Entrepreneurship
109 posts
The Best
The best teacher isn’t always the one who has a class full of students that get the best results. The best designer isn’t always the one who knows the exact amount of white space to leave. The best brand isn’t always the one that makes the most money. The best athlete doesn’t always win. And…
Make More Room For Bravery
When you’re itching to do the thing you really want to do, but don’t, what stops you? The answer is usually fear. Fear has a habit of getting in the way. Fear that people might laugh at you. Fear that your success so far was nothing but luck. Fear that you’ll fail. Fail in whose…
Why Startups Stall
It’s easy to start something today. Now that the gatekeepers are leaving their gates and the barrier to entry is lower than ever, anyone with an idea and an Internet connection can start a business. You don’t need a big staff on payroll or a factory to get the work done. So more people are…
Why Bother?
Why bother having a customer care line that informs of a thirty minute wait and asks people to call back later? Why bother selling an awards based credit card, then capping the points your customers can earn? Why bother creating cheap for the masses, when you can deliver quality to the few? Why both
When Will You Draw The Line?
When my mother left school aged just 14 she was sent to the Royal Candy sweet factory, to dip caramel by hand into big vats of icing, (pink or white). On the evening of her first day she told her widowed mother (who was raising 11 children single-handed), that she hated it and she wasn’t…
20 Questions To Answer Before Asking How Much Money Can I Make?
1. Why do I want to do this? 2. What do I care about? 3. What brings me joy? 4. What am I good at? 5. What’s scarce? 6. What problem can I solve? 7. Who needs me? 8. How can I make a difference? 9. How can I deliver value? 10.What can I change?…
They Miss Us Now We’re Gone
The shopping malls are empty and the big department store owners are worried. They’ve finally got the memo. They realise that they can’t out-stock Amazon, or price match the guy from Seoul selling wallets on eBay. So they’re trying to woo us back with loyalty cards, air miles and faster ways to chec
The Sure Thing
If you’ve ever watched surfers you’ll know that they spend far more time reading the waves, than riding them. And despite all of the waiting, watching and experience, they still sometimes choose the wrong wave to ride. In the end they take their best guess, commit and go. And so it goes for ideas to
How To Charge What You’re Worth
The days when you clocked in and out, and got paid by the hour for dipping squares of caramel into big vats of icing, (pink or white—a job my mother did for years), at the factory, are largely gone. You don’t get paid for showing up. And yet that’s how many creative entrepreneurs try to…
The Story Makes The Product Better
For three decades, 10% of the population of the tiny Welsh town, Cardigan, made jeans. 35,000 pairs every week. Then one day the factory died, and the jean artisans could no longer practice their art. They simply had no way to do the thing they did well, until Hiut Denim was founded. Now the company
How Dollar Shave Club Succeeds With A Better Brand Story
How does a startup come on to the scene, take on giant global brands like Gillette, and win? That’s what Dollar Shave Club did, by harnessing the power of great brand storytelling. This is how they did it. By telling the truth, and keeping it simple. With an easy to remember brand name and tagline,…
Understanding The Problem To Solve
There are a million and one web hosting services on the market. It’s hardly a niche. The market is so saturated, why would you consider launching yet another one? That’s exactly what my friend Kelly did. Her hosting business doesn’t stand out by competing on spec, or uptime. Kelly differentiates by
Because It Matters
How do you stand out when there are two other juice bars on the same street, and half a dozen ‘good enough’ life coaches just three clicks away? If you’ve got the same choices as the competition, how you choose can make all the difference. Do you make decisions based on what’s gone before, or…
Valuing Creatives. When Love Is Not Enough
No business owner would expect to rent an office for half the going rate, or buy a delivery van for far less than it was worth. Not even a fledgling, bootstrapping, startup founding, entrepreneur. And yet every day designers, creatives and freelancers are asked to drop their rates, do a deal, or con
Being The Most
In the 80’s Starbucks set out to be the most inspiring coffee brand on the planet. When they forgot this in the 90’s and tried becoming the most ubiquitous, they lost their way. If you could be ‘the most’ to people what ‘most’ would you be? Most reliable. Most irresistible. Most ubiquitous. Most lov
How Can I Make Money From My Idea?
Asking this question is a terrible place to start. I don’t know of many great ideas where the first question the creator asked was, “How can I make money from this idea?” You’ve got to care about the idea and understand the problem you are setting out to solve first. Not in a naive ,…
Signal Versus Noise. You Get To Choose.
I’ve always loved the name of the blog at 37Signals… Signal vs Noise. They chose well. They write well too. Signal versus noise perfectly describes how we are living and working right now. We want to be connected, both as business entities and as human beings. But we’re sacrificing hearing the signa
If Only You Could Write Like Malcolm Gladwell
WANTED “A professional writer talented in non-fiction storytelling with a passion for the topics of startups, social entrepreneurship, cutting-edge science and technology, and the psychology of the crowd, capable of crafting non-fiction pieces that are captivating and massively popular (think Freako
The Magic Of Making It Up As You Go Along
In Robin Sloan’s Fish: a tap essay, he asks what it means to love something on the Internet. Liking with a single click of the mouse is not the same as loving. To love something means to be moved enough to want more. It means to go back, retrace your steps, to linger. Yesterday I…
How To Standout
Care more. Do what you say you’re going to do. Stand in other people’s shoes. Solve problems. Fix what’s broken. Change how people feel. Create what you want to see in the world. Don’t wait for an invitation. Think beyond what’s possible. Get over your fear. Act. Rinse and repeat. Image by EIO.
