the goose

In 1997, a freshly minted Saatchi & Saatchi were handed a brief by the Conservative government to discourage teens from smoking via the all-powerful medium of advertising.  Setting about the task, running focus groups and unleashing their creative juices, they started to realise a basic flaw in the traditional model.

Millions upon millions of pounds were spent, worldwide, telling young’un’s that “Cigaretets Kill”. Something we all know but mostly only those in their 30’s or older pay much attention to.

Why?

Dissonance

Telling young people that they will die from smoking contravenes a rather self-evident truth:  young people don’t die.  Certainly not in general and you would be unlucky to have reached the age of 13 (when most people start smoking) to have known anyone in your peer group that had passed on.

Saatchi & Saatchi changed tack and instead started running advertising pointing out how gross your breath smells after a cigarette.  Something that rings true and is oh so important when your still trying to get off your mark with Priscilla in 6b.

So here is the rub.  Entrepreneurs in Ireland don’t make it big.  We don’t really celebrate the successes and I think there is a tendency to expect failure.  This is especially acute when it comes to funded businesses.  At least two founders who raised multiple millions of dollars have both told me that they tell their founders that there was a 90% chance of failure.  Accurate and laudable as it may be – the intention can’t be helpful towards achieving success.

How can we plan on building world-class ‘google’ type businesses when there is no precedence for it?  It doesn’t make sense to encourage people to startup when the expectations for success are so low.

Contrast this with a plumber/accountant/solicitor/carpenter setting up a new business.  While they may be more ’self-employed’ than ‘running a business’ – it seems far more real and natural that these types of business make it.  We all know successful people in these fields.  Meanwhile I’ve been trying to build an online business for the last 10 years and I’ve met only a handful of successes (and believe me I had to dig to find them).

To encourage startups and avoid talking out of both sides of our mouths, we need to reset expectations of indigenous startups towards success.  Online businesses have a heritage in high risk funding backed ventures, but things have changed and the web has become more mature.  There is no reason that 90% of ventures should fail.  The business models that work are out there and available to be exploited.  Beyond that, even if individual ventures do not succeed, subsequent ventures by the same entrepreneur can and probably will.

Email gets a bad wrap.  Spam clogging up inboxs and untold hours of lost productivity.  Viagra and free visa’s to the US all go towards making it a touchy subject.  However, if email can elect an American president, I can’t afford to ignore it for developing a relationship with our customers.

Checking my own inbox, the oldest email newsletter I’m subscribed to goes back almost 10 years.  It is a technology newletter to do with MS Outlook, something I don’t work on anymore, but I stay subscribed in case some day I need it.  That is one hell of a relationship.

Read the rest of this entry »

CRM systems are behemoths.  No matter how many claim to be ’simple’ they all feature from feature creep.  The fact remains, if you are not using a CRM, you are probably only running at half your potential cash-flow if the ever-so helpful introductary video ad infusionsoft is anything to go by.  The good guys there go on to point out that on average, customers will buy from you after 7 interactions.  Most people give up after 3.  You can manage this to a certain extent using excel or google docs (as we have been for the last three years) but after a while it all get unwieldy.

To counter this I did a quick review of available products  before designing my own minimum viable CRM system (oh groan – another techy reinventing the wheel).  Here were the front runners. Read the rest of this entry »

So we’ve moved somewhere, where

• the average temperature is about 20 degrees C warmer than Dublin
• cut our living costs by 2/3rds
• allowed us to focus all our time on building our own wealth
• avoided having to go to work (unless we’d like to)

But it can’t all be good.  And here are a few gotcha’s. In a week when its been too hot to walk down here, I thought I’d put a few down for posterity.  Lets see if I can mitigate them.

