The lifecyle of awesome

As far as I can tell the life cycle of awesome is in perpetual decline. Every day we all get sent something that’s awesome. Something that’s great. Something that’s shareable. and every day we make a judgement. A decision whether this piece is worth sharing. There are so many things to share, and so many places to share them, that the stakes get higher and higher for what qualifies – it has to. Which means that when we see something amazing, it’s only amazing for a little while. It means the window is very small and getting smaller.

Today I saw something awesome. A simple video projection come moving art, come installation, come viral video. It was very next level. In fact the guy show sen it to me (Rohan) said it was ‘off chops’. You can see it below. But what I’m really wondering is, for how long can we keep going to the next level until there is nowhere left to go?

Validation of Awesomeness

It’s pretty disappointing when you come up with a great advertising idea, new website or app – only to be shown one just like it. To learn that it has been done already. It’s a bit deflating in fact.

Unless we purposely decide to flip it around.

What we ought do instead is a create a list of the ideas and projects we arrived just a little to late on.

The list should be called the: ‘Validation of Awesomeness‘ list.

On this list is all the things that you thought of or started independently, just not soon enough. In fact the longer this list gets the happier we should be. We should be happy if it is long, because it proves we are on track. It proves our brain is cranking, we are on the path to getting it right. And eventually, we’ll have a fresh idea that we can take to market and get our own share of awesomeness. It proves our creative prowess. The list tells us it is just a matter of time. In addition it just might gives us the confidence we need to get it to market quickly.

The authentic phone message challenge

I’ll start by saying the concept of getting customers to “hold” on a telephone is a pretty bad idea. Then I’ll tell this story….

Today I was on hold for Optus telecommunications, which gave me a reasonably standard phone message:

“Your call is important to us. At this time we experiencing high demand for our telephone support staff, and we’ll be with you as quickly as we can. Please hold the line for the first available operator.”

Here’s what I seriously would prefer to hear:

“We’ve made a deliberate choice to only have X number of people to answer our phones. They are incredibly expensive and having any more than this would impact our profit too much. We’ve done studies which have worked out the number of people that hang up for waiting too long, and how much revenue the average phone call generates or loses for us. The number of people employed to answer our phones is just about optimal. We check this every few months. The average wait is about 5 minutes, so it’s a cool idea to put the phone on load speaker while you wait. Then you can do other stuff. If we answer and you’re not at the phone immediately, we’ll do you the the same favour of waiting a bit while you run to the phone to talk to us once we actually answer. We hope you appreciate our honesty. We reckon it’s better than giving you a load of shit that tells you how important you are. Cheers.

And so the challenge goes out to any startup or business is prepared to develop the worlds first authentic phone message be sure to let us know here at Startup blog so we can spread the awesomeness.

There’ll also be a prize for the best comment with a phone number to a company that has a message of this ilk – and the prize is $100 Amazon gift voucher.

Old world & customised – Rubble

A friend of mine is tremendous cook. It’s always a pleasure to eat at her house. At the end of every meal she gets the same comments about starting a cafe, restaurant or some type gourmet food business. As a startup evangelist I’m glad to say that time has finally come.

Welcome to Rubble – Home baked goodness from Bec.

The launch product is  Homemade Gingerbread House which is that we expect to see in some Hollywood Christmas movie than on our dinner table this Christmas.

The thing I love about it the most is the ability to customize. I’m getting the family name ‘Sammartino’ on ours. Might even be a very cool thing to get your brand name on it or gift it.

WHAT: Large, gift wrapped, X-Mas Gingerbread Houses (see attached photos)
LIMITED OFFER: 50 only being made. First in best dressed!!!
HOW MUCH: $60 (COD)
WHERE: Collection from 42 Peers St, Richmond, but we can work something out if difficult.
HOW TO ORDER: Return email providing – name, contact number, quantity required, pick up date, personalised name of house (if wanted).
APPEARANCE & TASTE: You will say “Wow’ for both! But not too spicy for the children to eat.

* email your orders to (bunglik [at] gmail dot com)

You know you want one.