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Focus Issues

March 31, 2011 in Business with 4 Comments

While I’m not generally a fan of his work for many reasons, I’ll be happy to explain in other posts, I am a VERY big fan of the topic of a book that Jack Canfield (of Chicken Soup fame) wrote. It’s called “The Power of Focus.”

Individuals, businesses, and even countries always seem to struggle with the issues of focus. Here’s an example. Since my daughter, Avalon, arrived, I’ve been bitten by the photography bug. I’ve probably read at least twenty books on the subject in the past three months. In the past three months I’ve gone from not really understanding f-stops and aperture, to having a distinct understanding behind the photography triangle and how it all works. I’m like that. When I want to learn a new skill, I don’t just jump in haphazardly; I’ll devour everything I can find about the subject.

I’ve learned that lenses (expensive lenses) can suffer from serious focus issues. For example, I’ve learned that lenses can front and back focus. You might think you’re focusing on the eyes, but the lens might actually be focusing on the forehead. I’ve learned about focus shift. And I’ve learned that lenses can suffer from chromatic aberration, sharpness issues, light fall-off and so much more… the list goes on and on.

Wow – like with anything else, the closer you try to get it perfect, the harder it gets. The closer you try to get a perfect focus in photograph, the harder it is.

When I first got into photography, I assumed if I bought a camera and a lens, off I would go. Of course, with all these issues and more and you could end up with a life full of blurry memories and years later blame your shaky hands.

Or, you could end up with shots that are pretty great. They’re not going to win any awards, but they’ll be clear enough to bring a smile to your face.

How does this apply to businesses?

When a business decides to jump on the social media wagon, there are focus issues. There is too much promotion, and not enough social interaction. The same thing happens when a business decides to build a website. There can be focus issues. Too much time is spent on clever behind-the-scenes SEO and not enough time spent on crafting the message you want to portray to your customers.

Whether it’s websites or cameras, you can spend forever searching for perfection. But to butcher the military motto: “A good plan executed now is infinitely better than the perfect plan executed two weeks late.” Just go out and shoot.

Focus issues and chromatic aberration are not for the fellow shooting pictures of his newborn daughter. These are the issues the photographer at the New York Times needs to be concerned with, not you and me.

Google Canada recently announced 50% of businesses in Canada don’t even have a website. That seems absurd. This boggles my mind actually. I’ll take a website with a bit of missed focus, that actually exists, over a well thought out plan that never happens. We can learn to adjust for the kinks along the way, and we’ll compensate the minor focus issues when needed.

My friend Shawn talks a lot about the trap of the “Wild Blue Yonder” when it comes to business planning. It is really easy to spend a lot of time worrying about what MIGHT happen, or what CAN happen when you’re massively successful. But that doesn’t help you NOW, when it’s time to launch.

Now, you just get something out there. You need to take the first step. And if it’s a bit blurry, that’s okay, You can worry about correcting it later. The most important thing is to put it out there. Its 2011 folks. Most people aren’t using the three-pound phonebook to find out about your business these days.

They’re just hungry.

February 11, 2011 in Business with 4 Comments

I remember hearing, a few years back, about a local real estate agent that was offering a crazy guarantee.

He said, “If I can’t sell your house in 90 days, I’ll buy it myself.”

I wonder how many houses he ended up buying.

Zappos, has a 365-day return policy on shoes. They even pay the shipping costs to ship the shoes back to them. Buy them, stick ‘em in your closet for next Christmas, then decide that you don’t want them? No problem. Send em back.

Now think about that and how you could apply something similar to your own business or service.

Can you guarantee I won’t wait any longer than 15 minutes in your waiting room?

Can you guarantee that my meal will be on the table in less than 15 minutes after ordering?

Can you guarantee that my pizza will be the best damn pizza in town with the toppings piled over two inches high?

My advice: Figure out how you can make a real statement about your product or service. Make a statement so big and bold that the consumer will actually believe it.  And of course, but most importantly, be sure you can back it up.

See, here’s the thing. A guarantee isn’t powerful because of the guarantee itself. A guarantee is important because of the confidence it projects about your product or service to your customers.

What a guarantee actually says is, “I’m so confident in what I’m telling you that I’m going to put my money where my mouth is.”

People don’t order your 30-minute-or-less pizza expecting to get a free pizza. People order your 30-minute or-less pizza expecting it to show up in 15 minutes.

Get it?

They’re just hungry.

2011 – The First Update

January 27, 2011 in Business, Life, Linchpin, Misc, Success with 5 Comments

Wow.

Where did the time go? I find it hard to believe that my last posting was November 23rd.

Here’s a quick update about both my personal and professional life.

First – The Personal Stuff.

