Archive of posts from April 2021

Three things are needed in order to get somewhere:

1. Knowing where you want to go
2. Knowing what it costs to get there
3. Being OK with both

Wanting to run a PPC campaign, but “needing it to ‘work’ right away” skips #2 and #3.

Wanting to invest in a huge social media following, but not really knowing why, skips #1 and #3.

Wanting a fantastic marketing website, but “needing it done cheaper” skips #3.

Wanting to develop a skill with a new tool, but “needing to use it perfectly now”, skips #3.

If we can’t be OK with all three things, we can’t be disappointed if we don’t get where being OK with them would otherwise take us.

Where do you want to go? Did you count the cost of getting there?

Asking, “What if we did…this?” turns our work upside down.

When challenging the way we do things, team members may respond, “We assumed that we do it this way for a reason.”

And they’d be right. Challenge the reasoning:

What would get better, what would get worse?

How would it make life easier for our chosen audience, and/or for us?

What are the trade-offs? Are the trade-offs worth it?

Many of our product or service refinements come from listening directly and intently to those we serve.

Others come from having listened directly and intently, then turning our work upside down with them in mind… just to see what ideas emerge.

Try it. Who knows what you might come up with.

Are you an expert in your industry?

Do you advise others with your expertise, either internally during product development or externally as a consultant?

Do you call upon experts to bestow ‘best practices’ on you and your business?

Careful:

Experts worth their salt use mental filters to work their way toward their best advice. Sometimes, they’re switched on and share astute insights. Other times, they’re fixated on a trend. Either way, they’ll share what they believe is best, in the moment, from the signals available to them.

There are limitations here. The quality of their critical thinking skills. The signals available to them. How much caffeine they drank.

To level up our work from relying upon being an expert, we need process.

Process to systemise access to best thinking available to you. Process to consolidate more signals than any one person can keep track of, calling upon them as needed. Process that leverages experts without being bound to the above limitations. Process that routinely gets better with every interaction, rather than just when the coffee’s strong and the schedule’s light.

Experts are cool. Process is not.

That’s why everyone reveres experts.

What if you were to revere process?

Warning, you may be disturbed:

“This advertising campaign must work.” This isn’t advertising. Advertising is harmonised action, whereas this is disturbed with desperation.

“This product launch must go well.” This isn’t product development. Launching products is harmonised action, whereas this is disturbed with insecurity.

“This video must go viral.” This isn’t marketing. Marketing is harmonised action, whereas this is disturbed with delusion.

When we disturb the nature of action with added strains, we lose the ability to focus on what we’re really doing:

Are we advertising, or are we connecting a specific message with a chosen few, to help them and learn more about how they want to be communicated with?

Are we launching a product, or are we helping our choice of market move along the journey they’re already chosen to embark on?

Are we marketing, or are we building relationships with those we wish to serve?

“Desire demands the attainment of that which you desire, and aversion demands the avoidance of that which you dislike. Those who fail to attain their desires are disappointed. Those who attain what they dislike are distressed.” – Sam Torode on Epictetus

Oh how this applies to creating value in the marketplace.

With so many external forces at play, distress and disappointment seem to be the pandemic among creative and entrepreneurial spirits alike.

For this pandemic, we need to mask up from desire and aversion:

We can’t avoid competition, nor assuredly secure every opportunity they got. Wishing for either secures disappointment or distress with each movement they make.

We can’t guarantee our products and services will be a hit immediately, or remain so indefinitely. Trying to guarantee success either secures disappointment or distress with each venture we pursue.

What if we simply focus on our work, and on the service of our chosen audience, instead? These are things we can control… The care to listen and the will to apply what we learn toward the problems others face, methodically and indefinitely, without the desire nor aversion of things outside our control that may distract us.

Sure beats being disappointed and distressed all the time, hm?

Could ‘under-done’ be the better outcome?

‘Done’ means it’s complete. Whatever the scope of the task was, whatever you thought about it, it’s done.

‘Undone’ means it’s not complete. Whatever the scope of the task was, margin remains. It’s unfinished work.

‘Under-done’ is another type of ‘complete’. You had an opinion about the scope, you made it simpler in the right ways. ‘Simpler’ could be to do nothing (not the same as ‘undone’) or to distill the task into the things that matter most and over-deliver on those.

Funny how ‘over-delivering’ is a by-product of under-doing something!

Perhaps the best next step for your product or service is not to get things done, nor to leave them un-done… but to under-do your way toward radical focus and over-deliver what truly matters to those you serve.

We know how to plan new products, new features, how to start.

But do we know how to plan how to end?

If we’re lucky, our products and services will survive – thrive, even – for the length of time they were designed for.

