Cameron Test Bootstrap: 2016

Pokemon Go's Lessons for Marketing

You probably know someone that plays Pokemon Go. Over the summer, the game became somewhat of a pop phenomenon, and it has been downloaded over 100 million times according to Engadget. The game hit the market as many pundits had begun predicting the "death of the app." This summer's biggest hit game proved them wrong, though. The app isn't dead.

In addition to the implications on mobile app developers and digital strategy in general, the app has some interesting messages for marketers and digital marketers as well. Through an ever-growing combination of tactics and techniques, Niantic (the company that makes Pokemon Go) has guaranteed themselves a good connection with the audience for some time.

Keeping Focus

The last few weeks have been full of a good bit of activity for me. I've started planning a site redesign which will make the pages here more responsive, especially on mobile and tablets (though that might be a 2017 thing). I've outlined a book that I will start writing shortly. I collaborated on a case study paper that hopefully will be out soon. I sketched out topic ideas for the blog for the next month. I took a certification class to get some new initials to drop on the LinkedIn profile.

You know what I didn't do? Post much to the blog.

I could say that all of these other activities got in the way. I could say I was not inspired or didn't have time. But the truth is, I was able to watch several old episodes of Arrested Development and Key & Peele (thanks, Hulu, Netflix, etc.) and catch the premiere of Westworld on HBONow. So there evidently was some time in there. At least three hours.

And, like I said, I have three or four topics picked out already, so the whole "inspiration" thing really isn't an excuse either.

The truth? Lack of focus and prioritization.

Writing a decent blog post can take a couple of hours. A not-as-good blog post can take thirty minutes. Both of those could have fit in the schedule. The reason they did not is simple. I did not focus and make that a priority. So what could I have done?

Determine What's Important

In order for something to be a priority for you, you have to actually believe that it is important. I've previously written about "voting with your feet" and how what you do actually shows what you think about the importance of competing interests. But how do you determine what is really important?

First you figure out what is the impact of not taking action and the cost of delay of that action. For me, not posting on the blog means that the content starts to get dated and the more I delay, the longer the gap comes between posts. I may shuffle it up at some point, but for now I had been trying to drop a post weekly. Delay of more than a week means that regularity falls down. Also, while I might be writing other things, the blog keeps me in a habit of writing, which keeps the juices flowing. Again, if I am cranking 1000 words a day on a book, I might be in that habit, but the blog can even help to break up that single topic focus and give me a little breather.

So to me, the blog posts are important.

What's important for you? What activities should you do that provide the most impact? And is there any sort of cost (real, opportunity, or otherwise) if you delay? I'm not going to say that urgency necessarily generates priority, but if the impact of the action is reduced by delay or the benefits start to disappear, you might look at that first.

Focus Only On That Action

Once your priority item has been determined, go do that. I decided this morning that I had to get this blog post done (and not miss another week), so in my first free minute, I sat down and started writing.

Do just that.

Once you have a free second (and again, you are showing what is really your priority by doing other things instead of creating a free second to do the "important" thing), do the task. Get it done. Eat the Frog and all of that (though if every important thing is a frog to be eaten, you might want to go back to prioritizing and make sure you enjoy some of the things you do with your life - or try my take on Eating the Hot Pepper).

I won't kid you. This is actually the hard part. You know why? Because you need self-discipline to actually get yourself up out of the chair and go do whatever it is you need to be doing. Action is hard. Passivity is easy.

Pretending that you are a victim of the circumstances ("Time got away from me" or "I just had so much on my plate I couldn't get anything done") just lets you hide your inaction. So stop whining and go do something about it.

Did you do it yet? I am OK if you pause reading right now and go actually do the thing. Then come back once you are done. I'll wait.

How about now? Are you done? Great. Now what's next on that list?

Set A Deadline

This works for thousands of folks every year for NaNoWriMo and other month-long challenges. The premise is simple. Set yourself a deadline and challenge yourself to make it. Deadlines are powerful.

Douglas Adams had a saying that I find humorous, "I love deadlines. I love the whooshing noise they make as they go by." It's funny, but not how you get things done.

That quote does illustrate one point, though, and that is to make those deadlines realistic. Will you write a novel in a day? Probably not. A month? Maybe. If you commit to it.

Make sure that you give yourself reasonable time to accomplish the task. Once upon a time, I tried writing daily blog posts. It was overkill and led to a ton of really thin and not-fully-baked ideas. Once a week ends up being enough time to come up with a good idea, write it, edit it, and get it out. Sometimes. In an event, it is a reasonable amount of time. Do the same with your deadlines.

Don't Defeat Yourself

The last thing I'll talk about here is this: don't kick yourself for being down. I missed a week's blog post. You know when? September 26. But once I missed it, it became just a little bit easier and less guilt-forming to miss that next post. Don't do that.

Don't use your inaction of the past to justify inaction of the future. We tend to create these internal monologues that start telling us that since nothing catastrophic happened by delaying just a little bit, then procrastinating a bit more won't hurt.

Inaction does not solve problems. Only action can solve your problems.

So don't let your little voice in your head trick you to believing that you can wait just a little longer because you have already waited. You will spend more time arguing with yourself over whether or not you should do something sometimes than you would actually completing the job. Tell the little procrastinating voice to shut up for a few minutes, then go do the task while it stays silent. Take away the topic of discussion.

Conclusion

Staying focused on your priorities requires effort. Nothing that you want to do really comes without work.

When we make a mistake or lose focus, all too often we can get sucked into this little inner discussion that justifies procrastinating just a little bit more. To succeed, you need to shut that down.

Set your priorities. Put a due date on it. Then go do it before you do anything else.

Lather. Rinse. Repeat.

So there. I wrote a blog post. I probably should get started on next week's. What are you going to do right now?

The Myth of Being Busy

So I have been reading Drive by Daniel Pink over the past week (fair warning - the Amazon links are affiliate links if you buy it, it will add a few cents to my account). While the book focuses mostly on extrinsic versus intrinsic motivation and what really drives us, I stumbled across a passage talking about the way we work and it made me think about how we're really busy nowadays.

For years, when people asked, "How are you doing?" the stock answer "Fine" would come back as a high percentage response. Lately, though, people tend to answer "Busy" instead almost as often. Articles have examined whether or not this phenomenon is good or bad, with our collective thinking that being busy says something positive about a person.

But I started thinking, when you say you have been busy, it can definitely convey some extremely negative characteristics as well. So be careful who your audience is. They might just be busier than you. Or they might ascribe one of these less-than-flattering traits to your "busy" response.

Busy Means Inefficient

I knew a guy several years ago who was always "busy" and proud of it, but when pressed on all of the things that he was working on, I discovered he was just very inefficient. Tasks that would take his peers hours to complete would take him almost a full day, and a week's worth of work might occupy his time for close to two.

This all created a tremendous sense of being busy to him, but it really meant his supervisor had assigned him equal work to his peers, and he was just unable to complete it in an appropriate window of time.

Busy Means Disorganized

Running hand in hand with inefficiency, disorganization also causes someone to feel busy. Not having a system to keep track of the things that you need to do can make every little task seem overwhelming.

You can't keep work items in context with your total to do list or set priorities appropriately when you don't have them organized.

Disorganization also means that you don't know what to do with new requests, which can lead to the next perception.

Busy Means Overcommitted

You have an inability to say "no" to new requests, even though your plate is entirely full. That may be what you are conveying when you say you are busy. If you had great control and understanding of projects you have already pledged to complete and what level of effort you would spend on a new project, you could easily keep yourself from getting overcommitted.

