Do you Have Staying Power?

Since reading The Dip I've been thinking about several new questions. Well, the questions are not really new; they just keep resurfacing so I'm thinking about them from a different angle. On the surface, wondering if you have staying power may seem simple. You either do or you don't. As Seth writes in his new blog:

"...the thesis is that being seen as best in the world, whatever 'best' and whatever 'world' means, is the single greatest contributor to success in marketing."

Seth talks about three reasons why this is important and offers some examples. I can add a few from these last couple of weeks:

Selection -- Recently Conversation Agent was recommended by popular vote to participate in Jaffe Juice's most valuable blog contest. Joe's readers vote and, by elimination, there will be one final lucky winner. What are the chances you will read the blogs that did not get picked? Does that mean they have no staying power?

Access -- thanks to the Internet and to many other technologies we have today, there are many ways to find information about a product and service. If we look at access also as who knows you, there are many more word of mouth opportunities to make it into someone's top of mind category. If you have a blog, or a web site or a book with ideas that people want to spread, you win. If your information is disseminated not only by your neighbors, but also by a global community, you win. Does this mean that if you don't have a blog or somehow use Web 2.0 technology you have no staying power?

Pyramids -- if you think you're never going to play this game, think again. You already are. Chances are that you have linked to several blogs in the last couple of weeks. To gain credibility for your writing and content you might even have linked to top ranking blogs in the hopes to be linked back or gain more traffic for your blog. After all, if nobody sees what you're writing, how are you going to establish yourself? 

We live in a winner-take-all environment. Think of American Idol, Survivor, etc. It's the people who get voted off the show or the island that create the buzz and publicity for the program and eventually help launch the career of the winners.

So what are your options? You could:

• Change the game -- this is another way of escaping competition by not entering the game by someone else's definition. How else can you look at a problem? Zig when everyone else is zagging.
• Create a new category -- What is missing in the marketplace? Is there a need or want that people could discover if you presented it to them in a compelling fashion? If you're smart enough, and do this right, this will allow you to be first. Think about a niche business, an underserved market segment. Ask your customers, or even better your competitor's customers. Note that the action verb is: create.
• Push through your challenges -- resilience can be good. It will help you develop certain muscles and train them so that next time you are facing a challenge, you have that memory to leverage. I'm talking about determination, perseverance, and faith in yourself. The bigger the challenge, the sweeter the reward. As long as you also learn to figure out whether it is time to invest more energy to continue your efforts, or it is best to let it go.

The secret is that you get to decide and plan your moves. Do you want to have staying power?

Comments

[Lewis Green]

Thanks for the thoughtful post, Valeria. being "best" at something when measured by others is a game I refuse to play. I am not my work, I am the totality of all the things that make me who I am. And I measure success as a marketer not by the number of clients I have but by how well I solve my clients' problems.

In other words, I don't play the life game to compete with others or to be noticed by others or to get kudos from others, but instead to be the best I can be as measured by me (and by those I love and who love me). Life, for me, is to precious a gift to allow my ego or my bottom line to determine who or what I am.

[Bob Glaza]

Ahh - pushing through challenges...whether it is little stumbling blocks or big walls, mind freezes or brain burps. What is it that causes them? Sometimes it feels as if we seek those challenges. More to the point what is it that allows us to overcome them? Perseverance and determination - yes. Faith, hope and love - yes. The chance to discover and exercise all the good things of our humanity - yes. Along the way perhaps realizing our true potential. Then we can experience staying power.
Thoughtful and thought provoking post, Valeria - thank you -

[Stephen Denny]

Valeria: it's funny, but when you look at the mob mentality of the market -- look at the blog community as a great example of this -- Godin's quote resonates. Authors and e-luminaries do seem to have more traffic and "heft", regardless of vapid content and boneless commentary. Why? Social proof, in all likelihood. Fame begets more fame. Paris Hilton is famous for being famous.

Contests pitting bloggers against bloggers, the Z-list gaming on Squidoo, blog posts about blogs, etc. Maybe I'm an outlier, but going through Mack's top 25, I come up with a small handful I find worth reading. None of what I'd consider the best marketing writing on the web is on the list, either.

As such, I don't think we do live in a winner take all environment, regardless of how hard the media wants us to believe it. American Idol shows us that the stage itself, not the winning, is what's important, because our audience finds us through our exposure.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Lewis -- your philosophy served you well, I'm sure of it. It is quite wise to decide what success means to you.

Bob -- thank you for visiting and adding to the conversation. You got it: human potential, as in what it means to you, the best version of your self.

Stephen -- my dear fellow marketer, you bring up an interesting point. I did not push it far enough in my post. Yes, success generates success... it happens also for us alone. The more we feel successful, the better we perform. It's what makes us human. And we do want recognition. You remind me of an important point I learned through Ben Zander in "The Art of Possibility": be the board. In other words, own the stage. As Lewis said, it's about us knowing who we are. As Bob shared, we learn to be curious and stretch.

Recently I made a comment at Make it Great, Phil Gerbishack's blog that might help us here: if we take the judgment lens away, mistakes are practice. Winners take all only if we think about it that way.

[John Dodds]

It's not about struggling up an existing pyramid, it's about building your own.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Hello John:

I agree it's about creating a new space where *you* define what it means to succeed. That was the point of my post, and also what Lewis and in a way Stephen alluded to in their comments.

There are plenty of stories already documented of businesses that redefined an industry. I'm sure you're familiar with "Blue Ocean Strategy".

However, no matter your pursuit, there will still be obstacles and dips to push through. Bob joined the conversation by fleshing out that point. Just as change is our life companion, it shows up in business as well. I suspect that Seth intended something quite similar in his post.

[Geoff Livingston]

You can't build a business or a movement based on the competition. There must be something about your organization's offering that attracts the right clients, the right relationships to you. This "special sauce" is the heart of staying power.

[Valeria Maltoni]

Geoff:

This is almost like "I'll take that question later kind of thing." I agree with you that our own specialness is what makes us enduring -- that's why I wrote that the secret is you get to decide and plan your moves.

We can also choose other options, of course.