Lee Duncan

Google Ads tool Wordstream analysed thousands of Ads accounts and found the best Display Network ads perform 6 times better than average.

According to Wordstream, only 1 in 100 ads are unicorns. In a recent limited trial, I set up a new campaign and three ads hit results at the unicorn level. In fact, the two best ads were 7-9 times better than average.

Different ideas are the path to your own Unicorn

Having a Unicorn will more than halve your Google Ads spend.

It will also produce better results. The problem is finding a way to dream up truly different ads to test. According to Wordstream, the top advertisers test up to 100 ads before they see a Unicorn. Here's how I got there faster.

#1. Do your research.

Customers buy for all kinds of reasons. You need to understand why they buy your kind of product. Not just the obvious stuff - go deeper.

I co-founded a business in 2012 that hit 8 figures within 6 years. I researched the 3 big 'hot buttons' that customers had. With these in our ads with our best promise, we had 21-23% CTR and dominated our niche.

#2. Make a list of great headlines or headline formulas.

There are hundreds of amazing headline formulas all over the web.

Steal them like an artist - using them as templates for your own ads. Working from a list of 25 great formulas, I created 23 brand new, unique ads for the service I was advertising.

#3. Keep winners, ditch losers.

Nobody can accurately predict the winner in advertising tests. So run them to get a sensible amount of data. Then weed out the losers. Keep running the winner until it doesn't work anymore, or until you make another better one.

Be-Do-Have plays out in real life.

Our habits are the building blocks of the life we experience.

If you want to run a marathon, you need to develop a daily running habit in order to develop stamina. If you want to write a book, you need a regular writing habit to get it from your head and onto paper.

And there are good reasons to be more deliberate with your business habits, too…

Reason #1: What Got You Here Won't Keep You Moving

If your business isn't moving as fast as you'd like, take a look at your working habits.

How much time each day do you spend working on growth? Is that time productive or thinking time? Look to develop the habit of taking action to grow your business, rather than thinking about growing it.

Reason #2: By Default vs On Purpose

Habits are like a built-in AI that does stuff without you needing to think about it.

But our human autopilot habits are rarely created deliberately, but by default. We have not programmed it with any sense of deliberate intent to get the results we want. When you create habits purposefully, you deliberately prime your actions to produce the results you want.

Reason #3: Habits Give You Consistency

Top athletes train with metronomic consistency to become winners.

You can apply the same approach to grow your business. If you know the behaviours that will produce success in your business, you can turn them into habits. They will inevitably produce the results you want.

The things you do on a daily basis add up to the results you achieve over a month, year, or decade. Don’t let them happen by default.

As business owners, we must work in two distinct, different worlds.

The external business world, where our business plans apply tactics and strategies.

And the internal world, which runs on autopilot - our habits. To grow our businesses, we must install growth habits.

Here are 5 methods to silence negative inner voices and be more productive.

I have done battle with a procrastination demon my whole life. It’s not laziness or lack of motivation, but perfectionism. The inner voice or feeling… “Are you sure that’s the best you can do? What if you did it like this? Or this?” And so on. I am conditioned to hold myself to an impossibly high standard.

My productivity wasn’t good enough. Rather than just trying to push through it, something else was needed. Here are the methods I’ve found most helpful…

Method 1: Notice what you say to yourself…

Practice mindfulness. Notice your emotions and thoughts, while you are experiencing them. It is simple, with practice, allowing you to interrupt problem thoughts that can hijack your emotions and leave you stuck.

Method 2: Plan your first action before you even start

The first stage in procrastination for me can be cherry-picking through my list of actions. Remove this by deciding ahead of time what you’ll do first.

Method 3: Break up your work by brain mode

Furniture makers work in stages that use different skills. Marking out the wood, cutting, joining, sanding, finishing. All tasks have similarly different steps. Our brains like to operate in a single ‘mode’ at a time. Try doing the same.

Method 4: Use deadlines and accountability

Having to hit a deadline is a great way to create urgency for me. Breaking your work down into daily, weekly or monthly deadlines might work for you, too. Especially if you have to answer to a coach or accountability partner.

Method 5: Celebrate your wins and be kind to yourself

Talk to yourself as if you are nurturing a much younger self. Your subconscious is your inner child and needs boosting, to counteract the critical voice.

