Philip Morgan

Invitation: Long-term, High-value clients roundtable

2023-10-09T12:41:51Z

I’m hosting an online roundtable on the topic of long-term, high-value clients. We’ll address questions like the following:

Are such relationships mostly luck, or is it possible to engineer these kinds of client relationships?
If you prefer such relationships, do you think or act differently as a result? If so, how specifically?
What tradeoffs are necessitated by these kinds of client relationships?
And of course any relevant questions or learnings you want to bring to the discussion.

This event lasts for 2 hours, starting at 9am Mountain time this Friday, October 13th. It’s free and open to anyone interested in the topic. It will not be recorded. The format is moderated peer-to-peer discussion.

If you’d like to attend please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

The most recent Friday Fun Poll results:

I hope some of y’all in the top $$$ half of that distribution attend the roundtable to share your learnings :) ICYMI: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

Can a Friday Fun Poll go out on a Monday? Does it then become a Manic Monday Poll? So many questions…

(If you have strong opinions about this'un, I'd love to hear them in the comments.)

Happy Monday, y’all!-P

Invitation: Long-term, High-value clients roundtable

2023-10-09T12:41:51Z

I’m hosting an online roundtable on the topic of long-term, high-value clients. We’ll address questions like the following:

Are such relationships mostly luck, or is it possible to engineer these kinds of client relationships?
If you prefer such relationships, do you think or act differently as a result? If so, how specifically?
What tradeoffs are necessitated by these kinds of client relationships?
And of course any relevant questions or learnings you want to bring to the discussion.

If you’d like to attend please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

The most recent Friday Fun Poll results:

I hope some of y’all in the top $$$ half of that distribution attend the roundtable to share your learnings :) ICYMI: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

Can a Friday Fun Poll go out on a Monday? Does it then become a Manic Monday Poll? So many questions…

(If you have strong opinions about this'un, I'd love to hear them in the comments.)

Happy Monday, y’all!-P

Invitation: Long-term, High-value clients roundtable

2023-10-09T12:41:51Z

I’m hosting an online roundtable on the topic of long-term, high-value clients. We’ll address questions like the following:

Are such relationships mostly luck, or is it possible to engineer these kinds of client relationships?
If you prefer such relationships, do you think or act differently as a result? If so, how specifically?
What tradeoffs are necessitated by these kinds of client relationships?
And of course any relevant questions or learnings you want to bring to the discussion.

If you’d like to attend please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

The most recent Friday Fun Poll results:

I hope some of y’all in the top $$$ half of that distribution attend the roundtable to share your learnings :) ICYMI: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

Can a Friday Fun Poll go out on a Monday? Does it then become a Manic Monday Poll? So many questions…

(If you have strong opinions about this'un, I'd love to hear them in the comments.)

Happy Monday, y’all!-P

Invitation: Long-term, High-value clients roundtable

2023-10-09T12:41:51Z

I’m hosting an online roundtable on the topic of long-term, high-value clients. We’ll address questions like the following:

Are such relationships mostly luck, or is it possible to engineer these kinds of client relationships?
If you prefer such relationships, do you think or act differently as a result? If so, how specifically?
What tradeoffs are necessitated by these kinds of client relationships?
And of course any relevant questions or learnings you want to bring to the discussion.

If you’d like to attend please register here: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

The most recent Friday Fun Poll results:

I hope some of y’all in the top $$$ half of that distribution attend the roundtable to share your learnings :) ICYMI: https://us02web.zoom.us/meeting/register/tZYtceuhqTotGtKIM4bDdXWgkz28p4Nsz3xU

Can a Friday Fun Poll go out on a Monday? Does it then become a Manic Monday Poll? So many questions…

(If you have strong opinions about this'un, I'd love to hear them in the comments.)

Happy Monday, y’all!-P

Learnings: Long-Term, High-Value Clients

2023-11-04T12:15:17Z

In the continued quest for offer-market fit, I've got some new service offerings at https://opportunitylabs.io. The core promise of the new offers: We'll make your business a household name to 6,000 prospects in 6 months. If that would be interesting to you, we should talk.

A few weeks ago before yet another leg of my Tour de Montana [1], I hosted a roundtable on the topic of long-term, high-value clients. I quite like the roundtable/pop-up online event format, and when the topic and audience are a good fit, the format is a real banger. Here are some notes on the event format:

I did zero selling on the roundtable. Two prospects for my coaching services approached me afterwards anyway.
120 minutes is not too long of a duration, but a 90-minute duration might have put a subtle pressure on us all to be a bit more concise in our communication.
At the same time, it's possible to too-quickly or superficially discuss things. This is one of the more wily challenges this format presents. For the host/moderator it can feel like improv or performance art in that you have a group of people show up, many of who you don't know, and you're hoping to create an experience most of them get educational value from. Under those circumstances, how do you keep the pace brisk and the discussion meaningfully deep?
Anything you can do to help attendees feel safe or encouraged to transition from attendee to participant is potentially valuable. The event I ran was 120 minutes, and at about the 50-minute mark and about the 100-minute mark I stopped the discussion and made space for introverts or those who maybe had been sitting on something they wanted to say but hadn't felt an opening to say it. The feedback was: love this. I also let folks know that it's fine to "lurk" for the whole call if that's what they wanted.
I tried something totally new for me: Instead of asking every attendee to introduce themself at the top of the call, I provided a Google form where anybody who wanted to be known to other event registrants could just drop their contact info and a little context on who they are/what they do into the form and then I shared the resulting spreadsheet with all call registrants [2]. This saved a ton of time, but did make it a little harder to contextualize some comments from those who participated. Tradeoffs! I think I will definitely use this approach again in the future, but perhaps with stronger urging for people to contextualize their comments a bit more robustly the first time they comment on something.
I could have done a better job of preparing attendees for the roundtable's agenda. On the one hand, I wanted to remain fluid and adaptable as the discussion happened, so I didn't want to have a too detailed or rigid agenda. But in prioritizing this, I might have deprived the group of the opportunity for more of us to show up having already put deep thought into the key questions we addressed during the event.
Choosing to not record the event seemed to be an OK approach. I'm not confident this enabled next-level deep sharing, but I do think it sent the signal that the event was a place that requested and benefitted from everybody's best effort at presence and focus.

Here are some thoughts on the content of the roundtable (long-term, high-value clients):

No one had a repeatable formula for creating these kinds of client relationships. Of course, the lack of any extant formula of this kind is why I convened this roundtable in the first place! And yeah, some part of me was hoping someone would show up and drop exactly this kind of formula in front of the group. It's fine that that didn't happen.
There's an interesting tension between two approaches to offer design: Approach 1: you purposefully start clients on a small/limited scope/low risk service that is probably diagnostic in nature, or delivers some initial planning or design work. You then work to upgrade those clients to a more long-term engagement. Approach 2: you just offer your meant-to-be-long-term-service right from the jump. I hope I'm not mis-remembering this part of the discussion [3], but I sensed a definite preference from the roundtable attendees for Approach 1.
- I am generally very suspicious of zero-sum thinking, but there certainly are specific situations where we can't have things both ways; we have to pick a direction and go with it and trade the benefits of the other direction to get the benefits of the direction we've chosen. I get the sense that you can design your business to appeal to long-term, high-value clients but that direction probably requires you to forgo some of the benefits of Approach 1.
Related to the above, I got the strong impression from the roundtable discussion that if you end up working mostly with long-term, high-value clients, you also tend to start those relationships by doing quite a lot "for free". This "free stuff" might look like any of the following:
- Spending a lot more time in semi-structured exploration with a prospect before there's discussion of specifics or before you submit a proposal.
- Delivering the exact kind of value you would deliver while "on the clock" for a client but doing so right from the jump with a prospect. [4]
- During a project, being willing to do out-of-scope stuff knowing that it's good for your client and trusting that it's good for your long-term prospects.
This "free stuff" thing is a chicken-and-egg question. What comes first? Do profitable long-term relationships allow you to be generous with prospects, or does choosing to be generous with prospects make profitable long-term relationships more likely?

Roundtables like this one are nice ways to explore important topics where there's no obvious single best practice. I hope to host more of them in the future for y'all. Thanks to all the most excellent folks who participated!

-P

Notes:

Driven further west by the need for better medical care options for my wife, we're in Missoula now. So far, we like it here. It lacks some of the dramatic mountain views more readily available in Bozeman and Paradise Valley, but more than makes up for that in having coffee roasters who understand the superiority of a light roast, better sandwich shops, more trees, fewer $80,000 Jeeps driven by spoiled college students, and 370 parts-per-million more patchouli in the air. Who knows, maybe we'll stay! Missoula also has the best cannabis dispensary name I've ever seen: Prescribed Burn. Any Missoula locals on this list? If so, I'd love to hear from you.
I don't think Zoom makes it easy to know who actually attended the meeting vs. who registered but did not attend, so for my sanity when I was doing followup after the roundtable, I just used the list of registrants that Zoom makes it easy-ish to download.
Hosting a roundtable can feel like juggling while riding a unicycle, so I may not be a 100% reliable witness about everything that happened during the event. :)
My recollection of Lencioni's book "Getting Naked" is that he illustrates this kind of approach quite well in that book.

Learnings: Long-Term, High-Value Clients

2023-11-04T12:15:17Z

I did zero selling on the roundtable. Two prospects for my coaching services approached me afterwards anyway.
120 minutes is not too long of a duration, but a 90-minute duration might have put a subtle pressure on us all to be a bit more concise in our communication.
At the same time, it's possible to too-quickly or superficially discuss things. This is one of the more wily challenges this format presents. For the host/moderator it can feel like improv or performance art in that you have a group of people show up, many of who you don't know, and you're hoping to create an experience most of them get educational value from. Under those circumstances, how do you keep the pace brisk and the discussion meaningfully deep?
Anything you can do to help attendees feel safe or encouraged to transition from attendee to participant is potentially valuable. The event I ran was 120 minutes, and at about the 50-minute mark and about the 100-minute mark I stopped the discussion and made space for introverts or those who maybe had been sitting on something they wanted to say but hadn't felt an opening to say it. The feedback was: love this. I also let folks know that it's fine to "lurk" for the whole call if that's what they wanted.
I tried something totally new for me: Instead of asking every attendee to introduce themself at the top of the call, I provided a Google form where anybody who wanted to be known to other event registrants could just drop their contact info and a little context on who they are/what they do into the form and then I shared the resulting spreadsheet with all call registrants [2]. This saved a ton of time, but did make it a little harder to contextualize some comments from those who participated. Tradeoffs! I think I will definitely use this approach again in the future, but perhaps with stronger urging for people to contextualize their comments a bit more robustly the first time they comment on something.
I could have done a better job of preparing attendees for the roundtable's agenda. On the one hand, I wanted to remain fluid and adaptable as the discussion happened, so I didn't want to have a too detailed or rigid agenda. But in prioritizing this, I might have deprived the group of the opportunity for more of us to show up having already put deep thought into the key questions we addressed during the event.
Choosing to not record the event seemed to be an OK approach. I'm not confident this enabled next-level deep sharing, but I do think it sent the signal that the event was a place that requested and benefitted from everybody's best effort at presence and focus.

Here are some thoughts on the content of the roundtable (long-term, high-value clients):

No one had a repeatable formula for creating these kinds of client relationships. Of course, the lack of any extant formula of this kind is why I convened this roundtable in the first place! And yeah, some part of me was hoping someone would show up and drop exactly this kind of formula in front of the group. It's fine that that didn't happen.
There's an interesting tension between two approaches to offer design: Approach 1: you purposefully start clients on a small/limited scope/low risk service that is probably diagnostic in nature, or delivers some initial planning or design work. You then work to upgrade those clients to a more long-term engagement. Approach 2: you just offer your meant-to-be-long-term-service right from the jump. I hope I'm not mis-remembering this part of the discussion [3], but I sensed a definite preference from the roundtable attendees for Approach 1.
- I am generally very suspicious of zero-sum thinking, but there certainly are specific situations where we can't have things both ways; we have to pick a direction and go with it and trade the benefits of the other direction to get the benefits of the direction we've chosen. I get the sense that you can design your business to appeal to long-term, high-value clients but that direction probably requires you to forgo some of the benefits of Approach 1.
Related to the above, I got the strong impression from the roundtable discussion that if you end up working mostly with long-term, high-value clients, you also tend to start those relationships by doing quite a lot "for free". This "free stuff" might look like any of the following:
- Spending a lot more time in semi-structured exploration with a prospect before there's discussion of specifics or before you submit a proposal.
- Delivering the exact kind of value you would deliver while "on the clock" for a client but doing so right from the jump with a prospect. [4]
- During a project, being willing to do out-of-scope stuff knowing that it's good for your client and trusting that it's good for your long-term prospects.
This "free stuff" thing is a chicken-and-egg question. What comes first? Do profitable long-term relationships allow you to be generous with prospects, or does choosing to be generous with prospects make profitable long-term relationships more likely?

-P

Notes:

Driven further west by the need for better medical care options for my wife, we're in Missoula now. So far, we like it here. It lacks some of the dramatic mountain views more readily available in Bozeman and Paradise Valley, but more than makes up for that in having coffee roasters who understand the superiority of a light roast, better sandwich shops, more trees, fewer $80,000 Jeeps driven by spoiled college students, and 370 parts-per-million more patchouli in the air. Who knows, maybe we'll stay! Missoula also has the best cannabis dispensary name I've ever seen: Prescribed Burn. Any Missoula locals on this list? If so, I'd love to hear from you.
I don't think Zoom makes it easy to know who actually attended the meeting vs. who registered but did not attend, so for my sanity when I was doing followup after the roundtable, I just used the list of registrants that Zoom makes it easy-ish to download.
Hosting a roundtable can feel like juggling while riding a unicycle, so I may not be a 100% reliable witness about everything that happened during the event. :)
My recollection of Lencioni's book "Getting Naked" is that he illustrates this kind of approach quite well in that book.

Learnings: Long-Term, High-Value Clients

2023-11-04T12:15:17Z

I did zero selling on the roundtable. Two prospects for my coaching services approached me afterwards anyway.
120 minutes is not too long of a duration, but a 90-minute duration might have put a subtle pressure on us all to be a bit more concise in our communication.
At the same time, it's possible to too-quickly or superficially discuss things. This is one of the more wily challenges this format presents. For the host/moderator it can feel like improv or performance art in that you have a group of people show up, many of who you don't know, and you're hoping to create an experience most of them get educational value from. Under those circumstances, how do you keep the pace brisk and the discussion meaningfully deep?
Anything you can do to help attendees feel safe or encouraged to transition from attendee to participant is potentially valuable. The event I ran was 120 minutes, and at about the 50-minute mark and about the 100-minute mark I stopped the discussion and made space for introverts or those who maybe had been sitting on something they wanted to say but hadn't felt an opening to say it. The feedback was: love this. I also let folks know that it's fine to "lurk" for the whole call if that's what they wanted.
I tried something totally new for me: Instead of asking every attendee to introduce themself at the top of the call, I provided a Google form where anybody who wanted to be known to other event registrants could just drop their contact info and a little context on who they are/what they do into the form and then I shared the resulting spreadsheet with all call registrants [2]. This saved a ton of time, but did make it a little harder to contextualize some comments from those who participated. Tradeoffs! I think I will definitely use this approach again in the future, but perhaps with stronger urging for people to contextualize their comments a bit more robustly the first time they comment on something.
I could have done a better job of preparing attendees for the roundtable's agenda. On the one hand, I wanted to remain fluid and adaptable as the discussion happened, so I didn't want to have a too detailed or rigid agenda. But in prioritizing this, I might have deprived the group of the opportunity for more of us to show up having already put deep thought into the key questions we addressed during the event.
Choosing to not record the event seemed to be an OK approach. I'm not confident this enabled next-level deep sharing, but I do think it sent the signal that the event was a place that requested and benefitted from everybody's best effort at presence and focus.

Here are some thoughts on the content of the roundtable (long-term, high-value clients):

No one had a repeatable formula for creating these kinds of client relationships. Of course, the lack of any extant formula of this kind is why I convened this roundtable in the first place! And yeah, some part of me was hoping someone would show up and drop exactly this kind of formula in front of the group. It's fine that that didn't happen.
There's an interesting tension between two approaches to offer design: Approach 1: you purposefully start clients on a small/limited scope/low risk service that is probably diagnostic in nature, or delivers some initial planning or design work. You then work to upgrade those clients to a more long-term engagement. Approach 2: you just offer your meant-to-be-long-term-service right from the jump. I hope I'm not mis-remembering this part of the discussion [3], but I sensed a definite preference from the roundtable attendees for Approach 1.
- I am generally very suspicious of zero-sum thinking, but there certainly are specific situations where we can't have things both ways; we have to pick a direction and go with it and trade the benefits of the other direction to get the benefits of the direction we've chosen. I get the sense that you can design your business to appeal to long-term, high-value clients but that direction probably requires you to forgo some of the benefits of Approach 1.
Related to the above, I got the strong impression from the roundtable discussion that if you end up working mostly with long-term, high-value clients, you also tend to start those relationships by doing quite a lot "for free". This "free stuff" might look like any of the following:
- Spending a lot more time in semi-structured exploration with a prospect before there's discussion of specifics or before you submit a proposal.
- Delivering the exact kind of value you would deliver while "on the clock" for a client but doing so right from the jump with a prospect. [4]
- During a project, being willing to do out-of-scope stuff knowing that it's good for your client and trusting that it's good for your long-term prospects.
This "free stuff" thing is a chicken-and-egg question. What comes first? Do profitable long-term relationships allow you to be generous with prospects, or does choosing to be generous with prospects make profitable long-term relationships more likely?

-P

Notes:

Driven further west by the need for better medical care options for my wife, we're in Missoula now. So far, we like it here. It lacks some of the dramatic mountain views more readily available in Bozeman and Paradise Valley, but more than makes up for that in having coffee roasters who understand the superiority of a light roast, better sandwich shops, more trees, fewer $80,000 Jeeps driven by spoiled college students, and 370 parts-per-million more patchouli in the air. Who knows, maybe we'll stay! Missoula also has the best cannabis dispensary name I've ever seen: Prescribed Burn. Any Missoula locals on this list? If so, I'd love to hear from you.
I don't think Zoom makes it easy to know who actually attended the meeting vs. who registered but did not attend, so for my sanity when I was doing followup after the roundtable, I just used the list of registrants that Zoom makes it easy-ish to download.
Hosting a roundtable can feel like juggling while riding a unicycle, so I may not be a 100% reliable witness about everything that happened during the event. :)
My recollection of Lencioni's book "Getting Naked" is that he illustrates this kind of approach quite well in that book.

Learnings: Long-Term, High-Value Clients

2023-11-04T12:15:17Z

I did zero selling on the roundtable. Two prospects for my coaching services approached me afterwards anyway.
120 minutes is not too long of a duration, but a 90-minute duration might have put a subtle pressure on us all to be a bit more concise in our communication.
At the same time, it's possible to too-quickly or superficially discuss things. This is one of the more wily challenges this format presents. For the host/moderator it can feel like improv or performance art in that you have a group of people show up, many of who you don't know, and you're hoping to create an experience most of them get educational value from. Under those circumstances, how do you keep the pace brisk and the discussion meaningfully deep?
Anything you can do to help attendees feel safe or encouraged to transition from attendee to participant is potentially valuable. The event I ran was 120 minutes, and at about the 50-minute mark and about the 100-minute mark I stopped the discussion and made space for introverts or those who maybe had been sitting on something they wanted to say but hadn't felt an opening to say it. The feedback was: love this. I also let folks know that it's fine to "lurk" for the whole call if that's what they wanted.
I tried something totally new for me: Instead of asking every attendee to introduce themself at the top of the call, I provided a Google form where anybody who wanted to be known to other event registrants could just drop their contact info and a little context on who they are/what they do into the form and then I shared the resulting spreadsheet with all call registrants [2]. This saved a ton of time, but did make it a little harder to contextualize some comments from those who participated. Tradeoffs! I think I will definitely use this approach again in the future, but perhaps with stronger urging for people to contextualize their comments a bit more robustly the first time they comment on something.
I could have done a better job of preparing attendees for the roundtable's agenda. On the one hand, I wanted to remain fluid and adaptable as the discussion happened, so I didn't want to have a too detailed or rigid agenda. But in prioritizing this, I might have deprived the group of the opportunity for more of us to show up having already put deep thought into the key questions we addressed during the event.
Choosing to not record the event seemed to be an OK approach. I'm not confident this enabled next-level deep sharing, but I do think it sent the signal that the event was a place that requested and benefitted from everybody's best effort at presence and focus.

Here are some thoughts on the content of the roundtable (long-term, high-value clients):

No one had a repeatable formula for creating these kinds of client relationships. Of course, the lack of any extant formula of this kind is why I convened this roundtable in the first place! And yeah, some part of me was hoping someone would show up and drop exactly this kind of formula in front of the group. It's fine that that didn't happen.
There's an interesting tension between two approaches to offer design: Approach 1: you purposefully start clients on a small/limited scope/low risk service that is probably diagnostic in nature, or delivers some initial planning or design work. You then work to upgrade those clients to a more long-term engagement. Approach 2: you just offer your meant-to-be-long-term-service right from the jump. I hope I'm not mis-remembering this part of the discussion [3], but I sensed a definite preference from the roundtable attendees for Approach 1.
- I am generally very suspicious of zero-sum thinking, but there certainly are specific situations where we can't have things both ways; we have to pick a direction and go with it and trade the benefits of the other direction to get the benefits of the direction we've chosen. I get the sense that you can design your business to appeal to long-term, high-value clients but that direction probably requires you to forgo some of the benefits of Approach 1.
Related to the above, I got the strong impression from the roundtable discussion that if you end up working mostly with long-term, high-value clients, you also tend to start those relationships by doing quite a lot "for free". This "free stuff" might look like any of the following:
- Spending a lot more time in semi-structured exploration with a prospect before there's discussion of specifics or before you submit a proposal.
- Delivering the exact kind of value you would deliver while "on the clock" for a client but doing so right from the jump with a prospect. [4]
- During a project, being willing to do out-of-scope stuff knowing that it's good for your client and trusting that it's good for your long-term prospects.
This "free stuff" thing is a chicken-and-egg question. What comes first? Do profitable long-term relationships allow you to be generous with prospects, or does choosing to be generous with prospects make profitable long-term relationships more likely?

-P

Notes:

Driven further west by the need for better medical care options for my wife, we're in Missoula now. So far, we like it here. It lacks some of the dramatic mountain views more readily available in Bozeman and Paradise Valley, but more than makes up for that in having coffee roasters who understand the superiority of a light roast, better sandwich shops, more trees, fewer $80,000 Jeeps driven by spoiled college students, and 370 parts-per-million more patchouli in the air. Who knows, maybe we'll stay! Missoula also has the best cannabis dispensary name I've ever seen: Prescribed Burn. Any Missoula locals on this list? If so, I'd love to hear from you.
I don't think Zoom makes it easy to know who actually attended the meeting vs. who registered but did not attend, so for my sanity when I was doing followup after the roundtable, I just used the list of registrants that Zoom makes it easy-ish to download.
Hosting a roundtable can feel like juggling while riding a unicycle, so I may not be a 100% reliable witness about everything that happened during the event. :)
My recollection of Lencioni's book "Getting Naked" is that he illustrates this kind of approach quite well in that book.

UPDATE: Pure Networking

2023-11-19T20:09:34Z

I've been layin', waitin' for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate
Now, I'mma start collectin' props, connectin' plots
Networkin' like a conference

--Gang Starr, Work

This is embarrassing, but here goes.

I counted up how many times, since February 2023, I've left the house for a primarily social purpose -- where the outing was first about doing something social and secondarily about something else. The total number: maybe 3? If we expand the definition to an outing that's primarily about something else but incidentally involves social interaction with more than 1 or 2 people, the number is still in the single digits.

Weird? Maybe. I bet more than a few of you have similar numbers.

It's not always like this for me. My level of "social Brownian Motion" has fluctuated throughout life based on various life circumstances. Some of us have lives that are arranged in a way that produces a lot of social interaction as a byproduct of that life -- you chat with people while getting one of those revolting kombucha drinks at the cafe at the coworking space; you're often on both sides of the "so what do for a living?" question because you're interacting with strangers often; you have functional small-talk skills because you accompany your extroverted spouse to their work events and need to not look like a psycho in order to stay married; etc.

Others of us have great lives that produce almost no social Brownian Motion. We work from home in offices that cubicle-dwellers would envy. We opt for the self-checkout, even if the line is longer there. We order it online or we've done all the research before we walk into the store. We live in the sticks and like it that way. Etc.

One of the really wise things my wife often says about introverts is "at a party, introverts need a job to feel comfortable". Set the table, make sure everybody's drink is full, do stuff in the kitchen, take coats at the door, etc.

In my experience, she's right about this. The ability to focus on a task that, as a by-product, produces social interaction is so very helpful for the most introverted among us. This is the opposite of what I refer to as “Pure Networking”.

When the starting point is my model of how non-professional buyers find service providers, the ways that we can intercept their search for an us-shaped service provider looks like the following:

(y’all email readers can tap this image to embiggen it)

Pure Networking is all about meeting potential buyers or those who can be helpful to us in the quest to meet potential buyers.

I am quite introverted but I know a surprisingly large number of people because of the "job" I have at "the party" (writing several books, this email list, etc.). If I had needed to meet that large number of people first through pure networking in order to do the kind of work I do, it would have never happened. If I'd had to write "I will meet more people through pure networking" on the blackboard 100 times each day I didn't meet more people, I'd choose the blackboard every time for the delicious solitary think time it provides. The job I have is nice, but it's not so nice that I would do <shudder> pure networking to have it!

Pure networking works for some of us as a way to intercept more opportunity. [1] For many of us, it does not.

During a meeting a week or two ago, a thought partner said something very wise: don’t compare your ideology’s theoretical best to reality’s actual worst. They're not the same thing and it's not even close to a fair comparison. One of those has to contend with the complexity and constraints of the real world. The other doesn't. This has implications for lead generation, I think.

It's been an... interesting... two years for my wife and I. I'll skip the details for now, but during this rather chaotic time one of the big "in my bones" learnings has been that a consistent application of a small portion of the good ideas out there beats trying (and failing) to fully (dogmatically) apply all those good ideas.

On a different recent thought partner call, I said "blah blah blah some people just aren't cut out to be authorities/thought leaders." My thought partner asked what I meant by that. For your context, I wasn't slagging on anybody in particular or even a group of anybodies in general. Rather I was reflecting on how my previous business model was, in large part, based on an effort to seduce folks into laying hold of the tools of thought leadership and using those tools for their benefit.

I think it took me seeing that those tools aren't enough for my business to thrive to get me to the place where I could say "some people just aren't cut out to be authorities/thought leaders." Some of us (me included) just don't have sufficient stability in our life to do what's needed for effective thought leadership. Some of us question our point of view on things (marketing, in my case, and the questioning was via small-scale research) and find our POV upended as a result and need to change other things in our business as a result. Some of us (me included, as of late) don't have whatever energy source is required to regularly turn thought into a useful resource for clients/prospects (or, perhaps, the necessary freedom from ADHD/bad habits/life distractions to effectively channel that energy source) via content marketing, publishing, and so on.

Laying hold of the tools of thought leadership is one "job" that we introverts can give ourselves to avoid having to use pure networking to intercept more opportunity. If you're cut out for thought leadership, or can fit yourself to the job's demands, it's likely the best available tool for intercepting more opportunity.

80/20 Agency Marketing is 4 done-for-you services for the rest of us. :)

I have bandwidth to take on a few more 80/20 Agency Marketing clients, and I’d really like a few more clients for this service, so if any of the services look interesting and in-budget for you, please reach out. I'm happy to meet with you via video call, explain more, answer questions, and try to be helpful to you in the specific positioning, lead generation, and small-scale research ways I’m qualified to be.

And if you know someone who is needing more opportunity for their services and struggling to find it because the whole content marketing/thought leadership/authority thing is not a fit for them, please let them know that this service exists. It would mean a lot to me if you’d also follow up with them in a week or so to see if they took action on your recommendation.

I forgot to do a For Fun Poll in the last email. I really enjoy doing these, so it musta been the life chaos (couldn't be increasing forgetfulness for... you know.... ah..... reasons). :)

For Fun Poll:

Notes:

To be more pedantically accurate, there are approaches to Pure Networking that are more suited to introverts. Generally, these involve intentional 1:1 interactions that leverage the Internet, video calls, and so forth. I’m not saying Pure Networking is a completely un-usable tool for introverts, just that it comes less naturally for us and the way it just naturally happens for others through “social Brownian Motion” often doesn’t happen for us.

UPDATE: Pure Networking

2023-11-19T20:09:34Z

I've been layin', waitin' for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate
Now, I'mma start collectin' props, connectin' plots
Networkin' like a conference

--Gang Starr, Work

This is embarrassing, but here goes.

Weird? Maybe. I bet more than a few of you have similar numbers.

When the starting point is my model of how non-professional buyers find service providers, the ways that we can intercept their search for an us-shaped service provider looks like the following:

(y’all email readers can tap this image to embiggen it)

Pure Networking is all about meeting potential buyers or those who can be helpful to us in the quest to meet potential buyers.

Pure networking works for some of us as a way to intercept more opportunity. [1] For many of us, it does not.

80/20 Agency Marketing is 4 done-for-you services for the rest of us. :)

I forgot to do a For Fun Poll in the last email. I really enjoy doing these, so it musta been the life chaos (couldn't be increasing forgetfulness for... you know.... ah..... reasons). :)

For Fun Poll:

Notes:

To be more pedantically accurate, there are approaches to Pure Networking that are more suited to introverts. Generally, these involve intentional 1:1 interactions that leverage the Internet, video calls, and so forth. I’m not saying Pure Networking is a completely un-usable tool for introverts, just that it comes less naturally for us and the way it just naturally happens for others through “social Brownian Motion” often doesn’t happen for us.

UPDATE: Pure Networking

2023-11-19T20:09:34Z

I've been layin', waitin' for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate
Now, I'mma start collectin' props, connectin' plots
Networkin' like a conference

--Gang Starr, Work

This is embarrassing, but here goes.

Weird? Maybe. I bet more than a few of you have similar numbers.

When the starting point is my model of how non-professional buyers find service providers, the ways that we can intercept their search for an us-shaped service provider looks like the following:

(y’all email readers can tap this image to embiggen it)

Pure Networking is all about meeting potential buyers or those who can be helpful to us in the quest to meet potential buyers.

Pure networking works for some of us as a way to intercept more opportunity. [1] For many of us, it does not.

80/20 Agency Marketing is 4 done-for-you services for the rest of us. :)

I forgot to do a For Fun Poll in the last email. I really enjoy doing these, so it musta been the life chaos (couldn't be increasing forgetfulness for... you know.... ah..... reasons). :)

For Fun Poll:

Notes:

To be more pedantically accurate, there are approaches to Pure Networking that are more suited to introverts. Generally, these involve intentional 1:1 interactions that leverage the Internet, video calls, and so forth. I’m not saying Pure Networking is a completely un-usable tool for introverts, just that it comes less naturally for us and the way it just naturally happens for others through “social Brownian Motion” often doesn’t happen for us.

UPDATE: Pure Networking

2023-11-19T20:09:34Z

I've been layin', waitin' for your next mistake
I put in work, and watch my status escalate
Now, I'mma start collectin' props, connectin' plots
Networkin' like a conference

--Gang Starr, Work

This is embarrassing, but here goes.

Weird? Maybe. I bet more than a few of you have similar numbers.

When the starting point is my model of how non-professional buyers find service providers, the ways that we can intercept their search for an us-shaped service provider looks like the following:

(y’all email readers can tap this image to embiggen it)

Pure Networking is all about meeting potential buyers or those who can be helpful to us in the quest to meet potential buyers.

Pure networking works for some of us as a way to intercept more opportunity. [1] For many of us, it does not.

80/20 Agency Marketing is 4 done-for-you services for the rest of us. :)

I forgot to do a For Fun Poll in the last email. I really enjoy doing these, so it musta been the life chaos (couldn't be increasing forgetfulness for... you know.... ah..... reasons). :)

For Fun Poll:

Notes:

To be more pedantically accurate, there are approaches to Pure Networking that are more suited to introverts. Generally, these involve intentional 1:1 interactions that leverage the Internet, video calls, and so forth. I’m not saying Pure Networking is a completely un-usable tool for introverts, just that it comes less naturally for us and the way it just naturally happens for others through “social Brownian Motion” often doesn’t happen for us.

Competing poorly with cat videos and unboxings

2024-01-03T12:29:08Z

Q: Claude.ai, in 280 characters, what will readers get from reading this email that they could not get from spending the same amount of time watching product unboxing videos on Youtube? Be honest. Be honest.

Alrighty then!

A Favor

I'm setting up some new email infrastructure for recruiting research participants so I can do a better job of speaking from the perspective of data to the question of how to intercept more opportunity. This initiative won't turn into benefit for my email list subscribers for another 6 to 12 months, but I could use your help now. Over the coming weeks I'm going to email you all from a new email address (philip@ibxresearch.com or philip@research.ibxresearch.com). If you'd be so very kind as to reply to that email when you receive it, it'll help establish some positive reputation for the new email addresses. Thanks in advance for any help you are able to lend this.

An Experiment

I just finished a very narrowly-focused competitive analysis for a client. He was curious if any of his competitors have priced and packaged services, or even publish their pricing at all.

This was the perfect kind of research question to bring in a "LLM research assistant" because we were starting with high uncertainty and could tolerate a significant degree of inaccuracy in service of reducing that uncertainty.

Here's what I did:

Pulled the names of 1,670 competitor firms from LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) and Apollo
Scraped the home page of every firm's web site
Wrote some tooling that sent each home page to GPT-4 and asked it to determine if it's a services firm or product business: 720 services firms. Also asked it to determine if it's a generalist firm or specialized solely on my client's vertical: 234 specialized.
Scraped every probably-a-services-description page from those 234.
Sent those pages to GPT-4 and asked it to look for pricing and evidence of service packaging. Aside from a few who published PPC management fees and a few low-cost productized services, none published pricing or had packaged services for significant scope projects.

It's impressive to me how generative AI makes getting researched answers to questions like this so much easier. A few learnings to pass along:

One of the fastest ways to size the supply side of a market is via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Inside of 5 minutes you can have a pretty good ballpark picture of how many companies there are focused on serving a particular market. But some categories will have both product and services companies showing up in even a very tightly defined search. That's why I had to have step 3 in my research process above.
My "quick, Philip, estimate how many companies in market X are specialized vs. generalist" answer is: 20% of the market, give or take a bit, will be specialized. You'll notice the market I investigated above has 32.5% of its companies specialized (again, according to GPT-4's inspection of the company's home page, so there is some uncertainty baked into this number). That's on the high side of 20%, but the form of specialization I asked GPT-4 to look for was vertical specialization, not a simultaneous vertical and horizontal specialization.

Some Rules

You can approach an email list with an "anything goes" attitude and do sorta OK (ask me how I know hahahahahah cough cough cough...), but it's helpful to have rules you try to live by in your husbandry of an email list, if only to occasionally delight yourself by breaking one of your own rules. That is also an excellent reason to keep these rules to yourself, but I'll make an exception here, just for you, so you'll know how I intend to approach this email list in 2024 and beyond.

