Category: Sales

Thursday, 10.32pm

Sheffield, U.K.

If you are too afraid to offend anyone, then I’m afraid you may not be able to do anything remarkable – Bernard Kelvin Clive

Yesterday I picked up The essential Drucker – a distillation of the writings of arguably one of the greatest management theorists of his time.

I particularly liked his idea of management being something that applied to “every human effort” and how its real value lay in its ability to unite technology and society in the service of humanity – arguing that it is a liberal art in the humanities tradition.

All that I liked.

And then it rather went downhill from there, as the text started talking about objectives and missions: things that I am not convinced actually work that well in real life.

The reason for this is that what happens has much less to do with what you want to happen and much more to do with the context in which you operate – the structure is usually responsible for the majority of the results.

Now, this is not easy to always talk through – and a model can help think through those structural issues.

So, I thought I’d pick up Seth Godin’s Purple cow and have a first pass at a model and see if it actually helps.

Godin’s book is about being Remarkable – like a Purple Cow would be if you came across it.

But you can’t just decide that you are going to be Remarkable – set that as an objective.

Well, you could – you could dress provocatively and behave outrageously – but I don’t think that’s the point we’re trying to make here.

The point is being the kind of entity that is remarkable – the “remarkable” bit is an emergent property of the business you create – something that is about the business but that you won’t find in accounting or marketing or sales but in the customer experience as a whole.

Okay, enough technical talk about systems thinking – here’s how to apply this first pass model.

Say you want your business to be remarkable – ask yourself – do you stand out in any way?

Being like everyone else might seem like a safe way to be – but that way your business will never grow beyond a certain point.

And again, it’s not enough to just say you’re different – you actually have to be different.

But how do you do that?

One good way is to identify a niche that you can target and dominate.

For example, if you’re a hair dresser in a salon, you could just cut hair – or you could specialise in a particular hard to do technique that is remarkable.

But how do you find that niche?

You find people who care about something you can do – who care to the point where it’s more than a hobby and less than an obsession.

A kind of feeling captured, Godin says, by the Japanese word otaku.

You learn from these people about what they need – give them that – and because they are early adopters who will talk about you a lot – you’ll find that word of mouth marketing helps you build your business.

But why should they listen to you?

Because you listen to them and give them something that tests the limits – gives them more – better, faster, cheaper, higher quality: something that they will love.

Now, when you get all this right you’ll find that your business takes off – it just explodes.

But nothing goes on forever – eventually that momentum will stop, the market of early adopters will dry up and you may move into a more mainstream world, where not standing out and being safe start being important, and you slow down and earn what you can for the rest of your product’s lifetime.

But that can be left to your managers – you should be working on building your next remarkable venture.

Now, I’m not saying this model is correct or complete.

Always remember that all models are wrong, but some are useful.

The question is whether this model is useful in thinking about whether your business, as it stands right now, is remarkable.

And if it isn’t, does it highlight areas that you could work on?

The thing to note is that this is not a process – not something you can follow.

Every part matters and you need it all to work for that “remarkable” property to emerge eventually.

My feeling is that this kind of model is more useful in helping us ask questions about our businesses than the relatively mechanical task of setting an objective to be remarkable.

If you focus on what’s inside the envelope – the elements of structure – and work to improve them, then what people see will be remarkable.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 8.31pm

Sheffield, U.K.

When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. – Angela Duckworth

Teaching children is a pretty thankless endeavour.

Under a certain age anyway.

We have two little people in the house.

The elder one tends to do work without complaining – but will often stop at an unexpected point.

This is a classic negotiating strategy – agree in principle but differ on the details.

For example, if an assignment says “think about” something, then the argument is that there was no need to write down the thought – which while technically accurate is not quite the point of the exercise.

The younger one, on the other hand, simply says “No!”, having learned early that taking a position and refusing to budge leads weaker willed adults to navigate around the obstacle.

Management consultancy, even with complex projects and demanding deadlines, is a doddle compared to the task of educating children.

One wonders what happens in school – do most teachers try their best to engage the kids and hope that they’ve learned something along the way?

I wouldn’t want to do that job.

But, since we’re all forced into it by current events, what can we do?

Well, there is one cardinal rule of consulting – which is to be one page ahead of the client.

