Ideas Are Like Slippery Fish - Spear Them With a Pencil Before They Get Away!

Last Friday I was sitting with a, sort of, prospective marketing and writing client.

There was no agenda or rigidity as such. Just shooting the idea breeze, as it were.

And the amazing thing that happens when you have no real agenda, no real clue as to where you're heading, the almost miraculous can happen.

If you take a look at that piece of paper above, in the top left is my one hour or so meeting. (The rest of the doodles and scribbles are... other meetings!)

Now here's what's super instructive about this: my prospective client had a number of ideas in how to market his product and services. And they were good.

So when he saw me think, ask questions, process a number of thoughts and then take those ideas that were running about in my mind and scribble them down onto that piece of harmless, scrunched up paper, he was gasping for breath when he saw the little tiny blueprint I created for him.

I really didn't know what was going to materialise from our conversation from the outset.

That's what my good friend and author Steve Chandler says about creating from where you are - miracles can happen right where you are, in the current moment.

How true.

Here's what's key: if all I did was deliver those ideas and let them swim around in the atmosphere for the time we were together, and did nothing more but try to remember them at some future date, we'd both be saying... "what they heck can you remember about our meeting?"

Of course, the answer being... a BIG FAT NOTHING!

Ideas are so fleeting and so delicate that if we don't spear them with a pencil and grab them with all our might, they'll sail away into the vast ocean of life... never to resurface in their original form again.

Marketing ideas, business ideas, writing ideas, coaching ideas, fearless living ideas... they are all waiting to be created and pounced on.

Do it... get your notepaper and pencil and create your world!

(Oh, and as an aside, when you really DELIVER your stuff, people want to buy into it. I mean, they really want to buy into it!)

Great Products & Services - Crapiola Marketing & Advertising

Why On Earth Would a Business or Company Go To The Trouble & Effort to Create Fabulous Products and Services And Then Support it With Shoddy Creative Thinking and Lacklustre Marketing & Advertising?

There’s no two ways about it: there’ a marriage of incompetents working together in perfect harmony.

What am I talking about?

I’m talking about small to medium business owners or the head honcho at a mega goliath company, and... the nitwit marketing and advertising people they’ve hired.

(An god help them if they’re in-house bods given a license to run amok and create marketing and advertising that’s based on some creative voodoo and a swagger of laziness that’s billboarded for the whole world to see!)

But how come a business owner, someone who’s somewhat entrepreneurial, sharp and savvy, commit their products and services to such shambolic cavorting by the crazies at most marketing and ad agencies?

See if this (is it tongue in cheek!) dialogue, doesn’t hit home -

“Oh I see, it’s because of the market conditions that we’re not doing so well in our sales! Oh, now I get it. I’m sorry, I thought it had something to do with the rubbish marketing material you’ve created for us… oh, now I get it, thanks for pointing that out to me. Now I know that next time there’s a tank in sales or that we’re spending a mint on ‘creative advertising’ and nothing happens, it’s because of the market place and nothing else… oh, there’s a big revelation for me… thank you for pointing that out and making me aware of all that… I’d never have known and I’d still have been cloaked in darkness for months and months and months!”

And… let’s see now, I don’t think that there isn’t ANY product or service which this lunacy type marriage hasn’t affected.

Think about the many closures, business busts, job cuts, product recalls that is happening all around – doesn’t matter what industry or business category – most could have been saved or eliminated altogether if the marketing was more than just a limp wheeze in the park.

Look at the software, financial, professional services, automobile advertising, and even, (you’ve guessed it) marketing services!! – I mean, it’s an all round shamble.

Adult men and women, working for ad and marketing agencies, being paid good money for coming up with campaigns and promotions that are drop dead BORING. And, by the looks of things, conjure up their lazy, unbelievably dumb and woefully inadequate ‘masterpieces’ by challenging themselves to see how dumb they really can be.

And, they are quite frankly, succeeding, wonderfully at the expense and misery of their hapless and oh so accepting, clients.

Solution?

Well, there’s nothing quite like a climb up a ladder that’ll help these poor misguided souls.

Of course, the ladder is a metaphor for the frazzled souls (and that includes both the ad ‘pros’ and the business owners succumbing to all the promotional and so called, ‘creative’, madness) being advertising victims at the lowest level on the scale of human consciousness. And the goal – is to climb to the top of the ladder where real creativity, solutions, and spirited imaginative insight, all reside.

It’s where being a true OWNER of the creative process, happens.

Next time you’re thinking about creating a promotion for your products or services, ask yourself, (or get whoever is charged with the responsibility to create your marketing assets) I mean really put the campaign under the process of inquiry and say…

“Am I really serving the customer or client with this communication, with this conversation, with this email, with this promotion… in the most creative, the most beneficial, the most exciting and most truthful way that I can?”

If your answer to that question is YES, (on a regular and continual basis) then my friend, you’ll be raking in a bundle.

And, if your answer to that question is NO, then, it’s a blast of brutal honesty time for you - for, you can do a few things.

You can fix things by aiming to get to the highest rung on the ladder of ownership and create, from there.

Or… you can do nothing and forget the question ever entered the receptive part of your brain.

Or… you can carry on regardless, letting the marriage deepen, deepen, deepen into a relationship where mediocrity reigns and where making a veritable bushel at the expense of the client is the HUSH HUSH mantra on the inside grapevine.

If you’re in a position of power and influence in your business or company, don’t let incompetence and mediocrity rule. Your products and services deserve better, so much better.

Raja C. Hireker
http://marketingandlifechangecoaching.com/
http://sellingtotherich.com/

Don't Be Hard on Yourself if You're Not Getting The Results You Want...

"Aaaargh... I'm not reaching the goals I thought I wanted to... there's got to be something wrong with me!"

In one way or another, I hear the above statement... a lot.

The number of people who have probably sentenced themselves to a life of everlasting chaos and turmoil because of feeling that something's WRONG with me, is pretty frightening.

However, if you, or anyone you know find themselves in this particular situation, there's a simple ANTIDOTE - and that is to realise that you're simply NOT COMMITED enough!

And I know that some reading this may find that it's some sort of personal defect, that they're travelling backwards by thinking and admitting that NOT COMMITED.

Let me tell you that it's NOT A DEFECT. You're not travelling backwards.

What this is all about is the fact is that you're... TELLING THE TRUTH!

Wouldn't it be great to know that if you're not passionate and commited about something, that you then have no false hopes about what you say you want?

Wouldn't it be insightful to know that if you wanted to grow and market your business to higher levels, but you're NOT actually growing it, that it's because you're not commited to doing so. You don't REALLY want to do it.

If you're totally frustrated and yanking your hair out because you're not achieving the health and physique you want, just simply own the fact that you really don't want to have the physique and health do you want... YET!

Once you get clear on that. Once you're really comfortable with the idea that you're not really commited yet with what you want, then you now have the opportunity to OPEN THE DOORS OF YOUR MIND and CREATE the commitment you want to get the outcomes you want... in ANY area of life you desire.

There's a freedom and freshness, a zest to life when we acknowledge, admit and dig deep to know we're not living with COMMITED INTEREST...and then, guess what... we can really achieve whatever we want... ONCE WE CHOOSE TO DO SO!

Get COMMITED FIRST - then, make things happen!



Raja C. Hireker
Personal Success & Business Coaching
Refusing to buy into people's limitation of themselves

http://raja-hireker.blogspot.com/
http://RajaHireker.com