If you’ve read my stuff before, you know I’m a big fan of what Stephen Covey called Sharpening the Saw. That’s just a clever way of saying: always be improving yourself.
Today, I want to talk about sharpening your saw mentally—especially if you’re a creative or entrepreneur (same thing). The question is: how do you find time each day to learn something that pushes your vision, ideas and business forward?
Let’s get real—success in today’s world requires both creativity and business acumen. Take digital marketing. It can massively accelerate growth for anyone from a coffee shop owner to a Fortune 500 exec. But it also demands serious creativity to capture your audience’s attention.
I love teaching through stories, so here’s one.
The $150,000 Mismatch
A few years ago, a local TV station pitched my wealth management firm on doing a 30-minute “educational” show. Their idea? Feature our advisors, maybe some CPAs and estate attorneys, talking about money matters. The production was “free”. The cost? $150,000 for one year. The time slot? A 30 minute slot, weekday mornings—between Judge Judy and The People’s Court.
If you know anything about content marketing, the first rule is simple: match your content to your audience.
Our ideal client? Mass affluent: $165K to $1.6M in liquid assets and household income north of $125K.
Now think: what percentage of people watching daytime courtroom TV fit that profile? Exactly. Almost none.
The station brought in their whole team to sell us on it. I don’t blame them—they had a product to pitch. But it was a massive mismatch.
Strike one.
The Micro-Attention Era
Now, contrast that with how people actually consume content today.
On Instagram, you’ve got micro-seconds to grab attention. Anyone who’s tried to go viral with a Reel knows how hard it is.
I experimented with a few on my Insta account for Mainer Montanan. One hit 97.6% non-follower views. If you know how Instagram “Insights” work, you know that means the algorithm loved it and pushed it far beyond my 36 followers.
Another post—a photo with a link to a story about legendary skier Glen Plake—pulled in 4,036 views (so far) with 99.2% non-follower reach. No paid boost. Just good content, comments, likes and shares. Blow away metrics for a tiny Intagram account.
So why am I telling you this?
Because great content gets seen—for free.
From Attention to Action (or Not)
But views are just the top of the funnel: Awareness.
Did I convert any business on the cowboy Reel? No.
Because I had no plan beyond Awareness. No next step. No Attention → Interest → Desire → Action. Just eyeballs and scrolls. The awareness was there but the attention was fragile. They watched, scrolled, forgot.
My “cowboy Reel” was 7 seconds long. My average watch time? Exactly 7 seconds. That’s perfect for a looping video. And that’s what helps a Reel go viral. But again, no CTA, no North Star.
As Alex Schultz (Meta, CMO) writes in The Art and Science of Digital Marketing, you need a clear goal—your North Star metric. For me, that’s readers. I’m an educator, hopefully also an entertainer. I want people to read my posts and grow from them.
What Actually Moved the Needle
The Glen Plake post did.
It wasn’t a Reel. It was an illustration with a story teaser and a link. It sent real traffic to my blog and traffic lets me create a custom audiences.
Skiers who like Glen Plake – many of them professionals in their 50s thinking about retirement. People with 401(k)s. People who read. On average, skiers have more money. In other words—my people. My audience.
Daytime courtroom television watchers or late middle-age, successful professionals who ski. Who is a better fit for me? These are my saw sharpeners—people who want to get better, learn, grow.
Final Thoughts: The Modern Funnel
Let’s dial in on sharpening the saw.
Today’s consumer attention span is shorter than ever. To be effective in modern marketing, you need to:
- Know your audience
- Create content they consume
- Put it in the right place
- Know where it fits in the funnel (AIDA)
- And have a plan to move them forward
And yes, I expanded AIDA a bit to find my North Star. For me, it’s: Awareness → Attention → Interest → Desire → Action. Here my post on my AAIDA funnel.
That cowboy Reel hit Awareness and stalled. No follow-up plan. That was fine—I was just learning. But I did learn. And that’s the point. Fail forward.
If I’d kept going, I probably could’ve cracked a million-view Reel. But to what end? No Attention. No CTA. No next step.
Compare that to my blog posts. A short story with a real links (sometime CTA’s) and a measurable outcome. Scroll depth tells me how far readers get. That’s my “watch time.” That’s how I sharpen my saw.
The Takeaway
My blog posts are meant to be read in under five minutes. Just like this one. My last post on the Fail Forward success principle – a four-minute read. By design.
Because I’m writing for you: a busy professional, creative, entrepreneur, or aspiring entrepreneur. What I call “creative entrepreneurialism“. Someone looking to sharpen their saw quickly and move on.
If you read this far, I’ll know—not you personally, but through analytics. If 100+ people land here, I’ll see the scroll depth. I’ll know if I got past Awareness into Attention.
If not? I’ll “fail forward” and write the next one. That’s how real growth works.
Have a vision. Fail forward. Keep sharpening the saw. Eventually, you carve. And then you may just go rails-on-edge.
