And then debating them.
That is constructive debate, what is the thinking behind them, why would they work? Why wouldn’t they work?
What would stop me executing them?
What would it cost?
How safe is this idea? How risky is it?
How disappointed would our customers be if we didn’t do this idea?
To those signed up to my email list and received a spam email.
This was the result of a hack, at this stage I am disabling email delivery till we isolate what’s going on.
Sorry again & thanks for your patience!
-Ben
For Seth Godin’s new book Poke the Box did a neat idea to support the early readers.
For every 5,000 people that signed up to his email list for the Domino Project and gave permission to be contacted he would reduce the Kindle pre-purchase price by $1.00. By launch it had dropped right down to only $1.00.
Toyota is doing something similar in Australia with LikeMyRide, you enter the competition and like the page, for every like the price reduces by $5, the winner can then buy the new Toyota FJ for up to $20,000 off the purchase price. Presumably (like Seth) they can then use the permission of the other thousands of people who signed up to to help them get their own FJ.
Nice framework for you to try, reward your early adopters, incentivise them to share and reward those recipients. Also helps make your product launch a heck of a lot more exciting.
This is for those up & coming…
You have an idea but not a business, pick up the E-myth and get some business systems around your idea, if it’s not your strength? Partner with someone who can do that. Behind every Steve Jobs is someone making sure bills get paid, hiring processes work, marketing channels & customer acquisition are going.
Pricing is too low, look at the value you give customers (survey them), sure it might be miles times your technology cost but once you build a business around you the costs get absorbed. Some price too high but I don’t see this as much as too low.
No marketing resource, get someone working on your marketing, constant action in this area will drive your business.
Flitting from idea to idea, it’s a bad habit, stop it. stick with an idea through.
Absorb advice – don’t take it straight on, listen, absorb, synthesise and act (do this with this very blog post!)
If you don’t know something, ask someone who does. People love having you ask them their opinion.
Read obsessively, if reading isn’t your thing, listen (audiobooks/video), you can learn from everyone elses mistakes.
Time is precious, don’t waste it, if you need to do something, do it today. You are an entrepreneur you have no excuse for not acting.
Do not let failure stop you, forgive yourself, pick yourself back up and try again.
Surround yourself in a supportive eco-system, other entrepreneurs, people that are smarter, more experienced etc, always be looking up. Hard to do but hugely valuable. You’ll find your own benchmarks of yourself will only go up.
Then one day you’ll be having lunch with Steve Jobs wondering how you got here.
The neat thing about StumbleUpon is that once you train it (a half a dozen stumbles) it will take you to content that you are pretty much guaranteed to like & enjoy. Whether it’s finance, arts, ancient history, writing, blogs (some of my personal favourites). Just give it 15 minutes – it brings back that joy, that sense of discovery that we have lost with information overload.
—
Amazon also does this for books. Last.fm does this for music. What could you do it for?
I was watching foundat.io/n earlier today and Philip Rosedale (founder of SecondLife) was on talking about a survey he runs every quarter.
The survey collects anonymous responses to these questions:
1) Do you think I should remain as CEO or be replaced?
2) Regardless of the above have I improved / gotten worse at my job?
3) Why?
Philip then relays the numbers of the first two questions back to the team. With the insight that at some point he should leave the role as CEO and at that point he probably won’t want to go but the trend of the numbers won’t lie.
Secondly he would sit down and review the Why responses (after a couple of drinks). It is easy to brush off feedback when it comes from someone you know but when (as he says) you get the same feedback from seven different employees who don’t know one another you can’t argue with that.
Are you brave enough to collect and take feedback?
It’s a classic case of just holding your breath and doing it. The feedback helps everyone, those you ask, you and your company. We do it for our customers and it was amazing to hear three different customers give us the same feedback. Like Philip said it is a universal truth when you hear it in that manner.
—
Note: Foundat.io/n videos are released once a month, if you are a subscriber (like me) you get them early. Watch the Foundation Vimeo channel for the video to come out.
I’m talking about new unchartered ideas. Ideas that are being executed for the first time.
They fit in at the head of the curve, where everything is new, the cost of change is low and change is rapid. Indicative of new projects (can be within a large organisation), early stage and smaller companies.
Systems Ideas, ideas that have been executed many times & have a set of steps to build & demonstrate value fit in here. The cost of change is higher, thus a systemised idea fits in & is more effective. Indicative of maturing / larger companies.
As many of you know I live in New Zealand, Auckland in fact, miles away from the earthquake that hit Christchurch yesterday. This isn’t the same for some of my friends & family (but they’re ok).
If you can, please make a donation to the Red Cross to help with the recovery. If you head over to GrabOne you can donate $5, $10 or $20 – each and every incremental dollar makes a difference.
Thanks,
-Ben
This video is the result of a few smart (great guys) I know coming together and executing, enjoy.
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5VGjNyMbM-E
How would you react?
in the digital age of libraries, what will they become?
Hubs, real physical hubs, just as with Twitter The Well, one of the original online communities, people strived to meet in real life (despite online connections).
Libraries will become places where we meet, gather, engage with each other and connect around content.
Or at least, till the next generation takes these libraries inside facebook.
Someone will research, interview, toil away for thousands of hours, employ a team of research assistants to help them collate the information.
The recommendations sum up this mass of intellect.
And then anyone can go the summation of this knowledge off the shelf as a book for ONLY $30.
Does executing your side project make business sense?
Or does it only exist because you’ll put unreasonable hours into it?
Answering those questions helps put your effort into perspective. It doesn’t necessarily have to make business sense yet but realising it doesn’t will change how you approach it.
Einstein said: “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”.
The annoying thing is that when you are seeking information often the same results come up over and over. It would be nice if we could ‘edit’ the results and say stop showing me this page. Just like Facebook where you can remove content from your activity feed – do the same for search results.
Please Google, Bing, that would make a world of difference (to me and everyone else out there researching).
We (my wife and I) were shopping over the weekend visiting (I’ll be honest) mainly ladies stores.
What I noticed is that most stores the attendant would come up and say hi, the most interesting was one who was on the phone wandered up said hi, shuffled two pieces of clothes and walked away to resume her conversation.
I thought that’s weird. Then I remembered my friends (in retail) telling me that mystery shoppers come test you and score you accordingly. One of those is ‘acknowledging’ every customer.
So what’s the shortcut to that? Saying hi by whatever means, even if it’s not helpful. It’s a shallow performance measure and really the response to it reflects the culture of the store.
Not a good sign! A better measure in my mind would be to have a meaningful interaction with each and every customer. And people are scored by customer satisfaction leaving the store. Not being on the receiving end of forced communication.
You can sell yourself, you’ll never have a problem.
Being able to sell yourself changes and de-risks any new opportunity you pursue.
It means you can chase an idea and still earn a living.
If you can solve this problem, it erradicates many others that you’ll never have to experience.