A characteristic that is shared by many members of the Learn and Get Smarter community is that we are ahead-of-the-times, outside-the-box thinkers… what is referred to in the book Play Bigger as “category kings” (or what I also refer to as "category queens").
In other words, we are creative experts and entrepreneurs who have come up with whole new categories of products and services that are new to the market and have never been heard of before.
As an entrepreneur, this creates a marketing challenge as we need to not just encourage people to BUY what we’re selling, but to actually understand what it even IS.
The analogy is that in this way we are like Henry Ford, who famously said, “If I had asked people what they wanted, they would have said, “Faster horses”.
If you have created a never-before-heard-of product, service, or method,
how do you educate people about it
so that they can understand what you’re offering and how it will benefit them?
One way is through digital marketing. Right now I’m reading the book Launch by Jeff Walker … himself a “category king” in the digital product launch sphere. He explains the innovative method he developed that helps people successfully launch digital products in highly effective ways.
The opposite of innovation is stagnation.
You can tell the purpose of a system (whether a biological system like the human body, or an economic system like a business organization), by what it produces.
The purpose of any system is to produce some kind of result.
But over time, some systems end up overly focused on a result that benefits the system itself at the expense of the larger whole it was originally meant to serve.
Examples abound and include everything from bloated bureaucracies to cancer cells.
In organizations and any other system, indeed, in any form, the system degrades over time to become less adaptable and less adapted to current conditions, until eventually, it becomes necessary to replace that form with a new one.
This is where innovators like us come in.
We are the creators and designers of new forms into which consciousness can move when the old ones no longer serve.
The pandemic has accelerated the process of destruction of old forms and the creation of new ones.
The pandemic is terrible for everyone in terms of basic enjoyment of life, and catastrophic for many in terms of everything from physical survival to economic well being.
That’s why we are having weekly community meetings: to support each other in focusing on ways to survive and thrive despite these unprecedented conditions.
So given that we are a group of ahead-of-the-curve, category king and queen, innovators, what can we learn by applying systems thinking to the pandemic?Adaptability to prevailing conditions is always the key to surviving and thriving,
and one definition I use for learning is that it is
the ability to adapt to conditions in ways that promote survival.
One question we can ask ourselves, as educators and entrepreneurs, is: what can we do now to help those we are here to serve, adapt and thrive under these new conditions?
How do the products and services we are creating help others live better lives, given the conditions we are all dealing with?
Reflecting on this question leads us to two related topics for discussion at next week's community meeting, in the Facebook group, and for self-reflection within our own minds:
1) Who are you here to serve, how is the pandemic affecting them, and how can you help them adapt, survive, and thrive?
2) Once you are clear on the answers to those questions, how can you get the word out to your community so they can benefit from what you offer?
Come talk about it at the Learn and Get Smarter community meeting on Saturday, September 5th, or in the Facebook group!
Come to the community meeting
Saturday, September 5th, 2020
9 AM Pacific/ 12 Noon Eastern
