Thoughts on technology, design, and building things.

Kevin McMurphy


Back in November [KLMC, the content marketing firm I started](https://klmcmarketing.com), celebrated 5 years of being in business. 🥳

After taking some time to reflect, these are the 5 seemingly simple business lessons that I learned the hard way.

## 1\. Know what makes you different.

What makes you unique? Find your differentiation and lean into it. Hammer it. Learn to tell that story well.

## 2\. You’re only as good as your team.

There are a lot of people out there. Finding the right ones will take a lot of time and effort. Always be looking for good people that you want to work with. You don’t have to have a project to start getting to know someone.

## 3\. Scalable systems matter.

If, right now, you landed all of the proposals that you currently have out — would you be able to deliver?

- How would you scale?
- What do you need to do to get ready?

Start doing those things now.

## 4\. There will be ups and downs. Be ready for both.

When an opportunity presents itself, do you have the bandwidth (financial, mental, staffing) to take advantage of it?

If you lost your biggest customer tomorrow, what would have to change? How can you protect yourself against this?

## 5\. Know your ‘no’s.

You cannot be everything to everyone. Many times saying yes to one set of customers means saying no to another.

- Do you know who you should say yes to?
  - Who does that eliminate?
- How do you negotiate those conversations?

And always, **always keep learning**.


5 seemingly simple business lessons that I learned the hard way

5 Things I Learned from the First 5 Years of Business at KLMC


![](images/1-pFoVD5IAUxmbSuBz4ml_6w.jpeg)

One simple question has been bugging me for a while:

_How do you move from learning to doing?_

The problem started in elementary school. Go to class learn the numbers. Learn the letters. Take in all that information. Consume that knowledge, Kid.

We moved to middle school then high school and we experienced more of the same. Learn the dates. Learn the word structures. Learn the formulas. Now, “show” what you’ve learned by regurgitating it back onto that scantron. And make sure you bubble it in darkly with a #2 pencil.

We spent over 12 years of our lives training in the art of consumption.

Fast forward to your adult[\[1\]](#fn:45578 'see footnote') life. Email, Twitter streams, and news feeds, throw thousands of words at us every day. But we’ve been conditioned well for it. Consume that knowledge, Adult.

We get tricked into feeling productive by sitting back and taking it all in. We claim that were learning or growing or improving ourselves. So what.

_All the world’s education is useless unless you do something with it._

Don’t get me wrong, there is a time and place for learning. But when that time has passed, how do you start doing?

Every day of your childhood education taught you the art of consumption. Take in. Absorb knowledge. Every day of your adult life applies pressure to keep you in that mold. Read those emails. Watch that video Buy that 10-step guide. If that’s all we know, it’s hard to blame us for consuming. But I’ll let you in on a little secret: those that _do_ run the world.

### Take a Break

It’s counter-intuitive. To do, you have to stop. Take a break from your consumer lifestyle, and let it rest. When you rest, you’ll free up those precious brain cycles for making something. It’s amazing how many creative ideas your mind will generate if you’ll stop drowning them in input.

### Commit

If you’re going to change you have to commit. I don’t mean this wishy-washy, people pleasing version of commit either. This isn’t just a “good idea”. This isn’t something that “you’d like to be a part of.” This is something that you _make happen_.

### Stop the Excuses

You’ve spent a lot of time training to consume, so if you give yourself a way out of doing, you will take it. Don’t trust yourself. You’re not reliable enough. Not yet. This is the “setting goals and deadlines” part. If I’m honest, something deep inside of me _hates_ this part. The consumer in me cringes at the idea of being forced into action, and that surfaces in my mind as terror. Yes, I too am terrified of schedules.

> The key to success is for you to make a habit throughout your life of doing the things you fear.” — Vincent Van Gogh

If pain is weakness leaving the body, deadlines are the death of the consumer mindset. Deadlines are your strongest weapon in the fight against your own static inertia.

### Make it Easy

You’ll have to fight to overcome your inertia, so make it easy on yourself. Build a system of deadlines and focus on it. Do something every day. Make is specific and start small. _Absurdly_ small. Workout for 3 minutes. Write for 7 minutes. Draw for 11 minutes.

> “The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” — Chinese Proverb

If I challenged you to walk a thousand miles, you’d probably laugh in my face, but a good friend of mine actually did it. He [hiked the Pacific Crest Trail](http://brandonexplores.com/category/pacific-crest-trail/) from Mexico to Canada. It’s actually 2663 miles and he did it one step at a time. 2663 miles is a _crazy amazing_ distance to walk, but if you focus on the simple steps — the system — you can do crazy amazing things that you never thought possible.

In the same way that the Colorado River carved the Grand Canyon grain by grain, your system will carve away your consumerism.

### Do it

Your system is your river and it washes away all of the soft stuff. In the end, it leaves only what you’ve really become: a doer.

