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Last week was Leo Fender’s birthday (he would have been 112!). He’s known for bringing the first solid body electric guitars to the world way back in the 1950s! The guitar he is most famous for, the Fender Stratocaster, became the favourite for many rock musicians including Jimi Hendrix, Eric Clapton, and Deep Purple’s Ritchie Blackmore. Would they have written the same music with different instruments? Who knows.

Give this song a listen with me as we see what the experts are saying this week. Every once in a while we just need to listen to a tune about space travel and groovy music, right? Not to mention some smokin’ riffs and vocals!

Fluke or Genius?

Is your product or solution’s success a fluke or a result of genius? Leo Fender is hailed by many to be a genius. However, is it possible that his successes were merely a fluke?

Sure, he was an off-the-wall inventor, but he was neither an engineer nor a guitar player. Some might say that the success of his two most iconic guitars (Telecaster and Stratocaster) was a mere fluke – a lot of luck on Venus.

Others were working on solid body electric guitars when Fender started. Many of his design concepts came from his employees’ feedback or suggestions from working musicians. And initial response to his guitar design was lacklustre.

But he was an obsessive thinker/worker – and he listened to what people wanted and took customer feedback very seriously. He trusted the input of people with talent (he met all the groovy people!), so he surrounded himself with them. Sure, he got a lot wrong at first, but failure is usually found on the path to success. So he made adjustments – and the fact that he had many ‘hits’ (guitars, basses, amplifiers) indicates that he had repeatable success – and that’s no fluke!

Regardless of whether you subscribe to methodologies like The Lean Startup, the importance of customer feedback and building something people want is paramount to success. And when the products we’re bringing to market are needed, it sure is easier for sales and marketing to ensure some Fender-style repeatable success.

The Art of the Mixtape

As a kid, I would pretend to be a DJ. I would listen to my trusty radio/cassette player, wait for those new songs I loved and hit record (sometimes missing the intro)… then I would create tapes of these songs and mix them together. It was so much work! The analog world was painstaking compared to today’s digital.

How about you? Do you remember the mixtape? They weren’t just a collection of songs – they were a statement. You’d make them for your own enjoyment, or to give to others. And great mixtapes had a life of their own – endlessly copied and shared among your friends!

There’s a new documentary on mixtapes coming out this week that you might appreciate, called Analog Love. Watching the trailer made me think about how things have changed in the B2B world. As vendors, we used to provide content to buyers. We’d provide sales collateral, whitepapers, etc. and the buyer relied on the vendor to provide information for their decision. But now the buyer is in control. Before even speaking to a vendor the buyer has already consumed a ton of content and seen reviews of the vendor’s product.

As B2B marketers – is it our job to create the mixtape for our buyers and provide the right mix of content for them? Or do we simply provide the ‘tracks’ and let them create their own mixtape? Perhaps it depends on your Ideal Customer Profile (ICP) and your solution – but in today’s digital world, it’s so easy to consume content, let’s keep on (space) truckin’, and not rely on our own fluke to achieve success!

As always, don’t hesitate to call me to brainstorm or just say hello.

Looking forward,
Rick

Rick Endrulat, President | ricke@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/rickendrulat

The post The Mixtape Path to Success appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

No matter what your long-term goal is, remember to build with SCALE in mind – the steps below are great guidelines to help keep you focused and your attention in the right places. Never forget, what gets measured, gets DONE. Ready, set, GO!!

A few years ago, Christophe Blazquez posted this great infographic on Twitter (by Anna Vital) about startups, based on Paul Graham’s essay: Startups in 13 Sentences.

I thought I would provide my own take on Paul’s 13 Sentences.

Pick good co-founders

There are so many challenges that come along with starting a business. Many entrepreneurs find that they don’t have everything that is required to build their start-up by themselves. Having someone to help you along the way can be quite helpful. Some of the greatest companies we know today started with two. Jobs and Wozniak, Hewlett and Packard, Ben and Jerry… even Laverne and Shirley (although I’m not sure how productive they really were)! It’s important to find a co-founder who can complement your skills and fill the gaps. This will ultimately help you focus on what you’re really good at and offload some of the work onto someone else. Additionally, having someone else around will make it easier when it comes time to make decisions for the company and will allow you to take a break every now and then.

