Tip 70: Shake things up

Forget thinking outside the box. Get rid of all the boxes. You don’t need them. Change the industry. To heck with the status quo. Do things differently. Your customers will love you for it.

Examples

  1. Dick Fosbury did it when he invented a new and more effective approach to the high jump, deemed the Fosbury flop.
  2. Gary Vaynerchuk did it to when he launched Wine Library TV and changed the way people looked at and talked about wine.

Suggestions

  1. Look outside your industry for tips, best practices, and ideas that you can translate back to your business. By gaining inspiration in a place different from where all your competitors are looking, you’ll get lots of ideas for how to do things differently.
  2. Get comfortable with figuring things out as you go. The path to shaking things up isn’t necessarily smooth sailing. It’ll take some trial, error, and tweaking as you go along. But once you develop a winning formula, stepping away from the status quo will pay beaucoup dividends.

Application for your business

  1. Brainstorm three activities in your business that could benefit from a little shake-up in terms of you do it.
  2. Write down five organizations that are completely unrelated to yours that you admire their approach in certain areas.

Previous tips

1-22. Section 1: Build a relationship with your customers (series)

23-48. Section 2: Make your customers’ lives better (series)

49-62. Section 3: Reward your customers (series)

63. Be cool (code for be yourself)

64. Love what you do (and let it show)

65. Give your business some G.A.S.

66. Have awesome people

67. Take care of your awesome people

68. Be remarkable

69. Be memorable