entrepreneurship
349 posts
Forget Which Way The Wind Is Blowing
When the disco diner opened on a warm Summer night in a flurry of pink neon, accompanied by loud music and cheap booze, the owner felt reassured he’d found his tribe. But as the evenings grew shorter and the nights colder, his confidence began to waver. The evolving messaging on a pair of sandwich b
In Time
You don’t know for sure that the broccoli at the local organic store was grown sustainably or without pesticides, but you trust that it was and you’re happy to pay more for it. You have no proof that like the label says the bread gluten-free until long after you’ve eaten it, but you don’t question…
Effort, Performance And Joy
The indoor bikes at my gym have a display monitor on the front. The monitor is designed to show you how much effort you’re putting into your workout. In theory the monitor helps you to get better results. You can see how the combination of your speed and resistance increases your power output. You c
Progress And Potential
Nobody knows who invented the button five thousand years ago. At first, buttons were simply used to adorn clothing. It wasn’t until the invention of the buttonhole three thousand years later that buttons became functional. It took us two thousand years to reimagine what the button could do. And in t
How Change Happens
The success of whatever we make, serve, sell or advocate for is dependent on creating and sustaining change. The same rules apply whether we’re trying to change perception or behaviour, get people to buy our software or stop using plastic straws. 7 Steps To Making Change Happen 1. Acknowledgement Th
The Sure Thing
Before we create a product, design a service or build a business we want to be certain the idea will fly. We want to know for sure that if we build it, people will come. If we only did the things we were certain would work, we’d never create anything original. Originality is a leap…
The Difference Between Good And Great
The tiny Italian restaurant in Carlton is in full swing. It’s 6 pm, and a couple of experienced chefs are cranking out meals. The kitchen is a well-oiled machine, the oven is at capacity, as diners and Uber Eats drivers converge at once. The food is good. It’s just not great—unlike the food served a
Victims Of Success
We’ve all been let down by a business we were loyal to or disappointed by a product we once loved. When we dissect what happened, it’s often possible to trace the missteps to a single source. Thriving businesses become victims of their success, and great products become mediocre when the people who
The Forgotten Power Of The Single Interaction
On a recent trip to Waiheke Island with my husband, we stopped a bus that wasn’t going our way. The driver told us to hop on anyway, and he’d take us to where we could catch a bus that would get us to where we wanted to go. Then, wait for it—he radioed ahead to…
Everything Starts With Something
When we’re starting a project or working towards a business development goal we typically have a laundry list of everything we want to do. From developing a new product to filing our tax returns, it’s in our nature to want to make immediate and visible progress all at once. That desire to do everyth
A World Built On Promises
Scott and Joanna are planning to open a two-hundred-seater restaurant along a small shopping strip that backs onto a residential area in their local suburb. They know the neighbours will be concerned about the prospect of increased traffic and noise from the venue, especially at the weekend when the
Who Trusts You?
We spend a lot of time wondering who we can trust. We are careful to work out who is worthy of our friendship, business or time. And yet, we often fail to make the connection between trust and success when it comes to ourselves. You don’t become trusted by being more successful. You become successfu
In Praise Of Intangibles
Think about all the things you didn’t charge your customers for today, those things that don’t appear as line items in your budget. The care with which you choose ingredients. The way you treat your employees. The time you spend listening to a prospective customer’s problems, so you can excel at ant
The Difference Between A Weak Brand And A Strong Brand
The biggest mistake a brand can make is to try being all things to everyone. Weak brands settle for doing what’s easy or obvious. They appeal to the market of everyone, avoid the edges and thus become interchangeable with their competitors. Strong brands know they are this and not that. They intenti
Big Enough
Conventional business wisdom suggests that success is dependent on achieving scale. We’ve come to equate fulfilling our potential with being number one—having the biggest piece of the pie. In our quest for success, we sometimes forget to question how much pie is enough. Exceeding the optimal amount
Create The Future You Want To See
The best investment I ever made in myself and my business was buying a copy of Seth Godin’s book, Purple Cow. Seth taught me that remarkability was a choice. Just as business owners don’t work just to pay the bills, writers don’t write just so they can eat. They write to create the change they…
Choosing To Be Better
Every business begins with a choice to be better. Not necessarily to be better than the competition, but to be a better option for the people it hopes to serve. As we become mired in the day-to-day work of business building, we can lose sight of our original intention. Nike’s Bill Bowerman chose to
Who Will You Impact?
The bus headed back over the Golden Gate Bridge as we neared the end of our tour of Sausalito. The driver pulled over at the second last stop and turned off the ignition so that he could ‘address his guests’. Then Dwayne Johnson (the man who had the name before the celebrity who made it…
What’s More Important Than Noticing Trends?
Enlightened entrepreneurs and visionary leaders don’t simply try to predict the next hit. They spend less time wondering about what people are interested in and more time caring about why people are drawn to it. Yes, it’s important to notice trends, but it’s far more valuable to understand what’s dr
The Two Questions At The Heart Of Great Marketing
The kind of marketing we practice is a result of what we’re most curious to know about our customers. Many marketing campaigns are created by asking the following questions: A. What will they buy? B. How can we get them to buy? The resulting tactics become about near-term targets, buying more attent
