Archive of posts from August 2024

It’s an odd question.

“What do you do?” requests that you find a widely-understood box to climb into. Ideally, a favourable box, so that the person asking the question can make an ‘impressed’ noise.

But maybe you don’t fit into a box.

Hopefully you don’t fit into a box.

Hopefully you don’t choose your box based on how you might answer this question.

Hopefully your satisfaction comes from more than the ‘impressed’ noises of strangers.

Hopefully you realise that designing a life you love is far more rewarding than attempting to measure up to those who were only making polite conversation in the first place.

Do you, friend.

What makes great copywriting?

Social media tricks you into thinking it’s:

• Using all available ‘tricks’
• More emotive adjectives
• Irresistible offer stacks

That impresses copywriters. Not customers.

Sensational language and outrageous offers don’t win long-term.

Giving people what they want, how they want it wins long term.

Don’t overwhelm with goodies, solve problems in ways they find delightful.

If you feel like quitting social media,

Remember:

• There are no ‘rules’, no one knows it all
• It’s hard, like most things worth doing
• Be where users are, not where’s cool
• You can quit if its the wrong place
• You can take breaks if you like

Don’t be bullied by platforms or peers.

Make great things & share it how YOU want.

You’re in control, champ.

A lesson from Steve Jobs’ Dad:

Remember:

“You gotta make the back of the fence, that nobody will see, just as good as the front of the fence, even though nobody will see it. You will know, and that will show that you’re dedicated to making something perfect.”

Most creators feel exhausted.

Avoid that by:

• Love your tools, not shiny new toys
• Love your audience, not numbers
• Love doing less, but high quality
• Remember why you do this

You don’t have to hustle to do great work.

Real buyers hate sensational offers.

All they want from you is:

• Meet them where they are
• Give them what they want
• Give it how they love it
• Put real care into it.

Delight always beats Sensational.

It’s tempting to do it all alone.

To line up a series of tasks, and pursue them solo.

Certainly, it feels efficient in the moment.

“Look at all these checkboxes I’ve completed!”

If efficiency is what you want, this is fine.

If effectiveness is what you want, look closer.

Enlist help of people interested in your cause.

Recruit the support of those who love the idea.

Amplify advocates who are cheering you on.

We can do so much more together than apart.

If you get great, you might get busy.

But when you’re too busy, you stop practicing that which makes you great.

When you’re good, don’t take on too much, so you can be great.

When you’re great, don’t take on too much, so you can stay great.

Hustle and grind sound good in a tweet,

But in real life, breaks and margin are essential to mastery.

Fancy is the enemy of Progress.

Here’s why:

• You’re too busy to talk to customers
• You’re attached to your fanciness
• You’re missing customer insights
• You won’t pivot on feedback

In this week’s newsletter:

• More on this topic
• Wisdom from Laura Krauss
• Sedgwick gets fancy 💀

Drops in a few hours at https://theproductoon.com.

We’re rarely known for our knowledge.
We’re more often known for a feeling.

Peloton is known for the feeling of a premium sweat.
Not exercise bikes.

Bulletproof Coffee is known for the feeling of being a biohacker.
Not coffee.

The feeling is why people buy.
The feeling is why people buy again.
The feeling is the product.

Fancy is the enemy of Progress.

Here’s why:

• You’re too busy to talk to customers
• You’re attached to your fanciness
• You’re missing customer insights
• You won’t pivot on feedback

Don’t get fancy.

Get going.

Ever wondered what self-doubt sounds like to others?

We’d laugh if we heard it.

Remember:

• The greats aren’t smarter than you
• If in doubt, talk to real customers
• We all feel this way sometimes

If you hear it, chuckle.

Good sales isn’t:

1. Convincing people to buy,
2. Chasing leads forever,
3. Optimising for closes

Good sales is:

1. Giving them what they want,
2. Giving it how they want it,
3. Optimising for delight

Which would you rather buy?

We’re told we should optimise.

Optimise performance. Optimise conversions. Optimise revenue. Optimise health.

Optimise optimise optimise.

But if we’re focused on optimising everything, are we optimising anything?

Part of optimising what matters, is not optimising everything else.

Otherwise, we run the risk of not optimising what matters, as we were too busy optimising everything else.

Someone pointed me to a survey this week.

It revealed that one in three Brits believe they could qualify for the Olympics, if they trained for the next four years.

Huh. This reveals two things:

1. We don’t understand the hard work required to be great at something, from the outset.

2. One in three Brits are not training to be in the Olympics in four years time.

The levels of care, discipline and sacrifice required to be great may not be understood. People may scroll past your works flippantly, not appreciating what you’ve had to overcome to get where you are.

And yet the competition for doing it remains slim. Since while competition does exist, and greatness is hard, most won’t get off their bottoms to try.

