Need a plumber? There’s someone you know that knows the perfect person for it.
Want an idea to spread? There’s someone you know that knows the perfect person to share the idea with.
Another way to look at it…
You throw a party and tell people to bring friends. Turns out the two different friends of yours bring one of their friends, both of which happened to go to the same high school together.
You go to organize an event for a nonprofit and turns out your kid’s teacher’s wife is a board member.
We’re all a single connection away. If that’s not convincing enough to plan an event, ship your work or ask for help, I’m not sure what would be.
Nothing is perfect, and even when you get it close to perfect–when you feel like there are no more gaps to fill in the project–the success of that project slows down.
Why?
Because every project or idea is an innovation and every innovation follows the diffusion of innovation curve.
By the time you have your work perfect enough for even the laggards to get on board, the early adopters and early majority and, often times, even the late majority are onto something new.
At the end of the race, whether you’re first by 1 meter or 100, it doesn’t matter if your goal is winning.
At the end of a holiday campaign, whether you captured more market share than competitors by 3% or 13%, it doesn’t matter if your goal is to capture more.
Not that one of the results feel more satisfying than the other (I’d rather blow a competitor away on a breakaway than have him right by my side, regardless of scoring a goal either way), but in terms of competition, when the goal is clear about what a win is, the rates beyond the win are irrelevant.
Either you beat the competition or you don’t.
If you want to get out ahead, be the reigning champ and stand out, you can do so to varying degrees.
But it first starts with lasting a little longer than others to get the win. That’s all it takes to win. (It takes more to win BIG. A subject for another blog post.)
You can calculate the amount of media spend you use against a competitor. You can measure how much time your team invests in a product launch versus a competitor. You can measure the body fat percentage of your group of athletes versus your competitors. You can do a lot of measurement.
But what happens when you measure your level of perseverance over your competitors?
Is it more?
Because all things considered (and your competitors are contemplating all the same challenges and innovations you are – at least the worthy competitors are), at the end of the day, the person who crosses the finish line will be the one who persevered.
Not infinitely longer than the other, but maybe seconds, maybe cents, maybe half of a percent longer.
Stay Positive & Hang In There. Just A Little Bit Longer.
They don’t teach you how to really learn marketing in college.
They don’t actually teach you very well on marketing podcasts, either.
You’re favorite marketing newsletter probably doesn’t do that great of a job, too. Sorry.
The reason being is that to learn marketing and how to market better, you have to learn to see.
Once you see what’s working and what isn’t, then you’re responsible for applying it to your problem, changing it to be the situation that fits for you and then amplifying that application.
The key, though, is that seeing isn’t specific to your industry. It’s not specific to your problem. It’s not specific to your competitors.
More often than not, the best marketing (and marketers!) arise out of seeing what’s out of their box, in another industry, all around them (and all around others, maybe others half way around the world).
And to really see what’s working and what isn’t, you have to show up, regularly, often, with empathy and with curiosity.
If you feel like all this doesn’t feel like marketing, then you’re right. At least, not the marketing that’s taught in school, on those podcasts, in those newsletters…
Stay Positive & Breakthroughs Come From See-Throughs
Most people aren’t setting out to be bored or sad or disappointed.
Most people want excitement, they want surprise, they want to be inspired.
Most people also treat excitement like they treat inspiration, they wait for it to arrive.
That’s good news for us, though, because we can give that if we choose.
So long as we’re comfortable sharing half baked ideas, maybe even sharing ideas that are out of left field. So long as we’re okay putting our egos aside to share something – anything.
One thing is for sure: you will definitely not get jazzed if there’s nothing to react to.
Meaningful work can be fun and easy. It’s when you’re in the state of flow. You’ve got the rhythm. Inspiration finally decided to show up because you did.
This applies to the art of creating.
But it doesn’t apply as easily to the art of connecting to someone.
Connecting to someone when it matters most (when they have an issue, when they are struggling, when they need something from you) is not fun or easy.
But we set aside our assumptions and uphold our empathy because we’re good people and it’s what’s needed of us. To listen and respond, not hear and react.
Stay Positive & We Can All Be Customer Service Experts If We Want
If everyone is using your tool, it becomes saturated and people drop off or it becomes broken because it wasn’t designed to handle this much all at once) and people drop off or something else happens and.. you guessed it, people drop off. Too much is too much.
If no one is using your tool, however, it becomes something no one wants to adopt. People might sign up but they’ll drop off right away because there’s not enough connections. People need the reassurance of not being the only one.
The challenge of every marketer is to get to the sweet spot in the middle of too little and too much.
This tension isn’t just applicable to the network effect, either.
Too much stress with work and there’s no flow. Too much boredom and there is no flow.
Life is too depressing to work. Life is too good to work. (Austin Kleon for HT.)
The spectrums are infinite, but the truth is the same: masters are found in the middle.
