Be Remarkable

Two of my younger relatives have started a new business. In many ways, it is a tough time to start a new business, particularly one which sells a highly discretionary service such as theirs. Astute political observers know that despite all the talk by the Federal LootNPillage Party currently in power, Australia has been in a per capita recession for years, and now, since the onset of the Covid pandemic and it's associated public health closures to business and borders, Australia is in a real recession too. Without the massive stimulus payments undoubtedly the recession would be a depression.

My young relatives however, are buoyantly confident, although whether or not that translates into business success is impossible to know. In truth, they are buoyantly confident about everything they do and think, a condition that to my jaded 57 year old eyes is somewhat of an anathema.

I often wonder whether such pervasive self-assurance is a characteristic of the Millennial generation where trophies for participation were commonplace, or whether this unfaltering self confidence is a character trait. Of course, it could be both, or one caused by the other. As with all things human nature, we will never know.

Very sporadically I send them emails, usually something I think is funny, like this video about Stravassholes, which is funny to everyone who is not a Stravasshole, but strangely not funny to my young relatives. Perhaps they are Stravassholes, although given they do not mountain bike, that is unlikely. I don't really know, because, they never reply to my emails and the possible reasons for that are too myriad to enumerate.

Well known marketing and business guru Seth Godin writes that to be a success in the modern and crowded market place, businesses need to be remarkable. Remarkable as in stunning, different, audacious, worthy of remark not by the business owner but by the public. Being remarkable is even more important in enterprises where the entry bar is low, because the marketplace is even more crowded with average.

I am not sure being remarkable is a thing that can be taught. Being remarkable requires such divergent thinking that by definition it will escape most people. I suspect being remarkable is much like many other sliding scale things in life, hard to describe but we know it when we see it.

One year update: "just not feeling it."