Burn your ships in the harbor!

Historians have since debunked this story.

It should read, “sink” your ships in the harbor. Here’s the real origin story …

In 1519, Spanish conquistador Hernan Cortes and about 500 soldiers were (barely) surviving in – what is now- Mexico City.

The native Aztecs were sophisticated, powerful, and brutal. All the shi* you see in movies. Skulls on display. Ritual sacrifices. And a wee bit of cannibalism.

To make things worse, Montezuma’s army boasted nearly a half-million soldiers.

That’s 100 times the size of the Spaniard’s tiny crew.

Only Cortes’ cunning and manipulations kept them alive those first few months. But Cortes’ men were scared less, and plotted a late-night escape by ship.

Through a stroke of luck, Cortes discovered the plot.

He could have executed his soldiers for treason.

He could have escaped with them.

He did neither.

Cortes ordered an ally to sneak onto the ships, drill holes in some of them, and run some aground.

Cortez forced his men to fight or die.

Sun Tzu called this ‘creating a death ground.’

Robert Greene’s 4th Strategy of War order instructs: “Place yourself on “death ground,” where your back is against the wall, and you have to fight like hell to get out alive.”

So, how in the hell do you adapt this to the ‘safe battlefield of B2B?

By widely broadcasting an initiative with a deadline, you force yourself to accomplish the task at risk of public embarrassment—like a wedding announcement. This strategy is anchored in manipulating your emotions into a fight-or-flight mode. And, in 2024, embarrassment is one helluva motivator.

Do you offer three categories of service? Nuke all but one. Unless you are one of the rare ‘master of all’ generalists in the B2B space, you need a specialty to survive and win. Your team must centralize their energy on making that ONE thing work – or let the company die.

This one has been the hardest for me. Regularly probing the market for new opportunities is a critical long-term survival strategy. Remember that Cortes left one ship for escape – but he sunk the rest. I’ll be publicly revealing the bandits’ “one ship” in November.

So, how have the Bandits fared with this strategy? In our typical unapologetically human fashion, here’s an unflinching self-assessment.

10/10. Between our start in ’09 with art meets business events in Seattle, to the ’15 Food Biz Roadtrip, to the ’23 Rooftop Happy Hours, the Bandits have lived in the arena. Not gonna lie. Sometimes, we backed ourselves into some corners that failed spectacularly. But the level of obsession and focus necessary to set a date has carried us further than 77% of other businesses. Not too shabby for a bunch of bandits.

4/10. Our early focus on events (Savor the Sound) left zero ships in the harbor. Survived, and became strong swimmers. Our focus on small business marketing (Small Biz Triage) could not be more broad … 30 million potential customers. Breaking our army into three battalions (Inbox Attack, Email Ecommerce, and B2B Bandits) wasn’t a bad strategy. One battalion survived and later thrived. Fast forward to 2024, and the Bandits are quietly nuking the industries we serve to free up forces to dominate the right battlefield … narrowed it down to 6.

?/10. I’ll just say it. I believe that the entire B2B world has become bland. The Bandits have fired at least 10 clients every year of our existence for the crime of energy vampirism. However, eliminating Colin Robinson’s has NOT helped us with our non-core outbound projects/distractions. We still have 3 ships in the harbor. Hoping to lash them together Waterworld-style, though.