Since writing my book back in 2011, I have struggled terribly with writer’s block, finding writing terribly difficult, stressful and unfulfilling.

Lots of false starts. Lots of second-guessing myself. Lots of procrastination. Which is a great pity, because in the past 10 years I’ve created a lot of new IP that I’ve used with clients to great effect. I want to turn this IP into courses and guides. It needs to be shared. And sharing means writing it down.

I have a strong desire to write.

So in mid-April I invested in the Ship 30 for 30 course to develop a daily writing habit with the objective of writing and publicly sharing a short essay every day. The structure, the cohort approach and the support have worked incredibly well to get me writing again, and enjoying the writing, too. I’ve written every day except one since then.

But my writing habit is not ideal.

This is typical of turning a skill into a productive habit. There is the commitment first to establish the habit. Then your approach needs to be tuned to make it work the way you really want.

Over the next month, I’ll move my writing habit to first thing in the morning. I’ll be writing to a content plan. And I’ll be writing a few days in advance, so that I have the chance to edit and polish, just a little.

So, if you find yourself struggling with a new habit like I have, just remember:

Getting a good habit going is more important than making the habit perfect every time.

Feel good about it.

And then look for ways to take it even further.

Turn it on again!

In March I went to my third Genesis gig of their Last Domino tour.

I’ve been a Genesis fan since I heard Turn It On Again on the radio in 1980. I quickly collected all of their albums, declaring my fandom by writing Genesis on my school sports bag in 6” high letters. Not surprisingly, my nickname switched from Dunks to Genesis at the same time.

I was a bit obsessed.

Over the years I saw them live through the 1980’s and 90’s, until Phil Collins retired from the band around 1994. I thought I’d missed my chance to see them again.

Then they announced a final tour, and there was magic in the air.

Somehow the music played live has a different quality to the studio recordings. Tracks I don’t care for on record are entrancing when performed on stage.

I’m sure half the older guys in the audience were wiping tears from their cheeks.

I was one of them.

But there was also magic in being with 20,000 other Genesis fanatics, fans and enthusiasts, singing along for over 2 hours of our music. For that time, I was among my people.

It was bliss, and the Afterglow still puts a smile on my face.

You work hard as a business owner, so use these steps to extract more profit from it.

A client’s business was making annual sales of £640K but only paying him £18k. Using the steps below, we found simple little problems on every job were crushing their margins. The fix was simple and increased their profits eight-fold to £160k. Here’s a breakdown of the process to achieve it.

Step #1: Look For Symptoms in Your Accounts

Your accounts are clues to what’s going on inside your business. Become a detective, using these clues to detect the crime.

• Poor overall sales point to your business not doing enough

• Poor profit margins say you’re not making enough per sale

• Inflated business expenses - your business spends too much

Step #2: Identify The Facts

To understand what’s beneath the numbers, follow the clues…

• Why have sales fallen?

• What’s the cause of poor margins? Prices, costs or problems?

• What makes up the 80% of your expenses? Staff? Rent? Borrowing?

With the facts in hand, dig to the next level…

Step #3: Prosecute The Root Cause

Find the action or decision causing the poor profit. Hiring too many staff, poor business processes, mis-pricing etc. Be dispassionately honest with yourself.

Step #4: Apply The Simple Fix

Solve the problem in the simplest way. Keep it simple stupid, in the words of Kelly Johnson, legendary lead engineer of Lockheed’s Skunkworks division.

I have been coaching businesses for almost 20 years and I co-founded a business in 2012 that now sells over £12m per year.

Over these years, I have learned that most people who want to massively grow their business end up failing because they lack commitment. They think it’s going to be easy and get very excited at the start. Then when things become challenging, the enthusiasm fades. It’s at this point you need the commitment to keep you steady and on target.

To be quite honest, it took me quite a while to learn this lesson too.

Being honest with yourself in order to understand and overcome the reasons for failure is an essential step towards succeeding. My commitment to writing an atomic essay every day for 30 days is a part of that.

COmmitment is an easy word to say, but it means non-negotiable. It means landing on a strange shore and burning your ship. To stay true to your word, when the going gets tough.

Commit, and you just might succeed where so many others fail.

In this article you’’ll discover how to quickly extract the value from practical books.

