bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

I just want to clarify (since I share ideas each and every day) an idea alone isn’t a business.

A business is a collection of ideas, executed in a fashion that generates profit.

An amazing idea helps a business spread, it forms the messages, builds the word of mouth but it is the collection of ideas and systems executed that make the business.  In essence an amazing idea provides a wave for the business to ride but that wave is short lived unless you have something behind it…

You need to take your amazing idea and mix it up with some others (usually standardised ideas) to turn it into a business.  Then you have something of amazing value.

You can virtually test anything and everything online… there is amazing amounts of tools available to measure different things.

Measure traffic? Use Google Analytics (#1 if you don’t have basic traffic measurement installed please bang head against wall – it should be an assumption.)

Want to do Brand Monitoring? Check out Techrigy (Google Alerts on steroids)

Usability and heat maps? Use CrazyEgg (it beats Google Analytics Heatmaps hands down.

Measure E-Commerce? Set up Google Analytics Goals (and figure out where your business comes from).

Measure blog subscribers? Use Feedburner.

Find out more about your audience demographics? Use Quantcast & Crowdscience.

Want to find out which design / slogan/ offer creates the most business? Use A/B testing with Google Website Optimiser.

Use these to test your assumptions, tweak and improve again.  The web is a huge incubator for evolution or products to happen, so get evolving.

If you have any others feel free to share below in the comments…

A while back as a Monday Ideas Post I shared my idea for a quick feedback form, you can view the original post here and the republished post on the NZHerald (where it was hugely controversial).

As a quick summary I suggested that stores add a device to collect quick feedback on your experience.  You could even integrate into the eftpos machine to hasten the process.

I was delighted to be greeted by this in a duty free store whilst away on holiday.

How neat! A quick screen to let me provide some simple feedback.  From the state of the machine I could tell it was well used.

Airports are a double sided coin as customers are only likely to visit a few times, so it’s harder to collect feedback (but you have a location monopoly so average service can prevail).

Some readers mentioned they had seen some in the original post but just wanted to share…

#15 Follow up (and stay in your customers frame of reference)
Follow up! and follow up consistently. Remind your past clients what you offer, see if you can help them. One client of mine went through a court case so had no funds for several months. We cut the project back, I offered to help pro bono, if they kept writing blog posts I would keep putting them up, thus ensuring they maintained return on investment. You think that client is ever going to leave me?

#16 Think Long Term
Clients are for the long term. Do not rip them off, burn their business. Repeat clients pay more and earn you more due to efficiencies.

#17 Clients as your sales team
Clients are your best sales people, so look after them, obsess about their business, recommend their product to others.

Sure the sales pitch work – it converts – generates dollars.  But do you show your human side?

You see having a real relationship with your customers means when things get tough they will hang in there (and vice versa).  Having strong relations creates a real loyalty and following.

Think of all the hoo haa around Apples products every 18 months and yet their dedicated users hang in there, why?  They have a strong relationship with the company.  And who would want to leave that?

It’s easy for someone to say you should be doing blogging, or tweeting or vlogging…

You can’t.

You see you ought to zoom in on what you’re good at.

If you’re not good at writing – don’t write.

If you’re not good in front of the camera – don’t do it.

No time for tweeting – don’t do it.

There is ZERO value in using a tool if you don’t do it well.  Let me repeat that – zero value.  If you’re in the space you need to own it.

It’s the same old business principle, 80/20 analysis of what you’re good at, then push that button and keep pressing it.  That’s the smartest form of leverage.

Isn’t exactly insightful (if that’s all you do).

It’s good – but people do get tired of it.  Have you read mainstream media?  People do like answers.  People find reassurance in answers.  People BUY answers.

But remember your answers get better with asking questions.

Catch 22 – but isn’t everything a paradox…

A gift to take home.

A token to show their friends.

A reminder of how much they enjoyed your product.

I enjoyed this wine on a recent flight, St Hallett – Poachers Blend.  It was really good, so I read the label.

On the back you can see is a little tab that you can pull of the label.  It has the name of the wine and more information on the back.

Very neat – now I know which wine to get!  I didn’t check but they could take it one step further and on the back have a coupon (so only those that have taken it off find it) – 10% off if you buy in Duty Free once you jump off the plane.  Just a thought but I think they are already doing enough.

So why not give your customers a gift?

First year of uni walking along (one way north in dunedin) with my high school friend Mathew.

A McDonalds type cup of coke landed near our feet, we heard beeping and look up to see two hooligans from school yelling abuse.

At that point in time I couldn’t understand how someone could be so angry at someone else (from whom I barely interacted).  They’d displayed the same behaviour at school.  I was never rude to them, or talked to them, in fact my first encounter was to verbal abuse.

You see what I grew to realise it was driven by fear.  Fear of the unknown.  Fear of some kid not willing to compromise his integrity & give up like the others.

This and many other incidents drove me.  When I was down, I realised that to give up was to let them win, let the fear win.

#11 Invoicing
Charge 50% up front and collect. Never ever do the invoice at the end of the month collect the 20th of the following month. Only for continual work but never start out this way.

Small businesses are using you as a free credit limit. Charge 50% up front, this filters clients immediately to those with cash and reminds them of your importance. It will also motive you to get the job done when you have that first 50% in the bank.

