Hey, Entrepreneurs: Why You Should Write in Friendly Tone

What is it with businesspeople trying to sound big? The stiff language, the formal announcements, the artificial friendliness, the legalese, etc. You read this stuff and it sounds like a robot wrote it. These companies talk at you, not to you.

This mask of professionalism is a joke. We all know this. Yet small companies still try to emulate it. They think sounding big makes them appear bigger and more “professional.” But it really just makes them sound ridiculous. Plus, you sacrifice one of a small company’s greatest assets: the ability to communicate simply and directly, without running every last word through a legal-and PR-department sieve.

There’s nothing wrong with sounding your own size. Being honest about who you are is smart business, too. Language is often your first impression—why start it off with a lie? Don’t be afraid to be you.

That applies to the language you use everywhere—in e-mail, packaging, interviews, blog posts, presentations, etc. Talk to customers the way you would to friends. Explain things as if you were sitting next to them. Avoid jargon or any sort of corporate-speak.

Stay away from buzzwords when normal words will do just fine. Don’t talk about “monetization” or being “transparent;” talk about making money and being honest. Don’t use seven words when four will do.

And don’t force your employees to end e-mails with legalese like “This e-mail message is for the sole use of the intended recipient(s) and may contain confidential and privileged information.” That’s like ending all your company e-mails with a signature that says, “We don’t trust you and we’re ready to prove it in court.” Good luck making friends that way.

Write to be read, don’t write just to write. Whenever you write something, read it out loud. Does it sound the way it would if you were actually talking to someone? If not, how can you make it more conversational?

Who said writing needs to be formal? Who said you have to strip away your personality when putting words on paper? Forget rules. Communicate! And when you’re writing, don’t think about all the people who may read your words.

Think of one person. Then write for that one person. Writing for a mob leads to generalities and awkwardness. When you write to a speci􀉹c target, you’re a lot more likely to hit the mark.

Make Less Policies for Your Startup - Wait, Why ?

The second something goes wrong, the natural tendency is to create a policy. “Someone’s wearing shorts!? We need a dress code!” No, you don’t. You just need to tell John not to wear shorts again.

Policies are organizational scar tissue. They are codified overreactions to situations that are unlikely to happen again. They are collective punishment for the misdeeds of an individual.

This is how bureaucracies are born. No one sets out to create a bureaucracy. They sneak up on companies slowly. They are created one policy—one scar—at a time.

So don’t scar on the first cut. Don’t create a policy because one person did something wrong once. Policies are only meant for situations that come up over and over again.

Entrepreneurs -- Why You Should Let Employees Leave Work Early

The dream employee for a lot of companies is a twenty-something with as little of a life as possible outside of work—someone who’ll be fine working fourteen-hour days and sleeping under his desk.

But packing a room full of these burn-the-midnight-oil types isn’t as great as it seems. It lets you get away with lousy execution. It perpetuates myths like “This is the only way we can compete against the big guys.” You don’t need more hours; you need better hours.

When people have something to do at home, they get down to business. They get their work done at the office because they have somewhere else to be. They find ways to be more efficient because they have to. They need to pick up the kids or get to choir practice. So they use their time wisely.

As the saying goes, “If you want something done, ask the busiest person you know.” You want busy people. People who have a life outside of work. People who care about more than one thing. You shouldn’t expect the job to be someone’s entire life—at least not if you want to keep them around for a long time.

Entrepreneurs -- How to Build a Rockstar Environment in Your Startup

A lot of companies post help-wanted ads seeking “rock stars” or “ninjas.” Lame. Unless your workplace is filled with groupies and throwing stars, these words have nothing to do with your business.

Instead of thinking about how you can land a roomful of rock stars, think about the room instead. We’re all capable of bad, average, and great work. The environment has a lot more to do with great work than most people realize.

That’s not to say we’re all created equal and you’ll unlock star power in anyone with a rock star environment. But there’s a ton of untapped potential trapped under lame policies, poor direction, and stiffing bureaucracies. Cut the crap and you’ll find that people are waiting to do great work. They just need to be given the chance.

This isn’t about casual Fridays or bring-your-dog-to-work day. (If those are such good things, then why aren’t you doing them every day of the week?) Rockstar environments develop out of trust, autonomy, and responsibility. They’re a result of giving people the privacy, workspace, and tools they deserve. Great environments show respect for the people who do the work and how they do it.

Making Decisions as a Startup: How to Avoid Simple Mistakes

“But what if …?” “What happens when …?” “Don’t we need to plan for …?”

Don’t make up problems you don’t have yet. It’s not a problem until it’s a real problem. Most of the things you worry about never happen anyway.

Besides, the decisions you make today don’t need to last forever. It’s easy to shoot down good ideas, interesting policies, or worthwhile experiments by assuming that whatever you decide now needs to work for years on end. It’s just not so, especially for a small business. If circumstances change, your decisions can change. Decisions are temporary.

At this stage, it’s silly to worry about whether or not your concept will scale from five to five thousand people (or from a hundred thousand to 100 million people). Getting a product or service off the ground is hard enough without inventing even more obstacles. Optimize for now and worry about the future later.

The ability to change course is one of the big advantages of being small. Compared with larger competitors, you’re way more capable of making quick, sweeping changes. Big companies just can’t move that fast. So pay attention to today and worry about later when it gets here. Otherwise you’ll waste energy, time, and money fixating on problems that may never materialize.

Entrepreneurs -- Startup Culture is the By-Product of Consistent Behavior

Instant cultures are artificial cultures. They’re big bangs made of mission statements, declarations, and rules. They are obvious, ugly, and plastic. Artificial culture is paint. Real culture is patina.

You don’t create a culture. It happens. This is why new companies don’t have a culture. Culture is the byproduct of consistent behavior. If you encourage people to share, then sharing will be built into your culture. If you reward trust, then trust will be built in. If you treat customers right, then treating customers right becomes your culture.

Culture isn’t a foosball table or trust falls. It isn’t policy. It isn’t the Christmas party or the company picnic. Those are objects and events, not culture. And it’s not a slogan, either. Culture is action, not words.

So don’t worry too much about it. Don’t force it. You can’t install a culture. Like a fine scotch, you’ve got to give it time to develop.

Entrepreneurs -- How To Handle Users Response Towards New Product Features

When you rock the boat, there will be waves. After you introduce a new feature, change a policy, or remove something, knee-jerk reactions will pour in. Resist the urge to panic or make rapid changes in response. Passions flare in the beginning. That’s normal. But if you ride out that first rocky week, things usually settle down.

People are creatures of habit. That’s why they react to change in such a negative way.

