Author: remap_content_admin

When the term was coined, comprised of Apple, Amazon, Facebook, Google, and Microsoft. Enormous tech firms like these exercise monopolistic and/or interest-conflicted control over markets, media, and government. 

Deliberately interlocked ideas that inspire a move to a long-term position of advantage.

Rich is the subjective experience of a set of feelings, freedoms, and specific financial realities. As with success, rich varies from person to person and must be defined for oneself.

For some independent creative and technical people (the author of this dictionary, for example), being rich combines feelings of security, happiness, and abundance with de facto freedom of association and movement, along with earning power and acquired wealth that lets one do the kind of work one want for whomever one wants. 

For such a person, rich might not mean, for example, extreme wealth, freedom from work, or freedom from routine.

Today we’re going to learn something from Donald Trump. Yes – really. Say what you will about sedition and whatnot, the man knew how to trick out an office desk. Bear with me.

You see, Trump could click a little red button on his Oval Office desk and – presto – a cold Diet Coke quickly materialized in front of him.

And right when it did, the Village People’s YMCA started playing. Wait no, I think that just happened inside his head.

The system was really even simpler: it just got him the Diet Coke.

• Not a warm Diet Coke
• Not a Pepsi
• Not any other kind soft drink
• Not any other kind of food or beverage
• Not after a long wait

And no questions or clarifications either – it’s a one way channel. No picking up a phone, no back and forth, no taking it back. Just click and done.

The media coverage got it all wrong. It’s not about the former president loving Diet Coke, Coke, or whatever. It’s about systematization.

Why should a president waste time clarifying, repeating herself, and even conversing about what she wants done?

Why should you?

How can you red-button your business in the following ways?

• A red button for creating new content
• A red button for distributing that content more widely than usual
• A red button for generating new business
• A red button for generating a bookkeeping report
• A red button for clearing your email inbox

These red buttons may take a little longer to press than the Diet Coke one, but they have the same idea: build little machines that streamline your business and which you can activate with almost no-friction. 

Sure, a lot of engineering and orchestration went into installing the Oval Office red button in the first place. A series of people had to design and install it. And even after it was installed, a series of people have to know what to do before, when, and after it was pressed. Protocols were put in place.

But once it’s up and running, you just click. Tempting idea, isn’t it?

*    *    * 

Now for a twist – you probably can’t do this. You alone, that is.

You might be able to design the red button. And you should definitely have a clear idea of what it does. But the really good buttons are hard to install.

And while your red buttons may utilize pre-built software, they will hardly ever just use one piece of sofware. For example, I can think of 5 or 6 pieces of software that my new content creation red button needs.

But’s the real kicker: you may need human help to put the whole thing together. 

Once it’s put together, you will certainly human help to service the red button on an ongoing basis: stock the fridge, clean the tray, listen for the ding, glide noiselessly into the Oval Office with the cold Diet Coke, etc.

What if you don’t have the staff? What if they are busy or otherwise problematic? What if it’s just you?

Wrong question – don’t think of it as just you. We run in packs, us humans.

So here’s a takeaway: design a red button for your business that requires a human besides you for it to work. Go find someone on a job board, craigslist, anywhere. Get a person to help make your button happen. They need the work, you need the button.

Rowan

When you win a new client, or as you try to do so, do not trash the work of the consultant who came before you. Or that of the other consultants with whom the client currently works.

Just as you definitely wouldn’t trash your client’s own work (and that of their employees)… riiight?

This essay is directed at consultants but having sold both complex software and consulting, I think the same applies for products. Look for ways to take the high road rather than trash the product that came before you.

I know it’s tempting. You’re certain, for example, that Drupal is better than Sitecore. You’re certain your Drupal consultancy is more subtle, clever, and strategy-focused than the other one. 

Why do we tell ourselves stories like this – and shoehorn them into conversations with our clients?

First of all, Illusory Superiority afflicts us. 

