Living the Startup Life

The idea of working for oneself circles the brain for more reasons than potential earnings, supposed freedom, and pure thrill - it does so because at some point we need to have our personal touch on business direction, and feel the joy of creating businesses that make a difference. Truly, no one knows business potential like each and every one of us does.

Beyond mere potential though, are the elements that make businesses successful; two of which are marketing and product creation. Last month I wrote about the differences between product-based businesses and service-based businesses in my given industry - forestry. At the risk of creating an “easier said than done” situation, in this post we’ll explore some tips and steps for taking a service-oriented business, and marketing it as (or making it) a product.

#1: Market Your Services As A Product

My biggest fear in creating a consulting business based on carrying out a service - in my case a service to both business and ecosystems - is that it is seen as an extra or mere option. To quell such fear, offer the service as a product, meaning that it must have positive consequences both long- and short-term.

The best way to carry out this transfer is to research and outline the consequences of ignoring your service. Cite law, case studies, and true benefits of your service. Incorporate them into your mission statement, as it is very important that you believe in them yourself. Lastly, market the ways in which your services make businesses run smoother, attract investment, and foster confidence and development.

When your system has been in place long enough, you may want to approach regulation that would make your business a necessity. An example of a service built on necessity is Environmental Assessment consulting: when development requires assessment to continue, the service deliverable becomes a valuable product.

#2: Diversify Your Services

Diversify your services not just for name and fame - but do so for multiple, viable revenue streams. Importantly, spreading your butter too thin may be worse than building a crap business to start with.

Identify people and trends that relate to your idea, and build them into your business plan. Integral to this are people you can trust to build your business alongside you; those who work in a niche which you may not be very familiar with. You must be familiar enough to know how to market and identify opportunities, then trustful enough to pass the task on to your business partner.

…and #3: Better Than Trend-catching is…

In fact, MUCH better than trend catching is trend CREATION. As with my first point, if you can take a mere trend, and make it a requirement you would be golden.

It’s a tough world out there. Not only are we seeing real signs of economic stagnation, but even the top performing businesses are cutting costs everywhere. Nowhere is this more evident in Canada than in the business I have the pleasure of partaking in, the forest and timber industry. But, hidden within the fact that the industry and its funding sources are in the crapper is the fact that we are in a time open to innovation and change, a.k.a the best time to build business.

Be that change, make that innovation, and most importantly, use it to follow your dreams.

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Helpful Links: Initial Steps, Management Help (more to browse within), and Canada E-business training.

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Torbjørn Rive is the writer and owner of Variable Interest. Variable Interest is also a member of the Brazen Careerist blog network.

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Have you guy seen those billboards all over the place and all of those commercials going “Woo hoo” for Washington Mutual?  Well at first, I thought this was a very funny approach to advertisement.  Their goal is to associate a positive emotion, “Woo hoo!”, with their company so that you react on that positive emotional feel.  All purchase decisions are made emotionally, so this could prove to be very effective.

You see, Washington Mutual is hitting you from two sides with their campaigns.  There commercials hit you on the logical side because it tells you about their free checking.  Then when you’re driving around on the street, you see these gigantic billboards that prompt your emotional side to associate Washington Mutual with a positive feeling.  It all sounds good and dandy, but I had never before realized how effective the campaign was, until now…

On Monday, my girlfriend and I went to a Washington Mutual at 5:59pm (1 minutes before they close).  I thought that we would feel rushed, but the Wamu employees were very welcoming and all had smiles on their face.  On the wall it said, “Free Smiles,” and that’s exactly what I saw in there.  The amazing thing is that this campaign, the “Woo hoo” campaign, is not just for us - their clients.  The campaign is also for internal use among their employees and to promote the company culture.

It was now 6:09pm, most of the registers were already closed, but they kept open a register for Kim.  All over the walls I saw signs that said, “Woo hoo,” so I had to ask: “Do you guys ever break out into a spontaneous “Woo hoo!”.  “We do it all the time.  We also give special treats to clients who do a little dance and yell out Woo hoo!” she responded.  So of course, I had to do it.  I showed them a little spin and I did a kick like Michael Jackson in his black days.  Everyone got a kick out of it and they rewarded me with the Woo hoo sticker I tagged above!

