🔌 If you wanna stand out, do this one thing

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👋🏾 Hey yall!

• 25 years later, Mariah Carey has mastered this one thing 📓

• Viola Davis’ advice for every artist 🔥

• Tyler’s unexpected callback to the high school cafeteria 🎵

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🥰 IN PARTNERSHIP WITH BEEHIIV 🥰

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📣 THE MANIFESTO 📣

These are the House Rules! Get into it.
And when you’re ready…memorize it so you know its real!

I AM A STRAIGHT UP ORIGINAL™.

I am unapologetic in my beliefs and obedient to my gifts.

I do everything with intention because I am passionate about my assignment.

I cannot stand cookie cutter…I value MY story. 

And I do not ask permission.

I control my own narrative.

🔑 MAJOR KEYS 🔑

Expectations are something we have to manage well as brand strategists. One thing that we must discuss when a client decides on a new offer to launch?

How long we can commit to selling this one thing.

See your flywheel needs time to get rolling.

Your biz plans need a minute to hit those goals and then master those goals.

You should get to the place where these things can run like clockwork and give you the results you expect.

That don’t happen in 30 days, y’all.

You’re gonna have a launch or two that doesn’t go as expected, or flat out fails 😬 It happens to all of us if you’ve been working long enough.

Problem is, people want those 10-year results on the first go round 👀

But 10-yr results come from 10 years of data. 

10 years of audience building.

10 years of testing and tweaking.

Ngl this discussion can get pretty tense and sometimes, the answer the client gives ain’t the thing they actually do 👀

It can be hard to stand ten toes down on something that takes a while to come to fruition.

We change our minds.

We see other people chasing other shiny objects and we want in.

Or maybe we didn’t really wanna do it in the first place so when the obstacles start to pop up, we raise a church finger and see ourselves out

So today, let’s talk about someone who may just be the very best at mastering the “one thing” play…

THE MARIAH CAREY PLAYBOOK 📓

Yesterday Mariah officially told us “it’s tiiiiiiiimeeee” so I feel comfortable dusting off the wreath and giving you the low down on how Mariah is 30 years in on her main offer!

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” came out in 1994, on her Merry Christmas album. Now initially, she wasn’t sold on dropping a holiday project, mainly because she felt that most artists go into the holiday lane towards the end of their careers, not the beginning.

She’s also said that she didn’t think it was a strategic move, since she didn’t see how it fed into the forthcoming music that she saw herself creating.

Those sound like some very respectable reasons for not jumping on the Christmas bandwagon. But once Mariah agreed to just get the project over with, it took her less than an hour to co-write the single that would extend her brand awareness forever and ever, amen.

(Of course I would say that now, because hindsight is 20/20.) 🤷🏾‍♀️

“All I Want for Christmas Is You” hit the #12 spot on the Billboard 100 charts in 1994, which is decent!

But it would take another 25 years to become a #1 hit 🤯 

In 2021, Forbes concluded that she’d made approximately $72 million off of that one song, and the song had exceeded 1 billion streams.

What’s even more amazing is, that song rules the airwaves only 2 months out of the year. And trust and believe, Mariah only pops out when she wants to pop out. 

If she doesn’t feel up to it this Christmas, SHE’S STILL GONNA GET PAID because it’s her season.

Yes, she can drop a showstopper like The Emancipation of Mimi and kill the game! But come November 1st, she’s still gonna be called on as a featured artist to come sing her song for 4 minutes.

She’s gonna do a Christmas special.

She’s gonna do a Christmas brand partnership (with McDonalds and Kay Jewelers to name a few).

And as of this year, she’s gonna do a Christmas tour.

One hour, 30 years ago, has given her the freedom to basically only work 2 months out of the year and do wtf she wants to do the rest of the year.

One hour, 30 years ago, has solidified her brand so that when someone says Christmas, we think Jesus first…and Mariah second 🎄

I mean!

Let’s look at what we can learn from Mariah’s “one thing” playbook.

🗣 MARIAH’S TAKEAWAYS 🗣

What can today’s playbook teach you?

If you want to become known, you gotta become known for one thing.
What’s one thing you know that you’re uniquely qualified to do? To create? To say?

We don’t always know, but it is always uncovered. You better clock it!

It’s the same as discovering your purpose or what you’re here to do. It’ll switch on like a light bulb, your job is to work it when you find it.

When folks say your name, they should think one thing.

Then —

Stick with it.
One launch ain’t gonna do it, friend.

Mariah’s been at this for 30 YEARS. Same song, same season. She still finds new ways to being the attention back to her, though. New partnerships, new features, new ways to shine doing the same damn thing.

If Mariah can do 30 years, can you at least do one? Think about that.

Instead of choosing to hop from one offer to the next, can you be intentional about putting your entire focus into one awesome thing and working it from every angle imaginable?

Can you tweak the messaging or shift the positioning until it becomes that “one thing” for you?

I bet if you were confident it was the thing for you, you could. So how bout you build something that you can be confident in (not anyone else)? That might just change the game.

🔥 YOU’VE GOTTA SEE THIS 🔥

A clip that made the rounds this week that you must take with you on your journey.

Viola Davis. Enough said.

Press play ▶️

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TLDR : When God steps in and says “yes”, you better have the courage to be the person you said you wanted to be.

🎵 ISSA VIBE 🎵

If you’re gonna be coming up with dope ass ideas and strategies, you’re gonna need some dope ass music to inspire you! Here’s a tune that I’ve got on replay this week.

This one’s sticky, no pun intended.

TikTok said it’s giving impromptu cafeteria freestyle vibes and IT IS. The reaction videos of folks listening to it for the first time have been everything. Love this for us!

Hit the link below to listen 👇🏾

Ready to be intentional about the brand you were meant to build?
Grab a free consult with me here and let’s talk about it!

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