One Step Removed… It Works with Embroidery Too!

From MS, who has the unfortunate job of simultaneously translating my speeches into Japanese:

“I am writing to let you know that your business/marketing concept of ‘one-step removed’ works in areas that are totally not related to business. For example: About 18 months ago, I began to learn haute-couture embroidery and I’ve I have been really into it. Last month, I completed a project – a project that had a clear design instruction on what materials (beads, threads, codes, raffias… etc.) to use where, and that is this (all black).

“Now, since there were many new techniques involved and I wanted to redo them on my own just to keep my memory fresh, I decided to use the same techniques and make something else. First, I was thinking of making a new design by myself, change colors… etc. etc. But then I remembered the ‘one-step removed’ philosophy and decided to only change one element – a color. So I decided to keep design the same, size the same, everything the same… but just new colors, so that I should have 50% of success rate.

“My embroidery teacher was so happy to see the new version with new color, and she is more than ever willing to share what she knows. Also, since I kept everything the same except the colors, it was really clear for me to spot when I messed up and how. It really boosted the quality of my learning experience as well.

“What you teach really works!!!!! “

From AS re being old:

“Having spent some time doing physical labor as a young man, I was conscious of the labor of the men who delivered supplies to my restaurant. From their trucks, they would unload 25-pound boxes of liquor and wine bottles, 30-pound packages of ribs, 50- and 60-pound beer kegs, and fully packed cartons of everything else. Some of these men remained on our route for 30 years. I watched them age along with me.

“Memorial Day weekend was always a busy time for the restaurant, and so deliveries would arrive in the days leading up to it all day, back-to-back. One weekend – about 10 years ago – I was, as always, watching the older deliverymen, worried a bit for their safety but mostly in awe of their ability to lift, drag, and pull the loaded handcarts and dollies.

“I asked Lou, who had been delivering to my restaurant for many years, how he did it. ‘Don’t know,’ he said. ‘I’m in constant pain, but I have a wife, and one of my kids is still in college. I have no choice.’

“I wanted to believe that if I had to, like Lou had to, I would find a way to do that kind of work at Lou’s age. But I didn’t know.

“Today, I was at a gas station and I saw a man in his mid-seventies, like me, rolling a handcart stacked more than six feet high with large boxes. I held the door for him and was about to compliment him on his tenacity, when I saw that he was delivering potato chips.”

From JS re my article on the Pareto Principle in the May 17  issue: 

“I was particularly interested in the returns (ROI) on the 10% allocated to ‘outside the box’ strategies – or, as you put it, ideas that are ‘far away from what has traditionally worked.’

“From my own experience managing budgets, I’ve typically used a 95/5 split, with the 5% dedicated to marginal changes. I found that beating the control was challenging, and the most effective gains came from small tweaks that, over time, compounded nicely.

“I generally avoided searching for the proverbial needle in the haystack. In the old Print world, the time required for testing and retesting made those more unconventional approaches too far outside my acceptable range. I suppose I was simply in a hurry… Dammit, I didn’t see 70 coming so quickly.”

My Response: You make a good point. I wonder if the difference was in the nature of our different markets. Your market was very large, but I see it as having been more stable because you were marketing to buyers of mainstream products. (Is that fair?)

I was a BIG believer in incremental improvements when our file was 100,000. I had more theories than a barn dog has ticks. (One day, I’ll tell you some and you will laugh at me!) But when our file size reached a million, all those incremental changes didn’t pan out. I tested and retested them because I wanted to believe them. But on test panels of 100,000 rather than 20,000, they didn’t work.

What made the difference were radical changes… like turning an investment newsletter into an international club of wealth seekers (The Oxford Club), which is still selling over $100 million a year in subscriptions 40 years later!