3 investment content lessons from a broken dishwasher.

After more than 25 years in the investment industry, I’ve seen firsthand that valuable lessons about money marketing can come from anywhere. That’s part of the fun. But this one caught even me off guard.

At the beginning of the pandemic our dishwasher stopped draining. Around the same time, our boy had started walking and also putting random objects in random places that they didn’t belong. A missing video monitor had been found in the washing machine – after we’d ran it. So we assumed the two events were probably related. He certainly looked guilty.

I’m tech savvy yet mechanically… challenged let’s say. But with appliance shops and repairers closed there was no choice. It was time for me to learn how to fix a dishwasher. Today the challenge isn’t finding sources of information. It’s finding a source of good information amongst thousands of sources. With my dishwasher, the manufacturer’s FAQs were no help. TikTok, subreddits and other social media the same – thousands upon thousands of results and no solution.  Then to YouTube. So. Many. Bad. Videos. That is, until I found  “Lurgs’ How To Guides.”

1. Break the content silos. Just as to a hammer everything’s a nail, to a writer everything’s prose. Video was the perfect way to teach this novice appliance repairer what to do and how to do it. If I had to use written procedures to fix my dishwasher I’d still be doing the dishes by hand.The optimal way to communicate is dependent on what needs to be communicated.  Form should indeed follow function. Someone in the process needs to have the experience to decide whether content should be a video, a paper, an article, an infographic or a tweet. They need to have the authority to act on those decisions and the resources to make that decision reality. We often see legacy roles, a lack of perspective and politics making these decisions instead.
2. Know your audience.[1]  Lurgs knew his viewers were inexperienced people like me. His instructions were straightforward and concise. No unnecessary blather or needless complication, yet no steps missing.  He goes from step A to B to C to D… to the fix because I wouldn’t know what step C was otherwise.With repairs and white papers, complexity is sometimes unavoidable, but only problematic when steps are missing or unclear. Holistic editing from a non-expert makes all the difference. Relying solely on a subject matter expert has it backwards.  They know every step innately and may not see the gaps.  “Expert-to-expert” communication leaves most of us out.That said…
3. Get there quickly. The instructions start immediately after the problem is cited. Neither a lengthy preamble on the presenter’s bio and hobbies nor an oft-used, never needed intro card are getting my dishes clean or my investment content engaged with. These offramps belong at the end or in the trash.Whatever the media, the deadline and the internal machinations, it’s essential that we create with a disciplined focus on every audience’s most valuable resource – time. Being concise and complete in our thinking is just a matter of experience and process.

And my dishwasher? With the problem demystified and deconstructed, I fixed it in 30 minutes. Irrefutable proof that almost anything can be explained to almost anyone if we impart information in a manner that’s appropriate for that insight, create for our audience and do it as briefly as possible. Everything else is secondary. Like this –

Turns out it wasn’t the kid that broke it. A wine glass had smashed in the dishwasher a week before – likely a stress fracture from overuse. A tiny, nearly invisible shard made its way from the pan through the filter and jammed something called an impeller. Taking the assembly apart, wiping it with a damp cloth and then vacuuming it solved the problem.

By understanding my needs and my skill level, and by respecting my time, Lurgs has demonstrated his acumen and earned my trust. Lesson learned.