Reading Time: 2 minOver the last few months, the WordPress community has been a bit of a mess. The short version of the “mess” is that Matt Mullenweg (the man behind WordPress) is not happy with WP Engine (a major host of WordPress sites) and it’s causing a lot of fallout. My friend Aaron has a great timeline […]
Business
When preventing the Osborne Effect hurts
Reading Time: 2 minBack in 1983, the Osborne Computer was selling relatively well when the founder of the company announced plans for the next version of the machine that would be coming out in the next year or so. The new one would be much better, so people stopped buying the current version and the company went bankrupt […]
The Yellow List
Reading Time: < 1 minI’ve mentioned before that we use the EOS / Traction model in our agency, and it’s been awesome. There are a lot of great pieces that we’ve implemented from it, but one of my favorites is the concept of the “IDS List” (Identify, Discuss, Solve). In short, it’s a place to leave ideas until a […]
Throw a jacket on your calendar
Reading Time: 2 minSomething I’ve tried to do over the years, with marginal success, is to schedule more white space on my calendar. It seems somewhat counter-intuitive (isn’t “white space” the opposite of “scheduling”?), but it’s often the only way to make it happen. In recently reading Juliet Funt’s book “A Minute to Think“, she had a great […]
Ruining a good thing by trying too hard
Reading Time: 2 minI remember back in elementary school we had an assignment to draw a map of a fictional city. I worked hard on mine, and it was great! However, I couldn’t leave well enough alone so I kept adding more and more stuff to it until it was a huge mess. Trying too hard created a […]
Using cash is expensive
Reading Time: < 1 minI recently listened a the long episode about Visa on the Acquired podcast, and it was fantastic. Visa is one of those companies that we all think we know, but it’s really quite confusing. From the show: Visa does not extend credit. They do not issue cards. They do not work directly with merchants. They […]
You couldn’t tell who the bosses were
Reading Time: < 1 minTom Murphy is one of those guys that not enough people know about it. He ran Capital Cities Communications (which you also likely haven’t heard of) for years back in the 1960’s until it eventually acquired the ABC network in 1985, which was later purchased by Disney in 1986. His story is fascinating, and a […]
Stewardship, not ownership
Reading Time: < 1 minKevin Paul Scott has a fantastic description of the idea of “stewardship” versus that of “ownership”. In his book “Return on Inspiration“, he says: “Stewards take care of things for other people; owners look out for their own interests. When we look at companies through this lens, we see that some owners act more like […]
Train people well enough so they can leave
Reading Time: < 1 minThere’s a maxim I’ve heard a few times over the years that goes something like: “You should invest in your team to make them the best that they can be. This may mean that some leave for better opportunities, but that beats the opposite of just not investing in them at all.“ This came to […]
Marketing automation works best when it’s backed by humans
Reading Time: 2 minIf you’ve followed my writing for very long, you know I’m not a big fan of automated emails. There are cases where they are done correctly and can be valuable, but the most common implementation seems to be “cool, let’s blast stuff out!”. If you’re going to automate, I suggest two main rules: It seems […]