Author: Karthik Suresh

Thursday, 8.49pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The only way to influence people is to talk in terms of what the other person wants. – Dale Carnegie

I have a press release to write soon.

How would you go about writing one of these?

Let’s say you have a consulting business and you get an opportunity to submit a short piece to a local newspaper.

What should you do?

As always, there is much advice on the Internet and some of it is actually useful.

But to start with I’d suggest just putting down the first 300 words that come to mind.

That’s because a blank screen or piece of paper can be the most intimidating thing around.

Before you can get it perfect you have to get started.

Once you’ve done that what are the most likely mistakes you’ve made?

If you’re like me, your first draft is all me. me. me.

It’s about you and your product and how fabulous you are and how your journey is so interesting and different. And here’s a really special thing that happened to make you who you are now.

The first thing to remove, then, is the hyperbole.

Phrases like “this fantastic product” or “this amazing experience” fail the smell test. They smell like a sales pitch and make people turn away as quickly as possible.

Then the advice usually starts to address how you can benefit your reader and talk about the things they care about.

But I’m not sure that’s the place to go next.

And when I thought about this, the whole camel and the eye of a needle metaphor came to mind.

I think what you want to do is think hard about your needle.

A lot of people read the local paper: butchers, bakers and candlestick makers; homeowners, homewreckers and hopeful romantics.

But only a few people are right for you and what you’re offering to do for them.

That’s the real purpose of each line in your copy – to filter the people who don’t care about your stuff phrase by phrase.

Unsurprisingly, Amazon have a process for doing this sort of stuff.

A good press release, they write, is clear and to the point and gives you the product’s features and benefits. It’s what the world sees about the product.

So, lets say you have a consulting firm, you might write that you do lots of clever techy stuff.

But who is the kind of person that is likely to buy from you?

Is it a harassed small business owner, a manager in a large firm or another consultant that wants to be more efficient in how they deliver their services?

The headline you use will decide whether the right person reads your copy because they are planning to buy or whether someone skims it because it happens to be in front of them.

I think I’d probably go with the advice of someone like the late Gary Halbert and write down 20 or so headlines.

The headline, after all, is a one sentence pitch that should hold the essence of your message.

With this process so far, you’ve got a first draft, preferably one you’d be ashamed to show anybody, and a bunch of headlines.

Then it’s time for more attempts at writing copy.

Writing in chunks helps.

The perfect message is never going to be written in one sitting – tapping directly into divine inspiration.

Instead, it’s a process of writing and rewriting.

And assembling.

I read somewhere about writing being like construction, like assembly, and that makes a lot of sense.

We need to be able to add and rearrange and delete and move things around because that’s how we get our thoughts in order.

We may have a number of ideas and scramble to get them all down.

But then we need to look at each idea, compare it with the next one and ask which comes first.

Should you introduce your company first or write about what you do or muse about the problems you know your prospects face?

There is no right answer, but the process of writing and moving and thinking will get you closer to something you are happy to send off.

I think when it comes down to it getting people to pay attention to your message is less about the message itself and more about how hard you try and make it easy for your reader to get.

And that takes work. Hard work.

As William Zinsser, who wrote the classic book On Writing Well says A clear sentence is no accident.

And it should be hard work for you – because the harder you work the less you reader has to – and that’s going to help them like you.

Maybe they’ll then even like you enough to consider buying from you.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 6.11am

Sheffield, U.K.

Do what you do so well that they will want to see it again and bring their friends. – Walt Disney

It takes time to see things clearly.

I don’t know about you but when you hear someone explain a concept it’s all words and ideas and concepts.

You don’t get it, really get it, viscerally and in your being, until you try doing what those words say and fail a few times.

I suppose that is the case with any profession but it’s even more true with marketing.

Because marketing is the art of having a conversation with someone and, as we all know, talking to someone you don’t know is not the easiest thing in the world.

It all depends on context.

A direct approach has the highest chance of failure.

As the famous McGraw Hill ad of the grumpy man in a chair shows beautifully.

What works better is being in the same place at the same time, serendipitously.

But serendipity is fickle and you may have to spend time trying to structure opportunities to meet instead.

But there’s something better that you should try and get working as a process in your business.

For a while now, I’ve been looking at the stuff that Jay Abraham puts out.

Abraham, one of the doyens of direct marketing, rubs shoulders with people like Tony Robbins and has some useful things to say.

He’s big on referral marketing – getting business through other people who know people.

And you see this being used by many of the people that are doing well in the digital economy today.

Take Tim Ferris, for example, the host of one of the most popular business podcasts on the Internet today.

His podcast starts with around six minutes of advertising built entirely around referring his audience to products and services he trusts and uses.

Abraham has a five step approach that you could use when approaching people who are, like Ferris, influencers that know your prospects.

The influencers you want to talk to may be existing customers, associates, or even competitors.

