willie jackson

Blog

  • Adopting effective habits

    I have a friend who will get excited about an idea and work 14 hour days for a week until he’s happy with the progress made. I have another friend who won’t make small changes (that will grow his business and careers) to save his life, despite there being the resources and support necessary to influence (and sustain) the changes.

    People who prepare, research, and plan (without taking action) are in some ways the opposite of people who ship, fail, iterate aggressively enough to find success. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with preparation, research, and planning…but I know people who have been “preparing to” do/launch/quit/ship a [project/product/job/idea] since I met them.

    We all have the capacity to make meaningful behavioral and mindset changes, but the likeliness of us doing this decreases every time we take the easy path. Every time we make a smaller promise in secret, hoping we never fail. Every time we plan for months instead of shipping a Minimum Viable Product.

    Not everyone is wired with the habits that bring success, but there’s no law stopping us from emulating effective humans until their positive traits become our own.

  • Driven by Legacy

    One of the reasons I quit my job last year is because the trajectory I was on became more and more divergent from the legacy I wanted to leave. I had no interest in climbing the corporate ladder, giving 18 years and three marriages to the corporate behemoth in exchange for a BMW convertible and big house, and most of all, I didn’t want the lifestyle that came with the corporate grind.

    I didn’t want to be sitting around a Christmas tree 40 years from now with my kids and grandkids, wishing I had spent more time with them while I was toiling away for The Man™ and reflecting on my unfulfilled dreams, regretting I hadn’t tried harder when I was younger (and had nothing to lose).

    And now that my goals are anchored by purpose, making tough decisions is a lot easier. I’ve accepted the fact that there will be tradeoffs right now while I’m hustling, and that it won’t always feel glamorous when I’m adopting the habits and mindset of a winner. And that’s the point.

  • Dealing with ignorance

    Ignorance can be a liability or a powerful asset, depending on how you react to it.

    If you’re anything like me, being exposed to new ideas teaches you, if nothing else, how much you truly don’t know. Winners use this to their advantage and approach new concepts with a childlike curiosity, setting their biases and notions aside in favor of exploration on the way of mastery.

    What’s dangerous is learning how much you don’t know and remaining content to dwell in the same place. In business, this can cause your company or product to become irrelevant overnight. The broader applications of this complacency are even more dire.

    There are different ideas on how to deal with the information available to us, but I think that an insatiable and purposeful curiosity

    Nothing in the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity.

    -Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.

  • Sticking to the script

    One of my goals is to write every day, even if it’s only a few lines.

    I’m also traveling right now. In addition to the benefits that writing regularly provides, writing under these circumstances is giving me the following insights:

    1. It is positively asinine to wait until the night before a post needs to go live to write it
    2. The daily habit of writing really does keep the subconscious churning away on ideas
    3. Being in the posture of writing regularly turns you into a keen observer of everything
    4. When you read less, the frequency of insight drops dramatically
    5. When your body needs sleep, writing something of substance is incredibly challenging
    6. Staring at a blank WordPress post screen is at times terrifying
    7. Lists are always the right answer (I think)
    8. It’s worth it

  • Clearly-defined job titles

    …don’t exist everywhere.

    Sure, it would be great if every opportunity and project came with the resources and clarity of purpose to make roles and responsibilities clear, but the reality is that these are often a luxury afforded by established businesses.

    And even then, said titles are often given as a formality rather than out of necessity. Executives and founders and self-starters don’t have clear delineations between what they do and what their counterparts (or employees or secretaries…) do; their job is to get it done, whatever “it” is, and no matter what it takes.

    There’s a marked difference between the person who says “that’s not my job” and the person who doesn’t say anything at all (because what needs to be done is simply done, and there’s no discussion needed).

  • Baked-in delight

    It’s not hard to engineer pleasurable experiences into customer interactions.

    Here’s what people want:

    1. To get what they ask
    2. For you to deliver on your promise(s)
    3. Simple interactions with no curveballs

    Here’s what people won’t tell you that they want (but do):

    1. To be appreciated for their business
    2. To feel like they got a bargain
    3. To be given special treatment

    And here’s what can be done to delight them:

    1. Deliver service faster than you say you will
    2. Extend exclusive offers to valuable customers
    3. Provide good news, positive reinforcement, and genuine gratitude when transactions are processed

    If you build success into your process (timelines you can beat, prices that can be lowered, etc.), you lose nothing. What you stand to gain, however, is tremendous.

  • A posture of gratitude

    I really like Tom’s idea about calling 50 people who supported you this year.

    As with the power of a handwritten thank you note (as compared to an email or text message), personal interactions like this enrich our relationships and inject warmth into the (sometimes impersonal and mechanical) routines of our colleagues.

  • The importance of trust

    In marketing: establishing trust is critical if you want to convert strangers into customers and raving fans. So if you pitch a sub-par product as the greatest invention ever created and people are continuously disappointed before the product catches up to the hype, you’re in trouble.

    In relationships: no one wants to feel like they need to sign paperwork (e.g., FrieNDA) before sharing something with you. Using discretion with respect to what’s public information and what’s to be kept secret will save everyone involved a world of pain and embarrassment.

    In web applications: if a user signs up for your application using a new (or rarely used) email address and there’s an influx of spam to that email address in the days that follow, they’ll probably deduce (correctly) that their information has been sold.

    There are of course less malicious mistakes that can be made in web applications, but the ramifications are no less dire.

  • Self publishing success

    An observation: marketers give us a new vocabulary and lens through which to experience the world. Terms like “pick yourself” an “permission slip” echo in my mind when I read articles like this now. (Read this if you’re confused).

    The idea that you no longer need your idea “approved” before bringing it to market (or, in this case, publishing it) is a powerful one, and it removes from us the ability to blame our lack of success on external factors. It’s not that the lack of red tape makes success more likely, it’s that we now stand face to face with the risk required for any endeavor.

    So it’s less about who hasn’t given us permission to pursue our dreams…and more about us being honest (with ourselves first, and then the world) about whether we’re actually willing to put in the emotional labor to see the dream realized.

  • Full stop failure

    One of the best interviews I’ve read in a very long time.

    Check it out.