What about testimonials?
Friend of the list Genevieve Hayes came back with a question after yesterday’s email on one thing you don’t need to build your authority: a personal brand. (shared with permission) What about testimonials? I know that, ideally, it would be great to have quotes from dozens of people who love your work but that’s not always possible early on. Furthermore, I’ve always suspected some of the testimonials on some websites aren’t actually real. How important do you think testimonials are in building…
Crushing solutions
“Don’t come to me with problems. I only want to hear solutions.” That’s part of friend-of-the-list Genevieve Hayes’ email about solving problems in isolation —and a generalized thinking framework in the business world, as the focus of this “don’t bring me problems” doesn’t let you see the forest for the trees. Here are a few thoughts on it: This kind of thinking from management has ramifications: “You bring fresh eyes, get me solutions”. If i see the problem —that you don’t consider a…
Elevating others
Yesterday’s email took these points on Womack’s conception of leadership: Leadership equals heroic leadership. Leadership equals authority. Leadership is about convincing others. Here’s why this view can’t be sustainable. Leadership equals heroic leadership. It’s there to save the day / put the fires out. Heroes don’t scale. So at the moment there’s no more “heroic leader”, things go down south. Quickly. Leadership equals authority. They’re both independent from each other.You can have…
The age of A.Y.
Just like artificial intelligence is not really intelligence, it’s a way of pattern recollection —intelligence needs the capacity to make decisions based on those pattern-recollections, -filtering and -recognition. We’re also in the age of A.Y. The Artificial You. Where, to succeed in a market, you treat yourself as a product. Taking approaches that work for things, to apply on people. Seeing what sticks and molding this AY into something that would be a fit. A construct (an artificial one)…
Telling hands from brains
Know how to tell when you’re hiring an order-taker (hands to do a job) from an advisor (brains to think different)? They’ll do everything you do. Everything you need. They’ll keep you happy — until you’re not. You won’t get push back on what to do. You won’t get asked the uncomfortable questions to explain WHY you have to do what you say you have to do. It’ll just be to get things “better”, without defining what “better” is. And to “get better”, you’ll get sold on more things. More metrics….
On a ledger
Do you give your clients what they ask for or what they, really, deeply want? That was Christopher Nolan with Heath Ledger. He didn’t focus on what the fans were asking for —an “evil” actor. He focused on what they deeply wanted: a serious actor who’d tear the role and make them feel. Who’d blow their minds. Nolan stuck to his guns. The studio backed him up. They trusted the process (and the project), even when they “didn’t get it”. And that’s how we ended up with the best Joker. Now, when…
A shitty business strategy
Charging by the hour is nonsense. Time is not a measurement. Time is not an asset. Time is nothing but a constraint. “Selling” time focuses on the seller, not on the buyer. It transfers the risk to the buyer, taking the seller’s efficiency unclear (and the more inefficient, the more they make). It turns the goal-setting from “Something concrete to get the thing done”, into a financial assessment of “Something should be done BUT how much (more) it’d cost me? Do I have the money to (keep)…
The cost of time
Pricing can’t include the cost of time. Because time… Doesn’t have a cost. Can’t be stored. Can’t be bought. Can’t be traded. Price is the representation of your promise —and of the opportunity cost to your buyer. It gives a context to the thing you can do with that money and what other ways you could spend that money on that you say no to. Time is nothing more than a constraint. I cannot cost.
Ranking number 1 on Google
Optimizing keywords and your website to have all the stats at 100%. Loading time Responsiveness Image Alt text Accessibility And so on… That’ll get you to be number 1 on Google. The question is: What kind of number 1 on Google you want to be? What if you’re first on Google right next to McDonald’s? Odds are, it won’t drive the prospects you want to your expertise business (unless you do want to be looked for after McDo for a strategic decision). Optimizing for the wrong thing will make you…
Who’s McKinsey?
• You and Larry David wrote Seinfeld together, without a traditional writers’ room, and burnout was one reason you stopped. Was there a more sustainable way to do it? Could McKinsey or someone have helped you find a better model?• Who’s McKinsey?• It’s a consulting firm.• Are they funny?• No.• Then I don’t need them. If you’re efficient, you’re doing it the wrong way. Interview to Jerry Seinfeld – Harvard Business Review While “better” means for the interviewer a way to keep the show…