All Audiences

Today, I received a number of flyers in the mail. I ignored most of them but one in particular stood out: a local real estate market data newsletter.

It was sent on behalf of a local real estate brokerage, with whom I’ve come into contact before.

The first time was when I was looking for a house in the area last year. They had a representative doing an open house at one of the places we looked at.

He was knowledgeable and courteous, and came prepared with a mini booklet to showcase the features of the house.

It was more than your average one-sheet—it stood out for its quality. Which makes sense given the house costs several hundred thousands of dollars.

He also offered to send us listings that fit our profile since our realtor was located out of town and he regularly got early access to houses coming onto the market locally.

Since then, I’ve noticed their distinct signs outside of houses for sale nearby. They are an independent brokerage, so their branding stood out with its unique colour and appearance.

And today, probably my sixth or seventh impression of their brand, I saw their flyer amidst all the other materials that came with the mail.

While I ignored the rest, I noticed theirs immediately. My wife did, too. We talked about them for a minute, too.

Marketing doesn’t work by a lucky single encounter with your brand. It happens by having multiple positive touch-points over time. That’s why people who look for short-term wins aren’t thinking about marketing the right way.

Marketing is a long game. The key is showing up frequently and consistently, ideally with a visual identity and messaging that stands out.

If you want results today, try doing sales outreach.

If you want opportunities to come to you instead, think long term and build your marketing with the aim of earning repeat exposure in a quality and unique way.

This idea was shared by Julian Shapiro on Twitter and I had to share it with you.

One of the most rewarding things I do is help people create consistent content for the first time, whether that’s on their blog, email, or social media.

The metaphor is simple: When you first turn on a dirty tap, the water will flow dirty for a while. But if you keep it running for long enough, it will eventually run clean.

It works the same with almost anything you create. Your creative work and ideas will start out being not very good. Downright bad even.

But when you commit to the process, it’s only a matter of time before your work begins to flow pure.

Your bad ideas leave your system, your work becomes a little easier, and the output a bit stronger every time you publish. Eventually, you can produce great work.

But it only happens if you trust the process and stick with it long enough.

Related: If you haven’t read The Practice by Seth Godin, go out right now and buy it.

When you launch something new, you never know whether it will succeed or not. By definition, you’re taking a leap of faith.

You’ll always feel excited when you begin. But by the time you launch, you might also feel resistance, imposter syndrome, or even downright fear of embarrassment.

And that’s okay. That’s how you know you’re creating something.

You don’t have to have all the answers when you begin. In fact, you never will.

But you do need to trust that you’ll make good decisions along the way. Business is an iterative process, after all.

If you go into your new venture knowing you’ll relentlessly follow the needs and wants of your best customers, it’s really only a matter of time before you succeed.

There are exceptions, but it’s really not much more complex than that.

Today I launched Mindshare, a rebranding of the Mentorship program I started a few months back.

It’s a community for marketing consultants seeking to sell their expertise instead of their hands.

It also includes resources and a private podcast feed with thought-provoking strategies and long form interviews to help you grow your marketing business around your expertise, not just your labor.

If you want the backstory, I talk about my story and how it led to this launch here in this Twitter thread:

A story and announcement for you today.

🎉👇

— Kevin C. Whelan 🦕 (@kevincwhelan) November 13, 2020

And if you want to package and sell your marketing expertise instead of your effort, check out the Mindshare Community and become a member.

Whatever you’re selling… know that it’s not for everyone.

It’s not for most people, either. And if you get disappointed when someone doesn’t buy or like it, you’re looking at it the wrong way.

Instead, create something for someone specific. A single, ideal person, not an “avatar”.

If it turns out someone else enjoys it more, consider making them your ideal customer instead.

It’s a lot easier to over-deliver for an already satisfied customer than it is to figure out what someone who isn’t satisfied will want.

Make what you sell as good as it can possibly be then continually improve it for those who actually value (and pay) for it.

This is the definition of customer-centric.

When I was seventeen years old, I tore three ligaments in my knee playing hockey.

It took six months to get a surgery and several more afterwards before I could walk without crutches again.

I recall vividly watching people walk around, unaware of how lucky they were to be able to move without crutches. To jump, run, and play sports.

We don’t really realize how lucky we are until we lose things in life.

And today is my birthday, so I’m in a particularly reflective mood.

It’s also Remembrance Day here in Canada. A time to think back and remember those who fought during WWI (and many wars since) so that we could enjoy our safety and freedom today.

May we use this day to remember our fallen soldiers, but also how lucky we are to have love, health, people who care about us, and people we care for.

It’s easy to forget how lucky we really are.

Lest We Forget.

The primary purpose of a blog post is to get a point across.

As long as you do that, length doesn’t matter.

Deliver the message.

This morning, I was cooking two eggs for breakfast. I dropped them into a pan that was not fully heated yet, which meant the eggs were taking a while to start cooking.

My instinct was to crank up the heat all the way, but that would have overheated the cast iron pan, causing the eggs to burn before the sunny-side-up yolks were sufficiently cooked.

And it got me thinking about marketing. I’m always thinking about marketing.

It reminded me that while yes, you can speed up results in the short term with tactics like advertising, the true and best way to do marketing is to take things one step at a time.

Making good eggs means letting the pan heat up to the right temperature, adding the oil when the pan is hot (not before), letting the oil heat slightly without burning it, and then finally, dropping in the eggs and waiting until they have reached the perfect level of doneness.

Doing good marketing means deeply understanding your ideal client or customer, delivering unique and distinct value in your business, doubling down on your strengths, making trade-offs with your resources, and building out the foundational systems that will support sustained results over time.

You can make fast eggs or you can make eggs the right way. To me, the fast way is to do things the slow way.

Do things in the right order, at a speed you can handle, and you’ll get magnificent, repeatable results you can enjoy over time.

Sometimes you will need to crank up the temperature to get an egg cooked quickly. But we can’t pretend that’s the right way to do it.

Slow is fast and fast is slow.

There’s a reason there are so few thought leaders in the world.

To lead in any capacity means putting yourself out there, making decisions, and then being responsible for the outcomes of those decisions.

Of course, thought leadership is not the same as having an opinion. Everyone has an opinion.

But few people are willing to make regular professional assertions and lead the conversation in their work or industry. It takes guts to do that.

Why? Because it’s one thing to be wrong with your own private opinions, where only few people care and the stakes are low. Anyone can do that.

It’s another thing entirely to publish original thoughts that may be imperfectly formed or could end up being wrong later on. Not to mention, your professional reputation is on the line every time.

Having this skin in the game and showing up regularly is what separates the opinionists from the thought leaders. This process forces you to continually refine and test your ideas. To make them better over time.

Which means accepting you’ll be wrong sometimes. But continuing to show up with new, more refined perspectives and ideas each time.

That’s what it means to be a thought leader.

There’s a weekly newspaper that gets thrown onto my doorstep once a week.

I have lived in my current home for over a year and may have opened it once to see if it has any valuable content. It didn’t.

It’s essentially a bunch of flyers wrapped around some local “news”.

It’s not that I don’t care about my community. I do. But this is essentially unsolicited garbage (recycling) that I need to pick up and throw away every month.

The worst part is, I can’t opt-out. So, for all intents and purposes, it’s spam.

Does anyone ever look at spam closely enough to see if they get value?

Nope. And it’s the same with most marketing.

If you depend on interrupting people with unsolicited garbage (recycling) on a regular basis, you can expect people to treat it for what it is: rubbish.

Flyers can work when done properly. But there are better ways to do marketing than this newspaper’s approach.

The better way to do marketing is to focus on creating enough value that people want to consume your messages.