20 business lessons you don’t want to learn the hard way but you probably will.

Inspired by an old colleague of mine - this is a post stolen from someone else (i.e. found on Forbes)

It's all about failure and lists 20 things you shouldn't have to learn the hard way. Ironically, I 'learned' a few of things when working with the colleague who inspired me - especially number 9 and 13.

A lot of the other ones, like the first one, I learned all by myself - the hard way.

I keep it here to remind myself - especially about number 20 - enjoy :) 

1.       You can’t do everything on your own. Building a team is essential because there are only so many hours one person can devote to a business. Exactly when you reach that limit depends on your other obligations. If you’re a young single person, you might be able to do everything for a year or two. But if you have a family, your dedication will eventually hurt those relationships. Build a team that can carry on when you’re not around.

2.      You may think your product is perfect, but your clients won’t. Listen to user feedback: Your opinion may not be the best one. The key takeaway here is “release your product early and release it often.” You won’t know if you have a great product until it’s in the field and users are beating it up. It’s like some of the contestants on American Idol. They think they’re talented, and their friends and family think so, too, but when they get on a bigger stage, their flaws become obvious.

3.      Do one thing really well. Entrepreneurs try to be everything to everyone, but it’s hard to be the store that sells bait and baby toys and vintage Beatles albums. Specialize, and you can charge for what you do provide. That said, if there is a skill or service that would make your core product better, provide it.

4.      Get paid before you hand over a project to a client. This is especially important if you provide a service. Once you turn over that contract or website or design project, you won’t have much bargaining power. When I was a graphic designer, I watermarked all my projects and hosted websites on a private domain until the bill was paid.

5.      Undercharging is not sustainable. You think, “I don’t need to charge $150 an hour, I can charge $70 and make way more than I was making as an employee!” But you might find out a short time later that your “great” rate is unsustainable. By the time you pay taxes, employees, business licenses, insurance, etc., that $150/hour is looking more realistic. Compete on quality, expertise and your niche focus (see #3) instead of price. When competing on price alone, the clients who are price-shopping will always leave for the person or company that undercuts you.

6.      Patience and flexibility help you survive the lean times. ShortStack started out as a side project at my web and graphic design studio. We weren’t a software development studio, but when a client asked us for a software product, we didn’t say no. We were patient, scaled slowly — partly out of necessity — and it allowed me to build with company without debt.

7.      Build for your actual market. All of my software-building experience so far has been in answer to a demand. It is purely opportunistic. If you’re an app developer and you think “Wow, I think xx industry could use xx,” you might be disappointed. Put another way: I would never start a restaurant without having worked in one…for a long time!

8.     Never enter a partnership without a buy/sell agreement. No matter how well you think you know someone, you just don’t know when he or she will want to retire or do something else. Even if it’s on amicable terms, know how you can get rid of one another when it’s time for one of you to move on.

9.      Be grateful. Appreciate loyal customers who show you there is a demand for what you do. There is no dollar amount you can put on brand advocates. Good will translates to loyal customers.

10.  Look after those who look after you.  ShortStack, who wrote this piece over referral’s  but it’s very much under the radar. They want people to recommend the product because they like it, not because they’ll say anything for a dollar. If they notice someone said nice things about them publicly, they might send them a t-shirt as a thank you. If they do it again and again, they might say, “Hey, you should become a referrer and earn a percentage of the business you send our way.”

11.   It’s not a sale until it’s paid for. This sounds obvious, but I’ve known small business owners who get very excited about orders and/or meetings with prospective clients. But until the money for those products or services is in the bank, it doesn’t count.

12.  You’ll make more money being “wrong” than proving you are right. Rather than fight with an unhappy customer and say, “You’re using it incorrectly,” or “You don’t know enough CSS to use our product,” we just refund their money. In the long run, these people consume so much of the support team’s time and energy that it’s more cost effective this way. They’re not our ideal client, and that’s OK.

13.  People don’t leave companies — they leave management. This lesson goes for both employees and customers. A manager will lose staff if the employees think they’re not being listened to or valued. Customers will stop using your products or services if they are dissatisfied with them. The quality and reliability of your products and services is a reflection of management.

14.  The way you present your business should be a reflection of your audience. If you have serious clients, be serious. If you have hip, fun-loving clients, have a sense of humor. You have to find your niche and build your content to suit them. For example Constant Contact and MailChimp do essentially the same thing, but their marketing content reflects very different client bases. (Ed. Something we have to think about more at Justaxi - a mobile app which helps people get the best taxi price... we have many competitors but hopefully not for the new market we are aiming at with our new marketing.)

