Today’s topic is all about doing things that do not scale. 

You might be thinking, “Michael, isn’t this a little bit counter-intuitive? Is it marketing all about further automation and putting things on autopilot and being able to scale something.” 

Now in some instances, I would definitely say yes, that is a good portion of what you’d want to accomplish. There are certain things that you should look to automate. You can do some automated social media posts, and then also do some posting in real-time. You should automate getting your content refreshed on your website, things like that. 

There definitely are some things that you want to automate. There definitely are those things that you want to move to somewhat of an autopilot in fashion so you can make sure that they continue to happen. 

What I wanted to challenge you today is to look at what are some of the things that you can do in your business that do not scale? What are some things that, I mean it literally just takes blood, sweat, and tears to get these things done—these tactics have done that marketing out into the universe. That there is no way that you could take it and just repeat it a thousand times over in 20 minutes, but it would take a fair amount of work. 

Why would you want to do things that don’t necessarily scale? The answer is quite simple—because your competitors are not going to want to do those same things that you’re doing. They’re just not going to do it. Like you, they’re gonna want to look for what are some of the easier things that they can accomplish? How can they get their message out, and then get it out many other times without having to put a lot of effort into it? 

Let’s talk about some of the things that really don’t scale but they have proven to be ridiculously effective. 

The first one is handwritten, hand-addressed letters. Think about how impactful it would be if you send all of your past customers, current customers, or your prospects a handwritten and hand-addressed letter. Now, it doesn’t have to be anything insanely long, but can you actually remember the last time that you got a handwritten letter from someone other than a family member? I can’t tell you years and years and years that would be the last time, I can’t even think of one. I know that some businesses have tried to automate it and they’ve used different companies that have pens and things like that (like robots), and like it makes it look like it’s real. But you can tell—at least a marketer can tell—that it’s not real. 

That’s them going back to being too lazy to want to do this time and time again. So let’s automate it now—time is money. But I can also tell you that if your competitors are not willing to execute some of these things we’re going to continue to talk about, it’s going to put you into another league, literally just in another league of your own. Because you’re going to start to do things very differently than anyone else is doing. So, handwritten letters—one easy win, one easy example. Take that a step further—sending a handwritten birthday card, a handwritten greeting card for their anniversary, when the first time they came into your business, or joined your company and in terms of doing business with you if it’s maybe in a b2b space or even a b2c space. Think about all the different industries in home services.

I definitely get a fair amount of greeting cards and thank you cards. Like we have Mosquito Joe and the local franchise, they went around and they dropped off Mosquito Joe mugs to all their customers. 

Now, they made a couple of mistakes. Number one, why would I want a Mosquito Joe mug? It just isn’t something I’m really gonna want to keep unless it was not really branded. And the other thing is that they didn’t take the time to put a little handwritten note in there. Now would that have taken many hours? Definitely. However, that little small gesture separates your company and again puts you in a different league—it just moves you into a different league. 

What if you were always used to telling people to go to your website and to kind of prequalify themselves before they then could work with you? Flip that model on its head and get back into doing more personalized consultations. Put together some kind of “audit” or “review” or something like that. Do things that are not necessarily scalable. 

If you have an email list of 1000 people, you want to automate sending out things on a regular basis. But why couldn’t you also take a look at that list and the 20% or 30% of people that have opened a couple of emails, why couldn’t you send them a one-off personalized email? Why couldn’t you send a little video using a tool like Loom or BomBom, for example? Let’s say, “Well, Michael, that’s 200 people”. That is exactly the point—your competitors will not do it. They’re going to just use the same excuse that I just said, “It’s just too much work. I don’t have that kind of time.”

What you’re going to find is, as you start to execute some of these little tactics that don’t scale and even on a smaller basis, you’re gonna find that they start to compound. And it’s the whole notion of compounding interest—where you’re compounding, and compounding, it just flips one day where you’re like things are really starting to jive. It’s like this whole phrase of little hinges, swing big doors. whereas these are little hinges and these little activities. That while they may not seem like a big deal, they start to add up because they get noticed. It puts you in a different basket. If someone’s looking at a shiny package or package that is just plain, they’re gonna pick the shiny package. That’s what it starts to do with you and your business, and this works in any industry. It just works but it takes time, energy, imagination, instead of lots of money. Do things that do not scale, and you’ll see your marketing results improve. 

Have a great rest of your day and I’ll see you back here tomorrow. 

Get out there, make a change, and take some action.