Posts Tagged ‘entrepreneurs’
Two Kinds Of Feedback
A common way to get feedback is to describe what you’re creating in detail and then to ask a prospective customer if they would use it. This is equivalent to asking someone for an honest answer to the question, “Does my bum look big in this?” Sometimes the answers we seek out are not the…
Read MoreThe Question To Ask Before Doing What You’re Planning To Do Next
Before you schedule that meeting. Before you contact that supplier. Before you attend that conference. Before you pay for that marketing. Before you hire that guy. Ask yourself this simple question: What’s the number one outcome I want to achieve by doing this? When you get clear (and honest with yourself) about the desired outcome,…
Read MoreThe Business You Want
If I asked you to describe the business you really want you’d probably find it hard. Here’s why. We have conditioned ourselves to pay attention to popular metrics of success and we often don’t want to make the sacrifices or the compromises it takes to achieve them. It’s akin to wanting Jennifer Aniston’s body, without…
Read MoreWhat Change Are You Making?
The sales assistant at the pop up boutique glowed. She enthusiastically pulled things one at a time from the rails to show to the customer. “These pants will change your life,” she said. I thought that was a huge claim to make about what seemed like an unremarkable pair of trousers, but when the woman…
Read MoreYou Are Not Apple, And That’s No Excuse
“That’s all very well, but we are not Apple,” says every CEO and entrepreneur, when a well-meaning colleague gives another Apple best practice example as a possible way forward. No, you are not Apple and you don’t have to be. There are a million ways to do meaningful work. Owning the fact that it’s possible…
Read MoreThe Business Of Enough
There’s a tiny cafe in Midtown with room for exactly three people to stand up inside. They open from 7 until 5 on weekdays and close at 3 on weekends. The two staff working behind the counter are always smiling and engaged. They clearly love what they do. Lucid doesn’t have a website or another…
Read MoreThe Power Of What We Measure
It’s easier than ever before to create a set of metrics by which to monitor our progress and measure our success. Click-through rates, subscriber numbers, impressions and customer lifetime value are useful data points. What if we measured our success by the results we delivered for our customers? Not what the customer did for us,…
Read MoreHow To Get The Results You Want
In work, as in life we create a sense of balance by understanding what we want and what we don’t. We prioritize by wanting less of one thing and more of something else. Less overwhelm and more progress. Fewer things to react to and more results. Less busyness and more time. Fewer restrictions and more…
Read MoreThe Value Of Giving To Give
A supermarket loyalty card helps the company more than it does the shopper. We all know that it’s less a way of rewarding customer loyalty and more a way of collecting useful data. Much of the ‘giving’ we do in business is because some kind of return is expected down the track. This drawing that…
Read MoreToo Cheap To Be Good
When a friend was shopping around for a logo designer she got several recommendations and then asked for quotes. The range was extraordinary, but no more extraordinary than her reaction. The companies that quoted below what she felt was reasonable were immediately discounted and they lost her business. They were just too cheap to be…
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