Andrea Shillington

By Andrea Shillington
Founder & Owner 
Brands for the people

The first question every leader should start with is this: why does your business exists other than to make money?

It may come as a surprise to you that the first questions in a branding process is not about what the product or service is, or even how it’s delivered differently. Those questions will come, but the one that matters most to customers – and thus should to leaders as well – is why. It’s a matter of creating a partnership with your customers, one in which you both contribute to making the world a better place. This is not any easy question to answer, it requires business leaders to dig deep and get personal. The emotional connection you create by answering this will become the driving force behind your brand’s momentum.

For my new startup, Brands for the people, the journey began with a desire to help startup businesses with a vision to make a profit and make a difference. After 8 years of working with agencies branding large corporations and governments in the Middle East, Europe and North America, I had had enough of the singular goal of making rich people richer. I was seeking a higher sense of fulfillment from my work. I found my ‘why’ when I moved to Vancouver and I began meeting visionary entrepreneurs who wanted to have a positive effect on the world. I have always been passionate about helping startups achieve their dreams, but realized that most of these businesses could not afford the $30,000 price tag for a strategic branding process. I’d have to find a new way. Now that I had discovered my passionate purpose, I’d need to start thinking about how to create a new business model.

I wasn’t satisfied with the cheaper alternatives available for startups: finding a freelance designer or posting a brief on a logo competition site.  It can be a disaster if the designer isn’t competent or doesn’t match the business type. Similarly, a competition site sells the idea that a perfect logo is the magic pill for getting a brand developed. I had met many entrepreneurs who had participated in one of the above mentioned processes and possessed a logo design, but were still seeking a brand that stood out from the competition.  To provide a client, specifically a startup, with a successful product both alternatives are missing the essential and almost magical part of the branding process, where the strategic part gives way to business clarity. The step–by–step process that would help guide business owners and help them decide what they are and, just as importantly, what they are not. The part of the branding process that helps businesses create an ownable space in the market, which in turn directs how the brand gets designed.

The inadequacies of these cheaper alternative are what drove me to create a new business model and a unique technology platform. If you knew me you’d say, “she’s the last person I’d expect to develop a technology platform for her new business.” However, I realized technology solved one of my most important challenges in helping small businesses obtain the expertise they actually needed at a price they could afford. Hence, Brands for the people was born as a hybrid between the creative agency and freelance designer using the crowdsourcing model. I choose to deliver most of the strategic branding process using the ‘freemium’ model. Free brand tools are available to download from my site, brandsforthepeople.com, which helps guide leaders through creative exercises to develop a brand brief. Additionally, I wrote an E-Book, 5 Secrets to Branding your Business from the Heart, which is also free to download. It’s written as a branding how-to guide that helps business leaders think deeper about the difference they will make in the world.

The process for a startup wanting to working with Brands for the people is a streamlined, easy and collaborative process.  Once you submit your brand brief and have spoken to one of our consultants, we will connect you with designers from our hand-picked community – connecting you with designers that meet your startup budget, industry type, design style, personal characteristics and skill sets required for the project. In our community we have have designers in a range of industries and from a wide array of backgrounds, including senior designers who have worked as Creative Directors for global brand consultancies typically being charged out in the hundreds of thousands for a brand identity design. We offer the strategic process and the design online at a fraction of the cost. This business model is a win–win for both startups and designers.

I founded Brands for the people with a passionate purpose. We exists to improve the world through helping startups connect with their customers. I called my new business Brands for the people because I believe change starts with the people: the business people, the creative people and the people who buy stuff. I’m dreaming of the day when I will have helped thousands of startups to become world famous brands to do Good in the world.

Here are a few questions to get you thinking about purpose:

What moment in your life did you feel a strong calling?

What action could you take?

How will you product or service make people happier?

How will your product or service help the planet?

Why is the world a better place because of your product or service?

–END–

Andrea Shillington founded Brands for the people to help altruistic entrepreneurs create world famous brands. Before creating Brands for the people, Andrea was a brand consultant for several years in the Middle East, Europe and North America. She worked on a wide variety of projects ranging from rebranding the UAE’s federal governments to re-branding hospitality groups. After returning home to Vancouver, became passionate about helping the startup community and wanted to find a way to make strategic branding affordable. Going much deeper than logo design, Brands for the people was born to help startup businesses with a vision to change the world.

You’re reading Why branding a startup begins with a question, and not the one you’d expect. from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Why Startups Fail: And How Yours can Succeed

By David Feinleib
VC, Entrepreneur, and Author of Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed

Startups fail for many different reasons. Turn failure into success by avoiding some of the most common causes of startup failure:

• Failing to drive demand
• Building a product people don’t want
• A lack of passion
• Running out of money
• Scaling too fast
• Small markets
• Failing to focus

Drive Demand!
As I wrote in Seven Ways To Market Your Startup, getting the word out about your product is key. All too often, entrepreneurs focus on what they’re going to build but not on their go-to-market strategy. Imagine that your product is already built. It’s done, and it’s ready to go. Now what? What is the tagline for the product? How are you going to market it? What’s going to drive massive adoption?

Figuring out how to drive demand for your product is just as important as figuring out what product to build. Inefficient, unleveraged distribution can kill a startup. There may be millions of small businesses you can sell your product to, for example, but you need an efficient, repeatable, and scalable way to reach them.

In fact, the best products today build marketing that drives adoption in from the beginning. Consider file sharing service Dropbox, which gives free space to existing users when they sign up others. The company now has some 50 million users.

Or think about social game maker Zynga, which builds games that require the participation of friends. Zynga leveraged the Facebook social graph to reach hundreds of millions of players. Marketing is no longer separate from product—it’s built right in.

Build Something People Want
Users of Apple products don’t just use the products—they evangelize them. This is the sign of having built and marketed a product people want.

So many entrepreneurs spend months or years building a product only to find out that few people want it. How does this happen? They keep waiting for the perfect product before being willing to get their product in the hands of early adopters.

Of course, the art of being an entrepreneur is finding the balance between products that are too early, which leads to unhappy users and negative publicity, and waiting too long to get real customer feedback.

There is nothing like real-world feedback. In the case of consumer products, build a product for yourself. When it comes to products for businesses, build for yourself if you can—and if you can’t, find a few early adopter customers who will work closely with you to be real world test cases.

It’s not that the best entrepreneurs get their products right out of the gate; rather, it’s that they fail fast and iterate their way to the right product quickly—and you can too.

Pitch With Passion
You might be surprised to see this one on the list. After all, what entrepreneur lacks passion? Yet I’ve sat through countless pitches where this was exactly the case. And if the entrepreneur lacks passion about the opportunity, how can potential investors be expected to get excited about it?

Investors in very early stage ventures aren’t investing in today’s numbers—they’re investing in the opportunity and the team. They’re making a logical decision based on pattern matching and potentially, early traction. But they’re also making an emotional decision.

They see something in the team and the opportunity that gets them excited. They feel heat on the deal, the scarcity of an investment opportunity that’s going away. They make an emotional connection and go for it.

Connect with potential investors, employees, and customers on an emotional level. Sure, it helps to be naturally outgoing and passionate, but there are other ways to connect as well—through delivering great products that people love and through measurable traction and growth. If you have trouble communicating passion, consider a coach, mentor, or advisor who can help you channel your inner Steve Jobs.

Manage Your Capital
Whether you’re funding the business yourself, have raised angel money, or have raised venture, capital is frequently hard to come by. And even when it’s available, it can be very expensive.

