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9 Useful ideas to make this your best year ever

December 27, 2014 by Jim Connolly

It has often been said that you are never more than 1 good idea away from the breakthrough you need. With that in mind, here are 9 ideas to help you and your business in 2015, along with some links to extra resources.

Do at least one thing each day, which your future self will thank you for. This is the basis of all meaningful progress.
Fail more often in 2015 than you did in 2014. Why? Because if you’re not failing often enough, you’re sticking to things you already know and no longer growing. Unless you give yourself permission to make mistakes, you will seldom try anything new.
Stop aiming for perfectionism. It will stop you getting started and block your progress. Instead of trying to be perfect, aim to be better than you were yesterday.
Get expert help in any area of your business, where you are under performing. Things don’t just change for the better because you hope they will. Hope is essential, but it’s not a business strategy. This will help you get it right.
Walk daily for 30 minutes. Studies have shown that walking helps to reduce stress and gives you a general feeling of well-being. Walking also helps you manage your weight and can lower your blood pressure. When you feel better you work better. Start with short walks, then do a little more. Talk to your doctor first, if you have any underlying medical conditions.
Get serious about developing your creativity in 2015. It will help you solve problems and grow a uniquely valuable business. There are hundreds of free ideas for you, here on my creative thinking website.
Stop doing work purely because it pays the bills. Start doing work that makes a difference. This post explains why.
Give people more than they expect. Don’t under-promise though. Instead, over-deliver. This is one of the most powerful ways to retain your clients and get them recommending you to their friends and contacts.
Learn to embrace your inner freak. This idea changed my life.

I really hope you find these ideas and suggestions useful and that they help you achieve your best year ever in 2015!

How to grow your business in a uniquely valuable way

August 11, 2014 by Jim Connolly

You are the biggest asset your business has. Those are not just kind words. They are based on fact.

Allow me to explain.

The Internet has presented business owners with a series of benefits and challenges. One challenge, is that it is now extremely easy for competitors to discover and copy one another’s best ideas. It’s little wonder then, that providers in just about every industry now offer an almost identical range of services.

Today, I’m going to show you how to overcome this challenge and build a massively valuable marketing asset for your business.

How to stand out in a meaningful way

Some things are easy to copy. For example, if a local restaurant starts opening an hour earlier and then attracts an extra hour’s worth of profitable trade, it’s simple for competing restaurants to do the same.

However, some things in business are extremely difficult to copy because they’re based on unique, human experiences. A wonderful example of this is the use of a newsletter or blog, to showcase your expertise and knowledge.

Here’s why it works

You are unique. You have a unique collection of life experiences, which your unique mind processes in a unique way. When you write (and speak) your communication style is unique too.

This uniqueness allows you to stand out from the pack and connect with your future clients!

Here’s an example of what I mean. Both Seth Godin and I write about marketing, yet we write very differently:

Seth grew up in a very wealthy family and was educated at Stanford — along with the CEO’s of many of the world’s leading companies.
I grew up in extreme poverty, the son of penniless immigrants.

It would be extremely difficult for either one of us to write like the other. For instance, when Seth thinks about being broke, he (thank God), won’t recall his mother begging for food to feed her children, the way I do.

So, when Seth and I write about business owners experiencing hard times, we will see the hard part extremely differently. This is reflected in what we write and how we write.

Your unique voice

Your life experiences will cause you to write very differently from your competitors. The only caveat here, is that you need to allow your personality to shine through your writing. If you try and sound like someone else, you lose your unique voice — the very originality that will allow you to stand out.

Now, compare that to the generic approach most business owners take with their newsletters and blog posts. Instead of delivering useful, valuable information from their own unique perspective, they churn out a series of thinly-disguised sales pitches. They then wonder why it isn’t working.

Allow your unique voice to communicate value. These brief tips may help:

Learn about the challenges facing your marketplace. A great way to do this is to connect with them on social networks and listen. [Compare this approach, to the typical service provider who uses social networks to broadcast.]
Provide answers to the most pressing challenges facing your marketplace. This positions you in the mind of your prospective clients, as a source of expert help and advice.
Share case-studies of how you have helped people, who had similar challenges to your prospective clients.
Turn up regularly! Treat your newsletter or blog as a high priority business activity. If you think it’s hard to write regularly, remember that writing is a lot like speaking — and you speak every day.

The unique connection these prospective clients form with you, is a massively valuable marketing asset.

Think of it like this: Who are they going to hire?

Some stranger they find on Google.
… or you, someone they feel a connection with and whose expertise and knowledge they already know about.

Yes. You win!

PS: This will help you — How to get more clients from your newsletter or blog.

So, you want more from your business? Try this!

April 12, 2014 by Jim Connolly

To grow your business successfully, you need all 3 of the following:

A substantial number of prospective clients, who you can locate and connect with.
These prospective clients need to have a problem, which your service provides the answer to.
Finally, they need to be willing and able to pay you for solving their problem.

That’s what you need for a successful business. And for most people, that’s all they want.

However, if you want even more from your business, something exceptional, you need to know the following.

Truly exceptional businesses are a little different

Exceptional businesses do 1 thing differently. To be exceptional, you need to change number 2 on that list, to this:

These prospective clients need to have a problem, which ONLY your service provides the answer to.

