Archive of posts from January 2021

It‘ll probably work. But is it worth the trip?

That product idea: is it worth the months or years it’ll take to get it up and running, in the hands of those it was designed for?

That ad campaign: is it worth the consistent outlay in funds while it gets dialled in?

That movement: is the change you seek to make worth the lifetime of commitment to your chosen people?

It’s worth first evaluating not if you’re worthy of the...

When markets change, people grumble.

The rules change and we didn’t want them to.

Everyone’s rules change together. Those fastest to optimistically adapt benefit most, with a good offence. Grumblers barely have time to form a workable defence.

You lost your king bishop, and you were leaning on him in your strategy. But we all lost our king bishops, now chess is played differently. Those most willing to fail quickly and learn the new rules of play benefit most. Grumblers...

They have nightmares about this stuff.

Things like talking to a prospect on the phone. It’s salesy! It’s live! It requires coming out from behind the keyboard!

Things like simple, manual tools. Non-automated emails! Hand-writing letters! Picking up the phone!

Yet things that bring us closer to our audience are precisely what marketers need to get excited about. It’s from that closeness that the best learning happens – actually connecting with people.

We can’t get closer to our audience if...

You might have heard this advice before along your travels:

“You’re not selling a product. You’re selling emotion. People buy because of you.”

In social media app ‘Clubhouse’, I’ve heard this advice given over and over again the last few days.

It’s right… and wrong.

If you’re “selling a product”, I suppose you should consider selling with emotion, building rapport, and showing them why you’re a brilliant fit for them.

But if you’re instead invested in understanding the...

Got a good offer for your product/service?

I’m sure it’s good…but that there’s an even stronger offer that isnt being made because it could reveal what’s broken in your team, product or business.

It’s the offer you’re afraid to make. Because it’s brave, risky, assumes more risk, puts you on the hook to do your work well.

It could work so well, you’d see a product problem. Where your work doesn’t create the type of results you claim it can....

Ever noticed how hard things have a soothing side?

It’s hard to make cold calls because you might get turned away. Yet you start at ‘no’ prior to even calling – calling is a potential salve.

It’s hard to send cold emails because you probably won’t get a reply. Yet you start with no unread messages from them – pressing send means you may get something to respond to.

It’s hard to present your work because you might get harsh...

Who are you competing against?

We know that our products compete against whatever alternatives exist in the minds of those we wish to serve.

But what about you? You compete against whatever you like.

It could be your peers: keeping up appearances in ways they deem important.

It could be different peers: the same rules as before but with a different crowd.

It could be yourself: being better than yesterday in areas you deem important, disregarding the pressures of peers.

“Innovation” is praised as a key requisite of successful projects. We don’t hear so much about “usefulness”.

Are these two things at odds with each other?

Innovation without usefulness is still innovative… but what good is that without usefulness?

Usefulness without innovation is still useful.

Innovation with usefulness either makes something more useful than were it to be otherwise, or it makes it useful but just in a different way.

Producthunt.com is peppered with innovations that lack much usefulness, a...

If it were gone, would those you wish to service miss:

Your product or service? Is there meaningful, useful advantage that you bring that others would reach out asking for were it to be gone?

Your team? Is it’s ability to do what it does contagious enough in spirit and culture, and skilled enough in deployment, that others would sorely miss working with you?

That particular feature? The one you thought was super-important, would people reach out desperate for its...

‘Simple’ is widely considered better.

‘Easy’ has more baggage.

When something is made ‘simpler’, something was changed so that, once learned, may prove ‘easier’ to a user.

Making something simpler has a cost (learning), which the user must be willing to pay. The return on investment might be that things are now ‘easier’.

When something is made ‘easier’, something was changed to reduce a cost (learning or time). Making something easier doesn’t necessarily require ‘simple’ (delegation and removal are other...

Less really is more:

More productive output comes from six hours of attentive work than twelve hours of mushy-minded ‘hustle’.

Better business operations come from fewer fancy processes and fewer moving parts, thanks to reduced margin for error, while creating the same output.

More Twitter community comes from less time wasted lurking on other social sites. One minute on ten social channels doesn’t create the same result as ten minutes on one.

Saying ‘No’ can be hard, especially when it’s...

What’s a lazy opportunity?

When your competitors think “advertising means running ads on Facebook”, there’s a lazy opportunity. They forgot about a universe of potential connection, creativity and useful initiative because one channel made them lazy.

When your offer does the safe, easy thing, instead of leading customers forward bravely with better value and risk- reversal. Being lazy means a competitor can walk in, care more, and shut you down in the prices.

The lazy route is a path well-travelled.

We’re often impressed by the wrong things:

When a framework/formula/system is put up for sale, we want to see screenshots of graphs and flowcharts… pages of supposedly-important nuance. If it’s got a lot of pages, surely it must be better? If it looks simple, perhaps it’s not worth the asking price?

When a new camera is put up for sale, we want to see how many megapixels it has… and that it comes with a carry-case and a spare battery....

Accidental Influence is all around us.

Described as “The Anchoring Trap” in a HBR post:

How would you answer these two questions?

Is the population of Turkey greater than 35 million?

What’s your best estimate of Turkey’s population?

If you’re like most people, the figure of 35 million cited in the first question (a figure we chose arbitrarily) influenced your answer to the second question. Over the years, we’ve posed those questions to many groups of people. In half...

Every sometimes, I have a strange chat with someone on our Creative team.

In that chat, we tear apart our products and services. We look for holes, flaws, things that could be improved, ways that something could slip through the cracks.

