Note: These are the best books I read, not the best books that I read that came out in 2022. I typically read books in order of publication date, and my list of books to read as of this writing stands at 265. So when I add a new book that was published in let’s say 2010, I’m going to end up reading it before a book that has been on my list longer, but was published in 2015. So, if you’re looking for my opinion on the best books of 2022, maybe come back in a year or two.
I started to get serious with tracking my reading in Goodreads a few years ago. In recent years, I’ve read a substantial amount. This is due in large part to the fact that I tend to have 3-5 hours every morning before work in which I can listen to audiobooks. So between doing that at double speed, reading the occasional ebook and paper book, and reading to my children every night, I’ve gotten a few pages put away over time. Last year, it was 184 books and over 63,000 pages. This year, 146 books and over 50,000 pages so far.
The New Common Denominator of Success is a speech given by Albert E.N. Gray numerous times throughout his career. You can actually find the speech online for free if you just search for it.
I first read it online and then was motivated to purchase a copy because I felt it was so powerful.
One of the key concepts in Gray’s speech is that there are things in our jobs that no one likes doing. If you are–like Gray–a salesperson, you very likely do not enjoy cold calling or following up with unresponsive leads. One of the primary things that separates successful from unsuccessful people though is that successful people do the things that are hard, the things that they do not like to do, because they know that is what it takes to succeed.
In essence, this is similar to the 10,000 hours of deliberate practice idea popularized by Malcolm Gladwell. The very top echelon of people in any field might actually spend less time practicing their craft, but they are more deliberate and they do the things that are hard because they know that is what it requires to achieve their goals.
Gray’s speech takes maybe 10 minutes to read and is a great way to communicate what success requires.
The name speaks to the central argument, which is that the growth of communications, civilizations, and even globalization to some extent create value and accelerate value creation. For example, when you live in a village of 150 people and have no communications or trade with people outside, you benefit only from the knowledge, thinking, innovation, work, etc of those 150 people. But when your 150-person village communicates and trades with the next 150-person village, you benefit from the fact that they can produce and sell something to you for cheaper than you can produce it, that some of their people might develop an innovation that you could not have come up with on your own, and more.
Fundamentally, this is a history book that argues that there is a non-zero-sumness to human development that results in greater and faster transformations of everything from technology to morality and beyond.
Competing Against Luck is not as intriguing of a book as those above, but you should read it simply because it introduces Jobs to Be Done research, or what they call Jobs Theory quite a bit in the book.
Jobs Theory posits that every product is a service because people do not buy a product because they want to own that product. They buy a product because it does something for them. Or, as Harvard Professor Theodore Levitt put it, “People don’t want to buy a quarter-inch drill. They want a quarter-inch hole!”
Ultimately, when you connect with people on the job they need to get done rather than for example features, benefits, personas, or any other common marketing, sales, and strategy frameworks, you can better succeed in selling your product or service because people need hydration, they need to feel like others want to look at or be them, they need to make their children happy. They don’t simply need water bottles, fancy watches/clothes/cars, or McDonald’s milkshakes simply to own them. They have a job they need the product to help them get done.
The core of the argument is that we often fail to change because we misdiagnose the challenges we face as needing technical rather than adaptive solutions.
For example, every year in the United States, millions of people commit to lose weight in the New Year, and on average 107% of the weight that is lost is gained back. So if you and your family all lose 100 pounds, you as a collective gain back 107 pounds.
The reason for this is that most people that commit to change identify the solution as a technical one. For example, Lose Weight = Don’t Eat M&Ms or Go On The Mediterranean Diet. For the hustle bros, it might be Become A Success = Take Cold Showers.
The reality of many things that are difficult to change though is that our behavior (eg. an unhealthy diet or lifestyle) likely gives us benefits that we might not recognize. As in, perhaps you hate your job, but cannot find another one, and you and your spouse disagree on how to parent your children and are not getting along well as a result. So everyday when you get home from work, you don’t want to fight anymore. Your day was already terrible, so you open a 6-pack, grab a bucket of KFC, and sit in front of the TV for a few hours–while your children run wild in the background–before you eventually fall asleep and repeat the cycle the next day.
In this case, what is your unhealthy lifestyle doing for you? It might be helping you find some peace and relaxation that you need as a result of not getting it in other places. So, you can say you’re going to start running or eating healthy or whatever else, but as soon as you have that next bad day and you find yourself needing some peace and relaxation, you will go back to the unhealthy lifestyle.
To solve problems like this, you need not a technical solution like Do X or Don’t Do Y, but rather an adaptive solution that takes into account the needs your behavior serves. In the example above, you would need to find a solution that helps you still get that peace and relaxation while also serving the desire to lose weight.
At work, if you’ve ever tried to guide someone that was a bad communicator or couldn’t stick to deadlines and found that they just wouldn’t change no matter how much they said they would, it is likely because they needed an adaptive rather than technical solution.
Alan Fine is the co-creator of the G.R.O.W. model, which was initially developed based on Timothy Gallwey’s Inner Game. The basic concept is that most guidance is provided from the outside in. Coaches and bosses say, “Next time the client talks to you like that, do this.” As in, “I (someone or something outside of you) know better than you do, so listen to me.” So rather than focusing on what you know and how you feel when you’re in the arena performing, you’re instead trying to think about what someone else told you and how and when to use that information. Instead, the G.R.O.W. model takes an inside out approach in that it asks the performer to focus on what they already know, feel, and experience and to use that to improve their performance.
For example, rather than telling a colleague that delivers a bad report, “Just do it like this next time,” I might ask them what they notice when reports go well or poorly and then have them focus on the things that they do when the repots go well so that they can improve and accentuate those.
Using this model helps to shift responsibility for success and failure from the coach to the performer and is a powerful way to get people motivated about change and improvement.
