Be Different or be dead

March 29, 2021

6 easy ways to know when to quit and walk away

Source: Pexels

6 easy ways to know when to quit and walk away.

We are all, at some point, faced with the decision: do I stay or do I go?
It could be in a relationship or it could be in a particular job role and generally results from reaching a tipping point of some sort. Something has happened to you and it triggered the question.

So, how do you decide whether walking away is the right thing for you to do?

Here are 6 filters that in total should help you decide if adios is the right call.

Check your energy reservoir

How much energy is it taking to continue doing what you’re doing? Are you constantly having to call on your energy reserves to push ahead?

Everyone has an energy reservoir which represents a backup level of energy to draw on when required. And the issue is whether or not it is as full as it once was, or has its level been reduced.

If your reserves are down, there are 3 implications:
— there’s less to draw on when you need it for future challenges;
— it will take longer to replenish when expended, thus requiring a longer recovery episodes when needed;
— you may want to reconsider how you use your scarce reserves and decide that your current activities have a lower priority than they once had. Your incremental payback from tapping your reservoir is diminishing every time you draw from it.

If you conclude that you’re not receiving a large enough return on your energy investment, a “go” answer is the highly likely response to the question.

Check the people around you

Do you still enjoy their company? Are they as interesting as they once were or are they getting too predictable for you? Do you like being with them or do you find yourself not looking forward to being with them?

If you are staring at a negative reply to this question, you’re leaning for a “go” answer.

Check your support symmetry

Sometimes having strong symmetric support for your efforts is worth the investment in time and energy you have at your disposal.
But ask yourself these questions:
— do you support others and they don’t support you back?
— do you find others return the support you offer them unconditionally?
— are their specific individuals in your bubble that speak of support for you, but act in an unsupportive manner?
If you conclude that asymmetric support for you exists in too many of your colleagues, then a “go” light is your most probable outcome.

Check for toxicity

Is the working environment toxic? Are there a needless number of contrarians trying to force their own self-serving narrative and agenda?

Divergents can be positive if their modus operandi is to seek out-of-the-box solutions to common problems.
But if their purpose is to be disruptive, the negative energy and emotion they create warrants a “go” conclusion.

Check your emotion barometer

Do your emotions run high when you are among your colleagues? Do you find yourself anxious and short tempered while engaging with them?
Conversations that send you to emotional extremes — anger, over reaction, shouting — are personally taxing and are often unproductive from the team’s perspective.

If you feel you’re on an emotional tightrope constantly with your immediate circle of contacts (958) then the “go” door is probably slightly ajar.

Check your appreciation meter

Do you feel that your teammates appreciate your efforts or does it look like they expect that you’ll just keep barrelling along doing more than what is expected?

Often, “Nice work” or “Good job” from those who witness your work go a long way to making the effort you put in feel worthwhile. And when you never hear the words, there’s an emptiness you feel which gradually results in a ‘to hell with it’ attitude.
If your hard work is falling ‘on deaf ears’ maybe you’re closer to a “go” than you realize.

Wrap up

It’s rarely a single factor that decides anything. Usually it’s a combination of a number of seemingly small things that make you decide to either stay in a relationship or role or leave it.

If you’ve given yourself a “go” on most of the above filters then perhaps a “gå” is in order.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.29.21 at 03:29 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

March 22, 2021

Why a winning personal brand is owned by someone special and different

Source: Pexels

Why a winning personal brand is owned by someone special and different.

Fitting in has been hammered into our heads our whole lives.

School teaches us to comply and conform to what the textbook says. Our parents reinforce at a very early age that being normal like everyone else is the thing to do, that not being like others gets you noticed and gets you in trouble. Business encourages us to find best practices and copy them as the way to improve performance.

As a result, we have created herds of people who are all alike in some way.

This is a real problem in organizations in which establishing a competitive advantage is the ultimate goal. An advantage isn’t about copying what another organization does; it’s about creating a uniqueness and distinction that is unmatched by anyone else.

And it’s also an issue for individuals who are looking to get a job and start a career. Getting that interview and landing that position is not about looking like every other candidate; rather, it’s about standing out and being noticed as someone who demonstrates special attributes that others don’t possess.

Gecko or Chameleon?

The point is this: If an organization or individual does not possess anything unique about them, why should anyone notice and care about them? Why should they be chosen over the plethora of options people have?

If they are not different in a way that is compelling, relevant and appealing to others, they will blend into the crowd and will disappear from anyone’s radar.

What do you notice and find more interesting: a chameleon or a gecko?

A ptarmigan or a cattle egret?

Your identity is determined by your context, the frame you live in. It could be the market segment your organization competes in or your MBA graduation class.

In both cases, the challenge is to find a way to gain a competitive edge and be successful given the many others seeking the same result.

If you are indistinguishable from others that share the same context, you will have no identity to those witnessing you and deciding whether or not to engage – other than family, of course, who have no choice in the matter.

Success is achieved for both organizations and individuals by staking out an unmatched position that separates one from their context; that separates them from peers, colleagues and competitors.

The best isn’t good enough

Jerry Garcia, business genius and leader of The Grateful Dead, nailed it:

“You don’t want merely to be the best of the best, you want to be the only ones that do what you do.”

Claiming a position like being the best, the leader or ‘No. 1’ doesn’t separate you from your context for several reasons.
▪️First, it’s not unique – many make claims like this.
▪️Second, it rarely can be substantiated with hard facts.
▪️Third, it’s not believable by the people who hear it.

