The cure to not caring about what others think of you
Once a week/2 weeks, I write about 7 different things I discovered or learnt during the week. My sources are primarily from work, books I’m reading, podcasts, blog posts, or my mom. I try my best to make them palatable and short, and provide a quick call to action for each that you can use (or not).
I know, you’re probably thinking, this is not your ordinary format for non-fiction? You’re right, most pieces of writing focus on a single idea, or at least one topic. They have a beginning, a middle, and an end. The writers, usually, provide great insight into the idea during the course of the “middle”. But I often get bored reading something long, especially if it’s an idea or POV I’ve heard before (most pieces cycle through the same material). It’s the intro that grips me to start, and the conclusion that pretty much tells me what I’ve just read. So, screw convention, and let’s just do tiny snippets that are skimmable (this is not a word apparently but I’m writing it because I know you know what it means), easy to read, and hopefully don’t bore you.
Also, I know you weren’t thinking that at all, sorry for throwing you under the bus there.
#1 About the truth.
What I wrote down: “It’s not what you don’t know that will get you into trouble. It’s what you do know for sure, that just ain’t so” — Mark Twain
What you can do with that: In other words, believing something is true with certainty, and being unwavering in changing your belief despite new information, is woefully negligent and dangerous. This is because what’s absolutely true doesn’t really give a shit about what is relatively true for you. The consequence of this is blindingly obvious. Take travelling, for example. Say two travellers in 1980 reach a cross roads, they can go left, or right. One traveller knows he is not sure, and he consults his map. He goes right, the right way. Right is an absolute truth to where his destination is. The other traveler is stubborn and has heard from a good source that left, is the way. He adamantly insists on left. Guess what, he’s absolutely going the wrong way…and he walks into a lion park and is eaten. Much the same as the business landscape of today, really. A way to use this that isn’t back in 1980, is never assume something is true, don’t conform to others beliefs, even those in authority, or people you want to trust, like friends. Always question, and ask how do you know it’s true.
#2 About product testing.
What I wrote down: Shadow test — sell pre product to test if people will pay for what you plan on selling
What you can do with that: This is actually a really interesting and useful concept, and I’ve heard of more and more people doing this. It allows a founder, or business, to discover two things, 1) do people give a fuck about what they are planning on selling, and 2) will they whip out their credit card for it. Back in the day it was a lot harder I guess to test a market, now days anyone can do it, no excuses, it costs nothing. Instead of investing in a physical product or building an actual software as a service that is 100% going to go though iterations when you start learning about what the buyer actually wants, rather “pretend” you have it. Crowdfunding sites run on this model — most Kickstarter campaigns are around “shadow products” — renderings or prototypes of the end product. This costs a fraction of the product, but you get to see how many people care, how many people care enough to pay +++ you get to hear feedback before spending on building. You can do this by making a simple landing page and testing a message on it. Add renderings of a product, and at the point to “buy” or subscribe, you let the user know they are on a waiting list. This gives you the indications you need and good actionable data.
#3 About advertising.
What I wrote down: Advertising is the tax you pay for being unremarkable.
What you can do with that: I agree to an extent. What this is saying is that if your product is remarkable enough, people will talk enough that you won’t need to spend on advertising. If not, to tick the needle, you will. But as Malcom Gladwell described in a book I personally found unremarkable, “Tipping Point”, there is literally a point that you need to cross to suddenly have the right momentum you need to propel forward. I absolutely agree that once you cross this tipping point, if your product is good enough it will have the juice to grow without ad $ — the caveat here is that this would be in a local. For example at WECAST, once we cross the TP in Cape Town, we can grow at a steady rate organically — that’s not going to do much good in the US. We need to get past the TP there for that to happen. And in the competitive landscape of new apps, services and memes, sometimes ad $ is what new businesses have to spend to get the ball rolling.
#4 About marketing.
