There is something unique about entrepreneurs and the way they work. Spontaneous, driven, constantly on the go, they focus all their time and energy on bringing their business ideas to life. And if their ideas fail, they go back to the drawing board and start again. So writes Alison in Entrepreneur Country.
They are the lone wolves of the business world, relying only on themselves for inspiration and successful at innovating in isolation; until a business idea takes off and then requires the input of skills, expertise and manpower. Very quickly, the lone wolf entrepreneur has to become a people manager, delegator, influencer; a leader of the pack.
It’s a huge transition and it raises the question; can brilliant entrepreneurs become great leaders?
On the face of it, the qualities associated with the two roles couldn’t be more different.
Entrepreneurs create something out of nothing. They channel all their energies into turning ideas into viable business innovations.
Leaders draw on and direct the energies of the people around them to achieve their business objectives.
Entrepreneurs work ridiculously long hours and don’t sleep. Well, not much, especially when they are on the verge of a big break.
Leaders have to set an example to their team by working comparatively sensible hours; occasionally long, but no all-nighters.
Entrepreneurs don’t like to delegate; that feels like a loss of control over their business and its direction.
Leaders recognise delegation as a key business strategy. Handing tasks and responsibilities over to those with more relevant skills leaves them free to focus on business development.
Does this mean that entrepreneurs can’t be leaders? Steve Jobs did both, brilliantly. He innovated and then created a workplace culture of innovation, because he knew he wasn’t going to succeed on his own. Young entrepreneurs are often described as the leaders of tomorrow, and if they are to make it from lone wolf to head of the business pack, these are some of the steps they’ll need to take.
Network – Once your business starts to grow you’ll need to think about bringing in outside skills and expertise. Networking is the key to finding the people who can provide them, who may eventually become key members of your business team.
Share – As an entrepreneur you have the vision and the drive to take your business concept to the next level. Share your vision with the people in your team, inspire and engage them, and you’ll take it much further.
Let Go – A lone wolf in business is also a Jack-of-all-trades; responsible for every aspect of the operation. Let others share the workload and take on the tasks they are best equipped to handle, and you’ll have more time to work on your next big business idea.
This one is going to take some doing. Letting go. So I am going to do something to help myself with this and ask other people about our new idea. Market research might will pivot massmob - A portal for pay as you go brand able mobile games. Into something else entirely.
Grow – Whether entrepreneurial talent is a product of nature or nurture is a matter for debate, but there is no question that leadership skills can be learned. Take advantage of formal training programmes or coaching and mentoring sessions to continue growing and developing them.
Friday 27 July 2012
Thursday 26 July 2012
As starting a new business - I think - this might be useful...
We have brainstormed on our new business idea. A way of smaller brands getting in on the mobile games party.
In essence, a soft way brands can engage with their target market on mobile phones with minimal investment.
Or is it a platform for brand focused mobile competitions.
Or a portal for pay as you go brand able mobile games.
Or even more grandiose, an ecosystem to help part time freelance mobile game creators.
Who knows - what we do know is that it is just an idea. And now it's time to face reality and work out whether your idea is a viable option.
As Smarta advises, be thorough in your assessment: if the figures don't add up, chances are it's not going to work out.
Don't be disheartened, though - if you've already had one idea, there will be plenty more where that came from.
So what makes a good business idea
Once you've come up with your idea, you need to make sure there is a market for it. Do this by conducting extensive market research - find out how many people would buy into your idea, what the competition is like and what your customers will be like. Will they be able to afford your product or service?
We have done this by asking our target market with a series of surveys in survey monkey and on linkedin.
But...Do the figures add up?
Smarta advise "Look at figures from competitors to work out what sort of demand you will have. What will your production costs be like, and how much will you need to charge for your offering to make it viable? Will your target customers be able to afford it? What will your margins be like? How much repeat custom will you get?
A good idea gives the business room to grow. Don't just latch on to a trend - your business needs to be more than a one-trick pony if you want it to expand and flourish. Try to forecast how the market will look in one, two and five years - will there be as much demand for your product then?
Your business idea doesn't need to be new, but it does need to distinguish itself from the competition. Check it's unique by conducting an extensive competitor analysis, and even if you're not planning to lodge a patent, make sure it isn't violating copyright law by checking the Intellectual Property Office's patents database.
Why some business ideas don't work
One of the major causes of business failures is bad market research. While you may be enthusiastic about getting started straight away, conducting exhaustive market research is absolutely essential. Without it, you won't have the information you need when you're marketing and pricing your offering.
When the majority of business ideas fail, it's not because it was a bad idea - it's because it was the victim of bad marketing. Make sure you know exactly who your customers are, what their habits are and how they react to various forms of marketing.
(We hope we have this covered a little as kinda great marketing is what we do...)
A business which doesn't distinguish itself from its competitors will find itself struggling. Define strong unique selling points (USPs) for your business to prevent this from happening. Look at your competitors' weaknesses and build on that: is there space for a premium version of their product? Could you add value by offering a wider range or better customer service?
If your costs are too high, you'll find it difficult to make any money, so start small and keep your overheads to a minimum. If it isn't absolutely necessary to take office space, start from home instead - and while having your product manufactured in the next town may be great for your carbon footprint, there's a good chance it could hit your bank account hard.
If your proposition is badly priced, your customers will be decidedly unenthusiastic about buying from you. Make sure you look at your potential customers' spending habits and earning power to determine how much - and how often - they will be willing to pay.
If your business is started purely to make money, there's a good chance it will fail. To start a successful business, you need to be absolutely passionate about your proposition so you are committed to steering it through the good times as well as the bad.
