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We're into the second week—thanks for taking this journey with me!
This week I wanted to focus on growth: something that I find both important and elusive at times. In Leadership, I specifically tried to choose posts that guided readers towards overcoming the personal fears that may be holding them back, rather than any real shortcomings—so often we are much better at what we do than we think!
In Product, Support and Marketing I tried to share readings that helped inform and guide readers in ways to better their internal processes: whether that be feedback or customer focus at a company-wide level. We can all always get better in both of those aspects.
Lastly, in Feel Good, I wanted to share some things that helped to make me feel better about myself and choices this week. I often find myself questioning the value of what I'm doing if it doesn't directly impact my company, my role, or the customer; life isn't always all about that. These three posts helped to contextualize that for me—hopefully they can do so for you as well.
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Ever wondered what it's like to be on stage, under those bright lights, sharing your knowledge? Not sure what it takes to be successful? In this awesome blog post, Moz shares some tips about landing and preparing for a speaking gig. Scott shared this with me because he knew it was ne of my goals this year to speak at more conferences. Though I certainly haven't done that yet, this helped me get some great ideas!
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Buffer's founder, Joel, shares some awesome thoughts on how to balance thinking macro and thinking micro. As fun as thinking big can be, it can put the kibosh on getting any "real work" done. Balancing those fun big thoughts and productive micro thoughts can be a challenge, especially for me, but the points here give some valuable takeaways to consider and implement in our daily lives to do it better.
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I've never been a huge Kanye West fan—I think he's a blowhard, most times. But, as someone who has definitely felt the effects of imposter syndrome, hearing Kanye's perspective on how it is engrained in us and how to beat it was infinitely helpful. Also, knowing that even Ryan Hoover, founder of Product Hunt (and poster of this video), has experienced imposter syndrome helps me to feel just a bit better. :]
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Product, Support, Marketing
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One of the most popular questions that I've seen in support communities is "How do you handle and share customer feedback?" Everyone does it differently, so there are always a lot of really great insights to glean. This post by Happy Fox seemed to amalgamate a lot of those ideas all in one simple, concise place. While these 7 guidelines are just the tip of the iceberg, they're a great place to start when considering how to keep track and act on your customer feedback.
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The job description of a customer support person goes far beyond a single role. Similarly, everyone in the company, in one way or another, is acting in a "customer service" way. This article from Groove strives to identify those roles and help you grow your flat sides.
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This post BLEW UP on my Twitter this week, so I thought I'd share it here in case any of you missed it. Supporting your support team actually supports your whole company. This blog post by Kayako outlines ways that you can help yourself, your teammates and, if you're outside of support, your support team achieve more and do better.
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"Remember back when you were a kid? You would just do things. You never thought to yourself, "What are the relative merits of learning baseball versus football?" You just ran around the playground and played baseball and football. You built sand castles and played tag and asked silly questions and looked for bugs and dug up grass and pretended you were a sewer monster."
Exploring the ideas of entitlement, passion, and "what should I really be doing," this post by Mark Manson was super-inspiring to me. Everyone should read it. Fair warning, there are lots of swears.
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In interviews and general conversation, I always attribute my professional success to a deep-seeded sense of anxiety. While it probably sounds crazy, having anxiety and harvesting it healthily can be a really great driver in our lives. This post talks a bit about that, and a bit about how being anxious and classified as an "overthinker" can spur some of our most creative ideas.
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The next time you feel even a tiny bit guilty for picking up a work of fiction instead of a self-help book or heavy tome, think about the good things that you are doing for your brain and for yourself.
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Thank you, so much, for taking the time to read and engage with me! Let me know what you're liking, let me know what you'd like to see more of. You are the very best.
-Mercer
PS: If you have someone that you think would really love or benefit from receiving these emails, you can send them the sign up form here.
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Mercer · Linden St · Allston 02134 · United States of America
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