1. Motivation: “Millions long for immortality who don’t know what to do with themselves on a rainy Sunday afternoon” writes  Susan Ertz.  Now imagine having a Sunday afternoon every day of the week.  We’re not the worst at this – and being honest – we can’t afford to put our feet up completely but there is a lot to be said for having to turn up for work on a Monday morning.  We’ve mitigated this by trying to stick to our 5 tasks a day (do five things then stop).   We’ve recently engaged a coach who will help crack the whip and keep us on track.  I guess there is a bit of a stigma (especially in Ireland) with having a ‘coach’ but I’m willing to bet pretty-much anyone could benefit from being called to book now and again.  It works in the gym and we’ve found it to work for building our cash-flow.
2. Weather: “hold on – its bloody georgeous down there”  - yes, yes  - it is in general, but when it tops 40 degrees, there isn’t much to be done about it.  Productivity goes down the toilet.  If we had our way we’d probably leave Argentina for a few months while the hottest of the summer passes.  This year we did that by going back to Ireland for a bit but we should have stayed until the end of Feb to really miss out on the heat.  Mendoza is actually not so bad as the humidity is low, but Buenos Aires is a killer.
3. Networking: I’m someone who did a lot of networking back in Dublin.  As well as joining local business networking groups and attending various nerd events such as Ruby Ireland and Bizcamp’s, I really enjoyed getting out and meeting people.  Watching the twitter feed I am a little envious of some of the great events which are being organised.  I’ve met some great entrepreneurs down here but there aren’t as many as I’d like.  We should probably move back to Buenos Aires where there is a much greater concentration.  Having said that, I probably we over-doing the meet-and greats a little and there is something to be said for just getting my head down.  Listening to Pegram Harrison’s Evaluating a Venture Idea lecture, I do get the sense that perhaps it might be a better idea to move to Silicon Valley rather than Dublin if networking is really the name of the game.  Perhaps a few months there might do it. Pegram posits in his talk that the greatest entrepreneur in the world can’t survive without the right environment in which to flourish.  Granted, he is talking about ‘big bang’ ideas rather than simply earning more than you spend without having to sell hours.
4. So what? Its all very nice not having a day job.  I guess the next step would be to avoid having customers (eg:  sell Piehole and live off the interest) but at the end of the day you do need a challenge.  We took August off to spend on the personal and ‘giving back’ type projects which were thoroughly enjoyable.  It was a month more than we could spend on these projects in Dublin, but at the same time, in order to hit the top run of Maslow’s over quoted hierarchy of needs, doing something ‘big’ starts to look more attractive.
5. Security: Stuff happens.  Accidents, long forgotten tax returns, emergency trips to visit sick relatives.  We can’t really afford to flit around the globe at will and while this provide motivation – at the same time – a life abroad does feel a little unsettled.  Going home for Christmas felt good and it might be a little time yet before Argentina or wherever we will be next year feels like home.  Part of what is contributing to this is the fact we don’t have a plan for where we will be past getting hitched in January 2011.  A 5 year plan always sounded ludicrous to me, but perhaps there is some sense in it.

So there you have it – some catches with this whole geoarbitrage thingy.   That is not to say there not considerable upsides, but its not all milk and honey in the land of steak and red wine.

I have been steadily working my way through the Building a Business podcast from the Oxford University.  All the topics covered are pretty standard but there are a lot of insights available from the top people in their field.  The podcast on negotiation, given by Owen Derbishire,  has some real nuggets.  I’m going to try and summarize them here.  You can listen to the whole lecture here.

No deal is sometimes a good deal

Ever go shopping for the day and come back with absolutely nothing?  It is kind of a bummer.  All that effort and nothing to show for it.  We are naturally biased towards doing a deal.  Its worth remembering that when in any negotiating.  I have a natural tendency to do some deal rather than walk away – even if that deal might be bad.  You can see this in the Dragon’s Den, every episode where entrepreneurs give away large chunks of their business.  This tendency isn’t limited to small timers either.  The infamous 3g auctions of the early 00’s left supposedly smart phone companies over-paying massively for licenses which never made a return.  In short, don’t be afraid to walk away. Read the rest of this entry »

If you have been using  the 085 agtweet number for the last while you have been experiencing a less than stellar experience.  In fact, it has been down since Friday and I’m having real problems getting it back on its feet.

Now, I should say, that it really shouldn’t take this long and I will admit to not giving it 100% attention as some day job issues are pretty pressing right now.  I guess I took on some responsibility when I launched the service and right now I don’t feel like I’m living up to that responsibility.  In part I am relying on the kindness of friends to keep agtweet running and I don’t want to abuse that by pestering them all the time for help.  I’ve been getting a lot of questions about when the 085 number will be back … to which I’ll say I’m not totally sure right now.

For the moment, accept my apologies and bear with me.

thanks

James