Want to avoid this perception? Make sure you know how to say "no" when faced with a task that will overcommit your time. Then use that skill to avoid getting too busy.

Busy Means Lazy

You might be surprised, but your busyness could be perceived as laziness. If the person you are talking to feels like she is busier than you are, then your claim to be "busy" may give her the impression that you are lazy. Obviously, in her mind, if you are "busy" but you aren't as busy as she is, then you must be a slacker, complaining about your light workload.

Busy Means You Lie

Lack of communication could have your busy state perceived as a lie by others, meant to make yourself look more important. If you claim to be busy, but nobody ever sees what you are actually working on or completing, others may think you are lying about how much work you do.

In a world where some value being busy as a badge of honor and importance, claiming to be busy without any tangible proof looks like bragging, when you may or may not even have anything to brag about.

Conclusion

If you typically answer "How are you?" with "Busy," perhaps you should rethink that stock answer. If you really are not that busy, don't act like you are. If you are busy, though, perhaps you could think about the root cause of why you let yourself get so swamped.

Then again, you could always think about how you actually are doing and answer appropriately. Communicate instead of reacting automatically to others, and you might manage to build a layer of trust between you and your coworkers.

Your Business Is Not Your Baby

I will start out here by telling you something that you need to hear. Your business (or product, or project, or work product) is not your baby. Nope, it's not. In fact, it's not a sentient being at all, because it's a business (or project or something like that). Shocking, eh?

When I phrase it that way, you probably think I am stating some obvious fact and being ridiculous. I am. But if as you read this, you start defending the position with statements like, "Well of course I would never mean that the business was a real baby," then you are exactly who needs to understand why this thing you work on isn't even a figurative baby.

You Made It, and You Still Are Making It

Sure, you make babies, too, but when it comes down to it, contribution of your genetic material is pretty much the "making" part on that end, and for the rest, the baby grows itself.

Your business, on the other hand, owes its entire existence to you. When you refer to your business as "your baby," you tell everyone that you are deeply connected to the inner workings of its growth. On the other hand, people who drop an idea for a business out there and let it organically grow without their heavy involvement don't refer to the business as their baby.

What if you treated your business really like a baby, though? You would let it grow on its own. You would guide it and reward it when it does the right things, scold it when it doesn't, and foster the types of behaviors that lead towards independence. You would allow it room to make mistakes.

In the past few years, the term "helicopter parent" has come about to describe parents that continue to involve themselves in their children's lives in areas where the child (or young adult in some cases) should be making independent decisions.

Similarly, small business owners and particularly passionate project leaders can have a difficult time separating their need for control from development of the teams into independent entities capable of making their own intelligent decisions.

You Can't Just Walk Away From It

Try leaving a baby on the sidewalk and walking away from it once you have decided it is not working out for you (OK, really don't try this, and if you were considering it, then I have more to worry about for you than just how you are running a business).

But seriously, you wouldn't leave a baby alone just based on how it affects you, because not only would that endanger the infant, but police and other would soon be after you, and you have an obligation and moral responsibility to the baby.

You don't have the same sort of obligation to your business. It is not a person who will starve if left unattended. It might cease to function, but you could start it back up again if you truly wanted.

Too often, business owners stay in a business longer than they need to because they feel some sort of obligation to the business. A need to see it through to the finish or to continue to chase success no matter how much the real performance trends away from it.

You don't have a responsibility to stay on the sinking ship. You may have obligations that require you to close up shop or shut down a project in the appropriate way, but you actually are a person (who needs to eat and all of that), and you need to make sure that this inanimate business does not drag you down with the undertow. In the overquoted and always accurate words of Kenny Rogers (he's an old country singer from probably before my time if I am being honest, but throwing this description in here for anyone younger than me who is scratching their head), "Know when to walk away, know when to run." OK, go listen to it on YouTube or something. I'll wait.

It's More About You Than The Baby

When you are a parent, you are obligated to the child. You should sacrifice for yourself in order to get the child what he or she needs.

Again, a business is not a baby.

When you spend too much time sacrificing yourself for a business (particularly one that underperforms), the business does not necessarily benefit. In fact, it's more likely you are just grappling with one thing: pride.

Sometimes pride as a business owner makes us deluded into thinking that we can't fail, or that if the business doesn't make us millions, that perhaps we, personally, are failures. Nonsense.

Some business revolve around a really crappy idea. Some businesses have no market for their product. Some businesses have bad luck with timing to market. Some businesses try to start in the wrong point of an economic cycle. Some businesses enter an overly saturated market.

Businesses fail for hundreds of reasons. The blame does not always fall squarely on the owner, founder, or manager. So stop thinking it is a personal reflection and move along. Do things that benefit the business, but don't kill yourself trying to make something from nothing.

Know When To Let Go

You want to take care of your baby? Raise her up, teach her well, and send her off to college.

You want to take care of your business? Build it up, instill great business practices, and sell that puppy to someone who will scale it well.

Look at your business as something that you grow and sell and repeat. Learn from your mistakes. Granted, this doesn't work for all business models, but if it can work for yours, try it. Sell your business and build something else.

Have you ever been to a farmer's market? The guy selling tomatoes out of the truck does not put great personal investment in each red juicy tomato. He may focus on quality, and he may have pride in his work, but he is not personally invested in a single tomato. You know why? Because the intent is to sell that tomato so he can go grow more tomatoes the next week or next season.

This step particularly applies to those individuals that are heavily invested in their products. Stop and realize, the more time you spend tweaking and perfecting that product, the less time you have to come up with something completely new that may yield ten or a hundred times the performance of the current product. Finish it, sell it, repeat.

Conclusion

People often get caught up taking care of their "baby" projects or businesses. In reality, babies and businesses don't have a ton of similarities. And business owners should take advantage of those differences when they can. Learn to leave a failing business alone. Realize your pride and not the needs of a baby tie you down.

And maximize the similarities as well. Grow and teach your business to operate independently. Let it scale beyond you. Learn to be pleased when the business no longer needs you. Smile as you sell it off and start the journey again.

Maybe instead of calling it "my baby." try calling it "my teenager." It might put everything in a bit of perspective.

Hooray! It's the First Day of School!

Do you remember the anticipation you had as a kid of the first day of school?

School started yesterday here in Texas, and parents the state over probably shouted for joy, either at the idea of getting the kids out of the house or (as is our case), settling back into a solid routine. Kids also exploded with excitement over what the new year would bring.

School to a kid always meant new opportunities, new clothes, new friends, new teachers, new things to learn, and a fresh slate to start the year. While I always lamented the end of summer, the adrenaline and freshness of a new experience usually won out.

We can learn a lot from how we felt as kids and look at the approach of Labor Day as an opportunity to reflect and refresh our outlook. It's a great annual reminder to take stock in where we are (like New Year's Day, birthdays, or other milestones).

New Opportunities

The new school year always offered new opportunities. What opportunities can you take for your business or career starting now? If you started your year now, looking forward to the next nine or ten months as the time to make an impact, what could you accomplish?

Take a few minutes today to think about what you could tackle this school year. Double your sales. Take the training class that you have been putting off. Crush that next project.

Challenge yourself to do something in the next sixty days that you have never done before. Remember when you learned something totally new in class? Doing new things keeps you moving and growing. Do something new. Then find something else you haven't done and go do that. Keep moving. Keep growing.

