My minimalist approach to success

Minimalism is much more than interior design or getting rid of material things, tMinimalism is much more than interior design or getting rid of most of your things. My favourite way to describe minimalism is “the act of living intentionally”. That means taking control of our lives by focusing on the things that bring us value. Thus, there is a minimalist approach for almost everything, success included.

What does success mean to you?

If we look at Cambridge Dictionary, there are two – apparently similar – ways to define success. Now you’ll see what I mean with “apparently”.

*Success (noun): the achieving of desired results, or someone or something that achieves positive results.

Cambridge Dictionary

So, in the context of business and self-development, Is achieving your desired results same thing as achieving positive results? Well… not always – specially when we set ambitious goals. Not achieving our desired results doesn’t mean that we haven’t achieved anything at all. So, if our results are positive, we are right to say we succeeded.

That said, let’s start by looking at how we can set our goals like a minimalist. And I want to clarify that this is my way to do it. I’m not expert here, so there might be a better way to set your goals. However, this works for me.

It’s a rule of three

Three is a good number; Am I right? It’s the number of perfection or completion. I try to keep things as simple as I can and put the effort into persevering. So here are my three rules:

Everything towards the big goals

We love to set objectives, it’s so motivating. However, when it’s time to seriously work towards achieving them, things can get pretty overwhelming. As I explained in one of my previous posts (Stop planning , start doing), sometimes we should just start doing before setting up any goals. This way we can make sure that we actually know what our real goal is.

If you want to become the best web designer in New York, the first thing you have to do is start designing –or move to New York…–. Maybe you find out that designing websites is not your thing –or that you hate New York–. Once you start doing whatever you want to do, you’ll see your goals more clearly.

I see goals as my ultimate objectives, so I don’t have more than two for my professional life and two for my personal life. These goals can change with the circumstances –and lessons from life–, but they are meant to be long term.

Sometimes different goals can be contained in just one. Minimalism means focusing in what is most important, so setting one or two important goals in the long term helps me to get rid of any distraction.

Focus on what you can control

Once I know my goals, it’s time to work. A long term goal should be impossible to achieve in two weeks. Basically, you won’t even know how to achieve it. It’s very easy to say that in order to become a famous fiction writer, you need to sell many books. But you won’t find out how you can sell thousands of books until you start working on it. Many will tell you what they’ve done but no one really knows what you’ll do.

“How do you eat an elephant? One bit at time.

Begin with something you can do now. Something you have control over, it’s achievable and measurable. For example, if you want to sell a lot of books, the first thing you can do is to start calling libraries. You don’t know if they will sell your books; but you can call 100 libraries and see the results. You’re already working towards your goals, so any good news is a success.

I focus all my efforts on what can help me achieve my long term goals and I keep trying new tactics until I start seeing the results. Minimalism helps me to take one thing at a time and free myself what is not working.

See the future in the past

Every month I write a list with important work that I want to get done –usually this has to be broken down into small tasks–. I don’t like to see this list as objectives because something more important can come up, thus making me postpone part of the work. Remember, whatever is more relevant towards our main goal should go first.

At the end of the month, I take a moment to reflect on everything I achieved and make a new list. That way, I can compare what I intended to do with what I actually achieved and see how fast things are going. I feel sometimes we’re so focus on what we should have done that we don’t realise all the unexpected wins. So I try to forget about my intentions and aim to progresses.

Sometimes we accomplish so much and don’t give any credit to ourselves just because things did’t go the way we have planned.

Not excusing yourself doesn’t mean beating yourself up

Last but not least, instead of trying to find excuses for what I haven’t done, I try to find deeper reasons. This way I can see what’s really happening and look for solutions. Excusing yourself won’t take you anywhere and beating yourself up will just drain your self-confidence.

5 reasons why you should have a monthly social media content plan

1. Avoid lack of inspiration at the last minute (my worst nightmare)

If you manage your business’ social media, you might know what is like to go blank at the last minute. You’re in a rush; the analytics say it’s your best time to post but you have no idea of what to post. There are two possible outcomes, not posting anything at all or sharing mediocre content.