But the web (and beyond) is littered with discontinued products. ‘Page Not Found’ 404 errors where dreams used to live. Services people trust, gone, due to red balance sheets or an acquisition.

We don’t deserve the trust we ask of people when we birth a new product, if we’ll be reckless with that trust when it dies.

We don’t deserve the subscribers we want when we launch a newsletter, if we’ll merely walk away from our relationships when we tire of the idea.

Planning the end is as important as planning the start, if we’re to be worth following, subscribing to, or doing business with.

We have a saying about shipping work in our teams:

“It’s the best it’s ever been, and the worst it’ll ever be.”

If it’s the best it’s ever been, we did the job properly. We listened to the right signals, we did the best we could, all while revering process.

If it’s the worst it’ll ever be, we’re committed to continuing to do the job properly. We’ll continue to listen to the right signals, do the best we can, all while revering process.

No body of work lasts forever. But for the time we have, make it the best it’s ever been, with a commitment to keeping eyes and minds open for what those we serve need from us next.

“This” may vary.

“That” may vary.

But one of the most important skills we can develop, as leaders and doers in our pursuit of helping others, is the ability to asset that This is more important than That.

Knowing what This is means we make clear our beliefs about what we do and what we stand for.

Knowing what That is in relation to This means we make our priorities clear and what we stand against.

Whether it’s guiding a prospect or client toward a good decision on a call, or assessing ways your work might develop, it pays dividends to know with confidence that This is more important than That.

“It’s always been there. But somehow, we’ve all become too smart for our own good. We think, ‘Oh, no, we need some profound idea or some view of the market so that I don’t have to go through that process of learning about the world again.” – David Cancel, Drift

Many of us fall victim to this.

Industry experts. Businessmen. Product designers. C-suite. Copywriters. Marketing managers.

When we stop learning about our world, it moves on without us.

Industry advice changes but you won’t hear it. Marketing “hacks” that were ‘in’ will be ‘out’ and you’ll have no idea (much less how to get off the rollercoaster of ‘hacks’). Customer desires will shift while you keep solving problems nobody has anymore.

Most entrepreneurs I talk to think they don’t have time to learn about the world again.

That is, until they realise(d) that the quantity of their success is in direct proportion to the quality of their communication (that includes listening and learning).

What did you (re-)learn about your world this week?

I have a couple of weird habits when reading books.

First, I keep a pen in my hand the whole time. It keeps me in “looking for nuggets of value” mode, marking them as I find them, rather than letting key insights pass me by.

Second, I use money for bookmarks (“buckmarks” as I like to call them). It reminds me that there is value inside the book, rather than it just being just entertainment.

There’s value and insight all around us. We only get to have it when we keep a look out, and do something about it when we find it.

Here’s what I’ve discovered about synchronous and asynchronous communication:

Sometimes, asynchronous is a better way to communicate. Thoughtful discussion, meaningful input, and solidified thinking are a by-product of communication that is important enough to slow down and do properly.

Sometimes, real-time is better. Immediate discussion, reactive input, and dissolved thinking are a by-product of communication that couldn’t slow down, where imperfect mostly-forward-movement is a better representation of progress.

The former works great only in teams who invest in the skill. Asynchronous communication is hard. Hard things need practice.

The latter works better for the rest. Because things have a habit of setting on fire when the skills aren’t there yet and real-time is more familiar.

Will you invest in the skill? Will those you talk to? What could you achieve if you did?

We talk a lot together on this blog about how a great product is also great marketing.

Hey.com is a good example of that.

They recently launched the unorthodox “Cover Art” feature, where you can cover previously read email with some artwork.

After thousands of daily posts, we’re in no short supply of artwork around here!

So I’ve created Heytops: like background desktops, but for Hey. If you use Hey, check it out!

There’s a desktop and mobile version of each image to accomodate common display sizes. If you’d like to contribute some Heytops, check out the GitHub repository.

Enjoy!

Best practices are supposed to be the best ways of doing things.

But the best way of doing things in your business, with your specific audience, will be much different to anyone else’s best way.

So why do ‘best practices’ emerge industry-wide?

Because people want broad-stroke, step-by-step, can’t-lose, easy. They’re there because it’s what people want to be there.

Except they don’t work.

When we spend time looking for industry-wide best practices, we’re looking for safe shortcuts that don’t exist.

When we spend time investigating what our unique audience desperately needs from us and give it to them, we’re creating our own best practices.

Ones that are sure to work.

Do you have best practices in your business?

Not all things should scale.

And most things shouldn’t scale indefinitely.