The point is that they have access to the kind of prospects who can benefit from what you have to offer.

The benefits need to be real and clear and tangible.

There is a mindset shift that Abraham needs from you – one where you go from being in love with your product to being in love with your customer.

Sounds cheesy.

But I suppose the point is that you need to look at things from the point of view of that customer and what they need.

So then you need to construct a risk-free offer. One that has no strings or obligations attached. A safety net that will make sure that new customer is not going to have a bad experience.

But then, coming back to the influencer, you really want to create an incentive that is customised for them.

So they can tell their contacts and audience that they’ve got a special deal or offer just for them.

The whole point of having a referral system in place is that you’re trying to make it easier for people to cross the chasm that stands in the way of them becoming your customer.

Everything you do in marketing is trying to bridge that chasm.

A referral, on the other hand, makes the gap smaller and easier for a prospect to step across.

So, if you don’t already have a working referral system in place make that one of your aims for the year ahead.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 6.02am

Sheffield, U.K.

Good government is no substitute for self-government. – Mahatma Gandhi

It’s the time of year for planning and deciding what you’re going to do with life and work next year.

What should you do if you want to change things? Change something or everything about your way of life?

Well, if we start with what most people would like to have, it’s work with purpose, autonomy when it comes to how they work and mastery of what they do, a framework described by Daniel Pink.

Peter Drucker, the management thinker, wrote about self-governance in organisations.

He imagined a world where each worker takes on the job of management – takes on managerial responsibility.

And, in doing so, you take responsibility for what you and your colleagues do, for what you contribute to the “performance and results” of the organisation and for the “social tasks of the work community”.

Drucker points out that the world of work as it is now, with managers and workers is relatively recent.

And, we’re moving to a situation where freelancing and gig working is more common.

So, what can you do to position yourself for these changing times?

The starting point is to write something down.

What you are trying to do in most cases is figure out an approach that is going to work for you and someone else.

It’s not quite a negotiation because it’s quite possible that neither of you know what the end result is.

It’s more about alignment.

Reid Hoffman, the founder of LinkedIn, wrote in his book The Alliance about the difficulties organisations have in recruiting and keeping talent.

He says that the old work model is broken. There is no more lifetime employment, no more seeing employees as family.

You also can’t run a business where everyone is free to do whatever they want.

The solution, according to Hoffman, is to forge alliances between employers and employees.

An alliance is an understanding that the two of you are coming together for a specific purpose – to achieve something together.

Morningstar, a tomato products company, has no hierarchy or job titles. Each person agrees how they will contribute with the others that they need to work with.

The thing that is common in both Hoffman’s and Morningstar’s situations is a piece of writing that sets out how things will work.

Hoffman calls this a Statement of Alliance while Morningstar calls it a Colleague Letter of Understanding.

So, how can you go about thinking through one of these?

The place to start is with what the leaders of the organisation want to achieve.

Maybe they’re focused on growth, perhaps on culture, perhaps on both.

But they’re only going to sign up to things that they can see will add value. And value usually means something that adds to profits this year. Maybe next year, if they can see it makes sense.

The only things you should put in front of them, then, are the things you can do to help them with those jobs.

Then, it’s time for the plan.

Which pretty much comes down to some variant of objectives, activities and deliverables with a little bit of honesty and plain talking built in.

Maybe that structure is worth exploring another day.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Sunday, 8.48pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Content builds relationships. Relationships are built on trust. Trust drives revenue. — Andrew Davis

There’s been something missing from the last few books I’ve been reading and trying to use in day to day situations.

It started with an increasing tension between strategy and tactics.

Strategy is a having an idea of where you want to end up.

Tactics are about having approaches that will get you there.

So far, so good.

The problem is that it isn’t clear what comes first.

For example, do strategic studies describe what you should do in the future or do they describe what has happened in the past.

And do you hear of tactics that were successful because the people and companies that used them prospered – but don’t know about the people who used the same tactics and failed?

From one point of view strategy and tactics are stories – stories that help us think about the situations we are in and perhaps help us come up with ideas and approaches we can test.

Is there anything a little more durable? Something that we can use in a more robust way?

How about economics?

The problem with economics the way it is taught in schools is that it has lots of maths and complicated words.

When it comes down to it, however, the best definition I read was by Steven Landsburg who writes in his book The Armchair Economist Most of economics can be summarized in four words: “People respond to incentives.” The rest is commentary.

So that takes us to tactics and strategies that we need to use to get ahead in this modern world.

Most people would agree that digital marketing is an essential part of what anyone needs to do now to survive in business.

High streets are being decimated – we use stores as places to browse while we check prices on Amazon or Ebay while taking pictures of products to remind ourselves of what we might like.

The effort that goes into curating products, selling shelf space and staffing those stores is something we are no longer willing to pay for.

