Archive of posts from May 2021

Do you compare your work to others?

There are many reasons why you shouldn’t.

Here are a few why you should:

There is no ‘expensive’, only ‘less expensive than’. Contrast creates value, and price is meaningless in isolation.

There is no ‘good value’, only ‘better value than’. We have to measure value against something in order to quantify it, even if it’s against its former self.

There is no ‘fast’, only ‘faster than’. If we remember there can be fast dogs and slow cars, we remember the importance of context to create meaning.

There is no ‘successful’, only ‘more successful than’. Otherwise Gates isn’t very successful when compared to Bezos, nor Bezos compared to anyone who is happily married. The variables in question make absolutes relative.

Comparing gets a bad name.

It’s not all bad: consider comparing your work to unearth more context and value, so you (and those you serve) can more fully appreciate what you have.

‘Modern’ has a short shelf-life.

Pursuing a ‘modern’ website means it won’t be modern when the trends change.

Chasing a ‘modern’ demographic means churning through people, each wave with needs different to the last.

Needing the latest ‘modern’ tools means your pocket never has the same device for long, even if each does the same things as its predecessor.

Wanting a ‘modern’ workplace means adopting behaviour, operations and culture from the innovation conveyor-belt, regardless of what’s on it.

Perhaps ‘modern’ isn’t what we’re looking for.

Maybe we want a website that speaks to our audience. Maybe our work changes to accommodate our audience, rather than the other way around. Maybe the right tools for the job aren’t always what’s hot off the press. Maybe the right workplace culture is one that represents our values, rather than the values of big tech and business news cycles.

Perhaps what we’re looking for is the opportunity to do good work for people we like, with people we like.

That has a much longer shelf-life.

Is more value, better?

Let’s see:

Which is the better referral incentive: 10% off your next order, or an immediate cash reward or movie ticket or similar? It depends on whether your goal is repeat behaviour or value maximisation. They’re not directly connected.

Which is the better closed-wallet offer: a single page Word document that solves a small problem right away, or a 200 page PDF that solves a slightly bigger problem? It depends on whether your goal is for people to actually take action, or value maximisation. They’re not directly connected.

So. Is more value, better?

It doesn’t matter: if the goal is to help people move forward from Problem to Solution, make that the focus, instead.

You do what you do through a lens.

You do it whether you know it or not.

But knowing it makes your work oh-so-much-better.

To find yours, here are a couple of examples:

When our coaching team creates coaching processes, they make processes through the lens of teachability and repeatability. Our focus on extracting audience narrative insights quickly means we need to be able to methodically equip team members (or those we serve) to repeat the process independently. 
That disqualifies permission for individual ‘gurus’ to show up, or excess process bloat that makes learning difficult. Our lens guides their focus.

When our development team writes code, they write code through the lens of accessibility and flexibility. Our focus on rapid re-expression of audience narrative means what we build needs to be able to iterate regularly based on what we (or those we serve) learn, and those iterations need to be accessible to as many people as possible.

That disqualifies needless technical debt, inflexible frameworks, and unnecessary whiz-bang. Our lens guides their focus.

What’s your lens?

Are you connecting enough with your peers to produce your best work?

Leadership is useful because many team members don’t talk to each other enough in a pinch. The ones that do, become leaders.

Development frameworks are useful because many developers don’t talk to each other enough in a pinch. The ones that do, make the frameworks.

Good books are useful because many interested in a subject don’t talk to each other enough to learn from each other any other way. The ones that do, write good books.

We don’t have to engage with others when trying to produce meaningful work. But if doing so creates team leadership, thought leadership and solid frameworks, perhaps it’s worth a try?

What’s the simpler option to that thing you’re working on right now?

Do you need to double your customer list, or simply help your existing ones a little more?

Do you need 50% faster hardware to reduce overheads, or simply 5% more efficiency from your people?

Do you need to send generic 500 emails per week, or simply a small handful of thoughtful ones that solve a problem for people?

