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Tag: Design

  • First Principles

    First Principles

    Elon Musk, savior of Earth Humans, explains in this short video what it means to reason from first principles, and why it’s important.

    This distinction is incredibly important in the martial arts world, and here’s why.

    Tiger Style

    Think about kung fu. For thousands of years the knowledge and skills have been passed down as analogies.

    “We fight with the strength of a tiger, the swiftness of a crane, and the deadly accuracy of a snake.”

    Makes sense to reason from metaphor because it’s the way humans have made sense of the world since before history.

    Physics

    But the instant people started looking at fighting, self defense, and strategy as what it is instead of what it is like, they started getting superior results. Immediately.

    That’s why the UFC has been such an incredible proving ground for a variety of martial arts; you see what works, and what doesn’t right away.

    The Problem

    We have to be mindful, however, that we can wind up making the same errors when we take lessons learned from the UFC and apply them to violent encounters on the street or in bars.

    They’re two different creatures!

    “Take What Works, Discard The Rest”

    These words from Bruce Lee are great, and they echo the idea we’re talking about.

    What works, usually, is called “physics.” It’s what governs the world of reality, and as an entity living in the universe of cause & effect, it will do you more good to study how physics applies to the human body than it will to spend decades practicing to be fierce like a tiger.

  • Designers Are Mind Readers (And So Are You)

    Designers Are Mind Readers (And So Are You)

    [vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]In order to create something that “just works” designers have to be mind readers. They have to get inside the heads of their intended user, and create something that feels natural & intuitive to use. This doesn’t happen on accident, and it can be a very difficult process to perfect.
    The interesting thing is, you’re a designer too; you just don’t know it yet.

    What Is Design?

    At its core, design is simply the process of making a series of choices. Imagine you’re designing a cell phone.

    “Do we use steel or aluminum for the body? Since steel will interfere with wifi signals, we’ll use aluminum. Now what about the processor?”

    On down the line of questions you go, until eventually you’ve created a product that’s incredibly valuable.
    Note: The end product is only as good as the quality of questions asked to create it.

    The Same Goes For Your Life

    Our lives are the results of the choices we make, so every decision contributes to the overall value of your life. Few people take ownership of the process, (or even understand the importance of their choices,) and wonder why their life isn’t how they think it should be.

    Product of Your Environment

    Just like the design of a cellphone is affected by the natural principles of physics, the design of your life is affected by the natural principles of psychology.
    The less you know about how your mind works, the more challenges you’re going to have making choices that get you the results you want.

    This is where the mind reading comes in handy.

    Sometimes the most difficult mind to get into is your own. You constantly wonder why you find yourself in the same situations even though you think you’re making better choices. Instead, you’re just making different iterations of the same mistakes.
    If you’re having trouble making lasting changes, it’s not your fault. We’re not taught how to think like designers & mind readers in school; we’re taught how to follow directions.
    Fortunately for you, I’m both. I’m a designer by education & experience, and a mind reader for the past 20 years.
    If you want to break out of the cycle you’ve been stuck in for years, I want to help you! Let’s chat. Let me know what you want to achieve, and we can develop a game-plan that’s specific to you. Let’s design something together![/vc_column_text][us_btn text=”Get In Touch” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.likeamindreader.com%2Fcontact%2F|||”][/vc_column][/vc_row]

  • How I Got A Company $100,000 of New Business In A Week

    How I Got A Company $100,000 of New Business In A Week

    Case Study

    Let me walk you through how I got a company more than $100,000+ in new business, and then show you exactly how you can use the same techniques for yourself (even if you’re not a big agency).

    A while ago I was hired on at the company as a graphic designer, and over the months I realized I could bring a lot of other skills to the table. The main way I’d promoted my mind reading shows is through email, so I was excited to bring that skill to my job. It was was outside my job description, but it was actually really cool to be able to contribute to a big win that everyone pitched in on. The company I was working with is a social media company that manages accounts for some large brands you’d probably recognize. They had been trying email marketing to drum up business without much success, so I wanted to figure out what was going on.