Managing your capital is all about knowing the numbers. Even if you’d rather be building product or out marketing and selling, knowing your numbers is key.

The first step is to know how much money you have and your burn rate. Put these numbers together and you get the runway until your “cash out” date.

The “cash out date” is not the date at which you get to take hundreds of millions of dollars of cash out and put it in your bank account. It’s the date at which, if things continue to proceed as they are and you’re not profitable, you’ll run out of money. Know the date. It can be terrifying staring down a rapidly emptying bank account—I know because I’ve been there—but there is nothing that lights a fire under you quite like the impending reality of running out of cash.

The second key part is to understand how much it costs to acquire a user or customer—your Cost Per Acquisition, or CPA—and what that user or customer is worth to you—the customer Lifetime Value, or LTV.

In the early, discovery stage of a business, your CPA and LTV numbers may be all over the map. You’re still figuring out the business and the business model. You’re trying lots of different approaches to acquire users and seeing how much various customers are worth. Once you see consistency in CPA, LTV, and your growth rate, it’s time to scale.

Scale When Ready
Nothing brings a rocket ship of a startup down to earth faster than scaling too fast. It can seem like a Catch-22. How do you acquire users and customers if you don’t spend enough money to acquire them? The trick is to know when to pour gas on the fire.

Scaling too fast can come in several forms. It can mean spending a lot of money on online marketing before having a site that’s optimized to convert the visitors who arrive. It can mean hiring people, especially sales people, too soon, before you’ve got the right product and the sales approach refined to a point where it’s repeatable.

The Sales Learning Curve (SLC) can help. The SLC was created by Mark Leslie, Former CEO of VERITAS Software, and Charles Holloway, professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business. Simply put, the SLC says that most products take longer and cost more to launch than entrepreneurs expect. You’ve walked your way up the learning curve when you have the right product, a repeatable approach to marketing and selling that product, and you know your CPA and LTV numbers. That’s when it’s time to pour on the gas.

Tackle A Big Market
It’s just as much work to go after a small market as it is to go after a big one—so why not go after a big one?

Of course, the decision about what kind of business to build is a very personal one. While I was in business school, I built an online lead generation business. It was highly profitable but relatively small. I loved building the business, but I missed working on something big and impactful. My Dad ran his own consulting business for decades and enjoyed every minute of it.

Yet when it comes to technology companies, many great teams have been beaten by small markets—there just aren’t that many customers and there’s limited revenue to go after. No matter how great a job you do on execution, ultimately it remains hard to be successful. So if you’re building a technology company and you have the aspiration to go big, start with a big market.

Focus
In a world where the barriers to entry to building products—at least software products—are rapidly decreasing, it’s easy to want to go after many different ideas. As my first venture investor told me when he wrote me a check, focus wins. The advice is as good today as it was 10 years ago.

It’s easy to get distracted. Distraction leads to lots of different features in a product. But winning is about finding one big feature that matters, a core feature so compelling that all of your users or customers want it, a feature that differentiates you from everyone else. Winning is not about having a thousand features. It’s about doing a few things really, really well.

Conclusion
Startups fail for lots of reasons. Fortunately, many of these reasons are avoidable. By driving demand for a product people want, focusing on what separates your product from the competition, and managing your cash along the way, you can turn your startup into a huge success.

===

David Feinleib is a former General Partner at Mohr Davidow Ventures and a four-time entrepreneur. To find out more about making your startup successful, get Why Startups Fail: And How Yours Can Succeed and check out David’s blog at www.vcdave.com.

You’re reading Seven Secrets of Startup Success from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Jarie Bolander
Founder, EnduranceLeader.com

Thomas Edison was famous for saying:

Invention is 1% Inspiration and 99% Perspiration.

What he should have said was:

Invention comes through practice.

Just like the endurance athlete, innovators need to practice.

Practice takes many forms. From the thought experiment, to the mockup all the way to beta, it’s all practice for the big event – shipping a product.

Innovative Deep Practice

I’m a big fan of The Talent Code by Daniel Coyle. If you have not read it yet, you should. In The Talent Code, Mr. Coyle explains how we improve our skills through deep practice. Deep practice is a state where we break down new skills into manageable chucks and throughly master each component. It’s a place where we struggle, do it wrong, adjust and in the end master it.

The best innovators use deep practice to break down problems into manageable pieces, grind away on solving them, make mistakes and then move on.

Practicing More Deeply

Too often, innovators of all kinds want the “Home Run.” They want their idea, invention or process to work right away. This seldom, if ever, happens.

Instead, the consistent innovator uses deep practice to always make progress – even when experiments go wrong.

Listed below are some of the techniques that innovators can use to practice more deeply and innovate consistently:

• Explore outside your comfort zone: Push yourself a little to see what might inspire you.
• Thin innovation slices: Always look at big problems in thin slices. That way, you can achieve small, incremental wins.
• Enlist others: Nothing beats collaborating with other smart people. Find some and get going.
• Create mockups: Models and mockups are great ways to touch and feel something – even in software. The guy that designed the first PDA build one out of wood to see how it felt in his hand.
• Make prototypes: The next level from mockup is prototype where the gadget actually does something. Like a mockup, prototypes give you a lot of insights into what works and what does not.
• Ship a Beta: Building something and shipping it feels great. It also gives you a tremendous amount of feedback so that you can innovate even more.
• Admire Art: Art provides great inspiration. Admiring art can inspire all sorts of innovative threads that might lead to other ideas.
• Build pieces: Take those innovation slices above and build the pieces. This will allow you to make incremental progress towards the bigger goals.

Practice, Stumble, Fail & Practice Some More

Innovation is a game of doing. You can’t just think your way to invention or innovation – you have to get in the lab, write code, build a prototype or ship that beta.

Part of practicing innovation is failing. Well, not exactly failing. Let’s just say that most of the time, your grand idea doesn’t make it past the bit bucket and you need to be fine with that. Here’s why.

Innovation is about pushing the envelope of understanding. Way out there on the frontier, there is no one to guide you. You are alone in the vast wilderness that is the cutting edge.

That can be a little scary since all that time you spend wandering may not produce anything of “real” value that others can see, touch or taste.

Navigating The Innovation Wilderness

Besides practice, the innovator needs some basic tools and techniques to make the innovation journey a little more predicable and comfortable. Some of my favorites include:

• Keep an idea journal: An idea journal is an invaluable tool to find trends and cluster ideas. Just reading through a journal can give you all sorts of inspiration.
• Have a hobby: Hobbies are great to spark creativity and innovation. I once had a friend who created an entire remote control toy business because he was sick and tired of not having enough frequencies to use.
• Be well read: Reading a wide variety of topics and styles creates opportunities for cross over innovation. Great ideas will come from looking at a problem from a different perspective.
• Take long walks: Wander, stroll, skip or run. Anything to get you out of a building and thinking. Many of my best ideas come when I’m working out.
• Volunteer: Volunteering is not only tremendously rewarding but a great place for inspiration. You would be amazed at how much you can help an organization and yourself by just giving a few hours a week.
• Help others innovate: Get out there and help someone else create. This is just like the recruiting others above and it’s for the same reason – the more brains, the better the idea flow.

Now, Get Out There And Innovate

The best kept secret about innovation is to practice and start doing something. Anything that can get your mind working and creating will benefit you. It might take time to build the next Twitter or Foursquare but you will never get there without practicing innovation everyday. Even if you stumble and fail, you are still making progress, and progress is how innovation comes to life.

