Tips, stories and news to grow your business
How to Tie the Perfect Tie... Every Time
Great short "how to" video clip
from Tim Ferriss...
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Promote Your Business With Coupons and Contests
Find out why offering customers coupons or giving them free
products is beneficial for your business.
While the name guerrilla
marketing was conceived in 1980 with the first guerrilla marketing book, there
is evidence of guerrilla marketers way before that. In 1895, C. W. Post, the
cereal manufacturer, offered the first money-off coupon ever issued in the
United States. The one-cent off coupon came with Grape Nuts cereal. By turn of
the century standards, this was very guerrilla-ish, and a lot of money. Today
the use of coupons has grown so much that consumers have saved over $4 billion
dollars since coupons were invented. Not bad for just a little clipping and
redemption. Coupons bring a consumer to a business to spend more than the
incentive cost of the coupon. That's the basic concept of using coupons. That's
guerrilla marketing.
More...
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Why Startups Should ALWAYS Compromise When Hiring
Theres a non-zero chance that youre reading this because you were thinking: What the heck is he talking about? Shouldn't startups be hiring the best people possible? What's this about compromising?
And, if
you were thinking that, youd be right. Startups should hire the best people possible.
But, if you re-read the title, youll notice that Im saying you should
always compromise.
Why? Because theres no such thing as the absolutely perfect hire along
every possible dimension. If you recruit people that you think were a
no-compromise hire, youre deluding yourself with unrealistic
expectations. Nobodys perfect (and if they are, you probably couldnt
recruit or afford them anyways).
Everyone you bring on is a compromise. The trick is to compromise on the right things.
Let me explain. Here are several different attributes or dimensions of awesomeness you might seek for your startup recruit:
1. Passion: Are they fired-up?
2. Experience: Have they done this particular job before? Did they succeed at it?
3. Intelligence: Are they smart?
4. Academics: Do they have the right degree? From the right place?
5. Hunger: Are they motivated? Are they ambitious?
6. Risk-Tolerance: Can they share the risk? Or, are they looking to make fair market value?
7. Scrappiness: Can they get by with little? Are they resourceful?
8. Loyalty: Can you get them to commit to your cause? Will they be fiercely loyal?
Those are just a few I thought of off the top of my head. Its by no means a complete list. I intentionally left out things like integrity, because its hard to argue in favor of compromising on integrity. Thats just plain stupid.
But just about all of the attributes listed above could be compromised a little in exchange for something else. For example, if you were somehow able to grade a recruit along all these dimensions, you might find that someone scores average in the academics dimension but is off-the-charts smart (happens all the time). So, you might decide that its OK for them not to have an ivy league degree. Or, someone might be so smart, passionate and entrepreneurial but lacking in experience. Perhaps thats OK too. Or, maybe you really do have to have the absolutely perfect person along every possible dimension, but theyre so good, youre just not sure youre going to be able to keep them engaged. Perhaps youll have to compromise on the loyalty front.
The point is, like with just about everything related to startups (and lots of things in life), there are tradeoffs. You need to figure out which dimensions are absolutely critical (where you will not give), and which ones youre willing to compromise a little on. Theres no right answer it depends on your business, your culture, your values and your instincts.
What
do you think? Which attributes of people
do you value the most? What would you be willing to compromise on, if you
could get almost everything else? What things do you hold inviolate that
you would never compromise on? Please leave a comment.
From OnStartUps.com
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Automatic Money Flow
(From Tim Ferris' blog)
Case study: Michelles Automation System
To see how this will work, lets use Michelle as an example:
Michelle gets paid once a month. Her employer deducts 5 percent of her pay automatically and puts it in her 401(k). The rest of Michelles paycheck goes to her checking account by direct deposit.
About a day later, her Automatic Money Flow begins transferring money out of her checking account. Her Roth IRA retirement account will pull 5 percent of her salary for itself. Her savings account will pull 5 percent, automatically breaking that money into chunks: 2 percent for a wedding sub-account, 2 percent to a house down-payment sub-account, and 1% for an upcoming vacation. (That takes care of her monthly savings goals.)
