I just have to ask and pardon the rant from the get go. Why? Seriously…why? Why do companies find it better to follow other companies instead of making their own waves? What has happened to originality? This has gone far beyond basic company standards rather in every day living.
Personally, I’m sick of it. Stop being a clone and start thinking for yourself for once people!
I remember years ago when my beautiful wife and I got married. She grew up catholic and I came into the church under pentecostal. The only thing that could really be further would be if I was baptist and she was a Quaker. Nevertheless we always found common ground when it came to basic principles. When we married one of our priorities was finding a church. Some place we could call our own and raise our child(ren) in.
Where am I going with this? Just wait for it, OK.
In our journey we went to several types of churches trying to find that common ground. I even tried Catholic masses and she tried some Pentecostal. Nothing mashed but one thing I noticed was that each one (on both sides) were preaching/teaching the same exact thing (which isn’t uncommon in the church) but they were doing so in the same exact way.
There was no originality. There was nothing. If we kept going back and forth between those churches I bet I could run the morning sermon after a month. That’s how original they were. They were following the lead of others. My guess on why is because they were scared to go outside the box. Now, there was one Father that I truly loved Father Clem, whom was from Nigerian and talk about upbeat. He, along with my in laws, helped changed my views on the catholic church. It was too bad that there was a mishap at the particular church he was teaching at or we would’ve been going there in all honesty.
Nevertheless we found a place: Parkview Nazarene. A truly amazing place with amazing people. The staff is something I haven’t seen in a long time = caring. In my ‘old church’ the power of the ol’ might dollar ruled over any type of outreach program. When family members went ill there were no calls/cards/let alone visits.
At Parkview Nazarene they have thought outside the box and it’s becoming something great. I’ll give one recent example. Yearly for Halloween the church does what’s called a “Trunk-N-Treat” where we bring cars and have the kids dress up and go car-to-car. The purpose is to get the neighborhood families involved. The downside is that it only reaches that particular neighborhood. This year though they decided to do more of an outreach and have set-ups at various neighborhoods around the town (in a 15-20 mile radius). Now instead of people going to the church they were going to the neighbor’s house.
Small idea but huge originality. This is just one example and I have plenty more but in the end originality is key that opens up new doors (or sales).
Can you say the same thing with your business model?