But for the things that benefit from scaling, there’s an easy way to ensure they do:

Build them to not scale.

Those who focus on building things to scale often do things out of order:

A coaching service built to scale focuses more on systems for acquiring more coaches, reducing skilled labour costs, or perhaps abstracting things into a course format…

…Anything but actually creating a coaching experience so personal, so powerful, so useful, that the client can’t help themselves but to tell everyone they know.

The levers that create the results we what are found in service of others.

Repeating something others find amazing is much more fun (and useful) than trying to convince people to fall prey to low-value arbitrage.

When do you ‘win’?

When your work or business enables you to retire from residuals/exit, or when it enables you to keep doing something you all love?

When it makes headlines others are jealous of, or when it’s quietly profitable and stable?

When it takes up your whole life for huge gains, or when it’s small, taking very little of your time so you can spend it with you family?

If you don’t define what your win conditions are, you’ll risk feeling like a loser every time you see someone progressing toward theirs.

We may have “competition”, but this isn’t a “competition”. Define success for yourselves.

Some things aren’t a fit.

Sometimes we can’t accept it.

Consider this paragraph:

A pair of shoes that don’t fit, don’t fit. They feel wrong. They’ll be bad for our feet if we try to wear them anyway. Buying them means we didn’t wait until we found a pair that did fit. Not having shoes is better than having shoes that don’t fit.

It seems obvious when it’s shoes.

How about if it’s a project, an opportunity, a client, or a potential hire?

Replace “shoes” with any of those things and we find it more difficult to accept.

Remember: they’re just like shoes.

Learning is chaos. Your assumptions are being broken apart. The more you know, the more you don’t know. Connections and patterns emerge between unrelated data points.

Creativity is chaos. You try things that might not work. Time, energy and cash are spent without guarantee of a return on our investment. It’s fun and tedious, engaging and tiring.

Yet putting the two things together creates calm.

Learning makes us more knowledgeable, the results of our creativity makes us wise. We learn and we try again. Steady, rhythmic, methodical progress toward our goals.

If you like macro calm, don’t rule our micro chaos.

If we don’t measure our work in ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than the alternatives, then what?

Ours and yours.

The ability to make something uniquely ours that can become uniquely yours if it resonates with you, takes ‘better’ or ‘worse’ off the table entirely.

Pursuing ‘better’ means competing with what others are doing, so that they might become ‘worse’.

Pursuing ‘ours’ means doing things without permission or consideration of what alternatives are doing, in hope they’ll resonate enough with YOU for them to become ‘yours’.

Isn’t that more fun than ‘better’ or ‘worse’?

What is a pink couch?

Ugly, is what it is.

Many of us own a pink couch:

“I really like the way this looks, we should keep it”: You liking something doesn’t mean it’s good, only that you like it. If we’re building things to serve others, it needs to be good to those we serve, or they won’t engage.

“I want this feature adding, I think it’d be really useful”: You thinking it’s useful doesn’t make it useful, except to you. If we’re building functionality to be useful to others, they set the benchmark for what is useful.

“I want to use this marketing style, it’s really cool”: You think it’s cool doesn’t mean it’s cool, only that you think it is. When designing a message for our chosen audience, it’s them who determines what’s cool (and whether or not ‘cool’ is even part of the success criteria or not).

Don’t hold on to your pink couch. It’s ugly, remember?

Made any innovations lately?

When we hear “innovation”, we immediately start thinking about technical advancements and clever new things.

But oftentimes, the best innovations available to us are less shiny:

A fancy new phone system may be the future, or it may be an elaborate way to avoid calling people back yourself. The “innovation” is the shiny new system. Perhaps the innovation worth pursuing is the discipline of getting better at having great conversations with people on the phone.

An advanced new web platform may be great, or it may be full of bugs for the early-adopters to weed out. The “innovation” is new-fangled unproven tech. Perhaps the innovation worth pursuing is the reliability that comes from battle-tested tech coupled with battle-tested operating procedures.

If innovation means bringing meaningful advantage to market, that’s often at odds with the stereotypes of innovation.

Are you innovating, or are you “innovating”?

The evidence often isn’t there:

“Our customers will love this idea…” Interesting assertion you made there. Show me the evidence. Did they tell you they’ll love this idea, or are you telling them they will?

“We should build this new feature…” Cool feature. But who’s it for? Did your audience tell you it should be built, or did you just see it on your competitor’s website and think you need it too?

“I think the layout should include…” Nice idea, you designer you. But what makes you think so? Did your audience give any indication that it would help them use your product better? At all?

Whenever we have a great idea, the temptation is always to push it forward without even questioning whether or not our audience wants or needs to. Because they’ll surely love this one.

