Of course. I have big plans to create a business that Amazon can't touch. Yes,... I am a fool. Max Niederhofer: The Amazon "kill zone" in DTC, 2018-Oct-4 So what's Amazon not good at? Where do startups have an edge? Because Amazon certainly has structural advantages in scale, capital, data, and probably people. Right now, it looks like the advantage lies in "the other ways in which people want to shop." Whether it's through their friends, by following an influencer, by falling in love with the narrative of the brand, by joining a community of like-minded, passionate individuals for whom... Continue reading

From the inimitable Ann Handley: "The most important part of the newsletter isn't the news. The most important part of the newsletter is the letter." The purpose of sending a newsletter is to make connections with people. If you're not connecting, you're not doing it right. Continue reading

Although I enjoyed Scott's LinkedIn post the first time I read it, I keep circling back around to think about what it means to me. Has social media changed the way I form relationships? Yes, social media has changed me. For the better, the way it's changed Scott? Hmmm... Unfortunately, I think it's given me an excuse to not maintain some relationships as well as I should. I check the Facebook profile of close friends and skip giving them a call. On the plus side, I think I have more connections who are different than myself and more ability to... Continue reading

Before trying to change someone's mind, run down this checklist: Am I challenging a deeply held prior belief? Is that belief tied to the other person's identity? What are the beliefs I share with this person? What stories and jokes can I share that will get this person smiling? What are the rewards they could experience if they changed their mind? What are options I could offer this person to experience or learn about the new position? How do I stimulate their curiosity and get them to fill in the gaps in their knowledge? What is the other person's mood?... Continue reading

At PatSnap, the Head of Content is Timi Olotu, and he has established an incredibly effective practice. He and his staff develop blog posts, research, and interviews which are prized by PatSnap customers. The process of interacting with customers, performing research, then tracking statistics is so well ingrained, that having a "content calendar" is irrelevant. Managing Editor: A Different Kettle of Fish: How Timi Olotu Has Built a Successful B2B Content Marketing Program, 2018-Oct-16 by Lee Price For one, research is key. I try to instill a research sensibility with my team. One of the first things I invested in... Continue reading

For the Creative Houston startup, I'm thinking about hosting a marketplace for emerging local artists. Based on this article, this strategy might succeed as long as we plan to let the artists graduate off the niche platform and join the big boys... SSRN: Competing with Complementors: An Empirical Look at Amazon.com, 2018-Jun-6 by Feng Zhu and Qihong Liu Platform owners can exert considerable influence over their complementors’ welfare. Many complementors with successful products are pushed out of markets because platform owners enter their product spaces and compete directly with them. To mitigate such risks, complementors could build their businesses by... Continue reading

I'm all for having a very small board of people who actually want to contribute. Twitter: The Great Non-executive Director (NED), 2018-Oct-13 by Fred Destin 2/ what we normally get - a bunch of high level comments at board meetings only and vague moral support for the founders. 3/ what we’d really like - firstly someone who cares as deeply about the success of the business as the others around the table, and anticipates issues and dynamically maps out opportunities... 6/ here is my list of wants from a great NED : (a) consigliere to the founders (b) independent voice... Continue reading

I do not normally listen to videos in order to learn, but this series from Peter Levine is very efficient. I have a deep marketing education already, and breadth of experience with salespeople, but this set of lectures allows me to check out the specific angles I have never handled before. Andreessen Horowitz: All Things Sales! 16 Mini-Lessons for Startup Founders, 2018-Sep-2 by Peter Levine It takes time for an organization to learn how to sell its product.... The sales learning curve is divided into three phases: initiation, transition and execution.... We think about the initiation phase as hiring what... Continue reading

Why should we invest in social media? There is a path where social media exposure can lead to changes in behavior.... It's a long and winding road! Blog: Social Media monitoring and the spectrum of online relationships, 2009-Oct-1, by David J. Carr Social Media campaigns are uniquely measurable but not all measures are equal and indicate true effectiveness. Different social media actions or online conversations have different values and influences upon consumer behaviour. Multiple metrics, from number of followers and fans, to positive or negative sentiment, to reposts and influencer mentions, can be difficult to distinguish from one another. In... Continue reading

