Everything is wrong
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.
The art of selling
Let’s keep it really simple this time.
It’s this; What’s in it for them? That’s it.
So here’s my top 2007 stimulus list to help:
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Profit
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Savings
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Environmental benefits
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Ego
Feel free to add yours.
Marketing Purity
When I run my own company I won’t cut prices
When I run my own company I won’t make strategic changes
When I run my own company I won’t be legally conservative
When I run my own company I won’t be stingy with brand investment
When I run my own company I won’t let finance overtake creativity
When I run my own company I will do it my way
When I run my own company I’ll realize that compromise is a fact of entrepreneurship.
Money & Water
Money and water behave the same way. They both find the most efficient path. So an important part of any start up must be both the revenue streams and storage devices.
If our streams dry up or our storage device is leaky we’re in trouble.
Quirky fact 3.0
Ray Croc stumbled upon McDonalds at the age of 53 and took over and expanded at age of 59.
Colonel Sanders although cooking chicken for sometime didn’t open his first franchise until the tender age 62. (Pun intended)
Lesson: You’re never too old to follow the entrepreneur inside.
What don’t you offer?
We are so busy telling our audience what we do, it’s easy to lose focus. Sometimes the easiest way to position our brand, is to tell our audience what we don’t do.
A flip in our thinking is all we need.
Faith Popcorn – Trend predictions
That’s the actual name of a person. Faith Popcorn, although she was born as Faith Plotkin….
Faith has a bit of a reputation as a Nostradamus of marketing. Given her uber cool book“The dictionary of the future” from 2001 is now much like the story of the present, she just might have some insights for us budding entrepreneurs.
Swiped directly from trendhunter.com here are Faith’s latest predictions.
Identity Flux Technology has enabled us to experiment with different personalities, leading to a much more fluid sense of who we are. Having tasted the nectar of virtual liberation, we’re beginning to reject the singularly defined roles we’re expected to play in society.
The Future: Gender-neutrality goes mainstream. People list skills on their business cards rather than title, and dress up in various costumes depending on who they feel like being that day.
Liquid Brands Today’s consumers are capricious and non-committal. Brands will have to become more liquid to keep up with their constantly moving targets.
The Future: Chameleon-like brands focus less on communicating a static message and more on being the right thing for the right persona at the right time. Constantly morphing retailers carry products until they sell out and never restock.
Virtual Immortality Consumers globally are creating fully fleshed out existences in the virtual world-dressing up their avatars, making friends, having affairs and buying property for their pixilated alter-egos. And now that people have multiple lives, who says you can’t live forever?
The Future: While some let their avatars drift away to online purgatory, many more leave behind specific instructions on how their virtual selves should proceed. Services offering avatar surrogates flourish, and we bequeath avatars to friends and family in our wills.
EnvironMENTAL Movement Like the movement to combat environmental pollution, the next consumer-led reaction will be against the mental pollution caused by marketers. With every corner of the world both real and virtual becoming plastered with marketing messages, bombarded consumers are starting to say they’ve had enough. The current attack against marketing to kids is just the beginning.
The Future: Companies are expected to reduce the amount of damage they are doing to our minds. Savvy companies sponsor marketing-free white spaces in lieu of polluting the environment with models and logos.
Product PLACEment In the globally networked age, consumers are much more concerned about the consequences of consumption. Is my garbage poisoning someone in a developing country? How much fuel was burned in order to get these strawberries to my local supermarket? The Future: Enviro-biographies are attached to just about everything, letting consumers know the entire life story of a product: where the materials were harvested, where it was constructed, how far it traveled, and where it ended up after being thrown away or recycled. Brand-Aides The government has let us down when it comes to providing the social services we had once expected from it. Brands are stepping in to take over where the government left off. Companies are already finding there’s profit to be made from providing affordable healthcare to the masses.
The Future: Socially responsible brands make a buck while providing desperately needed services. Communities are revived by Target daycare, Starbucks learning centers, and Avis transportation services for the elderly.
Moral Status Anxiety In today’s increasingly philanthropic climate, expect conspicuous self- indulgence to go straight to the social guillotine. The globally conscious consumer regards altruistic activities as a necessary part of self- improvement.
The Future: A person’s net worth is no longer measured by dollars earned, but by improvements made. Families compete with each other on how many people they fed while on vacation, and the most envied house on the block is not the biggest, but the most sustainable.
Oldies but Goodies
Our culture is suffering from an experience deficit. With the availability of online knowledge, we’re claiming expertise based only on secondary experience. Now that everyone’s a web-educated know-it-all, we’re secretly longing for authority figures to guide and assure us with indispensable nuggets of wisdom that could only come from having actually accumulated life experience.
The Future: Respect for elders makes a comeback in the form of Ask Your Grandma hotlines and the proliferation of online video clips by seniors showing us how to tie knots and concoct home remedies.
How can your start up get ahead of the curve using these mind jams?
Simple business model
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?
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