When you plan monthly and in advance, you have more time to do research and find inspiration. And preparing many posts at the same time it’s more efficient as practice makes perfect. You’ll find that once you get the idea for the first post of the month, the following will go smoothly. But don’t get way too excited and leave some room for fresh content that could come out. Although you can always move posts to the next months when that happen.

Another thing to avoid is to repeat topics a lot and fail to post about other things that you know are interesting to your audience but you simply forgot. Having a monthly plan you can categorise your content by different topics and assign them a color to make sure that you don’t repeat the same topic twice in a row. You’ll also find that this system makes it much easier to find ideas and to do research for curated content.

2. Know the media assets you’ll need in advance

Depending on the amount of original content needed for your social media, it can become virtually impossible to post on social media without planning beforehand. In fashion, for example, you depend a lot from original photography that takes time and money to make. So you definitely need to know your creative needs in advance.

Using monthly plans, you can spot the lack of creative assets not only for the coming month but ideally for the succeeding. This way you know what are your content needs and you can start planning photo shooting, video recording, article writing, new free templates or whatever assets you’ll need beforehand.

Photo by Matthias Blonski on Unsplash

One of my tips (and something that my clients pay me for) is to categorise assets by topics, thus making planning and content creation more efficient. Besides, if there is a certain type of content that is not delivering good results, you can have a look at the best performing topics and substitute those underperforming. Imagine that you are spending a lot of time creating free templates for Facebook campaign optimisation but your audience is not showing any interest on Facebook ads. You could invest that time in creating more relevant content for your followers.

3. Plan special events like a pro

When you are planning a special event there is so much work to do and the last thing you want is having to rush your social media strategy. A content plan allows you to put in place a clear strategy to inform your audience about the event early enough. You can test different ways to gain greater diffusion and as I mentioned before, you have in readiness all the content you need for the event. If you plan coverage of the event you can create a list of the shots and videos you would’d like to get during the event, for this, do some research about what has resonated the most on your competitors social media.

4. Be consistent but fresh

This is essential for your social media growth. You need to be consistent with:

• Publishing schedule
  • Tone of voice
  • Brand identity and visual style
  • Feeding your audience with the topics they like the most
  • Explaining you product or service while creating value for your audience
  • Surprising with fresh new ideas every time in a while
  • Showing that you are not just present but also active and things are happening when people expect them

5. Optimise all-over

A monthly plan is the best way to measure how your content is performing each month and make changes accordingly. If you have divided your content by topic, you can see which topics are delivering the best results. Go for what works best but be careful not to feed up people with repetitive content. You can also see which type of visuals or materials are more engaging to plan better for next month.

This illustration has been designed with illustrations from Freepik.com

When you just plan weekly, a lot of factors can affect the metrics you see in only seven days (take a bank holiday as an example). Meanwhile, months show more data to compare and you can easily differ between external factors and content quality by looking at aggregated results. It’s not wise to drop infographics just because it didn’t work the first day unless it was an absolute disaster. It’s just like a survey, the largest is the sample, the more accurate is the result.

These are just a few reasons to have a monthly plan, and although it might seem a lot of work, it’s a very straight-forward and efficient process once you already have a good template. If you work on this for one day or two, you’ll have the rest of the month time to focus on creating high quality. You’ll find yourself starting the next plan already knowing what you want to share. It all makes sense when you have a strategy in place to follow on and make adjustments.

If you need some help with content strategy for your social media don't hesitate to contact me, I can give you advice. I also create very easy to follow monthly plans for small business with a set of posts included, email me and let's get in touch …

WHAT IS A D2C DIGITAL BRAND AND 5 REASONS WHY THEY RULE

D2C digital brands are becoming nowadays a standard among small digital sellers. To define it in just four words, we can say that a D2C digital brand is basically the “disintermediation of digital commerce”. But to make it easier for non-english native speakers like me, let’s say it’s just the art of doing everything yourself. From conceiving the product or service to the delivery to customers, everything is integrated in one entity. This means having full control over branding and strengthening the capability to develop an emotional connection with customers as a barrier of entry.

