Author: remap_content_admin

I lived in London for a year and wanted to visit a friend in Dorsett. Impressively (for me, as I am from the US), there were trains and buses that went directly from Victoria Station to her village of 5,000 people. I love trains so why did I want to drive instead? Why feel the start-to-finish terror of overthinking what side of the road to drive on and, more crucially, to turn onto? 

Because I needed to try Zipcar, the Internet-based car-sharing service. I hadn’t tried it in the US and now was my chance.

A few years later, I rode the Barcelona city bus out to a distant suburban subdivision and paced about for an hour, in a mildly cold evening rain, by a highway onramp, with a phone on about 3% battery life. This time to try another car-sharing service, Blablacar.

Despite a few complications, I enjoyed both experiences.  I missed the Blablacar connection – driver was late, phone died. But I still enjoyed using the service and imagining so many of others doing the same, thinking of all those new connections made and how it might change things. Thinking about the business model, and so on.

That’s neophile behavior. Neophiles, also known as early adopters or neophiliacs, are less motivated by the business logic of being first in line and more by an obsession for novelty and the psychic pain that routine and tradition causes. 

The term was coined by Christopher Wood((Christopher Wood also established that Beowolf and Jaws have the same plot in The Seven Basic Plots)), to describe the countercultural embrace of novelty in 1950s and 60s Britain.

Zipcar and Blablacar are high-profile tech startups but as Christopher Wood clarified, being a neophiliac has nothing to do with technology per se. Instead, it’s a personality trait. Foodies are neophiliacs. So are adopters of the new variety of Crossfit, low-carb diets, or mindfulness. Tim Ferris is the quintessential neophiliac.

Neophiliacs and your client base

There are likely neophiles among your audience, even if you think your audience is risk-averse. Because sometimes trying something new isn’t as risky as standing in the rain at a bus stop as your phone dies. Sometimes, the risk boils down to spending an hour looking at something new on your laptop, in your cozy office.

How many people in your target audience will you try something you offer just because it’s new? Probably about 1 out of 20((In his influential 1962 book, Diffusion of Innovation Theory, Everett Rogers proposed that 14% of the market for innovative products and services are “early adopters”)). So the question becomes, how do you identify them and what do you say to them to entice them to try your new product or service?

Identifying them is important so you can be sure to say something else to the 9 out of 10 who are non-neophiliacs. Because they are most of your customer base in the long term and they don’t care if what you have is new, they just want it or they don’t. In fact, many of them intentionally avoid what is new and are less likely to become your customers.

Derek Sivers talks about this difference in his Ted talk, How to start a movement – watch it if you haven’t already.

Are you back? The first guy, who did the crazy dance – he’s the innovator. That’s you.

The second guy, he’s the neophiliac. The next four or five who follow his lead are also neophiliacs, but that second guy is the leader of the neophiliacs. And the mob who joins in are the neophobiacs, the 90% who will pay 90% of your mortgage((Some non-neophiliacs aren’t phobic of change; they’re just novelty-indifferent)).

See the problem you have? Here’s a relevant fact: you can micro-target a Facebook ad campaign down to three people. But even then, don’t you still have up to three different personalities to talk to?

Neophiliacs are mentioned 21 times in Seth Godin’s This Is Marketing but he also talks about neophobiacs. He says:

“They are neophiliacs – addicted to the new. They get a thrill from discovery, they enjoy the tension of “This might not work” … the neophiliacs are very forgiving of missteps from those who seek to innovate with them, and incredibly unforgiving after the initial thrill of discovery wears off…

… sometimes, you’ll be trying to build products and services that last, that extend beyond the tiny group of neophiliacs and reach and delight the rest of the market… 

There’s almost nothing a marketer can do that shouldn’t be prefaced with that distinction.

How do you preface this distinction as you bring something new to your market – including a new product, a new service, or a website redesign: a new assertion of the value your business creates? I think you want to find not just that “2nd follower” who shows his fellow novelty-lovers the way, but also the leader of the neophobiacs.

