I’ve followed him for years now. I think his work is important and, frankly, supporting him is an easy, painless way I can do something to save the planet without moving from my big, comfy chair. He sent an email to all his followers that was very simple: hey, I’m releasing a new film shortly, would you write about it? I said sure and am posting about it here and on my social media platforms. I don’t know how many of his community chose to write about it as I have, but if his community tends to mirror his values, and I think it does, and if all our communities tend to mirror our values, and I think they do, then this should be an efficient (and free) piece of marketing.

And now, back to the film. I hope you watch it…

It’s the story of Emma Ringqvist and her desire to explore loneliness. Her choice is to sail, solo, across the Atlantic and then some, with much of her journey coming after her engine gives out. She shares lots and lots of emotions, from “Why am I doing this??” to “This is why I’m doing this!!” To avoid a storm, she makes her way to Tristan Da Cunha, the most remote inhabited island chain in the world, where the people all have a second summer home on a different part of their tiny island (??). And she passes through The Doldrums, that patch in the southern Atlantic that can be without wind for weeks (with a dead engine), where she finds new meaning to her journey.

I don’t know whether Mattias released this short documentary as we come out of a pandemic on purpose, but his message is certainly well timed. And he adds the poetry of Stephen Jenkinson, but just a little, which was a delightful surprise for me. Jenkinson is one of the wisest thinkers and writers of our time.

Olsson summarizes his work as “Inspiring Change Through Film” and “Documentaries for a Transition Into a More Beautiful World”. Also:

“Imagine you’ve left the old story behind. You know, the one that takes for granted that Earth belongs to humans to exploit at will. You’ve started a hike into the unknown. There’s no map…”

His films show people simply, imperfectly, finding their way on that hike away from the unsustainable and into the unknown. Without a map. His work I believe is his contribution to that map. Yet his films are never preachy. They’re insightful, yet gentle. He never pushes, always allowing you to see the truth at your own pace. That takes bravery and humility. Olsson operates in both spaces with equal skill.

And his work is always beautiful.

“The Art of Slowing Down Time…” is Olsson’s latest piece of that map. Offered bravely but humbly, not to polish his version of his map, but to inform yours. It releases today, Tuesday, April 26^th, on his website, https://campfire-stories.org/the-art-of-slowing-down-time, and I hope today, or any day after that, you take 30 minutes to watch the film. And if you’re moved to support his work as I have been, I hope you make a donation.

• Get close to your customers. Your world is changing. So is their world. Find out how and help them navigate that change.
• Focus your shrinking marketing budget on the thing that works the best. That’s probably search marketing (paid and organic). And that probably means your website needs to work harder than ever. Work on it!
• Track, measure, refine, and repeat. Our increasingly digital world has made it easier than ever to track response and make changes.

This is actually good advice any time, but especially critical when a rising tide is NOT floating all boats.

You can check out the webinar here.

I disagree because when you go to a website to cancel something you already decided you want to cancel. They’re too late. Why annoy me by making it hard, dammit, AFTER I’ve decided to cancel?

You know what I mean. Are you sure you want to unsubscribe and miss all these great benefits…that you have to wade through to find the tiny “Unsubscribe”. Clicking through several pages, hunting for the “Cancel”, and sometimes, if the subscription is big enough, you have to actually speak to a human? A Customer Retention Specialist, no less. Whose job it is to RETAIN you.

None of this is a good experience. I recently cancelled my subscription to Wondruim, an online training company. Easy-peasy. A couple clicks, sorry to see you go, and two things happen. Both good for them:

1. I’m more likely to re-subscribe when the reason I cancelled changes.
2. I’m more likely to tell someone to try them if they’re looking for online training.

So, what to do? Help your users or customers get value out of what they’ve bought . Before they cancel. And make it easy. Most companies know when people typically cancel. How about a week or month before that time comes up you check in with your customers to make sure they’re happy, understanding how to use your product, etc.?

If I was a marriage counselor and I told you not to worry about your relationship until your spouse asks for a divorce, well, that’s ridiculous. Right? Don’t wait until it’s too late to save a customer relationship.

Some of the most successful entrepreneurs I’ve had the privilege of working with have made the most mistakes. 

So don’t bet the ranch* and don’t sweat the failures, and you’ll do fine.

*My grandfather did, literally. 

Sam Wallace homesteaded here in the Arizona Territory in 1892 with his wife and sons. They came from Missouri.  Samuel Wallace was my great-grandfather and one of his sons, James Wallace, the one holding his favorite horse, was my grandfather.

They cleared the land and hacked out a living in the bone-dry desert, trying a handful of crops until the government offered to buy all the cotton any farmer could grow at a guaranteed price. So they put all their land into cotton. 

The sad part was the cotton was going for World War One uniforms. Sad too because when the war ended the government stopped buying the stuff. The price crashed and tens of thousands of small ranchers and farmers were forced to scramble. Jim tried lettuce, cattle, and probably much more, but the family stories get simpler over the generations. With the ranch failing he heroically, because we all want our ancestors to be heroic, bet the ranch trying to save it. 

