A must watch for any entrepreneur, entrepreneur-in-the-making, student in any school, marketers . . . . anyone in business. Most valuable if you are NOT an architect, this movie is less about architecture (the WHAT), and more about digging down inside the self (the WHY) in order to “open the floodgates“, and unleash what’s inside (the HOW) in order to integrate WHAT you do with WHO you are (the WHAT + the WHO = the HOW) in a manner that is congruent to your own persona, philosophy and personality (the WHY).

There’s a conspiracy of misinformation and half truths, one of them is the quote:
“It’s not about you, it’s about the people that you choose to surround yourself with”. I believe consultants must have come up with this quote.
It’s not wrong, it’s just that it is a 1/2 truth, for TWO main reasons:

2. 2. Finding, convincing to join and retain top-notch employees & consultants is a rare skill
      and
   3. Guiding these employees and consultant to follow the plan within the vision, and the guidelines is no small feat

Therefore, it is all about you, but not in a selfish way. Bill Gates surrounded himself of MVP (most valuable people), but he was the one with the vision, he saw what nobody else (who could execute) could see, and he sold the team to give 100% toward his vision. Sure he listened to everyone worth listening to along the way, incorporated thoughts and ideas into his own thoughts and ideas.

How does this affect you as the entrepreneur? It does, in many ways:

• The journey and the communication starts within you: not only WHAT you do, nor HOW you do it, but the essence of WHY you do it. Steve Job wanted to free people from using user unfriendly computers. Have you discovered the WHY you are an entrepreneur? is it only money?

Nothing is created, nothing is destroyed, everything is transformed

There’s a conspiracy of misinformation and half truths, one of them is the quote: “It’s not about you, it’s about the people that you choose to surround yourself with”. I believe consultants must have come up with this quote. It’s not wrong, it’s just that it is a 1/2 truth, for TWO main reasons:

1. Finding, convincing to join and retain top-notch employees & consultants is a rare skill and
2. Guiding these employees and consultant to follow the plan within the vision, and the guidelines is no small feat

Therefore, it is all about you, but not in a selfish way. Bill Gates surrounded himself of MVP (most valuable people), but he was the one with the vision, he saw what nobody else (who could execute) could see, and he sold to the team the concept to give 100% toward his vision. Sure he listened to everyone worth listening to along the way, incorporated thoughts and ideas into his own thoughts and ideas.

How does this affect you as the entrepreneur? It does, in many ways:

• The journey and the communication starts within you: not only WHAT you do, nor HOW you do it, but the essence of WHY you do it. Steve Job wanted to free people from using user unfriendly computers. Have you discovered the WHY you are an entrepreneur? is it only money?
• If it’s just money, that is the WHY and the WHO that will be the driving force of the business, that will determine the hiring that you will be doing (more WHO), your management style as well as theirs (HOW), the corporate culture of the company (HOW), the language and vocabulary that will show up over and over in emails, memos, web site copy, marketing collateral, and conversations (HOW).
• Strategy. Got a strategy to fulfill the vision, and a plan to achieve it. And if you don’t . . . that’s also a strategy, whether it is valid or invalid the point is mute, since it is part of the WHO you are. It would not be Debbie Fields, that Debbie that sold Mrs Fields Inc. for $800 million. Debbie said “if you don’t plan, plan on failing”.

Who are you? Who is the “WHO” reading this? If you are a successful entrepreneur and you are reading this, you already have your WHAT->HOW->WHO->WHY aligned.   If your company is not doing well and you believe you’ve given it enough time to mature, and it is still not working, you are in trouble: you’ve got your WHAT (your company products / services), you’ve got your HOW in place (brand, corporate culture, marketing, story, etc.), which are the product of a WHY that is not supporting the WHAT and the HOW, because it never went into realizing the WHO, which is you. What is your passion, what makes you tick, what makes you wake up at 5:00 AM before the alarm goes off, jump out of bed looking forward to work. Is it really work if you love it so much?

If you are an entrepreneur in the making you are in the best position, like a painter with a blank canvass you can paint any picture you want, you get to pick the theme, colors, tone, mood, and you can even cut the canvass Lucio Fontana’s style, and declare to the world that it is indeed a sculpture, not a painting. As an entrepreneur in the making, you don’t even have a canvass, you can go into any art form and medium of your choosing, and you can even make up your own art form or medium, and break all the rules there are and make then your own, John Cage did.

Business is indeed art.

And business is indeed the outmost form of self expression: think Steve Job and Apple, and how the iPod and iPhone is shaping and enhancing people’s lives, that is Art indeed.

WHO are you? What’s your art? What’s your voice? What’s your story? What’s your BRAND? Trutfully and congruently answer those questions to yourself, and that is just the beginning, the base for discovering the WHY, your WHY to entrepreneurship, which will lead to the HOW of doing things, which is going to be your own, and your own only style. From there it is a natural progress to build the WHAT, the vehicle that will carry forward your vision, the healthy WHO in the link WHO->WHY->HOW->WHAT.

You’ve got friends: Jackson, Walt, Paul, Ben & Jerry, Debbi.

