The difference between ‘buy now’ and ‘bye now’ is very thin.
Sometimes, when we push very hard for a commitment, we break the trust we’ve earned.
For a while, you might not notice the broken trust, because we’re encouraged to keep pushing, treating every individual as a walking ATM, not a relationship to be nurtured and a person to be helped.
Soon, though, you run out of the gullible and all you’re left with is distrust.
The AI driven voice mail system said, “I’m sorry, I didn’t understand you.” Of course, there is no “I” and by most definitions of sorry, it’s not.
But it made me feel better.
The overworked and slightly bitter front desk person who was the frontline flotsam in a poorly designed system couldn’t be bothered. Even though the person they worked for was cancelling the appointment, and I had just spent ten minutes returning their call through a maze of badly designed prompts and it was a hassle to reschedule, they couldn’t/didn’t/wouldn’t say, “I’m sorry.”
After all, they didn’t cancel the appointment or design the system.
“Sorry” doesn’t have to be an admission of guilt or acceptance of fault. It could simply be the kind way one human acknowledges to another human that things aren’t ideal right now.
The magic of this simple word is that it can make both people feel better.
It looks like this:
Which do we measure the most, spend the most obtaining and argue about most often? We might have it backwards. HT Russ Ackoff.
Bananas are (slightly) radioactive. The banana equivalent dose (BED) is a measurement of radiation. It’s definitely not enough to hurt you.
When we think about risk, the BED is a useful way to find perspective. Is the exposure this new thing will cause on the order of a banana? If so, perhaps we shouldn’t worry about it so much. A chest x ray might be like eating 100 bananas… it gives us a scale we can work with.
Driving a car is far more dangerous than being on an airplane. The Honda Civic dose might be a helpful way to think about the risk of a crash.
And far more people are injured or killed in collisions with deer and moose compared to sharks. The Moose equivalent dose for exposure to wild animals might be worth considering.
Finally, and most salient, the chances that you will experience significant long-term damage from wearing the wrong color shoes to fourth grade, or by asking a dumb question after a presentation are lower than being injured by a pumpkin. And just imagining the pumpkin equivalent dose makes it hard to take ourselves too seriously.
That’s the first step, certainly. If you don’t, your boss will.
The second step is to take the time you’ve freed up and do work that the AI can’t do.
Every coat needs better pockets.
There are categories of products or services where there’s a universal area for improvement. When in doubt, make the pockets better.
The interesting work is in realizing that you might offer a product or service where there are non-universal preferences. Areas where improvement isn’t valued.
The Birkin bag is not a good value or particularly functional. That’s okay, that’s part of the appeal.
We might not benefit by always focusing on the pockets.
In medical TV dramas, losing consciousness is something that happens suddenly and dramatically. We can all tell… the body is still there, but the mind is gone, at least for now.
Unfortunately, this happens in real life. At work. In our personal lives. For a few minutes or even a decade or more.
We stop noticing. We fail to appreciate. Most of all, we stop making decisions.
Sheepwalking.
You probably don’t need a medical intervention. Instead, we simply have to find the guts to wake up.
Choice brings responsibility, and responsibility is often accompanied by fear.
That’s okay. You can’t run a marathon without getting tired, and you can’t do important work when you’re asleep.
PS thanks to everyone who responded to yesterday’s post. We sold way more than half of the limited-edition boxes in less than a day. I apologize that international ordering didn’t work in the morning, but the problem is now fixed. Thanks for your patience.
UPDATE! Now sold out.
It took less than 48 hours. Thank you for making it happen.
Original post below:
[Lots of links in this post… US offer is here, international is here.]
Ideas travel horizontally.
Not from the creator to the audience as much as from one person to another.
It’s easy to misunderstand the insight of Kevin Kelly’s 1,000 True Fans. Decades ago he argued that the long tail is fueled by circles of people who lean in and support a creator’s work. 1,000 people who show up when there’s something important going on. 1,000 fans who care enough to enable an individual to create something worthwhile.
That matters. But that’s not what makes it so powerful.
Ideas that spread win.
The 1,000 fans go first, yes, but they also spread the word. Part of the creator’s job is to give the true fans something worth talking about, something that advances their mission.
When we make spreading the word worthwhile, the word gets spread.
Today, I’m launching my new book in a special package to 1,000 people.
Click here for more pictures and to order…
It’s seven copies of the book (which comes out in about six weeks), a collectible chocolate bar from Askinosie with a trading card inside, a deck of 54 strategy cards and three month’s access to purple.space, including full access to the Marketing Seminar and Strategy Course as well. The retail value is over $700. I’m working with my publisher and Porchlight to sell the whole box of joy for below cost, less than $125 in the US.
Why overdo it?
Because ideas spread horizontally. Because someone with seven books is likely to give six away. Because I believe that when people have a better understanding of how to use strategy to make things better, they’re going to want to have their colleagues join them on the journey.
And because it’s fun.
It’s fun to interact with the true fans. Your questions and stories and heroics make me think more clearly and find new ways to extend the work. And what an opportunity design and create packaging for chocolate bars, trading cards and a strategy deck as part of my day job.
It all ships in a few weeks. If it’s something you’re interested in, I hope we made enough.
Click here to see all the details. International orders (no chocolate, sorry), please click here instead.
Thank you.
That’s magical. To have the resources to expend labor on something that fills us with joy.
If you’re lucky enough to encounter this, perhaps it makes sense not to confuse the issue by also trying to turn it into labor for maximum profit.
When we focus on one, we often decrease the other.
Spoiled leads to bitter.
A sense of entitlement is a trap, because bitterness demands more evidence and seeks to maintain dominance over the other emotions.
When we’re busy looking for more reasons to be bitter, we’re not taking the time to do generative work, to connect and to find opportunities to make things better. These are the enemies of bitterness… it’s easy to make bitterness worse by seeking more reasons to be bitter.
