Is there a person in your marketing?
Abraham Lincoln told the story of an “automaton chess player,” a complex machine that, all the way back in the early 1800s, could beat human players at the game.
decision
59 posts
The important thing is to aim
An old friend of John D. Rockefeller once recalled that—despite being one of the wealthiest people to ever live—Rockefeller would insist that they switch to old golf balls when playing around water hazards.
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.”
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.
Every decision is a marketing decision
My favorite cognitive bias is called “déformation professionelle.” Basically, we see the world through our jobs. It’s a bias I certainly have. I see everything through a marketing strategy lens. Often, that just makes me a boring conversation partner. But, sometimes, it actually helps.
Everything is a tradeoff
Every great decision you make comes with downsides. There is never a perfect answer.
There’s no such thing as a riskless strategy
If you want things to change, you have to try to change things, and that entails assuming the risk that things might not go the way you want. Every plan is a guess about the future, and sometimes our guesses are wrong.
You’ve already hit the iceberg
A common mistake when things go wrong is to spend time thinking about how they could have gone. Or how we’d hoped things would turn out.
If this then that, and if that, then what?
Everyone who knows me well knows there’s one rule I live by. They know it because I’m always saying it. So often it’s probably their least favorite phrase. But I’ll keep saying it: If this then that, and if that, then what?
Not deciding is still deciding
“The two biggest dangers in decision making are not making enough decisions and then not correcting the bad ones.”— David C. Baker
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