What are my New Year resolutions – and why am I telling you?

I have a number of New Year resolutions which I thought I’d share with you 

and of course, there’s a Marketing reason why I am…

1. I am going to do at least two stand up open mic poetry nights. (The only person you know who is so modest that after writing a few poems at a creative writing class gets it in his head that it would be a great challenge to stand up in front of a bunch of strangers and read some out.)
2. I am going to carry on offering free training sessions to SMEs and Startups.
3. I am going to try to become a TikTok Influencer – booktok- talking about older science fiction and fantasy books.
4. I am going to produce TikTok videos for my own business.
5. I am going to carry on losing weight – I’ve lost about 10 kg so far and I intend to lose another 10 (I know, i really need to).
6. I am going to run the Manchester 10K next year. I’ve just about reached 5K – although it’s more a stumble than a run…
7. I am going to do one more form of exercise. I go to the gym, do tai chi, and run, and I really want to add in something like pilates.

Now there is a reason for telling you each of these, and like everything in my life, it’s a marketing reason! I am after all a marketing bore, and everything comes back to marketing.

So, here are the reasons

Poetry – it’s a challenge. We talk about functional equity, brand equity, and relationship equity in our marketing training. As an agency, I have a little functional, a bit of brand, and good amount of relationship. One of my business strategies is to develop functional equity – and I’ve identified that I can do that with my presentation skills. We’re doing more coaching and training and so I need to push and challenge myself out of my comfort zone and into a presentational area where I don’t feel comfortable.

Free Training – as I’ve mentioned before, if you want to get good at something then teach it. If I’m going to be paid to coach and train people, then I need to keep my skills high and to do that I need to practice. If you want to be good at something, if you want a HEDGEHOG, then you need to practice it and to keep practicing it. And the place to practice, in my view, is not just when people are paying you. You have to be good enough to get paid in the first place.

TikTok – now anyone who has been on one of my courses will know that I don’t like TikTok. For the way its algorithm, in my opinion, can work. BUT, it is a social media I can’t ignore, and if I want to really understand it, and use it for other people, then I need to get good at it myself. We’ve been dabbling in it (unpaid) for clients this year – testing out what to do and how it works. If I want to get good at marketing on TikTok then I need to start using it. Both to develop my influence skills – to see if I can do it – and to see if I can use it to create business opportunities for myself before I credibly charge other people for doing it.

Consistency – consistency is one of the 7 levers of influence we use extensively in our training and in how we develop our marketing camapaigns. It’s the principle that we carry on doing what we have previously done, that we behave in a way that is consistent with our previous behaviour. So a client who has just given you a good review is less likely to get rid of you because they behave in a way that’s consistent, and if I want to lose weight, run a 10K, do more exercise, then it’s sensible to tell as many people as I can that I’m going to do it. Consistency is a hugely powerful marketing concept, and if I want to change, telling people that I want to change is a good start.