Ideas for free.
Why pitching (and elevator pitches) hurts you and your expertise: Because you’re presenting instead of having open, honest conversations. Because you’re operating without diagnosing. Because you go in convince-mode. Because you’re not listening to understand, but to reply. Because you’re shoving down their throats what you think you know, without considering context. Because you’re not considering walking away and recommend others to do that work. Because you’re focusing on implementation….
Secret Hacks to Increase Traction
Stuck? Try these proven formulas. Here are 28 Secret Hacks to Increase Traction (SHIT) to fit right into your market and get quick market share (part 1): The best product wins. Because great products don’t need marketing. Build it right and they will come. Because you know better than your customers. The best marketing wins. Because marketing is about communicating and storytelling. You need to enter the market with low prices. Because that’s a bulletproof way to capture market share. Work…
Secret Hacks to Increase Traction (part 2)
Here are the last 14 of 28 Secret Hacks to Increase Traction (SHIT) to fit right in and get quick market share: [You can read the first 14 here] 15. Build a love mark. Because you need to be loved by everyone. And can manufacture love. 16. Build a personal brand. Because that way you’ll show up authentic. And brands aren’t artificial. 17. Find your brand’s purpose. Because every business needs a purpose. 18. Marketing is storytelling. Because it’s about creating compelling content to earn…
Creativity and Productivity
As creatives, entrepreneurs or soloists, there’s this mix up to believe that creativity and productivity are opposites. They’re not. Creativity. The ability to see opportunity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi. Productivity. Ratio between the maximum output and the smallest effort. Peter Drucker. They’re different playgrounds, not ends of the same spectrum.
The BEST guitar player of all times
Everything is seen as a competition. Winners. Losers. Who’s the best —and everyone else can’t be the best too. There needs to be only one. It’s about winning. In business. Or life. How can you win where there are no fixed rules or equal results? How can you win in a game that will outlive you? Whoever tells you “Here’s how you’ll win [in life or in business]” is bullshitting you. You can get ahead or behind. Winning? Nah. Ask yourself: do you really have competition? The interesting thing…
Racers and 4x4s
Ethan Garofolo’s lovely email about “What’s faster: Land Rover or F1 Racer?” set up the stage for a different path. While he talks about how at early stages of business, it feels more like you need a 4×4, and when you advance, you focus on getting an F1 in order to grow; there’s another perspective. It depends. How most people see things is “Ok. This is bumpy and quite an irregular field. Let’s look for a smoother road, so we can build our F1.” They start looking for the perfect road to have…
Scale up
That’s all you hear: “You need to scale up” as the way to grow your business. What do they even mean by that? That you “must grow”. You can scale up and grow and still… Have high revenue and high costs Be near bankruptcy Be unprofitable Get thin, almost inexistent margins Be in the midst of a price war Get commoditized Be ignorable Get (more) shit clients Increase revenue (and hidden, sunk costs right with it) Surpass your capacity Destroy value Keep your clients unsatisfied Growth is not…
Uncover your voice
You don’t get to “discover” your voice. It was always there, nothing to discover. Just like a baby. They have it there but can’t make sounds yet. They explore, see around, play to figure out how to make sounds. They listen. And again, they start playing and training their muscles. Inhale the right quantity of air to make their voice sound. Years laters, you explore. Module it. Train it again. Trust it? Sometimes. The world outside tells you to lower it, sound more like X, use certain words,…
Wishful thinking
Build a brand. Build a culture. Build leaders. Does this even make sense? As if by going thru a process, the result, no matter what, will be that: a brand, a culture or a leader. As you could manufacture any of those. It’s not like that at all. However… What you can do is build the systems to foster an environment where: Your customers build your brand. → Your brand is what they say it is (btw, there’s no such thing as “personal brand”). Your employees thrive to build a culture of trust. →…
Beginners Mindset. Not.
“Approach things with a beginner’s mindset.” In an expertise/knowledge-based business, it’s the wrong frame. A beginner approaches things from scratch, trying to figure out the right questions. It takes them time to understand and comprehend things (quickly) because they’re trying to find patterns. A beginner explores with no clear picture in mind, Has no mastery. When you have expertise, it’s your responsibility to see and find patterns in an efficient way, meaning getting curious and asking…