Fewer or no thought experiments/good ideas/theories; more reporting on real-world experiments/research
The only goal for the list is usefulness at the individual email level; regularity or consistency can't matter or I'll get too wrapped around my own axle and the #1 goal will be threatened
Occasional promotion of my services, but the marketing for those is simply reporting the past performance of those services, not optimistically selling you on their future potential
Never ever, ever, ever write “stay tuned for part 2 of this email”

Speaking of thought experiments, the Wikipedia article on Antipodes actually has some interesting examples of what happens when all you have is thought experiments:

Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the Equator (De orbis situ 1.4).
From the time of Augustine of Hippo, the Christian church was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."

Both of these are laugh-out-loud funny from the modern perspective, but when I take a more sympathetic posture, they both strike me as totally reasonable thought experiments that ended up reaching silly conclusions because the experimenters were working with very limited information. Maybe Pomponius Mela thought the Earth's temperature rose exponentially the closer you got to the equator, meaning that you would burn alive if you got too close? Or maybe he thought the equatorial temperature extremely-hot-but-bearable but the journey with limited technology seemed as impossible as a manned journey to the Andromeda galaxy seems to us now.

These were just thought experiments, though, not actual in-the-world experiments with real people, boats, and supplies. The thought experiments only take you so far.

From the most recent "For Fun Poll":

I hope your 2024 is off to a good start.

-P

Competing poorly with cat videos and unboxings

2024-01-03T12:29:08Z

Alrighty then!

A Favor

An Experiment

I just finished a very narrowly-focused competitive analysis for a client. He was curious if any of his competitors have priced and packaged services, or even publish their pricing at all.

Here's what I did:

Pulled the names of 1,670 competitor firms from LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) and Apollo
Scraped the home page of every firm's web site
Wrote some tooling that sent each home page to GPT-4 and asked it to determine if it's a services firm or product business: 720 services firms. Also asked it to determine if it's a generalist firm or specialized solely on my client's vertical: 234 specialized.
Scraped every probably-a-services-description page from those 234.
Sent those pages to GPT-4 and asked it to look for pricing and evidence of service packaging. Aside from a few who published PPC management fees and a few low-cost productized services, none published pricing or had packaged services for significant scope projects.

It's impressive to me how generative AI makes getting researched answers to questions like this so much easier. A few learnings to pass along:

One of the fastest ways to size the supply side of a market is via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Inside of 5 minutes you can have a pretty good ballpark picture of how many companies there are focused on serving a particular market. But some categories will have both product and services companies showing up in even a very tightly defined search. That's why I had to have step 3 in my research process above.
My "quick, Philip, estimate how many companies in market X are specialized vs. generalist" answer is: 20% of the market, give or take a bit, will be specialized. You'll notice the market I investigated above has 32.5% of its companies specialized (again, according to GPT-4's inspection of the company's home page, so there is some uncertainty baked into this number). That's on the high side of 20%, but the form of specialization I asked GPT-4 to look for was vertical specialization, not a simultaneous vertical and horizontal specialization.

Some Rules

Fewer or no thought experiments/good ideas/theories; more reporting on real-world experiments/research
The only goal for the list is usefulness at the individual email level; regularity or consistency can't matter or I'll get too wrapped around my own axle and the #1 goal will be threatened
Occasional promotion of my services, but the marketing for those is simply reporting the past performance of those services, not optimistically selling you on their future potential
Never ever, ever, ever write “stay tuned for part 2 of this email”

Speaking of thought experiments, the Wikipedia article on Antipodes actually has some interesting examples of what happens when all you have is thought experiments:

Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the Equator (De orbis situ 1.4).
From the time of Augustine of Hippo, the Christian church was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."

These were just thought experiments, though, not actual in-the-world experiments with real people, boats, and supplies. The thought experiments only take you so far.

From the most recent "For Fun Poll":

I hope your 2024 is off to a good start.

-P

Competing poorly with cat videos and unboxings

2024-01-03T12:29:08Z

Alrighty then!

A Favor

An Experiment

I just finished a very narrowly-focused competitive analysis for a client. He was curious if any of his competitors have priced and packaged services, or even publish their pricing at all.

Here's what I did:

Pulled the names of 1,670 competitor firms from LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) and Apollo
Scraped the home page of every firm's web site
Wrote some tooling that sent each home page to GPT-4 and asked it to determine if it's a services firm or product business: 720 services firms. Also asked it to determine if it's a generalist firm or specialized solely on my client's vertical: 234 specialized.
Scraped every probably-a-services-description page from those 234.
Sent those pages to GPT-4 and asked it to look for pricing and evidence of service packaging. Aside from a few who published PPC management fees and a few low-cost productized services, none published pricing or had packaged services for significant scope projects.

It's impressive to me how generative AI makes getting researched answers to questions like this so much easier. A few learnings to pass along:

One of the fastest ways to size the supply side of a market is via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Inside of 5 minutes you can have a pretty good ballpark picture of how many companies there are focused on serving a particular market. But some categories will have both product and services companies showing up in even a very tightly defined search. That's why I had to have step 3 in my research process above.
My "quick, Philip, estimate how many companies in market X are specialized vs. generalist" answer is: 20% of the market, give or take a bit, will be specialized. You'll notice the market I investigated above has 32.5% of its companies specialized (again, according to GPT-4's inspection of the company's home page, so there is some uncertainty baked into this number). That's on the high side of 20%, but the form of specialization I asked GPT-4 to look for was vertical specialization, not a simultaneous vertical and horizontal specialization.

Some Rules

Fewer or no thought experiments/good ideas/theories; more reporting on real-world experiments/research
The only goal for the list is usefulness at the individual email level; regularity or consistency can't matter or I'll get too wrapped around my own axle and the #1 goal will be threatened
Occasional promotion of my services, but the marketing for those is simply reporting the past performance of those services, not optimistically selling you on their future potential
Never ever, ever, ever write “stay tuned for part 2 of this email”

Speaking of thought experiments, the Wikipedia article on Antipodes actually has some interesting examples of what happens when all you have is thought experiments:

Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the Equator (De orbis situ 1.4).
From the time of Augustine of Hippo, the Christian church was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."

These were just thought experiments, though, not actual in-the-world experiments with real people, boats, and supplies. The thought experiments only take you so far.

From the most recent "For Fun Poll":

I hope your 2024 is off to a good start.

-P

Competing poorly with cat videos and unboxings

2024-01-03T12:29:08Z

Alrighty then!

A Favor

An Experiment

I just finished a very narrowly-focused competitive analysis for a client. He was curious if any of his competitors have priced and packaged services, or even publish their pricing at all.

Here's what I did:

Pulled the names of 1,670 competitor firms from LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) and Apollo
Scraped the home page of every firm's web site
Wrote some tooling that sent each home page to GPT-4 and asked it to determine if it's a services firm or product business: 720 services firms. Also asked it to determine if it's a generalist firm or specialized solely on my client's vertical: 234 specialized.
Scraped every probably-a-services-description page from those 234.
Sent those pages to GPT-4 and asked it to look for pricing and evidence of service packaging. Aside from a few who published PPC management fees and a few low-cost productized services, none published pricing or had packaged services for significant scope projects.

It's impressive to me how generative AI makes getting researched answers to questions like this so much easier. A few learnings to pass along:

One of the fastest ways to size the supply side of a market is via LinkedIn Sales Navigator. Inside of 5 minutes you can have a pretty good ballpark picture of how many companies there are focused on serving a particular market. But some categories will have both product and services companies showing up in even a very tightly defined search. That's why I had to have step 3 in my research process above.
My "quick, Philip, estimate how many companies in market X are specialized vs. generalist" answer is: 20% of the market, give or take a bit, will be specialized. You'll notice the market I investigated above has 32.5% of its companies specialized (again, according to GPT-4's inspection of the company's home page, so there is some uncertainty baked into this number). That's on the high side of 20%, but the form of specialization I asked GPT-4 to look for was vertical specialization, not a simultaneous vertical and horizontal specialization.

Some Rules

Fewer or no thought experiments/good ideas/theories; more reporting on real-world experiments/research
The only goal for the list is usefulness at the individual email level; regularity or consistency can't matter or I'll get too wrapped around my own axle and the #1 goal will be threatened
Occasional promotion of my services, but the marketing for those is simply reporting the past performance of those services, not optimistically selling you on their future potential
Never ever, ever, ever write “stay tuned for part 2 of this email”

Speaking of thought experiments, the Wikipedia article on Antipodes actually has some interesting examples of what happens when all you have is thought experiments:

Pomponius Mela, the first Roman geographer, asserted that the earth had two habitable zones, a North and South one, but that it would be impossible to get into contact with each other because of the unbearable heat at the Equator (De orbis situ 1.4).
From the time of Augustine of Hippo, the Christian church was skeptical of the notion. Augustine asserted that "it is too absurd to say that some men might have set sail from this side and, traversing the immense expanse of ocean, have propagated there a race of human beings descended from that one first man."

These were just thought experiments, though, not actual in-the-world experiments with real people, boats, and supplies. The thought experiments only take you so far.

From the most recent "For Fun Poll":

I hope your 2024 is off to a good start.

-P

A Workshop Invitation: Build A Cold Email Stack

2024-01-12T11:04:24Z

What would your business look like if you had a repeatable process for becoming known and memorable to new prospects? This email promotes a workshop that helps you build such a system.

I’ve spent the last 8 months experimenting with using cold email to distribute education-based content marketing. As I’ve morphed my business away from a pure advisory/education model to a done-for-you services model, I’ve been looking for a balance between the value and usefulness of educational content but without the labor intensity a commitment to such content usually brings in its wake. I’ve developed something I like and the market seems to like. It offers the speed and reach of cold email without direct selling, and the value and usefulness of educational content without much emotional or intellectual labor.

I'm ready to share this strategy and the process I've developed to implement it.

You're invited to Build A Cold Email Stack. This is a 2-month-long online workshop, starting mid-February, where I'll help you build a system for using email to reach a sizable audience of prospects with useful content. At $1,800 for the workshop fee, this probably only makes sense if a new client would be worth at least ~5x that amount. Also, you'll need to sign up for some SaaS tools that total up to between $561 and $739/month (actual costs varies within that range depending on how quickly you want to build your cold email audience; if your intention is to stop building your cold email audience after some months your software cost would then drop to $290/month).

Here's what you'll get in this workshop:

Guidance on both low-effort and high-effort ways to create actual value for a cold email audience in a way that's totally different from the kind of cold email you hate receiving.

Sorry, I have to break from the bullet list here and say this again for emphasis: When I use this approach for my clients, I am not sending cold email sales pitches. I am sending relevant useful content, and the labor intensity of creating that content is scaled to their appetite for content-creation labor, their business needs, and so on. As a result of sending relevant useful content rather than a sequence of sales pitches, the email metrics we’re seeing are indistinguishable from those of most double opted in email lists (remember, always take open rates with a grain of salt no matter how the list was built). Ok, back to the bullet list of what the workshop includes:

A recipe for setting up an extremely high-quality, robust cold email tech stack.
Guidance on building a highly relevant list of prospects with recipe-level instructions for the mechanics of the process and principles-level instructions for audience definition.
Weekly group session where we discuss progress, questions, and so forth. (Exact day/time TBD but will very likely be between 8am to 10am Mountain time to provide the best time-zone coverage for most of you.)
One private 60-minute screenshare implementation session per week of the workshop (up to 8 such sessions per participant) where I help you translate the workshop's recipes and guidance into the specifics of your business. (If you want to preview my availability for these sessions to make sure my availability matches yours, you can check out the scheduling link for those implementation sessions here: https://opportunitylabs.io/baces1on1s) Again, this is not a course, it’s a workshop that combines learning with custom implementation support.

There are some pretty easy ways to know if this workshop would not be a good fit for you:

Not a good fit if you are desperate for extremely short-term results from outreach, are not open to a more investment-minded/generous approach, or are for some other reason definitely going to use your cold email stack to send transactional salesey emails. The world has more than enough of that already and I don't want to be part of the problem there.
Not a good fit if you don't know who your buyers are (meaning you could not in 1 or 2 short sentences describe who is a good fit for your services), or if it's not possible to construct a LinkedIn search that selects buyers or recommenders. (An example of buyers you can’t construct a LinkedIn search for: Boards of Directors that are struggling with effective succession planning)
Probably not a good fit if your buyers are exclusively in the EU.

If this description leaves you interested but with questions, please let me know your questions: philip@opportunitylabs.io

Oh, I almost forgot: early-bird discounts. Let's go big with that discount: 50% off the workshop fee for those who pay by EOD Monday, Jan 15th.

If you want to buy yourself a seat in this workshop, here's the payment link: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH. If you want to buy a friend, family member, secret crush, or estranged sibling/child a seat in the workshop, the link is also https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH.

-P

A Workshop Invitation: Build A Cold Email Stack

2024-01-12T11:04:24Z

What would your business look like if you had a repeatable process for becoming known and memorable to new prospects? This email promotes a workshop that helps you build such a system.

I'm ready to share this strategy and the process I've developed to implement it.

Here's what you'll get in this workshop:

Guidance on both low-effort and high-effort ways to create actual value for a cold email audience in a way that's totally different from the kind of cold email you hate receiving.

A recipe for setting up an extremely high-quality, robust cold email tech stack.
Guidance on building a highly relevant list of prospects with recipe-level instructions for the mechanics of the process and principles-level instructions for audience definition.
Weekly group session where we discuss progress, questions, and so forth. (Exact day/time TBD but will very likely be between 8am to 10am Mountain time to provide the best time-zone coverage for most of you.)
One private 60-minute screenshare implementation session per week of the workshop (up to 8 such sessions per participant) where I help you translate the workshop's recipes and guidance into the specifics of your business. (If you want to preview my availability for these sessions to make sure my availability matches yours, you can check out the scheduling link for those implementation sessions here: https://opportunitylabs.io/baces1on1s) Again, this is not a course, it’s a workshop that combines learning with custom implementation support.

There are some pretty easy ways to know if this workshop would not be a good fit for you:

Not a good fit if you are desperate for extremely short-term results from outreach, are not open to a more investment-minded/generous approach, or are for some other reason definitely going to use your cold email stack to send transactional salesey emails. The world has more than enough of that already and I don't want to be part of the problem there.
Not a good fit if you don't know who your buyers are (meaning you could not in 1 or 2 short sentences describe who is a good fit for your services), or if it's not possible to construct a LinkedIn search that selects buyers or recommenders. (An example of buyers you can’t construct a LinkedIn search for: Boards of Directors that are struggling with effective succession planning)
Probably not a good fit if your buyers are exclusively in the EU.

If this description leaves you interested but with questions, please let me know your questions: philip@opportunitylabs.io

Oh, I almost forgot: early-bird discounts. Let's go big with that discount: 50% off the workshop fee for those who pay by EOD Monday, Jan 15th.

-P

A Workshop Invitation: Build A Cold Email Stack

2024-01-12T11:04:24Z

What would your business look like if you had a repeatable process for becoming known and memorable to new prospects? This email promotes a workshop that helps you build such a system.

I'm ready to share this strategy and the process I've developed to implement it.

Here's what you'll get in this workshop:

Guidance on both low-effort and high-effort ways to create actual value for a cold email audience in a way that's totally different from the kind of cold email you hate receiving.

A recipe for setting up an extremely high-quality, robust cold email tech stack.
Guidance on building a highly relevant list of prospects with recipe-level instructions for the mechanics of the process and principles-level instructions for audience definition.
Weekly group session where we discuss progress, questions, and so forth. (Exact day/time TBD but will very likely be between 8am to 10am Mountain time to provide the best time-zone coverage for most of you.)
One private 60-minute screenshare implementation session per week of the workshop (up to 8 such sessions per participant) where I help you translate the workshop's recipes and guidance into the specifics of your business. (If you want to preview my availability for these sessions to make sure my availability matches yours, you can check out the scheduling link for those implementation sessions here: https://opportunitylabs.io/baces1on1s) Again, this is not a course, it’s a workshop that combines learning with custom implementation support.

There are some pretty easy ways to know if this workshop would not be a good fit for you:

Not a good fit if you are desperate for extremely short-term results from outreach, are not open to a more investment-minded/generous approach, or are for some other reason definitely going to use your cold email stack to send transactional salesey emails. The world has more than enough of that already and I don't want to be part of the problem there.
Not a good fit if you don't know who your buyers are (meaning you could not in 1 or 2 short sentences describe who is a good fit for your services), or if it's not possible to construct a LinkedIn search that selects buyers or recommenders. (An example of buyers you can’t construct a LinkedIn search for: Boards of Directors that are struggling with effective succession planning)
Probably not a good fit if your buyers are exclusively in the EU.

If this description leaves you interested but with questions, please let me know your questions: philip@opportunitylabs.io

Oh, I almost forgot: early-bird discounts. Let's go big with that discount: 50% off the workshop fee for those who pay by EOD Monday, Jan 15th.

-P

A Workshop Invitation: Build A Cold Email Stack

2024-01-12T11:04:24Z

What would your business look like if you had a repeatable process for becoming known and memorable to new prospects? This email promotes a workshop that helps you build such a system.

I'm ready to share this strategy and the process I've developed to implement it.

Here's what you'll get in this workshop:

Guidance on both low-effort and high-effort ways to create actual value for a cold email audience in a way that's totally different from the kind of cold email you hate receiving.

A recipe for setting up an extremely high-quality, robust cold email tech stack.
Guidance on building a highly relevant list of prospects with recipe-level instructions for the mechanics of the process and principles-level instructions for audience definition.
Weekly group session where we discuss progress, questions, and so forth. (Exact day/time TBD but will very likely be between 8am to 10am Mountain time to provide the best time-zone coverage for most of you.)
One private 60-minute screenshare implementation session per week of the workshop (up to 8 such sessions per participant) where I help you translate the workshop's recipes and guidance into the specifics of your business. (If you want to preview my availability for these sessions to make sure my availability matches yours, you can check out the scheduling link for those implementation sessions here: https://opportunitylabs.io/baces1on1s) Again, this is not a course, it’s a workshop that combines learning with custom implementation support.

There are some pretty easy ways to know if this workshop would not be a good fit for you:

Not a good fit if you are desperate for extremely short-term results from outreach, are not open to a more investment-minded/generous approach, or are for some other reason definitely going to use your cold email stack to send transactional salesey emails. The world has more than enough of that already and I don't want to be part of the problem there.
Not a good fit if you don't know who your buyers are (meaning you could not in 1 or 2 short sentences describe who is a good fit for your services), or if it's not possible to construct a LinkedIn search that selects buyers or recommenders. (An example of buyers you can’t construct a LinkedIn search for: Boards of Directors that are struggling with effective succession planning)
Probably not a good fit if your buyers are exclusively in the EU.

If this description leaves you interested but with questions, please let me know your questions: philip@opportunitylabs.io

Oh, I almost forgot: early-bird discounts. Let's go big with that discount: 50% off the workshop fee for those who pay by EOD Monday, Jan 15th.

-P

Quick update

2024-01-14T11:10:00Z

A quick update on a few items.

Update 1

I’ve moved my email list over to Beehiiv so I can have a segmentation feature. As I get back into selling my services more actively, this will let me put less irrelevant-to-you kilobytes into your inbox.

Along those lines, I’m selling a 2-month online workshop where I'll help you build a system for using email to reach a sizable audience of prospects with useful content. I have more specifics to share RE: this event before the 50% off early-bird pricing expires tomorrow night, but it’s probably only relevant to a fraction of you, so if this workshop might be relevant to YOU, then please choose YES below:

Update 2

Thanks to all of you who replied to my “asking for 15 seconds of help” email. I tried to reply to everyone who replied, but if the automation software sent you additional reminder emails after you replied to me, please let me know because that’s a bug that needs to be investigated and fixed. (These emails came from philip@ibxresearch.com or philip@research.ibxresearch.com)

A few of you asked what that email was all about. I’m warming up two new email addresses so that I can use email to recruit research participants. I dropped my entire nee-Substack email list into a 3-email Instantly campaign to conduct that warmup. That project is unrelated to my move to Beehiiv.

Thanks, and happy Sunday!
—Philip

Quick update

2024-01-14T11:10:00Z

A quick update on a few items.

Update 1

Update 2

Thanks, and happy Sunday!
—Philip

Quick update

2024-01-14T11:10:00Z

A quick update on a few items.

Update 1

Update 2

Thanks, and happy Sunday!
—Philip

Quick update

2024-01-14T11:10:00Z

A quick update on a few items.

Update 1

Update 2

Thanks, and happy Sunday!
—Philip

UPDATE: Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop super-early-bird pricing ends today

2024-01-15T18:49:00Z

Hey there! This is a reminder that the super-early-bird pricing for the Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop ends today. On a practical level, that means when I wake up tomorrow in Mountain Time I’ll tell Stripe to charge $1,400 for the SKU rather than the current price of $900 (and the full price of $1,800).

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

UPDATE: Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop super-early-bird pricing ends today

2024-01-15T18:49:00Z

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

UPDATE: Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop super-early-bird pricing ends today

2024-01-15T18:49:00Z

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

UPDATE: Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop super-early-bird pricing ends today

2024-01-15T18:49:00Z

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

The Cold Email Stack

2024-01-15T23:14:00Z

Someone asked what the cold email “stack” is. Here’s what I use and will be helping workshop participants implement:

Evaboot: Turns LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results into email addresses. Costly, but amazingly good. Does extra verification steps that dramatically clean up search results.
Inboxally: Expensive-but-worth-it warmup/deliverability tool. Necessary because to do this right you set up multiple new emails on a new domain, and the new domain has no reputation, thus requiring warmup.
Instantly: cold email automation tool.
Multiple Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes. Take the number of inboxes you want to reach each week, divide by 1,500, and that's the number of email accounts you'll need. Distribute the number of email accounts between Google and Microsoft infrastructure based on your audience's usage of inboxes.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The $180/month version. You need to be able to upload CSVs of accounts, and that requires this version of LISN.
Phantombuster: A LinkedIn search results scraper with different capabilities than Evaboot. Used to convert a list of companies into a CSV that is then imported to LISN to scope people searches. (You can't rely on the industry filter of LISN's people search because that field is self-assigned by people when they set up their LI account and... as they say, people do the craziest things.)

That's the software stack. Per/month price below show the subscription price range that folks are likely to need.

Evaboot: $49.00 to $199.00
Inboxally: $149.00
Instantly: $99.00
Emails accounts: $14.00 to $42.00
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: $180.00
Phantombuster: $70.00
Total: $561.00 to $739.00

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

The Cold Email Stack

2024-01-15T23:14:00Z

Someone asked what the cold email “stack” is. Here’s what I use and will be helping workshop participants implement:

Evaboot: Turns LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results into email addresses. Costly, but amazingly good. Does extra verification steps that dramatically clean up search results.
Inboxally: Expensive-but-worth-it warmup/deliverability tool. Necessary because to do this right you set up multiple new emails on a new domain, and the new domain has no reputation, thus requiring warmup.
Instantly: cold email automation tool.
Multiple Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes. Take the number of inboxes you want to reach each week, divide by 1,500, and that's the number of email accounts you'll need. Distribute the number of email accounts between Google and Microsoft infrastructure based on your audience's usage of inboxes.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The $180/month version. You need to be able to upload CSVs of accounts, and that requires this version of LISN.
Phantombuster: A LinkedIn search results scraper with different capabilities than Evaboot. Used to convert a list of companies into a CSV that is then imported to LISN to scope people searches. (You can't rely on the industry filter of LISN's people search because that field is self-assigned by people when they set up their LI account and... as they say, people do the craziest things.)

That's the software stack. Per/month price below show the subscription price range that folks are likely to need.

Evaboot: $49.00 to $199.00
Inboxally: $149.00
Instantly: $99.00
Emails accounts: $14.00 to $42.00
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: $180.00
Phantombuster: $70.00
Total: $561.00 to $739.00

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

The Cold Email Stack

2024-01-15T23:14:00Z

Someone asked what the cold email “stack” is. Here’s what I use and will be helping workshop participants implement:

Evaboot: Turns LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results into email addresses. Costly, but amazingly good. Does extra verification steps that dramatically clean up search results.
Inboxally: Expensive-but-worth-it warmup/deliverability tool. Necessary because to do this right you set up multiple new emails on a new domain, and the new domain has no reputation, thus requiring warmup.
Instantly: cold email automation tool.
Multiple Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes. Take the number of inboxes you want to reach each week, divide by 1,500, and that's the number of email accounts you'll need. Distribute the number of email accounts between Google and Microsoft infrastructure based on your audience's usage of inboxes.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The $180/month version. You need to be able to upload CSVs of accounts, and that requires this version of LISN.
Phantombuster: A LinkedIn search results scraper with different capabilities than Evaboot. Used to convert a list of companies into a CSV that is then imported to LISN to scope people searches. (You can't rely on the industry filter of LISN's people search because that field is self-assigned by people when they set up their LI account and... as they say, people do the craziest things.)

That's the software stack. Per/month price below show the subscription price range that folks are likely to need.

Evaboot: $49.00 to $199.00
Inboxally: $149.00
Instantly: $99.00
Emails accounts: $14.00 to $42.00
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: $180.00
Phantombuster: $70.00
Total: $561.00 to $739.00

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

The Cold Email Stack

2024-01-15T23:14:00Z

Someone asked what the cold email “stack” is. Here’s what I use and will be helping workshop participants implement:

Evaboot: Turns LinkedIn Sales Navigator search results into email addresses. Costly, but amazingly good. Does extra verification steps that dramatically clean up search results.
Inboxally: Expensive-but-worth-it warmup/deliverability tool. Necessary because to do this right you set up multiple new emails on a new domain, and the new domain has no reputation, thus requiring warmup.
Instantly: cold email automation tool.
Multiple Google Workspace and Microsoft 365 inboxes. Take the number of inboxes you want to reach each week, divide by 1,500, and that's the number of email accounts you'll need. Distribute the number of email accounts between Google and Microsoft infrastructure based on your audience's usage of inboxes.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: The $180/month version. You need to be able to upload CSVs of accounts, and that requires this version of LISN.
Phantombuster: A LinkedIn search results scraper with different capabilities than Evaboot. Used to convert a list of companies into a CSV that is then imported to LISN to scope people searches. (You can't rely on the industry filter of LISN's people search because that field is self-assigned by people when they set up their LI account and... as they say, people do the craziest things.)

That's the software stack. Per/month price below show the subscription price range that folks are likely to need.

Evaboot: $49.00 to $199.00
Inboxally: $149.00
Instantly: $99.00
Emails accounts: $14.00 to $42.00
LinkedIn Sales Navigator: $180.00
Phantombuster: $70.00
Total: $561.00 to $739.00

Here is a link you can use to buy a seat: https://buy.stripe.com/3cseYvabm16F7E48wH

If you know anyone who might want to attend this workshop, there’s now a page describing it: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/

We're All Just Panhandling

2024-01-21T11:00:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks. For you today: some lead generation learnings, and a bit of panhandling.

Lead Generation Learnings

I used to hold to a very comfortingly-simple view of lead generation[1]:

Lead gen based on communicating with an opted-in audience: GOOD
Lead gen based on communicating with an opt-out audience: VEWWY VEWWY BAD

Like so many beliefs in the world of marketing, my prior about lead generation was based on a combination of aesthetic preferences, second-hand observation, and the availability heuristic.

As I've started to use carefully-constructed opt-out audiences and email as a content distribution method, I'm reminded of this story Cormac McCarthy told in an interview once:

Source | More on McCarthy

I now think the question isn't opt-in vs. opt-out. The fundamental question is relevance and value vs. irrelevance/lack of value.

Every one of us has at least one vivid memory of being included in an audience we didn't opt in to and being "marketed at" in an irrelevant or value-less way that irritated us. We can easily call to mind those stories and use them to condemn opt-out marketing writ large. But when we're included in an audience and then on the receiving end of marketing that we find useful, enjoyable, or delightful, we overlook the opt-out nature of that marketing.

I’m not arguing in favor of opt-out marketing here, but we should see our biases for what they are.

I Can't Stop Thinking About

Panhandling.

So I'm on this call last week with a past client/friend. He's German, and I'm using his local knowledge of the culture to check an assumption I have about cold email and German culture which is: it's jarringly discordant to just walk up to someone you don't know (physically or digitally) and ask them for something, right? That's my assumption, based on various comments from previous German or Germany-adjacent clients over the years.

My friend is confirming that my assumption is correct, and then to further emphasize his point he says: "It's panhandling." My friend is German and also very fluent in English and American culture. This wasn't a translation glitch on his part, or an insult. It was just the best word to describe how one culture sees the practices of another. I'm generalizing bigly here about entire cultures and so forth, I know, but this was a wonderful moment for me.

As most of you know, Americans by and large only use the word panhandling to refer to someone asking for money from passersby on the street. So to hear someone use that word to describe scrappy, proactive ways of doing marketing for business services was delightfully profane. I'm not kidding. It was shocking, and completely delightful.

And yet, if we take the idea of panhandling to the semantic chop shop, the chassis we’re left with is: using the means available to you to put an offer in front of people you don’t know. Yes, with actual panhandling, the offer is asking for money with nothing tangible in return, and the kayfabe is “I’m broke and desperate”.

But using the means available to us to put an offer in front of people we don’t know? Maybe we're all just panhandling, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Announcements

In response to Gmail and other big email hosters upping the bar on what it takes to inbox, my friend Ian Crafford is offering a deliverability audit service: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content. Early-bird pricing is still in effect: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/
My friend David Baker is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February. He will also cover the important pre-requisite topics of positioning and offer design: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/

(Some More of) Philip's Panhandling

A bit more panhandling of my own :) I am conducting some very focused small-scale research to learn about what kinds of rates/fees e-commerce agencies charge. An e-commerce agency is one primarily or entirely focused on e-commerce, and if you know the rates that one charges because you've worked with one in the recent past or because you work at/run one, I would greatly appreciate your participation in this anonymous research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5 (about 2 minutes to complete this survey)

For-Fun Poll

Beehiiv (my new email platform) does polls too, just like Substack! So I'm going to continue ending my emails to you with a "for-fun poll" where I ask whatever question is on my mind and then share the results in the next email.

I hope you have either a great week or, if life is about to hand you a tough week, I hope it also gives you something to laugh about along the way,
-P

Notes:

1: I'll occasionally point out that "lead generation" is a misnomer. Most of us don't create the desire in someone to buy services like ours out of thin air. Instead, we intercept someone's existing desire that's turned into the action of them searching for a solution. We don't generate leads, we intercept opportunity. To map this to an analogy: if we are deer hunters, we don't cause a deer to materialize in front of us so we can kill it. If we are farmers, we don't cause a field of full-grown corn to materialize in front of us so we can harvest it. I'm being pedantic, but the term lead generation implies that you can just cause opportunity to materialize. If you follow this vector of thought too far, it gets you thinking that you can cause your market to want stuff it does not in fact want. Ideas and word meanings do matter! I know better, however, than to tilt at this windmill outside of a footnote. :)

We're All Just Panhandling

2024-01-21T11:00:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks. For you today: some lead generation learnings, and a bit of panhandling.

Lead Generation Learnings

I used to hold to a very comfortingly-simple view of lead generation[1]:

Lead gen based on communicating with an opted-in audience: GOOD
Lead gen based on communicating with an opt-out audience: VEWWY VEWWY BAD

Like so many beliefs in the world of marketing, my prior about lead generation was based on a combination of aesthetic preferences, second-hand observation, and the availability heuristic.

As I've started to use carefully-constructed opt-out audiences and email as a content distribution method, I'm reminded of this story Cormac McCarthy told in an interview once:

Source | More on McCarthy

I now think the question isn't opt-in vs. opt-out. The fundamental question is relevance and value vs. irrelevance/lack of value.

I’m not arguing in favor of opt-out marketing here, but we should see our biases for what they are.

I Can't Stop Thinking About

Panhandling.

But using the means available to us to put an offer in front of people we don’t know? Maybe we're all just panhandling, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Announcements

In response to Gmail and other big email hosters upping the bar on what it takes to inbox, my friend Ian Crafford is offering a deliverability audit service: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content. Early-bird pricing is still in effect: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/
My friend David Baker is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February. He will also cover the important pre-requisite topics of positioning and offer design: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/

(Some More of) Philip's Panhandling

For-Fun Poll

I hope you have either a great week or, if life is about to hand you a tough week, I hope it also gives you something to laugh about along the way,
-P

Notes:

We're All Just Panhandling

2024-01-21T11:00:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks. For you today: some lead generation learnings, and a bit of panhandling.

Lead Generation Learnings

I used to hold to a very comfortingly-simple view of lead generation[1]:

Lead gen based on communicating with an opted-in audience: GOOD
Lead gen based on communicating with an opt-out audience: VEWWY VEWWY BAD

Like so many beliefs in the world of marketing, my prior about lead generation was based on a combination of aesthetic preferences, second-hand observation, and the availability heuristic.

As I've started to use carefully-constructed opt-out audiences and email as a content distribution method, I'm reminded of this story Cormac McCarthy told in an interview once:

Source | More on McCarthy

I now think the question isn't opt-in vs. opt-out. The fundamental question is relevance and value vs. irrelevance/lack of value.

I’m not arguing in favor of opt-out marketing here, but we should see our biases for what they are.

I Can't Stop Thinking About

Panhandling.

But using the means available to us to put an offer in front of people we don’t know? Maybe we're all just panhandling, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Announcements

In response to Gmail and other big email hosters upping the bar on what it takes to inbox, my friend Ian Crafford is offering a deliverability audit service: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content. Early-bird pricing is still in effect: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/
My friend David Baker is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February. He will also cover the important pre-requisite topics of positioning and offer design: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/

(Some More of) Philip's Panhandling

For-Fun Poll

I hope you have either a great week or, if life is about to hand you a tough week, I hope it also gives you something to laugh about along the way,
-P

Notes:

We're All Just Panhandling

2024-01-21T11:00:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks. For you today: some lead generation learnings, and a bit of panhandling.

Lead Generation Learnings

I used to hold to a very comfortingly-simple view of lead generation[1]:

Lead gen based on communicating with an opted-in audience: GOOD
Lead gen based on communicating with an opt-out audience: VEWWY VEWWY BAD

Like so many beliefs in the world of marketing, my prior about lead generation was based on a combination of aesthetic preferences, second-hand observation, and the availability heuristic.

As I've started to use carefully-constructed opt-out audiences and email as a content distribution method, I'm reminded of this story Cormac McCarthy told in an interview once:

Source | More on McCarthy

I now think the question isn't opt-in vs. opt-out. The fundamental question is relevance and value vs. irrelevance/lack of value.

I’m not arguing in favor of opt-out marketing here, but we should see our biases for what they are.

I Can't Stop Thinking About

Panhandling.

But using the means available to us to put an offer in front of people we don’t know? Maybe we're all just panhandling, and maybe that’s not a bad thing.

Announcements

In response to Gmail and other big email hosters upping the bar on what it takes to inbox, my friend Ian Crafford is offering a deliverability audit service: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content. Early-bird pricing is still in effect: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/
My friend David Baker is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February. He will also cover the important pre-requisite topics of positioning and offer design: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/

(Some More of) Philip's Panhandling

For-Fun Poll

I hope you have either a great week or, if life is about to hand you a tough week, I hope it also gives you something to laugh about along the way,
-P

Notes:

Lead Generation Is A Mirror

2024-01-28T11:04:00Z

Happy Sunday folks! This week my wife and I are moving into this sweet rental house we found, so if any of you want to help me move a few sectional sofas with pull-out beds inside them that mangle your fingers when the bed frame unfolds on you while trying to get the sofa through a doorway, let me know and I'll send you the liability waiver and our address! (Kidding about the sofas but not about the house.)

