This time last week I was cruising the Western Caribbean on a massive ship with 3000 people.

Disclosure: I’ve never been into the cruise scene, or any kind of package holiday for that matter. From the outside looking in it’s a bizarro concept to me. I’ve always enjoyed the freedom of doing things my own way.

So what the H was I doing there?

This cruise was different…

I was among a group of 20 talented solo business entrepreneurs as part of WE Mastermind. A business building retreat hosted by Emmy Award winning Natalie MacNeil and Suitcase Entrepreneur, Natalie Sisson.

All of us cut off from our usual world – no internet access or mobile phone reception (not an easy thing as we all run our businesses online) – to get creative, work on our business and experience an…uh… alternative adventure.

See this picture? It shows what happened when we got to Belize and connected to wifi for the first time in 4 days. Can you Belize it!? (It’s an in-joke, ok? You’d think it was hilarious too if you had no internet to distract you).

Floating around disconnected from everything familiar to us took some getting used to. Initially I wasn’t sure what to make of the other holiday-makers on board, daytime dancing in the tiny, overcrowded pool, then donning fancy cocktail dresses and ball gowns for dinner. It was a little surreal.

The cruise phenomenon was a eye-opening experience for sure. But as the week went on I began to understand why so many people return 10, 20, even 90 times over a lifetime. (I even heard a story about a lady who lives on a cruise ship as an alternative to a nursing home).

During my stay I came to admire the slick operation of the cruise experience, and it got me thinking about how we can apply some of the same principles to our own, much smaller businesses to create success for ourselves online.

Here are 3 big brand lessons I took home from a massive hotel-boat-at-sea.

1. Weaving our brand personality into everything we do.

Carnival Cruises is a brand that has fun at it’s very heart. They promise lively experiences offering light-hearted entertainment from sing-along piano bars to ‘hairy chest competitions’ by the pool (that’s what I heard, anyway!)

Every experience on board has the common theme of FUN weaving through it, even when you least expected it.

Take dinner in the fine dining restaurant as an example.

Each night, just before dessert was served, the lights would dim as our attentive, usually demure waiters hopped onto podiums around the dining area to dance to crowd pleasers like Gangnam Style in hilarious fashion. They’d don wigs, fancy waistcoats and bust out their best moves to delight the cheering crowd.

Not what you’d expect at your average fancy restaurant…

They took a risk to show the personality of Carnival the brand and it totally worked. It endeared them to us and everyone LOVED it.

It reminded me of the importance of being prepared to take risks and show our personality online.

Solo workers get nervous about what exactly ‘being personal’ means and mistake it for sharing private details about their family and lives.

It’s no wonder so many shy away from using the internet to create success if this is the misconception they believe!

If you’re into revealing all (and your audience resonates with it), cool – go for it, but it’s not a necessary ingredient for online success.

Showing personality, demonstrating what makes you and your products or services different – what sets you apart from everyone else – IS. We don’t need to know any private details to understand that.

2. Showing up. Always.

Every evening after dinner, when I returned to my cabin there would be a towel animal sitting on my bed to welcome me.

Each day a different creature designed from towels and face cloths into a monkey, elephant, rabbit, dog or pig.

Sometimes I couldn’t make out what it was. All part of the fun, I guess!

And, every day our towel animals would be a topic of conversation among the group as we’d compare pictures and stories of our funny discoveries…

“I had a monkey swinging from the ceiling!”
“Mine was an amorous rabbit lounging on my pillow”
“I wonder what it’ll be tomorrow..?!”

As the week went on we came to expect our animal towel would be waiting for us in our rooms each night.

Imagine then if one night there wasn’t one?

I’d be gutted. Maybe even feel a little put out.

I would probably subconsciously think Carnival were a little slack and unreliable.

Supposing that’s how your community feels when you stop showing up online?

The blog posts, email updates and social comments just…stop.

Consistency in community outreach is a major player in successfully marketing your business on the internet.

So often solo business owners start off with great intentions about blogging regularly or sending email updates only to give up a few months later when things get a too busy or creative ideas escape them.

“I’ve only got a small list size anyway” is one reason for the sudden halt in communication that I hear over and over.

Y’know, it doesn’t matter HOW small your list size or audience is! Whether it’s 10 or 10,000 – they ALL matter.

And, without consistent effort your audience will never grow and that will strangle your business growth too.

By far the best way I’ve found to overcome a scattergun approach to marketing online is through planning. That’s why it’s such a huge part of what I cover with my clients during our 1:1 Business Breakthrough and Business Clarity experiences.

Planning ahead saves MASSES of time and headspace, giving you more clarity about the messages you want to deliver.

3. Natalie Sissons’ ABC

I would need at least 2 pairs of hands to count how often I heard Natalie Sisson chirp “ABC: Always Be Closing” during our trip.

It’s now ingrained in my head as examples of great sales techniques (and some terrible ones) were evident everywhere during the cruise.

Not just by Carnival themselves either…

Each time we docked at port and ventured onto the islands we were greeted by locals – enthusiastic traders, taxi drivers and tour guides all with something to sell.

Often the hustle would be too much – so eager to get our attention for a sale – traders would run to meet us, and try anything to steer us to their stall. Sometimes aggressively.

Others would allow us space to make our own decisions, engage in a conversation about their offer, negotiate a deal and leave us to decide. Sometimes letting us walk away – confident that if it’s right for us we’d be back.

And we were much more likely to spend with them than the former.

Whatever strategy they took, they’d Always Be Closing.

Let’s bring this into the online world for a minute because selling and marketing online is a tricky subject.

Without sales and marketing we have no business so we HAVE to engage in it.

Yet it’s not the reason most of us went into business in the first place, right?

If you switch your approach to one that’s informative about how you can help others and leave the decision making for your prospects, you detach yourself from the outcome and it becomes less icky. (It takes practice but it works).

I’m not suggesting to take a reactive approach either. Peppering your communication – blog articles, email updates, opt in freebies, social media posts, podcasts, videos – with examples of your products and services often and consistently means that more people will understand what you do more often.

And, that’s a subtle approach to always be closing.

Over to you

What other lessons do you think small businesses can learn from big brands? Share your thoughts in the comments below so we can all benefit.