Do You Taste Like Chicken?

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

If your business looks, tastes, and smells like any other business or competitor, why would someone work with you? Uniqueness is critical for businesses trying to influence new customers and clients. It’s easy to slip into “same old, same old,” which ends up the equivalent of “tasting like chicken.” This article will show you how to spice up your business.

I remember attending a Wild Game Dinner fundraiser several years ago replete with exotic hors d'oeuvres featuring animals that I was most familiar watching roam the prairies and jungles on the old television series, Wild Kingdom. They served antelope, wild boar, alligator, and cougar. The one thing that I most remember of the experience was hearing the servers proclaim about almost all the offerings, “Don’t worry…. it tastes like chicken.”

That adage has become a part of American culture, whether you’re describing frog legs, kangaroo, or cane toads. Chicken has become the generic standard that we base all other meats to. If it tastes like chicken, we are “safe.”

Here’s the problem. If everything tasted like chicken, it loses that joy of adventure and curiosity. It becomes stale and uninteresting. It’s just chicken.

The very same problem can happen to you and your business. If your customers and target market consider you to “taste like chicken,” then you’ve sunk into the abyss of ordinary and generic. You’re boring. When that happens, your viability is as threatened as a chubby chicken wandering aimlessly in a poultry farm. Dead meat walking.

How do you know if you “taste like chicken?” Consider these 3 signs:

1. You have no new clientele. The same people and businesses use your products and services, yet nobody new seems interested in your work. This appears to be success, yet it’s a fatal trap. No new blood means no energy, no interest, and no sustainability.
2.  You haven’t produced anything new in years. Whether yours is a service or product, stagnation is a killer. The world renowned speaking coach Patricia Fripp has said that sameness is the enemy of a speaker. Sameness is also the enemy of a business. No innovation leads to decline.
3. You live in a culture of “same old, same old.” If that’s your mentality when you get up and go to work; if it’s the mentality of your employees; then you’ve got a serious problem. In the rapidly moving business world brought about by escalating technology and global thinking, being in “same old” mode will get you run over. That chicken trying to cross the road today can’t take the same path he did 10 years ago or he will be road kill.

If any of these signs pervade in your company or in you, then you’re probably beginning to smell like the chicken dinner your grandmother used to prepare. Here are 5 strategies and tactics that you can implement immediately to mix up the menu to bring new flavors and add spice to your world and to your customers:

1. Create new intellectual property or products. Remember what I said about “sameness?” I don’t care what you do or what industry you’re in, you can create something new and exciting to offer your target market audience. It might be a workshop; a newsletter; a free webinar; or a new product that you created to help them when they didn’t even know they needed help! It doesn’t matter initially how successful it is. What really matters is that you have something new to talk about. Do something different than what everyone else is doing!
2. Boost your marketing. In the height of the recession, many small businesses hunkered down and hoarded cash for fear of running out. One of the areas they stopped was marketing. It should have been where they placed MORE resources. Boost your marketing by utilizing more technology, ask for more referrals, send out more press releases; seek out more interviews; and attend more networking events.
3. Fix Your Own Swing. My golf swing is terrible right now. I’ve been golfing for over 30 years and it’s time to get it fixed, so I need a lesson from a pro. Regardless of how long you’ve been in business. You can use your own “swing fix” from a professional coach or mentor. In fact, the longer it’s been since you’ve had one, the more you will need it! You can’t be brilliant or as creative by yourself. Seek help and utilize it to maximize your talent and opportunity. It’s worth the investment.
4. Get Out of the Office. We’ve become too tied down to our desks due to technology. Email has changed how we communicate in good ways (speed of information) and bad ways (stopped actually talking to people). Get out and see people face to face. Visit your best clients and customers. Make phone calls to those that you can’t readily see in person. Business is still about relationships. Remind them of what you look like.
5. Change the Culture. If the chicken taste has seeped into your workforce, it’s time to shake things up. How do you do this? Simple. Make work more fun by challenging your employees to create new things; help them grow personally and professionally; and offer mentoring to them to help them more rapidly succeed.

Bottom line ~ if you are perceived to be chicken, your goose is cooked. The business world demands difference and innovation; speed and accessibility; and technological sophistication and savvy. These are now becoming the new normal and those norms will continue to change and evolve just like menus in the finest restaurants in the world do. Does your business taste like chicken? If it does, don’t despair. You can always change the menu as long as you have the courage to do so. 

Who’s hungry?

