Getting too close to what the rules/views/templates/best-practices are can make you miss important details. Paper can hold anything. Reality doesn’t.
1 day ago • 1 min read
In a negotiation, the first thing you need to be comfortable with is zero. As in No Money, can't pay, won't pay, don't see the point on it. Having that figure clear in your head is the thing that will let you move forward. Right now, you have zero. If the deal doesn't happen, you'll still have zero. You didn't lose something that you didn't have in the first place. Zero means you're also free. You can say no when it's not a fit, when it doesn't make sense to you, or when you feel like it....
2 days ago • 1 min read
Anyone with money. Anyone who is willing to pay. Anyone that needs our thing. How do you reach to this specific anyone? If you can’t come up with a very clear specific description of who this “anyone” is, it’ll be hard for them to know you’re talking about them. For them to know of you. For them to recommend you to more like them. At the end of the day, anyone is no-one.
3 days ago • 1 min read
In diving, when you’re overwhelmed, you stop everything. Then, you breath. Assess. Decide. Same is in business. While everything seems urgent, you can only do so much. So stop, breath, assess, decide. And to get to that decision, you’ve already thought of a few ways to go about it.
4 days ago • 1 min read
Just as a band starts playing in a house, to small gigs, to more small gigs... all the way to stadiums with thousands of people. It's the same with decisions. The more controlled, low-impact, and low-risk decisions you make, the easier it is to see the patterns to move upwards. It's simpler to stir the wheel and correct direction with small decisions, than to shift everything from one decision. Quantity over quality first, quality over quantity then.
5 days ago • 1 min read
The way to choose better is by choosing more often. The way you decide better is by deciding more often. Practice. Quantity beats quality. It lets you make decisions that train your judgment. You won’t ever have all good decisions. Yet making a decision (even a shit one) can let you stir the boat and correct direction. Waiting for it to disappear won’t fix it.
6 days ago • 1 min read
Not only products. Also ideas. It's working around your ideas and offerings to present them in a different way. What's the impact it can have? It can lead to buy-in from decision-makers. It can shift how your brand is perceived. It can bring in marginal revenue. It can also bring new revenue in orders of magnitude (selling the same thing for a way higher new price). However, it's not about charging more only for the sake of charging more. It's about bringing (and articulating) more of what...
7 days ago • 1 min read
Reach is not what will deliver you change. Just because you’re in contact with more people, it doesn't mean your results will shift and/or improve. Hope is not a tactic. You have to be selective and make the hard choices, so that you can focus. Once focused, getting in front of the right people gets simpler (and easier). Instead of the big fish in the big pond, you get to be the big fish in the small pond.
8 days ago • 1 min read
Set your costs, then your price. Build a brand, then your customers. Set the metric, then the result. We have it backwards. Pricing: find the value, then set a price, then figure out what makes sense for you to charge for that price. Brand: design your customers, they’ll build your brand. And you’ll find the red thread on all of those brands, to make a cohesive one. Metrics: figure out what you want as the outcome. Then think of the result, then the measurement. The metric is the measurement...
9 days ago • 1 min read