I wrote about ten intro versions for this article, then I decided to replace them with a straightforward one – I would love March to be about more than postcards, happy wishes, rivers of flowers, retail campaigns, and sunny selfies.
I would love us to be able to talk about women without turning it into a fight or drama of some kind, to confront reality without complaining, to look at each other in admiration, not awe or judgment.
A while ago I asked my niece, who is three years old, what princess would she like to be and loves most. And her answer was „Me!”. She is her favorite princess, but not because she is vain, but because she does not understand why she would need to be or imitate somebody else!
And that was a bit of a surprise for me. I grew up with the poor habit of comparing myself to others and continuously coming second. Others were always better, prettier, more natural, more disciplined, stronger, funnier, etc
That is why I wanted to make this month about more than wishing you a great Spring. I want to bring forward womanhood at its best. I want to share those voices that inspire and support many, pioneer roles, and stand for something greater than themselves every day.
And to start this topic, I want to share a few favorite topics:
Do you remember what you wanted to be as a child? Was it something you truly desired or that somebody told you that would be awesome to be, like a doctor or a policeman?
Moreover, when you decided to do something else, less common in your family or group, how did those around you react? Did you feel support? Did you feel discouraged?
Of course, they did the best they knew and could. This article is not about judging, as I just mentioned above. I respect the work our parents and their parents did for us to get here. What I want to focus on is us, now, our present, our decisions, our reactions. We choose every day to fold under or to rise from our habits, our less helpful beliefs. And we choose every single day if we make them last, or we make them lost.
You might say this is important for parents. But it isn’t. This is vital for humans. All humans, of all genders and on all continents. We all have generations before us that survived helped by stories. As time passes, those stories become legends, traditions, cultural reflexes. So you have to choose every day what you nurture – limits or limitlessness.
We spend so much time running from failure. Have you ever stopped to ponder why? One theory is that we fear failure because we integrated the belief that „failure” = „shame”.
I was talking the other month with a client and friend, who was working herself to exhaustion in order to finish a project she has started. She is a mother, a wife, a (great) friend, a sister, a daughter, a manager on maternity leave, and recently an entrepreneur. Her career was a long and tiring fight not to fail others, not to be less than anybody expected of her. She is truly great, but unfortunately, she is also truly frightened by failure, by critics, by the shame of disappointing. That fear has haunted her and wore her down, despite her constant performance.
In one of our sessions, the subject of making sure everything runs perfectly with her new business came up. She was worried that she might do something wrong. That somebody might not be happy. That she might not have the right visual, the most appealing text, the best targeting. She was worried that she would fail. Somewhere in her list of possible dangers I stopped her and told her:
START FAILING! Do it! Even more, enjoy it! You are so new to this that every mistake you do now is a shortcut to growing. Failing will point out what needs improvement in your brand, your product, or yourself.
Failing can be exciting, and failing constantly will keep you in the area of failing small, exploring, and discovering. Running from failure keeps you in a state of fear, narrows your sight, your mind, and your life. Of course, this doesn’t happen just by reading my advice, the best self-help book, or the best guide in the world. This happens in time, by paying attention to yourself. It takes a lot of kindness to change the perception of mistakes to be pals and not enemies.
Perfection is a lie. We know this and yet, we fall for this. We would love to have the house in the movies that dust never settles in. The perfectly clean white carpets, that kids seem to play on and somehow never put the smallest spot on. The ideal mood of calm and serenity at all hours, with all people, on all topics. We want to be:
This list is endless. No joke. ENDLESS!!!
If these are hopes, aspirations, objectives, it’s great. Especially if they are prioritized and selected from the list, and you don’t aim for everything, every time, all day. However, if you turn them into evaluation (or judgment criteria) then things turn painful very fast. You will feel less for not achieving an impossible goal. And what’s even stranger is that you set those goals for yourself. In other words, you are punishing yourself to be Sisyphus.
I am sure some of these aspects are not new for you. And the point of this article was not to innovate. I wrote it to remind you (and myself) that you always have at least two choices: to do what’s best for you or to just know what that is. What do you choose today?
Planning is for sure the word of the month. Every start of the year makes us set goals, draft deadlines and dream a little.
Besides being a very good incentive to buy notebooks, planning is also a stage that helps our brain prepare and distribute its resources. In order for this stage to have the desired impact, a few criteria need to be met when making a plan, especially one that involves an organization.
Even if you are sure you have the best plan in mind, take a moment to think about your HOWs and what some alternative routes to your destination might be.
Let’s say you want to start your writing career by publishing your first book this year. You have your topic all set and you think the best plan is to simply plan 6 hours of writing every day until you meet your goal.
