Imagine that all of the money, influence and power in your world is a pie (apple in this case). Now imagine hundreds…no thousands…of people in your industry, your geographic space, your niche of business all vying for their piece of that pie! There is no way there’s enough pie to go around – if you’re going to get the pie you need it’s clear that you need to step on people, be ruthless and constantly be looking out for yourself. You must win at all costs!
Sound overblown? Unfortunately it’s not – it’s called a scarcity mentality and most people default to this mentality unless they actively guard against it. Here’s Stephen Covey’s take (from The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People – Habit #4 Think Win-Win):
Most people are deeply scripted in what I call the Scarcity Mentality….
The Scarcity Mentality is the zero-sum paradigm of life. People with a Scarcity Mentality have a very difficult time sharing recognition and credit, power or profit – even with those who help in the production. The also have a a very hard time being genuinely happy for the success of other people.
It’s an insidious problem because it gets worse with fear, so if you start to struggle in your business, you will shift to more of a scarcity mindset, which brings on more fear, less collaboration and ultimately makes all the problems worse!
You start looking at all transactions as a Win-Lose proposition – you have to win and the other person has to lose (‘cause there’s only so much to go around). However Win-Lose relationships aren’t sustainable and you’ll soon find yourself alone against the world wondering why everyone has turned on you!
Overall it’s a pretty bleak picture (especially since we started with apple pie!).
These days more than ever it’s critical that your business stands out from the crowd (for the right reasons).
Recent studies show that an ever growing majority of people are turning to the internet first to solve their problems and buy solutions, services and products. Specifically they’re using search engines like Google.
They’re looking for you, but if they can’t find you…if you’re not standing out, then they’ll go with who ever they can find and you’ll be out a customer opportunity (and an easy one at that since they were ready to buy when they started looking).
The good news is that most small businesses aren’t doing a very good job at building an online presence. For most businesses owners the bar is pretty low – if you do just a couple of things on purpose you could find yourself on the first page of Search Engine results when those customers come a searching. A little creativity and some focus could be all it takes to really ramp up your lead generation.
Below are 8 examples of different ways to stand out online – real businesses, real examples that you can steal borrow from. What could you start doing with your business to stand out?
It’s a Friday afternoon and I thought I would share 3 fun and interesting, but totally unrelated things. The internet is an amazing resource…what is it not capable of?
Item #1 – Accidental Innovation
Most of the time you think about inventors laboring away in the lab, spending years coming up with great ideas and products. However for a lot of products, the innovation actually comes about accidentally.
You may have heard the story about Post-its as an accidental creation at 3M, but did you know that Corn Flakes were totally an accident discovered by the Kellogg brothers in the late 1800s?
Or that the x-ray was discovered accidentally when a fluorescent screen unexpectedly started glowing during an unrelated experiment?
The fun folks over at Business Pundit have pulled together an article on popular products that were invented by accident – you can see it here at the unique origins of 25 popular products!
Item #2 – Unbelievable Photos!
I’m a big fan of photography and the amazing things you can do with Photoshop, but it’s even more amazing to find untouched photos that are unbelievable.
The WebUrbanist has come up with 15 incredible images that look altered but aren’t. As an example, the picture above is actually a reflection on a beach, not a body of water. Cool stuff – check it out.
Item #3 – Google Wave is coming!
Finally, if you haven’t heard about Google Wave, you’re hearing about it now and you’ll be hearing a lot more in the next couple of months. The quick explanation of Google Wave is that it’s a new platform / technology / application that represents what email would be if it were invented today instead of 40 years ago – bringing in all of the real-time collaboration and sharing that people are using in Social Media applications everywhere else.
Confused? Me too – but this video might help you make sense of it (and it’s only 2 minutes long!).
I can see a ton of uses for something like this and with Google’s backing you know it’s going to get a lot of exposure. Stay tuned, it will be interesting.
If you’ve seen some fun stuff lately, share it in the comments below – I’d love to see it.
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You may have heard the story about Post-its as an accidental creation at 3M, but did you know that Corn Flakes were totally an accident discovered by the Kellogg brothers in the late 1800s?
photo by