We "generated the lead" for this house in an interesting way. We published a 1-pager website with some info on us as renters, a photograph of my wife and I, multiple past letters of recommendation, and our promise to be great renters. We made a flyer with some of that info, a QR code linking to the site, and contact info. And we posted it physically and digitally everywhere we could think of. Within a week we were talking to a landlord who was just about to start looking for renters for this house. He found us indirectly, via his social network. A friend of his knew his plans, saw our ad, and forwarded it to him, allowing us to intercept his search for new renters.

Lead Generation Learnings

Anytime the topic of lead generation comes up, I'll haul out this mindmap and get folks talking to me about their reactions to this section of the map:

(Full mindmap: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/images/lead-generation-2024.pdf)

The general pattern here is interesting. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exceptions to what I'm about to say but most of the time...

...people's preferred approach to lead generation is a reflection of how they got into self-employment. If they got into self-employment by being well-connected, then networking as a lead generation approach will make a lot of sense to them, and will feel like the right approach. If the early internet connected them to semi-anonymous folks who published interesting articles about working online, and that's what got them to make the leap into self-employment or entrepreneurship without the benefit of being well-connected, then publishing to generate leads will make a lot of sense to them, and will feel like the right approach.

I don't think there's a thing in the world wrong with this. Lots of things can work just fine for lead generation. There's usually room to follow our natural preferences, become better and better at them, and prosper as a result. Yes, there are cases where some business just can't work with certain lead generation approaches. I have a hard time imagining an HR consultancy that specializes in CEO succession planning using only digital marketing for lead generation. I also have a hard time imagining a SaaS not making heavy use of digital marketing for lead generation.

So sure, there are limits to this pattern, but I find that most of the time our preferences with respect to lead generation mirror how we got into business in the first place.

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/. If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you attentively read the foreword of most books that you read?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (13)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No (10)

23 Votes

Thanks for the comments some of you left enriching your responses:

Why yes?

I find forwards useful for more tightly positioning the rest of the book, so I better tune myself into what I’m about to read. There’s something about a third party perspective that adds more than if it was just written by the author.
It's a bit like reading a movie review on Rotten Tomato before watching the flick. In the book forward, I know it is completely biased, but it helps me define what the author thinks I should be getting out of the book to some extent in another reader's words.
I like to know more about the author, their motivations, and reasons they have approached the book. I also tend to find more honesty in these than elsewhere in the book.
I think I read the forward to get the feeling that I have read the entire book later. In other words, if I don't read the forward, maybe I'll feel less accomplished or successful in my book-reading endeavor, which is weird to say out loud but I guess that's why I do it or that's what my brain comes up with as an explanation for why I read the forward.
I am a completionist and it’s part of the book, but I also consider it as an intro.
I think I'm scared I'll miss something. I actually enjoy introductions. I at least start the foreword.
I don't know that I get any value, but I read books cover to cover as long as it keeps my interest. The foreword is kind of a fun way to get hyped about the rest of the book, and sometimes I don't know much about an author going in so I guess in that way it helps set the stage 😅
I read it to get a sense of the author's mindset when writing; where was he? what was happening in his life? what prompted his huge expense of time, talent, and treasure for this undertaking? It helps me with my own interpretation (some may say prejudice) of the material.

Why no?

To avoid spoilers. Also, to get to the meat of it.
I like to get straight to the point. My time is limited.

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I hope you have a great week!
-P

Lead Generation Is A Mirror

2024-01-28T11:04:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

Anytime the topic of lead generation comes up, I'll haul out this mindmap and get folks talking to me about their reactions to this section of the map:

(Full mindmap: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/images/lead-generation-2024.pdf)

The general pattern here is interesting. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exceptions to what I'm about to say but most of the time...

So sure, there are limits to this pattern, but I find that most of the time our preferences with respect to lead generation mirror how we got into business in the first place.

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/. If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you attentively read the foreword of most books that you read?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (13)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No (10)

23 Votes

Thanks for the comments some of you left enriching your responses:

Why yes?

I find forwards useful for more tightly positioning the rest of the book, so I better tune myself into what I’m about to read. There’s something about a third party perspective that adds more than if it was just written by the author.
It's a bit like reading a movie review on Rotten Tomato before watching the flick. In the book forward, I know it is completely biased, but it helps me define what the author thinks I should be getting out of the book to some extent in another reader's words.
I like to know more about the author, their motivations, and reasons they have approached the book. I also tend to find more honesty in these than elsewhere in the book.
I think I read the forward to get the feeling that I have read the entire book later. In other words, if I don't read the forward, maybe I'll feel less accomplished or successful in my book-reading endeavor, which is weird to say out loud but I guess that's why I do it or that's what my brain comes up with as an explanation for why I read the forward.
I am a completionist and it’s part of the book, but I also consider it as an intro.
I think I'm scared I'll miss something. I actually enjoy introductions. I at least start the foreword.
I don't know that I get any value, but I read books cover to cover as long as it keeps my interest. The foreword is kind of a fun way to get hyped about the rest of the book, and sometimes I don't know much about an author going in so I guess in that way it helps set the stage 😅
I read it to get a sense of the author's mindset when writing; where was he? what was happening in his life? what prompted his huge expense of time, talent, and treasure for this undertaking? It helps me with my own interpretation (some may say prejudice) of the material.

Why no?

To avoid spoilers. Also, to get to the meat of it.
I like to get straight to the point. My time is limited.

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I hope you have a great week!
-P

Lead Generation Is A Mirror

2024-01-28T11:04:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

Anytime the topic of lead generation comes up, I'll haul out this mindmap and get folks talking to me about their reactions to this section of the map:

(Full mindmap: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/images/lead-generation-2024.pdf)

The general pattern here is interesting. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exceptions to what I'm about to say but most of the time...

So sure, there are limits to this pattern, but I find that most of the time our preferences with respect to lead generation mirror how we got into business in the first place.

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/. If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you attentively read the foreword of most books that you read?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (13)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No (10)

23 Votes

Thanks for the comments some of you left enriching your responses:

Why yes?

I find forwards useful for more tightly positioning the rest of the book, so I better tune myself into what I’m about to read. There’s something about a third party perspective that adds more than if it was just written by the author.
It's a bit like reading a movie review on Rotten Tomato before watching the flick. In the book forward, I know it is completely biased, but it helps me define what the author thinks I should be getting out of the book to some extent in another reader's words.
I like to know more about the author, their motivations, and reasons they have approached the book. I also tend to find more honesty in these than elsewhere in the book.
I think I read the forward to get the feeling that I have read the entire book later. In other words, if I don't read the forward, maybe I'll feel less accomplished or successful in my book-reading endeavor, which is weird to say out loud but I guess that's why I do it or that's what my brain comes up with as an explanation for why I read the forward.
I am a completionist and it’s part of the book, but I also consider it as an intro.
I think I'm scared I'll miss something. I actually enjoy introductions. I at least start the foreword.
I don't know that I get any value, but I read books cover to cover as long as it keeps my interest. The foreword is kind of a fun way to get hyped about the rest of the book, and sometimes I don't know much about an author going in so I guess in that way it helps set the stage 😅
I read it to get a sense of the author's mindset when writing; where was he? what was happening in his life? what prompted his huge expense of time, talent, and treasure for this undertaking? It helps me with my own interpretation (some may say prejudice) of the material.

Why no?

To avoid spoilers. Also, to get to the meat of it.
I like to get straight to the point. My time is limited.

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I hope you have a great week!
-P

Lead Generation Is A Mirror

2024-01-28T11:04:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

Anytime the topic of lead generation comes up, I'll haul out this mindmap and get folks talking to me about their reactions to this section of the map:

(Full mindmap: https://philipmorganconsulting.com/images/lead-generation-2024.pdf)

The general pattern here is interesting. Yes, I'm sure you can find some exceptions to what I'm about to say but most of the time...

So sure, there are limits to this pattern, but I find that most of the time our preferences with respect to lead generation mirror how we got into business in the first place.

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
In mid-February I am offering a workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/. If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you attentively read the foreword of most books that you read?

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Yes (13)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ No (10)

23 Votes

Thanks for the comments some of you left enriching your responses:

Why yes?

I find forwards useful for more tightly positioning the rest of the book, so I better tune myself into what I’m about to read. There’s something about a third party perspective that adds more than if it was just written by the author.
It's a bit like reading a movie review on Rotten Tomato before watching the flick. In the book forward, I know it is completely biased, but it helps me define what the author thinks I should be getting out of the book to some extent in another reader's words.
I like to know more about the author, their motivations, and reasons they have approached the book. I also tend to find more honesty in these than elsewhere in the book.
I think I read the forward to get the feeling that I have read the entire book later. In other words, if I don't read the forward, maybe I'll feel less accomplished or successful in my book-reading endeavor, which is weird to say out loud but I guess that's why I do it or that's what my brain comes up with as an explanation for why I read the forward.
I am a completionist and it’s part of the book, but I also consider it as an intro.
I think I'm scared I'll miss something. I actually enjoy introductions. I at least start the foreword.
I don't know that I get any value, but I read books cover to cover as long as it keeps my interest. The foreword is kind of a fun way to get hyped about the rest of the book, and sometimes I don't know much about an author going in so I guess in that way it helps set the stage 😅
I read it to get a sense of the author's mindset when writing; where was he? what was happening in his life? what prompted his huge expense of time, talent, and treasure for this undertaking? It helps me with my own interpretation (some may say prejudice) of the material.

Why no?

To avoid spoilers. Also, to get to the meat of it.
I like to get straight to the point. My time is limited.

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I hope you have a great week!
-P

5 Hours of Axe-Sharpening

2024-02-11T17:09:00Z

Happy Sunday, people! I hope the Super Bowl deeply nourishes every parched nook and cranny of your souls.

Lead Generation Learnings

I had a client who once said "If I had 4 hours to cut down a tree, I'd spend 5 hours sharpening my axe." This week felt a bit like that to me; lots of getting organized and improving the meta-tool of process.

I think that's the main shareable thing I learned about lead generation this past week: it's worth it to get organized.

Even though lead generation is the main thing I sell and so it's what I'm focused on every workday, there's still lots of picking up and putting down various components of my process, and therefore lots of opportunities to waste 30 minutes trying to figure out what exactly what needs to happen next with this piece of the process for this client. Even though there's lots of automation I've built to make things more efficient, there's still lots of client-specific state that has to be tracked. My brain is definitely not the right repository for the state about all of those moving parts.

Something like Notion is probably the ideal place for this kind of state-heavy process. But I use and very much like Logseq, so I spent time building client-specific dashboards and some templates using the smartblocks plugin. Once I got to the point where I can click a button and the exact right piece of the much larger overall process appears on the dashboard with the right pieces auto-completed for me, it was a very empowering feeling.

Another realization was that improving the meta-tool of process requires a very different headspace, at least for me. The natural headspace for me is a kind of fluid, associative, thinking-in-metaphors-and-possibilities sort of place. I'm unsure how to describe the headspace I had to be in to build empowering process and templates. But getting there felt like squeezing myself into a different shape. It was a palpable feeling of discomfort.

But I'll say it again: it was so worth it! As I think about how this might apply to your business development efforts, I wonder:

Are you using even a simple CRM to track opportunities, and to remind yourself to maintain relationships with people who might be important to your business but not salient in your daily thinking?
Do you have marketing or business development work that doesn't get done at all, or gets done less than it should because of some kind of friction? Maybe that friction is fundamental and just needs to be powered through, and maybe it's reducible with better process?

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/ It’s getting close to the deadline on this one and it’s in ATL, so jump if you’re gonna jump on this.
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
I am offering an online workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/.

The workshop kicks off on Feb 23, and offers a lot of 1:1 implementation time with me, along with group sessions, and recipe-level guidance. The 22% early-bird discount on the $1,800 fee is available until Feb 19.

If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

Last email’s For Fun Poll was: “How do you house yourself?” Results:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Apartment I rent (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ House I rent (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 House I own (20)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Movable dwelling (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (If you like please also leave an un-identifying comment with more details) (4)

33 Votes

When I wrote the poll, I was hoping for some fascinating answers to the “Movable dwelling” choice! When my wife and I lived at the Oregon coast back in the early 2010’s, we and our 2 cats and 1 dog lived in an 8×8’ pumphouse for about 6 weeks while we were waiting for our manufactured home to be delivered. I worked on a folding table under a big maple tree on a laptop run off a deep cycle battery + inverter and a cellular modem hooked up to yagi antenna I made from some 1×2 cedar furring and welding rods, mounted on a tripod and aimed at the not-close cellphone tower. We showered at the YMCA and ate a lot of sandwiches during this time. Not a movable dwelling, but still… 🙂

The “Other” responses were mostly folks who own apartments rather than rent them. Thanks to all who responded and commented!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

5 Hours of Axe-Sharpening

2024-02-11T17:09:00Z

Happy Sunday, people! I hope the Super Bowl deeply nourishes every parched nook and cranny of your souls.

Lead Generation Learnings

I think that's the main shareable thing I learned about lead generation this past week: it's worth it to get organized.

But I'll say it again: it was so worth it! As I think about how this might apply to your business development efforts, I wonder:

Are you using even a simple CRM to track opportunities, and to remind yourself to maintain relationships with people who might be important to your business but not salient in your daily thinking?
Do you have marketing or business development work that doesn't get done at all, or gets done less than it should because of some kind of friction? Maybe that friction is fundamental and just needs to be powered through, and maybe it's reducible with better process?

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/ It’s getting close to the deadline on this one and it’s in ATL, so jump if you’re gonna jump on this.
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
I am offering an online workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/.

The workshop kicks off on Feb 23, and offers a lot of 1:1 implementation time with me, along with group sessions, and recipe-level guidance. The 22% early-bird discount on the $1,800 fee is available until Feb 19.

If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

Last email’s For Fun Poll was: “How do you house yourself?” Results:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Apartment I rent (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ House I rent (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 House I own (20)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Movable dwelling (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (If you like please also leave an un-identifying comment with more details) (4)

33 Votes

The “Other” responses were mostly folks who own apartments rather than rent them. Thanks to all who responded and commented!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

5 Hours of Axe-Sharpening

2024-02-11T17:09:00Z

Happy Sunday, people! I hope the Super Bowl deeply nourishes every parched nook and cranny of your souls.

Lead Generation Learnings

I think that's the main shareable thing I learned about lead generation this past week: it's worth it to get organized.

But I'll say it again: it was so worth it! As I think about how this might apply to your business development efforts, I wonder:

Are you using even a simple CRM to track opportunities, and to remind yourself to maintain relationships with people who might be important to your business but not salient in your daily thinking?
Do you have marketing or business development work that doesn't get done at all, or gets done less than it should because of some kind of friction? Maybe that friction is fundamental and just needs to be powered through, and maybe it's reducible with better process?

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/ It’s getting close to the deadline on this one and it’s in ATL, so jump if you’re gonna jump on this.
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
I am offering an online workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/.

The workshop kicks off on Feb 23, and offers a lot of 1:1 implementation time with me, along with group sessions, and recipe-level guidance. The 22% early-bird discount on the $1,800 fee is available until Feb 19.

If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

Last email’s For Fun Poll was: “How do you house yourself?” Results:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Apartment I rent (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ House I rent (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 House I own (20)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Movable dwelling (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (If you like please also leave an un-identifying comment with more details) (4)

33 Votes

The “Other” responses were mostly folks who own apartments rather than rent them. Thanks to all who responded and commented!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

5 Hours of Axe-Sharpening

2024-02-11T17:09:00Z

Happy Sunday, people! I hope the Super Bowl deeply nourishes every parched nook and cranny of your souls.

Lead Generation Learnings

I think that's the main shareable thing I learned about lead generation this past week: it's worth it to get organized.

But I'll say it again: it was so worth it! As I think about how this might apply to your business development efforts, I wonder:

Are you using even a simple CRM to track opportunities, and to remind yourself to maintain relationships with people who might be important to your business but not salient in your daily thinking?
Do you have marketing or business development work that doesn't get done at all, or gets done less than it should because of some kind of friction? Maybe that friction is fundamental and just needs to be powered through, and maybe it's reducible with better process?

Announcements

A deliverability audit service to help you meet the new bulk sender requirements from Gmail, et. al: https://launchthought.com/email-compliance/
DCB is running a pop-up seminar on lead generation at the end of February: https://punctuation.com/event/pipeline-kickstarter-2024/ It’s getting close to the deadline on this one and it’s in ATL, so jump if you’re gonna jump on this.
If you know what an e-commerce agency charges, please contribute to this research: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/5HBG3M5
I am offering an online workshop on using cold email to deliver content, and on ways to inexpensively produce that content: https://opportunitylabs.io/workshops/ol-workshop-cold-email/.

The workshop kicks off on Feb 23, and offers a lot of 1:1 implementation time with me, along with group sessions, and recipe-level guidance. The 22% early-bird discount on the $1,800 fee is available until Feb 19.

If you'd like to get email updates on this workshop and reminders about discount deadlines, respond Yes to the poll below.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

Last email’s For Fun Poll was: “How do you house yourself?” Results:

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Apartment I rent (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ House I rent (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 House I own (20)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Movable dwelling (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (If you like please also leave an un-identifying comment with more details) (4)

33 Votes

The “Other” responses were mostly folks who own apartments rather than rent them. Thanks to all who responded and commented!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Small-scale research -> shared value, workshop discount deadline looming

2024-02-17T19:17:29Z

Happy Saturday, people!

As many of you know, I regularly advocate for doing research that is small, focused, inexpensive, and enables better decision-making. I refer to this as small-scale research (SSR).

Check this out from Josh Baron, a criminal defense attorney (he shared this with me and then gave me permission to share it with y'all):

I have a quick SSR success story for you.
I did a criminal justice attitudes survey of 500+ potential jurors in Utah (attached). I put it up on the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers email listserv on Tuesday and the response has been incredible. UACDL asked me to present on it at their annual seminar and wants to co-publish something. Another group of public defenders asked me to present the results at their training.
I did the survey mostly for fun, but it's probably been the highest-impact "advertising" money I've ever spent.
Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:
- $300 for SurveyMonkey pro (annual)
- $2,700 for response collection
- $200 for a stats friend to look the results over
I'm working on two articles for the Utah Bar Journal based on the results. It's also going to be useful for decision making in my own practice. Huge win.

To give you a sense of the kind of questions Josh was asking in this survey, here is a screenshot of one of the approximately 30 questions the survey contained:

Josh's research illustrates one of the ways you can use a small, focused research project to create significant value: learn about how one side of a "market" thinks or operates, and share this information with the information-starved other side of the market. I use quotes around market because in some cases you are gathering information from one side of "a place where parties can gather to facilitate the exchange of goods and services" and sharing that information with the other side of that market, and in other cases, like with Josh's research, the market is more of a metaphorical trading relationship between criminal defense attorneys and jurors.

Many of the clients you serve are choosing to endure uncertainty about some question or, more likely, a large group of questions. Life involves lots of irreducible uncertainty, we learn to deal with it, and none of us have the resources to become more certain about everything. Small-scale research is a response to this impulse: "we don't have to be so uncertain about that, and I'm going to speculatively invest some time, effort, and money to try to reduce the uncertainty that we as a group hold about that." This is an act of service that often creates shared value for the researcher and the audience the research is done for. That's what you call a win-win.

Sharing success stories like this is part of my advocacy for this idea. The other part is implementation support for those wanting help executing a small-scale research project, and on that front I'm prepared to teach you/your team how to do it, coach you/them through it, or execute the project for you at prices ranging from $500/hr to $4,500/mo. There's no sales page for this, just hit reply if you're interested in discussing.

This is turning out to be a somewhat more sales-focused email than usual, but all this stuff is a strong value, so I feel fine about that.

There's a deadline looming: if you want the 22% early-bird discount on the 2-month Build A Cold Email Stack online workshop that I'm running starting on February 23, you'll need to register for the workshop before Monday, Feb 19th.

The simple way to explain what this workshop is about and what you'll get is: it's everything I've learned and refined over the past year -- including a lot of turnkey process that you can use as-is -- about getting inexpensive-to-produce content created and enjoyed by an audience of prospects and recommenders. It includes 8 hours of 1:1 implementation time with me (up to 60m/week) to adapt and integrate these ideas into your business. And it includes 12 hours of group discussion time (90m/week) to share learnings, discuss, argue, and connect.

I think that's a deal, even at the full price of $1,800, and especially at the early-bird price of $1,400. I'm around this weekend if you want to email me with questions beyond what the sales page answers, and if you need to relieve that itch in your buy-button finger now, I've got you covered :)

Buy A Seat In The Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

Last week's for-fun poll asked how long you could run your business for without Internet access. Jonathan Stark keenly suggested that a more interesting variant of the question would be: for how long could your business keep earning income without you personally having Internet access. That's a great distinction because it gets to the heart of one of the kinds of leverage you can build into your business, and if you're not already there, Jonathan's email list is a good place to get inspiration about increasing leverage in the solo/small expert firm.

Poll results:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 1 hour (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1 day (4)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 week (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several weeks (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 month (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several months (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (OMG please leave a comment if you choose this one 😁) (1)

10 Votes

Also got this awesome comment:

“I spent 4 to 6 month a year sailing around in Atlantic Ocean. Internet is very much dependent on our location. < 20 mile off coast : pretty fine, most of the time (beware of cliffs though :) Otherwise: you might send me an email. I may receive it. But not guaranteed. Hope this nourishes your thinking :)”

Thanks to all who weighed in on this one!

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I'm curious about how many if you have never done any form of what you yourself would consider marketing, and of that subset, how long you've continuously been in business for yourself.

Rules for this: you define what is/isn't marketing. Only respond if you've never done any form of what you would define as marketing your services.

Happy Caturday everybody! -P

Small-scale research -> shared value, workshop discount deadline looming

2024-02-17T19:17:29Z

Happy Saturday, people!

As many of you know, I regularly advocate for doing research that is small, focused, inexpensive, and enables better decision-making. I refer to this as small-scale research (SSR).

Check this out from Josh Baron, a criminal defense attorney (he shared this with me and then gave me permission to share it with y'all):

I have a quick SSR success story for you.
I did a criminal justice attitudes survey of 500+ potential jurors in Utah (attached). I put it up on the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers email listserv on Tuesday and the response has been incredible. UACDL asked me to present on it at their annual seminar and wants to co-publish something. Another group of public defenders asked me to present the results at their training.
I did the survey mostly for fun, but it's probably been the highest-impact "advertising" money I've ever spent.
Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:
- $300 for SurveyMonkey pro (annual)
- $2,700 for response collection
- $200 for a stats friend to look the results over
I'm working on two articles for the Utah Bar Journal based on the results. It's also going to be useful for decision making in my own practice. Huge win.

To give you a sense of the kind of questions Josh was asking in this survey, here is a screenshot of one of the approximately 30 questions the survey contained:

This is turning out to be a somewhat more sales-focused email than usual, but all this stuff is a strong value, so I feel fine about that.

Buy A Seat In The Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

Poll results:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 1 hour (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1 day (4)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 week (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several weeks (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 month (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several months (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (OMG please leave a comment if you choose this one 😁) (1)

10 Votes

Also got this awesome comment:

Thanks to all who weighed in on this one!

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I'm curious about how many if you have never done any form of what you yourself would consider marketing, and of that subset, how long you've continuously been in business for yourself.

Rules for this: you define what is/isn't marketing. Only respond if you've never done any form of what you would define as marketing your services.

Happy Caturday everybody! -P

Small-scale research -> shared value, workshop discount deadline looming

2024-02-17T19:17:29Z

Happy Saturday, people!

As many of you know, I regularly advocate for doing research that is small, focused, inexpensive, and enables better decision-making. I refer to this as small-scale research (SSR).

Check this out from Josh Baron, a criminal defense attorney (he shared this with me and then gave me permission to share it with y'all):

I have a quick SSR success story for you.
I did a criminal justice attitudes survey of 500+ potential jurors in Utah (attached). I put it up on the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers email listserv on Tuesday and the response has been incredible. UACDL asked me to present on it at their annual seminar and wants to co-publish something. Another group of public defenders asked me to present the results at their training.
I did the survey mostly for fun, but it's probably been the highest-impact "advertising" money I've ever spent.
Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:
- $300 for SurveyMonkey pro (annual)
- $2,700 for response collection
- $200 for a stats friend to look the results over
I'm working on two articles for the Utah Bar Journal based on the results. It's also going to be useful for decision making in my own practice. Huge win.

To give you a sense of the kind of questions Josh was asking in this survey, here is a screenshot of one of the approximately 30 questions the survey contained:

This is turning out to be a somewhat more sales-focused email than usual, but all this stuff is a strong value, so I feel fine about that.

Buy A Seat In The Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

Poll results:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 1 hour (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1 day (4)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 week (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several weeks (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 month (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several months (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (OMG please leave a comment if you choose this one 😁) (1)

10 Votes

Also got this awesome comment:

Thanks to all who weighed in on this one!

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I'm curious about how many if you have never done any form of what you yourself would consider marketing, and of that subset, how long you've continuously been in business for yourself.

Rules for this: you define what is/isn't marketing. Only respond if you've never done any form of what you would define as marketing your services.

Happy Caturday everybody! -P

Small-scale research -> shared value, workshop discount deadline looming

2024-02-17T19:17:29Z

Happy Saturday, people!

As many of you know, I regularly advocate for doing research that is small, focused, inexpensive, and enables better decision-making. I refer to this as small-scale research (SSR).

Check this out from Josh Baron, a criminal defense attorney (he shared this with me and then gave me permission to share it with y'all):

I have a quick SSR success story for you.
I did a criminal justice attitudes survey of 500+ potential jurors in Utah (attached). I put it up on the Utah Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers email listserv on Tuesday and the response has been incredible. UACDL asked me to present on it at their annual seminar and wants to co-publish something. Another group of public defenders asked me to present the results at their training.
I did the survey mostly for fun, but it's probably been the highest-impact "advertising" money I've ever spent.
Here's a quick breakdown of the cost:
- $300 for SurveyMonkey pro (annual)
- $2,700 for response collection
- $200 for a stats friend to look the results over
I'm working on two articles for the Utah Bar Journal based on the results. It's also going to be useful for decision making in my own practice. Huge win.

To give you a sense of the kind of questions Josh was asking in this survey, here is a screenshot of one of the approximately 30 questions the survey contained:

This is turning out to be a somewhat more sales-focused email than usual, but all this stuff is a strong value, so I feel fine about that.

Buy A Seat In The Build A Cold Email Stack Workshop

Last Week's For-Fun Poll

Poll results:

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ 1 hour (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1 day (4)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 week (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several weeks (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 month (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Several months (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (OMG please leave a comment if you choose this one 😁) (1)

10 Votes

Also got this awesome comment:

Thanks to all who weighed in on this one!

This Week's For-Fun Poll

I'm curious about how many if you have never done any form of what you yourself would consider marketing, and of that subset, how long you've continuously been in business for yourself.

Rules for this: you define what is/isn't marketing. Only respond if you've never done any form of what you would define as marketing your services.

Happy Caturday everybody! -P

It's the conversations, stupid!

2024-02-25T14:25:51Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

My friend Brad Farris — coach to agency owners — recently published a really interesting article: https://anchoradvisors.com/all-sales-come-from-conversations/. Here’s a summary of it:

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
- Successful sales hinge on engaging in meaningful conversations with potential clients.
MAIN POINTS:
- Every successful sale involves an engaging conversation with the prospective client.
- Initiating more conversations increases sales opportunities.
- Effective engagement involves tailor-made outreach that prompts a dialogue.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Focus marketing on sparking conversations.
- Use questions to transition quick interactions into fuller conversations.
- Personalized outreach can re-engage past prospects.
Brad Farriss + GPT-4 + https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric/blob/main/patterns/summarize_micro/system.md

And then last week a client of mine shared with me a lead generation experiment they’re running. Here’s what they’re doing:

Visit the websites of competing organizations that support similar goals as my business or provide similar services. Make a list of organizations they identify as clients. Then, each day:

See who from their client base is on my newsletter list
Send email in Pipedrive inviting one person to a research chat about their experience with the org
Little drops in this bucket are already adding up to valuable conversations

I love the smart, efficient way my client is combining several information sources in order to guide their outreach and make it very focused and relevant.

I love the idea that my expertise would radiate such brilliance that everybody in my market would have to wear sunglasses when looking it. And I love the idea that my expertise would generate such a gravitational field that everyone in my market begins to orbit around it.

For me though, that idea hasn’t become a reality. I think Brad and my client, unbeknownst to each other, are together pointing towards a more realistic business development approach for those of us in this bucket. To paraphrase James Carville: “It’s the conversations, stupid!” 🙂 And to paraphrase Wayne Gretzky: “Connect with those who are already buying, not those who have no record of buying“. OK, that' was a pretty tortured paraphrase. Anyway! I hope these two ideas combine in your mind to give you some ideas/motivations for executing proactive, thoughtful business development.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If you've never done any form of marketing, for how long have you continuously been in business for yourself?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ >1 year (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 year to 3 years (1)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ >3 years to 7 years (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 >7 years (3)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (0)

6 Votes

I got one explainer comment from someone in the >7 years bucket: “All word of mouth. Started by partnering as a contractor to folks who had more work”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

One way to simplistically organize the world of marketing is two buckets: inbound, or attraction-based activities, and outbound, or outreach-based activities. We’ll go with this imperfect taxonomy for now.

As usual, I appreciate any comments you feel like leaving to enrich your answer (the comment field shows up after you click your response).

I hope the coming week is a good one for you!
-P

It's the conversations, stupid!

2024-02-25T14:25:51Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

My friend Brad Farris — coach to agency owners — recently published a really interesting article: https://anchoradvisors.com/all-sales-come-from-conversations/. Here’s a summary of it:

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
- Successful sales hinge on engaging in meaningful conversations with potential clients.
MAIN POINTS:
- Every successful sale involves an engaging conversation with the prospective client.
- Initiating more conversations increases sales opportunities.
- Effective engagement involves tailor-made outreach that prompts a dialogue.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Focus marketing on sparking conversations.
- Use questions to transition quick interactions into fuller conversations.
- Personalized outreach can re-engage past prospects.
Brad Farriss + GPT-4 + https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric/blob/main/patterns/summarize_micro/system.md

And then last week a client of mine shared with me a lead generation experiment they’re running. Here’s what they’re doing:

Visit the websites of competing organizations that support similar goals as my business or provide similar services. Make a list of organizations they identify as clients. Then, each day:

See who from their client base is on my newsletter list
Send email in Pipedrive inviting one person to a research chat about their experience with the org
Little drops in this bucket are already adding up to valuable conversations

I love the smart, efficient way my client is combining several information sources in order to guide their outreach and make it very focused and relevant.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If you've never done any form of marketing, for how long have you continuously been in business for yourself?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ >1 year (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 year to 3 years (1)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ >3 years to 7 years (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 >7 years (3)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (0)

6 Votes

I got one explainer comment from someone in the >7 years bucket: “All word of mouth. Started by partnering as a contractor to folks who had more work”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

As usual, I appreciate any comments you feel like leaving to enrich your answer (the comment field shows up after you click your response).

I hope the coming week is a good one for you!
-P

It's the conversations, stupid!

2024-02-25T14:25:51Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

My friend Brad Farris — coach to agency owners — recently published a really interesting article: https://anchoradvisors.com/all-sales-come-from-conversations/. Here’s a summary of it:

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
- Successful sales hinge on engaging in meaningful conversations with potential clients.
MAIN POINTS:
- Every successful sale involves an engaging conversation with the prospective client.
- Initiating more conversations increases sales opportunities.
- Effective engagement involves tailor-made outreach that prompts a dialogue.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Focus marketing on sparking conversations.
- Use questions to transition quick interactions into fuller conversations.
- Personalized outreach can re-engage past prospects.
Brad Farriss + GPT-4 + https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric/blob/main/patterns/summarize_micro/system.md

And then last week a client of mine shared with me a lead generation experiment they’re running. Here’s what they’re doing:

Visit the websites of competing organizations that support similar goals as my business or provide similar services. Make a list of organizations they identify as clients. Then, each day:

See who from their client base is on my newsletter list
Send email in Pipedrive inviting one person to a research chat about their experience with the org
Little drops in this bucket are already adding up to valuable conversations

I love the smart, efficient way my client is combining several information sources in order to guide their outreach and make it very focused and relevant.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If you've never done any form of marketing, for how long have you continuously been in business for yourself?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ >1 year (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 year to 3 years (1)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ >3 years to 7 years (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 >7 years (3)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (0)

6 Votes

I got one explainer comment from someone in the >7 years bucket: “All word of mouth. Started by partnering as a contractor to folks who had more work”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

As usual, I appreciate any comments you feel like leaving to enrich your answer (the comment field shows up after you click your response).

I hope the coming week is a good one for you!
-P

It's the conversations, stupid!

2024-02-25T14:25:51Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

My friend Brad Farris — coach to agency owners — recently published a really interesting article: https://anchoradvisors.com/all-sales-come-from-conversations/. Here’s a summary of it:

ONE SENTENCE SUMMARY:
- Successful sales hinge on engaging in meaningful conversations with potential clients.
MAIN POINTS:
- Every successful sale involves an engaging conversation with the prospective client.
- Initiating more conversations increases sales opportunities.
- Effective engagement involves tailor-made outreach that prompts a dialogue.
TAKEAWAYS:
- Focus marketing on sparking conversations.
- Use questions to transition quick interactions into fuller conversations.
- Personalized outreach can re-engage past prospects.
Brad Farriss + GPT-4 + https://github.com/danielmiessler/fabric/blob/main/patterns/summarize_micro/system.md

And then last week a client of mine shared with me a lead generation experiment they’re running. Here’s what they’re doing:

Visit the websites of competing organizations that support similar goals as my business or provide similar services. Make a list of organizations they identify as clients. Then, each day:

See who from their client base is on my newsletter list
Send email in Pipedrive inviting one person to a research chat about their experience with the org
Little drops in this bucket are already adding up to valuable conversations

I love the smart, efficient way my client is combining several information sources in order to guide their outreach and make it very focused and relevant.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If you've never done any form of marketing, for how long have you continuously been in business for yourself?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ >1 year (0)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 year to 3 years (1)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ >3 years to 7 years (2)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 >7 years (3)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Other (0)

6 Votes

I got one explainer comment from someone in the >7 years bucket: “All word of mouth. Started by partnering as a contractor to folks who had more work”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

As usual, I appreciate any comments you feel like leaving to enrich your answer (the comment field shows up after you click your response).

I hope the coming week is a good one for you!
-P

Creators & Curators

2024-03-10T14:02:00Z

Hey hey! Sorry for no email last Sunday, a sandworm ate my homework. BTW, if ever you come to the AMC Classic 12 in Missoula, MT to watch a movie in their IMAX theater, bring earplugs! I think they got Los Lobos’ old hard-of-hearing soundguy to set the levels in there. Yeesh!

Lead Generation Learnings

In an information landscape that looks like the illustration below, who has more power?

