The pie

I was at a startup angel session last night and it reminded my why I love the startup mentality so much.

All the participants where not interested in the end, as much as they were the process. Their interest was primarily in baking a pie they could be proud of. Which is the opposite to what we often see in the corporate scene. People whose interest is in getting the largest slice possible of a pie that someone else baked.

The key question we should ask ourselves, corporate executive or entrepreneur, is this: Are we baking or eating?

 

 

Have a drink on me!

I was at lunch today and got to talking to the owner of this restaurant seen below:

He mentioned that looking after regulars was important to generate return custom. One of his tricks was to provide a free glass or bottle of wine at the end of a meal. He empowered his staff to do the same. He said as reward and ‘thank you’ tell said customers this:

‘That last bottle / glass of wine is on the house!’

Problem was that some of his staff got the language ever so slightly wrong. Instead they would often say:

‘The next bottle / glass of wine is on the house!’

As you can imagine this changes their view on what to order (Hint: it comes from the top shelf). Instead of where they would normally focus their purchase. The strange thing is that the benefit to the consumer is essentially the same:

A free drink you didn’t expect to pay for.

The problem with getting it wrong is a cost to the business that could be many times higher.

Startup blog lesson: Our words to our audience matter. Small changes can have a huge impact.

Don’t do your homework

I’ve recently come to the conclusion that the most important thing I have ever not done, is my homework at school. Most of grade school and high school, I basically didn’t do my homework. I knew it was due the next day. I worried a little, but not enough to actually do it.

While other kids were doing their homework after school, I was out playing with the other kids, getting up to mischief. Riding my BMX, playing games (footy, cricket, building tree houses etc). I can home late, often. Mum would yell at me and I had to think of an excuse as to why I was late. I would have to provide at least some kind of creative response. Then after dinner I’d be too tired to do my homework. So I’d promise myself I’d get up early and do it in the morning. When morning arrived I’d be too tired to do it then either… In short the homework would rarely get done. Almost never. When I got to school, the same charade would occur. That is, me thinking of creative reasons why my homework was not getting done. Firstly to the teachers to try and avoid an after school detention. Again later, explaining to my mother why I ‘had’ an after school detention. In hindsight it was all a little stressful. Thinking on my feet for answer. Answers I didn’t have at such a young age, with little fast thinking experience.

Turns out this was a pretty good career move, or even ‘life skill’.

In the end, years of being naughty, taught me how to do something far more valuable than having high grades in senior school. It taught me how to think on my feet and how to present to an audience that wants answers. But it also did a lot more than that. Eventually it showed me how to read the play on different peoples reactions to bad news, that rules could be broken if you could sell an alternative.

It even goes a little deeper when I think it through….

I wasn’t just watching TV when I wasn’t doing said homework. I was out in the street playing. Building things with other kids. Under taking projects, playing games and interacting. Doing real things with real people. Operating in ‘live’ human environments, where the results, in this case the ‘fun’, was based on my ability to motivate other kids and organize them. All this, rather than spending my after school day light hours memorizing a bunch I’ve crap that someone had deemed it important for me to regurgitate in some test.

And now as the years have passed I’m reasonably certain that the key to any success I’ve had in life has been due to my ability to influence people. I’m also pretty sure that not doing my homework was where it all started.

The digital undertow

The 1′s and 0′s catch my eye

Data in disguise

I’m in a daze

I face perceived serenity

It temps investigation, constantly

It sucks me into its undertow

We are all drowning in it

Eventually we become the numbers

I dream of our analogue renaissance

 

The web is the people

The web has changed a lot since the early 1990′s. if we think back to the dominant behaviour in 10 year blocks it tells us a clear story about how the web is being ‘organised around the people’. Which means that the people are certainly not organising themselves around the technology. It sounds obvious, but it’s worth remembering as we embark on any business project.

the 1990′s – the web was all about browsing. Finding places to go. Websites – the WWW era.

the 2000′s – the web was all about search. The Google god, SEO and ensuring we had page 1.

the 2010′s – the web (so far) is becoming more human. Social interaction & guidance. It is segmenting, grouping & geolocating.

