by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Growth, Leadership, Marketing, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 37 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Best in the world
— From The Dip: A Little Book That Teaches You When to Quit (and When to Stick) by Seth Godin
The best in the world. Sounds great, doesn’t it? But why is it important? And what exactly does “the best in the world” mean?
A simple Google search for time management yields 138 million results. This implies that there are 138 million resources in cyberspace to help us figure out how to manage our precious time wisely.
Because we are all pressed for time and we don’t like taking risks are the reasons why being #1 matters. “If you’ve been diagnosed with cancer of the navel, you’re not going to mess around with by going to a lot of doctors. You’re going to head straight for the ‘top guy,’ the person who is ranked the best in the world. […] When you’re hiring someone for your team, do you ask your admin to give you the average résumé, or do you ask him to screen out all but the very best qualified people?”
“With limited time or opportunity to experiment, we intentionally narrow our choices to those at the top.” Also, “being at the top matters because there’s room at the top for only a few. Scarcity makes being at the top worth something.”
People who are looking at doing business with you (or with the business that you represent) will be wondering if you are the best in the world. And that deserves a new definition that Godin describes majestically:
“Best as in: best for them, right now, based on what they believe and what they know. And in the world as in: their world, the world they have access to.”
If I’m looking for a dry cleaning service that doesn’t use toxic chemicals, I’ll go with the one that uses organic products to clean, that offers a quick turnaround service, that is affordable, and that is close to where I live. That’s the best in the world for me.
“World is a pretty flexible term… Now there are a million micromarkets [and] each micromarket still has a best. And being the best in that world is the place to be.”
The consumer is the one that decides what is best, thus the term is subjective. And the term world is “selfish,” because it’s the world that the consumer defines based on preference and convenience.
The world got bigger with the Internet opening up a lot of different options to fit our needs and wants. Yet the world also got smaller because of specialization and niching down. Since we cannot be everything to everyone, and the mass market is changing rapidly towards specialization and customization, being the best in the world just got a new definition that, thankfully, involves us all if we want to pursue it.
ACTION
TODAY: Think about your micromarket and write down the answers to these questions: What do you offer that no one else does? What can you be the best in the world at? What needs to happen for you to position yourself to be the best in the world—in your world—however big or small? Also, talk to a few clients or customers today and ask them how they would describe what you do and what value you provide. The answers will reveal things that you may have either taken for granted or would have never even crossed your mind, but that are valuable to your customers.
FUTURE: Talk to as many customers as you can. Find out what are the key aspects of your business that you have to highlight and promote according to what your customers define as best in their world. Then set up a road map to get there. Work on becoming the best in your customers’ world and you and your business will flourish.
Note that this applies to business as well as to any other personal endeavors that you’re involved in: How can you be the best friend in the world? Or the best volunteer in your church? Or the best parent who organizes the bake sale for your child’s school this year? Our lives are made up of different mini-worlds in which best in the (mini)world applies too, for our benefit and the benefit of all involved.
Know someone who needs to read this? Be the best friend in their world today by sharing with them this post via email, Facebook or Twitter!
by Helena Escalante | Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Planning, Productivity, Resources, Time, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 41 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Extreme Pareto
— From The ONE Thing: The surprisingly simple truth behind extraordinary results by Gary Keller with Jay Papasan (watch the book trailer)
The to-do list is a magnificent tool and companion to our busy lives. Yet since the list can also serve as a catchall for minor, unimportant things, we feel the urge to get them done and cross them off—just because they were on our list. This leads to us being busy, but not necessarily productive: “busyness rarely takes care of business.”
But if we all have the same 24 hours in a day, how is it that some people seem to achieve much and get a lot of things done? What do they do differently? What do they know that we don’t? “Achievers always work from a clear sense of priority.”
Enter the Pareto Principle. You may be familiar with this already: it’s the 80/20 rule. It states that, “a minority of causes, inputs, or effort [the 20 percent] usually lead to a majority of the results, outputs or rewards [the 80 percent].”
What this means is that 80 percent of our results will come from 20 percent of our focused efforts. Thus, “a to-do list becomes a success list when you apply Pareto’s Principle to it.” The idea is simple, take your to-do list and cull it down to the 20 percent of things that will yield the biggest results.
