bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

#26: Financial Buffer
Once you can, build up a three month buffer and keep it there, you never know what is around the corner, I know it’s tempting to invest that amount or use it for something, but the way I see it the return you get by having a three month buffer in case something goes wrong out performs the alternatives.

#27: Blog
Blog. Blogging is the #1 marketing tool. Use it to your advantage; like networking, blog with the intention of helping your customers, you don’t need to give everything away, but answer the common questions, share your experience, compare/contrast competitors, industry news. By helping your audience you build your brand, stimulate an otherwise non existent conversation and build a community.

#28: Avoid fixed costs
Avoid taking on fixed costs, keep everything variable, this helps avoid negative cashflows and ensures flexibility when you need to keep costs to a minimum.

I was quite a curious kid, always asking questions, the ever curious question of WHY?  My first job was classic of this, it was assisting the local fire wood producer, chop up and distribute firewood.

My boss was an aging man, putting in the last few years before retirement, and it was his little one man band.  Our first job was to go out and collect the firewood, he would use the chainsaw to cut trees brought down by flooding.  Firstly he would cut the trees into rounds, my job was to then grab the rounds, put them in a pile.

We would then split the rounds in half, load them on the back of the flatbed truck and take them back to his wood yard.  Back at the yard, unload all the wood, put it in a pile.   The next step was to cut the wood with a log splitter, stack in another pile.

Finally we were ready for orders! Orders were by the cubic metre, and so a certain amount of barrow loads was a cubic metre.  We would then load the truck up an order at a time and deliver it.

It took me all of one day to speak up and go, hang on we are double, triple handling this wood.  Why don’t we split the back of the flatdeck truck in half, then into little stalls, the horizontal sides of the stall being such we could pull them out.

Then we could cut the firewood, split it on location, throw it into the stalls (which could be measured out on a cubic metre basis) then deliver straight to the customer.  We could save sooo much time.  “No Ben, this is the way I do it”.

This frustrated me to no end, but hey I got $10 for a mornings work and that bought me basketball cards.  I hung in there annoyed at partaking in such an inefficient process, as soon as the opportunity came up I quit my job and moved on.

What I rapidly learned was the concept of idea development, failing fast, modifying and moving on.  It’s no big secret, smart people understand it and embrace it.  Fail fast.  However whilst there is understanding – we fall short of having a mechanism for it.

That’s what the 12 Hour Startup (my first idea in The Best Ideas are Free) is about – formalising a mechanism that allows for remarkable ideas to be shared, tested, proven and ultimately to create significant change.

Everyone has a voice.

Whether you hear it or not is another thing BUT you can decide who you listen to.

The 1% rule online dictates that 1 in 100 people will place a comment.  As a blogger these are the people you tend to listen to.  However what about the other 99?

The same goes for negative comments, if you hear 20 good comments and one negative you tend to focus on that one.

Remember to make sure that you are listening to the right people.

What motivates you? What motivates your customers?

Two hugely insightful questions if you can answer them.

If you can find these motivator points, then keep pressing the button, things will change dramatically.  And I mean dramatically!

#23 Charging
Forget hourly rates, charge value based fees.

#24 Tom Peters advice: meet the crazy people
Meet at least 1 totally new person a week for lunch, if possible do 5 new people, but at the very least do 5.  Take them to lunch, have a coffee, learn about their business, what they do, how you can help, share what you do.

You will learn a lot by hanging around new people, you gain zero by talking to people who already agree with you on everything.  This is my favourite way of building my business getting to know people.

#25 Invest in yourself
Invest in top tools, don’t skimp on yourself, if you use a computer, get a top computer.  Getting the top tools of the trade communicates to yourself and your clients you are serious.  (This isn’t always easy when you start out, but keep it in mind).

Funnily enough I’ve had this conversation a few times in the last few weeks – hey it does what it says.

(Most of this has been centred around the Flip Mino HD)

It really is a betrayal of consumer trust that ‘it does what it says’ becomes a point of difference.  Everything should do what it says.  Yet we find (especially with technology products) that actually doing that is out of our reach.

Just a reminder, keep your products simple, people do like to buy stuff that does what it says…

Carmine Gallo breaks down the five elements (common threads) of every Steve Jobs presentation. Read it.

