Here are few things that is hard for your competition to copy (individually and collectively)
1. Your History Your history is yours alone. Nobody can repeat it.
2. Your Identity Identities are built over a lifetime. Whatever you have built as your identity so far, others can’t copy it.
3. Your Relationships Who you know, how you know who you know, who knows you – these are all impossible to copy.
4. Your Configuration How you have structured your business, who owns how much, the vendors you chose and your relationship to them etc. are hard to copy.
5. Your Values, Beliefs, Determination These are all so personal. If they are powerful, you have a huge competitive advantage.
6. Your Intellectual Property When protected right, it can be a source of competitive advantage.
7. Your Timing If you time the market right and your competition does not, you have a huge lead.
The above list is incomplete and I am sure each one of us can come up with more items to add to the list.
Her are my points:
1. List all the items (with their combinations) that are hard to copy and see if you are taking full advantage of that “strength” to establish a better position in the marketplace.
2. Most often, it is not that we don’t have enough resources that makes us fail. It is how we configure “everything we have” to gain superior strength.
What do the people listed below want from my blog readers?
Answer is simple: Attention. In fact, they want “attention” desperately.
I took a snapshot of the part of the day (May 16, 2007) and observed the trackback entries waiting for approval. While all the names look legitimate, none of them are real blogs. All the trackbacks point to products of companies that are seeking attention desperately.
I feel sad for these companies who are trying to get the attention of people in any which way they can. Rather than “interrupt” rudely in people’s lives, why not build products that people “love”? When people “love” your products, they will talk about it – and they will do it for free
Lisa Haneberg talks about the butterfly effect in her books and talks. You can read more about Butterfly effect here.
The butterfly effect is a phrase that encapsulates the more technical notion of sensitive dependence on initial conditions in chaos theory. Small variations of the initial condition of a nonlinear dynamical system may produce large variations in the long term behavior of the system.
The phrase refers to the idea that a butterfly’s wings might create tiny changes in the atmosphere that ultimately cause a tornado to appear (or prevent a tornado from appearing). The flapping wing represents a small change in the initial condition of the system, which causes a chain of events leading to large-scale phenomena. Had the butterfly not flapped its wings, the trajectory of the system might have been vastly different.
How can we take advantage of this butterfly effect?
Simply by being those butterflies (actors) flapping our wings (making small positive contributions in the lives of other people)
For all you know, you may already be taking advantage of the butterfly effect in your own life. Answer the following questions:
“How many people have you positively surprised in the last week?”
and/or
“How many people can you positively surprise in the next few weeks?”
There is no right or wrong answer. Once you answer the above questions, answer this question:
“Do I have the potential and resources to positively surprise more people this year than last year?”
Most of us have the potential to positively surprise someone in our network or outside of our network at regular intervals. All it requires is “more caring” for people around us – be it someone that we know or be it strangers. One of my teachers taught me this almost a decade ago – it has almost gone to the background of obviousness for me. Has it provided enough returns? Absolutely. Way more than you can imagine.
The roots for many interesting things that have happened in my life trace back to one or two caring gestures or acts. Yes, those acts that almost cost me nothing – all it required was caring beyond the current market standards.
Now, the question for you on this memorial day weekend:
How many people can you positively surprise this week in a memorable way?
Note 1: Here is a Squidoo lens that links to most of the previous articles in this series: Squidoo: Distinguish Yourself
“What are some exciting projects you are currently working on?”
Now, for the challenge:
Just for the sake of fun, let’s say your answer should have been “Too many to list.”
If that is really the answer, you win.
If not, what can you do in the next 30 days so that if the same question is asked after 30 days, the answer will be “Too many to list.”?
Bonus challenge Now, if you want to have a bigger challenge, try this:
What can you do in the next 30 days so that your team members live up to the challenge?
In other words, this is what is expected: After 30 days if someone asks each of your team members “What are some exciting projects you are currently working on?” each one of them will answer “Too many to list.”
This week is going to be “Learning on Steroids” in the bay area. If you are in the bay area (or closeby) please consider attending both of these events:
Venue: Santa Clara Convention Center Time: 5pm to 8.30pm Price: $50 (You will get five copies of “The Dip” if you register online) Registration: Click here
Seth Godin is the best selling author of “Permission Marketing”, “Purple Cow”, “Small is the new big” and the most recent “The Dip”
Lisa Haneberg is a author, management consultant, trainer and coach, is visiting Cupertino on her solo 10,000-mile Year of the Breakthrough Motorcycle book tour. Her goal for the tour is to catalyze breakthroughs and mobilize dreams by showing how small actions can produce big results.
Venue: HP Oak Room Auditorium, Cupertino Time: 6.30 pm to 8.30 pm Price: $15 Registration: Click here
21. Getting attention may be easy; maintaining it is hard
There are strategies and there are tactics. Tactics may be able to get you a boost in traffic that is fleeting. If you want following, you have no choice but to work on sound strategies. From my viewpoint, the fundamental strategy for success in the blogosphere has two parts:
a. continue to build an identity that is very powerful through your accomplishments outside of blogging b. continue to provide valuable information that is of high relevance to your audience.
