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“Broadcast the message and they will come!” “Segment my broadcast and I will have better response.” Both of these time–honored methods of reaching our customers have worked for as long as there was print and radio–TV to get the message out. The obsolete marketing message. And both have become increasingly obsolete as new channels of reach have evolved, allowing direct and personal contact with our potential customers, and better yet, free and near–free forms of marketing just for the asking.
For all of you whose business has survived for a few years, have you noticed how your thinking has changed ? Instead of sizing up new opportunities and actively courting every new customer, you start worrying about cutting costs, repeatable processes , and overtaking known competitors. As a consultant, I hate to see you lose that startup focus on innovation, change, and customers.
Amazon could substantially expand their dominance over the ecommerce market, as the Seattle-based tech giant has announced the acquisition of Veeqo, a UK-based ecommerce startup. Everyone knows that Amazon has been pretty acquisition happy over the last few years. From Whole Foods to MGM Studios, the ecommerce behemoth has been snatching up as many verticals as possible to make itself even more competitive in as many industries as possible.
There is a process to innovation that can be summed up with four words: “Whoa. Wow! Hmmm. Yes!” Credit Dr. Mark Goulston with this. He states, that’s exactly how Steve Jobs described his “aha moment.” So, let’s paraphrase the late Mr. Jobs as we describe this process. A bit of history that “made” Apple rich. Jobs was invited to Xerox Parc research facility and – against the better judgment of the research coordinator – shown three projects the engineers were working on.
Office leases are one of companies’ largest expenses, and if your whole team is working from home with no clear end in sight, you may be wondering what to do about your lease.
We’re talking about brand strategy here. Not advertising, and certainly not an easy grasp for amateur marketers. So how developed is your company’s brand? Is your message clear, concise, and consistent? Here’s the professional’s process: There is a process used by professionals to get to clear messaging. It starts with “discovery,” the process of finding the strengths of the company in the minds of all stakeholders.
Customer empowerment is moving so fast nowadays that many of us are running to just catch up. Yet if we don’t or can’t, it is a sure thing that someone else will. Yes, we can blame the Internet for this. But don’t close your eyes to the fact that your customers have grown to expect your products or services in the form of…. ‘WHAT I want, WHEN I want, and WHERE I want.’.
This one is attributed to Rod Adair, the famous oil and gas fire suppressing expert. And boy, does it apply to most of us and our offerings. “Quality” products and services…. …should not be positioned as “cheap,” or your potential customers will question your message from the start and will be more critical of the delivered product than if offered as one or the other, but not both.
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This one is attributed to Rod Adair, the famous oil and gas fire suppressing expert. And boy, does it apply to most of us and our offerings. “Quality” products and services…. …should not be positioned as “cheap,” or your potential customers will question your message from the start and will be more critical of the delivered product than if offered as one or the other, but not both.
Entrepreneurs are usually highly creative and innovative, but many innovative people are not entrepreneurs. Since it takes a team of people to build a great company, the challenge is to find that small percentage of innovative people, and then nurture the tendency, rather than stifle it. A few years ago I read a classic book “ The Rudolph Factor ,” by Cyndi Laurin and Craig Morningstar, which is all about finding the bright lights that can drive innovation in your business.
With the current pandemic appearing to scale down, many of you running businesses are looking forward to things getting back to the way they used to be. I’m sorry to predict it will never happen, so the agility you may have learned over the past couple of years will continue to be critical to your survival. If you aren’t yet adapting to the market and your customers, you are falling behind.
Every business professional needs to stay cool under pressure, to be a top performer, and for the sake of their own health. Yet everyone has a melting point – a critical threshold where pressure causes them to respond irrationally. Many people believe their threshold is permanently set by family genetics, or cultural influences, but I believe anyone can train themselves to stay cool.
When you have been on the startup firing line, you quickly learn that any insight from experts and entrepreneurs who have been there before you can make the difference between failure and success. Yet, many new entrepreneurs brazenly assume they are bulletproof, and march blindly into the fray. The result is that half or more of startups fail in the first two years.
By definition, most entrepreneurs are thought leaders. They have the ability to recognize a market need, the skills to design and implement a solution, and the drive to start a business from that solution. It all comes from within themselves. A business leader does the same thing and more, through the people around them. Most entrepreneurs are not both.
When it’s time to sell your company, or get new investors, valuation is the key parameter to success or disappointment. The first step is to quantify the value of assets and current financial performance, but every one of you wants to go further by adding additional value for “intangibles,” commonly called goodwill. The challenge is what and how to highlight these to your advantage.