15.   Agree on scope in advance. Have a clear contract before work begins. Once a project goes beyond the documented plan, charge for it. If you agreed to build a website with 10 pages, but soon the site is 20 pages, the client should pay you for them. If your contract makes that clear at the outset, it is easier to control scope creep.

16.  If your company sells a variety of products, make sure you know how to use/operate every single one of them. It might sound like a tall order — depending on how many products your company sells — but learning to use what your company sells will help you look at things with fresh eyes.

17.   When you think you’ve tested your product enough, test it some more. Never release a product until it has been tested and tested and tested by people who don’t work for you. 

 

18.  Understand how social media networks work. When Twitter was first available for businesses, I’d see people use it like an ad in a newspaper. If you go on a channel and use it the wrong way, it could do more long-term harm than good.

19.  Save up. You can operate at a loss for a number of years but you can only run out of cash once. Have a rainy day fund that has at least two or three months’ operating costs in it. And have a line of credit available, even if you don’t plan to use it. Having a CPA look at your books once a quarter is also a must. (Ed. I do it daily for JusTaxi - but we are a mobile app so it might be different for everyone else.)

20. Always let the CFO pay for drinks. Cheers!

 The last one I managed to do just before I left my last client - but it was over Christmas so I cheated a little ;)

Your biggest problem is NOT your product's lack of awareness or brand power. It's.....

It's ...something deeper than that. 

This is a wonderful blog from Seth Godin which gets to the crux of marketing and the problems people often have about the way they think about it...

This is mainly due to the fact that most people consume  A LOT of marketing - which makes them believe that they know about it - it's a bit like eating lots of food in great restaurants and then thinking you can be a chef. 

It is not to say that you cannot become a food critic - but A LOT of critics are not creators. 

Seth here is talking about the strategic point of marketing and a deeper fact of business i.e. that marketing is not here to make a bad product good and if you think it is that is a problem. 

As Seth says it  client's often say.... "Our biggest problem is awareness"

If that's your mantra, you're working to solve the wrong problem.

If your startup, your non-profit or your event is suffering because of a lack of awareness, the solution isn't to figure out some way to get more hype, more publicity or more traffic. 

Those are funnel solutions, designed to fix an ailing process by dumping more attention at the top, hoping more conversion comes out the bottom.

(Ed. This is old school marketing and what we used to do....with things like newspapers.)

The challenge with this approach is that it doesn't scale. Soon, you'll have no luck at all getting more attention, even with ever more stunts or funding.

(Ed. But you can change the conversion rates a little but this also doesn't scale quickly enough.) 

No, the solution lies in re-organizing your systems, in re-creating your product or service so that it becomes worth talking about. 

When you do that, your customers do the work of getting you more noticed. When you produce something remarkable, more use leads to more conversation which leads to more use.

No, it won't be a perfect virus, starting with ten people and infecting the world. But yes, you can dramatically impact the 'more awareness' problem by investing heavily in a funnel that doesn't leak, in a story that's worth spreading.

This IS modern marketing - this is social marketing. People have to talk about this. Which is why at Justaxi - a geo location mobile taxi comparison app - we are changing our product as much as our marketing. 

On this note if you would like to vote for our new slogan for 2014 - click here to Facebook Vote - you have until 7pm on the 16th.... so not long. 

Born or made? Entreprenurs. Discuss.

After a rather turbulent Christmas and New Year. I have been left asking myself about employment vs. entrepreneurship. Whether you really can be an "intrapreneur" and in truth, whether I have a mental problem or something wrong with me. The reason being is that I have left my rather stable world of employment to work as a consultant for a start up once again. This despite knowing the risks involved. 

And you know what..... I couldn't be happier. Well I would be happier if my last employer and I can see eye to eye on the subject of some money still owed to me - rather a large amount as it happens. 

It is this disagreement again and the fact they didn't seem to see it as a problem that prompted my leaving, not the team I left, not the ideas that we had, not the speed of progress made, not the changing of the world or the changing of the seasons. 

Yet, something deep inside me puzzled me about my leaving, so it was with interest that I read the below about entrepreneurship, as it might just be that I don't have a mental problem, it might just be a gene inside me, a gene, called the e gene.  

Recent research by Amway has revealed that, to become a successful entrepreneur, you must be in possession of the 'e-gene', which is categorised by six different personality traits as identified by Chris Coleridge, an innovation researcher at the London School of Economics. And you see - I have several of them - if not all of them.... to an extent. 