Her system also automatically pays her fixed costs like Netflix, cable, and insurance. Shes set it up so that most of her subscriptions and bills are paid by her credit card. Some of her bills cant be put on credit cardsfor example, utilities and loansso theyre automatically paid out of her checking account. Finally, shes automatically e-mailed a copy of her credit card bill for a monthly five-minute review. After shes reviewed it, the bill is also paid from her checking account.
The money that remains in her account is used for guilt-free spending money.
To make sure she doesnt overspend, shes focused on two big wins: eating out and spending money on clothes.
She sets alerts in her Mint account if she goes over her spending goals, and she keeps a reserve of $500 in her checking account just in case. (The couple of times she went over her spending, she paid herself back using her unexpected expenses money from her sub-savings account.) To track spending more easily, she uses her credit card as much as possible to pay for all of her fun stuff. If she uses cash for cabs or coffee, she keeps the receipts and tries to enter them into Mint as often as possible.
In the middle of the month, Michelles calendar reminds her to check her Mint account to make sure shes within her limits for her spending money. If shes doing fine, she gets on with her life. If shes over her limit, she decides what she needs to cut back on to stay on track for the month. Luckily, she has fifteen days to get it right, and by politely passing on an invitation to dine out she gets back on track.
By the end of the month, shes spent less than two hours
monitoring her finances, yet shes invested 10 percent, saved 5 percent (in
sub-buckets for her wedding and down payment), paid all of her bills on time,
paid off her credit card in full, and spent exactly what she wanted to spend.
She had to say no only once, and it was no big deal. In fact, none of it was.
(complete article..)
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WHY YOU NEVER QUESTION A DRUNK
I was shopping at the local supermarket where I
selected:
A half-gallon of 2% milk
A carton of eggs
A quart of
orange juice
A head of lettuce
A 2 lb. can of coffee
A 1 lb. package of
bacon
As I was unloading my items on the conveyor belt to check out, a
drunk standing behind me watched as I placed the items in front of the
cashier.
While the cashier was ringing up the purchases, the drunk calmly
stated, 'You must be single.'
I was a bit startled by this proclamation,
but I was intrigued by the derelict's intuition, since I was indeed
single. I looked at the six items on the belt and saw nothing particularly
unusual about my selections that could have tipped off the drunk to my
marital status.
Curiosity getting the better of me, I said: 'Well, you
know what, you're absolutely right. But how on earth did you know
that?'
The drunk replied, 'Cause you're
ugly."
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I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed.
Lucky people persevere in the face of failure. You've all seen that Nike commercial from Michael Jordan, right? "I've missed more than 9000 shots in my career. I've lost almost 300 games. 26 times, I've been trusted to take the game winning shot and missed. I've failed over and over and over again in my life. And that is why I succeed."
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doing nothing will get you nowhere
(copied from somewhere)
You have
control over your own actions and how you think about the events that impact
your life. None us can control the outcomes, but your actions can increase the
probability that desired outcomes will occur. There are no guarantees in life.
The only guarantee is that doing nothing will get you nowhere.
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Finding the Perfect Office Chair
Hello fellow desk - bound
entrepreneurs! Getting a high quality chair is on my to-do
list.
From the blog of Tim Ferris...
From the blog of Tim Ferris...
|
Finding the Perfect Office Chair: Aeron vs. Swiss Ball vs. the FBI’s Pick…
(Total read time: 8 minutes) In January of 2005, I found myself on a veranda in Panama after the usual afternoon rain, dreaming of the upcoming year and reflecting on lessons learned since leaving the US. Maria Elena, the matriarch of the Panamanian family that had adopted me, sipped her iced tea and pointed at my bruised feet: “Tim, let me share some advice I was once given. Buy the most comfortable bed and pair of shoes you can afford. If you’re not in one, you’ll be in the other.” I followed her advice upon returning to CA and the results were sudden: Plantar Fasciitis disappeared, as did shoulder impingement after switching from coil-spring to foam-layered mattresses. But what about chairs? On January 4th, 2009, I tweeted out the following:
… Even though I’m financially comfortable now, I didn’t grow up spending a lot of money, which I’m thankful for. To this day, I’ve never paid for first-class airfare for myself. Not that it isn’t worth it — I just can’t do it. Similarly, I had trouble believing a chair could possibly be worth $850-$1,200, but my back pain led me to pose the question to the omniscient Interweb. How did others feel? |
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