When you position yourself in the market as infallible, you’ll stop taking risks in order to avoid looking bad, and this will be the beginning of your end.
Staying relevant is so important in business. You must be at the front of people’s minds every day and all of the time.
The best way to do that is to always be trying something new or cool, and creating an atmosphere where people want to know what you’re up to and how it’s going.
Take a listen to my latest podcast.
Transcript:
When you position yourself in the market as infallible, you’ll stop taking risks in order to avoid looking bad, and this will be the beginning of your end.
Staying relevant is so important. You must be at the front of people’s minds every day and all of the time.
The best way to do that is to always be trying something new or cool, and creating an atmosphere where people want to know what you’re up to and how it’s going.
I remember working alongside an overseas marketing guru once. He was so afraid to do anything risky that would upset his position in the market that had any blemish to it whatsoever.
He had such a high opinion of himself that he had positioned himself in such a way that it made it VERY difficult to make a mistake.
Think about your positioning in your marketplace. As you position yourself as an authority or expert, how are you going to set parameters for yourself? Obviously, this depends upon your profession – if you are a dentist or a beauty therapist you probably want to be technically excellent but if you are in more forgiving professions you can perhaps be a bit more fallible.
For me for example, I am in the imperfect area of marketing, I’ve picked a positioning standpoint that allows me to try things risk things and at times fail but learning from each of these without I believe lowering my status.
I am being me – open and honest and in doing so created a character that simply tries to share all the risks and the flops but emphasising what I have learned from them.
I remember vividly seeing this in action when I was working for a family property developing company that was being viewed as a take over target by a major National player. Whilst all of us lieutenants in the transaction were outing on our best performance and appearing really certain as to what we did – our founder, our boss – the owner was being himself warts and all and in doing so – not only did he land the deal but he came over so sincere, so worldly, so experienced, so capable with dealing with all sorts of things that the National company not only bought his family business but quickly moved to have our guy lead the whole company.
This is how this podcast began.
It is an unedited, raw look at the inner workings of Peter Gianoli —a human who loves to try new things and learn along the way. There’s no sugar coating.
In some episodes, it’s clear I or my clients are having a win and I want to share with you why this has happened – what is working whilst at other times I will share with you what I am grappling with. No matter what, I want to share the real truth because this is consistent with my positioning.
This allows me to take big risks, stay relevant, and keep my status intact.
So, if you can from a profession point of view – don’t enter the marketplace as the infallible guru. It’s the fastest way to fall to the bottom and become irrelevant.
Pick a position that allows you to fail and get back up again.
