October is almost over, so it’s time for another monthly review.
This time, instead of reporting how many workshops I ran, or telling you about the exciting moments and the hard parts along the way, I want to share ten things I learned about running the business.
It’s mostly for me, but you’re welcome to read too.
1. Two questions I need to keep asking myself at the start of every project: “What happens if this really succeeds?” & “Where could this really go wrong?”
I don’t always remember to think about them (and that’s a pity). These questions have saved me a few times.
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2. Marketing is super important. It doesn’t matter how good the product is, you have to market it.
You can make an amazing product that nobody hears about, or a mediocre one that everyone talks about, and a lot of that comes down to marketing.
Lucky for me, so far I’ve barely had to make an effort on marketing, it pretty much came on its own. I also did a few smart things along the way without fully planning them.
But I understand that marketing is super important, and I plan to learn it more deeply.
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3. Build yourself a direct line to your audience. The algorithm is like the stock market: hard to predict. I’ve had posts blow up when I didn’t expect it at all, and posts I really loved that barely got seen.
There are tricks, there are tips, there are best practices, but it’s really hard to rely on the algorithm.
Lucky for me, I have this newsletter (hi! thanks for reading it right now). It’s important to build more direct channels like this one, channels that depend less on luck and on the weather.
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4. Feedback, feedback, feedback. I learned things about my business that I would never have thought of on my own. The goal is to have as many forms as possible, as many points in the user experience as possible where people can share what they think. That’s gold.
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5. Talk to your customers. Feedback forms are great. I also have agents that analyze every question that comes up in the Zoom chat, the questions in the WhatsApp group for workshop graduates, and many other sources.
But (and this is a big one) in the end, a half-hour conversation with a customer can teach you more than 30 feedback forms. In a conversation you can ask “why?” a few times and dig deeper toward the truth.
Usually the first reason people give is not the real reason, and in a conversation you can try to get to it. That’s pure gold.
6. If all your competitors are doing it = you probably don’t need to do it too.
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7. A post with 10 likes can beat a post with 1,000 likes. What’s more important is who looked at your profile, how many people saved the post, how many shared it, and most of all, how it affects your brand.
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8. Been asked the same question more than three times? Turn it into something permanent that’s always easy to send (like an FAQ, an affiliate link, a piece everyone wants to read, and so on).
Try to build yourself evergreen content that saves you from rewriting yourself from scratch every time. In the end, things pretty much repeat themselves. Find the patterns and the repetition.
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9. You can count what really made the business succeed on two hands. Try to aim for big moves instead of lots of small things. It’s worth staying focused. You don’t need to push too hard. Mostly, you need to aim right.
One article in a newspaper is worth more than a hundred SEO improvements to your website. One good podcast interview is worth more than dozens of paid campaigns.
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10. Smart, good people are willing to help for free. Don’t be shy about asking for help. Always keep learning, be humble, give back, keep an open heart, keep an open mind.
With all due respect to the agents (and there is a lot of respect), humans have a lot to give you. Receive it all with love.
OK, I do need a short summary of October.
I spent my time on private 1:1 sessions with workshop graduates, worked a lot on a talk I’m giving in December (on how to manage AI agents), looked into a few directions for business development, and spent a lot of thinking time planning the future of agents&me. There were six public workshops, and November has four more.
I feel like my business is in sync with the seasons: in winter I planted, in spring everything bloomed, in summer I got a little burnt from all the work, and now, in autumn, there is some turning inward, toward winter, a time to incubate new things that I hope will bloom in a few months, in a new season.
I finished month eight of the business. It has fully become a real business, with all the excitement and the challenges a business brings. I hope to come back and reread (and apply!) the ten tips I wrote here, and to keep writing down, for myself, the things that help.
I hope this text helped you too.
See you next month,
Tom
P.S. I wrote this letter in Hebrew. My team translated it, wrote the title, bolded the first line of each lesson, and broke up the long paragraphs. The lessons are mine.
P.P.S. The earlier monthly reviews: March, April, May, June, July, September. And if you read Hebrew, the four November workshops are at getagents.today.