Getting the Edge in Business

Here is some great advice from Mark Cuban about gaining an advantage in the world of business.  In his view, it’s not who you know, how much money you have, etc that make you successful; it’s about whether you have the EDGE and the GUTS to use it.  Great motivational stuff:

• The edge is getting so jazzed about what you do, you just spent 24 hours straight working on a project and you thought it was a couple hours.
• The edge is knowing that you have to be the smartest guy in the room when you have your meeting and you are going to put in the effort to learn whatever you need to learn to get there.
• The edge is knowing is knowing that when the 4 girlfriends you have had in the last couple years asked you which was more important, them or your business, you gave the right answer.
• The edge is knowing that you can fail and learn from it, and just get back up and in the game.
• The edge is knowing that people think your crazy, and they are right, but you don’t care what they think.
• The edge is knowing how to blow off steam a couple times a week, just so you can refocus on business
• The edge is knowing that you are getting to your goals and treating people right along the way because as good as you can be, you are so focused that you need regular people around you to balance you and help you.
• The edge is being able to call out someone on a business issue because you know you have done your homework.
• The edge is recognizing when you are wrong, and working harder to make sure it doesn’t happen again.
• The edge is being able to drill down and identify issues and problems and solve them before anyone knows they are there.
• The edge is knowing that while everyone else is talking about nonsense like the will to win, and how they know they can be successful, you are preparing yourself to compete so that you will be successful.

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Sources:
http://blogmaverick.com/2009/05/13/success-motivation/

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Market Focus of a Startup

As I attempt to brainstorm new business ideas, I constantly find my mind wandering and lacking focus.  I sometimes find myself wondering how to completely dominate a particular market, when in reality this is the wrong approach.  A common misconception is that large successful companies such as Microsoft or Google started with a broad focus to dominate the entire market space.  This is far from the truth.  Almost every succesful business starts by filling a void in a small niche.  More specifically, a good niche is a market that is small enough that larger competitors are not already going after it, but big enought that if you are successful, the profitablity can parlay into greater success.  When this initial niche is filled, then it is ideal to tackle another niche that can be approached with the same level of success.  After successfully adressing several niche markets, it becomes easier to expand into more niches and grow the existing product offerings vertically.  A key to developing a good product is finding the right balance between uniqueness and desirability.   A good balance of both will always provide the greatest success.

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Did You Know?

We are living in a time when information is being created at an exponential growth rate.  This means, to be successful, you must change the way you process, assimilate and utilize information.  Below I have attached to awesome videos that descibe the massive amounts of change that we are seeing. Watch the shorter version if you are time constrained.  The longer version contains more technology facts than the first.

Short Version (5 min)

Longer Version (1o min)

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Great products in a bad economy

Opportunity during a recessionary environment can at first appear as a few rays of light that peek through dark clouds; but it is these few rays that will eventually multiply to become bright enough to create a sunny day.  (Hey, it’s my first quotable quote…maybe…lol).  Recessions come along and provide a “clean-out” period for inefficient markets.  Though painful, it is normal and necessary.  This is not new news to us, but it is worth repeating to remind myself.  It is counter-intuitive to most to take risk during a challenging time, but it actually provides the best odds of becoming successful barring you have a great product and a solid business model.   Jimmy did a great job of articulating this in his latest blog post:

One of the things people always say is that it is tough to sell in a bad economy. I agree because most people have average products or products that are wants not needs. On the other hand if you have a great product it is easy. Especially if the product makes money for your customers and pays for itself.

The other great benefit about a bad economy is it is easier to find sales reps. So if you have the capacity and a great product you can gain alot of market share. Competitors are dropping off, new companies aren’t being started, and as a result when the economy turns around you explode.

So I suggest selling your best product in a down market and hiring sales people. Also if you don’t have an awesome product, look for someone who does and sell their product. That is what we are doing and it is turning out to be a great win.

Being very small can be advantageous if you progress carefully and keep all risks calculated.   There are plenty of talented people looking for work right now, and we need to use this to our advantage (in more than one way).  We need to outsource to them cheaply and also create a product they can use (in the case of the Sales Interview Project).

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Sources:
http://jimmyhendricks.collarfree.com/2009/01/07/selling-great-products-always-works/

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A Quick Foray into licensing

As we build our “muse empire” step by step, we should also keep licensing an idea or product in mind.  This could prove to be an invaluable arrow in our quiver.

I just read a post on the 4 hour work week blog about licensing from Steven Key from Invent Right (who was discussed in the book).  This guy is king of licensing.  One of his products is a spinning label that allows for 75% more space on a lable.  The video of this is below.

