Tag: training

Too Much You? Extreme Unique

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YOU Overboard

Is it possible to be too much you?  Is it possible to embrace your uniqueness – your weirdness – to such an extent to where your repel instead of attact?

Extreme Unique Personalities

unique look on Jesus in GodspellIn High School, I had a friend who was definitely unique and definitely embraced his weirdness.  His appearance even caught your attention.  He had brillo-like hair, similar to the actor who played Jesus in the movie Godspell.  When he got on a roll, his eyes had this wide-open, almost wild look to them.  He was funny and made a point to do crazy things.  Campaigning for class president in our senior year, he drove his moped into the gym and around the floor and then parked it next to the stage so he could take the podium for his campaign speech.  The audience loved it and he was overwhelmingly elected class president.

Too extreme?

Depends on your circumstance.

In an audience of high school seniors, it was perfect.   Not so popular with the basketball coach since he just drove a vehicle around on his freshly refinished hardwood basketball court.

Art Grindle and his unique way of selling carsIn the Central Florida area, there used to be car dealer named Art Grindle.  He would air commercials on local television showing some of the cars he had on sale, he would show a poster with the price of the car on it, get excited, and the scream “I’ll cut the price in half!” while he enthusiastically tore the poster down the middle.  Sometimes he would jump up on the car or car roof and do the same thing.  He made that mistake one time with a convertible.  You guessed it, fell right through the roof!  The driver bailed out and ran and Art just stood there sticking out of the roof and exclaimed “Look!  There’s a hole in the roof!  I’ll cut the price in half!‘

Too weird? 

Well, in used car circles some use the mantra of “anything that moves metal”.  Art was eventually elected to our state senate and served there for ten years.  In preparation for that, he toned down his on-air antics a bit.  Whether that helped him or hurt him is hard to say.

When Unique is Too Unique

I think you gauge whether your weirdness is too much based on several factors.

  • Your audience
  • Your purpose
  • The circumstance

I have seen many who choose to be unique or just plain weird and take it to the extreme.  They go for the polar opposite for no other reason than to stand out and be seen as weird or extreme.  This is self-serving; it typically has no other viable purpose than to attract attention.  When the focus is on you instead of on what you do and perhaps the different way in which you do it, then it’s not serving your purpose of making you stand out from the crowd; instead it makes you a pariah.

I am in no way suggesting manipulating people by forcing behavior.  Of course, I think going to the extreme just to go to the extreme is a little manipulative as well.

The idea here is to simply recognize how you ARE different and instead of hiding it celebrating it.  You still have to provide something of value to your client and you still have to perform when the time comes.

What do you think?  Is it possible to be too weird?  How do you know when you’ve gone too far?

 

Unique Up Your Niche

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The Business of Being Unique

unique rabbitThere is an old kid’s joke:

Q:  How do you catch an unique rabbit?

A:  Unique up on him!

Silly, but perhaps it has some value for us.  For small businesses, entrepreneurs, and solopreneurs, there is a big emphasis on finding your niche – the market that is almost exclusively yours.  The principle behind it is that if you try to market to everyone or try to be everything to everyone, you end up being nothing to anyone.  In the highly competitive marketplace today, especially with the explosion of entrepreneurs, it becomes important to target what you do to a specific group of people.  That group becomes your tribe or niche that can be yours and you can dominate that market much more effectively IF you know how to talk to them so that your message resonates with them and presents a sense of urgency.

What I see happen a lot with small businesses is aptly described by Marketing Coach Robert Middleton as trying to run their small business as if it was a big business.  Trying to compete with the marketing and organization.  It can’t be done.  You don’t have their budget or their resources.

The Unique Solution

be unique - stand outSo stop trying to be a big business.  Instead take advantage of what you have as a small business.  Part of what you have is the unique culture of your organization.  Whether you are a solopreneur or have 50 employees, there are things that are unique about you and your organization.  Maybe even a little bit weird.  Instead of trying to hide that, celebrate it.  Emphasize it!  Go out of your way to point it out to your customers and friends.  Integrate it into everything you write and say about your business.  There are distinct advantages to doing this:

  • You stand out from the crowd.  In the competitive marketplace, you can’t afford to fit in or be one grape in the bunch.  You need to be the lone banana.
  • You become more appealing to your niche.  They don’t want cookie-cutter, they want someone with character who will be as devoted to them so they can become devoted to you.  They want special!
  • You will connect better with people, customers and friends alike.  There is a whole generation out there that values authenticity.  The more you and your organization embrace who you really are, the more people will relate to you and trust you.