Ok, so the sticker isn’t all that amazing, but what was amazing was how this Woo hoo campaign has contributed to an amazing company culture.  I bank at Bank of America, and everything feels uptight and not that personable.  At Wamu, they really make an effort to make you feel welcome and like a friend rather than a client.

When building your company brand, don’t forget about branding ineternally among your employee culture.  If you’re National Geographic, then have dinosaurs, animals, and images of different cultures all around the office.  If you’re PetSmart, then allow all of your employees to bring in their pets once a weekso that you promote the animal friendly culture.  If you’re Wamu, then you’re employees all wear smiles, yell out Woo hoo spontaneously, encourage their clients (friends) to do the same.

Does your company culture reflect your company brand?

Why such good reviews for Iron Man? Why such good word-of-mouth?

I did not hear or see any attempts at viral marketing by Iron Man. Forgetting Sarah Marshall tried to harness the power of blogging and new media but didn’t fair so well at the box office. The ruins made an attempt at a viral video but did horribly at the box office. Does the new media actually cause people to go and spend $11 for a movie?

I checked out the Iron Man Website and it is a SUPER slow flash site that doesn’t have anything really that cool or interactive.

From my research, I believe that I have found the two X-factors:

1. Rotten Tomatoes
2. Hard-core user Approval

1. Rotten Tomatoes

Rotten Tomatoes gave Iron Man a 93% rating! The first thing that a person would say to me about Iron Man was that “It got a super high rating on Rotten Tomatoes.” For a lot of movies, Rotten Tomatoes can make or break you. In comparison, Speed Racer (34%) and What Happens in Vegas (28%) did not do well at the box office. Indian Jones scored pretty well this week at 80%. Lets see if they debut at number 1 next week.

2. Hardcore User Approval

One of my best friends, Timon Safaie, is a hardcore Marvel reader. He knows absolutely everything about the Marvel Universe and is a Maven in that area. The first thing that he told me about Iron Man was that “It stayed very true to its comic roots.” The second factor in gaining great word-of-mouth is gaining the approval of your hardcore users. People who don’t read comic books watch a great Marvel movie and think, “Wow, this was a good movie.” Harcore readers of Iron Man (people who have grown up reading the Iron Man comics) watch an Iron Man that stays true to the comic book and thinks, “WOW, I must tell everyone I know about this amazing movie!”

Even though your hardcore viewer base is very small, they will be the ones writing the reviews, telling their friends, writing blogs about it, and spreading it word-of-mouth. I think that’s where most companies drop the ball. They don’t focus on satisfying their hardcore users who ultimately make their product an amazing product.

So the ultimate movie recipe is:

High Rotten Tomato Rating + Satisfy Your Hardcore Viewers = Lots and lots of Money!!!

I am a huge proponent of building your brand and staying true to it.  If you’re brand is “solid and professional,” then everyone on your team must wear a suit and tie at all times and be a pillar of professionalism.  If your brand is “productive and fun,” then your culture must be upbeat and all of your client interactions must end with a bright smile :).

Now lets say your brand has worked for you but now you are growing rapidly.  You started with a niche group of people and are now gaining momentum.  Do you change your brand to accommodate to your new (and much bigger) market?  That’s what American Apparel has done.  Jeff writes a great blog about how sex sells and influences companies to “take the money.”

I want to take a step back and talk about American Apparel’s brand based on these ads:

I believe that AA actually has a pretty great strategy tied to its marketing efforts.

AA started as “green” and ethics minded.  Lets say they branded themselves very well with the sustainable minded people.  However, Jeff points out that only 10%-12% of sustainable minded people actually go out of their way to buy “green safe” products.  So what are the other characteristics of the sustainable minded?  They are raw, free, rebellious, against “the man”, amateur, and young.  I believe that AA’s ads are meant to further target the “sustainable minded” population.

Take a look at the ad above.  It represents raw, sex, youth, and freedom.  There are a lot of other ones that you can check out be just googling AA ads.  The girls in the ads are looking at you, exposing themselves freely, confident with themselves, and don’t care what you think about them.  They are strong minded and independent.  These are the exact characteristics of the people that AA is targeting.

You see, AA is still a “green” and ethics based company.  The new ads penetrate their target market further and I believe they have done a great job with it.

You can say that they “sold out” because now they’re using sex.  I believe that they haven’t sold out at all.  The ads are not trashy, but a strong statement about confident sexuality and doing what you believe in.