They’re used to using something in a certain way and any change upsets the natural order of things. So they push back. They complain. They demand that you revert to the way things were.

But that doesn’t mean you should act. Sometimes you need to go ahead with a decision you believe in, even if it’s unpopular at first.

People often respond before they give a change a fair chance. Sometimes that initial negative reaction is more of a primal response. That’s why you’ll sometimes hear things like, “It’s the worst thing I’ve ever seen.” No, it’s not. It’s a minor change. Come on.

Also, remember that negative reactions are almost always louder and more passionate than positive ones. In fact, you may hear only negative voices even when the majority of your customers are happy about a change. Make sure you don’t foolishly backpedal on a necessary but controversial decision.

So when people complain, let things simmer for a while. Let them know you’re listening. Show them you’re aware of what they’re saying. Let them know you understand their discontent. But explain that you’re going to let it go for a while and see what happens. You’ll probably find that people will adjust eventually. They may even wind up liking the change more than the old way, once they get used to it.

One Customer Service tip Every Startup Owner Need to Know

In the restaurant business, there’s a world of difference between working in the kitchen and dealing with customers. Cooking schools and smart restaurateurs know it’s important for both sides to understand and empathize with each other. That’s why they often have chefs work out front as waiters for a stretch. That way, the kitchen staff can interact with customers and see what it’s actually like on the front lines.

A lot of companies have a similar front-of-house/back-of-house split. The people who make the product work in the “kitchen” while support handles the customers. Unfortunately, that means the product’s chefs never get to directly hear what customers are saying. Too bad. Listening to customers is the best way to get in tune with a product’s strengths and weaknesses.

Think about the children’s game Telephone. There are ten kids sitting in a circle. A message starts and is whispered from one child to another. By the time it gets all the way around, the message is completely distorted—to the point where it’s usually hilarious. A sentence that makes sense at first comes out the other end as “Macaroni cantaloupe knows the future.” And the more people you have in the circle, the more distorted the message gets.

The same thing is true at your company. The more people you have between your customers’ words and the people doing the work, the more likely it is that the message will get lost or distorted along the way.

Everyone on your team should be connected to your customers—maybe not every day, but at least a few times throughout the year. That’s the only way your team is going to feel the hurt your customers are experiencing. It’s feeling the hurt that really motivates people to fix the problem. And the flip side is true too: The joy of happy customers or ones who have had a problem solved can also be wildly motivating.

So don’t protect the people doing the work from customer feedback. No one should be shielded from direct criticism.

Maybe you think you don’t have time to interact with customers. Then make time.

Craigslist founder Craig Newmark still answers support e-mails today (often within minutes). He also deletes racist comments from the site’s discussion boards and pesters New York City Realtors who post apartments for rent that don’t exist.

 If he can devote this kind of attention to customer service, you can too

How to Say “Sorry” in Customer Experience Failures

There’s never really a great way to say you’re sorry, but there are plenty of terrible ways.

One of the worst ways is the non-apology apology, which sounds like an apology but doesn’t really accept any blame. For example, “We’re sorry if this upset you.” Or “I’m sorry that you don’t feel we lived up to your expectations.” Whatever.

A good apology accepts responsibility. It has no conditional if phrase attached. It shows people that the buck stops with you. And then it provides real details about what happened and what you’re doing to prevent it from happening again. And it seeks a way to make things right.

Here’s another bad one: “We apologize for any inconvenience this may have caused.” Oh, please. Let’s break down why that’s bad:

“We apologize …” If you spilled coffee on someone while riding the subway, would you say, “I apologize”? No, you’d say, “I’m so, so sorry!” Well, if your service is critical to your customers, an interruption to that service is like spilling hot coffee all over them. So use the appropriate tone and language to show that you understand the severity of what happened. Also, the person in charge should take personal responsibility. An “I” apology is a lot stronger than a “we” apology.

“… any inconvenience …” If customers depend on your service and can’t get to it, it’s not merely an inconvenience. It’s a crisis. An inconvenience is a long line at the grocery store. This ain’t that.

“… this may have caused” The “may” here implies there might not be anything wrong at all. That’s a classic non-apology apology move. It slights the very real problem(s) that customers are experiencing. If this didn’t affect them, you don’t really need to say anything. If it did affect them, then there’s no need for “may” here. Stop wavering.

So what’s the perfect way to say you’re sorry? There’s no magic bullet. Any stock answer will sound generic and hollow. You’re going to have to take it on a case-by-case basis.

The number-one principle to keep in mind when you apologize: How would you feel about the apology if you were on the other end? If someone said those words to you, would you believe them?

Keep in mind that you can’t apologize your way out of being an ass. Even the best apology won’t rescue you if you haven’t earned people’s trust. Everything you do before things go wrong matters far more than the actual words you use to apologize. If you’ve built rapport with customers, they’ll cut you some slack and trust you when you say you’re sorry.

Why Startups Should Prioritize Customer Service

 “Your call is very important to us. We appreciate your patience. The average hold time right now is sixteen minutes.” Give me a fucking break.

Getting back to people quickly is probably the most important thing you can do when it comes to customer service. It’s amazing how much that can defuse a bad situation and turn it into a good one.

Have you ever sent an e-mail and it took days or weeks for the company to get back to you? How did it make you feel? These days, that’s what people have come to expect.

They’re used to being put on hold. They’re used to platitudes about “caring” that aren’t backed up.

That’s why so many support queries start off with an antagonistic tone. Some people may even make threats or call you names. Don’t take it personally. They think that’s the only way to be heard. They’re only trying to be a squeaky wheel in hopes it’ll get them a little grease.

Once you answer quickly, they shift 180 degrees. They light up. They become extra polite. Often they thank you profusely.

It’s especially true if you offer a personal response. Customers are so used to canned answers, you can really differentiate yourself by answering thoughtfully and showing that you’re listening. And even if you don’t have a perfect answer, say something. “Let me do some research and get back to you” can work wonders.

Entrepreneurs -- How to Deliver Bad News in a Good Way

When something goes wrong, someone is going to tell the story. You’ll be better off if it’s you. Otherwise, you create an opportunity for rumors, hearsay, and false information to spread.

When something bad happens, tell your customers (even if they never noticed in the first place). Don’t think you can just sweep it under the rug. You can’t hide anymore.

These days, someone else will call you on it if you don’t do it yourself. They’ll post about it online and everyone will know. There are no more secrets.

People will respect you more if you are open, honest, public, and responsive during a crisis. Don’t hide behind spin or try to keep your bad news on the down low. You want your customers to be as informed as possible.

