Archive of posts from August 2021

I learned these 4 things the hard way:

#1 One great blog post isn’t enough I remember writing a great post, publishing it, telling some people, and waiting for it to go viral. Great content doesn’t circulate itself like we’d like to think it would. Not everything we think is great, is great. Create more, publish more, distribute more.

#2 One follow-up message isn’t enough I remember creating a huge flurry of very personalised outbound email messages…with no follow-up whatsoever....

Most of us have gone through a time of insecurity in our careers where we wanted to prove ourselves to others…

To show we know what we’re doing… To show we’re good enough to do what we say we do…

And then we get the joke:

The market doesn’t care.

It doesn’t care if you were featured in that publication. It cares if you are trustworthy.

It doesn’t care if you landed that big client you like to talk about....

What do online marketers and churches have in common?

Here’s a quick story about how I got massively depressed…

I paused my company (that was doing very well) once, to help a megachurch grow online.

It depressed the hell into me.

At the time, I was told I was going to move alongside a big team of GOOD people, doing GOOD things (I was still a Christian then).

When I got there (after relocating across the country), the depression kicked...

Some days, you can feel like you kind of blew it.

Tomorrow is going to be a medley of property viewings and hospital visits… Not much space for tackling the to-do list of also-very-important business tasks that need completing.

And you know what? That’s totally OK. Here are 3 reasons why:

#1 Limited arms and hours: When you’ve got a lot of exciting projects moving at once, you can’t do them all at once all of the time. We don’t...

Both my wife and I remember being told our ideas wouldn’t work, when we were small.

She would write stories on the family computer – three novel-length manuscripts by the age of 14! But she recalls being told there’s not much money in writing.

I would make comics and games on a near daily basis, selling them to friends at school. Friends would even help sell on the playground for commission! I recall being told there’s not much money in...

I often feel really awkward when I receive a gift.

Some people are really easy to buy for. I’m one of them. Except for one big quirk.

I don’t drink. As in, completely. Wine, beer, cake with a bit of alcohol in it, nothing. Never have.

People who know me, know this.

So when someone gets me something like this, I have to figure out how long I’m going to maintain the ruse that I’ll actually open it someday.

Drinker...

Online advertising is full of people with a secret.

A secret formula to transform your sales. A secret hack to reduce belly fat. A secret step-by-step process to double your revenue.

The upside is that it’s results-oriented, which moves creators away from a focus on features.

The downside is that the product is so obscured, you’re unable to determine who is selling what anymore.

It’s gone from feature-focused, to benefit-focused, to baited fishhooks.

So what’s the right way to present...

When you think “good at sales”, what comes to mind?

It might be a smooth-talking, over-confident type, who’s good at holding your attention.

Some things were designed to be noticed. Like art, and music.

Not sales.

Selling gets simpler when it’s invisible, and brand does the work for us. (One great brand message is worth a thousand isolated sales campaigns.)

If we don’t make a little time for good brand messaging, we’ll need to make a lot of time for...

You’ll look crazy, but it’ll kill procrastination for good. Here’s how!

When you listen to your inner-voice, it may convince you of something other than what you had planned.

“I’m tired, I want a break…” is something you’re far more likely to say in your head than out loud.

Same goes for, “But I don’t want to do that, it’s boring ugh…”

To quiet the inner-voice, use your outer-voice.

Speak out what comes next. Like a crazy person.

Perhaps imagine...

I get a bit frustrated with myself when I’m unable to exercise.

This past week, I pulled something in my arm, and each attempt to exercise sets it off. It needs rest to heal.

You might think, “It’s no big deal, you can just pick it back up later”…

But I watch a lot of folks struggle to bring that forgiveness to themselves in business.

With exercise, we hear, “You can get fit any time, it’s never too late to...

Yes, showing up is one of the most important things…

…but we need to show up right:

1) With respect: Not everyone “deserves it.” But it always says more about us than the other person when we don’t show up with it.

2) As we want things to be: Not everyone makes our day better for being in it. We can be the one that does.

3) Be glad you did: I’ve never been glad of being angry, or disgruntled,...

“How many new sales did your company make last month?”

I’ve watched coaches and consultants go back-n-forth on this question for the last few weeks.

All eyes are on acquisition.

Not as many eyes are on the service rendered, and how it contributes to acquisition.

Not as many eyes are on customer retention, and how many times folks were happy enough to return.

A struggling, stressed out consultancy brings people in, does a workable job, then hunts for another victim.

What do you sell?

Some sell a rung of a ‘value ladder’. This is code for “a daisy-chain of things that aren’t quite what you needed.”

Some help folks move along their journey. This is code for “actually solving the problem at hand.”

The former is more popular, and is rewarded with completed (albeit frustrated) transactions.

The latter is rare, and is rewarded with loyal customers who tell their friends.

What do you sell?

It’s pretty natural to fall in love with your own work.

And when you do, you tend to want to guide it down a certain path.

…The trouble is, if you do, you might “fall out of love” (as much as I loathe the saying) with that work when customers want take it somewhere other than your original vision.

This is a kiss of death: if your customers ask for your help to get somewhere — but you’re not interested...

There are two kinds of “know your audience”.

The first way involves fake names, redundant exercises and colourful printouts.

Maybe something to colour in.

Or a dot-to-dot.

This doesn’t help businesses sell more. It simply helps people get out of their own way and start creating.

The second kind of “know your audience” is the one to look for.

This way involves understanding how they tick. Reverse-engineering their objectives.

And actually talking to them.

I’ve said before that there’s so...

Production value can enhance or detract from your authenticity.

If you make a video organically with your phone camera, it looks more authentic because less has taken place to mask reality.

But those same videos in a premium/bought context may make things seem unrefined and lacking in authority.

