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A king being stabbed in the side in front of a crowd

The Established Advantage

June 24, 2022 /

Alexander the Great wasn’t as great as people give him credit for. His father had paved the way for his “greatness” by conquering most of Greece and building a sophisticated military. Alexander took the reins of a chariot that was already in motion.

Similarly, the Persian emperor Darius “The Great,” didn’t build his Persian empire but won it by assassinating the monarch and assuming power with the support of a few nobles. Like Alexander, he took something already established and used it to conquer even more countries.

My sister-in-law works at a family-controlled commercial construction company that will cross a billion dollars in revenue in the next two years. The wealthy CEO is the grandson of the founder and assumed control of a company that was already making hundreds of millions of dollars.

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Old illustration of three swans

A Tale of Two Zoomers

June 23, 2022 /

“I think he’s better than I am,” Octavia said.

Octavia is one of our junior developers. Like me, she has a desire to help people out of poverty. I had asked her to join me in interviewing people for our new WordPress Developer apprenticeship position. We were both surprised by the candidates that made the final cut. Octavia thought the final person we spoke with knew more about coding than she did.

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A photo of an odd cube with different width and height square ridges on the top.

Brilliance in The Basics

June 22, 2022 /

I was on a call with four other agency owners this morning and it was interesting to see how different our businesses were. Agencies should be similar, but there were real differences in how we priced and delivered work. What roles were needed in one business and weren’t in the next. What systems worked for one agency and didn’t make any sense for the next.

Mike Michalowicz has a line in one of his books where he says all businesses are the same.

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Ancient armies fighting on camels

Persian Emperors & Revenue Growth

June 21, 2022 /

In The Histories, Herodotus explains how Cyrus became the first Persian emperor. Cyrus was the adopted son of a wealthy leader in Persia. At that time, the Medes, not the Persians were the dominant people of the region. Cyrus forged a letter saying that the King of the Medes had appointed him military general for the Persian tribes. He used this as a pretext to force the Persian military to assemble near his parents’ property with scythes.

Nearby was a large thicket of thorny shrubs and he told the Persian soldiers to clear it. All day, the Persian men toiled under the heavy sun of the Levant. When they finished their task in the evening, Cyrus told them to assemble again the next morning.

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An old illustration of a pendulum with a blade on it above a person tied to a table

Swinging Between Revenue & Profit

June 20, 2022 /

One of my key objectives in our six week execution cycle is to relaunch another iteration of a PPC campaign. We’ve been adding people to the team and capacity has exceeded demand. Because of this, capturing more of the market has been critical.

In the background though, one of our clients was acquired and transitioned into a chief marketing role in the purchasing organization. She recently told me that she’s replacing that organization’s agency of record with us. This will more than double the considerable work we were doing for her before.

Now, the focus has shifted to maximizing our team’s productivity.

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Ancient vase depicting Odysseus and the sirens

The Competence Trap

June 17, 2022 /

I’m the smartest person in my business. It’s a problem.

You’re probably the smartest person on your team too. You’re most invested in your success and most familiar with the way your business provides value.

There’s a quote that goes, “the reward of work done well is more work.” And that’s the trap of being competent.

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Old illustration of a man holding a cross to his eye and looking at a distant star

Why Leadership Matters

June 15, 2022 /

I’ve long felt like there’s a link between entrepreneurship and leadership.

It’s easy to think of famous entrepreneurs who are highly effective leaders like Richard Branson, Jeff Bezos, or Steve Jobs. However, you’ve probably encountered many entrepreneurs who aren’t leaders at all or are terrible at that role.

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Old textbook with rows of drawings of atoms and molecules

Big Profit in Tiny Operations

June 14, 2022 /

“That guy is making more money than he ever has,” my dad said.

I was home, on the family farm, visiting my folks and getting caught up the local events. A farmer from a nearby town came up in conversation and I asked how he was doing.

“Oh yeah?” I asked, “What’s different?”

My dad told me that this farmer used to run an operation with twenty to thirty “hired hands” working a large swath of acres. Now, on the verge of retirement, the farmer had collapsed the operation down into just a handful of fields, a select few crops, and one hired man.

He shrunk his team and grew his profit.

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Cupid like statue

What If It’s Easier Than You Think?

June 9, 2022 /

I enjoy hiking with other business geeks. On one of these hikes, my friend John shared a marketing test he had run on social media. He wanted to see what people responded to. So he posted a bunch of ads for his agency sharing a variety of information:

  • Case study style posts
  • Thought leadership insight
  • Interesting data
  • A post where he bragged about fake vanity metrics

The last one was just for fun, but that was the one that had the highest engagement.

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