Back in 1989, the Exxon Valdez oil tanker spilled 11 million gallons of oil into Alaska’s Prince William Sound. Exxon made the mistake of waiting a long time before responding to the spill and sending aid to Alaska. Exxon’s chairman failed to go there until two weeks after the spill. The company held news briefings in Valdez, a remote Alaskan town that was difficult for the press to reach. The result: a PR disaster for Exxon that led the public to believe the company was either hiding something or didn’t really care about what had happened.

Contrast that Exxon story to the rupture of an Ashland Oil storage tank that spilled oil into a river near Pittsburgh around the same time. Ashland Oil’s chairman, John Hall, went to the scene of the Ashland spill and took charge. He pledged to clean everything up. He visited news bureaus to explain what the company would do and answer any questions. Within a day, he had shifted the story from a rotten-oil-company-does-evil narrative to a good-oil-company-tries-to-clean-up story.

Here are some tips on how you can own the story:

• The message should come from the top. The highest-ranking person available should
  take control in a forceful way.
• Spread the message far and wide. Use whatever megaphone you have. Don’t try to
  sweep it under the rug.
• “No comment” is not an option.
• Apologize the way a real person would and explain what happened in detail.
• Honestly be concerned about the fate of your customers—then prove it.

Entrepreneurs -- How to Hire the Right Employees for Your Startup

If you are trying to decide among a few people to fill a position, hire the best writer. It doesn’t matter if that person is a marketer, salesperson, designer, programmer, or whatever; their writing skills will pay off.

That’s because being a good writer is about more than writing. Clear writing is a sign of clear thinking. Great writers know how to communicate. They make things easy to understand. They can put themselves in someone else’s shoes. They know what to omit. And those are qualities you want in any candidate.

Writing is making a comeback all over our society. Look at how much people e-mail and text-message now rather than talk on the phone. Look at how much communication happens via instant messaging and blogging. Writing is today’s currency for good ideas.

Entrepreneurs -- How To Hire A Great Manager For Your Startup

 Managers of one are people who come up with their own goals and execute them. They don’t need heavy direction. They don’t need daily check-ins. They do what a manager would do—set the tone, assign items, determine what needs to get done, etc.—but they do it by themselves and for themselves.

These people free you from oversight. They set their own direction. When you leave them alone, they surprise you with how much they’ve gotten done. They don’t need a lot of hand-holding or supervision.

How can you spot these people? Look at their backgrounds. They have set the tone for how they’ve worked at other jobs. They’ve run something on their own or launched some kind of project.

You want someone who’s capable of building something from scratch and seeing it through. Finding these people frees the rest of your team to work more and manage less.

Mistakes That Kills Startups: Avoid Hiring Delegators

With a small team, you need people who are going to do work, not delegate work. Everyone’s got to be producing. No one can be above the work.

That means you need to avoid hiring delegators, those people who love telling others what to do. Delegators are dead weight for a small team. They clog the pipes for others by coming up with busywork. And when they run out of work to assign, they make up more—regardless of whether it needs to be done.

Delegators love to pull people into meetings, too. In fact, meetings are a delegator’s best friend. That’s where he gets to seem important. Meanwhile, everyone else who attends is pulled away from getting real work done.

Why the Startups Love to Hire College Dropouts ?

I have never let my schooling
interfere with my education.
—MARK TWAIN

There are plenty of companies out there who have educational requirements. They’ll only hire people with a college degree (sometimes in a specific field) or an advanced degree or a certain GPA or certification of some sort or some other requirement. Come on. There are plenty of intelligent people who don’t excel in the classroom.

Don’t fall into the trap of thinking you need someone from one of the “best” schools in order to get results. Ninety percent of CEOs currently heading the top five hundred American companies did not receive undergraduate degrees from Ivy League colleges. In fact, more received their undergraduate degrees from the University of Wisconsin than from Harvard (the most heavily represented Ivy school, with nine CEOs).

Too much time in academia can actually do you harm. Take writing, for example. When you get out of school, you have to unlearn so much of the way they teach you to write there. Some of the misguided lessons you learn in academia:

• The longer a document is, the more it matters.
• Stiff, formal tone is better than being conversational.
• Using big words is impressive.
• You need to write a certain number of words or pages to make a point.
• The format matters as much (or more) than the content of what you write.

It’s no wonder so much business writing winds up dry, wordy, and dripping with nonsense. People are just continuing the bad habits they picked up in school. It’s not just academic writing, either. There are a lot of skills that are useful in academia that aren’t worth much outside of it.

Bottom line: The pool of great candidates is far bigger than just people who completed college with a stellar GPA. Consider dropouts, people who had low GPAs, community-college students, and even those who just went to high school.

The Art of Hiring: Every Entrepreneur Should Know and Never Use

We’ve all seen job ads that say, “Five years of experience required.” That may give you a number, but it tells you nothing.

Of course, requiring some baseline level of experience can be a good idea when hiring. It makes sense to go after candidates with six months to a year of experience. It takes that long to internalize the idioms, learn how things work, understand the relevant tools, etc.

But after that, the curve flattens out. There’s surprisingly little difference between a candidate with six months of experience and one with six years. The real difference comes from the individual’s dedication, personality, and intelligence.

How do you really measure this stuff anyway? What does five years of experience mean? If you spent a couple of weekends experimenting with something a few years back, can you count that as a year of experience? How is a company supposed to verify these claims? These are murky waters.

How long someone’s been doing it is overrated. What matters is how well they’ve been doing it.

Entrepreneurs -- Resume Are Ridiculous, How to Find the True Talent

We all know resumés are a joke. They’re exaggerations. They’re filled with “action verbs” that don’t mean anything. They list job titles and responsibilities that are vaguely accurate at best. And there’s no way to verify most of what’s on there. The whole thing is a farce.

Worst of all, they’re too easy. Anyone can create a decent-enough resumé. That’s why half-assed applicants love them so much. They can shotgun out hundreds at a time to potential employers. It’s another form of spam. They don’t care about landing your job; they just care about landing any job.

If someone sends out a resumé to three hundred companies, that’s a huge red flag right there. There’s no way that applicant has researched you. There’s no way he knows what’s different about your company.

If you hire based on this garbage, you’re missing the point of what hiring is about. You want a specific candidate who cares specifically about your company, your products, your customers, and your job.

So how do you find these candidates? First step: Check the cover letter. In a cover letter, you get actual communication instead of a list of skills, verbs, and years of irrelevance. There’s no way an applicant can churn out hundreds of personalized letters. That’s why the cover letter is a much better test than a resumé. You hear someone’s actual voice and are able recognize if it’s in tune with you and your company.

Trust your gut reaction. If the first paragraph sucks, the second has to work that much harder. If there’s no hook in the first three, it’s unlikely there’s a match there. On the other hand, if your gut is telling you there’s a chance at a real match, then move on to the interview stage.

