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Rod Aparicio

Get one tip, question, or belief-challenge that just might change the way you market, to help your customers buy. A *daily* email for b2b founders on improving your business —without the bullshit.

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A bulletproof way to mark you as spam

I received this email as a "follow up". Here's the whole of it (translated, the original is in German) which is a 100% sure way of how to get marked as spam. Hello Rod, I hope you are doing well. With this message, I would like to kindly remind you of my recently sent email regarding our group of companies. We are very interested to know whether there is any general interest in further exchange or a potential collaboration. Please understand that, in the absence of a response, our system may...

What's the gap you're helping your customers close? Because when you know what's that gap, you can put a number on it. And give them the warranty that you'll help them close it. By little. By much. Or completely. That gap between were they wanna be and where they are. And closing it.

When —not IF— you have a shit customer, employee, colleague, vendor, you know you have to let them go. As hard as it would hit your revenue or your profit. You have to let them go. If you're radical and make that happen overnight, it'll hit. Hard. If you're less radical and make it over a period, it'll still hit. Hard. They will kill your business chunk by chunk. Your morale. Your self-esteem. Your culture. Your value. You can do that. Or see your business fade away without noticing. Till it...

Fungible. Exchangeable. That's money. And that's why you don't have to give away your power. Sure, customers have money. And without money you can't make your business thrive. Yet, one thing you can do for sure is find money from better fits. People that fit to you. To your standards. After all, money is fungible.

Design for average. Produce for average. Make for average. If you want to stay blend in. To stand out you have to keep doing what you did at the beginning: breaking from what you saw was the same. What was average.

It's something that happens quite often: Sellers and buyers speaking different languages, yet using the same words. They use the same words and yet the understandings are different. Until you find that common language, you won't be able to see the same thing. The same return. The same outcome.

What's your level of self-awareness? As in when you're in a conversation and are able to listen and view yourself and what's happening as if you were an spectator? When you're able to do so (and I know I'm not one to do fully, or even at a 30%), you can guide the conversation at a higher level. You can see how you're about to react. Or how you did react, and correct on the spot. And if you can't correct right there, right then, you can take a note of what happened and do better next time. The...

Delulu. Adjective. Internet slang for "delusional", characterized by or holding false beliefs or judgements about external reality that are held despite incontrovertible evidence to the contrary, typically as a symptom of a mental condition. Oxford Languages TL;DR. The perception of reality vs the actual reality are very different. There's a time where delusion is disguised as optimism. A time where the expectations of what's supposed to happen in a business and the reality of what's actually...

When talking with people and trying to figure out if they're a fit for you, stop thinking of yourself. Assess their situation Take notes Help Connect And don't expect something in return. That'll build up your reputation. It's the long game, dear reader.

That's what most quotes and proposals look like. A list of items the prospect can choose from and decide what they buy. It doesn't matter if it's actually important, it's what they "feel" it'll be important for them... in their self-diagnose. A sense of alignment and direction BEFORE the execution? Nah. We need it to happen today. Let's skip that. This looks too expensive from that proposal. Let's take it off. This is too many things —and it's not everything that I asked for. Let's pressure...