Tag: writing

Let it go

Posted on by philipdodson

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Often we hold on to things that are said, or things that are done to us, we hold grudges, or we resent things. We sit and mull over things again and again, playing out scenarios in our heads and imagining what we might have said, and how we are perhaps going to ‘right’ the perceived injustice.

These can be things that we’ve held onto from childhood, from school, all our lives, like carrying around what feels like several back packs, full of hurt and injustices.

We hold onto them in relationships, ready to use as ammo when conflict occurs, or we hold them inside eating away at us.

The thing I have learnt in life is to let them go, to forgive and to move on. There is nothing to be gained in the slightest from holding onto things, they only create negativity, lead to bad feelings and nothing is achieved from holding on.

Forgiveness is a powerful thing, and like any habit, once mastered will make a huge difference to your life. It’s hugely important to be compassionate with ourselves and equally with others too, it makes for a better, happier world, and after all we have no time machines to go back and change it.

It is now and the future that matters, nothing else.

Not selling is the new selling

Posted on by philipdodson

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I have spent most of my life building businesses either for others, or my own.

I have mainly been focused on the sales/business development and marketing, and having spent a long part of my life selling, I know realise that less and less people want to be sold to.

The businesses that I like to be around and to buy their ‘stuff’ from, are the ones that do not sell.

Selling has evolved in most cases into a manipulative, often a very cynically driven process, that feels like you are simply being dragged into their sales funnel, for processing, before they move onto the next fish to trap in their net. Sure many have got really good at dressing this process up as something more ‘genuine’. Often overlaying their promotions with joyful tunes and fluffyness.

The reality is, it is simply a process, driven by making the revenue numbers look good and is just another part of the bland, homogenised industrialised system. Their is very little to choose between one bland entity or another, other than the latest sales offer.

The truly genuine businesses are interested in inspiring people with their story and are interested in building relationships with their customers or potential customers. They are only interested in speaking with the right audience, the ones that will become the true advocates of their business, the ones who will share their values and cause.

They want to make it easy to buy from them, as they make it easy to connect with them, and they want to get to know you. They want to build a bond, a trust and they want to keep that relationship going.

It is all about a clear message, it is all about businesses inspiring the right audiences to follow them. But the moment you choose the sales approach, you are choosing to simply create a commodity to sell to satisfy a need of others.

Choosing not to sell, means that you have decided to create a meaningful product or service, that will inspire people to want to join in and to become part of your journey, part of your community and that will never need any manipulative sales techniques to trap or keep customers in.

That’s why I am here at the Copass camp, because the people who founded Compass fundamentally have done it based on inspiring, based on values, building a community and not on selling.

That’s yet more evidence as to why coworking is the future of business and it is all about people.