Entrepreneurs -- Honest Advice On Who To hire For Your Startup!

If you go to a cocktail party where everyone is a stranger, the conversation is dull and stiff. You make small talk about the weather, sports, TV shows, etc. You shy away from serious conversations and controversial opinions.

A small, intimate dinner party among old friends is a different story, though. There are genuinely interesting conversations and heated debates. At the end of the night, you feel you actually got something out of it.

Hire a ton of people rapidly and a “strangers at a cocktail party” problem is exactly what you end up with. There are always new faces around, so everyone is unfailingly polite. Everyone tries to avoid any conflict or drama. No one says, “This idea sucks.” People appease instead of challenge.

And that appeasement is what gets companies into trouble. You need to be able to tell people when they’re full of crap. If that doesn’t happen, you start churning out something that doesn’t offend anyone but also doesn’t make anyone fall in love.

You need an environment where everyone feels safe enough to be honest when things get tough. You need to know how far you can push someone. You need to know what people really mean when they say something.

So hire slowly. It’s the only way to avoid winding up at a cocktail party of strangers.

Why Startups Should Hire Slow and Fire Fast ?

Some companies are addicted to hiring. Some even hire when they aren’t hiring. They’ll hear about someone great and invent a position or title just to lure them in. And there they’ll sit—parked in a position that doesn’t matter, doing work that isn’t important. Pass on hiring people you don’t need, even if you think that person’s a great catch.

You’ll be doing your company more harm than good if you bring in talented people who have nothing important to do.

Problems start when you have more people than you need. You start inventing work to keep everyone busy. Artificial work leads to artificial projects. And those artificial projects lead to real costs and complexity.

Don’t worry about “the one that got away.” It’s much worse to have people on staff who aren’t doing anything meaningful. There’s plenty of talent out there. When you do have a real need, you’ll find someone who fits well.

Great has nothing to do with it. If you don’t need someone, you don’t need someone.

When--and How--to Hire Additional Employees For Your New Startup

Don’t hire for pleasure; hire to kill pain. Always ask yourself: What if we don’t hire anyone? Is that extra work that’s burdening us really necessary? Can we solve the problem with a slice of software or a change of practice instead? What if we just don’t do it?

Similarly, if you lose someone, don’t replace him immediately. See how long you can get by without that person and that position. You’ll often discover you don’t need as many people as you think.

The right time to hire is when there’s more work than you can handle for a sustained period of time. There should be things you can’t do anymore. You should notice the quality level slipping. That’s when you’re hurting. And that’s when it’s time to hire, not earlier.

Do It Yourself: 1 Thing Every Entrepreneurs Should Do

Never hire anyone to do a job until you’ve tried to do it yourself first. That way, you’ll understand the nature of the work. You’ll know what a job well done looks like. You’ll know how to write a realistic job description and which questions to ask in an interview. You’ll know whether to hire someone full-time or part-time, outsource it, or keep doing it yourself (the last is preferable, if possible).

You’ll also be a much better manager, because you’ll be supervising people who are doing a job you’ve done before. You’ll know when to criticize and when to support.

For Example, we didn’t hire a system administrator until one of us had spent a whole summer setting up a bunch of servers on his own. For the first three years, one of us did all of our customer support. Then we hired a dedicated support person. We ran with the ball as far as we could before handing it off. That way, we knew what we were looking for once we did decide to hire.

You may feel out of your element at times. You might even feel like you suck. That’s all right. You can hire your way out of that feeling or you can learn your way out of it. Try learning first. What you give up in initial execution will be repaid many times over by the wisdom you gain.

Plus, you should want to be intimately involved in all aspects of your business. Otherwise you’ll wind up in the dark, putting your fate solely in the hands of others. That’s dangerous.

Entrepreneurs: And The Myth of Overnight Success

You will not be a big hit right away. You will not get rich quick. You are not so special that everyone else will instantly pay attention. No one cares about you. At least not yet. Get used to it.

You know those overnight-success stories you’ve heard about? It’s not the whole story. Dig deeper and you’ll usually find people who have busted their asses for years to get into a position where things could take off. And on the rare occasion that instant success does come along, it usually doesn’t last—there’s no foundation there to support it.

Trade the dream of overnight success for slow, measured growth. It’s hard, but you have to be patient. You have to grind it out. You have to do it for a long time before the right people notice.

You may think you can speed up the process by hiring a PR firm. Don’t bother. You’re just not ready for that yet. For one thing, it’s too expensive. Good PR firms can cost upward of $10,000 per month. That’s a waste of money right now.

Plus, you’re still just a no-name with a product no one’s ever heard about. Who’s going to write about that? Once you have some customers and a history, you’ll have a story to tell. But just launching isn’t a good story.

And remember, great brands launch without PR campaigns all the time. Starbucks, Apple, Nike, Amazon, Google, and Snapple all became great brands over time, not because of a big PR push upfront.

Start building your audience today. Start getting people interested in what you have to say. And then keep at it. In a few years, you too will get to chuckle when people discuss your “overnight” success.

1 Marketing Tip Every Entrepreneur Should Know

Do you have a marketing department? If not, good. If you do, don’t think these are the
only people responsible for marketing. Accounting is a department. Marketing isn’t. Marketing is something everyone in your company is doing 24/7/365.

Just as you cannot not communicate, you cannot not market:

• Every time you answer the phone, it’s marketing.
• Every time you send an e-mail, it’s marketing.
• Every time someone uses your product, it’s marketing.
• Every word you write on your Web site is marketing.
• If you build software, every error message is marketing.
• If you’re in the restaurant business, the after-dinner mint is marketing.
• If you’re in the retail business, the checkout counter is marketing.
• If you’re in a service business, your invoice is marketing.

Recognize that all of these little things are more important than choosing which piece of swag to throw into a conference goodie bag. Marketing isn’t just a few individual events. It’s the sum total of everything you do.

Entrepreneurs --- Understanding The Law of Successful Giving And Successful Receiving

Drug dealers are astute businesspeople. They know their product is so good they’re willing to give a little away for free upfront. They know you’ll be back for more—with money.

Emulate drug dealers. Make your product so good, so addictive, so “can’t miss” that giving customers a small, free taste makes them come back with cash in hand.

This will force you to make something about your product bite-size. You want an easily digestible introduction to what you sell. This gives people a way to try it without investing any money or a lot of time.

Bakeries, restaurants, and ice cream shops have done this successfully for years. Car dealers let you test-drive cars before buying them. Software firms are also getting on board, with free trials or limited-use versions. How many other industries could benefit from the drug-dealer model?