Simple – buy a big company and wait for it to shrink.  These are the words Tom Peters uttered earlier in the year when he came through Auckland.

There is something in that statement.

Actually there is a heck of a lot in there.

Remembering that ‘big’ is a relative term, but when you become a behemoth in an industry what are your options for growth? Move sideways; squeeze more from existing customers, get more customers and/or move vertically.

Get more is the default choice (as fits in with the scale a big company has).

The problem here is, get more = increase compromise to get that extra customer. You compromise too much you begin to lose your core audience.

Further (and you can see this happening) you almost create a culture of compromise – whereby suddenly you’re not doing anything interesting at all.

So what next? Split up and shrink.  Become small, agile, specialised.

No I’m serious do it.

The biggest barrier I find operating at the edge is executives who don’t want to do something new because they don’t know what is is, they would never read a blog or engage with brands on twitter.

All I can say is, put yourself in your customers shoes, in fact wear them for a day.  Get some real perspective, you can’t go on assuming that YOU are your customer – that’s stupid.

Consequently I don’t work with those people…

You don’t have to accept the standard, you CAN just as easily pick it up, REDEFINE it and make it your own.

This local article caught my eye over the weekend, a security veteran and local taxi cab company are joining forces to utilise the taxi driver network to respond to burglaries (via NZHerald).

Neat little idea.

This is a basic network acquisition model, a security companies value is in its ability to respond to alarms (ie security guard distribution), taxi drivers have distribution but require higher revenue.  By pairing those both parties win.

Not original but that’s what innovation is about, taking an existing model and applying it in a new context…

I also discussed this on the radio this morning:

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MtGejOaN2qo

Just a few updates;

• I will be MC and a guest speaker at W2W (Wellington to the World) 09 coming up November 17th.  You can register here.  Other speakers include New Zealands own Richard MacManus founder of ReadWriteWeb and John Watt New Zealand Young Scientist of the year.  We will give a couple of copies of my book away on the day – also videos will be up on YouTube post event.
• bwagy blogging club gets started Monday.  Last chance to sign up here.
• I have changed blog email delivery from Feedburner to Feedblitz.  If you’d like to change or get the blog in your email simply visit this post and sign up on the top right (in the blue box).  It’s the easiest way to get the blog.

And that’s all folks, have a great weekend 🙂

Wouldn’t it be neat if there were such a thing?

A database where you could browse the problems, pick one and try to tackle solving it.

Clearly you need to define when something becomes a ‘problem’ – I suggest based on the average detrimental effect it has per person world wide.

On that basis some of the top issues would still be:

• Poverty
• Sustainability & environmental concerns
• Education
• Peak oil?

You see when posed with a challenge humanity fights to overcome it (hey we’ve come this far right?) so why not expose these problems in a direct light.  Arm people with the constraints, barriers and requirements of  a solution and let them figure out how to fix it.

Given the amount of noise in our lives the aim of any marketing is simply cutting through.  Cutting through the clutter, the noise, to land your message in the right place at the right time.

That’s why attraction based marketing is so valuable, you attract people that are interested directly to you.

Google Adwords is one such tool, capture people whose intent is to look for your solution, a small investment here can pay huge dividends.

Twitter to build relationships and engage, this live ongoing engagement creates invaluable relationships (and word of mouth).

Blogging is another (and my personal favourite) by sharing, creating and collaborating ideas you create an attractive place for people to hang out.  This could just as easily be your customers.

You could keep trying to cut through, or simply attract people to you….

The reality gap is huge.

In writing my previous post, From living a nightmare to living the dream, when you look at the steps.  They read quite easily, simple basic steps to implement.  And they are.

Often [with an idea] you find the problems and solutions to overcome the barriers to implementation – however the timing between each step can be vast.

They all involve steps from A to B.  The problem can be the this huge gap – the void in between these steps.

What you have to realise is that whilst it has taken someone else 3 months to conquer it, it may take you much longer, or even shorter.

In reviewing often I find I struggle majorly with a few crucial steps, then blitz through others.  Talking to others you find that they struggle with different steps.

This isn’t really groundbreaking but is more a tap on the shoulder to say, hey, don’t stress, these things take time…