Because if she adopts, loves it, and gives you a wonderful testimonial on your website, the other neophobiacs will be convinced.

She’ll say, “I was skeptical because I’d never tried working with this kind of service, but… now I’m happy”. The best testimonials start with doubt – and so do neophobiacs.

My best,
Rowan

In messaging, something stationary and circular; not moving an idea or a message from one person to another; not moving someone to act.

Here’s what’s been happening recently on Zoom: Two ambitious digital entrepreneurs with expertise in GIS from Douala, the de facto capital of Cameroon, met with a marketing ideation consultant riding out the pandemic in rural Polk County, Oregon.

This Internet thing is working!

Except ideas take a while to send and receive. Sometimes decades. I’ll come back to that once I take you on a tangent or two.

In Oregon, the battle against the pandemic is going well compared to other parts of the US. Nationwide there will be 100,000 COVID deaths by next weekend, but just 137 in Oregon –  that’s 1 per 31,000 people((My source for worldwide coronavirus data is https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/, which aggregates data from credible if not comprehensively accurate sources)). That ratio is significantly better than in COVID success story countries such as, say, Germany.

But in Cameroon things are even better, so far: just 1 in 200,000 have died of COVID, despite a decades-long, multi-faction civil war disrupting medical supply lines. Cameroonian soldiers patrol the streets in masks, heavily armed.

In the US, those who bear heavy arms on the streets don’t wear masks – they attend fake civil liberties protests that are actually political rallies in disguise. Where they get and spread coronavirus. Apparently, astroturfing can cause collateral damage.

But a more sensible atmosphere prevails in sensible Douala, apparently. And the Internet there was good for an hour-long Zoom call to faraway Oregon, seeking ideas, help, and guidance on how to create a global marketplace for world-class GIS experts, students, freelancers, and buyers of GIS services.

This is what digital geeks call a “three-sided marketplace”.

For me, this is something digital innovation is good at – undermining the global status quo, in which a microscopic cadre takes home most of the globe’s GDP. Just 5,000 businesses worldwide collect 3 out of every 4 dollars the world generates each year.

The tech world’s largest buy-low/sell-high labor organizers are part of that status quo – the tenured like IBM, Accenture and Capgemini, but also VC and Nasdaq-funded gig-marketplace startups like Upwork.

Last time I checked (about an hour ago((I looked up the largest companies in Cameroon – none have an international presence))), none of the world’s big tech firms were based in Cameroon. But why shouldn’t a Cameroon startup take a tiny piece of the digital labor market economy? Why should enormous companies like Accenture, for example, monopolize the business – are their people any smarter than two GIS consultants from Cameroon with an entrepreneurial vision?

Of course not, says Steve Jobs: 

“Everything around you that you call life was made up by people that were no smarter than you. And you can change it, you can influence it… ”

Innovation vs the UN

Entrepreneurial innovation can disrupt the global economic status quo more effectively than the very best-intentioned UN programs. I became convinced of that after my stint with a UN agency in Sub-Sarahan Africa, where I built a communications strategy for national peace and nation-building effort.

Quick story – on my first day at work there, at the UNDP work compound in Juba, South Sudan, I was ushered into a small hut-office near the front gate, in the shadow of the compound’s 7-meter high perimeter wall. Across a desk from me sat Mr. Wanga, Directory of Security for the UNDP of South Sudan.

“Hello, you are welcome” – the standard, warm greeting. Then the conversation got serious.

For 25 minutes, Wanga explained the conflict raging around the country and even nearby the capital city, using a retractable pointer to highlight points of interest on the wall map behind him. He used this scary-as-hell context to frame the important messages: I had to be very careful, obeying security protocols was paramount, and, just so I was clear on the obeying part: the UN was a military organization. (Sidenote: the UN is not a military organization).

Once I nodded acceptance of my place in the military hierarchy, Wanga provisioned me a kevlar vest, a bulletproof helmet (one of those baby blue ones you see in the movies), an official UN badge, and a military-style two-wave radio. He showed me how to respond to a daily status request sent from the compound’s radio tower – an essential safety protocol.

