Author: Fabrizio

What you are and who for

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Few months back I got to know Stripo. I was looking for a way to spice up our internal email updates, and I wanted a tool that could let me build a compelling visual easily and with no coding.

The tool is great, there’s a free trial if you want to check it out. But what really stands out to me after having visited their website few times now, is the perfect way their solution is introduced to the world, right above the fold of their website.

Drag & Drop Email Template Builder – Simple and clear, sets you right away on the right course to understanding what you are looking at. At the same time, they are telling you they are not in the same business as other popular Saas that deal with email, positioning their offering in a very specific niche (“email template builder”). It’s interesting to notice how some of their competitors fail to do just that, because they prefer to put the emphasis on the more common and confounding term (“email”), or because they add complexity with the use of a second term (“content management platform”).

Create professional and responsive email templates fast without any HTML skills – While it is mainly a confirmation of the sentence above, this value proposition statement adds two important elements: what’s in it for me (“fast” = time saving) and why should I stop my research here (“without knowing any HTML skills” = a solution for people with no technical background).

Inside-in

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Talking about deeply personal and emotional topics transcends the need for an outlet to release personal demons.

It’s much more about achieving higher levels of self-awareness, that I believe being the stepping stone for everything – yes, everything! – you want to accomplish in life. We are very much used to approach reality inside-out, looking at what’s around from our perspective. We are also pretty familiar with an outside-in approach, letting the facts of the world influence who we think we are and the things we think we can do.

Inside-in, looking within to find and elaborate on feelings, fears, failures, pains, delusions, desires, passions, thoughts, ideas, plans. Stuff that we project outside, and also let others magnify. That is far less common, and we need to train in that.

Shit

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We all go through the same shit.

That does not mean our pain, despair, fights, passions are all the same, indistinct reasons why we feel miserable. It means that most likely others can relate to it. Can understand. Can empathize. And it also means that we are not alone, not in our suffering.

So, the first thing to do is talk about it. Reach out to a friend, a family member, a doctor, somebody in this deep sea of misunderstanding we can relate to. Talk honestly and don’t hold back.

And the second thing to do, arguably the most difficult, is to listen when we are on the receiving end of a request of help.

Gentleness

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Understanding what is happening within has one sole purpose.

Gentleness.

When it becomes clear where your actions and reactions come from, what’s behind the patterns you keep falling in, why it is so difficult to be a certain way and do a certain thing. Then you can relax.

That is not the same as giving up, or finding excuses. Actually, the moment you accept the trigger for what it is (a thought, a situation, a feeling, a sensation) and refuse to label it as “me” and “reality”, is the moment you can open to proactivity. Good thing will come from it.

Opportunities

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Why would people rent a car and not drive it?

Even a service as straightforward as car rentals can have things to figure out. So chances are your product, your service, your software might not be used for the application it was originally designed for.

Two points to make here.

If that’s the case, and most likely it is, the best way to find out what is happening is asking your customers. No need to sit in a meeting room with product, marketing, sales, customer success to second guess the needs of your audience. Ask them. Actually, get them involved and listen to them even if everything is going as planned. That’s almost always a signal that you are missing something.

Then, how do you react to finding out? You might be instictively led to force the original use on the customers. Teach them, penalize them, leverage price and place to guide the wrong users away. Or you could make an opportunity out of it, understand that your plans are irrelevant, leverage product and promotion to adapt to what you have found.