Change, or have change forced upon you.

If you resist change, thinking you can escape any forays out of your comfort zone, you may escape minor dispruption for a time, but you risk it all in the long run.  The tide of change cannot be stopped.  

The future belongs to those who harness this power, instead of resisting it.  Use the power of changing technology, demographics, sentiments, people, materials,  and dozens of other factors that may affect your business to lead in the marketplace.

What have you been resisting?

Notice the results

“People should be buying what I have like crazy!”, he said in heated frustration.

“But they aren’t.”, she said softly but bravely.

“But it’s so great!”, he said stubbornly.

“Is it?”, she asked, not making eye contact with him.  “What do the customers say?”, she added.

While he wasn’t happy, he sat thinking about it a long while, as his blindness slowly lifted.  Accepting that he was wrong, eventually he spoke up.  “I have an idea”, he said.  He went to work.

-LJ

What’s your visual brand?

These days we use the term “brand” to mean lots of things including quality, experience, and philosophy underlying your business.  But the American Marketing Association defines brand as a “name, term, design, symbol, or any other feature that identifies one seller’s goods or service as distinct from those of other sellers.

What’s your visual brand?  Does anyone have any reason to remember it?  Is it “sticky”?

Pick your target audience

In response to my shout out to our daughter Chloe on Think Daily for Businesspeople, (which I had to show her because she didn’t see it), she said “Why are you messing with me Dad, I never look at Think Daily – EVER!”

Good question, Chloe.  Why do we spend time and money marketing to people who are not our audience?

Horse first.

If you present a price before establishing credibility and high value in your product/service, you’re just wasting time.

Make me want it first.

The vicious cycle of commercial poverty

If your business doesn’t make any money – and it’s broke, you’ll have to cut back on marketing (resulting in less leads), cut back on customer service and value delivered (resulting in lower customer satisfaction) and cut back on resources for employee success and satisfaction (resulting in unhappy employees and turnover) – which results in more commercial poverty.

You’re broke because you don’t know how to do it right, or you just aren’t doing it right.

Best learn now.  Be profitable.

Money goes to money.

Ecosystem

What’s your business’ ecosystem like?  What does it support and reject?  Who is it healthy for?  Who does it attract and keep?  What results does it get?

What do you have to change now?

Lead from the front

Which department in your business is struggling the most right now?  Which is the weakest gear in your machine?

Are you there, visible, leading the change?

Leaders need to say the obvious

Is there anyone in your company that you need to have an “obvious” conversation with?

All Systems Go

All that has happened in human history has set the stage for you to be here now with no barriers between you and what you want – except you.

All systems go.