Content creation is always about relationship building. The moment a piece of content is read a relational exchange takes place. This literally cannot happen without trust of some description being present. That first instance is your Contact point. What happens next will depend upon the perception that initial contact creates. The perception will be weighed in terms of the value the content has delivered against time spent reading it. At that point it is either all over or it is the beginning of a beautiful relationship.
We are all squeezed for time. Each thing that lands in front of us is “urgent”. Everything we do is pressured by timelines imposed by others. In all this pressure we forget the ultimate basic. We act like we are no longer human.
The qualities we measure for in business are education, previous career path and experience. We hope that by studying the past as closely as possible we are mitigating the risk involved in hiring a stranger and trusting him to work in a business.
If you want great results in business, focus on those who make it possible to achieve them.
When you’re introduced to someone and spend five minutes chatting to them, what you remember afterwards is how they made you feel and whether you liked that feeling or not.
You don’t have to know everything about the things you make decisions on. That’s what advisors are for and why you often hire outside consultants. You do, however, need to roughly know what you’re talking about.
When I can I visit street markets selling fruit and vegetables, especially in the summer. Local growers sell fresh produce at really competitive prices. There is a subtext here in that they’re not always cheaper than the supermarket price, but the produce is a lot fresher and produced in a much more careful way.
Let’s borrow a couple of military terms (because they dovetail nicely in the corporate mentality of business as a regimen of discipline and application) and let’s call them “Strategy” and “Tactics”. Most executives will confuse one with the other but the two are not interchangeable.
Businesses that pride themselves on being practical will say “profit”. Without a healthy bottom line, they argue, there can be no grand vision, no great purpose.