Knowing what is a D2C brand let’s move on to its 5 pillars, which I see as 5 competitive advantages of going for this model.

1. Customer experience.

Extremely important when operating in highly concentrated markets. It allows building a relationship with the customer from the very beginning. Having full control over the entire chain brings this type of businesses the possibility to fully customise the shopping experience for a specific target market (always ensuring that there is a significant Total Addressable Market). For this purpose, it is crucial to engage with customers and to adapt to their needs so we can become the most convenient choice. Also crucial is having a pricing strategy accorded to the experience provided and appealing in terms of value for money.

2. Differentiation

The internet is full of small businesses competing with large established brands, so strong differentiation is a must. Carefully studying the market to find the unique value proposition missing for a substantial number of people can guarantee success. Take Red Bull as an example (and I know Red Bull is not precisely a D2C brand :D), there are plenty of energy drinks focused on sports, but when you think of extreme sports, Red Bull is the first energy drink that comes to mind. Red Bull has become part of this community by sponsoring events, professionals and initiatives which are meaningful for extreme sports fans and has invested profits into a media platform that connects this growing community. However, there is no need to have Red Bull vast resources, it’s all about having the storytelling that connects you with the community. D2C digital brands have an advantage over traditional brands as they have the same online tools to build strong relationships, but don’t have their overheads. Besides, these brands have expertise in the best channel to target small market niches, digital commerce.

3. Growth and defensibility

Digital commerce is a fast-paced sector, where digital business can grow fast and shut down even faster. That’s why having full control over the entire chain and delivering an outstanding experience is crucial in order to not just grow but also retain customers.
Keep in mind that building a strong sense of community around the brand will not only increase repetition but also turn loyal customers into brand ambassadors. This way the business guarantees sustainable growth with increasing marketing margins and strong lifetime value. In other words, happy customers don’t just buy more often but they also speak well of the brand, thus bringing in new customers at a cheaper CPC.

4. Profitability

Owning the process end-to-end translates into maximum flexibility in terms of costs. Obviously, this is not possible for all types of products and services but it does work with the most common stuff we can get from the internet. The biggest advantages of D2C digital brands in terms of costs are:

1. Maximum control over the inventory as the brand controls production and logistics.
2. As well as the savings on physical stores and retailers margins.

5. Scalability

From the sales perspective, not depending on opening new stores or signing deals with retailers makes the business more scalable. Another important factor for the business scalability is its inventory capacity which requires resources, good logistics and capital, thus attracting investment is crucial. Of course, potential scalability varies depending on the type of product or services being sold.
To conclude, I believe these 5 pillars, which make up what is a D2C, are actually 5 competitive advantages against most of the big brands out there. Obviously, D2C digital brands are limited in terms of total sales comparing to any big name, but what really matters is that they can compete in the same field (the internet) and achieve higher customer lifetime value with a much smaller marketing budget. That’s because D2C build solid relationships with their customers that allows them to grow organically, just like traditional business used to do.

 

If you found a mistake or you have any concern don’t hesitate to comment, all points of view are welcomed.

 

Image featured on heading by rawpixel

Source: Customer Love Framework: what we look for in digital brands

 

Techno-Human Intelligent Systems:

 

The title of this post might sound like some sort of new sci-fi movie but sadly is just a new business term, an interesting one though.