New Friends

When you walked in the first day of your new class, you most likely gravitated towards the few friends you already knew, but also looked around and found a few new faces that you could connect with. Sometimes, reaching out to the new kid in school could result in a lifelong friendship. One of my oldest friends was new to the school in fourth grade and we met in a reading group. A few decades later, we can still trade emails and reminisce.

As adults locked into our work environments, the opportunity for an entirely new crew of friends diminishes, but we still have several options for reaching out and building a network with new people. New employees, vendors, or customers all present opportunities to interact.

I love a quote I stumbled on a few weeks ago from Bill Nye (the science guy) - "Everyone you will ever meet knows something you don't." Think about that for a minute. Every single human on the planet has a unique set of experiences and knowledge that contributes to who they are. What can you learn from them?

Engage people in conversation. See what you can learn. Respect their experiences. Sometimes it may be personal, sometimes academic. Whatever it is, connect. Truly connect with people.

Clean Slate

New school years also offer the ability to start over, in some respects. No matter how your prior year went, starting a new school year granted you a blank report card. The idea of starting fresh meant that your actions from the first day forward were the ones that would shape your future.

All too often as adults, we get caught up in our history. We relive our mistakes. We let our history with projects and people plague our interactions day to day. But what if we could start over?

Every day offers you the opportunity to start over, though. Just like a new school year, your actions from today forward shape the remainder of your future. Continuing to focus on the negatives of the past will only prevent your ability to move forward and move your business forward.

All of this amounts to little more than armchair psychology, but when you focus on the present day actions that can shape your future instead of worrying about how past events shaped your present, you can make a change. You can make a difference. You can wipe the slate clean.

Conclusion

It doesn't matter if it is the first day of school, the first day of June, or halfway through February. You can take any opportunity to reflect briefly and seize all of the opportunities you have to reboot your situation.

Look for opportunities to improve yourself, your career, and your business.

Meet new friends.

Take the opportunity to start fresh and focus on the future.

Whenever you decide to start your new year, take the opportunities that await you and jump on them. What are you going to do with your new year? Drop me a line and let me know.

Don't Put All Your Eggs In One Basket

We've all heard the expression about keeping our eggs in one basket. Don't do it. Diversification reduces risk to your portfolio.

But how do you know if your business has its eggs in the appropriate number of baskets? And what areas should you evaluate?

Customers

If you lost your biggest customer, what would happen to your business? For some businesses, they would completely shut down. Others would find themselves crippled and struggling to pay their bills. Still others might just shrug it off as business lost and continue running along with their other customers.

Which one looks more like your business? If you are too reliant on one or two customers, you certainly have a risky situation to deal with. Not only does your business hang on every dollar you bring in from those customers, but you also lose bargaining power when negotiating future business with them.

As entrepreneurs, you welcome every customer. But if you find yourself reliant on one or two to keep eating, you may want to put a heavy bit of investment in customer acquisition efforts. Get your marketing machine in gear and work to become reliant on hundreds of customers instead of just a couple.

Vendors

I once ran a business that acted as a retail front for bands that wanted to sell their merchandise online, but didn't want to set up an entire storefront. Sales had massive peaks and valleys, though, and usually corresponded to new releases from just a couple of the artists. The survival of the business was wholly dependent on the product release schedule from just a couple of vendors.

Once again, this situation puts you in a weaker negotiating position with your vendors. But worse, being reliant on a single vendor really makes your business just a de facto employee of that vendor. Whatever service you provide, if your business totally rotates around the activities of one vendor, you become totally at their mercy. Your cease to control your business's direction and success.

The solution: take back your control where you can. Look to diversify suppliers, particularly if they offer commodity type products. If not, look at why certain vendors are succeeding and try to leverage that information to acquire new vendors with similar characteristics. Figure out if there are services you could offer that would reduce your reliance on particular vendors and increase your customer stickiness. Become more valuable to the vendor than they are to you.

Employees

You enter dangerous territory when you find yourself single-threaded on employees. Even the best and most loyal employees can often find themselves in personal situations that necessitate a job change. When that time comes, you may find yourself with a gaping hole in your organization where critical knowledge or certain tasks leave with the employee.

Sure, cross-training can help, but as an entrepreneur, you need to recognize these situations and take other steps to prevent it. For small businesses, often the boss knows how to perform everyone's job and can fill in in a pinch, but that role should quickly evolve into trainer as someone else comes up to speed in the area. Sometimes, niche knowledge falls through the cracks, though, and does not ever get effectively communicated to others in the organization.

Employee retention certainly plays a part here as well. Get to know your employees and coworkers well. Try to understand their motivations and make the workplace somewhere they want to be. Compensate people fairly. And while doing everything you can for the people of your business, make sure that you have ample backups and coverage for all critical items.

Products

How much do you rely on a single product or service to generate your revenue? What would happen if another business came in and blew that product away? Could you adapt in time to keep your business afloat?

This one seems obvious, but you would be amazed how many small businesses run out there on a single platform of a single product or service. Even at scale. Think of taxi companies. They provide a singular service - transportation. Introduce Uber to the market, and while taxis still exist, they certainly take a hit because of the additional technology and connectivity that Uber brings to the market.

So here, you can minimize risk by adding products and services, but you can also future-proof your business by making yourself willing to adapt and stay ahead of technology and the industry. Your product portfolio needs an assessment and strategy and risk has to be part of that.

Conclusion

You can absorb risk much better the more diversified your business operates. Beyond even these categories, you should evaluate investments, real estate, technologies, industry and business model, and other areas of your business to identify where you are single-threaded or reliant on a very small number of alternatives. Once you know where your risks lie, work to eliminate them.

Do you have any other good stories about diversifying to reduce risk? Please post a comment or email me to let me know. I'd love to hear them.

How To Take Advantage of the Next Technological Disruption

Every so often, a technology change comes along that disrupts life as we know it. Sometimes, adopting the change costs so much that individuals cannot really capitalize on it without already having huge sums of wealth at their disposal. Take the first computers, for example. These giant monstrosities filled rooms and were substantially less powerful than today's mobile phones, but were so expensive that only governments and high end research facilities really had the funds to utilize them. Over time, though, additional technological developments made them ready to mass market, and the technology that allowed the personal computer to exist spawned several companies ready to take advantage of that breakthrough, such as Microsoft and Apple.

Notably, these companies did not invent the personal computer. They also were not primarily responsible for the technological breakthrough that allowed the PC to exist on an engineering level. Rather, they positioned themselves with software and ideas that fit perfectly with the new technology to create new business models.

The internet exploded in the 90's dot com boom as a leveling of the playing field for all. Finally, anyone with a PC and web access could preach their message to the world. Eventually, that led to commerce, and worldwide household names such as Amazon, Google, and eBay. It also spawned new platforms with social media, like Facebook and Twitter.

Peer-to-peer commerce is the latest new development, with traditional business models being displaced by Uber and AirBnB, whose job consists primarily of connecting two interested parties to conduct commerce, all while taking a small cut off the top. You might argue that Paypal and eBay were doing this twenty years ago and these new companies are just porting the model to other businesses.

All of these companies came about due to technology shifts, some of which required nothing more than hard work and an idea to break through. The companies grew and morphed, but all of them are still around today. Several others didn't make it, even though the playing field was fairly level. So how do you adapt for the next technology change and capitalize on it?

Anticipate Disruptive Technology

You can guarantee that technology will change and develop. We have not yet hit a stagnation point, even though some of the developments of late may look quite similar to things we already have. Still, new developments keep coming month after month and year after year.