===
Jarie Bolander is an engineering by training, entrepreneur by nature and leader by endurance. His new site, EnduranceLeader.com combines two of this passions – leadership and endurance athletics. Jarie is also a moderator at Answers.OnStartups.

You’re reading The Innovator’s Secret Weapon from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

[After last week's post on A prelaunch page for your startup, Josh Ledgard of KickoffLabs reached out to point out his alternative. Here's more info from Josh.]

by Josh Ledgard
Co-founder, KickoffLabs

You need to start marketing your next great idea today.  Technology is easy, but marketing is hard. You need a head start and hard work because…

1. You aren’t famous

Yup, if you were the co-founder of Facebook buzz will build itself. (See Quora) But you didn’t invent Facebook and no one cares what your building.

2. Your idea sucks

No one has the heart to tell you that in person. You have to prove otherwise.  If you put up a landing page and can’t get anyone but your mom to ‘pay’ you with their email address… you need to go back to the drawing board. If you can quickly test and build an audience you may be onto something. Prove it.

3. You don’t know how to sell your idea
You don’t know what that pitch is yet.  The pitch needs to be ready for the tech launch. You use code to test your software and a landing page helps you test your pitch. Improving signup conversion rates will improve paid customer conversion rates at launch.

4. Your idea has already been ‘stolen’

A lot of people worry that sharing their idea early will lead to theft.  Sorry. It’s already been stolen.  Good ideas are not unique. Secrecy is irrelevant. Pitch, execution, and customer experience are the things you can claim uniqueness on. Transparency helps refine those things.

5. You can’t do it yourself

Creating a signup landing page before you launch isn’t just about getting customers. It’s about finding partners.  Engage signups to find testers, partners, & complimentary ideas you never would have received if you held onto everything.

6. You aren’t rich… yet

Do you have $20k to blow on generated traffic? Probably not. You need a head start. You need customers to find other customers for you.  You need your idea to get passed around for free… relatively speaking.

7. Your SEO won’t build itself

Slimy consultants have tarnished the term.  But it’s proven true that if you bring your URL up with the product launch you are starting with 0 SEO. It takes 2-3 months for search engines to start really sending you traffic.  Get a placeholder up so you don’t start at zero.  You don’t want to generate all the traffic yourself. You can’t. See #1.

8. You have no motivation

If your idea doesn’t suck and actual people start signing up and talking about what your building…it’s extremely motivating.  Way more motivating than sitting in that dimly lit cubicle.  A little social pressure can go a long way towards making your dream a reality.

9. You don’t know anything about your customers

They aren’t who you think they are.  When they start signing up on your landing page you can start learning, quizzing, asking, and engaging with them. What you end up building will be different than you envisioned… but it will sell better.

10. Buzz doesn’t happen… you build it.

You can’t just expect customers to start talking about your idea and signing up. You have to encourage them. Customers respond better to direct requests if you want them to share something cool. You can make a gimmick that’s not sleazy.

If you liked this post check out KickoffLabs. We’ll help you find customers with a viral landing page in less than 60 seconds! Are you more of a do it yourself person? Build your own site and use our viral API.  Our simple goal is to help every business find at least 5 more paying customers every month.

Like any good idea there are alternatives to the KickoffLabs service. Some are even cheaper. We differentiate ourselves by being simpler, supporting you better, and creating a customer referral platform that goes well beyond the landing page to include analytics, auto-responders, newsletters, and an API you can use well after you launch.

You’re reading Your startup needs a pre-launch signup landing page from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

The Business of Software Conference starting today in Boston is live streaming, beginning at 9am Eastern. If you want to hear and watch some of the sharpest minds in the software business, get yourself registered on this page and start partaking.

Monday, October 24^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:30 AM Clayton Christensen – How to Create New Growth Businesses in a Risk-Minimizing Environment
• 10:45 AM – 11:45 AM Jason Cohen – Naked Business: How I made more money through honesty than through typical business behavior.)
• 11:45 AM – 12:45 PM Alex Osterwalder - Building Competitive Advantage through Business Model Thinking
• 2:00 PM – 3:00 PM Dharmesh Shah – Insights And Musings On The Business of Software
• 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM Jeff Lawson
• 5:45 PM – 6:15 PM Tobias Lütke - How to make sure your business is on the right side of history through code and culture.

Tuesday, October 25^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Patrick McKenzie – Engineering Your Marketing Outcomes
• 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM Laura Fitton
• 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Josh Linkner - Unleashing Creativity
• 1:30 PM – 2:30 PM Rory Sutherland - Praxeology: Lessons from a lost science
• 2:30 PM – 3:15 PM Lightning Talks Five finalists present 15 slides in 30 seconds each. That’s 7 minutes 30 seconds, then sit down.

• Corey Reid, Freshbooks
• Karl Treier, Prospect Stream
• Patrick Foley, Microsoft
• Justin Goeres, JKI
• Tyler Rooney, 4ormat
• 3:45 PM – 4:45 PM Michael McDerment – CEO and Co-Founder of Freshbooks.
• 4:45 PM – 5:45 PM Peldi & John Nese – An Interview with John Nese

Wednesday, October 26^th

• 9:00 AM – 10:00 AM Paul Kenny - The art of asking!
• 10:15 AM – 11:15 AM David Cancel
• 11:15 AM – 12:15 PM Alexis Ohanian

You’re reading Give it a listen today! from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Mark L. Smith, Co-Founder
www.DigMyData.com

Momentum is the life blood of a startup. Nothing gums up the works and kills momentum like scheduling difficulties — timezones, multiple availability schedules, holidays. It’s a wonder sometimes that anything gets scheduled at all.

We absolutely love our product vision at DigMyData and we love using our own tool to tell our business stories. As a result, we schedule a lot of meetings with people all over the world to both pitch our product and to help them with the initial setup of DigMyData. We use Tungle to manage this scheduling and keep up the “big mo’.”

What is Tungle?

Tungle is a cross-company scheduling tool that solves timezone and availability issues. It allows the meeting initiator to “paint” in the time they can meet and send e-mail invitation to one or more meeting attendees. The other meeting attendees paint in their availability and the last attendee gets to pick from a list of times that work for everyone else. Tungle can integrate directly with Google Calendar and Outlook to automatically manage the painting process.

What we use it for:

We use Tungle for prospecting. When we want to talk with people about our product, we paint in our availability and send a Tungle invite to our prospect. How many of your prospects go cold because they’re used to frictionless scheduling with people inside of their company? You often don’t know because you never get a response. Tungle keeps that stuff from happening.

We also use Tungle for support. Tungle lets us plug our Google Calendar availability into a special tungle.me site. Our customers can visit our tungle.me site and book a meeting directly — we get an e-mail notification and it automatically shows up on our Google Calendar. Customers are most likely to do a support session with us if it is easy for them to do — which makes it more likely they will stay customers.

What we love about Tungle:

• Solves timezone issues.
• Keeps the mechanics of scheduling from getting in the way of great conversations.
• Great if you use Google Calendar — easy connection (shows busy times, puts it right on your calendar, etc…).
• Great for setting up meetings with more than 2 people.
• Free!

What’s bad:

• People who get it, get it. People who don’t, don’t. In our experience, the people who are most likely to give our Tungle invites the “sideways puppy dog look of confusion” are Outlook/Exchange users in large companies.
• Tungle was recently acquired by RIM – makers of BlackBerry. I’m an ex-BlackBerry user. I’m concerned that RIM will ruin Tungle.

Our tips to get the most out of Tungle.

