I know for a fact that many people buy from me based almost solely on the fact of trust. Are my services the cheapest in my industry? Hell no, not by a long shot!

But what my clients do know about me is that I am trustworthy, and will deliver what a I promise. I also don’t make promises I cannot keep, which is something that most “business people” do all of the time.

Thanks for the refreshing and unique look at being a businessman.

[...] at least a pretty unsatisfying guideline. But it’s my way of trying to avoid the “sexy umbrella” syndrome, a.k.a. “manipulating people into paying me money for my work when the simple [...]

[...] mentioned before my attempts to suss out a philosophy of marketing. I’ve got plenty of sussing left to do, but [...]

Congrats on saying fuck that ye olde recession. You make me think I should have taken that offer more than a year ago, but glad you found the right person on the west coast :)

–nico

“Somewhere on the interwebs I recently read a great analogy between successful companies and animals in a zoo; the tactic of the turtle is wildly different from the tactic of the lion, but they can each lay claim to tremendous success in their own way.

I believe that to be true. So it is with that huge caveat in mind that I offer my own take on marketing for a small Mac dev.”

I really ought to have included something to this effect in the body of this post.

–

@tony Whether they follow that advice or not doesn’t matter to me so much as whether they seriously consider the possibility that those expenses might not be necessary. I am puzzled by your critique. I’m planning on hiring at least one and possibly two people in the coming year. The graph above indicates that this strategy has not been unhealthy for my company, and in particular has not prevented growth. So…yeah, I don’t think I understand your point.

@Ron I’d certainly consider my paragraph on advertising the most vulnerable to criticism. For one thing, it doesn’t make any distinction between different kinds of advertising. Targeted AdWords for a piece of software and billboards that give soft drinks sex appeal are not the same sort of creature. I hoped, by introducing this post as a tentative set of initial impressions, that these ideas wouldn’t be taken as my idea of undeniable fact, but as observations worth serious consideration. Because, hey, here’s a company that does not advertise. And it’s kicking ass. During a recession. I think that’s enough evidence to at least consider how that could be happening, and whether that lesson might apply to other situations. (It certainly works for Zappos.)

Re: Companies: the organizational systems that keep a group of people working in concert are, yes, absolutely essential. As I said right at the top, the mechanisms of business are fascinating, wonderful, necessary things. My frustration comes when those systems start aping a human being. When apologies are diluted because they come from the company, rather than from a person. When support personnel are drained of a perspective, and given a stone-faced company line. When, in other words, we play the game that I am talking to some kind of transcendent company entity, rather than talking to a human being that happens to work within a structure that empowers them, leads them, and, yes, has a plan if they get hit by a bus.

@Dan Hey man! Nice to hear from you! Drop me a line, I’d love to hear what you’re up to.

Companies actually can be essentially living creatures, just as humans are actually societies of cells (mostly bacteria — not even human) who have both selfish interests and activities, and aggregate behavior that we accept as a new, larger “individual”. If you want your software to survive you (many programmers do not), then designing a company as an entity that is independent of the people in it is certainly a strategy to consider. Can I “trust” that I can still get support for your product if you’re hit by a bus? If you believe that a company “isn’t a real thing”, then you inspire little trust in that regard at all, despite your protestations of the importance of trust.