control
A content workshop for my readers — Kelford Labs Weekly
Launching the Marketing Rangefinder.
Choose what’s in the frame — Kelford Labs Weekly
The way only you can.
Automatic marketing myth — Kelford Labs Daily
Don’t blend in.
Marketing is self-control — Kelford Labs Daily
Patience. Consistency. Focus.
Flank the devil
It can be tempting to respond directly when you feel attacked. Perhaps by a competitor trying to “steal” your customers by drastically undercutting your prices. But to respond in kind is to rush headfirst into battle against someone who wants you to fight on their terms.
Adjust the end to your means
If you don’t have the resources, capabilities, or equipment necessary to make something that looks like it had an enormous budget, or which matches the prevailing trendy aesthetic, try something else.
Even if you lose, you win
If there are red flags during the sales process, if the project seems doomed from the start, those issues won’t suddenly go away once there’s money, expectations, committees, and deadlines involved.
Everything is a tradeoff
Every great decision you make comes with downsides. There is never a perfect answer.
There’s no such thing as a riskless strategy
If you want things to change, you have to try to change things, and that entails assuming the risk that things might not go the way you want. Every plan is a guess about the future, and sometimes our guesses are wrong.
Focus on the most likely outcomes
It’s easy to panic and imagine the worst-case scenarios for any project we embark on. And it’s just as easy to fantasize about the very best outcomes. But it’s a little more difficult, yet profoundly more important, to analyze the most likely best and worst cases.
You’ve already hit the iceberg
A common mistake when things go wrong is to spend time thinking about how they could have gone. Or how we’d hoped things would turn out.