What’s your bicycle of the mind?
Marketing cannot save a company, nor can it make one.
Marketing cannot save a company, nor can it make one.
Darwin said that he “followed a golden rule, namely, that whenever a published fact, a new observation or thought came across me, which was opposed to my general results, to make a memorandum of it without fail and at once.”
In 1916, the Saturday Evening Post published “Obvious Adams: The Story of a Successful Business Man” by Robert Updegraff. In the story, the titular Adams becomes a sought-after consultant to business leaders who know they've been blinded by their own narrow perspective.
When we have a new idea, a new business concept, or a new product or service, we’re motivated to move fast. We see everyone else out in the market, seemingly crushing it, and we strive to get in on the action. We think that speed is the key to success. When the opposite is true.
The business world often tells us to be aggressive. We’re told to project strength and hide weakness. But if there’s one thing that’s clear from my study of high-stakes decision making, strategy, and conflict it’s this: aggression is weakness, and calmness is strength.
A recent spam message offered me the opportunity to get “10–15 appointments every week” for my business, as if more meetings is the secret to success. These cold emails, messages, or calls are unwelcome because they’re not interested in me.
Knowing ourselves—what we like, what we’re best at, what we value above everything else—is what makes us different.
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.