Futurist business designer and strategist, Melissa Pepers, explains why you need to unlearn everything you thought you knew about business to create something that’s never existed before (and how).
The ‘way it’s always been done’ has stopped working. Year on year, the go-to strategies are returning lower results for the same effort. That’s because each year you need to compete with more businesses that sell the same things, to the same customers, in the same ways.
If differentiation is the key that unlocks profitability, you need to stop making that key the same way as everybody else.
It’s a myth that the proven model is a safe way to create and grow a business. All it’s proving to do is make the potential profit you can attain increasingly small. Not only is it not profitable to compete against a million others just like you – it’s expensive. Customer willingness to pay drops the more alternatives there are to meet their needs. Airtime in the marketplace costs you more with a growing number of businesses demanding that real estate.
So, it stands to reason that anything requiring increasing resources for diminishing returns needs to be replaced.
Unlearn to earn
We’re living in an era that is a tipping point for business globally. The way we’ve worked up to now is no longer what will work going forward.
As a futurist business designer, I know that the new way focuses on deep differentiation built into the foundations of a business. In many ways, it’s the opposite of the old way that will define the future of business.
To capitalise on the new, you need to leave behind the old first. Let me show you how.
1. Unlearn vision as a goal
Having the same goals is the problem with the way it’s always been done. Needs are finite. Too many meeting the same needs turns business growth into a zero sum game where a win for one person must be a loss for someone else.
I think this focus on building the same things in the same ways is humanity’s greatest source of ineffectiveness. You are unique, and doing the same thing as the next person is a waste of your potential. No one needs you to make what already exists – you need to make what doesn’t.
Relearn vision as a replacement
Your combination of values, skills, memories, experiences and interests gives you a unique perspective of the world. It’s as individual as your fingerprint. Your vision is not a paragraph on a business plan with a cookie-cutter concept you’re not even sure you care about.
Your vision comes from your view of the world as it could be. To find it, start by focusing your attention on what is. Consider your view of any aspect of our world, then consider what could be instead. What would be better? What could replace it? Your business’ offerings are then what makes this better possibility a better reality.
2. Unlearn impact from structure
Most people think of building their business with a focus on structure first. Will podcasting or an eBook make the most money? Should I freelance or make a product? Most advisors teach growth based on structure too. Are you B2B or B2C? Are you software as service or a product based venture?
The structures your business could fit into are infinite. That’s why answers to the above questions are so unsatisfying.
Relearn structure from impact
Start not with how, but with what. Your vision is as detailed and limitless as your perspective on life; your business is what brings this vision to life.
The parts of your vision that matter most to you, that get you excited? That you wish existed? From now on, that is your ‘what’. The ‘how’, is whatever structure will best bring your vision to life in a way that is both profitable and satisfying.
It’s much easier to choose a structure when you’re not looking at infinite variables. By focusing on creating an impact that has never existed, it’s easy to feel your potential, uncover the variables that matter, and jump off the hamster wheel of competition where your profitability is tied to what other businesses are doing.
3. Unlearn brand as a style
In the old way, branding focuses on looking ‘aspirational’ for a particular audience. This results in many businesses in a space converging to one aesthetic – for example, millennial pink. Then, marketplace demands shift that aesthetic over time, which we call trends.
But now that there are so many businesses, the lifespan of trends can feel instant. Differentiation in branding is treated very superficially, because it’s caught up in trying to ‘not look the same’. It’s hard to meaningfully look different if beneath the surface what you’re doing is the same!
Relearn brand as a signal
When you build your business from a unique vision, and then find or create from scratch the structure that best brings this into the world, you have deep differentiation at the core of your business. Trying to ‘not look the same’ isn’t even on your radar because there is no credible worry that you could.
Brand strategy for businesses that have never existed before is focused on emotionally signalling to your customer the unique role you play in their lives. It’s about owning the uniqueness instead of disowning the mainstream.
The old way has business backwards
Instead, you need to:
- Build your vision first then let it change your business
- Get clear on your impact before working out the strategies to best grow it
- Create your communications after you know the unique role you play for your audience
If you want to know how to zig while others zag, my program Turning Points is the pro version of this process. It takes these ideas from blue sky thinking to real world action. Whether you’re starting from scratch or have an existing business, it has everything you need to unlearn the old way so you can build the business you’ll be known for.
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