Be Different or be dead

July 9, 2012

15 lessons you can learn from Lady Gaga

Here’s a quick overview of one of my discoveries on iBooks. It’s called “What you can learn from Lady Gaga” by The Editors of New Word City.

Lady Gaga was born Stefani Joanne Angelina Germanotta on March 28, 1986, in New York.

Who is she? She’s an inspiration to business if we listen.

Check out these lessons:

1. Focus is crucial to success.

2. Stay humble and focused on the work, not your ego.

3. Find your heroes and determine how they inspire you.

4. Find a mentor that you can learn from. Find someone you admire and ask them (with humility, charm, and warmth) for their input and help.

5. Be a sponge. Gaga inhaled the history of her world. Take concrete steps to learn everything you can about the history, idiosyncrasies, and influences in your chosen field.

6. Celebrate collaboration. Find your collaborators and nurture the relationships.

7. Find your fans. Lady Gaga knew she appealed to the lucrative gay market, and she assiduously courted it. Define, charm, and cultivate your first-users and core customers.

8. Be disciplined and discreet. Gaga tightly controls her image and guards her private life. Avoid oversharing and remember: there is no such thing as privacy on the Internet.

9. Mess with success. Gaga revised her sold-out show until it was up to her standards. Can your latest project use a boost, a tweak, that extra oomph?

10.Open up to inspiration. Inspiration keeps you fresh, feeds you ideas, energizes you, and nurtures your soul.

11. Surround yourself with talent. Don’t be afraid of being overshadowed - in fact, that should be your goal.

12. Take risks. Leadership is about being bold (not to be confused with reckless), breaking the mould, and knowing when a risk is worth taking.

13. Form an emotional bond with your customers. Define your emotional connection to your customers and actively work to deepen it.

14. Master social media to engage with your Fans.

15. Know what you want. Remind yourself everyday of what you want to accomplish - and what you need to do to get there.

Post this checklist on your wall.

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

• Posted 7.9.12 at 10:50 am by Roy Osing
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June 25, 2012

Why the surprise element makes the best customer service experience

Source: Unsplash

Why the surprise element makes the best customer service experience.

A mind-blowing service experience is never created when people get what they expect.

Give ‘em what you have led them to expect; they will be satisfied and will give you a “C"on your service report card.

— A household move from Vancouver to Toronto on-time, on-budget with nothing damaged.
— A friendly server at your favourite restaurant.
— Food that is ok.
— A clean hotel room.
— A return telephone call that was promised.
— A flight that leaves at the promised time and lands with your baggage.
— A financial plan that delivers the promised financial benefits.
— Fixing a service blunder made by your local retailer.
— An online purchase delivered when promised.

No big deal. After all, you expect these things. And when they are delivered you are probably more relieved than anything else.

Iff you want to dazzle someone, blow them away, leave them breathless or WOW! them, you have to do something they DON’T expect.

You must surprise them with a spontaneous act.

A random act of caring.

It’s not about exceeding expectations. Trying to do more of what a person expects is not a good investment of resources. All it does is earn you a stronger “C” on your report card.

Earning an “A” on your service report card in fact has nothing to do with meeting expectations whatsoever.

Deliver what you promise and add the surprise element if you want incredibly loyal fans who will tell everyone they know how great you are.

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

• Posted 6.25.12 at 11:22 am by Roy Osing
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May 21, 2012

5 easy ways to waste your time and blow your career

Source: Unsplash

5 easy ways to waste your time and blow your career.

Having a successful career requires that you make the best use of the time you have available.

But if you really want to be ineffective, and a time waster here are 5 things you can do:

Put a to do list together of at least 10 things to be done
This will show your intent to do a lot of things but will guarantee that you will make little progress in any of them despite the huge amount of time you spend on them. Brainstorming and then multitasking is a great way to look really busy and waste time.

Kiss up to your boss
Focus on what THEY want. Ignore the priorities of the organization and just look to your boss for a sense of what you should be doing. Devote your day to asking what you can do for them. Ignore your business plan.

Write activity reports on what you’ve been up to
Include every move note detail — meetings, who were there, conferences attended and so on.
Share your reports with everyone you can think of. Make sure people know you’re a busy bee.

Send emails when you have something to say
And make every message sound complicated because it communicates how important you are.
Never have face-to-face meetings with people even virtually. They can be upsetting sometimes and could force you to answer questions you’d rather avoid.

Stay late at the office
And make sure everyone knows you’re doing it. The more time you put in, the more activities you are engaged in. Therefore you get the most out of the time available. And be sure to include your hours in your activity reports along with a complicated sounding reason you decided to put in the extra time.

It’s not easy mismanaging your time, but if you follow these 5 actions you’d be surprised about how little you will accomplish.

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

• Posted 5.21.12 at 10:22 am by Roy Osing
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May 10, 2012

Why a person that wins all the time is also a loser

Source: Unsplash

Most winners are good at losing.

A big winner is probably a big loser.

“I’ve missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I’ve lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I’ve been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I’ve failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.” — Michael Jordan

What’s the scoop? Winners tend to be great learners. They do stuff and learn from the results they achieve. Then they try more stuff.

And, as a result they tend to fail alot.

You can’t help but fail if you are constantly trying new things and there are few silver bullets to success out there

It turns out that the absolutely best learning experience is failure.

Failing at something offers the greatest opportunity to learn (as long as you don’t make the same mistake twice which would indicate you didn’t learn anything!)

The best learners have more failures under their belt. They fail often and they learn. They apply what lessons they learn from failing. And they win.

Do you have the guts to fail a lot?

If so, you have the critical ingredient to win. And win big!

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

• Posted 5.10.12 at 10:40 am by Roy Osing
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