Light bulbs are amazing. Because of light bulbs, you can work, read, play, and do other things when the sun is not out. And, if you have the right kind of light bulb, you get heat too. Thanks to light bulbs, you benefit, the people around you benefit from them, and you each benefit from the activities of each other.
For example, you can work later into the evening making yet another pair of shoes, and because you have that pair of shoes to sell, your family has just a little bit more income, which allows you to pay for your daughter’s education. And because your daughter can read by the light of that bulb, she tells you things you never knew about the world that open up new ways of thinking and better ways of making those shoes that generate money for your family.
We all benefit from something as simple as a light bulb.
Source: https://www.lightingafrica.org/
A light bulb is a fragile thing. Incandescent bulbs in particular have thin glass and a delicate filament.
Due to this fragility, it’s easy to break a light bulb. You can drop it, smash it, knock it, throw it, bump it against something, or breathe on it the wrong way. Believe me. I’ve seen it. There are thousands of ways to break a light bulb.
There are very few ways to make a light bulb, and it’s difficult. Have you ever tried?
When I was in elementary school, one of my science fair projects was a light bulb. It was a peanut butter jar that had been turned upside down. The lid was secured to a block of wood so that you could remove the jar (bulb) portion as needed, which I had to do a lot by the way. There were nails secured to the lid through the block of wood and wires attached to those. Between the nails, I connected bits of wire to use as the filament. The power source was a motorcycle battery.
It looked something like this.
Source: https://brinzaengineering.weebly.com/
One of the problems with my homemade light bulb was that the filament sure would light up and get hot, but it would burn out after less than a minute of being on. Also, the battery had to be charged, and I couldn’t just use my light bulb anywhere. It didn’t plug into existing sockets. There were no replacement parts available for cheap in stores. You see where I’m going here.
It was a great experiment, but the thing I built on my own–despite being less fragile–was much less useful than the light bulbs created by and based on standards that many people have contributed to.
Your organization’s culture is like a light bulb. More than likely, it took several (maybe even a lot) of people a substantial amount of time to build that culture. Whether they knew it or not and whether it was intentional or not, they tried a lot of things that did not work and arrived at something that finally did.
Source: https://www.edisonmuckers.org/
Like Edison’s first light bulb, like my light bulb, and like light bulbs today, are there things to be improved upon with your organization’s culture? You bet there are. There always are.
But, like a light bulb’s light and heat, does your organization’s culture provide benefits that might be harder to find in a culture of your own creation? You bet it does.
And, as in the case of a light bulb, are you better off with a culture that has grown over time as opposed to just tearing it down and starting from nothing? Well, do you want to benefit from the successes and failures of others or do you want to start over from scratch?
Source: https://www.azquotes.com/
Unfortunately, when you look at a light bulb, it’s easy to not see how fragile it is, how difficult it was to create, and how hard it would be to replace. And because of this, we undervalue the miracle that is that light bulb just as many of us undervalue the miracle that is our organization’s culture. That is until we break it and find out that it is not so easy to fix or replace.
If you find yourself thinking that your organization’s culture really does not do a good job providing what you believe it should, maybe think about how hard it would be to replace it with something of your own creation. And maybe even think about–despite how flawed that culture might be–how a lot of time, effort, and learning went into creating it and if maybe, just maybe, it’s something worth building upon rather than than tearing down and starting over alone.
Their podcast focuses on real-live insights from top business leaders sharing real success stories (and failures) always backed by data in ~20 minutes.
They run a great showand host really detailed conversations with founders, business owners, and leaders to dissect growth strategies and execution. They also look behind the curtain to show the personalities as well.
The interview closes with a rapid fire session and there was no prep on my side as to what to expect. If you’re interested to know what it’s like at Bigwidesky, how we think, how we’re different, etc, check out the interview:
Often, Google Ad Grant management for nonprofits can hit you for a one-time application and setup fee of $500-$5,000. Depending on your needs and arrangement with a person or agency, you might then have ongoing expenses.
After a common one-time setup fee, it is possible–but not generally advisable–to move forward with no ongoing management. At the low end of need for ongoing management though, quarterly to annual updates/work on your grant will often cost $500-$2,500 each time.
Even if your organization, website, or account do not need deep, active ongoing management, most Google Ad Grants benefit from monthly management. Typical monthly Google Ad Grant management for nonprofits will run you $100-$2,500 per month depending on the exact fees charged by the person or agency you’re working with and specifically how much work running a Google Ad Grant for your nonprofit is.
Applying for and securing a Google Ad Grant
You can generally get access to a Google Ad Grant within 1-2 weeks of beginning the process. During this time, you or the person or agency working on this will often invest less than 10 hours.
To secure a Google Ad Grant, you must first join Google for Nonprofits. Once accepted, you can then apply for a Google Ad Grant. Then, you can finally begin setting up and managing your grant.
Applying to Google for Nonprofits typically does not take more than a few hours at the very most. There have been times in the past when I had to spend hours on the phone with Google Ads support, but those have fortunately been few and far between. At the time of this writing, being accepted into Google for Nonprofits is generally not taking more than a few days.
From there, applying for a grant does not require much information and usually takes less than an hour with acceptance coming within a matter of days.
If you have someone on the outside handling this process, they will need to provide contact information for someone within the nonprofit so that Google can confirm the nonprofit actually wants into the program and wishes to work with the person submitting the applications.
Setting up a Google Ad Grant
When you first get access to your Google Ad Grant for your nonprofit, I recommend that you connect it to your Google Analytics and Google Search Console accounts. These are not required, but generally, doing this will make your life much easier.
After that though, the simplest quick start option is to setup dynamic search ads for your whole website. Basically, dynamic search ads allow Google to determine what keywords the pages on your website should rank for, and then, Google dynamically creates ads for searchers. Now running dynamic search ads in conjunction with standard ads requires its own special knowledge, but because the unique benefit of a Google Ad grant is getting you in front of new people and getting them to your website without having to pay for it, I almost always setup dynamic search ads immediately and then begin working on keyword research and manually creating ads.
