Think BIGGER

Whatever you’re doing now, it’s the perfect time for you to take things up a notch. Your business hasn’t reached its full potential yet. You know that because the sky is the limit. Really.

Getting started with anything can be a struggle, but once you reach a certain level of success, it can be hard to figure out how to make whatever it is you do truly remarkable. The things we do have a way of developing their own inertia, and if we’re not careful, we get carried along in the routine without ever realizing the full potential of what we and our lives can be.

What can you do to push the envelope? What do you have to do to take your project, your career, your product, or your life to the next level?

1. Build Your Brand

The strength of your brand is how well you are associated with whatever you do. For example, Kleenex is synonymous with “tissue” . When someone asks for a “Kleenex” they mean tissue. Think about the brand “Band-Aid”. Now that’s a pretty strong brand. How strongly is your name linked with what you do?

Here are some tips to help you link them more strongly:

• Traditional marketing: Commercials, print ads, billboards, bus wraps — anything that gets your name and message in people’s faces.
• Blogging: A blog is a conversation with your audience, and can help build up a loyal following that actually cares about what you do.
• Cultivate influencers: Hard to create and hard to fake, but very effective. Seek out people with a great deal of influence and focus on convincing them of your value.

2. Build Your Audience

Make a substantial effort to increase the number of people who know about you. Branding is part of this, but it’s not all of it. Give something away, find a new media platform, tell everyone you meet what you do, hand out business cards wherever you go, show up at conferences and exhibitions . Make yourself useful so people have a compelling reason to pay attention.

3. Increase Your Content Production

Give your audience more of what they’ve come to expect from you. Set goals to at least double your content production. Do whatever it takes to make yourself more productive. Put systems in place to help you do whatever you do in half the time — then halve it again.

4. Expand or Narrow Your Market

Do what you do now but with a wider outlook. If you write about cupcakes, start writing about baked goods in general. If you sell wine, get into the wine glass business. If you’re a musician, learn how to produce. Think about the people whose needs you aren’t meeting, and figure out how to meet them.

Conversely, focus yourself on a narrow part of your industry until you’re the only one doing it. Become the expert. If you write about policy, write about environmental policy, then write about Superfund sites. If you’re web designer, design sites for doctors (and then for brain surgeons). If you do public relations, promote authors who write about Climate Change. If you do marketing consulting, offer online marketing techniques that work with women over fifty. Become the person people have to go to when they have very specialized needs, because you’re the only one that does it.

5. Expand Your Expertise

Figure out how to use what you know in an entirely different way. If you coach your daughter’s soccer team, write a book about coaching. If you offer one-on-one career coaching, work with a developer to create motivational software. Find a new way to challenge yourself and put your knowledge to the test — while developing new knowledge and skills.

6. Grow Your Network

Your audience are the people who buy, read, or otherwise use your product; your network are the people that help you make it, market it, or distribute it. Focus on building strong relationships with a variety of people both in and out of your profession. We are all connected in the most unimaginable ways. Join a social networking site like LinkedIn and connect with at least 20 people in your field whom you want to know. Go to every happy hour, panel discussion, meetup, conference, volunteer opportunity that you can fine. and email them introductions. Build relationships with your 10 best clients.

Not everyone has time to do all of these, but they are something to strive for.

Ochstein Strategies can help you get “bigger”. Let us know what you need and we’ll help you get there.