One of the goals I set for myself after attending The Global Leadership Summit last year, was to incorporate more white space into my schedule. Juliet Funt, the founder and CEO of WhiteSpace at work said, “busyness kills creativity” and it hit me. My hardworking lifestyle was had my work life out of balance and was on a path to kill my creativity. Which is HUGE considering creativity is basically the bread and butter of what I do. I challenged myself to start to rectify that immediately.
If you know me you know that I am a lifetime learner. I LOVE to learn new things. One of the areas of my life that had been pushed to the side in my busyness was professional/personal development and learning. I decided I would increase my whitespace and add professional/personal development and learning back in by having the goal to read or listen to one book a month. Since then, I have read SO MANY great books that have inspired me and taught me a great deal of new tools. I thought I might share some of that with you.
One of the books, Get Scrappy, by Nick Westergaard has become one that I reference back to from time to time. I have highlighted content, dog-eared the pages and now have an audio copy so I can just listen when I need a reminder. In Get Scrappy, Nick provides tips and tricks to a smarter marketing strategy. While some of his tips are specific to digital marketing I think the thought process behind them can be applied to your entire marketing journey on and offline.
- He provides alternate methods to the checklist marketing techniques many have adopted in an effort to chase the next new shiny thing.
- He provides valuable examples and advice to help you do big things with limited budgets.
- He provides encouragement to marketers to get creative and look for answers outside your silo.
All topics you know are near and dear to my heart, as I have often written about checklist marketing and marketing on a shoestring budget. I am not sure I need to say more, because any savvy marketing leader is ready to get your copy of the book by now (it is available on Amazon and Audible).
Nick, a fellow Iowan, strategist, speaker, author, and educator (a man after my heart – can you tell?) (#likeminded) describes a scrappy marketer (who I like to think is me) as: putting brains before budget, being both efficient and effective, and seeing ideas everywhere. He stresses having a plan – not the stuffy old dust collecting plan that no one ever utilized, but a concise, executable plan that focuses on getting measurable results. (Sound familiar? I know – I told you I dig his stuff!)
As you know, like Nick, I am an also a college educator. One of the lessons I teach regarding becoming a better communicator and marketer uses the old 5W1H method we learned in middle school. Being able to effectively formulate your message and leave the audience with answers rather than questions will cut down on confusion. Some may consider this method along with strategic planning old school. I can assure you, like the modern actionable strategic plan will make you more efficient, formulating your concise and clear content will make you a more effective communicator. Because let’s face it your audience is “need to know.”
Today, I leave you with three tasks:
- Add more whitespace to your schedule. Busyness kills creativity and life is too short.
- Read Get Scrappy, highlight stuff, dog tag the pages, reference it often. It will help your marketing efforts tremendously.
- Surround yourself with like-minded individuals that will help encourage, challenge and build you up and visa versa. We were not meant to do life alone on an island. We need a tribe to be awesome!
If you would like to add some like-minded scrappy marketers (that is us) to your brand brain trust team (say that fast three times I dare ya), we would love to help! We are always looking to grow our network, clientele and brain trust team!