But why stop there? Gary Keller, author of The ONE Thing, encourages us to practice “Extreme Pareto” to get down to the one item on our to-do list that is the absolutely most essential to our success. He says, “Keep going. You can actually take 20 percent of the 20 percent of the 20 percent and continue until you get to the single most important thing! No matter the task, mission or goal. Big or small. Start with as large a list as you want, but develop the mindset that you will whittle your way from there to the critical few and not stop until you end with the essential ONE. The imperative ONE. The ONE Thing.”
“Sometimes it’s the first thing you do. Sometimes it’s the only thing you do. Regardless, doing the most important thing is always the most important thing.”
ACTION
TODAY: Take a look at your to-do list. Apply the Pareto Principle and focus on narrowing it down to the 20 percent of items that you need to get done. Then go extreme, keep applying the Pareto Principle to narrow it down, 20-percent-at-a-time, until you reach your ONE thing. Get that done before anything else, even if it’s the only thing you do all day.
FUTURE: Make a habit of applying Extreme Pareto when planning the week ahead of you by asking: “What’s the ONE Thing you can do this week such that by doing it everything else would be easier or unnecessary?” Do that ONE Thing, and once you are done, ask again… and repeat. You’ll see that by focusing on the vital few you’ll be able to move forward more rapidly than if you spend your time and attention in the trivial many.
Know someone who’s spread too thin and could benefit from Extreme Pareto? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Celebration, Creativity, Leadership, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes.
TODAY’S IDEA: WOW! All business is personal
— From The Book of WOW: A practical and inspirational guide for driving extreme client loyalty by John L. Evans
We’ve all heard the saying, “life is not measured by the number of breaths we take, but by the moments that take our breath away.” (Uncertain author) And this gets compounded if we add the words of writer and Nobel laureate Gabriel García Márquez, who said, “Life is not what you lived, but what you remember and how you remember, so as to tell it.” *
With this in mind, if you want to surprise your customers or clients with acts of thoughtfulness, that are truly meaningful and memorable, you have to create a “WOW” experience for them. This means the kind of experience that makes the clients go “WOW!” and blows them away because it shows them that you know what they care about.
“The essential premise underlying the WOW concept is that all business is personal.”
By reinforcing the personal aspect in client interactions, you de-commoditize your business and separate yourself from the competition, because “a merely satisfied client is not loyal—a satisfied and emotionally engaged client is.”
To make it personal, first and foremost, the Platinum Rule needs to be applied: “Do unto others as they would want done to them.”
“When doing something extraordinary for your clients, use the talents, resources or connections that are available only to you or through you, whenever possible.” This way you will ensure that the experience becomes memorable, indelible (and not repeatable by your competitors), causing your clients to talk about it to others and to recommend you. That’s why “the best WOWs bounce around—they get shared in the form of enthusiastic retellings [via] positive word-of-mouth.”
WOW moments are as varied and creative as the nature of each business. The openness and attentiveness to recognize when the opportunity arises is in the eye of the beholder. However the one underlying thread is that, to be able to imagineer (blend of imagination + engineering) the best possible WOW moments for your clients, you have to have as much information as you can about them. Get to know them in as much depth as your business will allow.
Also, while the WOW moments or experiences don’t necessarily have to be unique to each client, they do have to feel that way to the recipient. You can always “operationalize, but don’t [ever] DE-personalize.”
Above all, keep in mind that “WOWs don’t have to be complex or worthy of a world record to produce the desired effect. Some are. But most are smaller in scope. When left to accumulate over time, they can end up having an enormous impact.”
ACTION
TODAY: Think of someone who has wowed you during this past week. What did that person do that made you feel special? Now turn it around: who did you wow this week? A client? A loved one? How did you let them know that you care about them? Start imagineering how you can WOW your customers, clients or loved ones with the resources that you have.
FUTURE: Think of ways in which your business can get more info about what makes your clients tick. This will naturally give way to ideas for WOW moments. Make a list of every touch point in your client’s journey to see how you can personalize those interactions. How can you elevate them from the ordinary to the extraordinary and memorable?
Create a WOW moment for your friends and colleagues by sharing this post via email, Facebook and Twitter. Thank you!
* Original quote in Spanish: “La vida no es lo que uno vivió, sino lo que recuerda, y cómo la recuerda para contarla.”