He let the hired help go and worked himself, as our stories go, to death. His third stroke got him, but not before he bet the ranch. He used it as collateral to buy stocks on margin. In the 1920s you could buy $10 worth of stock for $1. Great if the stock went up, as it had been doing for so many years. Not-so-great if the stock went down and you had to cover the $9/share margin. Really NOT GREAT if you bought in about eight months before the market crashed in 1928. As grandpa Jim did.

So when I say don’t bet the ranch I’m serious. Don’t. Don’t literally bet so big on a marketing idea that if you don’t succeed on the first try you go under. 

Plus a word about sweating the failures…

Don’t.

Nobody likes to fail. But as long as your failures aren’t ranch-betting-sized failures I’ll teach you to use them as stepping stones to learn your way to where you want to go. 

Are you a perfectionist? Then this approach may be uncomfortable at first. But only at first. Same if this is new, if you haven’t made changes to your marketing and put them in front of people to see if they work, this might feel weird. 

But remember, only at first.

Small failures are a natural part of the journey to marketing that succeeds, so don’t sweat them. You’ll be comfortable with this by the time you’re done with the book.

It started out (in 1881) as a warning: watch out or a “bigger fish” will come along and eat you. Good advice back then when bigger companies did tend to gobble up smaller ones or put them out of business.

I’d argue it’s never been easier or safer to be a big fish in a small pond. Let me explain or, more accurately, let me let Seth Godin explain.

Godin observes “the long tail” is starting to segment into multiple markets, multiple audiences, and multiple long tails. I believe he’s right. My version is more big fish than long tail, so maybe a minute to revisit The Long Tail:

Think Barnes & Noble and Amazon and how the internet has changed distribution. The long tail is a strategy that allows companies to realize significant revenues by selling low volumes of hard-to-find items to many customers (Amazon able to sell 3.4 million book titles via the internet), instead of only selling large volumes of a reduced number of popular items (B&N, physical stores with limited inventory).

It’s been happening for a while. But the coronavirus has accelerated this trend by restricting personal contact and pushing all of us to the internet for shopping, school, and hanging out with friends. This has increased people’s ability to find what they’re looking for and made it easier for ALL books, movies, outdoor clothes, etc., to find their audiences. As Godin puts it: “Short heads built on multiple long tails.” Here’s his article.

Let me add:

This argues more than ever for small companies to focus on promoting who they really are instead of trying to look like something they think will appeal to the most people. Be crystal clear about who you are and focus on attracting that small pond of people who are looking for a company exactly like yours. You know what I’m talking about. When you get that phone call or read that email or have that conversation at a trade show and you KNOW that person is going to buy. You and they are a perfect fit. That’s what I’m talking about.

The internet is creating many small ponds. It’s never been easier or safer to be a big fish in one of them. Go be a big fish.

We will launch the series in April. If you want an invitation to this free series, click here to send me an email. Add “I’m in.” in the Subject Line and we’ll send you an invitation when our schedule is firmed up.

Our goal is to show you, teach you, and encourage you to put the things we know work into your marketing. We know they work because we’ve been part of them working. They don’t work every time, we’ve been part of that, too. But consider this a chance to hear from guys who have done the things they’ll tech you to do. Pay attention, ask questions, and take on step at a time you can take real, proven steps to improve your marketing and grow your business in this uncertain time.

These aren’t “Eat the food you love and lose the weight you want” type things. They’re real. And you can do them.

We teach on two levels: human nature; and how to. You need both. If your how-to ignores human nature, you won’t connect with people — you won’t move them. If your message connects but your how-to — your implementation — is weak, nothing happens.

We are Hamilton Wallace and Vikram Nagrath. I’ve been a marketing consultant for hundreds of companies over 39 years and have been a student of human nature my entire adult life. Vik has fewer companies and years (14+), but he “gets under the hood” and is tenacious at implementation. Together, while we regrettably don’t know everything, we know a lot. And by “know” I mean we put it through the homework/idea/implement/measure/fix/repeat process. The same process we’ll teach you.

Click here to send me an email and we’ll make sure you know about our next six-session series, How to Produce More WARM Leads from Your Website. Add “I’m in.” in the Subject Line and we’ll send you a reminder.

McDonald’s is doing this; giving their heavily advertised new product away. Yeah, McDonald’s, one of the best-known companies in the world, is giving their new product away. For free.

You might think McDonald’s would be the last company that needs to give their new product away. And you’d be wrong.

What are you doing to get your new product into the market, into use? I get that it might cost more than a chicken sandwich and you might not be able to give it away free. This isn’t the point. The point is one of the most powerful companies in the world is pushing their new product hard and you should too. Whatever that looks like for you.

How long ago was that? And what does that number mean in human and computer years?

How long ago? It would be another 18 months before I got a personal computer because literally, all the first ones did was store your recipes and balance your checkbook. Two things not important to me.

Can you imagine? Paying the equivalent of a car for a personal computer that would store your recipes (after you input EVERY SINGLE ONE) and balance your checkbook!  But, the story went, there are all these cool things coming because computers can do SO MUCH. A computer in your home was pretty exotic and full of promise.

