De-scaling
Does de-scaling mean you get to make less? To be less profitable? To get less revenue? To sell less? What are your thoughts on it?
Grow grow grow
Your job is not to grow the business. Unlike what most people think and say, not everything is about growth. In fact, if you’re in an expertise-based business, scaling up might even hurt you more than help you. Your job is not even to make the business “sustainable”. Your job is to make the business right. Right for yourself. Right for your customers. Right for what they need. Right for the planet. And it’s not always about “growth”. One of the few things that grows for the sake of growth,…
What’s your hourly rate?
That’s a question that comes up in most of the projects you’ll want to work on. What do you answer to that?
What if —the other take
Friend of the list and fellow emailer, Genevieve Hayes replied to the What If email with a great opposite take to constraints. “I think the other interesting exercise is asking yourself “what if everything was perfect and there were no constraints”? I find that thought exercise helpful in working out what to cut from my life (i.e. things ! still don’t want to do even under the best of circumstances).” What’s the position you take so that you can come up with new things? What would you need to…
Tracking time = Focusing on the wrong thing
When most prospects ask you about what’s your hourly rate, the focus is on the wrong thing —either to measure AND to use as a metric. Because time is not a resource. Because a rate is not a price, but a variable. Because it doesn’t focus on value, but on an arbitrary “cost”. Here’s what Tim Williams says about it in “The Unnecessary Cost Of Tracking Time”. Even the most ardent adherents to the time-based billing system will acknowledge that time logged on a timesheet does not equal value…
Rates and scope
The first reply to “What are your rates?”is NOT “It depends on the scope and time involved”. Neither is “What’s your budget?” Rates A rate is a factor to multiply or measure with another.”My rate is X. I’ll need Y time. The bill should be around X.Y” (Which is always more) It guesses on how much (time) it will need to get done. It transfers the risk onto the client. Which brings us to say”I miscalculated how long it would take. I should have estimated 3X. Well, dear client, now YOU have to…
A new luxury
Talking to a person is the new luxury. And that’s the worst business decision made by most companies. While tech is essential to our everyday lives, getting to use it for the sakes of “efficiency” is off focus. Isn’t it abhorrently bad (annoying and frustrating) that when you try to find some answer to a question you have… you end up “talking” to a bot that loops you into a never ending non-sense cycle of same, flat answers? If businesses were really customer-centered, wouldn’t they try to…
Boredom and creativity
Get bored and make something. If you make it a prompt What would you LLM of choice do? Answer: nothing. Because a machine can’t get bored.
Trends for 2024
Personal brand(ing), authentic content, content repurposing, community, experiences… All of these are flat and chatgpt can give you the same answer. And none of them will make you stand out. Personal brand… bc it doesn’t exist. You’re not a thing. Authentic content… because it’s not you who determines what’s authentic and what not. It’s your audience. Content repurposing… bc it’s been always there. It’s using a different medium for content. Only now under this “pretty(?)” name….
On trend
If you’re focusing most of your efforts on “What’s on trend for the next year”, there might be some higher risk that things don’t work out —in the long run. A trend is temporal. It van get “in fashion” for a certain period… and then be “out of fashion” just as fast. While it’s good to see what’s going on around you and where things might be trending, get a deeper view of where your customers are trying to get. Agnostic of product, solution and tech. ‘Cause they might change in the blink of…