He has sold over 300,000,000 of these in the last 5 years.  In the 80’s, he was part of design group that created Teddy Ruxpin (I used to love that cartoon) and Lasertag (awesome game that brings back memories)

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Sources:
http://www.fourhourworkweek.com/blog/2007/11/26/a-beginners-guide-how-to-rent-your-ideas-to-fortune-500-companies-plus-video/
http://www.inventright.com/

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Audio Mixologist: A great muse case study

Incredible case study on a muse project that has gone from concept to creation.  Not only is is this a great reference guide, but also very motivational as well.  The users handle is dvdwlsh and his post was made Sept 5, 2008, so this case study is still a work in progress.  As of today, Dec 9, 2008, his shopping cart is down for some reason, there have been more posts on the forum thread, but no response by him yet.  Below is his summary of the creation of his muse, click on the “Continue Reading” link to see the entire post.

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Update: Product is 100% complete and selling live

Warning: This is a robust entry so here’s the order I’m going to follow so it’s not just random thoughts. I’ll need to split it into 2 posts to get around the forums thread length limit.

1. Full Update
2. Direct responses to your questions/ideas
3. Step-by-step of product creation
4. Launch & Delivery

1) Full Update

Product
The Audio Mixologist System is 100% created, packaged and live for sale at audiomixologist.net. Going from concept to final product was literally packed with interesting challenges and unexpected turns, but nearly all of the experience was positive and will make things much easier for future projects.

Advertising
All advertising at the moment is via Google Adwords, which is driving traffic from the Google search engine (obviously) and content-network sites (surprisingly, this is where most of the clicks and impressions are originating).

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Inspired- time to bring out the big guns

I was just in the middle of reading a post on “6 reason to visit the world’s happiest place” (Denmark) by Tim Ferris and it lit a fire under my ass.  I thought of the fact I have never been overseas traveling and there is no good reason for it.  I thought “I will go on a honeymoon next year” but realized that was weak.  

So after reading about setting really difficult inspiring goals that motivate you more than miniscule goals, I thought I would post some rediculous ones of my own right here:

 

1. Have a new business launched by end of February 2009 (3 months away, must create urgency).  Its better to have something going than nothing.

2. Become location independant before I marry Dominique (probably mid July, 5 months after launch)

3. Earn at least $4000 per month by July with a new venture or ventures.

4. Replace both our current incomes by end of 2009 (7000/month) so we can free ourselves from daily obligation and 8 hours of daily slave labor.  This will start out our married life right and allow us to enjoy each others company and form a deeper bond.  At this point the true adventure of life will begin.

5. Be able to run the business by iphone within 1 year.

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Location Independent Living

Great concept, and this could be a very viable goal.  Both in terms of it’s practicality for what we want to accomplish, but also including the added benefit of experiencing life to the fullest.  As I read through the info on location independent living, I have to admit, that find myself in many ways falling victim to spending my time doing things that could be streamlined as they warn about.  For example, I have many different interests in life and find myself reading way too many different blogs, and in all reality, a lot of that can be cut out.  I need to become more focused with my learning and time allocation.  While you and I have both spent a lot of time reading all kinds of material, I feel that all the learning we have done in the past year is invaluable to helping us to get to where we want to be in the future.  I know it feels like we haven’t made much tangible progress, but I think we both have learned a lot about business, lifestyle, and more about how and what we would like to accomplish in our lives.  So  in this respect, I think we are setting ourselves up for success, slowly but surely.  It feels like we are slowly putting puzzle pieces in the right places to achieve our goals.  While it comes to some people easier than others, I think our time is coming.  Anyway, here is some info I compiled about getting started in taking steps towards becoming independent from the daily grind known as the rat race.

According to the Location Independent Living blog, here are 6 starting steps to take:

1. Plan Your Escape
2. Start Your Emergency Fund Now
3. Have an Idea of How You’ll Earn Income
4. Create Your Back Up Plan
5. Discuss it with those who’ll be most impacted
6. Skill Up

Good Resources to Improve different aspects of life:

Health

As a former personal trainer and holistic health coach, I know a thing or two about how to achieve optimal health (and it’s not how most people do it). The following blogs and websites share the same philosophy and provide good quality, practical information.

• Fit Shack
• Mark’s Daily Apple
• Dr. Mercola’s Total Health

Money & Personal Finance

I’m not brilliant with numbers – in fact I completely failed an interview with Capital One once because I couldn’t even do the mathematical case study required at the first round interview. These blogs however are realistic, practical and not-at-all scary if you’re not good with numbers and the concept of personal finance and money usually has you heading for a dark room.