For some nonprofits, dynamic search ads can take 2-4 weeks to begin sending traffic to the website. For most, your ads will start showing and you will begin receiving traffic within a matter of days. In typical one-time account setup, this would be the time in which your person or agency would do their keyword research, write ads, and get the account fully built out. For most nonprofit websites, it is not unusual for this whole process to take a total of 1-2 months from when you first get access to your Google Ad Grant. In that time, your person or agency will most likely spend between 10-100 hours building out your account so that it is comprehensive and will best take advantage of the free traffic Google can send you through this program.
Periodic management of Google Ads Grants
I do not recommend this as a default, but there are nonprofits that simply are not in a position to generate positive ROI from the expense of monthly Google Ad Grant management. In these cases, I most often will recommend quarterly or bi-annual work. This work looks similar to monthly Google Ad Grant management except that is happens less often.
Typically, I will recommend periodic management for a nonprofit when the grant simply does not generate much traffic and/or trackable online conversions–most often online donations.
The most common reasons your grant does not generate much traffic, revenue, or other online conversions are:
Your website has very few pages. When you have very few pages on your website, you likely have very few keywords for which your can get your ads to show.
Your website has thin content. Thin content provides little to no value to visitors. It is often for example a page with very few words and images on it, addressing a topic that deserves an in-depth answer. It really is not difficult for Google to figure out when your webpages talk about something, but provide a worse and less in-depth answer than the competition.
Your website is simply not optimized for conversions. Even if you have a lot of good content on your webpages, you might do a poor job converting visitors to those pages into email subscribers, donors, etc.
In my experience, creating more and better content and improving the website experience so that more people convert are often not within the scope of typical Google Ad Grant management. That is not to say that your person or agency could not do these things. Hopefully, they can, but if you paid for example $2,500 to get setup and then have been paying $1,500 per quarter for management, do you have enough budget for copywriting, design, and code work on your website in order to improve the performance of the traffic the grant is bringing you? If you do not, it is not ideal, but you might need to lower your ongoing management expenses by reducing the frequency.
There is however one big drawback to this approach that you need to be aware of. If you fall afoul of the Google Ad Grant eligibility requirements and someone is not monitoring that, it is possible that you would lose your grant during one of those times when someone is not actively managing it.
Monthly management of Google Ad Grants
Unless you know your budget does not allow for it, you should generally default to monthly management rather periodic management as described above. Even if your grant drives low traffic, revenue, or other outcomes, it likely would be to your benefit to just reduce the scope of ongoing management so that your grant has frequent attention and you run less risks of losing it.
At the low end, it is not unusual for a Google Ad Grant to take ~6 hours per month for management. That is roughly 1 hour per week plus some additional time for unplanned work, fixing tracking issues, reporting, strategy discussions, etc.
At the upper end, a Google Ad Grant for a large or complicated website or nonprofit can easily take upwards of 50 hours. The reason for this is that for example your website might have deep and broad content and also wish to integrate your ads with fundraising or messaging calendars. I have for example managed grants for websites with over 5,000 webpages, which required a lot of different topics to be managed, new ads and keywords constantly created, and ads updated to align with messaging and fundraising calendars.
How do you keep management costs low?
In almost every case in which a nonprofit needs to keep costs low, you will benefit from your person or agency setting up automated reporting using a system like Google Data Studio. Doing this allows you to save budget by not paying someone to manually create reports every month.
Additionally, if your circumstances do no require frequent analysis and discussion, you can lower your expenses by foregoing monthly analysis and other discussions. While many of us benefit from regular updates on progress, if you can learn from your person or agency how to interpret an automated report, you can save time in meetings and put that toward the actual ongoing management of your Google Ad Grant.
Why you might not want a Google Ad Grant
If your website has few webpages, thin content, and a poor user experience and you have little intention or budget to improve those things, it’s entirely possible that now is not the time to invest in a Google Ad Grant.
Recently, I went through the process of applying to Google for Nonprofits and then securing a grant only to have a nonprofit determine that they did have the budget for actual setup of the account. Unfortunately, that was money down the drain for them.
In the past, I have managed grants for some organizations that were only able to spend ~$1,000 per month of the potential $10,000 per month, and while they were generating 500-2,000 visits to their website per month, they were not able to track what the grant was accomplishing–specifically how much revenue is was generating. While the grant was bringing new people to the website (essentially for free) and undoubtedly generating revenue, they were not able to track the revenue, and as a result, it simply was not their highest priority.
Explore Google Ad Grants for your nonprofit
If you and your nonprofit are interested in exploring Google Ad Grant, send me an email at eric@inboundandagile.com. If I can point you in the right direction so that you can get your grant setup on your own, I would be happy to. If you would like to talk about working together on your grant, I would love to.
In the last five years, I’ve been asked to write my job description at least twice that I can recall. You’d think this would be a blessing because you get to create your own position. Unfortunately, it rarely is, so I’ve written this to help you avoid the mistakes too many people make in this situation.
A job description should detail what a business needs from you, not what you can do. Some bosses ask you to write your own job description because they want you to feel control, they’re too busy, or they really don’t know what someone in your position should do and are hoping you’ll tell them.
It’s particularly bad in the digital marketing space – where typically managers either are chasing trends and buzzwords or are clueless when it comes to new engagement opportunities, tools, processes, and more.
via jakeandlindsay
The best way to start your job description
List every task or responsibility you could possibly imagine you, or your company, wanting in your job description. In the recent past, I’ve written variations of these:
Run daily stand up meetings.
Share company performance with team.
Mentor the rest of the team.
Represent the company in industry publications and blogs.
Assess client needs and find products to address them.
Manage reporting for a growing client set while ensuring continual agency progress toward automation.
