Dylan Blew My Mind

In-Short
Powerful authentic brands that stand the test of time are built stone by stone through a process of uncovering and deeply understanding who they are at their core and then sharing that process with the world. 

In-depth
It was 1997, and I was a sophomore at Rochester Institute of Technology studying advertising photography. There was a group of us sitting in a friend’s finished attic (doing what college kids do in cozy attics in the dead of a blistery Rochester winter) when a friend said, “I’ve got a new album you need to hear”.

A moment later Bob Dylan’s young weathered voice and simple guitar picking moved through all of us as it resonated off the low hanging pitched ceiling. “Hard Times in New York Town” pierced my heart and flooded my soul like nothing I had ever heard before. We sat and listened to that album all night and replayed that moment countless times over the next few years. How were songs, many of them over 35 years old at the time and recorded using the most basic technology, able to touch us so deeply and influence our lives?

Dylan is simple.
Simple is powerful. Most Dylan songs are three chords. Most of the three disk sets feature only Dylan: just him, his guitar and harmonica. He is the ultimate example that it actually doesn’t take much to communicate deeply. The less that is said, the more piercing the potential of those words/images/experiences. I guess I should stop there.

Dylan is himself.
Dylan has always been and will always be unapologetically himself. He says what he sees and feels; he does what he feels is right and then leaves it at that. Even his voice is unapologetically himself. He didn’t go looking to make a hit; he just did him, and that is where art is born. He then put that art out into the world for people to do with it what they may and decide for themselves what to make of it.

The press and most of the public struggled with this. They often asked him what he meant by his songs or tried to attach him to movements, genres or current events. Dylan never understood this because he was just playing music; people could make of it what they will. This wasn’t posturing or positioning but simply being himself, and that came through in his music. It is the ultimate position, and the only defensible one. 

Dylan evolved.
Because Dylan is simple and is himself, he was able to evolve. He experimented and played with music, but more importantly he experimented and played with who he was as an individual and what he might be capable of. Because he evolved, so did his sound– countless times. Even as his health waxed and waned he persisted in being his authentic self, allowing what was happening on the inside to come through to the outside.

Bob Dylan remains one of the most authentic and powerful personal brands that exist today, winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2016. He built that brand the old-fashioned way. He didn’t go around liking other people’s posts so they would like him back, vigilantly posting once a day at just the right time. He didn’t defend his name on Google searches to drive everyone to his website or buy his competitor’s names as search terms. He didn’t mold himself to the latest musical trends or chase the white space.

Instead he focused on himself. He put in the work to discover who he is and then shared that with the world. That’s the old-school way to build an authentic brand that stands the test of time. It remains the only way.

What’s The Problem Today?

In-Short
Most businesses don’t wake up asking this question because we are too busy dealing with yesterday’s problem to notice, care about or focus on today’s problem. What if there was a team focused on only today’s problem?

In-Depth
Log jams alter flow hydraulics by diverting flow towards the bed or banks, increasing flow resistance and upstream pools. This then diverts flow onto the floodplain, damming the channel and causing water to spill over the structure. While this is the effects of log jams on river geomorphology according to Wikipedia, it sounds an awful lot like the work flows of many companies.

The river is like all the work that needs to get done, and the banks of the river are our capacity to do the work: A big rain occurs (like the holiday season, a big PR hit, an employee leaves, perfect product/market fit), we max out our capacity and suddenly logs (unexpected problems) come flying down the river, jamming up any choke point.

If the big rain is temporary, we might be able to deal with the overflow by working harder and longer, disappointing some customers for a short period of time but not so many and so badly that we damage our reputation. The problem with this path is the rains will come again. Do we really want to take the risk of damaging our reputation and relationship with our customers?

If the big rain is seasonal or the sign of the new normal, we can scramble to hire more people to manage the increased flow of the river – throw people at the problem. The issue with this is that builders and managers are two different types of people: one solves problems and the other keeps those now-solved-problems from occurring again. Neither enjoys the other’s job or excels at it. They each trigger different cultures within teams or organizations.

What if there was a team whose only focus was to unclog existing jams, proactively prevent future jams and work to sculpt the river for optimal health and flow. This team would be:

• an eclectic mix of individuals, each with specific skill sets and compatible mindsets
• free from day-to-day responsibility of running the business
• able to move quickly from log jam to log jam (or dive deep, if required)
• empowered to hire outside resources like developers, creatives or other tactical specialists
• capable of gaining a 360-degree view of issues and their impact on the business
• skilled at designing 360-degree solutions for the business
• reporting only to the leadership team

What if your organization had its own special forces team (internal or outsourced) so that it was able to solve your most pressing challenges without diverting existing resources from the task at hand?