It’s the skill you develop of looking around corners first, seeing what’s coming and suggesting what to do next.

When you’re in the middle of a project as a consultant there is a danger that you can be drawn into the details – get enmeshed in what’s going on.

But your job is also to keep an eye on the bigger picture, because when that job is done someone is going to look up, bleary eyed and tired and say, “What next?”

And if you haven’t got an answer to that – well it’s a few more hours before you get anywhere.

So, you always need to know what you’re going to do next.

This is not the same as drawing a process – saying “Look, we’re here and this is the next step.”

Instead it is, “To build on what we’ve done here, this is what we need to do next.”

The stages need to be linked and you have to have to adapt what you’re doing to the circumstances in which you find yourself.

Now, what I’m starting to realise is that in a three hour period with kids, around twenty minutes of productive work actually takes place.

And that’s because we’re not trained teachers – but at the same time, we’re professionals.

So, to make things easy, it makes sense to have just one thing on the go.

One piece of work on the desk, only the tools needed – a pencil if that’s all, or colours.

The more you put on the table the more opportunity there is for distraction and time sinks.

That’s not too different from client work, actually.

Focus matters in everything – if you limit your attention to the most important thing you can get it done – but if you let your gaze stray it can be a few hours gone before know it.

But the crucial thing with kids work is knowing what you’re going to do next.

Once kids get into something they find it very hard to stop – especially if that something is TV.

So, if they can only watch a couple of programmes – when they come to the end they will ask if they can watch another one.

And that’s because there was nothing agreed about what was going to happen next.

If you got them to think about what they were going to do after the programme ended – play, for example – then you’ve programmed them to move on to the next task when their time ends.

And sometimes this will work.

Because the little terrors are not predictable – but all you can do is try.

Sometimes I think that most of the angst we feel in life and work comes from this feeling of not being prepared – of not knowing what we’re going to do next.

The first thing to do to resolve this is the simplest – do less.

Left to my own devices I would leave the kids to amuse themselves – put the TV in the loft and leave them with a pile of books and games.

Eventually they will read, perhaps even learn.

If you really want to get engaged – I’d start from where they are, begin with what they’re interested in and bring in the maths and writing to help them with the projects they have.

This is also what you should do with clients – rather than forcing your thoughts on them, start with where they are, their problems, and then see how you can help resolve them.

But in the day to day, minute to minute battle of getting the job done – always remember to ask yourself one question before you have to.

Before you come to the end of whatever you’re doing – before it’s time to make a decision.

Ask yourself, “What do we do next?”

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 9.11pm

Sheffield, U.K.

The most interesting thing about a postage stamp is the persistence with which it sticks to its job. – Napoleon Hill

Over the last few days I’ve been re-looking at what I look at, gravitating towards creators of a different sort.

Creators like Campbell Walker, also known as Struthless and, at this point, I’m not sure how to describe what he does.

But he has some very useful pointers for people trying to be creative – one of which is do the same thing every day.

Perhaps I’ll come back to that another day.

Today, however, he introduced me to the Helsinki Bus Station model, which was created by the Finnish-American photographer Arno Minkkinen.

How do you develop your unique creative style – what differentiates you from everyone else?

It’s a question you can ask anyone – from an artist to a lawyer to an entrepreneur.

Differentiation is everything – it’s why someone will choose to work with you rather than anyone else.

One way of being unique is just to be unique – act differently, talk differently, dress differently – and you will be different.

On the outside, anyway.

When you see that kind of uniqueness – what you’re actually seeing is people trying very hard to be different in a particular way.

What they’re actually doing is classifying themselves in a style taxonomy – and by putting two classifications together to create a mixed one – they believe they’ve created something unique.

The thing is – how you dress and how you act and how you speak will help you with people for a while – but eventually they’ll want you to actually do something useful for them to stay interested.

This is not something limited to people who believe that clothes make the person.

Anyone who says that what differentiates them is their “expertise” has the same problem understanding the basic question being posed.

Experts are a dime a dozen.

Being an expert doesn’t make you unique – it doesn’t mean you add value.

The other thing differentiation is not about is the creative genius, the larger than life figure.