Do you need 50 web pages to pitch prospects with, or simply 1-3 really thoughtful ones to help people along their journey?

There could be a simpler route that focuses you on the important stuff. You’ll wonder how you missed it when you find it.

I hear you’re making something great.

Will it flex?

Buying a new website? That’s great, I hope it’s going to be a great advocate of your customer’s desired journey. But will it flex? Better make sure you have the ability (or support) to edit that asset often in response to what you’re learning about your customers.

Preparing a new advertising campaign? That’s great, I hope it’s profitable. But will it flex? Better make sure your assets are ready to be refined in response to the performance data you should be receiving.

Creating a new product offering? That’s great, I hope it’s a hit with your customers. But will it flex? Better make sure you have the ability to listen to real feedback and reflect that feedback back into your work as it comes.

If your work is an act of service to our choice of market, the things we make must be flexible enough to change with our audience’s needs.

Unless, of course, we’re not listening to what they have to say.

You are listening, aren’t you?

This ones for the ‘closers’:

We don’t define value. We can help set downstream buying criteria, but customers define value. What’s important to them is what’s important. Our job is to help them define value.

We don’t convince customers to buy. We can help them make a good decision, but customers convince themselves. Our job is to help them convince themselves.

Sales are not random. We may witness seemingly random sales patterns, but that just means we aren’t paying enough attention. Our job is to pay attention.

What if you were to identify less as a ‘closer’ and more as someone who pays attention, helps people define value, and compel them to act upon it?

What’s the law?

Companies often have manifestos. But how many in the team embody these things? For real?

Companies often have mission statements. But how many share this “mission”, rather than rolling their eyes at their higher-ups?

Companies often have “core values.” But for whom are they truly core values? What difference is it making?

Companies don’t often have a “law”. Law is how things absolutely happen. Sometimes because they’re believed in (patriotically), sometimes because they believe in who wrote them (religiously), sometimes just because…it’s the law.

Team members may slip on their values. But they don’t break the law. Because it’s the law.

If you truly believe the things in your mission, in your core values, in your manifesto… if they’re critical to your ability to produce work that matters… perhaps it should be the law.

What do product development, marketing, and washing the dishes have in common?

Here’s a quick story:

A monk told Joshu: “I have just entered the monastery. Please teach me.” Joshu asked: “Have you eaten your rice porridge?” The monk replied: “I have eaten.” Joshu said: “Then you had better wash your bowl.” At that moment the monk was enlightened.

Hey, there always feels like there’s a lot to do.

There’s certainly a lot we could do.

But remembering the act of “doing the next right thing” helps us steer clear of the paradox of choice, paralysis by analysis, or overwhelm.

Doing the next right thing could be to make that call you’ve been putting off. Or accepting a reality in your research.

Or it could simply be to wash your bowl.

Your goal is not my goal. Your goal is probably not the same as your competitor’s, either.

So don’t compare:

My goal might be to create an environment that’s calm, steady, predictable, creative. Those might not be among your goals.

Your goal might be to re-invest profit as quickly as possible to maximise business growth while minimising corporation tax. That might not be among my goals.

When you observe the development of other companies or the progress of other individuals, it’s natural to compare.

But as we know, for things to be compared, they must share axes. They must demonstrate statistical relevance that helps us draw useful conclusions.

When your goals and my goals don’t place the same value the same things or quantify information in the same way, they can’t (or shouldn’t be) be compared.

Outperform yourselves.

Outdo yourself.

But don’t compare. You’ll only slow yourself down.

What are your feelings toward cold email?

Cold email done well is an unrestricted, decentralised, open way for people with something valuable to share to connect with others, one at a time. This is good, and rare.

Cold email done badly is an unrestricted, decentralised, open way for people with nothing valuable to share to spam others at scale. This is bad, and common…

…So common, in fact, that “cold email” is synonymous with “cold email done badly”. As a result, giving people gifts, solving people’s problems and serving people first are all increasingly at risk of being limited to restricted, centralised, closed ways of doing good.

Consider sending good cold emails.