“Understand that you must respond to this request properly or we will assume you have been arrested or kidnapped.”

The message was clear: hierarchy. And what I would discover is that the UN, bless its heart, is a quasi-military organization. It’s a top-down hyper-bureaucratic and inefficient hierarchy. I was on an email thread with almost 10 UN employees of varying ranks for weeks – to arrange my airport shuttle. The UN’s hundreds of “country offices” (each of the UN’s major 5 to 10 agencies has one in each developing world nation) around the world seem to be staffed by the local elite. It gives them the comfortable sinecures that their economies and governments do not.

Counterpoint: the UN also does many remarkable things. It builds roads, sewers, legal systems, radio stations, dams, university systems, hospitals, and more. It cools the planet, mitigates wars, feeds starving millions, and offers hope to billions of people, me included.

But it doesn’t help entrepreneurs. When it comes to the distribution of business opportunities, UN agencies favor the established elite, the status quo. 

What a pleasure then, to Zoom it out with two people capable of actually changing things.

But were they?

“Everyone in the world over 18”

The problem was their unwavering answer to the same question I always ask: who’s your target audience? The answer:

“18 and up. From any country in the world. Anyone interested in GIS. And from any industry related to GIS.. which is most industries”. 

I’m good at paper-napkin B2B-math, but here I was stumped. This audience is in the millions, at least. And the only way to market to that  is to have 10s of millions, at least.

Facebook’s target audience at launch was 6,800. All in the same country, state, city, age group, language group, mindset, Dockers, and sweatshirt. Unlike many disastrous startups that have taken 100s of millions in venture capital (like Postmates), Facebook was not just bootstrapped but narrowly focused. Facebook was more niched down than 98% of the startups and consultancies I’ve done business with.

The idea of bootstrapping is spreading through much the world, as far as I can see. So has the complementary but differing concept of a lean business. But a narrow focus? That may be a decade or so behind. It’s this idea that we need to make an emotionally tough sacrifice – that’s hard for someone who dreams big.

But maybe Zoom will help work through difficult emotions faster.

Kind regards,
Rowan

Today, two true stories of digital marketing projects I was involved with, one with my heart in it and one without. Warning, these have a predictable plot: “heart in it” wins. But as you read, I encourage you to find two similar stories in your own project history – and ask yourself: how can you generate genuine enthusiasm for a project which at first seems dull?

Case 1: Heart In It

I helped a group of researchers and scientists find volunteers to test their approach to ending the tragedy of Alzheimer’s.

These scientists were (and are now) working on a drug to prevent Alzheimer’s Disease about 10 years before its likely onset – likely based on genetic predisposition. 

If you have one copy of the APOe4 gene, you are 4x as likely as normal to get Alzheimer’s. If you have two copies, 25x as likely – effectively giving you a 1 in 2 chance you’ll get Alzheimer’s. People commit suicide when they find this out.

At the onset of the project, I knew nothing about any of this. I knew about creating a complex web platform – in this case for digital recruiting and marketing. The platform was designed to recruit, screen, and (genetic) counsel clinical trial participants – and it needed to go through 100,000 people to find 1,200 suitable candidates. That’s 100,000 buccal swab kits and… you get the picture. Complexity.

Why use digital marketing to solve this problem? Because there are 50 thousand clinical trials actively recruiting – competition is fierce. I have the highest hopes for a COVID vaccine but I’m aware of the enormity of the task – so many massive Alzheimer’s studies have come up empty. Eli Lilly invested 400 million and got nothing.

Faced with likely failure after years and perhaps an entire lifetime of work, these scientists’ passion infected me. Over the course of a summer, I spent weekends reading – a long book on the disappointing history of Alzheimer’s Disease research, a short book on clinical trials, and dozens of articles about those subjects. I learned about genetic testing trials, the human genome, and genotypes vs phenotypes. I learned that trials are being outsourced to India to avoid regulations. I understood why 23andme.com was reprimanded so heavily for playing doctor. I learned that researchers used to use family doctors (general practitioners) to recruit – now that door is closed.

