The fear of the unknown

Posted on June 13, 2011 by Jon Stow
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The premise of this blog is my story of starting my own business by accident, because I became unemployed and couldn’t find another job. I had no choice.

Of course prior to my involuntary arrival in what was a freelance market (my businesses have evolved and diversified since and some is outsourced) I would not have dreamed of going out there on my own from the comfort of an employment with a great monthly “pay check”.

Lack of freedom

In employment we have little freedom, though. We do not make decisions about the business which could affect us or improve our situation. We cannot plan to change things. We can suggest to our bosses how things might be done differently. Our best ideas may be taken up, but we cannot guarantee to get the credit or the benefit.

When we are bosses ourselves, I hope that we do give our employees credit where it’s due, and proper reward, but as an employee we have rights in connection with our employment, but not rights to be appreciated.

Talent

It is understandable when we come across employees who are talented enough to run their own businesses that they are afraid to make that big step. As employees they feel more secure in getting a regular income, but that is month-to-month security. It is not a guarantee that the future will bring the same rewards they are getting right now.

Of course there is no guarantee of success in running one’s own business. There is much more control of our destiny, though. We can make a decision which will have an impact in the future. We can make changes to our lives with more freedom. We can build relationships with other businesses. It’s just simply being much more satisfying.

I would not try to badger a talented employee into making a giant leap into starting a business, but I would give every encouragement if I thought their idea was sound. What would you do?

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Is your content out of your control?

Posted on June 9, 2011 by Jon Stow

In this world of social media competition, I worry that some people are not in charge of their content. As far as I am concerned, social media is (are?) not supposed to be competitive, but about having conversations and getting to know people? At least, that is how it is for me. Those who are obsessed with scores may do things differently. Well, each to their own.

The one thing that would really upset me in terms of my on-line business networking would be to have material put out in my name that I did not agree with, or would make me or my business look rather stupid.

Quite a lot of people seem to auto-tweet posts from websites they do not own, including national and local news, or from businesses websites or forums (OK, fora). Presumably this is intended to increase their ratings or scores on the new indices riding on the back of Twitter and Facebook. That is fine (well, I wouldn’t do it) until some ghastly story of debauchery is posted on the source site, or some piece about fake Viagra in a total non-business context.

The other day someone in my line of business auto-tweeted a spam message for a tax forum from some guy who wanted to sell American Football jerseys. Of course the moderator would have zapped the post but the Tweet had gone out.

I thought at one time it would help to join one of those guest blogging exchange sites. I have to say that none of the stuff I have been offered to post on this blog has passed muster. It was a mistake in thinking this was a good idea, but I have neither accepted guest posts from the site nor posted any on anyone else’s through the exchange site. I need to approve and endorse anything posted on my blog.

The other day I saw this excellent piece about Triberr by Neicole Crepeau on Danny Brown’s blog. Now of course I can see the advantage of having lots of other people promote our blog posts via Twitter as long as they like them. Neicole says that she has her favorite bloggers she may re-tweet, but not every one of their posts. I agree. I wouldn’t want to endorse every post even by a top blogger, because I may not agree with it or the writer may have had an off-day.

However, maybe Triberr does have a place if the members collectively can moderate what is posted around. I would rather see that option. Do we have time to moderate our queue of potential tweets of other people’s blog posts? Will we annoy our friends with the extra tweets? Can a machine or a bit of software do the moderation satisfactorily? Do you use Triberr and how has it gone for you?

Otherwise, what should we do? Should we lower our standards and almost prostitute ourselves for the sake of self-promotion with random auto-feeds? Would it help enhance our reputations when we are expected to recommend unsuitable stuff? I don’t think so? Do you?

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Having a negative influence online

Posted on June 6, 2011 by Jon Stow

Digging the dirt

Haven’t we talked about online reputations before? We certainly have! Just the same, I sometimes worry about apparently intelligent people who probably do their businesses no good with their unfettered pronouncements on anything we care to think about.

