Your “why” doesn’t need to be about you

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In Simon Sinek’s excellent book “Start With Why“, he offers a simple premise:

People don’t buy what you do; they buy why you do it

That’s entirely true. However, people also may buy from you based on how you make them feel. In a TED Talk that Simon gave back in 2009, he offered the following example related to TiVo and why they ultimately failed:

Because you see, when TiVo launched their product, they told us all what they had. They said, “We have a product that pauses live TV, skips commercials, rewinds live TV and memorizes your viewing habits without you even asking.”

He thinks a slightly different approach might have made a huge difference for them. They should have said something like this:

“if you’re the kind of person who likes to have total control over every aspect of your life, boy do we have a product for you. It pauses live TV, skips commercials, memorizes your viewing habits, etc”

It flipped the script from a list of features someone might want to a connection with how people feel. It makes a huge difference! Your “why” can be about you and why you do what you do, but it can also be about how you want your customer to see the world.

This particular talk was given nearly 13 years ago, but is still worth watching today, and I encourage you to do so.

It’s based on an idea of mine

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I was recently listening to an episode of “Smart Talks”, where Malcolm Gladwell was interviewing IBM’s Rob Thomas. Rob shared a very short but noteworthy story:

There’s a rabbit and a beaver and they’re staring at the Hoover Dam. And the beaver says “I didn’t build it, but it’s based on an idea of mine”.

I’ve had a lot of seemingly good ideas over the years, but I’ve only executed some of them. The ones I didn’t pursue aren’t things I can claim.

A good example of that is a site called “Yard Sale” that never got built. The idea was simple – a buddy of mine and I wanted to start an online auction site so people could sell things to one another. It was 1994, and this hadn’t really happened yet. We created a logo and put some thoughts together — and then played basketball for most of the rest of the summer. 🙂 The next year, eBay came out instead.

Given our coding skills at the time, it very likely never would have worked out anyhow, but we failed to even give it a shot. There are good ideas and there are unique ideas, and they only partially overlap.

But even if you have a good, unique idea, it won’t do much good to watch someone else build it and then sit back and tell your friends how you had thought of the same thing. If you want any credit for your amazing idea, you need to put in the effort to help bring it to life.

Hoarding money, marketing myopia, and failure

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The term “marking myopia” is fairly new to me, though the concept is something I’ve seen many times before.

Explained by Theodore Levitt, it’s essentially when a company focuses more on short-term sales than on really solving their consumers’ needs. It can work for a while, but it’s likely to blow up eventually. The two famous examples:

Kodak

They pretended they were in the photography business, but really they were in the business of developing photos — and making huge money from the chemicals needed in that process.

They were the first to develop a digital camera, but always tried to force it back to people getting prints. A great example of this was when Kodak purchased Ofoto (a photo sharing site) in 2001. It could have been huge, but Kodak essentially just used it to try to get people to print more copies of their digital photos.

You see where Kodak is today.

Yahoo

Yahoo was similar. The banners on the Yahoo home page sold for extraordinary sums of money and made tons of profit for them. They really didn’t want companies to measure the effectiveness of those ads — they wanted customers to just feel proud to be on their home page and pay whatever it took to get there.

When Google started selling click-based ads, Yahoo held off for a long time, seemingly because being able to measure value would expose their ads as being incredibly overpriced.

Not “that” company

On the flip side, you have companies that don’t pin themselves in. Apple is a perfect example. Early on they were “Apple Computer”, but changed that name a few decades ago to just “Apple Inc”. They’re not in the business of selling you a Mac or an iPhone, but of selling you the experience of what you need.

As long as they push to do what’s best for their customers they should continue to ride this great wave they’re on, and you can do the same if you keep your focus in the right spot.

You don’t have to follow all of the rules

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I tend to be a rule-follower, for better or worse. It’s a common trait often attributed to first-born children, and it fits me pretty well.

However, in the past few years I’ve found that avoiding some rules can be very helpful.

EOS

At GreenMellen, we largely follow the EOS (“Entrepreneurial Operating System”) method of running our company. We find that about 80% of it works great for us, but we were struggling with some aspects of it — not everything seemed to work for us.

While in a strategy session with Jason Blumer a few years ago, we raised this point. His answer was remarkably simple, and pretty obvious in hindsight — “then don’t do those things”.

Ali and I were so focused on doing EOS “the right way”, that we let things get a little cloudy. Jason giving us permission to veer a bit away from the system was all we needed.

altMBA

I saw a similar thing happen when I took the altMBA. Each writing prompt had fairly specific instructions on what you were supposed to do. For the most part, people followed that path. Some didn’t. All were great.

Reading a prompt might say “do x”, but when unpacking “x” it spurs a great idea you’ve been pondering about idea “y”. So write about “y” instead! The altMBA has no grades, no passing or failing — it’s just about getting better. If you wanted to turn a prompt sideways so you could get more out of it, you were encouraged to do so.

