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Beyond the Boring Blueprint: Alex Smith on Strategies that Inspire and Motivate
203 Plays11 months ago
In this episode of Marketing Spark, we're excited to have Alex Smith, the i author of "No Bullshit Strategy" and the founder of BasicArts.org.
Alex challenges the status quo, believing strategy should be motivating and straightforward rather than complex and dull.
He illustrates how simplicity and inspiration can lead to incredible business achievements through captivating stories and real-life examples.
This episode is more than just a deep dive into strategic theories; it's a thought-provoking discussion filled with Alex's enthusiasm and practical insights; it's perfect for B2B and SaaS business and marketing leaders looking to revitalize their approach to strategy.
Recommended
Transcript
Why is strategy important for businesses?
00:00:09
Speaker
I love the quote, plan the work, work the plan.
00:00:14
Speaker
It's a simple way to say that strategy should come before tactical execution. Once you know where you're going and how to get there, the journey is easier and faster. Sounds good, right? For many businesses scrambling amid challenging economic conditions, strategy means they're not tactically executing. Strategy slows them down. Strategy doesn't jumpstart leads and sales. There's no instant gratification.
00:00:42
Speaker
But strategy matters. Without it, you're running with one hand tied behind your back. So why does it matter? In a fast-paced world, having a clear, well-defined strategy is not just an advantage, it's a necessity. Strategy is the roadmap that guides businesses through the complex terrain of market trends, competition, and consumer behavior.
00:01:07
Speaker
It's about making smart choices, deciding what to do, and, as importantly, what not to do.
Introducing Alex Smith and his perspective on strategy
00:01:14
Speaker
Today, we'll uncover the layers of strategic thinking with Alex Smith, author of No Bullshit Strategy and the founder of basicsarts.org. Welcome to Marketing Spark. Let's start with a high-level question about how you see companies approaching strategy.
00:01:32
Speaker
Many companies use tactics to drive leads in sales and as a result, strategy can take a back seat even though it drives better tactical outcomes. What's your take on strategy and its value and role?
00:01:48
Speaker
So to me, all that a strategy really is, is identifying the way in which you are going to put maximal value out there. And you worry about the money later because you trust that if I put the value out there, the money's going to come in.
The consequences of poor strategy
00:02:04
Speaker
Because of that, then, symptoms of lack of strategy are simply the same things as symptoms of lack of value. Any suggestion there is that the market isn't super crazy about what you're giving, and that can manifest in a million different ways. But fundamentally, I guess at the most basic level, if people aren't wanting what you're putting out there,
00:02:27
Speaker
Basically, I'd say you have a strategy problem. Now, it is, of course, theoretically possible that you do actually have a sort of lower level issue, like a second or third order issue, like maybe, for example, I mean, brand position, brand positioning and strategy are very close to each other, sort of like brand positioning is one click down. So I do think it's possible, for example, that a business would have
00:02:52
Speaker
a perfect strategy and terrible sort of brand positioning, which then makes the whole thing fall apart. Or if you go down a further click, maybe a business has got incredible strategy, incredible brand positioning, but the people operating it, maybe the salespeople are just terrible. Like all this is theoretically possible, but it's pretty unusual. Like you got like sort of Occam's razor, you got to look for the most simple thing, which is that,
00:03:20
Speaker
If people aren't choosing you proactively without having to be convinced by price cuts or anything like that, then you have an issue with what you are taking to the market. And that to me means that you have a strategy issue.
The role of CEOs in strategic thinking
00:03:37
Speaker
I think one of the things that I look at is whether entrepreneurs and CEOs and companies for that matter are self-aware enough to recognize that they have an issue and then do what they need to do to fix it because often entrepreneurs will see the symptoms of a problem, of a strategy problem or brand positioning problem.
00:03:58
Speaker
they often are caught in the here and now the day to day and they can't take a step back and say what's the problem here what's the real problem here so in your experience how does an entrepreneur step back. And recognize that maybe i gotta think this through maybe there's something bigger at play than i need to tackle before i lean harder into tactical execution or try some some short term hacks to make things better. What's the really am.
