greenmellen - MickMel

Bugging 24,990 people to make 10 sales

May 30, 2024 by greenmellen 2 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I’ve shared my disdain for cold email many times on here, and a recent video that I watched help to prove my point. Similar to how I follow both sides of political contests online, I also keep an eye on ~~cold emailers~~ spammers to see what their latest techniques are.

I was watching a video a few days ago where the creator was sharing some “great tips to create hundreds of fake email accounts to send out cold email“, and he included a spreadsheet on how many accounts you’d need to create. Here’s a snippet from the spreadsheet he shared.

The red arrows are mine. By his estimation, you’ll need to send out 25,000 spam emails every month in order to gain 10 new clients. To keep the business running for a year, 300,000 people would have to deal with their spam.

This shows the problem perfectly. He had literally nothing to say about those 25,000 people, other than how best to try to cheat the system and get emails into their inboxes. To him, that’s just the cost of doing business, but he’s putting the cost on the wrong people.

There is certainly a “cost of doing business” for everyone, but I wouldn’t dream of putting that burden on unsuspecting people that didn’t ask to be part of my sales process.

Thanks to new tools coming out and AI to help, spamming is going to continue to get easier but that never makes it acceptable.

Goals or not?

May 29, 2024 by greenmellen 4 Comments

Reading Time: 2 minutes

I recently read Jim Rohn’s classic book “7 Strategies for Wealth and Happiness“. As I’ve done with a few books lately, I had a brief discussion about it with GPT-4o to see if there were insights that I missed.

I asked for the main takeaway from the book and got this response:

One of the biggest takeaways from Jim Rohn’s “The Seven Strategies for Wealth and Happiness” is the importance of setting clear, achievable goals. Rohn emphasizes that having a vision and plan for your life is crucial for both personal and financial success. Did any specific strategy resonate with you the most?

It’s a solid answer and after a bit of back and forth I pressed into the goal setting a bit more and contrasted it a bit with the lessons from Emmanual Acho about not setting goals. Here was that quick conversation:

Me:
Well, in Emmanuel Acho’s book, Uncomfortable Conversations with a Black Man, he is against goal setting, which contradicts this book. How do you see the two of those?

GPT-4o:
That’s an interesting contrast. Emmanuel Acho argues against traditional goal-setting because it can lead to disappointment and a narrow focus, potentially missing out on unexpected opportunities. Instead, he promotes focusing on values and continuous improvement.

Jim Rohn, on the other hand, sees goal-setting as a way to create a clear path and motivation. Both perspectives highlight the importance of direction but approach it differently. It’s about finding a balance between having a structured plan and remaining open to life’s unexpected opportunities. How do you feel about these differing views?

Me:
I tend to side with Emmanuel’s views, but Rohn’s views are interesting as well.

GPT-4o:
That makes sense. Embracing Acho’s perspective allows for more flexibility and adaptability, which can be less stressful and more aligned with personal growth. At the same time, Rohn’s structured approach can provide clear direction and motivation. You can take elements from both: have overarching values and principles to guide you, while setting flexible, adaptable goals that can evolve over time. Does that sound like a good blend to you?

The quality of the response from GPT-4o was amazing, and makes perfect sense for a way to help blend those two approaches to goal setting.

This also leads to a meta question for me. I’ve long said that I won’t use AI to write content on here, as that’s not the goal for it, and I have no intention of going away from that — but would this be considered AI-generated content for the blog? It essentially is, but I think it still meets my criteria. It’s reading that I’m doing, digging into the text, asking questions, and then laying out the answers. While I’m certainly using AI in this case to help generate the content, it seems quite different from an “AI-generated post”.

All of that said, where do you stand on goal-setting? Do you side more with Jim or Emmanuel?

Creativity isn’t about writing or drawing

May 28, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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I consider myself to be rather creative when it comes to solving problems, but not at all creative when it comes to art. So does that make me “creative” or not?

In a fantastic podcast episode of The Futur, Blair Enns referenced Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi with a simple quote that aims to add some clarity to the thought. He said:

“Creativity is not the ability to write or draw, that’s Personal Creativity. It’s the ability to bring perspective to problems that others are unable to see.”

So based on that, it seems that I am creative. My ability to “bring perspective to problems that others are unable to see” needs to continue to improve, but that’s where I see myself when it comes to creativity.

Of course, many people have both kinds. Ali, for example, has both excellent personal creativity as well as strategic creativity. It’s great to find people that can cover both sides!

Where do you see yourself between those two terms? One over the other, a little of both, or neither for now?

Make mistakes once

May 27, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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Making mistakes can be a fantastic way to learn, even if you sometimes make them intentionally. Given that they’re a way to learn, though, repeatedly making the same one isn’t going to be very effective.

In a conversation last year with Donald Miller, Seth Godin said something to the effect of:

“Encourage people to make mistakes, but also make sure you learn from them. Make mistakes once, but don’t make them twice.”

Giving people the freedom to make mistakes is an awesome thing, and I encourage it. Particularly if the decision to be made is a two-way door, the freedom to try things and potentially make mistakes is worthwhile.