In Richard Koch’s The 80/20 Rule, he explains that most non-fiction books have few real nuggets in them. As an author myself, I was told by my publisher to aim for 55,000 words. Authors are given word targets. Too many books have a lot of filler.

Unfortunately, school teaches you to finish books that you start...

If you struggle to finish books, that’s ok

You are already busy enough without adding artificial shoulds to your to-do list.

• Your focus in business - and life - is creating, not consuming.

• 50,000 words at 238 words/minute (average) is almost 4 hours a book

• If a book is dull or unhelpful, you don’t need to finish at all.

If you want to learn useful and valuable info from books but don’t want to invest 4 hours into every one, there is another way. Here’s how…

Step 1: Figure out what you need from a book (or books)

Don’t pick up books just because you think you should read them.

When I wanted to bake artisanal bread, I bought a book about craft baking. I read just enough to bake my first loaf. It went well, I got hooked and read more.

Step 2: Triage the top books in the category

There are reviews of all the top books in every category online. Find the ones with the ideas that resonate for you. Then either skim-read or find a detailed review.

Atomic Habits by James Clear is a case in point. The big ideas and methods are in detailed reviews all over the web. 15 minutes or less in a review will point out all of the major ideas plus lots more besides.

Step 3: Dig deeper when you’re inspired

Sometimes a book will resonate more deeply and you’ll want to read it from front to back. That’s great. Just don’t feel compelled to do it because you should.

On the TV series NCIS, the main character is a former sniper. In one episode, he said something that stuck in my mind:

Slow is smooth, smooth is fast

This is a truism that’s drilled into soldiers who train as snipers.

When the bullets are flying, it’s too easy to just point a gun in the general direction of the other side and start firing. But special forces and snipers know that bullets fired in panic generally miss. They are trained to do things very differently. They take the time to aim and shoot, instead.

This means they keep their cool, select their targets and come out on top.

When you’re under pressure, remember that slow is smooth and smooth is fast

I’m not a soldier, but this idea makes perfect sense, so it has stuck with me.

When you have a lot to get done, it can cause you to become tense. You’re less productive when you’re tense and it’s unlikely you’ll easily get into your full stride.

So slow down.

Make a list of what you need to get done. Take a breath and pick the first target. Focus and get it done. Rinse and repeat and you’ll work with ruthless efficiency instead of bouncing around in a panic.

Smooth is fast.

After watching Queen’s Gambit on Netflix, I wanted to know how to play chess.

Although I had played a little in childhood, all I really knew was how the pieces moved. By the time my kids were 7 or 8, they could run rings around me at chess. I downloaded a chess app for my phone and started playing puzzles.

I was soon playing 30 or more a day, over 1,000 a month.

There are obvious winnable positions in chess

Certain situations play out to a win every single time with a set of moves, like a recipe for winning.

With practice, I could see some of them. I could solve a lot of puzzles without thinking, on autopilot. In October, according to the chess scoring system, I had a rating of 1,631 in puzzles.

But I plateaued and stopped seeing new patterns. I wasn’t improving.

To switch things up, I tried deliberate practice

Despite playing a lot, my rating fell back by 200.

The problem was that I had stopped thinking about puzzles, I just raced through them. It was too easy to play puzzle after puzzle without really thinking.

Chess is a thinking game. To keep learning, I needed a new strategy.

So I slowed right down. Now I do just 3 puzzles per day. But they are not on autopilot. My score has improved, and I’m enjoying it again, too. Less is clearly more.

Repetition can only take you so far

If you want to improve at something but have hit a plateau, maybe try the same. Practice less, but do it with full concentration.

Perhaps you’ll find that less is more, too.

How do you know that people are trustworthy if they’re going to have authority to spend money for your business?

My client called his supplier in China to find out why the shipment was late. “No payment, so nothing has shipped”, he was told. He spent the next three hours trying to understand what had happened. As the facts became clear, he could see he was trapped in his own business horror story.

Without the shipment, he could not deliver to customers across the UK.

By 7pm he understood. She had stolen Over £330k

He walked into her office to confront her.

“The money is all gone”, she coldly told him. She wasn’t sorry. “I knew you would catch me, but I enjoyed it while it lasted”. She took £30,000 each month for nearly a year to pay for a rock-star lifestyle, replete with cocaine-fuelled weekends in Paris.