I am all in favour of being ourselves in our blogs and when commenting on others. I think Twitter is a great medium for conversation, making connections and learning. What I do not want to know from my business contacts is their opinion on politicians, on other countries, and on celebrities, and especially using intemperate language. “Warts and all” is not a good thing in a business context.

Some such opinionated characters have large followings on Twitter. You might ask why I or others follow them if they are that bad. Why don’t we just un-follow? The truth is that there is a fascination (cliché alert) in watching a train wreck. You don’t want to watch but you can’t help it.

Quite a number of these “offenders” have high Klout or PeerIndex scores. If these were a measure of influence, I don’t think it’s going to be good influence: the sort of influence that encourages people to buy from them. Most likely it will be a deterrent to having any business dealings with them.

I guess I am letting of steam. None of these opinionated bigots who might read this would recognise themselves. How do you react to such people?

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First impressions

Posted on June 2, 2011 by Jon Stow

 

Elephants never forget

There are an awful lot of cliches. You know the sort.

 

  • You have thirty seconds to make an impression on a first meeting.
  • You’ll never get a second chance to make a great first impression.

Psychologists tell us that we do make judgments about the characters of the people we meet fairly instantaneously. It worries me that people do this, because we can all be wrong, and quite radically wrong. If we are out networking and therefore perhaps working our way round a room, I think we can make quite serious mistakes.

Fish out of water

When I left the corporate world and started in business on my own I carried with me all the old prejudices, and because I started meeting a greater variety of people and indeed clients, I floundered at the outset. I didn’t know how to deal with many of them.

In the world of the City, most clients were wealthy and / or high earners and most had a good educational background. By “good” I mean that they had gone to schools in better-off areas, and had gone to university or college. Perhaps they had worked their way up after starting as school-leavers. Perhaps they had been taken on by more sought-after employers because of whom they knew or more likely whom their patents knew. It was all very cosy as I now realise.

The new pond

However, there are some very smart people out there who do not speak “posh”, who didn’t get through college and who have got where they have got through hard work of course, but also because they are very bright; yes, intelligent.

It takes not just guts to build a major firm of hauliers (for example) from scratch. It takes intelligence and an ability to think on one’s feet. An ability to keep quite a few balls in the air if only in the head. An ability to adjust quickly to deal with the unexpected. Of course this is stuff we mostly don’t learn at school anyway, but it takes a clever person as opposed to just a well-educated person to run a business well.

Some people may come across as brash. They may have a questionable taste in clothes (although they may think we have). They may have hobbies we might think of as odd. They may just know what they are doing pretty well and can teach us a thing or too.

Mr Memory

It is easy to judge a book by its cover – and I am rolling out the cliches – but I remember in another context making a mistake I am glad I made because I learned from it.

A few years ago my wife and I were in South Africa staying in a hotel in the bush on the edge of the Kruger National Park. We had a waiter who was not in the first flush of youth. He was a local with a brilliant sense of humour, but obviously with no or little formal education. Because we were on a tour, we were regularly seated at a table of eight. This guy came and took the orders for the starters and main course (different every night) in one go, plus the drinks order and the wine for later. That isn’t necessarily the done thing in restaurants at home, but we weren’t at home.

The thing about our waiter was that he never wrote anything down. Sixteen food orders plus eight aperitifs and the wine, all in one go. Plainly the reason our waiter didn’t write down the orders was because he couldn’t read and write. He never got anything wrong though, and when he brought the order he remembered who was having what.

Plainly this gentleman had a fantastic memory and probably a terrific brain, but he had never had an education.

So please don’t judge a book by its cover or a person just by their appearance and the way they speak. You may be missing your next great business opportunity.

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Really not a football post

Posted on May 31, 2011 by Jon Stow
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And I don’t mean a goal post. It is just that sometimes we can use sport to illustrate a point about business.