Our beautiful daughter arrived on December 19th, 2010. Her name is Avalon Kate Fleming. She’s amazing. Seriously though, what a life altering event. Nobody can truly prepare you or explain to you what parenthood is actually like until you experience it.

So without further ado, I’ve included a picture of Avalon and yours truly.

My wife is doing fantastic. She felt great shortly after the birth and has settled comfortably into being a mother. She seems to be a natural.

The Biz Stuff

After spending a day with Seth Godin back in September, I arrived home energized and ready for a challenge. After all Seth, doing what he does best, provoked me and posed a challenge to me. Could I go home and ship something new this year? (Shipping is used metaphorically… it’s the art of creating something and actually getting it out into the world.)

I met with my friend Derek, who’s a crazy home-beer-brewer. He’s been brewing beer for over twelve years, and we wanted to see if we could turn that hobby into a business.

The business we decided to launch was TheBrewersMarket.com - The concept is simple. A website selling a small batch of all-grain beer. It’s a brewing system for folks who want to try making their own real beer – not like a Mr. Beer where you add water and turn on a machine; but the real deal. It will mean mashing grains, extracting sugars, and using real hops and yeast. Essentially, you follow the same process as your favorite beer maker on a very small scale. I knew nothing about making beer at home until I met Derek.

Our first official meeting was on October 5th. We sat down and filled out Seth’s Ship It Journal as our unofficial business plan.

The most important aspect of the Ship It Journal comes when you set a date. This is a date that’s set in stone and you’re basically saying, come hell or high water, we’re shipping to the world on this date.

We set a goal to launch a full-blown business within a month. November 1st was our date. Now, keep in mind, I’m talking about a full-blown business. We had one month to go from literally nothing to something special.

For example, and not limited to the following,

  • Building a website from scratch
  • Creating a marketing and launch plan (the goal was to be, not just shipping on November 1st, but making money on November 1st.)
  • Sourcing inventory and figuring out various logistics such as packaging and shipping
  • Setting up bank accounts, merchant accounts, wholesaler accounts and relationships.

The list goes on and on. When we told people about our plan, the first words were always along the lines of, “that’s impossible.” I’ll show you a few pictures of the Ship It Journal at a later date. We also used Basecamp to track our daily progress.

Anyway – skipping forward, this gives you a good idea of why my last post was somewhere in the middle of November and the one before that was in mid-October.

So how’d we do?

The business launched on November 1st as planned, but only after numerous sleepless nights. That was our first major success. At that point, I kicked into gear on an intensive marketing strategy.

This is when things got really interesting.

On December 15th, our business was featured in two major Canadian newspapers. We managed to finagle our way into The National Post in a big way and secured a mention in The Toronto Star. It was totally coincidental that they both happened on the same day. The two newspapers have a combined circulation of around four million people.

This contributed to a spike in sales almost instantly. But even more exciting was that because the story ran in The National Post, which is owned by PostMedia Network, the story was also syndicated to nearly every other major Canadian daily in nearly every major Canadian City. We assumed this meant the story would show up on their various websites. No. To our surprise, it ended up in print in literally dozens of newspapers. Our business was exposed to millions of Canadians in a single day .

A great start. But then the real magic of the Internet kicked in.

The following day, while my wife and I were driving, my iPhone started going bonkers. Taking a quick glance, I noticed these email were notifications of sales coming from the popular website Etsy. I’m talking one after another, after another, after another.

A week earlier, I was invited to write a blog post for Etsy. I carefully crafted our message and sent in the posting. I had no idea what to expect from it nor any idea if it would actually be used.

As it turned out, the post I’d written was featured on the front page of Etsy.

THEN… things got even more interesting when only four days later, my wife and I were in the hospital, smack dab in the middle of having a baby.

I can’t thank my business partners enough who kept their cool and ensured the business ran smoothly at time where my involvement and help was minimal at best. After all, I’m not Gordon Gecko, and my family comes first. Derek and Laurie had to fulfill, literally, hundreds of orders only days before Christmas.

Needless to say, one month to launch an insanely successful business, and it’s just getting better and better by the day.

You can do the same. This is the year folks.

Enough blabbering – lots of exciting things planned for 2010. I’m going to be changing up my blog in several ways and creating a whack of new sites and products. I’ll keep you in the loop.

As for my goals in 2011, I want to be a great father and keep shipping.

Cheers!
Noah

P.S. Last but not least, there are a few people I’d like to thank who helped tremendously in the successful launch of TheBrewersMarket.com.

Josh Stipancic – Josh handled all of the branding and design for our business in a very short time. We gave Josh an idea of the look and feel we were hoping for. When he returned a short while later, he had totally nailed it. Thanks Josh. He also designs some pretty amazing stuff. I’m sure he could help you too.