So in computer years, 1975 was a long time ago. An IBM 5100 Portable Computer, that sleek beauty in the picture, cost $8,995 that year, or $42,000 in today’s dollars. Today, your $42K buys a new, tricked out Audi A3. Plus you’d have enough left to come home with six decent Dell laptops in your trunk.

In human years it was just yesterday. So much has happened. If you pay attention there’s a lot to learn. Sometimes it serves you well, other times it gets in the way of what’s different and new. But it taught me a few important lessons. Things move fast but the important ones don’t. Human communication changes, but human nature hasn’t.

I’m collecting all the lessons I’ve learned about the nature of humans that doesn’t change as they look for and buy things. Lessons that apply to you regardless of what you sell, as long as sell to humans.

You won’t learn how to use Facebook or TikTok or Clubhouse, to mention three fast-moving things that are relevant this week. I teach what to do to connect with and engage other humans hopefully making your content, wherever it is, actually connect with and engage, you know, other humans.

So stay tuned. If you want to read a chapter or two free, while they’re still being edited, send me an email with “Book” in the subject line.

When I encountered the idea it had already built a culture that was the envy of the world at IBM, and for this ready-to-join-the-ranks young pup who was thrilled to get a job in one of the worst recessions in memory, much less with a company like IBM, it seemed the right way to do business and something I was ready and willing to throw myself into.

Then, 46 years later at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, there it was: THINK. The thing that tied together my beliefs about business. In a museum. My first gasp: Oh my god, the things that are important to me, the things I’ve carried with me all this time, the things that have worked for me, in a museum. A museum! So, grandpa, time to ask yourself if you are living in the past.

Respect for the individual. The best customer service in the world. Excellence. These were cornerstones of THINK. They were like a Scout’s Oath. There were a lot of other things I remember, the parts of the THINK culture: Tell the truth (lying to a customer got you fired, zero tolerance, you lie and you’re gone, this wasn’t just part of the culture, it was part of the handbook), don’t complain (fix it), and great people and great companies push themselves to do “the impossible” (I took this to mean do things that make you afraid). Most IBMers will have to think a bit to bring all this stuff up, it took bumping into it at a museum to get me thinking about it again. But the first thing every sales guy or gal will tell you, they remember the uniform; white shirt, tie, preferably striped, and suit.

I thought the uniform was cool. I was cool, I thought, when I put it on. A bit like putting on my basketball uniform. When you put that thing on it was game time. You gave your best. Clever that Watson and his disciples. They got the best out of their salesforce with that uniform. Not to mention gigantic sales quotas that grew every year and the expectation that you resign if you missed making your quota two years in a row. And yes, his disciples, I struggled with what to call the people leading the company. The religiousness of the word fits, though, but not in a bad way. His name, his words, and the stories of IBMers doing heroic things for customers were often spoke of in hushed tones.

The day after I left IBM I stopped wearing starched white shirts and suits but the things THINK represented have stuck with me. Which takes me back to my first gasp. Is my life based on things that don’t work anymore?

I hope not.

That sound? Me crossing my fingers.

It translates to “There is no bad weather, only bad clothes!”. To which I wholeheartedly agree. But, this isn’t about Norwegians or clothes…

To put the idea into a marketing context: There is no bad economy, only bad strategies. Said a different way, more to the point I want to make: we all need to know how to compete in good AND bad economic conditions. I can’t tell you what to do in your specific situation, but I can talk about some general principles that apply to us all. Principles that apply in bad times, that is, since this is October, 2020.

Finding better clothes strategies

First, acknowledge what’s happening. It’e easy to see nowadays, your governor says your gym can’t open or your restaurant can only seat every other table. I’m talking about when it’s harder to see, when things erode. Hey, no worries, sales are slipping, new customer orders are down, but our big, established customers are still ordering. This owner, and he told me just that, is holding onto the notion things are okay (established customers are still ordering) as opposed to accepting the reality that an important part of his business is eroding. It’s human nature. But let it go too long and all the sudden sales are off 30% and the scrambling begins.

Next, avoid scrambling. Get over it. Fast. Yes, it sucks, but a very wise owner once told me “You never go out of business by over-reacting”, and she was right. If you have a choice, and you do, react quickly.

Find out for yourself what’s real. This also answers the question, “Okay, I want to react quickly, but what exactly does that mean — what do I do?” Ask your customers. They’ll likely tell you what you need to do. At the very least, they’ll give you clues. Call them, do a Zoom meeting. Talk to five. That is, have five in-depth conversations about what going on in their world. That’s all you need. Ask:

• How has the economy affected your business?
• What’s going on with your customers?
• How do you see that’s happening to you affecting our relationship?
• How can we help you move forward, what more can we do?

Ask follow-up questions: What do you mean by that?; Can you give me an example?; Help me understand. Your job is to listen, not talk.

Act!! What did you learn? What ideas did you jot down? There will be ideas. There’re always ideas. Develop one, then test it on a handful of customers, or put it on a landing page and bring people onto the page with Google Ads. Is it working? If not, refine it and test again. Rinse and repeat. Test the next idea.

Sound simple? They are. Sound easy? Oh, dear reader, they aren’t. But they’re doable. So, get going! If you need help, I’m here.