Marketing Director Daily
Marketing Director Daily
The 1% Solution
Every day as a marketing director can feel overwhelming, defeating, and like you're not making any progress.
That is...until you learn the 1% Solution.
Because it changes everything.
P.S. If you're looking, here are a few things to help you:
- Hang out with 20 marketing directors for 2 days in Orlando, FL at the Momentum conference. You'll walk away with a simple strategy that works, the skills, plan, and confidence to make it happen. Click here for details.
- Download the Marketing Director Roadmap to get the one-page blueprint to succeeding as a marketing director.
This is the Marketing Director Daily, and I'm Tim Parkin. Today I want to share with you one of the most valuable, profound things I learned about how to have the right perspective of your work. And I learned this from my mentor, Alan Weiss. He's written tons of books, and he is one of the top consultants in the world. And I've been fortunate to learn a lot of things from him. And this is one of them. This is the thing that I often come back to throughout my day and my week, whenever I get stuck. This is the thing that unlocks me. It gets me back on track, grounds me into what am I doing here? And how do I make progress? And how do I view the work I'm doing to have the right perspective? So I hope it's as useful and valuable to you. And it's called the 1% solution. The 1% solution. And it works like this. If you improve by just 1% every day, in 70 days, you're twice as good. 70 days, that's all it takes to become twice as good. And the reason is when you improve by 1% a day, that compounds, just like compound interest. And so 1% on top of 1% on top of 1%, if you do that 70 times, if you do the math, you'll see you end up twice as good. Why do I tell you this and why is this important for us? Aside from being a really interesting, nerdy math thing, it happens that it's super important for our work. Because if you don't have the right perspective, you end up trying to juggle so many things at once and try to push everything so far, so fast, and you lose sight of what really matters. You burn yourself out and you're stressed trying to do everything. On top of that, you often feel like you're behind, like you don't have the skills that you need to have, or that you haven't figured out the right answer yet, or that the results aren't coming through yet. And that can be really frustrating to constantly feel behind, to feel inadequate, and to feel lost and confused. On top of that, it's kind of defeating when there's always a next thing. When you're working on this project today, and tomorrow there's a new thing or a different thing that you have to figure out or tackle or approach. And it just feels like no matter what progress you do make, there's always more. There's always the next thing, there's always something new and unknown. And that can be really defeating and frustrating. But when you have the right perspective and when you understand and apply this 1% solution, you're in control. You're constantly improving, you're constantly learning. And so the act of continually learning and improving is in itself valuable and beneficial, but also it's motivating, it's encouraging that these are not challenges that you're facing, they're opportunities to find that 1%, to improve a little bit every day, and to make progress slowly and consistently that will compound. So rather than seeing things as a challenge, you see them as an opportunity and that drives you, that pulls you rather than pushing you away. In addition, if you have the right perspective here of the 1% solution, you see and look for the lessons, the insights. It's not about checking a bunch of boxes, it's about learning what's working and what's not, and carrying that forward to help inform how you do things tomorrow, to make it easier, to make it better, to make it faster. And with the perspective of the 1% solution, things start to click and connect. You can look backwards and see how far you've come. And that means you can then look forward and see where you will go, where you will end up. And that's kind of like being on the top of the mountain and having the view of the land and seeing it from the 30,000-foot view. That when you're down on the ground level, it's hard to see where you're going and where you've been. But once you get perspective, once you elevate yourself and you can see the journey of how things have connected and project the path forward, you get the perspective you need. You can be more strategic, you can feel in control and less out of control, less burnt out and behind. So this is a super valuable perspective to have. And it's a really simple idea, but it's important to apply it. So let me share with you practically, tangibly, what does this look like? What does this mean? And how do you use this in your day-to-day? So the 1% solution, again, is if you improve by just 1% a day, in 70 days you're twice as good. If you continue that every day, that means that in a year you can get five times better, 10 times better, multiple times better in a year or in two years, et cetera. And so this compounds quite a bit. And what this means is that every day, don't worry about completing everything on your list. Don't worry about making monumental progress. Just focus on the 1%. And you have to look for this. Sometimes you get that important thing done that's been on your list forever. For me personally, there are some house projects that have been sitting around far too long. And finally, yesterday, I called some people, texted some people, and got some appointments made, things scheduled to take care of some of those. That was my 1% for the day. I accomplished a small but meaningful task that's been weighing on me for a while. That's my 1% for that day. It could also be some new insight you have, some new learning or revelation. Recently, we were running an A-B test and the data was coming through. We're trying to evaluate which version of the test