The six traits of entrepreneurship are: 

Difficult background - left on a doorstep when I was two, taken into two care homes, adopted by a loving family (of a different race and religion)

Minority/disadvantaged group - originally rather poor - mixed race - luckly adopted see above.

Disability - mild dyslexia (yes I couldn't spell that without spell check - why is that word so silly anyway!  I also wear glasses (very strong ones) and I am a bit odd socially (great on stage but not in groups.)

Risk-lover and optimist - I would say the latter rather than the former, but looking back on it - not starting a career till 36 and always running my own businesses from 16 probably says "risk" 

Independence and social distinction - fiercely so  to the extent it has become a disability (see above) and what else motivates a man to write a blog like this :)

The need for achievement and power- again former rather than the latter. (See above see above)

However, an important distinction it that - power is something - I care not one jot for - and am a firm believer that power simply corrupts - the less of it in the hands of men the better (and I do mean men here not men as mankind.) The more power to the people rather than to man made bureaucracies (and again I mean man made not woman made.) 

Coleridge argues that a combination of these six traits can be identified in all "successful" entrepreneurs. Which brings up the subject of success which creates another points. As many / most entrepreneurs are failures for a long time, some argue that it is that ability to be a failure in the eyes of the world and still love what you do, still continue, still work at it and become successful that is another characteristic (and even a necessary part of the process.)

But isn't this the same of all artists and creators? When looking into the "Over night success stories" from musicians to comedians you often see the magic 10 years and the irony of them being called over night successes.  However, back to Coleridge's e-gene traits. According to the research, Richard Branson has four of the traits – disability, risk-lover and optimist, independence and social distinction, and need for achievement/power, whilst Anita Roddick, founder of The Body Shop, possesses three - difficult background, minority/disadvantaged group, and independence and social distinction.

"Having researched entrepreneurs' personalities and traits, most of the successful possess an effectual logic – an approach to solving a problem that starts not with the desired end but with the available means, limiting the risk of failure," he adds.

Which pretty much sums me up.

And for the record I have all six traits - which cannot be healthy. 

But not everyone agrees (which is good otherwise the world would be boring) as serial entrepreneur Jonathan Richards believes that an entrepreneurial mindset is the sum of all our experiences and it is not something that we are born with.

"An entrepreneur is created when an idea comes together with a person who is happy to balance creativity and management; understand, live with and manage risk; evangelise the idea in the face of negativity; and stay responsive and positive," he says.

However, if you see the six traits, less than half are you born with. 

Former Dragons' Den judge and founder of School for Startups Doug Richard also believes that nobody is ‘born’ an entrepreneur and that entrepreneurship can most definitely be taught.

But he would as he teaches it. And very well might I add. Sometimes with my help.

What Doug says is...

"If you give a group of people a violin, certain people will have a natural ability of course, but that becomes irrelevant if everybody is given a chance to learn and practice. We all need to do exactly that in whatever we choose to do professionally or otherwise. Nobody can claim to be born an entrepreneur, and nobody wakes up one day with a successful business and brand. Hard work, mistakes and a determined attitude combined with the right support at the right time are the not-so-magic formula."

After reading the Outliners book and others it would seem that 10,000 hours should do the trick and then everyone would be entrepreneurs. The problem with this thinking is that some personality types, many of whom I have met now as I have had a job, simply wouldn't want to ever become a entrepreneur.

Perhaps entrepreneurship it is like greatness. Some are born great, some make themselves great and some lucky ones through clever marketing and PR have greatness thrust upon them! :)

Either way it is with the spirit of an entrepreneur I create my consultancy contract for working with a geo location mobile software specialist start up called Justaxi.  They have a great technology, an eager investment team, some real pedigree in entrepreneurship on the board, a great culture and new team (lead by me) and an amazing £1 billion market to aim at.

I am going to do their marketing and business development, bringing in social and mobile, maybe even a bit of augmented reality, definitely some gamification for the app experience and loads of digital guerrilla marketing ... as a consultant at first.... but you never know I might let them employ me :) 

Buying shares and social advertising and perhaps what it all means...

I just bought some Facebook shares today.

Nothing amazing in this news. I wanted to buy them ages ago - when they almost hit $15 - which for some reason I had in my head they would do - and so stubbornly (like an amateur) I didn't buy any!

As even, if I had wanted to buy them at $18 - I didn't know how to or where to and so each time my mind hit that tiny bit of friction I would stop and do something else and forget about shares for a while.

