Marketing Is Hard

Welcome back to Digital Gravity 💪

Every Friday, we share strategies to help you grow your business with content marketing and reach ‘critical mass’ in the great online game.

This week, I stole the mic from Katie and Maddie to rant (mostly at myself) about the seductive trap of “looking for an easier way”

I don’t know how to do any other type of writing besides ranting, which is why I usually let Katie or Maddie write our newsletter.

But this week I went rogue.

Enjoy 👇

Dear Reader: Please Stop Looking For An Easier Way

Tough love time. Stop looking for an easier way. Instead, focus on getting better at doing hard things.

A few years ago, I ran my first marathon. From that day forward, I had zero self‑doubt for all comparable challenges because I’ve done something at least this hard before.

That’s the magic of doing hard things. Anything new of equivalent difficulty to anything you’ve done before is suddenly doable.

So why does this matter?

The gap between where you are in business right now and where you want to go usually involves solving one hard problem. Harder than anything you’ve solved before.

But the mistake (delusion) most people make is believing there’s an easier way.

So they repeat the same six‑month journey forever.

Month 1: Run into a problem
Month 2: Try to solve it
Month 3: Decide it’s too hard, and start brainstorming “better” alternatives
Month 4: Save money to invest in the new “solution”
Month 5: Pivot to the new path
Month 6: Run into another problem that’s “too hard to solve”
Repeat.

This plays out everywhere - especially marketing and lead gen.

Let’s set the record straight.

AI hasn’t removed difficulty from our lives or businesses.

It hasn’t magically made “hard” go away. And it’s not going to.

• Automating complex roles is still hard.

• Acquiring customers predictably, scalably, and cost‑effectively is still hard.

• Managing people is still hard.

So you have two choices: repeat the same six months forever, or learn how to solve problems at a higher rung of difficulty.

Here are a four mental models and tools I use when I hit the wall.

Mental model: You are a professional, damnit.
What do professionals do? They hire coaches, read obsessively, and invest 10+ hours/week in deliberate practice (on the low end).

Mental model: Rethink “effort” levels.
You say, “this is so hard.” Really? Have you locked yourself in a room for three hours - no phone, no texts, no email - and done nothing but try to solve it? How about three days? A hundred hours? Don’t quit before you’ve actually given the problem a real effort.

Mental model: Valuable Is Expensive.
What’s it worth to solve the problem? You honestly think you can fix it for $20 an hour? 

My biggest breakthroughs this year came from:

1. The highest‑salaried employee I’ve ever hired

2. The most expensive consulting I’ve ever purchased.

Both paid off exponentially. 

All that still matters, in the world of AI or anywhere else, is solving hard problems.

That skill demands patience, endurance, and risk appetite.

AI will keep making more things easy. But your leverage still comes from tackling what stays hard.

So have fun out there. Take the hard problems head first. And stop giving up so damn easily.

Bonus Musings: Proper Dosages

You don’t have energy for a year by drinking 1 cup of coffee.

You also don’t have energy for a year by drinking 365 cups of coffee in one day.

Where am I going with this?

I’ve only recently begun to appreciated how much of “acquiring domain specific knowledge” is understanding optimal dosing.

As Max says in the tweet (above), there are very few marketing strategies where 1 week of testing provides significant enough information to draw any permanent conclusions.

Sending one newsletter isn’t going to save Christmas. It’s a dosing issue.

And the only way to fix dosing issues is by gaining experience (which can be acquired one of two ways…)

• Learn the hard way (and the slow way)

• Or hire an expert to teach you appropriate expectations

As Alex Hormozi says, entrepreneurs often are taking the right actions, but just at the wrong volume.

• You expect one cup of coffee to sustain you for 90 days.

• You expect 3 workouts to transform your physique.

• You expect 3 newsletters to cement your authority.

You will get bored of writing your newsletter after 5 weeks.

But almost all of the returns come after 5 weeks (and often significantly longer).

The prospect who has you in mind for after their fundraising hits might take more than 5 weeks to raise their money. So you’re only chance of closing them is by staying top of mind until the fundraise hits.

(and a newsletter is the path of least resistance for accomplishing this).

I’ve been in the agency game for more than 3 years.

Memory fades like a caffeine high.

Staying top of mind is nonstop attention warfare.

I’ve had several 2 year sales cycles turn into $10,000 - $50,000 LTV clients.

The war is worth fighting.

Start fighting. Never stop. Or be forgtten.

~ Happy Friday,

Louis

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