Write as many as you can. You’re brainstorming. No idea is stupid.
Once you have your list, group similar tasks into responsibilities. In the list above, I can reasonably group the first three into a single responsibility. Act as a team leader to both the team staff and the rest of the company. Continue doing that until you’ve eliminated all tasks and only have responsibilities.
Tasks in a job description distract from the long-term vision and make it more like a manual. Any time you realize you’re getting into the specifics of how to do the job, pull back and rewrite it or group things together to answer these two questions. What am I doing? Why am I doing it? (I’ve added more potential questions to help you at the end of the post.)
via eschipul
Shape your responsibilities to fit the company’s needs.
One of the key failings of job descriptions we write for ourselves is that we write them to suit what we want and need and not what the company needs. In the list above, I remember removing Represent the company in industry publications and blogs because, as much as I thought that would be great for me, it wasn’t what the company needed from someone in that position.
Imagine that I had left it in and my boss had supported it. That would have started an unfortunate downward spiral that goes like this.
I’m asked to write my own job description because my boss and company don’t know what they need from someone in my position.
I write it to satisfy my wants and not the company’s needs.
My company supports the job description as written without realizing I now have duties and responsibilities that compete with the company’s forward progress.
Because I spend at least a portion of my time on things that do not address business needs, we do not grow as much as we should and that leads the company to have unhappy clients, hire less, lay off staff, put more scrutiny on my department, or (worse yet) maybe be unhappy with me.
We have a difficult time agreeing on what the problem is because they originally endorsed my job description, which made me feel empowered and supported, but now, they’re telling me that I’m part of the problem.
They change my duties without asking me to contribute this time, and as a result, I feel I’m no longer empowered to control my own job/career.
This leads to resentment, which leads to less work or less effective work being done.
Eventually, I start looking for a new job, where I think I’ll be empowered, or I get fired because I’m no longer as effective as I was when I felt I had the freedom to choose my own path.
If you can write your job description to fit the company’s needs, you can get picture of whether you’re the right person to do the job. If you’re not, can you grow into it? Do you want to? Finding out now ensures that you don’t end up in the downward spiral, and it gives you the opportunity to talk with your company about what you really want to do, while showing them that you recognize the needs of the business. Both of these are good things.
When you’re done with this stage, the ideal job description will have 8-12 responsibilities. Any more and you’re probably being unrealistic about how much one person can do. Any less and you show you’re not sure what you should be doing.
via RichardStep.com
List the skills that pay the bills.
Look at the list of responsibilities and write down every skill and personal trait someone would need to satisfy these. If one of the responsibilities is Lead improvements in weekly client reporting, you might reasonably list skills and personal traits like:
Advanced Excel, Access, and SQL experience.
High attention to detail.
Willing to leave no stone unturned in a search for answers.
Passion for [client’s vertical].
Willingness to travel for client meetings.
Once you’ve listed the job responsibilities, skills and personal traits should be simple. Just make a list. Think of the keyword-type of things you would search for in an online job search like “Excel,” “No travel,” “Passion for marketing,” etc.
When you’ve got your list, split it into two sections – Skills and Personal Traits. For my tastes, Skills is just a list of words and short phrases that shows that the person in this job needs experience with X, Y, and Z. Personal Traits is a little more wordy and gets into the personality of the employee. Who are they? What do they like? Where do they thrive? Why do they love this type of work? How do they do their job so well?
via IRRI Images
Time for some job description research.
Every job description needs a Title, Department, Reporting Structure, Location, Compensation (base, bonus, commission, etc), Vacation, and Scope.
Department, Reporting Structure, and Location should be straightforward. What department will this job be in, who will the person report to, and where will they work?
For Title, I use Linkedin Advanced Search and Google Trends to find relevant titles. If you know for example that you’re moving to the Director level and that you’ll be working in digital analytics, doing multiple Linkedin searches for variations of Director of Digital Analytics, Marketing Analytics Director, etc shows you how many people have that title. Google Trends gives you an idea of how frequently people search for that title so that you can see if it’s growing or shrinking in popularity.
Picking an unpopular title guarantees:
You won’t be found when potential hiring managers search online in the future.
You’ll always have to explain what you actually did in that specific job.
For Compensation and Vacation, my favorite tool is PayScale. For free, you can create a report based on what you currently know about the position and then find out what people get paid in your area, how much vacation they have, whether they get commissions or bonus, and more. Almost everything is on a range at PayScale though, so you need to assess your fitness for the job and then put an appropriate smaller range on your job description.
While writing this up, I saw that $85,000 (at the 10% mark) to $130,000 (at the 90% mark) per year was the range for a test report I created and that the majority of people in that position had 2 weeks of paid vacation, but that some had up to 6 weeks. If I was writing a job description for the position, I would look at how well I could do the job compared to everyone else that might be able/willing to do it and then set my goal Compensation and Vacation there. For the purposes of the job description, I would place an appropriate range around that to give my employer room to adjust and also to avoid the potential negative psychological impacts of me being over-optimistic and them bringing me down to Earth by adjusting it down.
If you set your sights unrealistically high, either you will be disappointed when your company adjusts down or your company will be disappointed when they realize they’re overpaying you.
To finish your research, look at everything you’ve written so far and consider the scope of the position. Should you be working with people from the entire company, with all of the clients, or just a subset? Should you be only focused on a region or territory or thinking about, traveling to, or otherwise working with the whole country or world? How about effect within the company? Will you being making decisions that change the direction of the company or focused on a specific aspect of the business?
via Rob Young
Putting together your job description
As of now, you should be able to list these in your job description:
Title
Location
Department
Reporting Structure
Responsibilities
Scope
Personal Traits
Skills
Compensation
Vacation
Experience
The last big step is to look at everything you’ve put together and write the Position Summary, which I typically place before Responsibilities. The key here is to now put away everything you’ve been working on and write a 3-5 sentence, high level description of the job you want. Don’t worry about whether it gels with everything in the job description. Just write what your dream job would be.