 

To get started, take a look at the past, when successful businesses were focused on creating internal knowledge through applied sciences in order to develop new technologies and to be more efficient than their competitors. Now look at the current context of rapid changes and fast paced environments, traditional rational-based principles and technology assets are essential but insufficient. New gadgets and the internet have made technology and knowledge incredibly accessible, making it very hard for companies to keep innovation within the organisation walls as a competitive advantage. On today’s open environment, applied knowledge is openly shared and new technologies are quickly available for anyone to market them. Thus, competitiveness relies more than ever on the creativity needed to turn all the knowledge and technology available out there in outstanding products and services, effective business models and innovative business solutions.

As rational knowledge and technology assets alone are not enough, it is necessary to integrate them with the emotional features of human life and understand that emotions play a fundamental role in the organisational life and in the pursuit of business excellence (Schiuma Journal of Open Innovation: Technology, Market, and Complexity (2017)). Technologies guarantee efficiency and control, while emotions bring creativeness, art and personality. The integration of the latest technology, the available rational knowledge and human emotions is what is called Techno-Human Intelligent Systems. Emotions refer to the feelings and artistic thoughts of employees or even stakeholders in general, well managed emotions can bring innovation into the company. We are not just referring to the kind of innovation based on new technological enhancements. Emotions can produce disruptive innovation, effective business models, new approaches to markets and a resilient brand image, all determinants for business success.

Take as an easy example Apple, they haven’t been the first ones to market most of their devices, but they have developed a relationship between their products and their users emotions. Apple has a focus on how technology can intersect with humanities, and they encourage their employees, as well as their customers to be emotional and to turn their emotions into art by using their products as a tool. What they have achieved is embracing all this creativity into to their brand and into the organisation, what allows them to make their products stand out for their aesthetics and creative features.

Other tech companies like Google or Microsoft encourage creativity among their employees as well, but they are far more open companies that share their projects before they’re finished and complete them with external help. They follow what is called Open Innovation, consequently, as their products are already public while being under development, their launching doesn’t get the initial impact that Apple’s products get. However, as Microsoft and Googles’ new devices are polished and gain market share, they increase their aesthetics and creative features as well.

 

Feel free to leave any comment.

“The information revolution”

It’s been a while since I wrote my last post but I haven’t given up on the blog yet. My goal was to write at least every month (at first, every week lol) and I’m finding it very difficult, but as I’m trying to specialise in On-line Marketing or at least something related to computing, I feel it’s worthy to push ahead with the blog.

Today I’m just going to bring up an interesting topic that I heard a lot in the media recently. In case you don’t know about this, millions of jobs are at risk due to the developing of new technologies and robots that can replace workers at doing repetitive tasks. I’m sure I’m not the only one who heard about this lately, and this isn’t any prophecy coming from sceptics living in a cave, in fact, this topic has been up for discussion at the last World Economic Forum in Davos.

We’re immerse in a second industrial revolution, that one called “the information revolution”. It’s not hard to imagine the impact that some of the cutting edge gadgets and breaking-throughs in robotics which are under development right now could have on people’s jobs. For instance, if self-driven cars became a reality, millions of people whose job is basically driving any type of vehicle could lose their job. To self-driven cars we need to add up drones, robots, the e-commerce as a substitute of regular shops, big data, new algorithms in software and many more innovations. It’s not that any job can be done by a machine or a computer but very crucial professions for the job market could disappear and we’re not doing a lot to find new careers to all these people who could face long term unemployment.

It’s clear to me that if technology continues developing at this speed, we’ll need to be able to adapt to it at the same speed. I mean, the system needs more flexibility to find new career paths suitable for those being substituted by a very clever software, otherwise we’ll see inequality rise, consumerism decrease and our social stability being seriously threat. Right now education is not flexible enough to adapt to the job market needs and we’re used to making a choice for life when it comes to our profession. I don’t think labour will be totally substituted by robots, take the industrial revolution as an example, market trends and new industries are impossible to predict and could create new professions. However, in the short term it will definitely have a very negative social impact if nothing is done to avoid it.

I’m for using technology and robots to create more opportunities, more jobs, new professions, and a better distribution of the wealth and not to destroy jobs and enrich just a few. It’s also crucial for large international companies. Who is going to buy what automatised factories can produce if most of the people can’t make ends meet? Well, the current system would be just like herding cats.