I even watched the Notebook. Much better than I expected.

As we worked through the design of the recruitment approach, the screening, the genetic counseling – the bits and pieces of what I was learning began to enrich our discussions and improve the outcome of our work. And they could see that it had become something that I also cared about.

My heart was in it. The trial is happening – fingers crossed.

Case 2: Heart Not In It

I converted the entire King James Bible into a searchable website, where each of the 1400 chapters of each book was its own webpage with a discussion thread. I had a newsletter and built up a list of over 2,000 subscribers. I drove people to the site through Google Ads and SEO, kept them their using emailing marketing, quizzes, and discussion, and even sold subscriptions to Christian dating sites. This was 2007 and there weren’t many other sites, if any, with the entire text of the bible on them (now there are probably 100s), so it got some traction from search engines.

But I was something of a fraud because as the site owner and maintainer, I didn’t really have the level of passion for the topic that site visitors assumed I had. The site had the organization and feel of a community site, with a heavy emphasis on commenting and discussion. Many epic, pages-long Bible arguments happened.

In fact, many of the people who came to the site, commented, and signed up for the newsletter, were very devout Christians and bible lovers (I mean that non-judgementally). Naturally, they assumed the site creator was too. For my part, I found the Bible interesting and the KJV extremely beautiful – it’s one of the most beautifully written works ever created. But I was not part of the tribe site visitors assumed I was.

I had chosen to use the Bible as “content” because it was the largest amount of free, high-quality content I could find. I simply wanted to create a site that I could use to improve my digital marketing skills. I didn’t realize I’d be creating a community based on a false premise. Eventually, I closed down the site. In a way, I regret doing so – it was the best way to search the KJV I have yet encountered. I should have given it to someone else to take care of. Someone whose heart was in it.

Epilogue

What did the two projects have in common? Both used digital marketing to bring together people over a serious subject. People volunteer 7 years of their life in an Alzheimer’s trial because their mom or dad died of it; volunteership is not random. Considering that the Bible’s central story is Christ’s Passion, both projects dealt with death and dying.

But what’s most important is that both projects required passion – whether long-held or freshly cultivated.

That’s true of any work you take on – find the crack, the edge, the angle, that you connect to, where it touches you. Why? Because your work and time is important – and so is theirs.

Take good care,
Rowan

Conventional business wisdom argues for the latter in the case of your business, service line, or product. It’s good to have competitors – at least a few. It means you’re on to something. Good positioning isn’t unique.

Of course, your brand messaging should be 100% unique – and there’s a difference between brand messaging and positioning. Take the case of Australian business consultant Anthony English.

While his positioning is: “Helps independent consultants and solopreuneurs in Australia with business development”, his branding messaging is colorful: “I help Rachels. I help Rachels halve their frustration in finding clients.”

And why not be quixotic if the end-goal is memorable? Humans confuse formality with seriousness of purpose. But as Anthony’s co-antipodean, Aldous Harding says:

 “I don’t have to be sad to be serious. I don’t have to be serious to be serious. Like when I jump around at the end of The Barrel – I’m serious. But I’m seriously happy. And that’s as strong as any other place that I have been.”

Anthony’s messaging doesn’t have to be serious to be serious – and strong.

Yet it took a while for Anthony to arrive that messaging. Positioning by itself is a formula dissecting humanity into a group small enough you can overwhelm it with understanding and good intentions; market to it efficiently. Other business coaches had similar positioning, forcing his to grow, to give birth to something new.

This is how ideation works – when you have a great idea, you’ll know it’s good if someone else has already had it, already owns that domain name, has already written that book, that article. Rough. But this is the challenge you need to let your idea evolve into something greater than itself.

