I’ve always been impatient, but man do I love speed.

Matter of fact, it’s not really speed that I love, it’s momentum. It’s velocity. It’s seeing that a ball rolls faster and faster and faster every time you look.

In my opinion, it’s also one of the most underused features in today’s marketing. The fact that small teams have the ability to speed things up and to publish quickly, to learn quickly, to test quickly, to fail quickly, to succeed quickly as well.

And I think a lot of people are missing this. They are chasing perfection while it’s not really something you should aim for. When I did my first internship at Statik, I was taught

‍good enough for now and safe enough to try .

(in a different context though). And that’s the motto I kept on using throughout my whole career so far. Is it good enough for now?

When you’re trying to go for 100%, so for perfection, the last 5% of work takes probably 80% of your time. So to me, it’s almost never worth it. And I understand sometimes things can be very fragile and just have to be correct. And I agree with that, but then maybe it’s better to do half of the work instead of the whole thing. Because if you’re building a ‘perfect’ bridge for 10 years but never make it across, you weren’t really building a bridge, you were wasting time..

So I think speed is something that’s so underused. There are so many ways to quickly test things, set things up without asking for permission, without wasting time, without wasting money. Sometimes you just have to do it. I can’t recall where I heard it, but I remember this phrase: don’t ask for permission, ask for forgiveness. And I think those are the cowboy boots every marketeer should wear today.

There’s lot of people who sit back and watch. They are passive. But I think the best things in marketing come to those actively trying. They learn quickly, but they also fuck up quickly. They steer quickly. And I think that’s a huge advantage that you can have as a small team.If you have speed in the team, it’s really something valuable.

And it’s something I tried to do when I was working in the first agency I worked in.
Whenever I got a message, I tried to speed things up. Someone asks me for something, I deliver it right away. Trying to borderline surprise people with how quick it went.
They needed something from me before they can continue, I would do it right away. I never say, “let me finish this first”. No, immediate action. And all the other things I’ll do later. But I think speeding each other up is so, so valuable.

If I look at our clients, 6th Man also helps with that. If I see how we work with our clients, we’re like Lovable for our clients but on the marketing level. They ask you something, they have a dream, they want a certain feature built into their website, they want to work on their SEO, they want to try new things, they want to learn, then they can outsource it to us.

Most of the time, the people working for our clients, they don’t have the time to do these things. They are technology companies, usually very busy people working under high pressure already. And with 6th Man, they can outsource it and get their velocity back, get their momentum back and start the ball rolling. And I think that’s a great feeling. And that’s also the reason why I love my job and I’m very grateful for it. I get up everyday with a huge smile on my face.

You could see a marketing team on demand like a quick solution for everything that has been on your planning for a decade but never has been done. Or maybe as a testing team.

I don’t know, I’ve thought about becoming a testing team but maybe we shouldn’t become one. Although I really like the numbers and statistical significance etc. I think it’s also something very unused but that’s worth another post.

The lack of real numbers and understanding numbers in agencies. There’s too many people who can’t understand crucial numbers that are working with budgets they probably can’t even pronounce. That’s a big issue in the advertising world.

But I wrote this as a message to all small marketing teams: don’t forget your momentum.

BUILD!!!