Who has more power: the creators (they create that massive pile of stuff the guy at the computer in the illustration above can attempt to consume), or a trusted curator(s)? A Few Social Media Influencers Are Shaping AI, published on IEEE Spectrum, got me thinking about this question yet again. Here’s a critical moment from that article:

The UCSB paper analyzed more than 8,000 AI and ML papers, considering both social media mentions and the number of citations. Reviewing tweets from December 2018 to October 2023, the researchers concluded AI/ML papers shared by two specific influencers had median citation counts two to three times higher than those of the control group.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/social-media-ai

This is just one paper. However its core finding is more consonant than dissonant with my experience of navigating an overwhelming information landscape, which is: curators are powerful. They’re powerful because they perform a very valuable service, and it’s easier to leverage their curatorial contribution than it is to be informed about everything.

Are curators more powerful than any individual creator? Weeeeeelll, that one of those “what’s the sound of one hand clapping” unanswerable questions.

For sure, though, curation can be a powerful, valuable service when done well. How could the attention and trust that curation earns you be used to generate leads? Hmm… 😇

Lead Generation Tip

What: Pick one of your professional peers, and compliment their recent work. (Be genuine, of course.) Repeat each week going forward. (Different peer each week, obvs.)

Why: Your professional peers can be a substantial business development “channel”, and this practice strengthens your connection with them.

If you don’t know who your peers are, that’s a problem that will be highlighted by attempting to implement this tip and hopefully you’ll rectify this underlying problem in your relationship to the industry/discipline you’re focused on.
If you know who your peers are but don’t know what they are working on, you’re impovrishing yourself. Fix that too. 🙂 Maybe instead of complimenting their recent work, write and ask what they working on that they’re excited about.

Random Curatorial Excellence

Sometimes Spotify’s algorithm is a good “curator” for music discovery. And sometimes Spotify’s curation pales in comparison to a human’s work.

If you’re into awesome 90’s underground hip hop, you’ll enjoy this, from curator DaRocknessMonsta:

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If marketing works for you, what activities have a track record of success for you?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Inbound (5)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Outbound (4)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A combination of inbound and outbound (7)

16 Votes

A few respondents elaborated:

“I ticked outbound because I can directly attribute success to some of my outbound activities, but I’m pretty confident (but without evidence) that the inbound efforts have in some way help me to make successful sales. If nothing else forcing myself to generate useful content means I am much better at explaining the benefits of my approach which results in me being much more confident in sales conversations, which are in some ways often like an interview. ”
“Despite (or perhaps because of!) everything I do online to produce engaging and entertaining content on LinkedIn and to my email list that demonstrates my expertise to my ideal clients, it generates no leads. Outbound (primarily keeping in touch with ex-clients & people who know me / like me / trust me and asking them to refer me) is how I generate leads.”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
-P

Creators & Curators

2024-03-10T14:02:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

In an information landscape that looks like the illustration below, who has more power?

The UCSB paper analyzed more than 8,000 AI and ML papers, considering both social media mentions and the number of citations. Reviewing tweets from December 2018 to October 2023, the researchers concluded AI/ML papers shared by two specific influencers had median citation counts two to three times higher than those of the control group.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/social-media-ai

Are curators more powerful than any individual creator? Weeeeeelll, that one of those “what’s the sound of one hand clapping” unanswerable questions.

For sure, though, curation can be a powerful, valuable service when done well. How could the attention and trust that curation earns you be used to generate leads? Hmm… 😇

Lead Generation Tip

What: Pick one of your professional peers, and compliment their recent work. (Be genuine, of course.) Repeat each week going forward. (Different peer each week, obvs.)

Why: Your professional peers can be a substantial business development “channel”, and this practice strengthens your connection with them.

If you don’t know who your peers are, that’s a problem that will be highlighted by attempting to implement this tip and hopefully you’ll rectify this underlying problem in your relationship to the industry/discipline you’re focused on.
If you know who your peers are but don’t know what they are working on, you’re impovrishing yourself. Fix that too. 🙂 Maybe instead of complimenting their recent work, write and ask what they working on that they’re excited about.

Random Curatorial Excellence

Sometimes Spotify’s algorithm is a good “curator” for music discovery. And sometimes Spotify’s curation pales in comparison to a human’s work.

If you’re into awesome 90’s underground hip hop, you’ll enjoy this, from curator DaRocknessMonsta:

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If marketing works for you, what activities have a track record of success for you?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Inbound (5)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Outbound (4)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A combination of inbound and outbound (7)

16 Votes

A few respondents elaborated:

“I ticked outbound because I can directly attribute success to some of my outbound activities, but I’m pretty confident (but without evidence) that the inbound efforts have in some way help me to make successful sales. If nothing else forcing myself to generate useful content means I am much better at explaining the benefits of my approach which results in me being much more confident in sales conversations, which are in some ways often like an interview. ”
“Despite (or perhaps because of!) everything I do online to produce engaging and entertaining content on LinkedIn and to my email list that demonstrates my expertise to my ideal clients, it generates no leads. Outbound (primarily keeping in touch with ex-clients & people who know me / like me / trust me and asking them to refer me) is how I generate leads.”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
-P

Creators & Curators

2024-03-10T14:02:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

In an information landscape that looks like the illustration below, who has more power?

The UCSB paper analyzed more than 8,000 AI and ML papers, considering both social media mentions and the number of citations. Reviewing tweets from December 2018 to October 2023, the researchers concluded AI/ML papers shared by two specific influencers had median citation counts two to three times higher than those of the control group.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/social-media-ai

Are curators more powerful than any individual creator? Weeeeeelll, that one of those “what’s the sound of one hand clapping” unanswerable questions.

For sure, though, curation can be a powerful, valuable service when done well. How could the attention and trust that curation earns you be used to generate leads? Hmm… 😇

Lead Generation Tip

What: Pick one of your professional peers, and compliment their recent work. (Be genuine, of course.) Repeat each week going forward. (Different peer each week, obvs.)

Why: Your professional peers can be a substantial business development “channel”, and this practice strengthens your connection with them.

If you don’t know who your peers are, that’s a problem that will be highlighted by attempting to implement this tip and hopefully you’ll rectify this underlying problem in your relationship to the industry/discipline you’re focused on.
If you know who your peers are but don’t know what they are working on, you’re impovrishing yourself. Fix that too. 🙂 Maybe instead of complimenting their recent work, write and ask what they working on that they’re excited about.

Random Curatorial Excellence

Sometimes Spotify’s algorithm is a good “curator” for music discovery. And sometimes Spotify’s curation pales in comparison to a human’s work.

If you’re into awesome 90’s underground hip hop, you’ll enjoy this, from curator DaRocknessMonsta:

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If marketing works for you, what activities have a track record of success for you?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Inbound (5)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Outbound (4)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A combination of inbound and outbound (7)

16 Votes

A few respondents elaborated:

“I ticked outbound because I can directly attribute success to some of my outbound activities, but I’m pretty confident (but without evidence) that the inbound efforts have in some way help me to make successful sales. If nothing else forcing myself to generate useful content means I am much better at explaining the benefits of my approach which results in me being much more confident in sales conversations, which are in some ways often like an interview. ”
“Despite (or perhaps because of!) everything I do online to produce engaging and entertaining content on LinkedIn and to my email list that demonstrates my expertise to my ideal clients, it generates no leads. Outbound (primarily keeping in touch with ex-clients & people who know me / like me / trust me and asking them to refer me) is how I generate leads.”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
-P

Creators & Curators

2024-03-10T14:02:00Z

Lead Generation Learnings

In an information landscape that looks like the illustration below, who has more power?

The UCSB paper analyzed more than 8,000 AI and ML papers, considering both social media mentions and the number of citations. Reviewing tweets from December 2018 to October 2023, the researchers concluded AI/ML papers shared by two specific influencers had median citation counts two to three times higher than those of the control group.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/social-media-ai

Are curators more powerful than any individual creator? Weeeeeelll, that one of those “what’s the sound of one hand clapping” unanswerable questions.

For sure, though, curation can be a powerful, valuable service when done well. How could the attention and trust that curation earns you be used to generate leads? Hmm… 😇

Lead Generation Tip

What: Pick one of your professional peers, and compliment their recent work. (Be genuine, of course.) Repeat each week going forward. (Different peer each week, obvs.)

Why: Your professional peers can be a substantial business development “channel”, and this practice strengthens your connection with them.

If you don’t know who your peers are, that’s a problem that will be highlighted by attempting to implement this tip and hopefully you’ll rectify this underlying problem in your relationship to the industry/discipline you’re focused on.
If you know who your peers are but don’t know what they are working on, you’re impovrishing yourself. Fix that too. 🙂 Maybe instead of complimenting their recent work, write and ask what they working on that they’re excited about.

Random Curatorial Excellence

Sometimes Spotify’s algorithm is a good “curator” for music discovery. And sometimes Spotify’s curation pales in comparison to a human’s work.

If you’re into awesome 90’s underground hip hop, you’ll enjoy this, from curator DaRocknessMonsta:

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: If marketing works for you, what activities have a track record of success for you?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Inbound (5)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Outbound (4)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 A combination of inbound and outbound (7)

16 Votes

A few respondents elaborated:

“I ticked outbound because I can directly attribute success to some of my outbound activities, but I’m pretty confident (but without evidence) that the inbound efforts have in some way help me to make successful sales. If nothing else forcing myself to generate useful content means I am much better at explaining the benefits of my approach which results in me being much more confident in sales conversations, which are in some ways often like an interview. ”
“Despite (or perhaps because of!) everything I do online to produce engaging and entertaining content on LinkedIn and to my email list that demonstrates my expertise to my ideal clients, it generates no leads. Outbound (primarily keeping in touch with ex-clients & people who know me / like me / trust me and asking them to refer me) is how I generate leads.”

Thanks to all who responded!

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
-P

Audience-first

2024-03-17T12:08:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

18 months ago, this idea seemed pretty bizarre to me:

You can just... build an audience of prospective buyers and become visible to them. And (hopefully) memorable to them. And (hopefully) remembered and reached out to when they need the service you sell. Without special charisma and just a bit of skill and money, you can do this.

These days, this idea seems like a solid lead generation option to me. Not bizarre at all.

Here's how I implement it for clients:

1: Make sure my client has clear positioning that can be expressed in a memorable way (ex: React development for scale-ups, B2B Ecommerce marketing)

2: Build an audience of 10,000 buyers and recommenders

3: Create and email a topical weekly newsletter to the audience segment I can discover email addresses for (typically 3k to 5k). My client is the sponsor of the newsletter, and their content is often part but not all of the newsletter. The leading-indicator stats for this approach are very good: https://opportunitylabs.io/nlsstats

4: 5k to 6k of the audience will match into a LinkedIn ads audience and can be shown ads to reinforce my client's brand and positioning

5: 30% of the 7 to 5k no-email contacts will accept a no-pitch LinkedIn connection request from a relevant vendor that doesn't look desperate to sell them something

- Some percentage of them will respond positively to an (automated) polite+personal invitation to subscribe to the weekly newsletter

- Some other percentage of them won't subscribe, but will see my client's content in their LinkedIn feed (which can be re-purposed newsletter content)

The goal of this approach is to position my client as a salient, memorable source of educational value to a relevant audience of prospects and buyers without the cost of ghost-written thought leadership or the potential brand damage of irrelevant straight-to-the-sale cold email.

I've got my systems for delivering this dialed in to the point that I could take on 2 or 3 more clients. Happy to discuss with you if you're interested, just hit reply.

From The Confirmation Bias Files

I really like Matt Clancy's "living literature reviews", and this one was especially interesting: Teaching Innovative Entrepreneurship. He looks at the available research on the effect of entrepreneurship training programs.

A big part of what makes Matt's writing so interesting is how he constructs something like a socratic dialog as he walks his way through the scientific evidence on whatever question he's writing about. There are some booooooorrrring literature reviews out there. Matt makes what could be boring stuff much more interesting.

One of the life phenomena I find ever-fascinating is: things we do because we want the second-order effects but we can't get those second-order effects without doing the things that yield them. I attended Davidson College, a somewhat elite small private school. I had no idea that the payoff of connecting deeply with classmates (and maintaining those connections) far exceeds the value of the education itself. And if you're a normal person, you don't need to have any idea about this. You just go with the flow -- you participate -- and you end up with both the education and the network. I am not a normal person. And I'm not saying if I had known about this I would have spent less time in the library reading back-issues of Mix magazine and Positive Feedback magazine instead of connecting deeply with classmates. :)

Here, though, is the clipping I'm adding to my "Confirmation Bias Files":

Wallskog isn't looking at entrepreneurship training; she's instead looking at social role models. She shows that people who have more ex-entrepreneurs in their workspace are more likely to subsequently start businesses, and also more likely to say role models were an important factor in that decision. She also finds that people who worked with more successful ex-entrepreneurs had slightly better performing businesses than those who worked with less successful ex-entrepreneurs. That's at least one indicator that entrepreneurial mentorship (by talented entrepreneurs) can improve performance, as we see in other forms of innovation.
But of course mentorship is not the only possible explanation. It may also be down to the fact that intensive programs do a better job building a students network. In fact, when Lyons and Zhang compare before-and-after survey results for their Next 36 participants, they find that the biggest differences are related to networks. Participants say they know more potential investors and founding partners after the program than before. Lyons and Zhang also find accepted finalists have many more connections on LinkedIn than rejected finalists, which is a nice check on the survey evidence.
Source: https://www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/a6umfrib/release/2

It looks like entrepreneurship training doesn't work because of the training -- it works because of the professional network it helps participants build. That confirms my biases. And it might also be true.

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How many professional peers do you periodicaly or regularly interact with?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ None (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1-10 (13)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 11-50 (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 51-100 (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ More than 100 (0)

22 Votes

Someone left this comment: “Peer defined as someone doing work in, or just adjacent to, the work I do (or hope to do again.) I meet at least monthly with many for what I call a “play date”: a time to discuss ideas, synergies, and be curious together. ”

I love this. I do something similar where I have recurring “thought partner” meetings with a few different folks on a monthly or every 2-weekly basis to riff on ideas, help each other out with stuff, etc. It’s a nourishing practice.

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
—Philip.

Audience-first

2024-03-17T12:08:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

18 months ago, this idea seemed pretty bizarre to me:

These days, this idea seems like a solid lead generation option to me. Not bizarre at all.

Here's how I implement it for clients:

1: Make sure my client has clear positioning that can be expressed in a memorable way (ex: React development for scale-ups, B2B Ecommerce marketing)

2: Build an audience of 10,000 buyers and recommenders

4: 5k to 6k of the audience will match into a LinkedIn ads audience and can be shown ads to reinforce my client's brand and positioning

5: 30% of the 7 to 5k no-email contacts will accept a no-pitch LinkedIn connection request from a relevant vendor that doesn't look desperate to sell them something

- Some percentage of them will respond positively to an (automated) polite+personal invitation to subscribe to the weekly newsletter

- Some other percentage of them won't subscribe, but will see my client's content in their LinkedIn feed (which can be re-purposed newsletter content)

I've got my systems for delivering this dialed in to the point that I could take on 2 or 3 more clients. Happy to discuss with you if you're interested, just hit reply.

From The Confirmation Bias Files

Here, though, is the clipping I'm adding to my "Confirmation Bias Files":

Wallskog isn't looking at entrepreneurship training; she's instead looking at social role models. She shows that people who have more ex-entrepreneurs in their workspace are more likely to subsequently start businesses, and also more likely to say role models were an important factor in that decision. She also finds that people who worked with more successful ex-entrepreneurs had slightly better performing businesses than those who worked with less successful ex-entrepreneurs. That's at least one indicator that entrepreneurial mentorship (by talented entrepreneurs) can improve performance, as we see in other forms of innovation.
But of course mentorship is not the only possible explanation. It may also be down to the fact that intensive programs do a better job building a students network. In fact, when Lyons and Zhang compare before-and-after survey results for their Next 36 participants, they find that the biggest differences are related to networks. Participants say they know more potential investors and founding partners after the program than before. Lyons and Zhang also find accepted finalists have many more connections on LinkedIn than rejected finalists, which is a nice check on the survey evidence.
Source: https://www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/a6umfrib/release/2

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How many professional peers do you periodicaly or regularly interact with?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ None (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1-10 (13)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 11-50 (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 51-100 (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ More than 100 (0)

22 Votes

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
—Philip.

Audience-first

2024-03-17T12:08:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

18 months ago, this idea seemed pretty bizarre to me:

These days, this idea seems like a solid lead generation option to me. Not bizarre at all.

Here's how I implement it for clients:

1: Make sure my client has clear positioning that can be expressed in a memorable way (ex: React development for scale-ups, B2B Ecommerce marketing)

2: Build an audience of 10,000 buyers and recommenders

4: 5k to 6k of the audience will match into a LinkedIn ads audience and can be shown ads to reinforce my client's brand and positioning

5: 30% of the 7 to 5k no-email contacts will accept a no-pitch LinkedIn connection request from a relevant vendor that doesn't look desperate to sell them something

- Some percentage of them will respond positively to an (automated) polite+personal invitation to subscribe to the weekly newsletter

- Some other percentage of them won't subscribe, but will see my client's content in their LinkedIn feed (which can be re-purposed newsletter content)

I've got my systems for delivering this dialed in to the point that I could take on 2 or 3 more clients. Happy to discuss with you if you're interested, just hit reply.

From The Confirmation Bias Files

Here, though, is the clipping I'm adding to my "Confirmation Bias Files":

Wallskog isn't looking at entrepreneurship training; she's instead looking at social role models. She shows that people who have more ex-entrepreneurs in their workspace are more likely to subsequently start businesses, and also more likely to say role models were an important factor in that decision. She also finds that people who worked with more successful ex-entrepreneurs had slightly better performing businesses than those who worked with less successful ex-entrepreneurs. That's at least one indicator that entrepreneurial mentorship (by talented entrepreneurs) can improve performance, as we see in other forms of innovation.
But of course mentorship is not the only possible explanation. It may also be down to the fact that intensive programs do a better job building a students network. In fact, when Lyons and Zhang compare before-and-after survey results for their Next 36 participants, they find that the biggest differences are related to networks. Participants say they know more potential investors and founding partners after the program than before. Lyons and Zhang also find accepted finalists have many more connections on LinkedIn than rejected finalists, which is a nice check on the survey evidence.
Source: https://www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/a6umfrib/release/2

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How many professional peers do you periodicaly or regularly interact with?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ None (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1-10 (13)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 11-50 (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 51-100 (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ More than 100 (0)

22 Votes

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
—Philip.

Audience-first

2024-03-17T12:08:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

18 months ago, this idea seemed pretty bizarre to me:

These days, this idea seems like a solid lead generation option to me. Not bizarre at all.

Here's how I implement it for clients:

1: Make sure my client has clear positioning that can be expressed in a memorable way (ex: React development for scale-ups, B2B Ecommerce marketing)

2: Build an audience of 10,000 buyers and recommenders

4: 5k to 6k of the audience will match into a LinkedIn ads audience and can be shown ads to reinforce my client's brand and positioning

5: 30% of the 7 to 5k no-email contacts will accept a no-pitch LinkedIn connection request from a relevant vendor that doesn't look desperate to sell them something

- Some percentage of them will respond positively to an (automated) polite+personal invitation to subscribe to the weekly newsletter

- Some other percentage of them won't subscribe, but will see my client's content in their LinkedIn feed (which can be re-purposed newsletter content)

I've got my systems for delivering this dialed in to the point that I could take on 2 or 3 more clients. Happy to discuss with you if you're interested, just hit reply.

From The Confirmation Bias Files

Here, though, is the clipping I'm adding to my "Confirmation Bias Files":

Wallskog isn't looking at entrepreneurship training; she's instead looking at social role models. She shows that people who have more ex-entrepreneurs in their workspace are more likely to subsequently start businesses, and also more likely to say role models were an important factor in that decision. She also finds that people who worked with more successful ex-entrepreneurs had slightly better performing businesses than those who worked with less successful ex-entrepreneurs. That's at least one indicator that entrepreneurial mentorship (by talented entrepreneurs) can improve performance, as we see in other forms of innovation.
But of course mentorship is not the only possible explanation. It may also be down to the fact that intensive programs do a better job building a students network. In fact, when Lyons and Zhang compare before-and-after survey results for their Next 36 participants, they find that the biggest differences are related to networks. Participants say they know more potential investors and founding partners after the program than before. Lyons and Zhang also find accepted finalists have many more connections on LinkedIn than rejected finalists, which is a nice check on the survey evidence.
Source: https://www.newthingsunderthesun.com/pub/a6umfrib/release/2

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How many professional peers do you periodicaly or regularly interact with?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ None (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 1-10 (13)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 11-50 (6)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 51-100 (0)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ More than 100 (0)

22 Votes

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something good happens to you this week,
—Philip.

Expansion as Lead Generation

2024-04-07T12:20:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

The best place to generate new leads might be within existing client relationships. This is otherwise known as account expansion. While technically different from lead generation, it accomplishes a similar-enough goal: more business — though in some cases at the risk of creating or exacerbating a client concentration problem.

Why might you not already be doing this?

The status quo of a client relationship can construct invisible “retaining walls” around a scope that could otherwise easily enlarge.
A comfort with existing relationships or a fear of stepping on toes can create a hesitancy to explore expansion opportunities within an existing client.
A recent gaffe that you think more serious than a client does can create a perpetual “well, now’s not a good time for that discussion” syndrome.

Here are a few ideas about how to start this kind of discussion with a client:

Is there anything outside of our current scope that you would like our help with?
I noticed X, and I wonder if that’s a problem for you/your team/your customers. If so, I’ve got some ideas about how to address it.
(For a past client) I’ve been thinking about you, and since we worked together I’ve had a few ideas about X. Could we set up a brief meeting to see if they warrant further investigation?

If you think these need to be more artfully worded than what I’ve presented, I disagree. It’s hard to improve on a simple, clear, blunt statement of intent or desire when your statement has your client’s best interest at heart. Alan Weiss’s “Million Dollar Referrals” book has a good section on this topic, with more ideas, ways to recognize expansion opportunity, and suggested wording.

(Hat tip to Alex for putting the spotlight on this topic for me recently.)

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you meticulously route the cables at your desk?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Let 'em lie wherever they want to (9)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Make halfhearted effort at routing them neatly (11)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ The cables go exactly where I say they go, when I say they go, and how I say they go, and any cable that does't like it can find another job! (9)

29 Votes

Comments were left by a few:

“I have a hole in my desk at the back of the monitor which directs cables towards the plug sockets. Does that count as halfhearted?”
“All the cables on my desk are behind my monitors, so they’re always out of the way. No special ninjutsu there, I just route everything on the back edge of my desk.”
“I try to make them orderly, but somehow they don’t bend to my liking or are just the wrong length - or, more annoying, when I switch between laptops with the ridiculous differences in where ports are and what they do - they just don’t stay as neat as I would like. I haven’t given up, but I’m now less pedantic about it as I used to be. ”

I fall in the “The cables go exactly where I say they go, when I say they go, and how I say they go, and any cable that does't like it can find another job!” camp, but I can say that the satisfaction of getting the cables behaving properly is only a short-lived satisfaction, similar to eating the entire Creme Brulee donut at Veeras when half of the monstrosity would have been plenty.

This week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something nice happens to you this week,

-P

Expansion as Lead Generation

2024-04-07T12:20:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

Why might you not already be doing this?

The status quo of a client relationship can construct invisible “retaining walls” around a scope that could otherwise easily enlarge.
A comfort with existing relationships or a fear of stepping on toes can create a hesitancy to explore expansion opportunities within an existing client.
A recent gaffe that you think more serious than a client does can create a perpetual “well, now’s not a good time for that discussion” syndrome.

Here are a few ideas about how to start this kind of discussion with a client:

Is there anything outside of our current scope that you would like our help with?
I noticed X, and I wonder if that’s a problem for you/your team/your customers. If so, I’ve got some ideas about how to address it.
(For a past client) I’ve been thinking about you, and since we worked together I’ve had a few ideas about X. Could we set up a brief meeting to see if they warrant further investigation?

(Hat tip to Alex for putting the spotlight on this topic for me recently.)

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you meticulously route the cables at your desk?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Let 'em lie wherever they want to (9)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Make halfhearted effort at routing them neatly (11)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ The cables go exactly where I say they go, when I say they go, and how I say they go, and any cable that does't like it can find another job! (9)

29 Votes

Comments were left by a few:

“I have a hole in my desk at the back of the monitor which directs cables towards the plug sockets. Does that count as halfhearted?”
“All the cables on my desk are behind my monitors, so they’re always out of the way. No special ninjutsu there, I just route everything on the back edge of my desk.”
“I try to make them orderly, but somehow they don’t bend to my liking or are just the wrong length - or, more annoying, when I switch between laptops with the ridiculous differences in where ports are and what they do - they just don’t stay as neat as I would like. I haven’t given up, but I’m now less pedantic about it as I used to be. ”

This week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something nice happens to you this week,

-P

Expansion as Lead Generation

2024-04-07T12:20:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

Why might you not already be doing this?

The status quo of a client relationship can construct invisible “retaining walls” around a scope that could otherwise easily enlarge.
A comfort with existing relationships or a fear of stepping on toes can create a hesitancy to explore expansion opportunities within an existing client.
A recent gaffe that you think more serious than a client does can create a perpetual “well, now’s not a good time for that discussion” syndrome.

Here are a few ideas about how to start this kind of discussion with a client:

Is there anything outside of our current scope that you would like our help with?
I noticed X, and I wonder if that’s a problem for you/your team/your customers. If so, I’ve got some ideas about how to address it.
(For a past client) I’ve been thinking about you, and since we worked together I’ve had a few ideas about X. Could we set up a brief meeting to see if they warrant further investigation?

(Hat tip to Alex for putting the spotlight on this topic for me recently.)

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you meticulously route the cables at your desk?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Let 'em lie wherever they want to (9)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Make halfhearted effort at routing them neatly (11)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ The cables go exactly where I say they go, when I say they go, and how I say they go, and any cable that does't like it can find another job! (9)

29 Votes

Comments were left by a few:

“I have a hole in my desk at the back of the monitor which directs cables towards the plug sockets. Does that count as halfhearted?”
“All the cables on my desk are behind my monitors, so they’re always out of the way. No special ninjutsu there, I just route everything on the back edge of my desk.”
“I try to make them orderly, but somehow they don’t bend to my liking or are just the wrong length - or, more annoying, when I switch between laptops with the ridiculous differences in where ports are and what they do - they just don’t stay as neat as I would like. I haven’t given up, but I’m now less pedantic about it as I used to be. ”

This week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something nice happens to you this week,

-P

Expansion as Lead Generation

2024-04-07T12:20:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks!

Lead Generation Learnings

Why might you not already be doing this?

The status quo of a client relationship can construct invisible “retaining walls” around a scope that could otherwise easily enlarge.
A comfort with existing relationships or a fear of stepping on toes can create a hesitancy to explore expansion opportunities within an existing client.
A recent gaffe that you think more serious than a client does can create a perpetual “well, now’s not a good time for that discussion” syndrome.

Here are a few ideas about how to start this kind of discussion with a client:

Is there anything outside of our current scope that you would like our help with?
I noticed X, and I wonder if that’s a problem for you/your team/your customers. If so, I’ve got some ideas about how to address it.
(For a past client) I’ve been thinking about you, and since we worked together I’ve had a few ideas about X. Could we set up a brief meeting to see if they warrant further investigation?

(Hat tip to Alex for putting the spotlight on this topic for me recently.)

Last Week’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Do you meticulously route the cables at your desk?

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ Let 'em lie wherever they want to (9)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Make halfhearted effort at routing them neatly (11)

🟨🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️ The cables go exactly where I say they go, when I say they go, and how I say they go, and any cable that does't like it can find another job! (9)

29 Votes

Comments were left by a few:

“I have a hole in my desk at the back of the monitor which directs cables towards the plug sockets. Does that count as halfhearted?”
“All the cables on my desk are behind my monitors, so they’re always out of the way. No special ninjutsu there, I just route everything on the back edge of my desk.”
“I try to make them orderly, but somehow they don’t bend to my liking or are just the wrong length - or, more annoying, when I switch between laptops with the ridiculous differences in where ports are and what they do - they just don’t stay as neat as I would like. I haven’t given up, but I’m now less pedantic about it as I used to be. ”

This week’s For-Fun Poll

I hope something nice happens to you this week,

-P

You Say ICP, I Hear...

2024-04-21T14:48:58Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Lead Generation Learnings, or: You Say ICP, I Hear Insane Clown Posse

When working with a new client, I recently glossed over an important part of the process. I'm glad I made this mistake because it serves as a reminder of the importance of an Ideal Customer Profile (ICP).

During interviews with new prospects for my done-for-you education-based outbound marketing service, one of the first questions I ask is: who are your buyers? A good-enough answer to this question is crucial to proceed with the service.

I recently overlooked this step with a new client because they were a former coaching client. We're exploring my done-for-you newsletter service to see if it fits their situation, and I made some incorrect assumptions about their ICP.

Their situation is intriguing: they have a strong thought leadership presence that's very successful in one dimension but not working well in another. The successful dimension is that my client is a genuine thought leader. He has identified a problem in his market, developed a unique perspective on the issue, does innovative work to solve it, and educates the market about his solutions through impactful methods like highly visible talks at in-person and virtual events. The not-so-successful dimension is converting that thought leadership into projects within a reasonable timeframe. The simplified diagnosis is that the thought leadership is too far ahead of the market. They're not ready to act on it. They are impressed by the talks but need a few years for it all to sink in before they're prepared to implement.

I'm prototyping a weekly newsletter for this client, which involves curating news, putting together prototype issues, and sending them to the client and myself every few days. This allows him to experience what it would be like to have his name on these newsletters going to his target audience.

This is where my incorrect assumption about ICP came to light. Although we haven't built the audience yet, I'm basing my newsletter curation approach on my mental model of this audience, and I had the wrong audience in mind, leading to an incorrect curation approach.

We caught this issue early on and had a highly productive discussion as a result. We both gained clarity on the ICP and the type of curation approach that might accomplish our goal of providing educational value that represents my client's POV without being too far ahead of the market, as his thought leadership content tends to be.

This experience made me aware of something I hadn't fully appreciated about thought leadership content. It's easy to become so focused on the content itself that it's possible to lose sight of the audience for the content.

When your marketing involves building an audience first and then solving the content question, you're forced to think carefully about how the content will produce value for that audience and your business. I believe this is a crucial question to answer!

Finally, I can't hear ICP without thinking of the Insane Clown Posse musical group. I'm not a fan of their vile, offensive music, but I find them a fascinating case study in marketing.

Source: Wikimedia

So, let's just say buyers instead of ICP. As in, who are your buyers? Clarity about so many things starts there.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

Prices start at $2,500/mo, and there are some of you that ought to start investing in positioning your business as a source of educational value now during this down cycle in order to be ready to reap your harvest when things get better a few years from now.

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

The Distribution Question

Products can't sell without a way for them to travel from where they're made to where they're consumed. Products can't sell without distribution.

The Idea

I'm no expert on products, but it seems to me that distribution is so central to the consumer's experience of buying and using a product that distribution is really a product design question rather than a whole separate bolt-on question that can be considered independently from product design. Claude reminded me that Warby Parker is a good example of this:

Warby Parker's eyeglasses required rethinking distribution for a product traditionally sold in physical stores. Their Home Try-On program, where customers select 5 frames online to try at home for free, is a key part of the product experience. It reduces the risk of buying glasses online while providing Warby Parker rich data on customer preferences to optimize frame design and inventory. The distribution method is integral to making the product viable.
Claude 3

We should think about content marketing the same way. Content marketing is just bits stored on a server somewhere until it's distributed to those who consume it.

The Example

Content marketing distribution can be bundled in a way that makes the distribution part of the bundle nearly invisible. Posting on LinkedIn, for example, means that your content will be distributed for you by LinkedIn via its feed. When you think about who exactly sees that content, how many people see it, when they see it, and for how long new people continue to see it, you are thinking about how LinkedIn distributes your content. But most of us think: "how well does content marketing via LinkedIn work?". If we think about it this way, we're thinking about the bundle rather than the individual components of the bundle.

Taking a LinkedIn post and paying for it to become a Thought Leader Ad changes the distribution mechanism. It still ends up in the LinkedIn feed, but you get more control over placement and reach. Same content, different distribution.

The Internet dramatically changed distribution. If you came of age as a self-employed person while this was happening, you may have anchored yourself to a certain version of how the Internet changed distribution, and that specific version of distribution's implications for content marketing. This happened to me too. The thing is, how distribution works via the Internet is still changing.

Recommendations

I'll go light on recommendations because this little essay is really just meant to get you thinking for yourself about the components of the content marketing bundle. Questions to ponder:

How much of the content that influences your thinking and decision-making was content you actively sought out (you curated it for yourself), and how much of it was actively placed in front of you by a distribution mechanism where someone else controls the curation (whether that's an algorithm or person doesn't matter so much)?
Has the distribution of the active/passive consumption changed for you over time?
How do your buyers interact with various means of distribution?

As for me, I can't shake the sense that the current and future Internet content distribution landscape requires a more active stance. That's why I'm starting to emphasize all this stuff about content marketing really being a bundle of content and distribution and the importance of working out how the distribution part of that bundle will work.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: During nice weather, how many times/week do you usually get outdoors?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0 times (3)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 to 3 times/week (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4 to 7 times/week (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 8 or more times/week (8)

Some folks left explanatory comments:

“Geez. Must go outside often. I walk around and check how the plants are growing. ”
“Gotta enjoy what time we get here in Montana!”
“I take our dog out every morning for our ritual 4.2km, 50 minute walk. This is independent of the weather. Typically I’ll do some other activities on top, eg coaching an under 16s rugby team which is usually twice a week during the autumn to spring playing season. ”
“If walking the dog for 40mins is in the "trash" category then I'm a zero :)”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

One of my niche fascinations is cover songs that are better than the original (at least in terms of my objectively correct musical taste 😁). I don’t know that I have a list of 52 of these, but I thought it’d be fun to go through the ones I do have stored away in the back of my head in a section of these mostly-weekly emails. Here goes.

The original:

The cover:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

You Say ICP, I Hear...

2024-04-21T14:48:58Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Lead Generation Learnings, or: You Say ICP, I Hear Insane Clown Posse

Finally, I can't hear ICP without thinking of the Insane Clown Posse musical group. I'm not a fan of their vile, offensive music, but I find them a fascinating case study in marketing.

Source: Wikimedia

So, let's just say buyers instead of ICP. As in, who are your buyers? Clarity about so many things starts there.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

The Distribution Question

Products can't sell without a way for them to travel from where they're made to where they're consumed. Products can't sell without distribution.

The Idea

Warby Parker's eyeglasses required rethinking distribution for a product traditionally sold in physical stores. Their Home Try-On program, where customers select 5 frames online to try at home for free, is a key part of the product experience. It reduces the risk of buying glasses online while providing Warby Parker rich data on customer preferences to optimize frame design and inventory. The distribution method is integral to making the product viable.
Claude 3

We should think about content marketing the same way. Content marketing is just bits stored on a server somewhere until it's distributed to those who consume it.

The Example

Recommendations

I'll go light on recommendations because this little essay is really just meant to get you thinking for yourself about the components of the content marketing bundle. Questions to ponder:

How much of the content that influences your thinking and decision-making was content you actively sought out (you curated it for yourself), and how much of it was actively placed in front of you by a distribution mechanism where someone else controls the curation (whether that's an algorithm or person doesn't matter so much)?
Has the distribution of the active/passive consumption changed for you over time?
How do your buyers interact with various means of distribution?