So our new idea massmob - which has been created to help mobile developers make money - giving Manchester developers the ecosytem they need to survive is kinda passionate :)
We want to put the fun back into games creation and let talented people make money from this, from their mobile phone!
Wednesday 25 July 2012
It´s not the happy that are grateful - it´s the grateful that are happy!
A great article all about something which I am going to start practising more and more. Starting tonight.
Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales. And you know I think I might buy it.
He begins: "I'm utterly convinced that the key to lifelong success is the regular exercise of a single emotional muscle: gratitude."
People who approach life with a sense of gratitude are constantly aware of what's wonderful in their life. Because they enjoy the fruits of their successes, they seek out more success. And when things don't go as planned, people who are grateful can put failure into perspective.
By contrast, people who lack gratitude are never truly happy. If they succeed at a task, they don't enjoy it. For them, a string of successes is like trying to fill a bucket with a huge leak in the bottom. And failure invariably makes them bitter, angry, and discouraged.
Therefore, if you want to be successful, you need to feel more gratitude. Fortunately, gratitude, like most emotions, is like a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger and more resilient it becomes.
Practice Nightly
The best time to exercise gratitude is just before bed. Take out your tablet (electronic or otherwise) and record the events of the day that created positive emotions, either in you or in those around you.
Did you help somebody solve a problem? Write it down. Did you connect with a colleague or friend? Write it down. Did you make somebody smile? Write it down.
What you're doing is "programming your brain" to view your day more positively. You're throwing mental focus on what worked well, and shrugging off what didn't. As a result, you'll sleep better, and you'll wake up more refreshed.
Reprogramming Your Brain
More important, you're also programming your brain to notice even more reasons to feel gratitude. You'll quickly discover that even a "bad day" is full of moments that are worthy of gratitude. Success becomes sweeter; failure, less sour.
The more regularly you practice this exercise, the stronger its effects.
Over time, your "gratitude muscle" will become so strong that you'll attract more success into your life, not to mention greater numbers of successful (i.e., grateful) people. You'll also find yourself thanking people more often. That's good for you and for them, too.
This method works. If you don't believe me, try it for at least a week. You'll be amazed at what a huge difference it makes.
I will do this - for at massmob - our new idea. We are going to make this a core value - saying thank you to our developers and customers.
As mobile marketing and mobile gaming might be on the increase - but without saying thank you once in a while - we are nothing more than monsters ;)
Geoffrey James writes the "Sales Source" column on Inc.com, the world's most-visited sales-oriented blog. His newly published book is Business to Business Selling: Power Words and Strategies From the World's Top Sales. And you know I think I might buy it.
He begins: "I'm utterly convinced that the key to lifelong success is the regular exercise of a single emotional muscle: gratitude."
People who approach life with a sense of gratitude are constantly aware of what's wonderful in their life. Because they enjoy the fruits of their successes, they seek out more success. And when things don't go as planned, people who are grateful can put failure into perspective.
By contrast, people who lack gratitude are never truly happy. If they succeed at a task, they don't enjoy it. For them, a string of successes is like trying to fill a bucket with a huge leak in the bottom. And failure invariably makes them bitter, angry, and discouraged.
Therefore, if you want to be successful, you need to feel more gratitude. Fortunately, gratitude, like most emotions, is like a muscle: The more you use it, the stronger and more resilient it becomes.
Practice Nightly
The best time to exercise gratitude is just before bed. Take out your tablet (electronic or otherwise) and record the events of the day that created positive emotions, either in you or in those around you.
Did you help somebody solve a problem? Write it down. Did you connect with a colleague or friend? Write it down. Did you make somebody smile? Write it down.
What you're doing is "programming your brain" to view your day more positively. You're throwing mental focus on what worked well, and shrugging off what didn't. As a result, you'll sleep better, and you'll wake up more refreshed.
Reprogramming Your Brain
More important, you're also programming your brain to notice even more reasons to feel gratitude. You'll quickly discover that even a "bad day" is full of moments that are worthy of gratitude. Success becomes sweeter; failure, less sour.
The more regularly you practice this exercise, the stronger its effects.
Over time, your "gratitude muscle" will become so strong that you'll attract more success into your life, not to mention greater numbers of successful (i.e., grateful) people. You'll also find yourself thanking people more often. That's good for you and for them, too.
This method works. If you don't believe me, try it for at least a week. You'll be amazed at what a huge difference it makes.
I will do this - for at massmob - our new idea. We are going to make this a core value - saying thank you to our developers and customers.
As mobile marketing and mobile gaming might be on the increase - but without saying thank you once in a while - we are nothing more than monsters ;)
Can you sum up your idea in ONE sentence ?
Something which is really well timed as researching a new company to start.
All in the mobile marketing area. We think...
So a great article from The Next Web - all about the power or the need to be able to sum up your idea in ONE sentence.
The hard part for me is choosing the one sentence. I know what massmob is about. I know the idea behind it. Gamifaction for the nation. But this is more of a strapline or a marketing angle - rather than an explaination.
So I have come up with a few - what I am going to do next is market research (shock horror again) to see which one rings true for people.
Here's the article.
Here’s a pro tip that’s extremely obvious, but often completely ignored by entrepreneurs everywhere: You should be able to explain your startup in one sentence. That’s it. No exceptions.
Beyond the obvious rule that founders should never start a company just because they really like calling themselves “CEO,” being able to explain what you do in as little as one sentence is perhaps the absolute best way you can prepare yourself for success. It means your company actually exists for a reason, because you realize your purpose at its very core.
