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Profile Your Customer

December 18, 2012 by David

I first was taught to use a “customer profile” in 1993, as an entrepreneur attempting to delight CD-ROM users with high-quality content. It was invaluable, as I’ll explain…

The exercise then was to create a group, a series if you will, of customer profiles that included demographics, psychographics, and even a “face” (clipped from a magazine) to make the profile more “real”… a methodology one of our advisers brought from Microsoft.

We found the technique invaluable, because it provided a shared vocabulary for the factors that would affect the customer’s experience of our CD-ROM. In fact, just following the methodology itself was a way of focusing on the customer’s experience, rather than the product in and of itself.

This had the effect of reducing the internal conflict in the organization as our staff debated “what the customer really wants” — as opposed to the old “I” statements. “Well I think it will be much more compelling if it was in green instead of blue” became “I wonder if Molly (name of one of the customer profiles) would find that compelling?”

So it shouldn’t be any surprise that my friend Jim Ewel, also from Microsoft, reminds us this month of the modern methodology for this (19 years later) with a far better name… the “Persona”…

I advise that you click through to his discussion here, which is in terms and process used in Agile Marketing.

Better Cognitive Function for Entrepreneurs

December 15, 2012 by David

Entrepreneurs can gain better cognitive function, execute on multi-tasking challenges more effectively, and solve problems like Sherlock Holmes.

All by a daily or weekly mindfulness practice of as little as 15 minutes a day… it may even build a defense against Alzhiemers later in life.

Check out this timely article in the New York Times on meditation and mindfulness.

Metrics… for Life

November 19, 2012 by David

My clients will recognize my constant encouragement to set measurable objectives, and then utilize consistent process to apply metrics consciously and mindfully… for business goals and career goals.

Now there’s a book that helps define the benefit of this philosophy for your personal life, particularly if you are a busy and forward-driving executive or entrepreneur.

Clayton Christensen of the Harvard Business School wrote How Will You Measure Your Life? after a series of life events propelled him to share his point of view (an amazing and moving story).

He writes that his first clue that there was a problem with ensuring a happy and successful personal life was when he attended an HBS reunion to discover that nearly every member of his class had been spectacularly unsuccessful (and generally unhappy) in their personal and family lives, despite many accomplishments in their professional lives. Sound familiar?

I appreciated Christensen’s realization that his classmates were extraordinarily gifted, with both talent and opportunity, trained to cast sophisticated strategy into aggressive business plans, and execute accordingly. It wasn’t that they had planned to be unsuccessful in their personal lives, it was simply that they had no plan for their personal lives… and perhaps predictably, the results weren’t what they had assumed.

This realization is at the core of mindful and thoughtful coaching. Set measurable objectives, explicitly and thoughtfully, and then scrupulously measure progress against the objectives.

I can’t recommend this book highly enough for every entrepreneur and business person; get it and read it.

Big Data for Small Businesses

October 31, 2012 by David

Two stories are provided in the November Inc magazine with “big data” and “analytics” used in small/medium-sized businesses at a cost of $1,000/mo and $50/yr respectively.

Starting to look like Moore’s Law applied to software-as-a-service, driving the cost down and the value up!

But regardless of price, the wisdom of building analytics into your business is spot-on. Consumer, or B2B, you need to be collecting data, running experiments, and looking at the results. At a minimum you can increase revenue, and possibly margin.

It is an old (and wise) insight that it is more efficient to sell to an existing customer than it is to recruit a new customer; analytics is the strategy that informs the tactics of doing exactly that.

It is also best when it is more of a lifestyle, than a diet. In other words, don’t look at this as a project (or series of projects)… it should be a core function of your business: collect data, innovate, measure.

Why Big Data Matters

October 21, 2012 by David

Recommended reading for all entrepreneurs… is this article on Big Data from the Harvard Business Review while most startups in the early stages don’t have ANY data to analyze, let alone enough data that you could call it “big data” and derive any meaningful insight from it…

It won’t be long before many “startups” have data stores filled with information (if you choose to collect it, even 500 customers will provide you with rich data)…

and analyzing that information, deriving insights from it, and acting on it (a three-pronged skill set that few people have… thus the article’s focus on how to find Data Scientists) will be ESSENTIAL.

