Imagine Marketing as the act of catching fish. 

Different terms that’ll be used are:

Marketing 

Market

Marketing channel

Lead source

Lead magnet

Lead generation

Lead nurturing 

Sales conversion

The “Market” represents a body of water where fish live (or customers exist). Markets have to be networked in such a way that customers can talk to each other. 

“Customer Leads” are possible fish you can catch. 

Your “Lead Source” (marketing channel) are ponds, lakes, rivers, or oceans that you can go fish at. 

Your “Lead Magnet” is the fishing bait you’re using. How relevant and tasty the bait is to the fish you’re catching determines how often they’ll bite. 

The act of “Lead Generation” is the act of  fishing at your local body of water (Lead Source). To catch a lot of fish, you need to make the drive over to your local river as often as possible. 

When fishing, “Lead Nurturing” is the act of reeling the fish in until the fish gets close enough to the shoreline and you use your fishing net to close the deal and “Sales Convert”. The stronger the initial hook, the more engaged the lead will be as you draw them closer. 

Through a union we call a “marriage”, a husband and wife create a tree that must be nurtured.

The branches that form on the tree represent their offspring and the couple have a duty to keep the branches safely intact until they’re ready to be propagated.  

To manage the tree, the roots of the tree (values) must be protected. What keeps the roots healthy and branches intact are a combination of the right nutrients: sunlight, water, soil. 

The sunlight is love, water is communication, and the soil represents human needs. Proper flow of communication makes it possible for us to express love and our needs.

To grow a healthy tree as parents, the places our energy must flow runs deeper.

The goal in business is to generate results.

Precursors — data, decisions, actions

Data is a precursor to decisions. 

Decisions are precursors to action.

And actions, to results.

Input, process, output

Data is information that is inputted into our minds.

Which we then process by analyzing the information using heuristics and logics.

Decisions are made which stimulates action. And with the correct action, we get results.

Therefore…

Data is the First Principles of (possibly) generating results.

High quality data means accurate information.

High quantity of data means greater statistical significance. 

Effective communication of all of this data allows for faster processing, decision making, actions, and ultimately, results.

Today, I want to highlight a value that drives us: Curiosity.

Imagine the limitless wonder of a child. That’s the curiosity we aim to bring to our work. There’s no ceiling to what our minds can absorb and how we can grow.

Let’s stay eager to learn and open to change. Our curiosity is not just about finding answers, but about enjoying the journey of discovery.

Together, let’s embrace each day with the joy of learning and the spirit of exploration.

Continuous Improvement Mindset Recipe List: 

1. High personal standards that challenge the status quo
2. Strong belief that achievement of these high standards are possible
3. An understanding that consistent, compounding progress is the key to creating lasting significant change
4. A genuine desire and positive attitude to do better

Today, I want to share a few of many personal experiences that have fueled my continuous improvement journey throughout these years:

1. Writing
2. Reading
3. Strength training

Writing

Writing has never been easy for me. From elementary school all the way up to college, I’ve always struggled with writing essays. Math was typically easy (to a certain point), but I have vivid memories of always struggling with writing. Even in business, I can recall countless the countless hours I spent refining a single business email. I experienced brain fog, and the entire process of articulating my thoughts into words while expressing my personality was difficult. As I continued to practice, I improved but not overnight. In hindsight, the huge leaps in improvement is only noticeable years later. 

Reading

It feels like yesterday when I started my habit of active reading and learning. I started roughly 12 years ago at a coffeeshop where I often studied in Koreatown, Los Angeles. I remember sitting down one day; I opened a book (I think it was Peter Lynch’s: One Up On Wallstreet), and I couldn’t get past the first page for over 30 minutes! I remember my eyes getting dry and tears forming in my eyes from yawning from the severe cognitive strain. But I kept at it for the next 30 days. There were marginal improvements and no significant improvements initially. What motivated me was, I reasoned that being steadfast and consistent was the only way I would ever get good at reading because improvements were so slow.

Strength Training

I think I l have one of the worst genetic types for gaining strength and muscle. When I was 18, I started working out. All of my friends that I worked out with made me question if I had some sort of testosterone deficiency. It’s possible. Although my friends and I would still meet up for the gym, I started going to the gym by myself more often. I was able to comfortably experiment and learn what works for me, and eventually developed my own unorthodox strength training routine. my body responded better to significantly less volume, which I believe allowed my central nervous system to recover much faster than before. Strength gains were exponential which surprised my friends. But, as with anything you keep at it long enough, I experienced occasional setback injuries which slowed my rate of growth. So as these setbacks slowed down my speed of progress, I reasoned that the only way I could sustainable grow was to be more consistent than everyone else. 

Practical Process for Implementation — Copy, then Innovate

“Copy, then innovate” is my own iteration of the quote “good artists copy, great artists steal”. For anything I’m not an expert at (most things), I copy and leverage existing work as a baseline and then add my own twist to it. I’ve successfully applied this tactic to writing, where I would save well-written emails, deconstruct the sentences, and extract the words and phrases that I liked so that I can use it later. I would copy others until their writing became my own.

Takeaway

Never, ever, let anything you’re not good at now demotivate you from continuously improving at it. If anything, it’s more of a reason why you should put in more effort, daily.  

To start the day, I want to share why I believe the continuous improvement core value is so vital to organizational existence.

In our business journey, we often fall into the trap of believing that our current level of product and service differentiation is sufficient to captivate the vast market.

This belief, while seductive, overlooks a fundamental truth. What we create can often be replicated, especially by industry giants with more resources.

So, how do we carve out our unique space in this competitive world?

By differentiating something far more challenging for others to mimic: our selves. Let’s build a culture that hungers for continuous change.

One-time change may be achievable for many, but the will to continuously evolve is is what gives Starbond our competitive edge.

Lately, I’ve been thinking about the concept of change; how so many people want to change but struggle to.

I want to share the 5 most powerful drivers of change that I’ve used over these years to continuously change:

1. Who you get up for in the morning
2. Rather than your behavior, try reframing your identity
3. Change your environment
4. Decide to change now, thank yourself later
5. Believe it’s possible

Your Who

Whether the person you get up for each day is yourself or your family, do it for them. 

To me, it’s my mom who has gotten up for me for over 30 years to cut hair at a hair salon for 12 hours a day, even while fighting through breast cancer. 

Try Identity

There’s a saying that goes “you are what you repeatedly do”. Isn’t there some truth to this? 

But that also means we can have many different identities. 

If you want to exercise and train, become an athlete. 

Don’t just run, be a runner. 

Although it took me many years of feeling “imposter syndrome”, I’ve “faked it til’ I made it” (sometimes 🌝)

Change your environment

You will be shocked to know how much your environment influences behavior

This concept is discussed in various books ranging from Atomic Habits to even Lean methodology’s ABC model. 

In summary, there are things in our environment that act as cues, triggers to decisions, actions, and positive or negative consequences

Decide to change now, thank yourself later

Sometimes, people let the idea of perfect change be the enemy of action. 

It’s okay to change now and not be perfect. 

But it’s important to make the decision and to change (for the better) sooner because this commitment that can be made in a matter seconds is what typically takes year.

It’s possible

Have faith that no matter how big and how new the change is, it’s possible.