This isn’t even about saving busy VCs time or the declining attention span of society. The truth is, saying something in the fewest words possible eliminates confusion and fluff, so there’s no way to dress up a terrible idea as something worthy of more than a trash bin.
What not to say
When it comes to as finding the perfect words to say while crafting your short and sweet pitch, this is the second way most startups and PR firms end up doing it wrong.
Here’s a mind-numbingly easy guideline : as soon as words like disrupt, stealth, rock star and gamification are used, all is likely lost. As for words like network, social and platform, try to be careful.
This is ideal - as it get's rid of my strapline even before I have used it!!!
Here’s another warning: If you can’t describe your company without talking about another company, you should probably hit the drawing board again. Joking about a Microsoft Kin for Tech Incubators is always fun, but when you’re wrapped up in a vision, it’s surprisingly easy to lean on the crutch of familiarity. It’s also tough to navigate this problem when providing add-on services for another service of piece of software. All you can do is stay cautious.
I may just happen to have a problem with things ending up too meta, but tech blogging about tech blogging and startups servicing startups makes us all start to look like idiots. Maybe this is a benefit or a curse of living outside The Valley, but after a certain point, people need to realize that tech startups don’t actually comprise the entirety of the world economy.
We’re a major piece of the puzzle and deserve attention, but we aren’t the center of the universe, either. Having some context about how you and your company fits into the world helps you make something that everyone needs — not just another gadget or service that only the trendiest of bloggers and early adopters can use. Honing in on a target market is fine, but for god’s sake, get some fresh air.
The beauty of the tech industry is its promise for brighter days, new solutions to problems that plague our lives and fast-acting ideas that can change the world. It’s not without its poisons, but that’s life.
If you’re focusing on making something genuinely interesting or useful in a way that leads to real progress, no matter how big or small, you’re starting off in the right direction. In that case, pitch me here in one sentence: harrison@thenextweb.com.
If you’re only looking for an exit or heard that apps are the trendy thing right now, please go elsewhere.
Wednesday 18 July 2012
Is it about thinking differently? Is it about me being a bit Dyslexic..
And why is it such a hard word to spell?
Dyslexia affects 10% of the adult population; whilst recent research suggests 1:5 entrepreneurs are dyslexic. (300,000 in the UK)- so you are twice as likely to be an entreprenuer if you suffer from it.
Is this because you have to be I wonder? Apparently not, as dyslexic entrepreneurs then employ more workers than non-dyslexic entrepreneurs. Which moves it past just the surivial point!
Talents in innovation, problem solving and creativity, communicating, creating effective teams and seeing the bigger picture in business. Something we are looking at with Start up Britain with some market research into team building.
All my life, I have never put the fact I am dyslexic down and used it in a positive way. Never in school, on a CV, in an interview etc until now.
As I am not alone some very cool thinkers have been dyslexic. You may be impressed and surprised to know that:
Sir Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Tommy Hilfiger, Steve Jobs, Theo Paphitis, Steven Spielberg, Lord Alan Sugar, Michelle Mone, Noel Gallagher, Roald Dahl, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Winston Churchill, WB Yeats.
I know they are not all entrepreneurs, however I choose to highlight these names for you. Think and Google if needed who they are and what they have achieved.
So is it just another different way of thinking - I don't know but watch this space as from today I (and my dyslexica (I HATE THIS WORD) ) am going to do something rather different - something that hopefully doesnt need too much typing. And something which might just change the world of Mobile Marketing and gaming for brands.
Dyslexia affects 10% of the adult population; whilst recent research suggests 1:5 entrepreneurs are dyslexic. (300,000 in the UK)- so you are twice as likely to be an entreprenuer if you suffer from it.
Is this because you have to be I wonder? Apparently not, as dyslexic entrepreneurs then employ more workers than non-dyslexic entrepreneurs. Which moves it past just the surivial point!
Talents in innovation, problem solving and creativity, communicating, creating effective teams and seeing the bigger picture in business. Something we are looking at with Start up Britain with some market research into team building.
All my life, I have never put the fact I am dyslexic down and used it in a positive way. Never in school, on a CV, in an interview etc until now.
As I am not alone some very cool thinkers have been dyslexic. You may be impressed and surprised to know that:
Sir Richard Branson, Walt Disney, Bill Gates, Tommy Hilfiger, Steve Jobs, Theo Paphitis, Steven Spielberg, Lord Alan Sugar, Michelle Mone, Noel Gallagher, Roald Dahl, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, Sir Winston Churchill, WB Yeats.
I know they are not all entrepreneurs, however I choose to highlight these names for you. Think and Google if needed who they are and what they have achieved.
So is it just another different way of thinking - I don't know but watch this space as from today I (and my dyslexica (I HATE THIS WORD) ) am going to do something rather different - something that hopefully doesnt need too much typing. And something which might just change the world of Mobile Marketing and gaming for brands.
When you focus on what’s being removed, it’s easier to understand the revolution
This mini blog by seth godin - is so wonderfully wise that I pop it hear to remind myself.
When you focus on what’s being removed, it’s easier to understand the revolution
We remove shelf space as a limiting factor in books.
We remove the cost of polycarbonate as a cost factor in CDs.
We remove paper as an expense in magazines.
We remove the number of channels as a limiter in the broadcast of TV.
These are not small changes. These are revolutionary shifts in what’s scarce and what’s not.
If you are still organized around them, you will fail. If you embrace their removal, you’ve got a chance.
Which is why we at Massmob - are going to create a market place for mini mobile games which removes the marketing company!
Unlucky, Great Marketing Works - you just got disrupted!
When you focus on what’s being removed, it’s easier to understand the revolution
We remove shelf space as a limiting factor in books.
