You Can't Lose!

In this episode, Joe and Richard explore the difference between community and alliance: “An alliance is going someplace… it has direction.” They trade time-travel hypotheticals, reflect on the problem-solving joy of The Martian and The Last of Us, and debate whether their businesses are behaving like nouns or verbs. “Do something with this,” Joe insists, as they revisit lessons from the Philadelphia Experiment. Along the way, they ask: what if your lease is your marketing strategy?

While Richard was away Joe catches up with Anthony Colangelo, partner at Pine Works, host of Main Engine Cut Off & cohost of Off-Nominal, Engineering leader, iOS product developer, birds fan, dad, and Joe's spiritual nephew. Anthony has grown a space flght, exploration, and policy podcast empire rooted in his sincere passion and strong opinions re: the topic. They discuss the MECO origin story, how Anthony's vision drove the growth of the podcast, the power of authenticity, and the impact this project has on Anthony's life and career. Also it's a love fest.

Richard and Joe break down their conversation with Chris & Aaron Quinn, more details about agency acquisitions, private equity vs venture capital, and they spill the beans about The Philadelphia Experiment April 9-11.

Chris and Aaron Quinn join to share their experiences creating, growing, and ultimately scaling eHouse through an acquisition. Thanks to our friends for being so candid and informative about their experiences!

Duolingo announced changing their job titles from UX Design to Product Experience Design and created a 2013-Twitter-era dust up so Richard and Joe chime in with their thoughts. We discuss the purpose of job titles, the way identity effs with you, and to bring it back to sales in a meta way we ask what's more important? That you achieve your objective? Or that you're properly credited and acknowledged, and THEN achieve your objective?

This episode has it all! Richard shares how embedding "brown M&M" contract requirements helps you get what you want He also discusses how the TNT (takes no talent) parts of a business lead to success Joe provides an example: Respond to new leads shockingly quickly and meet your clients' enthusiasm Richard describes his tantric response to awkward silences (NSFW) Joe then accuses all of you of adopting a "Waiting Super Hard!" approach to sales and biz dev Richard explains you miss 100% of the shots you don't take Joe explains in sales "You Can't Lose!" and how that opens up the freedom to do the things you're not doing In a devastating finishing move, they describe how they know an agency is really in a bad spot: they redesign their website! It's like watching your friend decide to get bangs after a big break up. A redesigned site is a call for help!

Richard and Joe discuss the little cohort/therapy group they're in and how beneficial that relationship has become over the past year. Within that discussion Richard explains how effective it can be to manage communication patterns within a community, for example conducting types of conversations in person while conducting very different conversations within the same community online. He describes how powerful that contextualization can be as well as how that deliberate focus prevents the online conversation from cannibalizing IRL or other communities. If you manage complex communication with communities, teams, or clients this is a super practical episode.

There's a few big ideas in this week's episode. Richard makes a strong case that Pipedrive weighted outcome forecasting for open opportunities and leads is steering you wrong. It's 0% forecastable revenue until the check clears. Joe says tracking sales quarterly sets you up to fail. There are two selling seasons and two off-seasons every year, plan accordingly. Richard and Joe both illustrate how digital agencies in particular under-invest in sales, biz dev, and marketing. They discuss why this happens, the risks and challenges that follow, and alternatives worth exploring.

In our ongoing "Parenting Advice That's Not For Everyone" Richard and Joe explain in detail the benefits of arming your kids with humor, and how to make your kids funny. From the benefit of "banned books" to letting your kids funny their way out of trouble to shoving your 8-year-old into Victoria's Secret, this episode has it all.

This week Joe and Richard discuss some tactical tricks of the trade as well as examples from the industry and from popular culture. What's the value of showing a client a glimpse into a far future state of their project as a concept car? How does casting the vision far ahead dramatically improve the client's ability to be attracted to novel ideas, rather than poke holes based on their constraints? Great examples of how practitioners like Tracey Halvorsen, Dan Mall, and Anthony Colangelo are detailed along with a couple of famous superheroes Ryan Reynolds and Henry Cavill. Get inspired and inspire your collaborators!