I took this pic of this shop front / side in my local neighbourhood. It’s easy to see when you drive past.
Startup blog prize (free book) for anyone who can tell me what they do without calling the number (or knowing someone who works there / digging around).
I’m all for single minded simplicity, but if we are going to go to the effort to paint the brand and phone number, it’s also handy to have a tag line which tells people what we do.
Steve – rentoid.com
When we think about innovation, our minds get lost in big ideas and large investment. The Space shuttle, Electric cars, desalination plants, the Airbus A380. We’ve been influenced by mainstream business media, and the military industrial complex. As entrepreneurs we’d be much better placed to think as micro as possible when considering how to innovate. Because unless we are ‘inventers’ or ‘engineers’, the only innovations we need to care about are those which get to market.
Take this simple innovation from the publishing industry.
Magazine subscriptions which have been repacked to be sold in a new / yet existing distribution channel.
Before this shift in mindset, magazine subscriptions were only sold as in magazine leaflets, through call centers and via door knocking. Enter new packaging format, and all of sudden a magazine subscription is being retailed in newsagents and bookstores (This photo was taken in Borders). It becomes a simple ‘gift’ which provides us something we can hand ‘hand over’ to the recipient to touch and hold – we can even gift wrap it. It opens new revenue possibilities.
It’s clear that there is little capital expenditure with this innovation, which is simply a widening of distribution. In fact – new forms of distribution are often the most profitable innovations.
Start ups – When innovating, think micro.
Steve – founder rentoid.com
In tough times, operating in a non revenue generating business gets difficult. All your business may even dry up.
It doesn’t mean these activites aren’t important, it’s more a reflection of human behaviour. Unless the link of the activity to the transaction is clear – it will get pulled. This is true for consulting, marketing budgets or even your job. So the question we then must ask is this – how close are we to where money changes hands? Are we close to the transaction or in the backroom somewhere?
The further say we are from the money – the greater redundency exposure we have, in business and employment. Closeness to money is why many real estate agents who are often intellectual dodo’s still make big dollars. I’m sure you can think other examples too.
If you want to be an indispensable business partner in tough times, make sure you are close to the money.
Steve – founder rentoid.com
From a competitive viewpoint, imagine for a moment that our worst business nightmare came true.
Maybe Google decides to enter our market space. Or the Coca Cola Company launched a beverage with the same consumer benefit we’ve been bootstrapping. Or large company X decided to compete against “us” head on.
Well – you’d be surprised how that feels. How it makes us react, and how it very quickly changes our perspective on what is the most important element in ‘winning’. In competing effectively for our share of wallet.
All of a sudden many of the projects we are investing our time on seem far less important than they were yesterday. Maybe that front page redesign can wait, maybe the shiny new web 2.0 buttons are a little less important. Maybe our packaging will do for now and quite possibly every project we have on the agenda, excluding customer ‘centric projects’ can be put on hold.
Here’s an exercise worth doing with your team. Act as if. Act as if it has just happened. Have an ‘emergency session’ with your team on how you’d react if a more well resourced, financed and well known competitor came to play. Build your battle plan. Once your battle plan is drawn up – throw out your current business plan and work on that instead. Because they are coming, especially if your startup is in a fertile consumer territory.
After the intital fear, most entrepreneurs just get inspired, get angry and get on with it. A good scare never hurt anyone.
Steve – founder rentoid.com
Today’s task is boring, even hateful. Doing invoices. As with all great ironies, this ought be a task we revere look forward to and basically enjoy. ‘Payment’.
Given we often forget the important stuff we all know. I sometimes write a reminder and stick it to my office wall.
Here’s my pic: (Art’s never been a strong point)
Yep, I’m reminding myeslf that this somewhat laborious task is actually a cause for celebration, the celebration of hard work as we collect our earnings.
Startups struggling with boring stuff – remind yourself why it’s important!
Steve – founder rentoid.com
I took this quote from Seth Godins latest micro book Tribes:
“Do you beleive in what you do? Every day? It turns out that belief happens to be a brilliant strategy”
This resonates with me because it will motivate us to find solutions that ‘non believers’ will be too inept, apathetic or bored to uncover.
Entrepreneurs ought launch something they beleive in conceptually, not just financially.
In order to be in love we need to feel loved. Often we mistake love for other intense emotions such as lust, obsession and even fear.
So if we were to translate this to business parlance it might read like this:
If we want people to love our brand or company, we simply have to make our audience ‘feel loved’.
So then the next questions we should be asking are:
– Will they love this product?
– Will they love our value equation?
– Will they love our guarantee?
– Will they love our designs?
– Will love our ‘contact us’ policy or phone staff?
In fact, let’s just start every audience related question with the words ‘Will they love….”
If we do this and focus on being more than good, more than liked and only accept moving towards stuff people will love. Then one day, they may just love our brand.