was performing better. Is it version A or is it version B? And the data was only showing one version. It wasn't showing A and B, it was just showing A. And so we had to troubleshoot that and figure out why this connection is not working. And we figured it out. That was our 1% for the day. We unlocked this thing, this new learning that we know now, how the tool really works, why that problem happens, and how to prevent it in the future. And more importantly, we fixed the problem so that now we have the right data moving forward. That's my 1%. So those are two simple examples to give you some perspective, some idea of what does a 1% look like. You can see that in both of those examples, it's not some groundbreaking thing. It's not something that pushes the business forward tremendously. We're just looking for the one win of the day that gives us something to build on, something that will move you forward in the right direction, something that will give you momentum, or something that will remove a barrier or a bottleneck or an obstacle. In addition to being something that you can literally build on, an insight, an aha, a takeaway. Like in the A B testing example, we learned what not to do, and now we know moving forward what to do correctly. And oftentimes, especially in marketing, that's the 1%. What did you learn today about your customer? What's a meaningful conversation you had with sales to give you better perspective? What feedback did you get from the CEO today that you can apply tomorrow? What did the data tell you from your report? Which channels did you see are working? Which post really went off today? And you can learn from that and then do that type of post again in the future. Which email did you send this week that got a lot of replies or clicks? And how can we learn from that to carry it forward? Those are good examples of 1%. They're not massive things, they're not big things. They're things that in a normal day you might overlook. And this is why it's so important to have strategic time or a daily review process every day to pause and reflect and look back and say, what really happened? What was good, what was bad, but most importantly, what did we learn and what did we accomplish? And to celebrate that and to codify it so that you can have these 1%. And that a day is not wasted if you have a 1% to take away from it. That success is about progress, not perfection. And that too often we judge ourselves on the standard of perfect. Did I finish everything on my list today? No, you probably didn't. Most people don't. Did we accomplish amazing, incredible results today? No, you probably didn't. Most people don't. And yet, knowing that we still judge ourselves and hold ourselves to that standard, the standard of perfection, the standard of completion, the standard of we're doing everything right. And the reality is, no one is. No one is perfect, no one does everything, no one gets everything done, no one does everything right. But what matters is none of that. What matters is the lessons that you learned, the things that you can take forward and build upon, the 1% solution. So spend some time every day, even just 10 minutes. Maybe it's when you're in the car, maybe it's when you're cooking dinner, whatever it is, take a walk, listen to some music, and think about what happened today, what conversations did you have today, what meetings did you have today, what insights or data or things you observe today, and what's your 1%. The 1% can look a lot of different ways, and it can come from a lot of different places. Sometimes it's an idea you hear on a podcast like this. Sometimes it's a post you read on LinkedIn. Or maybe you're listening to your favorite song and you take a lyric from that and you see what it really means, or how it looks different, or how it applies to the problem you're solving. Sometimes it's a conversation you have with a friend and they happen to say the thing that unlocks the answer you've been looking for. The 1% can come from a lot of different places and it can look a lot of different ways. But the key is to be looking for it, to recognize when you see it and to capture it, to hold it and to carry it forward with you. And you can even go so far as to write these down every day. Write down what was your 1% for today. And if you're lucky, sometimes you can have more than one in a day. You might have one, two, or three. Those are the best days. But every day has something you can learn from it, something you can carry forward, something you can use to improve, to get better, and to do better. Success is about progress, not perfection. Don't worry about being perfect. Don't worry about doing everything. Don't worry about massive momentum. Worry about the 1%. How can we take today and build upon it? How can we improve? How can we optimize? How can we do a little bit better? How can we make it a little bit faster? How can we make it a little bit easier? Think about those things as you look for your 1%. Write it down if you need to, if it's helpful, but perhaps more helpful is to share it with someone. Find a partner or a buddy, your team, and tell them what your 1% was. Maybe it's even your spouse. Today my 1% was this. Get their feedback, pass it along. This is a valuable idea that's really helped me have the right perspective on my work because our work is challenging, it's difficult, it's frustrating, it's draining sometimes. But despite all of that, there's always a 1%. There is always something to learn. And if you're focused and looking for opportunities to improve and things to learn and ways to apply that, if you're looking for the 1%, you'll find it. And if you find it, if you use it, you will improve. And all it takes is a little bit every day. Improve by 1% a day, and in 70 days, you're twice as good. When Alan Weiss told me that, it changed a lot for me about how I perceive my day. And I hope you hearing it, it does the same for you. So the question I'll leave you with is simply what's your one percent?