The nature of this very newsletter is my answer to this question: yes, until… no.
I listen to dozens of hours of podcasts each month. Each with 100 ideas about how to do better in business and life.
All of them sound amazing, only a few have ever worked well for me (the ones you’re reading).
The trick is testing the ones that sound worth their salt.
Principle: 80/20 is everywhere.
Slack started out as a multi-player game called Glitch.
Shiny-object phase: World-building, quests, social stuff, art style. Huge creative sandbox, but the game never really hit.
On the ride down the slope to no hope, employees identified that the chat feature was actually widely used, and quite useful.
They scrapped Glitch, doubled down on chat, and created an email killer for teams.
One tiny part of this test, test, test, test everything phase came out as the winner, and they were smart enough to spot it, and run.
Tactics
Chris Koerner advises: “test everything except drugs.”
But when you’ve found something that hits, say no to everything else.
If you’re in business ideation mode, run validation tests with FB ads before ever investing other money into the idea.
If you’re trying to decide how to innovate on a product, make 5 iterations and presell them all. Your audience will find the winner for you.
If you own multiple businesses, and are trying to pick which one to put effort into on Tuesday at 3pm, ask yourself which one is making you the most money (or is capable of making you the most money).
Do everything with the Pareto Principle in mind.
Just like a small amount of your efforts yielding 80% of the results, so will a small amount of your features, products, employees, assets, etc. yield 80% of your outcomes.
Habits
Make a list of the 10…
options
actions
ideas
Test them all to know which one is the real killer, then let it kill the rest.
God speed,
Mike
Today’s inspiration: You're 1 Test Away From Finding a Marketing Channel That Will Transform Your Biz Overnight