bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Aristotle said the goal of all human activity should be happiness (including business).

Smile at someone and they smile back.

Same with yawning.

You spread the word, fast, easy and simple.

This is like joy, bring your customers joy, happiness, excitement.

The best forms of word of mouth.

If you bring someone happiness they will spread it and/or others will notice.

iPods are sold on enjoyment, videos go viral because they make you laugh or cry, business referrals come from those that are happy with your service.

Does your product genuinely make your customers happy?

If not, it should. Spread a smile 🙂

(you know you want to)

With a start up how do you legitimise?

What makes this concept real? how can we communicate that? how do we convince people that in all likelihood we will never meet but conduct business with?

Quotes, press releases, buzz, real physical address, photos via flickr, blogging, techcrunch mention..

All different routes.

How about a standard, a brand, voted for by the industry, like the Intel Inside brand.

A brand that reinforces legitimacy and rewards action.

Certain actions provide points, and start ups are only admitted once they have met criteria set by the community.

A brand that says we are a real business and are here for the long haul.

Now I’ll be the first to say, this isn’t for everyone, and if you are facing legimacy problems maybe there’s something bigger wrong.

However there is a real market need.

I don’t think this is quite the answer, but it’s less wrong than no answer…..

As I discussed in a prior post about the 80 / 20 Rule roughly speaking 20% of causes create 80% of consequences.

It was upon this (and other trends) the 12 Hour Startup idea came into fruition, the idea that in a condensed time frame you can stimulate these causes that in the long run will drive big consequences.

We all know the stories, those that stayed up all night to complete that essay that go them an A, doing a proposal last minute, no matter what happens we seem to always slide it in.

My thought is to encourage this more often, we are going to build this product by next week, I am going to finish that job by Monday as it’s been sitting around too long.

You should try it, put some pressure on yourself to complete more of the things that are important in condensed time frames.

You’ll be surprised at how often you nail it.

This is exactly how this blog came about, I spent April this year doing a road trip around the South Island of New Zealand writing blog posts, and i gave myself a 24 hour deadline to get the blog up and running with my first post.  Wham, Bam, Done. 

So what do you have in motion that you can condense and get it done?

(and then you can move onto the next mountain)

Its a meet up of twitter users.

Not sure if thats a new phrase? or how often it’s used.

I have organised a couple and been to a few more.

It’s fun, a whole bunch of people from all walks of life, getting together to meet up.

We take our online networks from online to the real world.

Looking around the table today, it was neat, I couldn’t imagine any other circumstances upon which such unique, different characters would all end up in the same place.

There are different careers, genders, personalities, backgrounds, the common thread was twitter.

In our increasingly virtual world, communications can be via avatars, what you actually say / share with the world.

What I really like is, the bias is gone, judgements are not made on race / age / gender, it’s moreso on what you contribute, and I think thats great.

The internet truly is creating an even playing field for all.  I look forward to the next Tweetup.

The bus driver can’t hear you. He has already driven away.  

He couldn’t care less, you should have been on time,

You should have been there when he cared, when he had time to give you attention.

Dam.

Oh well the next bus is 10 mins away?  Wrong.  It could be 5 mins away or 25 mins away.

You don’t know.

You know it is coming, but when?

The point is, in the meantime you’ve missed out.

Communications is rapidly changing and has been doing so for years, the bus has come and gone many times, each time it does, you miss out!

So when are you going to be on time jump on board, and give it a shot.  As hey one day its going to be lonely at that bus stop.

It’s the old adage Peter Drucker came up with:

“What gets measured gets managed”

It’s very true.

The trap we all fall into is an addiction to metrics, hey this one reinforces our success better or this is neat.

The question you need to ask is:

1. What are the objectives?
2. What is the one metric that shows progress and success? (look at per objective)
3. Ignore other metrics.

If this metric dictates your objective, focus on that, when you stop and review you can look at others, but do not let them distract you whilst your in the trenches.

Once you have this focus, you will notice as Drucker says “what gets measured gets managed” will drive your success.

Google is a multi billion dollar company by wrapping up two inefficiencies, search and advertising.

They shifted the market from an inefficient state to a much more efficient one.

Others would be Youtube, Ebay, iTunes.

First step is to identify ‘hidden inefficiencies’, in that they exist, yet a solution hasn’t been made yet.

Then to build a business around solving it.

We all hear about ideas that are so simple but the opportunity was missed as we aren’t involved in that niche industry.

So my idea is for a business to simply spend all its time aggregating these inefficiencies and present them to entrepreneurs to solve, thus taking the information market for these from inefficient to efficient.

Imagine though, being able to have access to 1000 industry wide problems in 1000 totally different industries.

I wonder how much overlay there are between them, so you could solve many issues at once.  

(and think about how much it would improve each of these industries)

Now that would be awesome! Don’t you think?

I hear novel ideas all the time.

They are neat, fun, unique, likely to spread.

I love them.

Yet I often ask What is the Business Case?

What is the value?

Where is the monetisation? (direct or indirect)

Cash flow is key to survival.

Otherwise your idea’s not going to last in the long run.

(and thats not a cool idea).

What is personality?