Now, here are some alternatives. The biggest challenge is probably drawing the characters, context, and plot. After that, the story might grow naturally. So an alternative would be to focus more resources on having the structure ready, then allowing yourself time for inspiration and learning. Let’s say 1 month of full-time writing work, with the following months of less pressure.
Another approach would be to write down key information that should be in your book. Then draft a timeline and plan your working schedule based on each module or chapter. 20 hours on the intro, 112 on chapter one, etc.
Thinking about alternatives may offer you new perspectives on your plan. And, most importantly, it allows you to test drive your initial idea by asking your brain to confront it with different options.
Thinking about the macro before the micro allows you to divide attention and effort. You will no longer have to think about everything at the same time. You only need to work on what your current phase is.
To continue the previous example, thinking about all the details in the book all the time might lead to never writing it. However, breaking it in chapters and main events will direct your focus and creativity on one topic at a time. Another great benefit is that having this structure will remove the pressure of uncertainty. What should I write next? What should I do now to grow my business? How should I develop my employer branding to recruit the best employees? The unknown is a strong stress factor and removing it will push your efforts further instead of consuming valuable energy.
To start, find the biggest steps or phases in your project. If nothing else comes to mind, use a classic Prepare – Deliver – Evaluate&Learn framework. Then write down the main steps or actions to be done for each. When this stage is over, take each phase and plan in detail the objectives, actions, stakeholders, and resources.
If you are planning a project you are very enthusiastic about, you will definitely have a million ideas in mind about how things should go: the presentation materials, the title of the first email, the look and feel for the landing pages, the channels, a video script, the design of the room to have a business shooting, the outfit maybe.
Your brain will love these details. They are candy for it because it allows it to focus on the aspects it wants and loves. But too much sugar is bad. And so are too many details. If you focus so much on the little things you risk missing the big picture.
As an entrepreneur or project owner, your role is to sail everybody to success, not to drive the project into the wall because the details are not perfect. After all, perfection is just a sisyphic chore.
Pretty basic, right? How many times have you sent a meeting invite or set an alarm?
Yet practicing this in project management is rare. The reminders I am referring to are however not detail-oriented. They are not the „buy toothpaste” or „pay cable” kind of reminders. They are timeline-oriented, meant to let you know when you are about to enter a new stage of the project. A timeline reminder would be: „you have entered the last five days of project drafting” or „you entered the execution phase. For the next 25 days, your goal is to deliver this webinar to over 200 people.”
Having these reminders set very early in the project will help you and your team with an extra automated project manager. Plus, you can structure them so that you offer a little extra motivation as well. Imagine you would receive a reminder saying: „You’ve done a great job so far. Keep it up and we will get to our goals in no time!”
Know how your destination looks like. Feel it, then break it into objectives and indicators that motivate and help you navigate.
Knowing that you want to have a book on the market is important. And to get there answer yourself some further questions:
how many pages will the book have?
how many copies do I want to sell in the first round?
what is the number of pages I will write daily to have the book done in a year?
what readership will my online free chapter have?
how much money will I make from this book?
Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) are generally measurable so that you can easily track across time. Sometimes breaking a phase into something measurable is challenging but it helps revealing specific actions and resources invested. How do you measure the awareness your project or brand has? What do you guide yourself in order to say your popularity has increased or decreased compared to last year?
These 5 recommendations to plan a great year can easily move to a list of twenty. But it is not the size of the list that matters, but the thought behind it: always search to simplify your work and your life. When it’s easy to do a good job, you might find yourself naturally doing a great one.
Performance is not about effort, but about energy invested wisely.
Today we celebrate. Be it with a post, a thought or a walk to see the marches, today we make a little time to honor our heritage. On this day we are remembered that we are not simple inhabitants of this geographic space. After all, the place we populate shapes us as much as we shape it.
I looked a lot for a picture that talks about my country and my people. One that is relevant, actual, and depicts the most beautiful side of our nation. And none seemed to be more appropriate that this amazing human flag, during the protests last year. It was in Victoria Square that I regained my national pride, surrounded by solidarity, common sense, intelligence, humor, and power. Peaceful but constant, these protests proved WE CAN STAND TOGETHER.
I saw in that square children empowered and impressed, couples holding hands and holding their ground for justice, progress and fair play. I saw at least three generations agreeing on how their country should look…will look.
It is to those Romanians that fight for what they think it’s right that I want to thank. Even if your way to protest is by refusing to raise your shoulders or stay indifferent, you are the Romanian I am proud to be sharing my country with. You might not hit the headlines, but now I know you are there, in thousands if not millions. And I have hope that one day that is what the majority will look like.
To you, my dear Romanians, I want to wish a proud 1st of December.
Foto credentials: Wall Street Journal
After a great launch last year, 2019 Rebels & Rulers was built around brand culture, and it brought together a nice list of guests. Good presentations, nice beat, and memorable case studies. This is the very short presentation of this 2-day branding event.
