Leap Day is Breaking Software Around the Globe.

What entrepreneurs can learn from it

Yesterday we celebrated the leap year. February 29th is already playing havoc on software. Most people don’t think too much about this extra day in the calendar, but as entrepreneurs, we absolutely should! But first, a few current cases of systems whose developers didn’t:

In Sweden, card payments are down at a leading supermarket chain. ICA is the biggest supermarket chain in the Nordic country, and today customers can only use cash. From Swedish online magazine Omni.se:

“The problem [with card payments] is due to today’s date. The information I received is that today is the shooting day. It is therefore a leap day problem and it is February 29 that simply causes it, says store manager Peter Slagbrand to Eskilstuna-Kuriren.

The information about the leap day problem is confirmed by the ICA bank’s press officer Maria Elfvelin.”

In Colombia, airline tickets have been printed incorrectly by the nation’s largest airline. Airline Avianca printed tickets dated as 3/1 instead of 2/29, thanks to their system not accounting for the leap day. A traveler shared how the airline recognized the mistake, fixed it on the day, and sent this email to customers:

“We inform you that if your flight is on February 29, 2024, you may experience a discrepancy in the date of your flight on the boarding pass. To ensure you have the correct information, please download it again from avianca.com or from our app.”

Payment terminals at gas stations stopped working in New Zealand. The New Zealand Herald reports:

“Petrol stations around the country are up and running again following a day-long leap-year glitch which saw card payment machines go down for more than 10 hours.

Allied Petroleum, Gull, Z, Waitomo and other fuel stops around New Zealand reported problems with card payments on Thursday because of a software glitch they said was caused by their systems not being programmed to deal with the date February 29.”

A smartwatch released this year couldn’t display today’s date. The Fastrack FS1 is a recently released smartwatch from the Indian company, Fastrack. The FS1 model was released in March 2023, and here’s what it says is the date today:

Driving license issuance disrupted in Japan. Japan Today writes:

“Police departments in some Japanese prefectures were unable to issue driver’s licenses Thursday, apparently due to a system glitch linked to the leap year. The extra day at the end of February appears to have triggered a system error related to time and date functions.

Police departments in Niigata, Kanagawa, Okayama and Ehime prefectures faced problems from the morning, such as being unable to send personal data from the driver management system to the machines that issue licenses. The system was almost fully restored before noon.”

I will give a hat tip to the “almost fully restored before noon” mention. You can imagine the engineer who was asked by a business stakeholder: “is it fixed yet?” and who answers: “Almost — I’ve now resolved 90% of the issues.” Which we all know means there’s still the second 90% left to resolve — because resolving those last edge cases often take just as much time as fixing the first 90% did! I’m being sarcastic, but this is often how it goes with bugs not encountered before.

There are several more cases of systems failing today, as collected by software engineer Matt Johnson-Pint in his post, “List of 2024 Leap Day Bugs.”

Expect more bugs this 31 December. After 29 February, we’re not done with leap day-related glitches. New Year’s Eve holds another nasty surprise for systems that assume a year is 365 days long. This year has 366 days.

Here are some common misconceptions about how we measure time in the modern era…

Falsehoods:

• There are always 24 hours in a day.
• February is always 28 days long.
• Months have either 28, 29, 30, or 31 days.
• The day before Saturday is always Friday.
• GMT and UTC are the same time zone.
• Any 24-hour period will always begin and end in the same day (or week, or month).
• The difference between two timestamps is an accurate measure of the time that elapsed between them.
• Daylight saving time always adjusts by an hour.
• “Time always goes forwards.”

Leap Day, a day that only comes around once every 4 years.

Which is about the same amount of time it takes most copywriters to hit 6 figures.

Maybe.

If they’re lucky.

So, in honor of the leap year, I offer you a choice:

1. Keep spinning your wheels as an underpaid, overworked copywriter with retainer clients who’ll drop you as soon as they have a few bad months (not uncommon in this wonky economy…)

Or…

2. Spend the next six months getting enough ongoing work to quit your job and live the life you’ve been dreaming of.

You could lose years of your life in retainer land chasing the dream of financial freedom. Or you could invest six months of hard work into getting there before you’re too old to enjoy it.

It’s all about creating and then validating an offer so you can build momentum and scale that initial success.

Using tripwires to optimize the success of your lead generation

In marketing, tripwires are like bait — they’re irresistible offers at a low price meant to hook customers into buying more later on. They’re used to grab people’s attention and get them interested in what you offer. Once someone bites on the tripwire deal, they’re more likely to stick around and buy your higher-ticket offer. It’s an effective way to turn curious browsers into loyal customers by offering them something low-cost that they can’t say no to.

The goal is to create a super juicy tripwire offer that even cold traffic will want to opt into. This should be priced well (typically under $50) but should air on the side of over-delivering. This is your first paid interaction and if done right, can build a lot of trust.

This will result in making them more likely to be comfortable purchasing your higher ticket offer in the future.

Keep in mind that this strategy is not intended to drive massive revenue, but to act as a tool that leads to those higher-ticket conversions down the line.

Over the past month we’ve helped some of our clients strategize their tripwires and execute their landing pages and we’ve already seen sales results while also reducing their cost per lead.

One of our current Essential clients posted in the community to say, “Celebrating the fact that I’ve had two women purchase my funnel tripwire in the last 48 hours which means I’ve made back my ad spend for the last 7 days! This feels good!”

Here’s how you can implement a tripwire into your business today:

Embed a tripwire into your ‘Thank You’ page

When someone opts in for your freebie or webinar, instead of just having a basic “thank you” message, invite them to take the next step with you. Offer a small upsell that feels like a no-brainer that will help them solve a problem right now!

An idea is to create a short training that focuses on a specific niche problem. Think about your high-ticket offer, what is one thing that your customer will likely run into during their transformation in that program? Take that problem and turn the solution into a mini offer, and voila, you have a tripwire.

The key is to create something extremely timely and gives them instant gratification so that they start to trust you as the expert.