Keep updated on what might be coming down the pipeline through social media and tech articles. As you notice new technologies being introduced, you can start to brainstorm how your business could morph and capitalize on the new tech. Not every technology will present an opportunity for your business, of course, but you should anticipate that new tech trends will come and potentially affect your market. Take the time to reflect on these trends and try to identify how your business might utilize them.

Be Ready to Pivot

Knowing that a new technology is coming to shake up your business or industry prepares you, but does not create success for you. Your business needs to be ready to pivot and adapt in order to take advantage of that technology. Drag your feet and someone else may find ways to put the new technological trend to a use that may make your business model completely irrelevant.

Successful businesses find a way to move in the direction that makes them more successful. While, not directly impacted by a technological trend, Groupon found its roots as a totally different concept called The Point and morphed with feedback from their user community into a focus on saving money en masse. Their ability to move kept them from fading into oblivion.

Likewise, we have seen companies like Borders books and Barnes and Noble struggle at best to compete with Amazon once the technology changed. Part of the failure was their ill-preparedness to pivot with the new technology changes around them, and in part, they failed in executing.

Perform with Excellence

For every one of the companies that took a technological advancement and made it into an empire, there are hundreds, if not thousands, who tried but found themselves unable to capitalize on it. For some, timing got in the way. For others, inability to scale prevented success. Whatever the reason, some who take a leap on a technology thrive, while others cannot execute and end up fading out of existence.

Whether you jump at a new technology innovation or continue to operate your business the same way that you have been running it, perform with excellence in mind. Your customers will notice. New startups attempting to disrupt a market find their path more difficult if the existing players have a reputation for outstanding customer service. Customers might even be willing to give the incumbent a little more time to catch up, knowing that the product and service that come out in the end will be superior.

For someone trying to make a name for themselves in an industry, outstanding service and performance always differentiate one competitor from another. In new markets, particularly, a commitment to excellence and customer service drives repeat business.

Conclusion

What technology buzzword in articles today will completely radicalize your business market in the coming years? Some enhanced mobile technology, maybe 5G? Augmented Reality? Blockchain?

Whatever it might be, you need to get ahead of the curve. Start reading about upcoming technology trends and determine how it might affect your business as well as what opportunities it may hold.

Be ready to pivot and pivot fast. Get your team used to moving quickly and changing direction with whatever makes the most sense. Those who drag their feet will get left behind.

And once you set a course, execute it as well as you can. Set a course that forces you to push past your competition in a commitment to performance. Make your company the best at what it does in the world. Customers will come to you.

And whatever happens, don't worry. It will continue to change.

What Evernote's Policy Changes Mean to Me

I love Evernote.

Granted, sometimes I will admit I occasionally may use it as a dumping ground for things I am sure I will "get to later" only to forget to ever get around to them. But when I recall seeing something somewhere, chances are I have stashed it in my Evernote account. Over the last couple of years, I have managed to cram quite a bit of stuff in there, which formed the basis for my panic over the note that I received earlier this week around Evernote's change in policy to limit free users to two devices.

After reading more about the changes, though, I decided that the change will not particularly impact me as much as I originally thought. Still, my routine must change a little, as yours might, so here is a go-forward plan that you can feel free to adapt for your own use.

Conform To The Guidelines

I do not really have a choice but to conform to the new policy at first. Luckily, Evernote has given some adjustment time, which I am using to implement this plan.

The actual change for me as a basic user really boils down to only installing the actual Evernote app on two devices. Considering I primarily use it for blog ideas, marketing concepts and articles, and reading material, my home computer has to be one of those two devices. The other one has to be my phone. While I find typing extensively on my phone much more difficult than one of my other computers might be, the portability makes the choice for me. I almost always have my phone on me (unless I am in the pool), so whatever note I need to take whenever and wherever I might be, I will likely be able to access that device to do it.

Which leaves me to uninstall the app from the remaining devices I have (tablet and additional PCs). Once I do that, I should be in compliance with the new policy. Not only do you have to uninstall the app, though, but you need to revoke access to Evernote from those devices.

If you don't know how to do that, log into Evernote Web, then click your account in the bottom left corner and select Settings. Once you click on Devices, you have the option to Revoke Access to any of your devices that you choose to remove.

Continue to Use Extension Apps

My biggest panic went something like this: "But what if I am at work and I stumble across an article that I want to read about marketing or leadership or something, and I need to flag it so I can read it at home or on my phone later? Will I have to pick up my phone and then re-find the article and then save it there to Evernote?"

Luckily, there seems to be an easy answer to this. I already use Evernote Web Clipper to save articles to Evernote whenever I stumble across them on the web. Per Evernote's Device Guidelines, Web Clipper is not considered a device, so I can keep it installed across all of my Chrome browsers.

Breathe a sigh of relief.

My largest panic attack about these changes has subsided, and now I can explore a few other "what if" scenarios and move along.

Embrace Evernote Web

Apparently, not only does Web Clipper not count as a device, neither does utilizing Evernote via the web on any device. While I generally find the app much more functional than its web counterpart, the web version does support all of the functionality that I need. As a result, I can still utilize the web version on any computer or device where I don't have the app installed.

In this age of apps and mobility, switching to a web-only version seems like a regression of sorts. However, since this access will only back up the primary access and use of the extension applications, then it becomes more palatable.

Start Paying

Depending on how my plans work out, I may have to start paying for Evernote usage. All in all, that's not a bad option. I love the app, and I would consider the $35 per year a reasonable price for its usage. I am still a dinosaur, of sorts, though, in that I would rather pay perpetual license costs rather than subscription-based costs, though I understand that forms the foundation of the low-cost entry market and is likely the future of the software business.

As I continue along, the time may come for me to upgrade my Evernote plan. My hesitation in doing that right away is not the annual fee but rather the idea that an ongoing commitment year after year hides behind the initial purchase.

Find Other Options

As onorous as it might seem, if Evernote continues to change its policies, the possibility exists that I might need to find another option. Luckily, I've got Microsoft's OneNote as a potential substitute, though currently I use that for different purposes.

Still, part of any plan going forward has to acknowledge that Evernote may have a change in situation that results in additional, potentially more stringent, changes to their terms of service and pricing plans. I cannot fault them for reacting to their market and making whatever changes that they need to in order to survive as a company, but for continuity on my side, it serves as a wake up call that I may not always be able to rely on a third party to provide a service that I use on a regular basis. It has happened before - back when Yahoo bought Astrid and shut it down it took me months to find a suitable task management replacement.

Conclusion

Evernote's latest changes, though initially panic-inducing, turn out to not have much of an effect on the way that I utilize the application. I will have to make some adjustments to fall into compliance with the new policy, but overall, it won't change the way that I use the app on a daily basis.

That said, it still serves as a reminder to not be too dependent on third party software or companies for anything that I need or my business needs. Contingency plans have to be in place for every dependency, and honestly, I only have a few truly established.

What third parties do you depend on as a business? What is your contingency plan if it shuts down? The risk always exists that those things outside your control may go sideways, so how much do you depend on them continuing their current course? I'd love to hear your thoughts and start a dialogue, so feel free to drop me an email with your ideas. Or join the mailing list and we can continue the conversation on even more topics.

How To Make Long Range Plans The Easy Way

Last week, marketing guru Seth Godin posted on his blog, "A ten-year plan is absurd," arguing that while planning that far out is impossible, companies and individuals need ten-year commitments to make an impact on the world.

While he has a point about plans spanning ten or more years, in order to understand how to implement and operate under your commitment, you still must plan for the future. Just keep it to a little more of a foreseeable future than a decade out.

