If you ask anyone how to create a successful business, there’s a good chance they’ll say: “Talk to customers.” And, they’re right. But, if you don’t know what your best customers actually value most about you, you’re likely to optimize for the wrong things.
Today’s newsletter is, hopefully, applicable to everyone, but it’s specifically focused on small business owners and consultants. No one else—no agency, partner, or consultant—can care more about your dream, your business, or your marketing than you do.
Marketing never fails. It just stops. It stops because we ran out of money, enthusiasm, or patience.
Marketing efforts don’t fail. They stop. Like New Year’s Resolutions, our marketing efforts simply peter out and fade away over time.
Your marketing isn’t going to work. At least, not at first. It’s something I call “The Principle of Expected Failure”.
I used to think the secret to getting what I wanted was to have an ambitious goal, to state it publicly, and to exert as much effort as I could in that direction, as fast as I could. But I was wrong. That doesn’t actually work.
At the age of 49, only a few years before being elevated to the presidency, Abraham Lincoln considered himself a flat failure. And on that evening in 1858, after watching the election results come in at the telegraph office, he walked home defeated.
The future is a mystery to us all. And that means the greatest risk is in assuming it isn’t. In assuming our plans are perfect and won’t need adjustment.
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong had a decision to make. The Lunar Module’s onboard computer was guiding the craft toward a crater’s edge, and a field of boulders “the size of Volkswagens,” according to biographer James R. Hansen.
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.
Frankly, entrepreneurs and creative types tend to bully themselves. Not because they don’t know what to do, but because they feel like they know exactly what they should be doing, but aren’t. Or can’t.
The most important concept in strategy is commitment. Not a commitment to do the same thing forever. Not a stubborn resistance to change. But a commitment to truly give a direction your all.
