Adam’s Daily Post

Best-practices are holding you back.

Because they:

• impose answers before knowing questions
• dictate right/wrong on your thinking
• trade creativity for cheatsheets
• advocate in-the-box thinking

Blessed are the ignorant,
For they are the most creative.

Because they:

• ask questions others deem ‘answered’
• think right/wrong comes from buyers, not books
• make what buyers want, not what gurus prescribe

Stay ignorant, friends.

10 ways brands kill their own reach:

01 Building for themselves, not customers. 02 Copying competitors, no originality. 03 Chasing trends, not shared values. 04 Avoiding bold, lovable marketing. 05 Safe experiences over fun ones. 06 Playing it safe with humour. 07 Not listening to customers. 08 Features over connection. 09 Using safe, dull language. 10 Ignoring customer stories.

Listen carefully,
Then put on a show they’ll love.

What customers don’t care about:

• Who has the most features
• Who has the most awards
• Who has the best story
• Who runs the most ads

What customers DO care about:

• Who focuses what they want & enjoy
• Who focuses on features they need
• Who understands their story
• Who cares most about them

We’re not in the features business.
We’re in the relationship business.

Speed is touted as the superpower of the greats.

You’ll find chapter and verse from folks like Bezos talking about how important speed is to their culture (even if you can also find former employees attributing the lack of meaningful work to do because of all the fixing of premature releases as a critical factor to high staff churn).

You’re less likely to find popular quotes from people saying it’s OK to go slow and build great work.

Not sure why that is. Perhaps it’s because they’re busy going slow building great work.

“I can’t choose which social platform to engage on”

“I’m researching social channels for my social strategy”

You might hear this sort of thing a lot, when chatting with SMBs.

What they often fail to remember is this:

Social platforms are just places that people go to sometimes.

If those people are your people, that platform is viable.
If those people are not your people, it is not.

That’s all there is to it!

Ready to choose?

The algo is not the enemy.

All it really cares about is:

“Do people like what you said & how you said it?”

So this week in the newsletter:

• Where we should place our focus
• Aya Ellaboudy shares how to pop on social
• Sedgwick fights the algorithm ⚔️

Drops in a few hours at https://theproductoon.com.

How to solve your marketing problem (3 steps)

(Anyone can do this)

1. Interview buyers (check what they want & how they want it)
2. Review your copy / messaging (does it match step 1?)
3. Review your presentation (does it match step 1?)

This alone gets you further than you think!

Obvious when you think about it, huh?

How thinking like an artist makes you a better entrepreneur:

Entrepreneurs often focus on:

• Speed to market
• Enterprise value
• CPA, AOV, CLV

Artists often focus on:

• Doing their best work
• Delighting their patrons
• Taking time to do it right

Customers want what artists focus on.

Think like an artist.

Creators always forget this…

Customers aren’t impressed by:

• How fast you built an MVP
• Which template you use
• Your MRR / stats

They’re impressed by:

• How well you listen to them
• How well you understand them
• How thoughtful you are with their problems

You don’t need big stats, just a big heart.

The key variable for business failure vs success?

It’s just 4 things:

1. How well do you know WHO you’re creating for?
2. How well do you know WHAT they want?
3. How well do you know HOW they want it?
4. How well do you implement THAT?

There aren’t 2,123,123 things to master.

Just 4.

You got this, champ.