This is a very informal piece of writing probably full of mistakes of all kind but I just wanted to bring up the topic. I hope I can search for more information and write a more accurate version including facts and new insights, plus better written. Anyway I welcome any opinion on the matter!

Cheers for reading 😉

 

The first lesson to become an explorer:

Start touring your surroundings

When I came back after spending one year studying abroad, I realised how little I knew about my own city. Comparing all the places I have discovered during my time in England to the few places I know around the house where I grew up, made me wonder where the f**k I’ve been wasting my time during all this time. The answer is clear, always going to the same bars, shopping centres, beaches and coffees, that’s it.

When I was living in Bristol I had the incessant necessity of visiting every town around and trying every coffee, bar or restaurant I found interesting. In doing so I got into a routine which consisted in going to somewhere new at least once per week. That is something I had never done when I was at home. Therefore, when I returned home I realised how much I knew about Bristol and how little about my city.

I think many are the ones who commit this mistake. So, for those like me who like to travel and to discover new places, we should also take some time to appreciate what is around us, often less than an hour drive. I decided to continue with the routine in which I got into during my amazing time in Bristol and I’m finding incredible new places that I had never bothered to visit before. It also helps receiving in my house all the friends that I’ve made when I was in England because it allows me to become a tourist guide to show them the city. Furthermore, enjoying the nearest places is very cheap which saves me some money for future trips abroad. I guess the first step to become an explorer and traveling the world is to make exploring part of your life, even if you just visit a new interesting café or pub every weekend.

I wanted to share some photos from a very chill place that I found an hour away from my home and where I had never been before.

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Don't hesitate to leave any comments and please share any places you like near your hometowns.

Shenzhen

The maker movement

From a fishing village to the biggest manufacturer of gadgets in the world, Shenzhen has radically changed in half a century. A Chinese region which once had less than 300.000 inhabitants, today has millions. It is said that this city could have over 20 million inhabitants, but that is something difficult to estimate due to the high number of commuters. Indeed Shenzhen is incessantly growing; driven by its buoyant economy, the city is becoming one of the main business centres in China.

Its fast-paced environment is characteristic of Shenzhen. Indeed, this is evidenced in the velocity in which new products can be not just manufactured but also created and launched to the market in this region. Because Shenzhen is no longer just a poor manufacturing city, it is becoming a place for innovators. That being so, “The maker movement” is the best example of what can be done by its unquenchable work force. Employees at manufacturing factories have learnt a lot from churning out gadgets for notorious brands. And although at first they had just been using that knowledge to produce cheaper copies of these gadgets, it did not take long for them to realise what they were capable of. Today, numerous inventions are launched every month in Shenzhen, a city driven by incessant “makers”.

Using large companies’ creations as the base for their own creation allowed manufacturers to thrive. Because the use of existing products to improve them or come up with new stuff is part of “The makers movement”. However, not everybody welcomed this movement with enthusiasm. Large corporations like Samsung, Apple and so on received it as a threat. If truth be told, these employees are using corporations’ intellectual property for their own benefit, something not allowed in Western countries. Nevertheless, there is nothing to be done to stop these outsiders who are now calling western entrepreneurs attention. Tech corporations know the importance of adaptability in this industry. Fighting against something that seems to be the new tendency is wasting precious time that can be used for adaptation. In fact brands like Apple or Microsoft are embracing the idea of Open Source which allows consumers to be more than users, and to become creators. And at the same time Open Source makes it easier for companies to find new ideas, because these are given directly by their customers.

What started in Shenzhen as a way to survive, producing forgeries could become a point of inflection for the tech industry, in which established brads had to choose between competing or partnering mere individuals thinking outside the box.

I wrote this post based on a very interesting documentary from The Wire. Here is the link: Shenzhen: The Silicon Valley of Hardware (Full Documentary)