2010 was a great year. Not perfect nor easy, but really inspiring and productive.
These are my top takeaways from last year…in life and in business…and what I’ll carry into 2011.
1. Stretch your vision, think big…but sweat every detail. Execution is everything.
Strategy and vision are what starts the ball rolling but execution is where genius finds root and creates the new future. And it happens every single day for the life of your company.
2. Everything is iterative in business and life.
There is no perfection, no absolute, no end point. Internalizing that and still driving for perfection is a key factor to balancing working like a demon with maniacal focus but with manageable stress.
3. Inventing something new is not essential to create value and win big. Tilting the spectrum to look at basic commerce and connections in unique, social, creative and aggressive ways is.
Look hard at Gilt Groupe and Groupon. At their core, they have not created a new genre. Far from it. But with brilliant brand marketing for Gilt and executional excellence on a simple social idea for Groupon, these companies have redefined the ageless concepts of email database marketing and brand integrity.
They are both creative execution on a core idea with a personal brand twist at its best.
4. Technology is no longer a genre or a business type. Simply the plumbing for everything we do. This is especially true if you or your business have embraced the social web, which, of course, you must.
We all live at the intersection of the web and the real world. In fact, the real world ‘is’ that intersection. Successful ideas or products or companies have to empower in some way, not just provide technological plugs. Technology like social savvy are tools, not the end game in themselves.
Apple exemplified this for the world and used technology to empower new human capabilities. But every company whether you make collective check-in services for connected TV, raw juices, organic winery tours in Sicily, or artisanal salsa in Brooklyn is now in the same place…and on a level playing field. The same upside and same challenges to harness technology to create value and a community applies to all equally now.
5. Scarcity is dead as a business model. Ubiquity is the norm. Brand value is essential.
Pre the global and real-time and social web, creating scarcity was a core component of business value. Exclusiveness. Control of supply and demand. Information packaging and control. All of this is now gone as a value scale. Information and markets and access are everywhere. Omnipresence and ubiquity are the new norms.
And in this world where everything is available to everyone all the time, brand value and social connections are more key than ever before. This is the beginning of a new social marketing ecosystem that is just being defined.
6. Do what you love…which is usually what you are good at. This almost always works out. If it doesn’t, something is wrong.
And while this may have been true always, it is much moreso in an iterative social business environment where the honesty and passion of how you communicate is as important as what. You can only really excel at what you truly believe in. The rules have changed and core connections with work and yourself seem more visceral then ever.
I thank my clients for the privilege of working with them and creatively solving some unique business opportunities. We pondered pieces of each of these six ideas and made them unique to their businesses.
And a special thanks to my friends and new blog friendships from a host of online communities, especially, my daily conversation with the community at AVC.com.
Happy New Year! It’s going to be a good one.
