Out of Town

I'm lucky enough to have family visiting. I've been traveling; ergo, my blog suffers.

I think the time in new cities with fresh perspectives has been good. I'm reinvigorated. I'm feeling imaginative.

Best Regards.

The Important Matter of Value

Before we get started today, let's quickly define convention, just to ensure we're all on the same page.

When I talk about value, I mean something that is worth money. Value is something that someone will pay for. If you provide a person with value, be it a good or a service, you can expect a denomination of dollars in return. If you think you are providing someone something, but they don't want to trade the contents of their purse, then you don't have something of value. I know there is a lot of hype these days about good business being about more than money, blah blah blah. It's bullshit, at least in the beginning. Before you can have a business that is about more than money, it needs to be about money.

That paragraph prior is redundant, but ever so important.

Because without that fiat currency, you won't be able to rent an office, employ a staff, develop a website or market your offering. The world goes around because money makes it spin.

And let me make one thing clear, I have serious beef with people who don't understand, nay, refuse to accept, this concept. Listen here, hippy: You can protest and hunger-strike all you like, but in my eyes, that's the easy way out. Your goals would be much more graspable if you were to just realize the rules that govern our globe. If only you would work your way up the corporate ladder, so that once on top you could make the right, responsible strategic decisions with a real impact. But that would require foresight and determination, not to say that all hippies lack such qualities.

Anyways, back to the lecture at hand, I've talked a little bit about how implementing something of value is crucial to business success. But in penning my last post, I feel I might have skipped a beat. Allow me to backtrack, please. I have come to believe, through brutal experience, that your idea of value, and your target market's idea of value, can be completely different. The question then, becomes how do we efficiently and effectively bridge this rift?

Communicate. More specifically, communicate with your potential customers. Ask strangers in your target market what they are looking for. Ask strangers, objective, critical strangers - the opposite of your mother. It sounds easy, but it takes action. You might be surprised by what you hear. But as long as you can adapt, you'll be fine. Get the hard stuff out of the way early. It's going to be a lot harder when you find out, 6 months and innumerable expenses later at the launch of your first product, that you've got a flop on your hands.

Find out what the needs are of the clients you want to serve. Listen to their answers and follow-up with more questions. Understand why their needs are important to them.

NOTE: I'm sort of just laying the framework, figuring out for the direction of this blog as I go. In doing so I'm applying the principle I'll touch on in my next post.

NOTE II: Once I'm happy with this here foundation I've laid, I'll get more specific and detailed by illustrating my posts with my own personal examples over the course of the last 6 months. Bear with me, for now; it'll be worth it, I promise.

Ideas are Irrelevant

You have a great idea for a business, do you? You're going to change the world, right? I hate to be the bearer of bad news (not really), but hear me now: Your idea doesn't matter.

This critically important notion was a particularly difficult lesson for me to learn. That's why I'm sharing it with you so early on, in the most nascent stages of this here internet blog. Personally speaking, I'm an idea man. I am easily excited and I love to think about big picture possibilities. I have approximately 12 million and 6 ideas for ways to change the world. Too bad I'm unable to implement most of them.

That's what it boils down to, friends: Implementation and action. If you can't make it happen, it won't translate to dollars. And dollars, are what this business thing is all about - at least in the beginning. If you don't have cashflow you don't have a business.

I implore you then, to stop spending your days daydreaming about a diverse plethora of lofty ideas. To start the meander down your path to start-up success, just zoom in on one of these great plans, preferably one that provides people in need, something of value (value being something that they will happily hand you "scrilla" for) and make it happen.

Coming up next: How to figure out if your idea has value, and strategies for making it happen. Stay tuned!

Reading List

This seems like a good place to start. I try to read a lot of books.

It's been more difficult than usual, what with business being crazy and all. It's also worth thanking the heavens/my parents for that eReader. English books in Bratislava are few and far between.

No matter what I read, I try to read it actively. Having a pen at hand (or stylus, should I be flipping through electronic pages) helps keep me engaged. I think about what I'm reading and apply it to work and my life. Here's my list of books read for 2010, so far:

At Bonus Time, No-one Can Hear You Scream - David Charters

The Greatest Show on Earth - Richard Dawkins

Accidental Billionaires- Ben Mezrich

Blink- Malcolm Gladwell

The 50th Law - Robert Greene

99 Ways to Increase Your Income - Frank Martin

The Richest Man in Babylon - George S. Clason

Save the Cat - Blake Snyder

The Design of Business - Roger Martin

Any suggestions of your own? I'd be delighted to hear them.

In The Beginning

Is where I now find myself.

I've been slogging away at this "Start-Up Game" for a few months now. In that time, where incredible frustration and extreme reward have consistently co-mingled, I have penned down my thoughts privately, almost on the daily. But I think I'm ready to move beyond the confines of my desktop Word document.

There exists an array of blogs, books and tweets from successful entrepreneurs. I read a number of them with indefatigably, and have learned an egregious amount. But I have struggled to find anybody reporting from the trenches, so to speak.

That's the niche that I will use this space to try and tackle. I'll rant about the occasional success and the plethora of failure that I experience each day, not to say that I'll be blogging each day. I will use this primarily as a tool to help me reflect on actions our business has taken and actions that we wish we hadn't taken. It is my hope that the perspective will be unique and add value to others out there who are in the midst of, or contemplating, blazing their own trail.

UPDATE: I need to add some value to this post, even if it's stolen value

UPDATE II: A little more stolen value.