• Setup your Tungle.me page and include your profile info. Send that link to people when you reach out to ask for a meeting. The links look like this: https://tungle.me/smithmarkl.
• When asking someone to Tungle a meeting with you, go ahead and tell them what call-in information to use (you call me, I call you, we use this #, etc…).
• We use join.me for on-demand screen sharing instead of worrying about scheduling a WebEx or GotoMeeting session. When we are on the phone it is very easy to to tell someone to A) go to join.me B) type in a phone # length code.
• Check your Tungle settings! I like making schedulers give me at least 2 hours advance notice for meetings — that way, I have time to notice it in my calendar.
• Be realistic on setting your availability — bankers hours are fine

Conclusion

A typical DigMyData call goes like this: We talk with a customer or potential customer over Skype using Join.me with a Tungle scheduled meeting. It’s all free and just works. Reduce friction; keep up the momentum!

===

This guest-post was written by Mark L. Smith, Co-Founder of DigMyData, a storytelling tool for web businesses. Follow @DigMyData on Twitter.

You’re reading Taking Charge of your Startup’s Scheduling from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Will your startup succeed? Will it make you money, get you into TechCrunch, be a home run?

No one can tell you for sure. But some people can give you a damn good guess backed up by a track record of building successful startups. One such person is Jason Cohen, of A Smart Bear fame, and he is ready, willing and able to share his considered opinion with you this Thursday, September 1st, online at 3:00pm Central Daylight Time (4p EDT / 1p PDT) for the second Smart Bear Live show.

If you want a better answer to this question than you already have, here’s the sign-up form: bit.ly/rrbDTn. Sign up for details on the conference call, and to get your questions answered.

Patrick Foley and I will also be on the call, adding what insight we can into the question that should be keeping up you at night.

See – or hear – you there.

You’re reading Will it work? from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Iain Dooley,
Founder of Working Software and creator of Decal CMS

Over the past year, I’ve done a bit of work producing videos and in this post I discussed the importance video has played thus far in marketing, support and training people how to use Decal CMS.

With the launch of our flagship public beta product Decal Mockups recently, I produced quite a lot of video for both marketing and training purposes and felt as though I’d really had the chance to hone my craft, especially when reflecting on my first attempt last year.

I’m by no means an expert, but I feel as though I’ve got a few simple strategies for producing video very inexpensively for your products that doesn’t totally suck.

I’m also very keen to share my experiences, thoughts and methods in the hopes that someone out there will give me some ideas on how my methods could be improved.

My tools of choice are:

• Macbook Pro 13″ (I just use the in-built microphone for recording audio – I’ll discuss how I’ve been able to make this sound better)
• ScreenFlow
• Wistia video hosting for business (gotta love the stats!)

The two primary purposes of product video

In my experience there are two primary purposes for product videos: marketing and training. My production strategies for each are slightly different.

Marketing videos

When I talk about marketing videos I’m talking about the video that people see when they land on your home page – the one that’s supposed to get them interested enough in your proposition that they follow some call to action (eg. signing up to use your product).

These are the ones that take me the longest to make and they require the most planning, ironically because they have to be the shortest.

I wouldn’t personally create a product marketing video longer than 1 minute and the shorter you can get it the better (Wistia’s home page intro video is only 30 seconds long).

If your video includes a piece to camera or interview I’d say that you can go (a bit) longer in some cases, however looking good on camera is really hard and screencasts are immeasurably easier and cheaper to produce.

Step 1: The message

When you are releasing a product, your natural inclination is to make a product video that demonstrates the features of the product.

This is because you’re very proud of the features – you have spent a while working on them and you think they’re totally ground breaking.

But features are totally boring to watch and your features are not your message (disclaimer: to a certain extent, this depends on your audience – but I’d say the cases where a feature heavy marketing video makes sense are the exception).

If you take a look at the very first video I made last year for Decal you can see what I mean about “feature focus” – it has absolutely no message whatsoever and is completely and utterly uninspiring:

I recently watched (and blogged about) a TED talk by Simon Sinek entitled “How Great Leaders Inspire Action” which says that “People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it”, but also states that people will buy your product for themselves, not for you.

So it’s not enough to ask why you’re making this video – you have to ask why your audience is watching it, why they’ll keep watching it and why they’re going to do what you want them to do at the end (ie. sign up to use your product).

At the beginning of this year I had just begun to get an idea about marketing message and produced 5 separate videos for the Decal CMS home page which were designed to appeal to different audiences.

I’d started to scratch the surface of what it meant to be talking to my audience, taking the focus off features and trying to deliver a message which would appeal to people’s emotions and you can see one of those videos below – however it’s still far too long and had too much of a feature focus:

I think it’s interesting to look at the progression to my latest offering for our Decal Mockups launch:

Apart from some technical improvements (which I’ll cover later) the single biggest difference is that I’ve taken the focus completely off the product features and come out with a strong message that makes a very bold statement about how this product will benefit my audience.

Jamie Zawinski puts it beautifully when he asks “How will this software get my users laid“? 37 Signals have also written a similar post about “when opening your wallet becomes a no brainer“.

Your message should focus on this: how is your product going to save people time or money, or help them get laid.

Now here’s a little secret: it’s really hard to do!

I guarantee if you’re not a seasoned sales and marketing veteran, this will feel wrong at first – because it is.

The first 2 videos I made above were pussy footing around the issue. The very first one simply presented my product and let people reach their own conclusions. The second focuses more on benefits to the viewer but the benefits are convoluted and probably only relevant to someone who’s had a specific experience with another provider.

The third video says in plain English that Decal Mockups saves you money and makes your job easier – and it felt like a lie. Not an out and out lie, but a bit of a lie.

However you’re trying to fit your message into a space that is so compacted, that if you don’t make a bold statement people will instantly tune out and stop paying attention.

So even though what you want to say is “This product will make your life easier once you’ve learned how to use it, and if you use it in a particular way then you could even save money by using it!”, what you have to say is “This product will make your life easier and save you money” without all the qualifying excuses.

Now I’m going to let you in on another little secret: no-one cares.

I was really nervous when I put that video out there – I emailed everyone I knew (only about 300 people) and I was an absolute wreck. I felt grimy and dirty as if I had told the world’s biggest lie and everyone would soon turn up at my door with pitchforks.

You know what actually happened? People signed up to use the product.

Here is a quick breakdown of the stats:

• 81% of people who landed on the page watched the video
• Those that clicked play watched on average 63% of the video
• Of those that clicked play, 23% signed up to use the product
• 19% of all people who came to the page signed up to use the product

Even for a free product, that is a phenomenal conversion rate. You know how many people I got complaining that I was taking liberties in saying the product would save time, money and make their life easier? Zero.

There are, of course, laws governing false advertising and I’m not advocating completely falsifying information but if the choice is between your waffly line of conditional, qualified excuses leading up to a statement of what benefits someone might be able to achieve in certain use cases, or just stating up front the benefits of the product in the first 10 seconds of the video, then you should definitely choose the latter.

Step 2: The Script

Now that you’ve decided on your message, it’s time to write your script. Start by writing your message in such a way that you can deliver it in 10 – 15 seconds.

It’s a good idea to state what your product actually is before you start talking about the benefits, otherwise the experience for the viewer is disorientating – but the combination of what your product does and how it “gets people laid” shouldn’t take more than 15 seconds to say.

From that starting point, you then need to reinforce your message, focusing on key points of difference and justifying your bold statement with a couple of facts about your product.

