Spring is traditionally the launch
of the home renovation season.
Wondering if the possible recession
is going to put a damper on this year’s spending,
I asked a buddy of mine in the business.
His marketing angle?
It is all about paint.
He’s calling paint the lipstick of the reno business,
low cost yet impactful,
an affordable luxury.
Are you offering an affordable luxury
in your product line?
One of my favorite authors has a new book out.
It is the best she’s ever written.
I’d love to recommend it.
I can’t.
Why?
Because the book is a compilation of characters
found in previous books.
If you haven’t read those books,
you’ll be lost.
Sequels of successful products are tempting
but be very, very careful.
It is so easy to filter out new customers.
Combine that with the natural loss
of previous product customers
and you have lower sales.
John Riccitiello, CEO of Electronic Arts,
has sounded off on sequels in the games industry.
“For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat.
There’s been lots of product that looked like last year’s product,
that looked a lot like the year before.
We’re boring people to death and
making games that are harder and harder to play.”
The media folks may be all gloom and doom
but business leaders and entrepreneurs?
Not so much.
Some are quite giddy…
including John Bragg, the world’s wild blueberry king.
Just last year,
he expanded his interests from food into communications.
His advice about taking on debt?
“We would say,
at these interest levels,
fill your boots.
But we’re careful to do it with secure assets.”
The low interest rates are creating opportunities.
How can you take advantage of them?
Children love saying the name Obama,
resulting in increased media
for the Presidential hopeful
as a flood of Babies For Obama videos
are loaded onto YouTube.
Why Obama?
Speech expert Harriet K. Klein says
that Ba and Ma are two of the easiest syllables
for babies to say.
Are your brand names simple to say?
Is your company name simple to say?
It is easier for a customer to recommend a product
if they can pronounce the product name.
When I first heard about
The Encyclopedia Of Life,
a wikipedia for biodiversity,
I thought “hasn’t this been done already?”
Actually no.
Not on the internet nor in print.
There is no single reference
containing every species on Earth.
In fact, the 1.8 million species number
people throw around
is just an educated guess.
No one knows how many species there are.
Because no one has a comprehensive list.
So next time,
you think everything needed
is already supplied,
think again.
Entrepreneurs are naturally protective of ideas.
We prefer to own everything associated with our product
including the entire product chain and
all spin off products.
But as venture capitalist Andrew Waitman says
“as long as systems are proprietary and not inter-operable,
cost will prevent mass market adoption.”
In other words,
we simply don’t have the resources to cover the world,
to do everything.
So we cheat.
We partner
and we give away information,
gambling that these small allowances
will allow for bigger gains.
Many of us feel that if we make “it”
(it being whatever destination we’re moving towards),
our troubles will be over.
Thus far, I haven’t seen that happen…
for anyone.
As our goals are reached,
we set new goals,
more challenging goals.
Today’s troubles are there
to prepare us for tomorrow’s greater ones.
As award winning author Ciara Gold was told,
“all the rejection letters you receive
help you prepare for dealing with tough reviews.”
So enjoy each stage of the game.
Seth Godin,
in a recent post about the music industry,
talks about the power of subscribers.
“Magazines make 10x return on equity of books,
you know why?
Because magazines have subscribers and
books don’t.
So every time a book comes out
they gotta run around looking for someone to buy it.
Where as the magazine people just look
for the next author to write the next article
in the next magazine.”
Subscribers are a must now
even in the book world.
There are publishers with subscribers
(Harlequin).
There are authors with subscribers
(Nora Roberts with her 11 new novels out in 2008).
Customers are too precious to let walk away.
Having watched a few too many movies,
I thought death by poison could be prevented
by inducing vomiting.
A paramedic told me this was
outdated and incorrect information.
What shouldn’t go in,
shouldn’t come back out again.
And since only a third of the poison
is purged by vomiting,
the victim would still die
if this was the only treatment.
(They now use medication like
Narcan and Activated Charcoal.)
Outdated information can kill a company also.
Not knowing what the competition is doing or
what the customer now wants is
equivalent to committing corporate suicide.
Stay current.
A month ago,
I wanted to buy shares of a certain company.
The problem was,
the price was too high.
I watched it go higher and higher
until my gut said I missed my chance.
Then a week ago, the price corrected.
I scooped it up at my target price.
The same holds with business launches.
Many entrepreneurs,
once they decide to start a business,
want to start it NOW.
They’ll settle for an “okay” idea
simply to have something to launch.
That so-so idea sucks up time, money, and energy
that could be spent looking for a better idea.
Hold out for what you truly want.
Take it from Richard Branson,
“Business opportunities are like buses,
there’s always another one coming.”
However, when you find one,
hop on it,
or you’ll never get to your destination.