In his book Antifragile, Nasim Taleb opens by asking readers to consider the opposite of fragility in the context of shipping a package. When you see a box marked “Fragile”, whatever is in it will break when the UPS driver drop-kicks it out of his van. A china vase, a Faberge egg, a batch of imported coconut macaroons. So what’s the opposite? Robust? If it’s robust it won’t break; it’ll retain its state. 

But the opposite of breaking isn’t staying as is; the opposite is breaking is growing, flourishing, transforming into something better, or at least different.

Therefore evolution is antifragile, argues Taleb. And this is a useful way to set up his Black Swan theory according to which he predicted the 2008 financial crash – and like thousands of others ignored by the current administration, the COVID pandemic.

Like evolution, ideation is antifragile. So put your ideas out there into the market – or subject them to research – and let them take a beating.

Have a good week ahead,
Rowan

In my last email about personalized rhetoric, I tried not to go off on too many tangents.

For example, I didn’t comment on those who robotically use the same sign-off after every email (Cheers, Yours); that’s impersonalized rhetoric.

But I did go off on a footnote-tangent((When the phrase footnote-tangent is invoked, Sir Richard Francis Burton’s name must be invoked – in a footnote. I am pretty certain I have at least a couple readers who know why)) about Alan Weiss. I said:

“In ‘Million Dollar Consulting’ (the only book of Alan Weiss’s you really need to read), the strategy is to save up enough to live on for a year so you have the leverage to turn down prospects who aren’t an ideal fit; of course, he also assumes you have a prestigious MBA and have worked in an investment bank or Big 5 consulting. If that’s not you, you might need to demonstrate your expertise in your content marketing”

A reader urged me to expound on this:

Hey Rowan, Tell me more as it applies to why you feel the above is a “truth”.

Excellent prompt, thank you J. First of all, Alan Weiss does have another book that’s worth reading, Value-based Fees. 

Secondly, I don’t have a deep knowledge of Alan Weiss. My observation comes from (a) reading two of his books and (b) working with his tribe – the pedigreed consultants whom his books target. Key points on the pedigree are a brand name degree, an MBA or similar, and a work history at a Big 5 consulting firm, or one of their few hundred offshoots collectively comprising the management consulting world. 

Firms like these subcontracted work to the marketing technology and data consultancy I co-owned for 8 years. In theory, the subcontracted work was implementation, such as building a web platform or creating a new digital product out of a Drupal and CRM integration. But as my readers in the digital world know, it is impossible to separate “hands work” from strategic work in our space. So along with implementation, we gave them strategy – and they resold that as their own. I bear them zero ill-will because business is business. This is just what happened.

They leveraged their sales advantage to mine the expertise of digital firms and resell it. 

This is the same model as dropshipping – you don’t actually own the factory or know how to do anything at all, you but you find someone who does then re-sell their work to someone who needs it.

Why does this happen? Primarily trust and risk. For very large firms, it doesn’t make sense to risk talking to, let alone hiring, a non-pedigreed consultant to give you, in this case, a digital product when you could hire a pedigreed one to do so. You can trust a pedigree to deliver.

It doesn’t make sense to buy a non-pedigreed racehorse when you could buy a pedigreed one. It’s risky. 

But what if you’re a racehorse?

Then prove it.

The unknown firms, the niche digital, creative, and technical firms, have to create their own trust by becoming visible experts through content marketing. This means consistently writing and speaking about your work – by newsletter, blog, case study, podcast, book, youtube channel, webinar. The writing itself will make you an expert 3x to 4x faster. 3 years instead of 10 years.

Of course, Alan Weiss does not specifically say, “you must be pedigreed to be successful as a consultant”. But that is the clear implication. In fairness, that’s partly down to his own content marketing strategy – his audience is institutional management consultants needing advice and inspiration to make the leap to becoming independent consultants. And by the way, his advice is generally excellent – any owner of a business that provides complex B2B solutions can learn something from it.

Except about the value of content marketing.

Have a lovely weekend – stay healthy!
Rowan

Men are from Mars. Women prefer Saturn dealerships – or they did.

