The Subtle Art of Giving a F*

The Subtle Art of Giving a F*

Mark Manson’s popular book “The Subtle Art of Not Giving a F***” is marketed as a “A dose of raw, refreshing, honest truth that is sorely lacking today”, it doesn’t literally mean to not give any F*’s, it’s just a ballsy way of repeating other self help books like “Don’t Sweat the Small Stuff”.

A caveat before we get started, I know that neither of these books is about shortcuts, in fact they’re about helping people see the big picture, and understanding what is important, and what isn’t. They’re also about living your best life, your authentic self, and generally being true to yourself.  These are all good things.

The scary part about messages like that is that some people have taken this to mean that you can just do a surface level skim coat and call it “good enough”. If I shouldn’t sweat the small stuff, why do you care that the thumbnail for your news story grabs the right part of the image?

Sometimes we need to give a F***, sometimes we need to give all of the F***’s, and borrow a cup of F***’s from a neighbour to add some extra F***’s to your awesome sauce, otherwise you’ll just end up with a big lump of “adequate sauce”.

Hey, maybe adequate sauce is exactly what you need on your Corporate Chain Pizza of life.

Then again, maybe you need to give a f***.

What is the “Subtle art of giving a F***”?

The Subtle Art of Giving a F*** is more than just “sweating the small stuff” and in fact it’s a lot about big picture thinking, and how small details add up to the big picture.

Let’s start with a website. You can tell within 30 seconds of looking at a website how the company is going to treat you.

  • How does it look? Is the site old and tired, or is it fairly modern?
  • Does the navigation make sense?
  • Is it obvious what you should do? Is it simple to find the thing you’re looking for?
  • Is it easy to get in touch with them?
  • When you want to get in touch with them, do they require a whole bunch of seemingly irrelevant information?

Sometimes it’s the little things. Maybe they have a really intricate logo, but the thing is so small that it loses all context – it was likely designed for print, not for a 300px phone screen, where 87% of your potential customers initiate their first contact. Maybe it’s the fact that a captcha form takes seven attempts to get through.

You can tell very quickly when thought hasn’t been given to who is using the website, and what they’re doing with it.

When the basics are taken care of, then the difference is in how an experience can delight you. The little things can take something from 90% or “good enough” to 125% – “Wow, this is great”

Sometimes it’s about doing something that only you will care about.

The other day I spent over an hour on a single image for a blog post.  The post itself probably took me another hour. I doubt anyone will even notice the difference between my picture and the default. The post was – How to Survive the Retail Paradigm Shift over on my Manage Comics blog.

Comic book store before and after

For those of you wondering, I went in and added actual comic books to the book covers, so that the picture was actually reflective of the source material. This may not seem like a huge deal, but it felt important to me at the time. It was fun, I flexed some Photoshop muscles I don’t normally use, and it lends some extra context to the post.

It’s also the kind of thing that a detail oriented person might notice, and since this particular post was going in front of hundreds of thousands of eyes that’s the kind of detail that matters.

For that post I also recorded a video, it took me 14 minutes to record the video, and another three revisions of the thumbnail image to make sure it was exactly right.

3 Versions, Paradigm Shift

In the first version, I realized that at certain screen sizes, the sides were being cut off, so I resized the caption and moved the logo a bit.  However reading it I realized that the title needed some juice to make it more relevant, so I revised it again. Each revision only took a few minutes, but they were important.

In short, I did sweat the small stuff, and I gave a F***.

Don’t miss the forest for the trees

The little things gave me a sense of accomplishment. However, I worked on the things that I thought would make an impact, I did things quickly and efficiently, and I only worked on these little things after I had the big picture covered.

The video I did was recorded quickly, and without fuss. The idea behind the videos I am making right now is that I want to do things that have a low barrier to entry, that don’t take me a ton of time, but that can hit an adjacent audience to the text.

I recorded the video twice, the first time I hemmed and hawed quite a bit, but the second time I managed to get through the entire thing with only one minor screw up (I couldn’t remember the name “Geek Easy” no matter how hard I tried).  Now I could have done a quick edit and fixed that up, but after watching it, I liked the raw energy of the unedited video.

What was important was that I got it up, that it enhanced the original post, and that it didn’t take a whole ton of time to do.

The Takeaway

I’m a big fan of the term “Appropriate Effort”, meaning that you don’t spend a ton of time on things you know very few people will ever see, but you do put a lot of effort into the details on things that many people would see.  I can’t imagine myself spending an hour on a graphic for a blog post just for Manage Comics, but when I’m going to draw in a much bigger audience, it makes a ton of sense.

  1. Cover the big picture, make sure your message is consistent.
  2. Don’t kill yourself over the little details that aren’t important.
  3. Work fast, work well, do things you enjoy.
  4. Give a F***, and make it matter.
How losing a promotion was the best thing that happened to me

How losing a promotion was the best thing that happened to me

I’m going to give you the secret sauce on how to make a marketing automation system for free. It has all the bells, though none of the whistles of the ridiculously expensive services where you can pay $2500 a month just for the software to run this plan. Most small businesses won’t need the whistles anyhow.