It’s not the story of the people you see with the fame and the billions – that story is not replicable and depends on place and history and above all luck – luck to be in the right place and luck to have the opportunity to prepare so that you are ready when you’re in the right place.

Where does that leave the rest of us?

Minkkinen points to the Helsinki bus station to provide a model.

At this station all the buses head out in the same direction at the start.

Whichever bus you get on you will find yourself, for a while, going in the same direction as everyone else.

You might look at people in the bus in front, people in the bus to the side and people behind – and they’re all doing the same thing, heading the same way – only slightly ahead, or slightly behind you.

And you might feel that there is no point to this – you might as well get off and go back to the station and take another bus.

And then again you find yourself going the same way as everyone else.

The thing you have to realise is that something happens if you stay on your bus.

After some time the buses start going in different directions – going to different places.

You might start your career in law school, and go through the process of qualifying.

You might start to work in a practice with other lawyers, doing general busy work.

You might move and start to work more on divorce cases.

Eventually, you specialise in divorce settlements involving couples with different nationalities that own property in several European jurisdictions and you end up with a quite distinctive and fairly unique experience.

You become the go-to lawyer for that kind of case.

The Helsinki Bus Station theory effectively says that the early stages of your journey are really all about getting started – about getting a feel for your field and developing a portfolio of work.

It’s by working and making that you start to figure out what you’re interested in – and then you start to build on that understanding to deepen your skills in that area.

Over time that develops into a way of working and a set of outcomes that are different from the people around you – you’ve started to create your own style.

There will be people who like what you do, people who don’t like what you do and people who are on the fence.

You focus everything you do for the people who like what you do and those on the fence.

The rest don’t matter – not when it comes to your work and output anyway.

I like this theory – it stops you from giving up and going back to the start every time.

It promises that if you carry on you’ll end up somewhere interesting, somewhere where you’ll be glad you went.

Somewhere where you will find that you are now unique and have a style and can differentiate yourself from everyone.

And to do this, you only have to do one very simple thing.

Stay on the bus.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Sunday, 9.35pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Light thinks it travels faster than anything but it is wrong. No matter how fast light travels, it finds the darkness has always got there first, and is waiting for it. – Terry Pratchett, Reaper Man

I came across the book Go it alone by Bruce Judson and decided to go through it – mainly because Judson talked about how he decided to test out his ideas about solo businesses by starting ones of his own.

It looked like there would be some stuff in there that was based on real life – rather than supposition.

Reading the introduction again, there is a sentence which reads, “The principal result of these efforts is my absolute conclusion that in appropriate circumstances, the ideas in this book have substantial merit.”

I think you could shorten that to, “In some cases, these ideas will help.”

Anyway.

For this post I actually thought I’d start with a book that Judson talks about called It’s not the big that eat the small… It’s the fast that eat the slow – which inspired the image above.

Now this, when you think about it, makes a lot of sense.

Big companies got big because there were certain things about their history that made a difference.

GE, for example, is the company that Edison started – the guy with the light bulb.

Companies that get really big – the Fords and the Berkshire Hathaways do so over time by accumulating capability and resources.

As they get bigger they don’t have the ability to pick up small business.

For a large company a meaningful contract may start at 10 million dollars, and they wouldn’t be competing for the stuff that small companies go after for a few tens of thousands.

There’s a place in this ecosystem for big and small – they feed off the same thing after all – just at different levels.

The real place where competition exists is where it’s red in tooth and claw – where you have one creature that feeds off the other.

This is where you have a competitor that wants to get another one’s customers.

It’s what Facebook did to MySpace, for example.

The faster one wins.

And this happens at different levels, with small firms competing with each other and larger firms doing the same.

When this happens whoever is fastest is probably going to win.

If you’re in the market for a new car, will you go with the supplier who has one in stock now or go with the one that can get it in three weeks at the same price?

In a network economy, with a winner take all system, being first to market can be vital.

Everyone else has to feed on what’s left behind.

Now, this isn’t always easy.

Technology businesses make it look like everything can be disrupted, but that isn’t always the case.

Some technology products aren’t really worth having – they’re not going to take off.

Other markets are so entrenched with such long lived assets, that change takes time.

But here’s the thing – borrowing Judson’s formulation.

