Invert the Industry
In the computer games industry, its common practice for developers to announce a game’s release date a good year in advance and then quietly let that deadline slip by months or even years. In the movie industry, it’s common for the trailer to show a compressed version of the plot and most of the explosions or the funniest jokes.
Promoting a product can only be so effective if you’re just altering the message within the conventions of the industry. You may have developed the most wonderful product, but it still seems like all the others already out there.
Apple inverted the idea of new product announcements by getting rid of the press release and putting a face to the presentation in the form of Steve Jobs. Now, Apple product launches are events in themselves.
In the music world, it was a commonly-held belief that labels should announce that a band is in the studio (heighten anticipation) then that they’re releasing a single in a month (heighten further) then have a big premiere on commercial radio for that new single (generate pre-sales and single sales) then release the album and go on a vast tour to promote it.
Then Radiohead released In Rainbows in a week and made the entire system look redundant.
It certainly helps that the products in these instances were excellent in themselves, but they also made waves in the way they were presented to the world. Unique. First. Different. Remarkable. Yes, your product should be a Purple Cow… but if your promotion is too, then you’re on to something big.
PS. Movie trailers needn’t fit the mould – just ask the Coen Brothers.
Can Business be Beautiful?
Consider, if you will, the various types of artist: painter, photographer, sculptor, graphic designer, illustrator, and so on.
Because of the years of precedent and the need for the works to be publicly presented, modern artists can look back to history to inspire and inform their work. They can recognise their abilities in one form over another and choose to pursue that particular path as the best expression of their talents.
When it comes to business, though, the idea of precedent and talent is far rarer. How many people in any given business went into their role as an accountant or a lawyer or a marketer because they were inspired by the work of previous generations? Or because it appealed to their natural talents?
The more creative the work, the more likely it is that people initially enter the field due to passion and talent. Advertisers may enjoy the creative aspect and may have been inspired by the adverts of their youth, but the same is unlikely to be said for a solicitor.
This leads me to the question: can business be beautiful? Can it be an expression of talents and genius, or is it something that must be learnt over anew for each generation?
My contention is that, with the wealth of bloggers and the availability of information online nowadays, it is possible for job-seekers to discover what they enjoy and where their talents lie before they enter business. Ramit has proven that something as apparently dry as personal finance can have an artistry to it and can be a natural talent for some.
We might well be entering a new era of business in which people are more passionate about the work they do, precisely because they are better informed about it and can see the worldwide precedents being set for them.
Which leads us all to consider where our talents lie. Are you a sculptor who likes to strip business down and reduce and simplify? Or a painter who prefers a blank canvas on which to create? Or a photographer who sees what everyone else sees, but can demonstrate it in an accessible and interesting way?
Worth thinking about.
How to Guarantee Success: Build for the Specialists
“Here’s what to understand about the f***ing specialists: they pay a premium and they never make f***ing trouble” – Al Swearengen, Deadwood
Colourful language aside, it’s an excellent point made by Ian McShane’s character in the equally excellent HBO series, Deadwood.
In the world of small businesses, the key word thrown about is ‘niche’. The best way to think of a niche is exactly in the terms described above.
When building a business it can be hard to know whether you’ve found a niche or just a market segment. It’s also a crucial distinction. The most successful small businesses in any economic cycle – even a recession – are those that make the distinction and target the niche, the specialists who will pay a premium.
One way that I’ve discovered of defining whether something is a niche or a segment is to construct the following sentence: “We sell X for Y”, where X is the product and Y is the type of person. Now, big companies can afford to make X and Y nice and vague: “soft drinks for young people”, maybe, or “processors for PCs”. Small companies have to be focused.
“Yoga for rock climbers”.
“Security installation DVDs for industrial lock-ups”.
“Sound effects for independent film-makers”
Look at how much more focused those X and Y statements are. The more focused they are, the more you’re catering to the specialists. If you can add a Z in there as well without making your market too small, all the better. Z factors are often location-specific:
“Careers advice for medical students in Scotland”. If someone’s in that market, you’re the one they’re going to want to talk to.
You can build a business around specialists without ever needing them to become early adopters and spread your message – we know this through the 1,000 true fans idea. Now you have a way to quantify whether or not you’ve got the potential to create 1,000 true fans for your company: X for Y in Z.
The only way to cater to specialists? Be a specialist yourself.
How to find Value in Unemployment
We all know by now the importance of creating remarkable products and services in order to succeed as a company. And we know that playing it safe is actually risky.
What’s also worth knowing is that this philosophy continues on beyond the business level and into the world of job-seekers. In the UK, there are over 350,000 graduates emerging from universites each year. What makes you stand out?
