Performance vs. Reluctance

I lost a client this week; one I'd prefer to have kept.

From over two years in business working with influential people, I know better than to take these losses personally. There's too much hidden from my knowledge to devolve into despair, or self-blame.

Nor was I about to place the blame on my team, who performed with their usual vigor and energy, up to our quality standards and never missing a deadline.

Instead, I raised my hand, took the hit and absorbed the impact. I had, it turned out, failed on a cue about his intentions. A cue I should have seen coming.

The Power of Reluctance

Ghostwriting, as you can imagine, is an investment; not an "expense," and definitely not a commodity.

I know some people hire ghostwriters to publish "legacy" books, like memoirs. But our agency does not attract such clients - and we aren't likely to anytime soon.

If you're going to invest thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars hiring an agency to write your book and/or digital content, you expect a return.

Paying $25-30k for someone to help you write and publish a book feels like a lot of money. But if you can gain a $50k client when the right person reads ... it makes more sense.

My vision always included a positive AND lucrative outcome for my clients.

Sure, they love the fact that I can "channel" them on paper, and write authentically in their voice. Those talents never go down as strikes on the record.

But plenty of people wonder, "How much is it worth, having content written in my voice?"

In a painful (but useful) disclosure ... I confess, I'd avoided the issue. I wasn't greedy, or unconcerned ... I just had no idea how to measure or determine the answer.

Especially with digital content.

The Purpose Behind Loss

I believe losses like these are like "alarm signals" that go off inside the places where exercise leadership or dominion.

It's similar to those inexplicable feelings of gloom or depression that sometimes crop up inside our souls.

They're God's way of saying, "Something isn't right. Pay attention!"

But now, if we turn aside, educate ourselves and - for lack of a better word - force ourselves to develop a healthy degree of literacy around the problem ... we'll be pleasantly surprised.

I recently shared in a Facebook post how this came back to haunt me in the area of business finances. In the first quarter of this year, I had to learn how to read financial statements.

I hate crunching numbers, as many wordsmiths do. But next thing you know, I found I actually enjoy updating my cash flow, balance sheet and profit/loss statements.

So, when my client fired me for sub-par performance on his content, I realized I'd already received a blueprint to follow: learn to read content marketing analytics.

So that's my act of defiance against reluctance for this week. The objective going forward is to marry authentic content with measurable performance.

So your web copy, blogs, emails, sales pages and other collateral are as persuasive online as you are in-person - and the numbers back it up.

How I Think About Mandatory Tasks I Dislike

Seeing as I'm still a newbie at interpreting things like SEO, click-through rates, analytics and so forth, I think it's more legitimate to comment on my mindset for the journey.

Reverse-Engineered Accountability

One reason I failed with my former client was that I left it in his hands to monitor and respond to the data.

Now, contrast this approach with the one used by my marketing partner, @Bjarne Viken.

When Bjarne began to generate leads for me, he didn't wait for me to figure out whether or not they were generating, responding or converting.

He sent me an organized Google Sheet that showed a snapshot of all the leads that came through, the nature of their responses and several columns for me to fill in the outcomes.

Now, I might have been able to dispute the quality of the leads ... but there was no way I could argue that Bjarne had done his job, which I paid him to do.

The evidence was there, staring me in the face. If sales did not follow, there were only two possible explanations: (a) the leads were not my target clients, or (b) I'm a poor salesman.

With the first batch of leads, we were able to figure it out quickly - I was not using a good sales process. In fact, I wasn't using one at all.

Luckily, Bjarne had an answer for that too.

He had answers because he came prepared. He anticipated every "energy leak" and weak link in the chain ... and he had remedies for all of them.

That's how things tend to go when you reverse-engineer accountability. I should have known that, from my days as a soldier.

Top-Secret Clearance NOT Required

I regularly tell others, "It wouldn't kill you to do a Google search and look it up yourself." But I'm not always great at following my own advice.

In fact, as I learned from educating myself about money, it rarely takes more than a few steps beyond a Google search.

In other words, you don't need to work at AppSumo or have a top secret security clearance to learn how to interpret content marketing analytics.

What you do need is force of will - and when force of will is required for tasks I dislike, I frequently need to be pushed to the brink of failure before I take it seriously.

We're not crying out for lack of knowledge or information. We just need a good, swift kick in the rear end sometimes.

This is embarrassing to write about, in case you wondered. But it's profoundly true of the human condition.

As soon as I set my face like a flint, though - I got the basics down.

Field Generals Don't Run Touchdowns

In a bright patch for a weary Denver Broncos fan, my favorite team recently acquired Russell Wilson, the star quarterback for the Seattle Seahawks.

Wilson is a stud on the field, and an able commander. It's the first time I've felt this confident about the future of the team since Peyton Manning retired in 2016.

Manning was a "field general" quarterback. He rarely rushed for yards, or touchdowns, especially the older he got. It wasn't wise ... nor was it necessary.

Throughout his career, Manning was renowned for his cerebral approach to the game. He didn't need to be especially fast on his feet, because he could tell when he was in trouble, before taking the snap.

He was also known as a "coach on the field," because he could make play calls by himself without help from the sidelines.

You simply can't deliver "field general" performance as a leader, unless you can read, interpret and make calculated risks with pre-existing data.

So I will take a page out of the Manning playbook, and study the numbers and ask myself the hard questions, until I find the answers.

Would you like to have a conversation about digital content, or a book, that takes your ROI and analytics into account?

If so, grab a spot on my calendar and let's talk this through.