“Being busy is a form of laziness – lazy thinking and indiscriminate action.”
Timothy Ferriss
Startup blog agrees, and adds – if we blame our employers for the above, there’s no locks on the door…. and we’re still being lazy.
Category: business
the old school
I love lots of stuff from the old school, including but not limited to:
Old school break dancing
Old school pinball machines & arcade games (think Galaga)
Old school computers (think Commodore 64)
Old school rap music (think Grand Master Mel)
Old school Airline service & the general airport experience
Old school hamburgers from the local greasy Joe’s
Old school cartoons
Old school slow food & home cooking
Old school architecture and buildings
The truth is the new versions of these are often better, more advanced, cheaper and more useful. (some not)
The reason we love old school stuff more than the new versions is this:
The original version was ground breaking. And ground breaking is exciting. So it builds an emotional connection.
Startups out there – become the old school 20 years from now, by being ground breaking today.
Rentoid on techcrunch
We finally got ‘crunched’ – with a little spiel for rentoid on Tech Crunch.
In the first instance it’s given us a large membership boost and a very positive response. But it’s also given us our share of negative armchair experts, naysayers in the comments.
We say:
“That’s Ok – revolutionaries like us don’t care what naysayers think.”
But it’s a few thousand more people that know about rentoid.com too.
Actually we do care about what they think as it pertains to ideas to improve the service. We turn their negatives into a positive. But we always ignore an attitude which says something won’t work. It won’t for them – their attitude has already predetermined that!
In fact, some context here: We had many more positive comments and only a few negative. Also, both our membership and listings have been boosted as has our unique visiters today. But I thought I’d make this ‘blatant piece of self promotion’ worthy of a startup blog story by providing some insight!
You can check out the story here.
And add some comments here on the Crunch Base or on the story. We want to hear negative and postive sentiments. We want to improve our offer.
Losing the plot – MTV
I found out the other day that MTV used to play music videos… here I was thinking that the ‘M’ stood for ‘Miscellaneous’
But seriously, they have lost the plot a little. It’s rare to turn it on and find a song playing.
It’s one thing to diversify revenue streams it’s another to forget why you are there in the first place. And this is why alternatives like VH1, Music Max et al had room to move into the market in the first instance.
I get my music from youtube now – on demand. Simply because none of the music channels on cable (pay TV) cut it anymore.
Sure, evolve, but don’t forget why your business / brand / startup exists.
Being liked
Being liked gives you a shot at being good
They’ll never find out how good you are at…
Selling
Marketing
Coding
Inspiring
Directing
Funding
Presenting
School work
Entrepreneurship
…..if they don’t like you.
They wont listen to you, if they don’t like you. In start up land, we need to people to listen to us. Listen to our ideas. Listen to our vision.
Consider the following example: In a job or at school our manager or teacher didn’t like us, and we got poor results. Then the next year we have a new manger or new teacher and miraculously the world turned in our favour. We got results. We didn’t change. We had the same skills, we had the same attitude and we had the same abilities. The people around us changed. We had someone who liked us.
Sure, it’s impossible for everyone to like you – but there are some things we can do to increase the probability of being liked….
…and the most important is ‘move on’ when we’re under tutelage of jerks.
Flexibility and entrepreneurs
The strategy is malleable. For entrepreneurs it must be. If it isn’t – revenue might stagnate, or even worse… not happen.
But the question we must constantly remind ourselves is this:
At what point does flexibility diminish our startup, concept or reason for being?
Many businesses end up being something totally different from what we originally intended. A good example is Flickr which started as an on line virtual world game. But unless we’re scientists, technicians or inventors driven by the widget – does it really matter?
Although, we may never answer the question on flexibility, we must continue to ask it. That way we can ensure we’re carving a path which still leads back to why we started and we won’t just become an ‘adhocracy’.
Leadership is not
Leadership is not about having control
Leadership is not about creating fear
Leadership is not about having power
Leadership is not about the number of followers you have (one is enough)
Leadership is not a short term proposition
Leadership is not…
Real leadership is not many of the things we see our ‘supposed’ leaders do and use.
Startup blog says Real Leadership is this:
Inspiring those who choose to be around you, to find a path which makes sense to them, and in doing so leads to achieving the objectives of a collective.
How are you leading your startup?