Archive of posts from July 2024

It’s OK to stink at finishing projects.

Why?

Because it’s a skill.

Starting, creating, and finishing projects is a skill.

Don’t practice it, and you won’t get better at it. Worse, you’ll lose your edge, and find them more difficult the longer you squander your streak.

Practice it, and you’ll get a little better at it, each and every time.

Starting (but stinking) at finishing projects is the first step to shipping great work.

Stink away, champ.

The problem with:

• irresistible offers
• website optimisation
• marketing automation

…is that they’re normally optimising the wrong thing.

You don’t need to:

• Make bigger promises
• Hound them over email
• Convince people to click

You simply need to:

• Give them what they want
• Make it enjoyable for them
• Make it so good they tell others

Optimise for that.

“Thanks for asking, that’s not what we do.”

This sentence (or a derivative of it) needs to exist in every business.

Even if you’re short on work right now.

Even if you’re scared to turn down accounts.

Even if you’re not sure what happens next.

Do what you do. Master what you do. Create an experience that is intentional, thoughtful, and exquisite. Learn how to make it better and better for those who need a master at what you do.

Avoid marketing automation, unless it achieves these things.

Users should feel it results in:

• Greater user context
• Better experience
• More enjoyable
• Faster service
• Easier to use

And never feel:

• Unseen/unheard by the business
• Like it’d be more fun if manual
• Like no one cared to show up
• Like it’d be easier if manual

Automation should be “you, but better”.

In business, we’re told to

“Work on the business, not in the business.”

True for entrepreneurs, less so for artists and indies.

And even less so when appropriating lessons to productivity.

“Work on your productivity system, not in your productivity system” would be terrible advice, when in fact the opposite is true.

Advice is not universally ‘true’.

Advice is simply a reflection of what has worked before in some circumstances some of the time.

Take it with a pinch of...

We think we want to make things easier.

But do we, really?

When a writer gives their writing to AI to do, it becomes easier.

Except a good writer looks upon the result and sighs.

Perhaps they could doctor the resulting prose into something acceptable. But the heart of the piece never really starts beating. They long for the discomfort of a blank page, where they can go to war with words and write something full of life.

Perhaps they...

Potential customers have a problem.

And they want to get to a solution.

So what do marketers do?

They say, “Forget about all, that look at my cool product!”

And that is why marketing is hard for them.

They try to close sales by doing things such as:

❌ “Make a super-irresistible offer so scrumptiously delicious they couldn’t even entertain the very possibility of doing anything other than exactly what you tell them.”

The problem is, that’s not how...

Although marketing keeps evolving,

Don’t forget what matters most:

• Knowing those you serve
• Creating things that they want
• Giving it to them in ways they love
• Doing that to the very highest quality

The rest is just cherries on top. 🍒

This one came up in a handful of conversations today.

There are a few shortsighted theories on how to improve your marketing that you may have heard before.

One is:

Make a super-irresistible offer so scrumptiously delicious they couldn’t even entertain the very possibility of doing anything other than exactly what you tell them.

The problem is, that’s not how people work is it. How often do you click on a page, then feel a magic marketing force rip your...

When two marketers disagree,

They have this in common:

They’re both revealing their lack of experience.

Example 1:

• ‘Test everything, it’s the only way’
• ‘Test nothing, they need you to decide’

What page? For whom? What stage? What campaign?
The argument simply reveals inexperience.

Example 2:

• ‘Social images good, videos bad’
• ‘Social videos good, images bad’

What medium? What platform? What audience?
The argument simply reveals inexperience.

Good marketing isn’t about using dogmas to...

‘Vanilla content’ is misunderstood.

Why you should be making ‘vanilla’ content:

First, understand ‘vanilla’:

• Vanilla is the best selling flavour in the world.
• Vanilla flowers bloom just one morning per year.
• Vanilla must be pollinated that morning, or it dies.
• Vanilla is the 2nd most expensive spice in the world.

