On trend
If you’re focusing most of your efforts on “What’s on trend for the next year”, there might be some higher risk that things don’t work out —in the long run. A trend is temporal. It van get “in fashion” for a certain period… and then be “out of fashion” just as fast. While it’s good to see what’s going on around you and where things might be trending, get a deeper view of where your customers are trying to get. Agnostic of product, solution and tech. ‘Cause they might change in the blink of…
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…
What’s your hourly rate?
That’s a question that comes up in most of the projects you’ll want to work on. What do you answer to that?
Bringing problems to your clients
I’ve never heard of a business that says “We bring problems to our clients”. Have you? In that same spirit, it feels obvious to say “We bring solutions to our clients”. Assuming you’re reaching out to them, you’d want to find out if they have challenges they can overcome. And that transformation… would it be a problem? Assuming they reach out to you, they come for you to help them with something. So… would that also be framed as a problem? If you’re using “solutions” in your business,…
Can I con you?
That’d be a weird way to start a conversation. If you get to think of it, asking “Can I be honest with you?” sounds just as weird. Because, if you get to ask that question, your counterparty will think “So you weren’t being honest up till now?” It also implies to yourself that you’re holding things up “waiting for the right moment”… which is quite probable to never arrive. Blair Enns takes this approach of “Kind ruthlessness”. You keep the behavior of saying what you think —being ruthless…
De-scaling
Does de-scaling mean you get to make less? To be less profitable? To get less revenue? To sell less? What are your thoughts on it?