The best “growth hacks” remain a secret, because those looking for them cannot see them.
They can’t see patience, the long journey to greatness, or the fiduciary responsibility to ship great work, even when it takes 10x longer to bring to fruition.
They can’t see it. And so they keep signing up for webinars.
I planted some trees this year.
And in the first year they didn’t grow at all… visibly.
Yet lots of growth under the soil.
The roots need to be as deep as the tree is tall.
People building brands forget this.
The web doesn’t have a content shortage problem.
It has a quality and experience shortage problem.
Everyone wants to build fast, built lean, test early, and pivot if it’s not automatically everything it could be in such a distressed state.
Ideas deserve better.
Customers deserve better.
You can grow by getting the fundamentals right (earning growth)
And you can grow by hustling and chasing growth.
The difference, aside from your sanity, is that one path leads you to do things that conribute to mastery…
And the other leads you to do things that compromise those fundamentals in favor of reaching a goal you may not be able to sustain because of it.
Not a touch choice, is it?
“What if lying was banned today?”
I love this question by the way, for so many things.
We ourselves, we think of ourselves as honest people. I know I do. And I hate lies in marketing or anywhere else.
But I still love asking the question — because it puts you in a lens of radical pragmatism, aggressive simplicity, an eagerness to shine a light on the unclear parts.
More trust, is the outcome.
Animals keep evolving into like crabs (carcinization).
Software keeps evolving into enterprise B2B SaaS (en$h*ttification).
But not always.
It’s popular, a well-documented path to The Big Bucks ™.
But we can also choose to remain committed to those in our care, to those we set out to serve, and to those for whom we can be of most value.
It’s a choice.
We get to be around three types of people in the marketplace:
The first two have a direct transactional score value.
The third is what you really want to surround yourself in.
The third is what we want to be completely covered in.
Because it only takes one tiny spark, from seemingly anywhere, to make amazing things come alive.
Look for the gas.
People argue online about what makes greatness.
Are people born great? Or do they earn it from 10,000 hours of input?
I’m not convinced about either of them.
I think the cost of ‘great’ is higher than that.
I think it’s about committing your short life… to something.
Whether that ‘something’ matters or not to others, doesn’t matter.
Whether the result at the end of the journey happens or not, doesn’t matter.
The cost of real greatness is a life.
Not every waking second, not hustle, none of that.
But a daily recommitment to your work. No matter when in life you discover it, the daily recommitment to that work. Getting a little better, every day, on purpose.
A great marriage (for instance) isn’t “born”, nor is it a byproduct of a 10,000 hour sprint. It takes a recommitment to that marriage, every day, for the rest of your life.
And the same is true for our work.
And what a privilege it is.
If you got down on one knee in front of your beloved, and said…
“After careful evaluation of all the available suitors, l’ve resolved that you are the most likely to satisfy my needs. Marry me.”
…how do you think that’s going to go?
Most businesses plan their go-to-market and sales conversations to be received like this.
Most businesses plan to receive proposals like this.
When you plan to do better, the results are staggeringly different.
There are a few lenses to think about ‘content’…
Here’s one of them I quite like:
“Would I want to buy this?”
Not need to buy.
Not want to get freemium.
Not think about evaluating.
WANT to buy.
On a tshirt. A mug. A print. Something to put in a scrapbook, on a desk, on my wrist, for a gift. Buy. Have. Keep.
If the answer’s no… why not?
If someone overcame something, you can overcome that thing too.
Just like when you’re home alone cooking, and you balance that fork precariously on the top of a carton/can to keep the prongs clean. And you think that’s a quirky-you thing, that no one else does.
It’s not.
These are shared experiences.
The doubt? Shared experience.
If any one person overcame them, you can too.
The only real ‘competitors’ are those who aren’t prepared to think bigger.
Those who are/can/will, realize we’re all just trying to help people - and can help people better, if we’re in this together.
Those who aren’t/can’t/won’t, are stuck being afraid of not eating tomorrow, so they try to eat your lunch too.