We remove the cost of polycarbonate as a cost factor in CDs.
We remove paper as an expense in magazines.
We remove the number of channels as a limiter in the broadcast of TV.
These are not small changes. These are revolutionary shifts in what’s scarce and what’s not.
If you are still organized around them, you will fail. If you embrace their removal, you’ve got a chance.
Which is why we at Massmob - are going to create a market place for mini mobile games which removes the marketing company!
Unlucky, Great Marketing Works - you just got disrupted!
Tuesday 17 July 2012
10 Ways to Find More Hours in Your Day
Here are some tips from the brilliant Ali Luke, on how to get an extra hour or two each day. So I nicked em - and put them up here.
1. Get Out of Bed Earlier
“If you normally get up at 7.30am, try getting up at 7am. That half-hour might
not sound like much — but it could be time that you use to meditate, to
exercise, to read that book you’ve been meaning to finish, or simply to get
your day off to a calm and organized start.
The first hour or half-hour of the day is often a great chance to work on
something important, before other demands crowd in on you. And if you need
your beauty sleep? Just get to bed half an hour earlier.
Today I woke up at 5am and did an hours hypno work - worked wonders.
2. Use Your Commute Productively
How much time do you spend commuting every week? Unless you work from
home, you’ve probably got at least a couple of hours each week when you’re
traveling between your home and your workplace.
Use your commuting time for something useful. If you drive, you could listen
to audio books. If you take the bus or train, you could read a book rather
than grabbing a free newspaper. And if your workplace is quite close by, you
could try walking or cycling to work — this builds exercise into the natural
rhythm of your day.
Did my social media catch up from last nights event and emailed developers. Then went to gym.
3. Tackle the Important Tasks First
Once you get to work, take a few minutes to prioritize your tasks. Get the
important ones done first (not the easy ones, or even the urgent ones).
You can afford to spend at least an hour working on big, important tasks
rather than on all those little urgent ones.
If you work like this, you’ll usually save time: the urgent tasks will still get
done, and you won’t spend hours procrastinating over the important ones.
This one tripped me up - so gonna get back to it - I think my market research is the most important thing I can do - but is it also finishing my book for Amazon?
4. Don’t Check Email So Often
Your colleagues and clients can wait for a few hours — or even a day or two –
for you to reply to their emails. If there’s something truly urgent, they’ll pick
up the phone.
Keep your inbox closed when you’re working, and only open it when you’re
ready to spend 30 minutes or so dealing with emails. It’s much more efficient
to batch-process your emails than to keep popping in and out of your inbox
to deal with individual ones.
Love it - am going to bring in the Tim Ferris Style Email Autoresponder from today (Again)
5. Reduce Interruptions
If colleagues have a habit of hanging around your desk to chat, or if the phone
is constantly ringing, you might find that it takes you half the day to finish a
simple task like writing a letter. Constant interruptions don’t just eat up time –
they also break your concentration.
When you’ve got a big task to focus on, let your calls go to voicemail. If you
have an office door, close it. If you work in a cubicle, wear headphones:
having them on makes it less likely that people will try to strike up a
conversation (you don’t have to listen to anything through them).
Way ahead of you...
6. Stay Focused on Your Work
You might have heard the saying “procrastination is the thief of time.”
When you want more hours in the day, procrastination can be a real problem.
A few minutes chatting, browsing the web, updating your Facebook status,
and so on, can easily turn into hours of wasted time over the course of a day.
When you’re working, work. If your concentration is slipping, take a proper
break: go and get a glass of water, or stretch your legs a bit. And if you’re
facing a difficult task, try breaking it into small steps or stages so that it’s
easier to tackle.
Love it - will do - water is in front of me and I am ready to go again :)
7. Go Home on Time
If you’re supposed to finish work at 4pm, but you never make it out of the
office door until 6pm at the earlier, then it’s no wonder you don’t have enough
hours in the day.
In some jobs, it is difficult to get away on time (if all your colleagues work late,
you might feel obliged to do the same). But if you’re staying because you only
ever seem to get any work done in a mad dash at the end of the day, then your
working habits need to change.
Thank you - am leaving at 4pm.
8. Delegate Some Chores
Perhaps you seem to be the only person in your household who’s capable
of unstacking the dishwasher or ironing the clothes. If your evenings get taken
up with a long list of chores, see whether you can delegate some of those.
Your partner, housemates, or kids can pitch in and help out. Even if you just
free up 20 or 30 minutes every evening, you’ll have a bit of extra time to spend
on something important to you.
Hmmm
9. Eat Dinner at Home
Although going out for dinner might seem like it saves time (after all, you don’t
have to cook) — you’ve got the time cost of traveling to the restaurant, ordering
the food, waiting for it to arrive, paying the bill … and it might well be faster just to cook and eat at home.
If you don’t have much time to cook during the week, try making extra portions
at the weekend so that you can freeze some. That way, you’ve got an
almost-instant meal (and one that’s probably healthier and cheaper than a
restaurant meal, too).
Do this one already
10. Limit Your TV Watching
If you put the TV on as soon as you get in from work, it’s easy to end up
spending hours slumped on the sofa. Instead of watching whatever happens
to be showing, try watching just one or two programs each night.
You might also want to have at least a couple of TV-free evenings; a great
chance to read a good book, or to work on a project around the house.”
Great - no more soaps ;)
You see I am going to need all the time I can get to launch my new start up business called Massmob. An idea to bring gamification to the nation... It's all about mobile marketing and how we can use engagement with games as an innovative advertising platform.