In appropriate circumstances, being the fastest means you win.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 9.36pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Marketing is too important to be left to the marketing department. – David Packard

Over the last few years my attention has shifted, like many of us, to content that interests me rather than passively consuming whatever is on the telly.

Few of us watch live television any more – and that’s led to a change in the way we look at things around us, including the businesses we buy from.

Many of those businesses haven’t realised that yet – but what would they be thinking if they did?

Well, the first question you might have is why would someone listen to your marketing messages?

Given everything that is out there, how would you position yourself?

Now, leave aside the stuff that falls into the commodity bucket – where there is underlying demand and it’s a matter of price and convenience.

Rice and beans and oil, for example.

But if you’re an agency or a consultant or a technology firm – what is it about what you’re saying that is going to interesting?

When I look back at the content I’ve gravitated towards in the last couple of years, it feels like it falls into two buckets – entertainment and education.

The distinction is not always obvious – so let’s see if there are any characteristics that stand out.

If you look at your YouTube feed or social media you’ll probably see that there is some content that is all about a brand – a personal or corporate one.

I think stuff like Gary Vaynerchuck’s work or even Tim Ferriss might be in this category – it’s about an individual who is generating the content – either themselves or with their team.

You buy into them.

Now, some of this material might be put across as educational – but I wonder if that’s right.

Let me come back to that in a minute.

Content that is educational is about the user, the learner.

It’s about other people and what they get, what they can do as a result of this thing you’re doing for them.

In entertainment, I think the messaging is brand centred.

In education, it’s user or learner centred.

Now, why do I say that.

With entertainment based approaches, what people want is your time, your attention.

The stuff they create is designed to get your interest and keep it – so you see a host of attention getting tactics.

We don’t need to list them out, but high energy, high status, use of colours and sound – all the things that make your reptile brain turn and focus.

An educational approach should be, however, about outcomes.

You want the participants to change in some way, preferably a specific and measurable one.

With entertainment, you might like them to change, but it doesn’t matter that much as long as they give you their attention.

I think this distinction is an important one.

If the creator is producing content but is too busy to care about crystallising outcomes for the consumers of that content – then it should be classed as entertainment.

If you don’t make change happen for your users – then you’re in the business of giving them a good time.

This does not mean that entertainment is a bad thing – by no means at all.

It’s a gift – the gift of inspiration of insight – the gift of belief that you can do what the person in front of you did.

Education, on the other hand, is about the transfer of a spark from the teacher to the learner – it’s about igniting a flame.

A flame that the learner can use to further their own work.

Now, you could argue that the content that I class as entertainment could ignite that flame – if the learner only could be bothered to do it.

But, I think that it’s only when it is ignited that you move from one side to the other – when you care that it actually happens.

On this basis, many of the classes you took could be termed entertainment – after all you sat in a room while someone droned on and neither of you cared if anything happened after that.

As long as the fees were paid.

Here’s the thing.

I didn’t really understand what education meant – after all, few of us are taught how to teach.

But when you start looking into it you realise just how much we have to learn to teach well.

So, when we think our marketing is “educational” we’re probably wrong.

If you think this isn’t the case, ask yourself this question.

In your business do you ask yourself, “What can we do for our customer?”.

Or do you ask, “What can our customer do with us?”

The subject you put first is the person you put first.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Friday, 10.17pm

Sheffield, U.K.

There are no facts, only interpretations. – Friedrich Nietzsche

I’ve been thinking about perspectives for a while – about how we get locked into points of view without realising it.

It’s the tools that do that to us really.

For example, I’ve started using paper more again because I’m in one place a lot more.

And there are pros and cons to paper – which is why we try digital and find that it doesn’t do everything we want it to do either.

Now, the thing that happens is we find a way that works for us and start using it.

Which then complicates things when we have to work with others who use different approaches.

One way of resolving that tension is through the use of power.

For example, in one of the notes I found as I sorted out my archives was an exhortation never to let anyone use their own notebook.

If you work in an engineering firm your ideas are the property of your employer.

So, you should really keep bound notebooks, with numbered and dated pages so that if you invent something you can prove that you came up with it and own the associated intellectual property.

Well, your company does, anyway.

It’s the same thing with sales.

If your sales people go out and gather intelligence from prospects who should have that information?

