Return on effort
We always hear about return on investment (ROI) and yield. The problem with this type of talk is that it assumes money is the only thing we can get a return on.
Turns out there are two things we can invest. Time or money. And when we haven’t got a lot of money to invest, we must invest our time. Which is what our education is about.
For bootstrapping startups our key investment is time.
The hope is that our time invested will give us a financial return. Which we can then invest in addition to our time. So the question we should ask ourselves as we track our new startup is this:
What is my return on effort?
Share the process
Here’s a really nice piece of brand engagement by South West airlines. Watch it, then we’ll chat some more.
This is such a simple idea, not just for Airline & time lapse photography nerds, but pretty much anyone. An entertaining audience connection. It brings the audience into the organization, a little bit of industrial tourism, which pretty much any company can do if they stretch their imaginations a little bit.
I think this could work showing chocolate bars being made, rock bands setting up, graphic design work, furniture being carved, clothes being stitched..l almost anything. And the awesome thing is that it’s very cheap to do these days. iMac movie comes with a speed up footage feature, and very good time lapse software apps can be bought for the iphone for a few dollars. It’s a good way to create a conversation, fill the blog, or even tweet about.
Startup blog says: Share the process, not just the results.
Our audience
Advertising polymath David Ogilvy once said:
‘You are not advertising to a standing army, you are advertising to a moving parade.’
Translation. We get bored of our output long before our audience does. Our audience is changing constantly. When our promotions strategy is working, our own boredom is no reason to change it.
What does this mean for entrepreneurs? It means that change for changes sake is pointless. It means that we need to be sure our communications strategy (or any tactic for that matter) has run its course before we take on the expense of changing it.
Everyone cares
How to make a Hungry Jacks (Burger King) Whopper:
- Take the top of the bun and swipe mayonnaise across it twice starting in the middle of the bun and swiping out ways
- Sprinkle lettuce onto mayo base just enough so the white of the mayo shows through the lettuce.
- Add two slices of tomato on top of the lettuce at 3 o’clock and 9 o’clock.
- Put the meat patty into the base of the bun.
- Spread 4 pickles in a dice configuration while using the squeeze ketchup bottle in opposite hand to spread the pickles.
- Squirt 3.5 circles of ketchup on the beef patty starting at the outside of the circumference.
- Lightly sprinkle onion onto the ketchup at 50% of the thickness of the lettuce.
- Place both thumbs onto the tomatoes of the bun top and flip onto the base.
Serve hot!
The reason I’m sharing this with you is, that I learned how to make a whopper over 20 years ago, at a wage of $3.00 per hour and I still remember exactly how to make it. It was and probably still is, the lowest paid job available in the economy.
And yet a business colleague recently told me his his employees didn’t care about their job or the brand of his company because they were Uni students, and part time workers. What a crock. I took particular pride in making fast, well formed whoppers. Even thought it was a menial wage. At the time I was in year 9 at school and had zero intention of going to University or finishing school for that matter, yet I still cared. I cared because I had good managers, encouragement and there was a culture of doing your best, maybe even a little healthy competition to make the fastest and best burgers. It’s my strong belief that the vast majority of people take pride in what they do, no matter how menial it happens to be. So when I hear people saying their employees don’t care about their job, because it is part time, or low paid, I tell them this story. The story that all people no matter what they do have pride in their job, so long as one ingredient is in place:
They know we value what they do, and we treat all employee efforts with respect, regardless of where they stand in the hierarchy.
Startup Blog says: Employees will respond to how we treat them. We must respect them in the first instance. When we do this and we’ll get results reflective of human nature, not the hourly pay rate.
Salvage Bazaar
I’m really impressed with new Melbourne Startup www.salvagebazaar.com
What is it? Salvage Bazaar is an online marketplace where you can buy and sell recycled and scrap building materials.
I’m impressed for a few reasons:
- It’s a nice iteration for on line real estate market
- It has strong eco / environmental credentials
It’s a very nice addendum to the existing established real estate websites in most markets such as www.realestate.com.au in Australia.
It also has a strong play with the move towards gentrification of housing in inner city areas, as well as green / eco requirements emerging in the architecture scene.
But here’s the kicker: the founder Kim Pannan, has never done anything in the tech space before in her life, not even blogging let alone founding, designing and building her own commercial web business. The bit I love is that Kim was a graduate from Startup School. So a feel a bit like a proud uncle.
If you want to learn to what Kim did – who incidentally bootstrapped Salvage Bazaar on very little money, then you might want to grab 1 of the 2 seats left at the Melbourne Startup School.
New Auto Resume Service
An amazing new auto resume service is on the web these days. You just go to their website, type in your name, and an extremely detailed and up to date resume is automatically generated. Very nifty: click here to give it a try: http://bit.ly/c4Ob8S
Whether or not you are disappointed with the service or your results is irrelevant. This is what people are using to check you out before they ask their friends about you or your startup. It’s more trusted than what you write.
The good news is that we can change it, use google to our advantage.
How?
- By making sure we have a digital footprint for our name, startup or charity work.
- By registering our own domain with links of our output and or things we care about.
- By having a meaningful blog, twitter feed, newsletter, YouTube channel or other category specific media channel.
- By doing the point above well and getting some mainstream coverage for our output.
SAT scores are dead. Welcome to the new world of digital assessment.
The non-web side of web businesses
If you’re not doing much tomorrow night, and happen to be in Melbourne, I’m giving a little talk at the Hive.
I’ll be focusing on the non-web side of web businesses. It’s free to come and should be fun.
Great bootstrapping
This Nutrigrain commercial isn’t really about cereal. It’s a message for Entrepreneurs. Take a look.
Notice how he didn’t let his environment (non coastal) hold him back?
Notice the tools he built to train himself and replicate his desired future?
Notice, the time invested in his dream, the years of dedication?
He wasn’t concerned about the resources he didn’t have, rather those he could use to bootstrap his training. It’s an attitude that all entrepreneurs should have.
Best we take a second look.
Economic irrationalist
Lately I’ve been making a few decisions which are economically irrational. Making decisions which are, on the face of it, financially inept.
For example, I starting to feel a sense of loyalty to my chief technology officer for rentoid.com
He’s not the cheapest and he’s not the best. Probably somewhere in the middle for both. I could probably get someone cheaper with similar skills, or better for the same price. But I don’t. In fact I tell him that I’m loyal to him. A large part of why I want to succeed so that he can succeed also, to share it with him. Even though he has not risked the capital, or the time that I have on the project.
Why would I act this way. Well I like working with him. He’s a nice guy, and sometimes that’s enough.
I guess you could call me an Economic Irrrationalist. And it just feels right.
Web everywhere
Recently I was chatting with a Director at a global advertising agency about changes in the media landscape. The impact that the internet was having. She mentioned that the internet only affected a certain portion of the population – not all target audiences. The younger generation, the web savvy, the technophiles…
I retorted with the following:
Once upon the web was a thing you had to visit. First it was in military installations, then Universities. Eventually it was present in only very large corporates on selected computers. Later, on every desk in every company. Afterwhich every computer in every home had it. And now it’s on our latops, in our cafes, in our pockets, it’s the GPS that directs our cars and powers the touch screen shopping mall directory. Next year all TV’s sold will be web enabled – 5 billion channels. It’s on every digital display in our lives.
It came to us, it removed the original demographic bias. The web is everywhere and permeates our entire existence. It has changed advertising forever.
The web is no longer and thing or a place. It is omnipresent.
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