Tag: leadership

Unique Up Your Niche

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The Business of Being Unique

unique rabbitThere is an old kid’s joke:

Q:  How do you catch an unique rabbit?

A:  Unique up on him!

Silly, but perhaps it has some value for us.  For small businesses, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs, there is a big emphasis on finding your niche – the market that is almost exclusively yours.  The principle behind it is that if you try to market to everyone or try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone.  In the highly competitive marketplace today, especially with the explosion of entrepreneurs, it becomes important to target what you do to a specific group of people.  That group becomes your tribe or niche that can be yours and you can dominate that market much more effectively IF you know how to talk to them so that your message resonates with them and presents a sense of urgency.

What I see happen a lot with small businesses is aptly described by Marketing Coach Robert Middleton as trying to run their small business as if it was a big business.  Trying to compete with the marketing and organization.  It can’t be done.  You don’t have their budget or their resources.

The Unique Solution

be unique - stand outSo stop trying to be a big business.  Instead take advantage of what you have as a small business.  Part of what you have is the unique culture of your organization.  Whether you are a solopreneur or have 50 employees, there are things that are unique about you and your organization.  Maybe even a little bit weird.  Instead of trying to hide that, celebrate it.  Emphasize it!  Go out of your way to point it out to your customers and friends.  Integrate it into everything you write and say about your business.  There are distinct advantages to doing this:

  • You stand out from the crowd.  In the competitive marketplace, you can’t afford to fit in or be one grape in the bunch.  You need to be the lone banana.
  • You become more appealing to your niche.  They don’t want cookie-cutter, they want someone with character who will be as devoted to them so they can become devoted to you.  They want special!
  • You will connect better with people, customers and friends alike.  There is a whole generation out there that values authenticity.  The more you and your organization embrace who you really are, the more people will relate to you and trust you.

So how do you catch a unique market?  

Unique up on it! 

Action Plan

  • What is it about you or your company that is unique?  What makes you a little weird?
  • In what ways is that appealing to your target market?  What are some possible dangers?
  • How can you leverage that to connect better with your clients?
  • How can you integrate it into every communication with people inside and outside your company?

Success in the Unique

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Strange and She Likes It

My daughter Liza, young teen that she is, loves to occasionally sing the lyrics to a song that was made popular on one of the kid channels on TV.

Come to think of it, she sings the whole song.

Come to think of it, she is ALWAYS singing some song, but more on that later.  The song she sings was sung by an artist named Skye Sweetnam.  You can see the video here:

Skye Sweetnam Video

The chorus goes like this

I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am
I can’t change
I can’t hide it
That’s just the way I am
Might as well get over it
But don’t try to understand
I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am

This may not be your style of music; certainly isn’t mine.

Celebrating Unique

being unique can be great
Dogs don’t worry about being unique, they just embrace who they are.

What I like about it, however, is the celebration of being who they are.  If you interpret it into adult-speak, the song basically says that yes I have idiosyncrasies, yes I do dumb things sometimes, yes I say silly things but all of that is what makes me unique and I gladly embrace it.  I think it is a great message for kids to learn, particularly since there is so much incredible pressure among their peers to be like everyone else.

Striving to Find My Unique Me

I know I felt it when in Junior High School (what we now call Middle School) and High School to an extent.  I went to a Junior High School where the vast majority of my peers were from families in higher income brackets than hours.  Polo branded shirts and Levi branded jeans were the “standard” and if you didn’t dress like that you were an outcast.  We could not afford those and my parents have always been thrifty so I wore Sears Kings Road jeans.  You can guess how that went over with my peers.  I hovered around the edge of several different peer groups and tried to fit in but never really got there.  I finally decided to quit trying and that’s what started to make the difference.

Once I reached high school, I started to embrace what was unique about me.  Naturally, I went a bit overboard for a while but I managed to stand out in high school and even show some leadership.  It was also there that I was allowed to grow more of the skills that set me apart.  While I had athletic skills, I chose to spend more time with speech and drama, particularly speech and was a competitive speaker all through high school and into college.  It helped me discover and hone the special talents, personality, and style that made me unique.  By setting myself apart and showing confidence in that person, I experienced more respect and popularity and SUCCESS than I ever did trying to be like everyone else.