The company feels it should be them.

So, a big part of organisational life is about controlling the intellectual contributions of their staff – collecting and filing it in case it’s useful later.

But really, these days what’s the point?

There are a few people out there for whom this kind of approach is justified – people who come up with patents and want a manufacturing monopoly.

For the rest of us, we deal with ideas – and ideas don’t need protection.

If I tell you an idea, I haven’t lost anything and you’ve gained something.

Many people will take the idea and run, but some people will ask you questions, want your time and pay for the things you create – those are your customers and you should focus entirely on them.

And not on anyone else.

Now, the point I’m wandering away from has to do with perspective.

You can look at the world of intellectual property in one way and have a particular point of view.

But, other people in different circumstances will have different points of view.

And you will find that there will be inevitable conflicts.

So, we need ways to switch between perspectives and take multiple points of view.

One method, an oldie but probably still a goodie, is Edward de Bono’s Six Thinking Hats.

The idea here is that you give someone the blue hat – that person is in charge of keeping things going and managing a meeting.

That person starts by asking everyone to put on white hats – they’re going to think about the facts in the situation – the hard things that we know to be true.

The hat up there is supposed to be a hard hat, by the way.

Then, you put on your yellow hat, and think about all the positives – the ways this could go well and the benefits you could get.

This hat is a backwards baseball cap, in case you’re wondering.

Hopefully the hats get easier to recognise from now on…

Then, rip the idea to shreds, talk about all the things that can go wrong.

Put on your black beret of defiance, your anti-establishment symbol and find all the ways this can fail.

Then, get the red hat on and talk about feelings, your emotions about the situation.

And then get creative with your green hat – what are all the ways you could adapt, change, innovate to make things happen.

Now, this hat process is a pretty good way to shift perspectives.

I remember doing it years ago, and thought it brought out some good ideas.

That really didn’t go anywhere after that.

That’s one issue with these kinds of facilitation methods – unless you have a “what next?” process that leads on from a session like this, you’ll have a good meeting and feel very enthusiastic, but not much gets done to change things.

But the basic idea is sound.

When you look at the same thing in a different way, you’ll spot new things, things you wouldn’t have seen with the old view.

This is why What You See Is What You Get (WYSIWYG) tools are perhaps bad for creativity.

Maybe it’s a good thing to write a first draft by hand on paper – so that your typewritten copy is a fresh perspective on the same thing.

I like doing stuff on the command line for that reason – there is a difference between what I put down and what emerges – and that is a useful shift in perspective as you go from creative to critical mode.

Like most things in life that are important – this issue of perspectives is something that is not obvious to everyone – perhaps it comes later in life after you’ve had some experience of how the real world works.

But if you ever wonder why people don’t seem to understand you or what you’re trying to say, stop for a bit.

And spend a little time trying to understand their perspective on things.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Wednesday, 9.23pm

Sheffield, U.K.

God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, courage to change the things I can, and wisdom to know the difference. – the Serenity Prayer, Reinhold Niebuhr

My surprisingly slim copy of A practical handbook for the actor popped through the letterbox today – which I ordered after reading about David Mamet and his technique of Practical Aesthetics.

I’m probably going to write about the technique another day but today I want to focus on the first chapter – the job of the actor.

Now, I’m not an actor and never will be – but it feels like there is a lot to learn from the profession.

You’ve probably heard the quip that goes something like – the hardest thing to achieve is sincerity. Once you can fake that, you’ve got it made.

And an actor has to make you believe that she is really feeling the way she appears – because a good performance makes you believe that it’s real.

Now, if you’re a salesperson, you might think that what this means is that it’s all about the appearance – after all, that’s what you see.

It’s the outer thing that’s on show.

But what the writers in the handbook remind you is that what creates the appearance on the outside is what happens on the inside.

The actor has skills, knowledge – a craft that he develops and hones over time.

And you can only do that by focusing on the things that are in your control.

Say you were to list them out for your profession, what would you have?

Well, you’d probably have tools and materials – paper, a computer, machinery.

And you’d have to spend time practising using those tools.

To get better, you need feedback – you need to reflect on what you’re doing and try and see what’s going well and what’s not.

And where it isn’t going well you need to dig into books and find teachers – learn how to do it better.

