Archive of posts from November 2023

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

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!