Author: Andrea Grassi

Promises are a real thing. Even though many of us might interpret them as volatile, less interesting, and sometimes feel they are a burden, they are not

Promises are great element to define how much you respect your word, how much you care about what you say and how you say it.

The way you keep promises also sets the bar on how much people can/will rely on you.
What would happen if you can’t be trusted?

If I had to give an advice it would be exactly this: Keep your promises.

One of the things I’m learning as an entrepreneur is understanding when marketing works and when it’s fake.

Many companies spend a lot in marketing and advertising.
I respect them, but I find myself thinking that advertising makes the game more complex than it should.

When you invest into a worthy product and you stand behind it, why should you advertise it?

The only form of advertising I like is explaining the product itself, but aside from that I wish that I’ll be able to sustain the business only thanks to word of mouth.

Word of mouth is probably the most powerful driver of all, because it allows you to grow with the user base.
An exponential growth is possible sometimes, but it’s not always a good thing because when you grow too fast you might end up loosing quality.

Facebook, twitter, amazon, aliexpress. Whatever the website, they have algorithms to show things you’re interested to and keep you navigating, searching, etc.

They all have features to keep on site, because their business depends on it. But what are they giving back?
Your attention (and your time) is worth it, at least for you, so what should you do? Should you spending it wandering in millions of product pages?

It’s easy to fall into this trap, because we end up in those sites searching for something.
The interesting thing about them is that there’s always this lingering thought that something interesting might come up, they create this suspence, this anticipation.
But what if you’re searching for something that’s not gonna be found?

What if your search can’t end today?
The questions is not relevant in the success per se, but it’s more interesting if you look at it from a timed perspective.
Translated it means: Did you waste time?

If you don’t find what you were looking for, then was that time well spent? The answer is obviously no, but that doesn’t mean that we learn from it because these systems “work like google, but you don’t think they are a search engine”, in fact we are fooled by them.

In a search engine after a few pages everything is clearly irrelevant, useless.
In social media and powerful ecommerce you might spend hours of your time searching for something, only to think that “you’re almost there”.

The endless search or scrolling through facebook posts reminds me of an old habit we can’t remove once learned. It’s hard to change habits, but all of these sites are habit-forming.
They create a standard behaviour that you will iterate day after day once you become accustomed to it.

Yet, you’re not aware. You don’t have an indicator that the search is gonna end because if you keep scrolling or navigating the related items there’s no end.
One door leads to another door, and while in a search engine we have “pages” to say that we’re too far and less contextual to what we were looking for, here the line is blurred and we honestly don’t know, we don’t have a way to say “ok, I won’t be getting any more useful information from here”.

Remember those times when you thought about your parents and you thought “I can do better. I won’t become like them“.

You knew that you could be different, that everything was clear and that you could improve it. It’s so easy right?

But how do you really do that? How do you avoid changing into something you didn’t expect/want to be?

I think that no matter what, when we are young we have still to define our main character. And with it many other things.
I think that even your worst enemy was once a nice guy. That the couples you watch fighting were once happy and in love.

They were perfect, they loved each other, but during the years many behaviours started to build up, to materialize, to become the default reaction.
You can’t pinpoint a date where it all changed because it’s a sum of many days, many actions, many ignorant choices.

And this is true for anyone. You either have the integrity to stay true to your belief or you change without noticing.
You become the ugly bad man.

You don’t change that fast, though. It takes years to make a change like this, but as with many things in life: it goes unnoticed.
You start reacting with too much rage.
Maybe you exaggerate some words, maybe you were stressed.
Maybe you saw someone acting harsh and you thought that it might work for you too, and you start emulating him from time to time.
Without noticing that time to time becomes your common reaction and you are “the guy that overreacts”, now you grow kids and you yell at them.

They watch you and say “I can do better, I won’t become like them“

Treasure your customers should be the number 1 priority of every business.

Think in long term, always seeking the best.