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.
Dual drawer dishwashers were originally designed
for dishes needing to be cleaned at different settings,
delicate and heavy duty.
Consumers have found a new use.
They,
instead of putting the dishes away,
use one drawer for dirty
and one for clean.
Saves time and saves space.
And yes, the pioneers of this usage
have been single males.
Has this new use been properly promoted?
No.
Opportunity?
Yes.
Men and women are different.
They have different needs and wants.
In everything, even housing.
Responding to the increasing sales to single females,
Gemstone is designing condo units in Las Vegas
especially for them.
The Diva suites have features such as
a vanity drawer plug for hairdryers,
terrace gardens with self-watering systems,
and walk-in closets with built-in organizers,
shoe storage, and full-length mirrors.
Can your product be better tweaked
for your target customer?
Recently Wal-Mart announced
that they would be offering banking services
to their customers.
Why?
Because there is a market
and its lucrative.
Ed Kountz of Jupiter Research
points out that approximately 1 in 4 Americans
don’t have a traditional banking relationship.
These individuals
pay more for transactions
such as money transfers.
The number is higher in areas
with low to moderate income.
Exactly Wal-Mart’s target market.