Stepping away from your context is not about using comparatives like “better” and superlatives like “best”; it’s all about being “the only one” that does something.

It’s a simple expression of what you do that no one else does. It can be observed and it can be measured.

It doesn’t have to be complicated

Finding what makes you uniquely special needn’t be complicated. It’s a matter of discovering what interests people and satisfying it in a special way that surprises others and makes them remember you.

— Strumming a signature long, protracted guitar chord at the end of every song.
— Amazing problem-solving abilities of employees who directly deal with customers every day.
— Having employees who genuinely care about others.
— Offering a personalized video résumé that speaks to your audience.
— Being the first one to put their hand up and volunteer for a project that will take personal time.
— Remembering the names of people you meet.
— Creating a character for your grandchildren – mine was “Papa Troll” – that enriches their lives with fun.
— Giving credit to peers and colleagues rather than wanting to personally grab the spotlight.
—Using uncommon words and your own language that is a bit out there, such as ’yummy incoming’ and ’Cut the crap’.
— Having a simple and informal communication style that captures the hearts of other people and makes you real.
— Keeping promises made in a world where this attribute is very rare.

Get it in your head

Stepping out of your context begins with having a mindset that makes it a constant priority; you live and breathe it every moment of every day, whether you are in an organization or in your personal life.

You are always looking for opportunities to surprise others and do things differently than what they expect.

Be the chameleon.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.22.21 at 04:59 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

March 20, 2021

Why female entrepreneurs are rising to be the best in class

Why female entrepreneurs are rising to be the best in class.

Whatever you give to a woman, she will improve.

The same goes for business. Even though the world is yet to become a level playing field for both genders, women can bring about the necessary change in entrepreneurship.

With the right platform, they can dare to be different. Where men focus on money and power, women focus on empathy. While men are strict on results, women build strong relationships.

According to the female entrepreneurship statistics, the number of women-owned businesses has increased by 3,000% from 1972 to 2018. Today, there are more than 9.4 million people employed in female-owned businesses in various industries.

Women aren’t afraid of making a change in any sector. Healthcare, technology, hospitality, and many more industries are welcoming female entrepreneurs. Business women aren’t afraid of being different.
For example, Maiko Sakai, Simmone Taitt, Trisha Okubo, Priya Virmani used their backgrounds to find inspiration and turn their ideas into reality.

The success of female entrepreneurs will grow over time, and the uniqueness of women’s leadership has the power to change the world. Women can be great at what they love doing and have what it takes to thrive in today’s economy.

The statistics in the infographic below about female entrepreneurs will tell you more about how women lead their businesses.

— Jenifer Kuadli is a Content Coordinator at WhyDoesEverythingSuck.net. Delivering top-notch content is her main focus, and she never stops until she turns it into a masterpiece. Outside of work, you can find her playing the guitar and re-watching ‘Friends’.

• Posted 3.20.21 at 05:33 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink

March 19, 2021

Why a marketing strategy to bundle is absolutely the wrong thing to do

Source: Pexels

Why a marketing strategy to bundle is absolutely the wrong thing to do.

A marketing strategy to bundle is a catastrophe; it’s nothing more than price cutting in disguise.

’Customerization’ replaces the traditional marketing approach of developing products and services for the masses in favor of creating packages of value for the chosen few customers you have selected to serve.

Many marketers equate packaging to bundling, and yet they are completely different concepts.

A bundle:

▪️ the whole = the sum of its parts. It is a collection of products and services kluged together without forethought of an integrated value proposition.
▪️ is driven by a price theme of savings.
▪️ price is a discount over what you would pay for all of the components if purchased individually. They follow ‘the more you buy the less you pay for each element’ theme.
▪️ is branded using the word ‘bundle’ to describe the pasting together of individual products or services - eg “The Financial Services Bundle”.
▪️ forces the potential customer to define value they would likely receive. Rarely is the value proposition offered anything else but cheap prices.
▪️ is easy to copy by competitors within an industry (everyone offers bundles these days) since it is really a lower price in disguise.
▪️ consumes relatively few marketing resources. The price message over a collage of existing products and services doesn’t require a significant investment to go-to-market.
▪️ is smoke-and-mirrors innovation. It gives the illusion (to the marketers) that the process is innovative when it clearly it’s nothing more than an assemble-and-discount one.

It’s a price play, pure and simple.

A value package:

▪️ the whole is greater than the sum of its parts. Package components are combined together to generate more value that they would by pasting them together.
▪️ is driven by a value theme and the great ones are built around the idea of creating new experiences for people.
▪️ the price is a premium to the sum of the individual product and service components. Value packages are priced on the basis of the overall value created and not on the price points of the components.
▪️ is branded as something NEW, and reflects the set of benefits created for the customer.
▪️ makes the value explicit for the customer. The value proposition is expressed in terms of value received from the collection of components operating synergistically.
▪️ is tough to copy by the competition since the package is the result of a value integration process.
▪️ consumes more marketing resources associated with integrating value components, branding, strategic partnerships (for package components that must be ‘imported’ from another supplier).
▪️ it exemplifies true innovation by discovering an unmet need and creating a new offering with a unique set of value.

Unforgettable marketing is NOT a price game.

A marketing strategy to bundle your products doesn’t work in the long term. It’s a value play.

Cheers,
Roy
Check out my BE DiFFERENT or be dead Book Series

• Posted 3.19.21 at 10:36 am by Roy Osing
• Permalink