Digesting a Meatball Sundae

I read several books from Seth Godin, the lastest one being "Meatball Sundae". From all my Godin's readings, I would summarize in a nutshell some of the core ideas:

The best marketing is in the product:
Every interaction your company has with its clients is a marketing opportunity

Tell an authentic story
Be sure that from your receptionist to the CEO, from your homepage to your product design, all is aligned properly, telling the same (authentic) story. It does not have to be true, but it has to be authentic and match people's believes (do you really think wall-mart is working hard to sell products are cheap as possible? No, but they tell us that, and we do want to believe it).


Inverse the megaphone: let your clients speak out
The old marketing was: make average products for average people. Buy ads and sell your products. With the money you make with the ads, buy more ads. And so on... The idea was to "shout" at people: my product is for sell, buy it. Well, this does not work anymore. Too many choices, too many types of clients, too many marketing channels. So invest the money you have in the product you have (improve it!), and let your customers tell you what's great and what's not. If you do that, your clients will connect with your company, and they'll start telling their friends how great your company/product/service is.


Go on the edge.
Be different. Do not be average in what you do. Think of the MP3 analogy: successful MP3 players are either cheap or remarkable. For 20U$, you can buy an MP3 on Amazon. People would buy it because it's cheap. On the other hand, for 299U$ (15 times more!!), you can buy an ipod. People would buy it because it's remarkable. Now, think of the ZUNE. It's neither cheap, nor remarkable. It's just average. And people do not want this anymore. Stop making average products and make either the cheapest, the most expensive, the smallest, the whatever-est, but do not make average products.


The last one (my favorite actually):
It easier to find products for your clients than to find clients for your products


Can you apply all of the above?

Change of apartment and office every month

If you're bored living in the same apartment, same city and with the same colleagues, I think it's time for you to change. And guess what? It's fairly easy:

1- Start an online business (fully automated)
2- Take a map and choose the cities you wanna 'explore'
3- Go to Moveandstay.com and book an apartment + office on the cities you have selected.
4- Get a ticket online and start the journey.

Easy!

Better doing it now than later

It's always the same. We wait wait wait, until it's almost perfect - or at least, until we're ready. It can be blogging, going on a diet, calling someone you have not heard of for some time.... We often wait to be in a better mood/situation/mindset. That's what happened to me over the last few weeks - no time for nothing. Well, I have made a decision to "just doing it". Yes, as Nike tells us each time we lace our sport shoes, I will act more. Like blogging for example. And so should you: take a piece of paper, a pen, and write down things (usually a goal, an end result) you have had in your head for too long. Next to that, write the steps to reach that goal and a timeframe. Do the first step right away and you'll see that the rest is easy. Have a great one!

It's the people, stupid!

I was just reading an article about skype failing to meet Ebay's expectations. It seems that this aquisition was not such a good idea as it is not performing as much as expected. Mergers, acquisitions, fusions, partnerships... All the business development concepts more often fail than succeed. Why? here's my little explanation:

When you start a partnership with someone, you may have three different approaches:

it makes sense approach:
- I am selling flight tickets, you sell airport picks up => boom, let's partner and offer airport pickup once a ticket has been purchased
- I am selling coffee, you are selling music => let's have it together and create coffee shops with music you can buy on spot!
- I am renting ski chalets, you rent ski equipment => let's partner and cross sell our services

we like each other and we think we can go great things together approach
- You and I want to create a company. You're in IT, and I'm in marketing => boom, let's open up a business
- I define business this way, so you do => let's partner together on this

It's interesting to note that, for some logical reasons, we tend to go for the rational approach (approach#1): we have products that are similar/complementary, so let's work around this. The problem with this approach is that we do not take into account the people that are going to work together on the partnerhsip. And you can have the best idea ever, if the execution is less than average, then the results can be catastrophic. Were eBay and Skype 's company's cultures compatible? Future will tell. If you take the Apple+Motorola example (RockR mobile phone), the incompatibility was certain and the products failed miserably.

The other approach is probably what Google has been during over the last 36 months. Buying lots of startup companies with talented and entrepreneurial "geeks". Same people as Sergey and Larry in a way. I am not saying they buy the companies regardless of the startup itself, no. But I would bet that Google bets much more on the people "they are acquiring" than the idea.

I guess, the very best is to mix both approaches. If you manage to have complementary products and people with full compatibility, then you are highly likely to succeed.

A very complete article on this topic.

Take your time to be smart...

In most people's mind, making good decisions is difficult - and making bad ones is very easy.

That's not logic. As we usually have to make (easy or hard) decisions everyday, we should be getting better at it, right? Well,apparently not. We keep making mistakes and taking bad decisions on a monthly, weekly or daily basis (which one is it for you?). Two tips I would give to people having hard time making decisions: take your time and do not take any decision that does not make sense to you. The best way to take bad decisions is to rush and not follow your gut.

This applies to all kind of decisions. But take "starting a new internet business" for example. Although (and because) starting up a new internet business can be really easy, cheap and quite fast to implement, lots of people start on the spot, wasting their time, money and energy in chasing the next multi-million dollar idea. I would guess that the main reason behind it is the lack of rational thinking and lack of listening to one's gut. I have a business idea once a week, and usually, after a few nights sleep, I know that: my idea sucks/is not realistic/is not profitable and does not any make sense to pursue.

Next time to make a 'tough' decision, try to apply these 2 basic tips and see what happens.

An interesting article about dumb ideas.

I have to admit: I bought this book

Have you ever bought stuffs that you wish nobody knew about?

I recently bought the old "How to win friends and influence people" by Dale Carnegie, a famous american writer for its self-help books ... It's a very interesting book giving you concrete tips on communicating and negotiating with people. At the end of each chapter, there's a two-line advice, easy to remember and apply - you have around 18 tips if I recall well.

Since I've bought this book, each time I have guests coming home, I always feel that I should hide the book. I just do not want my friends or even people I've just met to know that I have an interest in manipulating people... I mean, do not get me wrong: I am fascinated by the arts of communication and negotiation... but that is, i think, very awkward for people coming to my house, to see that I've studied the science of manipulation! Well, actually, it's not a book on manipulation... it turns out (IMHO) that this book teaches you basic education principles - and if your parents have done a good job, then a "so-what?" question should popup in your head at the end of each chapters.

I would still recommend it to anyone who needs a refresh on that particular and important topic.

Dead-Time Learning

It's been a few weeks since I have started organizing my life a bit differently, using what I would call the bi-tasking model. I've read several articles and heard several podcasts on productivity, banning multi-tasking. Well, I agree but to some extend only. Let me explain: During a whole day, we normally go through several phases that I categorize as follow:

1- Active Time: these are the times where you interact with people, concentrate on a given task or simply read a book. These phases require your full attention or it can be either dangerous (driving and talking on the phone....), very impolite (pretending listening to someone while watching a beautiful woman passing along) or simply unproductive (try reading a booking while watching tv...).

2- Passive Time: as opposite to the active phase, passive are moments during the day where you are doing something that does not require your full attention/concentration (cleaning the dishes, sitting in a bus, waiting your turn at the doctors..).

3- Sleeping Time

After looking at the use of my time, I realized that I was spending several hours a week in passive mode. I do clean the dishes :), I take the bus or train or plane at least once a week, I go (walk) food shopping, etc... During this time (that I now call the dead-time learning moments), I multi-task by listening to my ipod - I learn new things every day (currently learning spanish, thai, internet marketing classes and french history) by using these dead-time moments.

But be careful not to fall in the trap of keeping your ear-plugs day long. Connect with people is still the most interesting and valuable time you can have in a day.