April 2006 Archives

I just loved this post by Guy Kawasaki, and had to comment on it! I've been an engineer, a programmer, a tester, a marketing guy, and am currently an entrepreneur... Oh the lies I have told and heard ... (hahhahahaha) I'm going to write another post on "What I learned in my 5 years as an engineer" Stay put to see that sometime soon!

I just saw this article on the BBC website: US war costs 'could hit $811bn'. I'm pretty sure that those terrorists and other insurgents aren't using so much money to create panic. Perhaps the "powers that be" in Iraq and Afghanistan should ask the Indian government on how they tackle terrorism. After all there have been insurgents and terrorists in India since independence. There could be learning opportunities here! In one good example, the state of Punjab in India had a major insurgency in the 80s. Terrorism was rampant. Now however, there is no terrorism in Punjab. On the contrary, Punjab as a state today is peaceful and has some of India's biggest export industries, enriching the local populace considerably.

I saw a link to this on the Tom Peters site. This Business 2.0 article highlights how some companies have innovative ways of influencing "change" or "proper behaviour". I just love the Mozilla example. Mozilla gets their customers to suggest marketing ideas on the SpreadFirefox.com website. The most popular of these idease are in turn is taken up by volunteers who execute these ideas. The guy who came up with this idea is Asa Dotzler, a Mozilla staffer. (Disclaimer: I use Firefox on my Windows desktop and Safari on my Apple PowerBook.. haha) Seth Godin has some similar ideas on using your most rabid fans to go out and spread the word about you. He's written this new ebook Flipping the Funnel that you could download for free. Check it out. I, for my part, need to figure out how to get my customers to go out and spread the word.

I first came across transaction cost economics (TCE) in my MBA class at RSM. It was intriguing as TCE was used to explain the reason for a firm to exist at all, mergers, contracts, employment and so on. The idea is that every transaction has a cost because of negotiations, paperwork, delays, egos, self interest, etc. The idea of any business "equilibrium" is to reduce this cost. A new equilibrium should be achieved when the benefits of the status quo is possible at lower transaction cost. It got me thinking about human relationships too. Why do people get married or get into long term relationships? The most obvious answer is love and affection. But there are quite a few among us, who have felt love and affection for quite a few other humans, but we don't get into a long term relationship with all of them. My theory is this: Two new factors are also responsible - risk aversion and TCE! Now, every one takes risks. In some areas of life, one takes more risks than others. A lot of us are very happy to take risks in our profession, but we don't quite like risk in our private life. It tends to give us a sense of continuity and perhaps even rest and an outlet for our stress. Most of us also at one point or the other in our lives decide that we 'need' this continuity and low risk in our personal life. As one gains a sense of security, continuity and a low risk feel in his or her personal life, it gets tougher to make a change in that personal life - the "transaction cost" of the change becomes higher. The sooner someone gets risk averse and evaluates the transaction cost, the sooner that person gets into a long term relationship. What does this have to do with BUSINESS.. Deepen and broaden your personal relationship with your customer. That way you increase his or her transaction cost of switching to another supplier. Network with the customer on several areas of his/her life. Take them out to dinner, or go out with them. Get them to like you and trust you. It's good for your personal life and good for business!

There has been so much soul searching about how the UK car industry was losing out since production was moving to lower labour cost countries like Slovakia, Slovenia, Poland, India, South Africa and China. Now check this out: CLEVER project CLEVER is an acronym for Compact Low Emission Vehicle for Urban Transport The pic is as seen on Yahoo at this post: Students in England show off CLEVER car They should try and sell this in India and China too. There's enough air pollution there that can be overcome by such a vehicle. What's more, the growth rates of the automotive sector there are breakneck.

To mash up a line from the poem by Robert Frost with an old phrase by Steve Jobs:

Now I have "Miles to go before I sleep" because I need to "make a dent in the Universe"

Seth Godin brings up the eternal question asked by every entrepreneur.. What's next? I'll tell you what's next. Go browse the websites of your customers, and those of their competitors. Figure out what new force will impact their business. Better still, think of a disruptive force that can be used to impact their business positively. You should find these forces in industries that are seen as leading edge. They'll impact your customer's business too. But not just yet. And there lies the opportunity. Now go and help your customer take advantage of these forces. Here are a few to get you started :-)

• Web 2.0
• Razors and Blades - Paid services around products given away for free
• The PSF organisational model - Every staff function becomes a professional services firm that also serves external customers
• Collaboration - across divisions, and functional silos within companies
• Creation networks - Get everyone to innovate on your behalf, including your competitors and customers
• Open source everything - How fast can you spell Linux?
• China and India as the factory and backoffice of the world
• Brazil - which has become energy independent by running all automobiles on ethanol and is committed to using free software for everything in the government. Can you imagine the impact on costs of products produced there in a couple of years time?
• Russia, Thailand, Vietnam and the Philippines will provide the next wave of investment, and outsourcing opportunity