1. Get Out of Bed Earlier
“If you normally get up at 7.30am, try getting up at 7am. That half-hour might
not sound like much — but it could be time that you use to meditate, to
exercise, to read that book you’ve been meaning to finish, or simply to get
your day off to a calm and organized start.
The first hour or half-hour of the day is often a great chance to work on
something important, before other demands crowd in on you. And if you need
your beauty sleep? Just get to bed half an hour earlier.
Today I woke up at 5am and did an hours hypno work - worked wonders.
2. Use Your Commute Productively
How much time do you spend commuting every week? Unless you work from
home, you’ve probably got at least a couple of hours each week when you’re
traveling between your home and your workplace.
Use your commuting time for something useful. If you drive, you could listen
to audio books. If you take the bus or train, you could read a book rather
than grabbing a free newspaper. And if your workplace is quite close by, you
could try walking or cycling to work — this builds exercise into the natural
rhythm of your day.
Did my social media catch up from last nights event and emailed developers. Then went to gym.
3. Tackle the Important Tasks First
Once you get to work, take a few minutes to prioritize your tasks. Get the
important ones done first (not the easy ones, or even the urgent ones).
You can afford to spend at least an hour working on big, important tasks
rather than on all those little urgent ones.
If you work like this, you’ll usually save time: the urgent tasks will still get
done, and you won’t spend hours procrastinating over the important ones.
This one tripped me up - so gonna get back to it - I think my market research is the most important thing I can do - but is it also finishing my book for Amazon?
4. Don’t Check Email So Often
Your colleagues and clients can wait for a few hours — or even a day or two –
for you to reply to their emails. If there’s something truly urgent, they’ll pick
up the phone.
Keep your inbox closed when you’re working, and only open it when you’re
ready to spend 30 minutes or so dealing with emails. It’s much more efficient
to batch-process your emails than to keep popping in and out of your inbox
to deal with individual ones.
Love it - am going to bring in the Tim Ferris Style Email Autoresponder from today (Again)
5. Reduce Interruptions
If colleagues have a habit of hanging around your desk to chat, or if the phone
is constantly ringing, you might find that it takes you half the day to finish a
simple task like writing a letter. Constant interruptions don’t just eat up time –
they also break your concentration.
When you’ve got a big task to focus on, let your calls go to voicemail. If you
have an office door, close it. If you work in a cubicle, wear headphones:
having them on makes it less likely that people will try to strike up a
conversation (you don’t have to listen to anything through them).
Way ahead of you...
6. Stay Focused on Your Work
You might have heard the saying “procrastination is the thief of time.”
When you want more hours in the day, procrastination can be a real problem.
A few minutes chatting, browsing the web, updating your Facebook status,
and so on, can easily turn into hours of wasted time over the course of a day.
When you’re working, work. If your concentration is slipping, take a proper
break: go and get a glass of water, or stretch your legs a bit. And if you’re
facing a difficult task, try breaking it into small steps or stages so that it’s
easier to tackle.
Love it - will do - water is in front of me and I am ready to go again :)
7. Go Home on Time
If you’re supposed to finish work at 4pm, but you never make it out of the
office door until 6pm at the earlier, then it’s no wonder you don’t have enough
hours in the day.
In some jobs, it is difficult to get away on time (if all your colleagues work late,
you might feel obliged to do the same). But if you’re staying because you only
ever seem to get any work done in a mad dash at the end of the day, then your
working habits need to change.
Thank you - am leaving at 4pm.
8. Delegate Some Chores
Perhaps you seem to be the only person in your household who’s capable
of unstacking the dishwasher or ironing the clothes. If your evenings get taken
up with a long list of chores, see whether you can delegate some of those.
Your partner, housemates, or kids can pitch in and help out. Even if you just
free up 20 or 30 minutes every evening, you’ll have a bit of extra time to spend
on something important to you.
Hmmm
9. Eat Dinner at Home
Although going out for dinner might seem like it saves time (after all, you don’t
have to cook) — you’ve got the time cost of traveling to the restaurant, ordering
the food, waiting for it to arrive, paying the bill … and it might well be faster just to cook and eat at home.
If you don’t have much time to cook during the week, try making extra portions
at the weekend so that you can freeze some. That way, you’ve got an
almost-instant meal (and one that’s probably healthier and cheaper than a
restaurant meal, too).
Do this one already
10. Limit Your TV Watching
If you put the TV on as soon as you get in from work, it’s easy to end up
spending hours slumped on the sofa. Instead of watching whatever happens
to be showing, try watching just one or two programs each night.
You might also want to have at least a couple of TV-free evenings; a great
chance to read a good book, or to work on a project around the house.”
Great - no more soaps ;)
You see I am going to need all the time I can get to launch my new start up business called Massmob. An idea to bring gamification to the nation... It's all about mobile marketing and how we can use engagement with games as an innovative advertising platform.
Wednesday 4 July 2012
Happy US Independence Day, No Matter What Country You Call Home.
Yes, today the United States of America celebrates the signing of The Declaration of Independence. The pen hit hallowed paper July 4th, 1776 to let the world - and especially King George - know America was free.
But it’s... More Than Just an American Celebration.
The Declaration of Independence wasn’t merely 13 colonies declaring itself a nation.
It also drew a line in the sand on the inalienable and “natural” right to “Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.”
This line, although written by Thomas Jefferson, was influenced by English philosopher John Locke (1623-1704) who famously wrote about the right to life, liberty and property. And it has influenced countless countries since.
The French declared their natural right to “liberty, property, security and resistance to oppression” just 13 years after America. And just 5 days after the US passed its own “Bill of Rights.”
Canada, Japan, Vietnam and countless other countries have since included similar phrases in their guiding documents.
