The right mix
Ron Baker, host of The Soul of Enterprise and author of Implementing Value Pricing and Time’s Up sustains that you (paraphrasing him): “need to look at clients like an investment portfolio. Some might have more risk, and be more profitable; some more conservative, and safer”. In that way you can start finding balance in how you play and how you reach prospects and the ones you want to work with—which just made me think of poker and how, if you always play risky, your odds to lose are…
Delighting cold calling
Have you ever gotten a cold call and felt fantastic about having that conversation? Weird, isn’t it? Today i just got one like that from Strategic Coach. Even when I knew I was going to say no, there was no pressure on the other side. No shame. No sneaky tactics to pull Noes into Yeses. Even better, no trying to frame me to say yes to get into a buy. It went like this: – Hey Rod. I’m X from Strategic Coach and thought I’d call you to go through some things smoother than over an email. I…
Consequences to failure
Safety (or risk) Regret Creativity Learning Trying feel more like a consequence of failure, than the opposite to failure. As friend-of-the-list Genevieve Hayes says [brackets mine]: “If you succeed at the first thing you do (aka don’t fail), then why ever try anything different?” The only way to know you’re failing is when you set a goal to achieve. How you take the outcome of that process —whether you fail or not— is what builds you up. How you grow. Because all of those words at the start…
Not to win or Not to succeed?
Failure: to not achieve a determined outcome. Merriam-Webster defines it like this: “• (the) omission of occurrence or performance • a falling short • lack of success”. However, failure could also represent another view(s): To not win To not succeed A win → takes that others (or yourself) lose. It’s a thing that has an end. The rules are fixed: to win, you need to have these requirements. Success → takes that winning is part of it. Just as losing. It’s more nuanced. It doesn’t have clear…
A trend on failure
A bunch of replies to yesterday’s email “What would you say the opposite of failure is?” go into a set of themes. I find this fascinating. The opposite of failure: Success Safety (as in non-adventurous) Regret Success Creativity Learning Trying First thing to notice in all of these answers/themes (and that I personally LOVE): none of them said “To Win”. What do you see?
About failure
What would you say the opposite of failure is? Let me know your thoughts on it. 🙂
Product-Market Fit exercise
“They have an idea for a machine, and they build the machine and then, “Hmmm. Who would want this? We think it’s cool, but who wants this?” So they go do this Product-Market Fit exercise.I don’t like that. That’s how I’ve ended up launching to crickets. And that’s not fun at all.” Jonathan Stark on The Business Of Authority [02:24] Jonathan, in his now reverse-engineering of how to approach the market makes 2 main questions: How to do the thing so it keeps the promise to the person? How do I…
Your ONE thing
What’s the ONE thing you really rock at? Would love to know how you do what you do.
Things I’m afraid of — on daily writing.
A daily mailing list. For 365 days. Fucking scary. Been doing this for 252 days till now and it still feels scary, but GREAT. Joining Jonathan Stark’s Email365 last year to get to write consistently (again) was challenging/exciting. Over half a year of doing this, there are still these mind tricks playing around: Will I have something to say? What if I run out of things to write about? What if I’m not clear enough? See the pattern? → Me, Me, Me There was a shift Taking Me out of the equation…
Market-ING
It’s aimed at the market. It’s directed towards your customers in the context of their alternatives (what they consider instead of your services/products). It’s not storytelling. It’s not messaging. It’s not something / the opposite / a complement to selling. It’s not done to a product. It’s definitely not “internal”, as in “internal customers”. It’s how your customers can change (with your help). And when you start “marketing” with your brand/products/services/me-me-me, your customer is the…
