bwagy

As many of you may have heard (and seen the occasional spy shot) my first book The Best Ideas are Free is due out soon.

I sat down last year after 6 months of blogging, printed out every post and spent an afternoon selecting the 63 best ideas.

Since then they have been put together into a book – 63 easily digestible ideas to chew on.

It will soon be available to the general public (I expect to ship July 6th but that may move up if time allows) but I will be opening pre-orders exclusively to you guys.  This is to thank you for all your support, comments (good or bad), readership and to celebrate my 1 year anniversary of blogging!  

Now I will be the first to admit that yes you can browse through the blog and read the ideas for free (go for it I encourage you) but hey how much cooler is it having a book?  

The book is designed to be such that you can open it up on any page, read an idea within 30 seconds, pick it up and run with it.  The first time you read it you won’t get them all but reread it three months from now another one may be relevant.

If you enjoy the blog you’ll love the book.  Like the blog it is colloquial format – as if I am having a conversation with you.  DO NOT expect a typical book – expect my blog in phsyical form (and yes with all my quirks!).  This truly is a book the way I would want a book to be..

For the 130 pages of goodness you will be given the opportunity to pre-order 1 of 63 limited edition signed copies.

To snag one enter your email below and I will be in touch (first in first served).

 

(Note: RSS & Email Subscribers need to click here to visit the blog to use the form. Thanks!)

A few people messaged me yesterday when I mentioned if I hired someone here is what I would do (Obsess about your employees).

A common thread is that there can be a lot of dissent amongst employees, especially those that receive extra perks because they have a family vs those that don’t.  When some people put off having a family to have a career or unable to, bringing up these kind of issues would be very very difficult.

My idea would be to have a pool of perks (kind of an employee loyalty style programme) over time you receive these perks, you can swap as you please.  Thus if you choose something like day care you are giving up something else.  Not a be all end all solution but would allow employees to fairly allocate their own rewards.

(Oh and also you can get employees to make up their own perks or provide them within the scheme…)

Really obsess about your employees.  Look after them.

No seriously, the good guys aren’t hanging about, especially if you don’t look after them.

If I was hiring, things I’d offer are:

• Decent Health & Life Insurance
• Huge holidays, if you want to take 3 months off no pay, let’s figure out how to do that.
• Extra benefits for family guys
• Performance bonuses based on real business value that employees contribute
• Own time to build personal projects, whether related to business or not (including building personal brand, blogging, twitter)
• Flexible hours.  What are rigid schedules for? Deliver on time, don’t care whether you do 1 hour or 2 hours.
• Flexible location, if you can do the work from Cambodia whilst you do some travel, let’s make that happen
• Want to build a startup out of work hours? All good, maybe we can sort you out with some equity or loans to give you a helping hand.

Oh and of course a reasonable wage.

Maybe this sounds like a pipe dream or maybe providing a dream job scenario will attract dream employees…

Something we should all practice.

The Art of Objectivity.

It promotes mutual respect, encourages understanding and actually helps people to agree to disagree.

Sure peoples opinions may differ but do we have to dislike one another because of that?

As the web is showing us by flattening previous preconceptions (through twitter, blogging, social media), sure you may disagree on political views but on Rugby or Marketing or Traffic issues you share the same views.

Maybe there is something in an alternative view? It is worth a thought, or at least mutual respect.

The world would be such a better place if this was practiced more – or even taught in schools.  Now that would be amazing.

Even if you are in a bad mood a smile can cheer you up or take the edge off your grumpiness.

In fact a smile is contagious, if you smile at someone, chances are they will return it.  But the smile stays.  For them to spread to others.

So keep that in mind, smile :)

When you are doing something new, unprecedented or remarkable you encounter the reverse long tail.

Each of your actions have what seem to be small consequences, however over the long run things begin to snowball and consequences increase.

Hence why…. perseverance is genius.

(Orig Picture by Hay Kranen / PD. Modified by Ben Young.)

It’s like greasing the tyres of a relationship.

If well greased it should be a smooth ride.

If not conflict arises.

It’s not hard either, talk to all parties involved, listen, then adjust accordingly so everyone knows each others expectations.

A little work here will help create amazing results ;)

#11 of the bwagy marketing manifesto:

“You are always wrong, you just need to be less wrong than your competitors.”

It is so true – no matter your stance someone can always come up with a solid reason why you are wrong.

Don’t stress about being 100% right, you just need to be less wrong than those you compete with.

(And take action.)

the phrase: “I give up”

NO.

As much as 85% of all consumer purchases are made by females (via TomPeters.com) and I am guessing that the rest is guys buying stuff for the ladies! (joking).

Seriously though as a retailer you should be helping guys buy for girls.

Run a flower shop? Guide guys as to what they should buy.  Same with wine / chocolates.  In fact why isn’t there a store that solves guys problems – you could call it ‘I’m Sorry’ or ‘I Love You’.

Just give guys a guide – what do you want to say with your gift.  Get the girls to help feed the input.

At the very least it says they cared enough to try.  Just a thought, help guys buy for girls.