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The Empty Restaurant Paradox

People outsource their thinking all the time. You. Me. Partly because we need to (there’s too many decisions to make daily) and partly because we’re lazy. Sometimes we outsource our thinking and mistakenly think we’re embracing the so-called ‘Wisdom of the Crowd‘. A quick example. Two Asian noodle places are located nearby. One has a big queue outside and the other...

Cut through

In Marketing, we have this tired idea of cut through. We’re told we need to ‘make a stand’, ‘take a side’, cause division, etc because ‘if everyone agrees with us then no one agrees with us’ (and other cliches)… so we need to make a claim that interrupts people. That, we’re told, is how we can capture attention. We call this ‘creating...

84 to 85 = shoulder pain

I’d been wondering why I was getting pain in my right shoulder recently. Nothing sharp, just a dull ache by the end of the day. I realised (by accident) that it was the height of my standing desk. I’d bumped the height switch a few days prior and the height had gone from 84 up to 85. And in the following days the shoulder pain started. I took it back down to 84 (ie 1cm lower), and the...

Game Changer

Game changer Definition: Any new feature—no matter how basic or specific to a particular area—which is talked about breathlessly on social media as if it’s going to unlock some amazing new level of productivity or performance. Usually accompanied by at least one fire emoji. Ideally, if it is in beta, that makes it more of a game changer. Bonus: if it’s a private beta, then it’s...

Why I cancelled Duolingo

I’ve been using Duolingo for a while. I pay for the Premium (Super) version. But I cancelled this week. Not because I don’t use it. Not because I’m replacing it with another tool or ChatGPT. I cancelled it because I’m sick of so much upsell. The bottom set of icons used to give me access to different features. Now two of the six are just for upsells. I’m fine with...

Reporting Slop

Reporting slop is a subcategory of Process Slop. Reporting Slop is all the reports that get created simply because AI suggested them as a good idea for your business, your department, your clients… First, let’s take a step back though. I think we’ve all had that experience in our careers where we’re asked to create a report (or to continue preparing a report) for the...

Process Slop

I think we all understand content slop by now – the low value content pumped out by AI (usually at scale). Annoying, yes – but mostly harmless. One of the lacklustre side effects of AI advances. However, there’s another type of AI related slop coming – what I’ll refer to as ‘process slop’. It’s the side effect of people taking the ‘advice’ of AI when it comes to setting up their...

Don’t Tell Your Story

One of the things that’s taught in Marketing is around the power of storytelling and the exhortation that you should share stories. Often, people mistake ‘storytelling’ for telling their own story. But of course, nobody cares about the storyteller, they only care about themselves. Prospects and clients want to hear the story about the problem you solve for them. Hopefully we all know this...

HubShots episode 311

Ian and I recorded HubShots Episode 311 a few weeks back. You can watch it here on YouTube. And full show notes are available here. Here’s what we covered: 00:00 Introduction 00:20 Deep Thought of the Week? 01:10 Should you Build your Website on HubSpot? 05:48 Subscribe to our HubShots Daily Tip 06:22 Canva integration with HubSpot 08:49 HubSpot SNIPPETS Helper 09:26 View Activity Summaries...

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