I nearly cheated

Sometimes (and if you’re doing this entrepreneurial thing properly—most of the time!) you will have a ‘crazy idea’ and someone will respond with “Really? Are you sure?”

Of course you’re not sure?! But are you certain?—yes!

You can be unsure that something is going to work, unsure that it’s going to be easy, unsure it’s exactly what people will want it, but you can be absolutely certain that you’re going to do it anyway!

We all do it.

We think that we ‘don’t know much’, or that we only know ‘what everyone else knows’. This is the blight of ‘common sense’ :)

Sometimes it takes a new situation, a meeting in a new context, or simply being asked the right questions, for you to realise what you DO know and that it IS of value and that YOUR common sense isn’t everyone else’s.

If you’re in the business of helping people, or another business, move forward or make change or just do something differently, chances are you need to push some buttons to make that happen.

And I’m not talking about giving them a gentle poke and running away—I am talking about ‘in your face challenging them about what’s working, what’s not working and HELLO? WHAT WERE YOU THINKING?’ button pushing.

I was reminded again at the weekend (I am being Masterminded by Jonathan Jay) how important is it to be unique in business. We were talking about USPs, and why a business owner must know what their USP is before they can market their business with success.

USP stands for Unique Selling Point, or Unique Sales Proposition. I was reminded how hard it is to define these — to really make them totally unique.

It is quite easy to come up with a USP only to realise under scrutiny that it’s not, in fact, unique and could easily be applied to other businesses. So it was good to have the Mastermind group of business owners challenging each other to be unique.

Sometimes we are so involved with the journey and activity of our business we forget where we are heading.

When you love what you do (as is always the case when you are doing your Thing) it’s easy to do it a lot and get busy. But busy-ness without direction can mean taking your eye off your goals.

Where I do my Thing is hugely important to me. And it might be for you to.

The way you know it’s important is how you feel when you’re doing your Thing in different places. If some places don’t feel right, or you don’t feel you can fully ‘do’ your Thing there, then you’re probably a ‘where’ person too.