Are You Making These Mistakes When Adding People to Your Newsletter?

by Nina Post

Say you meet a startup founder at a networking event. A couple of weeks later, you start getting their email newsletter.

Hold up... you never signed up for that list.

The issue isn't limited to small companies. I see this with companies of all sizes, and with individuals. Unfortunately, it's a very common problem. Some people add everyone they meet to their list, with no permission or opt-in. It's shitty and unethical, and isn't doing your personal brand any favors.

It sucks that this is such a widespread thing, but this is especially important for startups because when someone starts getting emails from a new startup, it's pretty obvious who added you and when.

So, if you're doing this, please stop.

Here's what you can do instead:

1) Don't add anyone to your list UNLESS you explicitly asked for permission to add them to your email list—AND if they granted you permission to their inbox (saying, for example, "Sure, add me to your list.") Otherwise, you are a surprise, and not welcome.

Not only does it make you look bad, and dangerously ignorant, but you could get into trouble with your email service provider, and as a startup founder, you can't afford that, in either time or money. Enough ridiculous crap that's completely out of your control comes your way. Don't invite it with something you can control.

2) If you get a verbal consent, then the next step, at a minimum, should be to send a standard double opt-in email so the recipient at least has to click a link to confirm they want to be on the list.

3) Create a short template for an email you can send to someone you'd like to be on your list. This email includes a brief, polite note that makes mention of where you met, along with a sign-up link.

It could say, "I enjoyed meeting you at the Archie McPhee University Business Plan Competition Honoring David Lynch, and thought you might be interested in keeping up with the company's latest updates in our newsletter. I send it out every month, and you can always unsubscribe. Just click the link below to join."  

It's also a good idea to give people more than one way to connect with you, so you could add something like, "Or if newsletters aren't your style, it'd be great to connect on LinkedIn or Twitter."

Then when someone does sign up, they get an opt-in email where they confirm that yes, they do want to join this list. And they get their confirmation email telling them that they're all signed up for your list. Everyone feels good about it.

The alternative: this person sees you at another event, thinks, 'Oh, there's the asshole who signed me up for their email list without asking,' and avoids you and doesn't want to hear about your company anymore. That's not the worst that can happen, either.

Don't be a dum-dum. Always get permission.

gifs by giphy.com

How Surprise Frustrations Can Work in Your Favor

by Nina Post

Shortly after we first met, my husband and I (spoiler: Reader, I married him) planned a weekend at Universal Studios.

I was in Orlando at a Cisco conference, which started on a Thursday. He couldn't get to Universal until Friday, after an investor meeting—and he flew from Fort Lauderdale to Orlando because there was no point in us having to drive two cars back.

I came to the airport and met him as he was coming out of the terminal.

I'm sure I started laughing right away (like can't-breath-laughing), because along with his T-shirt, he was wearing jean shorts, white tube socks, and black loafers. He had changed out of his work clothes after the meeting, but forgot to bring along another pair of shoes.

We went to an outdoor mall, where he found a Foot Locker. He was in there forever because they didn't have what he wanted. We went to two or three other stores, then ended up returning to the first Foot Locker, where he bought something he liked enough.

Years later, after we were married, he had a meeting near Portland. He had to leave the house at 4 a.m. to get to the Seattle airport, and I was up, too, because I always get up with him if he has an early flight.

It was too early for public transit, and he was taking a town car service to the airport. He dressed in a suit. I made him breakfast, then when he was ready to leave, I checked if he had his phone, boarding pass, etc.

He arrived at the Seattle airport.

I got an email.

He was still wearing his slippers.

I laughed. I laughed pretty hard.

(His shoes were moccasin-style, so it wasn't obvious before then.) By the time he got into the terminal, he had thought, "Oh crap, I'm still wearing my slippers."

His flight was leaving at 6 a.m. from Seattle, and stores didn't open until 6 or 7. He had to wear the slippers outside twice: walking to the small plane on the tarmac, and getting off the plane.

