We are modern day entrepreneurs. We cut new ground and bring change. We need to act a little bit like rockstars – rockstars of a new genre. Like rockstars we need self belief which borders upon arrogance.
We need attitude. We can’t fake it.
We can’t act like employees
Employees are conformists
Conformists never change the world
We’re bringing change
We are not conformists
I used to think that it’s better to keep your business idea a secret. Then I read that “secrets kill you” in the Bootstrappers Bible by Seth Godin. It’s very true. You can get a copy here.
Firstly – no one is going to steal your idea. The idea is the easy bit. The execution is the hard part. Truth be told it is more likely that someone else will start doing what you are if they don’t know it’s already being done.
Proof – how many times have you had a great new business idea only to find out it has already been done. Then you simply move on.
By keeping it a secret – it not only chips away at your confidence, you remove the potential for your circle to help you nurture it and bring it to life.
At some point in your career as an entrepreneur (and entrepreneurship is a career, it’s just there’s no jobs available!), you’ll be told how why it’s a bad idea, an average launch…or just not quite right.
A simple response is this: It’s easier to critique than create.
I do it on this blog. I critique poorly executed marketing activities. We do this to learn and converse – which is part of the whole process. It’s what this blog is about. It’s a conversation on marketing.
But in the journey as an entrepreneur you’ll meet many who provide advice, but have never had the courage to pursue the path. In this situation it’s better to remember those who encourage, and forget about those who critique
And this is why, in any city in the world there are no monuments of critics.
The biggest problem with the perfect strategy is this: It’s pretty hard to implement the plan, maybe impossible. That’s why business plans can be overrated. The simpler the strategy and therefore plan, the greater the chance of implementation.
Here’s the start up blog view:
Create a 1 page mud map, and make up the rest as you go along. That way we just might keep up with the world.
Everything you have ever read on this blog is wrong. All of it. None of it’s true.
The reason none of it’s true is that in business, no less entrepreneurship every rule has an exception, sometimes quite a few exceptions.
On average the principals remain correct, true or usable, but every now and again, they’re proven wrong. That’s the thing with averages, they can be misleading. And principals are a bit like averages, they give us a read, some guidance – but they’re not infallible.
So whenever you read something on this blog. There’s a chance it wont hold true for you, your start up or your circumstances, even though on average – it will.
Google ad words:
This is why Google shares have quadrupled in 12 months. It has a simple business model. Easy to understand. All parties win.
Barriers to entry are low. You can invest as little as $5 a day / even 10c per click. You only pay for customers who actually go to your site, unlike other advertising (TV, Print et al) which you pay for even if people aren’t looking. Tailored marketing which is far superior to demographic targeting.
Find out more here.
How simple is your start up business model?
Physics and business are more closely related that one would imagine. Take Newton’s laws of motion. Markets are motion. Interacting bodies pushing and pulling in a constant state of flux. The principals are the same, but more complex as our laboratory ‘is’ the market, in which nothing stands still.
Law 1: An object in a uniform state of motion or will remain in that motion unless acted upon by a net force.
Start up blog interpretation; Change doesn’t just happen, it is made to happen by things and people doing something.
If we want our start up to improve, we’ve got to do something about it. Vary the marketing mix. Our start up will remain performing as is (good or bad), unless we, the market, our audience or our competitors change what they are doing.
We must change to improve
The market might change for us, without telling us
Our audience can shift behaviour, without telling us
Our competitors can vary their marketing mix, without telling us
Our market, audience, competitors will change. We ignore it at our peril. Or better, we embrace and create change, be the ‘net force’ so the state of motion is moving in our favour.
