On New Year’s Eve I was in the grocery store I love to hate.
Imagine a shop were the aisles are just two feet wide, where the containers of blueberries are piled so high that a sneeze topples them, and where the line to the deli is three bodies thick…and no-one will tell you where it begins or ends.
Then…and here’s the worst bit…the customers you find there are the meanest, nastiest, cruelest people you ever did see.
It’s shopping cart wars. Steely corner against chafed finger.
So why do I go there?
Because the food is insanely good: cheese from all over the world; pasta your mamma made; fish that swam there itself.
And it’s cheap.
If you can handle the stress…
But this week I figured out how to survive it.
You go at 8.30 in the morning, just as it’s opening.
Then it’s bearable. Almost.
I call this kind of timing “operating off-peak”.
When everyone is home, you go out.
When everyone is at the mall, you walk in the woods.
…and when everyone is busy doing other things, you go get your groceries.
When the rest of them zig, you zag.
If you can swing it, of course.
The same rule applies to newsletters.
Two reasons.
First, not many people send them, so when you do make the effort, you stand out.
And second… a good newsletter contains content that is different – your articles are not the same blah-blah-blah that your competitors include in their marketing materials.
Instead, your newsletter intrigues, it entertains and it informs.
In a world or boring, me-to brochures and websites, you stand out as someone with something interesting to say.
And so right away, you’re operating off peak. You’re zagging while they zig.
It’s not easy, of course. So that’s why my company exists!
We make ready-made newsletters (full of fantastic content) that you can edit as much as you want to make yourself really stand out.
And win more business.