The most important thing is: don’t agonise over the script too much before you’ve recorded it and listened to it.

Don’t think of a “script iteration” as writing, or even writing then speaking – think of a complete script iteration as writing, recording and then listening back. Don’t worry about the sound quality of your recording just yet, either.

Once you’re at least 75% happy with the script (not 100% happy, remember that folks: don’t get hung up on your “perfect script” yet), move onto the story boards.

Step 3: The Storyboard

I prefer to use index cards for my story boarding rather than a whiteboard because it’s easier to re-order the “shots” and sections of your script.

I have the shot list on one side and sections of the script on the other, and I can re-order and reposition chunks of text next to “shots”.

The image to the left is the “story board” I used for the 2nd in the series of videos shown above.

When deciding what “shots” to use, try using your product whilst listening to the recording of your initial script draft and see what fits well.

You can then add a visual or textual reminder for that shot to an index card and stick it next to that piece of the script.

When considering what shots you’ll have, you want to have a good balance of things that move and things that don’t.

If there’s one thing that can really ruin your message and be totally distracting, it’s having constant talking in conjunction with constant movement.

Go back and look at the Decal Mockups video above and see how little movement there is on the screen – especially where the spoken information is at it’s most dense.

The most movement occurs when I’m talking about the “real browsable website” and the only movement occurring is web browsing which reinforces the voice over.

Also don’t underestimate the value of just printing words to the screen that are key words in the sentences of the voice over.

Once you’re 75% happy with your story board, (that’s right folks, don’t wait until you’re 100% happy), it’s time to do some actual screen capturing

Step 4: Screen capture and editing

Fire up ScreenFlow and capture each of your shots. Move the mouse slowly and deliberately. It’s very easy to edit out pauses and speed video up, but very tedious to edit out unnecessary mouse movements so the smoother and more accurate your mouse movements are in your initial recordings the more time you’ll save during editing.

Once you’ve got each of your shots, it’s time to edit them to fit in with your script. If you haven’t already, get a good reading of your script recorded.

The timing should be reasonably good – speak slowly and clearly (in fact you should speak so slowly that it feels a little bit weird). Edit out any obvious mistakes but don’t worry about sound quality, or editing out breathing or other noises – this is not your final recording.

Now edit your video down to fit in with your script. This is truly the most mind numbingly tedious part of the process. Try as much as possible to edit out unnecessary mouse movements in the screen casts and avoid using any transitions other than cross dissolve – you’ll be tempted to use one of the many other featured effects in ScreenFlow but they all suck.

I’d love to give you some ScreenFlow tips that will teach you to be a ninja at it but I’m a total hack. I just use images and text boxes to create my “graphics” – zooming to give them a bit of movement. The rest is simply screencasts.

There are a bunch of really awesome ScreenFlow tutorials around on the interwebz though so it’s probably worth boning up a bit on your techniques. I didn’t do this, and it took me 18 hours to produce the 60 seconds of video for the Decal Mockups – and about 70% of that time was spent editing or producing graphics.

I’m sure if you put some time into learning about some more advanced tips and techniques for using ScreenFlow you’ll live a longer and more prosperous life than I.

Remember: you don’t want to have things moving on the screen when you’re expecting people to be listening carefully to your words. This is really important – having too much happening at once is suprisingly confusing and they’ll either not listen to the words because they’re trying to see your product or they’ll miss your product shots altogether.

Don’t move onto the next step until you’re 100% happy – if necessary go back and modify your story boards and/or script and re-record it.

Step 5: The Final Voice Over and Edit

I’ve got a problem that you can hear in the 2nd video in the series above: my office is very big and echoey. I also live right next to a main road where lots of loud trucks, motorcycles and people with sports exhausts torment me.

This is particularly troublesome because I’m only using the in-built microphone on my laptop and I don’t have any sound mastering software or skills.

However, the voiceover in the Decal Mockups video doesn’t suffer from any of these problems. The secret? I record it whilst sitting in a closet. It’s a very small closet and it has lots of coats in it. The result is much clearer, don’t you think?

So, go and sit in your closet and record your script. You should record this speaking ever so slightly faster than the voice over you were editing your video to initially – but still slower than you would normally talk if you were having a conversation with someone (one always has a propensity to speak too quickly when recording voice over).

Do as many takes as you need to get each bit right and just leave ScreenFlow running whilst you do it. Try to do your takes in “chunks” and leave a gap when you stuff up – it can be hard to edit a good take out from 2 mistakes either side if your words or sounds are “rolling into each other”.

Once you’ve got this done, go back to your desk, stretch your legs and edit the final voice over to suit the video. Make sure you get rid of any “lip smacking” or breathing noises. You’ll find that, since you read just a little bit faster, you have some “space” now and during this final edit you may be able to cut the overall length of the video.

It’s important to leave some gaps in talking though – this gives the viewer a chance to focus on what’s on the screen, and also gives their brain some time to process what you’re saying and what they’re seeing.

Step 6: The sound track

This is kind of the fun part. You should produce a few different variations and test them on people you know. For the Decal Mockups video, I started off with this, which is me playing the Mbira:

I wanted to give an air of “magical wonder and simplicity” – reminiscent of a Hayao Miyazaki forest creature. However when I played it to a few people they found they were so distracted trying to figure out what that sound was, that they found it really hard to concentrate on the video.

I knew I had to go with something more familiar so guitar seemed like the obvious choice, but I still wanted something a bit different so I found this Gypsy Jazz version of All of Me played by Adrian Holovaty (co-incidentally, the author of the Django web framework!) on YouTube:

This was a dramatic improvement, however a few people I played it to said they found the melody line a bit distracting – also we obviously didn’t have the right to actually use it!

Luckily for me, Campbell McGuiness (one of the Working Software team) is a musician so he recorded a version of one of his songs minus any melody lines and I re-edited it to fit in with the video and that’s the final cut that we ended up publishing.

That about does it for marketing videos!

Training Videos

Training videos are kind of easier. Firstly, the constraints aren’t quite so strong – if someone is watching your training video, chances are they’re already using and therefore at least a little bit invested in your product.

You can see examples of the training videos I’ve made for Decal here:

http://www.decalcms.com/page/Support/#instructionalVideos

When I want to do a training video I write a few index cards of what I want to teach, then I record each of those in turn and edit them together, getting rid of unnecessary mouse movements, loading times and using cross fades for transitions between points.

I then simply watch the video, and type a “narration” of what I’m seeing on the screen. I do a rough recording of this “script” and edit it down to the video.

I iterate like that as required until I’m happy then I go and sit in the closet to do my voice over and come back and edit the real V.O down to the video.

The other big difference in a training video is that obviously you’re basically just showing the product the whole time so there probably won’t be any “graphics”. I also find it’s more acceptable to have a bit more movement on the screen whilst you’re talking (not too much) so long as what the viewer is seeing is being reinforced directly by what they’re hearing.

There are 2 guidelines I use to make the videos more watchable:

1. Use zooming and panning sparingly – it can make people nauseous but is also a really effective tool for focusing people’s attention on one part of the screen (sort of like a “pointer”) – especially if you want to show a lot of detail in a smaller video resolution
2. State the length of the video and it’s purpose at the very beginning of the video and put the key words on the screen as you say them. This orientates the viewer and prepares them mentally for what they’re about to see

That’s about it for training videos. They’re far less involved, in my experience thus far, than marketing videos.

Remember: video converts!

Creating video is hard and tedious. It takes a really really long time, but hopefully some of these tips can help you make a better product video in less time than the year it’s taken me to get to something I find acceptable.