Consider thanking anyone who sends good cold emails.

Continue to smite those who send bad ones.

People not sharing your product online?

“Why won’t they share our product on Twitter, it doesn’t cost them anything…”

Yes, it does.

If it doesn’t say something positive about them for associating with it, it costs them something. Status, trust, reputation, attention. These aren’t free, or infinite, so they aren’t spent as such.

If it says something positive about them for associating with it, it gains them something. Status, trust, reputation, attention. Because they’re valuable, sharing is now something people want to do regardless of whether or not you put a huge share button in their faces.

Sharing isn’t free. Sharing is an investment. Make it a good one.

Here are some quotes from the school of Stoicism, and how we can apply them to our daily work:

“The best revenge is not to be like that”: Just because Jeff Bezos and Kevin Plank use their leadership positions to manipulate the stock market for their gain and everyone else’s loss, it doesn’t mean you need to play their game to get ahead. Play a different game.

“What’s bad for the hive is bad for the bee”: To accept the conduct or presence of bad clients or bad employees is to accept poison into your work that, once injected, is very difficult to extract. Preventative action is better than seeking out a vaccine.

“Amor fati”: Associating emotional security in certain outcomes creates high blood pressure, envy, exhaustion, and ignored families. Conversely, learning to love the journey, rather than the outcomes, creates better creators.

“Look for the poetry in ordinary things”: System and process design and/or refinement don’t feature on the cover of business magazines. Yet they’re a cornerstone of great companies. Beauty need not be sexy – learn to love systems.

“Meditate on your mortality every day”: You get to be a part of this work today. It’s just for a short time, possibly shorter than you think. Learn to love simply the act of getting to play in the first place.

…but speed as a byproduct is great.

Trying to go fast often means communication suffers. If ambiguity breeds anxiety, and anxiety kills creative energy, speed kills your ability to produce your best work.

Trying to slow down often means better communication. If clarity removes anxiety, and that space leads to creativity, slowing down creates the opportunity to produce your best work.

When we focus on speed, we get slow, suboptimal output.

When we focus on slow, we get faster, more excellent work.

SEAL and Delta Force operators are right: Slow is Smooth, Smooth is Fast.

Are you trying to go faster? Consider whether making it the focus is better than making it the by-product of something greater.

Do you represent your work?

Not just by being a spokesperson for the product. But by truly representing your work.

Chrysippus – sometimes known as “the second founder” or the third head of the school of Stoicism – supposedly wrote 500 lines a day. Not words, lines. An estimate states he wrote more than 700 papers on his work.

Similarly, Seneca supposedly read every day. “Reading, I hold, is indispensable”, he claimed. Not every sometimes, every day. This represented the belief that writing and reading should be pursued in equal measure.

Seth Godin writes a blog post every day. “I don’t write every day because I have lots of good ideas, I have lots of good ideas because I write every day”, he said. This happened to be the quote that motivated me to start writing every day 1,255 days ago.

Epictetus said, “Don’t explain your philosophy. Embody it.”   The same is true for your body of work.

Do you embody yours?

What’s between the back foot, and the front foot?

You may have witnessed these traits in folks along your travels in business:

When they’re on the front-foot – succeeding, well-regarded, ahead-of-the-game – they’re to be credited and revered for their self-made success.

When they’re on the back-foot – embarrassed, stuck, stressed, “under the gun” – it’s your fault it didn’t work, or the government’s, or the supplier’s.

What’s in the middle?

Balance.

When we’re balanced – whether succeeding or stuck, winning or losing, among calm or chaos – we’re respectful of both ourselves and those around us, operating with sound mind and good judgement.

Lady Fortune spins the wheel, projects succeed and fail, and we get to choose whether to swing from front-foot to back-foot, or whether we’ll model something different, something better.

Warning: Shiny things!

Not in this post… But probably in a bunch of others you’ll read today online.

Shiny objects are everywhere. Vying for our attention. Distracting us from our commitment to focused, meaningful work.