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: During nice weather, how many times/week do you usually get outdoors?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0 times (3)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 to 3 times/week (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4 to 7 times/week (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 8 or more times/week (8)

Some folks left explanatory comments:

“Geez. Must go outside often. I walk around and check how the plants are growing. ”
“Gotta enjoy what time we get here in Montana!”
“I take our dog out every morning for our ritual 4.2km, 50 minute walk. This is independent of the weather. Typically I’ll do some other activities on top, eg coaching an under 16s rugby team which is usually twice a week during the autumn to spring playing season. ”
“If walking the dog for 40mins is in the "trash" category then I'm a zero :)”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

You Say ICP, I Hear...

2024-04-21T14:48:58Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Lead Generation Learnings, or: You Say ICP, I Hear Insane Clown Posse

Finally, I can't hear ICP without thinking of the Insane Clown Posse musical group. I'm not a fan of their vile, offensive music, but I find them a fascinating case study in marketing.

Source: Wikimedia

So, let's just say buyers instead of ICP. As in, who are your buyers? Clarity about so many things starts there.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

The Distribution Question

Products can't sell without a way for them to travel from where they're made to where they're consumed. Products can't sell without distribution.

The Idea

Warby Parker's eyeglasses required rethinking distribution for a product traditionally sold in physical stores. Their Home Try-On program, where customers select 5 frames online to try at home for free, is a key part of the product experience. It reduces the risk of buying glasses online while providing Warby Parker rich data on customer preferences to optimize frame design and inventory. The distribution method is integral to making the product viable.
Claude 3

We should think about content marketing the same way. Content marketing is just bits stored on a server somewhere until it's distributed to those who consume it.

The Example

Recommendations

I'll go light on recommendations because this little essay is really just meant to get you thinking for yourself about the components of the content marketing bundle. Questions to ponder:

How much of the content that influences your thinking and decision-making was content you actively sought out (you curated it for yourself), and how much of it was actively placed in front of you by a distribution mechanism where someone else controls the curation (whether that's an algorithm or person doesn't matter so much)?
Has the distribution of the active/passive consumption changed for you over time?
How do your buyers interact with various means of distribution?

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: During nice weather, how many times/week do you usually get outdoors?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0 times (3)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 to 3 times/week (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4 to 7 times/week (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 8 or more times/week (8)

Some folks left explanatory comments:

“Geez. Must go outside often. I walk around and check how the plants are growing. ”
“Gotta enjoy what time we get here in Montana!”
“I take our dog out every morning for our ritual 4.2km, 50 minute walk. This is independent of the weather. Typically I’ll do some other activities on top, eg coaching an under 16s rugby team which is usually twice a week during the autumn to spring playing season. ”
“If walking the dog for 40mins is in the "trash" category then I'm a zero :)”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

You Say ICP, I Hear...

2024-04-21T14:48:58Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Lead Generation Learnings, or: You Say ICP, I Hear Insane Clown Posse

Finally, I can't hear ICP without thinking of the Insane Clown Posse musical group. I'm not a fan of their vile, offensive music, but I find them a fascinating case study in marketing.

Source: Wikimedia

So, let's just say buyers instead of ICP. As in, who are your buyers? Clarity about so many things starts there.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

The Distribution Question

Products can't sell without a way for them to travel from where they're made to where they're consumed. Products can't sell without distribution.

The Idea

Warby Parker's eyeglasses required rethinking distribution for a product traditionally sold in physical stores. Their Home Try-On program, where customers select 5 frames online to try at home for free, is a key part of the product experience. It reduces the risk of buying glasses online while providing Warby Parker rich data on customer preferences to optimize frame design and inventory. The distribution method is integral to making the product viable.
Claude 3

We should think about content marketing the same way. Content marketing is just bits stored on a server somewhere until it's distributed to those who consume it.

The Example

Recommendations

I'll go light on recommendations because this little essay is really just meant to get you thinking for yourself about the components of the content marketing bundle. Questions to ponder:

How much of the content that influences your thinking and decision-making was content you actively sought out (you curated it for yourself), and how much of it was actively placed in front of you by a distribution mechanism where someone else controls the curation (whether that's an algorithm or person doesn't matter so much)?
Has the distribution of the active/passive consumption changed for you over time?
How do your buyers interact with various means of distribution?

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: During nice weather, how many times/week do you usually get outdoors?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0 times (3)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 1 to 3 times/week (3)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 4 to 7 times/week (17)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ 8 or more times/week (8)

Some folks left explanatory comments:

“Geez. Must go outside often. I walk around and check how the plants are growing. ”
“Gotta enjoy what time we get here in Montana!”
“I take our dog out every morning for our ritual 4.2km, 50 minute walk. This is independent of the weather. Typically I’ll do some other activities on top, eg coaching an under 16s rugby team which is usually twice a week during the autumn to spring playing season. ”
“If walking the dog for 40mins is in the "trash" category then I'm a zero :)”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

About Daily Publishing

2024-04-23T10:47:00Z

I used to run a 9-month group program that began with a 3-month daily publishing challenge. I don’t run that program anymore, but I sometimes coach clients through a process that rhymes with the daily publishing challenge. In putting together some support materials for a new client, I came across the following, which I wrote in late 2021.

You folks know I almost never brag about my own work other than in an occasional tongue-in-cheek way, but I gotta say, this piece has an incandescent level of clarity about the challenge of daily publishing. It’s really good.

The piece is always available here: https://opportunitylabs.io/lead-generation-documentation/daily-publishing/about-daily-publishing/ And it’s reproduced in this email below. I hope you enjoy.

About Daily Publishing

The goal of daily publishing is this: every day you work, you publish something worth reading to your email list. I can not over-stress that if you do this simple mechanical publishing thing, what you actually want (expertise, POV) will happen eventually as a natural by-product. In other words, you are not trying to cultivate or clarify expertise or create a distinct point of view. Instead, if you just try to create a little piece of email-shaped value every day you work, those things will happen inevitably. Not immediately, of course, but eventually.

I describe publishing as a simple, mechanical act. Of course, there's a bit more to it than that. :) For example, you have to type words that are about something, and the question of what your emails are about is a relevant question, and it sometimes can cause a feeling of writer's block or analysis paralysis. That's why I want to make sure this guide includes a list of ideas of what your emails could be about. Hopefully you won't need this, but don't feel bad at all if you do!

Start With A Fear Inventory

Whether you feel stuck or not, I recommend you start with a "fear inventory". To be clear, you don't publish this. You don't have to share it with anyone unless sharing it makes it more useful for you.

The fear inventory is simply a list of every fear you feel about publishing daily. No matter how small or big the fears are, write them down. Writing them down has the effect of helping you see them more clearly and, sometimes, that makes the fears smaller or less powerful.

The common fears about daily publishing include:

Fear of criticism
Fearing loss of status
Fear of conflict
Disappointment at unsubscribes generally
Disappointment at particular unsubscribes (a certain person unsubscribes from your list)
Fear of failure

Don't limit your fear inventory to just these common fears. :) Explore your own fears in full detail.

Recognize That YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT CREATES SUBSCRIBER VALUE

Publishing to an email list automatically causes most of us to care about subscriber value. This means we want to publish stuff that most or all of our subscribers find valuable, meaning it's worth the time and effort it takes them to read it.

I'm sorry, but you probably don't know what will create subscriber value. Most of us don't know this when we start publishing to an email list, and even after publishing frequently to an email list for years we have only an imperfect thesis about what creates subscriber value.

You probably have some un-helpful ideas about what could create subscriber value. Most of us have had an earlier formative experience where we encounter something that someone else has published to an email list and that thing created massive subscriber value for us. We often spend time trying to create value for our list using the style and form particulars of that formative experience. Those style and form particulars may not be a good fit for us, and may actually prevent us from creating subscriber value.

You probably also have assumptions about what won't create subscriber value. You probably think some things are off limits for an email list that's supposed to somehow be about your expertise.

You probably have some un-helpful heuristics in place, like longer = more valuable, or more complex = more valuable.

All of the above will prevent you from creating subscriber value, because in a crowded information landscape, the best way to create subscriber value is often not:

Content that imitates what is already doing well
Content that prioritizes a pursuit of more length, depth, complexity, or nuance
Content that reverts to the mean in terms of style or form

I'm so sorry, but the only way to know what creates subscriber value for you and your email list is to experiment freely and frequently. I say I'm sorry because I actually think the ability to do this kind of experimentation is a wonderful opportunity, but I know it can be intimidating and bring up fear.

I'm sorry because the path to knowing involves experimentation and guaranteed failure and I can't walk that path for you ; you have to discover how to create subscriber value yourself.

It's fine to start the daily publication challenge with a rough thesis about what you think will create subscriber value for your list, because having a thesis frees you up to do the work of thinking and writing, but you must hold to that thesis incredibly loosely, and as soon as you can, take some risks by experimenting with topic choice, length of your emails, and the tone/style of your writing.

If you were a chef cooking a meal for 100 people, you would never expect all 100 people to think your meal was the best meal of their entire life, no matter how good the meal actually was. Likewise, no matter how good you get at creating subscriber value, you will never create perfect subscriber value for every member of your email list every time you publish. It's simply not possible. We will all disappoint someone eventually, no matter how good our work actually is, no matter how deeply we care about creating value, and no matter how hard we work. I hope that realizing this gives you a feeling of fellowship with those writers you admire.

Ideas Of What Your Emails Could Be About

Here are 6 ways you can generate topic ideas, and if you don't immediately have an idea what you should publish about, take some time to go through these idea-generation methods:

Write up a list of every question you've heard from your clients. Add to it all the questions they should have asked but didn't. Respond to these questions in your emails. It takes me about 1,000 to 1,500 words to thoroughly respond to a good question. That much writing output will kill you if you try for that every day, so give yourself a word budget of 200 to 400 words per email and split your answers across multiple emails if you need to.
Write the world's sloppiest "playbook" for how you run your client projects. Here's an example of a nearly-perfect playbook: https://playbook.hanno.co You are not going for perfection here; you are trying to write about something that is easy for you to explain so you build up momentum that carries you into more challenging topics/questions.
List out all the things you wish you understood better or had more certainty about. Title the list "Questions I'm Working On". Start publishing your description of each problem/question, and then see if you naturally start writing about potential solutions/answers.
Brainstorm a list of things you used to be wrong about. Publish short explanations of what you used to be wrong about, why, and how you see things now.
Brainstorm a list of things you've changed your mind about, and publish short explanations of these items.
Write up a list of terminology and ideas that are relevant to your client work and publish one definition of each term/idea.

I hope that if you're feeling stuck in terms of what to write about, this list helps you get un-stuck.

Style Ideas

I hesitate a bit to share the following, because I don't want you to get too much into your head about the publishing. It's an experiential learning process, and so the most valuable insights come from you doing the work of thinking, writing, and publishing.

That said, I hope the following expands your thinking a bit and helps you think about what might seem like unconventional ways to create subscriber value for your email list.

The following things can create subscriber value. I know this because I have received replies from my email list telling me so, and as a subscriber to other people's email lists these things have created subscriber value for me.

Teaching/Informing/Explaining: This is often what we assume email lists are best used for, and that's true but incomplete. Email lists can create value in other ways too.
Inspiring: What might your audience find inspiring?
Humor: We often assume that humor and business are mutually exclusive, or in some kind of opposing relationship. I don't think so. Humor can be used to create an open-minded atmosphere that can lead to all sorts of good things.
Light entertainment/distraction: Public speakers are advised to modulate their tone. Writers are advised to vary sentence length. For the same reason, daily emailers should consider blending in moments of levity.
Surprise/Discovery/Wonder/Delight: No explanation needed, I hope :)
Reassurance/Solidarity: Does your list sometimes need to hear this from you? "Yes, you're right to see things this way. Here's why."
Challenging reader viewpoint: Does your list sometimes need to have their assumptions challenged? Could this help them somehow?
Comforting/De-escalating anxiety: Do your clients/audience sometimes worry about the wrong things?

Final Thoughts

Let me conclude with a few thoughts:

The most important part of the daily publishing challenge is publishing daily. Don't let anything stop you from publishing daily, and lower the bar as much as you need to.

Uninterrupted streaks of good things are cool, but what is way more important is the willingness to begin again. To give yourself a hug and say, "let's try to publish something worth reading today!", no matter what happened yesterday or the days before.

It sounds like LinkedIn broetry, but the best way to get average results is to do average things. Commit to experimenting with what you send your email list, and be OK with the surprises that lie well below and above the mean.

Do not be afraid to repeat yourself or build on what others are saying. Both of these can feel like cheating but they play a surprisingly important role in thought leadership.

Motion generates information. Most of your daily publishing problems and blocks will be solved by publishing something, no matter how bad or low-value it may seem in the moment.

You don't have all the answers. You never will. The next email you send doesn't need to have all the answers either. Sometimes a question is better than an answer anyway.

Very often, less is more. (This does not apply to publishing frequency; you still should publish every day you work!)

Narrow focus is a powerful business strategy. And yet, you contain multitudes. It's OK for your publishing to reflect this duality.

Remember to periodically thank your email list for finding your emails worthy of their attention.

About Daily Publishing

2024-04-23T10:47:00Z

The piece is always available here: https://opportunitylabs.io/lead-generation-documentation/daily-publishing/about-daily-publishing/ And it’s reproduced in this email below. I hope you enjoy.

About Daily Publishing

Start With A Fear Inventory

The common fears about daily publishing include:

Fear of criticism
Fearing loss of status
Fear of conflict
Disappointment at unsubscribes generally
Disappointment at particular unsubscribes (a certain person unsubscribes from your list)
Fear of failure

Don't limit your fear inventory to just these common fears. :) Explore your own fears in full detail.

Recognize That YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT CREATES SUBSCRIBER VALUE

You probably also have assumptions about what won't create subscriber value. You probably think some things are off limits for an email list that's supposed to somehow be about your expertise.

You probably have some un-helpful heuristics in place, like longer = more valuable, or more complex = more valuable.

All of the above will prevent you from creating subscriber value, because in a crowded information landscape, the best way to create subscriber value is often not:

Content that imitates what is already doing well
Content that prioritizes a pursuit of more length, depth, complexity, or nuance
Content that reverts to the mean in terms of style or form

I'm sorry because the path to knowing involves experimentation and guaranteed failure and I can't walk that path for you ; you have to discover how to create subscriber value yourself.

Ideas Of What Your Emails Could Be About

Here are 6 ways you can generate topic ideas, and if you don't immediately have an idea what you should publish about, take some time to go through these idea-generation methods:

Write up a list of every question you've heard from your clients. Add to it all the questions they should have asked but didn't. Respond to these questions in your emails. It takes me about 1,000 to 1,500 words to thoroughly respond to a good question. That much writing output will kill you if you try for that every day, so give yourself a word budget of 200 to 400 words per email and split your answers across multiple emails if you need to.
Write the world's sloppiest "playbook" for how you run your client projects. Here's an example of a nearly-perfect playbook: https://playbook.hanno.co You are not going for perfection here; you are trying to write about something that is easy for you to explain so you build up momentum that carries you into more challenging topics/questions.
List out all the things you wish you understood better or had more certainty about. Title the list "Questions I'm Working On". Start publishing your description of each problem/question, and then see if you naturally start writing about potential solutions/answers.
Brainstorm a list of things you used to be wrong about. Publish short explanations of what you used to be wrong about, why, and how you see things now.
Brainstorm a list of things you've changed your mind about, and publish short explanations of these items.
Write up a list of terminology and ideas that are relevant to your client work and publish one definition of each term/idea.

I hope that if you're feeling stuck in terms of what to write about, this list helps you get un-stuck.

Style Ideas

That said, I hope the following expands your thinking a bit and helps you think about what might seem like unconventional ways to create subscriber value for your email list.

Teaching/Informing/Explaining: This is often what we assume email lists are best used for, and that's true but incomplete. Email lists can create value in other ways too.
Inspiring: What might your audience find inspiring?
Humor: We often assume that humor and business are mutually exclusive, or in some kind of opposing relationship. I don't think so. Humor can be used to create an open-minded atmosphere that can lead to all sorts of good things.
Light entertainment/distraction: Public speakers are advised to modulate their tone. Writers are advised to vary sentence length. For the same reason, daily emailers should consider blending in moments of levity.
Surprise/Discovery/Wonder/Delight: No explanation needed, I hope :)
Reassurance/Solidarity: Does your list sometimes need to hear this from you? "Yes, you're right to see things this way. Here's why."
Challenging reader viewpoint: Does your list sometimes need to have their assumptions challenged? Could this help them somehow?
Comforting/De-escalating anxiety: Do your clients/audience sometimes worry about the wrong things?

Final Thoughts

Let me conclude with a few thoughts:

The most important part of the daily publishing challenge is publishing daily. Don't let anything stop you from publishing daily, and lower the bar as much as you need to.

Do not be afraid to repeat yourself or build on what others are saying. Both of these can feel like cheating but they play a surprisingly important role in thought leadership.

Motion generates information. Most of your daily publishing problems and blocks will be solved by publishing something, no matter how bad or low-value it may seem in the moment.

You don't have all the answers. You never will. The next email you send doesn't need to have all the answers either. Sometimes a question is better than an answer anyway.

Very often, less is more. (This does not apply to publishing frequency; you still should publish every day you work!)

Narrow focus is a powerful business strategy. And yet, you contain multitudes. It's OK for your publishing to reflect this duality.

Remember to periodically thank your email list for finding your emails worthy of their attention.

About Daily Publishing

2024-04-23T10:47:00Z

The piece is always available here: https://opportunitylabs.io/lead-generation-documentation/daily-publishing/about-daily-publishing/ And it’s reproduced in this email below. I hope you enjoy.

About Daily Publishing

Start With A Fear Inventory

The common fears about daily publishing include:

Fear of criticism
Fearing loss of status
Fear of conflict
Disappointment at unsubscribes generally
Disappointment at particular unsubscribes (a certain person unsubscribes from your list)
Fear of failure

Don't limit your fear inventory to just these common fears. :) Explore your own fears in full detail.

Recognize That YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT CREATES SUBSCRIBER VALUE

You probably also have assumptions about what won't create subscriber value. You probably think some things are off limits for an email list that's supposed to somehow be about your expertise.

You probably have some un-helpful heuristics in place, like longer = more valuable, or more complex = more valuable.

All of the above will prevent you from creating subscriber value, because in a crowded information landscape, the best way to create subscriber value is often not:

Content that imitates what is already doing well
Content that prioritizes a pursuit of more length, depth, complexity, or nuance
Content that reverts to the mean in terms of style or form

I'm sorry because the path to knowing involves experimentation and guaranteed failure and I can't walk that path for you ; you have to discover how to create subscriber value yourself.

Ideas Of What Your Emails Could Be About

Here are 6 ways you can generate topic ideas, and if you don't immediately have an idea what you should publish about, take some time to go through these idea-generation methods:

Write up a list of every question you've heard from your clients. Add to it all the questions they should have asked but didn't. Respond to these questions in your emails. It takes me about 1,000 to 1,500 words to thoroughly respond to a good question. That much writing output will kill you if you try for that every day, so give yourself a word budget of 200 to 400 words per email and split your answers across multiple emails if you need to.
Write the world's sloppiest "playbook" for how you run your client projects. Here's an example of a nearly-perfect playbook: https://playbook.hanno.co You are not going for perfection here; you are trying to write about something that is easy for you to explain so you build up momentum that carries you into more challenging topics/questions.
List out all the things you wish you understood better or had more certainty about. Title the list "Questions I'm Working On". Start publishing your description of each problem/question, and then see if you naturally start writing about potential solutions/answers.
Brainstorm a list of things you used to be wrong about. Publish short explanations of what you used to be wrong about, why, and how you see things now.
Brainstorm a list of things you've changed your mind about, and publish short explanations of these items.
Write up a list of terminology and ideas that are relevant to your client work and publish one definition of each term/idea.

I hope that if you're feeling stuck in terms of what to write about, this list helps you get un-stuck.

Style Ideas

That said, I hope the following expands your thinking a bit and helps you think about what might seem like unconventional ways to create subscriber value for your email list.

Teaching/Informing/Explaining: This is often what we assume email lists are best used for, and that's true but incomplete. Email lists can create value in other ways too.
Inspiring: What might your audience find inspiring?
Humor: We often assume that humor and business are mutually exclusive, or in some kind of opposing relationship. I don't think so. Humor can be used to create an open-minded atmosphere that can lead to all sorts of good things.
Light entertainment/distraction: Public speakers are advised to modulate their tone. Writers are advised to vary sentence length. For the same reason, daily emailers should consider blending in moments of levity.
Surprise/Discovery/Wonder/Delight: No explanation needed, I hope :)
Reassurance/Solidarity: Does your list sometimes need to hear this from you? "Yes, you're right to see things this way. Here's why."
Challenging reader viewpoint: Does your list sometimes need to have their assumptions challenged? Could this help them somehow?
Comforting/De-escalating anxiety: Do your clients/audience sometimes worry about the wrong things?

Final Thoughts

Let me conclude with a few thoughts:

The most important part of the daily publishing challenge is publishing daily. Don't let anything stop you from publishing daily, and lower the bar as much as you need to.

Do not be afraid to repeat yourself or build on what others are saying. Both of these can feel like cheating but they play a surprisingly important role in thought leadership.

Motion generates information. Most of your daily publishing problems and blocks will be solved by publishing something, no matter how bad or low-value it may seem in the moment.

You don't have all the answers. You never will. The next email you send doesn't need to have all the answers either. Sometimes a question is better than an answer anyway.

Very often, less is more. (This does not apply to publishing frequency; you still should publish every day you work!)

Narrow focus is a powerful business strategy. And yet, you contain multitudes. It's OK for your publishing to reflect this duality.

Remember to periodically thank your email list for finding your emails worthy of their attention.

About Daily Publishing

2024-04-23T10:47:00Z

The piece is always available here: https://opportunitylabs.io/lead-generation-documentation/daily-publishing/about-daily-publishing/ And it’s reproduced in this email below. I hope you enjoy.

About Daily Publishing

Start With A Fear Inventory

The common fears about daily publishing include:

Fear of criticism
Fearing loss of status
Fear of conflict
Disappointment at unsubscribes generally
Disappointment at particular unsubscribes (a certain person unsubscribes from your list)
Fear of failure

Don't limit your fear inventory to just these common fears. :) Explore your own fears in full detail.

Recognize That YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT CREATES SUBSCRIBER VALUE

You probably also have assumptions about what won't create subscriber value. You probably think some things are off limits for an email list that's supposed to somehow be about your expertise.

You probably have some un-helpful heuristics in place, like longer = more valuable, or more complex = more valuable.

All of the above will prevent you from creating subscriber value, because in a crowded information landscape, the best way to create subscriber value is often not:

Content that imitates what is already doing well
Content that prioritizes a pursuit of more length, depth, complexity, or nuance
Content that reverts to the mean in terms of style or form

I'm sorry because the path to knowing involves experimentation and guaranteed failure and I can't walk that path for you ; you have to discover how to create subscriber value yourself.

Ideas Of What Your Emails Could Be About

Here are 6 ways you can generate topic ideas, and if you don't immediately have an idea what you should publish about, take some time to go through these idea-generation methods:

Write up a list of every question you've heard from your clients. Add to it all the questions they should have asked but didn't. Respond to these questions in your emails. It takes me about 1,000 to 1,500 words to thoroughly respond to a good question. That much writing output will kill you if you try for that every day, so give yourself a word budget of 200 to 400 words per email and split your answers across multiple emails if you need to.
Write the world's sloppiest "playbook" for how you run your client projects. Here's an example of a nearly-perfect playbook: https://playbook.hanno.co You are not going for perfection here; you are trying to write about something that is easy for you to explain so you build up momentum that carries you into more challenging topics/questions.
List out all the things you wish you understood better or had more certainty about. Title the list "Questions I'm Working On". Start publishing your description of each problem/question, and then see if you naturally start writing about potential solutions/answers.
Brainstorm a list of things you used to be wrong about. Publish short explanations of what you used to be wrong about, why, and how you see things now.
Brainstorm a list of things you've changed your mind about, and publish short explanations of these items.
Write up a list of terminology and ideas that are relevant to your client work and publish one definition of each term/idea.

I hope that if you're feeling stuck in terms of what to write about, this list helps you get un-stuck.

Style Ideas

That said, I hope the following expands your thinking a bit and helps you think about what might seem like unconventional ways to create subscriber value for your email list.

Teaching/Informing/Explaining: This is often what we assume email lists are best used for, and that's true but incomplete. Email lists can create value in other ways too.
Inspiring: What might your audience find inspiring?
Humor: We often assume that humor and business are mutually exclusive, or in some kind of opposing relationship. I don't think so. Humor can be used to create an open-minded atmosphere that can lead to all sorts of good things.
Light entertainment/distraction: Public speakers are advised to modulate their tone. Writers are advised to vary sentence length. For the same reason, daily emailers should consider blending in moments of levity.
Surprise/Discovery/Wonder/Delight: No explanation needed, I hope :)
Reassurance/Solidarity: Does your list sometimes need to hear this from you? "Yes, you're right to see things this way. Here's why."
Challenging reader viewpoint: Does your list sometimes need to have their assumptions challenged? Could this help them somehow?
Comforting/De-escalating anxiety: Do your clients/audience sometimes worry about the wrong things?

Final Thoughts

Let me conclude with a few thoughts:

The most important part of the daily publishing challenge is publishing daily. Don't let anything stop you from publishing daily, and lower the bar as much as you need to.

Do not be afraid to repeat yourself or build on what others are saying. Both of these can feel like cheating but they play a surprisingly important role in thought leadership.

Motion generates information. Most of your daily publishing problems and blocks will be solved by publishing something, no matter how bad or low-value it may seem in the moment.

You don't have all the answers. You never will. The next email you send doesn't need to have all the answers either. Sometimes a question is better than an answer anyway.

Very often, less is more. (This does not apply to publishing frequency; you still should publish every day you work!)

Narrow focus is a powerful business strategy. And yet, you contain multitudes. It's OK for your publishing to reflect this duality.

Remember to periodically thank your email list for finding your emails worthy of their attention.

"That's just an illusion."

2024-04-28T10:39:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Hey, I want to reduce my uncertainty about something, so here’s an invitation to help me with that. If you have been directly involved in deciding to spend $20,000 or more on consulting, marketing, or custom software development services that were marketed or sold with a cold outbound high-pressure approach, would you be able to take 5 to 10 minutes and tell me about it via a brief voice survey? No need for any scheduling - you can take the survey whenever is most convenient for you: https://alpharun.com/i/aSRxUyr_P26wPWU-Zh1Tm. Your contribution to the research will be kept 100% anonymous if/when findings are shared.

Thanks in advance for any contributions to this micro-research project!

Lead Generation Learnings

I’m fully aware that I’m looking at the world through a filtered lens, and these days that lens is: the role of networks and relationships in business development. That’s why this caught my attention:

Susan Athey's advice to young scholars on networking in economics:
— Simon Bowmaker (@SimonBowmaker)
4:28 PM • Aug 25, 2023

Here are the especially intense statements Susan Athey makes:

“The leaders in your field will be from peer institutions or better institutions than yours. Their choice of conferences to attend probably tells you something about what's important.”
“…young people sometimes think that the refereeing is random and anonymous, but, in fact, it is quite predictable. As an editor, you look at the references in the paper, and you try to find the experts in the area. It's actually pretty easy to figure out who the fifteen or twenty people would be that might referee a particular paper.”
“…you might think that there's a bunch of referees and tenure letter-writers out there who, when given your paper or packet, will dutifully sit down and spend an entire day reading your paper or two days reading everything in your packet. That's just an illusion. A lot of people will do things very quickly, and they'll base a lot of their efforts on things they already know. And so, if you've presented in front of them, and if you've talked to them, if you've explained things to them, if you've gotten their questions, and incorporated their feedback in advance, you're going to be much, much more successful in the process.”

I’ve quoted almost the whole thing. Heh. That’s because while Athey is speaking specifically about academia, I see all kinds of direct parallels to the world of business at both small and large scales. To our world.

Also from the world of academia, this paper is relevant: Editorial favoritism in the field of laboratory experimental economics. Here’s a useful simplification of the paper’s claims:

Editors manage journals and decide which papers get published
Authors compete to get their papers published in the best journals
Editors should choose papers based only on scientific quality
This competition should lead to the best papers being published
But sometimes editors choose papers based on social ties to the authors
This is called editorial favoritism and can lead to lower quality papers being published
Social ties between editors and authors can influence publishing in several ways:
- Editors might accept a colleague's paper while rejecting a better paper from someone they don't know
- Social ties make it easier for editors to find and evaluate papers from people they know
- Editors might share information with colleagues about topics they want papers on
- A social tie could be a signal that an author is high quality in ways that aren't in the paper
Editorial favoritism can slow down scientific progress by leading to lower quality papers being published instead of higher quality ones

Drilling into the “social ties make it easier” point, the study suggests a few potential mechanisms by which editorial favoritism may operate:

Reduced search costs: Editors may be more likely to become aware of and select papers by authors they have social ties with, because their familiarity with the author's work reduces the effort required to search for and evaluate papers.
Information sharing: Social ties may facilitate communication between editors and authors, allowing editors to share information about the types of papers they are looking for and encouraging connected authors to submit.
Unobserved quality signals: A social tie between an editor and author may serve as a signal of the author's quality or qualifications that is not directly observable in the paper itself, leading the editor to view the paper more positively.
Conscious or unconscious bias: Even if not intentional, editors' judgment of papers may be subconsciously influenced by their relationship with the author, leading them to overestimate the quality of work by connected authors and underestimate the quality of other submissions.
Quid pro quo: In more extreme cases, editors may consciously choose to accept papers from colleagues and frequent collaborators out of a sense of reciprocity or mutual benefit, even if those papers are of lower quality than other available options.

The paper authors see all this stuff as risks to scientific progress, but when transposed out of the world of academia and into my world I see it as: ways I can help my clients intercept more opportunity. The question that drives my innovation efforts is: How can I help my clients benefit from favoritism based on social ties?

Speaking of that, a past client — a Shopify front-end developer — has some availability while he is rebooting his consultancy. If you need help from someone like that, let me know and I’ll connect you with him.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How much does your musical taste overlap with that of your parents?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As much as 25% overlap (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 50% overlap (2)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 75% overlap (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 100% overlap (1)

A few elaborating comments:

“I found this is not a fixed percentage! ”
“I am an old soul mixed with a headbanger so I can listen to Dean Martin sing Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime and Glenn Miller's orchestra swing to the Chattanooga Cho Cho and on the same playlist listen to Adrenaline Mob sing C'mon Get Up and Halestorm's Freak Like Me. I just love music.”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The self-cover:

I’m already breaking from my self-imposed format of comparing originals and covers that are either an interesting departure from the original or flat-out better than the original. This is a self-cover from Lucinda Williams re-recording of Sweet Old World.

It’s awesome to listen to these two songs back to back because you’ll hear the passage of 25 years of time in her voice. Also, you’ll hear an attempt to make the words “casserole” and “tire iron” sound kinda sexy, which is also worth your time and attention. (How many of you youngsters even know what a tire iron is without looking it up?)

I’m already getting user-submissions of covers-better-than-the-original. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll drip them out later down the road.

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"That's just an illusion."

2024-04-28T10:39:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Thanks in advance for any contributions to this micro-research project!

Lead Generation Learnings

Twitter tweet

Here are the especially intense statements Susan Athey makes:

“The leaders in your field will be from peer institutions or better institutions than yours. Their choice of conferences to attend probably tells you something about what's important.”
“…young people sometimes think that the refereeing is random and anonymous, but, in fact, it is quite predictable. As an editor, you look at the references in the paper, and you try to find the experts in the area. It's actually pretty easy to figure out who the fifteen or twenty people would be that might referee a particular paper.”
“…you might think that there's a bunch of referees and tenure letter-writers out there who, when given your paper or packet, will dutifully sit down and spend an entire day reading your paper or two days reading everything in your packet. That's just an illusion. A lot of people will do things very quickly, and they'll base a lot of their efforts on things they already know. And so, if you've presented in front of them, and if you've talked to them, if you've explained things to them, if you've gotten their questions, and incorporated their feedback in advance, you're going to be much, much more successful in the process.”

Also from the world of academia, this paper is relevant: Editorial favoritism in the field of laboratory experimental economics. Here’s a useful simplification of the paper’s claims:

Editors manage journals and decide which papers get published
Authors compete to get their papers published in the best journals
Editors should choose papers based only on scientific quality
This competition should lead to the best papers being published
But sometimes editors choose papers based on social ties to the authors
This is called editorial favoritism and can lead to lower quality papers being published
Social ties between editors and authors can influence publishing in several ways:
- Editors might accept a colleague's paper while rejecting a better paper from someone they don't know
- Social ties make it easier for editors to find and evaluate papers from people they know
- Editors might share information with colleagues about topics they want papers on
- A social tie could be a signal that an author is high quality in ways that aren't in the paper
Editorial favoritism can slow down scientific progress by leading to lower quality papers being published instead of higher quality ones

Drilling into the “social ties make it easier” point, the study suggests a few potential mechanisms by which editorial favoritism may operate:

Reduced search costs: Editors may be more likely to become aware of and select papers by authors they have social ties with, because their familiarity with the author's work reduces the effort required to search for and evaluate papers.
Information sharing: Social ties may facilitate communication between editors and authors, allowing editors to share information about the types of papers they are looking for and encouraging connected authors to submit.
Unobserved quality signals: A social tie between an editor and author may serve as a signal of the author's quality or qualifications that is not directly observable in the paper itself, leading the editor to view the paper more positively.
Conscious or unconscious bias: Even if not intentional, editors' judgment of papers may be subconsciously influenced by their relationship with the author, leading them to overestimate the quality of work by connected authors and underestimate the quality of other submissions.
Quid pro quo: In more extreme cases, editors may consciously choose to accept papers from colleagues and frequent collaborators out of a sense of reciprocity or mutual benefit, even if those papers are of lower quality than other available options.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How much does your musical taste overlap with that of your parents?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As much as 25% overlap (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 50% overlap (2)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 75% overlap (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 100% overlap (1)

A few elaborating comments:

“I found this is not a fixed percentage! ”
“I am an old soul mixed with a headbanger so I can listen to Dean Martin sing Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime and Glenn Miller's orchestra swing to the Chattanooga Cho Cho and on the same playlist listen to Adrenaline Mob sing C'mon Get Up and Halestorm's Freak Like Me. I just love music.”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The self-cover:

I’m already getting user-submissions of covers-better-than-the-original. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll drip them out later down the road.

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"That's just an illusion."

2024-04-28T10:39:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Thanks in advance for any contributions to this micro-research project!

Lead Generation Learnings

Susan Athey's advice to young scholars on networking in economics:
— Simon Bowmaker (@SimonBowmaker)
4:28 PM • Aug 25, 2023

Here are the especially intense statements Susan Athey makes:

“The leaders in your field will be from peer institutions or better institutions than yours. Their choice of conferences to attend probably tells you something about what's important.”
“…young people sometimes think that the refereeing is random and anonymous, but, in fact, it is quite predictable. As an editor, you look at the references in the paper, and you try to find the experts in the area. It's actually pretty easy to figure out who the fifteen or twenty people would be that might referee a particular paper.”
“…you might think that there's a bunch of referees and tenure letter-writers out there who, when given your paper or packet, will dutifully sit down and spend an entire day reading your paper or two days reading everything in your packet. That's just an illusion. A lot of people will do things very quickly, and they'll base a lot of their efforts on things they already know. And so, if you've presented in front of them, and if you've talked to them, if you've explained things to them, if you've gotten their questions, and incorporated their feedback in advance, you're going to be much, much more successful in the process.”

