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SMARTY.

The human side of business

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.

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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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About

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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