When many of us starting making a shift to online marketing we need to develop content.

Content is the stuff that sells for us and the way in which we create and use content is going to make the difference between succeeding and failing.

Why is that?

Economics has a simple answer.

The biggest problem that exists in the real world between buyers and sellers has to do with the amount of information each has about the product.

Old world economics assumed that information was perfect – everyone knew everything and so the price was all that mattered to match supply and demand.

But then why is it that you hesitate to buy a used car?

It’s the lemon problem.

You could be about to buy a lemon. The salesperson knows it’s a lemon. You don’t.

So, what can a salesperson do to help you out?

Well, what they used to do was try and pressure you into buying.

I had that recently with a car purchase. They did all the things – started off saying everything was in my budget then coming out with a price twice as much.

Trying to get me to agree that I would make a decision that very day.

Trying to be my friend.

But you can’t really be pressured in the same way online – which is why so many of us prefer to be there.

So… the skills we need to develop are really the ones that help us figure out what kind of content is going to help sell our product.

What’s the economist’s answer?

Information.

We need to use information to show what we have – to describe it and show it being used and help customers see it for themselves.

We’re all very sensitive to hyperbole.

When a film’s blurb tells you that something is a fantastically told story you’re ready not to believe them. If it was really that good the reviews would tell you that.

That’s an example of not having enough information. Too much information is also a bad thing.

Including every detail that matters to you might well turn people off.

The optimal amount of information shows people what you have and tells them what they would ask if they were in front of you.

A friend of mine points out that selling on Ebay is common sense. Make descriptions clear, use terms that people would use when searching, show the thing from lots of angles – all these things help reduce people’s fears that they are about to buy a lemon.

We are, still, in the very early days of the Intenet.

Everything seems to be about glitz and glamour and look and feel but under it all the only measure of success you need to have is what kind of sales you’re making.

And if you’re not making enough sales it’s probably because you haven’t convinced enough people that what you have isn’t a lemon.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 7.39am

Sheffield, U.K.

Pen names are masks that allow us to unmask ourselves. – Terri Guillemets

Doing stuff is easy.

If you’re like most people the work comes naturally.

You can draw or write or file paperwork with the best of them.

So, let’s say you’re looking for a new job, starting a business or creating a new product line – what’s the first thing you should do?

Some people start with the function – the features of what they have to offer.

With you, that might be your qualifications, experience and achievements.

With a product, it might be what it does, the technology it uses and the team behind it.

I normally stumble around in that sort of space for a while trying to work out what it is that I’m trying to say.

Until I worked with a professor who took a very different approach.

She listened to my pitch for a while then leaned forward and said “Okay, so what do we call this?”

I wasn’t sure yet.

So, we sat and talked about possible names, things that this product could be and as we did that, the concept became more real and concrete and tangible.

Names have the power to do that.

In a sense, naming something makes it real.

It’s no longer a hazy idea but a fully formed concept held in words.

Which then leads you to thinking about how to choose a name that works.

Much advice is generic and obvious.

Choose names that people can say, words that are easy to read, unique, memorable, with feeling, energy and the right kind of sound.

Some advice is extensive and almost overwhelming.

In this blog post Nick Kolenda, the author of Methods of Persuasion details how to construct names for whatever you want to do.

It’s going to take a few reads before it sinks in.

Many founders start with ideas for names and the first thing they do is see if the domain names are available.

Both Dropbox and Uber started without owning the dot com domains for their names.

During their funding rounds they bought the names for what seems like a lot – around $300,000 and $1m or so each.

The equivalent value now would be hundreds of millions of dollars.

I suppose to start with there are a few things to work through.

Is your business very specific – like Kate’s Carpet Cleaners or an industry group like General Motors?

Does your brand evoke a promise like McKinsey or make you feel like you own something exceptional like Apple?

The thing that Nick’s article makes clear is that names have shape and sound and colour and feeling and size and gender and more.

Selecting a name may be less about inspiration and more about discarding ones that don’t work.

But there’s one more thing about names that may be helpful to us.

By naming something we give it an identity that starts to separate it from us.

It’s like having kids.

At first, they’re attached to you – a part of you, without a name.

Choosing that name for them is so important when they come out because we’re worried about how they will be treated.

Will their name help them or will they be teased for it?

Also, when we name them we recognise that they are separate from us, independent human beings.

And I suppose that’s what a name does with our creations as well.

Whether its a business, a product or simply a new process, naming it creates a separation from us and we can look at it more objectively.

Many founders can’t get over that feeling of personal attachment to their product and so can’t listen to advice that suggests their baby is not perfectly formed.

Maybe naming the thing we have made is the way we need to let go and let it become the best it can be.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Thursday, 8.32pm

Sheffield, U.K

Where there’s muck there’s brass. – Yorkshire expression

I’ve been finding it hard to work out what strategy you should use to try and make a career change.