Launch Fast

One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced entrepreneurs make is moving too slowly. By launching early and launching fast you are getting your business into motion. This will help you gain momentum and get things moving. You must be quick, efficient, decisive, and ready to learn and adapt.

Let your idea evolve and embrace mistakes

As you grow and gain more traction, more ideas will flow in. Let your idea evolve and change. In fact, Flickr actually began as a feature in an online role-playing game from gaming startup Ludicorp. Photo sharing was the last component of the game. The game itself was never successful, but photo sharing was on the rise and what we now know as Flickr became a huge hit. You’ll make many mistakes, and probably regret a few decisions, along the way. Many people believe that a mistake means failure. Making mistakes will provide great opportunities to learn from, so embrace them and use them to your advantage.

 Understand your users, and make at least a few of them really love you

By taking the time to get to know and understand your users, you have a better idea of what it is they’re looking for. Find out what their pain points are and try to address them. Create buyer or user personas so you have a better idea of who it is you want to target. You may find that your product doesn’t suit the particular group of people you initially had in mind. If this happens, you have options: modify your product to better suit the needs of your customers, or change up your strategy to target those who will be interested.

You’ll have to choose between partially satisfying everyone or making a few people really happy. Choose the latter. These people will act as brand ambassadors. Get them to really like you and they will spread the word. They can be your guinea pigs; have them try your product and ask them to provide feedback. It’s easier to gain more customers over time than it is to try and increase satisfaction among everybody.

Give surprisingly good customer service

Customer service is a major part of being successful in business. Customers aren’t always easy to please and now, more than ever, they look for instant gratification. When customers are happy with the service you provide, there is a higher likelihood that they will stick to your business instead of shifting to competitors. Customers like to share stories about their experiences with their friends, family, and colleagues – and social media has made this easier than ever.

When you provide customers with a memorable experience, they will be more likely to tell others about the great service they received. Receiving good feedback and knowing you did a good job can result in increased morale and a boost in confidence within the company and among employees. Having happy customers makes for happy employees, making it a better place to work overall. This also results in less turnover, increased profit, and on and on. The benefits are endless.

You make what you measure

When you measure something, you get a good idea of how to improve on it. Spend some time learning what people like, and what people dislike, about your product. Do some investigating and even put some free or inexpensive analytic tools to use to get a grasp on what’s going great and what’s doing poorly. This way you’ll have tangible evidence of how things are doing. When it comes time to approach investors, you’ll have plenty of data to make your case.

If you don’t measure your success, how will you ever know if you’re doing well?

Spend little

Contrary to popular belief, you don’t need a fancy office or a beer keg in the lunchroom to become successful. After all, Apple started off in a garage; so did HP. You’ll get there. The most common reason businesses fail is because they run out of money.

Get ramen profitable

While keeping expenses low, make just enough money to survive off of as opposed to trying to make millions from the get-go. This will make you more attractive to possible investors.

If you’re already making a profit, this proves to investors that you have piqued interest in the market and can get someone to pay for your product. It also shows that you are interested in taking the time to build a quality product, and that you maintain discipline by keeping expenses low. If you don’t need to raise more money for the next best thing (which you probably don’t really need, anyway), then you won’t have to take time away from building your product to do it. When investors see that you aren’t going to blow their money on random stuff, they will be more inclined to cut you a deal, as they will see that their investment is going to be put to good use.

Avoid distractions

As if starting a business isn’t difficult enough, there will always be distractions on the sidelines ready to pull you away from whatever you’re focusing on. Often startups get distracted and bogged down by things that are almost completely irrelevant to the success of their business: things like your day job, side projects, or even little things like having your phone beside you in your workspace.

