Dear Webpreneurs,
Click this. Study this. Understand this. Change this.
Thanks to Chris at rawstylus for the heads up!
Category: Business admin
Facebook ‘is’ the Hotel California
A great quote this week from came from US business consultant Nipon Das after he tried for two months to permanently remove his details from facebook, unsuccessfully:
“It seems you can check out any time you like, but you can never leave.”
Gold.
How to kill a brand – 101
It seems that the National Heart Foundation just can’t help themselves. They’ve put the next nail in the coffin of the brand that was the once respected National Heart Foundation Tick.
A logo which once upon a time meant the food it appeared on was healthy.
If the Mcdonalds disaster wasn’t enough last year. Then surely they’re getting very close to the tipping point now.
By endorsing a certain pizza chain’s pizza, they are saying:
“Oh well, people eat junk food, so we thought we’d recommend the best of a bad lot”
Brands are never about ‘content’ they are about ‘context’. So what if this particlar pizza has less salt and fat? The association with fast food wont change the opinion of pizza, just marginalise the heart tick. Our world view on pizza is already formed.
You can read more about it here.
“If you can’t beat them, join them” ?
Startup blog says: such a mentality is a sure way for you and your brand to be absorbed into nothingness.
Perspective – internet boom 2.0 ?
There’s been a lot of talk lately about an ensuing second internet boom. With the billion dollar sales of many web 2.0 companies it’s easy to see why:
$15.1 billion
$2.6 billion
$100 million
$6 billion
$3.1 billion
$1.7 billion
$60 million
Among others…
To give a little perspective the Nasdaq composite index peaked in the year 2000 at 5132 points. Yesterday it closed at 2320, just under 8 years later.
If you invested $10,000 at the peak, today it would be worth $4521. Still a very bearish 55% capital loss.
Sure we’d have to question some of the valuations, but the market hasn’t started to value ‘ideas’ at over a billion – yet.
Start up lesson – your company is worth what someone is prepared to pay for it.
China beach
And you thought your market was crowded !
Business hygiene
We wake up in the morning. Stumble into the shower, have a shave (legs or face), wash our hair. We put on deodorant, brush our teeth, and head off to work.
We work all day.
We return home. We go to the gym or for a jog, return and shower again. Cook dinner, do the washing, tidy up the house, do the dishes, wipe down the sinks.
These are our daily tasks. Simple things which just become part of the fabric of living daily. They’re about hygiene and health.
Our business also requires daily hygiene tasks. Tasks which must happen on a daily basis: Paying invoices, managing cashflow, ordering stock, doing paperwork, answering emails, returning phone calls, talking with employees and customers, planning our day, reading industry related information…… ‘business hygiene’ tasks.
Business hygiene tasks are not game winners, but they keep us alive in a business sense. Forget these and our business can catch some terrible diseases, maybe kill it.
The best approach is to get them into a routine we perform on autopilot. Just like brushing our teeth. Then we can focus on the fun stuff.
