Tom Adams

These last few months have been some of the busiest months of my business life. With the completion and publishing of my book, as well as numerous other initiatives we’re undertaking here at Flourish Press, we’ve been testing a marketing principle, almost by accident – or maybe more accurately – out of necessity. But it’s one I think you would benefit from.

Let me give you some context. Starting in January of this year, after a long hiatus, we started sending
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In their book, Funky Business, Swedish business professors Kjell Nordstrom and Jonas Ridderstrale offer the following observations and simple advice:

The ’surplus society’ has a surplus of similar companies, employing similar people, with similar educational backgrounds, coming up with similar ideas, producing similar things, with similar prices and similar quality.

To succeed we must stop being so damn normal.

In a winner-takes-all world, normal = nothing.

So the question is… how normal are you?

Are you clinging like crazy to the mistaken belief that you have
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Mark Cuban, outspoken owner of the Dallas Mavericks talks about passion in his online blog.

I love what he says.

A byproduct of passion is saying exactly how you feel in a way that you know will get someone’s attention, and listening to exactly how someone else feels when they need to get your attention. All of this is my way of saying that I expect people who work for me to yell at me, and I expect them to know that at
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I read Craig Terrels and Arthur Middlebrooks book entitled, Market Leadership Strategies for Service Companies. Definitely worth the read.

I am struck immediately by the trap they say many service companies fall into, namely of “doing things better.”

The need for constant improvement in process, quality, cycle time and a host of other operational activities has not necessarily helped to improve market share and profits. It has however created a “commodity” mentality into our businesses.

I am sure that many of us have
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I rant about this regularly, but your positioning is critical.

You must create a obvious uniqueness that allows you to differentiate yourself in the market.

You must stand out.

Check out this store that is doing it.

Let it be a catalyst for you in defining your own position. 

It only sells stuff that is black and white.

If they can create a very definable position, so can you.

If everyone in your market is selling colors and shades of gray, why not be the black and
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Without question most of us really want to listen to our prospects, our clients… our market. And in many cases we have the tools and systems set up to listen.

BUT…

Are we really hearing them?

There’s a great line in the movie “The Hunt For Red October.”  Maybe you remember it.

Jack Ryan, looking at a radar screen, asks “What are those destroyers doing?”

The Captain says, “They’re listening with sonar, looking for the Red October. Funny thing though–they’re moving so fast, they could
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In an article from Fast Company, Michael Porter, noted professor and management guru shreds his perspective on strategy. Some really good stuff…

There’s a fundamental distinction between strategy and operational effectiveness. Strategy is about making choices, trade-offs; it’s about deliberately choosing to be different. Operational effectiveness is about things that you really shouldn’t have to make choices on; it’s about what’s good for everybody and about what every business should be doing.

So how are you choosing to be DIFFERENT?

Are you content continuing
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