All Audiences

My wife’s grandfather was the CEO of Green Giant Canada some many years ago. I never got a chance to meet him, but I’m told he was a remarkable guy.

He not only led the company for a number of years, he was also the sole breadwinner of a family with eight children.

His legacy remains strong within his family and local community where he lived.

One piece of advice that he gave to my wife when she was starting business school that sticks out in her mind was this: in business, all you have is your reputation.

It takes a long time to build a good reputation. Years. Decades.

The best reputations are ones made through longevity. That’s where the value comes from.

If you can find a thing and stick to it for a long time—while managing your reputation along the way—the end result will be rare and valuable.

All you have is your reputation. Manage it wisely.

The job of the ship captain is to chart the straightest course possible to a desired destination.

But unlike steering a ship, marketing has no one set course. The waters and routes are always different.

The best you can do is keep the bow pointed eastward and adjust along the way until you find your destination.

When applying yourself to whatever marketing challenge you face, remember to keep your eyes on the destination and you’ll get there eventually.

I don’t agree with all of these, but there’s a lot of gems within. Happy Friday!

Source: @v_praveen

I recently bought a new iPhone 12 and got the leather case with it.

I was surprised to see how bulky it all felt after my last phone.

Sure, it was a slightly bigger phone (by a little), but with the new case too, it felt quite clunky by comparison.

Enter: Peel

Peel focuses on making the thinnest cases for your iPhone or Android device. That’s all I know about them, but it was enough to make me think of them, seek them out, then buy a new case for that very reason.

Sometimes, good marketing is about picking one thing and going to the edges with it.

So, what are you the only/most/best at?

Try focusing on that one thing in your marketing and let people uncover all the other benefits of your products and services later on.

I’m in the process of listening to an interview with Steven Pressfield by Tim Ferris on his podcast, The Tim Ferris Show.

If you’re not familiar with Steven Pressfield, he’s written some great books, including The War of Art, Do The Work, and Nobody Wants to Read Your Sh*t”.

One of his major themes is an idea called the Resistance. The idea is ultimately about the feeling of fear you get when you create something new, such as writing a book or other creative ventures.

It’s the little voice inside your head that says you’re not good enough, or it’s time to quit, or to procrastinate. Or many other forms of discouragement.

If you listen to that voice, it will ultimately doom you to live life as your “shadow” self; doing something similar to but not quite what you wish you could be doing.

Here’s some quotes from his book, The War of Art:

“Resistance will tell you anything to keep you from doing your work. … If you take Resistance at its word, you deserve everything you get. Resistance is always lying and always full of shit.”

“Fear is good. Like self-doubt, fear is an indicator. Fear tells us what we have to do.

Remember our rule of thumb: The more scared we are of a work or calling, the more sure we can be that we have to do it.

Resistance is experienced as fear; the degree of fear equates to the strength of Resistance. Therefore the more fear we feel about a specific enterprise, the more certain we can be that that enterprise is important to us and to the growth of our soul. That’s why we feel so much Resistance. If it meant nothing to us, there’d be no Resistance.”

“Rule of thumb: The more important a call or action is to our soul’s evolution, the Resistance we will feel toward pursuing it.”

If you haven’t read them, you must read The War of Art and his other books. Especially the ones I mentioned at the top of this article.

I also suggest listening to the Tim Ferris interview as they cover a lot of topics that any creative or entrepreneurial professional will resonate with.

Here’s a link to the episode.

Assume you could be successful at serving any audience.

Who would it be and why?

What’s stopping you from working with them?

What research can you do to understand what they need so you can sell things to them to sustain a business?

My guess is you could succeed in serving almost any niche.

Don’t let your mind trick you into thinking one market or another can’t sustain a business. It’s rarely true.

You just need to figure out what you can offer them that they actually want at a price that works for everyone.

By doing less you accomplish more.

By doing less, you’re forced to focus exclusively on what you do best.

When you only do what you do best, you’re more competitive.

You can charge more. You do a better job. You get more referrals. You’re not interchangeable. You become rare.

By doing less, you free up time to make your best work even better. You perpetuate your advantages.

You feel less overwhelmed. You enjoy your work because you’re good at it.

You become known for your specific thing. People start tagging you in things and sending opportunities your way.

You become the go-to person on your main thing in people’s minds.

The opposite of all this is also true.

Choose wisely.

Here’s an interesting way to approach the development and visualization of a marketing plan.

It uses four quadrants to lay out marketing channels (and perhaps investment) based on whether a client is looking for a product like yours, and whether the target market is specific or not.

There are lots of ways to organize your marketing plan. This was a useful visualization to perhaps replicate with a client.

h/t Tim Suolo who shared Kevin Lord Barry‘s resource on Twitter.

The best marketing is plain, straightforward, and non-sensational.

It doesn’t care if you buy or not. It believes in its own product but doesn’t go out of its way to convince you to buy it.

It doesn’t use gimmicky tactics. It doesn’t use hype. It requires no added frills.

It simply states what it is, who it’s for, and what it does. It does so in a creative and interesting way. But that’s it.

The best marketing isn’t cute or clever. It conveys a quiet confidence that speaks for itself.

Of course, the best marketing comes from having a good customer value proposition. In other words, it sells something people actually want to buy.

Solve that and your marketing can be the best kind, too.