What You Need to Know Today: September 22
Good afternoon, Early Risers!
Here’s what you need to know today
TECH
The tech trend all experts should pay attention to. The average person makes 35 choices per week about what to eat, making the chance of bad choices high for busy people, says Suneel Gupta, the co-founder of the weight loss app Rise. Today, Rise launches a new product called CoachLine, a real-time personal assistant that will let anyone — either existing Rise subscribers or simply any consumer via SMS — connect with a team of human advisors working in a machine learning framework to get food advice on the fly (Tech Crunch). Basically, Rise is testing out Artificial Intelligence (AI) software. If you’re a personal trainer, dietician, or expert of any kind (health-related or not), then this news concerns you. As AI software becomes more reliable and affordable, in-person coaching will lose its appeal and value.
“But I can’t afford to buy AI software?” “How can I compete?” Easy. You need to understand the root of your customer’s problem. For example, if your client is busy and has trouble making good food choices on the fly, then an app where they can ask what to eat is NOT the best solution. Changing that person’s default decisions is better. Think about that. If you’re already busy, then ain’t nobody got time to ask an AI app what food they should order at a restaurant. The decision should already be made for them. Here’s how you do that.
+ How a 17-year-old musician built an audience of 300,000 in one year.
CAREER
How to sell a Volkswagen. You heard the news, for 7 years, VW software thwarted pollution regulations. Not good. Since this story broke VW stock has plummeted, customers are unhappy, and VW’s CEO might be out. The big lesson: don’t lie. So how does a company recover? How does VW sell more cars? I don’t actually know. But I do know a formula you can learn that will not only sell you more cars but anything. If you’re starting a business and you don’t have a lot of money to spend on marketing, this is the one skill you will have to learn.
+ “Don’t worry if I write rhymes, I write checks.” – P Diddy. A look inside the business of Ghostwriting.
“There are only three ways to grow a business, Increase the number of customers; Increase the average transaction value per customer; Increase the number of transactions per customer. We call it Customer Value Optimization or CVO,” says Ryan Deiss. Commit this to memory.
+ Your boss will love this… People who are right all the time have this one thing in common.
LIFESTYLE
How much time do you spend finding your path? (Use this calculation) [The amount of time it took you to do it last time] minus [the amount of time it will take you next time]. If you come up with something close to zero, then you’re running the path, doing it consistently and spending almost no time at all finding a path. You’ve already found one. On the other hand, if the first time it took you to write that novel was 8 years, and retyping it would take five days, you’re spending virtually all of your time finding out where you’re going, not actually typing. Which is why writing novels is more difficult than commuting to work, says Seth Godin. Here are a few more things Seth wants you to consider.
What really matters in life. “Thirty years from now, you won’t remember what cereal you chose at the grocery store. On your death bed, you won’t care which vacation cruise package you picked. You won’t recall whether you chose to see the romantic comedy or the action adventure (unless, of course, it’s another Die Hardmovie — those are great). None of these things will have mattered. What will matter is that you acted, that you made a contribution, that you decided to do something. Or that you didn’t. And that’s the point.” Jeff Goins wrote a great article on the art of making good decisions.
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#NOWYOUKNOW
The High Ground Maneuver
From Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert
There’s a reason that science demands a control case. Without the control, test results have no meaning. Yet we think we can judge [Carly] Fiorina’s job performance without a control. If there is no control, it ain’t science. And if it ain’t science, it is just guessing.
I know I haven’t changed your mind about Fiorina’s business skills yet. But I’m not done either. I was saving my best point for last.
I call this move The High Ground Maneuver, and by now my regular readers are alert to this method of persuasion. Read more here.
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