Yes, it takes more effort to develop a uniquely valuable product or service, but the rewards are disproportionately high. For example, you no longer have to compete for business based on fees. Also, by deliberately choosing the type of problem to solve, you can predetermine the quality of clients you work with.

Here’s a suggestion

Think about gaps in the market — problems that are currently not being solved by existing providers. Dig deep. Stick with it until you get some answers. Keep working on it. Give it the time and energy it needs.

Why? Because you only need to get this right once, for your whole world to change!

Tip: This will help you get started.

How to describe your business so it stands out from the crowd

April 6, 2014 by Jim Connolly

story

Here’s a summary of the advice I recently gave a group of creative professionals, which I believe you will find useful.

It’s all about the labels we use and how they shape the way the marketplace sees us.

The labels people use

When I help creative agencies to improve their output, I start by asking them why they insist on labelling themselves as a creative agency.

Think about it: If a creative agency is truly creative, surely it wouldn’t copy a dull, generic term to describe what it does. It wouldn’t limit itself like that.

That kind of labelling works fine for some other businesses, because those businesses are generic.

For example, restaurants provide an identical core service: You eat and drink and then pay the bill. This is true, whether you go to a fast food restaurant or the most expensive restaurant in town. All that changes between restaurants is the food, the experience and the cost.

Conversely, creative agencies are supposed to think without limitations. The nature of what they do, is to think differently. Unlike restaurants, very few creative agencies, if any, should offer an identical service.

Benjamin Zephaniah is more than a poet

The best creative professionals, like all artists, are exceptions to the labelling rule. Is Benjamin Zephaniah a poet? Yes, but he’s so much more, so he’s never labelled simply as a poet. I’ve followed Benjamin’s work for decades and he’s usually introduced with any or all of the following statements:

He’s a social commentator.
He’s a recording artist.
He’s an activist.
He’s a master story teller.
He’s a trouble maker.
He’s an educator.
He’s a progressive thinker.
He’s a catalyst for change.
And he’s a poet… a really good poet.

Benjamin Zephaniah defies a simple label. The same was true of Andy Warhol. Warhol wasn’t a studio artist, he invented his own artistic niche with Pop Art.

My point here, is that creative professionals who embrace the creative agency label are, at best, causing people to think of them within a narrow, limiting box. At worst, it will restrict what the agency team do, as they start to conform to what they think ‘the typical agency’ does.

Neither of those are great outcomes. In fact, they’re common to every struggling agency I have ever helped.

A creative alternative?

Lose the label. Create your own niche. Do your own unique brand of work. Set yourself apart. Be meaningfully different.

When you lose that uncreative label, you get to define what you do.

This isn’t the 1990’s and you don’t need to be listed in business directories, under an idiot-proof label or category. Today, you can put your creativity out there and attract the attention of those interested in your unique, creative approach.

Show us what you’ve got. If it’s remarkable enough, we’ll hire you and share your story with our friends.

Why your business needs to be Meaningfully Different

January 17, 2014 by Jim Connolly

Despite what many people believe, small businesses are not merely smaller versions of big businesses. They are different in one very important way.

Here’s the difference

The largest companies, from Apple to MacDonald’s, have to stick to a standardised way of doing things. It’s all about consistency. There is a company way of doing things and the employees need to operate within that framework. iPhones and Big Macs look the same at every store and the way they are served to you is also as close to identical as possible.

With a small business, success comes from doing the exact opposite. It comes from individuals within the small business, being human and expressing themselves… doing work that is meaningfully different.

The most successful small and medium sized businesses provide products, services or experiences, which are only available from them. They have figured out that by creating something that is meaningfully different, they become the only show in town, for clients who want that meaningful difference. They create a special value, which is only available from them. It works. Beautifully.

Most small business owners don’t get this

In fact, the massive majority of small businesses within the same niche, look almost identical.

They offer the same predictable range of services.
They make the same predictable marketing promises.
They have the same predictable looking websites, blogs and social networking accounts.
They offer the same predictable guarantees and have the same kind of testimonials.

They become cookie cutter duplicates of their competitors, then wonder why prospective clients are so fee sensitive. Clue: When you look just like the competition, prospective clients use your fee as their way to determine your value.

Embrace your uniqueness

Build a business that is meaningfully different. Not only will you have no competitors, you will be free to charge what you are worth, to clients who value the meaningful difference you provide.

PS: For more information on how to attract the best clients and fees, read this.

Uncovering your unique voice

September 8, 2013 by Jim Connolly

I get a lot of email, from business owners who want to uncover their unique voice. In most cases, they are seeking to improve the quality of their newsletters, blog posts or articles.

They note that most material in every niche seems to be extremely similar — with just a few people writing anything fresh or original.

I have a theory about why this happens and how to avoid it.

My theory

I believe it’s linked to the mass consumption of the same kind of inputs. It looks like this:

We have known for years that if you watch TV, just like the masses, you’re likely to start thinking, just like the masses.

My theory is that the same is true of writers within a niche, who read the same popular books, magazines and blogs. By consuming the same inputs, they work from the same information base. This results in them adopting and sharing very similar ideas. It can also result in very similar writing styles.

Thinking differently

As I said earlier, this is only a theory. However, it’s based on years of study and observation. I am yet to find a unique voice in any field, who feeds her mind with the same mass market material as her peers.

In short: To think differently, we need to feed our mind differently.

PS: You may find this useful. My name is Jim Connolly and I am a freak!