Author: Fabrizio

Looking inside

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When you start looking inside, it’s possible that you won’t like what you find.

It’s a mixture of feelings, thoughts, ideas, memories, plans. Some land close to the picture of ourselves we have created culturally and relationally, some land quite far away. And that’s ok.

Looking inside, though, gives you quite a different perspective on the outside as well. When you begin to appreciate that deep down you are that insane and chaotic mixture, the good and the bad, the expected and the unexpected, the acceptable and the unacceptable, you realize that people around you are just the same. Their intentions are mixed, their feelings are mixed, their thoughts are mixed. They change trajectory within the same breath, they are insecure, scared, unprepared, variegated. Just like you are.

And so, what to do?

Most of us, spend their days fighting this, suppressing and denying what they do not recognize and cannot appreciate. Eventually, they bring the battle outside, because it’s easier to see the fault in others and pursue it relentlessly rather then acknowledging it in each one of us and make peace with it.

Few simply let go. They stop clinging, they stop holding on, they stop wanting to change, themselves and the others, they accept things for what they are, they navigate life to the best of their current possibility, making the most of each situation, realizing that it might not last (and in fact, it probably won’t).

Is this giving up, or is this the only way we have to actually change the world?

Stumbling on the funnel

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Not everyone is interested in what you have to sell. Not all those who are going to enter your shop will end up paying for something. Not all those who click on a banner are manifesting an interest in buying. Not all those who ask a question, or many questions, have their wallets open, waiting for the correct answer.

We all take actions without a reason, or at least without a clear enough reason, and so we should not punish those who stumble upon our pipeline or enter the funnel only to dream a bit bigger (or a bit smaller) for once.

Understanding your customers also means identifying those who are going to buy and those who are not. Too often we believe that the latter have just misunderstood, or have received not good enough service, or were misguided by the wrong button in the wrong banner in the wrong place.

It might be, sure, and yet it’s much more likely that they simply don’t want to buy.

And we should let them go.

Just a story

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Somehow we’ve all bought into the story that marketing is about tactics, hacks, posts, optimisation and measurement.

It’s an interesting story, one that somehow feeds both our need to stay ahead of the curve and our tendency to aimlessly complain when things don’t work.

The genius of Google and Facebook as platforms is that they are impossible to master. Can anybody name a company that has developed long term sustainable advantage from the mastery of Google and Facebook? … They have not become tools, they have become taxes that every one needs to pay.

Scott Galloway, PIVOT podcast ep. 188

It’s an interesting story, yet a story nonetheless.

The reality is very different: it’s made of mistakes in the very same metrics we have become accustomed to measure our marketing success by, it’s made of businesses that make money inflating those metrics with no top or bottom line benefit for the advertisers, it’s made of pointless efforts to optimise the unoptimisable while the platform owner brings the whole thing in a totally different direction.

What’s next for marketing is hopefully a reckoning that it’s not the platform, or the channel, or the single tactic, or the brand new hack that builds a meaningful, long-term connection. What’s next is hopefully a return to the lost fundamentals, and an increased awareness that there’s not a single way to reach that person that matters so much. Always start from them and you will win.

Not all the roads

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Annie Duke: We have this trade-off. We can kind of feel the pain in the moment, but the pain is going to be better in the long run, if we use it well, because we are going to be better decision makers in the long run, because we are experiencing the pain.

But the pain in the moment is pain. It doesn’t feel good. We have these competing problems: what’s best for me now, in terms of the way that I feel, versus what’s best for future me, in terms of how my life turns out. I think we can agree that the better my decisions, the more likely my life is going to turn out in a way that is good.

Shane Parris: It’s almost like the hindsight of your future-self becoming the foresight of your today-self.

Annie Duke: It’s getting the future version of you to get involved in the decisions of the present version of you.

From The Knowledge Project Podcast, ep. #37

When you make decisions in the moment, continuosly distracted by what is shinier, within reach, effortless, you often avoid negative feelings. And yet, you lose a little bit of who, deep down, you want to become.

What would your future-self say about what your today-self is doing?

Get that clear sooner rather than later, and accept the fact that not all the roads are going to take you where you aim. It will make it easier to accept defeats, say no, and be kind to yourself when some things will inevitably not pan out.

Presenting

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If you are preparing to deliver a presentation that matters (to you), consider the following.

Start with the audience and the change you’d like to see (even when you are just presenting results, you are still demanding a change). List them down somewhere and have them visible throughout the process.

Have the deck ready early, at least a week before the presentation.

Little text on a slide is always better than more. Always.

A list is a list even without a bullet.

Allow enough time to collect and implement the needed feedback. If you get feedback too close to the time you are supposed to deliver the presentation (<24hrs), be brave and disregard it.

Write a script for the key points and the transition between slides.

Rehearse the presentation multiple times, keeping the script at hand, but without reading it.

Few hours before the actual delivery, free your mind and take a break from the presentation. Do something else. The deck is ready by now, and so you are.

Good luck.