So how do you catch a unique market?  

Unique up on it! 

Action Plan

  • What is it about you or your company that is unique?  What makes you a little weird?
  • In what ways is that appealing to your target market?  What are some possible dangers?
  • How can you leverage that to connect better with your clients?
  • How can you integrate it into every communication with people inside and outside your company?

Success in the Unique

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Strange and She Likes It

My daughter Liza, young teen that she is, loves to occasionally sing the lyrics to a song that was made popular on one of the kid channels on TV.

Come to think of it, she sings the whole song.

Come to think of it, she is ALWAYS singing some song, but more on that later.  The song she sings was sung by an artist named Skye Sweetnam.  You can see the video here:

Skye Sweetnam Video

The chorus goes like this

I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am
I can’t change
I can’t hide it
That’s just the way I am
Might as well get over it
But don’t try to understand
I’m strange
And I like it
That’s just the way I am

This may not be your style of music; certainly isn’t mine.

Celebrating Unique

being unique can be great
Dogs don’t worry about being unique, they just embrace who they are.

What I like about it, however, is the celebration of being who they are.  If you interpret it into adult-speak, the song basically says that yes I have idiosyncrasies, yes I do dumb things sometimes, yes I say silly things but all of that is what makes me unique and I gladly embrace it.  I think it is a great message for kids to learn, particularly since there is so much incredible pressure among their peers to be like everyone else.

Striving to Find My Unique Me

I know I felt it when in Junior High School (what we now call Middle School) and High School to an extent.  I went to a Junior High School where the vast majority of my peers were from families in higher income brackets than hours.  Polo branded shirts and Levi branded jeans were the “standard” and if you didn’t dress like that you were an outcast.  We could not afford those and my parents have always been thrifty so I wore Sears Kings Road jeans.  You can guess how that went over with my peers.  I hovered around the edge of several different peer groups and tried to fit in but never really got there.  I finally decided to quit trying and that’s what started to make the difference.

Once I reached high school, I started to embrace what was unique about me.  Naturally, I went a bit overboard for a while but I managed to stand out in high school and even show some leadership.  It was also there that I was allowed to grow more of the skills that set me apart.  While I had athletic skills, I chose to spend more time with speech and drama, particularly speech and was a competitive speaker all through high school and into college.  It helped me discover and hone the special talents, personality, and style that made me unique.  By setting myself apart and showing confidence in that person, I experienced more respect and popularity and SUCCESS than I ever did trying to be like everyone else.

The Girl Just Can’t Help It

I mentioned my daughter is always singing.  That’s no exaggeration.  Pretty much there is a song in her heart and on her lips every moment of every day.  While it sometimes wears thin, I would never dream of stopping her.  It is her essence; it is part of what makes Liza uniquely Liza; along with her total acceptance of anyone regardless of race, intelligence, capability, or popularity.  I hope she continues to embrace that to find her true success.

Action Plan

  1. What about you?  What makes you uniquely you?  Are you embracing that or have you hidden that in order to fit in?  How’s that working out for you?
  2. What can you do today to bring out more of YOU in what you do?

Dreams Enter the New Millennia

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Big Dreams At a Conference

Dreams through juiceplusI am spending some time this week at the JuicePlus Leadership Conference.  As a distributor for JuicePlus and Tower Gardens, Sherry and I are able to attend the conference, especially since it is here in Orlando.  Our family has benefitted greatly from both and we enjoy sharing that with others.

A couple of things that really caught my attention about the conference so far:

1.  There are over 5,000 distributors here.  There are couples and individuals, women mostly but quite a few men, young and old.  Apparently the desire to eat and be healthy and share that with others isn’t really limited by demographics.

2.  Very reputable medical professionals like Dr. David Katz and Dr. William Sears spoke and endorsed JuicePlus and the Tower Garden enthusiastically.

Even more of what caught my attention is the people themselves.  As I mentioned before, the people attending here spread across age ranges, cultural ranges, gender, body structure, and level of passion.  But what they share in common is a desire to share healthy alternatives to the way we eat and, for a great many of them, how they fulfill their dreams.

See, some of the people here run this as a little supplemental income side business, but many are running this as their main source of income.  Either because they were laid off and could not find work or because they always wanted to run their own business.

