Field Report Hotsheet 8.15.2016

August 15, 2016 – Issue #217
Selling a Book?

I’m working with a client on a book launch and used this theme to build a one page sales/lead generation site. It has to be edited for hi-res (retina ready) graphics, but it’s way better than designing from scratch.

Great Interview About Hiring

Here’s a great interview featuring Craig Ballantyne talking to Matt Smith about hiring the right people for your team.

Still Liking AddPipe

A few months ago, we launched TheTestimonialWizard. A project I’m building with my son. We worked through quite a few possibilities for managing the video testimonial submission (Boast.io, Vidrack, Camera Tag, Story Box to name a few) and settled on Add Pipe. Now months later, it’s still the best solution. You need to be a semi to total geek because that’s who it’s designed for. But it accepts HD video and makes it EZ for your clients/customers to record from a computer or mobile device.

Right now, the setup is that the software pushes the recording to a dropbox and ALSO an unlisted youtube channel where the raw video can be shown to clients before editing.

HBR Aricle About Knowing Your Customers

Here’s an intelligent article from the Harvard Business Review about really understanding your customer. The point is that big data is leading to dumber decisions because companies are using it to make decisions based on correlations instead of really understanding what their customers/clients are trying to achieve. For someone who spends his days pretty much thinking ONLY about this very thing, this seems pretty much like common sense.

It’s well written and clear, but I’m always surprised how many words you CAN use to describe simple things when just a few would have worked in far less time 🙂 My summary would be: understand what your customers really want, what they want to do, where they want to go, what they want to achieve, who they want to BE.

More Cheese Less Whiskers

Don’t miss Dean Jackson’s new podcast, More Cheese Less Whiskers. If you’ve never heard that phrase, that’s the primary reason you should be listening to it.