One Position Summary template I really like is:
The [Job Title] focuses on [Client X, Company issue Y, Vertical Z, etc]. He [insert one thing you would dream of being able to do every day]. Additionally, the [Job Title] [insert the first thing that you would love to do that is also critical for the business]. He [a personality trait and set of skills that make that describe the ideal candidate]. Finally, the [Job Title] [write about the business effects of this person’s work].
Once you’ve done this, paste the Position Summary into your job description and make final changes to align the Summary and everything else you’ve put together. Hopefully at this point, there are very few differences between your Position Summary and the Responsibilities. If there are though, keep in mind that a job description has to address the needs of the business or else you’ll end up in the downward spiral I showed earlier.
If you can’t align the job description with what you really want to do or are suited to do, talk with your company. This is an opportunity to build a clear development path while also helping your boss see that you understand, and are committed to, the needs of the business. Managers appreciate that. It’s a huge advantage to have employees that get the big picture of the business.
via English 106
Final notes
If you get stuck at any point, try answering these questions:
What are the trends my job addresses?
What are the company needs and problems my job addresses?
How do I make my boss look good?
What possibilities can I see?
What purpose do I serve?
How will I be used?
Who needs me?
What platforms work best for this job?
How can I find the best solutions?
What people can help me make the best decisions?
Also, consider using these verbs in your job description:
Communicate
Plan
Manage
Monitor/report
Evaluate
Control
Produce
Maintain
Create/Develop
Recruit
Train
Developing policy
Formulate
And lastly, these are some of the guidelines I recommend sticking to:
Limit Responsibilities to 8-12 short points.
Limit to responsibilities, not tasks.
Group tasks into responsibility areas.
Refer to manuals when possible rather than over-explaining.
Clarify employer expectations.
Provide a measurement basis, but avoid putting targets in the job description.
Place the position in the org chart.
Prevent arbitrary interpretation of the role.
Define the skill set.
Write it to match your dream job.
Keep long-term business objectives in mind.
Job descriptions should be written to fulfill a business need, not detail what an employee can do.
Have you ever written your own job description? Are there other recommendations or guidelines you would add to this?
In a world where 70% of customers visit your website before making their first purchase decision, it’s no longer okay to say, “I don’t get that website stuff,” and also not pay someone to fix problems. If even 10% of those potential customers I just mentioned that visit your website decide not to buy, that’s a 7% decrease in sales.
For me, a 7% decrease in sales is tens of thousands of dollars. For that amount of money, I can justify spending either my own time or my own money to fix all potential problems.
Here’s how to fix the biggest problems I see with most broken business websites.
Fix broken links.
After spending two minutes on a friend’s business site and encountering just the right number of broken links in just the right places the other day, I gave up trying to find what I needed and actually just went to Google. Google sent me to a competitor’s site, where I found what I needed.
And, I spent two minutes on the site. Your potential customers won’t put up with more than one or two broken links to things they actually want to see before they just go back to Google and search for it – where by the way they’ll be shown all of your competitors.
Don’t let this be you. Go to your homepage, hold down control, and click every link you can find. Holding down control ensures they all open in new tabs so that you don’t have to navigate back and forth. Then, on each new page, hold down control, and click every link. If you find a bad link, remove it or find the correct URL and fix the link.
You can also check Google Webmaster Tools (if you’ve submitted your site and preferably your sitemap) or use a service to crawl your website, but if the website is under 100 pages, I actually prefer to do this by hand so that I get a feel for the user experience.
Your widgets are hanging out.
Want to show that you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Tumblr, Pinterest, MySpace, Friendfeed, Orkut; that you have popular posts, comments, activity; and that you like other blogs, have a family, take pictures, and have a mission statement?
Great, but don’t.
Sidebars are like signs on the freeway. They are very important, but if they have too much going on, drivers stop paying attention to the road and never get where they need to go (ie. they crash). Keep your sidebars simple and only include what is really valuable to your visitor.
Things get worse when your widgets and badges are broken. A broken sidebar widget is like a busted or graffitied shop window. Who cares if the shop is open… If the business owner doesn’t take enough pride in his business to fix his windows, no one is going to bother patronizing his business. Plain and simple.
Look at it from the customer’s perspective.
I’m just as guilty of this one as anyone. I get working on a website, put in a ton of hours, and suddenly realize that it doesn’t address anything my customers want. It’s too wordy, too cool, over-designed, and filled with jargon, and your website probably is too.
Every once and a while, it helps to get a customer’s perspective. With one client that ran a retail store, we posted a message on Facebook that said, “We’re giving 10% off one item each to the next man and woman that come into the store and spend 15 minutes giving us their opinions on our website.” In 9 minutes, we had the first man, and in 13, we had the first woman. It costs the store $20, and we guessed we made $5,000 in additional sales over the next 3 months.
Two of my other favorite options are UserTesting.com and mturk (or SmartSheet if you prefer, but it’s the same thing really). With UserTesting.com, you get a real, quality walkthrough of your website, but it’s fairly expensive compared to the other options. With mturk, you can get a lot of answers for cheap (like in the video below).
Either way, your website needs to address your customers' interests not yours, and very often, the only way to find out whether it does is to give your customers an incentive to give you the feedback you need to win yourself that extra 7% of new business.
Don't ignore it.
It always surprises me when someone says, "I've never heard/heard of/watched/etc this show/song/person/etc," and says it as if they're proud of their ignorance. When did it become cool to not know things?
The same goes for your website. Being ignorant isn't cool, and even worse, it costs you money, and honestly, do any of the things I listed above really sound so difficult that even the average business owner couldn't do it themselves?
I know someone that won’t leave their house when it’s dark and their spouse isn’t in town. Another person won’t visit their family across the country because flying scares them so much. Yet, another hides all of their money IN CASH around their business and home because they’re afraid it’s not safe in a bank.
