Whatcha Gonna Do With That Duck?: And Other Provocations, 2006-2012 (33 page)

A useful metric is both accurate (in that it measures what it says it measures) and aligned with your goals. Making your numbers go up (any numbers—your BMI, your blood sugar, your customer service ratings) is pointless if the numbers aren’t related to why you went to work this morning.

When people talk about “the tipping point,” they often misunderstand the concept in Malcolm [Gladwell’s] book. They’re actually talking about the flipping point.

The tipping point is the sum total of many individuals buzzing about something (or, slightly more accurately, the point at which everything can change, all at once, because of the sheer number of individuals buzzing)
.
But for an individual to start buzzing, something has to change in that person’s mind. Something flips from boredom or ignorance to excitement or anger.

It starts when the story of a brand or a person or a store or an experience flips in your head and it goes from good to bad, or from ignored to beloved. The flipping point doesn’t represent the sum of public conversations; it’s the outcome of an activated
internal
conversation.

It’s easy to wish and hope for your project to tip, for it to magically
become the hot thing. But that won’t happen if you can’t seduce and entrance an individual and then another.

Before we can reach the tipping point, someone has to flip. And then someone else. And then a hundred more someones.

We resist incremental improvement in our offerings and our stories because it just doesn’t seem likely that one good interaction or one tiny alteration can possibly lead to a significant amount of flipping. And we’re right—it won’t. The flipping point (for an individual) is almost always achieved after a consistent series of almost invisible actions that create a brand-new whole.

And the reason it’s so difficult? Because you’re operating on faith. You need to invest and apparently overinvest (time and money and effort) until you see the results. And most of your competitors (lucky for you) give up long before they reach the point where it pays off.

1. The first step is to stop Googling things like “how to make money online.” Not because you shouldn’t want to make money online, but because the stuff you’re going to find by doing that is going to help you lose money online. Sort of like asking a casino owner how to make money in Vegas.
   
2. Don’t pay anyone for simple and proven instructions on how to achieve this goal. In particular, don’t pay anyone to teach you how to write or sell manuals or ebooks about how to make money online.
   
3. Get rich slow.
   
4. Focus on the scarce resource online: attention. If you try to invent a way to take cheap attention and turn it into cash, you will fail. The attention you want isn’t cheap, it’s difficult to get via SEO, and it rarely scales. Instead, figure out how to earn expensive attention.
   
5. In addition to attention, focus on trust. Trust is even more scarce than attention.
   
6. Don’t worry so much about the “online” part. Instead, figure out how to create value. The online part will take care of itself.
   
7. Don’t quit your day job. Start evenings and weekends and figure it out with small failures.
   
8. Build a public reputation, a good one, and be sure that you deserve it and that it will hold up to scrutiny.
   
9. Obsessively specialize. No niche is too small if it’s yours.
   
10. Connect the disconnected.
    
11. Lead.
    
12. Build an online legacy that increases in value daily.
    
13. Make money offline. If you can figure out how to create value face-to-face, it’s a lot easier to figure out how to do the same digitally. The Web isn’t magic, it’s merely efficient.
    
14. Become the best in the world at something that people value. Easier said than done, but worth more than you might think.
    
15. Hang out with people who aren’t looking for shortcuts. Learn from them.
    
16. Fail. Fail often and fail cheaply. This is the very best gift the Web has given to people who want to bootstrap their way into a new business.
    
17. Make money in the small and then relentlessly scale.
    
18. Don’t chase yesterday’s online fad.
    
19. Think big, act with intention, and don’t get bogged down in personalities. If it’s not on your agenda, why are you wasting time on it?
    
20. Learn. Ceaselessly. Learn to code, to write persuasively, to understand new technologies, to bring out the best in your team, to find underused resources, and to spot patterns.
    
21. This is not a zero-sum game. The more you add to your community, the bigger your piece gets.
    

One percent.

That’s how many you get if you’re lucky. One percent of the subscribers to the
Times
read an article and take action. One percent of the visitors to a website click a button to find out more. One percent of the people in a classroom are sparked by an idea and go do something about it.

And then!

And then, of that 1%, perhaps 1% go ahead and take more action, or recruit others, or write a book or volunteer. One percent of one percent.

No wonder advertisers have to run so many ads. Most of us ignore
most of them. No wonder it’s so hard to convert a digital browsing audience into a real-world paying one—most people are in too much of a hurry to read and think and pause and then do.

The common mistake is to reflexively come to the conclusion that the only option is to make more noise, to put more attention into the top of the funnel. The thinking goes that if a big audience is getting you mediocre results, a huge audience is the answer. Alas, getting a huge audience is more difficult than the alternatives.

A few ways to deal with the funnel:

• Acknowledge that it’s there. Don’t assume that a big audience is going to easily convert to action.
  
• Work to measure your losses. Figure out where in the process you’re losing interest and clicks or the other behaviors you seek.
  
• If you can, remove steps. Each step costs you dearly.
  
• Treat different people differently. If you alter the funnel to maximize interest by the wandering masses, you may very well miss the chance to convert the focused few.
  