Saturns were boring. And they weren’t even a good deal – financially speaking. Emotionally speaking, they were a great deal. It didn’t matter what the person at the dealership said; you were never being manipulated and you didn’t have to worry about making a negotiating mistake with someone who negotiates for a living. Actually you were being manipulated – to buy add-ons. And credit.  But these add-ons were also fixed-price. No negotiation, no stress, no doubt about making a huge mistake.

You can make your customers feel the same with (a) publishing your prices and (b) productizing your services. Or at least some of your prices. Now take it a step further – what if you buy those products in a self-service fashion? 

Large-inventory business-to-consumer ecommerce has a fundamental flaw that hasn’t yet been fixed: browsability. By the way, this is one of several reasons that public libraries with an organization system such as Dewey Decimal are irreplaceable knowledge resources. The Internet will never displace libraries – though it makes an excellent companion. Same for the print version of the OED and the Encyclopedia Brittanica. Libraries are expert-curated and browseable, Google.com is not.

But for a niche B2B solutions provider, your products are also browseable – because you’ll never have that many of them. You should have between 3 and 4, with options and add-ons for each. 

Last December,  I wrote a four-part series about how niche B2B solutions providers can productize services (one two three four). But one of several things I left out was expert curation. It might be less work to productize services than it is to design and launch a SaaS app – but it takes just as much expertise. Things that don’t work without expertise: custom consulting engagements, SaaS software, and productized services. Without expertise, it’s pointless to even think about marketing these types of solutions.

But if you have the expertise, why not use it?

My best,
Rowan

A few months ago, I saw a notice on my Firefox browser:

“Click here to join the ‘No More Ads Revolution’ – for less than $3/month, you’ll get universal ad blocking and privacy, even while using major websites like Google and Facebook”.

Click.

But there was no such program, just an explanation that they were thinking of creating it – and would you like to signup for a pre-launch notification list?

But this test – called a “fake door test” in UX and digital marketing – apparently bore fruit. Firefox turned the fake door into a beta-project collaboration with a company called Scroll. Maybe this helped them get their pricing down (though it’s still flawed because it doesn’t offer options((It is essential to offer price options, as superbly explained in Pricing Creativity, chapter 6: Offer Options – read it!)).)

That’s easier when you have a product already used by millions – you have your own free mass-market advertising channel.

It’s harder for us. Fake door tests and other types of automated A/B testing aren’t worth the effort unless there’s a pretty substantial data. 30 is a statistically significant sample size when the data is good. 

Most of our marketing activities don’t supply enough quality data. That’s why I disabled web traffic analytics last year. Outreach email marketing is an exception. If you carefully select about 40 prospective targets, you might get 30 worthwhile data points (you lose 10 because some emails didn’t work, or some people aren’t who you thought they were – the process sharpens your perception). Pick another 40 and you can test one subject line against another.

Let’s set aside bulk email outreach, though, because there’s a better hack: the “smallest viable market”.

In This Is Marketing, Seth Godin offers a minimalist, bootstrapper slant on the customer-development theory of Silicon Valley pioneer and “lean startup” theorist Steve Blank:

Organize your project, your life, and your organization around the minimum. What’s the smallest market you can survive on?
…
Customer development is the act of gaining traction with customers, of finding a fit between what you make and what they want. This traction is worth far more than fancy technology and expensive marketing.

Ok? How. Tim Ferris says you can spend $500 on Google Ads ((In the hilariously titled The 4-Hour Workweek: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich, Ferris used the example of an entrepreneur testing an idea for a drop shipping business with $500 in Google Ads spend. This isn’t a bad approach today, but it’s more of a $5,000 matter, not a $500 one)). Maybe in 2004 – in 2020, not so much (sorry to hedge, but it really depends here). Firefox uses a product with massive reach. Silicon Valley startups use VC money. 

But most of us don’t have a multi-million dollar ad budget or our own web browser – so now let’s go back to email outreach, the most cost-effective way to do your own fake door test. It’s more precise than Survey Monkey or – and this is really scraping the bottom of the barrel – Google Surveys. Find 80 people you think might be interested in what you make, then find out if they want it.

