So best to think ahead, make a mental note anytime you meet someone, could you work with them? what would they be good at?
It might be 3 months, 2 years or 20 years and when the situation arises you already have someone to solve the problem!
It’s a knack I learned in some book but has been tremendously helpful at Young & Shand.
This habit has helped us immensely, there’s no harm in doing it, it’s all win/win.
doing things, doing things consistently, doing things that once packaged are worth more than their individual parts.
Doing things that exceed customers expectations, everytime.
Doing things that change the status quo, shift our customers forward.
Get customers from one house to another, help grow a business, increase their status, create an enjoyable and memorable experience….
Pop Up stores are a neat concept, stores that pop up at a retail location for a set period of time then close.
I talked about them on KiwiFm earlier in the week, have a watch/listen:
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GtK9Iumrvg
With a whole new generation of people living and breathing the digital world, the novelty & exclusivity of pop up stores (and thus experiences) are only going to increase. Especially when people can (and will) share that exclusivity to their networks through services like Facebook Places & FourSquare.
Fred Wilson the venture capitalist shares this picture of step function growth.
This is the same exact curve you get with any idea. You will bump into it again and again; user growth, idea propagation, growing your company.
Just realise when you’re at that flat area before a curve, this is usually where you need to tip an idea over, get it approved, get the right amount of support. It’s at this point where stress is the highest, presssure amounts and you want to quit. But it’s exactly where you should push through.
Then you wake up one morning and suddenly everythings changed. Get used to it.
You see it’s super easy to get started, it’s also just as easy to leave something to the wayside (quitting without acknowledging your quitting) which is what most people do.
It is hard to say “I quit” and consciously end something. Yet it’s very refreshing. If you can do this – excellent.
However the value is in finishing, going along the journey and achieving the idea. It may not be what you originally thought but it’s what you learn along the way.
Also developing a habit of doing what you say means you end up in all sorts of places, promotes credibility and makes you second guess what you’re going to say.
If you’d like to read an excellent little book on this, it’s called The Dip, it’s excellent.
What do people hunger for?
What do they really thirst for?
Imagine their current state is desperation, your product is the answer, what do are they desperate for?
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[Note: Written whilst hungry]
It’s the tagline of the Freakonomics Podcast (which is excellent).
And it’s a great mantra to have, ‘to discover the hidden side of everything’.
Once you’ve identified it you can ruthlessly attack and achieve the objective.
But if you haven’t identified it what are you achieving?
In action today
Well getting back into the swing of things
Honeymoon was excellent; Bora Bora Tahiti is well recommended!
Blogging shall resume Monday.
-Ben
Just a note to say I’m off, on a whole new adventure, marriage that is.
Esther and I will be tying the knot in Auckland then off for an island honeymoon.
So I’ll be back in action early December.
Thanks everyone for reading, your support and ongoing feedback.
—
Photo Credit: JSMoral
They’re going to let you loan books.
Digital books that is.
Suddenly they have overcome probably the second highest sales objection to digital books (first being you can’t replace a book, which people rapidly get over once they see a Kindle).
But what they’ve changed is, there is now a cost to loaning someone a book, in the past you could loan a cd and still enjoy the software of music yourself. Now you won’t be able to.
It’s that cost which will keep ebook prices up, get more people on board, but change consumers perception of digital goods.
They will have more tangibility and perceived value.
If you haven’t yet, consider what digital goods, tokens, experiences you could offer to make your service more compelling. Or consider maybe what you are giving away at the moment is vastly undervalued.
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PS this blog is available on Kindle, for a couple of bucks a month, that’s their charge not mine.
A story is made up of pieces of information all pulled together.
How a story is pulled together depends on what we do as much as others.
For example if an artist releases an album and it sells millions, and the second doesn’t, they would be called a flop. This can be enough that the artist quits and gives up.
That is if the story ended there.
If they carried on, pulled through, released another album, and does well? A comeback!
It’s that extra element we can add to mould the story, extend it, make it our own.
Whether it’s your product, service, experience or even opinion.
It’s once others experience what you have uniquely created that you realise the potential value.
However it’s just before sharing that we stop. We don’t release the product as we don’t think it’s good enough yet, we hide from voicing our opinions or sharing our experiences.
It’s not till you do, you take that final step, that you find the real value.
All the more reason to ship.
Often it’s not achievable, so we give up, it’s not perfect!
You could however just get started, start with 20% of the vision, give it a go, then keep adding to it.
You’ll get buy in along the way, make some money but also give you some time to refine the vision to the market.
Don’t be disheartned if it’s not perfect, just remember you’re always wrong, your aim is to just be less wrong than you were yesterday.
Can be a fruitful habit. It’s easy to slip into doing more, more of this, more of that.
I’ve often met founders of companies who said the best thing that happened to them was when they left the business for a week – and it was all ok.
It’s easy to meddle, slow things down, request approval, add new things tot the mix. But you need to know when to stop.
A mentor helps – or just testing, what happens if we stopping adding new things? Do it. Try it. Stop doing something today.