Archive of posts from November 2023

You start building a product, and you’re excited…

Then you go on social media.

And you see someone shouting about their success with AI. So you add AI to your product, ’cus surely that’s what everyone wants.

And you see someone shouting about their success with podcasting. So you add podcasting to your product, ’cus surely that’s what everyone wants.

And you hear someone shouting about their success with the blockchain. And IoT. And funnels. And SEO. And everything else anyone had success with.

Soon you’re not building that product anymore. And you’re not excited.

And neither is anyone you were making it for in the first place.

Now they’re confused.

And so are you.

Remember what you’re building.

Forget the rest.

There’s a danger in being number one.

When you’re #1, you can’t be discovered: because the media ran away with your story.

When you’re #1, a flurry of energy surrounds your work. Flurries fizzle out.

When you’re #1, trying new things is hard, spelling ‘your downfall’ rather ‘experimentation’.

When you’re #1, you’re the culture, instead of in the culture, meaning you’re gone when it changes.

If you’re not #1, either by choice or in spite of efforts to the contrary, celebrate.

You have a superpower.

When I first got a computer as a kid, I wanted to make games on it. It was an i486 with Win3.1.

It seemed to be a machine for making things with.

It seemed not to have obvious tooling installed to make things with… but it, itself, seemed like a tool for making things with.

And so I made games. Lousy, janky, limited games.

Many of them never got finished, either because the idea got boring or the ‘play test’ got boring. But I shipped some games. And friends bought them. They got better the more I made them. I listened to what friends wanted, and put my spin on those desires.

I was 11. 25 years later I’m still doing the same thing: listening to what people want, and putting my spin on those desires.

Really, that’s the heart of running a creator-led business.

If an 11 year old can do it, you can do it.

Being an independent creator or entrepreneur has 3 unspoken dilemmas:

Dilemma 1: There’s always more to do, so you always do a bit too much.

Dilemma 2: You don’t properly wind down, so you don’t properly recharge.

Dilemma 3: You never talk about it, ’cus no one else seems to be struggling.

Except they are.

They are struggling.

(The good ones are, anyway.)

I go into more detail on this in The Productoon Newsletter this week. Check it out!

The deal isn’t “closed” when you make a sale.

When someone buys your service, that’s the beginning of a relationship, not the end.

When someone buys your merch or plush toy, that’s the beginning of a relationship, not the end.

When someone buys your anything, that’s the beginning.

The service is a promise made, that must be kept. The plush toy is an invitation to make a brand a part of your world, and must mean something from now on. Sale may be a part of brand building, but branding building isn’t part of sales.

Think about what you’re really building. If done right, it might be much bigger than you think.

In the race to create more, we get less.

We’re told to ship more work.

We’re told to ship faster.

Churn out more, more quickly. Seven days is sufficient, sell it and make the next thing, on repeat.

There’s a danger here.

A danger that marginalises your abilities to whatever you can turn around in a small time.

A danger that puts you in the same bucket as many others, racing to churn out more.

A danger that removes care for your craft and commitment to your cause.

A danger that denies you the ability to build better things.

The world already has enough low-quality churned-out half-baked garbage.

But there’s huge demand for people who still care enough to be patient and build things that take their breath away.

I find this one really challenging:

If you work hard… rest hard.

Working hard is easy. I’ve always given my all to projects I take on and products I build.

Resting is hard. For me. As when I’m not actively building, I only want to sharpen or stack skills to build better.

Stepping away and doing something totally different? Super-hard.

And yet it’s where some of my best ideas come from.

So if you struggle with the same, consider this:

One of the best things you can do for your work, is to not work, and let that negative space charge you with fresh new perspectives you’d never find otherwise.

Remember to ‘unwork’.

My son taught me something new this week.

And I’ve learned the lesson by watching his actions.

Back when he wanted to crawl, all he seemed to focus on was crawling.

The moment he woke up, he was trying to get on all fours and move.

Once he’d nailed crawling, he had his eyes set on crawling faster.

Then on standing up against surfaces.

Then on standing up against things that let him practice assisted walking.

Every day when he wakes up, he’s straight into the one thing he’s got his eyes set on.

One goal at a time.

Not ten. Not five.

One goal. He stays focused on just one.

And that’s how he achieves it.

Sure, we can achieve things with multiple goals. But it’s far less effective. My quickest wins always came from when I focused.

And he’s taught me to make that more of a habit.

Maybe you should give it a try too.

If you love to build, networking feels like a waste.

If you love to network, building feels like a waste.

Whenever you’re hard-left, right feels like a waste.

It might not be a waste.

It might be the very thing you need to make your work thrive.

Building products and businesses can, at times, feel like a lonely deep space mission.

