Trout & Bass
Jonathan Stark and Ed Gandia had this talk on Ditching Hourly about positioning, niching down and fishing —in the ocean v in a barrel. And they talk trout and bass. [,,,] You’re [fishing] in the ocean or standing next to a barrel full of trout. […]Would you rather have the thousand trout that you can see right there, that are jumping into your hands?Or would you rather be out in the ocean in a dinghy with a single hook? You don’t get a big net. That is for big companies.You always only have…
The opposite take
Are you stuck trying to articulate what’s your “special sauce”? In a conversation with James Turner, we got to this point. (shared with permission) All good stuff to ponder as I circle and circle my own differentiation. Who do I work with? What do I offer? What problem do I solve? Here’s an easier start to get you in motion: Who do you NOT (and won’t) work with? What DON’T you offer? What problem you’re NOT interested in solving? What type of problem you DON’T want to solve? Fellow daily…
Filipino cuisine & Positioning (under 7 seconds)
A friend of mine just got his restaurant into the top 50 of Asia. If you plan to visit Philippines, this would be a great place. 🙂 Anyways. You know what stood up while going through their posts? Their boldness [in their positioning]. This is their post: What we serve.An 8-course menu that explores ideas around Filipino cuisine. A selection of natural wines, cool cocktails and crisp craft beers.The flavors are Filipino. There will be patis, soy sauce, bagoong, bold, funky, pungent and bitter…
99 problems but a b*tch ain’t one
Do you BATCH your thinking? How do you know what ideas are worth pursuing or not? One way it has worked for me has been daily writing. (Thank you, Jonathan Stark!) Daily writing has its challenges, but one that is not is getting ideas —and writing (almost) 24/7… Start Batching Batching ideas comes as a process of putting them down and either making an outline or brain dumping what comes to mind. No judgement. It is what it is. And it’s always a good start. This process becomes a “living”…
Quit charging your worth
“Charging your worth” focuses on you, not on the outcomes and transformations you can drive. It doesn’t focus on what your clients are after. It assigns the subjectivity to your POV (what you think it’s worth), instead of figuring out what is valuable for your clients. It implies that your worth has a fixed price. So that for whatever task you do, the price will be the same. Design a strategy? X price. Mown the lawn? The same X price. Wash the dishes? Same X price Implement a whole biz…
Change
Last couple of years, systemic change has become mainstream. Shows, podcasts, books have been published recurring to the idea that systemic change is needed to stop the decay of the environment or that it will help change how (broken) things work. I agree. However, the lens the vast majority sees systemic change through is of incremental change. They picture it like a waterfall. As if one fix will lead to fix the other one at a time, ignoring (consciously or not) they’re interrelated. That is…
It’s not fair
There’s no fair thing. Not from your POV as a seller / service provider. What you charge has nothing to do with you. Or if you find it “fair”. It’s about what’s important to your clients. If they think the work you’ll do will mean 500K to pay you and it’s acceptable to them, they’ll pay you (and you’ll take it). You don’t say “Oh, I don’t think it’s fair (to me) because it might take me 20 minutes to get that done or it’ll cost me 20K or I’ll be happy with 7K because that’s what ‘I’m worth'”….
Don’t bridge the gap. Own it.
Bridging a gap to avoid going into the depths of it might not always be the best choice. It’d leave too many things on the table. Yes, you might need to bridge gaps some times —yet not every gap needs to be bridged. Imagine the Grand Canyon with lots of bridges all over it. It would only create noise. Owning a gap, on the other side, makes you accept it as it is. There’s nothing to fix, it is what it is. It has unknowns that you can explore. It has potential to do and be so much more than…
Canyons
Here are 2 holes in the ground that you can’t (don’t want to, actually) modify. You can’t, either, take things home off it and you can only see —and explore: The Colca Canyon in Peru Colca Canyon – Nad Hemnani and the Grand Canyon in the US. Grand Canyon – Sonaal Bangera 2 big gaps in the Earth. Do they have value? Yeah. They attract a very specific kind of traveler for each of the available options: from no-budget, to low budget, to medium, to money’s-not-a-problem ($7K+/person). They can…
A shiny ribbon
You receive a present and are asked: “What did you get?” Your reply: “A nice, blue, shiny ribbon.” Wait. What? The ribbon is what makes the present nicer, what completes the picture of it, a part of it. But that’s not the present itself. Same is with marketing and storytelling. So, to whoever tells you that “marketing is storytelling”, think twice. It’s the other way around. Storytelling is (a tiny bit) of (one/few points of) marketing. Does it help? Yeah. Is it all about storytelling? No….