In fact, the Declaration was the height of a movement towards freedom that started centuries before in England. As all good movements do... ;)
The first being the Magna Carta, signed by King John of England in 1215. It finally put a limit on the arbitrary power of the king. And it was followed by the Petition of Right (1628), the Habeus Corpus Act (1679), and the Bill of Rights (1689) - all of which claimed more freedom for the individual.
The American's ran with it and made it even more (which they do rather well) and so the English movement laid the path for American Independence. Not just independence from a king or country, but from tyranny in all its forms.
Finally the individual would be King.
This is the bit that I love. This is the reason that I started Great Marketing Works - this is the reason that I work training entrepreneurs with NACUE, why I volunteer working in entrepreneurship with organisations like StartupBritain, why I started giving away my online mini marketing course for free. Click here for Your Marketing Trainer for free - saving you £34.99.
But a great question that the company who wrote a lot of the above post asked is:
What Will You Do With Your Freedom?
Their answer was:
"At The Elevation Group, we plan to cherish our freedom.
We will make the most out of our life, liberty and property. And that starts with taking full responsibility for our results.
We’re not burying our heads during these hard times.
Instead we seek out experts, truth and contrarian ideas.
We learn, we plan and we ACT."
Because as long as the world has a “Land of the Free,” opportunity will remain.
And no matter what country you are from - you have to love that!
Which is why today I am launching something new.
Something which takes back my freedom - something which is built on past movements and mistakes, something which, I hope will help many others remain free.
Tuesday 3 July 2012
Not enough pennies in Britain - maybe there is....
Malcolm Evans in his excellent blog - Corporate Finance North West - has made a great point. And so I have popped it below.He was chatted about:
"the seemingly endless overhang of investment funds in the region – VC, PE, mezzanine, banks saying they want to lend, the RGF, the BGF……goodness you’d think that potential growth companies could gorge themselves in a region flowing in milk and honey. (Not something we have seen at goAugmented - the independent Augmented reality development company I have been working with.)
Somehow, through, all this seems to work like the amusement arcade penny falls – money accumulates and accumulates but precious little of it ever seems to tumble out.
And I am absolutely convinced about what is going on – it is a situation which has long been evident but which has been radically heightened post-Credit Crunch.
Just about all of the tides of capital are looking to drip feed super-performance. By this I mean that they will only cherry pick the prospect of exceptional returns over relatively short periods. That disqualifies the vast majority of the business world, which I categorise as performance. I would estimate that some 2% of the SME market comprises super-performance and 98% performance.
Just as debt is an inappropriate funding vehicle for financing the development effort of a pre-revenue digital startup, so venture capital will also likely be inappropriate for replacing plant within a long-established componetry supplier embedded deeply within multi-national supply chains.
There are many such subtleties – and, indeed, thousands of funding applications out there that are sheer rubbish! But the trend is that just about everything sub the bottom end of super-performance, or at least the very top end of performance, is too often no longer getting a look-in.
We have become very poor capitalists – possibly the worst at any time since the Industrial Revolution. State initiatives tend to end up mired in the “mushy middle” of public sector bodies which appear more and more to be creeping back to swallow up cash, if, for that matter, many of them actually went away in the first place.
The banks have decidedly – and often by their own admission – undergone a revised risk profiling. Whilst the question used to be “is this business and this person capable of repaying this loan”, lending assessment has now entered the realms of super-performance. Just being good enough in business to service loans is no longer deemed good enough. But performance is enough – it is what makes the economy go round. The banks don’t do this very much anymore – we need to find ways in which performance is validated with appropriate investment.
We need new funding mechanisms – and we need to be precise, practical and determined about it. There was talk today about regional business investment banks.
That’s great – but we will need to be extremely vigilant and determined lest all the investment money continues just to feed the penny falls operators."
Myself I am wondering if Malcolm has every heard of the likes of USA crowdfunding portal Kickstarter which seems to be doing rather well.
It is interesting what this all might mean for finance. As Fred Wilson from America rightly points out here... in Gigacom.
And I think it is this crowdfunding route I am going to go down with for my next venture in mobile marketing - Massmob - a platform for mobile game developers for the business to business market place.
The question is.... is it a good idea?
"the seemingly endless overhang of investment funds in the region – VC, PE, mezzanine, banks saying they want to lend, the RGF, the BGF……goodness you’d think that potential growth companies could gorge themselves in a region flowing in milk and honey. (Not something we have seen at goAugmented - the independent Augmented reality development company I have been working with.)
Somehow, through, all this seems to work like the amusement arcade penny falls – money accumulates and accumulates but precious little of it ever seems to tumble out.
And I am absolutely convinced about what is going on – it is a situation which has long been evident but which has been radically heightened post-Credit Crunch.
Just about all of the tides of capital are looking to drip feed super-performance. By this I mean that they will only cherry pick the prospect of exceptional returns over relatively short periods. That disqualifies the vast majority of the business world, which I categorise as performance. I would estimate that some 2% of the SME market comprises super-performance and 98% performance.
Just as debt is an inappropriate funding vehicle for financing the development effort of a pre-revenue digital startup, so venture capital will also likely be inappropriate for replacing plant within a long-established componetry supplier embedded deeply within multi-national supply chains.
There are many such subtleties – and, indeed, thousands of funding applications out there that are sheer rubbish! But the trend is that just about everything sub the bottom end of super-performance, or at least the very top end of performance, is too often no longer getting a look-in.
We have become very poor capitalists – possibly the worst at any time since the Industrial Revolution. State initiatives tend to end up mired in the “mushy middle” of public sector bodies which appear more and more to be creeping back to swallow up cash, if, for that matter, many of them actually went away in the first place.