With long stretches of excitement and doubt in equal measure.

You think you’re flying in the right direction, but you can never be 100% sure.

You encounter other ships flying around and you wonder to yourself, whether they’re better pilots than you are. Whether they’re free of the ups and downs, the what ifs, and the challenges you face.

They’re not.

The only difference is, they’re flying to different places, with different passions and priorities, with a different life balance.

No one has it all figured out. Everyone is piloting their ships with their best guesses in mind, toward what they think their goals are, and where they think those goals will be met.

That’s it.

So really there’s not much in common aside from the fact you’re all flying, is there?

So forget about the other ships.

Only you are going where you’re going in the way you want to get there.

So make your priorities. Set your goals.

Then just fly.

Consider all the things you did last week.

Were they essential? All of them?

Sometimes, distractions masquerade as essentials.

A good way to discover them is to detox from them.

It may be for a day, a week, or longer.

But after that period, you get to ask youself: did I miss it? Did anyone miss it?

And does the value benefit of having it exceed the time or cost benefit of leaving it behind?

You may be giving your time away to things that simply don’t matter.

Detox and find out.

Ads should be your best content.

Instead, they’re usually the worst.

An ad should not be:

• They sell blindly vs first giving value
• The visuals are low-effort vs good quality
• They spend relational equity vs build it
• They’re board vs targeted to a chosen few
• They have no personality
• They’re not memorable nor remarkable
• They lead to boring sales pages

And yet companies expect to generate business with them.

Let’s reconsider what an ad is.

An ad should be:

• An invitation to a great experience
• Some of your very best work
• Filled to the brim with value
• The first step of a multi-step experience
• An opportunity to discover
• High quality in the eyes of the viewer
• So good that people share it with others
• Thoughtfully assembled for a chosen few

I go into more detail on this in The Productoon Newsletter this week. Check it out!

Will it work?

Will people care?

Will your work sell?

Will it grow to be the right size?

Here’s a quick thought exercise:

Step 1: Know what your audience wants and loves.

Step 2: Make something that will blow, their, minds.

Step 3: Boost it. Ads, outbound, whatever.

When you make something that is definitely un-ignorable, then you boost it, what remains?

Everyone’s online, waiting.

Over to you.

Feel like you’re not making enough progress?

Or like others are progressing faster?

No sweat.

Some things take longer than others.

You knew this when you started.

Stay the course.

‘Hard work’ and ‘hard’ are different.

When we say something is ‘hard’, we mean it’s unlikely.

Bowling ten strikes in a row is ‘hard’.

Building a profitable business may not be ‘hard’ though.

It may just be ‘hard work’.

Just like how redecorating a house is ‘hard work’.

But if you take it (the business or the redecoration) one step at a time, allow it the time it needs to make it as you (and those it serves) want it, there’s a good chance it’ll come out right in the end.

If you’re doing something that’s ‘hard’, practice.

If you’re doing something that’s ‘hard work’, keep going.

Don’t follow the rules, use the templates, or adhere to the best practices.

But don’t break the rules, ignore what works, or get into trouble.

Know the rules, then bend them… slightly. Knowing what makes the templates work, then going beyond their limits, puts you in a league of one. Knowing the best practices, but breaking them when it works better for your target market, puts you in a league of one.

There’s a fine line here.

Find it and reap the rewards.

Here’s how to never feel like you’re racing the clock at work again:

Have an ‘appetite’ for each task in your to-do list.

Instead of deciding how long it DOES take…
Decide how long it will take, THIS time.
Then shape the work to fit the time you’ve given it.

Example:
If it ‘normally’ takes 2 weeks, but you only have 1, that’s fine. Shape what a ‘1 week version’ looks like.

If everyone agrees on the scope, you’re fine!
If they don’t, they’ll give you 2 weeks!

No more clock chasing.

If you’re good at having ideas…

And good at executing them…

There’s one more skill you must master:

Being good at waiting.

On not scrapping the idea because you had another one.

On not constantly inventing a better wheel for your machine.

On not breaking it by meddling.

Instead, just showing up and doing the plan.

Every time you sit down to work.

Have you nailed the third skill?

Most ‘persona’ work misses the point entirely.

A great example of this is our spouses.

Someone could look at my wife and be like, “OK, she’s X age, Y height, lives in Z location, I know her now.”

That’s how daft we sound when we just do the basic stuff.

But if they knew her favourite-favourite author, and dropped an in-joke about that? Or that she’s a great mom, and leaned into that? Or that she loves fantasy fiction, and leaned into that?

We’re only few layers of depth away from geometric gains.

A brand is more than logos, colours, sound tags, and mascots, or what people say when you’re not in the room.

A brand is a part of you (the customer).

