Month: December 2016

If small business can’t compete
price-wise
on customized products,
what can we compete on?

Caring about our customers.

Big business can give customers
the illusion of caring for them
by collecting and using
their personal preferences
but we can give them
the real deal.

I use my personal profile
on Facebook
much more than
my business page.
I friend my best customers
(readers).
I comment on their posts.
I tell them I care about them
(because I truly do).
I ask them how they’re doing
outside of a business transaction.

Big companies can’t do this.

I still have to give my customers
a great product at a reasonable price
but our personal relationship
is a factor in their buying relationship.

Can this scale?
For me,
having 5,000 core readers,
readers who consider me a friend,
readers who will promote for me,
provides a base
to reach 1,000’s more readers.

Caring about your customers
is something only you can do.

In the past,
small business could compete
price-wise
with larger companies,
on customized products.

It was a niche
we could easily own.

That’s not true anymore.
With computers and robots,
customization is becoming
less and less expensive
to do on a huge scale.

Seth Godin
shares

“The future clearly belongs
to these mass customization
opportunities,
situations where
there is little cost
associated with stop and start,
little risk of
not meeting expectations,
where a robot and software
are happily shifting gears
all day long.”

If you rely on customization
to give you a competitive advantage,
you might wish to
investigate other ways
to be different.

Recently,
The Hollywood Reporter
hosted a roundtable
on diversity in animation.
The participants
were seven white guys.

I’ve worked for many large companies.
Almost all of them
are struggling with diversity.
They might have programs
in place
but they can’t remove
the bias built into their businesses.
They can’t change
how the people in charge
truly think.

I got tired of that bias
and left.
I was damn good
at what I did.
Why would I fight
the neverending fight
to receive recognition for those skills,
that effort sucking up
my time and energy,
when I had the option
of working for myself?

The business you’re building
right now
doesn’t have this bias.
You have the ability
to create a business
that attracts
skilled people,
the BEST people
from all backgrounds.

Right now,
skill is a precious commodity.
In the future,
it will become even more valuable.

Create a business
that has the best opportunity
to find and keep skilled employees.

Being a perverse person,
I usually take the opposite stance
of everyone else
on a project.

If a business builder is told
her idea is fabulous,
I will share
why she should be cautious.

If a business builder is told
her idea sucks,
I’ll point out
why she should be excited
about it.

During 2016
I haven’t once played the pessimist.
That role has been
MORE than filled by others.
I’ve always been the cheerleader.

What does the cheerleader do?

Seth Godin
shares

“This is the person
who will find ten reasons
why you should try something.

The one
who will embrace
the possibility of better.

The colleague to turn to
when a reality check is necessary,
because the reality is,
it might work.”

The role of hope killer
has been sufficiently filled.
There are plenty of folks
supplying the often paralyzing
gloom and doom.

We need more energizing hope
in the business world right now,
some positive vibes,
some enthusiasm.

Be the cheerleader.

When I was young,
a mentor told me
to never say,
“I can’t do this.”
but instead to ask,
“SHOULD I do this?”
and
“HOW can I do this?”

This reframing
changed my life.
Anything is possible.
We merely have to figure out
how to make it possible.

Maia Haag,
co-founder of
I See Me! personalized books,
shares

“When young women see
other women
starting and running companies,
they realize that
this is not just a man’s game.

That realization shifts
the conversation from
‘Can I do it?’
to
‘How should I do it?'”

You can do anything.
Take ‘can’t’ out of your vocabulary.