bwagy, the blog of Ben Young

Relative spheres of influence are changing. And rapidly.

They are becoming fragmented, diverse and often a group provides a sphere of influence rather than an individual.

Traditionally it was friends and family who influenced your decisions, whether they be purchasing, career or clothing decisions.

Instead we had become much more transparent.

Suddenly your favourite blogger is providing you with business advice, your purchasing decisions are judged by average ratings on IMDB, your clothing is dictated by international fashion rather than local.

Firms have yet to wake up and realise this.

Some get it.  Others still struggle.

People exist in multiple spheres or Pods as I’ve discussed prior so can in turn be influential in multiple pods.

The good news is you can reach them, they will listen, if your worth listening to.

Now how do you reach these spheres? By being proactive online, building a blog, developing a local twitter presence, making your own iphone apps.

As the talkers are out there and they would love to hear from you.

Browsing a book shop over the holidays I was scanning the business section.

Now as a bit of a side note, I don’t read any old book, I like to limit the ‘content’ that I engage with so purchase books that others have read and recommended.

And I thought about all the rubbish books there must be.

Think about it.

How does a book come to be?

You merely have to be a) good enough b) persevere through the process.

The publishers have the distribution, editors, marketing materials.  If you can get through that process wham your book is out.

However with self publishing I think books are going to emulate whats happened with music.

As the number of books released each year soars, the talent pool is going to increase, and the ‘average’ books just aren’t going to sell.  As everyone will buy the remarkable books within their interest.  The long tail is only going to grow.

Never been a better time to be remarkable huh? 

I wonder what publishers are doing to be proactive.

The platform play is a common one in niche industries.

It can be very successful.

However a recurring problem (and downfall) is a lack of focus.

Imagine your platform is like a big slab of concrete on a vacant lot.  This is your platform.

It can be anything; a carpark, a basketball court, a place to throw your rubbish.

Without direction it is open to interpretation.  It may even remain abandoned.

There may be easy road access so people park there; maybe the sun is really bright so people sunbath, maybe there are fences so people play sports inside.

As the owner of the platform, you need to pick a path, direct the audience towards that, open up to other opportunities later.

If you be everything to everyone you become nothing.  

(For more info best read my prior posts on Platforms here and here)

With all the doom and gloom atm I just wanted to share with you a private email I sent to a few of my colleagues back in November…

Hey,

As per my usual weekend ritual, which is to take some time out, step back, have some fun with my friends & family, review and reflect upon the week, treat myself, I went out this morning and purchased a book and I wanted to share with you a couple of paragraphs from the first few pages:

“Business is creative.  It’s like painting.  You start with a blank canvas.  You can paint anything – anything – and there, right there, is your first problem.  For every good painting you might turn out, there are a zillion bad paintings just aching to drip off your brush. Scared? You should be. You start. You pick a colour. The next colour you choose has to work with the first colour.  The third colour has to work with the first and the second.  The fourth colour… You get the idea.  You’re committed now.  You absolutely cannot stop.  You’ve invested. There is no reverse gear on this thing.  People who bad-mouth businessmen and women in general are missing the point. People in business who succeed have swallowed their fear and have set out to create something special, something to make a difference to people’s lives.  Are the colours just right? Are the planes polished? Do the crew look good? Are they comfortable? Are the seats OK? What’s the food like? It costs how much….?

And whether you’re a surrealist or a CEO, there are always bills to pay and money always arrives later than you ever dreamed possible.  In the teeth of a downturn, petty financial hassles can turn into major, life-changing crises, and tough decisions often have to be made.  This is the side of business that journalists like to write about, – but it’s the least exciting, least distinctive part of business.  It’s secondary. It’s dull.  What really matters is what you create.  Doe is work or not? Does it make you proud?”

Isn’t this what business is about? Isn’t this why we got into business? To be creative, to destroy something we didn’t like, to build something we saw, to say that’s not right let’s do it this way. We are all artists, business artists, entrepreneurs.

This is certainly why I got into business, I have told many people when they ask Why do you go through the pain? I love doing it, I love creating things, growing, moving entities that reflect change in peoples lives.

This is what I see in every entrepreneur I meet today, a spark in their eye, as they know they have leaped off a cliff, but they are making their dreams happen.

Now we all know that there is a shake up going on, it’s been going on for a while, but people don’t change fast, they cling to what they know.  The shake up is on, things are going to change NOW. Fast.

