Phil Romano teaches that we need to be individuals and to not be like everyone else. In our businesses if the product or the business doesn't feel good to you, it won't feel good to the customers. Give service all around you, in your community, in your business, anywhere you can. Don't think about the profit think about the need. Do all you can do, don't be lazy! Do everything you can do by being productive because you only live once. If you have to make it work, you make it work! I myself enjoy being productive and keeping busy. I am usually always working or doing things around the house. I have also enjoyed being serviceable in my community. I have door-to-door collected donations for a children's hospital and I have made baby blankets and infant hats for the children's hospital. One thing my dad taught me growing up was Good, Better, Best. It is a conference talk by Dallin H. Oaks. Whenever we as kids would do something, he would always ask us if what we were doing was good, better, or best. It was his way to get us to be the most productive we can be.
I learned you need to be a "purple cow". You need to be remarkable, do something no one else has done before. "The old rule was this: Create safe products and combine them with great marketing. Average products for average people. That's broken. The new rule is: Create remarkable products that the right people seek out" (Purple Cow article). 10 ways to raise a purple cow: Making and marketing something remarkable means asking new questions and trying new practices.
Here are 10 suggestions.
1. Differentiate your customers. Find the group that’s most profitable. Find the group that’s most likely
to influence other customers. Figure out how to develop for, advertise to, or reward either group.
Ignore the rest. Cater to the customers you would choose if you could choose your customers.
2. If you could pick one underserved niche to target (and to dominate), what would it be? Why not
launch a product to compete with your own that does nothing but appeal to that market?
3. Create two teams: the inventors and the milkers. Put them in separate buildings. Hold a formal
ceremony when you move a product from one group to the other. Celebrate them both, and rotate
people around.
4. Do you have the email addresses of the 20% of your customer base that loves what you do? If not,
start getting them. If you do, what could you make for them that would be super special?
5. Remarkable isn’t always about changing the biggest machine in your factory. It can be the way you
answer the phone, launch a new brand, or price a revision to your software. Getting in the habit of
doing the “unsafe” thing every time you have the opportunity is the best way to see what's working
and what’s not.
6. Explore the limits. What if you’re the cheapest, the fastest, the slowest, the hottest, the coldest, the
easiest, the most efficient, the loudest, the most hated, the copycat, the outsider, the hardest, the
oldest, the newest, or just the most! If there’s a limit, you should (must) test it.
7. Think small. One vestige of the TV-industrial complex is a need to think mass. If it doesn’t appeal
to everyone, the thinking goes, it’s not worth it. No longer. Think of the smallest conceivable
market and describe a product that overwhelms it with its remarkability. Go from there.
8. Find things that are “just not done” in your industry, and then go ahead and do them. For example,
JetBlue Airways almost instituted a dress code—for its passengers! The company is still playing
with the idea of giving a free airline ticket to the best-dressed person on the plane. A plastic
surgeon could offer gift certificates. A book publisher could put a book on sale for a certain period
of time. Stew Leonard’s took the strawberries out of the little green plastic cages and let the
customers pick their own. Sales doubled.
9. Ask, “Why not?” Almost everything you don’t do has no good reason for it. Almost everything
you don’t do is the result of fear or inertia or a historical lack of someone asking, “Why not?”
10. What would happen if you simply told the truth inside your company and to your customers?
E-corner Videos Notes:
- Ability to provide a unique product or service
- Make yourself likable. Dress appropriately, smile genuinely, and have a great handshake.
$100 Challenge Update:
- This week I recorded an Elevator Pitch describing my business in less than 1 minute. I learned the importance of having an elevator pitch on hand because you never know when you will need to use it as an entrepreneur.
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