Show me the evidence. It could surprise both of us.

We just launched a second blog!

If you like the the marketing-themed cartoons and insights from this daily blog, you’ll love the new blog.

Each post unpacks a marketing principle or strategy in a long-form web comic format.

The insights will be designed to be useful and actionable. The delivery will be designed to be fun and easy to read.

It’s called Marketing Isn’t About You, just like the book I wrote a couple years back, and you can find it here: https://marketingisntaboutyou.com

Head over and subscribe to that blog too, I’m looking forward to sharing those posts with you!

(P.S. don’t worry, this daily blog isn’t going anywhere!)

Momentum is what we all want from our work. The sense of progress, movement.

But there are traps.

Momentum opens doors, opportunities, distractions. We get to take them using the momentum we’ve created – any of them.

Saying ‘yes’ can cost us momentum if they’re ‘opportunities’ that take us off the path we’ve carved out.

Saying ‘no’ closes a door but maintains (or even builds) yet more momentum along the path we’ve chosen.

Build momentum and make progress.

Just watch out for the traps that come with it.

We think of our product or service as the thing we sell.

It’s not so for everyone else:

How (and if) you answer the phone matters.

How (and when) you email matters.

How (and to whom) you describe your product matters.

How you show up on video calls matters.

How you handle customer complaints matters.

The actor on stage at your show isn’t the product. The show is the product.

Ambition carries with it the risk of putting your happiness in the pockets of others.

That’s the trap.

If success depends on the reception your work receives, the trap has already been set.

Alternatively, ambition can simply be you, trying to beat your own high-score, at a game you still enjoy playing, where the rules aren’t determined by others.

If success depends on you being a better you, the trap has already been disabled.

What’s the state of your trap?

Your competition just did a thing.

How do you respond?

We could rush to adjust our work to match the new status quo, or pursue feature-parity with everybody else. If we’re lucky, we’ll come out equal to the rest, a workable and fine choice.

Or we could do nothing. Instead, we could simply continue making our work better, solving the problems we know our customers have, and carve our path in response to their needs.

There’s no shame in doing half the things another business does. You get to do them well, tailoring your work to your choice of market.

But the world doesn’t need another half-hearted attempt at doing everything everyone else is already doing.

Who do you build for: competitors, or buyers?

What does best mean to you?

Is a website with lots of animations and heavy JavaScript dependency best? Or is a website with really fast load times and comprehensive accessibility support best?

Is a collaboration that’s heated, fast-paced and full-on best? Or is a collaboration that’s calm, slow and asynchronous best?

Is an online product or service better when it comes with a native iOS app? Or is an online product or service better when it’s available on the open web?

When aiming for best, we need to remember that ‘best’ isn’t a universal goal.

Your version of ‘best’ and mine may differ. That’s totally fine.

Focus on what ‘best’ means for those you wish to serve.

“We cannot have a call at the time you requested. Choose another time.”

That’s how a machine might say it.

A negative, followed by a task to do.

“I’m working to help schedule that call as soon as possible for you! I have a call booked already at that time, but I’ve set aside Wednesday 9:00 am EST, if that works for you?”

That’s how a human might say it.

A positive, followed by a problem solved.

It’s a small difference that makes you a positive problem solver, rather than just the bearer of bad news.

Isn’t that better?

Do you use funnels in your marketing?

Funnels are to make sure you don’t spill something.

Like sausage meat, heading into a meat grinder.

People don’t enjoy being fed to meat grinders.

What people do enjoy, is a great show put on just for them.

Funnels: “Sign up for my thing. You’ll get some stuff designed to push you along to where I want you to go. It’ll be great (for me) if you do.”

Shows: “Come watch this show. You’ll get to see a great performance, we’ve got just the acts you love lined up ready to go. It’ll be great (for you) to come see.”

What if you decided to ease off on the funnels… and instead put on a show they’ll love and tell their friends about?

When something new enters the market, a concern many folks share is whether or not it’ll become a sunk cost.

New is exciting.

“Next-gen. Revolutionised. Supercharged, building the future. Featured on ProductHunt.” Things we can’t rely on to be here tomorrow because they were built to be exciting, today.

What’s the alternative?

“Mature. Est’d 1987. Excel. Illustrator. Skype. Not featured on ProductHunt because it didn’t exist back when we launched.” Products that manage to do something useful, pay their own bills, and do the same tomorrow. Things we can rely on because they were build to be relied upon.

We can assure the market that our work may become a sunk cost by reminding them of how exciting it is, today.

Or we can assure them that we’re committed to it not being a sunk cost by reminding them of our commitment to showing up tomorrow.