To Cannes or not to Cannes

To Cannes or not to Cannes

by | Aug 1, 2019 | Copywriting, Strategy

I just feel I get tricked a lot. By myself. Mostly, I solve the wrong problem.

Or I get seduced by something, like a kiddo in a candy store.

Facebook or youtube stuff that looks interesting. Fashion, endless rows of clothes or moisturisers with the promise of younger skin. As if I was getting any younger.

Books, or stories. Truth tellers can be seducing in themselves, it’s as if being under an all protecting bell of knowledge. I feel safe in there, but in lasts very little. I get distracted.

Or by plans to do something, someday.

One day I will take the whole day just to figure out what I want.

It will never happen.

And if it does, you’ll have to confront, for the first 30 minutes at least, if you can endure that long, that only stupid cliches come to mind and there’s no clarity to speak of.

A coffee addict without the daily dose, rambling on for the magic button.

There isn’t one.

In the meantime, obviously, there’s no joy.

It’s just meaningless trajectories to consume, spend, conjure dreams of spending some more.

Wouldn’t it be nice to go to Cannes, buy expensive shoes and go on a yacht? It would. Sort of. But not much.

The adrenaline of something new, really new, the zero to one kind of new, will always beat that.

If you have the bug, that is.

If you don’t, then Cannes is it. Or whatever else is in the same industry as Cannes.

But if you’ve got it, if you are after something new, then nothing will appease. Not shoes, not moisturisers, not yachts.

Here’s what has a chance, or so I think: ideas and people that produce them. Nerds like you. Or me. Putting puzzles together with them. That does it.

Because sooner or later, something will pop. Most times it won’t. But you can take it. You don’t do it for the most times.

And you are fine doing it for the most times and not getting much out of it.

I mean you should allow for it. Plan for it. Plan for something you want bad enough so the frustration doesn’t wear you off and turn you bitter or worse, ready to go into the world mixer of me toos.

Because, you know, you may have to.

There are bills to pay and life is short etc. And you may have people depending on you, and that’s hard. Everyone understands that.

Except you, if you have the bug.

Deep down, you know that’s selling short. And you know it takes so much courage to not go against you. The boring kind, the one you have to materialise every day, when there’s no money for bills or there is, but you’d also like to go on vacation and how will that happen?

It’s not easy.

Mostly, if you had one wish, it was actually to solve the correct problem.

Not the one that brings the most money now, not the one that brings peace now, the one that’s THE problem, the real battle, that’s the one you want to pick.

Are you creating value? Are you also retaining it?

Or are you just wasting time and neurones creating something that gets sold, even in large quantities, at little profits?

That’s called living for yesterday. Or like there’s no tomorrow, because literally, there is no future to that. It’s called the slavery of consumption.

No spark. No future. The future will happen after you abandon all that and actually give it a go at creating something new.

If you have the bug. If you don’t, it’s fine, Cannes is nice. Especially in the summer, or so I remember. Occasionally it’s even glam.

But that’s not you and, hell, it’s definitely not me.

So what’s there to do?

I don’t have it, I have no formula. For things like these, the best you can hope for is principles and questions. And the people to bounce them at and play ball with.

Otherwise, you’re back on the wheel, building offerings and pitching around for clients. You may even get them. And that’s going to keep you arrested until you collide with something of purpose.

It could even come disguised in agony or catastrophe. Here’s a small one: the budgeting season’s coming and you have no new website.

That’s not what you should worry about.

“Do I create any real value?” is what should stop your game.

And until you have the answer to that, you can put off the offering and start answering.

Make it quick, though.

I can help.

Give me a call.

Who are you for your clients?

Who are you for your clients?

by | Jul 4, 2019 | Copywriting, Design, Flagship, Strategy

Autodidacts out there, hear the swoosh of my virtual bow. I taught myself to read many, many years ago, but on days like these it looks like there’s not much else I’ll do for myself.

Figuring out other people’s main message is piece of cake compared to writing your own editorial plan. Your own anything, actually.

It’s not that there’s any dark art about it, by the way. We all drop clues, walk around with a cloud over our head, our message on the rainbow. It takes a reader to look and serve it back to us on a silver platter.

The reading, of course, has its method. The right questions to open the way.

But the actual looking for it, curiously engaged with a message extractor by your side does most of the job.

Because we all want to be known and gotten for who we are.

You want your tribe to know what you’re about. You want them to look at your work and say it has your name all over it. A classic you, they’ll say and smile.

Which is why when the website is nowhere near there, you’d rather not speak about it.

Let’s put an end to this Boogie man, though. I’ll say it for you.

