Our messages are what matters.
Meaning is what makes your business different.
We are searching for people to work with who resonate with our message and our meaning. As Simon Sinek says in an excellent book Start With Why, "people don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it."
“Communities of practice are groups of people who share a concern, a set of problems, or a passion about a topic, and who deepen their knowledge and expertise in this area by interacting on an ongoing basis.”
From Etienne Wenger’s book “Communities of Practice: Learning, Meaning and Identity”
Who believes what you do?
How are you creating community with these people?
As a general rule my market and yours are people who believe what we believe or want to.
The philosophies central to my life are:
We get what we give.
Enlightened self-interest or doing well by doing good
We must give without attachment to getting back.
Change is personal first, relationships second and organisations third.
Every human being has the capacity to be remarkable. One of the great joys of life is to witness people turning this capacity into reality.
The only difference between consistent high performance and average is a willingness to do what most people don’t do. The tragedy is that what needs to be done is usually common sense.
My best advice to anyone who wants to significantly improve their performance is - change what’s normal.
To show genuine appreciation for another human being is one of the great gifts we can give to other people.
The best response to give when others give us appreciation is to say thank you and leave it at that.
To take responsibility for our own feelings, thoughts, and actions, and not attach them to what other people feel, think and do, is the first step to freedom.
Profit is not a reason for being in business; profit is a result of being good at business.
Statements about values on walls are useless unless the words live in our hearts and we demonstrate them by our actions.
Having a continuous attitude of gratitude is the first step to emotional, mental, physical, spiritual, and universal well-being.
Leadership is the art of inspiring people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do.
Leadership falters without management however.
Management is the practice of making it simple for people to bring everything remarkable that they are to everything they do.
Apart from fundamentalism, believing and behaving as if our way is the only way, the biggest problem in the world today is low self-esteem.
All human beings have aspirations. Most of us fail to achieve them because we do not feel we are worthy of our aspirations.
The keys to successful relationships are honesty and openness. As soon as we hold back or hide our true feelings and thoughts, we have opened the door to deceit. It is all down hill from there.
The best three phrases I know for living a good life are, please, thank you, and I love you.
Failure to be a hero in our own homes first means we are never likely to be truly followed by anyone else.
I am never amazed by the incredible capacity of the human spirit. I am always in awe.
Each person is a one-of-a-kind. Our obligation is to be the best we can be.
Creating shared value (CSV) is the best way I know to help other people achieve what is important to them and also achieve what is important to us.
It is not who you know - It is not who knows you - it is who knows you who is prepared to recommend you to who knows them. In other words the key is the second degree away from you, rather than the people directly connected to you.
If you resonate with my messages I am a likely fit to work with you.
What are your philosophies?
Who resonates with your messages?
Where are these people?
Find out and create communities of practice with people who believe what you believe, in their own way. This is the easiest way I know to meet the challenge of communicating your difference. And it is a wonderful paradox that we demonstrate our difference by communing with people who have the same philosophies!
The other 4 ways I have shared with you in recent articles (special thanks to Sean D’Souza, Colin Pearce and Mark Sutherland) become simpler when we match our market to our messages.
Part one
1) knowing who our buyers are
2) deeply understanding the pain our buyers want to rid themselves of
3) knowing how what we do and how we do it can take away our buyers pain
Part two - Strategic positioning
Part three - Storytelling by Colin Pearce
Part four - Doing 8 practical activities by Mark Sutherland
Be the difference you want to see in the world.
Ian
PS What other people are saying about you in unsolicited ways is a key to knowing if your messages are cutting through.
“Brands are built on what people are saying about you - not what you are saying about yourself” says best selling author Guy Kawasaki.
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