---

######  *[Image](https://www.flickr.com/photos/roguephotonic/5172733869/in/photolist-8T6ByH-6ZeLwc-dbkz9c-jdPJWC-58mHAw-fuUPQd-9jp1Md-xTqWr-4aLoKZ-5B111U-7n6N5i-goixC-5AVKst-goiyq-wNDZ9-VESgN-VF1rw-5AW4jg-5AWcjZ-r8paz-hb8nEK-r8pav-r8pas-r8par-9M32eN-9LZjyH-99sNHo-9eMqFA-9M36dw-9M3asu-9LZnND-9LZiaM-5AWpXZ-5AWpU4-5AVJwg-8T9y3W-7n6Njx-5AVJuZ-5AZZsb-5AVJEB-5AVJAn-5AZZd3-5AVJwH-7n6MCV-7naFWm-7naFZ1-9M2ZMS-9M37kh-9M35nL-9M37zs/) by [Christopher Ryerson](https://www.flickr.com/photos/roguephotonic/)*

---

1. Here’s a secret. We don’t feel any more adult, we just have more responsibility. Inside we’re just as scared as we’ve ever been.  [↩](#fnref:45578 'return to article')


Learning the Art of Do


## Confessions of a self-described starter

[ENTP](http://www.personalitypage.com/ENTP.html). According to Myers and Briggs I’m supposed to be creative, compelling, visonary. All the good stuff people look for in a leader. But there is one thing that I have to fight for every day. One thing that does not come naturally to me, but is required if you’re going to have an impact in the real world: the ability to finish.

If I’m not very careful, I can have a list of 10 things to do, spend all day running and making progress, but never finishing a single one. Never getting to the point of “good enough”. Never shipping. I slip into the black hole of perpetual improvement.

“But I made some good progress today,” I’ll say to myself. “I mean, look how hard I worked today!”

Let’s set one thing straight: **Working hard is not enough.**

Working hard might be enough for grade school, an entry level retail job or some praise from your mother, but it doesn’t cut it in the real world. The real world doesn’t care how hard it was, how long it took, or how you feel about what you’ve been working on.

The world cares about the product. What you _produce_. The theoretical delivered in tangible form. You have to make them care about the rest: the effort, the time, the feeling by communicating through the product.

Want them to see your effort? Show progress by delivering. Want them to see how long this took you? Give them snapshots of the progression by pushing updates. Want them to share in your accomplishment or love the work like you do? Win them over by finishing.

Don’t worry that it’s not perfect. Nothing ever is. Show regular improvement and the people who follow you will grow to love the product like you do. They’ll be more invested in the process and more excited about the outcome.

Ideas may be genius, but execution is proof.


On Finishing


Every now and then I think it's important to publish what would otherwise be private motivational journal entries to myself. This is one of those.

## I read too much

For me, information consumption has become a problem: It's obsessive, it's procrastination, and keeps me from _doing better things_. It also prevents me from ever taking the time to **truly think** through deep, thought-provoking content because I continue to throw more and more onto the idea pile in my brain. I'm drowning in my own consumption. And in so doing **I bury my own voice**.

## Enough!

Stop drowning yourself with a world of information. Take a step back to analyze what you've learned, why you're here, and and how you're going to get to next... Great, so you've read it. Taken it in.

> What are you going to **do** about **it now**?


Chugging a Waterfall


I know politics is something that you should **never** discuss, but I can’t get over how much I love this idea. It’s great example of how the technology of the internet could improve and personalize federal politics. You owe is to yourself to stop listening to the marketing hype from all sides and find out for yourself. Stop _reading_, and [go take the quiz](http://www.isidewith.com/presidential-election-quiz).


A Political Pause


So the previous post got me thinking… If haven’t read it yet, go do it now. Seriously. It will make a lot more sense. I’ll wait…

…

…..

Ready? Okay! (was that too cheerleader-ish?)

And we begin…

I feel like companies are _completely missing the boat_. They have the web all wrong. As Paul points out:

- it’s not a book
- it’s not a newspaper
- it’s not a magazine
- it’s not a radio
- it’s not a portal
- it’s not another mass market device

Because **it’s not about consumption**.

Oh, don’t get me wrong. The web can do all of the above, but the true advantage of the internet is that it’s personal. You can give the corner store feeling - that _personal relationship_ - to millions of customers at the same time. You just have to do it right.

People want to know that they matter. Just like _you_ matter. _Your opinions_ matter.

The elements that drive the best engagement allow customers to express their own opinions:

- [Rdio](http://www.rdio.com/) is a radio app, but it takes the next step by allowing people to share their [personal flavors of music](http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomiogeron/2012/03/13/rdio-revamps-social-music-service-targeting-spotify/). Comment on it. Add it to your collection. Everyone will know thatyou like it, and your opinion will be counted.

- Amazon’s [Kindle](https://kindle.amazon.com/) is just a book, but a simple tweak - [social highlighting](https://kindle.amazon.com/most_popular) - enables people to express their opinion about the importance of any particular section of that book. To be heard. To contribute our their voice to the cacophony of global voices that would otherwise yell - “Why wasn’t I consulted?!”