• In a 1977 study, 94% of university professors thought they were better than their peers
• In a 1981 study, both US (88%) and Swedish (77%) students thought they were safer drivers than most
• In a 2003 study, 91% of surgeons believed they were more competent than their peers

And so on. Yet we think ourselves unbiased.

We consultants denigrate the work of those who precede us not out of malice (this happens so rarely I won’t address it), but out of ignorance. Mostly.

Anyway, let’s say you really are better than 94% of your peers. Let’s say Drupal is “better” than Sitecore, whatever that means in the context of solving expensive problems. So what?

Even if that’s so, you can still find value added by your predecessors – especially if they have earnestly done their best work. Listen to them by observing their work carefully. Then build on the things they created, rather than throwing it all out. 

If you’ve ever worked in tech, you know how it usually plays out. When old code is confronted the new consultant mildly WTFs it, at best. At worst, they trash everything and “start from scratch” – stabbing the DRY principle in the heart and build a whole “new framework”. 

But the dirty-slate aversion of tech is not so different from other areas of consulting.

Here’s the thing though: business is not made of blank slates. There’s always something there to contend with, starting with the founder’s personality, her understanding of the problem she started her business to solve, and how she thinks about solving it.

*    *     *

Then there’s trash talking’s more sinister allure – money and/or winning.

Fact: critiquing the work of others may help you get work.

So what starts as an innately innocent dislike of the way other people solve complex problems, which some of you term a “shitshow”, ends up as a sales technique. That strong negative reaction – in which you barely contain your disdain, suggest alternatives, and offer wise maxims – bespeaks confidence. And confidence sells.

And yes, sometimes, the works of others needs to be critiqued or just confronted. Sometimes it’s flawed.

But by the way, it’s never awful. Do you know why?

(Queue sidebar)

Because if it’s awful, then you shouldn’t be engaging with it as a consultant. Step away.

Sorry clients, but this is the law of the jungle. If your business asset (personnel/software-product/website/packaging/SEO) is really godawful to a given consultant specializing in that thing, then that’s the wrong consultant to fix it. You need a lower-level consultant to level up your asset first. You will probably need to be hands-on in this process. Then you can present the asset to a more talented, experienced consultant who can polish it.

So for you the consultant, the thing you are working on cannot be multiple-WTF awful.

What if does have problems, though?

I know, the thing you inherit can be problematic. Flawed. Outdated.

Here you have a responsibility to explain why that’s the case. Why it didn’t work. Why it became obsolete. Why it was perhaps the wrong solution. And if you can do so in a neutral way that also showcases your ability, experience, thinking, etc., then well done.

And if the work is actually pretty good? Then say so but also say why. 

More likely, though, the work that comes before you is a mix of good and bad. That’s because the right people were engaged to do the work, and came up with the right solution, but this solution wasn’t fully implemented. Start looking for that pattern in your consulting work and it will start to show up everywhere.

I’m thinking of independent consulting as I write this, but this happens in paycheck-land consulting too. Undermining others’ work is the long-game for fattening your paycheck or job title. (In paycheck-land, though, criticism of others’ work is Tales-of-Genji-level subtle).

In fact, I can often tell how new someone is to independent consulting by how willing they are to trash others’ work on a client call. If nothing else, hold your tongue to signal experience doing what you do.

As an independent, you’re ignorant of the unknowns inside the client’s company, at least initially. There may be reasons why consultants that came before you did what they did. This is why I have always been reluctant to publish the kind of tear-downs I recently did of Nuclino – and why I caveated that. Not only that, there may be hidden-but-valid reasons why those you work with right now act as they do.

Secondly, it’s just lame all-around. The more you rely on your ability to trash others’ work, the less you cultivate your ability to speak about your own work, your own perspective, your own ideas. How can a lame horse hit its stride.

Just a thought,
Rowan

By “slow selling”, I don’t mean “sales are slow”. Instead, I mean taking whatever time you need when it comes to buying and selling decisions. And controlling the timing.

When do you know for certain what you think or want?

Not on a live phone conversation. At least not for me, and maybe not for some of you.

