Archive of posts from September 2019

Are you growing?

Many pursuing work that matters are eager to spot-train areas of life, but do so to the detriment of other areas:

We might spot-train growing in sales but neglect training our teams. Any perceivable improvement we’d find on our balance sheets would only produce an equal-and-opposite decrease in customer satisfaction.

We might spot-train investing in business but not invest in our relationships. Any richess found in our bank accounts would only produce an environment where one has...

I was surprised to see the amount of traction a particular tweet got this week.

It said something to the tune of, “The secret to success is doing the things you NEED to do, not the things you WANT to do.”

We live in an era where this sort of advice is transformative, garnering huge numbers of retweets and comments appreciating the concept.

Entrepreneurs and companies who ride the wave of picture quotes preaching ‘hustle’ often appear to celebrate the...

What’s the main device in your life?

Your phone? Same here.

How often are you using that ‘on the go’? Not very often? Same here.

It’s time to redefine ‘mobile’:

Most of our devices are mobile. Phones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches, it all fits in a backpack and goes with you wherever you’re going. They’re no more or less “mobile” than we are.

**We are not “on the go”. **Phones, tablets, laptops, smartwatches, we use all of these in our offices...

How much you honor the process affects how much you succeed.

The sales conversation desperate to go off-course is far less likely to help the prospect move forward unless you can keep it on course. Providing there is a course, of course: to bring them maximum ethical advantage in the best timing for them.

The customer or client eager to buy right now is far less likely to get the result they’re looking for unless you keep them focused on their...

How do you feel when you hear that?

“You were lucky”?

We often hear it and think it’s demeaning our hard work. Marginalizing our progress. Mocking our sacrifices.

We give ourselves too much credit.

Being the lucky one that hits the egg. Born into a developed nation to parents who raised us well. At a time in history we’re all so connected. Luck abounds. We’d be fooling ourselves if we tried to overlook how lucky we are who are able...

Some schools are setting kids up for failure.

Today I drove by a school sign that said, “We will not tire, falter or fail.”

It sounds good. Determined. Resolute. Able to overcome obstacles. But those who reject these things can’t succeed.

To tire is part of the process. Every work of significance or importance I’ve ever worked on made me tired at one point or another. You press on through it some times, you get some rest others. But the...

Here’s the big secret of most experts and professionals.

Most are afraid.

Of being wrong about being good at what they said they were.

Of being found to not be as good as they said they were.

Of being too late, too soon, too cheap, too expensive, too brief, too verbose, too similar, too different.

The reason? Because they made it about them.

About their talents, rather than the empathy for those in their care.

About needing to know all...

I learned something from a seagull today.

The beach is the half-way stop on my cycle rides, at which point I take a short stroll along the water’s edge. The purple flag was up, meaning there was dangerous aqua life close by.

But the most dangerous life I encountered wasn’t aquatic, but a seagull.

A dead fish had washed up ashore. It could have been any gull’s lunch, except this gull had decided it was to be his. Each time...

When there’s a simpler way and a complex way, do it the simpler way.

Not to be confused with ‘the easy way’.

The simpler way is always there, it’s just never the one we notice first.

When trying to craft a marketing message, you may find yourself with pages and pages of important things to convey. The simpler way requires sacrificing paragraphs, axing features, and turning the focus away from yourself onto those you wish to serve.

When developing a...

How do you transform your thinking?

There are lots of questions we don’t think to ask of ourselves, our peers, or prospects in business. We don’t ask because we deem the answer obvious.

For instance, assuming shoppers at a fashion store will always want the clothes to be cheaper. “Of course they’d want things to be cheaper, that’s a silly question!”

If the question posed to them is, “Would you like cheaper clothes?” The answer will invariably be, “Yes, of...

There should only be one thing in a content marketing plan.

Regrettably, it always appears to be the last thing to make it into a plan.

Instead we have elaborate articles and sophisticated sequences that omit this one thing.

The process is usually sound, the technology workable, but without this one thing, it’s all for nought. Folks wonder why their content marketing plan fails them, despite constructing things correctly.


The one thing? The recipient.

We sometimes forget that marketing isn’t...

If a leader has no followers, are they really a leader?

We see this question pop up a lot. Perhaps it’s one of the reasons we’re so often proud of – or lust after – large numbers of followers on social media.

Loneliness has a bad rap. It’s considered to be all-bad. But it serves an important role in the production of leaders and the meaningful work they inspire.

• Mandela didn’t have any Twitter followers when he stepped into...

It’s hard when someone passes.

Yet it challenges our meaningful work in meaningful ways:

The finiteness of life reminds us to work on things that matter. If you already do, congratulations, you’re in a rare minority. This is the “real 1%”. This isn’t to say every thing you do must always fill you with joy, or there won’t be non-essentialist tasks to come your way. But it does mean that you should keep your focus on the big picture, pursuing...

Sometimes you can get both at the same time.

Oftentimes though, one comes at the expense of the other.

When the late Steve Jobs asked designer Rand to produce some logo options for his “NeXT” brand, Rand retorted, citing he will make only one. 

And that it will be the best one he can muster. It was an unpopular choice to challenge Jobs. But he earned him his respect. He moved from a consultant to a respected professional endorsed by...

Facebook didn’t get ‘so big’ by trying to be ‘so big’ all at once.

If they had, we may all still be using MySpace.

They didn’t try to tackle the world. “MySpace Tom” had the world. Instead, they tackled NYU. That’s where they were based. That’s what they knew. They focused on serving those they could serve most effectively, first.

Once they won NYU, they went for other colleges. Then those college students did most of the work for Facebook,...

Why should you do things differently when there are best practices you can follow?

We hear this a lot from business owners. Let’s put it another way:

Why should you stand out when you can blend in with everyone else?

