We also talk about the eight-step process to succeed faster, negotiating technique BATNA, and increasing product quality with easter eggs.
Hi friend and happy new year!
In 2018, Guillaume Moubeche took a bold step. He launched lemlist, a cold email tool, with just $1,000 in his pocket. The market was crowded, and he had no money for marketing.
Fast forward a few years, and lemlist is thriving. Just 3.5 years after its launch, it was valued at $150M. Today, it generates $28M in annual recurring revenue (ARR).
So how did Moubeche do it?
The secret lies in Moubeche’s “build in public” strategy. From day one, he shared everything he was doing to build and grow lemlist on social media. This helped him grow a large following on LinkedIn.
Later, he created a dedicated lemlist Facebook community. Whenever a customer achieved impressive results, Moubeche encouraged them to share their success stories there. These stories generated huge engagement. More people tried lemlist to see if they could achieve similar results.
Easter eggs are inside jokes, messages, or features hidden in a product.
The first documented Easter egg is believed to be in the 1979 Atari game Adventure. A developer hid the message “Created by Warren Robinett” in a secret room. He added it because Atari prohibited including credits in their games.
Easter eggs used to exist only in video games and software. But now, they can be found in everything from food to fashion products.
Take Burger King as an example. Their chicken nugget box features the message “This Box Is Password Protected. Try ‘helloyoutastylittleboxofyummyness’.” But it’s not immediately visible to the naked eye.
🔬 A researcher from a Swiss university ran four experiments and found that easter eggs act as a quality signal. When consumers discover them, their perception of the product’s quality increases.
– Easter eggs have little direct commercial benefit for brands. This signals to customers that the company values more than just profit. This matters because people trust creators who are passionate about their work for its own sake, not just for financial gain.
✨ How to Apply This Insight
Here are some real-life examples to inspire you:
– Lucky Brand: Their jeans often include hidden messages like “Lucky You” on the zipper or a wishbone icon on the buttons. Some even have funny notes tucked inside the pocket.
– Volkswagen: The 2023 ID Buzz car features a smiley icon embossed on the door handle.
– Candy Kittens: This UK candy brand hides funny messages in its product packages.
Almost every ad goes unnoticed. To grab attention and drive sales, an ad needs to do three things:
If an ad has impact but fails to communicate, nothing happens. If it lacks impact, no one will even notice it.
This isn’t rocket science. Yet many ad creators seem to have forgotten these basics. They often focus on just one element.
When creating ads, don’t just try to be slightly better or more polished than your competition. You’ll get buried under the sea of sameness. Instead, try to be completely different.
Most business books preach the gospel of hard work. But according to Tulsidas, hard work does not always pay off in the end.
“Working hard will only get you so far in life because you will be trading your hours for dollars when you simply focus on the “hard” part. Very soon, you will reach the upper limit on how much you can succeed because there are only twenty-four hours in a day.”
To reach extraordinary levels of success, you need to work smarter.
“Working smart is the first step to success. You should consider working hard only after you have learned how to work smart. This will help you accelerate your wins to super success.”
Tulsidas shares an eight-step process to help you work smarter. This process can help you get to your goal faster. It is also a lot less painful than simply working hard.
“Working smart did not come naturally to me in the early stages of my professional career. I relied on “hard work” to achieve any goal for several years until I was forced to find a different approach. My quest to find a better guiding principle to accomplish new milestones faster led me on the path of an exciting discovery. It helped me figure out how to work smart.
“I have created a step-by-step guide that can be followed by anyone who wants to succeed faster by working smart every day.”
1. At the very start of your work day, sit in silence without any distractions for a while.
2. Take ten to fifteen minutes to introspect. Reflect on how well you did yesterday. Write down your three major wins, and celebrate them.
3. Evaluate what prevented you from mastering your craft/skills yesterday and what you can do to become the best version of yourself today.
4. Write down your definition of long-term success. It will remind you clearly of your end goal and put you in the right frame of mind to make smart choices on the next step.
5. Write down up to three important things you need to accomplish today that will help you make the leap toward your destination. Let’s call them your “Wow Factor” for the day! Go above and beyond to deliver the highest quality of work on your wow factor.
6. Now, write down up to five “Deal Breaker” tasks that you must perform today for the survival of your business and prevent it from falling behind. Do not pick the things that are not critical on that particular day, and do not go above and beyond when working on these tasks. Doing the bare minimum on your Deal Breakers and going above and beyond on your carefully selected wow factor is the key to working smart on a day-to-day basis.
7. Refer to this note as and when needed to check whether you are making progress toward your destination. Stay focused on your predefined goals for the day, and only make adjustments in case of emergencies.
8. The practice of filling out this note at the beginning of your workday will help you develop the habit of working smart without fail. Be very thoughtful when selecting your key wow factors that matters the most today. Repeat this process regularly to improve your odds of success.
To negotiate effectively, you need to understand your BATNA. It stands for ‘best alternative to a negotiated agreement’.
Whenever you negotiate with another party, there is a chance that the negotiation may break down and that you will have to fall back on some alternative course of action. Your BATNA is this alternative course of action.
Being clear on what it is, and what is the other party’s BATNA, is crucial to effective negotiation.
Sometimes it is really clear what the BATNA is. However, it is not necessarily obvious. Let’s say you have developed a new consumer product. But you are struggling to agree a reasonable price with a major supermarket chain.
Is your best alternative here to sell it through a smaller chain of supermarkets, to sell it online or to drop the product launch altogether? There are many other factors at play here. These include non-quantifiable things such as your personal reputation.
There is a simple process for determining your BATNA that can be applied to any negotiation:
By using the concept of a BATNA, you focus on the broader options you have to achieve your objectives. This provides you with greater flexibility when negotiating.
If you are clear about what your own BATNA is, you know when to walk away. It is also important to think about the BATNA of the other party.
For example, if you are trying to negotiate terms for a new job with an employer and you know there are other good people short-listed for that job, then the employer’s BATNA is simply to hire the next person on the list.
Thanks for reading. Wishing you success in your business journey.