They promise outsized riches in exchange for our distraction and detours. They deliver us splintered focus and fractional results.

Sometimes, it pays to recognise the opportunity behind the shininess. After all, many great innovations that benefit us started out shiny.

Most of the time though, it pays far more to remember the opportunity is already within our scope. We need simply stay the course.

Are you looking for more shiny things today, or more focus?

The answer might not be in a course.

It might not be in your industry’s “best practices”.

It may not even be in that 5,000 word blog post that you bookmarked and have been meaning to get around to reading.

It may not even be in that Facebook Group you joined yesterday, or in those LinkedIn messages you’ve been meaning to get around to.

It might just be that…

…They’re in your audience.

…And that can feel inaccessible. Further away from us than the posts and groups we’re used to turning to.

That’s simply a failing on our ability to nurture close relationships with our audience. After all:

• Business 101: make things people want to buy.
• Messaging 101: say the right things to the right people.

If you’d like a blueprint for doing this, we made a mini-course covering how to say the right things to the right people. Warning: may require you to get closer to your audience!

Do those with the best marketing win? We’ve seen brands with great ads in the past, things we may have shared with others. But we don’t remember their names now, because they didn’t live up to their promise.

Do those with the best product win? We may not have heard about the best products in many markets we participate in, only the ones that negotiated shelf space, or who played the Amazon game.

Do those with a different point of view win? If they’re different in a way we’d love, but there’s no product behind it for us to engage with and the marketing isn’t working, we don’t get the opportunity to love them.

So what, then? A different point of view, expressed as a better product, with marketing that works. The point all three meet is a successful intersection.

How do we get these things? We listen to our audience, we have the conversation they want to have, while being mindful of our role in the conversation and the new way forward we can carve for them.

People share things that are remarkable.

People like using templates and step-by-step guides that claim to help make their thing remarkable.

If everyone makes things the same way, they’re the same.

Things that are the same aren’t remarkable. They’re the same.

Ergo, to make something remarkable, you can’t do what everyone else is doing, the way everyone else is doing it.

You probably already know this. But the allure of the template and ‘best practice’ is strong.

How will this lil’ reminder shape your work?

There’s a natural allure to Simple and Easy.

Why wouldn’t there be? It’s Simple and Easy.

But it causes pain for those in the creative class:

“Simple and Easy” is marginalised and commoditised. It’s now (or soon to be) available with one-click, drag-n-drop, free-with-ads.

“Complex and Easy” is just “Simple and Easy” grouped together.

“Complex and Hard” is admired and respected. We may not understand it, we may not think we need it, we may not do business with it, but props for the effort.

“Simple and Hard” is scarce and rewarded. Making something that is hard to achieve, simple, is a literal breakthrough: you’re enabling people to break through a barrier of opportunity.

We get to choose which quadrant we operate in.

Which suits your work best?

Good ideas die all the time in favour of mediocre ideas.

It’s not because they’re not good. It’s because they weren’t recognised.

“You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.” – Mark Twain

When imagination is out of focus, ‘Do what our competitors are doing’ becomes the good idea. Not because it’s good. It’s jus a mediocre idea in disguise.

The “This looks more on-trend” idea wins over the “This expresses a point-of-view that we share with our chosen audience.” idea.

The “This won’t push people away” idea wins over the “This pushes the wrong people away and draws the right people closer” idea.

Mediocre ideas are disguised as good ideas all around us.

What if you were the ones to let actual good ideas shine?

Wait on the Muse, wrestle with Writer’s Block, hope that Inspiration will Strike.

Or, ask better questions.

“I’m not clear on how to write this” leads us to either pursuing the Muse’s inspired creativity from page 14 of search engine results, or to asking, “What if we tried…this?”

“I’m not sure how to handle that objection” leads us to YouTube sales training video number thirty-four, or to asking, “What does my intuition say will serve them best, based on the narrative at play in the lives of those I serve?”

We get to get stuck, or we get to grow rapidly with (and by feeding) our intuition.

