April 17, 2009
Check out this quote from a Time Magazine article entitled The New Internet Start-up Boom: Get Rich Slow (Props to Derek from 37signals for posting this on SVN):
At no other time in recent history has it been easier or cheaper to start a new kind of company. Possibly a very profitable company.
The article goes on the highlight how one guy joined a growing wave of businesses springing up that are going to market inexpensively (and sometimes profitably). Now, I studied entrepreneurship in college. My training was centered around creating a business plan, raising capital, and pitching your ideas to potential investors. In fact, the coursework was desinged to simulate the risk of starting of a business by requiring seniors in their last semester to risk graduation on one course: an A or F class which hinged entirely on a presentation to a panel of business executives during the final week of school. About 30% of my class failed, which meant they had to awkwardly call mom and dad to tell them that they should cancel the hotel room for graduation weekend because they would not be able to get their degree for another year (the class was only offered once a year). My how the rules have changed.
Let’s cover the rule change. Old rules for starting a business:
- get an idea
- write a 50 page (or more) business plan
- pitch business plans to angel investors or VC firms until someone gives you money
- Build product
- Pray that your plan works before you run out of money
Proposed New Rules for starting a business:
- Figure out what is valuable to a business (hint: look for pain points)
- Offer a service to fix that pain and thus add value
- Translate that service into a product
- Charge customers to use that product on a reoccurring basis
In my opinion, starting a new business by offering a service is smart for a couple of reasons: 1. it makes it easier to get close enough to clients to really understand the product they would find valuable and thus be willing to pay for; and 2. services will provide cashflow while/if the product is being adopted in the market.
Also, I want to emphasize that I don’t intend to negate the importance of planning within the new rules. The ability to plan and manage a project are arguably more important, actually, because you will hopefully be working with several clients at once on your services business while at the same time building a product in your spare time (at least that is what we are experiencing at Elias). It is just a different type of planning. For a more detailed perspective on the topic, I highly recommend Guy Kawasaki’s Reality Check.
March 10, 2009
I’m waiting
I’m waiting on You, Lord
And I am hopeful
I’m waiting on You, Lord
Though it is painful
But patiently, I will wait
I will move ahead, bold and confident
Taking every step in obedience
While I’m waiting
I will serve You
While I’m waiting
I will worship
While I’m waiting
I will not faint
I’ll be running the race
Even while I wait
I’m waiting
I’m waiting on You, Lord
And I am peaceful
I’m waiting on You, Lord
Though it’s not easy
But faithfully, I will wait
Yes, I will wait
I will serve You while I’m waiting
I will worship while I’m waiting
I will serve You while I’m waiting
I will worship while I’m waiting
I will serve You while I’m waiting
I will worship while I’m waiting on You, Lord
- John Waller
March 2, 2009
I did it. I clicked one of the Facebook ads. It took me to a site called I am Second. Wow.
First, the site has incredible design. Just check it out for yourself. The videos are high quality interviews of people telling their stories.
Second, the message is life-changing. I watched three of them: 2 stories and 1 answer to a question.
Please drop me a note if you get anymore information on who is behind this one.
February 19, 2009
Immerse Yourself in the Right Information
Inc Magazine features a slideshow on 4 mistakes Young Salespeople Make. Here is the caption for the picture above:
They immerse themselves in the wrong information.
They lose sight of the goal.
In an effort to make an impression, they festoon their pitches with too many details. “They say, ‘My product does 20 things, and I’m going to tell you all 20 and, hopefully, one of them you’ll love,’” says Jeff Hoffman, co-founder of Basho Technologies and an adviser to a sales club at MIT, who teaches the fundamentals of sales to students interested in business and technology. No one has time for laundry lists. Be selective.
“I can help you,” amateurs like to inform their prospects. How presumptuous is that? Prospects may be founders of successful businesses or corporate executives; they are experts in their industry. Salespeople? They are merely salespeople. “Don’t say, ‘I can help you,’” advises Basho’s Jeff Hoffman. Instead, “Say, ‘That’s very interesting what you just said. A lot of our clients say the same thing. Let me tell you how we’ve helped them.’” This is especially critical when selling into a small or midsize company. “The life of a small business owner is that is, Everybody and their mother want to sell you stuff,” says David Spector, an account executive at Google who founded the MIT sales club as a student. “You want to make it really clear that you have a lot of respect for the fact that I know everything, and that I have given you 15 minutes.”
Some neophytes spend all of their time studying up on their products. Knowing the details of what you are selling is obviously crucial, but don’t forget to do some basic research about the prospect, too. Being able to draw on specific information about a sales lead is the most effective way to get his or her attention. “A salesperson should have something to refer to that the prospect has actually said or done,” says Hoffman. He recommends reading anything the prospect has posted online, and even citing snippets of things they’ve said or written in the past during a presentation. “Most people are primarily interested in themselves,” says Hoffman. “So let’s talk about the topic you care about, which is you.”
