Instigator Blog

Inspired by Rick Spence’s call for startup advice/anecdotes I sent him an email with this thought, “put yourself out there.” (There was a bit more to it, otherwise I would expect Rick to hit delete rather quickly.)

The gist of the idea is that entrepreneurs can’t be afraid of reaching out to people; even people they would otherwise never think to talk to. Celebrities. Big shots in their industry. Power players. A-listers. Super cool dudes that seem to be uber-successful. If you think there’s a valuable reason to contact someone, do it. They were once starting out just like you, and I bet many of them got their break through someone more successful than them.

Thinking about this some more, I realized that “being an entrepreneur is like dating.”

You have to make yourself available and seek people out.

You can’t be afraid of rejection or being ignored.

You have to approach people properly.

You have to bring something of value to the table in exchange for someone’s attention.

You have to put effort into the budding relationship.

I’ve been rejected many, many times. No I’m not a hunchback or too ill-mannered, it’s just a fact of life. Maybe I could be a bit prettier. Actually, I was talking about in business…

Since IGotNewsForYou launched back in April I’ve sent out hundreds of emails to people about the project, possible partnerships, idea exchanges, etc. I’ve emailed people I admire, people I found online, friends, contacts, contacts’ contacts, etc. Lots of people have ignored me completely. Personally, I think that’s extremely rude, but fair enough, they might see it as a “pitch” and everyone’s busy. Many more have written the curt “thank you” email, and it goes no further.

But there’s been quite a few that have engaged me in valuable dialogue and been an immense help. People that I never knew have helped in a lot of ways. Some of those people are fairly high profile in their respective fields; but they still took the time to help me, recognizing the value in building more quality relationships.

When I thought about whether or not I should contact them, my answer almost always was, “Why not?” I followed my entrepreneurship-dating rules above and went at it. I put myself out there.

You can do the same. If people ignore you, so what, you didn’t need them anyway. But those that don’t ignore you can become invaluable to your success. So go get ‘em.

As they say in A.A. - “admitting you have a problem is the first step.”

It should be the first step of a problem situation for any business, but of course it’s not. No one wants to admit they screwed up, that it was their fault. Maybe it’s human nature. Maybe it’s corporate culture. Maybe it’s some evil hybrid in between, but regardless of the source, few companies are wont to acknowledge a screw up.

It’s too bad really, because a lot of companies would get a lot less flack if they just fessed up. More importantly, companies could use a policy of honesty to fix things more quickly. Once you’ve said, “Hey, I buggered this, I’ll admit it,” you’re more likely to feel the responsibility to fix it faster and respond to your customers more quickly too.

And you’ll develop a culture of openness, honesty and great customer service.

Now “corporate Yosko” (who some consider to be “fun-loving Yosko’s” evil twin) might say, “Hold on now, I’m willing to take some responsibility, but we’ve all got skeletons in the closet that should remain there right?”

Ok, I’ll follow along with that for a moment. At the end of the day we’re not all going to get around in a circle and sing “Kumbaya.” There are ways of telling your customers that you’ve screwed up so that you don’t open yourself up for a scrutinizing inquiry or even more trouble. People are usually less concerned with WHY something went wrong versus WHEN it’ll be fixed.

Get to the point (which I often have a very hard time doing apparently) and make sure you provide people a simple explanation for the problem, and an estimated time of resolution.

Always be available to communicate with those clients that need more information.

Shit happens right?

And customers will forgive you provided you follow these rules:

1. Respond promptly.
2. Be honest, but keep it to the point.
3. Always be available if I have more questions.
4. Tell me when the problem will be solved.
5. Solve it before the time you’ve stated.

[tags]customer service, corporate culture, business, entrepreneurship[/tags]

Quick, your e-commerce website just crashed and you’re losing customers by the second. (Note: this is just an example to illustrate a point, feel free to replace this crisis with any other you might experience!)

What do you do?

Panic.

Panic?

That doesn’t sound like great advice…

Well, it’s not. But you’re human, so you’ll panic. Hopefully you’ve got some plans/steps in place for handling the crisis; at minimum, going through standard troubleshooting procedures and calling the necessary service providers (in my example that would probably be your hosting company and/or ISP.)

You call the hosting provider and they tell you (pretend this is Charlie Brown’s parents talking now), “Wah wah wah wah firewall wah wah network wah wah wah system failure.”

How long will it take to fix? “Wah wah 2 hours wah wah wah maybe 3.”

Ok, so you’ve got 6-7 hours to wait…now what?

Assuming you’ve done everything you can with your hosting provider, and it’s out of your hands, the next thing you do is probably curse. Let it out. (Use George Carlin’s 7 words you can never say on television, you’ll feel better.)

Once that’s done you’re probably sitting there hitting refresh over and over on your browser waiting for your mission critical e-commerce site to come back. But it’s not. And, while you’re doing that, you’re absolutely unproductive and all of your to-dos are falling by the wayside.

The best thing you can do is focus on small, easily manageable tasks. Focus on the less brain-tasking to-dos on your list, the mundane that you always put aside. You won’t be able to focus that well (being in panic mode) but you should still get something done, otherwise you’ll waste hours. So try and work on the “chores” you have.

The shorter the chore, the better. That way there’s a better chance you’ll actually get it finished without interrupting yourself a thousand times to check on your downed website.