So to a cliched quote “If you keep on doing what you’ve always done, you’ll keep on getting what you’ve always got.” attributed to W L Bateman. This sentence is used everywhere to entreat business owners to change their practices whether it is their purchasing, their marketing or their office practices or whatever. Of course, if things aren’t being done well and the business is struggling, it is best to turn over a new leaf and get help.

Sometimes, though, using tried and tested methods and having continuity is what brings success, not just now and again but year after year.

No, this is not a football post

Which brings me to football, the variety known better in America as soccer. I will let you in on a secret. Manchester United is not my favourite club. Nevertheless I have to admire their achievements year on year, and their pragmatism in accepting that they cannot win everything every year. Just the same they have a pretty good average.

United have won the Premier League again in 2011. They reached the European Champions’ League final. It is a great achievement (he says grudgingly but admiringly). How have they done it and how do they do it? By sticking with the same manager year on year (yes, Sir Alex Ferguson for nearly a quarter of a century), a manager who is the best at what he does and is single-minded, and doesn’t care what people think of him. Success brings money, and whatever the financial antics of the owners, the football business is self-perpetuating in its success.

United have won the Premier League four out of the last five times. They won the Champions League in 2008 at Chelsea’s expense.

Really, it’s not about football

Oh yes, on the other hand, there is Chelsea. The club has loads of money at its disposal, or rather, the owner does. Chelsea have won the Premier League Title three times in the last six years which is also a great achievement. I have to declare an interest here. I have supported Chelsea since I was a lad, seen them relegated to the old Second Division twice, and then promoted back to the first. I followed them from one end of the country to the other.

Chelsea nearly went out of business in the eighties. They were saved by an astute character called Ken Bates, whose hobby is rescuing football clubs. He made Chelsea a top-rank successful club by most standards, had the vision to employ managers from overseas because they were the best for the job, and Chelsea won the FA Cup and played in Europe.

Mr Bates sold out to a very rich man whose apparent ambition is to own a football club that wins the Champions’ League. Chelsea have actually been a bit unlucky not to have reached the final on one occasion and not to win in the final on another, but that’s another story.

The owner is single-minded on winning the Champions’ League. He has sacked several managers because they didn’t quite make it after two or three years. He is so impatient. This season he sacked the manager’s well-respected assistant, Ray Wilkins, back in November. The club was top of the Premier League at the time.

The team stuttered for six or seven weeks and lost their place at the top. From January, though they had a great league record. I think if they hadn’t sacked Wilkins they would have won the league. The other top clubs including even United have not been at their best this last season.

I am not taking anything away from United. They got the points and Chelsea ultimately didn’t. Carlo Ancelotti, a great and successful football manager was then sacked at the end of the season because Chelsea hadn’t won the Champions League.

So, it’s not about football

This is a difficult post to write for me. Yet United demonstrate along with Sir Alex that if you have a tried and tested formula and you keep doing the right thing in business, whether football business or anything else, you WILL succeed. United didn’t win the Champions League in 2011, beaten by a better side. However, you wouldn’t say that because now Apple has a larger market capitalization than Microsoft that Bill Gates is a failure, would you?

If it is not working, change. If it really does work, don’t let anyone tell you that you are wrong. Sir Alex wouldn’t. What do you think?

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Chasing the numbers or taking a gamble?

Posted on May 26, 2011 by Jon Stow

Having been networking on-line for quite a long time – eight years – I have quite a significant contact network out there. It is not the biggest network because I do not add people just to bolster my scores. I still have an issue with Dunbar’s number which is the village in my head, so I cannot “know” everyone.

I interact with quite a lot of people on Twitter and Facebook and some other on-line platforms, and also talk to bloggers through comments on their blogs and sometimes on mine. That means I think that somewhere down the end of the hall there is a revolving door where some people come into my mental village and some leave, whether they or I are aware of it or not.