Posting polished videos on social media makes us wonder what all the polish is there to hide. So we trust it less.

But those same videos in an official context assure us...

Did you follow-up today?

Most people involved in the sales process seem to have a particular stage that they hate…

Some hate prospecting. Others hate sales calls. But everyone seems to have a strange avoidance to follow-up.

Probably why most follow-up is so lousy.

“Hey just checking you got my last email!”

You know you can do better than this.

Advertising is boring until approached with creativity.

Outreach is boring until approached with creativity.

What if you dared to explore...

They say “hope isn’t a strategy.”

Ohh, it’s a strategy alright. A hugely popular strategy in fact.

I’d say it could be the most popular strategy of all!

It’s just not a very good one.

“It’s a stupid strategy”, you might say. But.

When we’re presented with a path to progress but we don’t take it, we choose that strategy.

When we find people and products that could advance us toward our goals, but we don’t leverage them, we choose...

I’m not very good at math.

I consider doing math to be ‘hard’.

But I’m fully aware that doing math is not ‘impossible’.

It’s simply a case of knowing the formulas and equations, knowing how to tackle each math problem, and bam, solved.

The same can be said for resonating with those you wish to serve in the market.

Knowing who you’re talking to and what they need to hear from you is ‘hard’ too.

‘Hard’, again, meaning: knowing the...

I hear people say they’re stuck a lot.

I’ve said it a lot myself in the past too.

But is it true? Or is it just inner voices?

For instance…

If you don’t have the number of clients or customers you want, maybe it’s not “stuck”, but that you simply haven’t yet implemented something that you need to. A certain outbound/inbound system, perhaps.

That’s not “stuck”, that’s “being in the process”.

If you don’t have the team you want or...

Want more eyes on your product?

I asked for that once. I regretted it. I got eyes alright, but totally not the right kind.

We need to be more specific than “eyes”:

More eyes could mean randoms who you can’t help. Who have no desire for your help. Who do nothing but cost you more server bandwidth.

More eyes could mean right-fit customers who haven’t been led to understand what success looks like nor how your product could help them...

When I was growing my first company, I took care of customer service.

I didn’t think it was all that difficult.

Until I realised what was necessary in order to improve customer service skill past a certain level:

You’re limited by your empathy. If you’re having a bad day, you still have to empathise — which means you need full control over your state.

You’re limited by your knowledge. If you’re ignorant about the nuances of the work you represent,...

Your growth and your business growth are tethered to each other.

We can’t really change that.

We don’t really like that.

But if we can come to terms with it, we can do something about it.

We’re able to accept how it affects others…

…A big part of sales conversation is helping people get past their own insecurities and indecisiveness.

…A big part of team development is helping people see beyond the limits of their perspective and skillset – revealing...

Don’t you love it when a free offer isn’t a free offer?

When I was doing some market research on web consulting firms years ago, I opted into lots of free offers.

Free audits! Custom plans! Oh my!

The audits were mostly copy/paste affairs.

The custom plans were inaccessible – you had to negotiate several questionnaires and phone calls before they lift a finger.

This is still mostly true today too, by the way, believe me I’ve checked.

So it...

What makes you trust others?

Judging by many of the signals we see online, you’d think it would be…

…Displaying huge sums of money?

…Talking about huge sums of money?

…Making bold claims about life transformation?

Unless I (and anyone I’ve ever talked to about this) are from another planet, these aren’t things that generate trust, likability, or relationships, are they?

The money claims assure us that they’re good at collecting it from others, not that they’re good at helping...

I sold my first NFT 13 years ago.

When I was on my early 20s, one of my projects was selling “virtual clothing” designs.

I’d design the clothes, and people would buy them to put them in their collection.

What fascinated me was, when I’d make the fashionable promotional graphics you’d normally see in a retail store, developing the brand around the NFTs, people would buy more and more of these things. Like with real clothes that you can actually...

What can a Gopher teach us about business growth?

I’m not sure who pointed this out first, but I apparently have a silly saying in our company that comes out whenever a certain kind of idea comes along.

“Gopher it!”

Ideas come in two forms:

The first: ideas that we cooked up out of nowhere in our heads.

The second: ideas that developed as responses from conversations with real customers.

The first kind of idea is likely to get shot...

Do you have lots of great business ideas in your notes app?

Or maybe marketing ideas, future product ideas, or just even skills you want to develop?

Years ago, my Apple Notes used to contain thousands of ideas. Thousands. You know what they did for our company?

Nothing.

The ability to hoard ideas as they come simply keeps you caught up thinking about all the things you could make in the future.

All maybe-great ideas.

And all stealing mental space...

“I’ll rest when I’m dead!”

Ever met someone who said that? I’ve been that person, a bit like Sedgwick is in the comic there.

I’ve had dark times where life didn’t look the way I wanted it to. Times where to most of the world everything looks amazing, but suffering something awful behind-the-scenes.

In those times, many of us are more likely to find an escape than a fix.

An escape such as working all hours “hustling” in an attempt...

What’s tiring for most people, but not tiring for you?

I wasn’t sure when I started drawing daily marketing comics… I wasn’t sure if it’d be a good idea or not. Nobody else was doing it, after all.

But it was easy. And that’s often a sign we might be onto something:

There are things that YOU do, that I’ll find quite tiring. Perhaps as tiring as the thought of creating daily marketing comics sounds to you!

When we lean...

We celebrate those who start.

We should also raise our glasses to those who stick (to what they start).

Starting is easy. The first day of exercise is hard but easy to show up for. Buying the domain name for the project idea is easy, too. As is telling others about your great idea.

Sticking is hard. Day 365 of your new exercise regime is harder to reach than Day 1. Dollar 1 from project idea is harder to reach...