Did you miss me?
This blog has been inactive for quite a while.

WHY? you might ask, and I am tempted to answer. BUT the question “WHY?” is the most disempowering question there is in any language. A better question is “HOW…?” See CommuWEcating for more on this and more similar principles (be kind, it’s still in Beta).

So here we go:
Q.: How frequently will you be posting to this blog going forward?
A.: While the Quantity will certainly increase, I am more concerned with Quality of posts; in the internet world there’s plenty of Quantity, and not enough Quality, is there?

Peter Madden‘s post on Advertising Age is perfect just the way it is. This is why:

1. Peter has not yet learned his own lesson, which makes him human. No need to write a book, these 500 or so words make the point, the whole point. Individuals who are ready to listen will have (yet another) Eureka! moment; and then let their own neurons do the work . . . or dismiss it till next time
2. Peter has succinctly debunked the myths of “Perfection”. He proves that perfection does indeed exist, and she has the following characteristics:
   1. perfection is a process, not an end;
   2. each task is either a stepping stone or a dead end. Stepping stones let you forward in the
      direction of your vision, dead ends are just side trips: stop and come back to the main road.
3. Don’t believe anything you hear, not even what you tell yourself: go out and test, test, test, test; evaluate, deploy; test something new.
4. There’s no such a thing as failure, only feedback.

There’s only ONE business model: the “Make Money” business model. No room for interpretation. Now, let’s go back to the basics. The basics business models are not that many:

1) Sell goods by:

1. Quantity transformation: buying wholesale and selling retail, or buying in enormous quantities and selling it to wholesalers;
2. Geographic transformation: buying in one place and selling it in another place (import/export business);
3. Time transformation: Storing fresh fish to be consumed at a later time;
4. Physical transformation: manufacturing, transforming raw materials into finished products to be used by someone else;

2) Sell services by:

1. Provide the services yourself;
2. Have someone else provide the services;

3) Combination of two or more of the above: it could get complex there, proceed with caution. Example: movie theaters where they give away the showing of the movie (a service for the moviegoers and the movie houses), and make money on the sale of food.

Where does YouTube stands? Since Yahoo bought it for $ 1.63 billions? Simple, it falls under 1b, if you think that the product was the stock in the company, not the videos over the internet. Venture Capitalists are smart people. In the late 90′s and early 00′s they sold stock to the IPO investors, who in turn sold them to non-IPO investors. The business plan was: build to flip. But that’s what Venture Capital, and the entire stock market is all about: you make money in the sale of the shares, not in the cash flow generated by the business.

ACTION ITEMS: What is your business model, and can you describe it in 30 seconds or less?

You’ve got the most brilliant idea.
You’ve talked people into joining you into this wild ride.
NOW, right NOW, it is time to PLAN.
Call it Business Plan, call it Action Plan, call it Alfred or Brigitte, you’ve got to PLAN, before you EXECUTE.
In a world where we get information on a granular level, in a non-sequential manner, driven by search . . . why use a word processor?
How about a single-file, searchable, menu-driven, platform independent medium?

Regardless of what you think about David Allen’s Getting Things Done, you ought to try GTDTiddlyWiki, if nothing else than execute on your next action item: write your business plan.

Added bonus: it’s (legally) free, and way too kool.

Read, think, make up your own mind.

The real issue is: is learning as we know it today, as ALL schools at all levels practice, is that methodology working?

Are the TANGIBLE results in line with the audience’s expectations?

. . . . . TO BE CONTINUED

Does the world need another . . . . . . (insert the name of your product or service here)?

I am sorry to say, but – chances are – the answer is “NO”!
Great features and benefits you say?
How quaint!

Whether you like it or no, your audience has survived just fine without you, actually we have thrived! And we’ll continue to do so, probably ignoring your new superduper gizmo, or your superduper service, or – if you are lucky – we’ll hack them for uses that they were not meant to.

Don’t despair! There’s hope!

You just need to rephrase the question to:

Does the world need . . . . . . (insert the name of your BRAND here?
YES, because:
1) . . . . . . stands for . . . . . (insert something that is relevant to your audience)
2) . . . . . . stands out from the crowd by . . . . . . (insert what your audience will say that is relevant to them)
3) . . . . . . gives them . . . . . . (insert a WOW factor here)

Of course, you could always compete on price, but can you beat Wal-Mart at the game Wal-Mart invented?

In the process of answering the above questions, and build them into your offering, BE ONE with your audience! If you are selling windows treatments, are your customers buying means to obfuscate light? Probably no, they might be buying privacy, but what if your brands give them “BRAGGING RIGHTS” convincing their friends and neighbors that they indeed are in the prcence of sophisticated elegance?
What are you selling?

The world surely needs to lighten up! What can you do to help?

Another list, another outsourced blog entry. This time is from Yaro’s blog.

Basic, YES! But good heuristic for you and your brain.

ACTION ITEM: Take inspiration from Yaro’s list to make your own list of the 7 DO’s and 7 DONT’s to guide you in your project. (Example of DO’s list).