The Girl Just Can’t Help It

I mentioned my daughter is always singing.  That’s no exaggeration.  Pretty much there is a song in her heart and on her lips every moment of every day.  While it sometimes wears thin, I would never dream of stopping her.  It is her essence; it is part of what makes Liza uniquely Liza; along with her total acceptance of anyone regardless of race, intelligence, capability, or popularity.  I hope she continues to embrace that to find her true success.

Action Plan

  1. What about you?  What makes you uniquely you?  Are you embracing that or have you hidden that in order to fit in?  How’s that working out for you?
  2. What can you do today to bring out more of YOU in what you do?

Dreams Enter the New Millennia

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Big Dreams At a Conference

Dreams through juiceplusI am spending some time this week at the JuicePlus Leadership Conference.  As a distributor for JuicePlus and Tower Gardens, Sherry and I are able to attend the conference, especially since it is here in Orlando.  Our family has benefitted greatly from both and we enjoy sharing that with others.

A couple of things that really caught my attention about the conference so far:

1.  There are over 5,000 distributors here.  There are couples and individuals, women mostly but quite a few men, young and old.  Apparently the desire to eat and be healthy and share that with others isn’t really limited by demographics.

2.  Very reputable medical professionals like Dr. David Katz and Dr. William Sears spoke and endorsed JuicePlus and the Tower Garden enthusiastically.

Even more of what caught my attention is the people themselves.  As I mentioned before, the people attending here spread across age ranges, cultural ranges, gender, body structure, and level of passion.  But what they share in common is a desire to share healthy alternatives to the way we eat and, for a great many of them, how they fulfill their dreams.

See, some of the people here run this as a little supplemental income side business, but many are running this as their main source of income.  Either because they were laid off and could not find work or because they always wanted to run their own business.

From a leadership (and good business management) standpoint, Jay Martin, the CEO of The JuicePlus Company (formerly NSA) and his team have gone out of their way to make it very easy to make this a business.

  • no overhead
  • very little management required
  • flexibility in what you offer and when you offer it.

If someone had dreams of their own business but worried about capital, stocking product, or handling process, this is ideal because it takes those roadblocks away.  It gives hope to their dreams.

Dreams Leaving the Corporate World

laid off workers have dreams dashedMore and more, people are seeing that placing their dreams in the corporate world just isn’t the same promise it might have been before; or perhaps it never was and people are seeing that now.  College graduates are finding it harder and harder to get a job and it may not have the income they need.

The older workforce is being laid off by short-sighted executives who value savings in human capital expense more than productivity.  As the 50 and over crowd gets laid off, they also find getting new work to be challenging at best and darn near impossible at worst.
So these people turn to entrepreneurial dreams in companies like The JuicePlus Company.

As Meridith Martin, the Director of Marketing Operations for the company said in her speech today,

“More of you are saying, I don’t need the latest version of What Color is My Parachute!  I know what color my parachute is; it is Red, Green, and Purple!”

(Red, Green, and Purple by the way are the colors of the JuicePlus bottles.)

It seems dreams have entered the new millennia.

Dreams Like a Weakling!

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Teddy Roosevelt was a Weakling!

Roosevelt pursued him dreams with passion

It’s true.  Growing up, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the 26th President of the United States, known for his gregarious personality, adventure-loving and thrill-seeking lifestyle, leader of the Rough Riders, and one of the faces on Mount Rushmore, was actually a sickly, frail child.  He was so asthmatic that he had to sleep propped up in bed.  He had frequent illnesses.   He was almost literally a 98-pound weakling physically!

I don’t tell you this to try to take down another public figure.  If that was the whole story it would certainly be a negative, and malicious attempt to destroy someone regarded as one of, if not the, greatest Presidents of the United States.  Obviously, however, he didn’t stay that way.

As Theodore (he actually hated being called Teddy) entered his teens he desired to become something more.  Encouraged by his father, he began boxing lessons, working out, and reading a steady stream of books to improve himself.  He quickly improved both physically and mentally and led a life of great experiences and adventures, including becoming at 42 years of age the youngest person ever elected President.

Even after that, he never stopped learning and growing.  He read thousands of books over his lifetime (which meant several books a DAY) and legend has it that after he died in his sleep and they removed him from the bed they found a self-improvement book he had been reading.