00:04:29
Speaker
a really interesting question because the sort of black pill answer to it, which in practice in my day to day work is what I actually believe, although it's a little bit negative, is that founders, CEOs, they're either
00:04:47
Speaker
are either conscious of this or they're not and the ability to kind of like bring someone from being unconscious to conscious is almost impossible because so much of this I think fundamentally comes back to the question of humility. Humility is by far the number one attribute for being a successful founder because it's essentially the same thing as curiosity and it's essentially the same thing as admitting, you know what,
00:05:11
Speaker
Maybe I don't know at all. Maybe I'm not sure really what works here and I need to sort of open my mind to other possibilities. So that is almost more of a personality trait than it is, you know, some sort of like business practice. So I think that there are quite a lot of founders out there. I wouldn't hazard a guess at the proportion.
00:05:34
Speaker
who just sort of constitutionally, they believe that, well, I'm the boss, and I know what's going on, and I know what's right, and I don't need anyone else to sort of tell me otherwise.
The evolution of founders' strategies
00:05:48
Speaker
You particularly get this in situations which are of course very common where a business starts with an initial concept,
00:05:56
Speaker
that initial product that it puts out in the market. That product gets traction and grows quite quickly. And of course, that feels great for the for the founder. And they're like, wow, I've really like, you know, aren't I clever kind of thing.
00:06:09
Speaker
And indeed, of course, they are clever in it and it will go to a certain point. But eventually that version of the business, that concept will sort of reach its natural size and then it will stall. And then going the next step, let's say from 10 to 100 million or however we define it, that actually requires a change in
00:06:29
Speaker
changing approach, but because they've had such good success up to that point, they kind of like they cling on to the initial theory and a huge part of the strategic process. In fact, maybe the central part of the strategic process is the chief executive or the founder or whoever was setting the direction before, basically letting go
00:06:53
Speaker
binning off all of that stuff and being open to a new evolved approach and that is like quite a pride swallowing thing to do. My feeling is that founders who are super open-minded and curious and just and open to the fact that maybe their hypothesis that they've been working to is not right
00:07:19
Speaker
They don't really need to be convinced of this. They're already thinking in this way and maybe they just need to get a little bit clearer on the options they have, a little bit clearer on the definitions, a little bit clearer on what strategy is and what they should be shooting for and then they can go after it. But founders who don't have that mindset, I've seen it on a few occasions. I don't think they can break out of it because it's
00:07:46
Speaker
because they don't perceive the problem. And theoretically, you could sit them down in a room for an hour and argue with them until they perceive that there's a problem. But that's not good for anybody. You know, I think you've just got to arrive at it, you know, in a sort of open hearted and natural way really.
Understanding strategy in the corporate vs. small business context
00:08:02
Speaker
Yeah, I guess at some point in time, it's about self-recognition and self-realization that there is a problem that you have to solve in a different way. So we've started this conversation with a deep dive into strategy and for that matter, brand positioning and how companies embrace change and do things differently. Maybe we can take a step back and have you share a bit about your background. You come from the CPG world and what inspired you to write the book No Bullshit Strategy?
00:08:27
Speaker
Well, I suppose it's a bit like what we've been talking about, the fact that people out there, they basically don't know that they have a problem.
00:08:37
Speaker
The reason for that is that, you know, this is, I mean, it's become a cliche, it's a joke by now that strategy is a word that people don't really understand and, you know, hard to define word, etc, etc, etc. Now, there actually is a really strong core body of knowledge about what strategy is, you know, in the work of people like Michael Porter, stuff like that, your real sort of business review type stuff. The issue is that, for whatever reason, that work, that body of work,
00:09:05
Speaker
It doesn't really trickle through to the majority of businesses particularly non corporate businesses you know i think if you go to like the board room of like shell or something like that. There will be people in there who got a very firm and technical understanding of strategy and i don't think that they necessarily have a short.
00:09:21
Speaker
short fall exists, particularly in owner operated businesses, or scale up stuff like that, any sort of like medium, small to medium sized business, they typically don't have knowledge of the field. So so I would say that, you know, you go below a sort of Fortune 500 company, and strategic understanding and skill just goes out of the window. So I was like, well, what is what is the issue here? And I think that
00:09:48
Speaker
The big issue primarily is just lack of accessibility in the way that the fields talked about a sort of an over an overly technical way of approaching it. It's not fun. It's not simple. It's not interesting. It's not.