Other than your actual place of business, your website is your main shop window. Where people come in to see what you’re about. Actually they come in for what they want you to do for them. Sometimes, something about you will get them in the door even when that message’s not clear. They’ll be intrigued. Or charmed. Either way, if there’re in, it’s on you to get the conversation started.

What do you say? If you skip the awkward hellos, they’ll want to know what you can do for them.

It rarely goes beyond a few lines. It could be even one. And it’s the mightiest of copy. Your hero copy.

Hero, because that’s where you put it, on the first window of your website. And the name says it all. It’s there to save the day.

Good hero copy is what has your clients at hello. It’s the recipe for love at first sight.

But here’s the thing about good hero copy. It doesn’t just happen.

Good hero copy is a sign the house is in order. Meaning your messaging, what you want to say to your clients, is neatly stacked, colour coded and cherished, like DVDs in the ‘90s. Like Star Wars action figures on your teen dorm mantelpiece.

And that only happens when who you are is crystal clear.

You know yourself as a business down to your DNA.

Do you know what that’s like? To just know?

Yes, you do.

You meet someone and know in the first seconds you’ll get along. And you sure know how it feels when this really isn’t going to work. Those Manolos may be gorgeous. But they’re not for you. You’d rather be in Birkenstocks all summer. You say “it’s just not me,” and you walk.

That’s what I do for you, by the way.

I spare you the search. Actually, I spare your clients the doubts.

I write your DNA.

I tell you who you are for your clients.

Call me an oracle. Or a nose. Or, my favourite, the un-tangler.

If your hero copy is nowhere near where you want it to be, it just might be you need some DNA work.

What do I mean?

Say why you think you’re in business is to empower entrepreneurs. It’s who you think you are. Empowering entrepreneurs is a universe. Noble, but vague.

Are you an online platform for personal development dedicated to entrepreneurs? Are you a tech company that offers accounting software for start-ups? Are you a start-up fund?

But if who you are is someone who plants the seeds of entrepreneurship, that’s empowerment in a very specific way. A filter that calls forth a different kind of reality.

And you keep at it until you have it. Maybe it is that you’re a hub for entrepreneurial resilience.

If your unique value proposition is vague, that’s where you need to look. That’s where the work needs to happen. Not in the copy. Copy comes easy when the house is in order.

That’s why good copy can only happen if you have strategy handled first. Here’s a secret good copywriters share: copy is walking strategy.

And a good copywriter is always a good strategist. Which is actually what you need your copywriter to be. Someone who can read your game and power it up with words.

I see brilliant entrepreneurs with websites that breathe who they are, the cloud and rainbow over their head, but no real hero copy. It’s fixable.

Somewhere in that cloud of emotion, the message is sitting tight like a needle in the haystack, waiting patiently.

You could do it on your own. If you’re an autodidact. I put together a guideline that will walk you through it. Get it here and use it to bits. It’s why it’s there for. Then drop me a line. I’d love to know who you are.

How to pitch with 2% success rate and not lose it

How to pitch with 2% success rate and not lose it

by | Feb 22, 2019 | Design, Strategy

I’ve been sitting on this for way too long but somehow, this will see the light of day. Today.

Does that recall anything? Feet up on the desk, I stare into the screen and occasionally peep out the window at the seagull floating by. I can’t help a “lucky bastard” or two.

He deserves it, by the way, for making it look absolutely effortless.

The thing is, I have no clue what to with it. It’s probably why I sat on it. Waiting for some grand idea to make this happen.

And then I went over the notes again and decided to take Joel’s medicine.

“Go somewhere for an hour and come back with 100 ideas on what to do with it.”

I’m doing this right now, just so we’re clear, while I’m hoping my body will go into ketosis (it most likely won’t, but let’s not get discouraged. Writing is hard anyway.)

Joel, just so we’re clear, is Joel Evey as in the creative director of Gap. I met him last September when he was in town for, mind you, an idea festival. They exist and they’re actually a good idea. Like TED without the hat.

This one – Unfinished – drew a neatly curated crowd.

Corporates looking for a breath of oxygen, creatives mingling with youtube stars, the last batch of entrepreneurial successes stating it with or without help from the Tom Ford jacket. And the understated brainiacs.

I’m missing a lot. But six months later, I’m allowed. I can’t even remember if Joel was the one with the statement striped socks.

Were you, Joel?

Joel has ideas for a living. And when you do that job, I’ve learned, there’s got to be something better anchoring you into results than inspiration and brain.fm. (Not a commercial placement. I learned of it in Tim Ferriss’s podcast and tried it. It does a decent job keeping me glued to the chair.)

How does Joel do it, though?