Certainly there are traditional things that the best graduates will have on their application, including any number of the following: good school, good A-level grades, volunteer work, extra-curriculars, good university, year abroad, summer work experience, Master’s level degree, etc.
But what is interesting is the opportunity now to develop hugely valuable skills that are valuable to employers without needing permission. All those attributes listed above are what recruiters would expect to find some evidence of in a CV; they prove you’re a functioning member of society and have followed the accepted path up to this point.
What about those who have more, though? Those who recognised that in the world of web 2.0 you don’t need to be in a marketing department to be a marketer, or that you don’t need to work for Google to build software. The great people in their respective fields don’t seek permission before doing something, they do it because they want to and know that the work will come to them.
If you’re putting together remarkable projects or remarkable websites, then you become a more remarkable candidate. If a recruiter has already heard you mentioned by a colleague or has come across some sites you designed, then they already have the proof that you’re someone of value in the field that you want to enter.
How can you tell a recruiter you’re passionate about what they do if you’re just waiting for them to hire you before you start doing it? If you were truly passionate, you’d be doing it already.
Don’t Take That Job
Every industry develops and changes, just as the world economy does. We all know that existing industries like newspapers and television are struggling in the face of new developments online, so why would anyone choose to apply for jobs at the Times or the BBC? It may be a slow process and these organisations may be able to offer you a steady wage right now, but what happens when things start to get tricky in a few years’ time?
Other people, those who chose to go into growing areas of the same industry, will have become valuable and skilled in their jobs. We’ve seen this sort of thing before when we moved from the industrial age into the service age, as labourers and miners and shipbuilders were ruined because their skills were no longer needed. Why assume that it’s any different now?
We’re moving from the service age into the new economy and there will be casualties.
The solution to this is not so simple for people already in those industries, but job seekers and recent graduates must project forward a few years when considering where to work. Look at growth sectors. Find trends (that aren’t fads) and look at how they will change everyday life.
Some examples:
1. More people are working remotely than ever before, a trend that will only continue.
2. We have an aging population who are more mobile, healthy and affluent post-retirement than ever before.
3. The size of the world population means that when a pandemic spreads, it can do so faster and with more effect than ever before.
Notice the repeated use of “than ever before”. These are issues that will lead to new, growing sectors because they never existed before. The multi-billion pound industries of today may well be niches in a few years, and vice versa.
Job seekers now need to speculate (in an informed way) and look to work in industries that have a future. Even the future professionals like architects and doctors should be thinking in these terms in order to develop the right skills. An architect with a proven history of making spectacular, environmentally sound buildings, for example, is going to have a bright future.
The Recession-Proof Graduate
Some brilliant advice here from Charlie Hoehn about another unique strategy for graduates to work their way through the recession. Charlie advocates ‘free work’, an idea that differs from an internship or work experience in a number of ways, as explained in his new free e-book.
One idea I’m keen on for graduates (whether struggling to find a job or not) is to start doing the job you want to do, regardless of whether or not anyone has given you permission to do it. Blogs and websites afford people the opportunity to get involved with their industry of interest, as well as to put work out there for all to see.
Want to be a consultant? Why not put together a website of analyses into public companies in which you have an interest.
Want to be a web designer? Start creating Wordpress themes that promote your particular aesthetic.
The more you can demonstrate your skills, the better. And whilst a blog can just be a random collection of photos, or links to other sites, why not use it to showcase your talents?
For instance, on my blog over at The Good Wall I’m creating a site that looks at the marketing tactics employed by heritage organisations. In theory, this is a job for somebody in the marketing department of the organisation concerned (and I’m sure they have people doing the job on their payroll) but it’s an area in which I’m interested and I enjoy doing it, so there’s nothing stopping me.
There’s no pay involved, but doing this type of thing can only help in creating a portfolio of work. It also proves a level of interest and passion in the industry, as well as demonstrating initiative in sculpting your future career.
Sidenote: the idea of free work is closely related to Chris Anderson’s work on the freemium model: give customers something for free, but charge them for the full product. In much the same way, free work means that you’re giving people your time and skills, then charging for them when your value has increased. Freemium is becoming more relevant every day and is something worth keeping an eye on.
The Anti-Jargon
Some companies simply bathe in jargon.
The internet lets companies put their mission statements out there, front and centre. So we end up with websites that drone on about “solutions” and “specialisms” and “customer-focus”. Click on the ‘About’ page of many a large corporation and you’re left with that vacant feeling of words gently drift through your consciousness without ever managing to convey the purpose of their visit.
