One idea to Build your Business, one idea to Scale your life. Every Wednesday.

Welcome to Winformation Weekly. My 13 years’ experience of growing a business from £0-£100m, and the life that goes with it. All wrapped up, in one winning weekly email.

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Business

I Met Dyson’s Head of Marketing of 24 Years – Here's What He Taught Me

Recently, I was fortunate enough to meet Dyson’s Head of Marketing, Jim Turner, who was 6th into the business and designed and managed the brand from kitchen table to global business for 24 years. Here are the 5 biggest takeaways from our chat:

1. Be brave. It is delusional to strive for a life free of any challenges. Inevitably, life will throw them up, especially if you are looking to pursue a successful business. That can bring with it some feelings of fear and doubt, but it is vital to show grit and persevere through your life if you want to see results. As they say, it’s not about how many times you get knocked down, but how many times you get up, that counts.

2. Be different. Cliché alert! In a world where everyone else is taken, be yourself. It’s important to show that in your business too. This isn’t about being quirky for the sake of it, it is about standing out from your competitors with a clearly defined offering. Or even about creating your own niche and avoiding many competitors entirely.

3. Being popular can still mean premium prices. While Dyson products have become the most popular among vacuum cleaning brands for their innovation, it doesn’t mean they were or are the cheapest. Quite the contrary. The reason people pay more for a Dyson is because they are seen as a superior product. If you are offering one of these don’t sell yourself short.

4. Get to the root of the problem. Before you present the solution understand the problem, when they do inevitably arise. There’s an initial urge to want to make them go away quickly. While swatting away the metaphoric fly is ok for now, it is better to find out where that fly is coming from and stop it from getting into the room in the first place. Set time aside to find the cause.

5. Land a knock-out punch. When trying to make an impact don’t land 10 small punches when you can instead strike with one big one. Think about what you are trying to achieve in business. It’s often better to focus your attention on a solution you are offering to one big problem, as opposed to trying to solve lots of little ones.

Life

How to Think More Positively

Too often, too many people totally underestimate how they think can have a huge impact on their life. What you think can guide your actions and beliefs, hand in hand can create the momentum needed to be successful in any walk of life. But you probably already know that. The question is how to maintain that level of positive thinking through the ups and downs of life – here are five tips to cultivate that.

1. Be mindful of your thoughts. As Brian Tracy said in his best-selling book Goals, you become what you think about most of the time. While it’s great if you are driven to succeed, it’s of no benefit to yourself, even if only done in your head, when things don’t go as planned. Be mindful of your thoughts, focusing on what you want, rather than what you do not.

2. Let unhelpful thoughts pass. Sometimes, step one above is tricky, as the voice we all have in our head begins chattering away, telling us what we should have done in that meeting yesterday and worrying about X, Y and Z. Rather than further berate yourself about having unhelpful thoughts, remember it is only that – a thought – so allow it to pass and wave it on its way.

3. Choose your perspective. Things happen to us all the time, but we get to decide on the meaning we give to them. If you only see the world around you as filled with angry and inconsiderate people, then the likelihood is that it’s all you will ever see.

4. Gratitude stack. The cynical among you may be rolling your eyes at the thought of this, but the mere act of thinking on some of the things you are grateful for isn’t as hippy-dippy as you might think it is, as doing so helps train the brain to think from a positive point of view.

5. Taking ownership. It is too easy to blame others for the things that go wrong in your life. But untimely we are all fully responsible for our own lives. As former US Navy Seal Jocko Willink said in his best-selling book Extreme Ownership, true leaders must own everything in his or her world. There is no one else to blame. The leader must acknowledge mistakes and admit failures, take ownership of them, and develop a plan to win.

…Plus More!

I Dropped the To-Do List & Did This Instead

When it comes to thinking about 2025 and fresh starts, most people think about giving up certain vices. Drinking during the week, smoking or maybe too much junk food. These are all great things to cut out, but I have another “vice” that you should consider dropping. The to-do list. Since scrapping the never ending, anxiety cultivating to-do list and replacing it with a nice scheduled calendar, my head has been calmer, my sleep has improved, and my productivity has gone through the roof! If you have trouble saying no to events, requests and other things, a schedule is very difficult to fit more into. A list? Well, just add it to the bottom, and watch the stress levels rise! Give it a go, let me know how you get on.  

Until next week! 

Let’s win, together!