Imagine a garden with the perfect amount of sunlight and different flowers in the garden. The difference between the plant's heights is because of the different seeds planted. The differences are genetic. Imagine another garden with different flowers that are neglected. The flowers will be shorter than the plants in the rich, well-resourced garden. The difference between the tall and short plants across very different environments is not just due to genetics. While this is obvious when it comes to plants, it's difficult for people to keep in mind.

Two gardens - a thought experiment

The relationship between heritability and response to the environment is complicated. Heritability is the proportion of variation in a population due to genetic differences between people. People often misinterpret heritable as 'genetically determined and unmodifiable by the environment.' But it doesn't mean that. Genetic studies that ignore the environment and only look for the main effects of genes require sample sizes above one million people. Adding gene-by-environment interaction, the problems get even bigger.

Heritability is often misunderstood

Just because a gene influences the probaility of an outcome in one group of people to the point that it's probabilistic rather than deterministic doesn't mean that it is portable when another group of people are studied. Heritable means that within a group of people that have experienced roughly equivalent environmental conditions,  genetic differences between them are related to the phenotypic differences between them.

Gene influences

This interview is an episode from The Well, our new publication about ideas that inspire a life well-lived, created with the John Templeton Foundation. Subscribe to The Well on YouTube ► https://bit.ly/thewell-youtube Watch Kathryn Paige Harden's next interview ► Schools ignore genetics—and that’s actually a bad thing https://youtu.be/-xavEnSBeio The relationship between genetics and the environment is incredibly complex. The term "heritability" refers to the proportion of variation in a population that is due to genetic differences. But people misinterpret the word to mean "genetically determined," "unmodifiable," or "innate" — but it doesn't mean any of these things. Just because a version of a gene might be linked to a particular outcome in one group of people does not mean it is linked to the same outcome in another group of people. Read the video transcript ► https://bigthink.com/the-well/nature-versus-nurture/ ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About Kathryn Paige Harden: Dr. Kathryn Paige Harden is a tenured professor in the Department of Psychology at UT, where she leads the Developmental Behavior Genetics lab and co-directs the Texas Twin Project. She is the author of The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality (Princeton). Dr. Harden received her Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology from the University of Virginia and completed her clinical internship at McLean Hospital/Harvard Medical School. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Read more from The Well: I put a camera on a monkey. Here’s how it shook my understanding of humanity ► https://bigthink.com/the-well/awe-ani... Atheism is not as rare or as rational as you think ► https://bigthink.com/the-well/atheism... System 1 vs. System 2 thinking: Why it isn’t strategic to always be rational ► https://bigthink.com/the-well/system-... ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- About The Well Do we inhabit a multiverse? Do we have free will? What is love? Is evolution directional? There are no simple answers to life’s biggest questions, and that’s why they’re the questions occupying the world’s brightest minds. So what do they think? How is the power of science advancing understanding? How are philosophers and theologians tackling these fascinating questions? Let’s dive into The Well. ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Join The Well on your favorite platforms: ► Facebook: https://bit.ly/thewellFB ► Instagram: https://bit.ly/thewellIG

personaldevelopment

Personal Development

videos

Videos

scienceandnature

Science & Nature

genetics

Stashed ideas

Is success genetic? | Kathryn Paige Harden

The first rule of success is to have a vision. Without a goal, you will drift around and never get anywhere. When Arnold Schwarzenegger was 11 years old, he walked past a store and saw a magazine with Reg Park on the cover. Reg Park was then a three-time Mr Universe. Arnold knew this was what he wanted to do. He wanted to become a bodybuilding champion, get into movies and be rich just like Park.

Have a vision

74% of people in America don't like what they're doing because they just follow aimlessly, drifting around. Then they fill the first job opening they can get but their work is a chore and not a joy.  Only a quarter of people really enjoy what they're doing in life.  When you have a goal, everything becomes easy. You will do what it takes to reach that goal. Visualising your goal and going after it makes it fun.

Drifting aimlessly without a goal

Nelson Mandela once said that everything is impossible until someone does it.  If you have naysayers who say what you want to do is impossible, show them that you can do it. Maybe it's never been done before, but that is fine. Put in the hard work and don't listen to the naysayers.