Don’t be afraid to give a little away for free—as long as you’ve got something else to sell. Be confident in what you’re offering. You should know that people will come back for more. If you’re not confident about that, you haven’t created a strong enough product.

Forget about the Wall Street Journal: Entrepreneur's Focus on Niche Media

Forget about Time, Forbes, Newsweek, Business Week, the New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. Pitching a reporter at one of these places is practically impossible. Good luck even getting ahold of that guy. And even if you do, he probably won’t care anyway. You’re not big enough to matter.

You’re better off focusing on getting your story into a trade publication or picked up by a niche blogger. With these outlets, the barrier is much lower. You can send an e-mail and get a response (and maybe even a post) the same day. There’s no editorial board or PR person involved. There’s no pipeline your message has to go through.

These guys are actually hungry for fresh meat. They thrive on being taste makers, finding the new thing, and getting the ball rolling. That’s why many big-time reporters now use these smaller sites to find new stories. Stories that start on the fringe can go mainstream quickly.

We’ve been written up in big mainstream publications like Wired and Time, but we’ve found that we actually get more hits when we’re profiled on sites like Daring Fireball, a site for Mac nerds, or Lifehacker, a productivity site. Links from these places result in notable spikes in our traffic and sales. Articles in big-time publications are nice, but they don’t result in the same level of direct, instant activity.

Entrepreneurs — How to Get Editors to Write Your Press Releases ?

 

Entrepreneurs — How to Get Editors to Write Your Press Releases ?

What do you call a generic pitch sent out to hundreds of strangers hoping that one will bite? Spam. That’s what press releases are too: generic pitches for coverage sent out to hundreds of journalists you don’t know, hoping that one will write about you.

Let’s dissect the purpose of a press release for a moment: It’s something you send out because you want to be noticed. You want the press to pick up on your new company, product, service, announcement, or whatever. You want them to be excited enough to write a story about you.

But press releases are a terrible way to accomplish that. They’re tired and formulaic. There’s nothing exciting about them. Journalists sift through dozens a day. They wind up buried under an avalanche of hyperbolic headlines and fake quotes from CEOs. Everything is labeled sensational, revolutionary, groundbreaking, and amazing. It’s numbing.

If you want to get someone’s attention, it’s silly to do exactly the same thing as everyone else. You need to stand out. So why issue press releases like everyone else does? Why spam journalists when their inbox is already filled with other people’s spam?

Furthermore, a press release is generic. You write it once and then send it to tons of reporters—people whom you don’t know and who don’t know you. And your first introduction is this vague, generic note you also send to everyone else? Is that the impression you want to make? Is that really going to get you the story?

Instead, call someone. Write a personal note. If you read a story about a similar company or product, contact the journalist who wrote it. Pitch her with some passion, some interest, some life. Do something meaningful. Be remarkable. Stand out. Be unforgettable. That’s how you’ll get the best coverage.

Imperfection is Good For Entrepreneurs, How ?

The business world is full of “professionals” who wear the uniform and try to see perfect. In truth, they just come off as stiff and boring. No one can relate to people like that.

Don’t be afraid to show your flaws. Imperfections are real and people respond to real.

It’s why we like real flowers that wilt, not perfect plastic ones that never change. Don’t worry about how you’re supposed to sound and how you’re supposed to act. Show the world what you’re really like, warts and all.

There’s a beauty to imperfection. This is the essence of the Japanese principle of wabi sabi. Wabi-sabi values character and uniqueness over a shiny facade. It teaches that cracks and scratches in things should be embraced. It’s also about simplicity. You strip things down and then use what you have. Leonard Koren, author of a book on wabi-sabi, gives this advice: Pare down to the essence, but don’t remove the poetry. Keep things clean and unencumbered but don’t sterilize.

It’s a beautiful way to put it: Leave the poetry in what you make. When something becomes too polished, it loses its soul. It seems robotic.

So talk like you really talk. Reveal things that others are unwilling to discuss. Be upfront about your shortcomings. Show the latest version of what you’re working on, even if you’re not done yet. It’s OK if it’s not perfect. You might not seem as professional, but you will seem a lot more genuine.

The Power of Behind the Scenes Marketing And How Entrepreneurs Use Them!

Give people a backstage pass and show them how your business works. Imagine that someone wanted to make a reality show about your business. What would they share? Now stop waiting for someone else and do it yourself.

Think no one will care? Think again. Even seemingly boring jobs can be fascinating when presented right. What could be more boring than commercial fishing and trucking? Yet the Discovery Channel and History Channel have turned these professions into highly rated shows: Deadliest Catch and Ice Road Truckers.

It doesn’t need to be a dangerous job, either. People love finding out the little secrets of all kinds of businesses, even one that makes those tiny marshmallows in breakfast cereals. That’s why the Food Network’s Unwrapped—which explores the secrets behind lunch-box treats, soda pop, movie candy, and more—is such a popular program.

People are curious about how things are made. It’s why they like factory tours or behind-the-scenes footage on DVDs. They want to see how the sets are built, how the animation is done, how the director cast the film, etc. They want to know how and why other people make decisions.

Letting people behind the curtain changes your relationship with them. They’ll feel a bond with you and see you as human beings instead of a faceless company. They’ll see the sweat and effort that goes into what you sell. They’ll develop a deeper level of understanding and appreciation for what you do.

Characteristic of Successful Entrepreneurs - They Told What they Know

You’ve probably heard of Emeril Lagasse, Mario Batali, Bobby Flay, Julia Child, Paula Deen, Rick Bayless, or Jacques Pépin. They’re great chefs, but there are a lot of great chefs out there. So why do you know these few better than others? Because they share everything they know. They put their recipes in cookbooks and show their techniques on cooking shows.

As a business owner, you should share everything you know too. This is anathema to most in the business world. Businesses are usually paranoid and secretive. They think they have proprietary this and competitive advantage that. Maybe a rare few do, but most don’t. And those that don’t should stop acting like those that do. Don’t be afraid of sharing.

A recipe is much easier to copy than a business. Shouldn’t that scare Mario Batali? Why would he go on TV and show you how he does what he does? Why would he put all his recipes in cookbooks where anyone can buy and replicate them? Because he knows those recipes and techniques aren’t enough to beat him at his own game. No one’s going to buy his cookbook, open a restaurant next door, and put him out of business. It just doesn’t work like that. Yet this is what many in the business world think will happen if their competitors learn how they do things. Get over it.

So emulate famous chefs. They cook, so they write cookbooks. What do you do? What are your “recipes”? What’s your “cookbook”? What can you tell the world about how you operate that’s informative, educational, and promotional?