There are lots of lessons from this. But for now, the lesson is one when hiring.

Put Integrity First When You Hire People

According to INC. magazine, Warren Buffet said integrity is the priority for hiring good people…

We look for three things when we hire people. We look for intelligence, we look for initiative or energy, and we look for integrity. And if they don't have the latter, the first two will kill you, because if you're going to get someone without integrity, you want them lazy and dumb

Whenever I had asked him to dig into his cash flow when money seemed tight, he would wave my concerns away. “My business is growing, the money is tied up in stock, my financial controller is on top of it.”

If you don’t understand your numbers, you’re not in control.

The average business owner in the UK earns around £30k - following these simple tactics can make that £35-£50k or more without even one more sale…

I am the author of Double Your Business from Financial Times Publishing.

Helping people make their businesses work harder for them is my thing. It doesn’t matter what kind of business or the size of your revenues, there is lost profit just hiding in what you’re already doing.

Yet there are simple ways to put more in your pocket right away.

Here are 5 steps you can take today:

• Profit Tip #1: When was the last time you reviewed your regular expenses? Your pockets will thank you.

• Profit Tip #2: Put your prices up? When was the last increase? 2 years ago? 5 years ago?

• Profit Tip #3: Optimise your PPC campaigns. Google Ads costs can often be cut in half with good optimisation, a huge saving for many.

• Profit Tip #4: Improve productivity. It sounds trite, but inefficiencies are everywhere in small business - even solopreneurs. Find the jobs you spend most time on per week and simplify, automate or optimise them..

• Profit Tip #5: Fall in love with the details of your numbers. There are jobs, services or customers that are not very profitable. Fixing them is transformative.

These are among the fastest techniques to rapidly boost your profit. People sometimes tell me it’s boring work. Boring? What’s not exciting about making thousands more income for just an hour or two’s work with numbers!

And… if you want help to add rockets to your business, you know where to find me!

I wrote today about a client who sold his business last year for multi-millions. But when I pressed ‘Publish’ this morning, nothing happened.

My immediate response was confusion. Then disbelief when I discovered I’d lost almost all of my work. Then anger at the technology. I walked away from my desk, took a deep breath and reminded myself to focus on what I can control, my own actions and decisions.

If I had allowed myself to continue into a rage, another hour or two could have easily been lost.

Instead I chose to focus on what I can do.

My to-do list has ‘Publish an essay’ on it for today. I don’t want to spend another hour writing. But here’s a great lesson in productivity. When a problem occurs, it’s human nature to respond emotionally. That doesn’t make it useful or necessary, though.

Being angry or upset does not help you get things done.

In fact, it does quite the opposite.

So, when things go wrong and annoy you, try this:

• Take a breath.

• Stop thinking about what has happened to annoy you.

• Decide what needs to happen next.

• Then get on and do something about it!

  This took less than 20 minutes. A fast recovery, and I don’t feel (too) annoyed anymore. Task ticked off, next please.

If you want to learn a new skill faster, try this.

I love to learn, but sometimes it can be a slog, especially at the start. Here’s how I made learning to draw cartoons easy last year.

In 2021, I came across a course that teaches cartoon drawing. I’m no artist, but enjoy a challenge. I soon fell behind and looked at other people’s cartoons with envy. While I intended to catch up, when the course finished, I was further behind.

When a follow-on course was announced, I needed a new approach…

How a pottery class helped me to become a cartoonist

I read a story online that comes from David Bayes & Ted Orland’s book, Art & Fear.

It describes a pottery class split into two as an experiment by the teacher. Half will be judged by weighing all of their work together, no matter how good or bad they were. The other half only have to make a single pot, but it’s got to be great.

By the end, the first group - judged on weight alone - were making the best pots.

Practice makes perfect put into stark relief.

Throwing clay is fun, easy and keeps your learning fresh…

For the second cartooning course, I decided the best way to keep up was to draw every single day, no matter what.

Some days I drew for literally a minute or two, when I didn’t feel like drawing. Because I was working on volume, not quality, I wasn’t trying to create works of art. Drawing was free of expectations and became fun.

I was just seeing what happens when you throw enough clay.

By the end of the second course, I had a very different result…

The result was a resilient cartoon badger called Roadkill, along with his own troublesome business, Box. You can see him on the homepage of my website.