I have worked on several "long range plans" over the years, and have found that usually three to five years forms the outer boundary on a fortune teller, and that predictions beyond eighteen months tend to be less and less accurate. Regardless, creating a plan helps set a direction and guidelines for motion that can help carry a company forward and avoid sitting paralyzed with inaction. So how do you do it?

Set Your Goals

If you don't have an overall strategy or goals, you might find it difficult to create any sort of a plan. That's like trying to create vacation plans without deciding whether you want to go to New York, Florida, or California. Or maybe a cruise.

Having clear goals and strategic direction shape the course of the rest of the plan. Your plan may have some things in it that you are just required to do, but overall, most of your initiatives should move you closer to one or more of your goals.

Granted, sometimes, you might find yourself without a real strategy (sometimes companies run for years without one). When faced with that situation, some of the teams I have been on just take a guess. Write it down. You can always refine it and make it better, but you need to have an overall direction to really get started.

Choose Your Inputs

The strategy defines the "what" of the plan that you want to accomplish, but you need to select appropriate inputs into the plan to help you determine the "how."

Some example inputs might be competitive or industry research, technologies that might provide you an opportunity, assessments of your current strengths and weaknesses, or financial inputs. All of these inputs (and more) should provide you with an idea of the landscape. Take a broad view of where your business fits with the world and what data could help you.

Do some research.

Brainstorm The Impossible

The easy path would have you planning out what you know, using in-flight projects and current scope work to craft your plan. Don't stop with the easy.

Schedule a specific brainstorming session. We've done this over lunch or informally, but if you really want some good ideas, set aside a specific chunk of time to do this.

Leverage all of your inputs to create a list of initiatives, opportunities, or projects that you could undertake to drive your strategy. Try to remove the filter, though. Don't limit yourself by what you could easily make happen.

Think big. Think crazy. Think impossible.

How could you turn the industry on its head? How could you completely overtake your largest competitor? How could you multiply your profits or productivity by ten?

Don't be afraid to put some things down that seem impossible. Remember, this is a long range plan. So, what you feel may be impossible might be easier once you achieve some of your intermediate targets. They also help drive your capability improvement. Sure, you could never accomplish that project tomorrow, but if you made these other five smaller tweaks to your capabilities, then you could do the first half of it, right?

Think big before you let the tactical get in the way.

Create A Timeline

Goals without timelines are just dreams. Create a Gantt chart or some other visual plot that shows where you think you can do your projects in the next couple of years. Maybe some of the impossible ones are a little further out. Maybe not.

Can you do all of those projects where you have them slated? If not, then you still have some work to do.

Prioritize. Put the most important projects sooner if you can get them completed. Put ones less likely to move the needle a little later. As you complete the impactful ones, you can always reassess whether or not you even need to complete the others.

Look for opportunities to scale. If you need help to complete some of the projects, build into the timeline the need to hire additional staff. Look at things you can automate to improve your throughput. Make sure you don't schedule too many projects immediately in the first six months of your plan, unless you can realistically complete them.

Add buffer. Things will come up at a tactical level that will challenge your ability to keep working the plan. Make sure that buffer time exists in the plan to deal with tactical distractions.

Conclusion

Long-range planning is difficult. Trying to plan beyond a certain horizon is simply impossible.

However, planning is essential to meet goals and implement change. Fortunately, the process of creating long range plans can be broken down to simplify it and help you generate something actionable. Determine your strategy and goals, do some research, brainstorm like crazy, and then start plotting out a timeline.

Over time, the process of planning will become more repetitive and you will get better at it each iteration. Pick a standard interval (yearly, perhaps) to reformulate your plan. Don't just update it, though. Walk back through the steps to create a new plan based on your new reality. If you do choose to update more frequently, make it a living document, able to be altered in any way.

Either way, you will find that your plan morphs, but so long as you clearly define your strategy, you will move in the right direction.

How to boil a frog, when you are the frog

Let's start with a little science and some folklore othe f sorts.

The old story goes that if you throw a frog into boiling water, it will jump straight out. If you want to actually boil a frog, you need to put the frog in lukewarm water and raise the temperature slowly until it finally boils.

First things first - why in the world are you trying to boil a frog? Please don't. That's strange and somewhat sadistic and frogs are an important part of our ecosystem (and their disappearance is a bit disturbing as well).

So, assuming we're talking theory here, instead of reality, the truth is that you can't kill a frog by boiling it slowly. The frog will notice. Here's some real scientists from the University of Washington explaining it better than I can.

So why have we heard this story a hundred times? Probably because it serves as a pretty good allegory describing change management as a gradual event. But I would believe that if the change leads to your death, no amount of gradual adjustment would cause you to ignore the change, so maybe it is time to update the story.

Maybe it's just having the frog swim in apple juice instead of water. Or maybe the story shifts to talking about changing your life instead of playing tricks on frogs.

Getting Your Exercise

I pretty much hate exercise. Rather, I hate having to do exercise as a regimented workout routine meant to improve overall physical fitness. I actually enjoy physical activity, but confining it to some monotonous hamster wheel of repetition really dulls it up.

Enter the Couch to 5K program. It's basically a gradual build-up through alternating running and walking to get to the point where you can run a 5K in half an hour.

If you don't exercise at all and try to go run a 5K, the chances are that you will not make it. At least not in a reasonable amount of time. And there will be much pain and walking involved.

Couch to 5K (C25K) assumes that your exercise regimen starts at sitting on the couch, and uses the theory of gradual increases in challenges to improve your stamina. And it works.

I've actually done C25K a few times, though the fastest I've actually done 5K is around 40 minutes. Still, that's much better than, say, the two hours it would take me without training.

The concept extends beyond running, though. If you want to get some exercise, there is no end of apps for your phone that will gradually build you up to doing a ton of pushups or several minutes of planks (my new nemesis).

The reason it works? As you repeat activity, your muscles add strength and build resistance to the activity, allowing you to push it to the next level. Were you to try to achieve the final outcome at the start, you would likely overstress your muscles and injure yourself.

Level Up

Exercise not your bag? No problem. Name the last video game that you sat down and played for the first time from beginning to end without ever failing and restarting.

Got one? If so, it must not be much of a game.

Video games designers make every level more difficult, either from a dexterity or mental agility perspective as you move through the game. The idea is that you build skills, once again, through repetition and slow addition of incremental challenges.

I played Guitar Hero recently (yes, it's not a new game, but it's a game). I actually play guitar (though I am out of practice on that one as well), but those skills don't necessarily translate directly to the video game. Couple that with the several years since I've played Guitar Hero, and I'm struggling on the Easy and Medium levels much more than the last time I played. I can tell because those higher level songs are already unlocked, but I'm still stuck on the easier ones getting booed off the stage.

And let's not talk about battling Tom Morello.

So without talking about how poorly I would fill in as a guitarist for Rage Against the Machine, let's recognize that the concept is the same: Difficulty increases as you progress, but those incremental challenges are appropriate to the skills you develop through repetition at an easier level.

But What Does It Mean?

Humans resist change. Don't believe me? Google it and read a few articles there. Our bodies seek stability and stasis through some sort of biological search for security or something. But the environment around us never stays the same.

Embracing change provides more security than resisting it.

Still, when helping others to adapt to change, you should recognize that their initial reaction will be to resist. And now, we're back to the analogy of the frog (however wrong it may be scientifically). Instead of upsetting someone's entire world, focus on a small change that they can not only absorb, but also agree with and champion. Start there.