However just remember: video converts! It’s really worthwhile taking the time to do videos and improve your skills because you’ll get more customers.

So stay motivated – I know it’s really hard (and I’m totally guilty of cutting corners here and there) but keep slogging it out.

The other piece of parting advice I’ll give you to is to avoid being a perfectionist. You can look at all my marketing and instruction videos I bet and find not only obvious flaws but flaws I’ve advised against specifically in this article.

There are only so many hours in the day and in the final analysis you’re going to be far more aware of the flaws in your video than anyone else ever will be, so try not to get trapped in some vortex of perfection.

Happy casting!
===
(Thanks Iain for a great guest post! If you have something to share, ping me at bob.walsh@47hats.com.

Iain Dooley is the founder of Working Software, creators of Decal CMS. He enjoys chatting with people on all manner of subjects and would love to hear from you on iain@workingsoftware.com.au – also if you’ve read this far, you should definitely Subscribe to the Decal CMS blog via email or RSS by clicking here, follow Working Software on Twitter and become a fan of Working Software on Facebook

You’re reading What I’ve learned about creating product videos from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Martin Shen,
UX Guy and Cofounder of UpOut

UpOut helps you discover hip hop karaoke, flying trapeze classes, underground restaurants and other awesome things to do. It has extensive filters, customizable profiles and much more, but it started as just a side project between college and our web design firm. However, it’s that busy schedule which forced us to launch quick/often and enabled us to bootstrap our startup. This is a quick story of our experience.

After our first startup failed, my roommate and I started a small web design firm. Around the time we got the idea for UpOut, the web design firm was finally taking off and schoolwork was piling on. We decided that in February, we’d take a week off of client work and school and build a prototype for UpOut to demo at a student entrepreneurship conference in NYC.

Fueled on energy drinks and seaweed snacks, we pulled a few 72-hour sprints to push a minimum viable product. We focused on building a simple user interface consulting our friends every step of the way.

People loved the prototype. From the few hundred people who saw the glimpse of UpOut, we took their feedback and planned the real product. This time, we pushed back some client work to give us a more relaxed 12-day window in early April to work on the next version. We ended up spending a little over two weeks but redesigned the entire site to post up on HackerNews.

We got a several thousand hits alone from HackerNews encouraging us to go at it full time. We quickly decided to close up the web design firm using the proceeds from the last jobs to give us a 5 or 6 month window. In May, we closed up the vast majority of the client projects, I graduated and we packed up our things to move to San Francisco.

Now we’re in SF. We’ve picked up interested users every step of the way. We earned enough through web design consulting to give us a runway to really try doing a startup. We’ve learned the importance of constant user testing which is helping us improve the product every day. We’re now testing the latest build for UpOut and would love to get some feedback and suggestions. Feel free to reach out to me at martin@UpOut.com or even drop by our loft in SoMa.

—-

UpOut helps you discover events, places and activities worth doing. Find amazing parties, hidden bars and other things to do in your city. You can also follow users and tags to get a customized stream of the best things to do. Check it out at UpOut.com or follow @up_out.

Note: Martin is Cofounder of UpOut.com and is now based in San Francisco. If you’d like to share your lessons learned, domain knowledge or relevant product (translated out of Marketize), how about doing a guest post for 47 Hats? Email me.

You’re reading Bootstrapped Lean College Startup: UpOut from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Jenny Wager
Founder, LefTurn Labs

I am thrilled that there is interest in hearing how Next! was launched. So let’s start at the beginning- the idea for Next! was born from my obsession with productivity and desire for a solution that worked how I worked. There is a certain efficiency that technology can bring to personal productivity, but everything I tried merely replicated paper-based system.

I am not a software developer, marketer, or designer…all things critically important to launching an app. So the first thing I needed was a team- I was lucky enough to partner with my neighbor and brilliant developer Grant Wood, friend and marketing wiz Sean Irwin, and awesome designer Jay Runquist. Together we turned my idea and shoestring budget into a fully integrated and beautiful productivity app used in over 80 countries around the world. We are learning something new every day, but here are the things that I have found to be most important in the launch of Next!:

Design with intention. Like Bob said, beauty is not optional. The app store is all about first impressions so from the design of the app itself, to the app icon and website everything should be designed with intention. This was very important to the development and launch of Next!. Even with our small budget we took special consideration to develop custom components instead of using Apple’s and to create an elegant design. Don’t take shortcuts and don’t launch ugly.

Differentiate. There are thousands of productivity apps out there and more released everyday. Understandably it is extremely difficult to stand out from the crowd. There are too many apps in the market to simply create another ‘me too’ app. If you don’t have an idea that is different in user experience, design, or functionality from what is already out there you are going to have a difficult time competing in the app market. The unique features, design and user experience of Next! has helped us gain recognition.

Be persistent. I didn’t expect to launch Next! and then just sit back and watch it climb the charts. With the amount of apps out there it is critically important to keep your app relevant in the market. Thankfully, there are an amazing amount of app review sites, bloggers and other sources that can help promote your app. It has taken me a great deal of hard work and persistence to contact and follow up with outlets who can spread the word about Next!.

Work for your customers. There are going to be people who don’t understand and/or don’t like your app, but that doesn’t make it any easier to see 1 and 2 star ratings or receive harsh criticism. I’ve learned to focus on the emails thanking me for this product and the difference it has made in their lives; from the couple who is using it to plan their dream wedding to the business professional who is now more confident to take on the next big project at work. That doesn’t mean that you should ignore feedback and criticism. It is important to understand all the ways to make your app better and more usable, but I remind myself every day that I am serving my customers- not everybody.

Next! for the iPad

Launching Next! has been a wonderful and unpredictable journey which has afforded me the opportunity to participate in this exciting market and to impact individuals around the world. Next! has a long way to go before reaching its potential and we would love to hear your experiences and suggestions.

About LefTurn Labs

We founded LefTurn Labs with a mission to create the most complete and engaging software app for getting organized, improving productivity, and taking control of your life and your career. To discover the power and confidence that comes from being in control of your life, please visit lefturnlabs.com or follow the company on Twitter @lefturnlabs.

You’re reading Launching Next!: Experience of a first-time app developer from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

The CatBoard – for Real cat lovers!

Community News:

Any time you put a now-obvious unmet need, a new startup and a cat on a keyboard together, you can pretty much bet I will run with it: Corey Maass (Gelform) has a great teaser up for Cue, the app you need If you run meetups, have gigs, or just organize happy hour every Friday. Corey proved three things with Cue – there’s plenty of unmet needs out there, video teasers do not have to be boring, and yes, you can still get a six-letter .com domain.

From the Actually Getting Work Done Dept.: Will Rayer has a new Ubercode Trial Pack is out – this version has an integrated installer. That means when your program is complete, you can create a fully working Windows installer in one click. Ubercode is ideal for VB programmers and developers who want a refreshing change from complex development environments.

Ever notice those little diamond shaped placards on the side of an 18-wheeler and wonder just want they mean? Ever think about how far and how fast you should run if you see liquid spilling out of the rail car parked down on the tracks behind your house? Well, now you can know: There’s an App, err, and Android App for that, it’s called DOT Placards and Anne Gunn of the Sheridan Programmers Guild wrote it.

