Sunday 2 June 2013

Are You A Flower or A Bee?

There was a fabulous little story shared at a Brendon Burchard event I attended and I believe you are going to love it.

It totally nails how we need to not "bee" in our business and marketing activities.

Flowers are amazing things

Flowers start from a tiny seed, get an idea they can be bigger than their current reality, and begin to do what it takes to grow.

They start out as a very tiny seed, but eventually one day, once their foundations are secure, the roots have been put down, the conditions are right, the flower plant pops through its first offering to the world.  

It pops the new green shoots up through the dirt that has so lovingly supported it during its first stage of growth.  The flower then lets the green shoots turn into leaves that establish the stability of the plant and provide shade while the flower bud starts to form.

Then when it is good and ready, the flower bursts forth and shines in all it's glory for the world to see.  It is so wonderful and beautiful, people often ignore everything else in the garden just to get close to, and admire the flower.  There is quite a lot of work and energy required to get the flower to its full stage, but once there, it simply stands tall and naturally attracts everything it needs, until it is time to go back to the earth and start the process again.

Then there is the bee.  

Everyone loves bees, in fact they have a sold reputation for being busy.  

They pop out with much abundance surrounding them, more honey than they could ever eat in a lifetime, but alas, all to soon they join the thousands of others just like them who need to work hard all day and keep up the reputation of the bee.

They fly around all day seeking out the flowers who are just standing around in the sunshine waiting for them to arrive.  

Bees don't see so well so they have to fly until they find a big bright patch of color and hope its a bunch of flowers, not a bright red kenworth truck!  It's tough for a bee just to get back to the hive in one piece.

Poor Mz Bee ..... doesn't even have time to admire the flower before she busily has to be gathering the pollen and then carrying almost her own weight in pollen or nectar, back to the hive and fight with the thousands of other bees just to get a spot to dump her load.  

Meanwhile the flower is still quietly in the garden basking in the sunshine waiting for Mz Bee to return.  

But there is now more busy work to be done by Mz Bee before she can return, now she has to do a complete clean down before she goes back out to bring back another load.

Sometimes each flower patch is so abundant the bee needs to make several trips, back and forth, back in carrying a heavy load, taking an empty load out and carrying a heavy load back.  The noise and road rage is overwhelming all day, so many bees on the path back and forth to the hive.  Sometimes she passes by some amazing places, but there is no time to stop and smell the roses, just got to keep working.  Oh and let's not forget to pollinate a few thousand other plants as we pass by keeping the whole Eco system in balance.  The work of a bee is never done.

The bee is so busy she doesn't even have time to consider if there is anything productive she could be doing with the empty load she always takes out of the hive.  She is just so focused on getting the pollen and nectar back to the hive, no time for thinking creatively.  

Then there is that demanding Queen to be served ... Oh dear, more work, it never ends.

Then what?  The farmer comes and takes a huge percentage of the production, safe in the knowledge the bees don't need it, they will just keep asking more because they don't know how to stop.

The flower and the bee play an equal part in the honey making process, honey can't be made without a flower AND a bee.

In fact our whole food chain is being threatened because the bees don't have enough flowers to seek out because humans keep building hosing estates where flowers beds used to grow.   Honey and bees don't exist without flowers.

It's the same in business - you can be the bee who literally works their guts out to get the honey OR you can be the flower who stands in the limelight drawing the bees in and getting the same result.

In your business you can choose to be the one track bee who will always be one of the masses working their guts out with little reward or recognition, or you can be the business who plans, puts down sold foundations and roots, is prepared to enlist the help of others during its growth and most importantly it is prepared to shine so everyone can find you easily AND you can contribute equally to the positive outcome.

The moral of this story is: 

Stop cutting down the tall poppies because bees and humanity need them!

Flowers and bees choose different ways to get the same outcome which is honey.  Bees and flowers have predestined roles, humans have choice.

What are you choosing to be? A flower or a bee?    

Is your brand maturing?

Is your brand maturing?

What brand some of you might be thinking!  

But everyone's business has a brand even if you aren't aware of it.

I had a great example of the power of branding last week.  I needed to buy an external backup drive so I could run the Time Machine on my Mac ..... Yes I am still trying to figure out how I can ride in the time machine but for now I will keep using it to back up my data.  

I was in a strange city and I was looking for either an Officeworks store or JB HiFi - for those of you outside Australia they are big national chain stores who supply stationary and electronics like Office Depot and Radio Shack in the USA.  I had no idea where these stores were but I knew I would find one or both of them easily.

So I firstly drove down the main street looking for their bright blue or bright yellow signs.  Nothing on the main drag so I started to weave in and out of the smaller side streets.  Took about 5 minutes of random driving around before I found both on the same street within two blocks of each other.

Yes a good person would have looked them up on google maps on their mobile phone but shock horror - I don't use a mobile phone!  So I had to use old technology .... My instincts with a little help from branding.

These brands are so strong I could be guaranteed to find their store easily in an unknown regional city and locate it easily without a map or mobile device.  

