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SMARTY.

The human side of business

Archives for February 2017

Small Business

Teflon.

February 28, 2017 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Cashmere coated in Teflon. The brilliant collaboration of industrial designer Yves Behar and fashion brand Lutz & Patmos. One of Time Magazine’s best inventions in 2002.

There are times when your “surface” needs to be sealed, and other times when it needs to be porous. Often, it has to be at the same time to truly be useful.

When I first meet a client, they’ve developed “beliefs” about what can or can’t be done, either based on years of a certain strategy that no longer works, or a few traumatic experiences. These narratives may turn out to hold water, or they may be anomalies born of other factors they haven’t considered. Usually these (potentially) biased ideas have shaped what they think they’re hiring me / us to fix. But until we know more and ask more questions, we have to hold those “facts” in a suspension of disbelief. We have to treat them as wickable. If we accept them as absolute, our strategies will be as silo’d as the clients’. They need us not to believe them, as much as they need us to hear them.

“Facebook has never worked for us.”
“No one wants to read more emails.”
“People won’t buy things on the internet.”
“We’ve done it that way since day one.”
“Customers don’t want to share cars.”

True? False?

It’s often our job or role to press pause for others and drive a conversation that unpacks / disrupts / refutes / or (maybe) buys the reality of the perception. But how do you provide this valuable service to yourself?

It takes some fancy footwork to hold your own breath, stop your own film, pause your own song – long enough to see if you’ve inadvertently built a false narrative. You’re busy doing the work – so it’s not easy to also figure out what part of your belief system is being misshaped by actions as they happen in real time. Kudos if you can be that kind of ninja!

But bigger kudos if you can be open / humble enough to let someone else take a crack at it. They might challenge what you see as a certainty, or play Devil’s Advocate in a way that’s tiresome. But they’re offering you a non-stick surface, which is the only way to see blindspots – or better – unchartered territory.

You can be dual-materials to everyone else, and probably get paid to be, but the biggest favor you can do your own business is to put your precious cashmere in the hands of something more industrial, and see what happens. Could turn out to be genius.

Big Life

Code.

February 21, 2017 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Even this half-beat public bus in Bombay has one.

Lucky are the doctors, therapists, lawyers and journalists – among others – when it comes to professional codes. Their days are governed by rules and laws – by an organized body of ethical standards that deems “yes we can” or “no we cannot.” It’s not that there aren’t gray areas, but at least they’re held to a baseline of collective agreement. For creative’s, consultants, entrepreneurs, marketers, in other words, most of us – we call our own shots. At a minimum, we aim for ethical, but there are hundreds of questions that live in a pretty gray area.

I heard Anthony Bourdain interviewed on NPR last weekend and he talked about his own code, mostly bleeped for national radio – that basically said he wouldn’t live his life or be part of anything he couldn’t stand behind. Nor would he work with people he “didn’t genuinely like.” He was more graphic (as expected), but in a nutshell, said – no bullsh$t. It’s easier to say that once you’re successful and in a place of power. But what about when you’re still in the hustle? Still building? Still pitching? Still perseverating over “yes I should” or “no I shouldn’t”?

I had a great brand ask me to pitch work on spec recently, to write messaging as a means of interviewing for the (big) project. I wanted the work. I really like the client and brand. But I know better than to invest a day in tagline development without a complete brief, without feeling invested, and without an official engagement. Doing business development and client woo-ing may be part of the job, but all of us who work in undefined business landscapes have to recognize a fools errand when we see one. Submitting a half-baked idea in order to ‘seem’ the most clever / creative / smart isn’t the way I want to win an account. I have a website, a portfolio and a weekly blog… if they want to see the work. You likely do, too.

I can tell when my code has broken links pretty easily; I’m uncomfortable with the arrangement (at best), or annoyed with terms (trying to understand why I agreed)  – at worst. It happens much less than it used to, but it still happens #stilllearning.

We all need codes. But when they’re on a case by case basis, when they’re too malleable, when we make exceptions and call it the rule, we break them without ceremony.

Have a standard. Make sure you can live with it and hold yourself to it. If not you, then who?

Small Business

Force.

February 14, 2017 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Even a star, a plan and hard work are not (always) a marriage made.  Image from Getty

It almost never works.

