Writer and pop culture specialist Thomas Hine reports the following: When consumers enter a supermarket they are exposed to 30,000 products in the average 1,800 seconds they spend walking the store.
Translation – any product only has 0.6 seconds to make an impression.
Imagine how little time we have before a web browser clicks away…so we’ve got to keep it clean.
The façade matters – a lot.
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.
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.
Really fit people seem to be good at all sports. Really talented at all the physical things they try. They seem to eat what they like at restaurants and yet remain svelte. How?
Here’s the trick. They don’t just play tennis, swim or jog. They do it all and more. They participate in many and varied types of physical activity and sport. So they exercise their entire body. They develop new motor skills all while refining the base they already have. They stay fit and get fitter.
Our brains work the same way. It gets fitter, stronger and more flexible the more challenges we give it. To just read about business and entrepreneurship only builds certain parts of our mind. Occasionally we need to stretch it in other ways. Read something different, watch a nature documentary, undertake some craft activity, do some gardening, go bird watching. Anything.
When we do this the interconnecting synapses in our mind will develop. We’ll then better cross fertilize our ideas and experience. We’ll open up the space for new solutions….
So please click out of this blog, and do something you’ve never done. Your mind will thank you for it.
Extending on one of my favourite strategy topics – terrorism, click on the little Al Qaeda dude below to read my latest Australian Anthill rant!
Enjoy!
Quite often it pays to be malleable, especially in a corporate environment. The powers that be only want to hear about incremental improvements that build on the status quo. Not change it.
Once we leave and get out there on our own. We must make sure do this:
Have an opinion, create change and go beyond the incremental.
It’s not cheating, it’s collaborating
It’s Ok to draw outside the lines
Neat handwriting is not a pre-requisite
Touch typing is not a pre-requisite
You don’t have to all wear the same clothes
You can have a respectable job and wear jeans
Conforming does not necessarily lead to success
the ‘Soft’ – subjects are the most important
Talking is not evil, it’s the most important skill you ever learn at school
Having a contrary opinion is fine
You can have a future and be bad at maths
Being different is OK
Doodling on your paper is good for the mind
Daydreaming is fine
…add yours here….
School is vital to our learning. But just remember which bits to ignore.
