The Broken Fan Problem (And How To Fix It)

Every marketing director suffers from the broken fan problem.

I guarantee you're dealing with it right now.

Here's what it is and how to fix it.

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Transcript

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This is the Marketing Director Daily, and I'm Tim Parkin. I want to tell you today about what I call the broken fan problem. And I guarantee you're suffering from the broken fan problem. Because I was recently suffering from it, and I realized something really important about it. So let me tell you the story, and I'll tell you why it pertains to you, why I believe you're suffering from the broken fan problem, and how to fix it. And how fixing it will be fast and easy and could potentially be life-changing for you. So at night, when I go to sleep, it has to be cold. If I'm warm when I sleep, I don't sleep well. But if it's cold, I sleep like a baby. So I need a fan. I need air circulating. I need it to be cool. And recently our ceiling fan broke. And I am not a handyman of any kind. I can barely hang a picture on the wall, if that so I certainly can't fix the ceiling fan. So the ceiling fan breaks, and we go a day or two without the ceiling fan. And my sleep is suffering. And now it's been a week or so. The fan is still not fixed. I couldn't get someone out here. We had a hurricane here recently. And I've been struggling. And so finally I took it upon myself to buy a tower fan for the floor. If you don't know what that is, it's a giant tall pillar, four feet tall, and it's a fan, and it oscillates. It turns left and right and blows air. This one happens to be a smart tower fan, so it connects to your phone and your Wi-Fi. It has a schedule that turns on at night automatically. It shuts off in the morning automatically. It can light up and do all sorts of cool things. But the point is, now I have a fan in the bedroom and it makes it cool at night. It blows air in the room at night, and I can sleep amazingly. Super incredible, the best sleep I've ever had. All because I finally realized I had a problem that was annoying me, something I depended on and needed. And the solution wasn't that complicated. Yes, we need to still have the ceiling fan fixed, and yes, it's on my list to get someone out here to fix it. But in the interim, there was an alternative solution, an easy thing I could do immediately within my control and my budget to solve the problem. And it turns out it might be better than having a ceiling fan. This fan can do a lot of other cool things, and it's really nice, and it's super powerful, and it's quiet. It's amazing. And so my proposition to you is that in your marketing, or perhaps in your life like mine, there are little problems. Things that are annoying you, things that are lowering the quality of your experience, or affecting negatively your marketing. Maybe it's a certain tool you're using that isn't doing the right thing, or that had an update and they broke something, or they removed something that you needed. Maybe it's a channel that you're investing in that it's not working quite right, and you can't crack the code, you can't figure it out. Or maybe it's someone on your team, they're not getting the support that they need, and therefore it's causing you headaches, and they're coming to you with too many questions. Whatever it is, I guarantee there is something. You have some broken fan right now in your marketing or in your life that you're dealing with. And I would urge you to consider, step back and pause and think, how much is this really affecting me? It may seem small, like a little fly flying around, just buzzing and more of a bother. But in reality, if it affects you every day, if it's taking up some time every week, if it's lowering the ROI of your investment in a channel, if it's frustrating you and causing you to move slower than you should, that adds up every day, every week, and every month. And there are many solutions to these problems, but the problem is we often don't take the time to think about solving them. And in addition, if I'm honest, we often think about the ultimate long-term solution. We think about fixing the ceiling fan, which requires me to get someone to come out here to my house, requires someone who has some electrical capabilities. It requires us to go to the store and buy a new ceiling fan to replace it. There's a lot of steps in the way to doing that. And instead of that, there's a faster, easier, and arguably just as good, if not better, solution in me buying the tower fan that I bought that solves the same problem in a slightly different way, has some advantages. Is it on the ceiling? No, but it still works and it still gives me the result that I needed and it alleviates that pain in my life. And again, I think in our marketing, we encounter these broken fans all the time. Tools that don't deliver, tools that we've been using for a while. We've never considered the alternatives. Perhaps there's a better tool out there, a tool that you haven't heard about yet, or a tool that someone else is using for that thing you're doing. Maybe it's a new process. Maybe the way you do something could be optimized or improved. Maybe you have too many steps, or maybe you're missing a key step that would make it a lot easier, a lot faster, a lot better. Or with people, maybe someone just needs clear expectations that you need to take an hour and sit down with them and go through their work and set clear expectations with them, or give them the support that they need so they can stop coming to you continually with questions and with needing support. Or maybe it's you, maybe you need to go to your boss, to the CEO, to the president, to the founder, and sit down and say, help me understand how we look at this or how I should be looking at this. Whatever it is, I guarantee you there's at least one broken fan that you can think about right now. And I encourage you not to be like me, not to sit on this for weeks. Because it will add up, it will compound. And the longer you wait, the harder it becomes to solve. That the resistance builds up to a point where it becomes insurmountable. So, right now, today, take a moment and think about what is one broken fan in your marketing? Something you can do something about. Maybe you can't take the perfect action, but you can take some action to resolve it, to improve it, or just to think about it, to analyze it, to reflect, what could we do? And a good way to approach this is to just think and write down every possible option. Don't judge whether they're good or not, but just write down the things you could do to alleviate this pain, to solve this problem. And for me, it was getting a different type of fan. If I rejected that wholeheartedly from the beginning and said, no, it must be a ceiling fan, I would still have no fan today. And so you can't judge your options. You just have to list some and then look at them and say, which one can I do right now, today, to solve this problem, to move forward, to make progress. Because if we're honest, that's what marketing is about. It's not about perfection, it's about success, and it's about progress and creating performance and keeping things moving forward. So find the one broken fan in your marketing today and take the first step. Do something about it. Fix your broken fan. I guarantee you you have one, and I guarantee you if you fix it, you'll be a lot more comfortable every day.