Shawn Veltman – Shawn is someone who’s at the top of marketing and copywriting game in Canada. I worked with Shawn on a website a few years back offering coaching and consulting servers to the chiropractic industry. He’s around 30 years old and pretty much retired. He’s good at what he does. Shawn helped me craft press releases, write blog posts, and tweak landing page headlines for optimal performance. If you ever need advice in any of these areas, contact Shawn.

Brandon Scott Photography – Brandon is a local photographer who, my partners just happened to know, and I believed he owed them a favor. He came through to help us with product shots that didn’t look like total crap. (Starting a business in a short time gave us a great opportunity to call in favors.)

Larry Cornies - Larry is a guy who knows the newspaper industry inside and out. He offered valuable advice on how to make sure our story got to the right people. His advice was spot on.

Seth Godin – Thanks for challenging me in September to go home and ship something new and exciting before the year was over.

The Little Thing Monster

October 5, 2010 in Business, Getting Things Done, Ideas with 5 Comments

This morning I had a business meeting with some colleagues to discuss a new venture we’re working on.

The meeting was great except for one thing.

The “Little Thing Monster”.

The Little Thing Monster is the monster that loves to knock you off the track. He loves it when we focus on the little things that don’t matter as much as the big important things.

Let’s be realistic for a minute about this classic lizard brain tactic. The lizard unleashes this little devil of a monster that wants to divert our attention. The monster loves it when we get caught up in the little things.

“It’s the little things that compound and snowball into big things” he says.

Now, I’m not saying that little things don’t matter. Of course they do. What I’m saying is, when you let the monster take over and let the monster shift your focus, you’ll end up stalling out and not getting anywhere.

Believe me, I understand how important the small things are. That’s not what I’m saying. The difference is that this monster’s goal is to derail you from what’s actually going to move you forward. It keeps you from looking at the big picture.

And it’s your goal to figure out what the big picture is. Figure out what needs to happen. Look at the big picture and focus, and the little things will end up happening regardless. After all, it’s the big things that make the little things worth doing.

Monster.jpg

Source: medialunadegrasa

Don’t Resist – Release.

September 29, 2010 in Business, Linchpin with 5 Comments

I have a friend who has always been wonderfully talented musician.

Many years ago, I strongly urged him to release his music to the world over the Internet and share his gift. More importantly, I wanted him to find his speck.

He resisted.

He resisted because that was not the way traditional musicians did things. He believed the old system would endure. He resisted putting his music on the Internet.

Musicians were supposed to try to get their music on the radio.

Musicians needed a record label to succeed.

It had worked for Jack Johnson, but it would never work for anyone else.

He worried people would steal his music and his lyrics. He worried he’d never become a rock star that way. He believed that if he saved his music a representative from a record label would maybe, just maybe, happen to be sitting in the club the night he was playing.

He missed an early opportunity to share his art with the world. He missed an early opportunity for his art to spread, and the world missed him.

Now he’s resisting again because he thinks it’s too late.

It’s not too late. The world is waiting and ready for your gift. All engines are fueled up, primed, and ready for lift-off like never before.

Don’t resist, release.

Imagine, over 78 Million views later, if Andy McKee had never shared his talent with us. Imagine if Andy had resisted.

Please, don’t resist.

The Speck

September 28, 2010 in Business, Creativity, E-Commerce, Internet Marketing, Life, Success, The Speck with 17 Comments

The speck is something I’ve been thinking about a lot lately.

When I found myself stuck in a dead-end office job five years ago, I quickly realized that trying to come up with the next Google or Facebook, in my spare time, was probably not going to happen. It looked as if I would continue working in the dead-end office job.

That’s when the idea of the speck came to me.

The idea was simple.

With close to a billion people using the Internet, I only needed to find 300 people, who shared my interests, were interested in what I had to offer, that would be willing to pay me $30 bucks a month, and I could find myself an office with a window.

My own office.

Only 300 people out of a billion. A teeny-tiny, yet extremely powerful, particle of dust. This is what I call the speck.

With a simple concept, like the speck, and a concrete goal on paper (300 x $30), I was off to the races.

I hit that target within a couple of weeks and left my job less than six months later. I haven’t been back to the windowless office in over five years.

Seth Godin talks about Tribes and the importance of finding your tribe. When I heard Seth speaking live last week in Chicago, he spoke about musicians and their ability to harness the power of the Internet to find their tribe and build a successful career at the same time.

The old model worked something like this: Write the music, take a loan out and record your demo, hope to be discovered by a record label, and keep hoping.

We could dive deeper into this old broken model, but your chances of being discovered and actually making money were next to none.

The new model: As Seth suggested, find 3000 fans who dig your music from that ever-growing pool of over a billion people. But find the 3000 who’d be willing to buy your new music for $30 bucks a year, and you’ve made it.

