Reading Time: < 1 minNearly 14 years in, our process for building websites and digital marketing strategies is pretty fantastic. The outcomes, both visually and financially, are a winner for everyone involved. 14 years ago the process wasn’t nearly as strong or detailed, but it worked, and helped lead us to where we are today. In his book “The […]
Business
Negotiate with more questions
Reading Time: 2 minI always find it interesting when the data shows the opposite of what I expect. It could be something like Simpson’s Paradox, which is just so weird, or the idea that expert poker players fold 3x more often than an amateur player. In Adam Grant’s book “Give and Take” he shares a study from Neil […]
Lead with reputation and legacy, not business
Reading Time: < 1 minThere are a lot of situations where it feels you should quickly steer conversations toward business, but that’s almost never the right way to go. Even if you’re at a business-focused event, keeping the conversations more personal and other-focused will lead to better long-term results. Gary Vaynerchuk can be a polarizing person, but I appreciate […]
Responsiveness can be as important as price
Reading Time: 3 minPeople value money but they also value time, and if your service can be faster and/or more responsive customers are willing to pay more. Disney’s “Lightning Lane” (formerly “FastPass”) is proof of this — millions of people pay billions of dollars every year just to get in the park, and a huge percentage of them […]
Who should you really serve?
Reading Time: 2 minWhen working in any organization, it’s important to remember who you serve and it’s not always as obvious as it seems. Years ago when I worked at a few different churches, I went on a lot of mission trips with the high school youth groups. These trips were all still in the United States (we […]
Assigning fault versus solving problems
Reading Time: 2 minAs time goes on, I’ve been finding myself caring a lot less about “who is at fault?” when something goes wrong. I’ll certainly want to investigate why something went wrong, but the who is less relevant. I’ll admit, part of this is because I’m lucky with how great our team is at GreenMellen. I’m confident […]
The future of AI
Reading Time: 6 minWe’re at a fascinating point in the history of computing, as most people think that we’re just seeing the tip of the iceberg when it comes to artificial intelligence. While everyone (myself included) has been stunned by the quality of tools like ChatGPT, the software has already become incredibly better in just a few months […]
Networking versus alliances
Reading Time: < 1 minWhile I hate the word, I spend a lot of my time “networking”, though the more “networky” the event, the less likely I am to attend. It’s important to expand your circle of contacts, but standing around trading business cards isn’t likely to do much good. In his book “Integrity“, author Henry Cloud compares traditional […]
A trusted partner?
Reading Time: 2 minI get a lot of spam in my inbox every day, and I’m sure you do too. Most of it is just blatant spam, but there is still a subset of it that thinks that it’s just “cold marketing” — which I still categorize as spam. I think a lot of that comes from folks […]
No organization is perfect
Reading Time: 2 minYou see it on Facebook with other people, and on LinkedIn with other companies – “wow, they have everything together”. We’ve learned over the years that a perfectly manicured Facebook feed often isn’t very truthful, but it can be trickier to see that in other organizations. If you see a group that puts out good […]