Greatness continues to be an uncongested pursuit.

Self-doubt is not the enemy.

This is your enemy:

• Believing it’s unique to you
• Letting it mean something
• Acting on it accordingly

There’s an easy fix.

In this week’s newsletter:

• Why your service isn’t about you
• What you should focus on instead
• Holly Crawshaw shares her wisdom

Drops in a few hours at https://theproductoon.com.

Life has a lot in common with games:

What doesn’t kill you, gives you ‘experience points’.

Rushing to completion misses all the secrets.

There are many games to choose from.

You can change the game you’re playing.

Comparing your score to those playing other games is pointless.

Side-quests are fun, they add to the overall experience.

No one else really cares how well we play.

Cheating spoils the fun.

It being hard sometimes is the point.

Good creators get ready, research, then slowly produce the best they can.

Great creators stay ready, then produce better work even more quickly because of it.

Sometimes being great is simply down to this.

Should you always tell customers the truth?

When they’re not ready for the truth,
Simplify so they get what they’re ready for.

When they don’t believe the truth,
Empathise with their beliefs.

When it’s too much info?
Simplify it for them.

Everything you say needs to be true,
Not every truth needs to be said.

Meet them where they are.
Help them from there.

Landing pages aren’t for pitching services.

They are for:

1. Fitting into your customer’s narrative
2. Showing them what they want to see
3. Showing them how they want to see it
4. Moving them forward in that narrative

Icing on the cake:
5. Make it enjoyable for them.

Watch what happens to your CTRs.

Do you like to organise your work?

Make it all neat and tidy, everything in its place?

Notion databases for everything?

It feels good to look at once you’re done.

Until you realise you’re not done.

You haven’t even started.

You got caught up in organisation procrastination:

The work of supposing how work might get done, were it to get done.

It’s better to make messy progress,
than to procrastinate in order.

Perhaps your company is huge.

Massive. Market leading. Publicly traded.

But more likely, it’s not.

Smaller. In pursuit. Private. A little chaotic.

You look up at ‘huge’. Perhaps you wish your operation was huge too.

They look down at ‘smaller’. They see your nimbleness. Your ability to change your mind, to be reckless, to do things differently.

They wish they had what you have.

Remember that.

• If you have lots of features, but a bad customer relationship, your brand will struggle.
• If you have very few features, buy excellent customer relationships, you’ll thrive.
• Know your audience. Relationships over features!

I explore this topic in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

What’s the best type of content right now?

The simple, uncomplicated answer:

• WHAT they want to hear/learn
• HOW they love to be entertained - UN-IGNORABLY well executed

Doesn’t seem to matter too much if it’s a picture, video, carousel, text, etc. etc.

Those are just mediums to express those 3 items.

So focus on those 3 items.

Marketing that “doesn’t work”…


…Does work, if you work it:

• Building what customers want
• Building it how they want to receive it
• Building it with great production value

Does it ‘not work’?

Or are you ‘not working it’?

Ignoring community = business on hard-mode.

But it’s easy:

• Find where your people hang out
• Hang out with them there
• Become a (real) friend
• Give 10:1 Ask ratio

Making friends + making their lives better?
What’s not to love about that!


While everyone’s racing to AI-everything,

Here’s some new competitive advantages:

• Being a real person in site live chat
• Emailing back quickly as a real human
• DMing thoughtful, unautomated messages
• Commenting like you actually read the post
• Remembering and sharing interests with them
• Recognising their register, speaking as they do

Y’know, real human stuff.

So easy to do,
Yet so effective.

If you use the web, you’ll encounter social tools.

If you encounter social tools, you’ll encounter a new creature:

“Internet people”.

Some of them are fine.

Others are miserable, sensitive, toxic creatures on the prowl, looking for ways to ruin your day.

Tune these people out.

Not because you’re being unkind (you’re not).
Because they’ll steal your creative energy (and your joy).

Create because of who you are, not because of who they are.

Think and ideate because of what you could make, not because of what they might think.

Tune out bad. Lean into good.

A time where everyone closes,
A time where no one signs up.

A time when you’re full of energy,
A time when you need to rest.

A time when ideas are flowing,
A time when you feel mentally dry.

A time to go viral,
A time to get 0 impressions.

A time to know exactly what to do,
A time to feel full of doubts.

It all comes in seasons.

Enjoy each for what it is.

Only hacks worry about tricks and hacks.

Focus on what users want, how they want it.

If you have happy users, the rest doesn’t matter!

I explore this topic in this week’s issue of The Productoon newsletter. Check it out!

I find this one really tricky.

I know it, but executing it is hard:

Taking a break when you need one.

Knowing and executing are two vastly different things.

True of both business ideas and your health.

Perhaps this is why execution is worth so much more than ideas.