It applies right here: we get to cross-reference and further research the above idea on the Internet right now, or we get to apply it right now based on what your intuition says about it.

You’re not ‘supposed’ to colour outside the lines.

The lines were put there to tell you where to put the colours, right?

Same is true of the marketplace. “You’re a bank teller.” “You’re a chef.” “You’re a writer.” There are lines, for us to colour inside.

But what if we coloured outside?

What would be possible if…

• A restaurant chef decided to harness his/her copywriting skills?
• An entrepreneur decided to harness his/her illustrator skills?
• A philosopher decided to leverage his/her programming skills?

Had any ideas yet? I’m sure you have!

Great ideas, great teams and great work can occur when you colour outside of the lines.

They’re just often easier to see in others than for ourselves, where the lines are more clearly defined.

What would happen if you (and those in your team) dared to bring your quirks and inconsistencies to work as an asset?

How can there be a benefit to you (or your brand) contradicting itself?

Being aligned with yourself creates Order. Consistency. Reliability. Clarity. These are good things.

But contradictions create Quirk. Uniqueness. Rarity. Relatability. These can also be good things.

I love systems (reliable) in our work, yet enjoy card games for play (luck-based). Our work is deeply influenced by philosophy (wise), yet our visuals frequently feature cartoons (silly).

People (and the brands they represent) can’t be the same as everyone else and yet be different and memorable at the same time.

Please, bring order, consistency, reliability and clarity to your work. But don’t forget to bring your team’s unique quirks, the things that make you relatable to those you serve, that which makes you a rare match in their evaluations.

If what I share helps you understand your market narrative better…

And that help creates positive results in your work, be it new outcomes or key insights…

…You’ll consider my team when you want to go further along your journey. You may even tell your friends.

Welcome to the help economy.

What are you holding back that could serve your choice of market, today?

What are you waiting for permission to do for those you wish to serve?

What if you were to stop waiting and stop holding back, for good?

If your product is obviously worse than other products on the market, you have a product problem.

For everyone else, there’s a relationship problem.

What’s the narrative taking place in the minds of those you wish to serve?

What’s a stand you take that your audience shares emphatically with you?

When was the last time you checked in on that narrative, refining your understanding and expressing it in your messaging?

These things have nothing to do with your product. These are calls to move closer to your people, to learn from them, and to love on them.

Please, make a great product.

Then focus on relationships.

Ever look at the work of a competitor, and scoff?

“We can do so much better!” you might exclaim.

Careful. What does “so much better” actually mean?

If it means you have the ability to outperform a market offer, where you think it’s great but buyers don’t care, did you really make anything “so much better”? Your scoffing may become a yardstick measured against only by you.

But if it means you have the ability to better serve your people in ways they care about, where you’ll bring more meaningful advantage to them thanks to your skills and insights, that’s another matter entirely.

Before you scoff, turn your focus to those in your care: what does better mean for them? And how can you bring more of that into their lives?

You will, eventually.

Much, much sooner than you think.

The question is, who’s putting you out of business:

Option 1: You. If you grow today, the you of tomorrow will put today’s version of you out of business. It could be a better you, that today you can’t compete with.

Option 2: Someone else. If you don’t grow today, someone else will have. Their skills, their offers, their market position, they’ll move, and you won’t.

It’s not something to stress about. A day off doesn’t put you on the back foot. But when you go out of business, we have a certain amount of control over who makes that happen.

What makes you want people to leave you alone?

Two reasons that probably spring to mind:

1. When they’re annoying you
2. When they’re selfish

With this in mind…

…why is so much sales, marketing, and advertising guilty of both of these things?

And why are guilty businesses and individuals surprised when they get suboptimal results from these efforts?

We get emails every day. We like and respond to some. We delete others. The difference? Being guilty of the above.

We get calls every day. We like and look forward to some. We hang up on others. The difference? Being guilty of the above.

We do business every day. We love buying from some brands. We hate being sold to by others. The difference? Being guilty of the above.

Are you guilty?