3 WAYS TO BE A STAND-OUT BRAND (GLITTER NOT INCLUDED) When it comes to bootstrapping a personality driven business, the Internet is an intimidating place to find your feet (okay, not as intimidating as finding your feet after seven whisky and cokes, but intimidating enough). It’s LIVE. Unfiltered. And anyone can rubberneck your journey: your former boss who put you on the mother of all guilt trips for venturing out on your own; the ex-boyfriend who’s desperately trying to get back into your pants – over a DECADE after you ditched his ass; your born-again Christian mother (god love her); the friend you haven’t spoken to since high school . . . You get the picture. Whether it’s a blog post you wrote six months ago, a six-week course you created that only two people signed up for, an off-the-cuff remark you made on twitter, or something you said (innocently enough) about someone else in a “private” Facebook group, there’s no place to hide. Your brand is out there, like it or not. It’s enough to make you shut your laptop, flush your mobile phone down the toilet, board up your house, and nail signs outside that say “DANGER: KEEP OUT”, isn’t it? But aside from the fact that you’d – shock horror – NEVER BE ABLE TO HAVE PIZZA DELIVERED AGAIN, let’s be honest here: cutting yourself off from the rest of humanity? Pre-ty extreme. (Unless there’s a zombie apocalypse – in which case, pret-ty standard, I’d say.) So resist that urge if you will for a minute. Instead, consider this: You can’t please everybody. There are SEVEN BILLION PEOPLE on this planet and you’re sadly mistaken if you think you have a hope in hell of pleasing them all. Instead, IF YOU WANT TO BE A STAND-OUT BRAND, STOP TRYING TO MAKE EVERYONE HAPPY. Because it’s impossible. INSTEAD, ask yourself, “What do I believe in?” or “What I want to be known for?” Because I bet neither of those things involve you trembling behind your living room curtains, terrified in case you offend somebody. Instead they involve you being you; expressing yourself fully. Not the person you THINK you’re supposed to be. Not the person society EXPECTS you to be. But the person you ACTUALLY are. (Radical, isn’t it?) Because unless we stick our necks over that invisible line of propriety; unless we hook our reputations to those things we actually believe in – heart and soul – then we may as well accept the fact that we’re no different to any other business out there. And with an estimated one third of all start-ups failing within the first two years of business – and almost 60 percent after four years – that’s frankly not a risk that we should be prepared to take. For the full post, click here: nikkigroom/3-ways-to-be-a-stand-out-brand/
Posted on: Tue, 24 Sep 2013 20:12:23 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015