“You get really good at the sell. And you stay at the edges because that’s where you develop the idea,” he said in the panel session.

How is the obvious question, which is why I went after him with it.

“What I would add is you get really good at editing. So the hundred ideas [you just went and had for an hour], like, eventually the hundred ideas you edit them yourself.

So then maybe you only show one or two ideas, but you’re going to have a hundred first. And most of them are going to be trash.

Yeah, just write them down like, just have any idea off the top of your head and that’s going to train you to iterate really fast.

And that’s the thing that’s really important is to be able to say, like, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this, we could do this and you kind of know at the end of the day that, like, a lot of those ideas are going to be bad.

But a few of them will be good and I want to like be able to have the lens or the focus or the intentionality, say, like, here’s the three good ones. Let’s work on this a little more.

I’m going to iterate on it a little bit. Okay, I’ve had all my ideas. All right. Now I’m going to try and like pull some reference images for it or start making, like, comps and make some, like, design, just do a few treatments.

Then you look at it again and you’re like, which one of those is strongest and then you’re like that’s the one I think is really going to work, and then you make it a little more, and a little more, and eventually you, like, get better and better and more confident with yourself, like, that process will get shorter and shorter and it seems less daunting because eventually you don’t even have to write a hundred ideas down, you’ll just have thought through them in your head and you’ll be like, I do this I, can do this, I can do this, and eventually then you sort of just start with the three and then you make the one.

If you train yourself to think that way, the idea has become less precious, but they become more valuable because you’re not like, this was my first idea, it really has to be this. I’m really inflexible if it changes.

I can’t do it because that doesn’t really happen in, like, real client culture.

It’s always going to change so you wanna be able to say okay I’ve had the idea. Now, how do I shift it? How do I change it?

You know, like, as the generation of ideas gets faster and faster, it’ll get easier and easier and then I’ll get more and more flexible and you can kind of put things together.

[And] they’re compelling and overarching.”

Then we went into podcasts and books. I got on Philosophize This ever since. Am still to go into “The Dialectic of Enlightenment.”

For my money, the cherry on top was when he explained what glued his choices all together.

“Those guys are just talking about how systems function and what I do as a design practice and as an educator a lot of times it’s just talking about, like, how systems function but the systems I’m interested in is cultural systems.

Why is something cool versus it’s not cool. Why is it like trendy versus not trendy?”

How does that even happen? As with the 100 ideas, as you go about your regular idea pushups, “there’s this other part of like developing your instinctuality when you look at something, you’re just, like, that’s cool.

No one has to tell you that it’s cool. You just know that it’s cool.

And I think a lot of times it takes a little while to build up that skill, but you want to just have tuned your personal taste so much, and I’ve looked at so many blogs, and looked at so many things where you’re just, like, that’s intrinsically amazing.

I know the reference points. I know why it exists. This is a cool thing.”

Just in case you catch me perusing Vogue or Wisecrack on youtube on a deadline, I’m sharpening my inner blades. Joel does it too. His playground’s design. Mine is words.

All wrought down to “hey, let’s vet your ideas, vet your process, vet your positioning.”

No worries, you don’t have to teach yourself to me. I pick that up.

Will plug in and download the chip of who you are. Your matrix.

I take you, boil it to the balsamic reduction of you and give you the copy.

To be fair, I picked some of these from Jill Kargman. I have not read a word she wrote. But saw a nice video of her apartment on youtube.

Yes, I was on a deadline.

What I learned in 2018

What I learned in 2018

by | Jan 11, 2019 | Strategy

Bill Gates posted something with a similar title the other day. Who better to borrow from? So without further ado, let me cherrypick a tres jolie collection of ups, downs and ahas, from my office on the 17th floor to your browser.

The second I wrote that, I sighed a sigh of insignificance. What could I possibly have to say? But then I can only give what I have, so here it is.

A business of one is a lonely affair. Buckle up.

Yes, on grey rainy days with no immediate deadline you surely can turn on the other side and surrender the melancholy under the warm duvet while hoards honk behind the wheel in traffic.

Yes, you can have lunch with your sister on Wednesdays at the Greek place you both love and catch up on books and the kids.

And yes, you can put your feet up and binge on youtube videos on storytelling until 2PM if you so desire, and then head to the bedroom for what we’ll call here a nap.

You also have to make sure work is done on time and there’s more coming. Nobody else is there to take care of it.

Are you more productive? Chances are you are. You will also have a fresh addition to your checklist: get social. Pronto.

No man or woman is an island.

I learned that in January when for reasons still obscure, my anxiety graph showed a huge spike. Anxiety is, by the way, a continuum unless you are either a) a very lucky individual b) a heavyweight meditator, which probably brings us back to a).

