The danger of disimprovement The fact is, the more we say, the less our audience will hear. Every time we feel like we should add another offer, another product, another message, or another focus to our marketing, we should try to pause.
When in doubt, land long On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong had a decision to make. The Lunar Module’s onboard computer was guiding the craft toward a crater’s edge, and a field of boulders “the size of Volkswagens,” according to biographer James R. Hansen.
Is there a person in your marketing? Abraham Lincoln told the story of an “automaton chess player,” a complex machine that, all the way back in the early 1800s, could beat human players at the game.
Do less, better Seneca once wrote, in On the Shortness of Life, “certain tasks are not so much great as prolific in producing many other tasks.” The essay’s general point is that we have plenty of time in our days—in our lives—but we spend too much of it doing things that simply don’t need to be done.
The important thing is to aim An old friend of John D. Rockefeller once recalled that—despite being one of the wealthiest people to ever live—Rockefeller would insist that they switch to old golf balls when playing around water hazards.
Genius is the art of taking pains Knowing what to say in our marketing is one of the most frustrating challenges business owners and marketers like you and I face every day.
Wishes feel good and rarely come true Entrepreneurs are full of ideas. It’s what inspired us to start our business, create our products or services, and sell them to the world in the first place. But, over time, we can start to think that the valuable part is the idea, and not the action that follows.