The web (internet, [series of tubes](http://youtu.be/f99PcP0aFNE), whatever…) gives us an opportunity to finally make business local again. Targeted, focused. You can know and care about what matters to them and how they feel about it. Turning your customers into your own advocates by **involving them** in your process.

It’s no longer about casting a wide net - we need to shoot laser beams, and then allow our customers to determine what kind of laser beams we shoot next.

That’s enough from me: What do you think? How are you involving people? It’s time for you to be consulted.

Comment below, or hit me up on Twitter: [@kevinmcmurphy](https://twitter.com/intent/tweet?screen_name=kevinmcmurphy)


Stop, you're doing it wrong.


> What did I learn from him? We could be here all night, probably all week, maybe even a month. I learned focus is key, not just in running a company but in your personal life as well. That you should do only a certain number of things great, and you should cast aside the rest.

**Tim Cook** @ _2012 D Conference_ in Reference to his relationship with Steve Jobs - **Focus**


Lesson Learned from Steve Jobs


[Listen to me!](http://www.ftrain.com/wwic.html)

Paul Ford (heard on [NPR’s All Things Considered](http://www.npr.org/programs/all-things-considered/)) delivers unique insights on his [personal site](http://www.ftrain.com) - the web offers a completely new medium that fulfills our base need for our opinions to matter and be heard - allowing us to comment, comment on the comment, and execute the most basic form of commentary:

> A boolean or integer value is the digital equivalent of a grunt. You can’t get any more basic than a like, or a thumbs-up, or a favorite.

On the web, people _must_ be heard. They’ll demand it. How are you showing that you’re willing to listen?

You can follow Paul on Twitter: [Follow @ftrain](https://twitter.com/ftrain)


Listen to me!


[Sparrow takes flight: how a startup built the Gmail app Google couldn’t](http://www.theverge.com/2012/3/14/2859933/sparrow-beat-google-gmail)

The Sparrow team has given mail, not only a beautiful UI, but a highly efficient one as well.  This is easily saving me 5 seconds per email and I’m finally using starring in Gmail.  Those seconds add up quickly, especially with the amount of mail that I go through…

> “The problem with Sparrow is that I’m happy with what we’ve done,” Leca told me. The next step for Sparrow is optimization and seeing what aspects of the app people actually use — seeing where people click and how the UI can be even further optimized.

For Leca, sometimes the right thing and the obvious thing coincide.  I just hope Apple will give them a chance to really shine.

> Sparrow could use its own servers to push emails, but then the company would be responsible for keeping track of every user’s email credentials. This isn’t a risk Leca is willing to take, citing the gravity of a security breach since emails are so personal.

It’s interesting to consider the implications of an Apple acquisition of Sparrow - but what about Google?  They could use more UI/UX help than anyone at this point.  For a company so driven by data _b\_\_eautiful_ _function_ would be the perfect combination.


On Sparrow and Doing Small Things Well


[AIM Is (Unofficially) Dead](http://m.gizmodo.com/5893031/aim-is-unofficially-dead)

Call me sentimental. I grew up on AIM. All my friends had it. I spent hours on it. I used to make a game of how many concurrent conversations I could carry on simultaneously on it. (Come to think of it, AIM os probably why I have such a short and scattered attention span.) Heck - I got to know the woman who is now my wife on it. (We met in person first).

AIM’s internal development team has been sacked. Just the client team, mind you. The protocol, at least as I am aware is still alive and well. Still, a little piece of my childhood just died. So long AIM.


AIM Is (Unofficially) Dead


[How busy are you, really?](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203358704577237603853394654.html)

> We all have the same 168 hours per week — a number few people contemplate even as they talk about “24-7” with abandon — but since time passes whether we acknowledge it or not, we seldom think through exactly how we’re spending our hours.

Be intentional - Are you doing what you intended to do with the time you have?  How do you maintain focus?


We all have the same number of hours. What will you do?

How Busy Are You, Really?


> Diplomacy is the art of saying ‘Nice doggie’ until you can find a rock.

[Will Rogers](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Will_Rogers 'Will Rogers')


Diplomacy


[Pulling every trigger | Kevin Myers' Leadership Gravity](http://www.leadershipgravity.com/2012/02/09/pulling-every-trigger/)

What you practice in the little things, you will perform in the larger.

> Leadership can sometimes feel like the Wild West. Many decisions can have big repercussions, and we shouldn’t make them lightly. But we also shouldn’t shy away from them


Pulling Every Trigger | Kevin Myers' Leadership Gravity


[What is Leadership?](http://www.eyesonsales.com/content/article/what_is_leadership/)

> _The skills of management are focused on things, processes and procedures. The skills of leadership focus on people, vision and development._

Are you leading or managing? To succeed, you need both. Figure out which one you’re good at and find someone else to do the other.


Writing