Don't listen to the naysayers

Arnold Schwarzenegger, former Mr. Olympia, Conan, Terminator, and Governor of California, delivers one of the best motivational speeches you will ever hear. ►Listen to this speech offline on the Mindset App: http://bit.ly/ArnoldMindset Special thanks to Jürgen Höller for partnering with us in the creation of this video! Subscribe to his channel for the full speech and more like it: https://bit.ly/JürgenHöllerYouTube Subscribe for new videos every week from the greatest minds: http://bit.ly/SubscribeHub "At the age of 20 I went to London and won the youngest Mr.Universe ever. And it was because I had a goal. So let me tell you something, visualizing a goal and going after it is fun. You have to have a purpose, no matter what, you have to have a purpose." ― Arnold Schwarzenegger If you know someone who could use this video, share it with them! ------------------------------------------------------------------- ►Speaker Arnold Schwarzenegger Schwarzenegger is known all over the globe for his many accomplishments: world champion bodybuilder, Hollywood action hero, successful businessman, environmentalist, philanthropist, best-selling author, and California's 38th Governor. Follow Arnold: YouTube: https://bit.ly/2DP2Wx3 https://www.instagram.com/schwarzenegger https://twitter.com/Schwarzenegger http://www.schwarzenegger.com/ ►Speech Credit Jürgen Höller - Power Days (Olympiahalle Munich) Special guest star: Arnold Schwarzenegger Follow Jürgen Höller: YouTube: https://bit.ly/JürgenHöllerYouTube ⁣⁣⁣Instagram: https://bit.ly/30Km6gC Facebook: https://bit.ly/3kAZ8jX Website: juergenhoeller.com ►Follow MotivationHub: YouTube: http://bit.ly/MotivationHubYouTube Facebook: http://bit.ly/MotivationHubFacebook Twitter: http://bit.ly/MotivationHubTwitter Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/motivationhub/ Website: http://bit.ly/MotivationHubWebsite Motivational Canvas Art: https://shop.motiversity.com/ Mindset App: https://link.mindsetapp.com/V21pnxiDThb ►Music: Whitesand - Story of the wind https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCe96JG5gdgSRtmqStx0isXA Audiojungle ►Video footage: All video footage used is licensed from Jürgen Höller or from various websites. 📝 Submissions Speeches: http://bit.ly/MHSpeakerSubmissions Music or Footage: http://bit.ly/MHMusicFootageSubmissions ►Disclaimer: This video was fully edited and licensed by the team at MotivationHub. Help us caption & translate this video! https://amara.org/v/C2Iiz/

motivationandinspiration

Motivation & Inspiration

arnoldschwarzenegger

Arnold Schwarzenegger Leaves the Audience SPEECHLESS | One of the Best Motivational Speeches Ever

People think about “being technical” in a binary way, there are software developers who know how to code, and there’s everyone else.Being technically literate simply means that you’re comfortable with the basics of how technology works, and critically, you understand the area you work in with more depth.

Technical literacy does not mean learning to code

<ul><li>The base: The basics of software and hardware.</li></ul> What’s a computer? What’s the internet? What’s a database?<ul><li>The domain: Deeper knowledge that’s relevant to your job.</li></ul> What products are we building, selling, and using? How do they work? What problems do they solve? How do our engineers build and use them? How do your team’s tools work?The point of being technically literate means understanding and working with developers, and being an expert at the tools you need to get your job done.

Useful and practical Technical literacy has two layers

If you work at a startup, chances are you’re going to need to collaborate with developers. That work could be internal on internal tools, integrations, providing expertise, etc. or it could be external marketing to, selling to, and recruiting developersDevelopers can be some of the most curious, thoughtful, and creative people to work with. But from afar, they can appear intimidating at best and downright scary at worst.Understanding the basics of what code is, how it works, and what developers are doing every day will help break down that barrier and engender collaborative relationships.

The importance of working with and understanding software engineers.