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Leadership, Marketing, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 55 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Own a word in the prospect’s mind
— From The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing: Violate Them at Your Own Risk! by Al Ries and Jack Trout (read a sample or watch an animated video summary of the book).
In The 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing, Ries and Trout say that one of the most powerful concepts in marketing is to “own a word in the prospect’s mind.” Not a complicated one—on the contrary—the simpler, the better. “You ‘burn’ your way into the mind by narrowing the focus to a single word or concept.” This is the idea behind their Law No. 5: The Law of Focus.
“Federal Express put the word overnight into the minds of its prospects because it sacrificed its product line and focused on overnight package delivery only.” You too can put this law to the test by doing a simple word association exercise: what comes to mind when you hear the words “copier, chocolate bar and cola? The [three] most associated words are Xerox, Hershey’s and Coke.”
Owning a word in the prospect’s mind is so strong of a foothold, that the word becomes a generic name—and sometimes even a verb—for the category.
As examples of this, we have Kleenex for facial tissues, Chapstick for lip balm, Post-its for sticky notes, and Google for Internet search. (Here’s a fun list of generic and genericized trademarks that you can use to amuse your friends at your next cocktail party.)
Further, you can solidify your position in the prospect’s mind if you isolate the most important attribute of your product or service. Heinz owns the word ketchup, yet the most important attribute it also owns is slow (“Slowest ketchup in the West”), because it takes very long to slide out. This has generated lots of tips and tricks to be able to get this beloved condiment out of the bottle and onto our food… to the tune of 10+ million results (!) if you Google how to get ketchup out of the bottle. (Did you notice I just used Google as a verb? That’s the Law of Focus at your service.)
As an added bonus, there’s the halo effect that comes with the word you choose. “If you strongly establish one benefit, the prospect is likely to give you a lot of other benefits too. A ‘thicker’ spaghetti sauce [Prego] implies quality, nourishing ingredients, value and so on [so much so, that big brands will go to court to defend their chosen words]. A ‘safer’ car [Volvo] implies better design and engineering.”
Now that you know this, what word will you choose to apply the Law of Focus in your prospect’s mind?
ACTION
TODAY: Think of the words that represent your product or service—or even the words that represent yourself if you are looking at creating a brand for you. Start making a list. Make a second list of the attributes that go with those words. These two lists will take a bit of time to develop, as you want to get the best word to represent you.
FUTURE: Get together with some of you colleagues or friends, and brainwrite to add to the lists that you had started. Besides the dictionary, a book that can help enormously with this is Words That Sell by Rick Bayan, as well as its sequel, More Words That Sell. Then vote on the words and select the one word + attribute that will differentiate you from your competition and position you solidly in your prospect’s mind.
Know someone who needs to find the one word? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 3 minutes, 21 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Work doesn’t speak for itself
— From Show Your Work! by Austin Kleon (here’s a summary of the book)
“Close your eyes an imagine you’re a wealthy collector who’s just entered a gallery in an art museum. On the wall facing you there are two gigantic canvases, each more than 10 feet [3 meters] tall. Both paintings depict a harbor at sunset. From across the room they look identical: the same ships, the same reflections on the water, the same sun at the same stage of setting. You go in for a closer look. […] You can’t detect a single difference. […] You can’t find a label or a museum tag anywhere… The head curator of the museum walks in. You eagerly inquire as to the origin of your new obsessions. The curator tells you that Painting A was painted in the 17th century by a Dutch master. And Painting B… is a forgery. It was copied last week by a graduate student at the local art college.”
Which painting do you want to buy now? You would expect that if it were the exact same thing, both to the trained and the untrained eye, either one of the paintings would bring the same joy. But our mind doesn’t work like that. Our assessment of things, people, services, situations, etc., “is deeply affected by what [we are told] about it.”
We tend to think that our work speaks for itself, but it doesn’t. We are naturally curious and we want to know the story behind it. That’s why we relate (or are repelled!) by the stories brands and people tell.
“The stories you tell about the work you do have a huge effect on how people feel and what they understand about your work, and how people feel and what they understand about your work affects how they value it.”
At the core, we are undeniably human. We need to feel a connection, and personal stories create strong bonds.
Why is this important?
