We can build slack into our lives. We can create cycles so that we don’t need to dance with a crisis around time on a regular basis.
If there’s another train after this one, you don’t have to fret.
If the deadline for the project is tomorrow, not today, you don’t have to sweat it.
If the guests aren’t arriving for an hour…
Sometimes, we choose to use the urgent crisis as fuel. We set up our lives around creating these deadlines, reminding ourselves that if we cross that line, we’re dead.
And then we allow the world to do it to us. To create urgencies simply to take our attention and focus.
Productivity is a measure of the value of what we ship in the time we’ve got to invest. It’s not measured in drama.
It’s possible to do great work without putting everything in jeopardy.
Marketers raise expectations in order to get someone to sign up and try a product and service.
And (hopefully) there’s satisfaction, delight and remarkability once the organization actually delivers on what you promised.
In between, the trough.
You spend $400 per customer on rent and architecture and web design.
Perhaps it’s $200 per new customer on podcast ads or salespeople.
All of these expenses happen long before you deliver.
And then, you confront the new customer with a surly receptionist, a website that is hard to understand, a wait for a table, a mismatch in the professional you assign, slow customer service, packaging that is difficult to open, fine print that suddenly becomes obnoxious and expectations that aren’t met.
In this trough, we have a few options:
The first, the most common, is to try to ignore it. Let em seethe. Bet on time and momentum and sunk costs to get them over the hump.
The second, a variation of this, is to spend as little as you can to address the problem of the trough. Acknowledge the problem, sure, but throw boilerplate and your lowest cost (least trained, least respected) people at the problem.
The third, the intelligent, difficult choice, is to invest in onboarding.
At $50 an hour, a well-trained, passionate and committed person might be able to onboard four customers an hour. That’s $12.50 to protect the $300 to $800 (or more) it cost you to earn that customer’s trial in the first place.
This person isn’t a replacement for what you sell or deliver. This person is the bridge over the trough.
They’re the patient voice at the end of the phone (who picks up on one ring) to help with a recalcitrant bit of software. Or the person who sends a handwritten note telling the guest what to expect when they get to your hotel. Or the human who simply calls to say ‘hi’ as soon as the trough begins. Not reading a script, but working as hard to make a connection and a difference as your ads and your location do.
The key rhetorical question, usually unasked and unanswered: Is it an expense or an investment?
Notes: Promotion is the time and expense of encouraging non-customers to raise their expectations.
The trough kicks in when reality intrudes, when we’re trying to understand what’s actually involved, when sunk costs become clear and when buyer’s remorse begins. It’s the form, the warmup act and that feeling of being alone at a cocktail party filled with people who know each other.
Many of your potential lifelong, supportive and profitable customers never materialize on the other side of the trough, because they left before you had a chance to delight them.
Actual marketing success happens after the trough, when people become loyal, when the product or service is remarkable and when the word spreads.
Why would we want to wait until someone is perfect before we give them a chance to make things better?
Each of us is part of a system, cogs in a process that rewards us for certain actions based on various inputs.
When the system is broken, some of the most highly leveraged, aware and insightful people notice. And of course, since they’re part of the system, they’ve been affected by it.
These are ideal qualifications to speak up and make the system better.
One way the status quo stays in charge is by encouraging people to stand by in silence, fearful of being called out for hypocrisy.
If people got a hacking cough and a chronic disease an hour after smoking their first cigarette, it’s unlikely many people would smoke.
If earthquakes happened a day after fracking for gas was tried, they would probably have stopped.
And if entrepreneurs discovered freedom, satisfaction and customer delight a week after starting their projects, more people would probably give it a go.
Most of us are able to respond to a feedback loop in the short run. The real opportunity and challenge is to get much better at recognizing the long loops.
In an episode of a podcast I really respect, three of the experts quoted used words that I was familiar with: Debunk, gaslighting and cult. These are powerful words, words with specific and evocative meanings.
In all three cases, the people speaking used them ‘wrong.’
Being on a podcast might be nerve-wracking, and in an effort to overcome anxiety, sound smart and level up, each person ended up doing the opposite.
But that’s how language works. We’re trying to say what we mean, and sometimes, it’s not what other people think we meant. The emotions behind the words are real, even if the words are a mismatch.
When it happens often enough, the words develop a new meaning.
Words are a moving target, an expression of feelings, and they inevitably shift.
There’s no absolute measure of wrong. Simply what we thought vs what they meant.
For people who aren’t paying attention or actively involved, it can seem like cultural change is sudden. One big shift after another.
In fact, cultural change always happens relatively slowly. Person by person, conversation by conversation. Expectations are established, roles are defined, systems are built.
From the foundation
The people in the news and at the podium get all the attention, but they’re a symptom, not usually a cause. Everyday people aren’t the bottom, they are the roots, the foundation, the source of culture itself. We are the culture, and we change it or are changed by it.
From peer to peer
Change happens horizontally. What do we expect from others? What do we talk about? Who do we emulate or follow or support? What becomes the regular kind?
People like us do things like this.
Day by day, week by week, year by year.
Going to the protest of the day, performing acts of slacktivism, hopping from urgency to emergency–this is how people who day trade in our culture are whipsawed. But the people who are consistently and actively changing the culture are not easily distracted. One more small action, one more conversation, one more standard established.
The internet would like us to focus on what happened five minutes ago. The culture understands that what happens in five years is what matters.
Focused, persistent community action is how systems change. And systems concretize and enforce cultural norms.
If you care, keep talking. Keep acting. Stay focused. And don’t get bored.
There are many good reasons to do so, and few downsides.
Do it for your efficiency, for the health of the web and for the planet too.
First, a quick clarification because this is confusing to many people: The thing you use to browse the internet is not a search engine. Chrome, Firefox, Brave, Safari–these are web browsers. A browser is software that allows you to look at any web page–and these companies often make money by selling your attention to the search engine that bids the most. Apple takes billions of dollars a year from Google in exchange for steering you to their search engine.
And the reason that Google bids so much is that they make an insane amount of money. Billions of dollars a year from serving up ads and harvesting your data from your searches. That money needs to come from somewhere.
You can switch your search engine in just a few clicks. See a short video and find the links right here.
Here’s what will happen when you switch to Ecosia:
You’ll get faster and less cluttered search results, with far fewer ads.
You’ll be diversifying the web, so SEO hacks can’t easily take over. Here’s Adam Savage ranting about this.
You’ll be giving away far less data about yourself and maintaining more privacy.
AND! You’ll be planting trees through a certified not-for-profit B corp… more than 100,000,000 planted so far.
If you don’t like the results, you can switch back in two minutes.
If you switch and then you forward this to five more people who switch, we’re likely to plant another 100,000,000 trees in the next year. That’s a lot. If you switch and spread the word, search results will get better and Google will start to do a better job knowing that they don’t have quite the same scale of monopoly.
If you switch, we all come out ahead. Share a question or experience here and I’ll share in a future post. PS I wasn’t asked to post this or compensated to do so. I switched 9 months ago and I’m glad I did.
[Thanks for making this my most popular post of the year. Please share. And here are some of the comments and questions I got.]
Check the ratings, whichever magazine or website you choose: Classical music and documentary films almost always get more stars and higher ratings than pop music and feature films.
The reason is simple: The folks who like stuff like that like stuff like that.
The smallest viable audience for certain genres is very clear. That allows the creators of the work to be specific and to deliver on expectations.
The broader you seek to make your offering, the more likely you are to run into people who don’t care, don’t get the joke or are simply not open to being satisfied.
It’s not easy to record a symphony or edit Restrepo. But your work is more likely to pay off in audience satisfaction.
May 25, 2022
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