Rework (12 page)

Forget about the
Wall Street Journal

Forget about
Time, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Week
, the
New York Times
, and the
Wall Street Journal
. Pitching a reporter at one of these places is practically impossible. Good luck even getting ahold of that guy. And even if you do, he probably won’t care anyway. You’re not big enough to matter.

You’re better off focusing on getting your story into a trade publication or picked up by a niche blogger. With these outlets, the barrier is much lower. You can send an e-mail and get a response (and maybe even a post) the same day. There’s no editorial board or PR person involved. There’s no pipeline your message has to go through.

These guys are actually hungry for fresh meat. They thrive on being tastemakers, finding the new thing, and getting the ball rolling. That’s why many big-time reporters now use these smaller sites to find new stories. Stories that start on the fringe can go mainstream quickly.

We’ve been written up in big mainstream publications like
Wired
and
Time
, but we’ve found that we actually get more hits when we’re profiled on sites like Daring Fireball, a site for Mac nerds, or Lifehacker, a productivity site. Links from these places result in notable spikes in our traffic and sales. Articles in big-time publications are nice, but they don’t result in the same level of direct, instant activity.

Drug dealers get it right

Drug dealers are astute businesspeople. They know their product is so good they’re willing to give a little away for free upfront. They know you’ll be back for more—with money.

Emulate drug dealers. Make your product so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.

This will force you to make something about your product bite-size. You want an easily digestible introduction to what you sell. This gives people a way to try it without investing any money or a lot of time.

Bakeries, restaurants, and ice cream shops have done this successfully for years. Car dealers let you test-drive cars before buying them. Software firms are also getting on board, with free trials or limited-use versions. How many other industries could benefit from the drug-dealer model?

Don’t be afraid to give a little away for free—as long as you’ve got something else to sell. Be confident in what you’re offering. You should know that people will come back for more. If you’re not confident about that, you haven’t created a strong enough product.

Marketing is not a department

Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. If you do, don’t think these are the only people responsible for marketing. Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:

• Every time you answer the phone, it’s marketing.
  

• Every time you send an e-mail, it’s marketing.
  

• Every time someone uses your product, it’s marketing.
  

• Every word you write on your Web site is marketing.
  

• If you build software, every error message is marketing.
  

• If you’re in the restaurant business, the after-dinner mint is marketing.
  

• If you’re in the retail business, the checkout counter is marketing.
  

• If you’re in a service business, your invoice is marketing.
  

Recognize that all of these little things are more important than choosing which piece of swag to throw into a conference goodie bag. Marketing isn’t just a few individual events. It’s the sum total of everything you do.

The myth of the overnight sensation

You will not be a big hit right away. You will not get rich quick. You are not so special that everyone else will instantly pay attention. No one cares about you. At least not yet. Get used to it.

You know those overnight-success stories you’ve heard about? It’s not the whole story. Dig deeper and you’ll usually find people who have busted their asses for years to get into a position where things could take off. And on the rare occasion that instant success does come along, it usually doesn’t last—there’s no foundation there to support it.

Trade the dream of overnight success for slow, measured growth. It’s hard, but you have to be patient. You have to grind it out. You have to do it for a long time before the right people notice.

You may think you can speed up the process by hiring a PR firm. Don’t bother. You’re just not ready for that yet. For one thing, it’s too expensive. Good PR firms can cost upward of $10,000 per month. That’s a waste of money right now.

Plus, you’re still just a no-name with a product no one’s ever heard about. Who’s going to write about that? Once you have some customers and a history, you’ll have a story to tell. But just launching isn’t a good story.

And remember, great brands launch without PR campaigns all the time. Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Amazon, Google, and Snapple all became great brands over time, not because of a big PR push upfront.

Start building your audience today. Start getting people interested in what you have to say. And then keep at it. In a few years, you too will get to chuckle when people discuss your “overnight” success.

*
Pilar Viladas, “The Talk: The Slow Lane,”
New York Times Magazine
, Oct. 9, 2005,
www.tinyurl.com/ychqtup

CHAPTER
HIRING

Do it yourself first

Never hire anyone to do a job until you’ve tried to do it yourself first. That way, you’ll understand the nature of the work. You’ll know what a job well done looks like. You’ll know how to write a realistic job description and which questions to ask in an interview. You’ll know whether to hire someone full-time or part-time, outsource it, or keep doing it yourself (the last is preferable, if possible).

You’ll also be a much better manager, because you’ll be supervising people who are doing a job you’ve done before. You’ll know when to criticize and when to support.

At 37signals, we didn’t hire a system administrator until one of us had spent a whole summer setting up a bunch of servers on his own. For the first three years, one of us did all of our customer support. Then we hired a dedicated support person. We ran with the ball as far as we could before handing it off. That way, we knew what we were looking for once we did decide to hire.

You may feel out of your element at times. You might even feel like you suck. That’s all right. You can hire your way out of that feeling or you can learn your way out of it. Try learning first. What you give up in initial execution will be repaid many times over by the wisdom you gain.

Plus, you should want to be intimately involved in all aspects of your business. Otherwise you’ll wind up in the dark, putting your fate solely in the hands of others. That’s dangerous.

Hire when it hurts

Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain. Always ask yourself: What if we don’t hire anyone? Is that extra work that’s burdening us really necessary? Can we solve the problem with a slice of software or a change of practice instead? What if we just don’t do it?

Similarly, if you lose someone, don’t replace him immediately. See how long you can get by without that person and that position. You’ll often discover you don’t need as many people as you think.

The right time to hire is when there’s more work than you can handle for a sustained period of time. There should be things you can’t do anymore. You should notice the quality level slipping. That’s when you’re hurting. And that’s when it’s time to hire, not earlier.

Pass on great people

Some companies are addicted to hiring. Some even hire when they aren’t hiring. They’ll hear about someone great and invent a position or title just to lure them in. And there they’ll sit—parked in a position that doesn’t matter, doing work that isn’t important.

Pass on hiring people you don’t need, even if you think that person’s a great catch. You’ll be doing your company more harm than good if you bring in talented people who have nothing important to do.

Problems start when you have more people than you need. You start inventing work to keep everyone busy. Artificial work leads to artificial projects. And those artificial projects lead to real costs and complexity.

Don’t worry about “the one that got away.” It’s much worse to have people on staff who aren’t doing anything meaningful. There’s plenty of talent out there. When you do have a real need, you’ll find someone who fits well.

Great has nothing to do with it. If you don’t need someone, you don’t need someone.