The Virtual High Street and Main Drag

I am not against having a large number of contacts on Twitter or LinkedIn. Being out there with one’s “open for business” A-board on the virtual pavement outside the virtual shop means someone might see it, drop in and buy. You just never know. It’s not networking in the conventional sense though, because we have no idea who is passing by even if we have a connection which means they do pass by our shop.

The problem for people just concentrating on having a large number of contacts is that it is very hard to make sure that the right people are passing. Some sign up to follow through automated Twitter search platforms and they may be lucky in getting business for all I know, but it seems pretty aimless for the most part. Still, each to their own.

Focus

What worries me is that lots of people concentrate on actively pursuing the numbers in a completely unfocussed way thus wasting their time. It can be an addiction akin to gaming or even gambling, thinking that the next batch of contacts will really pay off. The biggest danger in business is wasting time on things that don’t work.

Have you gone for big numbers? Has it worked? If so, well done and please share your experience. If it hasn’t worked, shouldn’t you be trying a more channeled and organized approach to your on-line strategy and your marketing in general?

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Hitting the spot and pulling the heartstrings

Posted on May 25, 2011 by Jon Stow
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We all need to give our clients and customers a compelling reason to buy from us. We have to be different from the rest and match exactly what our prospects think they need.

Match.com has a great advert which exactly expresses the need, and if I were in the market I would be at the head of the queue.

Why? Because:

  • If you are young and lonely, the ad is utterly romantic, every boy and girl’s dream of meeting the perfect partner.
  • If you are an oldie like me, it recalls what we once were. My crowd wanted to be like Bob Dylan or Joan Baez or Paul Simon or Joni Mitchell. We went to music shops and messed around with acoustic guitars and bought sheet music of our favourite singers’ songs.

Emotion is what drove us and emotion is what drives sales.

This is the short UK version of the ad. I un-mute the TV when this one comes on. There are longer variations if you browse, but just enjoy…

Click for ad… Match.com

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If only I had…

Posted on May 23, 2011 by Jon Stow
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There are the chosen few who have never worked for anyone else, and then there are the rest of us who used to be employed but now run our own businesses.

When we were employed we did not have total control of our destiny. Perhaps we didn’t choose the right employer or we could have moved somewhere else and we didn’t, and later we wished we had.

You know the sort of thing?

  • If I had known when I started work that I should have began at an investment bank and then I would have been paid today’s equivalent of 250K per year even if I were still making the tea.
  • I should have made a fortune working for an insurance broker and would have known to get out at the right time.
  • I shouldn’t have worked for XYZ. They were dreadful employers and just used me.
  • I should have earned megabucks in the Far East when I had the chance.
  • I should have stayed with EFG because they had and still have the best pension scheme ever (but I left to preserve my own self-respect).

We might all have certain variations on those themes. All those situations depended either on how we were dealt with by others who had power over us, or would have been pure luck along the lines of “if we had known then what we know now”.

Luck is chance and we can’t do much about unforeseen incidents in our lives. However in being in business for ourselves, we make our own decisions. We shouldn’t be at the mercy of anyone as we might be if with a bad employer. Our future is in our hands. We need to make the right decisions of course, and we need courage sometimes. We will still come to forks in the road and must do our best to take the right one. If we make a mistake we can learn from it, and need not look over our shoulders at what might have been.

When I started work I would have been surprised to be told where I might be now, but as an independent person in business who enjoys his work, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

Anyway, if I had started at the investment bank, I wouldn’t be talking to you now, though I might have been a fat cat taking the flak for the economic crisis.

So having regrets is pointless, and being in control of one’s own destiny in business is beyond value, isn’t it? And isn’t business fun?

 

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Come on, rabbit, don’t be shy!

Posted on May 19, 2011 by Jon Stow
Rabbit shape

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Quite often when I am taking my evening walk, I pass a man of about my age scurrying back from the rail station. No doubt he is a City worker. He does not meet my eye and scoots past like a frightened rabbit. Generally when I pass someone out walking, I say hello, especially if I quite often see the person. None of my attempts at greeting this guy have elicited any response, so I have given up.

