Andy Vaughn

Yesterday, I spent a couple of hours in the evening editing a business profile shot of mine. The photo shoot didn’t go too well, as I was sick with a head cold, so I was editing the exposure to put me in the “friendliest light,” and reduce the redness of my swollen nose and eyes.

After the edits, I was pretty proud of myself and went to show it off to Stacey. The second she put the baby down and came over to look at my photo, I realized it was all wrong. Absolutely, all wrong!

The edits were fine, the way it came out for my website was fine, the content and the smile on my face was not fine.

I was wearing a suit and tie, as recommended by various business professionals – I need to make sure that I “look professional.” The problem is that I am not a suit and tie guy. Everyone who knows me knows this. When I sit down with a client over coffee, they know this, and are fine with it. I should not be coming across as anything other than what I am.

In a day where people are paying for authenticity and trust more than anything else, I need to make sure that my personality really shines through whatever images I am putting out there. Showing a picture of myself with a head cold wearing a suit and tie is not going to say, “Hey, this is me at my best.”

In the end, I chose a more friendly picture where I am smiling and Stacey is trying to get in the screen, too. This is more my personality, my values, my priorities – family, friends, fun, me. This is what I should show my clients – I am a happy guy, an enthusiastic, fun personality, enjoyable character that can help you make change in your business.

So, here’s the picture I ended up going with (with some minor tweaks):

Seth wrote an insightful article on marketing a new business. He asks you to define if you are selling to a new market or a share of an existing market, because the strategy is highly different.

Getting new people to enter your market is hugely expensive. There’s no way I can persuade a non-book buyer to start buying books–I don’t have enough time or enough money.

With a new market and a new product, there is often a leverage factor called “First mover advantage.” Assume you are inventing a better mousetrap. It’s no more expensive than manufacturing a prototype of the mousetrap and selling it to millions of desirous existing mousetrap buyers. However, if you want to sell a banana juicer as the next big thing, you need to convince people why they would want to juice bananas to begin with.

Being First-mover can be an advantage when you invent something that helps solve an abundant existing problem. If your solution is the only one available, you will quickly gain all of the niche market – ex. Yoga for Leather Clad Harley Bikers. But, you first have to convince them that your solution solves it. This can be expensive to address, as advertising cost can be high – everyone is a “new customer.” Getting distributorship can be hard, as no one is willing to risk their shelf space to an untested product. But, getting investors, can often be an easier task. A VC is often much more willing to invest in a solution to a new problem than a new solution to an old problem.

With the required money in being First to market, it is recommended that inventors with real gusto stick with what they are best at, and leave the funding up to the believers and their first real customers, the Angels and VCs. Build quick, build well, and get it out-the-door fast.

There are two types of people in this world: those that focus on saving money, and those that focus on earning money. The two often don’t overlap, and the frequency of the former far outstrips that of the latter.

While this claim may or may not be true, it provides an interesting tenet to my calorie-/dollar-similarity theory.

Take a sample $2500 monthly budget for a single man in his thirties. If he were to start looking at his savings and decide that he wants to start socking-away an extra $500 each month, he needs to look at areas to cut. Cable goes, eating-out goes, commuting to work to save on gas, etc. He will find it pretty darn difficult to cut out $500 from a $2500 budget, simply if for no other reason than it is 20 percent of his overall expenses. Cutting this out is a significant decrease. The same goes for calories!

If you are eating a daily average of 2500 calories, cutting out 500 calories a day (enough to lose 1 lb a week), you will find it ridiculously difficult to reduce your diet by that much. Your body will hold on to it, as it has acclimated to the 2500 calorie diet. However, if you increase your exercise by simply as much as 45 minutes jogging, 1 hour walking, or 30 minutes swimming, you will be able to burn an extra 500 calories a day, hence resulting in the desired outcome.

Going back to the single guy, we can have him work an extra three days a month (1.5 weekends) and at a rate of $18/hr, he will be earning more to the tune of $540. Where can he do this? Perhaps a part-time job, start freelancing, set up a snow-cone stand in a park, etc. These are all good, quick ways to work on off time with low overhead that can earn his desired $500.

So, when focusing on the magnitude of the result, aim for the mantra “Burn more. Earn more.” It works for fitness, it will work for finances.

We went to a Columbian friend’s dinner party last night. The food was delicious, music energetic, and company amicable. After a few glasses of some delicious Merlot from Southeastern Australia I found a guest I did not recognize from previous parties, and started “talking shop” surrounding his new business. He recently-retired from an eighteen year career in the medical software industry, and just started a new business creating glass art. I introduced myself and informed him that I build websites and provide resources for local small businesses getting off-the-ground.

We chatted about the difference between a CMS and hard-coded website. I told him that all of my client websites are CMS-based, if for no other reason than I don’t like having to maintain content, and most clients hate having to email or call to get simple changes made.

