There are several “Best of Maine” and “Best of Portland” framed awards on the back wall.

One problem: The most recent award is from 2016.

And so even though our experience has been terrific, when I see a 10-year gap like that, my first thought isn’t, “These guys are great.” It’s, “Have they gone downhill?”

Awards, testimonials, even the content we create, have a shelf life. 

If you keep receiving/producing these over the years, that’s great. It shows consistency. 

But if they stop – for a long time – it raises more questions than it answers.

So…

… if the most recent blog post on your website is five years old, or the special report you offer as a free download was last updated during the Obama administration, either take those down or remove the dates. 

The same goes for LinkedIn testimonials. You can’t change the dates there, but if they feel ancient, get a couple of new ones, so it looks like you are still very much in the game.

The book — Range: Why Generalists Triumph in a Specialized World, by David Epstein — makes the point that (surprise, surprise) “generalists triumph in a specialized world.”

It caught my attention because I’ve long been stressing the opposite: the importance, for solo professionals in particular, of having a niche, focusing your efforts, blah, blah.

What I’m realizing, though, is that he’s talking about reality — the benefits associated with a broad perspective and range of experiences — whereas I’m talking about marketing.

Getting hired is not about being smarter or more capable. It’s about coming in first in a winner-take-all competition (second place and 100th place amount to the same thing).

And while it can be painful when describing your business to ignore all the things you are capable of doing, when you claim to specialize in solving a particular problem for a particular group of people, you move right to the front of the “maybe we should hire them” line.

Is it objectively logical? No. But human beings never have been.

I was trying to get AI (Claude) to complete a multistep task that required searching through my past correspondence.

At one point, it asked permission to “read, write, and delete” emails. I declined.

The last thing I need is for Claude to “accidentally” delete ALL my history. (If it did, I’m sure it would respond to my frantic complaint with a cheery, “Fair point, I will do better next time.”)

But it made me realize that while I have all my computer files backed up, I don’t do the same with my email.

But what if, one day, thanks to some AI task gone wrong or whatever, it was all suddenly gone?

My email is pretty much the transcript and workspace of both my personal and business lives. I’m in there all the time; losing all that history would make things very difficult.

So, I did a little research, and apparently, there is a very simple-to-use tool for Gmail called Google Takeout (I know, it sounds like a Silicon Valley food delivery service). I was able to create a backup file, which I have now downloaded and backed up elsewhere.

It doesn’t sync in real time or anything like that, but it’s several miles better than nothing.

P.S. I’m guessing whatever email service you use offers the same.

Someone called me (I know, nobody ever uses the phone anymore) looking for some email newsletter help.

At one point, as I always do, I asked: Why do you have a newsletter?

Long silence….

That’s a problem. And not just for newsletters.

Before spending time, money, and effort on marketing tactics, you should at least have a semi-coherent theory and expectation of why you are doing it. (Note: This is also true of invading foreign countries, but I digress.)

Every business has limited resources – solo professionals in particular. So you need a better reason for doing things than, “Because everyone else is on Instagram, using video, integrating AI, blah, blah, blah.”

“Doing marketing” isn’t the point. Doing marketing that works is.

The full title is, Alchemy: The Surprising Power of Ideas That Don’t Make Sense, by Rory Sutherland.

A lot of things that are true in marketing don’t make sense, and this book is both entertaining and filled with real-life examples – examples you can apply in your own business.

At one point (page 174, if you must know), he talks about the Sony Walkman, and how when it was first introduced, the ability to record was deliberately left out. 

The technology was available. But the Walkman was so new that Sony wanted to make it crystal clear what this thing was for: portable listening, a concept that at the time was unknown (stay with me, youngsters).

“It is always possible to add functionality to something, but while this makes the new thing more versatile, it also reduces the clarity of its affordance.”

This is exactly the problem with heaping on more and more features to your services – claiming to do all kinds of things for all kinds of people. 

Way better to throw everything but your specialty overboard and become known as the Leading Expert in something.

Because effective professional services marketing is not about impressing people with how smart, capable, and multi-subject qualified you are.

It’s about standing out as the only logical solution, thereby making the decision to hire you, and only you, easy and obvious.

I told you it didn’t make sense.