Product: Without understanding how software engineers work and the basics of what code they’re writing you’ll be looking at a black box. Effectively prioritizing feature work, keeping tight timelines, and aligning stakeholders are all predicated on understanding the work your developers are doing. Recruiting: Technical literacy can help recruiters more quickly identify strong candidates, speak intelligently about internal engineering organizations, and articulate what kinds of interesting engineering problems candidates will get to work on.

Technical Literacy for common roles (1/2)

Marketing: Even if your product isn’t explicitly focused on developers, every startup eventually needs to build a developer program (see Slack and Twitter). Without technical literacy, marketers will be in the dark on how to effectively speak to and engage with this potentially lucrative audience.Sales: Developers are notorious for disliking being sold to, so the process requires a specific approach. You need to understand typical developer workflows especially as they relate to the product you’re selling as well as what makes your company’s product compelling to this technical audience.

Technical Literacy for common roles (2/2)

The better you understand the software your team relies on, the more proficient you’ll be in it. This already happens naturally: teams that are large enough will usually have one “power user” who seems to know the ins and outs of Salesforce, Lever, or whatever your team runs on. You want to be that person. Becoming a true power user requires hours of reading documentation, finding tutorials online, and engaging with the community around whichever tool you’re focused on.

Technical literacy on the job: working with tools

The tools you use day-to-day integrate with other parts of your company’s stack. Lever job postings might be displayed on your marketing website with Lever acting as the CMS; Intercom might be pulling user-level data from your data warehouse.Understanding them means the difference between something getting fixed immediately and something getting fixed in a couple of weeks.The more technically literate you get, the more of these small opportunities you’ll find in between the cracks of your company’s toolchain — and the more impactful you’ll be.

Technical literacy and integrations

Being technically literate can often mean the difference between being self-sufficient and getting delayed by engineering resources.

Start by taking a look at your company and your role, and where you think being more technical could give you an edge. Earlier we identified a couple of areas:<ul><li>Understanding and working with developers</li><li>Being an expert at your toolchain</li></ul>If you’re a marketer, you’ll want to focus on cultivating an understanding of the developer persona, as well as diving into specific topics like email deliverability/how data moves between systems. Be specific about what you want to learn. A useful question to ask is: “Where have I lost out by not being technical?”

Starting your technical journey: Make a plan

If you’re working in startups, you’re already surrounded by people who spend their entire days doing what you’re trying to learn a little bit about software.In this arena, you’ll want to come prepared. Structured conversations with questions you’ve thought of in advance are a much better use of a developer’s time than aimless curiosity. Try focusing on the areas you’re weakest in, and do research in advance so you’re not putting the entire learning burden on someone else

Find a developer friend or two

There aren’t many places on the web with curated resources you can just read through so you’re going to need to be scrappy. The best content for explaining tech concepts sits in two places:<ul><li>YouTube. It has a lot of garbage, but it can be a goldmine for visual explanations of technical concepts. The most useful videos are not always the flashiest or best-produced ones.</li><li>Company-specific blogs. These are harder to find, but generally, the best content for any individual concept comes from a company that makes money off said concept.</li></ul>

Get good at Google

Understanding how programming works, what a language is, and basic patterns like packages and version control will help you across the board:<ul><li>You’ll have a concrete understanding of what developers actually do</li><li>You’ll be able to write simple scripts and work with tools to automate your work</li><li>You’ll get a first-person view of the tools developers use today (React, Redux, etc.)</li></ul>Think about something cool you’d want to build or automate maybe a tip calculator or something to send emails and try focusing on learning what you need to build that specific thing

You don’t need to learn how to code to be technically literate

Once you’ve built your plan and started looking around the web for helpful content, you’ll likely come across some usual suspects in your particular field who are creating useful stuff. Follow them, A few examples:<ul><li>Benn Stancil’s Substack on data strategy and tools</li><li>Corey Quinn’s newsletter about AWS (and his entertaining <a href="https://twitter.com/QuinnyPig">T</a>witter)</li><li>Vicki Boykis’s newsletter about tech and tech culture</li><li>My Technically newsletter on getting more technical</li></ul>You might not understand everything you read, but diffusion is powerful and you’ll be surprised how quickly you improve.

