Archive for the 'Blog' Category



The Reverse Integration (or interview) growth model

If you’re a blogger it works by interviewing people & sharing the content on your blog.  You then grow your authority, networks & credibility.  Often then they will link to your blog & help you grow.

The other way is to integrate your website into lots of existing platforms (same metaphor) and let them promote your offering to their network.  I.e. integrating your project management software into Xero, or eCommerce plugins for PayPal etc.

Same frameworks just different scenarios.

 

 

March 28th, 2011

Write better content

Share this.

Share that.

Forward it to your friends.

If I load these share buttons over here people will share more.

OR

You could spend that time writing better content.  Better ideas.  Ideas that will compel people to share no matter how hard it is.

 

March 23rd, 2011

PTE. Planning. Thinking. Executing.

PTE. Planning Thinking Executing.

We spend our careers in two modes, doing planning, thinking and then executing.

OR more commonly planning thinking executing all at once.  Doing it on the fly.

Problem is lack of planning kills projects.  If you can pull just one or two projects across the other side into doing the planning & thinking upfront you’ll have far more success.

 

March 22nd, 2011

At the speed of slow

Speed, how fast are you going?

It’s all relative.

Your speed is relative to the context.

In New Zealand driving 120km on the road is a no no (it’s too fast).

In Germany on the autobahn driving 120km on the autobahn is a no no (it’s too slow).

It’s the context of the driving.  If you truly want to go faster change the context.

March 17th, 2011

Marketing Service Level Agreement

It’s not revolutionary, we all know what a service level agreement is.

But it’s an interesting service we offer at Young & Shand – a defined service level agreement.

It allows us to be agnostic on the tools & tactics to drive results whilst owning the execution.

It’s strategy, ideas & execution.

SLA’s are straight forward, transparent and hugely helpful for your customers.  It takes what keeps them up at night away.  Imagine a SLA for your car? Never worry about car maintenance (I’m sure someone is doing that).  SLA for your groceries? SLA for…

March 16th, 2011

Using the Bell Curve to beat traffic

It’s interesting to see what happens when you apply a bell curve to human behaviour.

One I’ve noticed is traffic.

If I leave home at 7.00 am – traffic is bad.  If I leave home at 7.30 am traffic is bad.  If I leave at 8.00am… well I may as well stay home and have a coffee.

However if I leave at 7.20 the traffic is sweet and a quick breeze through, same at 6.55 (and a few other times I’ve tested).

My theory is this, we all set our alarms for the same times, 6.00, 6.15, 6.30, 7.30 etc.  Rounding up to the nearest 10 minutes or logical time.  What I do is set my alarm for obscure times 6.37, 6.40.

This means that at any point in time there is peak traffic generated from the 6.30 alarm, the 7.00 alarm.  If you catch that peak wave you have slow traffic like the rest.

Give it a try.

March 15th, 2011

Throwing ideas on the wall

And then debating them.

That is constructive debate, what is the thinking behind them, why would they work? Why wouldn’t they work?

What would stop me executing them?

What would it cost?

How safe is this idea? How risky is it?

How disappointed would our customers be if we didn’t do this idea?

 

 

 

March 14th, 2011

Express Apologies

To those signed up to my email list and received a spam email.

This was the result of a hack, at this stage I am disabling email delivery till we isolate what’s going on.

Sorry again & thanks for your patience!

-Ben

 

March 14th, 2011

Get Permission, Reduce Purchase Price

For Seth Godin’s new book Poke the Box did a neat idea to support the early readers.

For every 5,000 people that signed up to his email list for the Domino Project and gave permission to be contacted he would reduce the Kindle pre-purchase price by $1.00.  By launch it had dropped right down to only $1.00.

Toyota is doing something similar in Australia with LikeMyRide, you enter the competition and like the page, for every like the price reduces by $5, the winner can then buy the new Toyota FJ for up to $20,000 off the purchase price.  Presumably (like Seth) they can then use the permission of the other thousands of people who signed up to to help them get their own FJ.

Nice framework for you to try, reward your early adopters, incentivise them to share and reward those recipients.  Also helps make your product launch a heck of a lot more exciting.

March 7th, 2011

My biased advice for entrepreneurs

This is for those up & coming…

You have an idea but not a business, pick up the E-myth and get some business systems around your idea, if it’s not your strength?  Partner with someone who can do that. Behind every Steve Jobs is someone making sure bills get paid, hiring processes work, marketing channels & customer acquisition are going.

Pricing is too low, look at the value you give customers (survey them), sure it might be miles times your technology cost but once you build a business around you the costs get absorbed.  Some price too high but I don’t see this as much as too low.

No marketing resource, get someone working on your marketing, constant action in this area will drive your business.

Flitting from idea to idea, it’s a bad habit, stop it. stick with an idea through.

Absorb advice – don’t take it straight on, listen, absorb, synthesise and act (do this with this very blog post!)

If you don’t know something, ask someone who does.  People love having you ask them their opinion.

Read obsessively, if reading isn’t your thing, listen (audiobooks/video), you can learn from everyone elses mistakes.

Time is precious, don’t waste it, if you need to do something, do it today.  You are an entrepreneur you have no excuse for not acting.

Do not let failure stop you, forgive yourself, pick yourself back up and try again.

Surround yourself in a supportive eco-system, other entrepreneurs, people that are smarter, more experienced etc, always be looking up.  Hard to do but hugely valuable.  You’ll find your own benchmarks of yourself will only go up.

Then one day you’ll be having lunch with Steve Jobs wondering how you got here.

 

March 3rd, 2011

Stumble your way into what you want

The neat thing about StumbleUpon is that once you train it (a half a dozen stumbles) it will take you to content that you are pretty much guaranteed to like & enjoy.  Whether it’s finance, arts, ancient history, writing, blogs (some of my personal favourites).  Just give it 15 minutes – it brings back that joy, that sense of discovery that we have lost with information overload.

Amazon also does this for books.  Last.fm does this for music.  What could you do it for?

 

March 1st, 2011

What are you doing all the way down here? You could:
- View my about page
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