bwagy

#26: Financial Buffer
Once you can, build up a three month buffer and keep it there, you never know what is around the corner, I know it’s tempting to invest that amount or use it for something, but the way I see it the return you get by having a three month buffer in case something goes wrong out performs the alternatives.

#27: Blog
Blog. Blogging is the #1 marketing tool. Use it to your advantage; like networking, blog with the intention of helping your customers, you don’t need to give everything away, but answer the common questions, share your experience, compare/contrast competitors, industry news. By helping your audience you build your brand, stimulate an otherwise non existent conversation and build a community.

#28: Avoid fixed costs
Avoid taking on fixed costs, keep everything variable, this helps avoid negative cashflows and ensures flexibility when you need to keep costs to a minimum.

I was quite a curious kid, always asking questions, the ever curious question of WHY?  My first job was classic of this, it was assisting the local fire wood producer, chop up and distribute firewood.

My boss was an aging man, putting in the last few years before retirement, and it was his little one man band.  Our first job was to go out and collect the firewood, he would use the chainsaw to cut trees brought down by flooding.  Firstly he would cut the trees into rounds, my job was to then grab the rounds, put them in a pile.

We would then split the rounds in half, load them on the back of the flatbed truck and take them back to his wood yard.  Back at the yard, unload all the wood, put it in a pile.   The next step was to cut the wood with a log splitter, stack in another pile.

Finally we were ready for orders! Orders were by the cubic metre, and so a certain amount of barrow loads was a cubic metre.  We would then load the truck up an order at a time and deliver it.

It took me all of one day to speak up and go, hang on we are double, triple handling this wood.  Why don’t we split the back of the flatdeck truck in half, then into little stalls, the horizontal sides of the stall being such we could pull them out.

Then we could cut the firewood, split it on location, throw it into the stalls (which could be measured out on a cubic metre basis) then deliver straight to the customer.  We could save sooo much time.  ”No Ben, this is the way I do it”.

This frustrated me to no end, but hey I got $10 for a mornings work and that bought me basketball cards.  I hung in there annoyed at partaking in such an inefficient process, as soon as the opportunity came up I quit my job and moved on.

What I rapidly learned was the concept of idea development, failing fast, modifying and moving on.  It’s no big secret, smart people understand it and embrace it.  Fail fast.  However whilst there is understanding – we fall short of having a mechanism for it.

That’s what the 12 Hour Startup (my first idea in The Best Ideas are Free) is about – formalising a mechanism that allows for remarkable ideas to be shared, tested, proven and ultimately to create significant change.

Everyone has a voice.

Whether you hear it or not is another thing BUT you can decide who you listen to.

The 1% rule online dictates that 1 in 100 people will place a comment.  As a blogger these are the people you tend to listen to.  However what about the other 99?

The same goes for negative comments, if you hear 20 good comments and one negative you tend to focus on that one.

Remember to make sure that you are listening to the right people.

What motivates you? What motivates your customers?

Two hugely insightful questions if you can answer them.

If you can find these motivator points, then keep pressing the button, things will change dramatically.  And I mean dramatically!

#23 Charging
Forget hourly rates, charge value based fees.

#24 Tom Peters advice: meet the crazy people
Meet at least 1 totally new person a week for lunch, if possible do 5 new people, but at the very least do 5.  Take them to lunch, have a coffee, learn about their business, what they do, how you can help, share what you do.

You will learn a lot by hanging around new people, you gain zero by talking to people who already agree with you on everything.  This is my favourite way of building my business getting to know people.

#25 Invest in yourself
Invest in top tools, don’t skimp on yourself, if you use a computer, get a top computer.  Getting the top tools of the trade communicates to yourself and your clients you are serious.  (This isn’t always easy when you start out, but keep it in mind).

Funnily enough I’ve had this conversation a few times in the last few weeks – hey it does what it says.

(Most of this has been centred around the Flip Mino HD)

It really is a betrayal of consumer trust that ‘it does what it says’ becomes a point of difference.  Everything should do what it says.  Yet we find (especially with technology products) that actually doing that is out of our reach.

Just a reminder, keep your products simple, people do like to buy stuff that does what it says…

Carmine Gallo breaks down the five elements (common threads) of every Steve Jobs presentation. Read it.