bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Hire someone to execute it.

Give them the vision, your goal and your plan / methodology for achieving it.

You’ll then have someone asking you to help, to get to the next step, they’ll start the momentum, as they’re responsible for it. You’ll also be more motivated to help as you’re paying!

It’s a little hack I use to maintain momentum and ensure the right ideas get done (beyond my capability).

It’s also great practice in communicating, planning & delegation… all great skills if your idea is to grow beyond you.

We create our own methodologies & mind hacks for achieving a result.

Want an example? Ask 5 people how they calculate 20% off a price.  You’ll get a wide range of different answers.

Everyone (hopefully) gets the same answer, they just have different ways of getting there.

It’s this personal technology which gives us a framework to operate on, we use these mind hacks day to day, the more you create & learn the more intellectually adept you are.

So don’t hesitate to continue to learn, to continue to invest in yourself, to expand your personal technology.

Heck even (if you’re that organised) put a budget towards it.  What you want to spend each week/month/year investing in yourself.

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Inspired by Kevin Kelly’s What Technology Wants.

Being able to truly understand why disagreement exists.

It’s the emotional pull each party has to their perspective. From their point of view it is entirely relevant. That’s why you’re disagreeing.

Understanding that, pulling it apart, and taking it to a place of understanding is a gold skill.

it is hard though. you have to take a deep breath and separate yourself from the emotional pull you have to your point of view. And look at objectively what does the picture look like.

It can validate your own view but it does help everyone get to a place of understanding.

Following up yesterdays post. Today I sell words. Words that help boost stimulate creativity when you’re stuck.

This is easy.

Are you a blogger? writer? Curator? Creative?

Do you have to help clients create content?

Need some inspiration?

This idea is super easy. Takes 15 minutes to set up. Helps you whenever you’re stuck and need some creative inspiration.

Absolute gold if you live/die by the quality of your ideas.

18 words. 1 idea.

$18 USD.

Tomorrow you will receive a simple pdf with the idea.

If you implement and aren’t happy, email me and I’ll do a refund, no stress.

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[Note: all proceeds go to my Kiva account, so I can make more loans! And hit my goal.]

It’s time for another experiment, not that I’ve ever stopped, but one which I’d love for you guys to take part in.

As most of you know, I’m a massive Kiva evangelist, the concept just works on every level. Simply read my past posts.

One of my goals this year is to get $10,000 usd into my Kiva account. And to invest that in micro finance loans around the world. It’s something I really really believe in and see it as a form of everyday achievable philanthropy.

I will hit that goal – but I’d like to offer you guys the opportunity to help me (and in turn those I loan to).

One idea was to sell words.

That’s right sell words.

Mind you, not just any words.

Words that have been formed from thousands of hours of work, research, reading & experience.

Words that are curated to have maximum impact.

Not words for everyday people. But words that will have impact for the right person.

Words that once understood will create change. I won’t explain. I’ll create the spark. You finish the journey and fill in the dots.

Tomorrow I’ll share the first curated collection.

Well… I mean its website.  Its digital presence.

If Google is the first place people hit when they encounter a problem.

Then your website is what marks their impression (prior experience & brand helps) but it’s what your website does that helps them take the next step.

Just realise that people are making those judgements.  I’m not saying change.  Just acknowledge and change if appropriate.

Perfection requires attention to detail.

However attention to detail doesn’t mean perfection.

You can acknowledge the details and realise it’s not quite perfect & work with it.

Just look at iPhone / iPad releases.  We are amazed at what is delivered each year, yet if you internally at Apple you know what’s just around the corner.  They pay attention to detail yet realise it’s not quite perfect.

The absolute barebones you need to test an idea.

Even better if you can get someone else to pay for it.  Although when it is the bare minimum chances are you can fund it yourself.

Also it’s a million times easier to sell the vision when you’ve got the minimum viable product.  Much much easier.

Is that it happens anyway.  Whether or not you want it to.

The benchmarks & comparisons happen subtlety, subconsciously.

Even when you don’t think it’s happening it does.

That’s part of the problem with the brain drain, the top people who are normally benchmarked against, leave the country.  So the benchmark changes, it lowers.  So suddenly what people are comparing against is a lower performer.  As a result the whole status quo drops.

Jack Daly gave me a practical example when I talked with him, offering incentives (like iTunes gift cards) to those who won, the real reward was lifting the average performance of everyone.

Startups create the new ideas, systems & validate the market need.  They pave the way.

Then at one point they become a big company, that value is mass market, so they begin trading it off.  Systemising it, maximum customers.  They bring the scale & the behaviour that scale requires.

They are completely different, work with it.

I’ve just kicked off another project in the last few days.

It’s not built around fast, it’s built around a little bit of change each day. 10/15 minutes.

It takes a little longer to get started, but once you’re going, it starts to snowball. Real fast.

It also forces you to focus on what’s important, best way to achieve that & breaking down big goals into small digestible parts.

If someone has done it before, find out what they did, take it on board and start iterating. It’s the exact model we did at College, find some good ideas, reference them, link to our own. How come we don’t do this in business?

Hire smarter (than you) people, learn from them, decode others ideas, break them down, rebuild them.

You’re probably not doing something worth your time.

The key source of dissatisfaction or frustration? It’s when we swap from creating to managing.

We’re not creating physical things, new products, ideas, development. We’re maintaining, reporting……  not making actual change.

Constantly creating, curating & connecting ideas is what you want to do, create your systems so they generate. Talking to Michael Gerber of E-Myth fame earlier this year, he says the absolute best companies are those that make their customers creators, they help them create.

His business helps you create the business you want, McDonalds helps you create your meal, Apples whole product suite is based around creating & expressing.

I triple double guarantee that anytime you start to get sick of something, it’s because you’ve stopped creating.

Kaizen, an ongoing commitment to continuous improvement.

[From Wikipedia] The cycle of kaizen activity can be defined as:

• Standardize an operation
• Measure the standardized operation (find cycle time and amount of in-process inventory)
• Gauge measurements against requirements
• Innovate to meet requirements and increase productivity
• Standardize the new, improved operations
• Continue cycle ad infinitum

This is the standard business model.

It’s worth acknowledging that everything has a need for continuous improvement, constant maintenance, growth, nurturing.

The idea that you can set & forget doesn’t make any sense, especially in a technology driven world.  Embrace it.