Sometimes I’ll be put straight on something I missed (where the work was strong), other times a product development opportunity emerges (where the work wasn’t strong enough).

What’s the point in this?

• If there’s a fault, someone will...

We can’t perfect what doesn’t progress.

We can’t measure progress with parameters designed to measure perfection.

If we do, we never progress (we just become perfectionists).

So try different parameters:

Progress in a brand new craft could be “something was made.”

Progress in an existing craft could be “something different was made.”

Funny how we enable ourselves to perfect more things when we measure progress with parameters designed to enable more progress.

Awareness is attention that you took. Engagement is attention that you earned.

Many ads take awareness. They only deserve what they took if they did the work of engaging and moving you.

Many referrals take awareness. They only deserve what they took if folks engage because you lived up to expectations.

Setting yourself on fire in Time Square takes awareness. It only deserves the attention if others engage by setting themselves on fire too.

Do you want your work to...

You’ve probably heard these two phrases before. Here’s what they could mean for you:

“Plant the tree before you need shade.” Building a media platform, extending good will, going first, mastering a skill. These are things folks often leave until they need them. Have you?

“Fix the roof when the sun is shining.” Once things are up and running, leaving system errors, infrastructure problems, suboptimal marketing and recruitment bottlenecks unsolved means they’ll bite you in the butt at the worst...

“I don’t have time for that.”

Ever thought this to yourself when you stumble upon a great opportunity to level up your business, team, or project?

What you make time for is what you get more of. Putting out fires today? Got time for that but not spending it on that new product opportunity? Then expect more of the former and less of the latter.

What you don’t have time for will never happen. Great new marketing campaign opportunity? Product...

There are always a flood of articles about what you must do in any new year. These posts are likely going to be arduous regurgitations or whatever the trends are at the time.

Chasing trends isn’t a path to success. Good marketing isn’t about blending in and doing all of your competitors are doing. It’s about doing what your audience needs from you, regardless of what has your competitors attention.

Avoid linear tactics

If the trends say you should...

We know when it stinks:

When Boris Johnson’s government dithers between lockdowns and tier-systems while tens of thousands of Britons die from the global pandemic, we smell people-pleasing agendas for a hostile-dependent culture. We don’t smell leadership for the commonwealth.

When Joel Olsteen’s ministry enjoys over $4 million in undistributed aid while the average American receives $600, we smell the tax-haven prosperity gospel ministry’s goals. We don’t smell faith.

When Amazon becomes a trillion dollar business in 2020 while its...

Do you delegate?

Do you delegate results?

Some people on a team seem to naturally take full responsibility for outcomes, whereas others look for tasks to mark ‘done’.

The former moves things forward. The latter leaves gaps for someone else to have to go in and keep things moving forward.

When we delegate results, we remove the latter. We’re able to trust folks will get ‘the whole thing done’, rather than waiting for someone else to move things along for/around/in...

“Can you also do _____?”

This question is the catalyst of dilution for product and service projects alike.

“Add this feature, someone asked for it” is the way to make a product unfocused, bloated, and unable to clearly resonate with the specific people it was designed to support. Confusing those you wish to serve serves no one.

“Include this service and we have a deal” is how service teams stay small. Progressive mastery in an area of genius requires spending...

Got any?

Unplanned projects are adventures that probably would have benefitted from an end, weren’t planned properly… and so they simply sit on the shelf, unfinished.

Unfinishable projects are adventures you embark on we’re designed to not end. There’s a place for these.

A daily blog (like this one) is an Unfinishable project. It was designed to be daily. It doesn’t “finish”, it simply evolves as an ongoing adventure.

So is showing a significant other that you love them; it...

Do they?

There are many great web developers, but perhaps your insight and perspective could move the collective conversation forward, or offer a different direction also worth pursuing.

There are many great entrepreneurs, but perhaps your experiences or ideas could change the subculture for better, such as by bending things toward the triple-bottom-line or toward an appreciation for new ways of producing ethical advantage.

There are many great artists, but perhaps your way of seeing the world represents a convergence...

There are certain things you shouldn’t do, because you were told not to.

Some make sense. “Don’t drink that cup of bleach” is a wise exclaim worth listening to and remember in future.

Others make sense for most people, but not others. In your pursuit of creating important bodies of work, watch out for these.

“VPs don’t do customer service” is one example. It’s often true, except if you’re Umpqua Bank – every branch has a phone that connects straight...

Do you earn your badges?

It’s easy for folks to add “writer” to their Twitter bio because they wrote a blog post once. But “writer” and “wrote once” are different things, one is the ongoing pursuit of creating and publishing work, the other is merely something that happened in the past.

It’s easy to add “serial-entrepreneur” to that bio because someone had multiple ideas they couldn’t stick to, that failed. It sounds good, impresses mothers, but doesn’t accurately depict the...

The relationship we have with our work benefits from intentional care:

When we work hard at our work relationship, we get to make the time count, rather than dragging on mindlessly going through the motions.

When we see problems affecting our work relationship, we get to address them head on, rather than letting them fester, tarnishing what’s special.

When we see an opportunity to make the relationship better, we get to take the initiative, giving and receiving from our work...

Here’s what it says outside a ‘Pets At Home’ store nearby:

“We are committed to keeping you and our colleagues protected”, the sign reads, next to symbols depicting the importance of masks and social distancing.

After watching people come and go from the store for about 30 minutes: here’s what I saw:

• ~25% of the adults entering and exiting did not have masks on.
• ~75% of the children entering and exiting did not have masks on.
• 0% of everyone...