If you are trying to change yourself, determine what the smallest incremental change towards your goal you can accept would be, then implement that change. Force it daily. As soon as you don't notice the burden of the change anymore, add another.

The same principle applies with the Productivity Challenge I posted last year. The idea was to start with a small set of things to get done, and slowly start ratcheting them up and reprioritizing them in a certain way that it becomes habit.

Never underestimate the power of a good habit.

Once established, always look for the activity that you have to undertake to start to move towards the next level.

Conclusion

In the end, there's not a good way (or a good reason) to boil a frog. But if you are trying to affect change in yourself (or others), taking natural resistance into account will help and adapting gradually will overcome many of the challenges in implementing change.

Devise a slow and progressive plan to continually challenge the same muscles (or mental muscles) that are naturally resisting the change, and push them a little bit further with each increment.

As always, though, doing trumps planning in importance. Plan, but follow through with your actions. No mattter how small, an action in the right direction can build a lifetime habit that you can build and expand upon to create and enhance skills, become expert-level, and craft hobbies and careers around.

Got another idea on how to absorb change? Let me know - I'd love to start a conversation.

The Best Way to Market Your Business

One question seems ubiquitous among new business owners: "What is the best way to market my [insert niche business idea here] business?"

I see two problems with this question. First, the question seeks a silver bullet, a magic bullet, whatever bullet that can cause the product, service, or business take off in a viral message campaign that crushes sales projections. Second, the question shows the high focus on the business idea as something different as if what works for other companies can't possibly work for this business.

So let's address these two concerns first in answering the question.

First things first, magic bullets are hard to come by. People stumble across them, to be sure, but if you intend to plan your business around them, you might also want to buy a few lottery tickets. That said, when the pot's big enough, lottery sales go through the roof. So take a moonshot every now and again. Just don't assume that's your bread and butter.

As for the idea that your business is so different, you're right. Your business is a special snowflake, unique in every single way, just like every other snowflake. Except snowflakes are only unique in pattern. They all are made of frozen water. They all fall from the sky. The same weather conditions create all of them. For millions of years. So when you think about marketing, you might want to focus on how you can use similar techniques to other companies to attract customers rather than different ones.

So as a new business owner, what do you really need to do?

Create a Multi-threaded Plan

First off, instead of just haphazardly trying things, you need to take some time to actually think through your strategy and create a marketing plan.

Your marketing plan needs to have multiple channels as well. You can't just rely on one or two methods to get the word out. Instead, just like large marketing departments do, you need to include elements from all kinds of marketing strategies. Traditional marketing, content marketing, social media, referral programs, retargeting or remarketing, affiliate networks, and interaction between your brand or representative and potential customers on aggregation platforms (like Quora or Medium) could all be a part of your plan (as well as whatever other mechanisms you can think of).

Track Your Results

As you create multiple channels, you need to find ways to track the results of each prong of your plan. What good is having a bunch of marketing efforts if you don't know whether they are actually resulting in sales?

I know a company that takes out ads in various magazines, for example, and includes a toll free number. However, they put a different number in every advertisement that they purchase. This strategy allows them to track inbound calls to different numbers to understand what advertisements are generating the most inbound calls.

The internet offers even more opportunities to track the results of your online marketing, but again it requires a bit of planning to determine your source and target information and how you go about determining what methods succeed for you.

Test and Adjust

A common marketing strategy is called A/B testing. Basically, you create two potential marketing avenues and then measure their results before declaring a winner.

What succeeds, though, is continuing this process. In the boxing ring, there is always a challenger to the champion. I used to love when radio stations would do a nightly countdown and see if one song would beat out the others to be the best of the day. The competition continually improved the output and would, sometimes for weeks at a time, validate that the winner was, in fact, the best song of the time.

When you approach your marketing with a challenger that you think not only worthy to take on but also potentially defeat the reigning champion campaign, you challenge yourself to perform better and learn to continue growth even on top of your successes.

Once you get your results from your tests and efforts, you have to adjust. Perhaps you adjust by running yet another A/B test against the winner of the first. Perhaps you try some different channels to see if they perform better (if you didn't figure it out, that's also an A/B test). Regardless what you do, the concept is to continue to test your methodologies and adjust your approach.

Conclusion

You have a very low probability of winning the lottery, and a pretty similar likelihood of finding a magic bullet in marketing where you can just "do one thing" and have your business take off.

Instead, you have to formulate a structured approach, where you try many different types of marketing, track the results, and then adjust appropriately to make sure you get the best return on your marketing investments.

If you want to go deeper into this topic, drop me a note and let me know from the contact section. I'd love to continue the conversation with you.

Content Marketing and Product Development Should Focus on Quality: Lessons from Buffer

I recently stumbled across Buffer's "Marketing Manifesto in 500 Words" over on Medium. The original was evidently a shared Evernote note. I'm glad they shared with us, too.

I find Buffer itself a fascinating company. For starters, they have a wonderful product. If you are trying to stay active on social media, but have limited time to do so, Buffer offers the ability to just share and store things in a queue that will eventually post out on whatever schedule you choose.

What Buffer also performs well, though, in analyzing the performance of tweets and posts and providing free information to its users (or anyone that stumbles across its site) with valuable stats. They have identified the best times to tweet in any give time zone if you are seeking engagement, for example, by analyzing the results of thousands and thousands of tweets posted by their users.

They post the results often on the Buffer blog, which also offers a transparent look into the behind-the-scenes efforts of the company, even whenthose efforts end up negative in the results column.

In reading through this bold statement about how they intend to market through content, I gleaned a few gems worthy of noting for myself. Perhaps they resonate with your efforts as well.

Be Uncomfortable With Your Product

First and foremost, the manifesto stresses the need to truly own a concern that what you put out into the world is not good enough. Nobody wants to focus on that.

It's much easier to think about all the millions we will make and what model Lamborghini will look best in our driveway. But not everything hits a home run right away. Every post you write will not go viral and every product will not become the "hottest product of the season" (hopefully some do, but who knows).

When you solely focus on quantity, churning out article after article, you can play fun games with computer algorithms, but rarely connect with people. On the other hand, if you focus on connecting with people, not just potential customers, but individuals, humans with thoughts and concerns and dreams, then the importance of the idea that we should take care what we produce shines through.

This advice isn't just for bloggers either. If you make sandwiches, if you produce fiction, if you sell cloud data center space, take a healthy dose of self-doubt before you set something loose upon the world. Be vulnerable. Be edgy. Be scared. It's OK.

Focus on Quality

"Treat every piece of content — every tweet, every Facebook post, every CTA, every press outreach email — with the utmost care."

That's how this 500-word post starts, and it's beautiful. It's not a new idea, the whole zero defect/TQM approach to producing product. But the phrasing here to treat every single thing you do as if it is an important and qualified piece of content that you are releasing shows the brilliance of this statement.

The hyper-focus on quality creates some of the discomfort in releasing product. As the author notes, it's not perfectionism, but the idea that everything you do represents the company. Every piece of content and every product you release demonstrates the company's commitment to quality.

On the contrary, every crappy or shoddy product that you allow to make it to the public in the interest of quantity dilutes the brand of the company.

The endless chase of perfection prohibits truly releasing anything. Often a "good" or "really good" product could change the lives of thousands or millions, and the chase for a "perfect" product might delay that beneficial change. But the question you should ask yourself after reading this manifesto is whether what you are about to release is "good enough."

Reflect

The manifesto at its heart represents a reflection on the efforts of the company and acknowledges failures as well as successes.

