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“When setting out on a journey, do not seek advice from those who have never left home.”
Rumi
“Successful entrepreneurship is an ongoing self-improvement process.”
Sean Murphy
I have use several slight variations of this same quote, the all begin with “successful entrepreneurship is an ongoing self-improvement…” and end slightly differently see “Successful Entrepreneurship Is Ongoing Self-Improvement.”
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“Fall seven times, stand up eight.”
Japanese Proverb “Nana-Korobi, Ya-Oki”
In the early years, I had some midnight-of-your-soul type of times.
Once, I came home from a fair and found the window in my cabin blown in. Snow was all over. It was 20 below and 3 in the morning. I hadn’t made any money and the car had just barely made it there. I really believe that success is just getting up one more time than you fall. It doesn’t come from one brilliant idea, but from a bunch of small decisions that accumulate over the years. And you shouldn’t underestimate the amount of work that’s involved, the amount of fear that’s involved.
Roxanne Quimby in “How I Did It: Roxanne Quimby” from Inc. Magazine.
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“Face the facts of being what you are, for that is what changes what you are.”
Soren Kierkegaard
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“Courage can’t see around corners, but goes around them anyway.”
Mignon McLauglin
I used this to open my blog post of 2008 “Hello 2008”
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“The long tail is a dead zone for each individual contributor, but a goldmine for the ones who can provide the platform.”
Thomas Baekdal (@baekdal) “The Myth of the 99 Cent Book“
context
“We can always find isolated examples of people or companies making millions selling something at a very low price. It is the age-old problem with the Long tail.
The long tail looks like this. At the top you have a few big successes, followed by a herd of people who are not making a profit. The long tail is a dead zone for each individual contributor, but a goldmine for the ones who can provide the platform.”
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“The path of least resistance is what makes rivers run crooked.”
Elbert Hubbard
“Day, n. A period of twenty-four hours, mostly misspent.”
Ambrose Bierce “The Devil’s Dictionary”
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“Some people never learn anything because they understand everything too soon.”
Alexander Pope
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“Advanced technology is indistinguishable from a sufficiently rigged demo.” Andy Finkel
a riff on Arthur C. Clarke’s Three Laws from his essay collection “Profiles of the Future”
When a distinguished but elderly scientist states that something is possible, he is almost certainly right. When he states that something is impossible, he is very probably wrong.
The only way of discovering the limits of the possible is to venture a little way past them into the impossible.
Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
other variations on “sufficiently advanced”
“Any technology distinguishable from magic is insufficiently advanced.”
Gehm’s Corollary to Clarke’s Third Law
Not too late to register for the October 12 Great Demo Workshop in San Jose if you want to make some magic of your own–or embrace Nature if that’s your preference.
“In high school, popularity is more important than anywhere else, but popularity is not a measure of likability.
Popularity is composed of three elements: visibility, recognizability and influence.
The people in school who have those three qualities are often that way because they conform to a standard. Meanwhile, the kids who won’t or can’t conform are the ones who are left out. Nonconformity is a wonderful trait, and it’s going to be valued in adulthood.
If you’re different in school, that makes you an outsider. If you’re different as an adult, that makes you interesting, fun and often successful.”
We are trying an experiment tomorrow, instead of a book we will be talking about a short (200 words) but insightful blog post by Seth Godin “Texting While Working” that addresses several challenges many bootstrappers wrestle judging by the breakfast conversations I take part in.
Our panel:
Organizer: Francis Adanza, Dir. Professional Services, LeadFormix
On October 12, we are hosting Peter Cohan’s Great Demo! Workshop. It is open to the public and often participates travel from afar. The all day workshop held at the Moorpark Hotel, which several past attendees have stayed at and enjoyed. Here are some additional hotels that are nearby listed in increasing distance from the from Moorpark Hotel.
Woodcrest
5415 Stevens Creek Boulevard, Santa Clara, CA 95050 (408) 446-9636
Hilton Garden
10741 North Wolfe Road, Cupertino, CA 95014 -(408) 777-8787
Cypress Hotel
10050 S. De Anza Blvd. Cupertino, CA 95014 (408) 253-8900
Prospects gain an appreciation for your expertise and ability to understand and to solve their problems through what you write, what you say, and what your customers’ say about you. You should have a plan for developing referrals and testimonials, but I want to focus writing and public speaking as opportunities to demonstrate your expertise and give prospects a reason to believe that you can assist them. These outbound messaging strategies will complement your referral program and are essential to attracting new customers and cultivating valuable long-term business relationships.
Here are some suggestions for practices that will help you routinely refine and curate your thoughts.
Written content:
Collect Good Questions & Your Good Answers: When you get a good question from a prospect or a customer take the time to write up a succinct answer in a follow up e-mail (even if you have answered it in a phone call or face to face meeting).
Refine & Generalize Your Good Answers: save your e-mail in a special folder for “good answers” and set aside time every week or month to reviewing and refining it so that it becomes a more general answer that’s applicable to more than just the person you initially answered it for.
Start a FAQ on your website: If you don’t have one it’s worth considering starting a “Frequently Asked Questions” list. If a particular question indicates you have a defect in our standard presentation or marketing materials it’s more appropriate to fix the source of the question instead.
Reformat Your Generalized Good Answers: Convert good answers into articles or blog posts.
Talks
Make the Time to Rehearse: Always leave time to rehearse in front of at least one other person before you give the live talk.
Record Your Talks: Record at least the audio for your talks and listen to both your presentation and any Q&A. Listen to it again a few days later and a month or two later.
Consider Writing an Article: either as a leave behind instead of your slides or as another blog post.
Never Give a Talk Only Once: Considering the cost in time to develop and rehearse a good talk, you want to find at least three opportunities to give a talk or variations on it.