Dr. Gloria Mark has studied the effects of being interrupted and found that we typically become distracted and switch tasks every three minutes. Two other tasks usually intervene before we eventually get back to our initial task, and it takes about 23 minutes to get back into your groove. That means there’s a good chance you even stopped reading this post for a while in order to work on something else before coming back to it. Wow. Rude… (Full disclosure – I actually became distracted a few times while writing this.)

These distractions are coupled with physical changes to your environment such as new windows and applications open on your desktop, new files downloaded, and some new items in your workspace. These physical changes actually add to the time it takes to get back to what you were originally doing, wasting even more time.

You can read more on Dr. Gloria Mark’s study here.

Try to eliminate these distractions by planning distraction-free time in a distraction-free space. If even for just a few hours, go to a quiet place, play some music if you need to, turn off any notifications and keep your phone away from you and plan to work on one single task for a set amount of time.

Don’t get demoralized and don’t give up

These were originally two separate points, but they really go hand-in-hand.

You’ll have some hard times. It happens with every company eventually. Starting a business is a huge burden since you probably have a lot riding on the successful outcome of the product and the business. It is incredibly stressful, so it’s important to prioritize mental wellness and to not give up when times get tough.

While there is a lot of work to be done, it’s critical that you don’t work yourself into burnout. There will be times that you will have to work very long hours. It is important to remember to maintain a social life and spend time with friends and family. These positive interactions will help your mind take a break from the stress at work.

Don’t die

This one is… pretty self-explanatory.

My conclusions?

Building a start-up is like raising a child (Parents: need I say more?). Start-ups can be very fun and become quite successful, and eventually go on to change the world. There are many, many more topics I could talk about in this post – but then it might just go on forever.

If you have a great idea, don’t be afraid to pursue it. It might just become the next big thing.

Cynthia Sundberg, VP Operations and Administration | cynthias@v-causeway.com | www.linkedin.com/in/cynthia-sundberg-6742481

The post Succeeding in a Startup in 11 Easy Steps appeared first on Virtual Causeway.

We thought we would provide our own take on Paul’s 13 Sentences on Start-ups.

Pick good co-founders

There are so many challenges that come along with starting a business. Many entrepreneurs find that they don’t have everything that is required to build their start-up by themselves. Having someone to help you along the way can be quite helpful. Some of the greatest companies we know today started with two. Jobs and Woznick, Hewlett and Packard, Ben and Jerry, and Batman and Robin. It’s important to find a co-founder who can complement your skills and fill the gaps. This will ultimately help you focus on what you’re really good at and offload some of the work onto someone else. Additionally, having someone else around will make it easier when it comes time to make decisions for the company and will allow you to take a break every now and then.

Launch Fast

One of the biggest mistakes inexperienced entrepreneurs make is moving too slowly. By launching early and launching fast you are getting your business into motion. This will help you gain momentum and get things moving. You must be quick, efficient, decisive, and ready to learn and adapt.

Let Your Idea Evolve and embrace mistakes

As you grow and gain more traction, more ideas will flow in. Let your idea evolve and change. In fact, Flickr actually began as a feature in an online role-playing game from gaming startup Ludicorp. Photo sharing was the last component of the game. The game itself was never successful however photo sharing was on the rise and what we now know as Flickr became a huge hit. You will make many mistakes, and regret a few decisions, along the way. Many people believe that a mistake means failure. Making mistakes will provide great opportunities to learn from so embrace them and use them to your advantage.

Understand your Users and Make at least a few of them really love you

By taking the time to get to know and understand your users, you have a better idea of what it is they are looking for. Find out what their pain points are and try to address them. Create buyer or user personas so you have a better idea of who it is you want to target. You may find that your product doesn’t suit the particular group of people you initially had in mind. If this happens, you will be able to modify your product to better suit the needs of your customers or change up your strategy to target those who will be interested.

You will have to choose between partially satisfying everyone or making a few people really happy. Choose the latter. These people will act as brand ambassadors. Get them to really like you and they will spread the word. These people can act as guinea pigs; have them try your product and ask them to provide feedback. It’s easier to gain more customers over time than it is to try and increase satisfaction among everybody.

