entrepreneurs
256 posts
You Don’t Have To Matter To Everyone
We weren’t meant to be sitting next to each other. The European blonde, who didn’t want to be separated from her boyfriend for 10 hours overnight between Perth to Dubai, asked if I would mind moving to the middle seat in the row behind. So this is how I got chatting to a the chap…
Demographics Vs. Worldviews
It’s impossible now to presume everything about your customers just because you know their age, sex and postcode. In a digital world, that enables ever increasing possibilities and choices, people are no longer constrained by location, age, or gender, and they are not so easy to put into a box eithe
What Do Your Customers Care About?
Let’s look at some cold, hard, and fun facts. A search on Instagram one morning in mid-September for #me, gave me over 123 million results. Just 18 hours later a further 466,000 had been added. Let’s round that up to half a million a day, which means 26,000 photos with the hashtag ‘me’ are uploaded…
Hedging Is Risky
Have ever been scared to share more about what you stand for? Concerned about opening up about who you really are on your website? Anxious that the products and services you offer might put some people off? You’re not alone. One of the greatest challenges entrepreneurs feel keenly is the fear of sca
The Uncommon Advantage
In the 80s you’d walk into a record shop and the store owner, along with the record company would literally tell you what to buy. In every store there was a wall with 100 square compartments, numbered unsurprisingly—TOP 100. You got to chose from what everyone else liked, or what DJs were playing th
5 Steps To Getting Things Done, Strategy Before Tactics
On rare sunny, summer days at the beach in Dublin, my brother and I would have long, drawn out arguments about how deep and wide to dig the moat around our sandcastle. Obsessing over the tactics feels like the important work. We can often trick ourselves into jumping ahead to details that don’t yet
The Purpose Of Innovation In A ‘Needless’ Economy
For the most part in the West we have everything we need. Roofs over our heads, food in the fridge and a lot more besides. Even in the developing world where more people have mobile phones than have access to toilets, it seems that sometimes ‘wants’ trump real needs. So, if we have everything we…
6 Ways To Become Part Of Your Customer’s Story
Think about the rituals that punctuate your days. Freshly boiled water poured over scented tea, your morning workout, or favourite mug. The ten minutes you use to brainstorm ideas in Evernote, checking emails, or meeting colleagues at lunchtime, your ring tone, playlist, date night….each one adding
What Story Are You Selling?
It feels risky to put the words story and selling side by side in the same sentence. ‘Selling’ someone on something has had a bad rap since the days of snake oil salesmen with their bogus claims, snappy taglines and half truths designed to make people buy more of the average this or that. Although…
5 Questions To Ask Before You Schedule A Meeting That Matters
Have you ever been on a Skype call where you could hear the person on the other end trying to quietly eat their lunch in the background? Don’t ever do that. Firstly it’s bad for your digestion, and honestly if you don’t make yourself have a break to eat, what’s the point of getting out…
Make It Look Like Duarte
It’s possible to hire someone to create a slide deck in the style of Duarte for less than the hourly rate of a half decent designer. It’s no longer good enough to have technical skill in a world where a client can access a million freelancers online and hire based on price and need. Yes,…
Rethinking The Great Email Smash And Grab
The world has conditioned us from toddlerhood to understand that ‘most’ is what matters. Even a two year old instinctively knows that having just one more chocolate chip cookie than his sister is a good thing. Life teaches you that the people with the most win and so the quest for more begins pretty
3 Questions Every Innovator Needs To Ask
Microsoft is discounting it’s ‘Surface’ tablet just to get traction in the market. Even with all their innovation and marketing firepower Microsoft can’t make people care enough to switch, or belong. Innovation isn’t just about making something that works well, (I’ve never used a Surface, but I’m gu
What Are Your Metrics?
It’s easy to count Facebook likes and numbers of Twitter followers. And we’ve found ways to justify the ‘return on investment’ of a billboard that’s passed by 20,000 people every day. It’s easy to advocate for doing things that we can measure. A metric of any kind feels safe, and it’s got deniabilit
The Most Powerful Person In The World
During the summer of 1994 while on a lunch break at his new company NeXT, Steve Jobs struck up a conversation with some of his team in the lunch room about power. Here’s what he told them. “The most powerful person in the world is the storyteller. The storyteller sets the vision, values and agenda…
Measurable Or Important
In marketing as in management what we can measure gets done. But do metrics enable us to tick the right boxes, or are we ignoring what’s really important? When I was pregnant with my second son, the local health authority set about improving patient waiting times at antenatal clinics. Performance in
Why Starbucks Wins
You could have made a cup of instant coffee at home for a few cents this morning. Or you could even have splashed out on a flavoured Nespresso, brewed in your kitchen at 60 cents a shot. So why did you go to Starbucks and pay eight times that price for a commodity? A marketer…
The Fortune Cookie Principle. The Keys To Telling Your Brand Story
I’ve been working to get my new book into your hands for the past nine months, so I’m thrilled to let you know that The Fortune Cookie Principle: The 20 Keys to a Great Brand Story and Why Your Business Needs One is now available on Amazon. The Kindle edition is on sale at the…
You Don’t Need A Marketing Plan
Every business has a plan. Even if it’s written on the back of a Post-it note. The plan talks about the idea. Who it’s for. How to bring it to market, at what cost and how to get the word out. That final piece of the puzzle is your marketing plan, and yes it’s usually…
Narrow And Deep Vs. The Market Of Everyone
When you were ten years old all any marketer needed to know about you, or the people in your street was that you owned a TV. In a world of limited choices big companies could afford to cast the net wide across the masses. No depth required. This tactic doesn’t work so well now that…
