One of the upsides of travelling a bit for work is that I get to catch up with people I know in various places around the world. I’m working on a project at the moment that’s bringing me to Brisbane on a fairly regular basis and tonight I had the pleasure of catching up with Casual Marketer Newsletter Subscriber, Stephen Morgan.
Having A Backup Plan
There’s this almost cult-like fascination with being an entrepreneur and for some people, they wear it like an idiotic badge of honour. I don’t really subscribe to the idea of someone being an entrepreneur as I’ve said in a few previous emails – you can be entrepreneurial in nature, but defining yourself as an entrepreneur is a bit stupid.
Weirdly Bad Marketing
I was sitting here this evening at my desk thinking about what exactly I could write about and while there were a couple topics bouncing around my head, there really wasn’t anything jumping out at me. When I write these emails, the process usually revolves around me getting a germ of an idea and then thinking about a story to weave around that thought to expand and make it coherent.
Performing Triage On Your Business
Just before Christmas, I performed an intervention on a friend’s online business. He had been going round and round in circles for nearly three years. He would see something that someone else was doing, try to emulate it, work out that it wasn’t going to work for him, complain bitterly, stop doing it and then three months later start the whole cycle over again.
Changing Your Behaviours
I’ve started making a conscious effort over the past few weeks to make changes in some of my behaviour patterns and how I deal with certain things in my day to day life. We’re not talking about quitting smoking (I don’t smoke), drinking less (I don’t drink) or not buying “scratch ‘n’ match” lottery tickets (I don’t gamble), I’m talking about just making some subtle changes to how I go about certain things.
Being Part Of The Conversation In The Market
I talk about the “Cluetrain Manifesto” a fair bit because I think it was a pivotal book in the understanding of how marketing to your clients online had been changed forever by the dynamics of the medium itself. It’s no longer enough to sit back and buy some media to shout your brand and pimp your wares in ads to everyone and sundry.
Laptop Lifestyle Of A Normal Person
No Klingon in this email, I promise! In fact, I had a few people reply to yesterday’s email asking me if I was completely sober when I wrote it. Sadly, I was.
Are You A Marketing Klingon?
nuqneH’
In the “Star Wars vs Star Trek” debate, I’m a committed Trek nerd. I’ve seen all the Star Wars movies and really, other than Empire Strikes Back, I think they are all mostly a bit “meh” – I genuinely don’t know what the fuss is about. But Star Trek, I can quote episodes from all the series and I can happily do the Vulcan greeting with either hand.
Scratching An Itch
One thing I’m never short on is good ideas for new businesses, products, services or features I can add to existing businesses. I have a notebook dedicated to it in Evernote with probably 20 different notes and each of those having whole ideas mapped out. When I get a new idea I whip open Evernote and get it down.
Lessons In Bootstrapping Learned At Ikea
Our last house was cavernous. It had big rooms and high ceilings. Our main living room area was massive and had an entire open mezzanine level where our home office and man cave existed. The mezzanine had two large desks plus a sofa, a 42″ LCD for playing Xbox and a big outside deck area.