Collingwood Football Club president Eddie McGuire offers this retrospective on cheque book recruiting:
“I’ve never seen anyone who won the lotto become *Kerry Packer”
*insert revered businessperson’s name here…
Entrepreneur lesson:
Hoping and luck is never the same as learning, creating and building.
Got this email back from a company that sells custom t-shirts on the web called Neighbourhoodies after I sent in an email query.
Dear Steve,
We at Neighborhoodies think Curiosity is an underrated virtue, so thank you for writing in. This email is merely to confirm that your question or comment has been successfully received.
Here is your ticket number:
http://www.neighborhoodies.com/ticket_view.php?tlid=8L4Q4I
Ticket Number: 8L4Q4I0s3E8uxyt
It is a meaningless number and you do not need it. Nevertheless, please print out this number, memorize it, then shred the number into pieces and eat it. Chew first. If at that moment your phone rings, it’s us. Let the phone ring twice then speak the code in Swiss-German, or make guttural sounds to indicate you are choking on the shredded bits.
Thank you.
Sincerely, Neighborhoodies
It tells me so much about them, their values, that they’re human and they have a sense of humour. All the things that ‘real people’ have and corporate facades do not.
Cost – zero. Value – infinite.
Kudos Neighbourhoodies.
Business advice often given to entrepreneurs is how to protect themselves and their business. Think company formations, insurances, trademarks, partnership deals, business names et al.
These are all very costly for a start up. It’s often better to leave these things to the last minute. It’s easy to get excited and just register everything possible so you own all the relevant IP. That way your best friend and business partner Joe can’t steal all your personal assets….
Do it later. Any money spent which isn’t directly going to generate revenue can wait. There is nothing worse than wasting valuable cash on protecting business that never got to revenue.
Once we’re up and running it’s a great investment. But not in the early days, or during the pre-revenue period.
Leadership: Here’s the Start Up Blog definition:
Being prepared to do anything that you ask of your team. Being inspiring enough that you team knows and believes this.
Not hiding anything from your audience
Making everything internal – public knowledge
Posting all staff salaries on your intranet
Staff setting their own pay rises
No official office hours
Staff setting their own hours
No official office location
CEO’s cell phone number on the company website
Every employee a shareholder
Sharing all company financials with everyone (internal & external)
Telling consumers your actual profit margin on the product
Telling consumers the retailers profit margin
Maybe printing these profit margins on the packaging
Staff voting on who should get the internal promotion
Suppliers voting on who gets a promotion
First in, best dressed at the car park
Hot desking – corner office to first person to sit there
No offices at all; or offices for all
Staff doing performance reviews of their superiors
Staff setting their managers salary
All performance reviews posted on the intranet
Any staff member allowed to talk to any media person, on any topic
Your bonus this year, is paid on how the company performs in 5 years
(yes, you have to wait, but we pay it even when you’ve left!)
Publishing the carbon output of the company
Publishing waste created per product
Publishing energy used per product
No email
No meeting rooms (no formal meetings)
A public company blog, an staff member can post on (no moderating)
Sure, some of these things would cause chaos, increase politicking, maybe even fraud. But maybe, just maybe, these ideas could transform your start up into something revolutionary.
What can you think of that your company would never do?
There’s nothing more powerful in marketing than this. It allows the other important things to happen. Like being remarkable, sexy, premium, eyeball worthy, first, functional or ‘the’.
There’s another reason it counts. It makes the un-fun part of a start up easier. The administration. It’s far easier to do all the non audience stuff when you only do, make or sell one thing. Accounting, banking, inventory management, production, tax, supply chain, warehousing, distribution, invoicing et al… all become less arduous.
Then we can focus on the stuff that really matters.
Climate change is regarded by many as the biggest problem facing the global community. It’s an issue that is unlikely to be resolved any time soon due to the fact the climate change isn’t the problem. It’s actually the symptom. The problem is excessive consumption.
Everything we do (consume) happens to emit greenhouse gases. Driving, eating, buying, mining and buildings all consume energy and resources being manufactured, delivered and used. Governments and corporations are unlikely to encourage reduced consumption because apparently, growth is good.
It’s no different with early stage business development. If you’ve got an issue make sure you focus on the problem, not the symptom, or you’re unlikely to solve it.