Is it a problem, or a situation? Gut check yourself.
You can’t fix what isn’t broken. Yeah, yeah, yeah.
But if that’s so true, tell me why I spent HOURS going back and forth with MailerLite about a glitch in my unsubscribe page that hadn’t been operational for years, only to realize that it was functioning properly the whole time.
I finally figured out that it was an upstream problem. (Aka it was me. I was the problem.)
The issue: it wasn’t an opt-IN preferences page (checking all the lists you want to be part of), it was an opt-OUT page (looking at the lists I’d added you to and choosing to leave them).
Captain Obvious would like to announce that you can only unsubscribe from lists you’re part of. So the reason the groups I wanted to list weren’t showing up was because no one had been added to them…
(For the record: the 2 lists I wanted people to be able to opt in and out of was this main newsletter list, which I send every Tuesday, and purely sales/promotional emails, which I only occasionally send. Now everyone is added to both lists and you can leave either or both easily. But hopefully both types of emails are valuable!)
And the inverse is true: you can only fix something if it’s actually broken.
As in, the page was doing its job. I just wasn’t using it correctly.
Seth Godin wrote, “A problem without a solution isn’t a problem, it’s a situation we have to live with.
But most existing problems do have solutions. We just don’t like that solution.”
In business, it feels like we have layers upon layers of problems. And sure, there’s a lot we can tweak and “fix.” But there’s also a lot outside of our control that we waste way too much time on.
When I do copy/positioning audits (like the free one I’m hosting tomorrow), I offer a bunch of feedback around what could be changed. For you to decide what to act on.
When I work with clients in a month-long retainer, there are tons of comments and red, marked-up suggested edits. You don’t have to accept or agree with them all.
When we do a consulting session together, it’s often, “Here are 3 or 6 or 28 ideas of what you might want to try or do differently. Which one feels and sounds good? Which one is an immediate no?”
That outside perspective, paired with your values-aligned decision-making is where all the magic happens. All the progress. All the momentum to keep going in whatever direct feels right, right now.
That’s all the goodness I’m wishing for you.
📍 Book a free Alignment Call if you have a problem—or even just a “situation”—you want to work through and make better together.
This is an excerpt from Toward Purpose & Progress, my newsletter where I share business tips, good news, shoutouts to Founder Friends, and other juicy snippets. Subscribe here for more rants, reflections, and resources.