But let’s look at this in a more positive way: now that customers can access you and your competitors online in more detail than ever before, you have the opportunity to stand out. To mock the foolish management-speak. There’s no better way to undermine another company’s jargon than by telling the user what to look out for on the websites of your competitors. Don’t be spiteful or nasty, just tell visitors that they’ll find the type of irritating language that makes the company look as though it’s run by a PR machine.
When they find out that you’re right, they’ll not only be more enamoured with your plain-speaking site, they’ll start to think that your whole brand is more trustworthy – after all, what are those other companies trying to hide?
So by saying things in a straightforward and honest fashion, you come across as straightforward and honest. It’s not rocket science, but it is an opportunity to differentiate yourself.
The Golden Rule of New Branding
37Signals makes lean, simple software. They’ve also created a lean, simple structure and business model in which their employees don’t need to work from an office and they don’t even have to produce a physical product to complicate things. The idea of being effective and straightforward is not just a marketing tacked on to their product, it’s a philosophy that runs throughout the company.
Similarly, the Zappos culture of a little weirdness and intense people-focus (made manifest in their famed customer service and 365 day free return policy) begins with the company’s employees, who are such advocates for the company that they all rejected the $2000 offered to them to walk away from the company after training. If you don’t absolutely want to be there, then Zappos would rather know about it and let you go.
It’s nothing new to say that consistency in a firm’s strategy is paramount. It is, however, worth noting that in the world of Web 2.0 the sheer number of ways in which people can interact with your company – and the number of unofficial, uncontrollable information sources that can be found online about you – mean that any inconsistency at any point in the company will likely be found out.
If you’re promoting a simple product that is all about less clutter, you can’t have a cluttered company structure. If you promote your passion for people, you can’t treat your employees badly. In fact, you can’t even treat them well. You have to treat them fantastically, to make them want to shout about their love for their jobs. It’s not just about integrated, consistent marketing, it’s also about a visible consistency throughout the company.
No more brushing things under the carpet, as it were. There is no carpet anymore. What goes on behind the scenes should be as effective a marketing tool for your company as your super-expensive ad campaign.
Why Crisps Explain Everything
This post is about crisp packets, but it could easily be about so many other types of packaging.
When you open a crisp packet, the crisps themselves rarely reach above halfway up the bag. I’ve been told that this extra space is so that the crisps don’t get crushed, but considering the only thing they’re ever squashed up against is other packets of crisps, I doubt this logic.
The real reason the bags are that size is because if they were smaller we would buy a rival brand, thinking that we’d get more value for money. I know this is a sweeping statement and not true for all of us, but there is always a reason behind marketing and product design. Even if the idea itself is flawed, there’s a reason for it. In this case, the reason is that bigger packets sell more than smaller packets. So is this the marketers’ fault, or ours as consumers?
Either way, I’m concerned. In a world where we’re trying to find any possible way to reduce waste, recycle more, eat local produce, and so on, do our own human tendencies fight against us? As long as we buy bigger crisp packets, will the marketers and product designers continue to make them excessively large?
The issue here is who takes the first step. It is in the interests of both parties to maintain the status quo because we’re happier with bigger packets and the crisp companies are happier with bigger sales. Someone has to initiate proceedings, and in my view the best chance is for it to be a third party like a supermarket.
It would be great advertising for any retailer to say “we’re not stocking this brand of crisp until they stop wasting packaging”. They’ve done it with plastic bags, so why not with crisp bags? In my experience, it’s a rare consumer who’ll criticise a company that makes a stand and acts in a socially responsible manner (at least with the little things in life like product packaging).
The idea of taking the first step applies in so many areas of climate change: is it possible, for example, to reconcile cutting carbon emissions with our love of cars? Who takes the first step there?
To me, the most successful companies in this era are going to be the ones who let us improve our carbon footprints (or recycle, or reduce waste, etc.) with the least possible disruption to our current lifestyles.
Nobody wants to be told that they’re killing the planet and they have to change everything they do. They want someone to say “here’s how we can change things with minimal disruption to your daily life”. I believe it’s possible, and it’s far easier to get someone to escalate their carbon consciousness from that position than drastically to try to alter everything they do all at once.
Work in increments, or you’ll simply scare people into denial.
The End of the Office
What do you require to run a business? In the words of Michael Scott, “first of all, you need a building”. Except, of course (without wishing to suck all the comedy out of the clip), you don’t need a building any more. You don’t even need many workers, to be honest.
