bwagy

#29: Hiring the first person
Don’t hire someone, get them on a contracting basis for a while.

#30: Make every dollar work for you
Stretch every dollar as far as you can, and I mean as far as you can. Once I used to drink tea at coffee meetings to save a few bucks. (Cheap but was half the price of a coffee).

#31: Eco-System
Find out who your competitors are, send them work when you can’t help a client, it’s an eco-system not a free for all.

Unfortunately I fell ill last week and had to cancel some appointments.  Most were understanding (hey I don’t want to get you guys sick) some not so much.  One disgruntled person said could have given us more notice.  Hang on? It’s not like people plan on being sick….

It was then I wondered wouldn’t it be neat if there was a service that benchmarked small businesses call etiquette – the service rings up businesses and follows certain procedures to rank and score a business.  This is then shared online for all to see.  Then we can find out which are good to deal with and businesses can get a realistic view of their call staff.

Big businesses already do this (to a degree) but not in such an open format.

Imagine comparing a new hairdresser based on call manner.  As Drucker says “what gets measured gets managed”… I think we’d rapidly see an improvement.

One offs are expensive, focus on ongoing relationships where you can work together, get to know one another, take a dance.
For the continual ongoing growing relationship is made up of thousands of small steps, each compounding the previous. It’s this approach which creates tremendous change.

I have always wanted to write a post on the crazies.

These are the people who come up with hair brained schemes to change the world.

However they don’t get the credit till they do just that.  Up until that point they are just crazy.

Yet we shy away, they’re different, out there, exude passion.

Take a leap, listen to them, see if you can help.  They could be the next big game changer and even if not chances are you’ll learn something new that you’d never have learnt hanging out with regular people.

From the outside looking in at some businesses you wonder how they make money.

Anyone can do that right?

Well actually yes if someone else is doing it and offering as a service – chances are you can do it too.

BUT you’re not in that business.

If someone else can do it much more efficiently and take the stress away they have something of value.  What their customers are buying is reassurance that the job will get done.

A classic example of this is recruitment, yes you can seek and attract employees, vet them and do it yourself.  However it is probably more efficient to use a recruitment company to seek (and filter) candidates for you.  Don’t forget that, you don’t have to change the world to make a buck, just sell reassurance.

My common fault of public companies is that the focus shifts to the next quarter, the next dividend, keeping stockholders happy.  And so they should.

Yet…

What is the bigger picture? What are you working towards? A little less in shareholders hands this year could be magnitudes times more in five years.

It’s these big picture perspectives and long term plays that really pay off.  Bill Gates was for years saying Microsofts aim was to get a PC in every household.  Now that is virtually true.

If they had focused on the short term, forgetting the big picture, they would have ended up with mediocre results.

Great companies think big for the long term.

(And your Marketing should reflect that).

I hate it when people just give sales pitches at conferences.

At least respect my intelligence and try to hide it in something that is of value to the audience.

People come along to conferences to learn, meet people and catch up on industry changes.  Not to hear the latest pitch of how to buy your product.

It’s a very ME mindset. I’d rather focus on helping the audience – IF they want to know more they can have a chat afterwards.

And some do.  Most dont but this is a quality game not a quantity one.  Those that do are usually highly motivated to work with me.

That’s a win for everyone, audience gets info they can act on themselves, I don’t waste time on tyre kickers and those that are motivated can still have a chat.