I find it hard to believe that Amazon's growing power will not create negative side effects for consumers. The purpose of "locking in" is to enable exploitation. First, the competitors are eliminated, then the customers are trapped. Government regulation is a normal, but not inevitable, response. Hacker Noon: A Map of Amazon and Modern Marketing, 2018-Sep-11 by David J. Carr Perceptual Competition changes customer expectations. It means you set the bar regardless of whether your product or service competes in the category in question. Building on great customer experience it creates a meaningful and distinctive brand with cultural relevance, esteem... Continue reading

Evidence suggests that I'm accepted by most people as a leader, but I think I'm really falling down in this area, largely because I avoid confrontation. I need to step up to it! Fast Company: 4 ways the people around you are secretly judging your management potential, 18-Oct-19 by Gwen Moran HOW DO YOU HANDLE CONFLICT? One big way people form opinions about you is in observing how you react to conflict, says Natalie Michael, CEO of Waterfront Partners, Inc., a West Vancouver, British Columbia-based executive coaching firm and author of Your CEO Succession Playbook. “To what extent can you... Continue reading

I value loyalty as a behavior because it establishes stability. It offers predictability in a world that's changing ever faster. However, we have to be smart about our loyalty. In order to have a stable base from which we can handle change, we must build our platform carefully. We also have to inspect it and maintain it. When loyalty tries to consume us, or to move us around, it must be questioned and possibly removed. Loyalty exposes us to exploitation. This situation reminds me of the old saying "It's good to have an open mind but be careful that your... Continue reading

I had this feeling but I couldn't explain it. Fortunately, Scott Galloway can. No Mercy/No Malice: Brand & Bone Saws, 2018-Oct-19 by Scott Galloway The Founding Fathers were, at their core, incredible marketers who knew the Constitution needed to reach beyond its grasp and paint the promise of America. The strongest brand in the world, delivering loyalty and irrational returns on investment — that’s the US. When you are 5% of the world’s population but command a quarter of its resources, then we, the US, are the Jedi master of brand. Core to our brand code is independence, equality, rule... Continue reading

At some point in the future, almost all direct mail will be personalized to reflect all the data the sender has accumulated or discovered about us, including our past actions--online and off. That's because, as recipients, we are more likely to respond to highly personalized mail, making the mailing effort more profitable. In the meantime, the first company to provide physical direct mailings that integrate online consumer tracking data is PebblePost. Founder Lewis Gersh says... PebblePost is proud to announce the invention of Programmatic Direct Mail, which applies digital thinking to direct mail to help marketers drive great results. For... Continue reading

Over the last few months, I've been trying to move my project at www.CreativeHouston.org into a full-fledged startup company. Since I am an innovator, I want to use leading-edge organizational tools. The company will be a Texas Public Benefit Corporation. We'll use the new crowdfunding platform LetsLaunch to raise funds. I've felt embarrassed by missing so many deadlines, but I've finally come to realize that finding the best option is more important than sticking to a timetable. I really appreciate what Jake says below. The Mission: Why Most Plans are Terrible. And How to Improve Them. 2018-Sep-11 by Jake Wilder... Continue reading

Remember GEMPS! The decisions made by independent business owner/operators are driven by a need for Growth, Ethics, Money, People or Self-fulfillment... and I bet the order of importance varies by person and probably over time. And I suspect these drivers don't much apply very much in larger businesses where decisions are made by teams. Flux Studio Notes: Stop Talking and Start Listening: Behaviour Change at Scale, 2018-Aug-15 by Ariel Lerner So it’s not that these business owners don’t care about the environment, it’s just that there are other things they care about more.... ...we uncovered five broad motivations that drive... Continue reading