What Successful Entrepreneurs Do - They Teach Their Audience Something Helpful

You can advertise. You can hire salespeople. You can sponsor events. But your competitors are doing the same things. How does that help you stand out?

Instead of trying to outspend, outsell, or outsponsor competitors, try to out-teach them. Teaching probably isn’t something your competitors are even thinking about.

Most businesses focus on selling or servicing, but teaching never even occurs to them. The Hoefler Type Foundry teaches designers about type at Typography.com. Etsy, an online store for things handmade, holds entrepreneurial workshops that explain “best practices” and promotional ideas to people who sell at the site. Gary Vaynerchuk, who owns a large wine shop, teaches people about wine online at Wine Library TV, and tens of thousands of people watch every day.

Teach and you’ll form a bond you just don’t get from traditional marketing tactics.

Buying people’s attention with a magazine or online banner ad is one thing. Earning their loyalty by teaching them forms a whole different connection. They’ll trust you more. They’ll respect you more. Even if they don’t use your product, they can still be your fans.

Teaching is something individuals and small companies can do that bigger competitors can’t. Big companies can afford a Super Bowl ad; you can’t. But you can afford to teach, and that’s something they’ll never do, because big companies are obsessed with secrecy. Everything at those places has to get filtered through a lawyer and go through layers of red tape. Teaching is your chance to outmaneuver them.

Most Successful Companies Build Audience Not Customers or Fans!

All companies have customers. Lucky companies have fans. But the most fortunate companies have audiences. An audience can be your secret weapon.

A lot of businesses still spend big bucks to reach people. Every time they want to say something, they dip into their budgets, pull out a huge wad of cash, and place some ads. But this approach is both expensive and unreliable. As they say, you waste half of your ad budget—you just don’t know which half.

Today’s smartest companies know better. Instead of going out to reach people, you want people to come to you. An audience returns often—on its own—to see what you have to say. This is the most receptive group of customers and potential customers you’ll ever have.

Over the past ten years, we’ve built an audience of more than a hundred thousand daily readers for our Signal vs. Noise blog. Every day they come back to see what we have to say. We may talk about design or business or software or psychology or usability or our industry at large. Whatever it is, these people are interested enough to come back to hear more. And if they like what we have to say, they’ll probably also like
what we have to sell.

How much would it cost us to reach those hundred thousand people every day the old fashioned
way? Hundreds of thousands? Millions? And how would we have done it? Running ads? Buying radio spots? Sending direct mail?

When you build an audience, you don’t have to buy people’s attention—they give it to you. This is a huge advantage.

So build an audience. Speak, write, blog, tweet, make videos—whatever. Share information that’s valuable and you’ll slowly but surely build a loyal audience. Then when you need to get the word out, the right people will already be listening.

How Entrepreneurs Can Use Obscurity For Their Benefits ?

No one knows who you are right now. And that’s just fine. Being obscure is a great position to be in. Be happy you’re in the shadows.

Use this time to make mistakes without the whole world hearing about them. Keep tweaking. Work out the kinks. Test random ideas. Try new things. No one knows you, so it’s no big deal if you mess up. Obscurity helps protect your ego and preserve your confidence.

Retailers experiment with test markets all the time for this reason. When Dunkin’ Donuts thought about selling pizza, hot dogs, and other hot sandwiches, it test-marketed the products at just ten select locations.

Broadway shows also provide a great example of testing ideas on a small stage first. They routinely do a trial run in a smaller city before coming to New York. Testing out of town lets actors get some reps in front of a live audience before the show goes up in front of harsher critics and taste makers.

Would you want the whole world to watch you the first time you do anything? If you’ve never given a speech before, do you want your first speech to be in front of ten thousand people or ten people? You don’t want everyone to watch you starting your business. It makes no sense to tell everyone to look at you if you’re not ready to be looked at yet.

And keep in mind that once you do get bigger and more popular, you’re inevitably going to take fewer risks. When you’re a success, the pressure to maintain predictability and consistency builds. You get more conservative. It’s harder to take risks. That’s when things start to fossilize and change becomes difficult.

If millions of people are using your product, every change you make will have a much bigger impact. Before, you might have upset a hundred people when you changed something. Now you might upset thousands. You can reason with a hundred people, but you need riot gear to deal with ten thousand angry customers.

These early days of obscurity are something you’ll miss later on, when you’re really under the microscope. Now’s the time to take risks without worrying about embarrassing yourself.

Entrepreneurs – So You Think You Can Build a Useful Product?

How To Build a Successful Prduct

You know what it feels like. You go to a store. You’re comparing a few different products, and you’re sold on the one that sounds like it’s the best deal. It’s got the most features. It looks the coolest. The packaging looks hot. There’s sensational copy on the box. Everything seems great.

But then you get it home, and it doesn’t deliver. It’s not as easy to use as you thought it’d be. It has too many features you don’t need. You end up feeling that you’ve been taken. You didn’t really get what you needed and you realize you spent too much.

You just bought an in-store-good product. That’s a product you’re more excited about in the store than you are after you’ve actually used it.

Smart companies make the opposite: something that’s at-home good. When you ge the product home, you’re actually more impressed with it than you were at the store.

You live with it and grow to like it more and more. And you tell your friends, too.

When you create an at-home-good product, you may have to sacrifice a bit of in-store sizzle. A product that executes on the basics beautifully may not seem as sexy as competitors loaded with bells and whistles. Being great at a few things often doesn’t look all that fashy from afar. That’s OK. You’re aiming for a long-term relationship, not a one-night stand.

This is as true for advertising as it is for in-store packaging or displays. We’ve all seen a TV ad for some “revolutionary” gadget that will change your life. But when the actual product arrives in the mail, it turns out to be a disappointment. In-media good isn’t nearly as important as at-home good. You can’t paint over a bad experience with good advertising or marketing.

Entrepreneurs Don’t Confuse Enthusiasm With Priority

Coming up with a great idea gives you a rush. You start imagining the possibilities and the benefits. And of course, you want all that right away. So you drop everything else you’re working on and begin pursuing your latest, greatest idea.

Bad move. The enthusiasm you have for a new idea is not an accurate indicator of its true worth. What seems like a sure-fire hit right now often gets downgraded to just a “nice to have” by morning. And “nice to have” isn’t worth putting everything else on hold.

We have ideas for new features all the time. On top of that, we get dozens of interesting ideas from customers every day too. Sure, it’d be fun to immediately chase all these ideas to see where they lead. But if we did that, we’d just wind up running on a treadmill and never get anywhere.

So let your latest grand ideas cool off for a while first. By all means, have as many great ideas as you can. Get excited about them. Just don’t act in the heat of the moment.

Write them down and park them for a few days. Then, evaluate their actual priority with a calm mind.

