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How Can I Make Money From My Idea?
filed in Entrepreneurship, Strategy
Asking this question is a terrible place to start. I don’t know of many great ideas where the first question the creator asked was, “How can I make money from this idea?”
You’ve got to care about the idea and understand the problem you are setting out to solve first. Not in a naive , if I build it they will definitely come sense. But from a place of knowing that there is inherent value in what you plan to execute, for the audience that you want to serve.
If you start from the making money perspective you limit your ideas to what’s possible. You think in terms of the limitations and what the focus group wanted, and you kill what would have made your idea golden in the first place.
I recently heard Lina Ashar speak about how she founded the hugely successful Kangaroo Kids Education in India. She said if she’d listened to what the research told her the market wanted, she would never have gone ahead and launched her business.
Did Mary Quant, Banksy, Vidal Sassoon, James Dyson, Steve Jobs, Jessica Hische, Richard Branson, Tina Roth Eisenberg, Mark Zuckerberg and Instagram founders Kevin Systrom and Mike Kriegar begin by asking, “How can I make money from this idea”?
There’s nothing wrong with caring about the money. Just care more about your idea.
Image by Toban Black.
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You Don’t Need A Badge
filed in Worldview
My eldest son Adam graduated last Saturday. The whole family flew five hours across the country to be there.
What you’ll know about anything as special as a graduation ceremony is that it takes an army of people to pull it off. There are legions of people involved on the day, from caterers to photographers, academic staff to the valedictorian. And a thousand tiny opportunities to touch someone.
The person who stood out to me on Saturday didn’t have a title, a badge or even a clipboard. She was the anonymous woman, who went along the line of graduands adjusting their hoods as they stood waiting to go on stage to accept their degree. She was the last person to offer them a word of encouragement, or place a hand on their shoulder. And she arranged each hood with love.
You don’t need a badge to make a difference.
Image by Gerard Girbes.
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Attention Is Not The Problem
You’ve may have access to a hundred and one new channels that allow you to broadcast a message, but there are only a handful of ways to get attention for your idea.
1. Advertising
The old and expensive way to buy attention. You might be able to buy eyeballs, but you can’t guarantee you’re changing minds.
2. Sales
You can beg people for attention using a sales team, or social media. People become tired of dealing with interruptions they don’t want.
3. Public Relations
You could join the public relations lottery and keep waiting for the call from Oprah. It’s a long shot.
4. Earned
Alternatively you could just focus on solving people’s problems and creating something they value.
Build what you’re building for engagement not just attention. Beloved brands, favourite cafes and cherished products are always built to love. Attention in isolation is overrated and it’s not what makes ideas that matter.
Image by Methos04.
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Signal Versus Noise. You Get To Choose.
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
I’ve always loved the name of the blog at 37Signals… Signal vs Noise. They chose well. They write well too.
Signal versus noise perfectly describes how we are living and working right now. We want to be connected, both as business entities and as human beings. But we’re sacrificing hearing the signals because of the noise. I’ve thought about this every time I sent a tweet or an email this week and asked myself, “Is this a signal or am I just adding to the noise?”
The ratio of signal to noise is more relevant to what you put out than it is to what you take in. You can spend your days online endlessly curating, filtering and re-purposing content, or you can create.
Are you endlessly curating, or endlessly creating? You can’t do both.
It’s easy to convince yourself that the time lost exploring links down virtual rabbit holes is your real work. It’s not.
If you have time and energy to find ideas worth sharing, then you’ve got time and energy to bring ideas of your own to life.
Your real work matters. Send signals. Don’t just make noise.
Image by Brent Danley.
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Are You Measuring What Matters?
The cafe owner thinks that what’s most important is getting customers seated and served quickly. Because she believes her customers simply value tidy lines and orders pushed through, she creates standards and KPIs. She measures things that enable her staff to tick boxes and make them look hunted.
The truth is people don’t visit her cafe in order to tell themselves a story about how they got fed quickly, for three times the cost of making a salad at home. When they want quick there’s always McDonalds.
Your metrics should be created around what’s most important to your customer. Is he looking for a shortcut, reassurance or love? Whatever it is you need to understand it and deliver it in spades.
Businesses and brands succeed when they deliver value based on customers wants, not the metrics of a well-oiled machine.
Image by Coffee Common.
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The Difference Between Traffic And Visitors
When you optimise your website for “traffic” are you doing your best work?
Working out how to get “traffic” to find you is a tactic, that anyone with better technical support than you can win at. Giving “visitors” a reason to stay, means having a strategy for creating great content that can’t be easily duplicated.