So why this outdated, 20th-Century notion of inking deals on the fly? (“That work for you?”. “Yep, that’ll work!”. “Great!”.)

Maybe because business deals were simpler back in the 1950s or 60s when this meme took hold? 

Here’s the thing – there is no, “let’s just simplify this” when it comes to complex services agreements that call on technology, creative, marketing, and consultative expertise. It’s never a simple deal, it’s just a smaller or bigger one.

In his amalgam of essays titled Hell Yeah or No, which is webpage-readable in the tradition of Getting Real, Derek Sivers has an entry called I’m a Very Slow Thinker.

People say that your first reaction is the most honest, but I disagree. Your first reaction is usually outdated. Either it’s an answer you came up with long ago and now use instead of thinking, or it’s a knee-jerk emotional response to something in your past.

… Someone asks you a question. You don’t need to answer. You can say, “I don’t know,” and take your time to answer after thinking. Things happen. Someone expects you to respond. But you can say, “We’ll see.”

One more thing I’d add: hold your ground.

Because people “good at” sales will react to your “we’ll see” with more pressure.

But “good at” in this context usually means pressing for terms that benefit them. And wearing the other party down with more net energy, delivered in the aggressive packaging of charm.

But most people aren’t like this, at least not always. Derek also says:

“When someone wants to interview me for their show, I ask them to send me some questions a week in advance. I spend hours writing down answers from different perspectives, before choosing the most interesting one.”

That’s how to say just what you want during a live conversation. But here the context is preparing for a podcast; the stakes can be higher when you’re preparing to talk about a complex business deal.

The bottom line is that if you don’t have a drive-fast personality, then you shouldn’t drive fast. If you aren’t given to thinking fast, don’t try.

(And if you really detest making contractual decisions during conversation, fast or slow, then consider productizing your services.)

In business you will inevitably encounter people who are faster thinkers than you. It doesn’t mean they are smarter. And even if they are, so what?

The thing to be aware of is that such people will be present offers and counter offers more quickly than you. Your responses shouldn’t just be, “I don’t know”. Instead, proactively assert yourself: “I don’t know and I won’t know on this call, but I probably will tomorrow; I’ll let you know in writing”.

In the mean time, offer back questions, information, ideas, objections, and context. Just no agreements to terms.

To help you along this path, use the two phrases that Derek Sivers gives us, as starting points at least:

• “I don’t know”
• “We’ll see”

Good advice is to reframe problems and solutions for others; better advice is to reframe them for others and for yourself. So reframe for yourself what buying and selling complexity is supposed to be: a series of conversations where deals are discussed, punctuated by periods of solitary reflection in which deals are decided upon.

That’s slow selling.

My best
Rowan

Don’t knock people for describing something in the negative; what it’s not. Sometimes that’s easier. Or just more relevant to the present moment.

It’s a good place to start defining.

3 Micro-stories

1. A 1st grade teacher revealed her mantra. Not her actual mantra but the thing she had to say several times a week at her work: “What you need to understand is that this is not a daycare“. That was the thing parents often needed to hear. It was also easier than describing what a kindergarden actually is, off the cuff, in response to being asked to perform parenting tasks.

2. The doorperson at the British Library once told me: this is not a reading library for the general public (don’t worry, I eventually gained access; another story for another day). There was no need to describe what the British Library actually is, a one-of-its-kind research library, just the need to fend off my grubby fingers off the collection.

3. I once heard a Flamenco singer say, “What am I, a jukebox?”. (“Yo que soy, una tocadisca?”). She actually was a professional singer. She generously liked to informally perform, though, for her friends; she might even take a request or two. But don’t push it, was her point.

In these instances, people found it easier to say, “this is what I’m not”.

Eventually, you also need to say what you actually are, what you actually make, and what you actually do (are all three the same question?).

But first, let’s focus on the negative.

