One is always better than zero.

The moral of the story is that one is always better than zero. It’s better to get 1 view than zero because you were waiting for your “big break.” Big breaks don’t often exist. Lebron became an all star player after 10 years in the gym. Nothing happens overnight.

Source: Why 1 View is Everything – Gary Vaynerchuk – Medium

Keep moving forward. Small steps. Increments. Bite by bite.

I have to constantly remind myself of this because I like to think big and dream big.

But the big stuff, the stuff that could be — the destination, the outcome, the endgame — comes after the little stuff.

I’m trying to get pumped about the little stuff more often. So rather than visualizing the end result, I’m trying to visualize the work that needs to be done to take the next step forward.

In other words: Instead of thinking about what the big project will look like when it’s done, I’m thinking about the next task that will move the project closer to completion.

Want audience engagement? Don’t be an expert.

If you want to engage an audience, if you want your message to stick, then to move from the posture or the tone of an expert to an experienced learner suggests you’re a learner, you’re trying to figure things out, I’m a learner, I just happened to be a little bit more experienced. I just happen to be five feet in front of you, on the same journey.

Source: Expertise can disconnect you quickly. Choose Vulnerability.

What do you want to accomplish?

Knowing what you want to accomplish should help you determine which tasks are most relevant. This will take time and discipline. You need to stop hiding from discomfort and do the hard work. Which tasks matter most? Find out, and act on those. In doing so, you should see greater progress than you did when you were busy doing everything.

Source: Slow the fuck down

Counterpoint: When you’re just starting out, chances are you don’t know what you want to accomplish.

You gotta try different things until you hit that sweet spot of what you’re good at, what you enjoy, and what other people find valuable enough to pay you for.

Product management for SMB marketing websites?

A distinction we like to highlight at Postlight is that a product manager is not a project manager. Don’t get me wrong. Project management is important. But the focus is too often on maintaining a process, not shipping a product. That’s sensible on big projects, but less useful when you need to bring a product into the light. Product managers get in there. Moving things around. Dropping things off. Explaining to the team that the research doesn’t support this tactical move or that. My co-founder Paul Ford says that a good product manager has a crooked index finger from hitting “Command-R” to reload a web app tens of thousands of times. I think that’s right — you’re looking for that person willing to obsessively look at tiny changes until the entire picture of the product comes into view.

Source: What Makes a Good Product Manager?

Tangent time.

Lately I’ve been thinking about SMB marketing websites & eCommerce websites in the context of product management.

You have all the ingredients of a web app. There are UX considerations, performance considerations, back-end logic and infrastructure considerations, user stories and jobs-to-be-done.

(Isn’t monthly unique traffic similar enough to MAUs?)

So, along that train of thought… I wonder what principles we can borrow from product management and apply to SMB marketing & eComm websites?

(Aside: I’m a big fan of Postlight. You should read their blog and subscribe to their podcast.)