Or, for that matter, a change in strategic direction, a change in your product mix or a change in marketing strategy.

Here’s the problem…

You’ve spent many years getting good at doing something – marketing, computing, accounting.

Now let’s say you want to start a business but are not sure exactly what to do.

Should you do something that you already know?

Or should you try something completely different?

If you’re selling a particular product or service should you try to branch out and add more things to your portfolio?

On the one hand, you know what needs doing, you know your market and you should be able to go out there and talk to the right people about what you do.

But, if you enter a different market maybe what you know will give you an edge and you could do really well there.

What to do?

The first thing is to stop thinking in terms of you and what you can do.

Clayton Christensen, a professor at Harvard Business School, has come up with a theory called Jobs To Be Done.

The idea here is that when we have a problem we reach out and find something that will help us solve that problem.

In essence, we hire people and things to help us with the problem we have.

You hire a computer to help you get work done.

You hire shoes so you can walk around.

If your computer or shoes are rubbish you fire them and go look for something else.

So this theory says that everyone and every business has Jobs To Be Done and if you can figure those out then you can sell to them.

Is this a useful model?

I’m not sure yet.

Is there something more behind the fairly obvious bit that people and businesses have things they need to do?

The more I think about this the less useful it seems as a general principle.

As always, everything depends on the specifics – on context.

Many years ago, I was sat on the floor of a room surrounded by invoices.

Hundreds of them.

I was trying to get them organised for some kind of report and as I sat, in a sea of paper, it became clear we needed a system.

So we looked at our options and bought the cheapest one that seemed to do what we wanted.

We had a job to do but, more importantly, the job was mucky and hard the way we were doing it now.

That’s why we hired the system.

Not to do a job but because we were tired of shovelling shit.

The theory also struggles to explain what happens at holidays.

You could argue that one of your jobs is to turn the little people in your house into insatiable consumers of mass produced goods.

Or… in reality lots of people look at something and go “ooooh… shiny…..” and buy it.

Maybe the job they have to get done is get a dopamine rush.

Then there’s the sensible approach where you actually save someone time or money so they buy your stuff.

So, coming around to change…

1. Do you create attractive, shiny things?
2. Do you save people time and money?
3. Do you do a hard mucky job that no one else really wants to do?

If you do 1, then you’re probably in control.

People like J.K Rowling or Kardashian variants don’t sell on reason but on desire.

The second option sounds plausible but it’s actually really hard to sell savings to people.

It might seem like a no-brainer but most people have the brains to realise that a no-win no-fee deal is probably for suckers.

As Warren Buffett says if you don’t know in the first ten minutes who the patsy is then you’re the patsy.

And then for the rest of us… we get paid for shovelling up the muck.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 6.05am

Sheffield, U.K

If it can be solved, there’s no need to worry, and if it can’t be solved, worry is of no use. – Dalai Lama

I managed to screw up my computer yesterday. Quite creatively, by deleting half the operating system while trying to make a program work.

Anyway.

In these days when everything we do is backed up on Dropbox and emails are on services in the cloud that’s not the end of the world.

It did get me thinking, however, about what matters.

An opportunity to start again doesn’t come around that often.

We usually spend our time accumulating things. In fact, we don’t do it consciously. Things just gradually build up over time.

Take emails, for example. Once upon a time we probably had a computer that held our email and if we lost that machine we lost all our stuff.

Then Gmail came out with what seemed like endless storage. But after ten years or so I was surprised to find that I’m getting close to the limits.

Years of personal emails, attachments, newsletters, solicitations and junk over the years have built up to a data mountain – invisible but present.

At the other extreme I watched an animated programme the other day which had a monk in it who casually mentioned to his disciple that their job was begging.

Religious begging has been practised by many faiths. Zen calls it Takuhatsu and it has many purposes.

The acts of having nothing, going out with just a begging bowl and being dependent on others to survive is meant to help the monk develop humility, modesty and escape from ego.

Most of us are never going to do that, experience the feeling of having nothing and being totally dependent on the kindness of strangers.

But, is there anything we can learn from the possibility of that experience?

Can poverty be a good thing?

I heard recently the phrase resources versus resourcefulness.

This is the power that comes from having less.

Stuff can be lost, taken from you or destroyed in an accident.

How long would it take for you to get back up and running if that happened?

Probably less time than you think.

There’s a story about a store in Sheffield that was bombed during the Second World War.

Its accounting records were destroyed and so it could no longer bill customers. But almost everyone paid what they were supposed to and the store is still standing now.

I suppose the point of all this is that bad things happen sometimes.

The more things you have that matter to you then the more you have to replace.

If you had nothing, it wouldn’t matter.

Somewhere between those two extremes is where you want to be.

But, the harder you try to have less, to do more with less, the easier it is to be free from worry.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh