Life lessons from children

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Yesterday, I went to Copenhagen Central Station to purchase a new travel card. It was an amazing experience as the expedient and I hit it off immediately - banter, humour and playing up to our inner child. Therefore, this morning I was inspired to think about some life lessons we can learn from children.

  1. Be courageous and try new things

  2. Adopt a beginner's mindset

  3. Have fun and laugh more

  4. Make new friends

  5. Fall and get back up

  6. Ask lots of questions

  7. Believe in miracles

  8. Colour outside the lines

  9. Love playing

  10. Wander around


This pandemic is offering the entire planet a similar opportunity. This is the first time in human history that the entire world turned unitedly against a common foe. We are being presented with an opportunity - how will you use it? Contact me via e-mail for coaching, mentoring or workshops.

How to inspire your team

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““To inform is for free, ‘the how to’ is for a fee.” ”
— Stephen Burrell

This is my go to mantra whenever the smart people asked if I could help them with this or that. Today I have made an exception, as I feel that many managers and leaders need a little spark in these difficult times. How to inspire your team:

  • Show that you care

  • Build people up

  • Listen with empathy

  • Treat people with respect

  • Showcase their strengths 

No one needs what you are selling

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No one needs what you are selling, they may want it but they definitely don’t need it! Sometimes it’s OK that the goal is to understand for the sake of understanding. I think the hallmark of curiosity is a thirst for knowledge that has no obvious utility. As I am a lifelong learner, I enjoy exploration regardless of whether the discovery has any immediate relevance. I have never been in the position of selling water to thirsty people! I have always had to use my skills to formulate the brand promise - explaining who’s it for, what’s it for and why you should buy it…


Nowadays, the majority of people are working at home and those of you with young children have the opportunity teach them two of life’s most valuable lessons:

  1. To solve interesting problems
    To look at something that no one has ever looked at before and come up with an interesting way to solve the problem.

  2. To connect, to lead and use emotional labour

    Using emotional labour by looking someone in the eye and telling them the truth. Emotional labour means doing things that you don’t feel like doing.

The customers are the marketeers

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Each industry and every company have a different approach to marketing. Here are a few key questions I ask to help my clients to focus on their “new” marketing strategy:

  1. What customer problem do you uniquely solve?

  2. Who is your customer?

  3. Where are those customers?

  4. What makes you relevant to those customers?

  5. How do you communicate your relevance?

  6. How will you continuously measure and adjust?

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How do you figure it out?

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Tim Cook (CEO, Apple Inc.) understood that the majority of people don’t buy Apple products because they are better, they buy them because it raises their status. People wait in line because owning an Apple product increases their status and they feel good when other people see what’s in their hands. Apple uses the technology ratchet to turn the handle on status and luxury. Tim Cook understood this metrics and all he had to do was to watch and understand what was going on in the Apple stores. This turned Apple into the biggest and most profitable luxury brand in history.


I have spent many hours doing “mystery shopping” - watching what happens when people visit stores. Martin Lindstrom was hired by some of the world's leading brands to find out what makes their customers tick. As consumers do not tell you how they see the world, on the other hand they give it all away by the stories they tell. I would recommend that you read Martin Lindstrom’s book “Small Data” as it has many small clues that may help you uncover the next trend.

That's OK

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Our stories are being carried forward by our customers and I think user-generated content is currently social media’s greatest gift to marketing. I also think the customer is the most effective marketer, so how do we earn the right to enter their narrative?

  • How do we spend less effort on our stories and more effort on their stories?

  • How do we get invited to our customer’s conversations?

““People don’t buy goods and services. They buy relations, stories and magic.” - Seth Godin
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A breath of fresh air

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The most common mistake I have seen marketeers make is when each of us walks around with a world view that we are 100% sure is true. Our beliefs about money, our beliefs about strangers, our beliefs about places, etc., etc. We really believe that this is true! In my experience people do not always see the world the same way as we do, they don’t believe what we believe and don’t fear what we fear. I’m sorry! As a marketeer you have to be comfortable with this, and if you are not then you cannot market to them.


To put things in perspective, please oblige me in a thought exercise - Think of every product you’ve purchased over the past two weeks. This might include food, clothing, a car wash, house plants, insurance, medicine, office supplies, toys, books … anything at all. Now, consider this list and determine: How many of these purchases were directly or indirectly influenced by a piece of company content? If you are like me, the answer is zero.


Branded content has no impact on 99.999% of consumer purchasing decisions. We don’t see this company content, and if we see it, we probably don’t believe it - let alone subscribe to any of it.

The mainstream market

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The next group are the early majority, they are the key to getting a stable foothold on the market. This group are very loyal customers if you win them over and essential in securing growth and profitability. The next group are the late majority and are characterized by demanding easy to use, value-for-money products before anything else. Finally, the laggards, this group are the last to adopt an innovation. As clients they can be very tough to win and are therefore often ignored by many marketing efforts, yet can provide important feedback regarding the areas where your product could be further improved e.g. made even simpler, cheaper and more convenient to use.

The chasm is the point where the vastly different motivations for using the new product are emphasised. Visionaries seek out dramatic shifts in productivity which can enable them to quickly move forward, even despite resistance from within their own companies, the pragmatists want gradual, steady improvements, making sure no drastic changes occur too fast.

The early market

When trying to explain the Diffusion of Innovations theory to students, I always felt breaking it down to a simple analogy made it more palatable.


The first group are the innovators for whom owning the latest everything is a passion and an end in itself. The innovators proactively seek out new products to try them out, requiring almost no marketing efforts from your part. The next group are early adopters in search of competitive advantages provided by new products and services. The early adopters view technology as a means of achieving breakthroughs and aggressively gaining market edge.


The first two groups (the Innovators and Early Adopters) are visionaries. They want revolutionary change, something that sets them apart qualitatively from their competitors. They are the people who buy brand-new technology, before it’s been perfected or proved or before the price has come down. They usually have small companies and are willing to take enormous personal risks.

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The two things that define us

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A wise old man once told me that two things define us:
1. Your patience when you have nothing, and
2. Your attitude when you have everything.


My period of self-isolation ended last night and I am “officially” free to go outdoors. Now more than ever, I think it’s so important to tune in, look inward and listen to you intuition. It’s so easy to forget how to listen to that inner voice. This morning I took a moment to enjoy the silence and confirmed to myself how grateful I am to have come through B.1.351 (the South African variant) without any major symptoms.


Now we finally have an opportunity to focus on what matters most to us, make changes - and what better time to change your life than when it’s already changing?

Stroke of genius

Honest storytelling is compelling and it appeals to our emotions. When I hear a good story I feel myself becoming part of the story. I think that it’s really difficult to tell a good story when you are trying to please everyone. It’s a risk to tell a story that is going to offend some people, it’s not just the facts that you remember, it’s the stories.


Watch the video about Jill Bolte Taylor’s massive stroke, she share an amazing story. Jill is a brain scientist, and watched as her brain functions (motion, speech and self-awareness) shut down one by one and used her experience as a research opportunity.

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Change your story, change your life

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There is a voice in your head and it is always telling you what you are good and bad at. The voice tends to focus on your weaknesses and you are subsequently thinking hard about how to let people know all about your strengths. And this tends to lead to “me, me” storytelling, where you mistake the question: “How are you?” as an actual enquiry as to how you really are. What they are really asking is, “How am I?” and that is what they want the answer to.


Have some guts and tell a story! Are you fed up of telling a cleaned up version of someone else’s story? Everyone is walking around telling themselves a story based on their pain points and emotions of what is happening around them. Can you write a story in first person about exactly what the client feels? Written in a language that your client speaks and within this story, explain exactly what they can do better. Detailing exactly what your client get out of the interacting with your brand. Contact me via e-mail if you would like to learn how to tell your own story.

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Sales is an art and science

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My interest in psychology stems from the fact that I’ve always been a lover of people. I have always wanted to know the reason behind certain behaviours and why people do certain things. Sales is about helping your clients and from a psychological perspective you become a real trusted advisor when your clients become comfortable disclosing certain things. From the psychology stand point, it’s allowed me to be more understanding, empathic and better listener. Most people who know me will say that I have a natural air of confidence and I am very easy to talk to.

Selling is an art that requires the ability to form good relationships with others as well as a science that requires the development of successful, repeatable strategies. The Covid-19 pandemic has made it easier to be yourself, challenge the status quo and transform the ways in which you work. Contact me via e-mail if you would like to learn how to move away from your own needs and focus on the customer perspectives?

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You are the one we are looking for

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c/o MTV

c/o MTV

Are you a result-driven person with solid experience in marketing and a passion for brand building and luxury brands? Are you curious, positive and willing to run that extra mile to get the job done? If so, send me your CV and I will scan it for key words before I can see whether you are suitable the position.


Simon Sinek said, “Value is not determined by the people who set the price, it is determined by those who choose to pay the price." The same statistic can be presented in very different ways to create very different reactions. And our choices reflect and determine who we are and I think individual awards come as a result of the teams success.

Say thank you

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I believe the easiest path to transformation is by embracing everyday life with openness and gratitude. You can start on the path wherever you are. Everyone is in the position to say that this situation is difficult but I am grateful for having a higher self that can find a solution. By simply acknowledging this path, you can transform any experience from darkness to light. Just think of it like having a torch in a dark forest, where the only thing that matters is the next step that you see ahead of you.

 

How should you live life when you are on this path? 
It’s easy to feel grateful when life is going well, yet not everyday is like that! Most days are a mixture of negative and positive situations, emotions and feedback at home and work. I think that we only need two tools on the path: knowledge and experience. Knowledge gives you the vision of the bigger picture that you can trust, and experience validates that the experience is true. When we achieve even more knowledge and experience, complaints are transformed into light and wonder, and gloom changes to joy. This acknowledgement that you are being guided by the light inside of you is the beginning of the journey. I think that to be in the light, you must open yourself to it and this is fundamentally different from constantly struggling against the darkness.

SARS-CoV-2 (RNA)

Copenhagen (2200 N)

Copenhagen (2200 N)

According to the World Health Organisation
Most common symptoms are:
- fever
- dry cough
- tiredness

Less common symptoms are:
- aches and pains
- sore throat
- diarrhoea
- conjunctivitis
- headache
- loss of taste or smell
- a rash on skin, or discolouration of fingers or toes

Serious symptoms are:
- difficulty breathing or shortness of breath
- chest pain or pressure
- loss of speech or movement          


And even though I have none of the above symptoms, this morning I received notification from the Danish Health Authorities that my PCR test from yesterday morning is “positive”.
Therefore, I am in self-isolation until 5th February 2021. Stay safe 😷.