Dear Leaders, this week letter is a chance to rethink a few situations to take forward with new meanings.
A few years ago I was introduced to the founder of a successful growing business.
It was an in-person meeting, after a number of emails were exchanged the founder asked me to come into their office and meet in person.
No need for a pitch or a presentation, it was a discussion around specifics and where we could partner.
The meeting started well and then there was a statement that changed the direction of the conversation:
“I just don’t believe in Marketing”.
At that time they’d ask me to come in and pitch an interim solution to set their business up for success via growth channels and expanding their footprint.
I believe in tests and seeing reactions, it gives you a barometer of how they might react in a crisis or if something happens unexpectedly. But this was slightly different, the tone was off, the energy changed.
I used to work for someone who regularly ran unsophisticated social experiments based on the things he said and the way he said them and would see how people reacted to them.
The founder continued:
“I think it’s a huge waste of money, platforms will take a huge cut, the leads will be low quality and it’s a price wars”.
For me, this wasn’t something I expected a founder of a successful business to say especially when they had asked me in to help grow their business, with a focus of a Marketing and Pricing lens.
One major issue with the statement and the tone, how they grew was through Marketing; their fleet on the road, they were smart enough to have a website that redirected so they knew the lead source and they had a dedicated phone number that was logged as the lead source. Word of mouth was also a big driver of their business, despite not tracking it properly, in essence, it was a bias that the founder had against Marketing that never had the right set-up (which is common and still happens across all business sizes).
In life, we are tested every single day, sometimes by the small and insignificant, and then other days huge test, in many situations it is how you react and how you learn and grow from this.
The lesson at the time to me seemed to be; never work with someone like this, however, actually, in hindsight, it was learning that someone’s bias and wanting to prove they were right was hindering their success and their business.
Sometimes we are all blinded by a bias or a belief we cannot see or cannot shake.
This week, learn to write a list of learning experiences and consider how you might revisit or reconsider if there was a different learning opportunity.
Have a great week.
Thanks,
Danny Denhard
Essential Resources