I’m not talking about being competitive here, I’m talking about survival.

One retailer assumed from their extensive hands-on experience, that service person turnover was a key metric… that would determine customer satisfaction. Makes sense intuitively, eh? You want great service/counter staff, and you want them to stay.

Once they truly questioned their assumptions, re-ran their analysis and plumbed their sales per store… they determined service staff was irrelevant. Store manager turnover, however, absolutely determined if the location was profitable or not.

I’m sure my clients can relate, even though some of them have “smaller” businesses right now. Read and heed!

Accountability and Swift Termination

October 4, 2012 by David

Most experienced entrepreneurs will agree that they almost always took too long to terminate key employees when they don’t work out.

In World War II, the U.S. Army grew from 190,000 soldiers in 9 Divisions to 8,000,000 soldiers in 61 Divisions. General George Marshall is credited with instilling accountability in the officer ranks, including generals.

Below are excerpts from the Harvard Business Review article that I strongly recommend you acquire:

“As transformational leaders tend to do, Marshall began by focusing on people. He truly was ruthless in getting the right people in the right jobs—and the wrong people out of them. When Brigadier General Charles Bundel insisted that the army’s training manuals could not all be updated in three or four months and instead would require 18, Marshall twice asked him to reconsider that statement.

“It can’t be done,” Bundel repeated.

“I’m sorry, then you are relieved,” Marshall said.”

Can you imagine that in today’s army?

As you’ll learn in the article, the U.S. Army is no longer run that way (generals are almost never terminated, and certainly never swiftly when held accountable to a leadership goal).

Which way do you run your startup? With accountability? With swift action?

Doctor Heal Thyself

September 20, 2012 by David

I love that Norm Brodsky, long-time columnist and startup expert for Inc magazine… turned his formidable skills on himself, to diagnose the need for experiments and metrics in his own startup, the recently launched Kobeyaki.

Read this to get a taste of why (and how) they measured their new restaurant in order to establish profitability… and next they will experiment with location, in preparation for expansion.

Why So Few Can Write

September 4, 2012 by David

If you, like me, have wondered why so few executives and business people can write persuasively (or at all)… you might find this lengthy article in The Atlantic magazine will illuminate the issue for you.

I know that in my work coaching entrepreneurs, many otherwise talented and passionate startup founders are hampered, handicapped really, in their inability to write clearly, effectively and above all, persuasively.

Why not?

Yes of course, the U.S. education system needs repair and improvement, but what you may find the article inspiring for the point of view it brings to this problem — because improvement came not from a new technology for instruction, not more school hours, and not by changing teachers.

Improvement came by placing an huge focus on the basics of analytic writing, every day, in every class. This could be a model of educational reform, and it could expand the number of students will be our next startup founders.

Moore’s Law

July 4, 2012 by David

If you don’t know what this is, you need to know it. Really.

Whether you’re in the technology markets, or raising grass-fed beef cow in a pasture, you need to understand the implications of this simple but powerful factor that affects what we drive, what we eat and how we live.

Gordon Moore, a kind and razor-sharp engineer published a paper in 1965 describing that integrated circuits had doubled in density every year since 1958. “Density” in this context meant the number of components in the circuit, essentially its “capacity”.

The “Law” has stood up to the test of time, and 55 years later it has been generalized for processing speed in computers, the amount of memory in computers and consumer devices such as phones, and the number of pixels (“sharpness”) in digital cameras.

Even Moore does not believe that the exponential nature of capacity will continue to grow, and eventually it must slow. Although he has been quoted widely on this, including recently, it hasn’t yet stopped. This is why your iPhone from last year has already been superseded by a superior model, before your 2-year contract is up.

The salient point for us is that product development, providing services, and even the basics of transporting grass-fed beef cow to market, will be dramatically affected by the constant improvement and expanded capacity of computers. Our markets and cost assumptions are, by definition, a moving target.

For more on the Law, and its implications read the Wikipedia entry.

By the way, I had the great pride to work with Dr. Moore at Intel, although “work with” is a generous interpretation. He agreed to attend a few meetings with key customers that I hosted, and was gracious, self-deprecating, and very smart. A superior individual.