'My' edition of Dentistry arrived this week, the June 2023 edition of the tabloid dental magazine that comes through the post wrapped in Cellophane.
I often never read Dentistry, unwrap the Cellophane, put it in the bin, and put the magazine straight in the recycling. For one reason or another, I opened this one at the back straight into the education guide in association with dentistry.
I started to flick through this from the back to the front, looking at all the courses available for restorative dentistry and Implant Dentistry advertised over two-page spreads.
I started to get that horrible fear of missing out (FOMO) when I realized that our education business exists in a world with about 50 million others.
I did laugh out loud when I turned the page and found that we had an advert of our own in that edition that Tom and the marketing team had popped in, and I didn't even realize it was going to be there.
But it did start me thinking about something different, about what you're offering in a world where all there is noise and people trying to grab your attention and shout at you to get your attention and your business.
I was reminded of the very famous Simpsons episode, 'Flaming Moe's,' where Mo, the bartender invents a drink with Homer, which becomes a national sensation. It's only when the 'secret sauce' is revealed that everybody else ends up making a version of flaming Moe's, and Moe's has to shut down.
We're all doing effectively the same thing to one degree or another trying to get the attention of the people we care about or the people we want to attract in a world where they're battered five or 10,000 times a day with other people trying to do the same.
The race is very long here, and even if you win in the short term, if you're not providing something different, something better, something with more value than people think they're paying for, then you're not likely to last the distance.
Deciding what that something is and then trying day after day to continue to keep your promise is one of the hardest jobs in the world, but that is, in fact, the job.
People will arrive in a minute down the road with their own version of Flaming Moe's, which will steal yours away unless your service is better, or your smile is bigger or your story is different, your care is deeper, or some other aspect of what you provide is different to that which they are doing.
They used to call it a USP (unique selling point); they now call it a million other things.
But what we have seen is that the world is divided now into 100 million pieces, with none of them particularly big and all of us with our own little corner of paradise.
Blog Post Number - 3474