All these things are under your control and you can do something about them.

What you can’t do is control how people react.

I saw a news article today about a Chinese artist who makes little sculptures using insect parts.

Grim? Cool? Pointless?

You may have a view.

Sometimes you just can’t avoid bad luck – you might have a good thing but be in the wrong place at the wrong time.

That’s often a fate that inventors have suffered – being too ahead of their time.

There are two more things on my list that may surprise you.

I think you should treat success and failure just the same.

They are emergent outcomes from the things that are in your control.

If you are successful, remember that you could have been lucky.

If you fail, remember that you might have been unlucky.

And get back to work because that is the only truth.

And I think you should pay very little attention to critics and their ratings.

Especially if those critics don’t actually do anything themselves.

You should probably be open to feedback on the lines of, “I didn’t like what you made and I wouldn’t pay for it.”

Okay, but is that person the kind of person you made this thing for?

There is very little point talking to people who think you’re wrong.

Find people who think you’re right and sell to them.

Or find people on the fence and talk to them – see if you can get them over to your side.

Leave the haters alone.

You cannot satisfy everyone. Don’t try.

One thing to note is that I put practising down before reflecting and learning.

Starting with learning is much less useful than you might think.

When you try and do something with little or no knowledge, then you have a beginner’s mind and you can see how things go wrong.

For example, I’ve was thinking about setting up an overhead camera to record videos of work in progress.

I looked at a few examples of what was out there – and was put off by the cost of the specialist tripods you needed and the materials required for a DIY project.

So I mused about it for a while, obsessing a little.

And now I have one built from a Pringles can filled with play sand, some kindling wood, brown wrapping tape and an old cooking scale weight as a counterbalance, some French magnets and a couple of weird bent metal things.

It’s not perfect – but it’s free, built from junk and it does something useful.

You know what – I’m going to show you what it helped me do – just wait while I upload my very first video – a Hello World attempt.

Here you go.

Now, things can only get better if I keep practising, reflecting and learning.

One hopes.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Tuesday, 9.19pm

Sheffield, U.K.

More than 99.99% of facts are not and will never be useful to even a single person. – Mokokoma Mokhonoana

A few days back I wrote about a video by Larry McEnerney from the University of Chicago, in which he also introduced a model about writing which has wide applications for people in business.

If you’re a professional with some experience you have no doubt come across the following situation.

You’re in a meeting or giving a presentation and you give it your all – you talk about your experience and what you’ve learned and really set out a good argument.

And it falls flat.

Your audience sits there, with polite incomprehension – or worse, they misunderstand what you’ve said.

Why does this happen?

You followed the rules – perhaps you had no words on your presentation, only images.

Maybe you made sure everything was 18 point font or greater.

You used short, old words.

You made sure that you didn’t start sentences with “and” or “because”.

And they still didn’t get it.

What comes first, the rule or the result?

Robert Pirsig, in his book Zen and the art of motorcycle maintenance talks about the strange world of critics and rules.

When artists paint, when writers write – do they follow rules, do they remember their grammar?

Or do they write – pour out their passion – and are the rules created afterwards to try and capture what they did?

It’s a strange thing but you can write like Shakespeare and never really be like Shakespeare.

These days if you tried to compose things like a 16th century bard you’d probably be laughed at, or worse, ignored.

Think of a business person you admire – did they become successful by following rules?

Yes, you can see what they achieved and describe what they did – but did they knowingly use those ways when they were busily building their business?

The chances are that they didn’t.

Some people do.

And some of us watch – and paste on the rules later.

Oddly enough, rules can be of very little use in real life.

What is your relationship with the world?

The thing with writers is that we often use writing as a way to think about the world.

Writing is a way for us to work through our own thoughts – a way to find out what we think.

Few people sit down and simply type out a fully formed idea.

Just like few people walk into their office and create a fully formed business.

Let’s say you run a marketing agency – you’re probably thinking every day about how to differentiate yourself, how to stand out, how to show clients how you’re different.

And this takes experimenting – trying out different approaches, partnering with people who have skills you don’t and creating propositions that you can put to prospects.

In a sense, you’re using the container of your business to figure out what niche in the world it can occupy – just like a writer uses the container of text to think about the world.