We get to choose which camp we want to be in.
The toy industry powers the cartoon industry. Great cartoons are made, because they’re propped up by merchandising that lets us explore the worlds we enjoyed watching so much.
Why isn’t marketing and business the same?
Why isn’t marketing like the cartoons we thoroughly enjoy watching and experiencing - the best experiences in the world - fueled by the sale of products and services that let us explore those worlds further?
Smells like opportunity for every brand prepared to be brave, and create things people genuinely want to experience, that lead to products people genuinely want to guy.
There are (imo) two groups people fall into (finance-wise):
If you’re fortunate enough to be in the second group, anything extra is, as Gates says, all “the same hamburger”.
Show people what you did, they’ll copy the outcome without understanding how you did it.
Show people how you do it, they’ll get a bit closer to what you want.
Show people how you think, they’ll do as you did.
Show people how you think.
“Raise your prices!”
You hear this all the time.
Gurus make it sound like a confidence game, where the most delusional heights of confidence mean you’re worth most to the market.
But that’s not true, is it.
So instead of pursuing a raise or “raising your prices”, think of it this way:
When I have 20X extra value to share, I raise the price 10X.
That means you’re helping people so much more, while making your gift even greater.
Be out-give-able.
What’s ‘work life balance’?
Who says work and life should be at odds?
Why do they need balancing / reconciling with each other?
We have a name for unreconciled body parts that put the rest of the body at risk. We call them cancers.
Work should be a healthy, useful, and benign asset to our bodies. Not taking over, not hanging limp. Limbs like these don’t need reconciling. They need nourishing as part of a healthy body.
That’s what our work and craft should be treated like.
There’s a lack of care and honor going on.
And it’s in every space.
Even in spaces you’d think everyone is implicitly more rich with care and honor, such as artists - people for whom an emotional connection to your work is a huge variable in their performance.
There are plenty of people who will do half a project, then bail on you for something else.
Not all of them, of course. But too many.
I’ve had plenty of artists let me down over the years during collaborations.
And plenty of developers. And designers. And copywriters. And so on.
And it’s hard sometimes to remember the good ones, when you’re in the middle of getting slapped in the face by a bad one.
But the curse is on the bad ones. They have to walk many short walks to nowhere, rather than going on an long, rich, fruitful adventure.
Don’t stress about the bad ones.
Look for adventurers.
Before the first day of school:
“I’m going to find a kid my height who has brown hair and likes Pochacco and we’ll make the Pochacco Club and anyone who doesn’t like Pochacco is a loser but we’ll be cool, oh and they’ll also like all the bands I like.”
This kid, is not going to make any friends at all.
And yet most small businesses behave like this kid.
This is how they “niche down” before talking to a soul.
Go to school and meet the kids.
Your niche will find you.
Put your focus on actually helping people.
Like, really, really helping people.
Not on money.
Those with that focus, tend to get both.
The rest, tend to get neither.
Big orgs don’t (or won’t) listen. To customers. Not truly.
The depth of our affections was traded for scale.
Conversely, small teams get to listen. Properly.
Exploring the depths of affections ignored.
It’s why it’s such a shame when the small ones fixate on scale on day 1.
They’re sacrificing among their biggest strengths, their biggest gifts, their biggest responsibilities to the market.
The big orgs are dropping the one ball no one can truly afford to drop, not long-term.
And small orgs are perfectly positioned to pick it up.
Worth thinking about.
We like to talk about how bad subscription services are.
About how we’d prefer to own our media and tools, etc.
I sure do.
But then I realized, there are some things I gladly pay for, and others I only grudgingly pay for.
For instance, I’ve paid for Basecamp every month for about 15 years. Never complained, as the service is valuable, I trust their team to help me if I get stuck, and it’s proven reliable for my teams and I over that time. I get it: it’s hosted on their servers, they make small quality-of-life upgrades that are optional and useful, and their pricing options are flexible and fair.