The banks have decidedly – and often by their own admission – undergone a revised risk profiling. Whilst the question used to be “is this business and this person capable of repaying this loan”, lending assessment has now entered the realms of super-performance. Just being good enough in business to service loans is no longer deemed good enough. But performance is enough – it is what makes the economy go round. The banks don’t do this very much anymore – we need to find ways in which performance is validated with appropriate investment.
We need new funding mechanisms – and we need to be precise, practical and determined about it. There was talk today about regional business investment banks.
That’s great – but we will need to be extremely vigilant and determined lest all the investment money continues just to feed the penny falls operators."
Myself I am wondering if Malcolm has every heard of the likes of USA crowdfunding portal Kickstarter which seems to be doing rather well.
It is interesting what this all might mean for finance. As Fred Wilson from America rightly points out here... in Gigacom.
And I think it is this crowdfunding route I am going to go down with for my next venture in mobile marketing - Massmob - a platform for mobile game developers for the business to business market place.
The question is.... is it a good idea?
Monday 2 July 2012
What's the difference between the floor and the ceiling: is it just where you stand?
This is all to do with how much you should / could get paid by being a freelance consultant - and it's a very important question for those professionals looking to start their own business.
There are two methods for assessing your fair billing rate, and both are important, the floor and the ceiling.
This is an excellent post by Christopher S Penn - which is so good I decided to copy it pretty much word for word.
The Floor
Here’s how to judge your minimum billing rate. This is the rate you must charge in order for you to justify your time and the project you’re working on. First, you need to know what your mandatory annual income is, the money you must earn in order to be able to survive and reasonably thrive. As a consultant, there’s a good chance you will be a 1099 consultant as well, so you’ll need to budget between 30-50% extra for health insurance, self employment tax, etc.
For example, let’s say you have $40,000 in actual expenses for the year, including rent, food, etc. Your IRS tax bracket is 25%, so tack on an additional $10K for federal taxes and $5K for state and local taxes. Health insurance for a small business owner varies wildly from state to state, but call it $10K to be safe. You’re now at $65,000.
Once you have your mandatory annual income, divide that by 2,080, the number of work hours in a year. (52 weeks x 40 hours a week). That’s your effective hourly In this example, your required hourly rate is $31.25/hour.
Now here’s the part almost every consultant I’ve ever talked to gets wrong. They assume 100% utilization, meaning every hour they’re clocked into work, they’re doing billable work. That’s far, far, far from the truth. The reality is that consultants are lucky to get 2/3 utilization, and a better, safer estimate is 50% utilization. The other 50% of your time will be spent building your business. Thus, apply the appropriate multiplier based on what you think or know your utilization rate to be. If you’re just getting started out, assume 50% to start. That would mean your billable hourly rate would be $62.50/hour. That’s the floor.
Don’t accept any project under that rate unless there’s some massive leverage that comes with the project, like the opportunity to move up the food chain somehow. If you’re billing a project with a “Set Rate”, decide how many hours it will take you to accomplish it, multiply times your hourly rate, and be sure to specify in your contract that the project is restricted to X hours, with additional hourly charges for every hour after that point.
This is something that I wish I had read earlier in my career after making a series of terribly costly learning errors in pricing models i.e. we didn't get paid enough.
The Ceiling
The ceiling is where you make the big money, but it’s much harder to judge, much harder to assess without a lot of experience. The ceiling fundamentally is based on how much your work is worth to your client. For example, let’s say you’ve been asked to speak at a conference and you’re a popular speaker. You know that you can put 50 butts in seats just by telling your fan base that you’ll be there. You know that the conference is charging $495 per ticket. Effectively, your value to the conference is $495 x 50, or $24,750. If you don’t speak, the conference may or may not fill those seats.
It’s reasonable, therefore, to ask for a percentage of that ticket fee as your pay. How much should you ask for? Some conferences are offering up to 50% of the ticket price as a commission in their affiliate programs (Jason Keath’s SocialFresh is one such excellent event), so it’s reasonable to ask for that as your fee outright or in an affiliate program if you’ve got a great audience/community.
Now think about the contrast there. If you charged your floor rate of $62.50/hour, even if you billed for an entire day for the conference, you’d only make $500 at floor rate. If you got 50% of ticket under your affiliate program (assuming 50 seats at $495/seat), you’d get $12,375. That’s a really, really gigantic difference, and it’s why you should look to finding your ceiling as quickly as possible.
In order to develop a fair ceiling rate, you have to know and understand deeply the industries and companies you’re serving so that you know the economic value of the work you’re providing. As another example, say you know a particular method for looking at Google Analytics, a way that can instantly increase the ROI of a company by 30%. If you know the company’s industry and know that 30% more in their digital marketing ROI is worth X, you can justify charging a percentage of X and explaining how your pricing works.
A third example might be a graphic designer whose work increases website conversion from 2% to 5%. What does a 3% increase in conversion mean? Well, if the designer understands the companies he works with, he or she can say, “you’ll earn more with my design because my methods improve conversion from 2% to 5%, and that’s worth X to your company in additional revenue, thus my fee is a percentage of X’s value over the first year my design will be in operation as long as my design hits 5% conversion. After that first year, 100% of the increased value will be profit to you“.
That’s the power of ceiling pricing – it goes far beyond day labor rates because you know what your work is worth, and once you explain that to your clients, chances are they’ll be okay with it. Why? Because it demonstrates your understanding of their business and the value you are providing, and you have a performance target built in. If your client reaches 5% website conversion, you get paid a large fee because you created the value they were seeking.
Which is where Great Marketing Works is now heading - a new business model based on understanding the client's business not just understanding the client's industry or position.
