big companies.You always only have…
What the hell is water?
How’s the water?Asks one fish to other two.One of the other two replies “What the hell is water?” David Foster Wallace, Kenyon Commencement Speech The curse of knowledge. We assume what we know MUST BE known for others. Because we do something so natural that feels like breathing to us, doesn’t mean everybody else does too. Today’s email from Louis Grenier made my head click. You do something so easily it feels like breathing. It’s just natural. The thing is, you’re too close to it to really…
Quit charging your worth
“Charging your worth” focuses on you, not on the outcomes and transformations you can drive. It doesn’t focus on what your clients are after. It assigns the subjectivity to your POV (what you think it’s worth), instead of figuring out what is valuable for your clients. It implies that your worth has a fixed price. So that for whatever task you do, the price will be the same. Design a strategy? X price. Mown the lawn? The same X price. Wash the dishes? Same X price Implement a whole biz…
Category creation
“Category creation” really is creating sub-categories or niche markets. Hank Barnes. Rethinking Categories Which is not wrong. It’s just *not* creating a new category. To stay in the game of business, you need 2 things: will AND resources. To create a new category, you rely heavily on resources: you need money and time, a.k.a. big pockets AND patient investors. Louis Grenier lists here 4 reasons why *not* to create a “new” category. And it’s bloody genius. BTW, niching down ain’t category…
You’re not getting this guitar back!
“II would never pay a couple million dollars for just about anything.”Guitar plugged and 30 seconds later…’ll give you what you want. But I’m keeping this thing.” Would you pay $2 million for a guitar that was previously re-sold for 150 bucks? Meet Greeny. And his owner: Kirk Hammett (from Metallica). He didn’t buy a 2-million dollar guitar, he bought the unique sound he could make (that this Les Paul —in a specific setting— sounded like a Fender, when they’re not supposed to sound like…
