Compatible Weirdness
- December 2, 2013
- Posted by: Rochelle
- Category: Audience Building, Brand + Design, Personal Brand
“We are all a little weird and life is a little weird, and when we find someone whose weirdness is compatible with ours, we join up with them and fall in mutual weirdness and call it love.” Dr. Seuss
This is not unlike how we attract (and keep) our best clients.
It is a little like falling in love.
We match our small (or big) weirdnesses and together we are better than either would be solo.
Which is yet another argument for building our weirdness into all that we do.
Consultants and advisors paid for their smarts are often reluctant to do this. Vulnerability and poignancy do not come naturally to the profoundly left-brained. Showing ourselves as human seems, well, wrong somehow.
But it’s what attracts the right people—clients included—into our orbit.
I once posted a piece “What Do You Suck At?” And followed it up with a video version.
In both, I freely cop to my shortcomings. My weirdness if you will. Not only did it attract an unusually high number of hits, it directly delivered two new clients—1 from each post.
Mutual weirdness works.
Zuckerberg and Sandberg. Carville and Matalin. Yogi and Boo-Boo. Penn & Teller.
Think about it. Hard. What weirdness(es) will help your compatibles discover you?
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From another perspective, my clients often bond with me because they and I have different ways of being weird. I have many lawyer and accountant clients who appreciate that I encourage and help them try things that are highly likely, but not certain, to work. On their own, they hesitate to try things that are not nearly certain to produce results.
And I love my husband of many years because he is precise and careful, and he loves me because I am often out of the box and more spontaneous than him.
Love it K.C.–“Compatible weirdness” indeed!
Compatible weirdness? Could this be similar to thinking outside, or stretching the limits, of the box while getting others to join you? I am reminded of the Butch Cassidy movie when they jumped off the top of the cliff into uncharted waters.
Or Thelma and Louise 🙂 But I definitely prefer the healthy kind of compatible weirdness!
We’ve been asking colleagues, clients and friends to share their favourite quote with us, so I took one look at your latest post and thought hello, that’s weirdly compatible with our Gallery, so I have taken the liberty of adding you and Dr Seuss in as an exhibit/contributor – see http://www.hintonbarn.com.
Hoping that’s OK with you Rochelle. Welcome to Hinton’s world, where you know you were already a friend.
Love it Mollie! I’m delighted to be part–with Dr Seuss–of Hinton’s world…
Had to reflect on this when I first read it.
Weird.
Different.
Standout.
Perhaps what sets you apart from the others with whom you “compete” for business.
But I find what some might view as weird, the folks in my world just view as a part of me. Only the mention that at my age and all, I play full court hoops 2x/ week surprises some.