00:10:05
Speaker
It's not sexy, it's not any of the stuff that makes your average sort of non-corporate founder want to really pay attention and read books about it, which isn't to say that the information is bad, the information is great, just the presentation is absolutely terrible. So really what I wanted to do with the book was just basically do a book about strategy where ultimately the core underlying technical information
00:10:30
Speaker
for the most part, it isn't anything new in there. But the articulation is completely different than what you'll find with, let's say, a Michael Porter sort of MBA type strategy, just in order to make it accessible to a wider group of people, people who are not actually going to study the sort of academic texts on the matter and see really how it all works. Because ultimately, the whole beauty of strategy, in my view, is that
Why do strategies often fail to execute?
00:10:59
Speaker
It's not it doesn't really matter how sort of like right or technically correct or sophisticated you are. What matters is do you go out there and take action or not. So the right strategy is the one that actually makes you do something. So there's a million like strategies out there that are technical and sensible and no one ever does anything with.
00:11:20
Speaker
And it doesn't matter how good they are. The fact that they'd ever get executed means they're worthless. So I wanted to instead put across something that is as snappy and direct and actionable as possible whilst being, let's call it, right enough. So that's basically what, you know, there were no bullshit strategies. I was not the last word on strategy, but
00:11:44
Speaker
For people who aren't going to go and do like an MBA, it is definitely right enough. And that's what I was trying to give to people. So it's about accessibility, user friendliness, making people recognize that strategy isn't this sort of highfalutin big corporate concept that they can't get their heads around. It's the idea that anybody can do strategy. Strategy is important. And here's an easy way that you can
00:12:12
Speaker
Embrace strategy and actually make it happen. Is that is that the book in a nutshell spot on spot on? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah should have got you throughout the blurb. I want to ask you about the the bridge or the gap between developing a strategic plan and actually
00:12:32
Speaker
doing tactical implementation based on that plan because I run into a lot of situations where clients will say yes we want a marketing strategy and I'll put together a really nicely written document with all you know the right things and things to do and then they'll go and ignore most or all of it and it's very frustrating because they say that they want a strategy they think that it's important but they'll simply just sort of do what they've always done and
00:13:02
Speaker
do tactical execution on the fly or by the seat of their pants. Two questions here. Why do companies do that and how do you fix that problem? There are so many elements. I'm just trying to boil it down to let's say maybe the top three.
00:13:19
Speaker
touching on what we were talking about before, there is this sense, obviously, that for a strategy to be good and right, I mean, no one would ever say it this way, but I really think this is what people believe. People think for a strategy to be good and right, it must also be somewhat technical and boring because that sort of proves that it's serious in a weird way.
00:13:41
Speaker
Which, of course, is a huge error. The number one attribute that a strategy must have, again, before even being a good strategy, I genuinely believe this, is that it must be interesting and in some ways sort of charismatic. It must be interesting and even charismatic so that the people who are responsible for implementing the strategy, number one, get interested in it, number two, get motivated by it, and number three, go out there and do it.
00:14:07
Speaker
And so it's a metric of evaluating a strategy that no one ever talks about, but it's absolutely central, which is, is this strategy inspirational? Is it motivating? Is it something that you can tell to people once and basically they will remember?
00:14:25
Speaker
All strategy to me needs to be put through the ring of that test and so so that you could go and tell it to the you know the hypothetical guy in the warehouse he instantly gets it says huh yeah that that's clever yeah definitely and then.
00:14:40
Speaker
even better can follow up with some executional ideas. So, you know, you want the person who you're telling the strategy to, to not only say, huh, I like that, but also to say, so because of that, what we should go out and do is X, you know, like come up with an actual idea falling, falling out of it. So that, that kind of pick up and play nature of a strategy is not something I think that people really
00:15:06
Speaker
the people really focus on so i think that this is the the first and most important. Characteristic that you that you need to have and i know that it sounds really sort of like try to none serious but ultimately this means you got to make the strategy in some way a bit so fun because you know or emotional in some way because,
00:15:26
Speaker
At the end of the day, it's people you're talking to, and people are people, and that's just how they are. Well, let's pick up on that, because that's an interesting idea. And in some ways, it's akin to the whole content marketing world in which you create a piece of content, and then you package it in different ways to appeal to different audiences. So a blog post becomes a LinkedIn because it becomes an infographic and a video.
How should strategies be communicated?
00:15:50
Speaker
And I'm curious, and it would be great if you could provide a real world example of how
00:15:56
Speaker
you can reimagine a strategic document. So traditionally, it's this long tome that no one reads and it collects dust. But in an ideal world, maybe it's a video. Maybe it's a one pager. Maybe it's a quick presentation to the guys in the warehouse. Maybe it's something like a lunch with your salespeople. How does that manifest itself? How does a strategy become fun and interesting and creative?
