Reading Time: 2 min I talked a few months ago about how we don’t all really have the same amount of time in the day, and I thought I’d share one of my favorite tips (albeit one I’ve not used lately due to COVID) — take an Uber or Lyft to your next meeting. When I’m out and about […]
Collaboration beats competition
Reading Time: < 1 min I’ve talked before about how I love to collaborate with our business “rivals”. There’s a place for competition at times, but collaboration almost always has a better outcome. I saw a recent post on Reddit that talked about that as it relates to driving, and I thought it made a lot of sense. If you […]
What we want to see versus what we expect to see
Reading Time: < 1 min Uncovering the truth can be a tricky thing to do. Not only do you have to figure out who to trust and which sources to believe, but our own brains can often conspire against us. According to Adam Grant in his book “Think Again“, we have two biases that tend to drive poor judgement: Confirmation […]
What positive accidents have you seen?
Reading Time: < 1 min It’s human nature to focus on things that go poorly. If there are two lines at the grocery store, of course you picked the slow one, as always. It’s not always like that, it’s just that you don’t really remember the times when your line moved quickly. On Thanksgiving day, I had to drive roughly […]
Marketing automation isn’t always the answer
Reading Time: < 1 min Marketing automation can be a great thing. If a user is interested in your service or product, creating a series of messages to go out to them can be a very beneficial for both parties. Too often, though, companies think that marketing automation is something magical that can solve all of their problems, and that’s […]
Website themes are not content
Reading Time: < 1 min When building websites, people are often concerned about not duplicating content across pages or sites. While there is no specific penalty for that, if Google thinks your website has the same content as another site, one of you won’t have a chance in the rankings. So what does that mean for website themes and templates? […]
Classic tips to avoid the echo chamber
Reading Time: 3 min In this world where algorithms are increasingly dictating what content we see every day, I’ve been working hard to avoid getting trapped in an echo chamber (as I’ve mentioned before). This recently came up again when Darren Rowse pointed to a 15-year-old post from Chris Pirillo (summarized by Angelo Racoma) that had some amazingly timeless […]
Which is the right tool?
Reading Time: < 1 min I talk a good bit about various digital tools on here, like my recent post about Pipedrive. At times I probably play with tools more than I should (testing tools instead of doing work), but in a lot of cases it can really pay off. For example, I posted 12 years ago about Gmail’s “Send […]
Why do you want more money?
Reading Time: 2 min If given the choice, most people would say that they’d like to have more money. But why do they want that? Really why? In thinking about this, it reminds me of Theodore Levitt’s thought that “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill bit. They want a quarter-inch hole.“ Really, they don’t want a quarter-inch […]
20,000 people say you’ll be happier if you take more chances
Reading Time: < 1 min Last year, Steven Levitt (best known for his book Freakonomics) conducted an interesting test. He set up a website for people that were considering making a major change in their life, such as quitting a job or ending a relationship, and the website flipped a coin for them — heads they make the change, tails […]