When you use Apple tech, it becomes part of your identity. You associate with its design choices and philosophies, which appear in other areas of your life.

When you use HEY email, it becomes a part of your identity. You wave your email address like a standard bearer in a “say no to spying big tech” army.

You don’t have a brand yet if:

• customers wouldn’t wear your t-shirt
• your name doesn’t stir something in them
• no one knows what it stands for

Stand for something for someone. Make and sell things that help them do that thing. Be one with their culture.

Now you have a brand.

It doesn’t matter if they match your ICP or not.
It doesn’t matter if they’ve added to cart or not.
It doesn’t matter if they opened your email or not.
Nobody likes to be harassed.

Consider the “new friend test”: If you wouldn’t message a new friend with the frequency or forwardness in your new campaign, don’t send the campaign.

Conversely, what would you send them?
Would you make it fun?
Would you make it shorter?
Would you make it a different format?
Would you send them a freebie?

The answer is rarely ‘harass them more’!

Best practices should be learned and then forgotten.

If you don’t learn best practices, you’ll make needless, avoidable missteps. Learning from those who went before you is really important.

If you lean on best practices exclusively, your work will never stand out. As Seth Godin rightly observed, “to be remarkable, it must be worth making a remark about.”

Learn them so you know what not to do. Then forget them so you can publish work that stands out, turns heads, builds brand equity, and motivates sales.

Don’t be in such a hurry.

When was the last time you saw the Peanuts brand sending ‘abandoned cart’ email sequences for a ‘flash sale’?

Peanuts leaves you to explore and discover. They’re not hurrying you along. They’re everywhere, yet nowhere. As David Horvath says, “they’re in the ‘falling in love’ business”.

We don’t trust those who hurry us along toward where they want us to be.

We trust those who create safe places for us to explore and progress in our own timing.

While you build your thing…

There are tasks you think are mandatory, that are actually optional.

Posting on social every day? If it makes you a stressed-out template-robot checking a box each day, maybe don’t bother. Maybe engaging as a real person at a cadence that suits you is better.

Newsletter? Blog? Podcast? If it brings out your best and your audience has an affinity for it, go ahead. If you don’t love it, we’ll tell. Maybe just focus on doing the things they love that you love too.

Meetings? You can request it be an email, or a loom, if you want.

So many things are actually optional.

Exercise your ability to choose.

Having social apps on your phone is a choice. I know you have growth plans there. But of the last 100 times you opened social apps on your phone, have they increased your growth, or just extend your bathroom breaks?

Responding to email throughout the day is a choice. I know you might have a really important client or prospect message. But of the last 100 times you interrupted deep work to check your inbox, how many of those times did that happen?

60 minute meetings are a choice. I know you know rapport-building is important. But of the last 100 meetings you took, how many of them could have realistically achieved the same outcome from being 30 minutes? Or 15? Or an email?

The data’s right there.

Are you brave enough to do something about it?

After we exercise, we know we need to rest.

And the harder we exercised, the more rest we’re likely to need.

We forget this when we’re at work, be it physical or mental labour.

I’ve been forgetting this one a lot too.

It’s okay to rest:

If you want to do good exercise, engage both strain and recovery.

If you want to do good work, engage both strain and recovery.

That project nuance you’re wrestling with at the moment?

The one that’s “a whole thing” right now?

Remember…

Someone out there is fighting for their life today.

That nuance of yours snaps into perspective when you realise what a privilege it is to be working that project in good health at all.

Are you seen as the best in the world at what you do?

Wrong question. Who cares. Not important.

Doesn’t matter.

What matters is that you practice, grow, and do your best.

This isn’t a sprint. It’s last-man-standing.

Keep going, don’t compare, and enjoy the process.

Post 1–2 times a day.

No, Post 3–7 times a day.

No, Post 9.25 times a day.

No, Post 64 times a day.

Hold on hold on hold on. Let’s think about this.

What are we trying to achieve here?

To be seen as a likeable, entertaining humans that others want to spend time around, who keep giving out presents like its Christmas?

Or to be seen as tedious self-important algo-monsters who eat platitudes for breakfast?

Santa only comes once a year and we look forward to him because he knows what we want and he gives it to us in a fun way.

It’s not the frequency we love about Santa, it’s that he knows what we want and he gives it to us in a fun way.

Sure, show up every day. Be the good friend that’s awesome at keeping in touch. Rather than the bad friend who constantly drops in raids your fridge, takes a dump, then leaves.

But remember: it’s not about arbitrary post numbers. It’s about who shows up.

Standing out means not doing what the others are all doing.

This is a newsflash for most businesses in most industries.

And what good news that is: while they’re all trying to sound the same, you need only listen to what your audience really wants to see and hear…

…and create that instead.

Too easy!