Archive of posts from March 2019

Two types of company have to fight to be believed:

• Inauthentic or unconfident: Where those you wish to serve don’t believe you because you’re a mediocre company selling a mediocre product or service.
• Authentic and disruptive: Where those you wish to serve don’t believe you because your work is so exquisite it appears too good to be true.

For those in the former camp, I’ve no interest in helping you. But for those in the latter, we should...

Everyone’s got an urgent matter to attend to. Only yours is urgent to you, though, isn’t it?

• AIDS only feels urgent if all your friends are dying from it. Yet it’s likely not as “urgent” for you as that important presentation you need to make next week. Seems odd in perspective, doesn’t it?
• Your presentation only feels urgent if you’re the one responsible for it. Nobody else in that room will feel its urgency like you will. It may...

We think that problems come at us from all angles. They don’t. Usually they come from one of two places. For example:

• ‘Not enough sales’: a communication or systems problem. Are we saying the wrong things to the wrong people, or is our system flawed?
• ‘Not enough customer satisfaction’: same again. Are we not communicating the value of our work, or is our system flawed?
• ‘Not enough imp act with our work’: same again. Are we not connecting with...

Srikumar Rao, MBA business school professor, said, “Everything is nothing but a vehicle for your growth.” Vishen Lakhiani cites this quote online in relation to career, business, life, even love and kids:

• Business challenges exist for our growth: The way we embrace them (or become engulfed by them) are merely an opportunity for us all to grow. Not only in our aptitude for what we do, but in our attitude toward life.
• Social issues exist for our growth: By...

Does what we believe about a situation, such as a sales conversation or a social issue we want to solve, affect the outcome?

In many ways, yes, thanks to all the ways we humans communicate that we don’t control:

• If you expect your problem to perpetuate, be it a sale you think will fail or a deal you think you can’t make, others will smell that all over you. Your words may be perfect, but your lack of belief...

Being in business to make an impact is a hard, hard road. Cause-driven companies shoulder more burdens than any other entity in the market. Consider this a short reminder:

• A soiled $20 is still $20. The value doesn’t decrease just because it’s been in circulation for a long time. Your harsh lessons learned are still lessons learned. If you didn’t ignore them as do many do, you’ve grown.
• A fine wine is fine because it’s old. The value increased...

“Welcome the present moment as if you had invited it. Why? Because it’s all we ever have.” – Peña Chodron

In a company, cause-driven or otherwise, there’s always a problem waiting for you once you’re done with the current one. Welcome it:

• A problem resented costs us our progress: When we become reactive–perpetually putting out fires and awaiting the net–we don’t grow. We merely survive. It costs us our progress, and our work (and our causes) suffer for it.
...

There’s a lot of emotion in sustainable, eco, social-conscious, or cause-driven companies.

That doesn’t mean they should be soft:

• No screwing around: There’s important work to do. All the more reason to take it more seriously than our conventional counterparts.
• Take what belongs to you: Whether it’s unpaid invoices or slanderous competitors, do not be afraid to use force when necessary.
• You can give what’s yours: Abundantly and lavishly… but only when it’s yours to give. Grow to give...

We struggle to think of failure as good because ‘something’ needs to be ‘the bad one’, right?

• Winners must have skills, hustle, and direction to be winners. Failure is needed to develop skills, hustle pushes through it, and direction makes it worthwhile.
• Losers must lack skills, hustle, and direction to be losers. Avoiding failure avoids the development of skills, lacking hustle stunts growth, and lacking direction would make it largely pointless anyway.

So there we have it: Failures...

Ever noticed how you never feel inspired to work on anything important after eating cheap pizza?

• Junk food is bad for business: It’ll fog you brain and drain your focus. A 10-hour work day may yield only 2-3 hours of useful output.
• Your mind is fed by your gut: An unhealthy gut creates an unhealthy mind. You may be smart generally, but under these circumstances, you’re really not anymore.
• An unhealthy lifestyle isn’t noble: It’s actually taking away the...

As enticing as they can be (albeit a little desperate) there’s a better option for the enlightened consumer of today:

• Coupons are for people who are already interested. But what gets them interested? Unless it’s the mere pursuit of a bargain, initial interest must come from somewhere altogether more emotional.

• We want to buy things that stand for something. What we stand for. Be it sustainability or sex slavery abolishment, as consumers we wear our hearts...

Ever caught yourself staring at a good cause and saying, “One day, I’ll contribute to that cause…when we have more money.”

I think we’ve all caught ourselves saying it at one time or another in our lives. The problem is, it’s completed backwards:

• If TOMs Shoes didn’t have its 1-for-1 campaign, would you have ever heard about them? Would you have cared if you had? That campaign put the cause on the map–the shoes came along for the ride....

Your secret recipe is about to be exposed.

• Ads that sell are dying: Not because they used to be good and now they’re not. But because they were never that good and prospects got wise to it.
• Ads that serve are rising: Not because it’s a new trend we should all hop on. But because solving problems for others is what business is all about.

There’s no need to wait for permission–or renumeration–to start serving your market. Why...

They say you shouldn’t meet your heroes. I’m not sure it makes any difference:

• Meet them and see their flaws, or don’t meet them and remember they’re flawed. Meeting them doesn’t make them flawed any more than believing they’re perfect makes them so.
• Meet them and learn from them, or don’t meet them and learn from them. Meeting them doesn’t make them easier or harder to learn from if they’re producing books and trainings you can use.

Learn...

I get asked all the time, “we want to improve our ability to sell online, what do we do?”

And my team and I have routinely seen people approaching this from as many different angles as you can possibly imagine. So what’s the answer?

• Not where you think you should start: This is the first clincher. Folks tend to start from a linear, tactical mindset where they’re looking for a tool or website hack to make everything work better....

It’s not because they need lots of information. It’s because of them, and you:

• You don’t know what to say: If you’re unsure how the industry works or you’re not clear on how someone does something, you’ll ask more questions.
• You don’t feel confident: If you’re not confident in your own decision-making ability, you’ll avoid making a decision by asking more questions.
• You’re not being led: If who you’re talking to isn’t leading the conversation, you’re left to lead....

Your market probably has a lot of mediocrity in it. That’s your problem now:

• Most should be worse: If you’re able to deliver an elevated experience and greater difference, and you’re cause-driven, you’re probably among the best in your space. If you’re not, that’s another problem entirely.
• Set the criteria: If they choose you or not, they should at least know what the right buying criteria is. Providing that to them is your fiduciary responsibility if they go elsewhere,...

When we build things, we give them form: structure and expectation.

What if we gave them neither of these things?

• When your ad campaign fails, it‘s because of the form you gave it. Lose the form and it’ll take the form of your audience, through lots of small ongoing tweaks.
• When product sales aren’t up, it‘s because of the form you gave them. Lose the form and you’ll reach the numbers through listening to what your audience needs.

Personal branding is wonderful for creating reach for your team’s work. Entire empires have been build upon them.

But if you want to build a living legacy, for those you serve and those you serve alongside, what happens when you die? When your name becomes a distant memory, and your insights become old-hat?

Your work stops. All because you were careless enough to die without a legacy plan. So, what’s a legacy plan?

• Your death means nothing to anyone...

A winning plan may win for a while. What about when it stops working?

And when the next one stops working, or if it never works to begin with? We need a ‘best, worst-case scenario’:

• Assume your plan will flop and leave you needing to adjust course immediately. What do you do then?
• Assume your next one’ll become saturated, and everyone starts doing it the same way. What do you do then?
• Assume the one after that’ll go out...