I hope you’re asking yourself now:
How many things has that person missed by not going out after dark?
How much time and valuable experiences with their family has that person lost out on?
How much of that money has been stolen? What if there’s a fire? What if they forget where some of it is hidden?
I can’t help but wonder what the real value of those fears are. How does entertaining those fears make any of those people’s lives better?
Fear is a tough thing. It makes your heart race, makes your feel vulnerable and uncertain, and worse, but most of your fears are irrational, and they hold you back from experiencing, achieving, and reaching everything that you really could with your life.
Free is an excellent discussion of the move to freemium, open source, and all around free products.
Best Quote
Piracy happens when the marketplace realizes that the marginal cost of reproduction and distribution of a product is significantly lower than the price asked. In other words, the only thing propping up the price is the law protecting intellectual property. If you break the law, the price can fall, sometimes all the way to zero.
Review
I really enjoyed Chris Anderson’s Free. It jibed with what I feel has been a predominant change in many markets. At the same time though, I have read several biting critiques of the book and been told by an equal number of people, “That’s crap,” so apparently, the market is divided on this book.
For my part, I do not see it as particularly difficult to swallow that companies are able to offer something free because the unit cost is essentially so low that it’s not worth tracking anymore or because the value of the growth they get for being free can be traded for something like advertising revenue or the revenue from a complimentary, non-free product. Nonetheless, many of the critiques that I have read seem to not be able to draw the distinction between free and non-free products from one company. For example, Anderson talks about how Google can offer free services – search, YouTube, etc – and monetize the eyeballs on the free product with advertising dollars. Most of the criticism leveled at Free appears to be of the “if you’re not the customer, you’re the product being sold” type, which makes sense, but seems inappropriate here.
Last Word
I would recommend this book to anyone in business, but also anyone that is interested in how societies, markets, and the world change. I really like The Long Tail, and I think that Free is better. I believe you will too.
Years ago, I made a small name for myself through blogging about social media and tweeting pretty much anything that I could find on Reddit. I got to the point that I was getting a fair number of job offers, as well as just a lot of praise, so what did I do? I blogged and tweeted more. It got to the point that I would be out with my friends or family and spend most of the time on my phone because I knew that, if I blogged and tweeted more, I would see more progress. Even when I’d walk from one place to another, I’d be glued to my phone.
Unfortunately, I never questioned whether it was the volume of blogging and tweeting that led to my progress or if maybe it was something else like me being a first mover or having the right personality or connections or something else. Had I questioned that, I might have seen the cost-benefit problem that was going on. While I was getting noticed and seeming to move my career along, I missed out on experiences with friends and family. I often wasn’t there when important things happened, and if I was, I was too busy on my phone to really be involved.
via birgerking
This is one of the things that frustrates me about “analytics” the most.
Just because you can A/B test tweeting at 8am vs 9am or emailing on Mondays vs Tuesdays doesn’t mean that the answer tells you anything useful. When we see graphs of the best times to post to Facebook, we have to ask ourselves if the time a post goes live on Facebook has anything to do with its performance. Perhaps, it’s the day of the week, the topic, the phrasing, the thumbnail image, or something else?
One of the most frustrating drivers of this seeming need to A/B test everything is the fact that it’s so easy now. With EdgeRank Checker or PageLever, I can see how my Facebook posts do. With Radian6 or any number of other monitoring tools, I can see how my brand does across the web. With Unbounce and Google Content Experiments, I can see how my landing pages perform, but A/B testing and even performance testing over time does not give us science fact. It simply gives us more questions.
If I blog and get job offers, do I get more offers when I blog more? If so, did I get more offers because I blogged more or because of the topic or time that I published or something else?
If you email your donors with a blue template and get more donations, was it the blue template or something else that cause the increase in donations?
via Amy Loves Yah
This is not to say that you shouldn’t invest in analytics.
You should, but you should invest in analysis that means something and people that ask the right questions. Just because someone knows how to gather a million tweets on political topics doesn’t mean they can tell you anything about how the election is going to go. That is one reason that I trust people like my friends at Analytical Ones or the folks at Edison Research (the people behind the presidential election exit polls).
Analytics done right helps you make better decisions. Analytics done wrong helps you make decisions… aimless, pointless, potentially harmful decisions.
Does mastering the art of seduction make you a better leader—or just a more effective manipulator? Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction is a provocative exploration of influence, power, and the subtle psychological dynamics that govern human relationships. Blending historical anecdotes with bold strategies, Greene positions seduction not merely as a romantic tool but as a broader mechanism for persuasion. Yet, I was left with this question: Can these lessons elevate your ability to connect with others, or do they risk encouraging a manipulative mindset?
This review dives deep into the book’s lessons, highlighting its strengths, uncovering its ethical quandaries, and exploring its practical applications. By the end, you’ll know whether The Art of Seduction deserves a place on your shelf—or if it’s a title best skipped in favor of Greene’s more universally applicable works like The 48 Laws of Power. Let’s untangle the allure of this book and uncover whether it truly delivers on its promise to teach the ultimate art of influence.
Who Is This Book For, and When Should You Read It?
Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction isn’t for everyone, but for the right reader, it offers insight into human nature and influence. If you’re an aspiring pickup artist, this book might feel like a goldmine of strategies. I am however not in that group. For those like me interested in broader applications, such as business or professional networking, the value is more nuanced, requiring a discerning eye to extract lessons that go beyond the realm of romantic manipulation.
Who?
Aspiring Pickup Artists: Those looking to enhance their romantic appeal and charisma.
Power Players and Strategists: Professionals aiming to refine their ability to persuade and influence others in business or leadership.
History Enthusiasts: Readers who enjoy learning through vivid historical examples of power and intrigue.
When?