He arrived in Portland, and thought he'd have to take a cab to a shoe store or a mall and get shoes there, but luckily, since Nike is based near Portland, they had a huge store right in the airport terminal.

He went into the store, found an employee, and said, "I'm looking for shoes that wouldn't look ridiculous with this outfit."

They were pretty amused, but very helpful, and brought out a few options. He really liked a pair called Roshe Run*, which were lightweight, all-black running shoes.

The shoes he found turned out to be his favorite shoes ever. He ended up tracking down another pair later, and always wears them with dress pants. When he goes to any meeting, or any event, he wears the Roshe with dress pants.

And I learned to have a better "leaving for a flight" checklist, including "Wearing the right shoes?"

I like checklists, and didn't like this flaw in my system, so I patched it.

The takeaway here is that when a frustrating thing comes up, totally unplanned, and you have to change your tactics at the last minute or deal with an unexpected situation—ook around. The solution could be closer than you think.

Oh, and use checklists.

*The closest version you can buy today is a Roshe One.

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What Punk Shows Can Teach Us About Conferences

by Nina Post

When I was in high school, I went to a lot of punk / hardcore punk shows. I saw the Ramones, the Cramps, Danzig, Black Flag, Butthole Surfers, Cro-Mags, some other big names I forget (which I'll think of in the middle of the night)—and a lot of lesser-known bands.

I'm not one for crowds, and I haven't been to see live music in what seems like forever. I get to bed early, rarely go out at night, and have super sensitive hearing (even after all those shows). The most recent live music I've seen was a chamber music quartet. Things have changed, obviously.

But I remember that feeling of belonging and energy. Even jubilance.

That's my new standard for conference events (which is pretty much the least punk thing to say). Don't keep going to one if you don't feel that.

Here's How Metacognition Can Make Your Life Better

by Nina Post

Metacognition is usually defined as "thinking about thinking," or "judgments about thinking." To be more specific, metacognitive competence includes planning, monitoring, evaluating, goal-setting, and strategy adjustment.

Metacogntive competency can lead to greater well-being, especially when combined with the pursuit of long-term goals.

How does metacognition work with your goal strategy? You can define your goal in the planning phase, adapt your strategies and identify weaknesses in the monitoring phase, and assess your progress toward the goal in the evaluation phase.

Accomplishing your goals makes you pretty happy - it brings positive affect to your life. Recent studies have found a significant positive relationship between goal-striving and metacognition. Metacognition can help with your selection of goals by identifying your problem or purpose, the kind of goal that can address it, and your plan to accomplish that goal.

Improving your metacognition facilitates a growth mindset and boosts self-efficacy, or your belief in your capabilities. Continuously challenging yourself to learn new things and develop new skills will train your metacognition and contribute to your happiness and satisfaction in life. You can read more about developing mental strategies in the excellent book Mastermind.

Being metacognitive means acting with more self-awareness, which according to another study may be the link to eudaimonic well-being. Self-awareness helps you create a strategy to respond to obstacles and plan how you think and respond. Awareness is a part of self-control, and self-control is invaluably important for well-being.

You can engage in deliberate practice to train your metacognition, and make adjustments as you observe and evaluate your own process of learning and deducing.

For instance, what time is better for certain tasks? Do you tend to retain more information if you take hand-written notes? Does explaining a newly-learned process to someone else help you internalize the process and enable you to recall the steps more readily in the future? If you're studying for a particularly challenging test, are you getting better at knowing what questions you won't realistically get right and should just skip to make more time for the ones you're more confident with?

To recap: training in metacognition can improve your intrinsic motivation and long-term goal strategy, help you control your thoughts, and make your life better.

Why a One-Person Company is Like a Helicopter

by Nina Post

My knowledge of helicopters is limited to what I researched for one of my books, along with 80s TV (The A-Team; my husband loved Airwolf).

But I liked this metaphor of the relationship between the helicopter pilot and the air traffic controller to show what's like working as a one-person team. Let's hope I don't torture it *too* much. (If anything, you'll learn more about helicopters.)