    They purchased a database of 39,000 emails, so the quality of the leads wasn’t exactly top notch. The emails were companies & entrepreneurs who had bought professional services before, but they hadn’t actively signed up to receive emails from the company.

    So that was the first clue why it hadn’t been working.

    Then I looked at the emails they were sending out. They were pretty, but well polished emails usually are sent from companies, so it gets filtered out by readers. Think about it, when was the last time you spent the time to create a 3 column layout with coordinated graphics & buttons in an email to a friend? Probably just typed something out, and sent it over, right? The numbers show that text-only promotional emails work the best, but it’s the least intuitive for business owners. They want the pretty stuff!

    Another speed bump was they could only send the same message to everyone; customized messages weren’t possible because their database wasn’t segmented or categorized.

    Solutions

    I started out by asking what we were already good at. What were the industries we were already doing excellent work for, and what had they learned from it?

    We listed 7 areas that we really knew how to handle, so I asked everyone at the company to pitch in and write informative blog posts that explained how clients had used their services & seen results. The community engagement coordinators also wrote articles around what social media platform was best suited for each industry, and the best way to engage with followers.

    Then we created email campaigns for each of the 7 categories that would direct readers to the articles & blog posts. The tone of the emails was more conversational, more personal, and communicated a much more fun personality. My client is a social media company; be fun!

    Now that we have the campaigns ready to go, how do we figure out who to send them to?

    I’m kinda proud of this one.

    I created a landing page on the website. The landing page had a simple form on it that asked them to tell us what industry they’re in so we could send them a report on the best social media practices for that industry. Instead of focusing on what they could do for us (give us their dollars!), we were offering something they would find valuable, first: how to make your own dollars through proper social media use!

    When someone fills out the form, it would tag their contact information with the appropriate category which would then trigger the proper email campaign. This way we allowed the contacts in the database to organize themselves without us having to go through 1 by 1 and go looking for it.

    Then we wrote the main email that was sent to all 39,000 contacts letting them know who we’d worked with previously (social proof), and then we told them we had unique insight on what works, what doesn’t, and on what platforms so they should click through and let us know what industry they were in so we could get that info to them.

    And it worked like a charm.

    We had massive open rates on the email, tons of click-throughs to the landing page, and most of the people who saw the landing page filled out the form.

    Then they started getting the emails that pointed them to the blog posts that lived on the site. We saw big spikes in traffic, and people were spending time digesting the information.

    And it worked.

    Within a week there were tons of new, highly qualified leads pouring in. The sales team was now spending their time closing hot leads who were getting in touch with them; they weren’t going out trying to drum up business by cold calling businesses.

    As a direct result of that campaign the company landed an alcohol company with more than 50 labels under their umbrella. They decided to sign up with one label to start, and signed another within 3 months. That initial contract was worth more than $100,000 by itself. without including any other client work that came through because of the campaign.

    And that’s how I got the company I worked with more than $100,000 in new business! Since then I’ve gone back to performing full time, and I now have time to build this site, but it was a ton of fun working with awesome people who were excited to do good work.

    Takeaways

    • Show some personality
    • Use technology to get the right information to the right people
    • Have a system in place that communicates value from multiple angles
    • Educate your potential customers on what you do, why it’s valuable, & how they could do it themselves (Then they’ll see how hard it is, and wind up just hiring you to do it for them!)

    GET CONNECTED

    Want to find out how I might be able to help your business? Please don’t hesitate to reach out.

  • Persuasion Is Dangerous

    “…Persuasion is dangerous, particularly in an advertising and capitalistic world. You are persuading people to do things that may not be in their interest. In the last 10 years or so, I’ve become conscious of the difference between informing and persuading. It’s a moral question for anyone involved in communication.” -Milton Glaser