Just don’t make them twice.

The Sunday Summary: GPT-4o, viral posts, customer data, and silence

May 26, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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In an effort to help me keep up with everything I post each week, here is my latest “Sunday Summary” of my posts from the week.

Mon, May 20: GPT-4o is astounding
AI continues to accelerate, with the new GPT-4o looking absolutely amazing.

Tue, May 21: Why am I talking?
Asking that simple question can do a lot.

Wed, May 22: Viral posts versus 1-on-1
Having a viral post can be fun, but 1-on-1 connections ultimately mean a lot more.

Thu, May 23: Treat customer data with respect
“Happily, the very fact of its difficulty makes treating customers’ data with respect a powerful demonstration of your company’s commitment to them.“

Fri, May 24: All of your old Google Analytics data will vanish on July 1
You don’t have much time to save it before it’s gone forever.

Sat, May 25: The silence is the question
Gaps in conversation can feel uncomfortable, but often lead to great outcomes.

I hope you found some value in this. If you ever have questions, ideas, or disagreements regarding anything I write, please don’t hesitate to reach out.

The silence is the question

May 25, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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A trait of mine that I continue to work on is to let conversations breathe. I tend to jump in quickly to keep things moving along, to the extent of sometimes trying to finish someone else’s sentence. It’s not good, but it’s getting better.

Better still, though, is allowing some silence to exist in a conversation. Particularly when it’s a tough subject, silence can be a great way to punctuate a question. In a recent episode of “The Long and the Short Of It” podcast, host Peter Shepherd simply said the title of this post: “The silence is the question“.

This can work very well for tricky conversations, as it doesn’t let the other person off the hook as easily. People often feel the need to fill the silence with words (like I often do), so being the one to hold back will encourage the other person to speak and it can often move things along at a better level.

Getting comfortable with silence is something I’ll keep working on, as it can itself be a very good question to leave out there.

All of your old Google Analytics data will vanish on July 1

May 24, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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In the last move of Google’s weird switch from “Universal Analytics” (“UA”, the Google Analytics that everyone has used for years) to “Google Analytics 4” will happen in just a few weeks. For those not familiar with this, Google Analytics is software used to track information about your website visitors, and Google made a massive change to this software a few years ago.

While the old Analytics stopped tracking traffic a year ago, you’ve still been able to access that old data for historical purposes. Starting the week of July 1, all of that data will be deleted.

On one hand, this isn’t a huge deal. The data is all at least a year old, and most of it is much older. On the other hand, keeping historical data can be very important for long-term trends, so losing access to that is troublesome.

Sometime between now and July 1, you’d be wise to export that old data to have on hand just in case. For GreenMellen clients, we’ve already backed up all of that old data so we’re able to use it as needed going forward. If you’re a client of ours, this is part of our normal maintenance plan and nothing special needs to happen on your end — it’s already done.

If you need help getting it backed up, feel free to reach out and we can chat. Either way, be sure you have it saved before July or it’ll be gone with no way to get it back!

Treat customer data with respect

May 23, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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One of the biggest assets that many companies have is data on their customers. By collecting, storing, and using piles of data on their customers, they can often turn that into additional profit.

In fact, at this point, it’s almost easier to collect too much data and so those companies that work hard to limit it deserve some respect. In her book “Data Reimagined“, author Jodi Daniels simply said this:

“Happily, the very fact of its difficulty makes treating customers’ data with respect a powerful demonstration of your company’s commitment to them.“

There are a lot of things that companies can do to help their customers, often in ways that reduce their revenue. For example, we don’t host websites for our clients. We’d love to, as it’s be another small revenue stream, but it’s not in their best interest for us to do that.

As with Jodi’s example above, it makes things a little more difficult for us to not host their site directly, but that also helps to showcase our commitment to their success. Data is the same way; you can choose to vacuum up every bit of data you can, but taking time to treat data respectfully is better in the long run and I greatly appreciate companies that take the effort to treat my data with care.

Why am I talking?

May 21, 2024 by greenmellen Leave a Comment

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One of the best things I’ve done over the past few years (though it’s still a work in progress) is to be more quiet during meetings. If I want to open my mouth, I always try to have the thought of “why am I talking?” before I start.

A while back, Pete and Jen talked about this in an episode of their podcast with this statement as the acronym W.A.I.T. (“Why Am I Talking?”). It was a great episode and I encourage you to give it a listen.

More recently, this came to mind while reading Charles Duhigg’s book “Supercommunicators“, where he said:

“The most effective communicators pause before they speak and ask themselves: Why am I opening my mouth? Unless we know what kind of discussion we’re hoping for—and what type of discussion our companions want—we’re at a disadvantage.”

Being careful with your words is an excellent thing, but it also gives space for others to share their thoughts instead. The trap that I can fall into, though, is to be too focused on whether I should speak up or not and then I’m not as focused as I should be on the person who is currently speaking.

It’s a fine line, and it’s one that I’m continuing to dance upon, but hopefully I’ll continue to get a little better every day.