Risks are part of business. So we need to know how to successfully avoid risks. That means that first of all we have to acknowledge the risks facing our projects and whole enterprises. ‘Positive Thinking’ doesn’t eliminate risks, it just naively ignores them. Looking for the risks isn’t ‘negative thinking’; it’s the opposite! It’s only …
Tag: success
Customers are ‘ploggers’
Customers are powerful. We can’t control customers and we can’t control what they say. All we can do is guide them to some extent. We can provide them with the stories they will tell. It’s interesting to look at the progress of this thing called ‘marketing’. Around 50 years ago, marketing communications was all about …
Strategic Marketing avoids Bad Customers
Not all customers are good customers! Strategic Marketing will avoid and deter bad customers. Customers can be bad customers for all sorts of reasons. They can be unprofitable or troublesome. They can waste your time or cause stress. Some interfere too much. Some aren’t worthy of including in your portfolio. Others pay late, or never. …
The ‘3Ms of Marketing’
The best way to illustrate the technique of using the 3Ms of Marketing most effectively is to use a true story. Julie, a jeweller, asked me for some marketing advice. With a limited budget for marketing communications, she couldn’t decide whether to invest in a better website or in a printed brochure to promote her …
Don’t be a ‘busy fool’ – act strategically
Are you a ‘busy fool’? We avoid doing difficult things by occupying ourselves with trivial things. We deal with urgent trivia instead of what’s really important. Keeping busy like this allows us to avoid having to make important decisions. In my work, advising and training hundreds of businesses all around the world, I see too …
Your Competitive Advantage
What’s your Competitive Advantage? Knowing what you can excel at in relation to competitors – and then building your business strategy around that focus – is probably the most important element of any successful business strategy. If you are competing in a market place by offering the same thing as many other rivals, then you …
The Curve: from Free to Superfans
Download and read the free eBook ‘10 Ways to Make Money in a FREE World‘ from Nicholas Lovell, author of The Curve. I’m recommending The Curve to my consultancy clients in the creative and digital industries. This free eBook is a great short introduction to the The Curve. It contains specific references to creative industries …
How to Price a Service or Product in the Creative Industries
Pricing policy has both immediate and long-term consequences on a creative business and has an impact not only on the economics of the enterprise but also on the perception of its products and/or services. In the video and article below, David Parrish offers his advice about how to price a service or product in the …
Ideas are not enough!
One of the points I make in my training workshop ‘How to Make Money While You Sleep’ is that ‘Ideas Don’t Make You Rich”. I quote multimillionaire Felix Dennis, publisher and poet, who wrote in his book ‘How to Get Rich’: “Ideas don’t make you rich, the correct execution of ideas does.” In other words, …
Two kinds of Creativity: a-Creativity and i-Creativity
Creativity is a word that means different things to different people. To solve this problem, David proposes we acknowledge two kinds of creativity: “a-Creativity” and “i-Creativity”. He explains this in his keynote speech at TEDx Napoli. UPDATE: These two kinds of creativity can be used to diversify. “How to use i-Creativity in the Business Office” …