But before I move to tell you more about the insights I got from this event, I have to tell you a different „revelation” that surfaced in a conversation with a friend and fellow attendee. It is about making things happen, which besides being part of my slogan, it’s also a big driver for me. I like to get involved and move things forward. In this case, it was about attracting what you wish for.
To shorten the intro, I won a double invitation for this year’s edition, which I really wanted to go to. More, in the event, I won what is possibly a ticket for 1 day in the 2020 edition. So the feedback was: wow you are lucky! And I am, I truly am. But I went back after a while and revisited my path. I did not find those tickets on the sidewalk or got them randomly in my inbox. I asked around to see if anybody had invites already or was interested in a group discount, I searched for alternatives and I signed in for a contest. To put it in other words – in order to make the magic work you have to work the magic.
One of my key takeaways from this marketing event is that if you want to build a solid brand, you need to base it on authentic beliefs, values, and actions. Not on well-phrased promises or headlines.
You need years to create a reputation. It will probably require a lot of failures until you find the format that works for you. You will have to learn constantly, remain constant, and be dedicated throughout all the fog and uncertainty that lies ahead before you can reach the shiny shore of success. It rarely simply happens to a brand, if it does not stand or fight for something.
„Beliefs take a long hard look inside.”
Eric Solomon, NOVIO CMO
It sounds obvious when you hear it the first time, but going through a few cases studies like the fight Patagonia brand is carrying to save natural reservations and the courage it takes to go against the president is rare in all markets, but it’s worth standing by financially as well. Statistics show Millenials are willing to spend more money on and be loyal to brands that walk their talk. Perhaps the era of „try to look pretty for the media” is closing to an end. And I say that as a marketing professional, not just a consumer.
To circle back to my story, it might not be enough to want something. You have to believe in it, to work for it and sometimes to fight for it.
It might sound over-ambitious to say that advertising writes history. But it depends a lot on what you understand by advertising. I am not talking about those ads to newly opened online stores that make you delete all accounts and stop using Google. Plus, there is already an advertising museum in New York and Tokyo, as well as a Museum of Brands in London.
The reason I am so confident in the impact brands can have is not related to any public institution. It is the result of two observations:
consumers are starting to demand more responsibility and honesty from brands
the shorter the attention span, the better and more consistent an ad has to be
If you do the same as everybody else, the overall commercial noise will cover your message faster than waves wipe up footsteps in the sand. So the choice is clear, but the solution is not simple. I will not lie and say it is within every brand owner to think super creative campaigns. But it is within their power to stay relevant and vertical in their business practice.
Not to stray too much from the subject, I have another case study I want to share with you. I hope you will like it as much as I did: The Immigrant Songs.
The basic idea of the campaign was to offer access to legal information to a disadvantaged social category. For that, the agency used an existing channel and a familiar form of entertainment. The agency transferred legal advice into songs and used radio to broadcast it in the region. Smart and impactful, I would say!
At the end of the conference, I took a moment to see how everything I learned or discovered in these two days would help Coach4Marketing. And the answer was easy – I felt inspired. It was not as much about the theoretical concepts as it was about substance and possibility. It was about creating a solution where there is none yet or it takes too long to find. About changing perspective, but maintaining core values at all times. And most of all, it was about building a business that has a positive impact.
After all, that is why I became an entrepreneur and why my job is to stand by people’s dreams and make sure they land safely on that bright success shore.
I love writing. I feel it gives me the magical ability to bring things from my imagination into „reality” and the other way around. But when it comes to choosing the words to make this happen, well…it can be less magical at times.
In marketing, words are assets. The right headline, the correct description, the most persuasive selling points, the most efficient message all rely on accessing this resource quickly and with precision.
But writing is much more than an instrument. It is a bridge, that allows us to connect, to understand and to express ourselves, to stay in touch. Pouring meaning into shapes of intention and hope is what makes it so special and socially indispensable. And although it might seem strange, good marketing is very similar.
I started Coach4Marketing because I want to transform the meaning and knowledge I held precious into a practical and personal solution. My goal is to support and share growth, stand by the amazing people who take a leap of faith towards what they love and assist them in turning their dreams into reality. If you want to know about me, you can read my story and share your own in a comment.
Partly, I want to do this because I too have done that big jump into the unknown, having nothing but the certainty that I should be doing something I love. So I know how it feels to be overwhelmed, to know what you should do but be totally confused about how to actually get around to doing it. I have felt myself the conflict between the promising theory and the demanding reality.
This blog is about work and belief, not about 1,2,3 – now it’s all done/ gone. It is about your journey and mine, and millions of stories that happen by joining forces.
To sum it all up, I believe in you and your dreams. So just browse around and have fun!
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