Genius is the art of taking pains
Knowing what to say in our marketing is one of the most frustrating challenges business owners and marketers like you and I face every day.
Wishes feel good and rarely come true
Entrepreneurs are full of ideas. It’s what inspired us to start our business, create our products or services, and sell them to the world in the first place. But, over time, we can start to think that the valuable part is the idea, and not the action that follows.
Anything is better than indecision
“With a ton of charts and a wondrous plan, he comes, behold, the Research Man. Give him four and twenty scholars, give him twenty thousand dollars, and in two months he’ll bring to view, the facts that you already knew.”
A torrent of change
On May 4, 1844, over an experimental line extending the almost 40 miles from D.C. to Baltimore, Samuel Morse sent four words. A similar message sent just days before would have taken hours to arrive. Now, it travelled the distance in an instant.
You can positively unenjoy it
“You can make people feel guilty enough to do something,” advertising legend Howard Gossage once wrote, “but you can’t make them enjoy it. As a matter of fact, you can make them positively unenjoy it.” Many business owners positively unenjoy doing their own marketing.
Not an evil at all
"There’s only one thing you can count on...On any given moment in any given day, somebody somewhere is screwing up."
The irresistible pressure to expand
There’s a dangerous pressure in business. The pressure to have more and more products, so we can capture more of the market. To further and further expand our target market, so we can appeal to everyone. Or to provide more and more services, so we can do more work with our current customers.
The most important question in strategy
Building a sustainably profitable business is a bit easier, and a lot more likely, when you couple that drive with a strong strategy.
A perfect sensibility of danger
Successful strategy requires being different. When you focus on what everyone else is doing, when you try to fit too well into your industry, you become more and more like everyone else—with less and less for a customer to base a choice on other than price.
The only way under high heaven
Unless we have an external accountability, if there’s something we should do but don’t want to do, chances are we won’t do it. At least not for long.
If you can’t see the goal, set a pace
With the New Year now upon us and ambitious goals set, or resolutions made, we’re entering a dangerous period of disillusionment. The first shock may come when we realize we don’t suddenly have more energy or motivation this year than we did last year.
Flank the devil
It can be tempting to respond directly when you feel attacked. Perhaps by a competitor trying to “steal” your customers by drastically undercutting your prices. But to respond in kind is to rush headfirst into battle against someone who wants you to fight on their terms.