Interesting Answers.Onstartups.com questions with useful answers:

• If I’m working at a company, do they have intellectual property rights to the stuff I do in my spare time
• Startup discounts
• IRS taxes with 0 revenue in first year

Interesting Quora.com questions with useful answers:

• How can one crowdfund a startup?
• What are the best project management/bug tracking tools for a lean startup practicing continuous deployment?
• How do you build a community of users that give high quality comments on a website?

News/posts for microISVs and Startups:

• If you’re still in the “I don’t need source code versioning” camp, maybe you should read this post: “Code Fearlessly”.
• And if you are also one of those “Real Startups don’t need A/B testing” types, have a gander at “How Split-Testing Our Opt-In Form Increased Our Conversion Rate by 102.2%“
• And if you think that having a free version of your product doesn’t carry a cost and a risk, because you won’t be charging for it, then you’d should consider the carefully chosen words of the WooThemes team: “The Cost of Free“.

New at the Startup Success Podcast:

• Show #96 [link] [iTunes]. In this show Bob and Pat talk with best networked Irishman in Silicon Valley, David Smith, Senor Vice President of Enterprise Ireland. Enterprise Ireland is not just an Irish version of the typical “pretty please do business in our country” national commerce program – they are a $500 million VC fund directly investing in over 70 startups, 15 startups incubators throughout Ireland, and are actively woo U.S.-based startups to locate their European offices in Ireland. Give a listen to what happens when robust government support of technology startups is a reality, not a campaign slogan.
• Show #97 [link] [iTunes]. In this show Bob and Pat interview Allen Stern, founder of CloudContacts. CloudContacts is another way you can take the hassle and inefficiency out of converting business cards into data. We talk with Allen on the advantages of building a startup to address a problem you experience, why in the age of the social network business cards are not going away any time soon, and more.
• Show #98 [link] [iTunes]. In this show Bob and Pat interview Sarah Prevette, founder and CEO of Sprouter. Sprouter is an online community for entrepreneurs where you can get advice from more experienced startup founders one-to-one on securing angel and VC funding, pricing, positioning and all the other questions you face. We talk about the growing global startup community, why successful startups want to pay it forward to the next batch of startups, how Sprouter got its seed money and why and plenty more. Don’t miss this show, and join Spouter!

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Here’s what one recent client had to say:Details at 47hats.com.

====
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

You’re reading Startup/MicroISV Digest for 2/14/2011 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Running Lean

Community News:

One of the absolute best startup bloggers out there is Ash Maurya. If you have not been reading his posts these past few years, you’ve missed some extremely good content on how to define, build and grow a Lean Startup. Ash finished today his book, drawn from the workshops he’s been doing, Running Lean. I’ve been reading an advance copy and all I can say, this is an ebook that should be on every single startup founders’ device of choice. It is that good. We will be reinteviewing Ash soon on the Startup Success Podcast, but in the meantime, listen to that show and buy his book.

Jeff Lewis, ConsultUtah.com, just released his first serious iPhone app, Unbroken Chain. Unbroken Chain is an app that helps you keep track of your goals and motivate you to do something about them every day. Read more at Motivated Ideas.

John Nye, NimbleWorks, has launched TrackTime – a Mac time tracker app designed to help you find the billable time you forgot to log. Finally a time tracker that acknowledges we are not automations! Also worth mentioning, all of TrackTimes profits for February and March will be going towards the Developers Against Poverty campaign at http://www.developersagainstpoverty.org/. (Disclosure: John did a microconsult with me last year.)

Interesting Answers.Onstartups.com questions with useful answers:

• How to reply to a prospective client’s first inquiry in email?
• Approach to online marketing?
• Solutions for sending large amount of opted-in mails?

Interesting Quora.com questions with useful answers:

• What questions do entrepreneurs want to ask venture investors most, but are too afraid to ask?
• Why has Robert Scoble started adding pictures to every one one of his answers?

News/posts for microISVs and Startups:

• Something to think about: Steve Jobs, No One Needs Permission to Be Awesome (by way of Merlin Mann).

StartupToDo.com, The Startup Success Podcast and other plugs:

What’s new at StartupToDo.com. (StartupToDo.com is a subscription-based community of startup founders; if you’re not already a member, get your free 30 day free trial membership):

• No new guides this period.

New at the Startup Success Podcast:

• Show #95 [link] [iTunes].In this show Bob and Pat interview Sid Viswanathan, cofounder of CardMunch, a business card scanning startup presently available on the Apple iPhone. Sid explains how this crowdsource-powered startup structures its work to ensure accuracy, protect privacy and makes Internet-based piecework successful. Sid covers how deferring profitability while A/B testing different pricing models has given CardMunch the time and opportunity to discover the best price points for its service. Sid also explains the approach to selling a mobile App that merits 4.5 out of 5 stars.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Here’s what one recent client had to say:Details at 47hats.com.

====
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

You’re reading Startup/MicroISV Digest for 1/21/2011 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Pierre Khawand
Founder & CEO
People-OnTheGo
http://www.people-onthego.com

(Note: I invited Pierre to do this guest post and be on The Startup Success Podcast after buying and reading his book, The Accomplishing More with Less Workbook. Got questions for Pierre? Add them to his Guest page before Jan. 31st!)

The rumors that e-mail is “dead” have been put to rest time after time. Even though some Social Media evangelists would like us to believe that e-mail is dead, and most of us who are spending hours on e-mail every day wish this would be the case, reality just confirmed once more that e-mail is still king! Our recent survey of 1000 business professionals revealed that on the average they spend 3.27 hours on e-mail every day while only 1.18 hours on Social Media. Whether we like it or not, e-mail is here to stay! Most importantly, critical business notifications and information still come to us through e-mail.
Bottom line is that we are still spending a good part of our day in our e-mail inbox! Or in “e-mail jail” as one of my workshop participants called it. This is partly necessary to conducted business and partly self-inflicted. “Self-inflicted?” You might ask. Totally! E-mail is a great escape. It is the ultimate break from more difficult tasks. It gives us this feeling that we accomplished something. It satisfies our curiosity. In summary, e-mail is seductive, addictive, rewarding, and also anxiety-provoking all at the same time.

So how can we stop this love-hate relationship with our e-mail inbox and turn e-mail into something more healthy and productive in 2011. Here are some techniques that can help. When applied consistently and over time, these techniques have helped business professionals transform e-mail from being a daunting and stressful to being a productive and stress-free!

#1: Don’t start your day on e-mail. Start by taking a few minutes to jot down the key accomplishments that you would like to achieve today. Ask yourself the simple but utterly important questions: What is important? And what do I want to accomplish today? Envision what a successful day would look like. According to Chip and Dan Heath, the authors of Switch, when we have a destination in mind, it is likely that we can create change and make things happen. This morning exercise is likely to re-direct your attention to, and focus your energy on, the bigger things instead of getting your energy and creativity stolen away by your e-mail inbox right from the beginning.

#2: Treat e-mail like a task. A task that has a beginning and an end, instead of being an ongoing task. This new “contained” e-mail task starts when you go to your e-mail inbox, and ends when you have handled all the “new” messages in your inbox (the messages that arrived since you performed this task last). When this task is done, you leave e-mail alone, and handle the more important and strategic tasks that are going to get you results. You can repeat this e-mail task as often as you think is necessary. My recommendation is that you consider repeating it every 30 or 40 minutes but not more often (check out The Results Curve free download to learn why the 30 or 40 minutes).

