Best Practices Are The Worst Advice With Jay Acunzo From Unthinkable

Best Practices Are The Worst Advice With Jay Acunzo From Unthinkable Marketers are always searching for advice that they can apply to their marketing efforts and strategies. Luckily, plenty of people are more than willing to share their expertise, ideas, and â€Å"best† practices. Don’t simply emulate them and their words of wisdom. The biggest problem is sameness. Everything is the same, and no one stands out. Rather than just taking their advice, make it your own, put your spin on it, and do what works best for your business. Today, my guest is Jay Acunzo, founder of Unthinkable Media and author of Break the Wheel. He describes how to push yourself to ask the right questions and make the right decisions when surrounded by conventional thinking. Some of the highlights of the show include: Two Stories to Jay’s Career: LinkedIn’s about logos, and liking process of making things through tinkering and not caring if anybody consumes it Google was a great place to work; brand, perks, awesomely smart co-workers Following prescribed path because that’s what you’re â€Å"supposed to do† Expertise and checking a bunch of boxes doesn’t make a great career Everyone wants best practices and guidance because they’re afraid of what to do Unthinkable Stories: People did something that seemed crazy, but they clearly explain why what they did was practical and strategic Being taught there’s a right and wrong answer, and approaching marketing the same way; the real answer is, it dependson context Push yourself beyond commodity work and do something exceptional instead Problems: We don’t want to be average, and we don’t operate in a generality Understand your specific situation and use it as a decision-making filter to find clarity; borrow from your situation and what’s proven to work elsewhere Six fundamental questions to ask to understand how to operate in a more contextualized way for your environment Pike Syndrome: Psychological barrier to making decisions with clarity; based on situation, instead of generality Context parts in every situation: You/team, customer/audience, and resources Reasons for Decisions: Learned helplessness, foraging choice, cultural fluency Aspirational Anchor: Personal- or team-based mission statement; articulates behaviors to change Links: Unthinkable Media Unthinkable Newsletter Break the Wheel HubSpot NextView Ventures Who should be on the show? What topics should be covered? Send your suggestions! If you liked today’s show, please subscribe on iTunes to The Actionable Content Marketing Podcast! The podcast is also available on SoundCloud, Stitcher, and Google Play. Quotes by Jay Acunzo: â€Å"Instead of searching for the muse, it’s a lot more effective just to put out a lot of bad work. You’ll get better a lot faster. You’ll find your inspiration and your answers.† â€Å"I like to make things that make me feel and make other people feel, too. I just so happened to be doing that in a business context.† â€Å"Finding best practices, in and of itself, is not the goal. Finding the best approach for you is. We’ve never been really taught how to do that.† â€Å"I was just shown how broken it is, that we think expertise and just checking a bunch of boxes, makes for a great career. That’s just not the case.†