One must full-heartedly devote himself or herself to the company brand. Before making any decision, you must ask yourself if this fulfills and pushes the company brand.

The Future Delivery brand is “Make productivity fun.” Everything that we do is about career or personal development for the student or young professional. However, there are many sites and services out there that offer students and young professionals a way to further their careers. Our edge is that we make it FUN. No matter if it’s researching a company, contributing to the community, writing a blog, asking or answering a question, our goal is to make the entire interviewing and personal development process as fun as possible.

Enter the picture above. Our designer Cat is very good at what she does. I came up with an idea about introducing a personal avatar for each user that physically represents the amount of FD points the user has. If you have a healthy set of FD points, then your avatar will be big and healthy (like a plump sumo wrestler). If you have low FD points or if you are in the negative, your avatar will be scrawny and weak.

Our FD Cache is built around the see-saw function that Yu-kai developed.  It’ll be a physical representation of peoples opinions and thoughts about the company.  Here is an example of what it might look like:

Can you imagine how cool it would be if there were sumo wrestlers or even cowboys riding the ends of those see-saws!  Yes, extremely amazing.  But in all seriousness, we will live and die by our brand.  If we cannot make a productive site that is also extremely fun and rewarding so that people keep coming back, then we will have failed our mission.

Our site will be out in two weeks! Get ready for productive fun!

So I don’t smoke; never have and never will. However, watching these lame “Truth” commercials make me just want to grab a cigarette and puff a few smokes in their face just so they know how ineffective and retarded these “Sunny Side of Truth” commercials are.

Lets analyze this 30 second commercial that constantly plays on TV airwaves.

Who is their target audience?

The target audience for these commercials is the Millennial generation. This includes Gen Y and Z. I have seen them on TNT, TBS, and local channels all the time. The lead actors are always people in our generation so it is very impactful and relevant to us.

What is the point they are trying to get across?

The commercial opens like every other “Truth” commercial where two Gen Y’ers stand outside a major tobacco company. This is effective because it calls to the heart of what Gen Y is all about - sticking it to the man. Big Tobacco is “the man,” and we are standing outside their giant building in defiance. “5 million people died from their products last year.” This immediately grabs my attention because it is so concrete. 5 million people is a freakin lot of people! So far so good; the first 5 seconds does grab my attention.

What is the unique way in which they grab and keep our attention?

So the “brilliant” way they thought of gaining and keeping our attention is to do a silly little dance and jig about “making a typo.” How effective is this, really? What they are trying to do is show how ridiculous it is to think that 5 million deaths a year could be a typo. I’m not sure if Big Tobacco said that the number was a typo, but if they did, then this commercial is trying to counter their statement.

The feel of this commercial reminds me of reality TV. There are so many reality shows about singing and dancing, that I believe the directors of the commercial are trying to use this momentum to catch our attention. Also, the people in the crowd are shown standing and watching this dance. It makes it seem like they are performing it live, which is another play on reality TV.

I completely understand what they are trying to do, but I DO NOT feel that it is effective. It didn’t drive me to google their movement nor was there a website url at the end that told me where to go to check them out online. Actually now to think about it, let me go online and google them.

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There website is www.thetruth.com. I actually take back my first statement about being targeted to the Gen Y. After spending a few minutes browsing the site, absolutely everything is very cartoony and seems to be targeted towards the pre-teens and very young teenagers.

If this is the case, then no wonder these commercials are not effective on my. Actually, they’re effect on me is the opposite of what they’re trying to do because if makes me want to smoke. The next steps are for me to talk to some very young teenagers who have seen this commercial. Is it effective on them? Do they understand the message? If they smoke right now, does it encourage them to stop smoking?

Here is a great blog post by David about Anti-Smoking Ads

Would love to hear from you and learn your viewpoints on this commercial.

Twitter me this, twitter me that… what is twitter really good for? Its a question that everyone is asking, no one truly knows the answer to, but people all over are still using it. Are they really?

Rachel makes a good argument for the uselessness of Twitter. If you truly look at what twitter is, it’s a tool to help people stalk you. They literally took a cool feature from Facebook (the status bar), and just built an entire community around it. Now I know they added those cool little text message notification to tell you what your friends are doing, but really… I don’t need to be updated that you’re “tying your left shoe” or that “you’re coming back from your trip to NY.” Twitter is a tool that pretty much all bloggers are using to try and push their posts (at least in my opinion).