11 Negative Questions

1. Who is it not for? What people think they would benefit from it – but they’re wrong?
2. What is it not for? What do clients, partners, and others mistakenly assume it’s for? How is it mis-used?
3. When someones uses it, what’s an outcome that you would not define as successful?
4. What do others (partners, investors, parents, journalists, anyone) mistakenly assume to be your audience worldview?
5. What are members of your audience overconfident or mistaken about?
6. What untrue story can you tell about your organization or the things you do/make?
7. What will your thing do nothing to fix, change, or improve?
8. Let’s say your audience receives or uses your thing but that doesn’t change your status. Why did no change in your status occur?
9. Who would be the last people to adopt your product, service, or content? Who would not be early adopters?
10. If they hated your product or service or content, what would early adopters tell their friends, family, and colleagues about it?
11. If your customers or audience members congregate somewhere (physically or virtually) but don’t talk about you, then why not? Why don’t they mention you?

Answer these questions and you are well one your way to be able to speaking fluidly about your business.

You’ll be able to specify who it’s for, what it does, how it changes your audience, what their worldview is, what their truths are, the true story you can tell them, how it changes some (small) part of society, how all this affects your status, who your first adopters are, what they tell others, and what your audience says about you when they come together.

Good luck!
Rowan

 

In all walks of life, you benefit by listening for inflection points. It’s no surprise they often come on negative words. Thus, a nifty messaging hack is to search for negative “trigger” words in comment threads your customers are a part of. Be alert for words such as “hate”, frustrated”, “shocked”, “disgusted”, and the emotions behind them, usually frustration, anxiety, and resentment.

Words and feelings like this are encased in genuine, instinctual wording. Like the immigrant who slips back into her native tongue when she’s wronged, the triggered brain voices whatever words form in the moment.

This is the essence of “use your customer’s voice” advice. 

*    *    * 

Let’s say you are Nuclino. You sell a simple, web-based document editor to small work teams. How do you convince someone to at least try it? What you don’t say is something like:

Empower your team with a collective brain

Which is exactly what you will read – first – when you visit their website. 

Why don’t you say this? Because no one says this, because no one ever even thinks this. “You know what, we need a document editor that empowers our team, as if it were our collective brain!!”. 

You know who does say something like that? Nuclino’s owners and product designers – to one another. They say it to each other in meetings with their UX designer, in company-wide meetings, and at “Tech All-Star” startup weekends or the like. They say it to investors in their struggle to sound smart or edgy.

And maybe they say it to some customers, ones who like the product and are willing to indulge the enthusiasm of the entrepreneur.

This type of diplomatic customer smiles and nodes, “Ohh our collective brain, haha, that’s nice, yes”. But their inner thought bubble reads, “Love your enthusiasm but we don’t actually need a collective brain; we’re not brainless. We just need something that does what MS Office 365 or Google Docs does, but ________ (even simpler, easier, cheaper, with better privacy safeguards, team-focused, wiki-features, etc).”

“Empower your team with a collective brain” is the opposite of speaking in the customer’s voice.

So how do you do speak in their voice? One way is to interview them methodically.

A simpler way is to go find their negative emotion.

How To

Two sites contain more of this than anyone else – YouTube and Amazon.

Reddit, Twitter, and Quora also have vast comment threads, but they’re too fraught with commentary-as-performance, status seeking, and other forms as artifice. Whereas on Amazon, you can easily find pissed off customers who just want to vent.

So let’s visit Amazon’s library of business software. Doesn’t take long to find MS 365, from whom Nuclino would love to steal 10,000 word editing customers.

Now: filter by 1-star reviews, lean back in your office chair, arms extended to the sides, and bask in the negativity.

Here’s one.

What’s particularly infuriating here is that Office 365 is supposed to be a cloud product; it was invented to compete with Google Docs. Yet it still makes customers endure downloads and licenses and other small pain points.

So what do you get from this if you are Nuclino?  Sentiment and word-for-word phrasing. Fast-forward through a dozen principles of copywriting and you eventually arrive at something like this:

Going around in circles installing downloads and “redeeming licenses”? 
That’s not how Nuclino works – sign up and your whole team is editing on it 60 seconds later

As you can see, using your customer’s voice is the kind of advice to take literally.

