bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Stop moaning because it didn’t happen today. Nothing happens in a day. Everything is the conclusion of a prior set of events. That lunch you had, was cooked by the chef outback, who used the pre-prepared food, which came from the farmers markets, the butcher earlier that day, that came from farms, that were grown (or bred) over the past 12 months, that was cultivated land, that was cleared from scrub. Heck food has come a long way to get to you!

It’s exactly the same on any journey, focus on the bigger picture, have fun along the way (ie enjoy the journey, if you’re not, quit and try another journey), you’ll get there and it’ll get better. Just keep making the small iterative changes, be proactive, you can probably get there faster than you think (even if it’s not overnight).

I help organise a local tech entrepreneurs drinks once a month, it was at the last one I was discussing Chris Andersons article Free… with Nic of Litmos a few night backs, we both agreed that yes you can get undercut by free.

BUT

If you look at the long run, who is still about, who keeps turning up? It’s those that persevere.

(Especially when you look at bootstrapped startups.)

In order to do so you must be making money somewhere.

You must also have a passion for what you do.

Sure someone can undercut your service by making it free but do they have the passion to keep at it? Through the hard times, the ups and the downs.

You see you can be undercut by free and still thrive but being undercut by passion? That’s a hard hard battle.

You should stick to what you’re passionate about.

Honestly stop it.

Not me specifically but others in general.

Carve your own path, your unique path, your passion.

Given the transitional environment at the moment I thought I would share the words of the new economy.

Obsess, obsession about your customers, how can i help them? how can i deliver insane value, how can i build their business?

Passion, what is my passion? am i fulfilling it? What are my employees passions and how can we utilise that? Do we have a team of passionate people?

Delicious, are your services delicious? are they the nicest in your category, if i was to eat your business would it be delicious?

Agility, we need to be leaner, fitter, agile in every sense.  Leveraging our resources to achieve results that we used to do with twice the resource base.

Zero is increasingly more and more of a relevant number.

The cost of building a brand online? Zero.  Input time and thought.

The cost of creating a movie?  Zero.  Input time and thought.

The cost of building a business online? ….. you get the idea.

Since costs are zero, what is the differentiator?

Passion.

Passion for your problems.  Your niche.  Your customers.

As humans we like passion.

That’s the one thing we can not have zero of…..