The challenge and responsibility that lyes upon us as entrepreneurs is to create, to innovate, to inspire others, to be the glowing light in the dark.

We need to group together, help each out, what are the challenges you are having? share them with your peers, maybe we can help you or find someone to help you.

The turn is coming, through pain and pressure comes creativity, we have to survive and thrive within the environment, we can and we will.

So take this on a whim, or think about what you can do.

If you have got this far, thanks so much for your time, I truly appreciate it.

I wish you all the best and keep in touch, let’s make things happen.

Ben

ps
The quote is from Richard Branson‘s new book Business Stripped Bare,
go out grab it, read it, loan it to friends, spread the inspiration.

And

Remember perseverance is genius.

—

My only comment to add is, it’s all about action, so start walking.

The Best Ideas are Free we know that.

But often in a business scenario to stimulate the idea generation we need to part with some dollars.

A few crowdsourcing sites have popped up, the idea is to tap into a large crowd to generate ideas for marketing, business and general problems.

Fantastic model.

Yet for Marketing I think its slightly overengineered and appeals to a slightly lemon market.

That is those that have the time to invest in the site may not necessarily be that savvy (exception to the rule is those that commit time to invest in it strategically).  

Typically the target market are very time poor and do not have the time or resources to invest into yet another social resource.

I think a simple email list suffices.

Create a list of interested parties, email then occaisonally with a marketing problem, provide them with a bounty.

Keep it simple.

Just to let you know I’m taking a bit of a sabbatical this week and next.

Some time to unplug, unwind and revitalise.

I shall be off exploring some of the upper North Island of New Zealand.

In the meantime check out some of my most popular posts:

1. You Can do What You Want
2. 12 Hour Startup is gaining momentum
3. Running a Twitter Campaign
4. You wonder why Starbucks is struggling
5. Bloggers Pack
6. Personality
7. Am I smiling?
8. Customers becoming Evangelists
9. How Marketing can help solve Poverty
10. I fail lots

I look forward to catching you all the week of the 20th. 2009 is the year to dominate!

One of my first Monday Ideas Posts was about how Petrol Stations could improve their service.

I want to follow that up and push it a bit further.

Cafes are renowned for price discrimination ie Free Trade coffee for $0.50 extra however the coffee beans only make up a minor part of the production cost.

Petrol stations have this with premium petrol but I think they can do better.

Let’s help the customers help themselves.

Have a carbon credit rate, where you pay for your gas plus a premium to cover the avg carbon credits you would use for that tank of gas. 

By my calculations, using 22mpg and 12,000 miles/yr (from here: http://www.liveneutral.org/calculator/) you would pay$0.0045 per mile or 11 cents a gallon.

Why do this?

• Customers know about global warming
• They also still need to fill up their car.
• You can help them do this without feeling guilty, garner extra revenue but also help build your brand for whent he day comes that fuel is no longer needed.

Thoughts? Would you pay extra for this? Should it be compulsory for businesses to pay the premium? Government vehicles?

Yes it is.

But also it isn’t.

You think movies can earn billions of dollars by keeping all the money for themselves.

No they don’t.

They involve hundreds of different organisations to help produce, edit, marketing, distribute, sell, merchandise, ringtones, cross promotions with McDonalds.

Growing an organisation is the same, sharing the pie with others.

So it is all about you, but to make it big do not be afraid to bring others in.

They add credibility, expand the pie and most of all share the risk.

(oh and plus its fun).

That’s my rant on entrepreneurs whom want to keep the pie all to themselves. Stop it. Chances are your too arrogant to grow what you’ve got.

“Perseverance is genius”

Is a great quote.

Some of you may have seen it about, in my email signature, in tags, in comments.

It is one of my favourites, along with:

“if you can dream it you can do it”

“do what I want”

There are many many more.

The point is, I use these to inspire me on a daily basis, I always have this simple poster either on the back of my bedroom door (so i see it when i close it) or above me desk (or both).

When I need to be made of rubber, this helps spur me on.

Find some quotes that inspire you, put them up, and then let them do what they do best.

Make that a New Year resolution 🙂 and that’s it for me in 2009.  I will catch you all in the new year. -Ben

To those who wonder.

How can Ben post 5 days a week?

Given his busy schedule, many meetings, and involvement with multiple projects and businesses.

I built up momentum, remember Blogging is a marathon.

I followed my blogging strategy.

Started with 1 post / week for 2 months.

Then increase to 3 posts / week for a few months.

Then September I tried a post a day.