What I wrote down: Appeal to your probable purchaser. Fight for their attention. 99% of the world do not want to give you their money and don’t care about what your doing
What you can do with that: When I read this, it resonated quite hard with me. As a founder, you want to think everyone cares about what you’re doing. You think your product will appeal to everyone. The truth is, most people don’t care, and politely respond, “That’s interesting”. Word of caution, “that’s interesting” means they don’t think so. That’s also absolutely fine, and is ammo for you to use. Stop curating marketing messages for the masses, you’re shooting a shotgun into the abyss. There are people who care, and they are a more specific group of people that likely share similar interests, affinities and demographics. Target your messages and ad $ towards them. The people who don’t care still won’t care, and the people who do will care more because what you’re saying resonates with them. You will have better ROI, better engagement, and happier customers.
#5 About what others think.
What I wrote down: You wouldn’t worry so much about what others think of you, if you realised how seldom they do.
*the click-bait from my heading
What you can do with that: We are all victim to the fallacy of thinking people care so much about what we do, how we look or act, or what we think. It makes us overly self aware. We’re inherently social animals that want to fit it, and to fit it, by and large, means to have some level of conformity — and to conform means to be like the group, and liked by the group. We think others are sizing us up, meaning we’re often thinking about our insecurities, wondering what they’re thinking about us and what we’re doing. But guess what, everyones too busy thinking about that themselves. That means, everyones just thinking about themselves and what they’re saying and doing — whatever you think people will remember or notice, they probably won’t.
#6 About what to sell.
What I wrote down: People don’t buy quarter inch drills, they but quarter inch holes.
What you can do with that: Ask yourself, the last time you went to the grocery store to buy ingredients for a cheesecake — where you buying {insert individual ingredients here}, or where you really buying a delicious and decadent cheese cake? The same applies for the products or services you buy. You don’t go to a car wash and spend R200 of soap and water, but the idea of a nice and fresh car. You might think this is obvious, because that’s the hindsight bias kicking in. But companies miss this everyday. If you’re selling a software as a service, or a product, don’t tell me what the product does, tell me what my end state will be with it — it’s part of the narrative and we all love buying with a narrative, with a desired end state in mind. I understand it’s tough to not tell users your Nimbus 2000 has an amazing tech stack and can process 10x faster and it’s machine learning capabilities are amazing — but at the end of the day that’s not what someone is going to run to their friends and tell them. No, they will tell them the story and impact it had. So, sell the desired state. For example, “With the Nimbus 2000, you will fly the highest and catch the snitch first, your friends will clap and cheer for you and you will one day kiss Ginny.”
#7 About negotiating.
What I wrote down: The first thing to do when walking into a negotiation is to know what to do if the other party says no.
What you can do with that: This, in short, is prepare for the worst, or undesired outcome. Always expect the party you’re negotiating with to through a curve ball or change the terms last minute. Seldom (from what I’ve heard, and so far experienced), does the end result turn out as was planned from the outset. Going in with the expectation you will get what you want leaves you vulnerable to your emotions and reactions when you suddenly don’t. It also leaves you without a plan of action. It’s nice to think you will end up on top and it will go your way first time - so you fall victim to confirmation bias and would rather not prepare for undesired outcomes. But preparing for “the no” allows you to be ready and act/react in a strategic, thought out manner.
As I once read in “Letters of a Stoic” by Seneca, to be truly happy, is to rid on-self of expectations and always think the worst can happen, because then when it doesn’t your reality exceeds expectations and you are happy. And when it goes terribly, you expected it anyway so no big deal. Not so practical in reality, but food for thought.
#Noteworthy things to check out
- I just got the book, “The Social Animal” by Elliot Aronson. It’s pricy, but it’s incredibly gripping and interesting. If you’re interested in human behaviour, check it out.
- I started a new podcast, “Masters of Scale” by Reid Hoffman — super interesting. Listened to the likes of Brian Chesky (Airbnb), Cheryl Sandberg (FB) and Reed Hastings (Netflix).
- Check out Shift (tryshift.com) if you suffer from tab overload at work — it’s a neat app that consolidates all your tabs in one window. *not an ad