You don’t need all of these, and some are mutually exclusive (while others are not). And most don’t work, don’t scale, or can’t be arranged:

1. Be very focused on your goal and work on it daily.
   
2. Go to college with someone who makes it big and then hires you.
   
3. Be born with significant and unique talent.
   
4. Practice every day.
   
5. Network your way to the top by inviting yourself from one lunch to another, trading favors as you go.
   
6. Quietly do your job day in and day out until someone notices you and gives you the promotion you deserve.
   
7. Do the emotional labor of working on things that others fear.
   
8. Notice things, turn them into insights, and then relentlessly turn those insights into projects that resonate.
   
9. Hire a great PR firm and get a lot of publicity.
   
10. Work the informational interview angle.
    
11. Perform outrageous acts and say obnoxious things.
    
12. Inherit.
    
13. Redefine your version of success as: whatever I have right now.
    
14. Flit from project to project until you alight on something that works out very quickly and well.
    
15. Be the best-looking person in the room.
    
16. Flirt.
    
17. Tell stories that people care about and spread.
    
18. Contribute more than is expected.
    
19. Give credit to others.
    
20. Take responsibility.
    
21. Aggrandize, preferably self.
    
22. Be a jerk and win through intimidation.
    
23. Be a doormat and refuse to speak up or stand up.
    
24. Never hesitate to share a kind word when it’s deserved.
    
25. Sue people.
    
26. Treat every gig as an opportunity to create art.
    
27. Cut corners.
    
28. Focus on defeating the competition.
    
29. When dealing with employees, act like Steve. It worked for him, apparently.
    
30. Persist, always surviving to ship something tomorrow.
    
31. When in doubt, throw a tantrum.
    
32. Have the ability to work harder and more directly than anyone else when the situation demands it.
    
33. Don’t rock the boat.
    
34. Rock the boat.
    
35. Don’t rock the boat, baby.
    
36. Resort to black-hat tactics to get more than your share.
    
37. Work to pay more taxes.
    
38. Work to evade taxes.
    
39. Find typos.
    

Tower Records is gone. I used to go there almost every day when I lived in Greenwich Village. I haven’t been in more than five years—pretty much since I started buying just about everything at Amazon. Obviously, I won’t miss it.

I haven’t been inside a bank in nearly as long. Why would I? The ATM is closer, faster, and easier.

I haven’t read the classified ads in the paper in five years, either.

None of these three activities were ever particularly emotionally heartwarming. And now that they’re gone, I don’t miss them.

So, here’s the question: When you’re gone, will they miss what
you
do? It’s not too late to change the answer …

It’s a simple test of whether you’ve created a remarkable experience:

“Would I buy the T-shirt?”

A T-shirt for your blog or your accounting firm or your bug-fighting software.

If you’re not T-shirt worthy, what would it take?

This might be the last time you see me in your hotel.

It might be the last time you get to give me support on the $3,000-a-month Web hosting I’m buying from you.

It might be my last blog post (unlikely, but possible).

With so many choices, every business lives right on the edge. When you were the only florist in my town, storming off in a huff cost me as much as it cost you. Now, it’s sort of trivial to just type a few different letters into my browser.

Yes, switching costs make some people hesitate before moving to Firefox or KPMG or National Car Rental. But when customers have been trained to no longer tolerate imperfection, they can go (forever) at any moment.

I try to give every speech I do as if it might be the last chance I ever get to give one. I still remember the last canoe lesson I gave, the last time I walked out the door at my one real job, and the last time I talked to my mom. Sometimes you get advance warning; sometimes you get to cherish the moment or try a bit harder. Other times, though, it just—stops.

If you know that tomorrow is your last chance, is it going to go differently?

Most organizations have a sweet spot. That’s the product or service that leads to the highest profit, retention, customer satisfaction, and word of mouth. If you walk into a certain bar and order a draft beer, you’re more likely in that sweet spot than if you ordered, say, a Coke. A different bar might discover that the customer who orders a top-shelf martini is most likely to lead to the best outcome.

Over time, you’ll start to develop slight variations on your sweet spot. If one kind of martini is good, then a few are even better. Pancake
houses start selling Swedish, German, and even Brazilian pancakes. Insurance companies start selling a dozen different variations on whole life.

Clusters work because people are likely to be drawn to a crowd. They also work because making a good, better, best comparison gives us the confidence to go ahead and buy something. It’s not an accident that profitable products like cars come in so many variations—having a choice makes it easier to choose (at least for a while). When Heinz comes in four colors, you don’t have to decide whether or not to buy ketchup; you merely have to decide which color, and they win every time.

Clusters have a few problems. The first is that you inevitably leave people out. If your restaurant serves nothing but spicy food, then the odd duck who came with a group and doesn’t like spicy food is going to go away unhappy.

Clusters get boring. If all you’ve got is another variation of the same fund-raising tool that’s worked so well for you, it’s hard to get a meeting with me (again).

And most of all, clusters make it hard to develop new sweet spots. First-class long-haul travel was a great sweet spot for Pan Am, but when the world changed, they got hammered.

So, consider this: not just clusters, but edges, too.

Maybe your bar ought to start selling amazing hot chocolate.

It’s hard to make outliers, because it’s so tempting to gradually work your way over, making each new product an extension of your sweet spot. That doesn’t work. It just adds SKUs to your life.

An edge needs to be sharp and abrupt and distinct in order to generate the light it needs to thrive.

Just got my monthly issue of
Relix
magazine. It comes with a free CD, with about a dozen songs from bands ranging from Frank Zappa to Keller Williams.

Each band gets exactly one song as a showcase.