00:16:22
Speaker
so that it resonates with different types of people, but but motivates them and directs them in the same way. Well, I'll tell you exactly how I do a strategy document, which doesn't necessarily completely contain the sort of fun element, because that's a little bit more based on the actual idea behind the strategy. But if we're talking purely in terms of like formatting, the way that the way the way that I do my documents, which does cover off quite a lot,
00:16:50
Speaker
of these questions you're asking is so i'll do a absolutely always it has to be a word document or you know pages like pros not that's the first thing is basically like a one pager but realistically are probably talking more like two or three pages two or three pages cuz there's a couple of different sections but you know the crux of it is one page.
00:17:14
Speaker
Now, the first section that you have on there, and this is the super important bit that everyone misses, is what I call the strategy argument. So it's not enough to just say, our strategy is to do whatever. There's actually a reason for that. You've got to explain it. You've got to contextualize it to people. If you want people to actually engage with it, you've actually got to give them the whole story. People have got this ridiculous obsession with brevity, and brevity isn't what counts. What counts is being engaging and interesting.
00:17:42
Speaker
And so you need to then tell them the story of the strategy if you want that to happen. And if that takes three or four paragraphs to do, that's absolutely no big deal. So the structure of that argument is very much like a lawyer, let's say, delivering their closing statement to the jury.
00:17:59
Speaker
So they'll say, look, at the end of the day, the issue with this industry that we're in is X. And that is a problem because of Y. But what we've noticed, because we're so clever, is this strange thing over here. And because of that, if we go and do such and such, we will then be able to unlock massive new value and grow. So, you know, fill in the blanks, but you need to have some sort of narrative structure.
00:18:24
Speaker
for the strategy like that, because that's the way that people are going to remember it. And that's the way that people are going to make it their own. So of course, the culmination of that will be therefore our strategy is to do such and such.
00:18:35
Speaker
But you can't just give people that. You've got to give them the story. You've got to take them on the journey. And so that's why you've got to write out in prose like a little essay exactly what the thinking is and why it is and what the conclusions of it are. And then you can literally give that to people. You don't even need to talk them through it. You need to have something which people can just read and say, yeah, I'm with you. I get it. You don't want to have to be there to present it all the time.
00:19:00
Speaker
So you've got your strategy argument, then the actual just statement strategy statement. That's just the short version. You could you could also maybe give it like a sort of fun name. Sometimes you do that because normally the strategy statement will be quite an ugly sentence just so that you're making sure that you are super precise and your meaning is clear. But then you can just shorten that down into something
00:19:22
Speaker
into something sort of more snappy. So and then finally, you then have the other bit that people miss out, which is the implications of the strategy. So therefore, because this is our strategy, the exact things that we are now going to go and do are 123456. So hard actions, which the strategy demands, because of course, the actions are the bit that counts, the bit that goes before is just rationale. But what matters is what you do, a strategy should never be
00:19:52
Speaker
presented to anyone without a, without a couple of action points falling out of it, because those are what sort of make it real. So that's where then the person who you're giving it to can be like, Oh, yeah, so because we want to do this, that means that let's say in my job, I need to change the way that I'm doing things to actually go a little bit more like this. So I know that I'm being very sort of hypothetical here. So I'll just give you a real strategy example, but just to sort of illustrate that flow. So this is like, yeah,
Case Study: Tesla's strategic approach
00:20:22
Speaker
It's a good is a good example because it's all sort of public domain knowledge and of course often strategies on public domain knowledge but the original strategy for tesla.
00:20:34
Speaker
that Elon Musk literally wrote a blog post about, which is a masterclass in strategy writing, by the way. Essentially, obviously, electric cars existed before Tesla, but they were not successful. Nobody wanted electric cars. It was seen as this kind of like, totally purely virtuous, slightly dorky, and obviously kind of not particularly desirable way of traveling.
00:20:57
Speaker
But of course you know mask because of sustainability concerns and all that he was like I want to make electric cars a thing I want to make electric cars be like you know normal cars I want to popularize that's what he essentially needed a sort of a strategy to do so what they did.
