In with the old

Everybody is super concerned with what’s new, but there is often a great upside to searching what has worked historically that people are no longer doing.

A good example of this is direct mail advertising. This is something that worked for years until people moved to electronic advertising. Now, direct mail advertising is something new and novel again, and nobody is doing it. Many companies are starting to stand out from their competitors by returning to direct mail advertising.

Another good example is polaroids. Who uses polaroids anymore? Nobody, except somebody figured out there was still a market for instantly printed photos at weddings. So, suddenly polaroids saw a huge resurgence in the wedding industry.

In my own career, I made a splash by printing all my books in hardcover. Most people thought hardcover comics were antiquated, but I saw an opportunity and pounced on it. Hardcover books set me apart from the rest of the marketplace at a time when everybody else was either sticking with softcover or moving to digital-only.

Those aren’t the only a couple of examples. Opportunities like that are everywhere. Because so many people are searching for the NEW, you can make a pretty decent career searching for the old that people have abandoned. Once enough people have abandoned it, the costs go down again, and you have an opportunity to bring something back and make it work for your business.