Reading Time: 2 minSolid marketing can do wonderful things for your business, but it can be easy to get distracted and waste your time. Similar to my recent post “Can you speed it up?“, people can often do things in marketing that have the opposite of the intended effect. In the book “Trying Not To Try“, the author […]
Business
Can you speed it up?
Reading Time: < 1 minMost tasks in this world could be sped up with improved processes, but in many cases that’s not what’s best. I recently wrote about un-automating parts of my note-taking in order to better understand what I have in there, and there are other areas like that to consider. For me, a big one is the […]
Sell the customer as little as possible
Reading Time: < 1 minIt sounds counter-intuitive, but some of the best companies in the world work hard to sell as little as possible to each of their customers. I first shared this a few years ago when talking about how “if you don’t say no, your yes is meaningless“, where the companies I trust most often push to […]
A solid business is built on trust
Reading Time: 2 minThe title of this post may seem a bit obvious, and I think it is, but taken from a wider view it can get a little interesting. In Patrick Lencioni’s book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team“, he breaks down the typical dysfunctions in the form of a pyramid, shown here. In his pyramid, you […]
Dumb rules come from lazy leadership
Reading Time: < 1 minWe’ve all worked at organizations where they had some rules that were clearly overkill, or even didn’t make sense at all. Most of these rules can be traced back to an incident in the past, and people say “Oh yes, that rule is because of Steve”. Rather than management talking to Steve about his behavior, […]
If it costs less, we care less
Reading Time: < 1 minThis is one of those pieces of human nature that I don’t really like, but I need to accept that it’s true. If you pay less for something, you value it less, even if the true value is much higher than what you paid for it. This applies to buying cars, purses, electronics, or almost […]
What service do you offer?
Reading Time: 2 minBetween our business mail service and returning Amazon orders, I visit our local UPS Store quite a lot. They’re great! A few doors down from them I often see a few trucks for Sluss+Padgett, a company that does… something? Here are their trucks: I appreciate a nice clean design, but their “See the difference” tagline […]
We are impossible to imitate
Reading Time: 2 minOver the years, an interesting thing we’ve done at GreenMellen is to literally give all of our “secrets” away. Across dozens of podcast episodes, hundreds of Meetup events, and thousands of blog posts, we don’t hold anything back. I often joke that our Meetups are when our competition all visit and we tell them all […]
The Curse of Knowledge
Reading Time: 2 minIn reading Jonah Berger’s book “Magic Words“, he shared some thoughts on “The Curse of Knowledge” and how it can impact the ways that you communicate with others. In his words: This curse has a name, and appropriately, it is called the curse of knowledge. It’s a curse because the more we know, the more […]
Be willing to miss your exit
Reading Time: < 1 minThere’s a saying out there that says “bad drivers never miss their exit”, meaning a good driver will take the safe route if they are about to miss their exit, but a bad driver will make poor decisions in order to make their exit at all costs. Here’s a great example, where the white car […]