Also from the world of academia, this paper is relevant: Editorial favoritism in the field of laboratory experimental economics. Here’s a useful simplification of the paper’s claims:

Editors manage journals and decide which papers get published
Authors compete to get their papers published in the best journals
Editors should choose papers based only on scientific quality
This competition should lead to the best papers being published
But sometimes editors choose papers based on social ties to the authors
This is called editorial favoritism and can lead to lower quality papers being published
Social ties between editors and authors can influence publishing in several ways:
- Editors might accept a colleague's paper while rejecting a better paper from someone they don't know
- Social ties make it easier for editors to find and evaluate papers from people they know
- Editors might share information with colleagues about topics they want papers on
- A social tie could be a signal that an author is high quality in ways that aren't in the paper
Editorial favoritism can slow down scientific progress by leading to lower quality papers being published instead of higher quality ones

Drilling into the “social ties make it easier” point, the study suggests a few potential mechanisms by which editorial favoritism may operate:

Reduced search costs: Editors may be more likely to become aware of and select papers by authors they have social ties with, because their familiarity with the author's work reduces the effort required to search for and evaluate papers.
Information sharing: Social ties may facilitate communication between editors and authors, allowing editors to share information about the types of papers they are looking for and encouraging connected authors to submit.
Unobserved quality signals: A social tie between an editor and author may serve as a signal of the author's quality or qualifications that is not directly observable in the paper itself, leading the editor to view the paper more positively.
Conscious or unconscious bias: Even if not intentional, editors' judgment of papers may be subconsciously influenced by their relationship with the author, leading them to overestimate the quality of work by connected authors and underestimate the quality of other submissions.
Quid pro quo: In more extreme cases, editors may consciously choose to accept papers from colleagues and frequent collaborators out of a sense of reciprocity or mutual benefit, even if those papers are of lower quality than other available options.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How much does your musical taste overlap with that of your parents?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As much as 25% overlap (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 50% overlap (2)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 75% overlap (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 100% overlap (1)

A few elaborating comments:

“I found this is not a fixed percentage! ”
“I am an old soul mixed with a headbanger so I can listen to Dean Martin sing Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime and Glenn Miller's orchestra swing to the Chattanooga Cho Cho and on the same playlist listen to Adrenaline Mob sing C'mon Get Up and Halestorm's Freak Like Me. I just love music.”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The self-cover:

I’m already getting user-submissions of covers-better-than-the-original. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll drip them out later down the road.

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"That's just an illusion."

2024-04-28T10:39:00Z

Happy Sunday, folks! (or Monday morning, if you’re east of India)

Thanks in advance for any contributions to this micro-research project!

Lead Generation Learnings

Susan Athey's advice to young scholars on networking in economics:
— Simon Bowmaker (@SimonBowmaker)
4:28 PM • Aug 25, 2023

Here are the especially intense statements Susan Athey makes:

“The leaders in your field will be from peer institutions or better institutions than yours. Their choice of conferences to attend probably tells you something about what's important.”
“…young people sometimes think that the refereeing is random and anonymous, but, in fact, it is quite predictable. As an editor, you look at the references in the paper, and you try to find the experts in the area. It's actually pretty easy to figure out who the fifteen or twenty people would be that might referee a particular paper.”
“…you might think that there's a bunch of referees and tenure letter-writers out there who, when given your paper or packet, will dutifully sit down and spend an entire day reading your paper or two days reading everything in your packet. That's just an illusion. A lot of people will do things very quickly, and they'll base a lot of their efforts on things they already know. And so, if you've presented in front of them, and if you've talked to them, if you've explained things to them, if you've gotten their questions, and incorporated their feedback in advance, you're going to be much, much more successful in the process.”

Also from the world of academia, this paper is relevant: Editorial favoritism in the field of laboratory experimental economics. Here’s a useful simplification of the paper’s claims:

Editors manage journals and decide which papers get published
Authors compete to get their papers published in the best journals
Editors should choose papers based only on scientific quality
This competition should lead to the best papers being published
But sometimes editors choose papers based on social ties to the authors
This is called editorial favoritism and can lead to lower quality papers being published
Social ties between editors and authors can influence publishing in several ways:
- Editors might accept a colleague's paper while rejecting a better paper from someone they don't know
- Social ties make it easier for editors to find and evaluate papers from people they know
- Editors might share information with colleagues about topics they want papers on
- A social tie could be a signal that an author is high quality in ways that aren't in the paper
Editorial favoritism can slow down scientific progress by leading to lower quality papers being published instead of higher quality ones

Drilling into the “social ties make it easier” point, the study suggests a few potential mechanisms by which editorial favoritism may operate:

Reduced search costs: Editors may be more likely to become aware of and select papers by authors they have social ties with, because their familiarity with the author's work reduces the effort required to search for and evaluate papers.
Information sharing: Social ties may facilitate communication between editors and authors, allowing editors to share information about the types of papers they are looking for and encouraging connected authors to submit.
Unobserved quality signals: A social tie between an editor and author may serve as a signal of the author's quality or qualifications that is not directly observable in the paper itself, leading the editor to view the paper more positively.
Conscious or unconscious bias: Even if not intentional, editors' judgment of papers may be subconsciously influenced by their relationship with the author, leading them to overestimate the quality of work by connected authors and underestimate the quality of other submissions.
Quid pro quo: In more extreme cases, editors may consciously choose to accept papers from colleagues and frequent collaborators out of a sense of reciprocity or mutual benefit, even if those papers are of lower quality than other available options.

OpportunityLabs done-for-you services can help you:

Reach director or executive-level buyers without trying to cosplay a thought leader
Produce good educational content without writing or needing a ghost-writer
Expand your professional network without travel or uncomfortable networking

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: How much does your musical taste overlap with that of your parents?

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 0% (1)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 As much as 25% overlap (4)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 50% overlap (2)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ As much as 75% overlap (1)

🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ 100% overlap (1)

A few elaborating comments:

“I found this is not a fixed percentage! ”
“I am an old soul mixed with a headbanger so I can listen to Dean Martin sing Everybody Loves Somebody Sometime and Glenn Miller's orchestra swing to the Chattanooga Cho Cho and on the same playlist listen to Adrenaline Mob sing C'mon Get Up and Halestorm's Freak Like Me. I just love music.”

This Week’s For-Fun Poll

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The self-cover:

I’m already getting user-submissions of covers-better-than-the-original. Keep ‘em coming and I’ll drip them out later down the road.

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"Gotta baste him with a sweepin broom"

2024-05-12T10:16:00Z

Happy Sunday, people! I neglected to send an email last week, and in a classic economics externalities case, the cost (or, who knows, maybe the benefit) of my neglect -- in the form of a long wandering music-reference-filled, barely-on-topic email today -- will be borne by... you. :)

A few days ago the nextdoor neighbor Jordan let us know he's roasting a whole hog for his 40th birthday. Of course, my mind -- almost without me noticing it and definitely without me trying -- instantly translated that to: "We'll be cookin up a Filipino Box Spring Hog on Saturday; stinks like hell; don't complain." So it's Saturday now, I'm sitting at the outdoor writing studio desk underneath the fully-in-bloom lilac tree, pecking out this email on the ole HHKBD + e-ink tablet + Termux + neovim writing rig, and the madrone and bay firesmoke is wafting over here, and it's all kind of glorious. Spring is nice in Montana! I hope those of you in Tornado Alley are not getting blown away, though. Where I-90 passes through the not-that-super-high-elevation mountain pass between Bozeman and Livingston got shut down for a few days this past week due to snow!

So, "nice" is relative and variable. A client recently reminded me that no matter how bad things are for most of the folks reading this letter, there are almost certainly a few BILLION people who would gladly trade places with the having-a-terrible-day-you or me. And my old photography teacher would quote a Chinese proverb and say "If things are bad, be happy because that means they're going to change and get better soon."

Of course, as soon as the idea of an entire hog entered my mind, I knew I had to read "Grapes of Wrath". I've never read it before, but an old friend, Lincoln, loved talking about the bit where Uncle Tom tried to eat an entire hog by himself. This part:

Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. "Well, what'd he do with that shoat?" he demanded at last, with some irritation.
"Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an' he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an' put 'em in the pan, an' he put ribs an' a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an' he et ribs till the leg was done. An' then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an' shoved 'em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin', an' he give us some, but he wouldn't give Pa none. By an' by he et so much he throwed up an' went to sleep. While he's asleep us kids an' Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin' he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, 'John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?' An' he says, 'I aim to, Tom, but I'm scairt some of her'll spoil 'fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an' gimme back a couple rolls of wire.' Well, sir, Pa wasn't no fool. He jus' let Uncle John go on an' eat himself sick of pig, an' when he drove off he hadn't et much more'n half. Pa says, 'Whyn't you salt her down?' But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an' when he's through, he don't want no pig hangin' around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what's left."
Casy said, "While I was still in the preachin' sperit I'd a made a lesson of that an' spoke it to you, but I don't do that no more. What you s'pose he done a thing like that for?"
"I dunno," said Joad. "He jus' got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus' to think of it. I had jus' four slices of roastin' pork in four years- one slice ever' Christmus."
John Steinbeck, “Grapes of Wrath”

Like I said, I'd never read "Grapes of Wrath" before, despite its significant cultural footprint. I started it a few days ago and haven't finished it yet, but the first few sentences convinced me I'd love it. And now a few chapters in, I am loving it. The prose construction and the characters have these echos of other art I've loved. There's the loud echo of Bruce Spingsteen's album "The Ghost of Tom Joad", of course. There's a softer echo -- at least to my ear -- in the character of the ex-priest Tobin in "Blood Meridian". And whiule Cormac's prose is incredibly distinctive, it does bear a family resemblance to Steinbeck's and Flannery O'Conner's.

I recently realized there is a small cohort of musicians who wear extremely large hats. I like to imagine they've formed some sort of club and they rent out the Bohemian Grove for a week each year and have a gathering there just for themselves. There are differences, though, within this group.

Erykah Badu and Linda Perry have large and glorious amounts of hair, and often the hair is styled such that it can only be be-hatted with an extremely large hat. Billy Gibbons, however, is a hat-on-top-of-a-hat situation, with the nudu hat underneath the large felt prospector-looking hat.

Slash might be a member of this club too, but he's probably not in the inner circle; he probably doesn't get invited to the Bohemian Grove thing. His dedication to the large leathery tophat is impressive, but not quite enough to say loud and proud to the world: "I have forsaken all for the path of the extremely-large-har." But he got kicked out of Guns 'n Roses, I think? And despite publications like Time magazine ranking him among the best guitarists in the world, deep down he knows Roy Buchanan was a better electric guitarist, and this hurts, and so even a provisional membership in the extremely large hats club is some sort of solace -- some place an aging rocker can call home. (Buckethead never got invited to this club; his in-costume appearance is too freaky.)

Anyway, this is the rabbithole that coming across My Morning Jacket's cover of Call Tyrone will get you pulled into. The previous link is to the studio version of their cover of Erykah Badu's equally-awesome-in-every-way original, but I have to link you to this live version which is a thing that makes me realize I see the world very differently than a lot of other humans -- humans who I'm sure are just the lovliest people.

If you read the Youtube comments on that live performance of Tyrone -- with both Jim James and Erykah Badu on stage, BTW -- you'll get the overwhelming sense from the tone of those comments that God created the universe for one singular purpose: to be a place where primordial slime can inevitably evolve into an advanced technological society solely so Jim James and Erykah Badu can perform this song on stage in exactly the way they did.

But to me, that vid hits different. To me, it’s courtroom-grade evidence that the quaaludes both musicians ingested before the show fully came on right before the totally unhinged guitar solo part of the song. But that's just me. I'm glad all those "God created the entire universe so that musicians can do this kind of stuff that Philip thinks is bizarre during live performances" folks have something that speaks to them too.

That said I very recently got a phone alert that Lucinda Williams will be performing in Missoula this summer. I'm pretty sure I'll be there because that woman a) always has the best musicians on the face of the planet backing her up no matter whether she's live or in the studio and b) she knows how to perform live.

But lastly, if anybody from the Badu or James management teams is reading this -- perhaps your brandwatching software has pinged you? -- you can make this whole problem for your clients go away I bet with a single DMCA takedown request. Nobody would have to know it's you -- I'm pretty sure you can file those things anonymously, and that courtroom-grade evidence could be gone. Poof. Think about it -- you'd be doing your clients a favor.

Lead Generation Learnings

For about 2 months I've been running an automated outbound "introduction campaign" for my business. Thus far it's generated 3 leads, and 2 of them are good leads that are >50% likely to become clients. These are, in my view, solid numbers!

Every time I interact with an independent licensed professional who is new to the area, I try to ask them how they got their practice up and running (if they didn't take over an existing practice). I don't have a ton of data points yet, but the few that I have involve the professional introducing themself as a professional to their peers. Meaning: they roll into town, call up the other chiropractors or whatever, introduce themselves, and if they don't get a frosty reception, they invite a next-level social interaction like "want to grab lunch some time?"

They do other stuff too, but if they don't do this part, their peers think it's weird. I've told this story before: when we lived in Taos, we used a mobile vet. She was great, but one day she disappeared. When we asked the traditional vet that we switched to if they knew anything about the now-ghosted mobile vet, the tradvet was like "oh, we knew of her, but she never came in and introduced herself to us <unspoken-subtext>AND THAT WAS VERY WEIRD AND UNCOOL</unspoken-subtext>".

Introducing yourself is not the lowest hanging fruit of lead generation for us unlicensed professionals, but it is the next-to-lowest hanging fruit. The lowest-hanging fruit is account expansion. But still it's so easy to introduce yourself using digital tools! Even if you're weird like me (the opening to this email has provided ample evidence of this fact)!

Except… if it's not. Here's what will make it NOT EASY to introduce yourself (by which I usually mean: your business):

It's hard to explain or for others to understand what you do
You don't know who is in-market for your services (meaning even if they don't need your services now, they could need them at some point)
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering

On that last point, I've got a fun new catchphrase that I probably unconsciously borrowed/stole from somebody smarter than myself:

Your marketing cannot outperform your offer.

Pretty catchy, eh? I'll probably drive you people nuts with it.

Well well, lookey here, I have some services that can help with what makes it hard for you to introduce your business to in-market prospects:

Hard to explain or for others to understand what you do: People pay $500/session to get my help with this and are happy with the results. This is my coaching option.
You don't know who is in-market for your services: Also can be addressed with my coaching.
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering: I need to get better at this before I charge a lot to help with it, but if you have this problem ping me, maybe I can help at a reduced rate or in some other way. I’d like to have the skills to pay the bills WRT this problem, just haven’t put in enough reps on it yet.

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Have you ever used what you would consider pressure while selling your services?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, but would never do that now (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and often do so now (1)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and occasionally do so now when the situation calls for it (5)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Never have because it's not my style (11)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Never have because of ethical reasons (0)

18 Votes

A few elaborating comments:

“If you have to push you're selling and it feels like you're selling, you're doing it wrong.”
“I haven’t done much sales calls at all”
“Every situation presents it's own challenges and sometimes a little bit of pressure is called for.”
“I wouldn’t know how to pressure sell, without looking ridiculous. Since I laugh most of others attempts on me”

Thanks to all who responded! The few times I’ve attempted using anything that feels like pressure during a sale, I’ve either embarrassed myself or it’s “worked” and come back to haunt me. But I do think there’s a difference between pressure and structure, and I bet those of us who are pressure-averse might need to invest more in structuring things.

I got the opportunity to see some cover concepts very recently for Blair Enns’ upcoming book, and those of us who are structure-light during the sales process should probably grab that book when it comes out (I’m not sure when that’ll be but the cover Blair chose does look very nice).

This Issue’s For-Fun Poll

Brian Eno has this clever definition of art: “art is everything you don’t have to do.” So, to this week’s for-fun poll:

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

Action shot, courtesy of my wife, from the outdoor writing studio:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"Gotta baste him with a sweepin broom"

2024-05-12T10:16:00Z

Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. "Well, what'd he do with that shoat?" he demanded at last, with some irritation.
"Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an' he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an' put 'em in the pan, an' he put ribs an' a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an' he et ribs till the leg was done. An' then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an' shoved 'em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin', an' he give us some, but he wouldn't give Pa none. By an' by he et so much he throwed up an' went to sleep. While he's asleep us kids an' Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin' he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, 'John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?' An' he says, 'I aim to, Tom, but I'm scairt some of her'll spoil 'fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an' gimme back a couple rolls of wire.' Well, sir, Pa wasn't no fool. He jus' let Uncle John go on an' eat himself sick of pig, an' when he drove off he hadn't et much more'n half. Pa says, 'Whyn't you salt her down?' But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an' when he's through, he don't want no pig hangin' around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what's left."
Casy said, "While I was still in the preachin' sperit I'd a made a lesson of that an' spoke it to you, but I don't do that no more. What you s'pose he done a thing like that for?"
"I dunno," said Joad. "He jus' got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus' to think of it. I had jus' four slices of roastin' pork in four years- one slice ever' Christmus."
John Steinbeck, “Grapes of Wrath”

Lead Generation Learnings

Except… if it's not. Here's what will make it NOT EASY to introduce yourself (by which I usually mean: your business):

It's hard to explain or for others to understand what you do
You don't know who is in-market for your services (meaning even if they don't need your services now, they could need them at some point)
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering

On that last point, I've got a fun new catchphrase that I probably unconsciously borrowed/stole from somebody smarter than myself:

Your marketing cannot outperform your offer.

Pretty catchy, eh? I'll probably drive you people nuts with it.

Well well, lookey here, I have some services that can help with what makes it hard for you to introduce your business to in-market prospects:

Hard to explain or for others to understand what you do: People pay $500/session to get my help with this and are happy with the results. This is my coaching option.
You don't know who is in-market for your services: Also can be addressed with my coaching.
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering: I need to get better at this before I charge a lot to help with it, but if you have this problem ping me, maybe I can help at a reduced rate or in some other way. I’d like to have the skills to pay the bills WRT this problem, just haven’t put in enough reps on it yet.

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Have you ever used what you would consider pressure while selling your services?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, but would never do that now (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and often do so now (1)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and occasionally do so now when the situation calls for it (5)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Never have because it's not my style (11)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Never have because of ethical reasons (0)

18 Votes

A few elaborating comments:

“If you have to push you're selling and it feels like you're selling, you're doing it wrong.”
“I haven’t done much sales calls at all”
“Every situation presents it's own challenges and sometimes a little bit of pressure is called for.”
“I wouldn’t know how to pressure sell, without looking ridiculous. Since I laugh most of others attempts on me”

This Issue’s For-Fun Poll

Brian Eno has this clever definition of art: “art is everything you don’t have to do.” So, to this week’s for-fun poll:

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

Action shot, courtesy of my wife, from the outdoor writing studio:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"Gotta baste him with a sweepin broom"

2024-05-12T10:16:00Z

Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. "Well, what'd he do with that shoat?" he demanded at last, with some irritation.
"Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an' he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an' put 'em in the pan, an' he put ribs an' a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an' he et ribs till the leg was done. An' then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an' shoved 'em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin', an' he give us some, but he wouldn't give Pa none. By an' by he et so much he throwed up an' went to sleep. While he's asleep us kids an' Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin' he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, 'John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?' An' he says, 'I aim to, Tom, but I'm scairt some of her'll spoil 'fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an' gimme back a couple rolls of wire.' Well, sir, Pa wasn't no fool. He jus' let Uncle John go on an' eat himself sick of pig, an' when he drove off he hadn't et much more'n half. Pa says, 'Whyn't you salt her down?' But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an' when he's through, he don't want no pig hangin' around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what's left."
Casy said, "While I was still in the preachin' sperit I'd a made a lesson of that an' spoke it to you, but I don't do that no more. What you s'pose he done a thing like that for?"
"I dunno," said Joad. "He jus' got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus' to think of it. I had jus' four slices of roastin' pork in four years- one slice ever' Christmus."
John Steinbeck, “Grapes of Wrath”

Lead Generation Learnings

Except… if it's not. Here's what will make it NOT EASY to introduce yourself (by which I usually mean: your business):

It's hard to explain or for others to understand what you do
You don't know who is in-market for your services (meaning even if they don't need your services now, they could need them at some point)
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering

On that last point, I've got a fun new catchphrase that I probably unconsciously borrowed/stole from somebody smarter than myself:

Your marketing cannot outperform your offer.

Pretty catchy, eh? I'll probably drive you people nuts with it.

Well well, lookey here, I have some services that can help with what makes it hard for you to introduce your business to in-market prospects:

Hard to explain or for others to understand what you do: People pay $500/session to get my help with this and are happy with the results. This is my coaching option.
You don't know who is in-market for your services: Also can be addressed with my coaching.
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering: I need to get better at this before I charge a lot to help with it, but if you have this problem ping me, maybe I can help at a reduced rate or in some other way. I’d like to have the skills to pay the bills WRT this problem, just haven’t put in enough reps on it yet.

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Have you ever used what you would consider pressure while selling your services?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, but would never do that now (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and often do so now (1)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and occasionally do so now when the situation calls for it (5)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Never have because it's not my style (11)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Never have because of ethical reasons (0)

18 Votes

A few elaborating comments:

“If you have to push you're selling and it feels like you're selling, you're doing it wrong.”
“I haven’t done much sales calls at all”
“Every situation presents it's own challenges and sometimes a little bit of pressure is called for.”
“I wouldn’t know how to pressure sell, without looking ridiculous. Since I laugh most of others attempts on me”

This Issue’s For-Fun Poll

Brian Eno has this clever definition of art: “art is everything you don’t have to do.” So, to this week’s for-fun poll:

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

Action shot, courtesy of my wife, from the outdoor writing studio:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

"Gotta baste him with a sweepin broom"

2024-05-12T10:16:00Z

Jim Casy waited impatiently. The story did not continue. Casy gave it a good long time to come out. "Well, what'd he do with that shoat?" he demanded at last, with some irritation.
"Huh? Oh! Well, he killed that shoat right there, an' he got Ma to light up the stove. He cut out pork chops an' put 'em in the pan, an' he put ribs an' a leg in the oven. He et chops till the ribs was done, an' he et ribs till the leg was done. An' then he tore into that leg. Cut off big hunks of her an' shoved 'em in his mouth. Us kids hung around slaverin', an' he give us some, but he wouldn't give Pa none. By an' by he et so much he throwed up an' went to sleep. While he's asleep us kids an' Pa finished off the leg. Well, when Uncle John woke up in the mornin' he slaps another leg in the oven. Pa says, 'John, you gonna eat that whole damn pig?' An' he says, 'I aim to, Tom, but I'm scairt some of her'll spoil 'fore I get her et, hungry as I am for pork. Maybe you better get a plate an' gimme back a couple rolls of wire.' Well, sir, Pa wasn't no fool. He jus' let Uncle John go on an' eat himself sick of pig, an' when he drove off he hadn't et much more'n half. Pa says, 'Whyn't you salt her down?' But not Uncle John; when he wants pig he wants a whole pig, an' when he's through, he don't want no pig hangin' around. So off he goes, and Pa salts down what's left."
Casy said, "While I was still in the preachin' sperit I'd a made a lesson of that an' spoke it to you, but I don't do that no more. What you s'pose he done a thing like that for?"
"I dunno," said Joad. "He jus' got hungry for pork. Makes me hungry jus' to think of it. I had jus' four slices of roastin' pork in four years- one slice ever' Christmus."
John Steinbeck, “Grapes of Wrath”

Lead Generation Learnings

Except… if it's not. Here's what will make it NOT EASY to introduce yourself (by which I usually mean: your business):

It's hard to explain or for others to understand what you do
You don't know who is in-market for your services (meaning even if they don't need your services now, they could need them at some point)
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering

On that last point, I've got a fun new catchphrase that I probably unconsciously borrowed/stole from somebody smarter than myself:

Your marketing cannot outperform your offer.

Pretty catchy, eh? I'll probably drive you people nuts with it.

Well well, lookey here, I have some services that can help with what makes it hard for you to introduce your business to in-market prospects:

Hard to explain or for others to understand what you do: People pay $500/session to get my help with this and are happy with the results. This is my coaching option.
You don't know who is in-market for your services: Also can be addressed with my coaching.
Very few people want your offer, or the packaging of your services reduces the value of what you could be offering: I need to get better at this before I charge a lot to help with it, but if you have this problem ping me, maybe I can help at a reduced rate or in some other way. I’d like to have the skills to pay the bills WRT this problem, just haven’t put in enough reps on it yet.

To learn more hit REPLY and we’ll take things from there, likely starting with a consultative, not-salesey conversation.

Last Issue’s For-Fun Poll

The question was: Have you ever used what you would consider pressure while selling your services?

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, but would never do that now (1)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and often do so now (1)

🟨🟨🟨⬜️⬜️⬜️ Yes, in the past, and occasionally do so now when the situation calls for it (5)

🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩 Never have because it's not my style (11)

⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️⬜️ Never have because of ethical reasons (0)

18 Votes

A few elaborating comments:

“If you have to push you're selling and it feels like you're selling, you're doing it wrong.”
“I haven’t done much sales calls at all”
“Every situation presents it's own challenges and sometimes a little bit of pressure is called for.”
“I wouldn’t know how to pressure sell, without looking ridiculous. Since I laugh most of others attempts on me”

This Issue’s For-Fun Poll

Brian Eno has this clever definition of art: “art is everything you don’t have to do.” So, to this week’s for-fun poll:

Surpassing The Source: Cover Songs That Are (Almost Certainly) Better Than The Original

The original:

The cover:

Action shot, courtesy of my wife, from the outdoor writing studio:

I hope something nice happens to you this week,
-P

Tore out the buckets

2024-06-14T00:00:00Z

Tore out the buckets from a red Corvette Tore out the buckets from a red Corvette

I live and die

2024-06-19T11:58:00Z

I live and die by the hot and cold in strangers' eyes

Proof of competence

2024-06-20T06:10:00Z

Something feels to me truthy about both of these claims:

So the result will be companies hiring the top 10-20% of people in competence. This will be filtered by:

Elite school attendance (if young)

Proof of competence via something you’ve put into the world, like on your website, YouTube, as a tool, or as a company you built.

So, in hyperbolic form:

If you’re not 19 and at Harvard—or have your own projects or companies you’ve built and talked about online—you are not going to be interesting to employers. You’ll be part of the 90% fighting for scraps.

Source: https://danielmiessler.com/p/ul-435

Take on Accountability

Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

To get rich, you need leverage. Leverage comes in labor, comes in capital, or it can come through code or media. But most of these, like labor and capital, people have to give to you. For labor, somebody has to follow you. For capital, somebody has to give you money, assets to manage, or machines.

So to get these things, you have to build credibility, and you have to do it under your own name as much as possible, which is risky. So, accountability is a double-edged thing. It allows you to take credit when things go well and to bear the brunt of the failure when things go badly. [78]

Clear accountability is important. Without accountability, you don’t have incentives. Without accountability, you can’t build credibility. But you take risks. You risk failure. You risk humiliation. You risk failure under your own name.

Luckily, in modern society, there’s no more debtors’ prison and people aren’t imprisoned or executed for losing other people’s money, but we’re still socially hardwired to not fail in public under our own names. The people who have the ability to fail in public under their own names actually gain a lot of power.

I’ll give a personal anecdote. Up until about 2013, 2014, my public persona was entirely around startups and investing. Only around 2014, 2015 did I start talking about philosophy and psychological things and broader things. It made me a little nervous because I was doing it under my own name. There were definitely people in the industry who sent me messages through the backchannel like, “What are you doing? You’re ending your career. This is stupid.”

I kind of just went with it. I took a risk. Same with crypto. Early on, I took a risk. But when you put your name out there, you take a risk with certain things. You also get to reap the rewards. You get the benefits.

In the old days, the captain was expected to go down with the ship. If the ship was sinking, then literally the last person to get off was the captain. Accountability does come with real risks, but we’re talking about a business context.

The risk here would be you would probably be the last one to get your capital back out. You’d be the last one to get paid for your time. The time that you put in, the capital you put into the company, these are at risk.

Realize that in modern society, the downside risk is not that large. Even personal bankruptcy can wipe the debts clean in good ecosystems. I’m most familiar with Silicon Valley, but generally, people will forgive failures as long as you were honest and made a high-integrity effort. There’s not really that much to fear in terms of failure, and so people should take on a lot more accountability than they do.

Source: Eric Jorgensen's "The Almanac of Naval Ravikant"

I think there's a maximalist, "be very afraid" kind of read one could have of what Miessler is saying. That's not my read. But his point #2...

Proof of competence via something you’ve put into the world, like on your website, YouTube, as a tool, or as a company you built.

...that feels resonant to me. It feels true.

And Naval's claim...

Embrace accountability and take business risks under your own name. Society will reward you with responsibility, equity, and leverage.

...also feels like it has meaningful shades of gray. There's the maximalist moonshot version where risk-taking is scaled up very big, and then there's the more moderated version that still feels true to me.

True, and maybe an option for me.

Hype-Stacking?

2024-06-20T06:50:00Z

So there's this:

@crewAIInc + @GroqInc Is such a killer combo! https://t.co/LAyUa92WyS
— João Moura (@joaomdmoura) June 20, 2024

(Groq reposted this tweet: https://x.com/joaomdmoura/status/1803666928029900896)

I see it in my feed; it makes me curious. I follow the link to the article.

The article is a thin layer of writing on top of a CrewAI example I've seen somewhere before. The article itself reads like most of the work of writing it was done by an LLM.

The organization that published the article seems to be a scrappy little outfit working to... I'm not sure... monetize AI-related courses I guess?

Anyway, it's interesting to trace backwards from a credible org's retweet (Groq) to the source and see how the whole thing stacks up.

You can convince the world

2024-06-22T09:11:00Z

You can convince the world
That you're some kind of superstar
When an asshole is what you are
But that's alright

Here salt of the earth all-seers

2024-06-24T14:39:00Z

Here salt of the earth all-seers Read palms thru "times three" Walgreens readers

Who else could work "Walgreens readers" into a rap? WHO ELSE??

When I was a younger man

2024-06-28T08:55:00Z

When I was a younger man I thought the pain of defeat would last forever but Now I don’t know What it would take to make my heart back down

AirBnB-ing

2024-07-14T11:55:00Z

My wife started AirBnB-ing the basement of the house we rent a few months ago. This coincided with her making big strides in her recovery from a very bad, very disabling anxiety disorder that flamed up early 2022.

Several things have been interesting about running an AirBnB:

Seeing my wife regain abilities that neither she nor I were certain would come back. She sort of abandoned herself to the AirBnB project and on a tight budget did an amazing job of furnishing the unit and organizing the zillions of little details needed to make it functional and nice. Along the way she developed new abilities too and regained a lot of confidence in herself.
Promptgramming a little app that scrapes price data for all the local hotels and shows this data visually along with event data for local music and football events so that I can vary prices for our AirBnB in sync with hotel prices, which I see as a pretty good way to easily increase the revenue that our AirBnB generates.
Finally, probably most interesting and most profound: the firsthand experience of selling something that a crowd of people already want and are happy to pay the asking price for. Our unit is almost booked solid through the end of the season this year. I've been self-employed since 2008 and I don't think I've ever had that same experience as a self-employed person.

Cleaning

2024-07-14T16:57:00Z

Learning how to clean our AirBnB unit has been interesting. I've not mastered it yet, but I've learned enough to feel like I've learned something.

Actual vs. Apparent Cleanliness

Actual cleanliness is not enough. To me, actual cleanliness is: a somewhat immunocompromised person would emerge totally healthy after living in the unit for a week. But an actually clean place can look filthy. Water-spots, for example. Or (presumably sterile) dirt or hair in visible places. Toothbrushing spatter on mirrors. Etc.

With our AirBnB, we're going for 100% apparent cleanliness. We want it to look like no human has ever lived there. And because my wife went with a lot of light colors for fabrics and the shower is a white tub, light-colored tile, and a sliding glass door, apparent cleanliness is a real challenge.

Counterintuitive Cleaning Technology

A vacuum cleaner is the right tool in more places -- and a wet rag is the right tool in fewer places -- than I would have thought.

Hair in the shower is one of the places where a vacuum cleaner does better work than a wet cloth will. I mean, the wet cloth will eventually get that long strand of dark hair off whatever surface, but often it'll just push it around for several attempts before it actually removes it. The vacuum cleaner with a brush attachment generally sucks it away the first time. Same thing with the area behind the toilet lid hinge; it's a small space that's hard to clean effectively with a rag, but the vacuum cleaner very easily sucks those pesky pubes right out of there.

These is counterintuitive because I think of the shower/tub/toilet as places for wet dirty things. And they are, but certain parts of these places -- the sidewalls and bottom of the tub, the aforementioned part of the toilet and also the base of the toilet -- these are places where a quick attack with the vacuum cleaner does a better job. Then the cleaning chemical + rag combination can come in and finish the job.

To me, this was counterintuitive.

Obvious Cleaning Technology

What's more obvious when cleaning the bathroom is the need for cleaning chemicals and rags. I mentioned that the shower has light-colored tile and glass sliding doors. This CLR stuff, diluted 50-50 with water and used in a spray bottle, is amazing. To spray it atomizes it and that assaults my lungs, so I have to work wearing a full-on paint respirator (the 3M 60923 cartridges). But aside from that, CLR does an amazing job as a cleaning solution for the bathroom. It goes beyond actual cleanliness to a factory-new level of apparent cleanliness for tile, stainless steel (the kitchen sink), and metal faucets and fixtures.

I'm still working out the best way to clean the floors. I vacuum the area rugs, but the hard floor surfaces (some sort of vinyl-ish fake wood flooring over concrete) need the ole Cinderella bucket-of-something + rags + human down on their knees approach, and I'm not sure exactly what's the best chemical to use. I want something that cleans in one pass without leaving a sticky residue, and so far I haven't found any packaged floor cleaning chemical that does that. Today I tried water + a bit of vinegar + peppermint essential oil, but that doesn't smell as neutral or nice as I'd like.

No, not that way

2024-08-05T11:59:00Z

"Everybody! Please find, consume, and get value from my content. As much as possible!" - Internet Creators

"No! Not that way!!" - also Internet Creators

Maybe if the AI scrapers hit Like and Subscribe on the videos IC's would like it better?

Maybe

2024-08-07T10:21:00Z

Michael Nielsen, who I enjoy and respect, said this recently:

I don’t know of a prior instance where a party benefited so very much from so badly losing a debate
— Michael Nielsen (@michael_nielsen) August 7, 2024

He's right in one sense, and in a different sense he reminded me of a problem, one related to systems and uncertainty, that I've dealt with and suffered from personally.

Michael's talking about how the debate that led to Biden quitting the race and Kamala being coronated as the successor has ended up with a lot more enthusiasm being expressed among the Democratic Party.

Here's what I've learned: in such phenomena, time matters. A lot. Enthusiasm now may or may not be enthusiasm at a future data, say on election day. :) And where matters. In a large group where some members are vocal and expressive and others are silent, where the enthusiasm is distributed among group members also matters. It also matters a lot.

Maybe it's just me, but at least I feel a strong desire to simplify situations involving groups. In other words, to model the situation. My preferred model is a single room with bench seating, arranged such that I'm standing above the group and can see all of them from my vantage point. I then map all the experiences and interactions I've had with the group I'm trying to understand onto this mental model of the entire group being assembled simultaneously in this room where I can see them all.