Entrepreneurs Never Let the Customers To Outgrow Them

Maybe you’ve seen this scenario: There’s a customer that’s paying a company a lot of money. The company tries to please that customer in any way possible. It tweaks and changes the product per this one customer’s requests and starts to alienate its general customer base.

Then one day that big customer winds up leaving and the company is left holding the bag—and the bag is a product that’s ideally suited to someone who’s not there anymore. And now it’s a bad fit for everyone else.

When you stick with your current customers come hell or high water, you wind up cutting yourself off from new ones. Your product or service becomes so tailored to your current customers that it stops appealing to fresh blood. And that’s how your company starts to die.

After our first product had been around for a while, we started getting some heat from folks who had been with us from the beginning. They said they were starting to grow out of the application. Their businesses were changing and they wanted us to change our product to mirror their new found complexity and requirements.

We said no. Here’s why: We’d rather our customers grow out of our products eventually than never be able to grow into them in the first place. Adding power-user features to satisfy some can intimidate those who aren’t on board yet. Scaring away new customers is worse than losing old customers.

When you let customers outgrow you, you’ll most likely wind up with a product that’s basic—and that’s fine. Small, simple, basic needs are constant. There’s an endless supply of customers who need exactly that.

And there are always more people who are not using your product than people who are. Make sure you make it easy for these people to get on board. That’s where your continued growth potential lies.

People and situations change. You can’t be everything to everyone. Companies need to be true to a type of customer more than a specific individual customer with changing needs.

Why Saying ‘No’ is a Skill that Successful Entrepreneurs Should Master

If I’d listened to customers,
I’d have given them a faster horse.
—HENRY FORD

It’s so easy to say yes. Yes to another feature, yes to an overly optimistic deadline, yes to a mediocre design. Soon, the stack of things you’ve said yes to grows so tall you can’t even see the things you should really be doing.

Start getting into the habit of saying no—even to many of your best ideas. Use the power of no to get your priorities straight. You rarely regret saying no. But you often wind up regretting saying yes.

People avoid saying no because confrontation makes them uncomfortable. But the alternative is even worse. You drag things out, make things complicated, and work on ideas you don’t believe in.

It’s like a relationship: Breaking one up is hard to do, but staying in it just because you’re too chicken to drop the ax is even worse. Deal with the brief discomfort of confrontation up front and avoid the long-term regret.

Don’t believe that “customer is always right” stuff, either. Let’s say you’re a chef. If enough of your customers say your food is too salty or too hot, you change it. But if a few persnickety patrons tell you to add bananas to your lasagna, you’re going to turn them down, and that’s OK. Making a few vocal customers happy isn’t worth it if it ruins the product for everyone else.

ING Direct has built the fastest-growing bank in America by saying no. When customers ask for a credit card, the answer is no. When they ask for an online brokerage, the answer is no. When they ask if they can open an account with a million dollars in it, the answer is no (the bank has a strict deposit maximum). ING wants to keep things simple. That’s why the bank others just a few savings accounts, certificates of deposit, and mutual funds—and that’s it.

Don’t be a jerk about saying no, though. Just be honest. If you’re not willing to yield to a customer request, be polite and explain why. People are surprisingly understanding when you take the time to explain your point of view. You may even win them over to your way of thinking. If not, recommend a competitor if you think there’s a better solution out there. It’s better to have people be happy using someone else’s product than disgruntled using yours.

Your goal is to make sure your product stays right for you. You’re the one who has to believe in it most. That way, you can say, “I think you’ll love it because I love it.”

Successful Entrepreneurs Initially Focused on What ?

In the end, it’s not worth paying much attention to the competition anyway. Why not? Because worrying about the competition quickly turns into an obsession. What are they doing right now? Where are they going next? How should we react?

Every little move becomes something to be analyzed. And that’s a terrible mind-set. It leads to overwhelming stress and anxiety. That state of mind is bad soil for growing anything.

It’s a pointless exercise anyway. The competitive landscape changes all the time. Your competitor tomorrow may be completely different from your competitor today. It’s out of your control. What’s the point of worrying about things you can’t control?

Focus on yourself instead. What’s going on in here is way more important than what’s going on out there. When you spend time worrying about someone else, you can’t spend that time improving yourself.

Focus on competitors too much and you wind up diluting your own vision. Your chances of coming up with something fresh go way down when you keep feeding your brain other people’s ideas. You become reactionary instead of visionary. You wind up offering your competitor’s products with a different coat of paint.

If you’re planning to build “the iPod killer” or “the next Pokemon,” you’re already dead. You’re allowing the competition to set the parameters. You’re not going to out-Apple Apple. They’re de􀉹ning the rules of the game. And you can’t beat someone who’s making the rules. You need to redefine the rules, not just build something slightly better.

Don’t ask yourself whether you’re “beating” Apple (or whoever the big boy is in your industry). That’s the wrong question to ask. It’s not a win-or-lose battle. Their profits and costs are theirs. Yours are yours.

If you’re just going to be like everyone else, why are you even doing this? If you merely replicate competitors, there’s no point to your existence. Even if you wind up losing, it’s better to go down fighting for what you believe in instead of just imitating others.

How Entrepreneurs Can Compete With Big Business and Win

Conventional wisdom says that to beat your competitors, you need to one-up them. If they have four features, you need five (or fifteen, or twenty-five). If they’re spending $20,000, you need to spend $30,000. If they have fifty employees, you need a hundred.


This sort of one-upping, Cold War mentality is a dead end. When you get suckered into an arms race, you wind up in a never-ending battle that costs you massive amounts of money, time, and drive. And it forces you to constantly be on the defensive, too. Defensive companies can’t think ahead; they can only think behind. They don’t lead; they follow.

So what do you do instead? Do less than your competitors to beat them. Solve the simple problems and leave the hairy, difficult, nasty problems to the competition. Instead of one-upping, try one-downing. Instead of outdoing, try underdoing.

The bicycle world provides a great example. For years, major bicycle brands focused on the latest in high tech equipment: mountain bikes with suspension and ultra strong disc brakes, or lightweight titanium road bikes with carbon-fiber everything. And it was assumed that bikes should have multiple gears: three, ten, or twenty-one.

But recently, fixed-gear bicycles have boomed in popularity, despite being as low-tech as you can get. These bikes have just one gear. Some models don’t have brakes. The advantage: They’re simpler, lighter, cheaper, and don’t require as much maintenance.