What keeps your client up at night? Do you remember that question? It comes up for a reason. Clients are up at night for a reason. Mine was both existential, as it many times is – I was about to turn 40, but more on that some other time – and overwhelm.

In your first years, Seth Godin says, you hydrate from the hose. It sure was true for me. And there are consequences.

You just keep up with it as best you can and then you need to fall back on something. Someone. Like my sister, my parents, my friends from around the world who checked on me and listened to me rant about whatever.

You take the fall. It happens. It’s how you learn faith and feel love. Otherwise you don’t go on.

Vague means it doesn’t get done (well).

I’ll do marketing on Friday. Or I’ll get started on research at 10:00 am. It’s how the story goes. Then, come Friday or 10:00 am, the latest from Chanel on Youtube will look ten times more tempting. Because what do you mean, do marketing? Am I actually going to start thinking about it then? Chances are, I have learned, very, very slim.

Bottomline, emergencies get handled. The rest is at the whim and twist of fate. I got that out of one of the n courses I put myself through 2018. Todd Herman’s 90 day year was well worth the price for that and other hacks I have now wired into my week.

What I do now is procedures: documents of steps I need to take come Operations Monday or Writing Friday. I open the doc, look at the list and do the basic tasks it says I should. For marketing, there’s a to do list. Whenever I have an idea of something that is actually actionable, I put it down in the Marketing to do list doc. When Marketing Fridays come, I open it and, as the poet says, just do it. Everything else is make believe. Haze. Nada.

What’s my 123? aka as Discipline is freedom.

Says Jocko Willink, not that I am a member of the 4:30 am club. If I wake up that early I’m either catching a flight or sick. The Navy SEAL figured it out, though.

Remember the Aristotle quote everyone used to throw around in college? It’s the go to training prompt: excellence is a habit. (Apparently it was also a misattribution, but let’s just leave it at that.)

How am I going to be excellent at anything today unless I’ve done it a million times? Well, you’re not.

Enter the morning routine, probably one of my biggest wins in the last years. I wake up, I meditate for 10 minutes (lately with Sam Harris’s Waking up course), I get on the mat for 30 minutes of yoga, I do the morning pages and head to breakfast. Not every day, but most days. I will brush my teeth somewhere in between these steps.

Do I want not to do it at times? Yes. But I generally don’t think about it. Let me revert to the poet – just do it.

I am now searching for the alchemy that gets me to do the research, write etc. when I say I do. When I find it, you’ll know. It’ll be all over Times Square. Or here. Check here first.

The mind will learn very slowly. And that’s alright.

It’s not my neuroscience thesis. I have no evidence for that other than my own impressions. And mind can play tricks on all of us.

The thing is, I’ve been on my own for almost four years. I had no idea what I was heading into. I just wanted to do something that put to work what I had best to offer. I’ve had heartbreaks big and small every other Thursday, and it sure took a while until I learned not to believe all I read out there in the land of the Internet.

A website that converts on its own without Google Ads and no constant other traffic generation efforts is a very rare thing. A sales page with a buy button does not equal money in the bank. And it takes a lot of inner work to name your price and get it. You will have to fire clients now and then, and that’s ok, too. They’ll get a better fit. The people I admire have been doing this for 10+ years and are still learning. It just takes time.

Because it builds something truly valuable. Technology is not just tools and instruction, but also process knowledge. (There’s a wood shrine in Japan that gets destroyed and built from scratch every 20 years so the community can pass on the knowledge from one generation to the next. Go figure.)

Clients are heroes. And teachers. (And I’ll still charge full price.)

I am grateful to my clients past, present and future.

Because I’ve learned so much. Like real stuff. An ambitious crypto entrepreneur introduced me to the crystal clear lines of Paul Graham, a Silicon Valley Yoda I would have not learned of otherwise (seriously, if you’re in tech, read Hackers and Painters. If you’re not in tech, read it still.)

My health and slow ageing coach client taught me how to prep all my meals a week in advance and saved me hours and money in the process.

My international litigator client who remains the only foreign lawyer in Afghanistan showed me the meaning of fierce and compassionate. Did I mention she’s a woman and has mind boggling success rates because she uses laws for their intended purpose: to protect?

Where else would I get this education and get to be a part of the big adventure? I am grateful for a shot to do something great together. And I want them to win.

Best books I read all year: Paul Graham: Hackers and Painters; Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett: Good Omens

Best podcast: The Tim Ferriss Show, Philosophize This!

Best youtube channel: Nerdwriter1, Wisecrack

What are yours?

