Hello boys and girls,
Before we break a sweat, let's take a moment to take eight deep breaths and be grateful to be here, right now.
One. Two. Three. Quatro. Five. Seis. Siete. Ocho.
"Life is not just about peaks and valleys, about wins and losses. Life is about the journey. You hear that all the time. You’ve got to absorb that. You’ve got to know that. The journey has to become the destination because there is no true destination. There is no endpoint. There is no goal. All rivers run to the sea and yet the sea is not full. Life goes on; accept what life gives you. The sun rises the morning after you win the championship or lose in the first round."
— Paul Assaiante, Run to the Roar
Awesome. Let's go.
What's new?
Pitching. Pitching. Pitching. Pitching. We're hitting the road with the We Heart Impact story and I'm at the forefront of experimenting with our storytelling, our angles, and assumptions for what we're building here, but most importantly I'm getting great feedback from people I love and admire.
Another exercise I spent time on this week is a reference to Brian Chesky, founder of AirBnb, the 10 Star Experience. In a nutshell, you describe your user's experience and rate it from 1 to 10, where 1 is a really bad experience and 10 is the most awesome experience you can think of.
The purpose of the exercise is to write down how you want your product to evolve over time to become an uber experience - the ultimate, unforgettable experience. It helped me a lot as it challenged me to empathize with the most important people in my business and also to think about how to deliver on my promise. It leads to a better understanding of your value proposition and how you deliver it.
I'm also working with three clients at the moment and we're making great progress. I'm excited to see what comes next.
Ok, in addition to all this work, I jumped on a treadmill for about seven hours this week and used it to my advantage. I will share with you my crash course in B2B sales and storytelling and another episode with the author of the operations bible; Working Backwards - the way Amazon operates.
From the treadmill
B2B crash course (thanks to Lenny for such an amazing pod)
I first came across Nancy Duarte's work many years ago - in fact I used her material to help develop my teaching materials - and I think she is number one when it comes to storytelling. So to my surprise - as I was warming up for my run - I found an episode of Nancy and Lenny to watch - touché! - It was a great run and I highly recommend this material to founders, creatives, and sales teams.
The journey to finding the right customer involves identifying and executing the right product position - this episode provides some very interesting frameworks that you can apply to your product.
This one is insane. I've sent it to several people and I'm sure they'll get lots of great ideas and insights from this one episode. It's all about telling your story, your value proposition and working side by side with your customers to help them understand how great you are for them.
Did you know that when you bring FOMO into a negotiation, you increase the chances of closing the deal? Well, you can find that and more in this article.
I thought Eric was the right guy at the right time and that was it. He became an entrepreneurial legend simply by writing smart ideas when the hype of being an entrepreneur was just beginning. But no, the guy is actually pretty damn smart. His parents were both doctors - the scientist ones - and he grew up with this experimental mind-set and first principles. The whole idea of testing fast and failing fast came naturally to him - getting things wrong was just a super important part of the process. So he deserves all the credit for changing the way people innovate. I highly recommend this book!
He is the founder of Pixar and a former creative and business partner of Steve Jobs. (I'd better not add anything else).
Amazon is one of the largest and most complex companies in the world. Books? They have them. Marketplace? They got it. Alexa? You got it. Super fast delivery? They got it. Cloud AWS? You bet they got it.
So how do you go from selling books online to being one of the biggest companies in the world? Exceptional people running insanely great processes.
Bill was at Amazon for 15 years and he's written a book about how Amazon works and what makes it so special. The book became the operations and culture bible for many hyper-growth companies.
In this episode, he breaks down many of those concepts, how they were created and implemented, and more. He also shares that Jeff is wired differently :-)
I won't share any other content, but I'll add it to the next one.
Hecho con Amor en Madrid.
Daniel