And when the crisis is over and you can wipe the sweat from your brow (or wherever you sweat from), you’ll have managed to get something done…even during a really really crappy time.

Good luck!

[tags]crisis, crisis management, productivity, george carlin[/tags]

A couple of days ago I wrote a post about being more prepared and how you can accomplish that. The goal wasn’t to say, “be prepared for anything and everything,” because that’s just a big fat lie. But, there are ways of being more prepared than not.

First, we embraced failure and learned from it.

Now we’re looking to the future, and tackling the dreaded to-do list.

Why is it dreaded? Mostly because to-do lists tend to be unmanageable; a mish mash of tasks, events, mixed up priorities, confusing details and general chaos. AAAAHHH!

Take a deep breath. Here are some tips that might benefit you in writing a useful to-do list.

1. Keep it as short as possible. We’re all busy, true, but there’s only so much we can do in a day. A to-do list with 50 things on it is basically useless. Try keeping your to-do list down to 10 things. Let’s stay laser focused. If you’ve got more than 10 to-dos, move ‘em off your list somewhere else.
2. Write concise to-dos. Standardize them. Make sure the critical information is there. You need to be able to scan your to-do list in a quick flash and get all the critical information you need.“Call Bob.” -> Concise, but not enough detail.

   Call Bob at 555-654-9876 because I have to talk to him about that sales lead from yesterday. -> No longer concise, but has more detail. Still, a lot of it is superfluous.

   Call Bob: 555-654-9876. Re: Sales lead 07/12/2006. -> Here’s a fairly concise to-do. I’ve also formatted the to-do in a way that can be standardized across all my to-dos.

3. Prioritize. Even with a short list of priorities it makes sense to prioritize them. The trick (to avoid a complicated to-do list and wasting time) is to develop a simple prioritization system. Even listing them in a specific order is good enough; we all know that the first item in the list is more important than the last. Alternatively you can assign numbers to your to-dos; I would recommend 1-2-3 and no more than that.
4. Exclude extraneous information. Beware the bloated to-do list. Decide what’s most important in terms of content, and stick with that. Each time you’re about to put something into a to-do, ask yourself, “Do I really need this information? The most common information I’ve seen in to-dos that’s extraneous is dates and times. To-dos are meant to be done as soon as possible, all the time, so they don’t really need dates and times.

Tools to Make To-Do Lists

There are a million tools out there designed to keep track of your to-dos. The most common is Outlook which has a simplified task list feature.

I use Notepad. It’s one step away from writing it on yellow sticky-notes, but it meets my needs. The only problem is that I can’t access my to-do list while I’m out of the office (at least not easily.) If that’s a priority, then you can look at any number of web-based tools. When looking at a web-based tool, consider ease of use and its ability to integrate with other software (i.e. Outlook.) I’ve experimented with a few web-based tools including Ta-da List, Remember the Milk and voo2do. I didn’t get far enough to remember any of them, but they’re all easy to get into and experiment with.

Yesterday I wrote that you can be more prepared in business and life if you learn from your mistakes and failures. Many more successful people than myself will also tell you, “Failure is good. Embrace it and learn from it. Then you’ll succeed.” First let’s try and accept two facts:

1. Failure is inevitable. Even the most successful people in the world have failed and will continue to fail.
2. Failure can be a good thing, if you learn from it.

So now you’re saying, “Fine. I’m failing. Oh, I’m soooo happy! Why don’t you tell me something useful, Ben?” Fair enough. It’s not enough to say, “learn from your mistakes” — let’s look at how you can learn from them.

1. Write down your mistakes/failures. Be as explicit as possible. “The business failed,” doesn’t count. “We couldn’t find a way to properly market the product,” does count.
2. Break the failure into its smallest components. Essentially, what we’re doing is problem solving. And with any fairly substantial problem, it’s always easiest to break it down. The first question to ask is “why” — “Why couldn’t we find a way to properly market the product?” If you’re working with a group, try a brainstorming session to come up with some ideas. If you’re on your own, then brainstorm with yourself (I said “brainstorm” people, minds out of the gutter please.) Few failures have one absolute reason, but going through this exercise should help you get to the root of things. The most obvious answer might be right (“None of us know how to market anything”) but it might not be (“We didn’t know WHAT we were selling, so we couldn’t market it properly.”)
3. Propose solutions. Now that the problem is identified in its smallest chunks, we need to find solutions. Even if solving the problem won’t fix things (it might be too late to fix the failure that started this process), this is where you’ll buffer yourself against making the same mistake twice. Ask this question, “How COULD we have solved that problem?” Most of the time, the answer won’t be a simple one. There will probably be multiple answers. But that’s OK, and expected. And if you can’t figure out or decide on the answer, seeking help from others is always a good place to start. Mentors. The community. Your employees. Peers. Seek and ye shall find, as they say. Sometimes the answer might simply be, “I need to get more feedback from others.”

When thinking about tackling failures, always remember:

Be open. Be honest. Communicate. Problem Solve. Learn.

Good luck! And here’s some worthwhile reading:

* Giving Yourself Permission to be Imperfect from Dave Navarro.

* How Failure Breeds Success from Business Week.

* The F Words from Phil Gerbyshak.