Coaching for Excellence – Issue ⁰09

Coaching tips from issue 09 of the Coaching for Excellence newsletter.

Industry Follower or Innovator?

We start businesses for different reasons. An opportunity often overlooked in the current entrepreneurial gold rush is the desire to be different, to challenge the status quo, to take the less traveled path, and to do things differently.

Here are two patterns I’ve observed on social media that impact your growth.

• The myth is that you must participate and follow the ever-changing rules of social media to be successful. Why are you allowing tech platforms to dictate your business strategy? Social media is a piece of the marketing pie, not the whole pie. Being dependent on any social media platform is equivalent to building your business on sand. At any time a wave can wash it away.
  • What happens to the media you created and your followers?
  • How much is that time worth to you?
  • How much are those relationships worth to your business?
  • What are you doing to retain the media you create and share?
  • Do you have a content database?
  • How are you moving relationships offline? I had the pleasure of meeting several new people recently. I enjoy hearing their story and learning more about their interests.
• The hack of replicating someone else’s proven formula or process. Just as no two people are alike, neither are two businesses. Think of it in terms of building a home. Do you want a house identical to your neighbor’s? Or do you want a home built and personalized to you and your family’s lifestyle? A similar choice applies to your marketing strategy.

Do you want a strategy identical to a peer or one built for your business, vision, values, and clients? Which one resonates best with your clients, their problems, and their lifestyle? The more conversations (questions + listening) you have with your clients, the greater likelihood you’ll understand them and build a strategy that resonates and generates results.

Leaders ask questions. They aren’t afraid to take risks. Leaders know the greatest rewards are where others are unwilling or afraid to go. What will you do differently this year?

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Opportunity Costs of AI

Most of us don’t understand the full range of AI capabilities or the social cost. Because there’s always a trade-off. The question is “At what cost?”

OpenAI has “the goal of developing “safe and beneficial” artificial general intelligence, which it defines as “highly autonomous systems that outperform humans at most economically valuable work”

• What are you going to do with this extra time? More work? How will you differentiate from others when inputs can be replicated to get similar outputs?
• How will trust be affected when anyone can create anything?
• How will client expectations be shaped when they see out-of-this-world concepts?
• What is the value of the media and knowledge you share online?
• Where has your data been scraped for profit?

Per the Verge, Reddit will let “an unnamed large AI company” have access to its user-generated content platform in a new licensing deal, according to Bloomberg yesterday. The deal, “worth about $60 million on an annualized basis,”

What are your ethics, business and personal? As it relates to the collection and use of data, creativity, etc. Define them so you can make decisions with confidence versus following the crowd.