Now go write a proposal or a businessplan this evening. Actually go take a break! You just worked hard all day :-)

I'd suggest you read these. Paul Graham (blog) is a man who's been in the trenches, and by most accounts still is. Better still, Copy paste it in Word, format it to reduce the number of pages, and print it. You don't have to agree with all of it, but it does give you a pretty good idea of what to expect - at least for a tech startup. How to start a startup How to fund a startup And if you're still keen, buy his book Hackers and Painters on Amazon

Good marketing A good marketing person is one who finds out what a customer wants and desires and makes sure that the product he's promoting/selling/managing actually meets those wants and desires. These would be the GEs of this world. Great marketing A great marketing person is one who creates an aspiration for a product, and targets those customers who aspire to this product. These would be the Apple, LVMH, Nikes of this world "Game changer" marketing A game changer marketeer would be one who solves a problem in such a visible and simple way that the vast mass of humanity adopts it. These would be the Googles of the world. That's what we all aspire to be - a game changer. But how do we get there? People solve the same problems over and over again. The new solution is typically one that satisfies one or more from the list below

• easier to use
• more cost effective
• makes things go faster
• has a domino effect - solves other problems
• is seen as mainstream but innovative

So ask yourself this: What's the problem I'm solving and how am I solving it? Is this relevant to my customers? If you can build a credible short story to answer this question, you're well on your way to being a game changer marketing professional. Tell that to your customers, and get them to tell it to others, and you'll actually achieve game changer status. It doesn't mean that you'll have the same impact as a Google - since you need a Google like product to have that kind of effect - but certainly, you'll outdo your competition by a long margin - which incidentally was the game wasn't it?

A fibonacci poem is a poem where the number of syllables on each line is a fibonacci progression. A fibonacci sequence is such that each number is the sum of the previous 2 numbers. It goes like this: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21, ... The New York Times has a little article on this. Here's my little attempt. I think I've succeeded in illustrating what I do in a Fibonacci poem. So here goes! Why (1 syllable) I (1 syllable) love to (2 syllable) blog about (3 syllables) business issues (5 syllables) Better pricing enriches you (8 syllables) Simple processes cut costs and speed productivity (13 syllables) Venturing builds effective businesses at lower cost, and builds stronger economies (21 syllables) And that's what I do: Pricing, Processes and Venturing

How cool is that? Here's the link http://www.fieggen.com/shoelace/index.htm Definitely not productive, but at 23:11 at night, who cares?

I read this great ebook by seth godin. Here's the link to it: Flipping the Funnel. The idea is to get your most satisfied customers to share their stories with your product/service/experience with the world. These stories are authentic, which lead to increased interest in you and the stuff you have to sell. This increases revenue!

Exude passion For your service/product/experience For your customer For your employees For your community People, including leads, prospects and clients respond to passion. USE IT! YOU ARE THE GREATEST... Now all you have to do is prove it to the world. Be disciplined When I worked for other people, I used to be a guy who worked hard, but needed extenal motivation to get things done. A deadline.. A boss who checked up on me.. A client visit.. Sometimes I even goofed off on the job - the internet, email, coffee, chats with colleagues, etc. Needless to say, things got done "on time", but could have been done faster. But that changed (slowly) when I started my own business. I needed to get things done on my own. I was master of my time, but I had no clue of how to use it. Time was really money (my money!) The first thing I did was to start using the calendar program in my computer to put down deadlines - both at home and at work. I also included a reminder for each deadline one day in advance. That worked sort of - until I started making mistakes in estimating the time it took to get things done. Now I still use the calendar method, but I simply double the time I estimate to take care of external influences on the work. If I finish ahead of that schedule on one particular task, I can always start on the next task. This way, I just about manage to finish the entire project on time.. Underpromise and overdeliver I learnt this from my first bosses at a division of Emerson Electric in India. Incredibly useful advice I got. Now, for e.g., I promise a profitability increase of 5 - 10% to my customers, but my actual results are much more than that.. Which definitely is overdelivering on commitments. That is a sure first step to a follow on contract. A caveat on underpromising - don't underpromise below that of your competitors! If you do that, you won't get a chance to deliver.. This is a sad fact of consulting. A hell of a lot of customers when accepting bids from various consultants, believe the number promised. Consultants are good salesmen you know, and they tend to be able to provide good reasons for the numbers they show. Make sure you're selling unique stuff When I started my consulting business, I had a client, and I worked all hours for that client. When that contract ended, I came outside and tried to resell that work.. Well, there were a lot of barriers there. 1) It was too diffuse - product management. 2) It was too strategic - folks tend to keep strategic things in-house 3) It was difficult to explain in a short while While I struggled gamely, I met a guy in a networking event. I offered him my business card and said I work in bladibladibladibladibla. He took my business card and said

"Arun, you're saying that you work in 4 things. Which of these do you do best? could you rank these 4 out for me?" He added then "Always sell what you're doing best 'first' to a prospective client. If you get a contract and do well, you can cross sell the other stuff later on".