First, let me tell you a quick story.

3 years ago I had the unfortunate experience of getting passed over for a promotion to a marketing director role at the company I worked for. A role that at the time I really believed was what I wanted. It was not a great experience, and was the second time this had happened at this company. Obviously, that particular goal wasn’t ever going to happen.

It was a wake up call.

I didn’t respond how most people do in this circumstance. I did something unusual which looking back on it three years later was a bounce pad for where NorthIQ is at now – a successful and growing business.

I took an entire week off and spent it working with a former colleague (my now-NorthIQ partner Brian Garside) to begin building what is now NorthIQ.

Only we didn’t know it at the time.

That week was exciting because we launched an ebook and sold several copies within the 5 day window we gave ourselves. We hit our goal of building a database of 50, and we also landed a customer who ended up being a significant partner in our growth as an organization.

It was crazy. We barely slept. It was interesting and engaging and unlike anything I did in my 9-5.

If you’re sitting there right now unsure about how a very small change in your life can lead to huge things I will tell you right now it can be astronomical. Life changing. It can be the difference between you hitting your goals and just continuing along where you’re at now.

At the time I’d have loved to be where I am now. It was such an elephant to eat I didn’t really see how it was possible. 

Intermission:

If you just want the How to Create a Free Marketing Automation System go ahead and grab it, but we’d love if you would continue on the story (don’t worry, we’ll remind you about the download below as well).

Back to the story.

We decided let’s just do one small thing at a time. Set the bar so damn low we’d have things to accomplish, over and over.

Brian had already done the brave thing and taken the plunge – he quit his day job to start NorthIQ. He had provided what would be the foundation for what we’d build. I always joke “What took you so long to quit.” but that’s a very brave move to take. We didn’t have the dollars or customers to pay for both our salaries so I went back to work and patiently supported NorthIQ as an evening job.

Another big game changer for us occurred that week, and thinking back on it it’s a funny story.

During day 1 Brian had mentioned to me that he had a prospect who was wanting a new website but also more – a lot of marketing work. At the time it wasn’t his area of expertise but I talked him into providing a proposal. We barely knew how to make proposals of this kind. We weren’t sure how we’d get the work done, since I had a full time job and he was still learning the marketing side.

They accepted. To this day they are a top customer. The impact this company has had on NorthIQ, and the relationships we built from this is vast.

Two seemingly minor things in the space of 2 days that changed our lives.

The simple fact is that just getting out there, doing, executing  is so valuable. You can accomplish anything if you just get in and try.

A lot has happened between now and then. We moved into an office. We have awesome staff. Great customers. During the ride we’ve accomplished so many things that seemed outside my safety zone. I dare say it…we’ve even become (uggghhh) sales people.

No road is too steep for somebody who is determined and patient.

Let’s get back to marketing automation…

I learned marketing automation on Marketo, then Pardot, then Hubspot, then I built my own free version and NorthIQ used that for awhile. Finally, last month we  partnered with Sharpspring and I implemented a full system for us. I have thousands of hours of experience in all the platforms combined.

Automating your marketing is incredibly powerful. Even a simple automated email nurture when somebody fills out your form can prove extremely useful. Add in lead capture forms, lead magnet, lead scoring, lead routing, CRM, sales pipelines, reporting and you get a tool that most companies should really invest in at some point.

When I see the reasons for saying no to using this type of service I am frustrated.

Don’t I need to be a marketer?

The honest truth is that any small or medium business owner needs to wear…not just a lot of hats but every hat. All of the hats need to be worn. Chair falls apart? Fix-it hat. Somebody didn’t get paid? Finance hat. Need more friends (customers)… yeah… marketing hat.

You don’t need to BE a marketer, you just need to act like one long enough.

My company is too small.

Too small to engage and delight future customers so they love you before they even spent a cent?

Isn’t it expensive?

You can build a solid system for free. NorthIQ used it for a couple of years. There are even paid options that fit inside the budgets of small companies. It’s no longer just for big companies. That has ended. The industry has changed and nobody has told the small businesses.

Don’t let the big boys snap up every prospect while you rail against the unfairness of it! You can compete! If anything automation just evens the playing field. It’s enabling David’s everywhere.

We’re already doing good business.

Yeah, that’s awesome. What if you could be doing even better? When you are doing well you likely have more money to invest in ways to make your sales more predictable and take less effort.

It’s complicated! We’ll never be able to take advantage of all the features.

Implement a piece at a time and before you know your system will be humming along.

I don’t have the time.

Of all of the excuses, this one I understand the most. Time is the one resource that none of us seem to have enough of. The thing is, you can start today with a little bit of time, and build it small, piece by piece. Each piece will add incremental improvements, which multiply exponentially. It is amazing how a series of small changes can have major impacts.

