Lunch-pail Mentality

Playing the game for money produces the proper professional attitude.
It inculcates the lunch-pail mentality.

— Steven Pressfield

You can spot a pro a mile away. She carries a lunch pail.

The dilettante, on the other hand, carries a bag from Pret.

The pro shows up, rain or shine, and works her plan.

She persists.

The dilettante sits and waits—often in meetings—for the Muses (or the cavalry) to arrive.

He resists.

I love the name of conference planner Warwick Davies' company, The Event Mechanic! It perfectly—and authentically—describes Davies' lunch-pail attitude.

Journalist James J. Kilpatrick once likened the professional writer to a carpenter:

Our task is deceptively simple. It is as deceptively simple as the task of carpenters, who begin by nailing one board to another board. Then other boards are nailed to other boards, and, lo, we have a house. Just so, as writers we put one word after another word, and we connect those words with other words, and, lo, we have a news story or an editorial.

Jack London trained himself to write for money by copying other writers' phrases into notebooks, "strong phrases, the phrases of living language, phrases that bit like acid and scorched like flame."

And journalist Hunter S. Thompson trained himself to write for a living by typing for days on end the works of Faulkner, Fitzgerald and Hemingway.

That's persistence.

No Wine before Its TIme

According to a study by Regalix, The State of B2B Content Marketing 2016, 73% of CMOs are dissatisfied with content marketing.

Crap content, of course, explains much of the dissatisfaction. Crap content won't give a brand a welcome seat at customers' tables.

CMOs' impatience explains the rest. They've spent all this dough. Where are the results?

Maybe they expect too much, too soon.

Content marketing isn't branding; but it sure as hell isn't selling, either.

To work, it takes time and amplification. Before results arrive, you have to cultivate an audience and win its trust.

Look at the number of readers you're getting. How large is your readership? How many readers are clicking from your blog to other value-added content? How many are sharing and recommending your content? If the numbers are low, you can't expect stellar results. Those take time.

So exercise some patience. Be like Orson Welles, who earned his "grocery money" in the 1970s by shooting TV commercials, the most famous of which has aged pretty well.  

Can You Dig Out of the Hole?

If you find yourself in a hole, the first thing to do is stop digging.

— Will Rogers

A new survey by the Association Research Board shows most association executives lack urgency and direction in their search for non-dues revenue.

The survey found only one in three association executives is “very committed” to tapping new non-dues revenue streams in 2017; the rest are only “somewhat committed” or “not committed.”

It also found one in four executives never discusses non-dues revenue-generation with her board.

While one in two association executives tapped a new revenue stream in 2016, the survey says, only one in four describes her revenue-generating activities as “highly successful.”

Association membership and dues revenue continue to decline year over year. So why do most association executives give non-dues revenue-generation so little priority?

Don't they see the only other way to dig out of the hole is to trim expenses—and members' benefits?

Journalist Michael Hart recently hosted a webinar exploring some alternative ways out of the hole.

Take a peek, if you're interested.

B2B Marketers: Should You be Festive this Holiday Season?

This December, should your content go all-in on the normal holly-jolly? Or should you just skip the festive look and feel?

Bear in mind, more than half your customers are despondent. Should your company pretend otherwise?

I have six suggestions:

Dial back the ho-ho-ho. Would you wear a sequin cocktail dress to your brother's funeral? Leave the snowmen and candy canes in storage this year; they'll be an eye-sore to many. Stick instead with your year-round branding.

Step up your social outreach. B2B social media users spend more time sharing in December, so beef up your posting, social advertising and social selling. But avoid syrupy stuff. Provide value.

Make it personal. Personalized messages will help you stand out from the automatons deaf to the nation's mood.

Re-gift your best content. Republish the year's best content. Package a blog-post series as an e-book; an article as a year-end checklist; customer research as a white paper. 'Tis the giving season.

Align with sales. Alignment with sales is critical every December; maybe more so, this year. Create content sales can use to close deals—data sheets, testimonials and case studies.

Ask for wisdom. Don't just eschew frivolity; promote serenity. In 1963, when LBJ lit the National Christmas Tree a month after JFK's murder, he urged Americans to turn from "things false and small" to "things true and profound." He went on to say:

We have our faults and we have our failings, as any mortal society must. But when sorrow befell us, we learned anew how great is the trust and how close is the kinship that mankind feels for us, and most of all, that we feel for each other. We must remember, and we must never forget, that the hopes and the fears of all the years rest with us, as with no other people in all history. We shall keep that trust working, as always we have worked, for peace on earth and good will among men.

NOTE: Opinions at my own.

Don't be a Blabbermouth

No matter the forum, choose your words wisely.

That's the advice of 17th century Jesuit Balthasar Gracian in The Art of Worldly Wisdom.

"There is always time to add a word, never to withdraw one," Gracian says.

So be prudent when you speak, particularly when your audience doesn't agree with you; and, when it does, speak only "for the sake of appearance."

"Talk as if you were making your will: the fewer words, the less litigation."

And make good use of everyday conversation, because every encounter is another chance to rehearse for "more weighty matters of speech."

Blabbermouths don't have much future, Gracian says. 

"He who speaks lightly soon falls or fails."

PRUDENT DISCLAIMER: Opinions are my own.