Imagine all those streams of thought moving in lines away from you, embedding themselves in the world.

Are your consumers thinking the same way?

McEnerney’s point in his video is about how the relationship writers have with the world is very different from the relationship readers have with the world.

At the intersection of the writer and reader is the text – the dots that you’ve created.

At the intersection of the creator and consumer is the business you’ve created.

You’ve used your writing to think about the world.

The reader reads your writing to learn about the world – or perhaps be entertained – maybe both.

Imagine the reader’s desires radiating down towards the world – these are what your text or business have to satisfy.

So, although you’ve created your thing to help you, you need to make it in a way so it helps your consumer.

And this is harder to do than it sounds – because it’s very hard to get out of your own head and see the world from someone else’s point of view.

Are you listening?

And to do that there is one simple thing you have to learn to do – learn to listen.

Many people believe that if they come up with a good idea the market will rise up in applause and give them money.

If you know anything about the future, you know it’s hard to predict.

The one certainty you have is the past – which is why many ancient cultures looked back for wisdom.

The future will arrive… and you will probably be surprised when it does.

After all, how many people predicted we’d have a global lockdown this month?

But if you take the time to listen to your consumer, to ask questions and explore what they have done, then you will learn more about what they will do than you realise.

And that’s because past behaviour is a much more reliable predictor of future behaviour than statements about the future.

If you ask someone if they like your product – it costs them nothing to say yes and avoid hurting your feelings.

If you ask them whether they have bought a product like yours in the past – that tells you a lot more about their willingness to put their hands in their pocket.

If you want to be useful, try to understand what your consumers are in the habit of doing – and then help them do more of that.

If it’s good for them, of course…

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Monday, 9.06pm

Sheffield, U.K.

Our copycats are script kiddie scum who hijack all our keywords with their half functioning monstrosities. — email from a founder somewhat frustrated by knockoffs – Paul Graham on Twitter

I thought I might do a quick post on how startups figure out how to share their equity – but after a very quick search I got bored.

The basic point is that if you need money then you might be in the wrong place.

Let me explain.

There are certain ideas that need money to become real – you need cash to hire people to do the things you don’t know how to do, and then hire more people to sell the thing you haven’t made to people you don’t know and hire even more people to count the money you’re not making because no one wants to pay for the thing the people who gave you money paid to make.

Now, every once in a while a business that follows this model makes a success of it but you’d have to be very talented or lucky to spot them at the beginning.

So, for the rest of us, perhaps it makes sense to be more conservative.

But what would that look like?

First, relieve pain

A good business solves something that a customer needs solving.

Not something that, if solved, would be better for them – but something that actually needs solving.

For example, it’s probably better to be in a situation where you are selling a person with a cut knee a band-aid than the same person hair lotion.

You could argue that the person needs the lotion, although they might have a different view.

But you’ll probably have the same view about the cut and the need to cover it.

I read somewhere that a person found it easier to think about his child’s hurt feelings if he visualised them as a physical injury – a cut – and so respond with compassion.

That visualisation will probably work in business as well – is what you’re solving the equivalent of a cut or the equivalent of a pat on the back?

Find the pain – that’s where the sales are.

Build something with low marginal cost

Every once in a while you’ll come across an opportunity that’s low cost.

Starting a market stall, for example, or selling things online.

The thing that matters, however, is not low cost, but how much more it’s going to cost you.

For example, if you’ve spent £200,000 on your education then building a service around that is pretty low cost – you’ve already invested in the intellectual property that matters.

That’s the reason why lots of manufacturers can make face masks so quickly right now – the cost of repurposing machinery that makes shapes out of plastic is low compared to the initial cost of the machinery in the first place.

When you leverage existing capability – when you build on what you already have then the business creation journey is like a gentle walk uphill rather than a torturous ascent up a steep cliff.

Do something that builds on what you’ve done already.

Focus on making what you do hard to copy

If there is one rule you should follow when creating your service or product – it’s this one.

Make yourself inimitable – hard to imitate.

That’s because if you come up with a great idea that you can’t protect with a patent or copyright – or if you can’t afford to enforce your rights – then people will copy what you do and they’ll do it quickly, especially if it’s selling well.