#12 Pay your suppliers
Pay all your suppliers asap, nevermind their terms, if you can pay them straight away do it. Why? Suddenly you become their most valuable client and thus get top priority. It is good karma too, they are more likely to recommend you to others, hey i work with this great dude Ben…fantastic to work with.

#13 Link services to bottom line
Only offer services that can build someone elses business, link your services to real returns, in the current times it is a no brainer to invest in services that will grow your business.

After a holiday to clear my mind, relax, unwind and generally have some fun thought I’d share some of my thoughts…

1) Holidays are under rated (way under rated) – as an entrepreneur you need holidays just as much as you need to stop procrastinating.

2) There is no better way to reflect than to take yourself out of your day to day life.

3) You learn something new.

4) Have fun! As much as you love your job having a break means you can have fun but also gives you time out so that are reminded how much you like your life anyway.

5) Meet new people – whilst I didn’t do much of this, typically I do.

6) I need to ramp up my blogging, the last few months haven’t been as shit hot as I would have liked them to be (but hey I released a book in that time). Expect some fresh stuff to come out real soon.

7) It’s always good to stop, reflect, do some culling of work/junk/responsibilites and refocus.

Finally I want to do more to engage with all of you, I have a few tricks up my sleeve but am always open to hear suggestions.  Feel free to email me [email protected] or leave a comment.  Even if you just want to say hi.

Having just read Chris Anderson’s latest book Free I thought I’d share a great little quote from the book:

“…a technologist’s job is not to figure out what technology is good for. Instead it is to make technology so cheap, easy to use, and ubiquitous that anybody can use it, so that it propagates around the world and into every possible niche. We, the users, will figure out what to do with it, because each of us is different: different needs, different ideas, different knowledge, and different ways of interacting with the world.”

What he is saying is, focus on the product, making it cheaper, easier and ubiqutous.  Your users will figure out the best way to use it (stop forcing them to do it your way).

37Signals is a great example of this, with the likes of basecamp (project management software), their focus was on developing the product, getting out of the customers way and letting them do their job.  In fact this is their development focus across all their products.  And of course you can get an iPhone App, send messages in basecamp through email, various other widgets and desktop applications.

Even if you wind back the clock, the postal system is a technology within itself, over time the cost of posting a letter dropped as the system became more efficient and where can you post a letter? At the post office, post box and most likely either or was situated at your regular shopping centre…

Pick up Chris’s book and give it a read (just like his first book the long tail) you won’t regret it.

Just a heads up nefore things ramp up with the book I am taking a few weeks holiday.

So I won’t be blogging till the 7th of September, sad I know, but hey it gets better.

Time off, a break, some playtime from your normal activity helps spiral creativity, review & reflection.  So look forward to some great posts once I’m back.

In the meantime, if you haven’t visited the blog in a while, check it out, there is a slightly new layout  – with popular and related posts shifted to the sidebar.

Also check out this short video from TED on Creativity and Play.

TheBestIdeasareFree.com is now live – so as a bit of an update I wanted to fill my readers in on how it got to this point, where it’s going, and if you want to help how you can.

Background
Last year, mid november, I started putting together the 63 best ideas from the blog.  Through the next 7 months or so I went through 11 or so revisions, finally wrapping up in June.  Now it’s finally ready.

Tipping the traditional book model upside down
It hasn’t been the usual process – I have tipped a few things.

1) Firstly I wrote my book based off the blog, this allowed me to find the ideas that resonated with you guys the most but also forced me to take my conversational style into book form.

2) The book contains 63 easily digestible ideas to chew on, you can open it up on any page and give it a read.  You can pick up an idea within 30 seconds and run with it.

3) I don’t pander to the reader.  Instead of compromising and explaining every little detail I respect your intelligence if you don’t understand something you can look it up. (Not that it is overly technical, non tech/web savvy people enjoy it just as much).

4) Business Books typically contain a few ideas, or at the other extreme 100, instead I have 63 – why? It’s my lucky number.  (You will also note there were 63 limited signed pre-orders).

5) Even further, I have made the book free, you can read the book online for free right now. (Absolutely no region restrictions, anyone, anywhere can read it).

Clearly of course, my hope is that you enjoy it and will want to pick up a copy.  If you can’t do that, spreading the word is a great way to help.

6) There are also a series of videos (authors typically hide from the camera), detailing more information about the book, the themes, the journey and more…

So head along check it out TheBestIdeasareFree.com.

Already read it?
If you have already read the book, it would awesome if you could:

• Share a review on Amazon (help others get to know about it)
• Write a blog post or tweet about it
• Retweet this post (or thebestideasarefree.com)
• Tell your friends! Ideas are better shared.

Or simply email me with your feedback.

Thanks guys, I really cannot ever express my gratitude for the support shown by many of you. – Ben

Realigning your business at the moment for the next five years, there needs to focus around getting talent.

Get the best, the up and coming, those that outperform others.  (The best are also much cheaper now than they were 24 months ago.)

Remember at the end of the day it is people that run your business and if you don’t have the best people when it comes time to ramp up – you’ll miss out (to those that do).