Helicopters present a particular challenge to controllers. The advantage to working with helicopters is the flexibility, but there's also an unpredictability that requires a unique combination of skills for the controller. The unpredictability of external factors affects you much more as one person, and it requires skills that those working with the fixed-wing don't need.

Last week on the blog, I talked about boosting the efficacy of teams. A larger company is a large team (which has teams within those) that can be likened to a fixed-wing aircraft, which takes longer to get moving because there are many more people involved and it takes a lot more coordination to do even one simple thing. That's the inefficiency of working in a large team. Once you add even one more person, everything gets more difficult to coordinate and make happen.

As I can continue to treat this metaphor like Tim Roth in Reservoir Dogs, here are a few things to keep in mind as a one-person company:

Clarify your destination and the route you're going to take to get there.

Even a basic plan is good. A fixed-wing aircraft operates in a more fixed path, especially when departing the runway, e.g., launching a new product, which requires a lot of energy, people, and sign-offs. When you're one person running a business, getting that many resources together just to leave the runway isn't your concern.

But even though I wrote about how to boost your team's efficacy, the truth is, it's an ideal. It's possible, but unlikely. Most teams are grossly inefficient, and people's flaws typically become more overt and problematic over time. Exceptions to this are rare. They might have built in the values, rules, and system from the very beginning and adapt to new variables. Or their magic is strong enough to overcome the personality conflicts and inefficiency. But most likely, a large team is stumbling all over itself and can barely get through one step of a huge process. This can be to your advantage.  

However, even though your company has agility and autonomy, it can't go in multiple directions at the same time. Usually you have your head down, frantically trying to keep afloat. But it's worth revisiting your plan and see if you might need to modify it from time to time.  

Pick up a little speed to outrun turbulence

A fixed-wing aircraft prefers to take off into the wind so they can use it to climb faster, and it isn't affected by the wind while taxiing because its wheels provide control.

Wind affects helicopters, too. Use "translational lift" to pick up speed and get into calmer air. At a slow speed, the downwash of the main rotor creates turbulence, and as it moves faster, the helicopter can outrun the turbulence and more efficiently generate lift.

When there's turbulence, you can't just sit around and wait. Sometimes things start to close in on you and you can't keep moving slowly--you have to do something to move faster and out of the way. It's times like these when you can't underestimate yourself and what you have the energy and wherewithal to do.

Any given level of turbulence affects you more, but on the flip side, you can pick up speed and push through the turbulence if you just make up your mind about where you're heading and put your resources (time, energy, skills; "blood, toil, tears, and sweat") into that.

At the pilot's own risk

Helicopters can only get clearance from the controller when taking off from what's called a movement area -- taxiways and runways. If a chopper takes off in a non-movement area, the controller can't clear it for takeoff. It's at the pilot's own risk. Sound familiar?

As an example, if a helicopter wants to depart from an FBO ramp, like a hospital helipad on airport space, the departure (or landing) risk would have to be on the pilot. The pilot is solely responsible for avoiding any obstacles in his departure area. That's sort of like the risk dynamic of a one-person company: you're in control, but can't hide behind bureaucracy if things don't go your way. You own the risks, but also the rewards.

Land and Hold Short

In a Land and Hold Short (LAHSO) operation, the controller directs the helicopter to land on a specific part of the runway, especially if the runway intersects another runway. It's not dissimilar from seeing a market opportunity, pivoting towards it, and getting your product into the hands of customers at just the right time.

Even a smaller helicopter can wield strong outwash vortices similar to the wing tip vortices of a larger fixed wing aircraft. That downwash can rock a Cessna, easy. Being the little guy doesn't mean the bigger company is automatically going to win. Don't underestimate your ability to win if a fixed-wing gets too close.

Sources:

Rotary revelations: managing helicopter operations around fixed-wing aircraft demands a little finesse and a lot of clarity on the part of pilots and controllers
Tarrance Kramer, IFR. 33.1 (Jan. 2017)