BIG insight into sales and business - You need to focus In another networking event, I met another guy who told me -

"Arun, you're a good consultant. But what you're doing is already being done! Where are you adding value? Make the Value add your practice.. that's how you create something unique"

BIG insight into business - Your value addition is your uniqueness. Build everything around that. Two amazing insights from two guys who probably will never meet me again. But a lesson was taught, and I hope well learnt. Focus only on what you can influence. Don't worry about the rest There are way too many things that can go wrong in life and in business. You need to analyse each of them and ask yourself : Do I have any influence on this? If you don't, don't work on it. Either find someone who does have influence on it, or else just forget about it, and leave it to chance (or God, if you're a little religious) A hell of a lot of things went wrong in my business and my life, but I'm still here! Always have a sense of humor, especially on bad days Shit happens, all the time everywhere. You're not immune. You could look at the past week and say - I actually accomplished nothing! My proposals have 'all' been put on the backburner, because of internal problems at my clients. Two scenarios: A] Depression hits. People who are near and dear tend to get it, and be equally depressed. If they try to pull you out of it, you snap and yell at them. Nothing is still accomplished, but you managed to project your frustration on someone else who definitely didn't deserve it. Remember, even prospective clients can smell if someone is depressed, needy etc etc.. :-)) B] Depression hits. You decide that there's nothing you can do about last week. Best forgotten. However you can do something about next week and you make a plan. People turn up, and you focus on what's making them happy. Try to bring that happiness to your day, and have a sense of humor about it all.. "Man I should fire myself for last week" would be a good way to start .. (Ok.. it's 11 at night, and my humor is waning. If you find this funny we should talk :-)) Know enough of what the others on your team are doing so that you understand it People around you - at client sites, or in your team do stuff. The most common way of team management is "hire stars with trackrecords" and then delegate properly, and follow up. In this manner one hopes that everything will be all right, and one's project management skills will finesse the way to success. It could work, but usually doesn't. What does work is that you discuss with every team member 1) what they are going to do (in great detail) 2) how they're going to do it (in some intermediate level of detail) 3) why they're going to do it (in basic detail) Doing this does two things a) It clarifies misunderstandings and miscommunications (a common problem in project failure or delay) b) It improves your knowledge of other ancillary areas, so that the next project you're better prepared. c) It helps you sell your services better since you get a (wellfounded) reputation of knowing what you are going to do and the outcomes that can be achieved. AT THE END ALL YOU SELL IS BELIEVABILITY.. Rigorously recruit mentors I've always learnt something from everyone I met. In this spirit, If I meet someone I think is better than me at something, I ask him about my problem, and I get an opinion. People love to teach - even busy people. You may have to meet up at another time to discuss stuff, but even then, it's still worth it. Usually you'll hear the same thing over. But there'll always be a twist in what's being told. And you're learning from that twist. Mentors are also great references for future projects and a possible source of leads. Don't ever neglect marketing I made this mistake. Bigtime. When you get a project, you try your utmost to deliver tremendously to the client - and you do (you hope) The thing is - working so hard sucks up all your time, leaving you no time to go out and get new contracts. Which means that when you finish this project, you need to go out and market yourself again. That's incredibly tough. You're out of mind of most of your prospects. It's like starting a business all over again. Don't make this mistake. Always budget at least one day a week for marketing. Keep it flexible, so that if you need to visit a prospect on another day, you can do it. You can always catch up on the work later. But communicate this to everyone waiting for you to do work for them. Since this is not a post on marketing, I'm not going to go into that subject. But feel free to contact me if you want ideas. Count your pennies This is a simple way of saying "Watch your cashflow". Remember to invoice your clients properly. Read your contract and the "terms of payment of your client" to see at what time you can get paid. Plan your own payments accordingly. You don't have to be someone who pays in advance. Pay on the last date possible. Again there is a lot of software out there that can help you do all this. Take advantage of it. Don't treat your company like a piggybank. The company is a person. Taking money from the company for fun stuff is kinda wrong. The best thing would be to take a fixed minimum amount out of your company bank account for your personal expenses. Fit your expenses into this amount.

I just posted my lens on venturing on squidoo. Here's the link. Do rank it if you're a squidoo user. Here's the link http://www.squidoo.com/venturing. It's a work in progress. I still have to fill out a lot of details, so please do leave a comment here letting me know what you think of it.