“No plan survives first contact.”
I think a lot about this concept related to building things in my business.
And I prefer not to think about the full phrase. When I looked it up this morning before writing, the full phrase is:
“No plan survives first contact with the enemy”
Or even more specifically, “No plan of operations reaches with any certainty beyond the first encounter with the enemy’s main force”, attributed to a Prussian military strategist from the 1800s.
But let’s set aside the full phrase, because our clients aren’t the enemy. (Alright, maybe it feels like Mr. Algo is…)
However, the essence remains.
No matter how much behind-the-scenes effort you put in to making something good, assume you'll be making adjustments once it’s released into the world and other people interact with it. Plan for it.
I launched my systems assessment last weekend, after 6 months of thinking, 10 weeks of writing, and probably 20-30 hours of actually putting the thing into the Score App. And on Tuesday, it was promoted in a newsletter ad going out to about 8,000 people.
I was hustling to meet that deadline!
And the minute I launched it, I realized some things needed to change.
- I made a spelling error in the custom URL 🤦♀️
- It wasn’t clear how to answer the “people” question if you didn’t have a team
- Some of the questions were confusing
- The landing page didn’t have my name on it! Which wasn’t relevant when users were coming from my newsletter, but would be very relevant when used as a lead magnet
- The landing page is also not converting very well for cold traffic
- I didn’t have a dedicated welcome sequence for people taking the assessment, nor a way to make sure people didn’t sign up with duplicate emails
Sure, some of these issues I could have fixed when working behind the scenes.
But only when I put something out LIVE to the world did I get real, honest feedback.
How can you shorten your latency period?
I could have spent weeks more refining the assessment, figuring out the welcome sequence, etc.
But instead, I launched and got real feedback from real users, and made adjustments quickly. That feedback was invaluable.
How and where might you shorten your latency period for things you want to build, ideas you want to implement, or even marketing you want to do. How can you shorten the time from idea to aerating that idea in public?
Minimize any build time
Example: Have an idea for a new course?
Long Way: Script and create slides for a bunch of videos, set up a course platform, film videos, create a landing page, create a funnel, etc.
Live Way: Launch a live workshop and teach some of the content in real time. See what resonates and what doesn’t. Evaluate what messages get people to sign up and what they want to learn more.
My first round of Deeper Foundations was teaching live off of 8 Loom videos. Now, there’s robust slides, videos, and worksheets illustrating the concepts, with co-working and additional support. Much of what is in Deeper Foundations I first taught live in a Deeper Business Dialogue session for free.
It took me months to film the whole course, and I’ve been making tweaks to the curriculum and program structure ever since. But it’s infinitely better - and launched way quicker - because I got feedback quickly.
Decrease the friction on the format
Example: Want to launch a new offer or group program?
Long Way: Create a landing page on your website, social media graphics, a whole series of launch emails, and check out pages.
Live Way: Draft a Google Doc, tell your friends and communities, invite people through personal emails, and send people an invoice when they want to join.
The largest single investment I’ve made in my business this year? There wasn’t even a sales page. I invested in consulting from someone I’m working with already, and I got the details over a Slack message.
The next investment I’ll be making? The details are on a well-formatted Google Doc that gives you what you need to know without all of the formatting bells and whistles that normally keep us from starting.
Example: Want to deepen the relationship with your audience?
Long Way: Set up a really complicated email funnel that tags them based on some qualifier and sends the right upsell offer when people sign up to hear from you.
Live Way: Send a personal email to everyone you don’t know on your email list and see if they’d like to have a conversation.
In our search for "scale", we often bypass the more relational, direct option.
Publish your sh*tty first draft (because I promise, it’s actually not sh*tty and people want to hear what you think)
Example: Want to write more on social media or send more emails?
Long Way: Spend an hour or more creating a social post with a killer graphic, or 3-4 hours writing a well-crafted email with a beginning, middle, and highly curated end. But because this takes a long time, only get a rep in every week or every month.
Live Way: Voxer a friend about what you observe or think on a daily basis, or capture your observations on Otter.ai. Every one of you thinks amazing new thoughts regularly, and most often they happen when you aren’t sitting down feeling the pressure to write. Talk it out, lightly transcribe what you said, and publish it and see what conversations result.
Success is, at least in part, a volume game. The more you do, the more you try, the more you put your consulting firm out in the world, the more likely you are to achieve your aspirations for your firm.
Not every marketing piece your firm produces has to be great. Or even good. For many consulting firm leaders, the greatest impediment to ramping up their marketing efforts is their overwhelming desire for excellence or success at every turn. Or, perhaps more importantly, their fear of failure at any turn. -
David A Fields
This goes for updating your website copy, updating your offers page, or even creating a new bio. You won’t really know if it’s going to work until you publish something and get eyes on it that aren’t yours.
Yes, in this approach you will publish things with errors, so make sure you just don’t publish something that will truly get you into trouble.
But you’ll learn a whole lot more about what works when you plan for making adjustments and adaptations when it goes public.
Reduce the time between reps.
Shrink the time from idea to action.
Make contact.