• I will teach you to be rich
• The Simple Dollar
• The Digerati Life

Professional Career & Business

Stay in the corporate world and improve your experience there/achieve your dream role:

• Chief Happiness Officer At Work
• Presentation Zen
• Executive Hack

Leave the corporate world & run your own business:

• Escape from Cubicle Nation
• Springwise (for business ideas)
• Ittybiz (for small business marketing)
• Sproutwire (for the best small business articles)
  

Take an existing business online and/or run a business from anywhere:

• Ours!
• Entrepreneur’s Journey
• Conversation Marketing (Common Sense Internet Strategies)
  
• Web Worker Daily

Travel As A Lifestyle

When it comes to lifestyle design, many people cite freedom to travel as their ideal lifestyle. We have been there and done that and it’s certainly our ideal lifestyle – if it’s yours too, then these are the blogs we recommend.

• Ours!
• Vagabondish
• Vagablogging

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Sources:
http://locationindependent.com/blog/2008/09/01/lifestyle-design-a-framework-and-guide-to-the-blogosphere-that-will-help-you-do-it/
http://locationindependent.com/blog/2008/10/23/6-things-you-must-do-before-you-leave-the-rat-race-set-up-your-own-business-and-become-location-independent/

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Automating income and mini-retirements

Its official…I am hooked on Tim Ferriss’ philosophies and knowledge.  I just read up on using mini-retirements  (4+ week vacations) to balance work as well as potentially save you money.

• A sabbatical is a one-time event. Mini-retirements are meant to recur throughout a lifetime.
• A vacation is short, and often involves a tourist lifestyle with little immersion in a new way of life. A mini-retirement is long (one to six months), and allows one to fully participate in his new environment.

Here is how it works:

Tim
When you recognize that the costs of travel are mostly transportation and housing costs, and that you can rent a posh apartment for three to four weeks for the same price as staying in a mediocre hotel for four days, things start to get very, very interesting. You need to amortize the transportation and housing costs over the period of time that you’re in this specific location. So I saved $32,000.

There are some very interesting instances and quite simple approaches for actually making money — and let’s just look at making and saving as essentially the same thing, improving the balance. You can actually improve your financial balance by taking mini-retirements…\

Read the article here

 

So the goal now becomes to find a way to automate as much of a business as possible, and be able to “plug into it” remotely when you are needed to step in.  Thus you can be on a mini-retirement in Punta Cana, saving money by spending next to nothing on living expenses, while still running a income generating business via laptop and cell phone.  

I like where this is going.  Here is a video of Tim taking a last second mini-retirement and his cheap digs:

As per your request, here is the link to the blog about Location Independent Living

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VC Continues to fade away

Interesting article yesterday on venturebeat.com about why the VC market is broken.  The circumstances surrounding the economic climate and end of the “let’s create a cash burning internet startup and hope it gets bought out” mentality will cause an estimated 50% of VC firms to go under.  This consolidation of VC is probably needed as the easy-money VC-fund my friend’s startup fad is finally recognized as an ill founded business model.  A few interesting points made in the article:

• Less than 10% of startups that need capital get funded
• The companies that get funded are generally through knowing friends or “friend-of-friends”
• Endowments and pension funds are moving away from investing in VC funds
• VC funds are now consuming more capital then they are generating

At present moment, VCs are not a creator of value, but a diminisher of value!

Where I do agree with Ressi is in the ugly economics overall. Most daunting is that there’s more money being invested into venture firms than those same VC firms are generating from their investments in start-ups — in other words, Ressi argues, they’re now having a net negative affect on the economy. You’d expect this lopsided dynamic to exist temporarily in a downturn. But the worrying thing is that this state of affairs may last for quite some time.

I’m not sure how long this negative balance will last, but for now it certainly contradicts the message traditionally propagated by the VC industry — that it, that VC is a net creator of value, namely of stock market growth and job creation. That positive impact was indisputable — until now.

In order for the VC market to stabilize, the underperfoming firms will need to be weeded out.

However, a lot of VCs are likely to go under this time. This asset class significantly underperformed other asset classes between 1998 and 2006. A handful of firms — Sequoia, Kleiner, Benchmark, Accel and a handful of others — have pulled up the average performance somewhat, because they’ve produced an inordinate amount of the successes (a small group of homeruns, the eBays and the Googles, account for 25 percent of total VC returns over the past 20 years; see Ressi’s slides). But if you invest in the average firm, you’re doing very poorly. So limited partners will probably shift from endowments and foundations increasingly to fund-of-funds and sovereign wealth funds.

So, yes, the VC model is badly broken. This time, Bob Kagle’s statement about half of all VCs going out of business is more likely to be true.

The way I see it, the doors will be opening for those willing to create a solid business model to flourish.  Instead of spending time worrying about how to impress and sell whatever company we start to a VC firm, we will focus on building and evovling our business itself.  It seems that CollarFree has a pretty firm grasp on this concept, and we can learn a lot from them.

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Sources:
http://venturebeat.com/2008/11/12/the-vc-model-is-broken/

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