Could you make more progress faster?
Could you increase employee satisfaction and therefore customer satisfaction?
Could it pay for itself or better yet be a profit multiplier?
Could you change your culture into a problem-solving organism?
Could you, the leader, founder, change-maker, be more effective by day and sleep at night?

Wrestling The Devil

In Short
The details, or the weeds as they are often called, get a bad rap, are considered a productivity trap and something the smart leaders steer clear of. But if the devil is in the details, success requires wrestling the devil to the ground.

In-Depth
I’ve made my living by diving into the weeds and wrestling devils. The truth is, most devils are nothing more than a lack of communication. A lack of clarity in either the vision, the starting point or the path connecting the two. This is why diving into the details is so important.

That devil we’re wrestling with right now looks nasty from the outside; it looks complicated and unruly, kind of like a giant knot of twine. But as we dive in, we see it’s a single string that just needs to be untangled, little knot by little knot.

So we start with the most available knot. That leads us to the next, and the next, and the next, as we slowly but surely unwind the mess, a misunderstanding of order.

What we’ll always find is a person behind all those knots. Not a devil, although they may seem possessed by one, it is a person doing what they think is the right thing. That person might be us, or a vendor, or an employee, or a whole team; but someone, somewhere is making this mess or allowing the mess to be made.

Once we’ve identified the little devil causing problems (again, usually unwittingly) the wrestling begins: Obviously not physical in nature… this is mental and emotional wrestling. It is taking the time to change how the individual sees, thinks, or feels; clarifying and aligning the vision, the starting point or the path between the two.

Changing how an individual sees, thinks or feels is usually not easy. Not because change is hard- change is actually quite easy- but because we humans don’t like change. We make change hard.

Change is scary, uncomfortable (at first) and confusing. It makes us feel like beginners again, like we’re not smart or talented or valuable. This is why people don’t wrestle with the devil in the details. Devil wrestling often turns into ego-wrestling, which can get heavy and more real than most can handle.

Heavy and real, now that sounds like work worth doing to me. That sounds like change that can positively impact a person’s life, which can positively impact a whole company, which can positively impact thousands of people’s lives.

This is why I wrestle devils for a living.

A few of my favorite resources for devil wrestling:
Switch: How to Change Things When Change is Hard
The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph
Extreme Ownership: How Navy Seals Lead and Win
The Power of Story: Change Your Story Change Your Destiny in Business and in Life 
All things Seth Godin

P.S. I should point out that not all devil wrestling is hard. When an individual or team sets aside their egos out of a hunger to learn, evolve and do what’s best for the brand, this process of change is fun, fast and yields nearly immediate results.

P.P.S. Sometimes the opposite is true and the devil wrestling requires more time and energy than the organization can bear, there is too much collateral damage and too little change. Sometimes the knot makers need to find another place to play.

Management vs. Control

At age three, my daughter was a skilled Zen teacher. During one of my lessons, she was trying to fight back pooping after three days of willful negotiation. As we both found, we can only attempt to manage pooping, we can’t actually control it.

As humans, we learn we can manage nature and over time confuse that management with control. We believe our will is all powerful, and we ignore universal laws. We dismiss the data. We hold tightly (pun intended) to our beliefs.

I’m not so sure my daughter’s belief about her powers over poop are all that different than a climate change denier’s powers over data. Or the business owner’s willful resistance to shifting trends as they cling to beliefs no longer supported by data.

Nature is always evolving, markets shifting, expanding, contracting. So we, too, must always be evolving by listening, watching, measuring and, perhaps most importantly, being honest with ourselves. If we don’t, well, I hope there’s a bathroom nearby.

Blocking & Tackling

In Short
Sustainable growth lies in executing the fundamentals thoroughly and consistently, day after day. The fundamentals are not the flashy, exciting things to work on, but they are what make the flashy and exciting things possible and successful.

In-depth
The Philly Special didn’t win the Eagles Super Bowl 52; blocking and tackling did. Blocking and tackling is what wins every Super Bowl. Only after you’ve got the fundamentals down can the breakout runs, deep passes and methodical movement down the field be possible – oh, and of course, the trick plays.

Going to market works pretty much the same way. It all starts with blocking and tackling.

We often want to do the fancy stuff, especially the go-to-market teams. They want to create emotive videos, redesign logos, come up with clever slogans. Smart, long-tail search engine optimization is boring; functional content on the website isn’t sexy; an automated email series to support a new customer doesn’t win awards; incremental improvements to core products don’t get big events. But all this is the blocking and tackling that ultimately wins market share.