Find influencers and experts in your space

Technical literacy is key to career success, even for non-engineers. Learn how to master the tools of your trade and build a solid tech foundation.

communication

Communication

startup

Startups

computerscience

Computer Science

digitalliteracy

How to Excel in Tech Without Learning to Code

There isn’t just one cause – the pandemic has pushed underlying issues to the surface, triggering a widespread re-evaluation of what’s important in our work lives. One thing that will always be on that list, however, is good management.The data suggests bad management is a real and significant issue. According to data from DDI’s Frontline Leader’s Project, 57% of people have left a job to get away from a bad manager. In fact, Gallup found that 70% of the variance in employee engagement depends on the manager.

It’s not me, it’s you

Few managers ask themselves the hard questions: Am I the reason people are leaving? Was it because of something I did, or something I didn’t do? They assume they’re not the problem, their employees are.A <a href="http://www.leadershipiq.com/blogs/leadershipiq/35354241-why-new-hires-fail-emotional-intelligence-vs-skills">survey of 5,247 hiring managers</a> who’d hired 20,000 employees said that after 18 months 46% of newly hired employees failed and only 20% achieved success.And what was the biggest takeaway for managers interviewed? They needed better interview processes to weed out the failures before they joined their teams.But the common denominator isn’t the employees. It’s the managers.

Management overconfidence

<ul>
<li>You should always be asking for peer review on a people management problem before you take action, whether that’s from your own manager or your HR team. </li>
<li>Don’t blame, own. As a manager, it’s all too easy to abdicate responsibility and blame the person on the other side of the table when they are not doing as well as you’d like.</li>
<li>Giving feedback is your most powerful tool for growing your people and your team. It’s also one of the hardest to get right. </li>
<li>Celebrate your team’s successes and let team members know they’re making an impact.</li>
</ul>

How to better support your team

57% of people have left a job to escape a bad manager. So what does good management look like, and how can it keep your team happy?

corporateculture

Corporate Culture

humanresources

Human Resources

leadershipandmanagement

Leadership & Management

People leave managers, not companies – 4 ways to better support your team

British scientist and Professor of Social Interaction Elizabeth Stokoe found that changing one word in a question can lead to more positive outcomes. Market leaders establish a strong position in the mind of the prospect by focusing attention on a surprisingly small amount of information. Market leaders find a way to own a word. For example, Google owns "search", Facebook owns "social", Oracle owns "database", HubSpot owns "inbound".&nbsp;

If You Want To Dominate Your Market, Pick A Word.

Pick a word or phrase that no other company in your space claims.&nbsp; If generic terms are taken, try to mix terms from related industries. It will improve your marketing ROI and differentiate you from "Me-Too" approach to content.&nbsp;

Pick a word to own

One word can change the direction and outcome of your conversation. Elizabeth Stokoe, a British scientist and Professor of Social Interaction, found in her experiments with mediation services that…

marketingandsales

Marketing & Sales

How Industry Leaders Create Strong Brands

But what stopped us wasn’t the spend, it was the feel  . Every dollar you spend is a vote, and we were casting hundreds of thousands of votes for big companies that are tracking people’s every step, every move, every curiosity, and every detail of their lives. Fuck that. 

Our new Basecamp Referral Program splits $100 between existing customers and new customers rather than putting it in the pocket of those that track your every move online.

If someone signs up, pays, and stays a customer for at least 75 days, we’ll Paypal you $50 cash. That person you referred will save $50 on their first month. You don’t need to apply to be part of the referral program. Click on the link below to send your link to anyone you want.

Introducing the Basecamp 3 Referrer Program.

Many Referrer programs pay you in credit towards the product you’re using. If you’re on someone else’s Basecamp account, then your referral would give them credit. You wouldn’t see any of that cash. Not good either.

Designed differently

Ideally, we’d love to see every customer we have bring us just one more customer a year. That would be an amazing outcome.

