[UP 005] 7 Fears / Spears over Nets / AI Content Plans

New week. New UP email.

Seatbelts on? Good. Let’s gooo!

Personal Growth: 7 Fears

I came across this little list by when reading a book summary this week.

(With a title like ‘Victory Favors the Fearless’, I wasn’t not going to sample it)

But it was no ordinary list.

It was a list of the universal human fears we all face that get in our way.

1. The fear of other’s opinions

2. The fear of change

3. The fear of mistakes

4. The fear of missing out on something better.

5. The fear of not being good enough

6. The fear of failure being permanent

7. The fear of being ‘due’ for a setback

Reflecting on this was an interesting exercise.

I’ve realized I’ve been led by these fears at different times in my life. And with different levels of intensity too.

My Teens? The fear of other’s opinions.

My 20s? The fear of missing out on something better.

Now? The fear of not being good enough.

What about you - What’s your current main fear? And how can you turn it around?

For example, with me right now, I’m spinning a positive narrative by reminding myself of all the previous times I was deemed ‘not good enough’.

And how in those specific cases I learned, iterated, and went back again, to eventually be ‘good enough’.

Gotta keep reminding our default negative thinking of our past successes.

And a reminder that fears are just distortions of reality.

We can choose to give them power. Or we can choose to take their power away by rewriting and changing our beliefs around them.

Can’t be scared of the boogeyman if you don’t believe in him.

Business Growth: Spears Over Nets

Let’s talk spears.

Not the Britney kind.

No, more the violent, primal, hunter kind.

Yup. That’s better.

When it comes to getting your business off the ground, those first few sales are crucial. And having a hunter’s mentality is a pretty useful metaphor.

In the book ‘Predictable Revenue’ by Aaron Ross, using Salesforce as a case study, he outlines a great framework for sales putting this hunter’s mentality into action.

It’s a great way to think about the timing and priority of your growth efforts and different stages.

Here’s a very quick breakdown:

First Phase - Spears 

These are sales that you get from one on one outbound efforts.

Think of cold emails, DMs, and phone calls. These are free to do. You just need discipline!

Definitely my least favourite of the three, but one I realize I really need to embrace right now trying to get things moving from zero.

Beginner’s key metric to track: 1 to 1 outbound messages sent

Second Phase - Nets

These are sales that come from one-to-many communications.

Think of paid ads, webinars, e-books, and content marketing.

The leads that come in through one-to-many efforts are usually very warm. But it’s best served with a side dish of spear-based prospecting when starting out as it takes time for these to come in regularly.

Beginner’s key metric to track: Impressions per content piece

Third Phase - Seeds

Finally, we come to the sales that come from many to many efforts.

These are leads that come from word of mouth, referrals, affiliates and PR.

These are perhaps the hottest leads but often the ones that will take the longest to come to fruition when earning them, which is best. But these can be paid for too. Slowly combining nets with seeds is a great winning formula.

Beginner’s key metric to track: audience holder outbound messages sent

How am I applying this to ASN?

Right now I’m still in the stages of customer interviewing, so this is being done right now with one-to-one messaging using social media.

I’m also in the process of building out our content strategy to activate our nets phase (which you’ll read in just a second).

And seeds? I have that planned once we have our product happily received and reviewed. I’ll then get it in the hands of some specific influencers.

Audience Growth: AI Content Plans

This was fun.

This week I plotted out our startup’s organic content strategy in order for us to start getting discovered. All using AI.

I wanted to get down:

• What we’ll talk about.

• For at least five different topics.

• With specific examples.

To begin with I had to start with a framework that I knew I wanted to use already.

(But in hindsight, AI could have easily provided me one had I asked it haha)

I used the ‘Five Stages of Awareness’ framework by Eugene Schwartz.

(And fun fact, his original book is going for over £300 on Amazon 👀. Of course you have my permission to gift this to me this Christmas.)

Here’s a quick look at the stages:

So how do we convert this into a content plan?

Here’s the prompt I used to get the project started.

You are a content marketing manager for a DTC high protein, low sugar snacks brand. Using the 'Five Stages of Awareness’ framework by Eugene Schwartz, create a table with at least five topic ideas for each stage. 

And it wasn’t too bad. Needs a little refinement for sure but it’s a good starting point.

Here’s a little sample:

Next steps?

Refine the prompt so the output is more aligned with the stages.

(For example, the first example generated in the ‘product aware’ column is a more ‘problem aware’ idea.

Likewise the second ‘unaware’ idea is more of a ‘problem aware’ idea.)

AI’s cool n’ all. But it still needs a human eye to go over I’m afraid.

Anyway, once done, I’ll then turn it into content that is contextual. At the very least contextual to…

• Our target avatars

• How content performs best on Instagram (our chosen first platform).

• Our product

Next week I’ll work on improving this.

But that’s your lot for this week. Thanks for being here. Have a great weekend!

‘Til next Saturday.

Your pal Utkarsh