Are you creative? Full of ideas, constantly starting projects which you don’t finish?
Watching a video from Seth Godin, author of 13 bestselling books which have been translated 
into over 30 languages, brought home a crucial point.
“What you do for a living is not be creative, what you do is ship.”
What does that mean? Simply that we’re all creative and have lots of ideas. But unless those ideas actually manifest into something tangible, that’s all they remain, ideas.
So it’s not about starting. It’s all about finishing. Taking action. Getting a result. And frankly, that’s the only way you’ll ever be successful at anything.
Let’s take your business marketing as an example.
Which camp do you fall into…
Camp A:
You’re frustrated with all the loose ends. You’re constantly fighting fires. You need to come up creative ideas to get more business in the door.
So you might engage us to work with you. We create lots of promotions, campaigns, whitepapers, sales letters, videos etc.
You love the stuff. But unfortunately, that’s where it ends. When it comes to actually using the material, you either never send it out, or do a half-baked job when you do – and quit in the middle – effectively wasting your investment in time and money.
In effect, you never complete. And the cycle starts again.
And it’s not that you don’t want to finish. Other stuff just comes in the way. Or other people want to make changes at the last moment (see the concept of “thrashing” in Seth’s video).
Lots of creativity, but no shipping – and no results and your business doesn’t grow.
Camp B:
You spend time planning your projects, have a budget and timeframe for completion. You’re focused on taking action and getting results. In effect you don’t start something unless you know you’re going to finish.
And that’s not easy because we’re all creative and love to come up with good ideas. But it takes real discipline to stop and take stock before you commit to a project.
Here’s an example from a current client, a multi-national with its headquarters based in Europe.
Last year they committed to exhibiting at National Manufacturing Week and did everything they needed to, to ensure success. And reported they had the second best trading month in the history of the company in Australia as a result of the focused work we did with them.
This month we created a promotion for some high end (meaning expensive) equipment which is being sent out as we speak.
We meticulously planned out what the deal would be, did the costing’s on the bonuses a buyer would get if they bought by the 31st March, decided who it would go to as an initial test, what the follow up would be and when.
The National Sales Manager then took action and rang the recipients before the letter went out to make sure they were good prospects. And wonder of wonders, had people thanking him for the call and letting him know they were going to place orders even BEFORE the letter went out!
But the part that made me smile the most was when Headquarters Marketing liked the promotion we created so much they wanted to copy it!
This year, they’ve got a huge financial goal – and want to beat every other subsidiary in the world. And you know what? They’ll do it because they plan, take action and ship!
If you’re in Camp A, and you want to break the cycle of frustration, wasting money and opportunity, and are ready to make bold and consistent changes, talk to us.
We’ll go through what you’ve got on the table – look at all your projects, prioritise them and create implementation plans. We’ll work with you to make sure you FINISH what you started so you get results.
Don’t procrastinate, call us on (02) 9499-7958 and engage us to help you.
Rashid.
P.S. We offer a complementary 20 minute consultation on the phone so you can tell us what your issues are and we can decide if we can help you.
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