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….
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.
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…
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…
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…
April in November
Today’s daily comes from a post by April Dunford, one of the best experts in positioning for product and b2b companies and author of Obviously Awesome and Sales Pitch. The core of it? Comparing your start to someone else’s mid-journey (bolding mine). —- I had a call with a product marketing consultant today, and it was a little bit heartbreaking. She’s worked in-house for eight years; she’s been consulting for six months. She told me she feels like a failure. Her big question was, “Why…
All hands on deck
When going into a strategy session, retreat or next-year planning, one thing that often happens is this: Everyone goes to work and figure the ways to make things work… by just jumping in and “brainstorming”, coming up with solutions, deciding on 500 steps ahead. It all would be good, if this pattern didn’t repeat over and over: no reflection nor pause to define what’s THE big thing. Everyone gets behind their own interpretations of the ideas and at the end of the day/session, it’s just…
Leadership stress test
“Leadership is about how to create more leaders; not attract more followers.” David Marquet Do a stress test with any “thought leadership” out there. Which one do most of them fall under? From the ones who pass the test, who do you feel like giving a shout out? Give some thought on why these and no the other ones. Here’s the thing Most “leadership” (and “thought-leadership”) goes about oneself. Choose the path to focus on others. Then, that is actual leadership.
Yes, you are
To yesterday’s email on “What’s the most important” in your business, there were interesting replies: Sustainability Profit Revenue Consistent income Me Freedom to choose Customers And so on… And, while all of them are important, ME, is the most important. Because when you’re not at your best, your work can’t be at its top. You can’t take care of your customers at your best. You can’t take care of making the best decisions to build sustainability into your business. You can’t innovate. You…
What’s the most important?
Pop quiz: What’s the most important for your business?