00:21:13
Speaker
that was different from any other electric car brand at the time is that whilst all of the other electric car brands were focusing on making maximally economical and accessible little run arounds, you know, little sort of urban city bubble cars, which fundamentally nobody wanted and didn't make you look cool. He was like, no, what we need to do if we want to, if we're actually going to build, build this industry,
00:21:38
Speaker
and get people on board with the concept of electric cars is we need to start at the other end of the spectrum. Our first car is not going to be an economical car. It's going to be a supercar. It's going to be very fast, very expensive, very beautiful, very desirable. It's only going to be for rich people, etc., etc., etc.
00:21:56
Speaker
And that was the Tesla Roadster. By doing that, what they were able to then do is to build interest in the category which wasn't rooted purely on ethical concerns or economical concerns or anything like that, all that sort of stuff that just wasn't working. Instead, it was saying, no, through the virtue of electric power, we can actually make a car that is cooler than a Ferrari or whatever.
00:22:21
Speaker
So then they start with that and then after that they can then move down. So each subsequent car they released was cheaper and cheaper and cheaper and more and more accessible as the demand in the industry grew. So basically by doing this, they, I mean, you know, obviously now there are loads of electric cars from all the different marks, but Tesla basically invented the category to all intents and purposes using this strategy. Now you can see how that strategy is like,
00:22:49
Speaker
very clear and the implications of it are very clear. The implications are essentially we need to start with the most desirable luxury high-performance cars possible, make them as fun and exciting as possible, completely ignore questions of ecology or economy or anything like that, go all in for pure kind of vanity and desirability, et cetera. All of that is very clear falling out of that. But in order for you to get that, I had to kind of give you
00:23:18
Speaker
give you the story and so that is that is an example of sort of telling a strategy story now you could go in if you're Elon Musk and you're in Tesco you can tell that story to anyone you can do a rousing speech about it a video like you said whatever and everyone's gonna be like oh yeah that's really clever i can see how where other electric car brands have failed we are going to we are going to succeed because we're adopting this completely different strategy
00:23:43
Speaker
So yeah, I think if you apply that back to the logic of having an analysis, having a theory, having an argument, and then having an explanation of how you were going to leverage that in practical, executional terms, that's how you get people going. But I never see people
00:24:05
Speaker
I mean, I'm sure it happens, but I've just never, other than with my own stuff, seen people take this narrative approach to strategy, which I do think is fundamentally essential for getting buy-in. Two more strategy questions, and I want to talk about your activity on LinkedIn, which looks as if it's been a game changer. One, how does the CEO of a smaller company, not a Tesla, but a company, let's say that's less than $10 million in sales,
00:24:35
Speaker
What are the different ways in which they can get that narrative out to customer success or customer service or sales and marketing? What are some of the mediums that they can use or the tools that they can use to make sure that everybody knows what the strategy is, everybody can understand it in a way that's relevant to them so that you get buy-in. You can communicate the message, the strategy, but you also get buy-in. What are the different levers that they can pull to do that?
00:25:01
Speaker
Well, the first thing, like I say, is you create that document where you have a sort of central blueprint that everyone can refer back to, which is just sort of universal and it doesn't require you to be there to talk it through. Then I think that clearly you want to have, you want to take people through it individually or in their teams, you know, so that you can then contextualize it to what it means for their team. And to be real, you know, there are going to be some occasions when it actually just doesn't mean anything. You know, maybe like your
00:25:26
Speaker
Financial controller ultimately their job is the same no matter which way you cut it so you want them to be aware of it but and to be excited by it because I want to be excited to work there but you know you don't have to like list a bunch of implications for them but for a lot of people's jobs you need to really have a sit down and give them ownership to say right based on this what do you think you should do how do you think this changes your job now if they can't answer that then okay
00:25:55
Speaker
unless they're in that sort of financial controller situation this is quite a good sign that there's a there's a flaw in your strategy that it's not clear enough that's not actionable enough because the ideas should flow so that's one of the best ways that you can evaluate the strategy by having those.
00:26:11
Speaker
those individual sessions with different departments or people from different departments to get their take on what it means for them. And then the one other thing that I would say is that it takes a lot of time. I kind of say that it sounds a bit silly, but I sort of like to say that like learning to play an instrument or something,
00:26:31
Speaker
embedding a strategy takes practice. It's not like you develop it and then you have it. There is probably realistically a six month period where you have to practice the strategy, which means that you have to
00:26:44
Speaker
consciously go over it over and over again. And you have to kind of forcibly bring it into conversations and bring it into decision making processes where intuitively you might just forget it. Because it's going to take that amount of time before it beds into your head and it becomes second nature.
