You might be thinking, “Hey, I’m the audience…what are you talking about, James?”
Hear me out. And know that it’s a quote from Rick Rubin.
(The music producer who has worked with such disparate artists as RUN DMC, The Beastie Boys, Lucinda Williams, Public Enemy, Weezer, Johnny Cash, Krishna Das, and Adele.)
He goes on to clarify, “…the audience comes last in service to the audience.”
He’s talking about creating music, art. Something that’s meant to be different, new, and unexpected. But it holds true for many small businesses too.
He’s not saying Weezer should make a Gregorian Chant album. He’s saying, given their genre, they should express their Weezer-ness freely and openly.
And not just make endless carbon copies of their first album.
And so it is with our businesses.
We’ve figured out the ‘genre’ we’re working in. Be it wellness, executive coaching, marketing strategy, sustainability, or exhibition design.
We know (or seek to know) the problems we want to help people in that genre solve.
But at the moment of making, we need to take time to ignore opinions. We need to make the thing we intuitively know we want to make, given all our existing knowledge.
This is the differentiation point.
To do anything else will lead us astray. We’ll churn out copycat offers, race to the bottom, compete on price, write keyword-stuffed content…or, worst of all, make listicles!
First, then last, then first,
James
P.S. Of course, after they’re made, we test our offers and accept the market’s truth. We’re not monsters.
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