We will therefore be doing a lot less work with small businesses and a lot more with established ones that understand the ROI from what we do - and have the commercial cashflow to instantly benefit from it.
Conclusion
Your goal in doing any kind of consulting is to get to your ceiling rate as soon as practical, while never violating the floor rate. That means developing a strong, deep understanding of the value of your work to your clients and moving away from the floor where you’re just another hired hand whose work quality may or may not impact their business.
It also means that you have to think about your personal brand a lot more than perhaps you did before... which is what I think I will blog about next week... Which all links in to our linkedin training... but that's another story...
There are two methods for assessing your fair billing rate, and both are important, the floor and the ceiling.
This is an excellent post by Christopher S Penn - which is so good I decided to copy it pretty much word for word.
The Floor
Here’s how to judge your minimum billing rate. This is the rate you must charge in order for you to justify your time and the project you’re working on. First, you need to know what your mandatory annual income is, the money you must earn in order to be able to survive and reasonably thrive. As a consultant, there’s a good chance you will be a 1099 consultant as well, so you’ll need to budget between 30-50% extra for health insurance, self employment tax, etc.
For example, let’s say you have $40,000 in actual expenses for the year, including rent, food, etc. Your IRS tax bracket is 25%, so tack on an additional $10K for federal taxes and $5K for state and local taxes. Health insurance for a small business owner varies wildly from state to state, but call it $10K to be safe. You’re now at $65,000.
Once you have your mandatory annual income, divide that by 2,080, the number of work hours in a year. (52 weeks x 40 hours a week). That’s your effective hourly In this example, your required hourly rate is $31.25/hour.
Now here’s the part almost every consultant I’ve ever talked to gets wrong. They assume 100% utilization, meaning every hour they’re clocked into work, they’re doing billable work. That’s far, far, far from the truth. The reality is that consultants are lucky to get 2/3 utilization, and a better, safer estimate is 50% utilization. The other 50% of your time will be spent building your business. Thus, apply the appropriate multiplier based on what you think or know your utilization rate to be. If you’re just getting started out, assume 50% to start. That would mean your billable hourly rate would be $62.50/hour. That’s the floor.
Don’t accept any project under that rate unless there’s some massive leverage that comes with the project, like the opportunity to move up the food chain somehow. If you’re billing a project with a “Set Rate”, decide how many hours it will take you to accomplish it, multiply times your hourly rate, and be sure to specify in your contract that the project is restricted to X hours, with additional hourly charges for every hour after that point.
This is something that I wish I had read earlier in my career after making a series of terribly costly learning errors in pricing models i.e. we didn't get paid enough.
The Ceiling
The ceiling is where you make the big money, but it’s much harder to judge, much harder to assess without a lot of experience. The ceiling fundamentally is based on how much your work is worth to your client. For example, let’s say you’ve been asked to speak at a conference and you’re a popular speaker. You know that you can put 50 butts in seats just by telling your fan base that you’ll be there. You know that the conference is charging $495 per ticket. Effectively, your value to the conference is $495 x 50, or $24,750. If you don’t speak, the conference may or may not fill those seats.
It’s reasonable, therefore, to ask for a percentage of that ticket fee as your pay. How much should you ask for? Some conferences are offering up to 50% of the ticket price as a commission in their affiliate programs (Jason Keath’s SocialFresh is one such excellent event), so it’s reasonable to ask for that as your fee outright or in an affiliate program if you’ve got a great audience/community.
Now think about the contrast there. If you charged your floor rate of $62.50/hour, even if you billed for an entire day for the conference, you’d only make $500 at floor rate. If you got 50% of ticket under your affiliate program (assuming 50 seats at $495/seat), you’d get $12,375. That’s a really, really gigantic difference, and it’s why you should look to finding your ceiling as quickly as possible.
In order to develop a fair ceiling rate, you have to know and understand deeply the industries and companies you’re serving so that you know the economic value of the work you’re providing. As another example, say you know a particular method for looking at Google Analytics, a way that can instantly increase the ROI of a company by 30%. If you know the company’s industry and know that 30% more in their digital marketing ROI is worth X, you can justify charging a percentage of X and explaining how your pricing works.
A third example might be a graphic designer whose work increases website conversion from 2% to 5%. What does a 3% increase in conversion mean? Well, if the designer understands the companies he works with, he or she can say, “you’ll earn more with my design because my methods improve conversion from 2% to 5%, and that’s worth X to your company in additional revenue, thus my fee is a percentage of X’s value over the first year my design will be in operation as long as my design hits 5% conversion. After that first year, 100% of the increased value will be profit to you“.
That’s the power of ceiling pricing – it goes far beyond day labor rates because you know what your work is worth, and once you explain that to your clients, chances are they’ll be okay with it. Why? Because it demonstrates your understanding of their business and the value you are providing, and you have a performance target built in. If your client reaches 5% website conversion, you get paid a large fee because you created the value they were seeking.
Which is where Great Marketing Works is now heading - a new business model based on understanding the client's business not just understanding the client's industry or position.
We will therefore be doing a lot less work with small businesses and a lot more with established ones that understand the ROI from what we do - and have the commercial cashflow to instantly benefit from it.
Conclusion
Your goal in doing any kind of consulting is to get to your ceiling rate as soon as practical, while never violating the floor rate. That means developing a strong, deep understanding of the value of your work to your clients and moving away from the floor where you’re just another hired hand whose work quality may or may not impact their business.
It also means that you have to think about your personal brand a lot more than perhaps you did before... which is what I think I will blog about next week... Which all links in to our linkedin training... but that's another story...
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