Self-Focused v Others-Focused
What’s your focus gap? Where are you focusing your efforts on your comms and messaging? Here’s a self-audit to start seeing where’s your focus. Something VERY important: It’s a spectrum —it’s totally ok to be somewhere in between. The idea is for you to identify where you are. Think of it as a dial. Wherever you are, you can regulate and adapt your messaging to a new state. 🙂 LanguageDo you use your language or your client’s? SELF •————————————————• OTHERS…
Focus Gaps
You started working on your personal inventory and are asking yourself “Now what?” You move onto what’s your current Focus Gap. Your very own self-audit to start seeing things under a different light. Are you focused on yourself or on others? You can review your comms and messaging under these 2 lenses (on your website, brochures or any kind of media you use). Self-Focused It’s all about you. Our work, what we do, what we see, how we work, how we help, our vision, about us, our projects, our…
Snorkeling or diving?
You’re in the Caribbean and have two options: snorkeling or diving. Which one would you choose? You snorkel Don’t need quite a lot of equipment: usually just your snorkel and fins. You stay on the surface, need lots of sun protection (your back will be under the sun for a loooong time), it’s fun, can’t really explore for longer what you see below (a starfish, an angel fish, coral…) It’s somehow easier to have a sense of orientation: stick your face off the water and look for landmarks. You…
How to make your inventory
To find gaps, you can use a personal inventory. And that sounds simple… yet, many times it’s overwhelming not to know how to start. Here’s a way to do your personal inventory to figure out what you’re really good at. Client / Employer Industry Project Description → Quickly describe what you were hired to do. Inputs → Time, money, resources Outputs → Deliverables (roadmaps, strategies, papers, docs, software…) Outcomes → What they achieved after the work was done Impact → How impactful was…
How to find a gap
First, know what you’re really good at, ego aside. How? Do your personal inventory. A collection of the work you’ve done for clients and in your work life. Good and bad —the worst ones too, actually. Having that will give you a better glimpse of the big picture. This is how you start seeing the hidden patterns in what you do and how you do it. How you actually helped. What your contributions and impact are. In the big picture, they’re evergreen. It unveils the deep you, your core and what…
Un-best practices
Best practices. What the mass does. Proofed ways to get somewhere in a safe way, the way everybody does it. By the time something is a “best practice” what you’re seeing is the search for efficiencies. Scaled or not scaled, they try to get something as fast as possible, with minimum risk and in the safest possible way. This is how it happens: Try something that works. Play it safe. Get (some) desired results. Loss aversion kicks in. Low motivation of change (to keep things working)….
You’re not ready
You can have tools data, info, strategy, actions, plans and yet, not move forward. Stay still. How so? I mean, you’ve got it all ready to go, right? One answer that keeps coming in conversation about launching, creating and mindset is “I’m just not ready”. Ready as in ready to do what it takes, to act on it and just jump on. The backbone of it is mindset – and not in the wishy-washy, woo-woo ways you must be so familiar with (self-help and all that fluffy stuff). Mindset, as I’m learning, is…
Buying clothes
When you’re buying clothes, you need to fit into the clothes. When you don’t, you don’t buy them. And if you do buy them, you’ll feel funny at some point. Like it’s not quite the right thing for you. Same thing happens trying to fit a product into a market. You might get it, but in the long run, odds are you’ll feel funny. You don’t need to fit in when you can stand out.
Pricing different
Going into a product-market gap allows you to play a different game from the rest. One thing you can start playing with is Pricing. In a product-market fit “This is how everybody else prices” (eg. costplus) “These are the prices.” Makes you think:How can i make my price “fit” into this place and still make a profit (????) or make it attractive for me to keep at it? WTF [Where’s The Focus] → Yourself In a product-market gap “This is how everybody else prices” (ceg. cost+) “These are the prices”….
The gap
It’s like diving a new site. You won’t know exactly what you’ll see, but have a rough idea. You know you’ll be underwater —that’s a good start. ???? You know what’s the water temperature on surface, and can guesstimate what it’ll be as you go deeper. So you prepare accordingly. A wetsuit, a drysuit or just a rashguard. You know you might encounter currents and surges. You’re aware of what changes happen. You know how long you can stay below water, depending on your equipment and depth. What you…