And on the Internet, it’s hard to keep a secret.

Which is why you have to find a way to make your thing about you, in a very personal, very special way.

And actually this is easier to do than it sounds.

What you’ve got to do is combine things – like Scott Adams says about his creation of Dilbert.

Everyone can write, some people are funny, some people draw, and some people know about engineers and businesses.

But Scott Adams is one of very few people who can combine all those things.

And now anyone else who does it will simply be seen as someone who is copying Adams.

The perfect startup is perfect for You

When it comes down to it, there are lots of ways to make money.

But if you want to go down the route of creating something new, something like a startup, whether inside or outside a business – then what matters is not the share you give, the money you raise, or the product you build.

It’s whether it works for you.

Some people think that creating the next Facebook is the only kind of business model worth pursuing.

Most of those people will fail.

But there are millions of people quietly working away, creating significant businesses that do one simple thing.

Take away your pain.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh

Saturday, 9.34pm

Sheffield, U.K.

God Almighty first planted a garden. And indeed, it is the purest of human pleasures. – Francis Bacon

When we are busy we miss most of life – and that is probably becoming clearer to us now as we stay home at this unique time.

Like most parents with young children the weekends were filled rushing from class to class – activity to activity.

And now, there is nothing to do.

Over the last four years that rushing, that incessant activity, has been the norm for everything in life.

For example, although I’ve tried to write every day for the last few years and managed to do so for around 250 days a year – doing it has been like looking out of a window on a train.

The landscape moves past and you spot a lake here, a tree there, a bird flashing by – ideas that catch your attention and then they are gone and you wait for the next one.

At some point, though, you start to think about what is the point – why are you doing this?

For me, it’s been about learning and documenting that learning in these posts.

I am my own audience and if what I put down helps someone else that’s good – but it’s not the purpose of why I write.

But what if you want to write for others – if you want to create something that’s of use to others – how should you think?

As I’ve thought about these ideas I’ve looked at how creators who do this well have developed their skills.

We’re incredibly lucky to be able to see the journeys people take over years and catch up with them in hours.

For example, the Verbal to Visual project by Doug Neill has five years of videos that you can go through to see how his skills and focus have developed over the years.

And in one of those videos Doug talked about what you want from your content – and this is a useful model when you want to create material for other people, not just yourself.

There are three things you need to get clear before you start.

The first is the idea – what is it you’re trying to get across?

On LinkedIn I saw a post from a person who sells double glazing – an industry with a reputation for hard sales and sharp practice.

This chap decided he would do things differently – he created videos and talked about the business – trying to shine a light and show how you could do things well.

His audience? Well, presumably they are people with windows – and Windows.

I can’t think of anyone else who has popped up on my LinkedIn feed with that particular business – and I’d probably be tempted to ask for a quote given he’s connected to people I trust.

And that’s the outcome he’d hope for.

I think it’s easy to think that what you do cannot be easily boiled down to these three elements.

For example, if you are a consultant or a designer – it’s tempting to think that everyone could be a customer.

Surely you can help any size of business or create any kind of design material?

But it helps to focus, to be clear on exactly who is going to be interested in what you’re selling – why they need it and what you need to do to get them to buy.

Now, you don’t always have to have a purpose.

Looking for new ideas is as important as developing the ones you have.

It’s a little like gardening.

Today, we looked out of the window and saw that the Forget-me-nots had taken over the garden.

I don’t know how you can forget them – I suppose that’s the point.

So, we pulled out some, enough to give the other plants some room – and now you can see a variety of colours rather than a sea of blue.

When you’re learning you need to be open to as much as possible.

And, at some point, you need to curate that learning, create a garden where you decide what you’re going to have, and where, and why.

Perhaps then, you get to a stage where you create a garden that others can enjoy – a space for them to sit and experience what you’ve designed and brought to life.

I wonder whether it’s only possible to be that way when you slow down and you have the time – the time to get a broom and clear the path, the time to pull out weeds and take out the dead plants and put in new ones.

Being in a hurry, paradoxically, can mean you are too busy to develop a sense of purpose.

If you want to do that you have to slow down, to take care – to take your time.

Give your ideas the time and space to grow – and you might one day create a body of content that has purpose.

Cheers,

Karthik Suresh