I've been going through a presentation by Jeff Walker of Product Launch Formula fame. Here's a bit that particularly stuck with me. Says Jeff: === When I'm looking to run a launch I'm as much interested in what strategic benefit does it have to me in addition to any money I could make. I'm a big believer in thinking long term. That's one of my competitive advantages, that I always think very long term. === Sounds really good, except.. ... what does "strategic benefit" really mean? And how do you think long-term? I'm not just farming for engagement here. I'm genuinely asking, because my time horizon is like 3 days. To help me with that, I just sat down and made a list of "10 kinds of strategic benefits of a launch." I wanna hear yours as well, because I'm sure I'm missing some. If you're game, we can play the usual "Battleship" format. If you name a strategic benefit that's on my list, I'll confirm it. If you name one I don't have, I'll give you one I have that hasn't been named yet. The game goes on until I'm sunk. Your turn.

What's your favorite ridiculous, fun, or parody song? Comment below with a link to it on YouTube. (You can find mine in the comments below.) And if you want to know WHYYYY I might be asking you this pointless question... I wrote an email once about how even entertainment gets boring after a while, if it's the same kind of entertainment. So baseball team owners introduced fireworks to juice audiences beyond just what the athletics could do... A Croatian pop singer (possibly) leaked a sex tape to get more interest and sympathy than her singing alone could do... And I'm taking a break from our ongoing sports-like teaching tournament to talk about music. Same for you. If you've been giving people interesting anecdotes, or analogies, or any other form of infotainment over and over in your emails, that's good... ... but you need throw in a changeup among all the fastballs. Such as for example, working in some pop culture, in the form of your favorite ridiculous, fun, or parody song. So list yours below, and then, for bonus points, work it into your email today.

Following up on the topic of following up... Do you have a system that works for you to follow up with people 1-1? I'm not talking about the content of the follow-up, but just something that gets you to follow up in the first place, when it's actually time to do so. I can imagine a few options, all of which I've tried without amazing results: 1. Just remember it's time to check in with people who dropped off 2. Have a spreadsheet of people I've reached out to, and revisit it daily to see who it's time to reach out to again 3. Use calendar reminders for each individual unfinished conversation that say, "Did person x respond?" For reference, there are currently about a dozen people I should follow up with in case they don't get back to me, based only on conversations that happened over the last week. Maybe, if I had a good system, I would realize there are actually even more promising conversations that I've let drop. Do you have a system that works for you? If you do, let me know, I'm all ears.

The return of Small Win Saturdays... I found this thread fun and useful last week. I wanna make it a regular thing. So let me ask... what was your small win this week?

After months of only sending 1-2 emails a week, this week I sent out four! Let's see if I can keep this up next week.