When Santa Claus Really Came to Town

Like most kids these days, mine have excitedly been getting in the Christmas mood. As December 25 gets closer, the sounds of Christmas songs being sung, hummed and played on the violin are filling our house.

Over the weekend, my wife and I were showing our kids some Christmas videos on YouTube. The videos were all of famous singers doing their own versions of popular Christmas songs.

They were all good but, for my money, one stood out above and beyond all the others.

Bruce Springsteen’s version of “Santa Claus is Coming to Town”.

The original is good. Bruce’s unique version took the song to a whole nother level.

This is my last post for 2012. And as you look forward to 2013, I want to leave you with this thought…

There’s not a whole lotta new stuff in marketing. Most businesses just blindly copy what everyone else is doing and hoping it works for them too.

You can copy the words, the offers, the guarantees, the ads, etc. and, if you’re lucky, have some small level of success.

But to really lead the pack, dominate your market and have real, lasting success, that ain’t enough.

The businesses that truly succeed take what others are doing and do it much better.

Make it uniquely their own.

Make it stand out from the competition.

They’ve replace the “original” in people’s minds with their own unique version.

And the feeling of achievement, the respect of your family, friends and competitors (even if they won’t admit it), and the financial freedom that comes from pulling this off makes the challenge well worth the work.

It’s not an easy thing to pull off. But no one ever said running your own business was gonna be easy.

Hope you either had a Happy Hannukah or have a Merry Christmas.

And I wish you a healthy, happy and successful 2013.

I leave you with a live performance of Bruce doing his thing…