Archive of posts from October 2018

What’s the biggest difference between prestige and heritage?

How much it means to you:

• What it ‘says’: This is a prestige parameter. Buyers choose to express it (such as with a display of wealth) or not (such as a commodity purchase). There are many options in this category.
• What it ‘means’: This is a heritage parameter. An item either means something special, or it doesn’t. Be it a family heirloom or a monogrammed gift, it’s not prestige that gives...

When you don’t know how to do something, remember, you do:

• 20 years makes a big difference: There’s more information available to you in your pocket than The White House could access 20 years ago. It’s hard to not know things these days.
• 300 hours a minute: That’s how much video content is being uploaded to YouTube. If we want to learn how to do something, there’s likely to be a few videos covering it somewhere.
• Trial and error:...

Don’t wish for it to arrive, just yet:

• Longing for the goal misses the trip: If you don’t like the journey, why take the trip? It’s the journey there that you’re giving your life to.
• The prize at the end of life is death: It’s not arriving at death that makes life worth living, but how we lived along the way.​

For teams doing important work, it can be easy to fixate on the difference we want to...

Most teams competing in the marketplace have a lot of worries, be they spoken or unspoken.

Many have simpler answers than we’d care to admit:

• If you’re premium, don’t worry about those who can’t afford it.
• If you’re niche, don’t worry about the outsiders that don’t understand it.
• If you’re viral, don’t worry about those who haven’t yet heard about it.

This all goes both ways. We can trace our worries back to what we ought to become...

It’s not what we say, but the energy and conviction with which we say it, that makes the difference:

• The nervous sales representative doesn’t make the sale. If he doesn’t truly believe what he’s saying, why should we?
• The broken web page citing product reliability gets no opt-ins. If the owners don’t live out their priorities, why should we think they’ll be any different with us?
• The teammate that promises camaraderie but ‘disappears’ when everyone needs to pull together,...

“I should prefer to lack success than to lack faith” – Seneca

While doing work that matters in the marketplace, what is success without faith? What is faith without success?

• Without faith that our work creates a better future, we’re punching the clock. Given that time is finite, and given that there are causes out there worthy of our time, why pursue this work without faith?
• Without success as a result of our faith, be it in learning, awareness,...

We don’t like to think about it when things are going great.

But one day, it’ll be dead. Either due to a market correction, being too slow to market, becoming obsolete, bad changes in leadership, or something else. All things come to an end, eventually.

• How can our work live a long life? If it’s worthy of a long life, it’s worth remembering what that reason is every day we’re fortunate enough to do this work. Otherwise, we risk...

How many times a month do you rush at work?

The greatest works of nature weren’t rushed. Yet we believe we should:

• The best-growing businesses to work with don’t force deals and sales, nor do they force growth beyond that which is healthy for long-term success. They simply focus on being the best option to work with. They toil without force.
• The best teams to belong to don’t go on hiring sprees and rush to fill slots. They simply...

You, and those you serve. It goes something like this:

• The bit that went great: We don’t talk about it much. At least, not without us bringing it up. That’s okay. We both know what the other means.
• The bit that didn’t: We talk about that a lot. You come worried, but then we remind you that we’re in this together. We’ll work it out, just as we always have before.

The more we’re “in this together” with...

We see a lot of teams and individuals in the marketplace that are inconsistent with themselves:

• Perception: A poser with a fancy car and a $30 website template sends a conflicted message. How clear is yours?
• Value: Do you advertise your value but close on price? What does that communicate to your prospects?
• Care: Are you more (or less) attentive to your clients as you are with prospects? What does that say about how much you care?

If...

“If you stop supporting that crowd, it will support itself.” – Seneca the Younger

‘Sort-of-delegating’ is the worst kind of delegating. It’s when we show others how to do something, then don’t give them the space to try, fail, then succeed.

• Making room to fail: When we only “sort-of-delegate”, we deny team talent from owning their work–a full delegation. Why even bother, then?
• What you’re missing: Could our team’s cause, chosen charity, or community be underserved due to our...

What gets written down and shared, grows:

• Documentation: A well-crafted soft-system creates happy customers in ways talent never could when talent remains the secret gift of only a few.
• Blog posts: A well-crafted blog post outperforms a front-page advert when the post is so good you can’t not share it with others.What gets written down and shared, grows:
• Briefs: A well-written brief sets great teams into motion in ways an articulate-yet-unclear leader never could.

If the talent writes...

If you’re a team who reaps the rewards of strategic partnerships in the marketplace, you may notice that everyone falls into one of two categories.

Advocates: In the ‘spirit of shared success’ they will seek out ways to grow with you on the assumption that growth begets growth.

NothingPersonals:  In the ‘spirit of the game’ they will feign advocation until it no longer suits them. “It’s nothing personal.”

All partnerships are one of these. Both have their place. Invest lavishly into...

You’ve probably heard of growth mindsets and fixed mindsets.

It seems to me that growth mindsets need fixed goals–to become who we need to be in that reality, and fixed mindsets need growth goals–to become the same person, but a little better:

• If your goal is set–big and fixed–you’ll live life with that goal as your new reality. You’ll become the person you need to be in order to reach it.
• If your goal isn’t set, but a moving...

