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Very young kids are just as happy with the wrapping paper as they are the present.

Sometimes with customers, we think it’s about the present but it’s really the wrapping. 

Because the present can’t ever really live up to expectations. Software has bugs. Training has flat spots. Clothes wrinkle.

But how people feel about us?

That lives on.

When real estate mogul Barbara Cororan sends a thank you note to clients, she doesn’t use a letter.

She uses a postcard.

A postcard saves them the trouble of having to open an envelope.

The thanks is right there. 

How can you cut to the good news?

One of the projects I cared most about was a massive flop.

I called it the User Shoes program, a way for me and my fellow product managers to visit consumers in their homes each month. 

It was ethnographic-research lite, where the objective was to expand our perspective by seeing how real people were using our products in the real world.

Knowing the corporate politics of the situation, I invited our sister brand to include a team member in the pilot program. 

What a mistake.

She...

Typing rather than talking changes behaviour.

Customers are more willing to buy, for example, when they type their search rather than use a voice assistant like Siri or Alexa.

When we type, we subconsciously associate it with taking action.

When we use a voice assistant, we instead associate it with gathering information and deliberating.

Unfortunately, customers are unlikely to tell you they decided to buy because they typed rather than talked. They can’t. They won’t imagine...

Baby birds open their beaks for two reasons. 

They trust their parent and it’s worth it. They get fed.

Customers and colleagues open your emails for the same reasons.

My word for the year is different.

Or to put it a better way, different is my word for the year.

It’s been remarkably clarifying.

From taking a different path when walking the dog to changing parts of my website and taking on different projects, reminding myself to be ‘different’ has been powerful.

It’s helped me unshackle from my status quo.

I’m even writing differently. Have you noticed?

Looser. More conversational.

And in the spirit of that, I’m going to...

You already know there are employees you are not getting the best out of.

What may surprise you is it’s not the lazy ones. It’s not the shirkers. The ‘all talk no walk’ types. You probably have a plan for them, or you should.

No, I’m talking about those conscientious, hard working members of your organisation that are doing good work, but they could be doing GREAT work. 

These are your 60% employees.

I know this because I was a 60% employee. 

Before I...

I was updating my LinkedIn profile and was given the option for AI to rewrite it.

You’ve probably seen these AI integrations across a number of different platforms?

And to my delight, AI did an excellent job.

It covered all bases and flowed really nicely. (You can read for yourself it at the bottom of this post).

So I pressed publish.

But then I started to wonder, what is the point of my profile?

What am I trying to communicate BEYOND the words?

Because there were two problems...

There are seven words I guarantee you, your customers, and your boss will love. 

There is nothing you need to do.

Here's an example.

A few weeks ago I received an email from my website host Kajabi.

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"Hello Bri,

You may have heard about the new email requirements for bulk senders starting February 4, 2024. Yahoo and Gmail have separately announced updated requirements to deliver email to their platforms. Their goal is to better secure customers' inboxes and provide an...

Surprisingly, this is the type of comment I love.

"Surely this only works on idiots?" 

The comment was in response to a clip I'd posted about how decimals and commas elongate a number.

For example:

50,000.00

50,000

50000

50k

In the clip I show an ad promoting a $50k cash giveaway and make the point that it would have been more impressive (though less poetic) had they used $50,000.00.

It's known as Magnitude Representation (Coulter, Choi and Munroe, 2011).

So why...