© 2014 Dan Weedin. All Rights Reserved

Dan Weedin, CIC, CRM
The Crisis ConquerorP.O. Box 1571 / Poulsbo, WA 98370
http://www.TheCrisisConqueror.com
dan@danweedin.com
360-697-1058

Blog – http://Weedin360.com
LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/in/danweedin
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Skype: danweedin

Inducted to the Million Dollar Consultant™ Hall of Fame – 2012
http://weedin360.com/2012/11/15/the-official-announcement

“Dan’s guidance helped us crystallize our somewhat vague ideas about what we would do in the event of a disaster, into a well-thought out (and written) Crisis Prevention & Disaster Recovery Plan.  We appreciated Dan’s ability to combine his subject matter expertise with an easy to work with approach.  Hopefully we will never experience a disaster, but there is great peace of mind knowing we have a plan in place for that eventuality.” ~ Steve Richardson, CFO AEC, Inc. (Portland, OR)

How’s Your GPS?

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

A few weeks ago, I was driving home with my daughter on the last leg of a week-long, cross-country trip that took us 3,004 miles from her doorstep in Steubenville, OH to our doorstep in Poulsbo, WA. She was coming back home after a 7-year “tour” that resulted in a Masters degree and a job back home. We had used her GPS throughout the trip to guide us to our next destination. I turned it on this last leg home, even though I knew the way because I always like to feel this is my final “destination.”

I was getting frustrated with the GPS as she kept telling me to take an alternate route home. I couldn’t understand it.  After all, I knew where I was going. Heck, I’d driven this stretch of highway a gazillion times.  Why would this electronic device try to take me off my own course?  In jest, I kept telling her that I was simply going to ignore her and go my own way. She had the last laugh.

Turns out the GPS had a built-in sensor for traffic. She was trying to help me avoid a huge traffic jam being caused by the start of a 3-day Independence Day weekend on the Interstate. By the time I realized my mistake, it was too late and I was stuck.

How often does that happen to us?

We think our way is the right way because we’ve done it before; we can do it best by ourselves; we don’t need any help…we’re smart. Just like I laughed off the good advice from the GPS, we also often disregard opportunities to really rapidly advance our careers and improve our lives when we don’t seek help.

Do yourself a huge favor. Find some smart GPS to guide you “home.” Executive coaches and mentors often sense those “traffic jams” that lay in wait ahead of you and can divert you to roads that lead to faster and more effective destinations. You ignore them at your own peril. I wish I had been more humble with that GPS…I would have been home faster.

Are you humble and smart enough to take the right road for your success?

Dan Weedin

Dan Weedin helps turn his clients business risk into rewards. He is able to take the abstract concepts of risk and crisis management to help business owners prepare and respond more effectively and with less time and cost to crisis. Since he doesn’t work for an insurance company or agency, he is able to act as an unbiased advocate for his clients. You can lear ore about Dan and how he can help your business on his web site at www.DanWeedin.com.

Your Achilles Heel

Today we have a guest blog from Dan Weedin:

Last summer, I suffered an injury to my Achilles heel. I’m 49 years old, and for my fellow mid-lifers, it’s a very common malady. After visiting my doctor, I learned that what I actually was suffering from was a condition called Achilles “tendonosis.” The difference between tendonosis and tendonitis is that “isis” is acute, and “osis” means chronic.  Basically, this was an ailment that I would have to be dealing with forever. The good news was that there were some exercises and stretches that I could do that would reduce the inflammation and relieve the pain.

After assiduously following my regimen, the symptoms went away. This year, they popped back up. I had been extending myself with exercise and was beginning to feel a little discomfort. Then I walked the hill from the ferry terminal up to the Washington Athletic Club. Wow! I felt like an old man (and probably looked like one, too). I can blame it all I want on walking hills and overuse, yet the problem was me. I felt better, so I stopped doing what improved it. My Achilles Heel roared back like a lion.

When you have Achilles pain, you discover that it greatly affects your normal walking. I realized that this small part of my otherwise healthy and able body was causing chaos. It was slowing my progress, forcing me to divert to different routes, causing pain, and generally being a nuisance and distraction.

What is your Achilles heel in your business or personal life? My guess is that each of us has blights that keep us from maximizing our talents and value. Something that distracts us, wastes time, causes pain, or just simply creates chaos. This Achilles heel is keeping you from reaching your potential. AND, if you suffer from the chronic “osis,” you’re allowing it to drag on and on, with the danger that you will never fix it and could “rupture” your dreams and passions.

We are all guilty at times of fixing our symptoms and then relaxing when we feel better. Just like the pain in my heel. Yours will also come back to bite you hard if you stop working at it.

The moral of the story is this…Fix it. Fix whatever allegorical Achilles heel you’ve been carrying around before it becomes chronic, or worse, ruptures. The sooner you identify it and then eliminate it, the sooner you will be unleashed from its burden. 

Now, get “walking!”

DAN WEEDIN

Dan Weedin helps turn his clients business risk into rewards. He is able to take the abstract concepts of risk and crisis management to help business owners prepare and respond more effectively and with less time and cost to crisis. Since he doesn’t work for an insurance company or agency, he is able to act as an unbiased advocate for his clients. You can lear ore about Dan and how he can help your business on his web site at www.DanWeedin.com.