With that in mind:

• Know what your market wants.
• Know how they enjoy receiving it.
• Make something rare & un-ignorably good

Vanilla has a bad reputation.

If you read what everyone else reads,
you’ll have everyone else’s ideas.

If you use what everyone else uses,
you’ll see what everyone else sees.

If you install what everyone else installs,
you’ll have everyone else’s limitations.

It’s neither good nor bad,
but it’s worth being aware of.

Advertisers used to dare.

They dared to run ads that tickled their target demographic’s funny bone, instead of just copying their peers.

They dared to tell stories that touched their market’s imagination, instead of leaning on sensationalism and celebrity.

They dared to make things that were actually good for brand, rather than merely good for the performance marketing agency of record.

Advertisers have lost their nerve.

Have you?

I’m going to go out on a limb here.

I’m assuming you’re not making landing pages for the “Institute of Self-loathing.”

Oh that’s correct? Hah, what a relief. Okay good.

In that case, question for you:

Do your landing pages know that?

Because most landing pages are:

• boring
• salesy
• not what we wanted
• not how we wanted it
• low-effort
• forgettable

And yet brands spend huge sums of money ‘optimising’ these things.

It’s like trying to ‘optimise’ a...

“Marketers ruin everything”

I 100% agree with this, unless:

They STOP doing this:

• Building faux-connections to pitch us from
• Following us around the web with ‘offers’
• Optimising for clicks not user delight

And START doing this:

• Building real connections we’re drawn to
• Building unignorably good experiences
• Optimising for long-term fans not mere clicks

We want things to look forward to.
We want to be seen as people, not clicks.
We want great experiences that...

When you plan a landing page…

How do you make sure it stands out?

The Internet doesn’t have a landing page shortage, y’know.

And it doesn’t have a mediocre offer shortage, either.

But it does have a shortage of memorable experiences that make us better…

So much better that we had to tell others about it so they could receive those same benefits for themselves.

Know what they WANT.

Know HOW they want to go there.

Then make that thing...

I’m about to save you a load of time, friends.

Replace your productivity hacks with this:

• I learned this through trial and error
• I had gotten really ‘productive’
• But I didn’t get more effective

Here’s what I realised:

• Better than email hacks? Having fewer emails.
• Better than calendar optimisation? Having less to do.
• Better than meeting schedulers? Having fewer calls.
• Fewer emails won’t cost you. Most of them are’t important.
• Less to do won’t cost you. You...

What personal brands are getting wrong

(And why it’s getting worse)

1. Everyone’s just using templates
2. Everyone’s recycling the same topics
3. Everyone’s afraid to be unique ‘because algo’

The result?

You cannot stand out.
(How can anything stand out by blending in?)

Ring ring

Oh hey, the Universe is on the phone!

Hello? …

It says:

Show us your art.
Show us your heart.
Make things you’re proud of.
Make things that last beyond the...

Technology moves quickly…
But it also moves slowly, if you want it to.

Take email for example. There are hot new subscription-based options if that’s what you like, but there’s also very capable text-based alternatives that have been around since 1995.

They still work fine.

Or take website builders as another example. There’s fierce competition between the big players at the moment, yet this site is currently powered by a framework created in 2008 (and loads faster than all...

Sometimes ‘Done’ isn over-done.

‘Done’ means we’re totally happy, we’ve manicured every nook and cranny.

But ‘ready’?

‘Ready’ means we may not be totally happy, because that would take weeks when we only have days.

‘Ready’ means we brought our skills to the work both in production and in planning.

It may not be the very best loaf of bread we ever baked, it may not be ‘done’ in that sense, but it can still be ‘ready’ for us to...

Why are you sitting in a box?

Silly, let me help you out of there.
Feel better?

You might be wondering why you were in a box at all.
That’s okay, it happens all the time:

Spend time in any industry and it’ll build itself around you.
‘Best practices’ show up, corrugated and firm,
Giving you paper cuts as you defy them.

But the problem is, from the outside?
You just look like a cardboard box.