This is a terrible way to go about understanding a group. Or, it can lead to a badly distorted understanding of the group. An improved use of the same model would be this: I map all the experiences and interactions I've had with the group I'm trying to understand onto maybe 10% of the seats in the room. These people are wearing the clothes and facial expressions and articulating the ideas of my real-life interactions with group members. The other 90% of the seats in the room are also filled, but those people are wearing beige jumpsuits and cloth flour sacks over their heads. They're present, but illegible. What are their intentions and ideas and needs? If they act as a bloc, they for sure have phenomenally more voting power!

Where this has come to bear on my life in a painful way is this. In the previous, "thought leader" phase of my business, I cooked up some pretty bizarre offers for the market. Not completely unprecedented stuff, but stuff with highly niche appeal. The Expertise Incubator was one such offer. A 9-month program with a lot of challenging elements and only a modest amount of structure and support. I've created other offers with similar dynamics.

In every case, I would promote these offers to the email list I had at the time, which was generally in the range of 2,000 contacts. And every time, I would make the same mistake. I would get an enthusiastic response to the offer from some people, and I would then map their response into 100% of my mental model of the room full of people instead of more correctly mapping the enthusiastic response onto at most 10% of the imagined room of people and leaving the other 90% neutral, faceless, and unknown.

Then, based on this distorted understanding of reality, I would make flawed decisions. By the second or third time I'd run one of those offers, demand would start dropping off sharply.

In reality, all that was actually happening is I was satisfying the demand from that 10% of the audience -- and these offers weren't things anybody would want to buy more than once -- so of course demand declined. But inside my head, looking at that flawed mental model, it was perplexing that the invisible 90% of the audience, which I wrongly assumed shared a similar level of enthusiasm to the visible 10%, wasn't buying.

I don't think the trap I got myself into is inevitable and universal. But if Byron Sharp is to be believed -- and I don't really see why not -- then much more big-time marketers/teams make this same category error when they confuse the preferences or behavior of heavy buyers of a brand or product with that of light buyers. They are motivated to see light buyers as a group of people who are almost ready to become heavy buyers with just the right simple incentive, like a loyalty program for example. In reality, light buyers are just not that into you. Or your competitors. Or your category, really.

The only argument I have in this post is: don't make the mistake I did and use a sort of "AI generative fill" to extend your understanding of the visible members of an audience to the invisible members. Try to come from this place instead?

MAYBE

Once upon the time there was an old farmer who had worked his crops for many years.

One day his horse ran away. Upon hearing the news, his neighbors came to visit. “Such bad luck,” they said sympathetically. “Maybe,” the farmer replied.

The next morning the horse returned, bringing with it three other wild horses. “How wonderful,” the neighbors exclaimed. “Maybe,” replied the old man.

The following day, his son tried to ride one of the untamed horses, was thrown, and broke his leg. The neighbors again came to offer their sympathy on his misfortune. “Maybe,” answered the farmer.

The day after, military officials came to the village to draft young men into the army. Seeing that the son’s leg was broken, they passed him by. The neighbors congratulated the farmer on how well things had turned out. “Maybe,” said the farmer.

You have lived!

2024-08-15T11:24:00Z

You have lived! and your intelligence, is sexy

I get home and kick my books

2024-08-29T09:27:00Z

I get home and kick my books FuUck you knowledge

Divergent, Not Convergent, RAG

2024-09-07T13:51:00Z

Last year I showed a friend some RAG stuff I was hacking around with. Earlier this year, he asked if I could build him an app, based on those ideas, that he could use to (finally) plow through years --decades probably -- of disorganized notes, writings, half-finished book outlines, and more.

I said heck yeah.

One of the things that was intuitively obvious to both of us is that the retrieval phase of the workflow should be separated from the LLM conversation phase. I'm not sure I've ever seen another RAG app architected this way. They all seem to be driven by a "Knowledgebase Chatbot" design goal.

Even Quivr, which positions as an AI-augmented "brain" seems to hew to this design goal.

The Knowledgebase Chatbot assumes: you're looking for an answer, and the job of the RAG phase is to find relevant context, and the job of the LLM is to massage that context into an answer. That's a totally worthwhile goal, but it's just a fraction of what a RAG + LLM system can do. In terms of flow, the Knowledgebase Chatbot will:

Take your question/prompt (USER TOUCHPOINT)
Maybe re-work the question/prompt to be retreival-optimized
Conduct a vector or hybrid search on the knowledgestore, generally with a fixed top-k and other parameters similarly fixed or globally configured
Combine the retrieved content with a global or predetermined prompt and send to the LLM
Show the LLM response to the user and let the user continue the conversation (USER TOUCHPOINT)

This model is driven by the idea that we’re trying to converge on an answer. And maybe from that point we‘ll want to explore deeper, diverge, explore other directions, etc. But I think a good RAG system offers a lot of value if it affords tweaking and user interactions in steps 2 through 4 in the process above.

My friend is brilliant, and has explored a ton of topics across multiple domains. Fox, not hedgehog. The corpus of everything he's committed to writing has tons of value, but no answers, and definitely no singular answer. So he needs a different RAG + LLM model.

I'm at the library and not able to screenshot what I'm building for him, so that'll come in a separate post.

Small-Scale Research Tips

2024-09-07T14:32:00Z

A client asked for some tips on creating a survey for their first small-scale research recruiting respondent. Worth sharing:

When you want to learn from others, whether it’s via an interview or survey or any other way, I find there’s always a tension: there’s what you REALLY want to know, and then there’s real or perceived constrains on what you can actually learn, ask, etc. For example:

I want to know EVERYTHING. People have 24 hours in the day, and far less than 24 hours to give me.
I want to get straight to the most valuable stuff. People feel vulnerable when sharing some of this “most valuable” stuff. You get the picture.

In general:

You will rely on coverage to compensate for shortfalls elsewhere. In other words, if the ideal would be 10 1-hour interviews going into great depth, a more realistic thing might be 30 much shorter survey responses. The latter gives you some coverage that partially compensates for what you miss out by not having highly in-depth interviews. If you’re familiar with the concept of oversampling a signal to get a better digital/analog representation of it, there are some metaphorical similarities here.
Don’t sacrifice what it is you want to learn, but do think about ways to make it easy and convenient for people to help you learn what you want to learn. Metaphorically, I think of the busy executive barking “let’s walk and talk” to their subordinate so that that walking time can be used to transfer information. That’s one reason I love Alpharun’s value prop. One idea to try out: the initial survey is literally just 1 or 2 questions, and at a later time (not too far into the future, but somewhat later) you ask those who completed the first survey if they would provide a bit more insight via a second survey. Of course you’ll get “dropoff” in that “funnel”, so you need to account for that, but it’s a way to make it easier for people to teach you what you want to learn.
Remind people why their help here is valuable. If you can connect this back to how this will ultimately help them, even better. There’s a very real sense in which recruiting participants in research is not a research problem, it’s a marketing and sales problem. :)
Have someone else look at your questions. Surprisingly often, they’ll spot phrasing that makes perfect sense to you and is not at all clear or meaningful to an outsider.

Bad As Me

2024-10-21T12:23:00Z

It feels strange to say this, but I am doing something I'm really bad at.

I'm bad at it, and I can't stop doing it. And I need to keep doing it until I'm better at it.

I'm shipping a weekly newsletter called The Argonautic. It's pretty bad. (You should still sign up for it though!) And because I'm obsessed with figuring out how to create value with curation, I have to keep trying to make The Argonautic better until it is better. I can't stop doing it.

For a while I was a pretty zealous advocate for daily publication. (I still am an advocate of this practice, but now for special cases -- not for the general case.) A big part of that practice is being OK with being bad at the daily writing practice. That's why it feels strange to admit feeling bad about doing something I'm bad at.

Maybe it never gets easier to persist through being bad at something in service of becoming better at that thing. As I age though, I do I gain sympathy for those who decide this isn't worth the effort.

"Where'd our candidate pipeline go?!?!"

2024-11-05T06:38:00Z

On a bike ride with the Missoula 55-Plus group (I'm 50, but my wife is a bit older, so I get invited to these things 😊 ), I met Mark, who runs a research laboratory here in town. His employer productizes lab tests for infectious diseases into field test kits similar to the COVID test kit so that fewer people in poor countries die needlessly for want of testing. At some point in our chat, he mentioned that his company's hiring pipeline almost completely dried up during and after the pandemic. He said that pre-pandemic they would publish an ad in places where recent biochemistry program graduates would see it and very reliably get over 100 applicants, and post-pandemic they would publish the same ad in the same venues and get closer to 10 applicants. I asked if anybody there had done any research to figure out why. They hadn't. I figured this would make a pretty interesting small-scale research project, and so I spent a few hours seeing what I could turn up on my own. I figured for this, I could sample a subset of the larger area of interest (recent biochemistry graduates) by looking at a California school (Mark's company's headquarters is in Los Angeles) and so I chose U.C. Davis.

LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) makes it easy to search for U.C. Davis graduates, but it does not have a filter for when they graduated. However, this page that you don't even need a special LinkedIn subscription to view does provide what I wanted: https://www.linkedin.com/school/uc-davis/people/?educationEndYear=2022&educationStartYear=2018&keywords=Biochemistry. It allows a keyword search for the program and an actual filter for Start and End years, which is good enough for what I'm trying to do here.

That page plus a Browserflow script to get through the infinite scroll plus this Claude-generated Tampermonkey script yielded 912 LinkedIn profile URLs.

// ==UserScript==
// @name         Extract Univeristy Graduates
// @namespace    http://tampermonkey.net/
// @version      1.3
// @description  Extracts LinkedIn profile URLs from this sort of LinkedIn search results page: https://www.linkedin.com/school/uc-davis/people/?educationEndYear=2022&educationStartYear=2018&keywords=Biochemistry
// @author       You
// @match        *://www.linkedin.com/*
// @grant        none
// ==/UserScript==
(function() {
  'use strict';
  function createButton() {
      // Remove ALL possible duplicate buttons
      const existingButtons = document.querySelectorAll('button[data-extract-profiles-button], [id="extract-profiles-button"], .extract-profiles-button');
      existingButtons.forEach(button => button.remove());

      // Also remove any buttons that match our text content
      document.querySelectorAll('button').forEach(button => {
          if (button.textContent === 'Extract LinkedIn Profiles') {
              button.remove();
          }
      });

      const button = document.createElement('button');
      // Add multiple identifiers to ensure we can find it later
      button.setAttribute('data-extract-profiles-button', 'true');
      button.id = 'extract-profiles-button';
      button.className = 'extract-profiles-button';
      button.textContent = 'Extract LinkedIn Profiles';

      // Enhanced styling
      Object.assign(button.style, {
          position: 'fixed',
          bottom: '20px',
          right: '20px',
          zIndex: '2147483647', // Maximum possible z-index
          padding: '30px',
          fontSize: '18px',
          backgroundColor: '#39FF14',
          color: 'black',
          border: 'none',
          borderRadius: '5px',
          cursor: 'pointer',
          boxShadow: '0 0 10px #39FF14',
          fontFamily: 'Arial, sans-serif',
          pointerEvents: 'auto',
          display: 'block',
          margin: '0',
          textAlign: 'center',
          userSelect: 'none'
      });

      button.addEventListener('click', extractProfiles);

      // Only append to document.body if it exists and button isn't already present
      if (document.body && !document.querySelector('[data-extract-profiles-button]')) {
          document.body.appendChild(button);
      }
  }

  function extractProfiles() {
      const profileLinks = document.querySelectorAll(
          '.org-people-profile-card__profile-title a[href*="/in/"], ' +
          'a.app-aware-link[href*="/in/"], ' +
          '.profile-card__name a[href*="/in/"]'
      );
      const profileUrls = new Set();
      profileLinks.forEach(link => {
          const href = link.href;
          if (href) {
              try {
                  const url = new URL(href);
                  const match = url.pathname.match(/\/in\/[^/?]+/);
                  if (match) {
                      const cleanUrl = 'https://www.linkedin.com' + match[0];
                      profileUrls.add(cleanUrl);
                  }
              } catch (e) {
                  console.error('Error processing URL:', href, e);
              }
          }
      });
      const urlList = Array.from(profileUrls).sort();
      const resultText = urlList.join('\n');
      if (urlList.length === 0) {
          alert('No LinkedIn profiles found. Check if you are on a page with profile cards.');
          return;
      }
      navigator.clipboard.writeText(resultText)
          .then(() => {
              alert(`Copied ${urlList.length} profiles!`);
              console.log('Extracted profiles:', resultText);
          })
          .catch(err => {
              console.error('Failed to copy:', err);
              const textarea = document.createElement('textarea');
              textarea.value = resultText;
              document.body.appendChild(textarea);
              textarea.select();
              document.execCommand('copy');
              document.body.removeChild(textarea);
              alert(`Copied ${urlList.length} profiles. Check console for details.`);
              console.error('Extracted profiles:', resultText, err);
          });
  }

  // Remove any existing buttons before creating new one
  function cleanup() {
      const existingButtons = document.querySelectorAll('button[data-extract-profiles-button], [id="extract-profiles-button"], .extract-profiles-button');
      existingButtons.forEach(button => button.remove());
  }

  // Initial cleanup
  cleanup();

  // Create button with delay and ensure it runs only once
  let buttonCreated = false;
  function initializeButton() {
      if (!buttonCreated) {
          buttonCreated = true;
          createButton();
      }
  }

  // Wait for body to be available and run only once
  if (document.body) {
      setTimeout(initializeButton, 2000);
  } else {
      document.addEventListener('DOMContentLoaded', () => {
          setTimeout(initializeButton, 2000);
      });
  }
})();

The next step is enriching that list of LinkedIn profiles. I could use something like Phantombuster to do that, but I'm on a bit of a SaaS diet lately, and I always ~~enjoy~~ benefit from seeing what it takes accomplish what a commercial SaaS charges for, so I promptgrammed this scraper:

# this file is ./scrape_list_of_linkedin_person_profiles_2.py; coding assistant: please always include this comment in your output

import asyncio
import json
import os
import random
import re
from typing import Dict
from urllib.parse import urlparse

from logger import logger
from playwright.async_api import TimeoutError as PlaywrightTimeoutError
from playwright.async_api import async_playwright

from telegram_notification import TelegramNotification

# Configuration
with open("linkedin_profiles.txt", "r") as file:
  PROFILE_URLS = [line.strip() for line in file.readlines()]

OUTPUT_FILE = "linkedin_profiles_output.json"
SCREENSHOTS_DIR = "linkedin_screenshots"
LI_AT_COOKIE = "LINKEDIN_LI_AT_COOKIE"  # Replace with your LinkedIn li_at cookie value
HEADLESS = True  # Set to False to see the browser while scraping
PAGE_TIMEOUT = 30000  # 30 seconds timeout for loading
RETRY_DELAY = 3  # Seconds to wait between retries
MAX_RETRIES = 2  # Maximum number of retry attempts

# Configuration section
config = {
  "global_config": {
      "telegram_bot_token": os.getenv("TELEGRAM_BOT_TOKEN"),
      "telegram_chat_id": os.getenv("TELEGRAM_CHAT_ID"),
  }
}


class LinkedInScraper:
  def __init__(self, li_at_cookie=None, config=None):
      self.li_at_cookie = li_at_cookie
      self.config = config  # Add config parameter for Telegram notifications
      self.browser = None
      self.context = None
      self.page = None

  @staticmethod
  def sanitize_filename(url: str) -> str:
      """Convert URL to a valid filename"""
      parsed = urlparse(url)
      path_parts = parsed.path.strip("/").split("/")
      profile_id = path_parts[-1] if path_parts else "unknown"
      sanitized = re.sub(r'[<>:"/\\|?*]', "_", profile_id)
      return sanitized

  async def wait_for_content(self, timeout=10000):
      """Wait for the page content to be fully loaded"""
      try:
          # Wait for any content to appear
          await self.page.wait_for_selector(
              "body div",  # More general selector
              timeout=timeout,
              state="attached",
          )

          # Brief delay for any dynamic content
          await asyncio.sleep(0.5)

          return True
      except PlaywrightTimeoutError:
          logger.warning("Timeout waiting for page content")
          return False

  async def take_screenshot(self, url: str, section: str, attempt: int = 0) -> str:
      """Take a screenshot of the current page with retry logic"""
      os.makedirs(SCREENSHOTS_DIR, exist_ok=True)

      base_filename = self.sanitize_filename(url)
      filename = f"{base_filename}_{section}.png"
      filepath = os.path.join(SCREENSHOTS_DIR, filename)

      try:
          # Check if there's any content on the page
          content_loaded = await self.wait_for_content()

          if not content_loaded and attempt < MAX_RETRIES:
              logger.warning(
                  f"Content not fully loaded, retrying... (attempt {attempt + 1})"
              )
              await asyncio.sleep(RETRY_DELAY)
              return await self.take_screenshot(url, section, attempt + 1)

          # Take full page screenshot, scroll first to ensure all content is loaded
          await self.page.evaluate("window.scrollTo(0, document.body.scrollHeight)")
          await asyncio.sleep(0.5)  # Brief pause after scrolling
          await self.page.evaluate("window.scrollTo(0, 0)")  # Scroll back to top
          await self.page.screenshot(path=filepath, full_page=True)
          logger.info(f"Saved screenshot: {filepath}")
          return filepath

      except Exception as e:
          logger.error(f"Error taking screenshot: {str(e)}")
          if attempt < MAX_RETRIES:
              logger.info(f"Retrying screenshot... (attempt {attempt + 1})")
              await asyncio.sleep(RETRY_DELAY)
              return await self.take_screenshot(url, section, attempt + 1)
          return None

  async def start_browser(self, headless=True):
      """Initialize the browser session with specific fingerprint settings"""
      self.playwright = await async_playwright().start()

      self.browser = await self.playwright.chromium.launch(
          headless=headless,
          args=[
              "--disable-dev-shm-usage",
              "--disable-blink-features=AutomationControlled",
              "--window-size=3440,1440",
          ],
      )

      # Configure context with supported fingerprint settings
      self.context = await self.browser.new_context(
          viewport={"width": 3440, "height": 1440},
          user_agent="Mozilla/5.0 (Windows NT 10.0; Win64; x64) AppleWebKit/537.36 (KHTML, like Gecko) Chrome/130.0.0.0 Safari/537.36",
          color_scheme="no-preference",
          reduced_motion="reduce",
          forced_colors="none",
          device_scale_factor=1,
          is_mobile=False,
          has_touch=False,
          locale="en-US",
          timezone_id="America/Denver",
          permissions=["geolocation"],
      )

      # Add fingerprint properties via JavaScript
      await self.context.add_init_script("""
          Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'deviceMemory', {
              get: () => 8
          });
          Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'hardwareConcurrency', {
              get: () => 12
          });
          Object.defineProperty(screen, 'colorDepth', {
              get: () => 24
          });
          Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'platform', {
              get: () => 'Win32'
          });
          Object.defineProperty(navigator, 'vendor', {
              get: () => 'Google Inc.'
          });
          Object.defineProperty(screen, 'width', {
              get: () => 3440
          });
          Object.defineProperty(screen, 'height', {
              get: () => 1440
          });
          Object.defineProperty(screen, 'availWidth', {
              get: () => 3440
          });
          Object.defineProperty(screen, 'availHeight', {
              get: () => 1440
          });
      """)

      await self.context.add_cookies(
          [
              {
                  "name": "li_at",
                  "value": self.li_at_cookie,
                  "domain": ".linkedin.com",
                  "path": "/",
              }
          ]
      )

      self.page = await self.context.new_page()
      self.page.on("pageerror", lambda err: logger.error(f"Page error: {err}"))
      self.page.on(
          "console", lambda msg: logger.debug(f"Console {msg.type}: {msg.text}")
      )

  async def close_browser(self):
      """Close all browser resources"""
      if self.page:
          await self.page.close()
      if self.context:
          await self.context.close()
      if self.browser:
          await self.browser.close()
      if self.playwright:
          await self.playwright.stop()

  async def check_login_status(self):
      """Check if we're still logged into LinkedIn"""
      try:
          # Check for login page redirects or elements
          login_selectors = [
              "input[name='session_key']",  # Email input field
              ".login__form",  # Login form
              "button[data-id='sign-in-form__submit-btn']",  # Sign in button
              ".join-form",  # Join now form
          ]

          for selector in login_selectors:
              if await self.page.locator(selector).count() > 0:
                  logger.error("Detected LinkedIn logout - session expired")
                  if self.config:
                      notification = TelegramNotification(
                          config=self.config,
                          current_client="LinkedIn Scraper",
                          message="⚠️ LinkedIn session expired - script halted. Please update the li_at cookie.",
                      )
                      notification.send()
                  return False
          return True
      except Exception as e:
          logger.error(f"Error checking login status: {e}")
          return False

  async def navigate_with_retry(self, url: str, attempt: int = 0) -> bool:
      """Navigate to a URL with retry logic and login check"""
      try:
          response = await self.page.goto(
              url,
              wait_until="load",
              timeout=PAGE_TIMEOUT,
          )

          # Check login status after navigation
          is_logged_in = await self.check_login_status()
          if not is_logged_in:
              logger.error("Session expired during navigation")
              return False

          if not response.ok and attempt < MAX_RETRIES:
              logger.warning(
                  f"Navigation failed (status {response.status}), retrying..."
              )
              await asyncio.sleep(RETRY_DELAY)
              return await self.navigate_with_retry(url, attempt + 1)

          return response.ok

      except Exception as e:
          logger.error(f"Navigation error: {str(e)}")
          if attempt < MAX_RETRIES:
              await asyncio.sleep(RETRY_DELAY)
              return await self.navigate_with_retry(url, attempt + 1)
          return False

  async def capture_profile(self, profile_url: str) -> Dict:
      """Navigate to profile sections and capture screenshots"""
      profile_data = {"screenshots": {"experience": None, "education": None}}

      try:
          profile_id = profile_url.rstrip("/").split("/")[-1]

          # Check login status before capturing each section
          is_logged_in = await self.check_login_status()
          if not is_logged_in:
              return profile_data

          # Capture experience section
          experience_url = (
              f"https://www.linkedin.com/in/{profile_id}/details/experience/"
          )
          if await self.navigate_with_retry(experience_url):
              profile_data["screenshots"]["experience"] = await self.take_screenshot(
                  profile_url, "experience"
              )

          await asyncio.sleep(2)

          # Check login status again before education section
          is_logged_in = await self.check_login_status()
          if not is_logged_in:
              return profile_data

          # Capture education section
          education_url = (
              f"https://www.linkedin.com/in/{profile_id}/details/education/"
          )
          if await self.navigate_with_retry(education_url):
              profile_data["screenshots"]["education"] = await self.take_screenshot(
                  profile_url, "education"
              )

          return profile_data

      except Exception as e:
          logger.error(f"Error capturing LinkedIn profile {profile_url}: {str(e)}")
          return profile_data


async def main():
  os.makedirs(SCREENSHOTS_DIR, exist_ok=True)

  existing_data = {}
  if os.path.exists(OUTPUT_FILE):
      with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "r") as f:
          existing_data = json.load(f)
          logger.info(
              f"Loaded {len(existing_data)} existing profiles from {OUTPUT_FILE}"
          )

  scraper = LinkedInScraper(LI_AT_COOKIE, config)
  try:
      await scraper.start_browser(headless=HEADLESS)

      total_profiles = len(PROFILE_URLS)
      for idx, profile_url in enumerate(PROFILE_URLS, 1):
          if profile_url in existing_data:
              logger.info(
                  f"[{idx}/{total_profiles}] Skipping already processed profile: {profile_url}"
              )
              continue

          try:
              logger.info(
                  f"[{idx}/{total_profiles}] Capturing screenshots for profile: {profile_url}"
              )
              profile_data = await scraper.capture_profile(profile_url)

              # Check if we got logged out during capture
              if not await scraper.check_login_status():
                  break

              existing_data[profile_url] = profile_data
              with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "w") as f:
                  json.dump(existing_data, f, indent=2)

              successful_screenshots = sum(
                  1
                  for screenshot in profile_data["screenshots"].values()
                  if screenshot
              )
              if successful_screenshots == 2:
                  logger.info(
                      f"[{idx}/{total_profiles}] Successfully captured all screenshots for {profile_url}"
                  )
              else:
                  logger.warning(
                      f"[{idx}/{total_profiles}] Captured {successful_screenshots}/2 screenshots for {profile_url}"
                  )

              delay = random.uniform(108, 120)
              logger.info(f"Sleeping for {delay:.2f} seconds to mimic human behavior")
              await asyncio.sleep(delay)

          except Exception as e:
              logger.error(
                  f"[{idx}/{total_profiles}] Error processing {profile_url}: {str(e)}"
              )
              with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "w") as f:
                  json.dump(existing_data, f, indent=2)

  finally:
      await scraper.close_browser()


if __name__ == "__main__":
  try:
      asyncio.run(main())
  except KeyboardInterrupt:
      pass

Trying to properly extract the education and job experience text from the detail pages of each person's profile proved... elusive, so I flintstones'd it by grabbing screenshots of the relevant pages and using this script to get Gemini 1.5 Flash 8b to extract the text for me for free:

import json
import os
import time

import google.generativeai as genai
from json_repair import repair_json

# Configuration
API_KEY = "GOOGLE_API_KY"
SCREENSHOTS_DIR = "linkedin_screenshots"
PROFILES_FILE = "linkedin_profiles.txt"
OUTPUT_FILE = "linkedin_analysis_results.json"

# Rate limit configuration
REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE = 2
SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS = 60 / REQUESTS_PER_MINUTE

# Configure Gemini
genai.configure(api_key=API_KEY)
model = genai.GenerativeModel("gemini-1.5-flash-8b")


def analyze_image(image_path, prompt):
    # Upload and analyze the image using Gemini
    image_file = genai.upload_file(image_path)
    try:
        response = model.generate_content([image_file, prompt])
        # Repair any malformed JSON in the response
        repaired_json = repair_json(response.text)
        # Parse the repaired JSON string into a Python dictionary
        parsed_data = json.loads(repaired_json)
        return parsed_data
    except Exception as e:
        print(f"Error analyzing image: {e}")
        return None


def read_profiles(file_path):
    with open(file_path, "r") as file:
        return [line.strip() for line in file if line.strip()]


def main():
    # Load existing results if they exist
    if os.path.exists(OUTPUT_FILE):
        with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "r") as f:
            try:
                results = json.load(f)
            except json.JSONDecodeError:
                # If the output file is corrupted, try to repair it
                with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "r") as f:
                    results = repair_json(f.read())
    else:
        results = {}

    profiles = read_profiles(PROFILES_FILE)

    for profile_url in profiles:
        profile_id = profile_url.split("/")[-1]

        # Skip if profile was already processed
        if profile_id in results:
            print(f"Skipping already processed profile: {profile_id}")
            continue

        results[profile_id] = {
            "linkedin_url": profile_url  # Store the full LinkedIn URL
        }

        for section in ["education", "experience"]:
            screenshot_path = os.path.join(
                SCREENSHOTS_DIR, f"{profile_id}_{section}.png"
            )
            if os.path.exists(screenshot_path):
                prompt = f"Extract the {section} information from this LinkedIn profile screenshot. Output a JSON object with the {section} information."
                analysis = analyze_image(screenshot_path, prompt)
                if analysis:
                    results[profile_id][section] = analysis
                    # Save after each section is processed
                    with open(OUTPUT_FILE, "w") as f:
                        json.dump(results, f, indent=4)
                time.sleep(SECONDS_BETWEEN_REQUESTS)  # Respect rate limits

    print(f"Analysis complete. Results saved to {OUTPUT_FILE}")


if __name__ == "__main__":
    main()

This did a thoroughly respectable job! Ex:

The next step was a few days of low-speed scraping and image-to-text data extraction.

Then, I repeated the whole process again for a cohort 10 years senior to the first group, so that I could do the simplest possible comparison, which is to see what sort of differences these two groups might have between each other. My starting point question for this analysis was: is there a difference in the distribution of job titles between these two cohorts? If so, is it meaningful or interesting in any way?

Stay tuned for part 2...

Where is the cave where the wise woman went?

2024-11-21T08:48:00Z

Where is the cave where the wise woman went? And tell me where, where's all that money that I spent?

Windsurf is nice!

2024-11-22T15:26:00Z

Windsurf is really nice. It's been more productive for me than Cursor.

Cursor had an infuriating propensity to drop important code from modules/files when dealing with larger, less-focused requests. Windsurf has done a lot less of that.

I miss the quality-of-life stuff that Cursor is great at (doc imports and web browsing, for example), but those are livable tradeoffs for better core code-generation capabilities.

It's difficult not to worry

2024-11-23T04:14:00Z

It's difficult not to worry

about what happens next

TIL: dateparser makes everything better

2024-11-23T19:06:00Z

Today I Learned that dateparser makes life so much easier when dealing with scraped data that contains dates that need to be... parsed. :) Wish I'd used it from the start with ol-ousiders-edge. Much like json-repair's quality of life improvement.

I actually like X née Twitter.

2024-11-25T16:24:00Z

I actually like X née Twitter. It's useful for keeping up with AI-related stuff. When I see people post on Twitter itself about Twitter "being toxic", it feels like they're complaining about a party guest they specifically invited over getting drunk and throwing up on the furniture. Maybe just don't invite that person over again? Maybe use the block/unfollow controls that are not hard to find in the user interface?

This is not a post about Twitter. Rather, it's about living here:

A lot of the AI-heavy Twitter contributors that I follow seem to live in the very early part of the Rogers curve. I don't blame them; it's fun and exciting there. I mean, they can't fully live there unless they also live in some kind of isolation pod with drones delivering their every bodily and physical need. But they publish like people who mostly live in that innovator/early-adoper part of the Rogers Curve.

And when these folks talk about how AI is going to impact the world, or some part of it like the job market, it's LOL funny the kind of crazy stuff they come up with.

Here's a good antidote to that:

This fallacy explains so much AI hype. The barriers to doing real-world tasks efficiently are rarely computational — they are usually physical, economic, social and political. So you could make the computational part 10x faster yet make the overall system only 1% more efficient. https://t.co/TvVMZEWg3c
— Arvind Narayanan (@random_walker) November 25, 2024

The rest of the system (and there is always a "rest of the system" -- always other parts of the system) may not live in the same part of the Rogers Curve as the part innovators/early adopters are focused on does. In fact, it's a safe bet that it doesn't. If it did, they'd be focused on it. They'd be fascinated with it.

Evaluations are all we need by Rohit Krishnan does talk about evaluating LLM output, but it's really a broader, higher-level reflection on what an incredible mess of complexity any actual "job" is. Parts of some jobs easily yield way to the efficiency gains of cutting-edge, unreliably-but-amazing innovations. But those parts of jobs are just parts of a bigger, messier connected system. And the job is not the parts that easily yield their inefficiency to innovation; the job is the whole system. Rohit's article is another helpful counterbalance to the "OMG look how many jobs AI just nuked with the latest releast of XYZ yesterday!!!" kind of stuff that's drawing a lot of heat nowadays.

pt2 - "Where'd our candidate pipeline go?!?!"

2024-11-25T23:51:00Z

Here's what happened to it: https://a79dca30.career-path-analysis.pages.dev/. Let's back up a bit, though, first, and talk about this trash research and why it's still valuable...

Weeks ago I published "Where'd our candidate pipeline go?!?!". Gemini's got your back if you need the TL;DR:

Shrinking Candidate Pool: The author investigates a significant decrease in applicants for biochemistry graduate positions at a research lab, dropping from over 100 to around 10 after the pandemic. This prompted a small research project.
Data Collection Method: To study this, the author scraped LinkedIn profiles of UC Davis biochemistry graduates (2018-2022) using a custom Tampermonkey script and then used a Python script with Playwright to collect screenshots of their experience and education sections. A separate script then used Google's Gemini to extract text from these screenshots.
Future Analysis: The author plans a further analysis comparing the collected data from two different graduate cohorts (one recent, one 10 years older) to identify differences in job titles and explore potential reasons for the shrinking candidate pool.

Here we are now, with the conclusion to that first article. The real value of this post for most of you is thinking about this whole thing from the mindset of small-scale research, which is a tool I wish more of you would gain competence in.

Picking up where we left off... I got all ready to scrape from LinkedIn the second cohort of UC Davis Biochemistry graduates (from this public page: https://www.linkedin.com/school/uc-davis/people/?educationEndYear=2022&educationStartYear=2018&keywords=Biochemistry), adjusted the date range on the filters on that page, went through the slow-motion data extraction, examined the output file, and eventually noticed it was the EXACT SAME list of people as the first cohort.

That's pretty typical of LinkedIn: a lot of black box behavior when it comes to filtering, even in their paid products. On that page the keyword filter works but the date range profile sorta doesn't work. Fine. I now have a barely-useful piece of knowledge about LinkedIn's behavior and a JSON file of every UC Davis Biochemistry graduate that has shared that fact on LinkedIn and made their profile public. Onward!

I get Claude to whip up a Streamlit app for me to start looking at the data. My fundamental way of slicing the data is: two cohorts of people. The most recent cohort is those showing attendance at UC Davis in the 8 year window from 2016-2024, and an older cohort 10 years their senior (in terms of self-reported attendance at UC Davis). That's 108 people (the 1998-2006 cohort) vs. 81 people (the 2016-2024 cohort).

The first thing I do is get Claude to create two histograms of job titles, meaning: for each of the cohorts, what's the distribution of job titles for each cohort?

Then, of course, the noisyness of the data smacks me in the face. LinkedIn is user-entered data with almost no normalization, so you're always going to get this even under the best of circumstances. I spend some hours getting Claude to implement some semantic grouping of job titles to stylize the data somewhat and reduce the noisyness that makes it difficult to see patterns (if they exist) in the data.

Here's what I see after that:

I then spend an inordinate amount of time trying to get a usable Sankey diagram showing how the two cohorts progress through various possible job roles along the course of their career. I was hoping for something like https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/01/26/opinion/sunday/paths-to-congress.html but, uh, it didn't work out so nicely.

LOL. Oh well, onward to what I knew would work better... pivot tables!

These aren't particularly beautiful, but when I spend a bit of time staring at these, I start to see or rather feel the vibe of some potential patterns.

I ask Claude and Deepseek both to take a look at the data (via CSV uploads). Before I tell you what we all think, a Small-Scale Research lesson:

Small-Scale Research Takeaway #1

Being an insider, or having skin in the game, is a good thing with Small-Scale Research. It means you have context, and context helps you make sense of information.

Thus far in this "what happened to our candidate pipeline?!?!" research, I've collected and organized information that could help answer the question. But I semi-jokingly called it trash research in the opening to this post because in my hands, it kind of is trash, no matter how well-organized the data is. I just don't have the context about the profession of biochemistry to effectively interpret this data.

Someone who does have that context would have an easy time answering questions like this:

What is a common career path for a biochemistry graduate?
What are high-status and low-status jobs within biochemistry?
Where is the "real money" in biochemistry jobs?

I can only guess at what the answers to those questions might be.

One of the nice things about LLMs is they can be an easy way to quickly gather basic context I don't have. So I ask Claude and Deepseek for their interpretation of the data. After a bit of followup prompting, here's what Claude said:

Career Path Evolution Analysis: UC Davis Biochemistry Graduates (1998-2024)

Key Conclusion

The career trajectories of UC Davis biochemistry graduates have evolved from traditional linear academic/research paths to more diverse, flexible career pathways, reflecting both market demands and changing professional preferences.

