We live in a very noisy world. Audible noise and visual noise.

Seems that we are constantly surrounded these days by messages – all vying for our attention. Standing in line at the bank or supermarket, surfing the Web, driving, at the movie theatre, watching tv, listening to the radio. . . everywhere we look there are businesses of some sort talking to us.

No, most of that’s not really new, and we’ve learned to tune most of it out. Yet it has has become more and more prevalent with technological advances.

And even more of this noise is being created since just about everyone we know now has a business of some sort. Starting a few years ago when many of us realized our “jobs” were not as secure as we had hoped, the “side” or “home-based” business has been growing exponentially. And on top of that, many people have recently become involuntary entrepreneurs. Friends, relatives, people we meet on the street ~ all of them want us to pay attention to their enterprise.

On top of all that, we have our own enterprise ~ whatever that may be. Even if it’s going really well, it is mostly likely requiring more of our attention. We’re having to learn new skills, apply new creativity, and generally keep ourselves visible among all the Noise.

Whew!

Where do we find the time to pay attention to all that?

Well, using our incredible adaptability, we’ve developed internal screening methods that keep us from feeling totally overwhelmed. We’ve learned how to “tune out” most of the noise. It’s necessary for us to train our focus on the things that are most relevant among the multitude of choices we have.

No longer do we go searching for new things. So many messages are coming at us, most of the time we simply screen the incoming for what grabs our attention.

This makes life a bit easier for us in our role as consumers.

As business people, it can present challenges. How do we become heard above all the Noise?

How do we set ourselves apart so we are one of the voices that our prospects and clients actually hear instead of tune out?

We have to do something different. We have to make our message more compelling than the others ~ to the people we want to hear us.

YES! We can agree on that. Now for the question: how??