By the Ocean
Breezy 67 Degrees
4:48 a.m.
If you’ve been around a while, you’ve seen it happen time and time again…
Some new tactic or technique gets discovered for more easily connecting with your prospective buyers or getting a sale to happen… then MARKETERS SHOW UP… and destroy everything.
This is called the strategy of “doing what works.”
Early on, it sounded smart to me. It made you popular if you knew what was working, if you were doing what was working, if you were going “all-in” on what was working. You might get invited to tell everyone else, make a quick buck, and ruin it even quicker!
Back then I had no idea this strategy also made you a slave…and a hamster stuck on a wheel you could never jump off of. No wonder so many of the folks I worked with back then were exhausted. They’d been doing that for years!
These days, it’s easier to see. We’ve dumbed things down enough that you’d have to be sleeping not to notice that “doing what works” in areas like social media makes you a slave to an algorithm that is not alive, that you will never meet, that was created to enrich someone other than you.
Do you want to be a slave? Do you like being told what to do? Do you want to mold and craft your message to please the tastes of a thing that has nothing to do with your prospective buyer?
If you’re playing the long game, “doing what works” seems to be a bad move.
You pay a steep price if you choose that as your primary mode of operation.
Not only will you be entering a race to the bottom with all of the other “do what works” worker bees, but you will also, over time, lose your capability to act in the absence of “what works.” Oops.
What’s the alternative?
Create value where you might, at first, see none.
Instead of doing what works, figure out how to make what you want to do, WORK.
Instead of conforming to this new type of “self-censorship,” figure out how to make WHO YOU ARE… WORK.
Instead of looking “out there” for direction about “what’s working,” develop your belief and capacity to MAKE THINGS WORK in the way you want it to happen.
In other words, throw off the passive role of “doing what works” and assume the creative role of making something that works.
This puts the power back where it belongs…in your own hands.
The only raw materials you start with here are YOU, what you have, human nature, and the desires of the people you want to serve.
Everything else gets made up!
This is what I practice doing every day. Making things up to generate attraction towards the clients I’m helping.
The “do what works” guys are like the martial arts students who only ever learn forms. Do Form A, then Form B. That looks impressive until they get punched in the face and have no idea how to respond.
Principles win. Principles are the building blocks you use to create something unique that works. They allow you to be creative, valuable, powerful. They are the tools you can use to make your own path to “what works.”