Supporting Arguments

1. Increased Career Path Diversification

Traditional Focus (1998-2006 Cohort)
- Concentrated in research roles (Research Associate, Laboratory Technician)
- Clear hierarchical progression (Graduate Research Assistant → Postdoctoral Researcher → Research Scientist)
- Strong presence in academic positions (Assistant Professor, Research Assistant Professor)
Modern Diversity (2016-2024 Cohort)
- Broader range of entry positions (including non-research roles)
- Multiple concurrent roles and internships
- Integration of teaching, clinical, and industry positions
- Evidence:
  - Entry positions include Medical Staff Assistant, Tennis Coach (not present in early cohort)
  - Higher proportion of teaching/mentoring roles
  - More varied technical specializations

2. Shift in Professional Development Patterns

Early Cohort Pattern
- Linear progression through research ranks
  - Position 1: Graduate Research Assistant (15.6%)
  - Position 2: Research Associate I (16.7%)
  - Position 3: Postdoctoral Researcher (14.9%)
  - Position 4: Research Assistant Professor (5.9%)
  - Position 5: Senior Research Associate (15.1%)
Recent Cohort Pattern
- More flexible, multi-track development
  - Multiple concurrent internships
  - Combination of research and teaching roles
  - Higher proportion of industry-oriented positions
  - Evidence of skill diversification through varied role types

3. Changes in Institutional Relationships

Traditional Model (Early Cohort)
- Long-term institutional commitments
- Clear departmental hierarchies
- Focus on single-track specialization
- Evidence: Higher proportion of senior academic positions
Modern Approach (Recent Cohort)
- More fluid institutional relationships
- Multiple concurrent affiliations
- Emphasis on cross-functional roles
- Evidence: Higher frequency of internships, temporary positions, and cross-sector roles

Implications

For Educational Institutions

Need for broader career preparation programs
Importance of industry partnerships
Value of flexible degree programs

For Students

Benefit of diverse skill development
Importance of adaptable career planning
Value of cross-functional experience

For Industry

Opportunity for early career partnerships
Need for flexible career development paths
Value of academic-industry collaboration

Methodology Notes

Analysis based on career progression data from two cohorts:
- Early Cohort: 1998-2006 (n=108)
- Recent Cohort: 2016-2024 (n=81)
Career positions categorized into 5 progressive levels
Data includes job titles, career stage, and temporal progression

That's also the same basic feeling I got from staring at the data for a bit. It seems the older cohort had less variance in their career paths. Sort of like there was a single "valley" of normalcy that more of them flowed down into, and the younger cohort moved on from graduation into a landscape with more smaller varied valleys they could flow into.

But again, I don't really have the context needed to interpret this data effectively!

Small-Scale Research Takeaway #2

Research does not exist independent of the audience for the research. The audience's priorities, incentives, uncertainties, and emotional immaturity are all critical parts of how any research is consumed.

You'll remember that a new friend's employer has a much-diminished pipeline of job applicants. They don't know why.

After consuming this research, they probably still won't know exactly why their applicant pool got so much smaller, but they might have at least one test-able hypothesis. And that is a huge improvement! It's not an "answer", but it's a reduction in uncertainty; it's a direction to explore that's better than wild guessing or asking the senior person "what do you think we should do?".

Again, I'm lacking important context here, but here's one path that they might take from this data to a test-able hypothesis:

Look at the kinds of jobs that are most common among the recent graduates cohort.
Imagine those jobs and the companies they're at as competitors for a scarce resource.
Think about what they might need to do to compete better against that competition. (ex: maybe the competition seems like it offers a way to have more impact in the world; my friend's company might try playing up that angle in their job ad or, gasp, actually marketing themselves as an impactful place to work outside the job ad itself.)
Try some small experiments guided by #3 above.

Or, alternately, they could use this shabby little dataset as a starting point for deeper research. As you know if you've read this far, I wrote some code to scrape LinkedIn. But it wouldn't take a human much more than a few hours to:

Set up a free account on voiceform.com, put together a 2 to 4-question survey that allows voice response. Ask really open-ended questions like "As you were nearing graduation from , how did you gather information about employment opportunities?" and "How did you choose the job you ended up taking after graduation?".
Secure a $500 budget for the research. Set up an account on tremendous.com. Load that half a g-stack into Tremendous.
Start connecting with and messaging folks on LinkedIn, offering them $30 for 10 minutes of their time if they'll complete your survey. Automate and multi-challenei-ize the outreach with a $100/mo tool like Lemlist if needed.

I could spend many thousands of words pointing out the flaws in the methodology of all of the above. However the goal of small-scale research is not methodological perfection, the goal is uncertainty reduction. So as long as the methodological shortcomings do not translate into highly flawed conclusions, we're fine. And generally, small-scale research doesn't really lead to a. conclusion. It leads to refined understanding or reduced uncertainty, which should lead to action, new questions, and new research initiatives.

Here again is the link to the Streamlit app I put together (modified a bit to run in-browser): https://a79dca30.career-path-analysis.pages.dev/. (This sucker's heavy; it's running code inside your browser to let you play around with the data visualizations (thanks stlite!), so give it a minute to load.) If I'd had full-day stretches to work on this, I could have got from start to finish in 3 days. My friend https://www.linkedin.com/in/zelmanow/ would be proud (I hope) of the speed of execution. :)

This is but one example of Small-Scale Research. Sometimes it's more qualitative in nature. But it's always about reducing uncertainty around an important business question, or a question your clients struggle with. If you'd like my help with a SSR project, ranging from coaching to done-for-you, I'm a mere email or LinkedIn message away.

You can never be sure of

2024-12-01T01:27:00Z

You can never be sure of the people that you know They don't want to show you their sadness ... It's so hard to tell where I end And my father begins

Or, https://youtu.be/o8x6BHmV_us?si=zJLZV1qvbpdY4Ke5

I live low enough

2024-12-05T20:31:00Z

I live low enough so the moon wouldn't waste its light on me

1:3 Speed Reducer for Singer Spartan

2024-12-19T23:24:00Z

I made a 1:3 speed reducer for my Singer Spartan. It really helps with needle control and low speeds, and gives a nice boost in torque.

The machine needed some place to mount the speed reduction add-on parts, and getting a 12x17 1" thick acacia cutting board from Amazon and jigsawing out negative space for the machine to rest in turned out to be the easiest and cheapest way to handle that.

The speed reducer is this 1:3 belt-driven pulley system from Aliexpress and this extra pulley, and this polyurethane pulley belt material (5mm dia). I would have repurposed the motor shaft pulley that came with the machine, but it's for a 6.35 shaft diameter (aka 1/4") and the aliexpress pulley system uses an 8mm shaft with no option otherwise (though you can choose the shaft diameter for the small pulley that comes with it, and you should choose 6.35mm if you want it to fit on a 1/4" motor shaft).

I then bolted the speed reducer to my cutting board base at a distance and alignment that got the toothed belt lined up right, and then I cut and welded the PU belt drive to an appropriate length. For some reason on this machine the motor midline is skewed away from the machine's midline, so it looks like a did a sloppy job with the speed reducer alignment, but thta's where it had to go to get the toothed belt running straight!

All in this was about $40 or so IIRC, and that's way cheaper than the industrial speed reducer pulley systems I've seen, and a big boost in the machine's usability!

Perplexity-style search engine

2025-01-06T23:12:00Z

https://github.com/ammaarreshi/Gemini-Search was super-easy to get up and running, worked right away, and has been a delight to use. Might be new toy syndrome, but I find myself using it several times per day and being totally satisfied with the results.

First item on my feature wishlist: a conversation history to be able to go back to previous conversations.

On replacing humans with automation

2025-01-13T12:32:00Z

Situations where it is easy to swiftly replace a human with automation are more scarce and unique than most people think.

The first rule

2025-01-14T22:32:00Z

RE: On replacing humans with automation

The first rule of any technology used in a business is that automation applied to an efficient operation will magnify the efficiency. The second is that automation applied to an inefficient operation will magnify the inefficiency.

-- Bill Gates

Heynote is great

2025-01-16T15:56:00Z

Heynote is great. It scratches an itch I've had for a while for a lightweight scratchpad-ey note system.

It can save notes in a cloud drive, so you can sync stuff
It's txt file native, but can handle markdown and many other code formats
It lets you easily create new "blocks" to have a little bit of hierarchy within note files, but it doesn't go crazy with hierarchy the way Logseq, Obsidian, and other tools allow you to.
It can evaluate math expressions, which is really nice

It's feels rare to find little tools like this that so perfectly hit the Goldilocks zone for what I want them to be.

On AI and job replacement

2025-01-22T13:28:00Z

If you have a really great prompt containing lots of careful instructions, and provide all the data needed to perform that task, plus lots of chances to reflect and try again, with as much regular code as possible, LLMs are going to be able to perform that task. If you have a whole lot of these collections of prompts and data and code you can create an agent that can perform *lots* of tasks. At that point, it's tempting to look at somebody's whole job and say "this job is really just these 20 tasks, I have created an agent that can do all of these tasks, therefore I can replace this person". It's tempting but I have never, ever seen it work.

Jobs are more than collections of tasks. Jobs require prioritization, judgement of exceptional situations, the ability to communicate ad-hoc with other sources of information like colleagues or regulations, the ability to react to entirely unforseen circumstances, and a whole lot of experience. As I said, LLMs can deal with a certain amount of ambiguity and complexity, but the less the better. Giving them a whole, human-sized job is way more ambiguity and complexity than they can handle.

Source: https://seldo.com/posts/what-ive-learned-about-writing-ai-apps-so-far

This is exactly what I was inelegantly trying to express here.

The rest of Laurie's piece is excellent.

hat tip to Simon Willison for the pointer to Laurie's piece.

PocketFlow

2025-01-24T16:35:00Z

I'm trying to think of an LLM agent framework that doesn't use "write an article" as its primary example:

I can't come up with any. :)

At least https://github.com/miniLLMFlow/PocketFlow is really small.

R0003718.jpg

2025-01-30T00:13:43Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54295942813/

R0003721.jpg

2025-01-30T00:13:46Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54294812762/

R0003722.jpg

2025-01-30T00:13:49Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54296123260/

R0003731.jpg

2025-01-30T00:13:52Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54295942928/

Ice, Missoula, MT

2025-01-30T00:13:54Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54295693016/

Sunrise, Missoula, MT

2025-01-30T00:13:56Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54295942978/

Sidewalk, Missoula, MT

2025-01-30T00:13:59Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54295943018/

Tree, Missoula, MT

2025-01-30T00:14:02Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54296123395/

Tree, Missoula, MT

2025-01-30T00:14:05Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54294813047/

I'm from where the kids don't get a new jacket in Fall

2025-02-14T17:35:00Z

I'm from where the kids don't get a new jacket in Fall roach in the cereal and every spoon black in the drawer

🔥

You can't impress me with talkin unless you're a lawyer finessin the court to take my people from detention to walkin

🔥🔥

Indeed job postings data + Streamlit front end viz

2025-02-14T17:43:00Z

A while ago I hacked together this Streamlit app that pulls the job posting data that Indeed publishes on GitHub and lets you explore it with a nice Streamlit front end. Simon Willison's URL-addressable Pyodide Python environments post reminded me I'd wanted to stuff this app into a URL string to make it easier to load up via stlite/pyodide without waiting for Streamlit Cloud to boot a VM, and here that is: stlite app that visualizes Indeed job posting data.

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:51:52Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54359622287/

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:51:55Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54360721118/

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:51:58Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54360701084/

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:52:00Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54360497811/

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:52:04Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54360497936/

Singer Spartan with treadmill motor

2025-03-02T16:52:06Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54359622947/

A campground site availability checker

2025-03-07T19:01:00Z

Recreation.gov is... fine, but I wanted an easier way to check campsite availability in Glacier NP for Thur-Sun camping trips, so a few hours of vibecoding with Gemini and Claude yielded this nifty tool

That link will load up a small Streamlit running in your browser via stlite, Pyodide, and WASM.

The face of evil's on the news tonight

2025-03-16T20:40:00Z

The face of evil's on the news tonight

We see the darkness over light

But have we really ever lived in better times?

After the twilight, always a sunrise

Of course there's a crack in everything. That's how the light gets in.

I went to bed last night

2025-03-16T20:54:00Z

I went to bed last night and my moral code got jammed

I woke up this morning with a Frappachino in my hand

Rock, Missoula, MT

2025-03-22T15:26:00Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54402993103/

Fitting the Singer Spartan with an upcycled treadmill motor

2025-03-23T18:23:00Z

Well, the desire for betterer got the best of me, and I replaced the Singer Spartan's 1:3 speed reducer with a treadmill motor and a custom speed control system. It was worth it.

The 1:3 speed reducer used a toothed belt which is nice from a torque transfer perspective because the toothed belt doesn't slip but at the higher end of its speed range it makes a noisy whine. For some time I'd been thinking about upcycling the motor from a treadmill because treadmills tend to use DC permanent magnet motors that have a lot of torque at low speeds.

Free treadmills grow on trees, in my experience. You just put an ad on Craiglist or Facebook Marketplace saying you'll haul away someone's unused treadmill and keep it out of a landfill and in a few weeks you'll probably have more of them than you can use. I snagged two by doing this. One was a huge Nordicsomething with a MASSIVELY heavy 2.5 horsepower motor, and one was a smaller off-brand treadmill with a claimed 2.5-horsepower motor that was a better fit for upgrading the Singer Spartan because the motor is smaller and lighter. Both treadmills also yielded a lot of square and round steel material to be used for TBD future welding projects.

I guess I've got some splainin' to do RE: the motor mounting:

When I got the acacia cutting board I used to make the base for the machine, I wasn't thinking about mounting this hoss of a motor; I was thinking in terms of the previous speed reduction system, which is smaller. As you can see, when the new motor is positioned in a way that lines it up with the machine's pulley, it hangs off the right side of the platform. I maaaaybe could have mounted the motor pointing the other way -- with the shaft pointing to the right from the operator's position and with the body of the motor positioned accordingly -- but that would have had the large motor blocking valuable work area, so I cut some 2x6 lumber and made an extension platform for the motor to sit on without blocking the work area. (Now I understand why most industrial sewing machines mount the motor underneath the table!)

Once I'd done that, I got the smallest pulley I could find that fit the motor shaft and screwed it on and adjusted my 5mm polyurethane belt to fit. When I got sufficient tension on the belt it levered the machine a bit out of its resting hole in the acacia base, so I countered that by screwing a fender washer down over a corner of the machine's baseplate.

Simultaneously, I had been building the motor's speed control using an old Arduino Uno I had lying around.

The easiest way to create a speed control turned out to be:

A pneumatic foot pedal (some old-but-not-quite-vintage Singer's — and other makers as well — used pneumatic foot pedals to control speed and so these pedals can be found cheaply on eBay and other places) plugged into a MPS20N0040D pressure sensor. (Useful info on this sensor: https://makersportal.com/blog/2020/6/4/mps20n0040d-pressure-sensor-calibration-with-arduino )
This frequency-to-voltage converter to convert a PWM output from the Arduino to a DC voltage that can tell the DC PWM power supply how fast to run.

I wired the above up and put it inside an old wooden cigar box I picked up at Goodwill, and powered it with a switching power supply I got also at Goodwill, and Claude and Gemini helped me vibecode up the Arduino code to convert foot pressure into PWM-modulated DC output to feed the motor:

Here's the code I ended up with: https://gist.github.com/philipmorg/93907949fc039166434b6abfe5be7b7e

A few notes on the design of the speed control algorithm:

After some experimentation, I decided I wanted to create 4 "bands" for the foot pedal's input:
- A "dead zone" that would encompass the small range of pressure readings that represent no foot pedal pressure (this has to be a range rather than a single value, I think, because of the pressure sensor's noise and variations in atmospheric pressure, etc.)
- A super-low speed zone
- A low speed zone
- A proportional zone, where increasing pedal pressure results in increasing speed controller output

What's somewhat unique, I think, is that the low and medium-low speed zones each map a range of pedal input to a fixed speed controller output. This is because I wanted the user experience to be: light pressure on pedal (which in reality is a range of light pressure readings) result in a fixed super-slow needle movement; medium-light pressure on pedal → a fixed medium-slow needle movement; and anything beyond that becomes proportional in relation to the pedal input.

I'm pretty happy with the results of all of this! The one shortcoming I've found thus far is in the super-slow speed band with several layers of thick fabric, the pulley belt can slip on the drive pulley end of things, despite being at a relatively high tension. I don't want to increase the tension more, so I'm looking into some sort of coating I could put in the groove of the drive and machine pulleys to increase friction. If you peek at the Arduino code linked above, you'll notice that I'm using only about 4% of the motor's total power range, so I've got plenty of power to spare in this system and could stand to lose a little bit of efficiency to whatever friction-increasing method I end up using. :)

And here's a video clip of the machine operating in all 3 speed bands:

I had it all

2025-03-24T12:53:00Z

I had it all

but still I reach out

Picnic Table, Missoula, MT

2025-03-26T18:50:38Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54412214569/

Van Windshield, Missoula, MT

2025-03-26T18:52:03Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54411159272/

Dairy Queen Restaurant, Missoula, MT

2025-03-26T18:53:11Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54411161847/

You can't change somebody ignorant

2025-04-02T18:23:00Z

You can't change somebody ignorant that wants to be like that

It's like detoxin' someone hooked on coke who won't stop smokin' crack

Tree and Clouds, Missoula, MT

2025-04-10T14:49:43Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54443238663/

It'll get so quiet when this record ends

2025-05-21T17:38:00Z

It'll get so quiet when this record ends

you can hear the first hour of the world

And the last thing I see

Let it be me helping

Let it be me, honestly

Let it be me working

On being a better me

The sign says caution

2025-08-11T14:08:00Z

The sign says caution

but the vibe says awesome (it's both)

Every day we give up time

2025-09-24T19:36:00Z

Every day we give up time

We pour the drink into a vast glass

I've become pessimistic about inbound marketing

2025-10-19T01:35:00Z

I've become pessimistic about inbound marketing. I hate writing those words because to me, and probably to so many others, the physics of inbound marketing are what was so great about The Internet we grew up with. This physics of inbound was: my interest plus search engines plus other people's content equals (effectively) unlimited cool free information for me to consume. Really, I'm talking about inbound content discovery. Or even more simply: inbound distribution. So-called inbound marketing is merely marketing that makes use of inbound distribution.

Why I've become pessimistic about inbound marketing is a whole other essay. Because I make my living as a marketer, my pessimism about inbound distribution has pushed me to explore alternatives. OpportunityLabs' service offerings are based on outbound distribution -- primarily email. For a few years, there was a free lunch in the outbound distribution world.

The free lunch: new email marketing platforms that are aggressive about growth seem to delay their implementation of certain best practices, and so if you're willing to lie about your adherence to their terms of service, you can email a cold email list and land in more than 40% of those inboxes. Beehiiv was one such platform, and my free lunch involved using their platform to email weekly newsletters very similar to The Argonautic to cold email audiences.

The best practice that these platforms sometimes delay implementing: using multiple email sending infrastructures and assigning new accounts to the "dirty" lower-reputation pool until the account owner requests to be moved to the "clean" higher-reputation pool or the account passes certain age and performance gates and is auto-migrated to the higher-reputation pool. In Beehiiv's case, I saw 40 to 60% open rates sending to cold email audiences using Beehiiv's higher-reputation sending infrastructure. A recent client has never gotten more than 20% open rates. This means that Beehiiv has implemented the multiple-sending-pool best practice and my free lunch is gone. :)

To butcher a lovely saying: The arc of society is long, but it bends towards reputation.

Answering the question of where The Internet is headed is also a whole other essay (and one I'm not at all ready to attempt!), but here's a tentative take: any aspect of The Internet that bypassed or promises to bypass building a reputation for yourself or your business is probably at best a temporary free lunch as your traverse the inevitable arc towards building that reputation and at worse a wasteful detour from that same destination.

List-building checkpoint

2025-10-19T02:23:00Z

The ever-elusive psychographic/behavioral list. It's easy to build a demographically-defined list (location, job title, company type, etc). Not so easy to build a list that includes people with certain beliefs, or who have had certain experiences. And yet, I keep trying to figure out how to do the latter. I've had some success...

The demographically-defined list

I have always cared a lot about list quality. When I started building lists for clients, I started with the "tight & clean" approach:

Use LinkedIn Sales Navigator (LISN) Advanced. Reason: LinkedIn has fresher data than Apollo et al, and The Advanced tier lets you upload CSV files, allowing much easier creation of account lists which let you scope people lists more easily.
Process:
- In LISN build a search that results in a list of companies that employ the people you want on your list.
- Use Phantombuster to scrape that LISN search. Turn the Phantombuster scrape into CSV files of 1,000 companies each.
- Import each CSV into an Accounts list in LISN.
- Use those Accounts lists to scope a LISN people search such that your people search yields exactly the kind of people you want on your final list. Use LISN exclusion filters heavily to reduce noise.
- Use Evaboot to scrape the people search and get email addresses for those people.

This is a slow, difficult process. Over time, I came up with something better, the "refine a big, noisy list" approach:

Use the cheaper LISN account. Reason: you don't need to upload CSVs to LISN using this approach.
Process:
- In LISN, build a people search that results in the people you want on your list.
- Use vayne.io to scrape that LISN search. Vayne can multiplex a search across (I presume) a fleet of bot accounts they run, meaning you can scrape way more quickly and with less risk to your LISN account than Phantombuster poses.
- The scrape you get from Vayne will be noisy, but it will contain the subset of people you are looking for. It takes a bit of code to clean the list up, but either a pivot table or an LLM looping over the big noisy CSV or a combination of both can get you a squeaky clean list with considerably less effort, delay, and cost than the other approach.
- Use anymailfinder.com to look up email addresses for the cleaned Vayne list. Use Zerobounce to further validate the email addresses that anymailfinder.com gives you, and use scrubby.io to validate the catch-all email addresses.

The psychographic/behavioral list

I've got nothin shippable, just some experiments I've tried. :)

It's worth mentioning that there will be good proxies for certain behavioral characteristics. Ex: Most people who have been a manager for multiple years are likely to have had to fire one or more employees. Building a list of people with the behavioral characteristic of "has had to fire someone" isn't going to be that hard because having manager in the job title -- a demographic characteristic -- is a good proxy for the behavior we're interested in.

Phantombuster does let you scrape Facebook and LinkedIn groups. So does Apify, which I've moved to for most of my scraping work. I experimented with scraping a Facebook group once. IIRC the group was for people dealing with anxiety disorders -- a great example of a psychographic characteristic. The scrape went great. It yielded maybe around 10,000 people? Then I tried to convert that big beautiful list into email addresses and got asymptotically close to zero email addresses. If it had been a scrape of a LinkedIn group, I'm certain that closer to 50% of the list of people would have successfully converted to email addresses.

Last weekend I built a proof of concept for a prospective client. They wanted a list of companies that are likely to buy a certain kind of firm in the future. Since we don't live inside the world depicted in Minority Report, the next best alternative to find:

Companies that in the recent past have bought that certain kind of firm. They may buy another one again.
Companies that ordinarily buy a range of firms that include the certain kind of firm in question.

This resolves to a scraping job followed by an LLM filtering job.

So... the best I've been able to to come up with for building a psychographic/behavioral list:

A demographic proxy
Scraping a LinkedIn group that's likely to have members with the desired characteristic(s)
Scraping the open web, or search results from the open web, and then filtering those results through an LLM.

Maybe I'm underplaying my ability to build a psychographic/behavioral list a bit. If so, it's because the inherent difficulty of this kind of list-building is greater than the difficulty of building a demographic list. But if the quality of the outreach that I'm on the receiving end of is any indicator, most people aren't even trying at all to get a relevant list. So what I consider a minimum bar for quality might be quite a bit beyond what most other outbound marketers are attempting?

Anyway, sorry for the lengthy writeup; I wanted to do a bit of a checkpoint of where I'm at with respect to list-building expertise. Maybe some of this will be helpful to others.

School and Shadow, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:24:54Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865330436/

Electrical Equipment, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:24:57Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865584234/

Wall, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:00Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54864484057/

Fence and Hills, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:07Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865578548/

Tree Trunk, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:11Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865584789/

Church, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:14Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865578928/

Building, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:17Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865331336/

Shrub, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:19Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865331456/

Covered Car, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:22Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865579253/

Garage, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:25Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865585444/

Building, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:27Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865579548/

House, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:30Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865585654/

House, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:33Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865585759/

Scooter, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:36Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865332091/

House and Shadows, Missoula, MT

2025-10-19T17:25:39Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/54865580073/

Surfing POV

2025-11-25T15:45:00Z

One of the fun things that people with a strong point of view do is they "surf" it against the river of news.

Here's a kayaker surfing a static wave on a river:

The river of news is ever-changing; the expert's point of view remains constant, and the interplay between the two can be interesting if the expert's POV is relevant to us.

Here's a recent example from Jennifer Pahlka: https://www.eatingpolicy.com/p/outcomes-reviews-realigning-legislative:

In the state capacity framework that underpins my work (and the work of the Recoding America Fund), it’s the fourth competency that confuses people. It makes sense that government needs the right people, focused on the right work, with purpose-fit systems (competencies 1, 2, and 3), so it naturally follows that we need civil service reform, procedural reform, and reform of how we build and buy technology. But when we say that it needs to operate in test-and-learn frameworks, brows wrinkle. For some, this evokes the practices of digital teams who employ build-measure-learn cycles as they implement interfaces to government programs. But test-and-learn isn’t limited to implementation – the point is that the whole system, from writing law to how programs operate, and everything in between, needs to constantly adjust based on accurate feedback about what’s working. So what do we really mean here?

An experiment out of the California legislature may provide an illustrative example.

The surfing then begins. She uses a thing happening in current events to elaborate on something she things is important -- an idea that she advocates for. That's how I define point of view.

BTW, Jennifer Pahlka may have the best SEO game I've ever seen. Certainly some of that comes from a unique last name spelling cutting down on competition, but the rest of it comes from staying on-topic for a long time. Check this out:

Two Years of Building

2026-01-04T17:33:00Z

Over the last two years I’ve built a small ecosystem of tools—some practical, some ambitious, some “because I wanted to see if I could.” Looking back, the pattern is pretty clear: when something feels oddly hard, slow, or opaque, I tend to build a thinner, clearer version that fits the way I actually think.

Here’s the tour.

The “I just want this to work” automations

A campground availability checker (Glacier National Park edition)

Glacier National Park is close to me, and it’s one of those places where the planning window never matches real life. By the time I’m ready to book a campsite, everything is gone—because the reservation system rewards people who plan early, not people who plan well.

So I stopped relying on the official waitlist and built my own watcher.

I reverse-engineered the API behind the campground reservation site and wrote a Python script that runs on a GitHub Action every 5–10 minutes. It can check:

any campsite in a campground,
specific sites I care about,
and even vehicle permits for Going-to-the-Sun Road.

When it finds availability, it sends me a Telegram notification. It’s simple, reliable, and it works.

Calendar-based cash flow planning (twice)

I’ve always felt like cash flow planning tools miss something obvious: calendars are how humans naturally think about time-based commitments. So I built two different cash flow planner apps that use a calendar interface for scheduling expenses.

The newest one is intentionally “quick and dirty” in the best way:

a lightweight Flask app,
a calendar library,
and a YAML file to store cash flow data.

Half a day of work got me something that feels more intuitive than most commercial options I’ve tried. It still feels like a weird gap in the market: good calendar-based cash flow planning shouldn’t be rare.

Deliverability and list platforms: SES + domains + Listmonk/Sendy

I’ve built list and delivery infrastructure for multiple newsletters using:

Amazon SES for delivery,
custom domains for reputation and branding,
and both Listmonk and Sendy as front-end platforms.

This is very much a “playbook” I’ve refined over time: cold email content to people, run the system cleanly, keep deliverability healthy, and treat the pipeline like a product.

In total, I’ve operated this successfully at roughly 30–40k people across multiple lists.

RAG, dashboards, and “make the invisible visible” interfaces

A custom RAG app with retrieval controls (for a friend)

One of the more distinctive things I built was a retrieval-augmented generation app for a friend. It runs in a Docker container, has a Streamlit front end, and uses LanceDB for the vector database.

But the interesting part isn’t the tech stack—it’s the philosophy.

Most RAG apps try to hide retrieval. They quietly fetch context and blend it into the answer, as if the user shouldn’t have opinions about what got retrieved.

Mine does the opposite: it makes retrieval tunable.

The interface gives the user control over:

how many documents are retrieved,
a threshold slider to control “how close” matches must be,
and a visualization, a histogram to help you see retrieval quality/distribution at a glance.

Instead of forcing you into item-by-item micromanagement (“exclude this chunk”), it offers a more useful middle layer: “pull fewer, but more relevant,” or “pull more, but allow looser matches.”

Then I added a prompt library: the final LLM call includes retrieved context plus a selected prompt from a curated set. I’ve seen partial versions of this in other tools like Onyx, but I liked the simplicity of treating prompts like reusable presets. It made the tool dramatically more usable.

A Streamlit app to visualize Indeed hiring data (including a Pyodide version)

This one was a quick build, but satisfying: a Streamlit app that live-retrieves Indeed’s job data from the GitHub repo where they publish it, then graphs it in a friendly interface.

I even made a version that runs in Pyodide (Python in the browser), which was mostly just fun: fewer moving parts, instant interactivity, and a neat demonstration of “this doesn’t have to be heavy to be useful.”

Hotel rate tracking via Booking.com scraping (pre-Apify lessons)

I built a system that, for a given city and time window (usually 6–12 months), scraped Booking.com hotel pricing and saved it into JSON. Then I wrapped it with a Streamlit viewer.

The idea was straightforward: help Airbnb operators price competitively by knowing what hotels are charging.

The reality was also straightforward: scraping is the hard part. Dynamic sites don’t want to be scraped, and maintaining scrapers is a tax you pay forever.

If I were building this today, I’d almost certainly use an Apify actor for the data collection and focus on the customer-facing layer. This project taught me (again) that sometimes the “best code” is rented.

A client dashboard: enrich, qualify, and suggest outreach

I also built a multi-client dashboard to surface performance numbers across different systems, including website visitor de-anonymization.

The flow looked like this:

Pull site visitor data from a de-anonymization tool (Warmly? Clearbit? one of that category).
Enrich the visitor/company.
Use an LLM to grade the visitor as a prospect.
Show the result in a dashboard and suggest first outreach actions.

The implementation evolved over time—starting as a Flask app, experimenting with different front-end approaches (including fast HTML-style tooling), and eventually landing on something practical: a place where clients could see “enriched and qualified” visitors and what to do next.

A Cloudflare KV backend for LinkedIn auth cookies

One oddly specific piece of infrastructure: a Cloudflare Workers + KV store backend that securely stores LinkedIn authentication cookies. A browser plugin front end could fetch/store those cookies via the backend.

This was part of building systems that interact with LinkedIn while keeping the sensitive “session” layer separate and controllable.

If there’s a “main thread” through a lot of my recent work, it’s this:

I built a social listening / content scraping system that stores publishing and social activity in MongoDB. It can track a predefined set of people (call them influencers, experts, prospects—whatever fits), and it can also discover content through search-based discovery across the web and platforms like LinkedIn and Twitter.

At its largest ambition, it’s basically a partial “digital twin” of an information ecosystem: who’s publishing, what they’re saying, what’s getting engagement, and how activity clusters over time.

And once that data exists, you can do interesting things with it:

Concise activity feeds: Instead of wrestling with LinkedIn’s UI for each person, you can see relevant ecosystem activity in a cleaner, denser format.
Engagement recommendations: Interleave the feed with guidance on how to engage with a prospective client—what to comment on, what to reference, what signals matter.
Automated newsletter generation: Filter to “the good stuff,” summarize it, and generate newsletters from the ecosystem.

A note I can’t ignore: early versions of this involved me hand-building scrapers (with heavy LLM assistance, but still… hand-built). In hindsight it was kind of insane. These days, it’s often smarter to pay for proven scraping expertise and treat your advantage as what you do with the data.

List building as a pipeline, not a pile of CSVs

I built an email list contact management system that started as a Streamlit app and eventually became something I liked more: a command-line, Unix-like set of utilities for interacting with the database.

The database acts as the backbone for a list-building pipeline:

start with LinkedIn scrape output,
enrich progressively (including email lookup),
validate addresses via Zerobounce,
and integrate services primarily through APIs rather than constant CSV import/export.

The practical result is speed: list building went from “a bunch of manual file shuffling” to a pipeline with much higher throughput and fewer failure points.

One-off systems for specific client outcomes

Finding buyers in company transactions

For one client, I built a custom scraping + enrichment + opportunity discovery system to find transactions they didn’t know about—specifically: when a company sold, who bought it.

It did:

broad searching across sources likely to contain the answer,
LLM-based extraction of relevant facts,
LLM grading/qualification of candidate opportunities,
plus some deliberate manual steps where human judgment mattered.

This was less about building a product and more about building a machine that reliably produces a particular kind of truth from messy public information.

Hardware detours and unfinished experiments

Two Arduino-based sewing machine controllers

These might be my favorite “this is so specific it has to be homemade” builds: two custom Arduino sewing machine controllers that translate foot pedal input into PWM DC motor control.

One pedal was potentiometer-based; the other used air pressure. The output controlled either:

a 90V PWM-DC treadmill motor (converted),
or a universal 120V motor.

The key feature was customization: three speed bands, including an ultra-slow mode (think one stitch per second), a slow band, and then a proportional mode. The fun part wasn’t just making it work—it was making it behave exactly the way I wanted.

A voice survey app I didn’t finish (for a good reason)

I started building a simple voice survey web app:

show a question,
record a voice response,
transcribe it,
store it,
analyze it with an LLM.

Then I stopped—because I realized tools like Voiceform already exist and would get me to the outcome faster. It was a useful reminder: quitting can be a form of shipping, if you quit in favor of the right tool.

A personal to-do app in Svelte

Mostly a side project and an excuse to play with Svelte. The UI was interesting: a 3x3 grid of tiles; no more and no less than 9 top-level initiatives. Tapping a tile opened up a 3x3 grid of tasks within that initiative. Tapping a task opened up a modal card showing the details of the task (name, priority, etc). Swiping right dismissed the modal or allowed navigating up through the hierarchy.

An RSS feed for Torah readings via Safari API

I also built a small app that generates an RSS feed for weekly and daily Torah readings by pulling from the Sefaria API. Simple idea, satisfying result: religious study content delivered in a format the internet still does extremely well.

The throughline

A lot of these projects share the same instinct: remove friction, expose control where it matters, and turn messy systems into something you can actually reason about.

Also: I spent a lot of time building “data collection” muscles—and then learned, repeatedly, that the real leverage is often in what you build on top of the data, not the scraping itself.

That’s a pretty good snapshot of the last two years: a pile of practical tools, a few ambitious systems, and a growing preference for investing in the parts that compound.

Frosty Cactus, Missoula, MT

2026-01-13T23:02:43Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/55040263099/

Frosty Cactus #2, Missoula, MT

2026-01-13T23:02:47Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/55040263254/

Garage, Missoula, MT

2026-01-14T16:09:06Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/55041335798/

Plastric-Wrapped Building, Missoula, MT

2026-01-14T16:14:17Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/55041504145/

Tree, Missoula, MT

2026-01-14T16:19:31Z

Bigger image: https://www.flickr.com/photos/pmtnm/55041353613/