I’ll still continue to be a rule-follower by nature, but I’m trying to keep my eyes open so I don’t get stuck on a path where a venture to the side might make more sense.

Ask more questions to avoid survivorship bias

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I find the idea of “survivorship bias” fascinating. If you’ve not heard of it before, this short video from Eddie Woo is an excellent overview of it.

I see two places where this comes up in some of the areas where I work.

Our non-clients

We frequently talk to our clients about why they chose to work with us. It could be our pricing, our process, our approach, or any number of things. That information is great to have!

However, we also lose some jobs that we bid on, and knowing why we lost those jobs is perhaps even more important. We’ve made it a practice lately to ask specific questions about why we lost a bid, in an effort to improve ourselves going forward. Some folks don’t answer (or just don’t say much), but some give pretty solid comparisons about why they chose a different firm.

It can be a little hard to hear, but the information that they give us is pure gold.

Deeper SEO

This also can apply to trying to improve your position in Google with Search Engine Optimization (SEO).

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We all have keywords that we want to go after, so we focus on those keywords, watch their rankings, and try to make them better. That’s a great thing!

However, what about the keywords that people are using that we’re not even aware of? Reporting will only show the keywords that you’re going after. There are likely hundreds of other keyword combinations that could be valuable for your business that you’re unknowingly ignoring.

Essentially, this is a form of survivorship bias since you’re not able to see the keywords that don’t ever work for you. Spending time to research and uncover those can be a huge benefit to your company.

To get started with that, Google Search Console can be useful. Among other things, it will show you keywords that you’re ranking for way down the list (that you never get clicks for), so it can be some good low-hanging fruit to go after.

Survivorship Bias can make it easy to only focus on the planes that come back, so remembering those that didn’t (and learning why they didn’t) can apply in a lot of different ways.

Explain it to me like I’m five

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There’s a funny scene in “The Office”, where the company has a budget surplus but Michael doesn’t really understand what that means. During the conversation, Michael asks Oscar to simplify things and “explain it to me like I’m five”. Here’s a clip of that:

https://vimeo.com/27060669

It’s a funny clip, but there’s a lot of truth there. Oscar is a sharp guy, but it takes someone that really knows their stuff to be able to take a complex issue like that and bring it down to a simple level.

As Albert Einstein said:

If you can’t explain it to a six-year old, you don’t understand it yourself.

Being able to explain complex topics without complex language, as well as coming up with analogies to help with it, takes some time.

It’s part of the reason I have this blog. Not quite to the “six-year old” kind of level, but it’s so that I take new ideas that I come across and try to really understand them and then polish them up before I publish. As I mentioned last year, that polish is why I prefer to blog instead of journal.

If you’re ever trying to explain something to someone and end up saying “it’s just too complicated to explain”, that’s a sign that you need to spend more time with the subject to learn how to distill it down to the essence of the problem.

Thoughts on taking the altMBA

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I recently finished taking the altMBA, described as “an intensive, 4-week online workshop designed by Seth Godin for high-performing individuals who want to level up and lead.“

Intensive is a great word to use. Throughout the four weeks, you work through 13 separate writing prompts. They ask us not to reveal the nature of the prompts, but they are around things such as goal setting, decision making, sales, and much more. They’re quite thought-provoking.

I estimate I spent about 35 hours a week working through this, so adding 140 hours of work to my month made for quite an intense experience.

Groups are gold

Throughout the process, you work with a variety of groups. At least in our case, things broke into three levels:

  1. Everyone in altMBA class 46, which was around 120 people.
  2. Everyone in my cohort, which was around 20 people.
  3. My “Learning Group” for the week, which was 3-5 people out of those 20, changing each week (with some duplicates in later weeks).
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You get to know your 20 people very well, and you also get to know many of the others when interacting in various settings.

During each week you’d go through three of the writing prompts with your team, in three phases:

  • Write the prompt. Simply reading what they want you to write about can take a few hours per prompt. I loved it! Most prompts included a few blog posts to read, some videos, and various other material, ending with “and now you should write about…”. When you finish writing, you publish your entry for the group at large.
  • Leave comments. The next day, you go through and leave comments on other posts, and people do the same for yours. “Leaving comments” is putting it lightly, though. The process of how to leave comments is something you spend many hours on, as learning to give (and receive) insightful comments is key to the process. (Note: “That was great!” is not a helpful comment.)
  • Write a revision. The following day, you go back and write a post-script on your original posts, with new insights you have based on the comments left by others.

Then you repeat — 12 more times.

To help out, each prompt comes with a significant block of time for your Learning Group on a Zoom call. These are the key. The great (but challenging) thing with altMBA is that it’s not inexpensive, and not everyone gets in. You have to work hard just to get into the program, meaning the people in your group tend to be amazing individuals. I felt out-classed the entire time, which made me work that much harder.

Set aside time

I’m sure they’re constantly revising the flow of things, and I won’t get into details for the sake of your experience, but blocking huge chunks of time on your calendar is essential. In my case, having the full support of my family and work team were required to make it happen, and they were all amazing during the process.