My team at ExactTarget has been preparing for a significant meeting with a prospect that will take place later this week. It’s interesting to note our preparation in comparison to the above advice. We have read everything we can get our hands on with regard to the client’s business: its press releases, articles in various magazines, video interviews with their founder, and blog posts. We purchased their service to get first hand experience. And we pulled quotes from these sources to integrate into the presentation. In the end, we will have spent 80% of our time researching the client’s business and 20% of our time preparing to speak to our product.
The results, we believe, will make us far more engaging to the client because we will be relevant to the client’s business. And if we find out we are wrong about halfway through the meeting, then maybe we’ll ask him if he is into fishing.
February 3, 2009
I get asked about the topic of permission-based email A LOT. And it seems like it ends up being the same set of questions about what defines permission. So when I read Seth’s post the other day I thought, “Yes! Thank you!”
If you are wondering about how to approach email for your marketing, then please read this email case study before you contact the email service you are considering (which hopefully will be me). It will save us both a lot of time.
January 28, 2009
A close friend and mentor met me for lunch last week. A successful business owner, he wanted me to help him design a website to leverage the other marketing channels like radio and print that he currently uses. We discussed various online marketing channels like email,websites, blogs, keywords, Linkedin, and Twitter. He was incredibly engaged and kept asking things like, “What does that do?” and “Why do people use that one?”
For my friend – the video below does a fantastic job of explaining Twitter.
January 24, 2009
Google yourself. What comes up in the search? Are you the top listing?
Today I searched for myself and discovered 1. this blog is the top search result and 2. that “Josh Colter – Orlando” outranks me on Facebook (#2 in the listing). Orlando Josh has a picture of him racing on a bike in tights. Since you won’t find me in that attire anytime soon, it might be a challenge to retake the lead on the merit of profile pic. Also, some “josh colter” from Bear Stearns is right there with me on Linkedin (note: Bear Stearns is listed as “past employment” for Banker Josh).
One way to keep tabs on your online brand is to use google alerts. I have alerts setup for myself, wife, company, and other things of interest. A frequent alert keeps popping up for “Joshua Colter” because someone wrote a fictional novel about a cowboy in the old west named Joshua Colter. I looked at the cover of the book on Amazon. Cowboy Josh bears about as much resemblance to me as tight biker shorts Josh.
At least I am only competing against cowboys, unemployed bankers, and tight-shorts bikers. Steven Moody, a member of Brazen Careerist, recently wrote:
I am trying to get to the top of Google searches for my name, but competing with a Death Row inmate in TX and a con artist in Utah is proving difficult.
That’s a tough one, Steven. Normally I would suggest creating an elaborate Ponzi scheme to swindle millions of innocent people out of their investment funds as a strategy to overthrow your death row and con artist name-counterparts with the PR buzz you are sure to generate. But I’m not Banker Josh and it seems like Bernard Madoff beat you to that one.
I guess the moral of the story is that if you aren’t a fictional character, crook, con-artist, murderer, past-employee of infamous financial institution, or willing to wear tight shorts then maybe you should consider starting a blog. Hey, it worked for me. You could use a free blog like WordPress, or if you are marketer at your company then check out Compendium Blogware. Either way, the next time someone types your name into Google wouldn’t it be nice to be #1?
January 21, 2009
Let me be blunt: Websites that have music, video, or any other form of sound automatically play when you visit the site annoy me. I work in an office. There are many people around me. And I find it disconcerting to type in a web url for an online toy retail prospect, anxiously wait for the website to load, and then – BAM! – music blasts through my computer speakers. This usually leads to simultaneously muting volume while nervously glancing around to see who on my floor might be looking at me. I tried to work with the volume muted all of the time, but ended up missing phone calls because the ring works through the computer.
Now a personal confession: I violated my own rule. Just before Thanksgiving I posted an entertaining video. For some reason the video would automatically start playing when you visited this blog. It is a good video, so I let it slide. However, I found myself increasingly annoyed at my own blog. My desire to visit the blog and update posts began to wane.
So I am sorry. Today I was motivated enough to fix the video, which turned out to be really simple (new Youtube video past). This makes me wonder what else in life might involve a simple fix to make it a little less annoying.
January 19, 2009
Thinking about buying new technology for your business? Forbes recently published an article on their website about getting stronger in a recession.
Those with the strongest positions get stronger because they’re considered a safe haven…This is like the old adage to information technology managers that you can’t get fired for buying IBM. Well, you can get fired for investing precious resources in a company that won’t have the resources to refresh its product line on a regular basis.
By the way, I work for an email marketing software company. Drop me a note if you want to discuss why this quote is increasingly true for email.
