How To Succeed In Business If You’re Boring (And Not Quirky, Weird Nor Cool)

There’s a lot to be said for being quirky, offbeat, having a “thing” or being one of the cool kids online. It makes you stand out, it makes you different and it’s not half bad for business (not taking anything away from any of the above whose success is by no means purely down to the fact that they’re quirky, weird, offbeat or have a thing – they really do know their stuff).

But as somebody who is none of these things and sometimes really wishes she were, it can be frustrating to feel so boring, normal and run-of-the-mill…

And when I look at some of these guys and see the strong brands and personalities they’re creating around themselves, it’s useful to remind myself of the following:

• You can’t be what you’re not
• If everyone were quirky, offbeat & weird then no-one would be
• You can still be successful without being like that

Here’s how you can achieve the same effect & business success as some of the cool kids you see online whilst still being boring (like me):

Polarise your audience

One of the reasons why people like Naomi & Havi do so well is not because they’re insanely popular with absolutely everyone but because they polarise people. Naomi especially is great at this – you either love her or you hate her (I love her, well maybe not “love” but I do think she’s fabulous).

This is a brilliant strategy because the people who hate you clearly aren’t the people you’d want to work with anyway and the people who love you, really do love & rave about you.

There’s no wishy-washy, happy medium here – there are strong, passionate feelings involved which is quite something to achieve in any business evironment (another example of this is Marmite – you either love it or hate it).

Here are a couple of ways you can achieve a similar effect if your personality isn’t up to scratch:

• Focus on making your product or service 200% suitable for a very specific group of people only – don’t try and make it appeal to everyone, in fact it may even turn some people off but that’s ok. If you can build loyal, raving fans of the product/service you do offer, that’s enough.
• Tweak your marketing messages to be more exclusive – by this I mean don’t try and appeal to everyone with vague, generic phrases on your marketing literature but be specific, state very clearly who your ideal customers are and behave in a way that they’ll be turned on by but perhaps others wouldn’t.

Make what you do, not who you are interesting

If you’re not a “personality”, then there are plenty of other ways to pique & keep people’s interest. What you’re basically looking for is some sort of hook – something which makes you more memorable to people and if that’s not through your personality then find something else.

It might be something you do, something you know or something you have which gives you a hook.

Our personal example is obviously the fact that we’re location independent. The business we’ve been running (which, once again is going through yet another reincarnation!) wasn’t particularly spectacular or different from many others but the fact that we did it whilst travelling the world, living in exotic places gave us a hook, a story which made us stand out from the crowd.

Keep your branding & core message consistent

[Please note, this is very much a case of do what we say and not what we do - even though it's not turned out too badly for us!!!]

To become and remain memorable (and in the forefront of people’s minds), keep your branding and your core messages consistent. In practice, this means:

• Decide on a message (your USP – the thing that tells customers why they should buy from you and no-one else) and stick to it.
• Keep your offline and online branding consistent – use the same logo, colour scheme and tagline on all your materials.
• Use the same avatar/profile picture for all your online profiles, here’s what Seth has to say about choosing one.

It can be hard when you look around and see the cool kids clubbing together and being quirky, offbeat and cool whilst you sit there wondering how you can make it too, but here’s another secret to being successful if you’re not part of that club…find a club you do fit into or better yet, create your own.

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