Ah.

The iPod didn’t need a circular click-wheel. But it was delightful to use. And still is, if you still have one knocking around (or you still desperately try to keep one in circulation like I do!)

It’s competitors –...

We need a champion.

Not an armor-clad fearless warrior. Not a perfect white-winged angel. Not a fountain-of-all-knowledge genius of a guru.

A champion. One who has suffered, struggled, practiced and worked their way to the front. One who still doesn’t know everything. One who still bleeds.

When we share our stories with the marketplace, perfection won’t earn us trust. We can’t relate to perfect. The world we live in isn’t perfect. Perfect people won’t know how to solve our problems.

The deals roll in. It’s your turn. She says yes.

You grinded for a while. You worked on your skills, made the calls, kept pressing Publish.

For a long time, it felt like it wasn’t working, that it may never work, not for you. But still, you persevered through the doubt and nay-sayers. You let the mistakes teach you and you were able to hold on through the long dry stretches of nothing.

When all of a sudden, it started...

We choose to go wide or deep.

Kasparov went deep into chess. That’s why he’s the world champion.

Deep Blue went wide into chess. That’s why it beat Kasparov, using brute-force calculations rather than by actually playing chess.

Most sales people go wide into prospecting. That’s why you get so much spam in your email, your LinkedIn inbox, and Facebook feed.

People you do business with go deep into prospecting. That’s why you only got a few messages from them,...

I had to renew my passport today. From abroad. It’ll be 4-5 weeks until my new one arrives.

It’s a funny feeling, being grounded, when you’re used to traveling. I keep my bag ever-ready for wherever you need to go, each pocket and segment carefully cleaned and considered. Yet I can’t go anywhere.

That little burgundy book with “Passport” written on the front is the main thing people to see to determine whether or not they believe me when I...

We know that work made for everyone is made for no one.

We can deduce then, that the fewer people it’s made for, the more it’s made for those fewer. The more likely they’ll become passionate about the work, eager for more, less likely to consider an alternative.

But for some reason, this scares us.

Targeting fewer means… fewer people will say yes.

And yet, we want people to be passionate about our work, eager for more, less likely to consider...

You probably ponder where your company could go next, sometimes.

What opportunities are out there that you could leverage. The tools you might use, or messages you might share.

The loudest voices online may lull you into following a well-trodden path. “Install this on your site.” “Be a guru, make a course.” “Make more funnels, make more offers.”

A question we don’t often ask ourselves is, “Would you be proud if you did?”

Perhaps you’d have runaway success as a...

In my conversations with entrepreneurs on a (mostly) daily basis, I’ve noticed many share the strain of progress.

The strain is this: “I should be further along than I am.” “Things should be like that, yet they’re like this.”

That little word – ‘should’ – is where all the tension lies. We seemingly get it from comparing what others claim their efforts produce, or how a culture defines success, then comparing our reality to that aspiration.

There’s a beauty in the realization...

Somewhere along the way, we stopped looking at the visitor. At what they’re looking for. At helping them get what they need. At leading them forward without friction, with a heart of service and an eagerness to create change.

Somewhere along the way, all that turned into looking at one’s self. At negotiating for email addresses. At ‘hacking’ one’s way to better open rates. At coercing people to ‘ascend’ toward what the company wants them to do, rather than what...

We’ve become wary of others online.

We’re pressured to ‘like’ the post and opt-in for the upgrade. We will definitely be retargeted with ads.

We don’t like that.

Have we asked too much for the ‘like’ or the ‘share’? Have we incentivized and further incentivized people into no longer wanting to tell their friends, wary of our intentions?

Yes. Yes we have.

It’s rare to receive an email from a friend telling me about a great product they’ve seen or...

There are times when we all want to point the finger.

A teammate drops the ball but struggles to take responsibility.

A client issues support tickets about things that were their own fault.

A deal falls through because of a last-minute stakeholder that “doesn’t get it”.

You choose who has control to make change happen.

You’re pointing at them.

The teammate, if pointed at, now has the power to fix the problem, or not. Nothing you can do about it...

Instagram or Facebook?

Twitter or LinkedIn?

Direct message sequences or sponsored posts?

Story ads or newsfeed ads?

Comment engagement or group engagement?

There is no perfect, one-size-fits-all, clean-and-tidy golden channel. There are simply other people also using the internet, usually with the same goals as you.

Can you help them solve a real problem? Prove it. It’s your ability to understand and serve people that makes the difference, not the channel you choose.

I have a few bones to pick with the term ‘entrepreneur’.

As a job description, that is.

###1 What do you DO?

A job description describes your craft, your body of work, what you bring to the cause.

‘Entrepreneur’ rightly suggests someone who creates things that didn’t exist before… but designers, developers, copywriters, engineers, and architectures all do that, too, don’t they?

I consider myself in many ways to be a designer, for instance; I design businesses, I design systems,...

Being ‘all in’ carries stigmas.

It tends to mean you’re obsessed. Obsessed with your idea. Or obsessed with working long hours. Something negative.

Is there a non-workaholic, essentialist place on the scale between being average and being reckless with yourself?

##**Doing work that matters? **

If the work you’ve enrolled in is worthy of the time and life it needs from you, congratulations.

Being ‘all in’ is about bringing the best of you to the things that you do. Not...

Are some hours better for working than others?

You may work better-but-fewer hours, get more done, but feel guilty for finishing early… and fill the remaining time with busywork. You may work lesser-but-more hours, get less done, but pat yourself on the back for the ‘hustle’ of how many hours you worked.

“Productivity hours” aren’t actually hours at all. Rather, they’re a form of output, like horsepower is to cars.

A horse creates 1 horsepower. A Ford Mustang (2019) creates 460...