I caught a mouse in my
trap last night and it begged me for a minute or two before throwing it into
the trash. It wanted to teach me a lesson of my life. Squeaking and rolling its
eyes in the pains of the booby traps, the mouse needed to leave me with 5 major
lessons that provoked me to write this piece. It's written to me. And if by
chance you are reading this, you may learn one or two things but remember this
was straight from the mouse to my own Muse.
LESSON 1. Mice know how to invade new territories. INVADE
If you ever wonder how a
mouse found its way into your well-locked apartment, think again. These
creatures look for little cracks in the walls and together, they burrow it
further bringing in their kin one at a time. You are not ready for business if
you are not ready to drill a hole in the competition's. Steve Job's Apple
drilled a hole in the IBM concept in order to launch the Lisa in 1984. Also in
that same 1984, Richard Branson took on the almighty BA by bringing
‘Virginness’ into an industry plagued by dullness. Mice smell opportunities in
distant places and launch an offensive. If you are coming into an industry with
the same convention of offering, why would anyone do business with you? You
gotta leave some hole in the walls so they can notice you and literarily smell
a rat.
LESSON 2. Mice know how to
litter the place. They are very fertile. CREATE
There is almost no other
way to build your personal branding without producing what we can see. And
number matters here. How many articles have you written in your area of
expertise? How many Blogs have you contributed to? How many papers have you
submitted to the local institutions in your city? Every 4 week, a mouse is
ready to produce new litters. You are laughing at the other lady whose work is
almost everywhere online, right? Well, you need to laugh at yourself.
Revolutionists write their thoughts down. They produce prototypes of their
works. They keep doing it. You are as good as your last job four weeks
ago. Don’t tell us you have an idea of how to change an industy. Write it
down. Post it online. That’s littering.
LESSON 3. Mice can Infect your precious little ones. Be
INFECTIOUS
When a mouse pee on it,
you better leave it. It's called the power of infectiousness. Don't do things
for doing things sake. Leave them with an infectious messaging or style. To be
infectious is to start something that can go places. Online, you call it viral.
What's more viral than a mouse? Don't just update your Facebook page, leave it
with a poison. Tweet with some infectious words and see the world at your
doorstep. Learn the power of infectious messaging. Learn how to tell story that
can be retold. Check your area of influence on your marketplace. Are you being
infectious or you are just a sweet little something that leaves no bite. Pee on
that industry and let people smell it from afar. Don't strive to litter for
litter's sake. Make sure your works have a bite to it. The little Black dress
by Coco Channel was a revolution that has never left womenfolk’s closets. Prior
to 192O's, no one would touch a black dress except they are mourning. Coco
tapped into the World War 1 fatalities and created a sexy dress women could
wear to just about anywhere. That's being infectious. Smelling the opportunity
and turning it into some magic. People still can't get over it as every woman
worth the salt still keeps a little black dress. Infectious works create
movements, cool cultures and counter cultures. They help us make sense of our
world without providing an absolute answer to our many questions. They are
deeply layered leaving us wanting for more. Above all, they are brutally simple
like the LBD.
LESSON 4. Mice can
adapt to a new environment quite faster than fast, making them one of the
animals you find anywhere on earth. ADAPT OR DIE
Like Darwin said. Only the
creature that adapts in the circle of life truly survives. Things change all
around us. Economies change. Consuming patterns change. Industries change. From
diskette to CD, from CD to flash drives, from flash drives to clouds. Things
are bound to change and you don't just stand there crying foul and blaming your
stepmom for your misfortunes. There was a time we clutched our Encyclopedia in
forms of books and CD-ROM. Today, the Wikipedia has changed all of that. What
do you do? Change. Yea, you heard me. Change. Change your operational model.
Change your office. Who needs that over-decorated reception when most of your
prospects are online? Change. Change the way you see work hours for your staff.
The cities are getting overpopulated. Transportations are barely enough for
all. Do people have to come to work from 8 to 5pm when they can get most jobs
done on their computers at home? Change. Adaptation
is the no 5 rule of the mouse.
LESSON 5. Mice are
the lab rats. Experiment. EXPERIMENT WITH FAILURE.
You know the popular saying about the lab rat? It's not a legend. Most
laboratories of human science today have to thank the mice for allowing
themselves to go through such gruesome exercises in the lab. Mice embrace
experiment. So should you. You can't know if it will work if you don't
experiment with it. History has it that Thomas Edison tried for a thousand
times before he got the light bulb right. After many experiments with platinum
and other filaments, Thomas Edison returned to Carbon filament to give the
world a long lasting bulb.
PS: I created a workbook out of this to teach the
‘how’ of each lesson. The workbook gives you detailed steps to take. These are
techniques gleaned from over thousand best practices in Brand and Idea Management
as taught at Orange Academy. If you want
the workbook or you want to attend our next Personal Branding workshop, send a
mail to the Program Officer at Orange Academy via info@kennybrandmuse.com or info@cluborangeng.com.
Peace.
