Be Remarkable

I’m sick of businesses trying to stand out for the same things:

• Friendly
• Approachable
• Whatever your needs
• Cost effective
• High value
• ‘x’ years experience

If your business uses these to stand out, congratulations! You’re doing the complete opposite. Every business says this!

The good news is that it will make it incredibly easy for you to be otherwise – just do what no one else in your industry is doing – usually the opposite.

How are we trying to be remarkable? Accountants are labeled as old, boring, traditional and stuck in their ways. To a point this is true. It’s probably known to be the most boring professional in the world. What do we do? We’re young, cool, fresh and creative, in all we do. How many accountants say that? Not many at all.

Imagine a Hair Salon, completely free. Professional stylists cut your hair, give you a coffee, nice chat etc. that all other salons do, but it was entirely free; doesn’t cost you a penny. It sounds insane, but put that to one side open your mind and imagine you came up with some use for human hair that you could sell/use for some reason and that’s how you made your money. That would be a truly remarkable concept. Other salons would be forced to adapt or die.

Look at Facebook; an entirely new concept, free to the world. The growth Facebook saw was truly remarkable, no doubt about it.

There’s a book called ‘Purple Cow’ by Seth GODin (purposeful uppercase). In it he talks about being remarkable and gives a good analogy. Travelling on a motorway in France he sees cows all along the motorway. He finds it interesting. All these brown cows so close to the fast traffic. Then, two miles later, he’s sick of brown cows. Brown cow, brown cow, brown cow. They become boring.
Suddenly, he sees a purple cow. Wow! He’d stop, get out and probably take a picture stood next to it and tell everyone he knew. It would be remarkable.

Is your business a purple cow? Or just another brown cow?