You’re done! Keep producing your art. Keep doing what you love, and earn a solid living at the same time.

$90,000 bucks a year is nothing to scoff at.

Some might argue that as the overall size of the group grows, it becomes harder and more complicated to find your speck.

3000 out of a billion.

300 out of a billion.

100 out of a billion.

In Tribes, Seth stressed that in many cases, the tribes have already been formed and they’re simply looking for a leader. “We need you to lead us”, the book’s tagline read.

I see it like this. You can find your speck faster than ever before. Your speck might even find you. There’s a good chance people on line are looking for you, or someone just like you. They’re ready to cling to you like dust mites on your Grandmother’s dining room table.

Finding 3000 people who like your music out of a billion may be easier then you think.

Finding 300 people to pay you $30 bucks a month for a service or product that you’ve poured your heart and soul into, and created just for them, is easier than you think.

Who knows, maybe your speck is even smaller. Maybe you only need a hundred people, or you may need more.

It doesn’t really matter. The whole point is this - in the big scheme of things, all you probably need to achieve success, beyond your wildest dreams, is nothing more than a tiny speck of people.

Back in 2005, I found a speck, organized them, and signed them up within two weeks. Done.

Five years later, the two weeks it took me to connect a speck of people can potentially happen a heck of a lot faster today. Maybe even overnight. All it takes is one good sneeze.

The speck is a small but insanely powerful concept for mapping your plan for success. As the size of the number of connected Internet users grows, your chances of actually finding your speck increases tremendously.

It worked for me, it can work for you.

Wise Words

September 24, 2010 in Business, Career & Work, Life with 13 Comments

Today I had a chance encounter to talk to one of the top 15 wealthiest men in Canada. They are ranked according to their net worth.

He had three simple suggestions for me.

1) Only do what you love.

2) Have a big, big, big vision.

3) Work super hard.

Wise words that can be applied to anything we do in life.

So simple, yet how many people are wandering through the world not loving what they do, without a vision, and only doing the minimum amount of work required?

Simple steps can mean big changes.

Going Into Labor

September 7, 2010 in Business, Life, Linchpin with 2 Comments

No, my wife isn’t going into labor 13 weeks early.

Instead, it’s time for me to truly get down to work. As I mentioned in my post yesterday, Labor Day in my eyes is viewed as a fresh start. It’s the first day of the rest of your working life, regardless of what happened yesterday.

The main intention of this blog over the past six months has been to inspire. I’ve wanted to inspire others to take the big leap. My goal has been to inspire those standing on the edge to take that next step, that step we’re all afraid of.

For me to take the next step in my own life, I first had to conquer an evil lizard. At this very moment, after months of hard work, the lizard has been subdued. And because of that, I need to make my move.

My blog posts may become less frequent in the coming months. I’ll do my best to continue to post often, and maybe still daily, but I’m not making any promises.

I’ve got a lot of exciting things in the works. I’ll keep you posted.

Noah

Learning To Swim

September 3, 2010 in Business, Fun Stuff, Life with 0 Comments

Have you ever bought a product from someone that promised something like instant wealth and business success in a short period of time?

We’re willing to invest insane amounts of money into products and training programs that promise immediate and instant results.

This is the reason the entire late-night infomercial world exists. It’s the reason you can supposedly make a couple of payments and transform yourself into a real estate investing expert instantly.

The realty is, and we already know it, that nothing happens instantly. We know that most of these programs are designed to make the creators rich, and make us feel better about ourselves, but only slightly and for a short time.

If a program promised you the skills of a piano virtuoso without any work, you’d know it was a scam. We understand that most things in life require constant practice and experience.

Any type of self-development is the same. Upping your game requires constant practice and experience. Malcolm Gladwell said in his book “Outliers”, that expertise and proficiency in any subject was found only after about 10,000 hours of practice.

You learn to swim by getting in the water, taking lessons, and practicing. With more and more experience, you’ll become a good swimmer.

If someone said they could turn us into Michael Phelps overnight, thousands would buy into it, and thousands would drown.

Get in the water and learn to swim. I’m on the diving board and about to take a swim. Care to join me?

Have a great weekend!

Noah

Time & Money

August 28, 2010 in Business with 1 Comment

Most advertisements focus on saving us money. They say things like 10% off – or buy one get one free.

And some ads tell us they’ll save us both time and money.

And while we all love to save money, most of us are actually far more interested in saving time. It’s the one thing we can never get enough of. It’s the one thing we’re always short on.

Two week vacations always end two weeks too soon.

The trick for marketers is understanding that people will gladly give you their money when they believe you can give them more time.

Saving time and money is merely an added bonus – provided we believe you, and you can prove it. But if you can truly find a way to give your customers the benefit of time, your customers will have no problem giving you their money.

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