From a leadership (and good business management) standpoint, Jay Martin, the CEO of The JuicePlus Company (formerly NSA) and his team have gone out of their way to make it very easy to make this a business.

  • no overhead
  • very little management required
  • flexibility in what you offer and when you offer it.

If someone had dreams of their own business but worried about capital, stocking product, or handling process, this is ideal because it takes those roadblocks away.  It gives hope to their dreams.

Dreams Leaving the Corporate World

laid off workers have dreams dashedMore and more, people are seeing that placing their dreams in the corporate world just isn’t the same promise it might have been before; or perhaps it never was and people are seeing that now.  College graduates are finding it harder and harder to get a job and it may not have the income they need.

The older workforce is being laid off by short-sighted executives who value savings in human capital expense more than productivity.  As the 50 and over crowd gets laid off, they also find getting new work to be challenging at best and darn near impossible at worst.
So these people turn to entrepreneurial dreams in companies like The JuicePlus Company.

As Meridith Martin, the Director of Marketing Operations for the company said in her speech today,

“More of you are saying, I don’t need the latest version of What Color is My Parachute!  I know what color my parachute is; it is Red, Green, and Purple!”

(Red, Green, and Purple by the way are the colors of the JuicePlus bottles.)

It seems dreams have entered the new millennia.

Dreams Like a Weakling!

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Teddy Roosevelt was a Weakling!

Roosevelt pursued him dreams with passion

It’s true.  Growing up, Theodore Roosevelt, Jr., the 26th President of the United States, known for his gregarious personality, adventure-loving and thrill-seeking lifestyle, leader of the Rough Riders, and one of the faces on Mount Rushmore, was actually a sickly, frail child.  He was so asthmatic that he had to sleep propped up in bed.  He had frequent illnesses.   He was almost literally a 98-pound weakling physically!

I don’t tell you this to try to take down another public figure.  If that was the whole story it would certainly be a negative, and malicious attempt to destroy someone regarded as one of, if not the, greatest Presidents of the United States.  Obviously, however, he didn’t stay that way.

As Theodore (he actually hated being called Teddy) entered his teens he desired to become something more.  Encouraged by his father, he began boxing lessons, working out, and reading a steady stream of books to improve himself.  He quickly improved both physically and mentally and led a life of great experiences and adventures, including becoming at 42 years of age the youngest person ever elected President.

Even after that, he never stopped learning and growing.  He read thousands of books over his lifetime (which meant several books a DAY) and legend has it that after he died in his sleep and they removed him from the bed they found a self-improvement book he had been reading.

You are never too old to set another goal or dream a new dream.  –C.S. Lewis

Putting All You Got Into a Dream

There is a point here.  Roosevelt had visions, he had dreams of what he wanted to be, and he pursued them with passion and enthusiasm.  He had his detractors and enemies, including very famously Mark Twain, but never let it stop him or even slow him down.  He continued to dream new dreams and set new goals, even up until he died.  Despite his robust life, he battled Rheumatoid Arthritis most of his adult life and lived with a bullet in his chest for many years.  Still, he kept on learning and growing and dreaming, preparing himself as well as he could for the next adventure and the next episode of his life.

Theodore Roosevelt knew you had to GROW INTO YOUR DREAMS!

They don’t just happen.  You achieve your dreams only when you fill your pursuit of them with passion and enthusiasm, prepare yourself for when your dreams arrive, expect to achieve them, and pounce on the opportunity when it arrives.  As Zig Ziglar says

You were born to win!  But to be a winner, you must plan to win, prepare to win, and expect to win!

Action Plan

  1. If you haven’t written your dreams down, now is the time to do so.
  2. Have it written down?  Now, think about how life will be when you achieve it.  You need to create a very specific vision of achieving your dream in order to commit it to your mind and develop a passion and enthusiasm for achieving it.
  3. Now think about how you need to prepare for it.  Consider yourself a poor marketer and know you will need to effectively market yourself to achieve your dream?  Read marketing books and attend workshops on marketing.  Need to develop your leadership skills?  Find a leadership coach, attend workshops and seminars, join a leadership mastermind, identify your leadership strengths.  Just need to grow yourself overall?  Find a growth coach, read self-improvement books, join mastermind groups of other like-minded people to help each other grow.  Preparation is key!

 

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