Be Remarkable… Be Irrationally Committed To Being Remarkable

From the desk of Roy Furr, Tuesday, 10:22 am

I don’t know if you’re familiar with Seth Godin yet. He’s not necessarily who I’d go to if I have something very specific that I need done, like writing a sales letter. But when it comes to an overarching strategy for your business, he has one piece of input that will help you slaughter your competition.

“Be remarkable.”

Do what you do so well, that everyone will want to talk about you. They’ll talk about you to their business associates. They’ll talk about you to their friends. They’ll talk about you over lunch. They’ll talk about you in that “filler” conversation before and after meetings. They’ll talk. And talk. And talk.

Being remarkable — doing things in a way that people want to make remarks about what you’re doing — is what creates word of mouth. And that’s free advertising. Powerful free advertising. Because usually the person who is talking about you has built-in credibility with whoever they’re remarking about you to. This is a credibility you’ll never have through your advertising. And one of the only ways I’ve ever found to leverage this credibility is through doing exactly what Seth recommends — be remarkable.

Taking it one step further, I’d recommend you become Irrationally Committed to being remarkable.

Learn to recognize when you’re wrong… but when you’re right stick it out longer than anyone else has the guts (or irrationality) to do. Often that extra few days — or weeks, months, or even years — is the extra time that means the difference between another failure and a smashing success. It took years for Amazon.com to become profitable. Now if something’s available on Amazon I will often buy it there before I’ll buy it from anywhere else. That’s because Jeff Bezos and crew were irrationally committed to creating the Amazon machine.

There’s an endless stream of stories of entrepreneurs who came up with a remarkable product that fit a specific need (a need backed up by a teeming mob of hungry buyers)… and then they irrationally committed themselves to making that idea successful… and then most struggled through hard times long before they got their business in the black… until one day — after all their resources (emotional, financial, otherwise) were exhausted, they crossed the line… and now they run incredibly successful companies and lead their industry.

It’s not an exact formula for success. At the tactical level it gives you nothing. But as something to inform your entrepreneurial strategy — becoming irrationally committed to being remarkable can pay off in spades.

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