And we can see this in the evidence we find in how the web is being trafficked. According Hitwise web traffic to portals is down -21%, traffic for web search is flat and traffic to social forums is 52% up. Just like life, people don’t want to leave their stream if they can help it. We’d rather stay with the ‘life juice’ that our human relationships provide. Another simple example is what is happening to brands in social forums. Most brands have 10 times the the Facebook fans than they have in monthly visits to the home portal. The best example is Coke, which currently has 33.8 million fans versus 270k visits to its home page per month.

I guess one thing has never changed in business, and that is the best place to take our brand, is where the people already are.

Idea or invention?

Marketing polymath Seth Godin was asked for his distinction between an idea and an invention on his blog today. I think it is important and worth sharing right here:

An idea is something you can write about in a science fiction book.

An invention is when you build something that people who read about it in the science fiction book said was impossible

Before we venture into our next startup and invest capital (Human or Financial) it is worth knowing which one we have.

Email from Ender

My friend Ender sent me an email with a youtube link (below) and some words. Also below. I just wanted to share it here because it is relevant to entrepreneurs and anyone who is interested in their future.

the Words

People like him inspire me, i got an epiphany from that video.
KRS-ONE is a branding and sociological and anthropological expert who is still connected to the street.
You know what, I’m convinced that in today’s world, where cultural and social currency is traded rapid fast, it is crucial to be connected to the street scene whatever your age or standing.

In advertising, marketing, entrepreneurship, this is exponentially important.

The Video

Content vs Context

While reading the Age newspaper on my iPhone yesterday I happened upon an unfortunate advertisement. Have a look at the series of screen shots I took to see if you can notice it:

 

No doubt you too can see that a red Double Decker bus ride is probably not so compelling in the middle of a street riot. Although it is pretty funny, this could and should have been avoided. Why digital media providers don’t have a simple tagging system where certain advertisements don’t run is beyond me. Simple example;

Key word for advertisement: Flight & London. (run adv)

Don’t run advertisement tag: Flight & London & Crash (don’t run adv)

Pretty simple really, so why the GUI internet is nearly 20 years old and these mistakes still happen is beyond me.

If your startup ever runs digital placements, be sure you include your ‘do not run’ tags too.

I’m in love with Shwood

I saw this video below and fell in love with all of it. Every single P. Of the 4P’s that is…

The Product: So cool. Who doesn’t want something hand made, that has a story, that looks uber cool, and is recycled?

The Price: I almost don’t care, so long as it wasn’t more than what I would expect to pay for this product, then it is fine. Really. In fact, I’d probably pay a little more.

The Place: I hate shopping. I like ordering over the web and not have to go find a car park, pay for parking, deal with condescending retail worker fashionistas. In fact, I’m not even sure how these will look on my head. But I figure because they are so cool, I’ll feel cool and they’ll automatically look cool on me. (hey, I’m not pretending sunglasses are not a fashion accessory)

The Promotion: Well let’s put it this way. All I have ever seen is the video below. No one has ever spoken to me about this brand or product. In fact it is my first exposure to it. I loved the film, the light and most of all the story. It was beautiful to watch. I have already placed an order over the web. I found out via a tweet that someone sent. (By the way over 10 million tweets a day are about brands). That was all it took.

And now I’m in, part of the brand and spreading the word. This is how startups gain traction. Making cool stuff and embracing new methods to go to market.

New rules of media

The new rules of media are pretty simple. The only type of messages pretty much anyone is interested in these days are:

Anticipated, personal and relevant messages.

Anything else is just noise, or maybe even SPAM. It’s also easy to conclude that this is only relevant in new media. Not true.  These changes in the landscape have modified our worldview to the point that all media must now abide by the rules in bold above.

So next time we talk to our audience, we should ask ourselves if we abiding by the rules of the new world, or damaging our brand by living in the past.