No product is ever perfect.
There is always something to be tweaked.
Maybe the blue on the package
could be more blue
or the copy one word shorter
or one more bug taken out of the program
or…
That is why deadlines, even artificial,
are important.
Stick to the deadline
and get that product out.
If its successful and money flows in,
then consider “upgrades.”
An orange juice company I worked for
tried to change the perception of
not-from-concentrate vs from-concentrate juice.
Despite the from-concentrate juice
scoring higher in blind tastes,
customers insisted that the
not-from-concentrate juice was “better.”
Decades and millions of dollars
in advertising later and
the perception remained.
The juice company finally gave up
and launched its own
not-from-concentrate product.
A couple weekends ago,
my writing group had a forensic scientist speak.
He insisted that the crime shows (like CSI)
had it all wrong.
So which source of information
should we use in our romance novels?
The crime shows.
Why?
Because that is what the customer expects.
Rejection is usually a bad thing
…unless its your business.
First came the Rejection Phone Number,
a number you would give people
you didn’t want to call you.
Then came the Rejection Email Address.
The same concept, except for emails.
Proving once again that every negative
is a positive for someone else.
So what do you do when the day
before shooting starts on a shark movie,
your mechanical shark sinks to the bottom?
If you’re Steven Spielberg,
you improvise,
end up shooting an even better movie
and add, he estimates, 175 million to the box office.
Every film maker, entrepreneur, employee
is faced with “disasters.”
You can throw up your hands and walk away
or you can make your Jaws.
German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer
stated that all truth goes
through three steps.
First, it is ridiculed.
Second, it is violently opposed.
Finally, it is accepted as self-evident.
Entrepreneurs work within the first two steps
(by the third step,
all opportunity is gone).
What does this mean?
Don’t expect raving fans
on day one.
You’re going to have to sell your ideas.
I often get asked how to valuate a business.
There are general rules such as
10 year (or less depending on leases, trademarks, contracts, etc)
discounted cash flow
plus the net worth of the business
as of today
but a big chunk of that valuation
rests on industry specific metrics.
Valuing a blog is no exception
as Lorelle VanFossen points
out in her post Selling Your Blog.
Buyers,
as in the case I saw of
a telecom company buying
a computer consulting company,
ignorant of these metrics
are likely to overpay.
In the telecom’s case,
they ended up buying a lemon
(I had to reco they close the division down).
Millions of dollars wasted.
When people ask me what I do,
I tell them “I get things done.”
I say I’m going to do something
and then do it.
It might not be a successful,
it might not always be the “right” thing,
I may not actually do the work myself,
but I execute.
There’s value in that ability.
As Jeffrey Pfeffer says
“success depends on execution—
on the ability to get things done.”
An angel investor in India
posted that one of the first thing he looks for
in entrepreneurs is
“the ability to accept “delayed gratification””.
I thought that was such a given
that it was not post worthy
…until I started reading the comments.
Successful entrepreneurs HAVE to delay gratification.
There are no immediate results.
Products have to be produced before they are sold.
Posts have to be written before traffic comes.
The delay between the two could be months
(for blogs, 9 months in the Google sandbox)
or even years.
Jell-O salads are a summer staple.
Allrecipes alone has over 150 recipes for it.
So Jell-O designed especially for this purpose
sounds like a great idea, right?
Wrong.
Celery flavored Jell-O
(and other vegetable flavors)
was launched in the 1960’s
and yanked from the shelves shortly after
due to low sales.
Even no-brainers sometimes fail.
There are two major companies
in the $62 Billion U.S. Golf business,
Nike and Fortune (owner of Titleist).
Fortune,
targeting the money rich baby boomers,
is number one in golf clubs, shoes and gloves.
Nike with Tiger Woods and his younger demographic
are snapping at their heels.
So are all the opps in golf already taken?
According to Rick Horrow of Horrow Sports Ventures,
20% of all new golfers are women.
Who is directly addressing their needs?
As crowded as a market appears to be,
there are always opportunities for a new entry.