Another great example of a product that is succeeding by under-doing the competition: the Flip—an ultra simple, point-and-shoot, compact camcorder that’s taken a significant percentage of the market in a short time. Look at all the things the Flip does not deliver:

• No big screen (and the tiny screen doesn’t swing out for self-portraits either)
• No photo-taking ability
• No tapes or discs (you have to offload the videos to a computer)
• No menus
• No settings
• No video light
• No viewfinder
• No special effects
• No headphone jack
• No lens cap
• No memory card
• No optical zoom

The Flip wins fans because it only does a few simple things and it does them well. It’s easy and fun to use. It goes places a bigger camera would never go and gets used by people who would never use a fancier camera.

Don’t shy away from the fact that your product or service does less. Highlight it. Be proud of it. Sell it as aggressively as competitors sell their extensive feature lists.

Entrepreneurs Fight their Entrepreneurial Instincts - Pick a Fight Against Competitors

If you think a competitor sucks, say so. When you do that, you’ll find that others who agree with you will rally to your side. Being the anti-______ is a great way to differentiate yourself and attract followers.

For example, Dunkin’ Donuts likes to position itself as the anti-Starbucks. Its ads mock Starbucks for using “Fritalian” terms instead of small, medium, and large. Another Dunkin’ campaign is centered on a taste test in which it beat Starbucks. There’s even a site called DunkinBeatStarbucks.com where visitors can send e-cards with statements like “Friends don’t let friends drink Starbucks.”

Audi is another example. It’s been taking on the old guard of car manufacturers. It puts “old luxury” brands like Rolls-Royce and Mercedes “on notice” in ads touting Audi as the fresh luxury alternative. Audi takes on Lexus’s automatic parking systems with ads that say Audi drivers know how to park their own cars. Another ad gives a side-by-side comparison of BMW and Audi owners: The BMW owner uses the rear view mirror to adjust his hair while the Audi driver uses the mirror to see what’s behind him.

Apple jabs at Microsoft with ads that compare Mac and PC owners, and 7UP bills itself as the Uncola. Under Armour positions itself as Nike for a new generation.

All these examples show the power and direction you can gain by having a target in
your sights. Who do you want to take a shot at?

You can even pit yourself as the opponent of an entire industry. Dyson’s Airblade starts with the premise that the hand-dryer industry is a failure and then sells itself as faster and more hygienic than the others. I Can’t Believe It’s Not Butter puts its enemy right there in its product name.

Having an enemy gives you a great story to tell customers, too. Taking a stand
always stands out. People get stoked by con􀉻ict. They take sides. Passions are ignited.
And that’s a good way to get people to take notice.

How Can Entrepreneurs Create Greater Value in Their Products? Decommoditize your product

If you’re successful, people will try to copy what you do. It’s just a fact of life. But there’s a great way to protect yourself from copycats: Make you part of your product or service. Inject what’s unique about the way you think into what you sell. Decommoditize your product. Make it something no one else can offer.

Look at Zappos.com, a billion-dollar online shoe retailer. A pair of sneakers from Zappos is the same as a pair from Foot Locker or any other retailer. But Zappos sets itself apart by injecting CEO Tony Hsieh’s obsession with customer service into everything it does.

At Zappos, customer-service employees don’t use scripts and are allowed to talk at length with customers. The call center and the company’s headquarters are in the same place, not oceans apart. And all Zappos employees—even those who don’t work in customer service or fulfillment—start out by spending four weeks answering phones and working in the warehouse. It’s this devotion to customer service that makes Zappos unique among shoe sellers.

Another example is Polyface, an environmentally friendly Virginia farm owned by Joel Salatin. Salatin has a strong set of beliefs and runs his business accordingly.

Polyface sells the idea that it does things a bigger agribusiness can’t do. Even though it’s more expensive to do so, it feeds cows grass instead of corn and never gives them antibiotics. It never ships food. Anyone is welcome to visit the farm anytime and go anywhere (try that at a typical meat-processing plant). Polyface doesn’t just sell chickens, it sells a way of thinking. And customers love Polyface for it. Some customers routinely drive from 150 miles away to get “clean” meat for their families.

Pour yourself into your product and everything around your product too: how you sell it, how you support it, how you explain it, and how you deliver it. Competitors can never copy the you in your product.

The Best Entrepreneurs Don't Start Companies, They Invent

Sometimes copying can be part of the learning process, like when you see an art student replicating a painting in a museum or a drummer playing along to John Bonham’s solo on Led Zeppelin’s “Moby Dick.” When you’re a student, this sort of imitation can be a helpful tool on the path to discovering your own voice.

Unfortunately, copying in the business arena is usually more nefarious. Maybe it’s because of the copy-and-paste world we live in these days. You can steal someone’s words, images, or code instantly. And that means it’s tempting to try to build a business by being a copycat.

That’s a formula for failure, though. The problem with this sort of copying is it skips understanding—and understanding is how you grow. You have to understand why something works or why something is the way it is. When you just copy and paste, you miss that. You just repurpose the last layer instead of understanding all the layers underneath.

So much of the work an original creator puts into something is invisible. It’s buried beneath the surface. The copycat doesn’t really know why something looks the way it looks or feels the way it feels or reads the way it reads. The copy is a faux finish. It delivers no substance, no understanding, and nothing to base future decisions on.

Plus, if you’re a copycat, you can never keep up. You’re always in a passive position. You never lead; you always follow. You give birth to something that’s already behind the times—just a knockoff, an inferior version of the original. That’s no way to live.

How do you know if you’re copying someone? If someone else is doing the bulk of the work, you’re copying. Be influenced, but don’t steal.

How to Make the Best Decisions for Your Startup - One Decision at a Time

Big decisions are hard to make and hard to change. And once you make one, the tendency is to continue believing you made the right decision, even if you didn’t. You stop being objective.

Once ego and pride are on the line, you can’t change your mind without looking bad.

The desire to save face trumps the desire to make the right call. And then there’s inertia too: The more steam you put into going in one direction, the harder it is to change course.

Instead, make choices that are small enough that they’re effectively temporary. When you make tiny decisions, you can’t make big mistakes. These small decisions mean you can afford to change. There’s no big penalty if you mess up. You just fix it.

Making tiny decisions doesn’t mean you can’t make big plans or think big ideas. It just means you believe the best way to achieve those big things is one tiny decision at a time.

Polar explorer Ben Saunders said that during his solo North Pole expedition (thirty one marathons back-to-back, seventy-two days alone) the “huge decision” was often so horrifically overwhelming to contemplate that his day-to-day decision making rarely extended beyond “getting to that bit of ice a few yards in front of me.”

Attainable goals like that are the best ones to have. Ones you can actually accomplish and build on. You get to say, “We nailed it. Done!” Then you get going on the next one. That’s a lot more satisfying than some pie-in-the-sky fantasy goal you never meet.