Many important things that distract us from our meaningful work aren’t all that important.

For example, I love my inbox, but only when it’s in a box:

• Put inbox in box: If you spend a while in email every day–an hour or more–what boundaries and rituals could reduce the non-essential time? Could you automate, delegate, batch, or systemize away the things that prevent you from your important work?
• Make to-do today: It’s not just the inbox this applies to....

Life just keeps on happening, regardless of whether we perceive it as noise or focus.

We have choices.

• >Your noisy world is the same noisy world that everyone else deals with. They just don’t advertise it to you on social media. They may be selectively reveal themselves just as you do, or they may be using ‘hoot selection’.
• >Perpetuating the lie: if we pretend we don’t live in that world, something terrible happens: others may believe you. They may...

There are parts of your work that others don’t understand. Sometimes, those ‘others’ are your buyers, and that’s an issue.

When “they don’t get it”, you have three options:

• >Nix it: Sometimes they don’t get it because it doesn’t matter. Take the opportunity to let go of something you’ve been holding onto for too long.
• >Teach it: Sometimes it does matter, you’re just not communicating well enough. Pour out valuable and insightful education onto those you serve.
• >Build it:...

It’s the same with business and bicycles: if you increase the resistance, you increase the value…

• >Low-Resistance work is commoditized. Having an article published 30 years ago meant you were ‘somebody’. Now a new blog can be set up with its first post published within a half hour. The resistance decreased, and so did the value. We don’t get much of a workout while tootling along in first gear.
• >High-Resistance work is valuable. Podcasts are still hard to set...

“Don’t behave as if you are destined to live forever.” – Marcus Aurelius

If it matters enough, ’later’ is an excuse we can’t afford. Better to invest our time in FLOW:

• F: Fail. At any activity or skill. The sooner we fail, the sooner we…
• L: Learn. We don’t truly learn without first failing. When we learn, we can…
• O: Optimize. Our learning dictates how to improve. Do it enough times and…
• W: Win. As an eventuality...

What’s your job title? Is that all you do?

• Everyone’s a customer service rep. “Why isn’t it working?” If there’s a code glitch, dignifying the customer with a proper reason and a plan to resolve it is customer service.
• Everyone’s a spokesperson. “So what does your team do?” We’re all on social media, we all line up for coffee, we all interact with others. We represent our team everywhere we go.
• Everyone’s a benefactor. “What on Earth are we...

How did that last digital training course work out for you?

• “I tried all the advertising channels and none work.” It’s not the channel, but your ability to communicate that determines its success.
• “I tried all the investment vehicles and none work.” Some are better than others, but putting up only $1,000 at 6% or 12% is still only $60-120.
• “I tried all the NLP tricks and none work.” It’s not your techniques, but how much you empathize that...

Year 2000, flying cars. Year 2020, all-green energy.

These goals are delusional. And there’s a formula as to why:

• Dream = Dream. That’s all it is.
• Dream + Deadline = Delusion. This is our “new millennium flying cars” thing. The deadline didn’t make it so, the work never happened, as much as I wanted to have been during the 90s.
• Dream + Milestones = Goal. What has to happen next year? What about next month? What about next week?...

“Amor Fati” is Latin for loving one’s fate, to make the best out of what comes our way. For teams doing meaningful work, this premise compliments our toil:

– Loving the vision is one thing. An inspiring end-goal or virtuous mission is easy to get excited over. But how do we stay the course?

– Loving the pursuit is another. If it’s to ever happen, there’s likely to be an unsexy daily grind to master. Beyond mastering it…

– We...

Complication is the enemy of execution. See if this sounds familiar:

1. Read 50 articles on the subject: The Internet is full of tricks, best practices, strategies, and blueprints. So you read all of them, perhaps taking notes along the way.
2. Whiteboard out the intricate complexity: Next, you muster the mental energy to map out a method of applying every piece of information you’ve gathered into one “master plan”.
3. Do nothing with it: Because it’s really complicated. Where to begin?...

Would you do business with you, based on how you treat yourself?

• Your attention: Does your team give itself as much attention on internal projects as it does to customer-facing work, or do you instead resemble a slow, unpredictable service provider?
• Your process: While working on your own projects, do you use the process and discipline you’d show your customers, or do you freestyle it with vastly different responsibilities and standards?
• Your referral: If judged only by your experience...

Tweakaholic. Noun. One who is obsessed with tweaking things past the point of return.

• You have this. It’s why you do the things you do each day that make no difference; because it’s comfortable work rather than useful work.
• Your clients have this. It’s why they want to take control of things they may not fully understand, and get frustrated when it doesn’t go their way.
• Your team has this. It might be why that one project everyone thought...

You have twelve great options. Which do you choose first?

Whether it’s choosing a content strategy, code framework, A/B test, or market segment, we have choices on how to choose:

• “I’m not sure, let’s discuss it some more.” Most teams choose this one, even for tiny concerns. It’s laziness disguised as collaboration.
• “I’ll just pick…that one.” This is the second most popular choice. Decisions are made without record or method, until we get lucky.
• “I’ll sort them and start...