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A few weeks back, Jac and I took a week’s vacation in the woods, with no access to our devices or the Internet. There was electricity and water and a small fridge, but there was also the basic requirement that if you wanted a meal, you had to start a campfire and cook over open flame. Imagine having to coax wood to burn, get some coals going, prep the food, and cook it slowly every time you felt like a meal.

Compare that to our regular fast world. We eat when we want. We get it delivered or pop something in the microwave. When we think about buying something, we can say “Alexa, order me more True Lime packets” and it will show up a day or two later. But if everything is so much faster, why is your marketing so slow?

Marketing in the Faster World

Your buyer doesn’t have time to read Moby Dick. Mind you, they’ll binge a whole season of Mindhunter in a day’s time, but if you slow them down with print, it’s not going to happen. (Says the guy typing this to you.)

I’ve been pushing the same simple (but not easy) marketing premise over and over: the snack, the show, and the letter. I’ll repeat it here.

Snack – small media bites. Things like an Instagram posts, tweets, little bitty tastes of what’s going on in the world of your buyer and what you sell to them.

Show – something longer, entertaining, and with more substance, like a podcast, a YouTube channel, or a well crafted newsletter (not to be confused with “the letter” I talk about next).

Letter – access to your prospect’s inbox. This last one becomes the most important tool right now. Why? Because you can’t trust someone to choose to buy or take follow-up actions when they’re consuming snacks or shows. Besides, Google and Facebook own all the other access points to your customer. You own a direct path to their inbox.

The map of where to reach your buyer changes so often that we have to write it out in pencil. For well over a decade, people have asked me where people hang out online, as if that’s the right question to ask. It’s not. The question is and always should be: how do I get access to their inbox? And then: how do I get them to read what I send?

Device-Sized Messaging

The inbox is the phone. We keep forgetting. And anything we send in text has to be short form these days. So even when we earn their inbox, it’s all about short messages well-targeted.

If you want to reach people in this too-fast, too-busy world, my best advice is that formula: the snack, the show, and the letter. Get clear about showing your prospects their problems and your solutions. Deliver a message that reminds them often that they’re in the right place and you’re the right guide.

And do it quickly. We don’t have time to start a fire. People are hungry now.

What comes next is production. We want something to chew on. We want to sing along. We want it to make sense in our lives. We want to know all the words. We want to collect it.

And then

We want to take it, modify it, make it ours, do our own version.

Old Town Road isn’t a hit simply because the song was catchy. Gazillions (that’s a real number) of people used it on TikTok to make their own thing with it. They started with the product belonging to Lil Nas X, but at some point, they felt an ownership of their own.

Send It

Make something and put it out there. Make it memorable and unique and give it a flag and something for people to latch onto and take it as their own. And that’s what messes people up and confuses companies and why marketing is always so crappy. Because we create “material” and “content” that’s built to sell something, which isn’t inherently bad, but it’s also not at all interesting.

And forever more, you have to use as many channels as you can. Posts, letters, audio, video, and whatever else makes sense. Postcards. Phone calls. SMS texts. But ONLY if you’re contributing to the anthems of the people you hope to serve.

Only if you’re bringing something to the picnic.

I was asked which skills would be important for business professionals in the coming years, a question I love because I definitely read every article that came out giving me this guidance when I was young and hungry in business. (By this, I mean I still love these articles – except I’m old and hungry.)

Skills for the Coming Years

I feel you’d do yourself an incredible favor if you focused on a few capabilities more than others. You might not need everything I am about to share, but pick as many as you can.

Project Management – you’re the boss of you more than ever before. In a massive company, you have more autonomy. In a solo business, you can only turn to yourself. But people are horrendous at managing their time and resources. Learn some basic project management skills, and learn to stick to your own commitments.

Clarity/Brevity – people have less time than ever before — at least they feel that way. They multitask and split their attention. To communicate, you need to be brief and clear and say what needs saying without having to write a novel to get there.

Video and Audio Making – people are reading less than ever before. The same people who don’t have time are the ones who binge watch entire seasons of TV shows in two sittings (one if you’re really committed). Podcasts are having their fifth or sixth renaissance. Learn how to simply “be” on video and audio. Practice that the way it wasn’t natural for you to email or text people back in the day. Get GOOD with being you on camera and in someone’s ear. Even if you never produce an actual “show.” This sounds fancy but it’s basic. It’s the basic building blocks of modern communication.

Information Curation – you can try to read everything and watch everything and try to catch up and blah blah, but it’s not working. You have to pare back. A lot. There’s no value in blindly searching haystacks for inspiration or to “stay informed.” There’s so much content coming out that you will never make a dent in it. Pick sources to learn from and jettison the rest. Swap it up from time to time. Learn to stop reading/watching. Learn to discern.

Interfacing – I’m using this like a verb which kinda grosses me out, but stick with me. Learning how things and people and systems and the like all connect is a VITAL skill in the coming years. Nothing is staying the same. Everything is adapting. We need to keep sharp with our skills to connect one thing to another, be that people, culture, technology, foods, etc. Working with others. Collaborating. Matching what you do to what someone else does. This is the hardest one and probably the one that will save many businesses. (Sociology is a good subject to study.)

What We Thought Mattered Didn’t As Much

Someone was bragging about all they knew the other day (stuff like all the state capitals). I realized that everything they were talking about was at my fingers with Google and that if I cluttered my brain with it, my life wouldn’t be any better or worse. No one ever pulls a gun and says, “Quick, the capital of Pennsylvania!”

Coal miners don’t want coal mining jobs. They want jobs. They want to provide. They don’t feel they have the skills to do something else.