More than any company I've found, Mailchimp works to create better listening opportunities with their customers. It's not enough to pay attention when customers speak up. We have to prompt customers to share. At Mailchimp they try to make it fun and productive. Fast Company: MailChimp’s cofounder shares the best ways to get to know your customers, 2018-Sep-23 by Dan Kurzius Visit your customers where they live or work... Invite customers into your office... Be your customer for a day... Early on, we decided that our motto was going to be, “Listen hard, change fast.” For us, this meant constantly... Continue reading

If you work in a big company and your job is getting the newsletter out, you have challenges, but the newsletter gets out there. For people like myself, independent or in small organizations, regular release of the newsletter is hard. Getting a newsletter out is a matter of "showing up." You wouldn't miss an appointment with a client, would you? Never blow off the newsletter because is going to be late. If you miss an issue due to catastrophe, share that story with your readers. Act like it makes a difference, and it will. I highly recommend Ann Handley's newsletter... Continue reading

IDEO has developed a very good program to help companies get their employees to empathize with customers. If employees are not users of the product, customer empathy is always an ongoing challenge. Harvard Business Review: To Get Employees to Empathize with Customers, Make Them Think Like Customers, 2018-Sep-28 by Erin Henkel and Adam Grant What’s the best way to cultivate empathy? The standard answer is to spend more time with customers. For example, leaders at IBM, Medtronic, and Microsoft have sent their people out to meet customers and see their products in use. But recently at IDEO, we’ve been encouraging... Continue reading

It's not the fear of failure... it's the agony of learning too late! Yes & Know Blog: What do you need to know? 2018-Sep-19 by Nilofer Merchant There’s a learning curve for all new things. We need to learn the interdependencies of decisions, what people are capable of, who is good at what, what key decisions need to be made and in what order and so much more. Just like I had never done a remodel, most organizations need to grow by doing something they’ve never done before. But we want to do it as efficiently, as effectively and as... Continue reading

As ad agencies invest more in time and effort to understand behavioral science, new strategies are being developed to deepen customer loyalty. Transactional loyalty is being left behind as if it were just price discounting (which it is). The Wise Marketer: Four Loyalty Lessons from Behavioral Science, 2018-Sep-18 by Charlie Hills 4 lessons for loyalty marketers: 1. Good member engagement is heavily reliant on the smart application of creativity, data and contextual relevance. Use all three, not just one in developing your loyalty strategies. 2. Invest the time and resource to understand what the data actually means. 3. By building... Continue reading

Every time a supplier misinterprets our customer behavior, we get a little more frustrated. Most CRM systems don't even have the ability to track the context of a purchase. So the salespeople and customer service representatives have to take the initiative, find out what's going on, and record it. The companies that figure out how to train their people and update their systems to track this, they will be the loyalty winners. Edge Perspectives: Navigating From the Industrial Age to the Contextual Age, 2018-Aug-15 by John Hagel The forces shaping the Big Shift are progressively undermining standardization and efficiency (as... Continue reading

My personal experience is that you need to weigh yourself daily and chart what you're eating. (Similar to a food diary but easier.) Download my chart. I've discovered the easiest way to gain weight is to overeat protein. Desserts are less of a problem. EVERYONE is different! Vox: What I learned about weight loss from spending a day inside a metabolic chamber, 2018-Sep-4 by Julia Belluz Studying thousands of subjects in the metabolic unit — the chambers plus NIH hospital wings for patients with diabetes and obesity — has helped researchers show how adaptable the metabolism is, and how it... Continue reading

Below is one of the best explanations I've seen, and a great argument to NOT identify with any political party. I don't talk politics with my friends. I read a wide variety of news media, and then I vote in private. With my friends, I like to have conversations about art, travel, and business. MIT Technology Review: How social media took us from Tahrir Square to Donald Trump, 2018-Aug-14 by Zeynep Tufekci While algorithms will often feed people some of what they already want to hear, research shows that we probably encounter a wider variety of opinions online than we... Continue reading

When I unsubscribed from email news from my bank, I found this charming landing page. Continue reading