Too often we get caught up in searching for the victory that we fail to see what we can learn from the defeats. This post acknowledges failure. It acknowledges missteps.

Most people flee from that type of self-evaluation. They can't handle the idea that they should confront their own failures to learn from them.

But that's how you grow.

Embrace the idea that you need a little time every now and again to reflect on how you could perform better, or how the company could work better.

Conclusion

I've been impressed with Buffer for some time. Again, their product and insight have been extremely valuable to me.

This article, though, shows an honest and vulnerable side to their marketing that I would encourage all marketing departments and companies to look at and potentially embrace.

The idea is simple: create a quality product for your consumer. Someone relies on you to produce, and instead of producing en masse for pure consumption sake, produce something of quality, of value, that has potential. Potential to change lives, businesses, relationships, people.

The burden of creating quality product weighs heavy. The result of accepting that burden is a constant internal struggle, a decision point about everything that represents the company and brand. You will have to ask "Is it good enough?" over and over again.

Once you've pored over everything that you produce, you must pore over it again. Reflect and reflect to try to understand all of the complexities that led to failure and all of the equal complexities that led to your success (here's a hint, you didn't succeed just because you were a genius, though that might have helped. So did luck.).

I'd love to hear your thoughts here. Go read the Buffer marketing manifesto and come back. Leave me a comment or drop me an email and we can chat about it.

New Content Creation Strategy Concepts I Learned From Gary Vaynerchuk

If you don't know Gary Vaynerchuk, you should get yourself acquainted with him. He is an entrepreneur who has an often refreshing take on marketing, media, and business.

He also has great taste (and advice) on wine.

I follow Gary on Twitter and often check out what he's doing in other corners of the web, like this gem I stumbled across on Medium last week.

In the article, Gary discusses a growing trend in video content towards short-form content being produced by big media outlets, such as HBO. The content creation strategy corresponds with online trends and general catering to an ever-shrinking attention span.

But Gary offers a unique perspective which gave me a few takeaways.

Strong Brands Drive Value in Any Form

Gary uses HBO's signing of Jon Stewart to produce new short-form content as his primary example in the article. Jon experienced tremendous success in his long run on The Daily Show on Comedy Central and created a brand around himself of a certain type of humor and wit that resonated with his audience.

Because of the strength of his brand, Jon can attract a certain audience with just about any content creation strategy. Much like his protege. Stephen Colbert, Jon Stewart can change formats and channels and still attract a following.

The key concept here is that when the brand has enough strength, it can carry over to different formats, and the content could be long or short form.

Quality First

In urging companies to buck the trend and pursue immensely epic long-form video content, Gary stresses the idea of creating quality long form content.

The key is in the quality.

Whether an established or new brand; whether creating long or short content; whether generating video, audio, or text; creating quality content wins. Every piece of content should have a purpose. Every piece of content should deliver value. Every piece of content should offer something unique. Every piece of content should require effort to produce.

Create New Things

A bold suggestion hides in one of the latter paragraphs of the article: for Fortune 500 companies to build a brand new type of content creation strategy. One that embraces long-form video or fiction or both to build brand loyalty. One that crafts the content around product rather than using product placement to hide and disguise the product within the media.

Whether you agree with Gary or not on the particular suggestion, the concept is novel. Not only that, it should serve as a beacon for large corporations to realize their need for media outlets and information streams and to manage their ability to traverse across multiple media types.

Conclusion

You can learn quite a bit from listening to and reading things by Gary Vaynerchuk. (Especially about wine).

However, when thinking about content, Gary gives us perspective in terms of who can create content at what level (anyone) (and at any length and format).

If you have an established brand with an audience, great! Keep up the good work. If you don't, while it may require more work you can still get rolling pretty quickly.

Otherwise, let your content be your guide. Try to get as many people interested in that content as you can.

Thoughts? Go read Gary's article and then ping me to join the conversation here.

A Little Something Cool and a Favor

So, I've been working on something that I think is pretty cool, though I'm not ready to share it just yet (there are a few folks in the beta group that get to see some of the behind the scenes stuff, but it is not ready for prime time).

Anyway, as we progress with it, I have a few questions that would help me out among people in marketing and small business owners.

So, since you're here - could you help me out?

If you are a small business owner or marketing professional, I would really appreciate two minutes of your time to fill out the quick survey below. If you don't fit in one of those categories - fill it out anyway - but then send this link via email to ONE friend of yours who runs a small business or works to market a business or service.

Thanks, I appreciate the assistance!

Create your own user feedback survey

If the survey doesn't show up - click here!

Thanks again!

The Theory of Microservices and Your Productivity

How can you tackle the biggest problems that you face? When you or or business are faced with some humongous task that frightens you, how can you address it?

There's a trend in software development (something I come in contact with a little bit in the day job) called microservices.

The idea behind microservice architecture is to break down large software applications into smaller and discrete pieces, each with a specific function.

The concept could spread well beyond software, though, to how you organize your work life. What if you thought about how to break your biggest challenges down into small, manageable pieces that you could master and control?

Determine The BIG Problems

What huge problem do you or your small business face? I remember the old GI Joe PSAs from the 80's that always ended with "...and knowing is half the battle." I'm not sure that knowing your problems constitute half of the battle, but for you to address and fix your issues, you certainly have to identify them.

Take a piece of paper. Write down you big challenges. The more concrete you can make the issues, the easier they are to decompose and address in smaller pieces. Putting the giant and impossible challenges on paper makes them real, instead of giant fictional villains keeping you from your dreams.

Break Them Into Pieces

The key to the microservices movement in technology is to take huge functions (they refer to them as monoliths) and break them into tiny and separate functions required to accomplish the larger task.

Take the same approach here. For each challenge that you have identified, list out all of the different tasks that you have to take in order to solve the problem. Here's a tip - if your tasks seem large, they are still too big. Break it down one more level to a smaller task.

Seek Mastery

Microservices architecture is not just about breaking large and complex functions into smaller parts. Each separate part must also create a niche where it can excel.

Each small and discrete function that gets created becomes the sole source for that activity. Any application across an organization that requires a particular activity to be created can utilize that service. But the services can't work it partially. They have to conquer it.

So as you approach the list of tasks to accomplish one of the giant goals, look for how you can optimize your approach to each task. What's the most efficient way to get it done? Could you do it better next time?

Reduce Redundancy

If you can master a function but find it repetitive, is there a way to automate it? Can you set it up so that it works the same way every time?

The danger in repetitive tasks hides in the inconsistency of the results. If you have to rediscover the process to complete the function every time, you waste valuable execution cycles. Automation and repetition of process helps remove the variables from the process.

Conclusion

No task is too big
to conquer
Tweet This!

No task is too big to conquer. You tackle the giant by chopping it into tiny pieces. Small tasks that move you towards the large goal provide structure and method to attacking the humongous.

Through prioritization, breaking down the challenge into smaller tasks, optimizing your efficiency at accomplishing tasks, and removing or automating redundant activities, you can tackle huge obstacles.

Stealing best practices from the way that efficient and scalable software is designed, we can hack our lives to maximize our own productivity as if it were a system.

So what monolith will you take down today?

What to do when nobody's listening

The allure of broadcasting to the world is the audience. The response. Speakers don't speak to talk to themselves on stage. Changing the lives of the audience drives the communication. Bloggers write in the hopes that someone will read what they have written and take it to heart. Authors can only get their message out when someone buys (and reads) the book. Even the voice of the most boisterous politician sounds quieter after a losing vote.