00:27:02
Speaker
And really, this is a particular situation where it's really good to have somebody external to hold you to account. I suppose it could be someone internal as well, but somebody fundamentally needs to be responsible for this. Somebody needs to be responsible for being the annoying one who says, yeah, can you just explain to me how exactly this aligns with the strategy, how this helps the strategy? Someone has to say that. And it would be a mistake to think that it would be you, the chief executive. It might be.
00:27:32
Speaker
But from what I've seen, probably only about 30% of the time does the core team have the discipline to really carry it through to the point where it becomes second nature. The other question, I think this would be relevant to smaller companies as well, is how in depth does a strategic plan need to be? So the way that you've
00:27:58
Speaker
laid things out, you've got your two to three page document and at the second half of the document includes all the things that the company needs to do tactically. In my world, you fall into the trap that if I provide lots and lots and lots of details, it demonstrates that I'm thinking through the strategy and I've got a real robust plan here and I've got all the bases covered and it's gonna be awesome and that in some sense, quantity means quality.
00:28:28
Speaker
I guess the question is does it do you can you get away with the two or three page strategic plan is that enough to say why we're doing this is what we're gonna do and this is exactly how it's gonna happen so now you just have to go and do it is that enough for is that it really should be.
00:28:46
Speaker
moving towards back of napkin kind of stuff as much as possible. Not just because it's good to be short, it's more because going back to that idea of the strategy or the idea of having charisma. If it's a big slam dunk idea, it doesn't take a lot of explaining. You're just saying, well, everyone else in our category does X, we are going to do Y. You should be able to say it like that,
00:29:16
Speaker
And it should be such a big, big, binary, brutal difference that everyone gets in. It barely needs any more elaboration. So you're not trying to make it short because it's good to be short. I don't really care about that. You're trying to make it short because it's a good test of how sort of juicy and real and tangible the idea is.
00:29:44
Speaker
sort of longer strategies are sort of disguising the fact that when you strip it all the way back to its bare bones, there isn't really an idea there.
00:29:53
Speaker
And then in terms of the actual plan and the execution, again, there's a very simple way to think about this. Essentially, the business is either executing the strategy or it's not executing the strategy. It's a binary thing, right? So there will come literally a moment in time where you've implemented whatever you need to implement from where the strategy goes to being not strategic, not existing, to strategic and existing.
00:30:20
Speaker
And the way that you know when you cross that divide as a rule of thumb is to ask, could an external observer of our business, could they explain our strategy for us just by looking at us? Could they interior our strategy from what they see from the outside? If the answer is no, the strategy doesn't exist. And it doesn't matter how you rationalize it internally.
00:30:43
Speaker
So from a plan point of view, your only question really becomes, what is the minimal amount of things we would have to change to get to a point where an external observer would understand the game we're playing? And that might, it might be one thing or two things. It doesn't have to be complicated, but you do need that binary change from before we weren't doing the strategy, now we are doing the strategy and anyone could tell.
00:31:09
Speaker
Right. And to be clear, and this I think where a lot of marketers stumble is that there's a delineation between a strategic plan and a tactical plan. So the tactical plan can have all the details about how things are going to happen, how you're going to measure success, what the workflows and processes are like, but that doesn't necessarily have to be part of a strategic plan. That's the tactical plan that
00:31:34
Speaker
that unfolds as a result of having a strategic plan. So I want to make clear that that's how you see the world. Is that how we should view sort of strategic planning?
00:31:44
Speaker
I never thought of it that way, but actually I like that. I do agree with that. This is a really stupid example, but it might be helpful for some people. I like it anyway. Probably a lot of people who have watched Succession. Have you seen Succession? Yes, of course. You think about what the characters, the kids in that, and Logan,
00:32:04
Speaker
like they're always discussing strategy as they call it so they're always getting together on a yacht or over cocktails at night and they're thinking they're talking about fundamentally what is that what are they gonna do what is the business gonna do that is actually a super good
00:32:19
Speaker
demonstration of real strategy in action, because that's what it bloody looks like. It looks like big decisions made in quite a sort of casual but binary way, which then they can give that decision to their sort of like their lackeys and they'll go off and figure out the detail. They don't care. The point is, is that they're like, no, look, we are going to acquire this company, not that company.