Marketing today, but especially digital marketing, is about the fundamentals. This is because everything is measurable:
We can measure the average order value of a new customer.
We can measure the annual or lifetime value of a customer.
We can measure the viability of targeted audiences.
We can measure the effect of each change to the message.
We can measure the performance of specific pages on the website.
We can measure the return on each dollar spent on each marketing vehicle.

It’s this measurement that allows us to incrementally optimize. Let’s be clear here: This is not to masterfully trick the customer. This is to communicate our value and purpose so that it resonates with our customers (not the whole world, just the customers that see the world as we do and desire solutions like the ones we provide).

Too many companies currently have too much money and are not measuring and optimizing their actions. Marketing budgets are being spent in unsustainable ways. The Silicon Valley mindset of acquiring customers at any cost, which works for bleeding edge technologies and platforms that require a network effect, has made its way into every industry and has created a culture of unsustainable customer acquisition and retention.

Most of us are not building Amazon or the next unicorn brand. For 99.9% of us, it’s time to get back to the fundamentals. For us, growth is all about blocking and tackling. Three of the most effective places to get started:

1. Measure and analyze all go-to-market efforts.
   If we don’t have time to measure, analyze, optimize, repeat, then we are doing too much or need to hire additional talent to support our efforts. Too many of us are too busy and not paying attention to what the marketplace is telling us. And so we make poor, uninformed decisions about where we spend our money and how we communicate.

a. Measure the performance of every vehicle and the sales channel as a whole.

b. Analyze data at least monthly, preferably weekly; and if you are spending a
significant percentage of your revenue on marketing or have large peaks and valleys to your business, then measure daily.

c. Make decisions based on clear trends in data. Don’t lose who you are, or how you communicate. Optimize your ability to tell your story.

2. Optimize what we own first.
The most cost effective optimization comes from our owned marketing vehicles because, once optimized, they require little ongoing spend. Where paid marketing vehicles require us to continually feed the beast.

a. Our website
Building a better mousetrap will improve the performance of every marketing vehicle. Through user testing, consumer interviews and the data available for free from Google Analytics, we can improve the site experience, increase our conversion rate and drive long-term customer loyalty.

b. Organic Search
“We’re spending too much on search engine optimization”, said nobody, ever. Google is free marketing for life. Allocate marketing spending up-front to make sure Google’s search algorithms can clearly see what you offer. Target the long-tail customers for uncrowded access to highly valuable customers. Support from SEO specialists is amazingly cheap given the return on investment. Moving from page 2 to page 1 in a search, or from the bottom of page 1 to the top can trigger significant growth.

c. Email
Starting with automated email we can deliver a series of valuable information to customers based on if they a) are just signing up to hear about our next promotion, b) made their first purchase or c) have just spent more than $1,000 with us. Once optimized to further develop the relationship with the customer, automated emails are the gifts that keep on giving. They drive repeat buying habits and long-term loyalty without another second of our attention.

As for the weekly or monthly communications, make them useful. Give users a reason to want to open the email. Educate, entertain, surprise. It’s not that we are too busy for email; we have too much choice in how we spend our time.

d. Social Media
Let’s get clear, social media is a distribution vehicle. The question isn’t, “What content should we create for social media?” The question is, “Is the content we’re creating interesting or useful enough to distribute through social media?” What is working? Who cares how many followers we have. What matters is engagement. How many likes, comments and clicks? Understand what’s resonating and at what cost.

3. Expand our audience.
Once we are measuring our activities, and have optimized the digital world we own, we can now cost effectively expand our reach by paying for traffic. We are able to do this cost effectively because we know who our customers are. We know we can connect with them in a meaningful way. We know how to form a relationship so they will come back to buy from us again and again. It’s simply a matter of finding more of our customers.

Whether we use paid search, social media advertising, banner ads or whatever new-fangled tactic arises, it really doesn’t matter. We simply follow the data in search of our customers.

a. We cast a net. Usually the first cast is not profitable. But we are seeking new places to find our customers. Using the proven communications from our owned vehicles.

b. Once we’ve found our customers, we hone the location and message until we’ve found a cost-effective way to introduce ourselves.

c. We repeat, casting a new net. Seeking the long-tail locations where we can compete and win attention. Again, not competing for everyone’s attention. Not seeking all customers. Just our customers.

This is blocking and tackling. It’s not flashy, but it works. We’ve seen it work for sub one million dollar companies and those pushing to cross the 100 or 200 million mark.