Over the years, an interesting thing we’ve done at GreenMellen is to literally give all of our “secrets” away. Across dozens of podcast episodes, hundreds of Meetup events, and thousands of blog posts, we don’t hold anything back. I often joke that our Meetups are when our competition all visit and we tell them all of our secrets. Of course, they share their secrets as well and we all leave the room smarter than when we arrived.
In her book “Radical Candor“, author Kim Scott shares a similar idea:
For context, I circulated an article from Harvard Business Review that explained how a culture that captures thousands of “small” innovations can create benefits for customers that are impossible for competitors to imitate. One big idea is pretty easy to copy, but thousands of tweaks are impossible to see from the outside, let alone imitate.
We do four things very well: Branding, Content Strategy, Website Design, and Digital Marketing. Those links share how we do them, and you can dig into our resources to see exactly how we make them happen.
That’s kind of the point of what Kim shared in the quote above. Our big ideas are easy to copy, but the little tweaks aren’t even visible. A great example is the messaging strategy that we work through as part of the “Written Branding” for every client. Here is a step-by-step guide to show how we do it, and here is an example of the finished product.
Even with that, most people can’t duplicate it. In this case, it’s the hours and years that Robert has put into perfecting his craft, and the tiny little things he does along the way while creating one of those. I know the method as well as anyone, and I assure you that I could not create a messaging strategy as effective as Robert can.
Your business is likely the same. There are no secrets to do what you do, but the tiny innovations and techniques that you’ve worked on over the years are what makes your output special. Feel free to share your ideas and educate those around you, knowing that the core of what you do can never be sufficiently imitated.
