In the last week I have met two coaching clients who both have 3 years old businesses yet their approaches to business are like chalk and cheese.
John enjoys a comfortable job, his company has a regular clientele and he makes steady money - not brilliant but enough.
Poles apart, Paula has created her market, overcoming many barriers and her current income is marginal. In my assessment, her company is on course to make a $million because I see her innovating in three distinct stages.
Be creative in redefining your market and your products
When I work with Paula to help her grow her market, her creativity starts with "quantity before quality". She lets her ideas pour out unselectively as we explore the different profiles of customer that she might sell to, dig into new ways of using and benefiting from her current products and brainstorm the services and complementary products that she could add on to her current sales.
Although the ideas are prolific, Paula is effective in capturing them on paper without rejection. Then as we re-work the list, she plays with each idea: creating an inversion (or two), mixing and matching several ideas, and cross-fertilising diverse ideas to multiply the new ones. Our time goes quickly and working with her so creatively invigorates me!
Use opportunities to think differently
Paula is building her business success by working differently. Whereas her competitors let assumptions hold them back, she has a sharp eye for conventions and habitual ways of thinking and she chooses whether she wants to follow with yesterday's way of doing things.
I queue for printers and photocopiers like everyone else so I was interested that Paula does not: she uses such opportunities to share her ideas with whoever else is there too, trying ideas out on them and asking for their comments.
She enjoys meeting new people, especially potential customers, and imagines "standing in their shoes": she keeps a diary of people she has met and how they have helped her to see her products differently.
Paula also has a panel of 'anti-customers' to review products from alternative perspectives: some of them are hostile (and would never buy from her), some are long term customers of her competitors and she includes just one loyal customer. She values all of their comments.
Get your team to help
When Paula has developed and researched a cluster of new ideas, she gets her team to help evaluate them. She relies on her team member to tune the ideas, and blend them together, until they are feasible.
Then she nominates a project manager to build a change programme and create a workable strategy for putting the finished idea into practice. By the time the project is up and running, her team have done a lot of work on those ideas, the ownership of the outcome is shared and everyone is motivated to make the final idea happen.
I guess in summary, Paula is making her success by embracing and driving change, in her company, in her market and in her customer's lives.