One for One

If you aren’t already a Basecamp 3 customer, but you’ve been considering it, now’s a great time to try. <a href="https://3.basecamp.com/r/7" target="_self">Use my referrer link </a>and you’ll save $50 off your first month. And I’ll donate the $50 that I’d be getting to the <a href="https://www.chicagosfoodbank.org/" target="_self">Chicago Food Depository </a>.&nbsp;

Save yourself $50 and do some good

Last year we experimented with running ads on Facebook, Google, and Twitter. All-in we spent 6 figures on the experiment. And then we stopped. But what stopped us wasn’t the spend, it was the feel…

Paying customers, not paying Facebook, Google, or Twitter.

<a href="http://polycraftgame.com/">Polycraft </a>is a fun browser-based tower defense strategy game reminiscent of the original Warcraft games. It uses a cartoony low-poly style and it’s suitable for children or adults. The gameplay is smooth, fast-paced, and engaging, and it’s packed with quests and prompts to help you find your way.

1. Polycraft

<a href="https://playcanv.as/p/JtL2iqIH/">Swooop </a>is a fun and challenging game where you fly an airplane around an island in the sky collecting gems and trying not to run out of fuel and crash. A great way to kill a few minutes if you’re bored. It plays a bit like Flappy Bird, but I like the graphics a lot better. And you can fly in loops.

2. Swooop

Swooop was built with a 3D game engine and production environment that lets you build 3D and Webvr games right in your Browser. It’s called Playcanvas, and it’s the best Javascript-Native game engine I’ve seen to date.

3. PlayCanvas

Polarr is a world-class photo editor suitable for professional photographers who may be using tools like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop. It works in Browsers, on Android and Ios devices, and allows photographers to create and share filters.

4. Polarr

<a href="https://usecubes.com/">Usecubes </a>is an easy and fun way to build 3D models using … you guessed it. Cubes. If you’re into pixel and voxel art, this is the app for you.

5. Usecubes

<a href="https://sketchfab.com/">Sketchfab </a>is a great platform for 3D artists that lets you upload, share, discover, embed, and even edit 3D content in the browser.

6. Sketchfab

<a href="http://www.flowkey.com/en">Flowkey </a>is a great app that teaches you how to play piano. It uses web APIs to access your microphone so it can interact with and respond to you as you play along.

8. Flowkey

Now that you’re making amazing music, it’s time to share it with the world. What better way than to upload it to <a href="https://soundcloud.com/stream">SoundCloud </a>, where you can share playable embeds across the web?

9. SoundCloud

<a href="https://www.duolingo.com/">Duolingo </a>is a great PWA (Progressive Web App) for learning languages. It has over 120 million users, for good reason. In my opinion it’s the best language learning app on the market.

10. Duolingo

The web offers the lowest friction experience for users, too. Since there’s nothing to install, deciding whether or not to try a web app is a no brainer. Just hit the URL and start using the app.All of the new apps I build will be <a href="https://medium.com/javascript-scene/native-apps-are-doomed-ac397148a2c0" target="_self">progressive web apps</a>. The web has grown up. It’s time to take it seriously.

Web Apps Are The Future

JavaScript was born in 1995, and lived half its life as a toy language that people didn’t take very seriously. Today, JavaScript is the most popular programming language in the world, and it’s being…

10 Must See Web Apps & Games

<ul><li>January 2016: Nestor becomes the 1st company to manage their payroll with PayFit. It was the first time they ran payroll. </li><li>January, February, March 2016: Merci Handy, Heetch, Alan are among the first ten companies who become our beta users. </li><li>April 2016: PayFit is launched, and 14 companies are already paying and enjoying PayFit. Pretty exciting! </li><li>May 2016: our Content manager Margaux arrives. </li></ul>

1. What happened before, during and right after the launch of PayFit?

Customers often had to add new employees and their payroll variables, to get their Payslips right. We often had to remind them to add new employees and their payroll variables, to get their Payslips right. We saw a great opportunity for us to ease the lives of our customers even more.

2. Self-Onboarding

In October 2016, we reached Product-Market fit. We decided to raise funds (5M€ with Otium and Kima) to give a boost to our growth. Within four months, between October 2016 and February 2017, we recruited two batches of sales (6 people in total) as a newcomer to this market, we had to make twice as much effort as our competitors to be heard by our prospects. As a newcomer to this market,

1. Our biggest Sales challenge: build trust

Payfit is one of the fastest-growing Saas companies in Europe. To reach their targets, our sales team needed to have enough leads they could work on. Our marketing team is split between one content manager, MARGAUX, and one lead generation manager, Clément S. to reach their targets, our sales team needed to have enough leads they could work on.

