In the long run, the best way to build ‘your business’ is to me more ‘your’ and less ‘business’.

We’re bored with same old.

This is a thought from Roman Eggenberger, not me, in the comments here: https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7211632109491294209/.

Is your business really your business? As a founder, this question is as important as any you can ask.

For two reasons:

1. Most founders are not confident enough to be their real selves in business. Instead, they turn up as a more polished, sanitised and endlessly more boring and blend-in version of themselves. So, I’d argue, that it is impossible for their business to really be ‘theirs’. Because ‘they’ are not being the real ‘them’. So the business is just some personality-less, cloned thing that they do.
2. Most customers are desperate for founders to be their real selves in business. They crave different, interesting, ‘real’, relatable, polarising and inspiring. Birthed and run by enthusiastic, driven, visionary example-setters doing their life’s work, in the way only they can, in very best way they can.

The good news? Sort ‘1’ out (properly), and you fix ‘2’ too.

Is your business really your business? As a founder, this question is as important as any you can ask.

The best way to master a thing, is to explore, craft, hone and do the thing – yourself. The explore bit is talking and writing about the thing. Talking’s good because it’s fast. Writing’s good because it’s slow.

This week, I helped a sizeable sales team to sell more. By not talking about selling. I prepared two things.

1. A 2-point agenda for the day.
2. A 27-point things-to-talk-and-write-about. In no particular order. In no particular way.

By the end of one day, they were all broadly ‘better’ at sale-making. Each in their own, personal way. Because they talked and wrote about the 27 things.

Here’s the list that, incidentally, I spat out in 5 minutes. (The important bit isn’t the list, it’s where the list takes you. Give it a go. If you like).

Things to explore today. If we want.

1. Why write?
2. How to write.
3. When to write.
4. The importance of having an opinion.
5. What’s your calling card?
6. Don’t look for people to sell to. Look for people that believe what you believe.
7. How to package your thoughts.
8. Good writing versus bad writing.
9. Clarity and simplicity.
10. The best way to set up your personal LinkedIn page (skills and confidence).
11. It may sound contradictory but… No one’s listening. You’re not that important. So you may as well just write.
12. Just telling people stuff versus making them feel something.
13. Inspire. Educate. Entertain.
14. Audiences become customers.
15. What to write on LinkedIn. Core beliefs and opinions, then pillars.
16. How to connect and build an audience on LinkedIn. Starting and joining the right conversations.
17. How and when to publish online. Patterns and process.
18. Building your brand, as a team, online. So we become increasingly desirable – individually and as one. And add value/prominence to our brand.
19. How to think like a publisher, not a marketer. So you build readership first, and customers second.
20. Building and populating a blog.
21. Building and populating a newsletter.
22. The importance of generosity and being useful.
23. Created content versus curated content.
24. Selling that doesn’t feel like selling.
25. The importance of patience.
26. The importance of committing to what you want to do and enjoy, rather than what you think you should be doing. If you don’t enjoy it, you won’t do it. Note, it may be tricky in the beginning.
27. The importance and power of your opinion.