“Traffic” is passing through. Far better to think in terms of how you can turn a visitor into someone who cares to return.
Tiny distinctions make all the difference.
Image by Sefano Corso.
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If Only You Could Write Like Malcolm Gladwell
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
WANTED
“A professional writer talented in non-fiction storytelling with a passion for the topics of startups, social entrepreneurship, cutting-edge science and technology, and the psychology of the crowd, capable of crafting non-fiction pieces that are captivating and massively popular (think Freakonomics or The Tipping Point)
Location: Los Angeles or telecommute
To apply: provide your resume and relevant writing samples. Applications without writing samples will not be considered.
Responsibilities:
Work with a high-profile CEO of startups and foundations backed by some of the world’s most famous billionaires to draft blog posts and articles in his voice (i.e. all byines (typo not mine) will be that of the CEO).
Work with a small team of content researchers to identify topics and develop content.
Draft a series of blog posts based on the NY Times bestseller of the CEO.
Draft a series of original blog posts and articles based on interviews and research on subjects such as:
How to create audacious startups to change the world.
How to drive innovation through crowd-sourcing, open-sourcing, incentive competitions and DIY communities.
How billionaire entrepreneurs realized their audacious goals.
The position is a month-to-month contract (part time or full time), expected to last 8 to 14 months.
Required Skills:
Excellent writing and story-telling skills.
Demonstrated ability to create engaging non-fiction articles that entertain, intrigue, instruct and inspire by telling a good story with actionable lessons.
With a writing style/voice akin to non-fiction bestsellers such as Freakonomics and The Tipping Point.
Outstanding communication, interpersonal and interview skills.
An organized and creative researcher.
Able to work as part of a small 2-3 person team.
Content production, editing and publishing experience.
Familiar with online publishing platforms like WordPress.
Strong organizational skills and attention to detail.
Able to meet all deadlines.
Enthusiasm and passion for our subject matters.
A plus: audio and video production experience.”
This is a real position. The job is open. Yours for the taking.
But…if you can do even a fraction of what is “required” here, please don’t apply. Go build your platform. Tell your own story. Write bylines you care about. Build a team. Be audacious. Innovate. Then show others how to do that, on your terms, for as long as you like.
The difference you want to make doesn’t happen when you’re working week to week for a paycheck.
Don’t live in anyone’s shadow, not even Malcolm’s.
Image by Chris Christner.
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The Internet Is Not A Shortcut
filed in Marketing, Storytelling
Here is the cold hard truth about the Internet, viral marketing and the way to make your ideas matter.
The Internet gives you a million and one chances to amplify what’s great about what you do.
It doesn’t actually make your idea better.
70,000 people found Philippa on Instagram. She was an amazing visual storyteller, who touched people, long before she downloaded the Instagram app.
There’s only one formula for getting your work noticed over and over again.
Do good work.
Then do it over and over again.
If you do good work people will find you. If you give them something to come back for they’ll keep coming back. And if you make them care, they’ll share you with their friends.
Image by abrinsky.
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The World Is Your Focus Group Now
Think about every conversation you overheard today. It may have been on the train, in the coffee queue, or while you waited in the hair salon.
You know, the one where the guy on his mobile explained loudly that his taxi hadn’t turned up. Or when forty something Sarah confided how stressed out she was about the amount of time her kids spent on Facebook to her stylist Jill.
Not forgetting the tweet Phoenix sent to her followers: “So I have to get fitted for a bridesmaid dress in June… but the wedding’s in September… #problem I’m freaking huge!”
These are real reactions to the world. Your customer’s world. The world you as a marketer want to be a part of.
They are gold to you.
Every day people are telling you the problems they want you to solve. The world is your focus group. All you need to do is keep your eyes and ears wide open.
Image by Noise 64.
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The Magic Of Making It Up As You Go Along
filed in Entrepreneurship, Worldview
In Robin Sloan’s Fish: a tap essay, he asks what it means to love something on the Internet. Liking with a single click of the mouse is not the same as loving. To love something means to be moved enough to want more. It means to go back, retrace your steps, to linger.
Yesterday I found something worth coming back to. The best advice you’ll probably ever get about success, failure, fear and doing what you love.
Yes, it really is okay to stop holding your breath while you wait for success to arrive.
If you don’t know it’s impossible it’s easier to do.
If you make mistakes it means you’re out there doing something.
Let go and enjoy the ride.
Pretend to be someone who is wise and behave like they would.
Make glorious and fantastic mistakes.
Break rules.
Leave the world more interesting for your being here.
Make good art.
Image by Pilar Almenar.