The ant hill

To a degree I understand the man’s attitude. It is a sort of defence mechanism some adopt when they work in a big city, especially a capital city. There are just so many people. I know what it is like to find my way through an enormous number of people especially at a mainline rail station. One is reduced to ant status, almost climbing through and round the crowd to get where we want to.

This defence mechanism often extends to the workplace too, particularly if people are unhappy and just turn up, keep their heads down and work just because it pays the bills. I used to do that too. I stopped doing it because if you keep your head down people really do crawl all over you, and at the time it was a conscious decision. I realised I was not getting anywhere at the place I was working and that I was badly undervalued. I left and got a much better job with more responsibility, which was much more rewarding and which gained me a lot more pay.

The warren

Once we have our own business, we can’t be frightened rabbits. After all, rabbits are social animals really. We have to be seen and noticed. We have to network and build relationships in person and online. You know that already.

As an employee I DID make a conscious decision to go for better things.

When I set up my own business it was still pretty tough for a natural introvert like me. I had done a course on public speaking as an employee, mainly because I had to do a course and I had done all the others. It didn’t train me to present myself properly, because you only learn by doing it in practice. I have to thank BNI for that because it is where I cut my networking teeth. Getting business there was not all that successful because I could not get my ideal business category, but I benefited a great deal from the training.

To see me online you might not think I am a shy person, but by nature I am. We need to be ourselves when we network, but for many of us we still have to overcome our inhibitions and not hide away even when we would like to. I have got used to being “out there”, and that’s what we all have to do, but at the start it’s not easy, is it?

 

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Why the personal touch is important in business

Posted on May 16, 2011 by Jon Stow

 

One of the patients

Small businesses have a huge advantage. They know their customers. Large businesses don’t. Small businesses which become large businesses forget their customers.

I wrote a while back about our extreme disappointment at our treatment by a veterinary practice.  Quite apart from the excessive charges levied in the face of my wife’s and my distress, there is another underlying problem with the practice and with many other veterinary practices in the UK. They have been acquired by large chains.

What is the effect for the customer of dealing with a large chain of vets? Well, we rarely get to see the same vet twice. There is often no continuity in the case of an ongoing treatment. The usually junior vets we get to see are still learning their profession but are not used to building relationships with the animals’ owners even if we do have any continuity in their dealing with a case.

Young vets have to learn their business. Our previous family veterinary surgeon, before he sold out to the chain, always had a young assistant vet. Most of them lasted two or three years before they naturally moved on in their career progression. That meant that they had a relationship with the owners of the pets brought in. Of course we had known the senior vet for a long time, so felt we could talk to him more easily than to a business-like trainee of the current vogue who probably has developed little in the way of people skills.

Small business owners can beat the big chains simply by being there, by talking to the clients and customers on a regular basis, by perhaps visiting their premises or homes and even inviting them to celebrations and networking events. We can make them feel they belong, which of course they do.

Customers who feel they have a relationship with a business owner or with the staff are less likely to move on and are more likely to value the service they get. They are more likely to be happy to pay more for the personal touch. Small businesses can compete very well with their larger competitors because although sometimes the big boys and girls will pile high and sell cheap, there is nothing like being able to pick up the phone and talk to your supplier as a person you know.

How often with large companies must we press the phone keys for multiple options just to get through to an offer of more multiple options? Hours of our lives can be wasted hanging on the telephone.

It will be no surprise to you that we have moved our cats’ healthcare issues to another veterinary practice where we can make an appointment with any one of several veterinary surgeons we know and like, and whom we can see are really caring. One in particular has given us great advice on dealing with a problem without even prescribing a medicine. There was huge value in the advice and it was well worth paying for.

Against big business, we generally have the upper hand if we have the facilities to provide the same basic service as they do, and then add to it our personal touches and ourselves. Remember we have the advantage, and make the most of it.

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