Conversely, my Adobe subscription is a grudging one. I use Photoshop in almost exactly the same way as I used it in 2002. I owned it outright, but now I pay monthly for it, and have done for 14 years (since it turned into a subscription service). Every month, I think about how it’s gotten no better, there are no server nor hosting fees associated with it, how ‘new features’ would be ‘bugs’ to me, and how that bothers me.
Both paid for monthly for about the same length of time…
One I gladly every month despite cheaper or free alternatives…
The other I’d gladly replace with a cheaper or free alternative once one competes with its core competencies (the ones I use).
One’s a service (the more expensive of the two) I recommend gladly to others all the time.
The other’s a ticking time bomb, waiting to lose my business.
We get to choose which of these things we’d like to be.
These days, most days, “why don’t people care more” comes up in conversation.
When a package arrives in the mail, sloppily packed.
When a gift arrives to give to my son, and the seller didn’t sweat every detail.
When I spend $20 and only get $20 of value.
When I spend $10 and only get $5 of value.
When I drive past road signs that need cleaning.
Everywhere we look, we’re reminded that things could be so much better, if only people cared more.
But they don’t.
And so everywhere we look, we’re reminded of just how much opportunity we have available to us to make things better.
I’ve drawn for over 30 years, but I still buy books.
Books for experienced artists.
Books for novices and beginners.
Books for nuanced specific technical bits.
Books for the basics.
Books that cover lots of topics.
Books that cover nothing but pictures of hands.
Not because I don’t necessarily know some of that stuff.
But because your skills are either growing or dying.
“Don’t quit!” “Never surrender!”
We’re told even the thought of quitting is weakness.
It’s not.
The thought of quitting isn’t a bad thing.
It can be healthy, even.
Not because you might do it.
But because it reminds why you don’t.
More often leads to a better Better.
Daily drawing rituals, for instance:
“This month we’re going to revisit skulls”
“This month we’re learning bioluminescence”
“This month we’re experimenting with volume”
Nothing ‘new’, no singular ‘level up’.
Just care, exhibited over a long period of time.
I’ve yet to see a better Better than that better
When driving back from feeding the ducks with my son this morning, I felt a keen reminder:
We feel most connection, when we’re disconnected (from tech).
We feel most in tune (with ourselves) when there’s no tune (on the radio).
We feel richest (in every sense) when doing the free, priceless stuff (like feeding the ducks with my son).
This is why I carry paper rather than a phone.
This is why I prefer quiet to contant music.
This is why I’d still feel rich, even if everything else were taken away.
We all need our own version of feeding the ducks.
This is just a reminder:
You don’t have to stick to the original plan if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to carry a smartphone with you if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to do what others expect of you if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to check social media all the time if you don’t want to.
You don’t have to respond to every message immediately if you don’t want to.
You can choose the less popular path if it suits you.
Your body, mind, peace, and craft may thank you for it.
Large companies often have layers of beaurocracy designed to prevent any feeling being hurt, any responsibility being taken, or any brave decisions being made.
But the funny thing is?
You see it in some small companies too.
A few dozen employees, “pre-revenue”, and still bogged down with beaurocratic behavior, chest-beating, pedigree-laden hires, and a whole lot of wasted time and opportunity.
It’s not about the size.
It’s about whether or not you’re running with a group that reveres craft, care, and courage.
Or mere safety in numbers at the expense of everything else.
The owner does the owning.
The leader does the leading.
The sales guy does the selling.
The manager does the managing.
The administrator does the admin.
There’s a pattern emerging.
Rather than choosing what to do,
Choose which hat you want to wear.
Then do what that hat requires of you.
Some work hard on things they hate so they can show up at dinner parties and boast, the cry of the insecure.
Others work hard on things they love so they can wake up in the morning and smile, the glow of the peaceful.
I create a newsletter called GrowthCandy. Each issue shares one idea to help build and spread your work, delivered as a short comic. Fast to read. Easy to apply. Hard to forget!