00:32:43
Speaker
we are going to kill this division, we're going to grow that division, whatever. Those sorts of bam, bam, bam, macro decisions, that is what strategy looks like. It does not need any detail at all, as long as it is sufficiently directional. Then, exactly as you say, once that's given to the people who are a little bit more boots on the ground and actually have to do the work, that's where all the detail will come in and fill itself out. That is very, very much post strategy.
00:33:13
Speaker
You know, all those lackeys in Waystar, that was the name of their company, all those lackeys in Waystar, they know exactly what it is that Logan wants to do. And they know that he doesn't want to be bothered by all of their petty little tactical questions and concerns. He just wants to see it happen. So although in your business, you might be both the Logan and the lackey, the same principle applies in terms of how it filters down.
00:33:41
Speaker
Why don't we go off on a bit of a strategic tangent here and talk about your approach to LinkedIn.
Alex Smith's personal journey with strategy and social media
00:33:48
Speaker
I think a lot of people have been pounding away on LinkedIn for a long time and the landscape has gotten a lot more noisy.
00:33:56
Speaker
there's increasing number of creators pumping out content it's hard to attract engagement but i would say that. Linkin has been a game changer for you in the sense that it's done amazing things to raise your profile the one of the reasons we're talking on this podcast is i love your.
00:34:15
Speaker
I love your posts and your carousels and the fact that you're telling a really clear story and establishing a really great personal profile. Can you talk about the way that you thought about LinkedIn? Maybe some of the thinking that you went through before you threw yourself into LinkedIn and how your
00:34:35
Speaker
What's working for you? Why is it resonating the worry that that has any lessons that you could give other people who are looking to use LinkedIn as a way to generate business?
00:34:45
Speaker
certainly has been a game changer, that's for sure. For a solo consultant, it's sort of like winning the lottery because in a way, it's a little bit like having a full pipeline, always forever kind of thing, assuming that you obviously keep the momentum up, which is quite a slog and quite difficult as you can imagine. Yeah, basically, the reason I did it in the first place was
00:35:08
Speaker
In hindsight very obvious but i say that but i operated the business for seven years without doing it so you know it's not that obvious maybe is that i realized that really i have done the newsletter that was quite well liked but not big and its growth was so glacial and i was like well.
00:35:25
Speaker
Why wouldn't the growth be glacial? Because how would people ever hear about this? The only way they're going to hear about it is some random subscriber forwarding it to another person, which works up to a point, but it's not really operating at scale. So I was like, I've got no top of funnel. I have actually no way that people hear about me.
00:35:43
Speaker
other than just random connections and you know enough random connections were happening that i could run a reasonably successful solo consultancy but it is still not a volume game not a scale game so i was like there's no getting away from me you know i've i've got to find some way of
00:36:03
Speaker
of getting in front of a higher volume of people. And how you do that is obviously going to be very different depending on the type of business that you're running. Another business, the answer to that question is advertising, for instance. Obviously, with my type of business, that doesn't really work. So in my type of business, the answer is social media. And LinkedIn is clearly the most obvious one if you're going to go on there and witter away about business, although some people do a good game on Instagram and Twitter too.
00:36:31
Speaker
So, you know, I started posting in February this year. I had sort of like six months of not much happening. I mean, the engagement levels were good relative to my number of followers, which was just my contacts, you know, so like a thousand or whatever it was. But then there was literally one week where I sort of changed things up and I sort of like hit the mark for whatever reason. And I basically went from 1000 to 20,000 followers in the space of three days. Wow.
00:37:01
Speaker
And what was that what was that what was that that thing that you did that change things. Well well well there's like. The troubling answer is that it might be that I simply had one mega viral post and I just got completely sort of like lucky cuz there was one post that was absolutely gigantic.
00:37:19
Speaker
which was actually one about how i write a strategy document that stuff that i just mentioned before but that cut that corresponded with the change in approach as well which there were lots of different elements to it you know there was a big aesthetic element because in this process as well i did a rebrand of the business so that changed the aesthetics a lot and then i created um and i was creating these carousels that had real um those sort of the documents that you see on linkedin the little slideshow presentations
00:37:46
Speaker
that had, I was starting to kind of get much better at sort of hooky, clickbaity titles. So even though the content is not at all kind of clickbaity.