Google ‘definition of personality’ returns “the complex of all the attributes–behavioral, temperamental, emotional and mental–that characterize a unique individual; “their different …”

Essentially personality is what makes us different and unique.

Big businesses try to stamp out personality to keep regimented systems for franchises, to reassure customers, to get the right cogs doing what they need to.

Yet more often than not a loyalty between organisations is between people, not the brands.

It’s people behind every company and every interaction and with people comes their personality.

We shouldn’t shy away from that, we should embrace it, what are the personalities behind our business? and how can we leverage that? (and in term keep them happy).

I was thinking this as I bought a coffee from Cafe Monet, in Newmarket.  

I wandered in and 3 people were in there and they all said hey anton, morning anton, etc to (as I instantly became aware) Anton the barista.

Anton looked up and said ‘hey buddy’ to me, and carried on talking to various people, within 30 seconds you could tell he was the personality behind the cafe and the reason people kept coming back.

It was like everyone was friends, a real sense of community.

I daresay his 10% extra effort with every customer leads to 80% (or higher) return rates.  

I’ll definitely be going back to say hi to Anton and grab a coffee (plus the coffee isn’t half bad).

The question is, what personalities do we have? and how can we embrace them?

Not many rules I follow.

However 80/20 rules is one that I pay attention to.

The argument is 20% of causes lead to 80% of consequences.

(Note: its not strictly 80/20 it can be 90/10)

Examples are:

• 20% of streets cause 80% of traffic jams
• 20% of your clients derive 80% of your profits
• 20% of faults make up 80% of your replacement costs

Smart thinking.

I always throw this around every few months, see what else I’m doing wrong, or where improvements can be made.

Some examples i’ve found:

• 20% of our Marketing Exp lead to 80% of our revenue.
• 10% of my calls derive 90% of my mobile bill
• 20% of my clients derive roughly 85% of my revenue (fluctuates a little bit)
• 13% of our content drove 95% of our traffic

Once you’ve identified a link, what can you do to improve that 20%? How can you look after your clients that drive 80% of our profit? Can you modify your call behaviour to lower the 10% that make up 90% of your bill?

Give it a shot, it’s not only fun, it’s quite interesting to see the results.

Have you already done it? share your results I’m always intrigued…

It’s true.

Really You can do what YOU want.

But chances are it’s you holding yourself back?

Your saying no it’s not Ben, it’s this and this.  A lot will say time.  A lot will say money.

Stop making excuses.  You can make time.  Start with 5 minutes a day.  Work up to 60 minutes.

Look at how you can reduce the time for other tasks, do you really need to do so and so.

Believe me you can find enough time to start doing what you really love.

Secondly money, it can be a barrier, but its not infallible.

For under $100 you can:

• Write a book via self publishing
• Drive your favourite super car
• Learn how to fly a plane 
• Start your own online tv show

The barriers to virtually everything are getting destroyed, the chances for excuses are getting less and less.

If there is something you really want to do it, bite the bullet and jump in the deep end, do not let yourself or others talk you out of it.

I think we are at a tipping point.

Where all these contextual factors, tip the scales, in favour of Micro Businesses.

Kind of like Small is the New Big.

So what am I talking about? I believe the future is in micro niches, dominated by micro businesses, run by 1 or maybe 2/3 people.

It fits in with a few other trends I have noticed:

• Desire of Gen Y to ‘do what you want‘
• Bootstrapping startups
• Lower technology costs, meaning you can start a business for nothing that can scale 
• Handys Doughnut Organisation discussions (shift to project work)
• Current financial crisis forcing all businesses to remain agile.
• Slashies trend, where people hold many roles teacher by day dj at night
• 12 Hour Startup (great way to stimulate innovation)

The idea of micro businesses;

• Small businesses designed to be agile
• Garner enough income to live off but big upside potential
• People will typically have at least 1, but be involved in 3-4.

Keep sowing.

Keep meeting new people, keep blogging, keep the conversations going.

The return will come.

New Marketing isn’t about create x get x.

It’s not a strict formula.

You need to keep investing, and the rewards will come and like your investment they will compound.

This week, as a result of conversations have around my brand some neat things have happend:

• A referral to become a Mobile Content provider (no work on my behalf)
• I have heard of another project I have secured (before the official word)
• Been offered a speaking gig

Wow today marks 6 months of blogging.

From 1 post a week, to 3 posts a week, to a post a business day. (91 in total).

I just want to thank YOU for reading now, last week and those that were here 3 months ago.

And if you came across the blog at the start, take a bow, pat yourself on the back.

It has now reached a point where the blog receives more attention (in time) than my input. Yay!

I have been wondering whether to increase to two posts a day.

And I have decided no.

That stimulates quantity and dilutes my message.

So I will continue with one post a business day. For now at least.

Thanks again! I really really appreciate all the feedback, comments, support, tweets, emails from all of you.

It is just as important to celebrate the small wins as the big ones.

Leadership is powerful.

Pioneering, Revolution, Change

Magical.

However leadership is lonely.

You are at the front, carving a new path, and have to endure the flak.

It’s a hard hard battle.

You need to persevere,

Through these hurdles.

To change.

Obama will be reflecting on this today (and realising)

Perseverance is genius.

And THIS is what leadership is all about.