2. Salespeople are the experts

Payfit's Onboarding process is a very time-consuming process. It's easy and intuitive to be Onboarded on Payfit, prospects are more willing to sign the contract, and the sales cycles become shorter. With the help of Charles, Thomas and two Siders, we managed to guarantee a gentle transition for the 150 new customers that we welcomed in January. If you have any questions, feel free to contact us at Info@ Payfit.Com.

3. Onboarding focus

With a small team of motivated and smart people we succeeded in reaching amazing targets. In less than a year, we had reached our 1ST goal: 100K€ monthly recurring revenue (Mrr). If we wanted to keep on growing fast with such a fantastic team, we needed to be more organized. This is when I decided to dig into concepts such as “sales predictability” or “sales machines” (from

4. From 100K€ MRR to our first SDR

Here were our challenges : <ul><li>How do we grow sustainably a team from 7 to 22 within seven months? </li><li>What KPIs do we need to build to measure performance both at an individual and team levels? </li><li>How do we align the Lead Generation, SDR and Sales objectives? </li><li>How do we go from 800 to 1600+ clients and make their onboarding as smooth as possible? </li></ul>

🏎 Phase 3: Scaling THE Growth Team (Sept. 2017 — now)

The sales team already had its Metrics to measure performance (First-Month Mrr closed), so we needed to find a way to measure the performance of our SDR’S. We finally found out Pmrr (Payfit Mrr? performance Mrr? we still haven’t found what falls behind these letters yet) and growth Pmrr. Growth Pmrr refers to the total value of deal created by SDRs and added to our sales pipelines whereas Pmrr is a derivation of it ..

1. The development of 2 main KPIs: Growth PMRR & PMRR

Lead Generation objectives being set, we still wanted to maintain or improve two ratios to ensure acquisition budgets were being optimized over time: <ul><li>Ratio Efficiency = Growth PMRR / Cost : if 1€ investment generates 3€ Growth PMRR, then if we invest 2€, it should generate at least 7€ Growth PMRR. </li><li>Ratio Productivity = Derivative of Efficiency / , that should be an increasing function. </li></ul>

2. Align Lead Generation with Sales targets

We had different objectives in mind when we first started to work on this plan: <ul><li>Better and fairer pay the Sales Team depending only on the MRR they’ve signed. </li><li>Propose a real acceleration bonus for the best performers. </li><li>Encourage teamwork. </li><li>Define precise and reachable targets. </li><li>Avoid as much as possible report effects. </li></ul>

3. How can we scale Sales?

From June 2017, we started to share an excel template to our customers so that they could fill it by pulling data from their previous solution automatically. Our back office automatically pushes employees to Payfit and after adding health insurance contracts, our client can directly use his new account. Today, one Onboarder can absorb the flow of new customers created by 6 sales. A bit less than two years after we recruited our first sales, we now have 11 sales and 13 SDRs. All of them are very happy to come to work and.

3. How did we scale Onboarding?

Here we are, in May 2018, with a solid basis on which we can rely for the coming months. We’re still at the very beginning of what we want to achieve with PayFit. And even if we’ve successfully passed different tests, we still have a lot of challenges ahead of us. We plan to triple our MRR by January 2019.

🚀 Phase 4: To infinity and beyond

Obviously if we want to grow we need to create more sales opportunities. But higher volume of leads doesn’t mean lower quality. Actually this should be the contrary as we’ll have more data to analyze with our growth. This is going to be very interesting to see the Lead Generation Team tackle this challenge.

1. Generating more pipe without compromising quality

While we are expecting to have 45 to 50 reps within the SDR &amp; Sales Team, we are exploring how we can sustain performance on both the individual and team levels.&nbsp;

2. SDR & Sales Team organization

Technology offers a wide range of optimization for our Onboarding Team. We are planning to use OCR to scrap data on the payslips, pull data history from DSN (API to communicate with payroll &amp; taxes institutions), or improve data imports directly on holding.

