Scott's Short Stories

I’m in this constant quest improve the way I make decisions. But every day life it’s really difficult to find other people that are interested and probing and digging deep on decision-making.

I read this book by Richard Rumelt called Good Strategy Bad Strategy and it completely changed my ability to develop a strategy for our business. https://www.slideshare.net/Michaelcmcdermott/a-rumelt-perpsective-on-good-strategy

Every time I walk into a grocery store kind of fascinated by all the signage and product placement that’s going on and the massive number of new products.

A brief update.

Changing my wife's password caused me to overwrite my memory

I'm approximately 68 hours into a water fast and just kind of sharing what the first three days have been like.

Stored knowledge is basically how you add things to a simple system over time, and the system is no longer simple.

I'm done fast before but I've never not eaten for over a day.

The tip I share is about setting goals as a range such as lose 1-3 lbs. each week.

I have found that getting up and doing a small task helps get me going. Especially when I'm stuck, bored, frustrated, or can't stay focused.

I'm learning to be flexible with how I should frame my productivity system.

I've been fasting for the last 7 days, and it's really interesting how it changes your relationship to food.

Get Outlook for iOS

A brief update.

I've recently been learning a lot about probabilistic decision making. Now I have to figure out how to apply that in our business towards making decisions. How do I know what is the most important thing to work on next?

Sometimes you waste money trying to get shit done.

I'm finishing each step across three different purchase flows before preceding to the next step.

Both approaches have value in certain contexts, not just in product development. Customer personas has more value in marketing and Jobs To Be Done has more value in product development, but both approaches are useful in both functions and beyond. Here's the talk that inspired my recent thoughts. https://blog.intercom.io/jobs-to-be-done-doubter-believer/

How we systemize our life with Amazon Echo ordering.

I've added a pre qualifying survey to our site to help our customers know which product is right for them. After we give them an answer we put a lead magnet in their path.

I've got better things to do than spend all day tinkering with webapps.

I talk about how I'm planning to survey new customers to increase activation.

More details about how I'm using Mental Modeling to plan out customer activation and retention strategies from Meal Mentor.

Mental Modeling was discussed in Smarter Faster Better by Charles Dugg http://citgrd.co/1THS4lF A mental model is an explanation of someone's thought process about how something works in the real world. It is a representation of the surrounding world, the relationships between its various parts and a person's intuitive perception about his or her own acts and their consequences. Mental models can help shape behaviour and set an approach to solving problems (akin to a personal algorithm) and doing tasks. from Wikipedia

I've created a very simple SMS bot that allows our members to download their meal plans via text message.

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Discussing Des's talk about feature bias. "Real dog fooding is eating every day."

We feel like the best way to help our customers is to build a community that can support each other and not just rely on Lindsay to be there to help them.

Make sure your survey is representive of your customer base.

Check out Google Trends.

Don't go too many hours or days without reflecting on whether what you are doing is important.

Keep focused only on things that move important things forward.

A brief update.

Keep asking yourself this question.

Use google keyword analysis to figure out the language your customers actually use to solve their problems.

Whether in your life or in business success is rarely a specific moment. 

For you are unsure about a problem you have ask someone for help. Even if they can't help you; maybe they know someone who can.

If you sell bits, give away your physical products for free as a marketing and branding expense.

In this episode, I referenced Carol Dweck's book Mindset to talk about status and fixed vs growth mindsets.

This is a response to my friend Natala's status episode. https://www.briefs.fm/the-front-porch/6 I think related to brands there are at least two types of status: earned and purchased status.  I think for most brands online you want earned status. 

Join us in supporting high poverty public school children at http://www.donorsclicks.com/

Today, my wife and I have as many as 20 people helping us run our personal lives and business. But the easiest things to delegate are in our personal lives; not business.

I used Upwork to go from idea to done in 3 hours.

I know it hurts to give good compliments, but let's strengthen that muscle.

This episode is a follow to the "You should read 5 Elements of Effective Thinking" where I discuss how writer become better thinkers. Snickers reference included.

Can you explain what you believe with facts? Or do struggle to find the words? Here's the book: http://citgrd.co/5-elements-thinking

Here a little tip on making small habit changes from James Clear

You can get one in person at #microconf. Otherwise you can get one mailed to you at cost. Charge More 'coin' stickers - https://www.stickermule.com/en/marketplace/10889-charge-more Charge More "badge" stickers - https://www.stickermule.com/en/marketplace/10890-charge-more

I use a combination of Shoeboxed, Zapier, and Printopia to automate saving my receipts. If you just want to save receipts to a folder, then use Printopia's print to folder feature

With expensive Moleskine notebooks I never write anything in them, because it needed to be important. Yellow legal pads are cheap and disposable so I'll write anything in them. I take a lot more notes now.

Scott explains how using Excel pivot tables makes it so much easier to get insights about your data. The TCV of our users with a grade of F is higher then people with a C grade. So there's opportunity there!