Hustle uses shortcuts and effort to bend the conventions of society to get more than the hustler’s fair share of attention. Hustle burns trust for awareness. Because it’s a shortcut, hustle might deliver in the short-run, but hustle is notably non-consensual. Few people want to be hustled.
Marketing is the work of helping people get what they’ve wanted all along. Marketing is about establishing the conditions for a small group of people to eagerly spread the word and build connection. Modern marketing changes the culture by establishing what the new norms are, and does it in a way that makes things better for those it serves.
Taking attention vs. storytelling and service. Sometimes it feels like the shortcuts and depersonalization and scale are the only option, then a great marketing project comes along and we’re reminded that in fact, we can do work we’re proud of.
April 5, 2022
When you meet expectations, when you make a promise and keep it, when your quality is on spec—we say “of course.”
On the other hand, if you relentlessly raise expectations, if you overpromise and add a bit of hype, you’re almost certain to fail to meet our dreams and hopes. At the same time, though, those raised hopes are their own sort of placebo, an internal cognitive dissonance that will make some people like your work more than if you had simply promised less.
And finally, if you invest the time, care and money to dramatically over-deliver, you probably won’t make as much in profit today, but that imbalance is often made up for with word of mouth in your favor. When you amaze and delight, your fans will pay it forward.
A hundred years into our industrial age, each of these forms of expectation has become its own signal. We’ve established expectations about expectations. You can’t raise money from a VC if you tell them exactly what the numbers are going to be like, and no one would have surgery if surgeons were clear about all the details.
The challenge is to be sure we put the correct expectations in the right categories.
April 4, 2022
It’s not a word, but perhaps it should be.
If a competitor goes after your customers by offering them faster service, all day and all night, you’ve been anytimed.
And if your boss, fearing that event, or simply trying to boost output for free, pushes you to be available all hours of the day and night, you’re being anytimed as well.
The market wants convenience and speed and price. Anytimed is a side effect of that race.
April 3, 2022
Life’s a tragedy. It always surprises us, and eventually, we all die.
But tragedies don’t have to lead to catastrophes. A catastrophe is a shared emergency that overwhelms our interactions and narratives.
Lately, they’ve become a business model and a never-ending part of our days. If we live in a world driven by attention, catastrophization is a sure way to grab some. It’s a bright red button that causes forward motion to freeze up.
If it helped, it wouldn’t be a problem. If it helped, we could use our resources to make a difference. But it’s not designed to help, it’s designed to shift our focus and activate our emotions.
It might be the catastrophe of world events, or the political scrum or even an unhappy customer on Yelp.
For too long, people with power and privilege simply ignored things that mattered, and catastrophization is a reasonable response–until it begins to undermine the work we need to do. It quickly becomes a version of Pressfield’s resistance, a way to avoid leaning into important projects that might not work–because it’s safer to focus on a thing over there than it is to work on something right here.
And it’s exhausting. Catastrophe fatigue sets in, and we end up losing interest and drifting away, until the next emergency arrives.
Catastrophization ends up distracting us from the long-term systemic work we signed up to do. It’s a signal that we care about what’s happening right now, but it also keeps us from focusing on what’s going to happen soon.
The best way to care is to persist in bending the culture and our systems to improve things over time.
April 2, 2022
If you work with your hands and your back, avoiding a heavy lift is totally understandable.
For many of us, though, we work with time or with trust.
If someone asks you to endorse their new project, “it’ll only take a minute,” they’re offering to save you time, but at the risk of the trust you’ve built. That’s not a light lift, it’s a huge risk.
If someone says, “please forward this to everyone in your address book, here’s a simple script to do it automatically,” that is indeed a heavy lift.
Just because it’s fast doesn’t mean it’s worth doing.
April 1, 2022
For many ailments, physical therapy shows some of the best results. We can learn a lot from this for our own projects, organizations and narratives. Physical therapy often works better than pills or surgery. Here’s why:
–it’s self-produced. Even though we work with a professional, it’s done BY us, not TO us.
–it’s gradual. No one gets better after one session.
–it puts our own resources to work to create the change we seek.
–it’s simple. There’s no magic involved, just directed, persistent effort based on science and testing.
–it takes effort. If you want something easy, you’re in the wrong place.
Thanks to Ricardo.
March 31, 2022
What would a focus group have said about the title of Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird? Is it easy to understand, did you know what it’s about before you pick up the book?
What about the consumer testing on a name like Nike or Starbucks?
Some objective measures of new names and concepts are worth knowing about before you launch. Seeing what search results look like, understanding the trademark register, having insight about pronunciation and language issues.
But general “how does this make you feel” feedback on a new concept is almost certain to give you exactly the wrong feedback.
That’s because the idea isn’t going to work because it’s objectively, obviously and completely better. It’s going to work because the network effects and cultural dynamics behind it push it forward.
March 30, 2022
What’s the variance in customer service at your organization?
Even if there’s just one employee, the question is: If an issue is handled by a committed employee having a good attitude, vs a cranky one who is a bit off–can the customer tell?
One philosophy is to make this gap as small as possible. Create systems that ensure that the experience remains the same, always pretty good. Make sure your scripts and your policies and your phone tree and your management oversight is such that there isn’t much of a gap.
The other philosophy is to hire great people and give them room to shine. With all the variability that entails.
It’s almost impossible to have both.
If you want to create remarkable service, you’re simply going to have to trust your people and yourself.
Heroes use systems, they aren’t held back by them.
March 29, 2022
When an entrepreneur gets funded, it’s often difficult for them to start spending money on assets–the old limits fade slowly. What used to be smart is now dumb. What used to too risky is now the safe thing to do.
When someone gets older or is injured, one of the dangers is that they’ll fail to realize that they can’t do the things they used to do in quite the same way.
And graduating from college means that you probably can’t maintain the lifestyle you used to have…
None of these changes are failures. They’re simply steps in the journey.
We change. That’s part of the deal.
A well-lived life without calibration is unlikely.
March 28, 2022
Bad drivers do this often, everywhere I’ve ever been in the world.
Instead of gracefully and safely slowing for a light they know will be red by the time they get there, or even a stop sign, they hit the gas and then slam the brakes.
One big reason is that the certainty of on-then-off is a lot easier for them to navigate than a thoughtful approach to transitions. If you’re going to have to stop soon, perhaps you should start coasting now.
And of course, we all make the braking mistake in our daily lives.
A transition doesn’t have to be a crisis, unless we want it to be.
March 27, 2022