Give surprisingly good customer service

Customer service is a major part of being successful in business. Customers aren’t always easy to please and now, more than ever, they look for instant gratification. When customers are happy with the service you provide, there is a higher likelihood that they will stick to your business instead of shifting to competitors. Customers like to share stories about their experiences with their friends, family, and colleagues and social media make this easier than ever. When you provide customers with a memorable experience, they will be more likely to tell others about the great service they received. Receiving good feedback and knowing you did a good job can result in increased morale and a boost in confidence within the company and among employees. Having happy customers makes for happy employees, making it a better place to work overall. This also results in less turnover, increased profit and on and on. The benefits are endless.

You make what you measure

When you measure something, you get a good idea on how to improve it. Spend some time learning what people like, and what people dislike, about your product. Do some investigating and even put some free or inexpensive analytic tools to use to get a grasp on what is going great and what’s doing poorly. This way you will have tangible evidence of how things are doing. When it comes time to approach investors, you’ll have plenty of data to make your case.

If you don’t measure your success, how will you ever know if you’re doing well?

Spend little

Contrary to belief, you don’t need a fancy office or a beer keg in the lunchroom to become successful. After all, Apple started off in a garage as did HP. You’ll get there. The most common reason businesses fail is because they run out of money.

Check out this list of freebies to use while you’re getting started.

Get ramen profitable

While keeping expenses low, make just enough money to survive off of as opposed to trying to make millions from the get-go. This will make you more attractive to possible investors.

If you’re already making a profit, this proves to investors that you have peaked interest in the market and can get someone to pay for your product, that you are interested in taking the time to building a quality product, and that you maintain discipline by keeping expenses low. If you don’t need to raise more money for the next best thing (which you probably don’t really need), you won’t have to take time away from building your product to do it. When investors see that you aren’t going to blow their money on random stuff they will be more inclined to cut you a deal as they will see that their investment is going to be put to good use.

Avoid distractions

As if starting a business isn’t difficult enough, there will always be distractions on the sidelines ready to pull you away from whatever you’re focusing on. Often times start-ups get distracted and bogged down by things that are almost completely irrelevant to the success of their business; things like your day job, side projects and even little things like having your phone beside you in your workspace.

Dr. Gloria Mark has studied the effects of being interrupted and found that we typically become distracted and switch tasks every three minutes. Two other tasks usually intervene before we eventually get back to our initial task and it takes about 23 minutes to get back into your groove.

That means there’s a good chance you even stopped reading this post for a while in order to work on something else before coming back to it. Rude… (Full disclosure, I actually became distracted many times while writing this).

These distractions are coupled with physical changes to our environment such as new windows and applications open on your desktop, new files downloaded, and some new items in your workspace. These physical changes actually add to the time it takes to get back to what you were originally doing, thus, wasting even more time.

You can read more on Dr. Gloria Mark’s study HERE

Try to eliminate these distractions by planning distraction-free time in a distraction-free space. If even for just a few hours, go to a quiet place, play some music if you need to, turn off any notifications and keep your phone away from you and plan to work on one single task for a set amount of time.

Don’t get demoralized and Don’t give up

These were originally two separate points, they really go hand in hand.

Times are going to get hard. It happens with every company eventually. Starting a business is a huge burden since you probably have a lot riding on the successful outcome of the product and the business. It is incredibly stressful so it’s important to prioritize mental wellness and to not give up when times get tough.

While there is a lot of work to be done, it’s critical that you don’t work yourself into burnout. There will be times that you will have work very long hours. It is important to remember to maintain a social life and spend time with friends and family. These positive interactions will help your mind take a break from the stress at work.

Don’t die

Pretty self-explanatory.

Conclusion

Building a start-up Is like raising a child. Parents: need I say more? Start-ups can be very fun and become quite successful and eventually go on to change the world. There are many, many more topics we could add into this post however It would simply go on forever.

If you have a great idea, don’t be afraid to peruse it. It might just become the next big thing.

The post How to Succeed in a Startup in 11 Steps appeared first on Virtual Causeway.