The danger of disimprovement
The fact is, the more we say, the less our audience will hear. Every time we feel like we should add another offer, another product, another message, or another focus to our marketing, we should try to pause.
focus
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Do less, better
Seneca once wrote, in On the Shortness of Life, “certain tasks are not so much great as prolific in producing many other tasks.” The essay’s general point is that we have plenty of time in our days—in our lives—but we spend too much of it doing things that simply don’t need to be done.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Dear Charlie
The task was to sell a German-made car in America, less than 15 years after the end of World War II. Oh, and it looked and drove nothing like the most popular cars of the day. So how do you introduce a new car in a hostile market dominated by giants?
Not lazy, but afraid
Why do we put off marketing work we know we should be doing? The fact is, if we aren’t confident an action is going to create positive results, we won’t do it. We’ll procrastinate. We’ll avoid it. We’ll make excuses. It’s not because we’re lazy, it’s because we’re scared.
Focus on the most likely outcomes
It’s easy to panic and imagine the worst-case scenarios for any project we embark on. And it’s just as easy to fantasize about the very best outcomes. But it’s a little more difficult, yet profoundly more important, to analyze the most likely best and worst cases.
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