Early in Your Career: If you’re just beginning to explore the dynamics of influence and persuasion, this book provides a foundational understanding—albeit one skewed toward romantic seduction.
In College or Young Adulthood: Particularly for readers who find the archetypes and strategies applicable to personal relationships or creative ventures.
While Greene weaves an engaging narrative filled with historical figures and timeless lessons, it’s important to approach this book with clear intentions. If you’re looking to sharpen your professional skills, you may find yourself wading through a heavy emphasis on romance that doesn’t always align with the modern workplace. That said, those who sift through these sections may uncover principles of persuasion that are applicable far beyond the confines of seduction.
Why Read The Art of Seduction? (WIIFM: What’s In It For Me?)
The Art of Seduction promises a fascinating dive into the psychology of influence, seduction, and power. But does it deliver on its promise? For readers willing to navigate its romantic-heavy themes, Greene’s work offers a treasure trove of insights into human nature—if you know where to look.
What Makes It Worthwhile?
Historical Depth: Greene excels at weaving together stories from history, featuring figures like Cleopatra, Casanova, and Napoleon, to illustrate his strategies. These narratives add richness to the text, making it more than just a self-help manual—they offer lessons rooted in real-world outcomes.
Psychological Insights: The book delves into how people’s emotions and desires drive their actions. Greene outlines how to tap into these drives through archetypes and strategies that blend observation with action.
Universal Principles: Beneath the surface, Greene presents ideas about human connection that apply to more than romance. Concepts like building intrigue, playing to others’ desires, and creating emotional resonance are just as relevant in professional settings.
The Caveats
While the book shines in its storytelling and psychological depth, there are aspects that can detract from its value:
Romantic Bias: A large portion of the book is dedicated to romantic seduction, which may alienate readers looking for insights into broader influence.
Ethical Concerns: Some strategies flirt with manipulation, making it essential for readers to approach the material critically.
Practicality for Modern Readers: Not all lessons translate seamlessly into today’s workplace or social settings, especially for those prioritizing authentic relationships over calculated influence.
Who Will Benefit Most?
If you’re intrigued by the psychology of persuasion and enjoy learning through historical case studies, The Art of Seduction delivers in spades. However, if you’re looking for actionable advice tailored to modern leadership or business, this may not be your first pick.
Ultimately, what you gain from this book depends on your ability to filter its content through your own ethical lens. If you’re willing to engage with its ideas critically, you may find surprising lessons that transcend its romantic facade.
A Closer Look at the Content: Themes, Archetypes, and Lessons
At its heart, The Art of Seduction unpacks the art and science of influence by exploring both the psychology and tactics of seduction. Greene divides his work into two main parts: the seductive archetypes and the seductive process. Together, they form a roadmap for captivating, influencing, and persuading others—though the tone and context often lean heavily toward romantic manipulation.
Key Themes
Seduction as Power: Greene positions seduction as a form of soft power—an alternative to force or authority that operates by appealing to emotions and desires. He argues that understanding seduction makes one more adept at navigating relationships, whether personal or professional.
The Interplay of Desire and Control: Much of Greene’s philosophy hinges on the balance between sparking desire and maintaining control. The strategies he outlines are designed to create intrigue, cultivate dependency, and subtly guide others toward your goals.
The Seductive Archetypes
In the first section, Greene introduces several archetypes, each representing a distinct style of seduction. These figures provide a framework for understanding how seduction works and how to adapt it to different contexts:
The Siren: Charismatic and alluring, the Siren captivates through charm and magnetism.
The Rake: Intensely passionate, this archetype wins hearts by pursuing their targets relentlessly.
The Charmer: Masterful at creating harmony, the Charmer knows how to disarm others with warmth and kindness.
The Enigma: Mysterious and elusive, the Enigma keeps others intrigued by remaining unpredictable.
Each archetype is illustrated with historical examples, from Cleopatra’s mesmerizing appeal to Casanova’s relentless pursuit. While these characters provide vivid lessons, they also highlight the book’s focus on romantic contexts, which may feel limiting for readers seeking professional insights.
The Seductive Process
The second part of the book focuses on the steps involved in seduction, from setting the stage to cementing influence. These stages include:
Creating Intrigue: Drawing others in by being mysterious or appealing to their curiosity.
Building Emotional Connections: Playing to others’ desires and needs, often by mirroring their mood or indulging their interests.
Cultivating Dependency: Encouraging others to rely on your presence and attention.
Sealing the Connection: Ensuring loyalty or compliance through moments of shared intimacy or understanding.
Strengths of the Content
Rich Historical Context: Greene’s use of historical figures to illustrate his points makes the book both educational and entertaining. These examples give his strategies a timeless quality, grounding them in real-world success stories.
Psychological Depth: The book provides a nuanced exploration of how human emotions and desires can be influenced, making it a valuable resource for anyone looking to better understand interpersonal dynamics.
Weaknesses of the Content
Overemphasis on Romance: Many of the examples and strategies focus on romantic seduction, making the book feel less relevant to readers seeking professional or platonic applications.
Ethical Concerns: Some strategies can come across as manipulative or exploitative, particularly when Greene encourages emotional dependency or control. Readers must approach the material with a critical eye.
Relevance in Modern Contexts: While the historical examples are compelling, they can feel disconnected from today’s workplace dynamics, where authenticity often trumps calculated influence.
Despite these limitations, the book provides a fascinating lens through which to view seduction as a universal tool for influence. Whether or not readers embrace all of Greene’s advice, the themes and archetypes he presents remain thought-provoking and ripe for adaptation in various contexts.
Personal Reflections: A Balanced Perspective
Reading The Art of Seduction by Robert Greene left me with mixed feelings—fascination at its depth of research and storytelling, but also discomfort with its overemphasis on manipulation and romantic seduction. As someone drawn to books for professional and personal growth, I couldn’t help but feel this book falls short in offering practical guidance for those seeking influence beyond the realm of romance.