After the discussion of website basics, I offered two key tips that I have found bog down lots of small businesses to stagnation and often failure.

Tip 1

If you are a craftsperson, artist, or otherwise creative individual selling your work, 80% of your time should be spent networking, fostering business relationships, selling, and otherwise pleasing your customer-base. If you are a great-enough artist to be professional, then you can do awesome work in the remaining 20% of your time.

Tip 2

Say “no” frequently, and offer referrals.

Don’t say no just for the sake of saying no. Rather, if you are spending a majority of your time networking, advertising, or otherwise fostering a market, you should be getting way more requests than you can handle.

Many professional videographers, web designers, and photographers that I have met over the years find themselves spending an inordinate amount of time working on work that they would prefer to not be working on, and is clearly not their best work. By defining your niche market and niche product, and passing on all the other work, you can be the best glass dragon-egg salesman in the world, while giving the stained glass window jobs to the friend of yours in the stained glass industry.

Foster these business-to-business relationships as an element of your networking. It elevates you as a fellow business person, whilst providing connections and new jobs to your friends. This type of reciprocal behavior will often get you referrals in the reverse direction; don’t expect it, but it is more likely for them to be passing on your work when you are passing on theirs.

Never before in history has it been so easy to quantify and archive your actions. With the digital streams of Twitter, Facebook, Wordpress, Flickr, and other social media, anyone is able to display a history of their “connections” or friends, conversations with these friends, record ideas and thoughts as they happen, and share pictures of non-digital events.

In SAMBA’s recent discussion of “Is College Obsolete?” Alex Krupp took a look at the transition from a small-town economy where actions trumped credentials, to a growing network economy where credentials where used in representation of actions.

One hundred years ago college didn’t matter. Maybe for bragging rights, but not for getting a job.

With the cyclical ebb and flow of our economical structure, it appears that credentials are again being put wayside to the result of a Google search. When hiring tutors for her business, my wife Stacey checks out her potential hires on Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, and Google. If pictures of them come up with beer-in-hand, passed out on couches, or otherwise on the receiving end of a beer-bong, her image of them weighs heavily on their chances of getting hired. Is this justified? I think so; with a business that counts on tutors to be role-models and motivators towards positive behavior, whether in academic studies, sports, or otherwise patchwork-subjects, her employees need to represent an ideal, a mentor, or at least some sort of a road that parents can count-on for steering their kids in the right direction. Having a mentor who uses blatant profanity and feels it is an ideal image to the globe to have a singular finger as their flag-of-pride, is not the type of representation she wants to employ.

So, now that credentials are being thrown down the drain, what do we do? Foster the relationships you do have. Remember that your actions and messages are archived and leave a digital-trail – hopefully a digital trail that you want to leave behind. Be transparent, honest, and professional, but remember that you are living in the world’s biggest fishbowl. And your next employer is looking in when your name comes up. Are your pants down mooning back?

Yesterday, I was reading 37signals post on “the difference between truly standing for something and a mission statement” and it echoed similar sentiments I have had with big businesses. I shared this with a friend of mine, and he provided the following response, edited:

This reminds me of a Business School professor who always warned us to look for “Credible signals” sent by companies. In a nutshell, “Credible” meant “Skin in the game”.

Examples: Not Credible: A company says they are “committed” to customer service and spends $20 making 1,000 photocopies of a series of platitudes about service and cleanliness. Credible: An entrepreneur says he believes in his company. When looking for funding, he agrees to eat ramen noodles and take no salary for a year in exchange for keeping more equity.

I’ve taken to looking at almost everything any person, corporation, or government says through the lens of “credible signals” – it’s a remarkably accurate way to predict which statements will be carried through, and which are just BS.

Thank you, Trent. I agree; when evaluating new businesses, especially the throng of small business plans out there, it is important to measure the level of investment the entrepreneur is willing to place in the business – not just monetarily, but all forms of “skin in the game.” Eloquently put.

I read Kevin Kelly’s 1000 true fans post yesterday, as well as The Reality of depending on true fans. Both were very insightful articles, the first being motivational and practical – hey artists, you’re only 1000 people away from making 100k a year. The second a more somber look at attrition rates, overhead costs, and managing the fans.

What I took away from it all though, from a business-perspective, is it is important if you are a “creator” of some type, that you sell or offer something that can be re-gifted, shared, taught, or passed on in some way. This is the only way to have your fan rates grow higher than your attrition rates. This is the only way for viral-spread. This is the only way to infect a population. One teaches two whom teach two, etc. Robert Rich sold his music online, but still frowned upon passing it on. He even says that he feels conflicted about the Copyright act. Five-hundred Russians have his music and appreciate it, but his “4 or 5 true fans” are the ones who pay for it and tell him about those bootleggers. If open-source software has taught us anything, it’s to open yourself up, build transparency, share it with the world, and let them see your warts. As Seth Godin says, “If you want to not be demonized, open up and become exposed,” or something like that.