I am sitting in my hotel room and I just saw a leaf fall and hit the surface of the pool. The ripples that spread from that leaf floating down had me thinking about the impact we have as we create content for our fellow humans to consume. It is a powerful and often hidden impact that our creations have.
When I was a younger man, my life centered around sports. I would practice and compete in a variety of sports for many years. What I loved about sports is that it challenged me to always share the practice time in a competition. I didn’t realize it at the time but sports really was my way of being a creator. I would practice to improve so that on game night I could compete and share my talents with the crowd. I didn’t love the practicing, but I loved that it gave me an opportunity to be in front of a crowd. I think that self-challenging is a key element for today’s creators.
I am a lifelong fan of the sport of horseracing. Since 2017, I have been the founder and managing partner of a fairly successful racing stable named, Wasabi Ventures Stables. In racing, jockeys ride the 1,200 pound horses at 35 miles per hour, all the while they rarely weigh more than 110 lbs themselves. It takes amazing altheticisim and strength. On the surface, it may not seem like there is a lot of similarities between the game of being a creator and that of being a jockey. But that is where you failed to connect the dots, such as:
In 1994, I created my first landing page for a marketing campaign. It was wild Internet times back then and we had to really create the concepts and technology from scratch that we now take for granted. But just like then, today landing pages are an essential part of any brand’s digital marketing strategy. They are designed to convert visitors into customers by providing a focused and optimized user experience. When it comes to maximizing conversions on a landing page, there are several key factors that brands need to consider. Here are some of the most important strategies and tactics that brands can use to maximize conversions on their landing page.
“Follow your passion”. How many times have I heard people say that in my life? Honestly, I have no idea what that means. My passions are around rolled up aces over kings and hitting a Pick 5 with a long shot in the last leg. But no idea how that would have helped me professionally. I think it is the same thing with being a creator.
Everyday, my life is like Shark Tank. Someone stops me somewhere and wants to pitch me. I was playing craps in Vegas a few weeks ago and someone actually tried to pitch me their startup while the dice were rolling. My answer to most of these people is that they really need to invest in themselves before they pitch me. As a creator, your first thinking should be as an investor. That will be your greatest opportunity for big returns.
In my thirty plus years of being a founder or investor, I have spent almost all of that with other people who had an “entrepreneurial spirit”. While no one can really define what that means it is pretty easy to define and see patterns in people and why they want to be an entrepreneur.
During pitches from a start-up founder, I often ask the question, “What makes you the right person to build this company?”. During a pitch a few years ago, I had a founder give a unique answer to the question, ”I just needed a job.” While that was refreshingly honest, it was also an answer that left me a little hollow as a potential investor. There was no talk of solving a problem, speaking to a customer base, or even maximizing profit. Needless to say, the startup didn’t get my money.
Many years ago, I was at a startup pitch with a founder and he was so adamant about the fact that he was the greatest of all customers of his company. He used the product all of the time and was still trying to figure out why more people weren’t using his product. I asked him the simple question, “how many people in the world are like you?”
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