When I first received the course agenda, I knew to block out the time for the Zoom calls but I wasn’t sure what else. I thought it might be wise to block out 3-4 hours before each item was due to make sure I had time to work on it, which was ideal.

For me, though, the best part was blocking out my entire day on Monday. It kind of happened on accident the first week, but I made it happen on purpose for each of the following weeks.

Each Monday, at least in this season of altMBA, is when you receive your three prompts for the week. Having the day available to dive deep into them, watch all of the videos, read the posts, take notes, etc, was incredible. I used Roam Research to help with my note-taking, which worked out very well. When each prompt then came up for our group during the week, I could skim back over things and dive in.

Is the altMBA for me?

I really can’t begin to answer that for you, but reach out if you have questions and I’ll try to steer you in the right direction. Everyone I met through altMBA came into the program with a different goal, but most were people that wanted to become better thinkers and leaders.

The time spent just thinking and talking and dissecting ideas with amazing people made everything worthwhile. I came out of the experience with more clarity of thought and a lot of business tips and ideas, but also with much greater empathy for those around me.

If I could go back in time and take it again, I 100% would. I encourage you to check it out for yourself at altMBA.com.

“Good job” isn’t all that good

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I’m trying to work on how I give thanks to those around me. I feel like I’m pretty good about giving frequent thanks when it’s appropriate, but I’ve realized (in part from books like Thanks for the Feedback, and in part from other conversations) that my “thanks” isn’t all that good.

It’s not that giving a sincere “thank you” is a problem, but just that appreciation could be much more effective with just a bit of extra work.

“Thank you for making my favorite dinner”.

“Great job with the charts you pulled together for that report.”

“Excellent work staying focused with your delivery in that presentation.”

Not only will your message be appreciated at a higher level, the person you give it to will have more actual feedback to work with for next time, making things even better for everyone involved.

Why our competitors are better than us

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I recently went through an exercise to determine, truthfully, why someone might pick a competing digital marketing firm instead of ours. It was an eye-opening experience.

There are a few easy cases I can think through:

The list could go on, but you get the idea. When potential clients have specific needs that we’re not the right fit for, I’m happy to refer them to a company that can serve them better.

But what happens when I think we’re the right fit, and they still go elsewhere? Are there good reasons for that?

Good, Fast, Cheap

There’s an adage with development projects that says “Good, Fast, or Cheap: Pick Two“. For example, if you want something done fast and cheap, it won’t be good.

At GreenMellen, it’s more of “Good, Fast, or Cheap: Pick One“. We do great work, but it’s not cheap or fast, and that can be a problem. We have an excellent process that we’ve refined over the past 12 years, and it’s a wonderful way to build a website. However, it takes time to do it properly, which means it won’t be fast or cheap. We’re ok with that, and we recognize that it’s not right for everyone.

  • If you need a new website for $1,000, we’re not a good fit. $1,000 might be a completely appropriate budget for what you’re wanting to do, but it doesn’t fit with our process.
  • If you need a new website in three weeks, we’re not a good fit. You may have a great reason to need it so quickly, but we can’t deliver the quality of work that we strive for in that period of time.
  • If you need help with updates to your Squarespace site, we’re not a good fit (we only use WordPress). Squarespace can be a great solution in some cases, but it’s just not something are experts in.

We love our competitors

The great thing with digital marketing is that the need far surpasses the supply. I often joke that our Meetup is full of our competition, but it’s really not much of a joke — that’s actually who attends, and I love it! We learn from each other, we pass work around to each other, and it’s a great group.

Some adjustments to be made

While this thought process indeed has me considering a few tweaks, I feel pretty good about how we’ve positioned ourselves. There are great reasons why someone would want to use us, and there are great reasons why someone might be better off going elsewhere.

Take some time to really think through the lens of your competitor, or objectively through the lens of a potential client, and think why they might be a better solution than you. It’s a challenging thing to do, but can give you some great insights on improving your own company.

A quick agenda beats no agenda

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It’s been true for decades, and with everyone forced to switch to Zoom for the past year it hasn’t changed much — meetings without a clear agenda are often a complete waste of time.

While we have solid agendas for many of our meetings, there are times when we don’t have a chance to put together a solid plan before we start. A quick solution for that can be the “POP Model”. Just agree on three things before you start:

Purpose

Why are you having this meeting? If you can’t come up with a good answer to this, you should probably just log out of Zoom and go on with your day.

Outcome

What do you want to accomplish with this meeting? You know why you’re having the meeting, but what do you hope to walk away with? It could be a decision on a color for a logo, or agreement on the name of a product, but there should be some clear outcome that you’re aiming for.

Process

How will you make that outcome happen? This generally means assigning specific tasks at the end of the meeting so that everyone knows what needs to happen next.

If you can create a clear, detailed agenda before your meeting, that’s often preferred. If not, a quick “POP” might be a good way to help people stay on track.