Quick afterthought on messaging: Nuclino’s current subheader contains a nice, helpful description of the product:

“A lightweight and collaborative wiki for all your team’s knowledge, docs, and notes.”

While this is helpful it’s not persuasive. If persuasive is your goal, then make that a detailed tagline, or “infoslogan”, and feel free to depart a little bit from your customer’s voice. Say your piece but keep it as simple, like this:

Nuclino
lightweight team wiki for docs and notes

*    *    * 

One last afterthought: All teardowns like mine above need this caveat: a brand may have valid, invisible reasons for how it expresses itself. Teardowns contain too many assumptions to have actionable value.

As an outsider to Nuclino, I don’t know the internal team dynamics, the customer relationships, the future product vision, etc. It may be less concerned with acquiring customers than with acquiring investors. Or less concerned with acquiring new customers and more concerned with keeping old ones. Or something else I’m unaware of. All of which can affect messaging.

So take teardowns with a big grain of salt and don’t think of this as advice for Nuclino.

I’m simply using them to illustrate this point: to speak in the voice of your customer (or voter, supporter, member, or client) go find them venting negativity about the alternative, the thing they have been choosing over you.

My best
Rowan

Like early-2000s blogging, the pandemic disrupts the Internet by turbocharging its distinct qualities. This yields enough digital disruption to change the material world beyond the Internet, made up of things like bank accounts, lifestyle patterns, and with whom you engage day-to-day.

If your work is connected to or conducted through the Internet, consider who benefits from this disruption. Or who takes advantage – and how.

1. 1000s of reddit and 4chan memelords collectively out-sliming Wall St’s pump’n’dump hedge funds by …. publishing new memes daily. It’s hard to know how much certain individual have/will benefit from pumping Gamestop stock, but the increase in market cap is in the billions – and much of it is not held by establishment Wall St hedge funds, let alone investment banks.

2. Jonathan Mann writing a song and producing an accompanying music video every single day for 12 years – who would be better qualified to commemorate the breakup of QAnon and Alex Jones?

3. beeple making and publishing digital art every single day for 13 years, then cashing in for 3.5 million when blockchain and cryptocurrency let him (and others) do so.

4. Adriene making yoga videos (sometimes) every day and giving them away for free, while also insisting that you need to buy exactly nothing to practice yoga. The well-deserved result? Almost 10 million subscribers to her YouTube channel.

There’s a darkside, though.

Soon after COVID first hit, I wrote that: tech entrepreneurs who have created ways for people to benefit from their products and services using the Internet are going to win the pandemic economy.

Unfortunately, this is mostly a story about tech billionaires becoming wealthier tech billionaires (Bezos, Gates, Musk, Page, Brin, Zuck, etc), at a time when others need that wealth much more than ever.

But somewhere in between social media content-stardom and billionaire techpreneurship, pandemic-disruption leaves opportunity cracks for the rest of us, especially if success doesn’t mean obscene wealth and/or fame.

But what can we learn from the above examples?

• Enroll in or create digital communities
• Rebuild the tech stack monthly
• Publish a lot and consistently
• Focus on one or two channels at a time

Just a thought, thanks for listening (:
Rowan

Let me relate a recent communication between a consultant and her prospective client (names removed).

Prospect: I was planning on focusing on leveraging affiliates for launch as it would offer an opportunity to get some runs on the board without requiring capital. What are your thoughts? How would you approach this?

Consultant: That’s a great question for me, thanks for asking! I advise on this kind of thing. Here’s how I approach that advice and how much it costs [link to productized services page]

In other words, thank you for asking and recognizing that I might be capable of giving you answer buut I won’t answer for free.

Why not? Because that advice is the product. 

Some additional thoughts:

• other services besides the provisioning of advice can be productized
• you can also package those other things together with advice; this is usually the right approach
• or you can give advice away, just like you might give away a free product sample; one does this deliberately
• by being direct about this in a kind way, you’re doing the prospect a favor

My best
Rowan