A lot of times, we cling to the wrong part of the equation. I used to think that the more domain knowledge I had in a particular technology, the more useful I was to the world. But everything I once mastered doesn’t even matter any more. Almost all of my technical proficiencies were wiped out by cloud computing, the death of middleware, and people’s shift to apps over server-based environments. If I had doubled down, I’d be a coal miner of another kind.

Are you working on your future skills?

The technology behind building a blog or a podcast or a newsletter is easier to operate than ever before. You can get started for very low money and it doesn’t require a boat load of technical skill either. But the two questions you should ask yourself are these: do I have something helpful to share and will anyone bother to read/consume what I create.

I don’t know that there ever were any “gee whiz” days in blogging and content creation. I feel like more people used to do it because they were told to create something, but really so few people actually liked writing and making media. They saw it as a chore. People did it until they felt they didn’t have to any longer. “No one’s reading blogs anymore anyway.”

That was never true. No one read your boring blog.

Podcasts: The New Rage

Everyone and their cousin are finally launching podcasts. It didn’t take off in 2005, like I thought. Nor 2006, 2007, 2009. All the years I figured “Wow, now THIS will be the age of podcasting” ended up being wrong. Because people tend to start doing something only when it’s saturated. So now everyone also wants to start a podcast and/or get on Instagram and do what everyone else is doing.

You can do a podcast. It’s okay. People are consuming more audio than ever before. (And people are reading less and less.)

You can and should do video, too. Start a YouTube channel and put something up at least weekly.

Will you? Not as likely. Podcasting is another thing people became willing to do because it seems easy enough. Video still seems hard and scary.

None of it matters. Unless.

Blogging, podcasting, video, and whatever other tools you don’t seem to want to use to reach people don’t matter all that much unless you have something interesting and useful to say. People make the mistake all the time of thinking that what they’re writing or speaking about is interesting because it’s what they sell. Not many people sell inherently interesting things. And even if something has a little pizazz, that wears off quickly if it’s not something anyone wants to buy.

No, you shouldn’t bother. Don’t make media. Of any kind, really. Just knock on doors and ring phones. It’s worked well for decades and decades.

Even though people don’t read as many mainstream news sources any longer. Even though people stopped listening to terrestrial radios and podcasting is having its heyday. Even though YouTube serves over a billion hours of video every day displacing a lot of eyes that used to just watch whatever was on TV. Don’t think much about that.

Or

You can take a stab at creating something interesting and compelling and worth someone’s time. You can write helpful articles and posts. You can record podcast episodes that entertain and inform someone (I just spent the better part of a day in my car and ran out of GOOD podcasts to listen to – because I’m not all that into true crime shows).

You could try to reach the millions and millions of people who are looking for something entertaining and informative. And do it regularly, and across multiple types of platforms. Because that might be worth something to someone.

Or you can wait a while longer. Until no one’s doing any of these things either.

You’ve been told that it’s not what you know; it’s who you know. That’s almost true. It’s who you know that you maintain good relationships with that matters most. Warm contacts, not just contacts. Years ago, my friend and boss at the time Jeff Pulver told me, “You live or die by your database.” I’ve guided my business by that principle ever since, and it continues to pay off.

Warm Connections Beat “Contacts”

I’m typing this from the dining room table of two friends who are now also clients. I’ve known them for years now. Gary is a chef and author and Sylvia is a photographer and creative. They own a boutique inn located in the fabled Hamptons in New York, and through that, I’ve seen them nurture guests and deliver amazing customer experiences. They treat their friends as if there’s no one else in the world besides them and it’s a treasure to bask in their presence.

When they asked me to come work with them on a few projects (some marketing and some business work), I said yes without a moment’s hesitation. And while I’ve worked with the two of them in limited ways over the past several years, this is our first big business undertaking.

My point is this: these are the types of engagements you want in business. You want to work with people you like. You want to work with people who matter. And that takes time and effort.

The Opposite of Serendipity

Some parts of life happen by chance. They’re beautiful. Sometimes, we meet someone simply because they’ve wandered into our world. That’s great.

But for business purposes, and for life plans, and for mapping out a way to thrive, I have to caution you: your business success will increase if you learn how to nurture warm connections with people who you want to work with in business and in life. This particular success comes from effort, not serendipity.

How to Keep Contacts Warm

I could tell you the simplest method possible:

• Make a simple spreadsheet with names and contact columns, an area for notes, and an area for an ongoing log of dates.
• Ensure it has a “last contact” column where you can add a date.
• SCHEDULE TIME to reach out and connect with people on your list daily (or almost daily).
• Do this a lot.
• Visit people when you can.

I know it’s insane. I know you wanted there to be more to this. But this is how it works. You connect. You observe. You leave messages. You recognize the good work of others. You find ways to help however you can, even in small ways.

And here’s the most important one:

You make warm introductions where it makes sense between people you know, and using the following model.

1. Ask party one if an introduction to party two might be helpful. Wait for a yes.
2. Ask party two if they’re willing to connect with party one. Wait for a yes.
3. Introduce both parties and get out of the way.
4. Follow up with party one and party two separately after the fact.

(I can’t tell you how many times someone sends an email to me and someone else without following this model and how rarely this is beneficial to either me or the other party.)

Trust in Relationships

I never connect with people solely for business. I have to like the person. I have to want to eat meals with them, drink beverages with them, and laugh outside of work with them.

And I just lied. I said “never.” Every time I end up doing business with someone I don’t really like much, it fails. Either I don’t give it enough love, or the other party treats the business relationship as transactional, and nothing good comes of it.

I don’t know. Maybe other people can do this. I can’t. I need to actually like the people I work with.

I just gave you a super easy recipe to work this way. Trying it might benefit your business. What do you think? Willing to try?

(And drop me an email – [email protected])