A brand is a companies story.  In this instance their story says we are brightly colored, we stand out, we are in places that make it easy for you to find, we will have the cheapest prices and we will have lots of choice plus we stock all the brands you will want to buy.

Interestingly I purchased my 2 terabytes of data storage from the one who was $10 dearer, why?  Well because the more expensive one put a higher focus on customer service and clearly instilled the "go the extra mile with customer service" into their brand.  I was one block away from saving the extra $10 but I decided to pay extra because the knowledgeable young staff member was prepared to go in search of someone who was a Mac expert to answer my question.  I considered it a very cheap consulting fee because he told me how to reformat the product from pc to mac and gave me peace of mind I had bought the right product.  

When I come to think of it, I have always received this level of knowledge at JB's but they don't rank in my brain like say the Apple Store do because JB shops are a bit grungy.  They also don't aim to attract middle aged nerds, they aim to attract the youth market who like that grungy feel.  The grunge is part of their brand.

Have you thought about your brand?  Not even sure what a brand is.  Well simply put, your brand describes the personality of your business.   Think of it as a person and describe it.  

This week take a look at everything you read or purchase this week, then think what is the personality here.  Strong brands do it for you for instance Apple ran a great advertising campaign a few years with a picture of a hip young guy standing beside a classic corporate accountant and asked the question, which one would you rather be.  There is no right or wrong answer to the question, they were simply attempting to attract more of their people to buy their product and keep the people they didn't want in their stores away.

But hey wait a minute you might say, don't they want everyone in their store? NO - they only want those hip good groovy people who are easy to sell to.  There in lies the power of a brand.  If your brand is clear you will only attract the people who want to buy from you.

Do you even know who your people are?  If you don't know your people you can't begin to know your brand, therefore your people can't find you.

Branding is a whole new interesting world that the big guns play hard in, but even if you don't have big budgets, your brand can still support your business.

Your brand is a living, breathing identity that grows and matures and ages just like a human does.  We learned in some high end training I did in New York that brands mature.  A sign of a brand coming of age or maturing is when it gets a major revamp.  Facebook and You Tube are great examples of a maturing brand who have recently completely changed the look and feel of their business and the way their customers interact with it.  Now it's hard to even remember life before the timeline version of Facebook.

In layman's terms, they are fixing their mistakes.  So often in business we launch in and learn a lot as we grow.   We make mistakes and self correct and make even more mistakes, then we might go learn from an expert and figure out where we went wrong and fix it.  Then there comes a point at which you have something so jumbled up and unclear that you have to regroup and relaunch the brand.  It throws your customers for a loop when you do it.  But sometimes that is a necessary part of your business growth.  

I am going through a big personal and brand regroup right now as I go off into the wild blue yonder and regroup and rebrand.  My training in New York taught me that I have many of the right puzzle pieces, they are just in the wrong place.  It's not that I even have to do much to put it right, it's simply about sitting down and rethinking where I am going and who I want to work with and how I want to get my message out and then what do I really want to say.

If you aren't doing this on a regular basis you risk your brand stagnating.  You might have guessed your brand is a sooky la-la that always seeks and needs constant attention!

So while I go quiet for a while and pack up my house into a 3x3 lock up garage and hit the world with a lap top and backpack - why don't you spend some time thinking about how you can either create your brand or re-invent your brand.

Funny end to my story.  When I presented my 2 terabyte Seagate external hard drive to Oli my Mac Tech he was very impressed but pointed out I could have given him a hoy and he could have got me one online and bought it cheaper and had it delivered to my door!  Hence why any serious retailer is clambering to include online stores in their branding mix right now.

Where Am I Going To Go?

This is the big question everyone is asking me at present since my shock announcement that my Cute House is sold.

The three word answer:  I don't know 

But that's the point, I don't know and I don't want to know!  I am throwing myself on the mercy of the Universe and building a new story.  I believe I will still be doing the same work, teaching, coaching, mentoring, speaking.  I will just have no fixed abode.

I am truly stepping out to further my dream which has always had a component that says I teach and work in many different and exotic places all round the world.  One of those exotic places can be your computer, I can beam into your inbox and Skype address easier than I can drive to your house.  We are entering a new way of living and working and as usual ...... I'm on the cutting edge of change!

I can tell you the house settles on the 13th July and I move 10 minutes up the road and house sit for a friend in Daylesford for two weeks, then I will probably be in Silicon Valley for more training, but I don't have anywhere to stay there yet.  Then I don't know anymore.  In fact my car has more stability than me, she is going to live in the blue mountains, north of Sydney for a few months = NOICE!

So if you have friends or family anywhere in the world with WiFi who need a house sitter or pet minder, the give me a hoy.

Despite all I have been through, this is my greatest test of trust yet.  

So please support me.  If you have been thinking of doing some one on one coaching or if you see a course you fancy doing online, please don't hesitate or think about it - just do it - it could be difference between me eating that day or not.  

Thank you to those who have supported the dream thus far by doing my courses and being clients, without you the dream would have died, instead it's hitting the next phase and I am very grateful to you all.