00:37:57
Speaker
I recognized eventually, sadly, that you cannot avoid playing that game. If you do not do clickbait-style titles, no one will read your stuff. End of story. I know it sounds quite cynical, but it's been such a game changer to me. Going back to your question of how do you make the strategy be engaging,
00:38:19
Speaker
Basically, one of the ways you would do that is clickbait it. You can clickbait an internal email as much as you can something online. You've always got to have that sort of that sense of mystery, that sense of, oh, I really need to read this, all of the classic stuff. Here's the one secret to growing your following on LinkedIn, blah, blah, blah, all that stuff. I've tried not doing it and I'm sorry, but people will not read your stuff. If you can't beat them, join them. So that was one of the big things. But there was a whole bunch of other more deep strategic work on my own business.
00:38:48
Speaker
that went behind that because during this process from sort of february to august when i wasn't getting any traction i was also trying to kind of like do the strategy on my own business and i did like i say i did a rebrand as part of that and i was doing various forms of coaching and courses and
00:39:06
Speaker
all these things to really try and figure out what exactly am I offering? All these people out there yammering on about strategy, why would anyone listen to me? I used the posting process because I'm a one-man band and I didn't hire another me to do this for
Strategy as a motivator for action
00:39:26
Speaker
me. I used the posting process to get the harsh objective feedback
00:39:32
Speaker
which you would normally get from a consultant if you are actually doing the work formally. I consulted myself, but using the LinkedIn audience as the feedback mechanism. The main thing that I realized was that it's a bit more to it than this, but just to give you the short version of my part of my own strategy is that I realized that there's
00:39:57
Speaker
strategy is like 50% about having a good strategy and being right and being effective and knowing what to do. That's the obvious side of the equation. Everyone knows that. But it's also 50% about being motivational and inspiring action. You sort of got to think about a good strategy is like 50% Michael Porter
00:40:17
Speaker
50% Tony Robbins. Ultimately, strategy is the discipline of inspiring action. How are you going to inspire action without actually being in some way inspirational? Then this is the angle that I've tried to take to my content. Of course, it's all basic stuff about strategy, which you could find anywhere.
00:40:38
Speaker
But I've tried to put it in a way that really sounds super reductive, but this is how it's really come out. A way that makes people feel good. I actually look at every post I do, and a lot of the time I fail in this, by the way, but definitely the good ones. And I think to myself, will this make a person feel good? Will this make a person literally go away happy about reading it and feeling better about themselves and feeling more empowered, feeling like, oh, yeah, I can do this. That is what works.
00:41:06
Speaker
That is the thing that I discovered. So if you go back and look at my posts back around February, March, it was all very much like that classic sort of contrarian, like, everyone thinks that strategy is this, but they're idiots. Actually, strategy is this, all of that type of stuff. It's not like that's completely ineffective. It's more effective than a lot of other games you could play.
00:41:26
Speaker
but actually if you become really helpful to people and really empowering and yeah just focus on making them feel good that's how your message that's how your message gets across so that's really what I've been what I've been sort of trying to double down on.
00:41:40
Speaker
Maybe you've identified, maybe feel good is the KPI that people on LinkedIn should be following aside from comments and likes and connections and all the other vanity metrics that people use these days. Alex, thanks for the great insight into strategy. I think this, as I said, when we first talked about doing this podcast, this is a conversation, the type of conversation that
00:42:05
Speaker
I don't have very often, but I think that given the current landscape strategy matters, people should be thinking about strategy and the different ways that they can approach it. So I thank you for that. Final question is, where can people learn more about you and basic arts?
00:42:20
Speaker
Well, top of funnel, as you know, is, um, is LinkedIn. So you can find me on there as Alex M H Smith, just to differentiate me from all of the other Alex Smiths out there. And then through that as well, there's my newsletter where I do one sort of more in-depth essay every week. That's, that's free. So you can sign up, you can sign up to that as well. And then, you know, if you want to go further than that, then.
00:42:44
Speaker
then the next thing would be my book no bullshit. Of course you could do you could do it in any order but the combination of those three things well will sort of tell you everything you need to know. Awesome thanks for being on the podcast and thanks to everyone for listening to another episode of marketing spark if you enjoyed the conversation rate it and subscribe apple podcast spotify or favorite podcast app and share my social media.
00:43:06
Speaker
And if you're a B2B or SaaS company looking for more demand pipeline and revenue, but struggling to do marketing that makes an impact, we should talk about my fractional CMO services and my 90-day marketing sprint. You can reach out to me via email, mark at markevans.ca or connect with me on LinkedIn. I'll talk to you soon.