These letters are always a reflection of where my head is at with respect to the business. Abundance comes & goes. Ideas evolve.
A couple of years ago, I felt really down about our prospects. We didn’t have enough clients and were losing money fast. Nobody wanted to hire us, and our promotional work wasn’t really landing. When we did get people on the phone, it never went well. One prospective client went with a dashboard bro instead. Another got mad that we don’t work for free. Another straight-up screamed at us(!) that our method is wrong and we don’t need to research anything. There were multiple times when I wondered if I should stay in this industry.
It is funny to consider this now. We haven’t had to worry about “sales” in over a year. People just come through, pay us, and the world sorts itself out. We are effectively booked solid through the summer.
I’m writing to you from a world where design – actual, honest-to-god, research-driven design – is respected, acted upon, and profited from. It still exists! And you can find it, too.
This week, for paid members
- This week’s paid lesson will teach you how to reliably QA your experiments. Fun & essential!
- Our design of the week presents an add-to-cart button that… might not be? Does it work?
- And our monthly office hours are today at 1p CDT. Join us!
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Links
- When Blair Enns talks about the structural support of design, you had better listen. It’s fascinating how people think buyers buy strategy. They do not. They buy outcomes. They buy execution. They have always done this. Strategy is essential, to be clear, but it can never be the focus – then you just have theater. We talk about strategy often at Draft, but it always exists in service to executional work.
- After getting so many economic wins through research, it’s hard to believe that people still skip it. Here’s a cautionary tale from 500 years ago.
- Speaking of, research should be built into every phase of the build, not just tacked on at the beginning. Correct!
- Critique should be positively framed.
- Conversion lays out its own methodology. Nice to see how things work at the top.