Take action. My explanation above skips steps 1 through 100 because this isn’t the right venue. But later in this month, I’ll be co-hosting a free, 60-minute webinar on testing it before you make it. We’ll show you how we use prospecting, email outreach, and webpages to create and execute a minimum viable fake door test.

So it’ll be kind of like a Zoom-based carpentry class, except you won’t need any tools – just a good project idea and a theoretical smallest viable market.

Kindly yours,
Rowan

Marketing is difficult, emotional work.

It’s hard to say, “this isn’t for you – it’s for these other people.” But that’s the essence of positioning.

It’s hard to listen to someone on Zoom for an hour with intensity.

It’s hard to go all the way back to your values, your beliefs, and then ask yourself, “what future state do I want to create that reflects my values?“. But you have to do that work to know the mission of your business. This is half the work of brand messaging.

The other half is also hard – listening to your customers. Yesterday, we talked about uncovering pain points by asking, “what’s your favorite workaround“? But how do you that – it takes time from your busy days and theirs. There’s no endless well of hour-long Zoom calls and no easy answer.

Philip Morgan systematizes his listening as a core business process; research. As a result, he can easily point you to the questions he’s researching.

Probably every single Fortune 1000 company does something similar; a function of corporate marketing is market research. (This is actually how the term and concept of marketing became popular during the 60s and 70s ((In the superbly written Ogilvy on Advertising, David Ogilvy’s description of marketing helps you realize it used to be a “weird science”))). And/or they outsource the work to Gartner or other market research firms. 

But it’s hard to do this for your own independent business. As with content marketing, regularity is the ultimate value add. It probably needs to be a business process, not a project.

In the Bootstrapper’s Bible, the author calls for a “formal reinvention process”.

You need a formal business reinvention process. Put it in your calendar. Every three months, take your most trusted advisors, employees, backers, and even customers and get away from the phones for a little while.

Start from scratch. “If we were starting over – no office, no employees, no customers – would we choose to be where we are today?”. If the answer isn’t yes, then it’s time to take a hard look at the path you took and the impact it has had on your business.

That book was written in 1998. Its successor, The Bootstrapper’s Workshop, continues to ask for an “emotional effort” to figure out what people are happy to pay you to do for them. Not because they need you to do it for them, but because they want you to. 

The alternative is to spend your hard-earned money at random hoping you’ll make someone happy; often this has the opposite effect.

Case study in unhappiness: Postmates

There’s a pandemic on and we’re on lockdown, so you must have heard about Postmates, the online ordering app for local restaurant delivery and takeout? I’m surprised you haven’t heard of them, given that they have 903 million dollars in venture capital funding.

Let’s listen to what Amanda, a customer, has to say about Postmates two days ago:

This is what, “getting market share” looks like, folks – disrespect and outright theft.

You raise almost a billion dollars, to do the same thing GrubHub has been doing for a decade, and your net accomplishment is making people miserable. Why?

Partly it’s that money tempts you to spend on something – and you can’t figure out more ways to spend money on product. 

But the real reason is you haven’t done the emotional work of regularly determining what people really want – and don’t want. Advertising can be a helpful tool in your marketing but you can’t put lipstick on a pig.

Postmates-scale advertising (probably in the hundreds of millions) is out of reach for most of us but with even a modest financial investment, you can mimic them in miniature – you can purchase cold ads and emails from a business like CallBox, with its dozens of fake LinkedIn profiles sending messages on your behalf. ((A better way to do LinkedIn outreach is LeadCookie, which actually does a pretty artful job of cold outreach because it stipulates good positioning and messaging, at least on LinkedIn.))

It’s hard to pick up the phone and call someone – or it seems hard. That’s why you hire CallBox. They’re not selling expertise; in fact, they are pretty terrible at advertising. They’re selling emotional effort.

But is that something you can buy and sell, or is it something you just have to do for yourself?

Herzlich,
Rowan