With that said, I use Twitter. Why do I use it? Because I need to stay up to date with everything going on in the Web 2.0 community as the CMO of Future Delivery. Have a met any friends through Twitter? NO. Do I actively visit the site everyday? NO.

I do have one question though. Why is it that some people have 50,000+ people following them?!?! That completely boggles my mind because I want to be them, hahaha. But seriously, I do. Can you imagine the power that these people have? Every single thing that they post can potentially be text messaged to 50,000+ people. This is insane for viral marketing!

So, my quest is to find out how to get more people to follow me on FB. If you have a strategy, contact me and we’re work on it together to figure it out.

So my girlfriend and I were driving to get some late night Boba Loca over in Garden Grove when I saw the billboard for I Hate Sarah Marshall. I saw this about 6 times the last time I was driving around in Westwood, so I finally decided to check it out. I asked Kim to look up Sarah Marshall on her iPhone and we found out it was a blog of some sort.

I’ve recently dived into the blogging community and I thought, “Wow, blogs have gotten so powerful that jealous boyfriends are now using it to ruin the reputation of their ex-girlfriends.” It was literally a blog about how much this guy Peter Bretter hates Sarah Marshall for breaking up with him. I joked around that I’m going to get the url ihatekimear.com just in case

And then it hit me. I had the I-think-I’ve-seen-this-guy-before feeling and it was because I had seen Sarah and the guy on top of the horse in a movie preview before. Kim and I had gone to see Semi Pro last weekend and The Sarah Marshall movie was on one of the previews.

WOW! If this is not a great way of using blogs for viral marketing, then I don’t know what is. These billboards were posted absolutely every where I looked, which drove me to the site. The site itself is very cleverly made and is made to seem like it is actually the blog of Peter. There is even a little youtube snippet of him hating on Sarah. There is a picture of Sarah on the top right that says “Click here only if you’re over 18.” Of course everyone is going to click there! It’s like putting a red button in front of people that reads “Don’t click.” We will click; it’s human nature.

So this is the power of viral marketing. If you use blogs effectively, you are able to reach your target market directly and have them spread the word for you. The only things that I can add to their strategy is to incorporate comments, trackbacks, and all that other good stuff on their posts. If you can get a conversation going on the site, it will attract even more attention.

So I am very very excited!  About a week and a half ago, I was contacted by a Brandweek representative to chat about being a young CMO and what my opinions are about marketing and PR.  I’m good friends with Ryan from Brazen Careerist and today I get an email from him congratulating me about being on the latest article!  I didn’t even know that the article had been written, so I google my name and there it was: Marketers of the Next Generation.
After reading the article I realized something that seems to be a recurring theme when you continually try to push your image and company into the public eye - authors will alter what you say and alter your message to create a more buzz-worthy and interesting article. Luckily, I remembered to tell him not to mention what companies have signed on with Future Delivery or else I’m sure he would have added those names in the article.

So what did I learn from this experience?  You have to be very careful with what you say to authors and writers.  It is there job to write an interesting and appealing article so that people will read it.  If they have to alter some things, then so be it.

I just read a blog post by Ian about using the title of your blog post strategically.  He makes some very good points and I have to agree that making your blog post seem more enticing or controversial can compel people to want to read your post.  I actually also had a conversation with my business partner Yu-kai Chou about whether or not all PR is good PR.  We were talking about this because some of my most controversial blog posts that have shown up on Brazen Careerist have gotten the most comments.

For example, Flirting with the Interviewer was a blog I wrote to test out my theory of all PR being good PR.  It definitely raised some controversial issues and started a great conversation.  Not only was my blog a test, but it did have some very relevant tips and strategies that applied to interviewing.  Now, I could have entitled my blog post something like, “Principles of flirting apply to interviewing,” but that might not have generated the same buzz.

So since I started this blog to document my marketing experiences, I would like to tell you that buzz-worthy, controversial blog post titles and blog posts do increase traffic to your site.  I hope that once people go to our site, people will realize that we do have some very great content and that this is a place where you can learn how to further your career.  I’ll definitely keep you all updated about how or if we sustain the traffic we generate.