How is it December? I mean, did someone figure out how to collapse the space-time continuum? Hmmm…interesting thought. What would you do if you could?
What if you could pick any point in your life, in your business, career, in your love life?
What if you could go to a specific moment in time and shift ONE thing, without any of the messy ripple effects that science tells us would inevitably occur?
What would it be?
I’m a girl of the 80s so I have PLENTY of moments to choose from.
I’m also a recovered marketer, which adds to the selection of vignettes that could be re-written.
And, I have also spent about a decade ‘reinventing’ myself (part of the recovery process) often feeling as though I just couldn’t stop shaking the snowglobe…more rewrites.
It’s an interesting exercise, one I use with my clients who are wrestling with finding their ‘brand’…of course, as a recovered marketer I don’t call it that; I use words that feel more human, like creation, contribution and so on.
The process can be fun (and yes, it has been challenging for, especially for those who work with others in challenging places) but here’s the Endgame behind it and why it’s worth it.
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We can’t stop time.
We can’t go back in time.
We can’t rewrite the past and…that’s the WHOLE point.
It is the SUM of our experiences – the good, the bad and the ugly – that make up our unique, individual ‘creation’ or contribution, inside our business.
It is all the micro moments that we sometimes WISH we could rewrite that become the real point of intersection that can unite us with our customers.
Whether the customers you work with are ‘B2B’ or ‘B2C’, there are elements from your journey that intersect with theirs.
I work with a diverse array of business people – from coaches, naturopaths and plumber, to downstream business services – like graphic designers, accountants, virtual assistants – and beyond.
And this has played out each time.
It’s not necessarily the WHOLE of your journey but there is always, at least one moment, from within all the micro moments that galvanizes itself and gets woven into the core of your contribution, what we create in and through our business.
I know what you’re thinking, this is business, not personal.
Our customers choose us based on what we can do for them, based on our competency…nothing else.
Hmmm…interesting thought and I think intuitively we know this isn’t the whole story.
I also think it’s going to be something that gets put to the test over the next decade, as consumers (that’s us) really start to look at who they are doing business with.
It’s not new, we’ve been seeing the shift for 20 years (maybe longer) and we’ve been feeling the tug ‘o war for decades…as businesses grew bigger and created arms length relationships, we adapted…we didn’t like it but we adapted…and we’re recalibrating each time something in the macro world shifts.
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Let’s start with the seismic shift that Napster set off in the music industry, in 1999.
One industry found itself turned upside down and inside out and for a couple of years after, there was a lot of uncertainty, frustration and polarized positions. The music industry just wasn’t prepared to have their world rocked, the way Napster rocked it.
Then, things began to settle and even as they settled, the impact created a ripple throughout multiple aspects of business (movies, DVDs and more)
New entrants came into the market, like Apple with iTunes. A tent was erected and the circus contained.
If you look at KEY inflection points from 1999-2002, the metrics that I think are most important SHIFTED…specifically, Share of Revenue to Artists started to climb.
Trendlines for those who are and have been directly connected to the creation of music increased.
Last month, I shared some insights from a book written just after the 2009 U.S. housing crisis. I shared a few of the most important, relevant and significant parallels between what ‘we’ did and how our values shifted then, in the wake of that crisis and how many of those same shifts showed up in 2020.
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So let’s tie this together.
It’s the SUM of our experiences that point us to our contribution (and the community of customers we are best suited to work with) AND we cannot go back in time.
We have tremendous power at our fingertips to look back through our recent (and ancient) past for wisdom and reassurance.
Whether you look to 2009, 2000, the late 1800s and the Industrial Revolution or the 15th century and the Italian Renaissance; no matter what 2020 looked like we have every reason to believe that we are on the cusp of a creative period of time.
That, those who are directly related to the CREATION of things, bringing their own key experiences into those creations (contributions, etc.) – the way musicians do – well, I’ll let you consider the likely outcomes.
In the Science of Getting Rich, written in 1903 by Wallace D. Wattles, there is a great line of text, he says:
“You are to become creators, not competitors. You must get rid of the thought of competition. You are to create, not compete for what has already been created.”
So what are the experiences that are indelibly connected to the work you do (or the work you want to do, would love to do and maybe even, feel that you are here to do)?
How can those experiences enable you to CREATE something new, something different, something that has not yet been created?
I’ll give you a hint based on what I found after a lengthy Eat Pray Love journey…
There is nothing new under the sun…except you (and me) and…who we are is what we have to offer.
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What I saw repeated over and over again, in the midst of all the micro moments of 2020 was that we are finding our way forward.
We are finding our way, the way we did during the Renaissance, the Revolution, the 2000 music recalibration and 2009 shift, as a business community, as a community of local businesses and as a global community…
…and, we are finding it, our way – our own individual, gloriously original way, in the midst of all those macro moments.
And that’s the whole point.
Listen to more in one of my first podcasts – Three Keys • Are You an Original?
Explore more of how I support the smallest SMBs in the MICRO moments at www.becomingcoherent.com
Tricia Murray is strategic guide, speaker, author, and podcast host whose core community is built around change-makers, agents of change and game-changers. She connects the smallest of SMBs to more, and her ‘people’ go on to create more, experience more and create the experience of more inside their business & beyond it.
Her hybrid approach incorporates DIY, group and 1:1 guided pathways each designed to strategically simplify that which has been made incredibly complicated, especially for solo and micro business owners. Her process is backed by universal and timeless wisdom from both science and spiritual traditions, and enables individuals to tune in, sync up and amplify the change they want to create and experience – inside the business & beyond.
Explore more @ www.becomingcoherent.com
Create the experience of more in an upcoming event • https://bit.ly/bci-events-triciamurray
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