Then last week I remembered about doing it again - but not because of a chat with friends (I had already done that the week before) or a talk with family (again done the week before with a recommendation from my father that I go into a bank and chat to them about it... ) but my mental reminder came from a Facebook ad on my mobile phone. Right in my stream, right in my social area, right smack bang where it should be.

Fair play to Facebook and fair play to eToro (who I am now buying social shares with... even though I don't know how I own the shares or whether I really do...)

The point I suppose is that when Facebook marketing is done right - it really works. I have been thinking about buying shares for YEARS. Literally. Then three clicks later I had bought shares with my first $50 being free. All thanks for mobile and facebook and facebook mobile ads.

Yet apparently, so people are saying that it is precisely Facebook's solving of it's mobile problem (i.e. how to make money from it) that could be it's very undoing. As Mobile Marketeer reports: 

"Facebook recently revealed that its mobile application install ads are responsible for driving 175 million application downloads so far this year. At the same time, the company is stepping up efforts to leverage its mobile news feed to link users with news and other content from media sources, pointing to how it is evolving away from being a way for users to connect with one another to become more of a content platform.

“Facebook is far from its roots as a social network, and are now functioning more as a social publisher,” said Jordan Schenck, senior strategist at Rokkan, New York. “Their priorities for this platform will remain around serving up ads and less about functioning as a person-to-person engagement tool.

“Facebook and Instagram's biggest challenge will be remaining authentic to their roots as a social network and photo-sharing network, respectively,” he said.

“They will need to figure out creative ways to re-target millennials without over-saturating their platforms with ad units. Consumers are smart and see straight through that.”

Instagram COO jumps ship Facebook is experiencing significant growth in the use of its platform by mobile users and has been responding to the need to monetize this audience by building out its mobile advertising offerings, which has been successful to date.

Facebook recently reported that 49 percent of its ad revenue is coming from mobile.

However, the platform is increasingly facing pressure from newer social networks that are inherently more mobile oriented, such as Twitter, which is quickly growing its own mobile ad business. Vine, SnapChat and others are also expected to introduce advertising soon.

Just this week, Instagram’s chief operating officer Emily White, who brought advertising to the platform, jumped ship for SnapChat.

Facebook is not even the most popular social messaging app any longer. That spot is now occupied by WhatsApp, according to On Device Research.

Content referralIn the face of the growing competition, Facebook is doubling down on app install ads, last month introducing new capabilities enabling developers to use deep links in mobile app ads that direct users to a customized, specific location inside an app such as a sale, promotion or specific content.

“Mobile app install ads make up a significant and growing portion of Facebook's mobile ad revenue, and this is an example of Facebook successfully identifying and capitalizing on the huge opportunity that stems from advertisers' need to drive discovery, installation and usage of their mobile apps,” said Todd Herrold, San Francisco-based senior director of product marketing forKenshoo.

Facebook is also giving articles and other content from media companies a more prominent role, particularly in mobile, via links to articles users might find interesting. The idea is to increase the amount of time people spend there, which in turn will help Facebook sell more ads.

The move comes as the average referral traffic from Facebook to media sites has increased by over 170 percent in the past year.

Users will start to see links to articles more often, particularly in mobile, about current events, sports teams and other news. Facebook is also planning to include links to three related articles once users click on a link to an article of interest.

It remains to be seen if these efforts will overwhelm users with too many marketing messages.

Cross-device targetingGoing forward, the social network will need to focus on leveraging its significant scale to deliver more relevant cross-device advertising so it does not turn off users with too many brand messages. The risk that Facebook and others face with tracking user activity across devices is running afoul of consumers and regulators who are concerned about privacy.

“Facebook's biggest opportunity and challenge related to mobile in 2014 will be to develop capabilities for cross-device consumer ad targeting, measurement and optimization," Mr. Herrold said. “This will be a hot topic in 2014 and Facebook is uniquely positioned to capitalize on it and innovate in this area.

“Rather than rely on device fingerprinting technology which is complicated and doesn't take into account multiple users who share devices, Facebook has the scale necessary to simply link user activity across device through association with the individual user's login,” he said.

“Enabling advertisers to target users and measure performance across devices will open up many new advertising and revenue opportunities and will solidify Facebook as the leading digital and mobile marketing channel.”

So perhaps the solving of Facebook's mobile problem is going to be OK in the end... I hope so as I own $50 worth of their stock - at a starting price of around double what I would have paid if I hadn't been so slow... on that note .... anyone want any Netflix shares ;)