PS Below is Kim Motley at the Unfinished 2018 in Bucharest. The story of how she extracted a woman forced into seclusion by her family in Afghanistan made me walk to her and say “Hi, you’re the bravest woman I’ve ever met. Need copy?” I later learned Richard Branson called her aspirational. You bet.

Rule #1: Assume nothing

Rule #1: Assume nothing

by | Dec 14, 2018 | Copywriting, Design, Strategy

Given the luxury, I will sit around and wait for it.

Something will get my attention, like my eyebrows, which I will diligently proceed to pluck, or, God forbid, some Youtube title from the usual suspects (John Oliver, Wisecrack, Peaceful Cuisine or the Nerdwriter. Chanel, too, I’m not ashamed to say. I may end up with perfect make-up on a day I have no meetings, and that’s just fine.)

Sometimes, this will pour out of me. Sometimes it just drips, Chinese style, like some perverse hide and seek routine. Either way, I will need to pace myself.

If this doesn’t sound in the least familiar, think of your last presentation deadline.

Did you get a slice of the elephant done each day or did you gulp it all the night before? And how did you work your mind into it?

Maybe this will help. Smarter people than me have done it.

Book time to stare at the wall. Have a pad and pen ready. Eventually, a thought will cross your mind.

It might happen in an hour, but it might not. (I mean, for real, book me for an hour and I’ll have 10 ideas. Sometimes, one may be it, but can I guarantee that? Here’s what I can guarantee, who guarantees it is bs-ing you. Because you just don’t know. But you will get something, that’s for sure. And something takes you somewhere. I’m not channeling the Cheshire cat, I promise. I’ve just done this for a while.)

Back to the wall. It can get excruciating, and I totally understand why you would want to walk away from it. And by all means do, if you can. Outsource it to the likes of me.

But since we’re not faking it here, let me tell you, there’s no way you can outsource all of it. And you don’t want to, anyway.

Because what happens while you stare at your metaphysical wall is precious. It’s time you gift yourself into the ivory tower to see where you are. Possibly glimpse where you’re heading.

You might want to start that on your own. It helps to have someone to bounce ball with, throw stuff around, just to see what they hear and, ideally, rephrase it. Distill it into one liners, key questions or koans. The air will clarify around you, I promise. There’s nothing like the cold crisp tingle of an idea. Then you write it all down, real quick.

I always record these conversations. What you’ll say in the first one, you may never repeat.

It’s a twilight zone, where doors of perception swing open. I used to quote Huxley in high-school without really getting it (“If the doors of perception were cleansed every thing would appear to man as it is: Infinite”). I was a Doors fan, very much intrigued but not fully engaging the idea. For that, I can forgive myself. High-school is a good time to believe in the esoteric.

At 40, I’m more into basic questioning. What makes you say that? I’ll ask the dumbest of questions fearlessly. I’ll assume nothing. I have learned that to be the key.

Some of the most revealing conversations I’ve had had that in common: allow myself the time to be in the presence of the idea. Assume nothing.

Then, go through the same process: can I recreate it? Say it exactly as you say it. Can I generate it? Say it as if I was you, owning it. Can I generate from your world? Put on my magic VR glasses, enter your world and see what’s in there and describe it as your audience needs to hear it.

That, actually, is what I do. It’s how I get to your DNA (core, why, what, X-factor or whatever else you call them out there) and then am able to phrase it into your one liner, your pitch, your mini bio, your home and about page or your deck.

In one of the monthly sessions copy mama Amy Posner does at the Copy Clinic (Hogwarts for the likes of me), I’ve met this wonderful fellow copywriter from Toronto who specialises in interviews. Hannah Shamji is also a nearly registered counsellor, diving deep into issues she needs to keep contained but be able to capture. Think Harry Potter, pouring from his potion bottles to get lucky or go through other people’s memories.

Hannah and me, it turns out, have both a thing for immersion into other worlds to come out truth in hand, and the same Flat Iron Building poster from New York in our respective homes. My favourite takeaway from our first conversation: don’t question, ask. When you question, you’re already implying things, and that’s you, not them. Didn’t I say it? Yes, I did. Assume nothing.

I love playing for time, by the way. The more I get, the better. Something inside is shifting into focus, while on the outside I go for yoga or watch series. “How do I explain to my wife that when I look out the window I’m working?” Joseph Conrad, whom I have never read a line from and will not pretend otherwise, said it. And it’s true. I even moved my desk now, so I have a better view.

(I only work with innovators, btw. If you read this far, chances are you’re one. Lovely to meet you. Sign up for my posts, I’ll have good idea stuff coming your way.)