Week 40: play 3 - Find your lane of genius

everyone is genius... in one thing

thank you to over 10,000 of you who read this weekly and share with your friends and family for behind the scenes on building a million dollar business from scratch and beyond.

---

last week, i shared how to define or reframe the problem as one of the 10 go-to-market principles that helped us go from 0 to million in 9 months with two different companies, in different markets with different economic times.

so far, i have shared 2 plays:

play 1: Redefine the problem

pay 2: Your Point of View is your Strategy

well, today, you have to really zoom out and think about the one thing that you / your organization does so well, that it’s impossible for your competition to copy.

think - your brand presence, maybe your data-driven insights, may be your community building approach.

well for me, what has worked well is event-led growth.

Story time:

for terminus in 2015, my first company that went a million in 9 months, brought a bunch of thought leaders together talking about this idea of flipping funnel and challenging the status quo.

i never told them what to say except to share something that challenges the core message of marketing and sales.

well - we did almost 10 events in 2 years creating a market awareness with the gospel of ABM from city to city and buzz on this new category called ABM and the movement of FlipMyFunnel.

for GTM Partners in 2022/23, we are leveraging the same strategy of event-led growth. since GTM or go-to-market is about driving executive level clarity, alignment and team, we altered the process from open to all to executive and invite-only starting in Seattle, Boston, San Francisco, Washington DC and Atlanta. check here

instead of 200 people coming, we concentrated on no more than 75 executives in marketing, sales and GTM roles who can make the executive level change.

there you have it!

that’s our lane of genius - we know how to bring thought leaders, practitioners, and vendors together in a way that feels like rising tide lifts all boats.

there is no such thing as category of one.

most organizations are too self-obsessed that they can’t see that a market is made up more than one players.

competition is a good thing.

and if everyone is talking about the problem, guess what, everyone will also be now searching for a solution and that is your market opportunity.

---

on a personal note, i have been wondering how do incentivize my kids to learn more and be better leaders in the future.

sure, i can give them money for chores but that is expected for them to do.

so i struggle with giving money for dishes, trash out day, clean up because i think that’s just something one must do without any expectations.

so here is what we are doing as parents and you tell me if you think otherwise or have better ideas:

$5 for book reading one of books that I recommend

for every book they read i give them $5. so my son, who is 12, just read Rich dad poor dad

and my daughter, who is 8, is finishing up reading Be intentional today by my friend Dick Biggs

Plus:

$5 if they get A in school every month in all their subjects

$5 for helping someone or doing something kind

at the end of the month, let’s tally it up and what ever you make give 10% to Church and anyone else and then find ways to save or buy something for yourself.

sometimes, we will say we will double the money if you raise for a good cause.

leaderpoint: leadership is not an accident. leadership is being intentional.