What Resonated
Greene’s ability to distill complex psychological dynamics into accessible lessons is undeniable. His detailed exploration of archetypes, like The Charmer or The Enigma, offered valuable insights into different styles of influence and how they can be tailored to various situations. The historical anecdotes were particularly compelling, providing both entertainment and an understanding of how these principles have been applied successfully in the past.
Additionally, Greene’s writing shines in its ability to highlight the subtleties of human interaction. Concepts like mirroring someone’s mood or creating intrigue through calculated mystery are universally applicable. If approached thoughtfully, these lessons can be adapted to modern contexts, such as professional networking or leadership.
What Fell Flat
For me, the book’s heavy emphasis on romantic seduction overshadowed its broader applications. While Greene occasionally gestures toward professional settings, the romantic lens is ever-present, making it difficult to extract lessons for business or leadership without significant reinterpretation. At times, the tone even felt exploitative, like a handbook for manipulation rather than genuine connection.
The ethical implications of some strategies also gave me pause. Encouraging emotional dependency or indulging someone’s whims to gain influence may achieve short-term results but could easily erode trust in the long run. As someone who values authentic connections, I found myself questioning whether these tactics align with modern relationship-building practices, both personally and professionally.
Final Thoughts on Greene’s Style
Greene’s work is undeniably engaging, but it often feels like style over substance. While the book is rich in examples and historical context, it lacks a clear framework for translating these lessons into actionable, ethical strategies for the reader. Compared to his other works, like The 48 Laws of Power, The Art of Seduction feels narrower in scope and less relevant to a modern audience.
Would I recommend it? That depends. If you’re a history buff or intrigued by the psychology of persuasion, there’s value to be found here. But for anyone looking for practical, actionable insights into influence—especially in professional contexts—I’d recommend Greene’s other books first.
Actionable Takeaways: Applying The Art of Seduction in Modern Life
Despite its romantic-heavy focus, The Art of Seduction offers lessons that can be thoughtfully adapted to modern contexts. Below are some actionable takeaways for applying Greene’s principles in ethical and practical ways—whether you’re looking to refine your professional influence, improve interpersonal dynamics, or simply gain a deeper understanding of human behavior.
Understand the Power of Archetypes
Greene’s archetypes—such as The Charmer, The Siren, and The Enigma—illustrate different ways people can wield influence.
Modern Application:
In professional settings, embody The Charmer by using warmth and harmony to create trust and collaboration.
Adopt The Enigma’s air of mystery in negotiations by keeping some cards close to your chest, sparking curiosity without revealing everything at once.
Build Emotional Resonance
A key theme in Greene’s book is connecting with others by understanding their desires and adapting to their emotional states.
Modern Application:
Practice active listening in conversations to understand what motivates others.
Mirror a colleague’s or client’s mood to create rapport without being disingenuous.
Cultivate Intrigue
Greene emphasizes the importance of creating an aura of mystery to draw people in and maintain their attention.
Modern Application:
In professional storytelling or presentations, share just enough to pique curiosity, then let your audience ask questions or engage further.
On social media or in personal branding, be intentional about what you reveal, creating a sense of anticipation around your expertise or offerings.
Avoid Manipulation and Foster Authenticity
Many of Greene’s strategies, such as cultivating dependency or playing to someone’s narcissism, can feel ethically dubious. Instead, focus on influence strategies that prioritize mutual benefit and trust.
Modern Application:
Use seduction principles like charm and intrigue to enhance authentic relationships, not to manipulate.
Be transparent about your intentions to build trust and long-term rapport.
Take a Selective Approach
Not every principle in The Art of Seduction is applicable—or advisable—in today’s social and professional dynamics. Learn to separate the timeless lessons from the outdated or overly manipulative ones.
Modern Application:
Focus on Greene’s lessons about understanding people’s motivations and crafting compelling narratives.
Skip the tactics that rely on creating emotional dependence or exploiting vulnerabilities.
Final Note on Practicality
The lessons in The Art of Seduction work best when adapted thoughtfully. Rather than seeing the book as a strict guide, view it as a collection of ideas to explore and reinterpret in ways that align with your personal values and professional goals. By doing so, you can harness the art of influence without compromising authenticity or trust.
Final Verdict: Should You Read The Art of Seduction?
Robert Greene’s The Art of Seduction is a polarizing book—provocative, insightful, and at times, unsettling. It offers a fascinating exploration of influence through the lens of seduction, blending historical anecdotes with strategies designed to captivate and persuade. But whether or not it’s worth your time depends largely on what you’re hoping to gain from it.
Who Will Enjoy This Book?
If you’re a fan of historical storytelling or intrigued by the psychological dynamics of influence, this book is a captivating read. Its vivid examples of figures like Cleopatra, Casanova, and Napoleon provide timeless lessons on human interaction, making it a rich source of inspiration for anyone interested in persuasion.
Who Should Skip It?
For those looking for straightforward, actionable strategies for modern leadership or business influence, The Art of Seduction might feel too niche or ethically ambiguous. Its heavy emphasis on romantic manipulation overshadows its broader applicability, and readers seeking Greene’s trademark insights might find his other works, such as The 48 Laws of Power, more universally relevant.
The Bottom Line
The Art of Seduction is best approached as a thought experiment or philosophical exploration of influence, rather than a practical guide.
It offers moments of brilliance but is bogged down by a tone that can feel exploitative or disconnected from modern ethical standards.
If you’re curious and have time to engage with its themes critically, the book may challenge and expand your perspective on power and persuasion.
My Recommendation
If you’re short on time or prefer content that is actionable and relevant to today’s professional landscape, skip The Art of Seduction and explore Greene’s other works instead. But if you’re intrigued by the psychological underpinnings of influence and don’t mind sifting through the romantic emphasis, this book might just spark some unexpected insights.
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