Every startup wants to be a predictable success, yet so few ever achieve this enviable position. In reality, getting there is not a random walk, and requires an understanding of the stages that every business must navigate and the organizational characteristics necessary at each stage. Les McKeown, in his book from a while back, “ Predictable Success ” outlines these stages and characteristics for any business.
True business success and leadership starts with real personal values, extends to building a team, and finally to inspiring customers and your community. That’s a huge leap from an entrepreneurial idea, to a product, to making money. Is it any wonder that the majority of startups fail? My job as a new business advisor is to help entrepreneurs get over this chasm early.
With the ITRC 2021 End-of-Year Data Breach Report revealing a 68 percent increase in stolen sensitive personal information, there is a growing population out there worried about all the people intent on hurting them. My recommendation to entrepreneurs is to recognize these concerns as an opportunity to make people’s life better, rather than worry and dodge the risk.
If your startup is looking for an angel investor, it makes sense to present your plan to flocks of angels, and assume that at least one will swoop down and scoop you up. Or does it? Actually numbers and locations are just the beginning. The challenge is to find the right angel for you, and for your situation. Here are some basic principles: Angels invest in people, more often than they invest in ideas.
I agree with those of you who tell me that you learn the most from your own mistakes, but that shouldn’t keep you from starting with some best practices , and the feedback from others who have been there and done that. In my experience, mistakes in business are an expensive and painful way to learn, and in these days of rapid change, you just can’t afford the time to recover.
Managing and motivating a team in a startup is more than just using the right interpersonal skills. It’s more than providing recognition, tangible incentives, and clear work goals. A key influencer of satisfaction and motivation, top-ranked by employees, is positive progress and the completion of meaningful work. Sometimes you have to manage progress, not people.
With the power of the Internet, and the impact of the recent pandemic , the world of business services, such as accounting and marketing, have gone more and more remote. Yet the value of real relationships, as with consumer customers, has become critical to your business services growth and success. The challenge is how to build client relationships without face-to-face.
Startup work environments are always chaos, but they can still be great environments to work in, or they can be terrible. Whether yours is terrible or great, that same tone flows out to your customers, and regulates your productivity inside. You as the founder are the starting point and definer, so you need to get it right. What does it take to create a positive workplace culture?
In growing your business, how you communicate under pressure can make or break your progress, as well as your relationship with the team and outside constituents. In my experience as a mentor and consultant, it is not just the words, but also your tone, approach, body language, and the context in which you choose to engage that can make all the difference.
I’m sure you will agree that not all business leaders are created equal, starting from the CEO on down. But I have found the more challenging question to be what distinguishes the best leaders from all the rest, especially before they have been selected and tested in a new role. My own conclusion, after years of experience and consulting, is that leadership is largely about mindset.
Many of you business leaders I work with, and entrepreneurs I mentor, have a great strategy and an innovative solution , but struggle with building and motivating the team necessary to run your business. You assume everyone has your passion, and simply needs your command and control to make it work. In my experience, what a team needs more is your connection and inspiration.
Have you noticed that more companies beg you to participate in their business today? It started with an email survey on your last stay at their hotel, but now includes requests for online product reviews, to social media input on the design of future products. They do it because engaged customers become loyal advocates and buyers. Welcome to the “Participation Age” of marketing.
Grocery delivery startup Instacart used to be valued at $39 billion. Now, it has dropped that valuation to just $24 billion, a drop of 38%. Instacart cites “market turbulence” and a need to attract talent as reasons why it has reassessed. Another reason could be a steep drop in sales growth rate since the start of the pandemic, when many people suddenly became interested in getting groceries dropped off at their door.
If every entrepreneur could predict the future, starting the right new business would be easy. Since my experience and interests have been primarily with technology, I’ve been watching those trends for a long time, and I see rapid change, but predicting impact is a challenge. Recently I’ve changed my focus a bit to people demographics, and I find the implications a bit more concrete.
A common misconception I often hear in the startup world is that non-profits are easy and safe, since they don’t have to pay taxes, and they don’t have to make a profit for their shareholders. In reality, from the feedback I get from non-profit executives, exactly the opposite is true. Technically speaking, in the United States, a non-profit corporation or association is one which has been exempted from Federal income taxes by meeting the criteria set out Section 501(c) of the Internal Revenue C
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