The NorthIQ Free Marketing Automation System

I initially figured this out because NorthIQ needed a budget solution for our own business. Then we ran across other companies who also needed a budget system. They were all at a point in growing their business where it would help them grow but the dollars and internal knowledge were not there. They could not afford to pay NorthIQ to implement for them, but we’re really passionate about seeing other companies succeed. That’s why I built this as a free download.

DOWNLOAD THE NORTHIQ FREE MARKETING AUTOMATION SYSTEM

The “How to Build a Free Marketing Automation System” does not give you all the advanced features that a fully paid program gives you but it does give you the most basic ones that a small or medium business will need.

The more important features for a small business:

  • Collect prospect data via forms
  • Automate nurturing emails to those prospects
  • Store prospects in a CRM for optimizing sales funnels

So from very small organizations (I’ve implemented this easily with 1-2 person companies) to medium organizations with limited budget and limited experience this is actually a really good solution. It gives you the basics of a marketing automation platform and is easy to learn.

You’ll get:

  • A free CRM that is actually really good for both sales and marketing
  • An email tool that is as good as the pro tools
  • Automation that is just limited enough to make it easy
  • Forms to collect your leads
  • Simple behavioural based triggers
  • Flexibility in terms of customized properties and values that your
    internal team might require
  • Real time web tracking
  • Reporting for you to understand what’s going on
  • And it’s all free, if you’re smart and careful about the whole thing.

You won’t get:

  • Extremely detailed workflow capabilities
  • Advanced behavioural based triggers
  • A content strategy
  • A large database (if you’re working with more than 2500 leads, this becomes cumbersome)
  • An all-in-one tool
  • Support

Last Paragraph: Let me Put on my Sales Hat

NorthIQ has implemented professional Marketing Automation solutions across many organizations, and works with most of them monthly to generate leads and boost revenue. We’re proud of the work we do and the companies we get to do it with. The companies that we work with have doubled, triple, and even quadruple their revenue in one year of working with us.

If you want to explore having NorthIQ implement this free version for you or a service with more functionality (we offer this at surprisingly reasonable rates) you can book a time to talk to us here. No pressure, no pushy sales promotions, just a chat where we’ll find out a bunch of things about you and tell you if we can help you out.

The NorthIQ Free Marketing Automation System

Nobody Cares That You’re Vegan

Nobody Cares That You’re Vegan

It’s a harsh truth that nobody wants to hear, but it’s true, nobody cares that you’re a vegan. Nobody wants to listen to you drone on about the fact that you don’t eat anything with a face, or that animals are your friends and you don’t eat friends.

I totally understand, I eat two vegetarian meals a day right now, and I plan out a vegetarian dinner once a week. I don’t do it because of ethical reasons, I find that a mostly plant based diet makes me feel better. I’ve tried to convince my parents that they need to adopt a similar diet, but they’re not really interested. Now with that said, I honestly believe chickens wouldn’t exist if they didn’t provide us eggs…but I also don’t like factory farming conditions. However, I understand that without modern advances in agriculture, we wouldn’t be able to support our massively ballooning population.

WAIT!!!

Be honest. You totally scanned over that last paragraph didn’t you?

The reason you scanned over it is simple, you really don’t care WHY I choose to eat the way I choose to eat. I either had you, or lost you at the word “vegetarian”.

It’s the exact same with your business.

  • Nobody cares WHY you choose to sell sprockets*.
  • Nobody cares about the history of your sprocket sales.
  • Nobody cares what the ethical reasons for your sprocket manufacturing process is.
  • They want to know that your sprockets will solve a problem they have.
  • They want to know what pain points your sprockets fix in their business.
  • People care how your sprockets will make their lives better.

*NOTE: I don’t care if you sell artisanal platypus abodes, or high end consulting services, for the sake of this post, we’re calling all of it sprockets…WHAT you sell doesn’t matter.  HOW you sell it is what matters. (more…)

Why we left Medium, a cautionary tale

Why we left Medium, a cautionary tale

Our Manage Comics blog was recently suspended by Medium for no justifiable reason. To date the only explanation we have been given is that we were accidentally caught in their spam filter.

This caused a huge impact on our business, saw our page rankings plummet, created dozens of orphaned links from sites that had referenced us, and left us scrambling to solve a problem that our vendor has not been able to give us a reasonable explanation behind.

Because of the negative effects on our business, and Medium’s lack of a reasonable explanation for what happened, we have removed all content from Medium, and we are firmly advising our clients against using Medium as a blogging platform. (more…)

The 5 Basics of a Successful Digital Content Strategy

The 5 Basics of a Successful Digital Content Strategy

There has never been a more exciting time for small business owners to capitalize on marketing tools and increase their customer touch.

Only a few years ago marketing professionals had to depend on expensive mass media or unreliable methods to get their message across.

But having a clear digital strategy allows small business owners to make a big impact to their customer base with low costs. Further, you can be precise and focused on message and audience, ensuring you are getting the best return on your investment.

One of the keys to that digital approach needs to be a digital content strategy.
(more…)