23 | The Rebel’s Guide to Business: Breaking Rules and Taking Names

What if you could revolutionize your business by simply breaking the rules? In today's episode of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show, I explore the bold idea of shaking up your industry norms to create something truly unique. Drawing inspiration from various industries, I challenge you to think outside the box and reimagine your approach to marketing, sales, and customer engagement. Imagine charging exponentially more for your product—how would you innovate to add value? This episode offers a treasure trove of thought experiments and strategies to help you stand out from the competition.

Join me as I share a voicemail packed with actionable insights for our friend Tim, a small business owner navigating a tough patch. By looking at successful strategies from other sectors and tweaking them to fit your own, you can break free from the conventional and craft a standout business model. Whether it’s adopting a subscription service, running creative promotions, or simply rephrasing your messaging, these tips can lead to significant breakthroughs. So, tune in and get ready to infuse your business with fresh, rule-breaking ideas that can propel you forward, just like Tim.

If you are self-employed or run a small business and feel more like you're self-annoyed then get in touch, visit the website www.theannoyinglyoptimisticshow.com where you can submit a question or problem and start your journey to becoming self-enjoyed! 

The majority of 'business advice' out there isn't aimed at self-employed or micro businesses, following it leaves you frustrated and chasing quick fixes. I specialise in tools, systems, techniques, inspiration and help specifically designed for YOU, the person who has to do it all, who doesn't have a team of people, unlimited resources or the time to spend months learning complicated techniques. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:00

Hey there, listeners, it's your annoyingly optimistic host here bringing you another season of the Annoyingly Optimistic Show. Welcome to Season 2, voicemails to Tim. Now let's meet Tim. He's been running his own small business for almost three years now and let's just say he's hit a bit of a rough patch. You know how it is Sometimes you get so stuck, you make yourself busy and just avoid finding the real problems. Well, that's Tim.

Speaker 1 0:23

So, as a good friend, I decide to leave him a daily voicemail, if I can't get hold of him, filled with nuggets of inspiration, insight and wisdom and downright brilliant ideas to help get him unstuck Every day. In just under 10 minutes, I'll share some tips, tricks and a healthy dose of optimism to get Tim, and maybe even you, back on track, because, let's face it, we're all a little tired, in need of help and muddling through. So here we go. Oh wait, never mind Tim's being busy. Here's the voicemail I left him today. Hi, tim, sorry I missed you. Good to catch up again, and this one a bit of a weird one. I was walking, thought of you, thought I must kind of give you a quick call, missed you again, so breaking the rules. Now, I'm not talking about getting self-arrested and anything illegal or anything like that, not the big rules, but the rules of business. Yeah, everything great, different, amazing, new, fantastic, that we have kind of business-wise, product-wise, has generally come out of people breaking the rules, people coming up with something new, coming up with a new way of doing things, of approaching things, and we need to embrace that in our business.

Speaker 1 1:36

And the way to kind of do this is not to, you know, sell shoddy products or anything like that, but it's about thinking outside of the box. It's about breaking the rules of your particular industry. You know, looking at other industries other way companies advertise, other ways they promote things, other ways they sell to their customers, and seeing how you can take that idea into what you're doing. Because often by seeing something else that someone does successfully and co-opting that theory, that way of working, can make a massive difference to our own industry. Because we tend to follow the same patterns, the same style of advertising that our competitors do, that other companies in our niche who are doing really well, we try to kind of copy and emulate those, and often they've got bigger budgets, more staff and things like that. So if we want to cut through, if we want to, you know, really be different. We can sit there and reinvent the wheel and hopefully come up with something stunning and amazing, which we should always try and do anyway but what we can do is we can borrow, we can break the rules of our own industry and see how we can.

Speaker 1 2:46

We can do something differently. You know, it might be a subscription model, it might be a certain kind of giveaway or competition or a way of wording things. I always remember, years and years ago, advising some businesses who starting doing three for two and this is going back to when, you know, boots was one of the pioneers of three for two. You know, and you know, that if a big company is coming up with a particular way of marketing a product or marketing certain areas of products, that they've had focus groups and lots of teams of people doing it. So take that and see, okay, it might not directly apply, but okay, how can I take that idea, that wording, that way of focusing customers and make it my own, make it work for me, and that's something that that you know will work really well. The other thing about kind of breaking the rules is when you're looking at your competition and how they do it. It's.

Speaker 1 3:39

And there's a couple of really nice questions that do this. If you are had to charge 10, 50, 100 times more for your product you had to. There was no reason for what more would you deliver? How would you give them more? How would you add value to what you were doing? How would you change what you're doing? How would you market it differently and give more value? And it's an interesting kind of thing because it can lead to all kinds of well, I do this, this and this. That will be obvious. And so why aren't you doing that? Now? You know, because if you come up with those ideas, when you kind of take cost out of the, the option, well, okay, how can we achieve that same idea where cost isn't a problem, you know, and it it forces you to think outside the box.

Speaker 1 4:23

The the other option is if you, if you had to give your product away for free, how would you market it? How would you get people excited about it? How would you do that kind of same value? It's these kind of questions which challenge us and force us kind of outside of the normal lanes of just doing the same thing over and over again and suddenly we're confronted with doing things a bit differently, coming at them from a different angle and breaking the rules that we'd normally kind of follow. So it's something I want you to kind of think about. So pick some cuts and companies that nothing whatsoever to do with what you do, but you just love their promos, love the way that they kind of do things and approach things and talk about them and, you know, ping me a list of them if you like and let's see how we can take how they market and apply it to you. And all of a sudden, you're going to have a fresh way of marketing, fresh way of positioning your products and the chance are you're going to get attention for those because you're going to stand out from all your competitions. So go break some rules and, um, and let me know, let me know what you think and let's let's have a chat about it so I'll catch up with you soon. Bye, tim, and that's it for today.

Speaker 1 5:33

Episode of voicemails to tim on the annoyingly optimistic show. Now, remember, tim might be busy, but we're all in this together. Whether you're tired, in need of help or just muddling through, tim is here for you because, well, tim is you. Yes, you heard that right. Tim isn't just my friend. He's a reflection of all of us who are struggling to make it work. T-i-m stands for tired, in need of help and muddling through. So if you're feeling like a Tim, you're not alone For all those ambitious listeners. If you've got a burning business question, a quirky thought or just want to see if you can leave an even weirder voicemail, head over to the website voicemailstotimcom. Submit your question and maybe, just maybe, you'll hear your idea in a future Voicemail to Tim. So until then, stay annoyingly optimistic, keep pushing forward and remember if life gives you lemons, leave a voicemail about it.