Selling a personal brand
You can’t have a personal brand. A brand is an asset —a quantifiable one for a business. With that, you can value it and sell it for whatever you want. A brand can change hands and —at least for a moment— keep that same value. As well as it could go up (a VC-funded startup grows its value, as Figma) or absolutely way down (x/twitter). If you were to have a personal brand (aka “become” a brand), you’d turn into an asset. An asset, as a resource or capital… is a thing. If you were to sell…
Being open and honest.
While underpromising and overdelivering might seem like a good tactic to delight your customers because you want to have some buffer, don’t. There’s another way. You can be open and honest —that’s the core of business, right? Being honest with your customers— and say you don’t know exactly how long or how much exactly it’ll take. That you’ll put in some buffer, just in case. Sure, you can give an estimate of the time, or even a timeline. Just please don’t lie. Friend-of-the-list Jonathan…
Over-delivering 1/3
Overservicing hurts you. Because the extra things you do are out of scope creating marginal value (doesn’t really have an impact) taking resources off of you Here’s the thing It might look like you’re delighting your customers. Truth is, you might be bringing nice-to-haves, without a real impact on your profit side, or on their impact side. You can delight, by keeping your promise. Always.
Behind the math
If you see a bit further than underpromising, overdelivering, overservicing, you’ll find that most of it is linked with one question: “Will they accept my proposal?” When people don’t understand what they’re getting, the only thing they’ll get back to (and do understand) is price. So your default to answer this questions revolves around, yup: price. In this context, it’s (hopefully) a set price (and not an estimate/rate) and about how (if) delight could happen —only after the acceptance of…
Overdelivering 2/3
Overdelivering in the shape of attending an overserved market hurts you. You provide nice-to-haves. Moving one extra pixel that only you notice. Writing one more line of beautiful code, that only you care for. Here’s the thing If they’re nice-to-haves odds are, they’ll be mostly ornaments without a relevant job. It’ll increase your workload while adding either more complexity to your customer or adding nice features they don’t actually care about. You don’t need to prove anything. All you…
When your clients (and prospects) ask for the price
Don’t. You. Ever. Try. To. Anchor. Them. Giving. Bullshit. First. Stop trying to convince. Set up your differentiated value and stop the bs. “Our goal withX is to make starting and running your own X business accessible. MBA programs cost upwards of $50,000 [→ FIRST ANCHOR] and exclusive masterminds charge $15,000+ [→ SECOND ANCHOR] to help you learn X fundamentals. We think both miss the mark. You don’t need to spend decades working to become a whatever-aspiration-they-try-to-sell-you [Bro…
Overdelivering 3/3
Makes your price go down —and your work’s value. Doing more of what you promise trains your clients to expect more of what you promise… every time. For. The. Same. Price. And since they’ll know you’ll do more for less, they’ll go for it. You’re giving a hidden discount, even when you don’t want to accept it. In the long term, it makes your work go for a lower price, and when trying to raise prices or go for the actual job, your customers’ expectations will be higher. You not keeping with…
The best product wins
You’ve heard this before: if we have a great product, we don’t need marketing. Here’s the thing Product is part of marketing. And marketing is not comms and messaging —or ads.
The opposite to success
Friend-of-the list Genevieve Hayes sent this email with a twist to a series I wrote on “What’s the opposite to…” So I’m passing this great question on to you: “In your view, what is the opposite of success?” Hit reply and let me know. I’d love to hear your thoughts on this. Also, do subscribe to Genevieve’s list to read her take on it. PS.- Here’s my series on Failure ↓ The opposite to failure A trend on failure Consequences to failure
A spark
Today, it’s Rick Rubin who leaves the daily: “The amount of time or effort put into a work doesn’t matter.Sometimes the most meaningful projects spark suddenly and completely quickly.” I couldn’t put it better. 🙂 You can check his instegram post here: https://www.instagram.com/p/CyJCJKArIW-/