#3: Treat each e-mail message like a micro task. Once you start handling the message, this is it. No breaks. No opening new messages when you hear the beep. No opening other unrelated documents. No checking Twitter or Facebook. Stay focused on the message on hand and finish handling it first. Furthermore, treat this message like a “hot potato.” Get your reply out as quickly as you can. No day dreaming and no dwelling over the small stuff. If however the message requires significant thinking and/or effort, then either stop your e-mail task and switch to the task that is in the message, or tag the e-mail message so you can come back to it later add.

#4. Tag every e-mail message that you cannot handle right away. Depending on the e-mail application you are using, this may be flagging the message (see Microsoft Outlook 2003 free demo), or categorizing it (Microsoft Outlook 2007 or 2010), or labeling it (Google Mail), or tagging it (Mac Mail with SmartTag add-on), or whatever else. There are three tags I would recommend. The “Today” tag, the “Tomorrow” tag, and the “Waiting For” tag. The “Today” tag implies that this is a message that you need to get back to today, while the “Tomorrow” tag implies that this can wait, and the “Waiting For” tag means that you are delegating to someone else and expecting them to handle it.

#5: Think 80/20. 80% of our results come from 20% of our effort. The same applies to e-mail. 80% of our results come from 20% of our e-mails. So in essence, 80% of our e-mails can be ignored or dealt with very quickly. As soon as you take a look at an e-mail, make a quick determination if this is part of the 80% or the 20% and then act accordingly. Handle the 20% carefully and strategically, but spend very little time or no time at the other 80%. If you have to respond to such messages, make it very short, and don’t spend time editing.

The time has come to break free from the “e-mail Jail!” The time is 2011!
===

You’re reading Stop e-mailing and start living: 5 tips to get e-mail well under control in 2011 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Community News:

In the last few years something important has changed. From there being scant support for first-time/bootstrapping startups we’re seeing incubator after startup fund come online. Case in point, The FinTech Innovation Lab is an annual program in New York City supports start-ups developing technology for the financial services industry.

Selected participants get workspace in New York City, $25k in funding and access to and the opportunity to develop relationships with chief decision-makers in the financial services industry. At the conclusion of the program, a demo day gives participants an opportunity to pitch for further funding. This is one sweet deal – both for developers, and for financial service companies. If this sounds like you, deadline is January 31st, so stop reading this post and get hustle on over to http://www.fintechinnovationlab.com/summary.html.

Interesting Answers.Onstartups.com questions with useful answers:

• Can a Legal Immigrant file for a LLC or Corporation?
• Is Outsourcing Evil?

Interesting Quora.com questions with useful answers:

• How does a startup create a board after securing funding?
• I have an idea for an internet startup business. Should I: 1. Hire a programmer to code it for me. 2. Partner with a programmer (if so should it be 50/50?). 3. Learn PHP?

News/posts for microISVs and Startups:

• I’ve been following Steve Rubel since his Micro Persuasion days and he continues to rock. Case in point, “The Next Media Disruptors Are Mobile Pure-Plays“. Steve makes the whole mobile disruption thing easy-peasy: “With Internet consumption on mobile devices set to surpass the same on PCs next year, according to Morgan Stanley, and US smart phone penetration to hit 50%, Nielsen says, mobile is no longer the tail on the media dog. For the next wave of media upstarts, it’s the dog and the rest is the tail.” Also, kudos for adding a much needed phrase to our vocabulary as we try to describe content that leaps and jumps from medium to medium: transmedia arc.
• While I will walk through the Trough of Sorrow I will fear no evil department: Martin Kleppmann, co-founder of Rapportive candidly talks about the tribulations of supporting a product while trying to do 19 other things that need to be done yesterday if the startup is to succeed. Good reading.
• If you’re not reading Seth Godin everyday, you should. His insights into your world are golden. Case in point from his Lost in a Digital World post that earned over a thousand retweets: “Constant inputs and unlimited potential distractions allow us to avoid the lizard, they give the resistance a perfect tool. Everywhere to run, everywhere to hide. The advantage of being cornered with nowhere to turn is that it leaves you face to face with the lizard brain, unable to stall or avoid the real work.”

StartupToDo.com, The Startup Success Podcast and other plugs:

What’s new at StartupToDo.com. (StartupToDo.com is a subscription-based community of startup founders; if you’re not already a member, get your free 30 day free trial membership):

• No new guides this period.

New at the Startup Success Podcast:

• Show #94 [link] [iTunes]. In this show Bob and Pat interview Jerome Breche, cofounder of SnapEngage, an instant IM system for creating conversations between you and visitors presently on your site. Jerome explains the unmet need behind SnapEngage, why SnapEngage is highly integrated with other online services, and more.

Tired of being stuck in neutral in your startup? Why not do a MicroConsult with Bob Walsh? Instead of hypotheticals and too much information, Bob will work with you for an hour via Skype developing 8 to 10 specific todos that will get your startup in gear. Here’s what one recent client had to say:Details at 47hats.com.

====
(If you have an announcement of interest to your fellow microISV, indies or startups, please email me at bob.walsh@47hats.com with the word digest in the subject.)

You’re reading Startup/MicroISV Digest for 1/15/2011 from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

Michael Prendergast just let me know about this free online class tomorrow – nearly busted a finger stabbing away at my keyboard to sign up. Dan Martell of Flowtown will be giving tips on “Social Media Marketing for Startups.”

It’s great seeing busy startup founders making the time to give back to the community. I’m attending, how about you?

You’re reading I like actionable! from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.

By Rob Clymo
Office Genie

When you’re starting a business venture then there are a multitude of things to think about. One of the main components of getting a new business infrastructure in place is to decide on where you’re going to work.

If you’ve got an idea for your venture that doesn’t really require business premises as such, then working from home is always a good way to go. However, not all of us are able to do this as there can often be distractions. Some of us simply need to go out the front door to work in the morning.

Having a business workplace to go to can therefore work really well if you look at renting some office space, either for yourself or other employees in your new start-up venture. This can be a little bit daunting to undertake if you’re new to the office space rental game, but there’s a handy way of making the process quick and easy.

Go compare

Comparison websites can be found that tell you ways of saving money and getting the best deals for just about every kind of product, from food to clothes and from cars to broadband.

Now there’s an office space rental comparison website that does the same kind of job. Head along to Office Genie and you’ll be able to search and find all manner of vacant office space up for grabs. It allows you to search all of the currently available office space throughout the UK.

This is a wonderfully efficient way of pinpointing office space that matches your needs exactly, along with providing the cheapest and best deals too. Choose from traditional leased offices, serviced offices, shared offices or simply rent a desk in an office block. The service is free to use and provides you with a one-stop-shop for new start-up needs when it comes to office requirements.

What kind of venture?

The great thing about using an office space comparison site like this is that it works for any kind of start-up venture. So it can be an excellent idea no matter if you’re a developer looking to go solo or a web designer who needs to branch out into ‘proper’ office space. There’s an office out there somewhere for you and this is the ideal way to find it.

Shared office space is great because it usually comes with the likes of broadband, utilities and security already in place. This is generally covered by a monthly flat fee, although hot desk schemes also allow you to simply pay for what you use. Shared offices offer flexibility and short term contracts too.

Serviced office schemes are also a good idea if you’re expanding by the day. These are ‘bells and whistles’ affairs, often with receptionists, post rooms and everything else that is needed when a fledgling business is on the up. It also gives your new start-up a presentable ‘face’ that will not only look good when people want to visit, but also possibly tempt new clients too.
—

You’re reading Office space options for start-ups from: 47 Hats. If you like this post, there’s plenty more! Want more sales for your startup? Stop by and let’s chat, or consider a Microconsult with Bob Walsh.