3. Go further on the onboarding scale

Here is how PayFit Growth Team managed its growth and which processes they set up to scale, since the launch in April 2016.

The PayFit Growth Machine

In the early-stage, a startup’s brand is a reflection of the founder’s ethos, values and beliefs. It is an extension of you. This is why it’s important to understand your personal identity and the events that have occurred to shape your identity.As you dig deeper to understand more about your life story, you will learn the truths behind what motivates you and why you do the things you do.

Step 1: Tell your life’s story

After you have told your life’s story, review it, and pick out the words that resonate with you the most. These words can be your values such as honesty, integrity, and loyalty or they could be words related to your product or service.You want to unload all the words that are associated with your brand. Don’t think too much and just write them all down without second-guessing yourself. The purpose here is to get all of your ideas on paper first so you can review them later.&nbsp;

Create a word cloud

Often times, brand inspires us to pursue things that are greater than ourselves.&nbsp;Quotes and idioms also aspire you to become something more. Great quotes would always have a philosophical basis, which makes them inspiring in the first place.

Research quotes that are related to your values

In this step, you want to visualize what your brand would look like by collecting images that would evoke the type of emotions that you want your audience to feel.

Collect images that are related to your values and product

By conducting a competitive analysis, you will understand how to uniquely position your brand against your competitors.

Conduct a competitive analysis

The key to crafting a great brand narrative starts with nailing down the top 2 to 3 values you want to convey.&nbsp;If you’ve done the work, the ideas will come to you

Create your brand narrative

Over the years I’ve developed a lean branding framework that enables early-stage entrepreneurs to quickly put together a brand that’s meaningful. If you are an early-stage entrepreneur, chances are…

The Quick and Dirty Guide to Building Your Startup Brand

The customer acquisition funnel is a process of tracking and monitoring how effective the company is in attracting, engaging, converting, and retaining its customers.

The customer acquisition funnel 

<ul><li>Customer Lifecycle helps companies understand how customers are experiencing your product and what actions they are taking.</li><li>Sales Funnel shows internal processes that companies need to follow in order to move prospects down the funnel effectively and efficiently.</li></ul>

What is the difference between a customer lifecycle and a sales funnel?

There are six stages the customer has to go through: Visitor->Prospect->Activated User->Customer->Active Customer->Loyal Customer.<ul><li>Each stage that a customer goes through is preceded by a specific action.</li><li>The effectiveness of each stage needs to be tracked and optimized with conversion metrics.</li><li>For products that have free trials, it’s crucial to track ‘Activated Users’. This metric is an important checkpoint for measuring intermediate steps between the ‘prospect’ and ‘customer’ stages.</li><li>Companies need to know how often customers use their product/solution and how much value they derive from it.</li></ul>

Customer Lifecycle Funnel

Whereas the customer lifecycle is driven by customer actions and tracks how they experience the product and company, the ultimate goal of the sales funnel is following specific actions, processes, and workflows to track and optimize the sales process effectiveness.Questions that your sales funnel has to answer:<ul><li>How does your team prioritize leads?</li><li>How does your team nurture prospects?</li><li>What prospect actions correlate higher with closed deals?</li><li>How long does it take for your SDR team to reach out to leads that reach a qualifying lead score?</li><li>How long is your sales cycle?</li></ul>

Sales Funnel

<ul><li>The common mistake companies make is creating too much awareness content and not enough educational, selection, and training content since it requires more resources.</li><li>Educational content impacts almost every step in the customer lifecycle and sales funnel. </li><li>While marketing should own content strategy, it is critical to have your sales and customer success teams participate in the content strategy formulation and content creation. As you noticed, content strategy spreads through each step of the customer lifecycle and the sales funnel.</li></ul>

How Content Strategy Drives Customer Acquisitions

<ul><li>Content strategy is only for the marketing team</li><li>Not creating a clear positioning and story</li><li>Starting with content before creating target customer profiles</li><li>Focusing too much on awareness content and not enough on educational</li><li>Not taking content distribution seriously</li><li>Giving up too quickly.</li></ul>

The Biggest Content Marketing Strategy Mistakes

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