A number of articles have argued that we are coming towards the end of cubicle life – there are links at the end of this post – and perhaps of office-based necessity entirely. With the world shifting towards remote workers and an economy built more on networks than physical production, it isn’t beyond the realms of possibility to foresee a working environment in which people work from wherever they want and rely upon programs like 37Signals’ Campfire, or conference calls in order to communicate with co-workers and project teams.
One further thought: if more people are working outside the office, then there’s a growing market of remote workers to be served in some way. If in a few years we are going to see millions more people out in the world during the day, making their own schedules, maybe you should start to make yourself or your business vital to these people. It needn’t be a given that they will all spend their days in Starbucks.
Workplace Trends: The End of Cubicle Dwelling? – Dawn Foster
The Last Days of Cubicle Life – Seth Godin
Results-Only Work Environment – Culture Rx
Create your own MBA
It really is a great idea, and one that could only exist in the world of the web: to create and lead a community in which a $50,000 MBA program is broken down into core texts, forums, and personal coaching that gives the content of a full studied course at a fraction of the price. And that’s the story behind The Personal MBA.
The democracy afforded by the internet is wonderful. Seth Godin started his own MBA as well and, whilst neither of these courses necessarily pass the ‘gatekeeper’ test of having official certification at the end, the information to be gleaned is invaluable. No, neither are a ticket into the higher corporate echelons like a Harvard Business School MBA would be, but they do provide you with the information necessary to succeed.
Which makes you question the whole purpose of business school; do you pay $50,000 for education and knowledge, or – as one of my tutors has put it in the past – “access to people” and the chance to create a network? As The Personal MBA shows, you can have the education for (to paraphrase for a moment) the cost of $1.50 in late charges at the public library.
Creating Value vs. Harnessing Value
“Everything I read was public. Anyone could buy the same books and magazines. The same information was available to anyone who wanted it. Turns out most people didn’t want it”.
This quote is from billionaire entrepreneur Mark Cuban, owner of the Dallas Mavericks, on when he came to be involved with computers as a young man. He found a growth sector (personal computers and software), learnt everything he could about it by obsessively reading manuals and textbooks, then passed that public information on to others in the form of guidance and products.
A big, big question when starting businesses is this: how do I create and deliver value for the consumer? Cuban (and many others in a myriad different sectors) altered this question to suit his own model, asking not how they could create value, but how they could harness it.The value was out there, waiting to be passed on to customers. Cuban just transferred it to them in ways they could understand and appreciate.
The link from this idea to this website is pretty clear: the tools necessary to make oneself more employable are available – in fact they are available to pretty much everyone – and they’re usually free. I’m not creating new skills or ideas, just harnessing those that already exist. All one needs to invest is what Mark Cuban invested: hard work and time.
It’s also worth considering that line about working in a ‘growth sector’. It pays vast dividends to be in an industry that the rest of the world doesn’t quite know it needs yet. By this I don’t mean the sectors where the sellers tell themselves “everyone will love this product, we just have to convince them”. I mean the sectors where buyers suddenly have an epiphany and realise that the world has gone in a particular direction and they have to find someone who can help them stay in the game.
The world suddenly realised that personal computers and software were going to be a rather big deal, and Mark Cuban was perfectly placed to help. If you can become an expert (and I mean a genuine leading authority) in that sort of future sector, it’ll be truly hard not to end up a success.
Are You Really at Full Capacity?
I came across the following lines from David J. Schwartz the other day:
“Capacity is a state of mind. How much we can do depends on how much we think we can do.”
Seth’s original post was about achieving all of the things listed in a year, not just some of them. Over the past few days since I’ve started this site, it’s become more apparent just how much work there is to get through compared with how much I have been doing up to now. The work required is beyond the ordinary, but that is precisely the point – if it were easy, if it were the bare minimum, then it wouldn’t be exceptional to accomplish these things and they wouldn’t set one apart from the crowd.
Still, I agree with Schwartz’s statement; capacity is indeed a state of mind. We often imagine that our current lifestyles have us acting at somewhere near optimum, that we have little room to fit in any more, that we are near capacity. After all, we did something to fill all those hours of our day so it must have been important. A day of doing ‘important’ things means we’re living near capacity, right? Doubtful.
I’m confident that I can create enough time in the next year to complete the list, and I’m certain that there are countless others who could find the time as well. What’s more, anyone who undertakes a series of challenges like these can’t lose, because no matter how far through one gets, it all helps – even a little more learning is better than just waiting for things to happen to you, apathetic and frustrated.
PS. If you really are at full capacity, maybe you should give The Four Hour Workweek a look. Hopefully it can help you to fill your life to its limit with things you genuinely enjoy doing.