It hasn’t been easy, certainly didn’t happen overnight, but I stuck with it.

Just thought I’d share that to remind you all since its easy to forget.

Online video provides a plethora of opportunities for any budding entrepreneur.

You can do it for virtually no cost, build a small community and monetise through sponsorship or ideally associated products (created by yourself or others).

Some I would like to see (as I think you could blow these wide open) would be:

• Lunchtime tv – tv show released every business time at lunch.  Grab the captive office audience in front of their computers.  (Integrate with thoof.com for monetisation)
• Daily Bible Reading – Read the bible each day, break it up over the year.  Provide discussion/interpretation.  (cds, books, associated products).
• Random Webcam – Tune into a random location via web cam and discuss interesting things about the place, ie an Amazon Web Cam? Monetise via travel books.
• Programming – teach an audience how to code and explain logic behind it, let them converse one another.  Monetise via programming books / services.
• Languages – bite size language instruction, same model as programming above.
• Weight Loss – take one of these ‘systems’ and prove it, everyday with a test subject, show the audience it works.  (Sell the system).  This would be a million dollar idea.

Are you passionate about any of these? If so run with it.  Go on.  

The new year is an opportunity to start afresh.

I just want to wish a Merry Christmas to you all 🙂

Whatever, wherever you celebrate I hope you have a well deserved break.

Time with friends and family.

Time to reflect and….

Most of all have fun!

I shall be taking some time out myself over the break.

Blogging wise I shall be back on the 29th for a week then off again.

Thank you each and everyone of you for reading, give yourself a pat on the back its been a challenging but rewarding year.

-Ben

At some stage I’d love to return to university and finish the Physics degree I began. (finished in Marketing).

One of the theories I quite liked was that; for every action or reaction it created a space time warp.  

Such that for every decision you made, in a parallel universe you chose the other path.

Ultimately then the question came if you took the other route would you get to the same end result?

Which then lead into the philosophical question of fate vs controlling your destiny.

Which I’m not going to go into detail here.

However now the tone is set I want to talk about achieving goals and that multiple (often parallel) paths you can take to achieving it.

In my age group everyone is starting out in their careers often I ask how are you going to get where you want go be?  And of course there are many paths.

Technology forges infinite paths.

Yet this provides more and more opportunity.

Want to be come the most well known in your industry? You can:

• Use twitter to network
• Build a blog to establish credibility
• Invest in SEO to ensure your personalised website comes up before the big names
• Create an online social network
• Build an online industry directory

Those are just some, technology has created them yet they all offer a different path of achievement.

There is no set path to achieving that goal or almost anything in this day and age.  By the morning a new one has opened up.  

Stop searching for the magic button and take one.

Whether it be your business direction, marketing plan or personal goals just start walking.

Twitter is a great platform for conversation. 

However how could you run a marketing campaign on it?

Criteria would be:

• Remarkable content
• Idea worth spreading
• Of actual benefit to those who consume it

If you were to fulfill these, how could you spread the word?

Same as any strategy, plan, line up your chess pieces and execute.

My strategy would be around:

• Have a series of tweets, to provide background information or arouse curiousity
• A follow up tweet with the actual subject
• Stimulate discussion tweets.

Then target 5 users in your niche to engage in it, with slightly different variations of the tweets.

An example would be:

1. bwagy: checking out this cool video @bwagy sent me
2. bwagy: hilarious, check out this video from @bwagy 
3. bwagy: what did you think? watch it here retweets appreciated

Of course this only works for the criteria above and with people you have solid relationships with.

It’s more of an initiative to maximise coverage of your first and second tier networks of your offering.

The next step would be to do multiple timezones within a 24 hour period to ensure global coverage.

You can then directly measure through tracking webpage visits and tweets (using search.twitter.com).

That’s what I would do if I was to try and get a message out over twitter.

This information is worth thousands to the right person so help spread it for me as its free 🙂

Update: Tweet this to share:

Running a campaign on Twitter http://tr.im/2j8k by @bwagy [make sure to add your comments when you tweet]

Relationships matter.  That’s why we invest in them, maintain them.

We need not forget that online whilst we have this brilliant tool, it is nothing without relationships.

Hotmail took off as suddenly anyone could have email to talk to anyone.

Skype, same story.

Facebook, same story.

Twitter, same story.

Relationships are so so important to us.  When we have established them on say Twitter we are not likely to shift easily if at all.  We place more value on them (than the actual service).

Remember this and do not forget it when your building & marketing your product.