Sounds simple but hard to implement.
22. What you don’t know might hurt you
If you are in the blogosphere, you have to know what is happening. It can be as simple as knowing all the technologies that you should be aware of and be using to take your blog to the next level. There is nobody who is going to tell you about all these things unless you seek out for that knowledge.
You not knowing something does not invalidate the fact that it is valuable. A short list of things that may be interesting to you is available here Squidoo: Blogging Starter Checklist.
The above list is short and incomplete. Dig into the blogosphere and never make lack of basic knowledge hurt you.
23. If you don’t care passionately about your readers, they won’t care for you
Your audience are your customers. Some of them you may never see in your life. That does not change the fact that they are your customers. They may not pay for what you write. That still won’t change the fact that they are your customers.
Think about this way. If your blog is your business, customers pay with their time and mindshare. Sometimes time and mindshare are more valuable than money. So care beyond the market standards and then exceed your own standards!
24. What you do outside the blog is equally important
Your blog is not your life and what you do offline has a direct bearing (almost all the time) on the way you are perceived via your blog. If you are a jerk offline but appear to be sophisticated on the blog, chances are that your “true colors” will come out via some channel.
Since blog increases the transparency of your life to the external world, the safest strategy is to keep your offline life in order. There are no other “tricks” that I can think of except “to be” who you want to be portrayed as.
25. You can never stop learning; now you got to learn FAST
If you think change happens fast, in the blogosphere – change happens VERY FAST. So you got to learn to be FAST. You got to respond FAST. If you goof up, you have to apologize FAST. If you are appreciated, you have to thank FAST. Everything has to be FAST.
If speed is something that you are not comfortable with, you will be more uncomfortable blogging.
26. You rarely can take back what you said
If you say something in real life, rarely can you take it back. You can apologize and beg for forgiveness but you can never take back what you said. In the blogosphere, sensitivity is an order of magnitude higher. The reach is far and wide and even if you delete what you wrote, there would be footprints everywhere. So please think twice before you write anything on your personal publishing platform (blog)
27. You have more help than you can ever need
When you are starting out, you need help. The good part is there is help. Lots of it. The works of several smart people are only a click away. If there is only one limitation, that will be your spending of time to get that help. It is never the lack of help. Not only can you read what others have written, you can also reach out to those people for more help. If the request is reasonable and if you can structure the request in a way that will mean something to the other person, chances are that your request will be answered.
There is an abundance of help out there. The old adage “when the student is ready, the teacher arrives” fits brilliantly to the blogosphere.
28. You can make more friends in the blogosphere fast
Blogging makes it easy to get to know people far away in ways that you could have never done before. Where else can learn about a person’s ideas, attitudes, thinking etc. without really meeting that person?
Communicate, collaborate and be nice to people in the blogosphere and you can start to nurture great relationships. I am fortunate to have met a set of really nice people in the blogosphere. I have never met a whole lot of them in person yet but I know that we are close enough that we honor each other’s requests with care.
29. You WILL have critics. So get used to it
Even if you are the most controversial blogger out there, there will be people who won’t like what you write. There are people who are out there who don’t like anything that anybody writes. So having critics for your work is part of life. You getting upset with the critics will not make them go away. You can fight with them if you think that is where your energy is spent wisely (or you have no other work to do)
The better option would be to learn to live with the critics.
30. You have to give back!
You get a lot by actively participating in the blogosphere. You do. Once you do get it, it is your turn to give back. You didn’t get to where you got without the help of other people who were ahead of you. So why not help people who are behind you to reach their potential?
I love questions – especially those that provoke thought. I collected more than 50 Quoughts (Quought = Question that provokes thought) from very smart people earlier this year and created a “Quought for the Day” series.
Now, we have extended this further.
Earlier this month, my business partner Hari Shetty (of iPolipo) and I created a new blog called “Time Matters” to focus on only one topic – Time. This time, we are asking several smart people and thought leaders one question:
What is the one question about time, that, if answered well – will help the person make the most of his or her time?
Their response, which is another question (or quought) is the foundation of a new series there called “Quought on Time”.
I hope to meet with Stephen sometime soon. Stephen is deaf by birth but that has never stopped him from being a certified pilot. Now, he has a new video on YouTube. In this, he talks about the person that sowed the seeds of courage in him when he was a student.
The video is only seven minutes. There is a lesson for all of us who have the gift of being able to see and listen. What we say can make a difference in the lives of others – sometimes profoundly.
Question for you: Have you said anything last week that would make a profound positive impact in the life of that person? If not, when are you planning to start?
Thanks Stephen for sharing the video. I enjoyed it!
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