Videotape A Good Talk In Front Of An Audience: Once you have given a talk two or three times live either do a video recording of it or arrange to have later versions videotaped. You will look and sound much better in front of a live audience with a talk you are comfortable giving and this will come through on the video. Consider editing it into a couple of 5-10 minute chunks if you can to use as teasers, summaries, or good stand-alone content.
For more testimonial videos see Peter Cohan’s YouTube Channel. We are offering another Great Demo Workshop October 12 in San Jose:
Create and Deliver Surprisingly Compelling Software Demonstrations
“Do The Last Thing First” — the recipe for a Great Demo!
When: Wednesday, October 12, 2011 8 am – 5 pm
Where: Moorpark Hotel, 4241 Moorpark Ave, San Jose CA 95129 For out of town attendees: The Moorpark is located 400 feet from the Saratoga Ave exit on Hwy 280, about 7 miles from San Jose Airport and 35 miles from San Francisco Airport
Cost: $590
Before Sept. 28: $566
This is an interactive workshop with Peter Cohan geared especially for you who demonstrate B-to-B software to your customer and channels. Bring a copy of your demo and be prepared to present it — we’ll help you turn it into a surprisingly compelling demo!
This seminar outlines a framework for the creation and delivery of improved demos and presentations to enable increased success in the marketing, sale, and deployment of software and related products. Whether it’s face to face, in a webinar, as a screencast, or as a self-running demo the ability to present the key benefits of your software product is essential to generating prospect interest and ultimately revenue. Peter Cohan of The Second Derivative gives us the recipe for a Great Demo!
I will sometimes encounter an entrepreneur or team who is developing “a general purpose toolkit for X.” This may be at a Bootstrapper Breakfast or other networking event. They have often developed a core of a promising technology and see applications for it everywhere.
Here is what I normally suggest:
Write up a few examples or use cases that are extremely specific as to need and benefit.
It’s OK if these examples only apply to a very narrow population or niche market. The most important thing is that they bring the prospect a lot of improvement–preferably that they can quantify–to their current situation.
You have to be careful that you can envision all of these possibilities but they come with “some assembly required.” It’s the fate of an entrepreneur with a new product to see broad applicability, and you may ultimately achieve that, but focus on where you would bring the most value rapidly.
Think about offering a new Perl compiler and saying “you can do anything you want with it.” If you have paying customers look at what they have done with it. Specifically. What benefits have they gained?
The highly effective teams I have been a member of used a rapid prototyping approach to help bound uncertainties/risks in the project and delayed making decisions when more information would improve the situation, unless any further delay was effectively a decision. I think that a lot of individual productivity comes from problems avoided by a high level of trust, cooperation, and teamwork.
I think that there are broadly three classes of skills needed to develop software that customers pay for and use:
figuring out what the customer really needs, and will use and pay for,
architecting a solution,
getting it debugged and into operation.
I have seen folks that were excellent in one of the three areas and good in the others, but the best teams seem to have different people taking the lead on these three aspects of defining and delivering a system.
Wednesday, October 26, 2011Dave Stubenvoll, CEO & Co-Founder Wowza Media, Inc., Francis Adanza, Dir. Professional Services, Zephyr, Inc. and Sean Murphy, CEO SKMurphy, Inc. share insights from the book about how they explore uncertain and ambiguous opportunities.
The book examines the nature of the opportunities that entrepreneurs pursue, problems and tasks they face, traits and skills they require, and the social and economic contributions they make; and then compares those realities with features of large, established companies. Entrepreneurs pursue opportunities with different levels of uncertainty, investment requirements, and likely profit. They survive and prosper because of an ongoing ability to adapt to opportunities and problems, are subjected to many detours, and stumble often along the way.
At first we didn’t know what to call it, so we called it what happened. “Do you believe what happened?” “They think he died in what happened.” It was weeks before we called it 9/11. Sometimes tragedy takes time to find a name.
Peggy Noonan in “We’ll Never Get Over It, Nor Should We“
I apologize for this detour from my usual exploration of entrepreneurial issues, but this anniversary of my complete confusion on 9/11/2001 is one that I continue to observe: still attempting a decade later to make sense of it.
One thing I was certain of was that we would be attacked again, and more than once.
“The first mission of the war that followed 9/11 was to prevent any further attacks. That mission was accomplished. That is a fact often forgotten.”
George Friedman “9/11 and the Successful War“
Some very serious people, many of them no doubt quite young, must have been working hard to forestall further attacks.
“Ultimately, there are three lessons of the last decade that I think are important. The first is the tremendous success the United States has had in achieving its primary goal — blocking attacks on the homeland. The second is that campaigns of dubious worth are inevitable in war, and particularly in one as ambiguous as this war has been. Finally, all wars end, and the idea of an interminable war dominating American foreign policy and pushing all other considerations to the side is not what is going to happen.”
George Friedman “9/11 and the Successful War“
That’s something I will reflect on today as I give thanks for things turning out much better than I would have ever anticipated. And I will take time to remember the sacrifices of so many on that day.
“Three hundred forty-three firemen gave their lives that day. Three hundred forty-three! It was impossible, like everything else.
Many heartbreaking things happened after 9/11 and maybe the worst is that there’s no heroic statue to them, no big marking of what they were and what they gave, at the new World Trade Center memorial.
But New York will never get over what they did. They live in a lot of hearts.
They tell us to get over it, they say to move on, and they mean it well: We can’t bring an air of tragedy into the future. But I will never get over it. To get over it is to get over the guy who stayed behind on a high floor with his friend who was in a wheelchair. To get over it is to get over the woman by herself with the sign in the darkness: “America You Are Not Alone.” To get over it is to get over the guys who ran into the fire and not away from the fire.