At the root of it is tunnel vision, with no room for other ideas or possibilities. Railroading, bullying, one person’s will over another – that kind of force is easy to spot.

But there’s another kind, a more insidious, subtle version – and I’m guilty of it too.

If you’ve ever tried to impose your (good) will on something or someone who doesn’t want it as much as you do, you’ll recognize this. It usually seems like a “no brainer” or a “win-win.” It might look like one person trying to put an idea or business together, and the other not responding with urgency or next steps. They might say one thing, but do another. Years ago, I tried to put together a partnership with a world-renowned architect and a luxury furniture retailer. He was willing. They were excited. Meeting after meeting seemed more promising than the next. But the middle partner (not pictured), the person who was critical to the deal itself coming together to ultimately oversee the marriage, made it so hard, so complex and so unappealing to everyone – that we all walked away. But I hung on, even when everyone had left the room, as it were. I made persuasive marketing decks and delivered the starchitect to their showroom, because my vision was crystal clear. But no amount of vision, if you aren’t listening (and adjusting) to what’s really going on, is going to make something happen. My blind attachment to the idea was essentially forcing a key through a hole that did not fit. I didn’t have the wisdom to balance perseverance with practical facts.

We can push so hard and work so hard and try so hard that even when we aren’t literally forcing ‘people’ to do something we want, we force ideas where they aren’t meant to bloom.

I see force happening all around us right now, most clearly at the highest levels of office. Let’s remember that it’s easy to see the rigid, unyielding, aggressive behavior of uneducated heads of state, but much harder to see it in our own good intentions.

Big Life

Moves.

February 7, 2017 · By Amy Swift Crosby

Even he makes mistakes. But you won’t see any JV moves in his - or his team's - game. Photo from goliath.com

Sometimes I think our path to finding agreement – the way we fight, disagree, recover or come back – define us even more than the big issues themselves.

Conflict or differences in opinion happen all the time – in marriage, in business, between countries and between partners. Alec Baldwin recently interviewed the actor John Turturro and both shared that there are times during the making of certain, high stakes films, when each have wanted to walk off the set – where the disparate visions of key stakeholders (actor / director / producer / investor) don’t seem like they can be (peacefully) resolved. The only scenarios that worked allowed everyone to come back to the conversation with their self-respect in tact. We can all relate to that. You hope discord moves the conversation in a healthy way – with no black eyes – and that it pushes an idea / issue / team to its full potential. But does how you get there…also matter?

Our moves define us, ultimately. And that includes our passivity or inaction. We can (and will) make mistakes, throw bad passes, get sloppy, fail the people we most want to impress – but our course, words and gestures in finding our way back is what will be remembered.

It’s fun to win, and nice to be right, but hopefully not at the cost of anyone losing too much to recover.

Consider not just the stakes, but how it will feel to win what’s at stake. Make the moves you also want made. It’s the most generous thing you can do, and unlike the Super Bowl, where credit is obvious and comes with a ring, no one will likely know all that you did to change the game.

That’s okay. Do it anyway.

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About Me

photo of Amy Swift Crosby

Amy Swift Crosby is a brand strategist and copywriter who has positioned or voiced messaging across the commercial spectrum, from icons like Ford, BVLGARI, Pottery Barn, Pantene and Virgin, to boutique brands like The Wild Unknown, fitness franchise Barre3 and the rebrand of legendary metaphysical bookstore, Bodhi Tree. She has leveraged this expertise to help entrepreneurial women and small businesses owners hone their skills, mission and message, while uncovering their own “voice.” This blog explores “the human side of business,” and universal themes like uncertainty, anxiety, the tension between engagement and disconnection, personal value and most importantly, of finding - and hearing - our own voices in our everyday life.

Photo - Andrew Stiles

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SMARTY began as a thriving community in Los Angeles and Boston with weekly panel discussions and events designed to better understand the mindset and growth strategies behind successful entrepreneurs. Today, SMARTY is a weekly blog written by Amy Swift Crosby who chronicles her life as a creative, parent, entrepreneur and spiritual seeker. As an urban refugee living in a New England seaside village, she unpacks topics ranging from uncertainty and doubt to the built environment and advertising. More on Amy.

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