You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.  –C.S. Lewis

Putting All You Got Into a Dream

There is a point here.  Roosevelt had visions, he had dreams of what he wanted to be, and he pursued them with passion and enthusiasm.  He had his detractors and enemies, including very famously Mark Twain, but never let it stop him or even slow him down.  He continued to dream new dreams and set new goals, even up until he died.  Despite his robust life, he battled Rheumatoid Arthritis most of his adult life and lived with a bullet in his chest for many years.  Still, he kept on learning and growing and dreaming, preparing himself as well as he could for the next adventure and the next episode of his life.

Theodore Roosevelt knew you had to GROW INTO YOUR DREAMS!

They don’t just happen.  You achieve your dreams only when you fill your pursuit of them with passion and enthusiasm, prepare yourself for when your dreams arrive, expect to achieve them, and pounce on the opportunity when it arrives.  As Zig Ziglar says

You were born to win!  But to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win!

Action Plan

  1. If you haven’t written your dreams down, now is the time to do so.
  2. Have it written down?  Now, think about how life will be when you achieve it.  You need to create a very specific vision of achieving your dream in order to commit it to your mind and develop a passion and enthusiasm for achieving it.
  3. Now think about how you need to prepare for it.  Consider yourself a poor marketer and know you will need to effectively market yourself to achieve your dream?  Read marketing books and attend workshops on marketing.  Need to develop your leadership skills?  Find a leadership coach, attend workshops and seminars, join a leadership mastermind, identify your leadership strengths.  Just need to grow yourself overall?  Find a growth coach, read self-improvement books, join mastermind groups of other like-minded people to help each other grow.  Preparation is key!

 

Get Your Dream Out of Your Head

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A Dream in Your Head is Called a Fantasy

One of the things I have noticed in my talks with people about their dreams is how many have to search their minds for exactly what their dream is.  In fact, that’s the only place they have their dream documented.  “I have it all up here!” they proudly proclaim, yet seem to have trouble finding it in that filing system.

It doesn’t work!  You need to get your dream out of your head and down on paper!  When you write down your dream, you have made it more than just a dream.  You have made it a goal.  You have given it substance.  As Napoleon Hill said in Think and Grow Rich

A goal is a dream with a deadline.

When you document it, you commit to it probably truly for the first time.  Things written down tend to have more meaning and permanency to them, like an ancient king making a declaration and then saying, “so let it be written, so let it be done!”

If we put it down on paper, we put it not only in our minds but in our hearts as well.

visualize your dreamNow when I say paper I simply mean documented somewhere.  You can do it in Word on your computer.  There are lots of apps out there for tablets and smartphones.  I use Evernote because I can synch it between my tablet, my smartphone, and my laptop and access the same information everywhere.

However, you do it, DO IT!

When it is documented it takes on legs.  And wings!  It spurs you on to action so much more than if you simply keep it “all up here!”  It creates a visualization that helps you really paint a vivid picture of what you dreamed about.  It becomes detailed and real and tangible.  You begin to see it, feel it, touch it, taste it!  It moves from the realm of “one day, it would be nice” to “gotta have it NOW!” and you begin to build your case and your plan.

How to Record Your Dream

Here’s a few great ways to get your dreams down “on paper”.  Remember that detail is important here.  The more you write down the dream with all the trimmings — the who, what, when, where, why — the more real it becomes and the more likely you are to take action.

  1. The simple one is…get a sheet of paper and write it down.  Or buy a composition notebook.  Or if you want a lot more guidance along this lines, buy a goals planner.  Zig Ziglar publishes a great one but it can be pricey.  Here is a shorter version you can download as a PDF. I used this and it was sufficient for the time being.
  2. Use an online application or use Evernote to write down your dreams in detail.
  3. Create a “vision board” using pictures to represent your dream or dreams.  Vision boards are great because it completes that step of visualization, making your dream real and tangible, that we talked about earlier.  If you want to have an online version of this, consider using Pinterest.  You can create a page with your vision board and make it private.  It’s about the only real good usage I have found out of Pinterest at all.

Action Plan

  1. Set aside time tonight to think about your dreams.  Brainstorm for 15 minutes and write down every dream that comes into your head.  Don’t evaluate them, write them down.
  2. After the 15 minutes is up, look at what you wrote.  Pick out the top three to five to start working on right away.
  3. Write them down in detail using whatever method you have chosen.  But write them down, don’t keep them in your head.

 

 

 

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