Because our work leaves prints: “realize it or not, you’re already telling a story about your work. Every email you send, every text, every conversation, every blog comment, every tweet, every photo, every video—they’re all bits and pieces of a multimedia narrative you’re constantly constructing. If you want to be more effective when sharing yourself and your work, you need to become a better storyteller. You need to know what a good story is and how to tell one.”
So, what story do you need to tell?
Image from Austin Kleon’s Flickr account: Show Your Work! Album. (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0)
ACTION
TODAY: We have many stories that depict different aspects of our lives. What is one story that you would like to enhance for your work or your life to be perceived as stronger/better/more valuable/fill in your blank? Please note that enhancing doesn’t mean lying or exaggerating; it means highlighting the best and most positive angle for connections to form, sparks to fly and value to rise.
FUTURE: Take some time to enhance your story in a way that it will connect and create a strong bond with your desired audience. That way your work will—purposely and intentionally—“speak by itself,” saying what you want it to say. Ask yourself the following questions (merely as a starting point), and then go from there to begin crafting your story. It will be very helpful if you can share your story with someone whom you trust and who has your best interest in mind. This person will give you helpful feedback to make your story even stronger. (Hit me up if you want to share your story, I’d love to give you feedback!)
- What do you want to communicate?
- What is your expertise?
- What is your superpower?
- What is a challenge you’ve overcome that someone else can relate?
- How have you been in your customer’s/another person’s shoes?
- What experience do you have with a particular situation/issue that you can share?
- What epiphany did you have when you did XYZ that you can share?
- What example can you give of how you use XYZ that you can share?
Know someone whose story could be told from a different, better angle? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter, thank you!
by Helena Escalante | Creativity, Goals, Growth, Habits, Mindset, Opportunity, Planning, Resources, Tools
Estimated reading time: 2 minutes, 27 seconds.
TODAY’S IDEA: Little bets, big breakthroughs
— From Little Bets: How Breakthrough Ideas Emerge From Small Discoveries by Peter Sims
Amazon and Google, two of the biggest companies of our time, as well other successful enterprises (regardless of size), all have one thing in common: they embrace an experimental discovery mentality. They don’t know which ideas will be a big hit and which ones won’t, so they allow themselves to experiment and “learn and uncover opportunities as they go.”
Jeff Bezos, Founder of Amazon, often compares his company’s strategy of “developing ideas in new markets to ‘planting seeds’ or ‘going down blind alleys.’ […] Many efforts tend to be dead ends… but every once in a while, you go down an alley and it opens up to into this huge, broad avenue.”
In today’s business environment, long gone are the elaborate business plans in favor of lean and agile ones. The focus is on action, and this means actually “do[ing] things to discover what [companies/people] should do.” Little bets, then, are “concrete actions taken to discover, test and develop ideas that are achievable and affordable. […] The important thing to remember is that while prodigies are exceptionally rare, anyone can use little bets to unlock creative ideas.”
“Most successful entrepreneurs don’t begin with brilliant ideas—they discover them.”
Two advantages of the little bets approach are that:
- It lets us focus on what we can afford to loose, versus projecting or assuming the gains (this is called the affordable loss principle); and
- It makes us aware of the means we have and those we will need as the idea moves along.
The affordable loss principle involves failure. However, it doesn’t focus on failure as a negative and dead end, but as a means to an experiment. It’s the “error” part in trial-and-error. We’re not intentionally trying to fail; yet “in almost any attempt to create, failure, and often a good deal of it, is to be expected.”
With this in mind, trying out little bets as experimentation on new ideas and projects works. Why? Because we “will make important discoveries by being willing to be imperfect, especially at the initial stages of developing [our] ideas.” And as we move forward, iterating from the feedback we obtain, we will be able to build up to breakthroughs.
ACTION
TODAY: Take the time to figure out which one idea or project you have going on where you could put little bets to the test. Then decide which little bet you can start working on and what little means you need to make it happen.
FUTURE: Embrace the experimental discovery mentality in all you do, both professionally and personally. Include little bets so as to turn an initial idea or project into a great one by means of experimenting, iterating, refining and pivoting if necessary. Remember to move forward imperfectly. By doing this, you’ll be able to discover your best, breakthrough ideas and succeed with them.
Know someone who could use the little bets approach? Please share this post with that person via email, Facebook or Twitter!