But what if you have a message to get out? What if your book sits unpurchased, on shelves? What if you stand in front of empty halls with no one to speak to? What can you do to make sure your message outlives you?

Listen

Not having anyone to listen to you may concern you, but when did you last listen to your audience? Ask them for feedback. Try to understand what their concerns and needs are.

If your audience doesn't listen to you, you may be out of touch with them. Having something to say does not mean that someone necessarily has to listen. I'll be honest, I find this to be a difficult lesson, because when I'm talking (or writing), I feel like I have some awesome ideas to pump out there. But if you want to engage, you have to understand your audience.

What are their needs?

Reformulate Your Message

Does your message resonate with the audience anymore? Maybe you need to refactor it. Take some time and incorporate the feedback you learned from listening.

Look for new angles on your existing content and message. Review your existing content or speeches and look for weaknesses and omissions. What content could you produce that would augment and improve what you already have?

You might even consider creating a totally new approach that pivots from your existing course of action. What new perspective could you provide that gives additional insight to your potential audience? Does it align with what feedback they told you that they needed?

Try To Reach One Person

Sometimes content producers try to come up with something valuable to everyone (I certainly do at times), and lose sight of the real audience.

Try this instead: focus your content on a single person. If you have to reach out to them individually via email or talk to someone before a speech that you know will be in the audience, do it. Ask for feedback, work on what would engage that one person.

If you are so lucky as to have more than one true fan, try to engage them, or engage them in bunches. Once you have started building a group that listens, make sure you continue to engage with them as you build larger and larger audiences.

Stay The Course

I have heard of people speaking to near-empty conference halls, marching forward as if it were filled to the brim. I'm not sure that's the type of staying the course that is valuable. However, using that opportunity to pull the few people that did show up to attend into a smaller, more personal and interactive discussion as opposed to unidirectional speech would add value and truly engage that smaller audience.

But you cannot let yourself get discouraged. If your message has merit, and you can verify that with test audiences or small groups, then producing content with that message creates value to people. Those people are your audience. You just need to keep producing and try to find them.

Conclusion

Talking (or writing) to no one can be discouraging, especially if you believe in the message that you want to get out to the world. But you need to make sure that message has someone interested in listening. Sometimes, that means you need to take some time to listen to your audience and understand their needs, reformulate or refactor some of the work that you are doing to make sure it aligns to those needs. From there, it's an effort to truly focus on engaging your customers or potential customers and then stay the course to keep creating meaningful and useful content.

Happy Belated Birthday, Blog (and What I've Learned About My Piles of Content)

If you happened to have been born on March 23 (or any day from then until now), then a belated happy birthday to you! Otherwise, I'm celebrating the fact that this blog has stuck around for just over a full 365 days. I thought about writing some April Fool's related article, but realized I was over a week late in getting this one out instead.

I've already done a Year In Review post, and going forward, I will likely stick to the calendar year for my report card on what got done in a given year, but I thought it worthwhile to talk about the blog itself and some strategic (and tactical) (and just happenstance) changes I've made over the last twelve months.

The Noble Goal

The original goal here was to write every day. Well, every business day at least. Actually, to be more honest, my original goal was posting every day. I fully intended from the beginning to pre-write and schedule out posts.

See, in my head, I envisioned a world where I had created all of this brilliant content that went out on auto-pilot for months in advance, while I sat back and watched clicks and shares and the like fly up through the roof, blowing the top off of my Google Analytics trackers.

As it turned out, to get content out every day meant I had to produce content at an even faster than daily rate, and after some time, that became untenable for me. So, I started spacing the content out until I landed on one post a week as a happy medium.

I think most of the subscribers preferred that frequency as well, so I did not flood their inbox with multiple emails a week. If you're not a subscriber, you should be - you can sign up here.

Cleaning The Content

One side effect of my attempts at being prolific with the prose was that I created a bunch of articles that were relatively thin content.

Some parts of series or subtopics that I wrote honestly just need to be rewritten or packaged up in a bigger article. Some could be reformulated to read a little better. Some could be beefed up with a few more links and resources.

And then a few holiday and other non-posts hide in there that I could honestly just delete, since they are not really adding value as content to the site.

I (as always) have grand plans of scrubbing this content. We will see how much of that happens. But I am no longer concerned with a race to create 250 articles or whatever. Instead, I want to make sure that I am adding good content.

Even meta articles like this may end up getting scrapped in a future review.

Standardization

As I browsed the last year's worth of content, a lack of consistency in formatting stood out among several posts before I got to a somewhat standard set of headlines, fonts and the like.

Along with the text, links to tweet content and share have been a bit inconsistent as well. Standardizing these create a unified experience and a feeling of "I know how this works, I have seen it here before" across the content.

Republishing and Broadcasting

As I go about cleaning up content, an opportunity presents itself to republish that out. The danger in that strategy lies in boring people who read the original content. So, I've put a little thought into the strategy for it.

If you are subscribed to the email list, I'd love to say that you will only get new articles. This should be the case most of the time. However, if I end up rewriting something so substantially that it basically warrants a new post, then I will likely post it here as a new article, so you might get a tiny bit of rehash, but it will hopefully have enough new content that you won't notice.

For the most part, though, my intent is to clean up those evergreen posts from way back when and distribute two additional ways. First, through Medium, which I am experimenting with a bit as a republishing platform for getting writing out there. And then there's Twitter, where I occasionally share older articles as "From the Archives" or something like that. I will likely note these differently as "Updated" in some fashion, though I haven't figured out my exact verbiage yet.

Takeaways for You

So if you are still reading, you may think to yourself, "Thanks for the updates on your blog, Cameron, but what does this have to do with me?"

You can take what I am doing (yup, straight up steal these ideas) and go apply them to your own content marketing. Scrub your old articles, repurpose stale content, and find new channels to share your brand with new audiences.

Thanks for sticking with me so far, I'll try to keep it coming.

If you want more articles from me, subscribe to the email list and you'll get them delivered straight to your inbox (and you can reply right back to me). I'd love to continue the conversations with you (and take your suggestions as well).

Determine What's Important

Focus Only On That Action

Set A Deadline

Don't Defeat Yourself

Conclusion

Busy Means Inefficient

Busy Means Disorganized

Busy Means Overcommitted

Busy Means Lazy

Busy Means You Lie

Conclusion

You Made It, and You Still Are Making It

You Can't Just Walk Away From It

It's More About You Than The Baby

Know When To Let Go

Conclusion

New Opportunities

New Friends

Clean Slate

Conclusion

Customers

Vendors

Employees

Products

Conclusion

Anticipate Disruptive Technology

Be Ready to Pivot

Perform with Excellence

Conclusion

Conform To The Guidelines

Continue to Use Extension Apps

Embrace Evernote Web

Start Paying

Find Other Options

Conclusion

Set Your Goals

Choose Your Inputs

Brainstorm The Impossible

Create A Timeline

Conclusion

Getting Your Exercise

Level Up

But What Does It Mean?

Conclusion

Create a Multi-threaded Plan

Track Your Results

Test and Adjust

Conclusion

Be Uncomfortable With Your Product

Focus on Quality

Reflect

Conclusion

Strong Brands Drive Value in Any Form

Quality First

Create New Things

Conclusion

Determine The BIG Problems

Break Them Into Pieces

Seek Mastery

Reduce Redundancy

Conclusion

Listen

Reformulate Your Message

Try To Reach One Person

Stay The Course

Conclusion

The Noble Goal

Cleaning The Content

Standardization

Republishing and Broadcasting

Takeaways for You

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