Posts Tagged ‘strategy’

Wanting to start a business that will provide everything you can possibly imagine in a given field is bound to failure. Don’t try to be everything to everybody. That won’t work. But if you can just offer one thing relevant to a small group of people – then you have the base to succeed.

One of the most common mistakes I hear all the time is wanting to build an “all inclusive” type of business.

What’s really interesting to me is to see the exact same misconceptions and mistakes so widely spread. Literally anyone who ever talked to me about starting a new business has had a similar approach. No wonder most businesses fail within the first year!

I also always hear the same examples: Amazon, Google, or some other giant! You can’t start a business trying to mimic companies that have matured over 10 years and became huge because of a myriad of reasons. (more…)

“Productivity comes from interactivity and the exchange of ideas and talents.” Seth Godin. (more…)

A good ol’ entertaining talk by Seth Godin: (more…)

A few days ago I got a phone call as I was eating dinner: (more…)

People often say that “less is more”. But that still implies that “more” is the better way to go when in fact it’s not.

Focusing on what’s essential is a great strategy you can apply to many cases in your professional and personal life.

The drive to do more, to have more, to get more is embedded in our society. It’s not a positive tendency. Try instead to do better, have less, get less. In everything you do, focus on what’s essential to you.

You can apply this to a lot of things. From working, to designing a product or service, to furnishing your house and going grocery shopping. (more…)

We’ve been selling Magento themes for a long time now. And a couple of months ago, we grew our collection to about 40 really awesome products.

But at the end of the day, these themes were all “more of the same”. What I mean by that is that they were more or less at the same level as the products from a couple of other quality Magento theme providers out there. Of course we innovated a bunch, and we were able to be successful by creating products that stand out from the competition and by providing great customer service.

But that type of business strategy is a never ending struggle. As we delivered better products and worked on producing more and more themes to diversify our catalog, we were faced with a growing number of competitors doing exactly the same thing. Often copying/stealing our work. Everyone in the Magento theme market is working on more and better products and are competing on delivering more value and offering a wider selection of themes.

So I decided to completely change our attitude towards developing new products. Keep reading to find find out how! (more…)

“Ever wanted to get rich overnight? It’s easy: just hop on a plane.” Some random guy. (more…)

In the United States, Post Office employees have a bad reputation. They’re notoriously unfriendly, cold, hostile and unhelpful. It’s hard to avoid feeling frustrated when you have to deal with arrogant staff – be it an employee of the Post Office, an abusive police officer, or a flight attendant who’s running his own little power trip on the passengers.

But then I ask myself – wouldn’t you also become angry, frustrated and bitter if you had a crappy job at a crappy organization? The work environment and the context you create within your company plays a major role in your staff’s happiness and professional satisfaction, which in turn is crucial to make your customers happy.

The Post Office doesn’t have a good context that would allow its employees and agents to thrive and be happy. And the atmosphere of bitterness spreads to the customers who don’t receive friendly customer service. If only you could be nice to people, they would put up with long waiting lines, complicated rules, and even expensive service! If the clerk apologizes for the wait and take the time to provide good customer service, that would make all the difference.

It’s so important to create a great company context where the members of your organization can strive and be happy. (more…)

While building Noam Design and helping other businesses take off, I’ve learned a thing or two about entrepreneurship and about developing a business. Here are 6 mistakes I find particularly hard for entrepreneurs to avoid: (more…)

“Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.” Extract from another great post by Jason Fry.

Every interruption cuts your work day into a series of work moments. 45 minutes here, then a meeting. A hour there, then a conference call. 20 minutes until someone taps you on the shoulder or calls your name across the office. These events kill productivity.

Most of these interruptions are experienced at a micro level. They’re experienced during a day. But I’ve found the same thing holds true on a macro level. If you stretch your time scale out to weeks or months, a day trip here or a couple days away there has the same effect: It kills productivity. A couple days away a week is like a few meetings a day — it makes it hard to get anything meaningful done. An interruption is an interruption.

[...] knowing I have a clear schedule for many months has shifted me into a pleasantly productive mindset. I’ve gotten a ton done so far this week. There have been some projects I’ve been meaning to start for a while, but with future travel hanging over my head I couldn’t get into a groove. I’m back in a groove.

It’s a good reminder of the power of an open schedule. Just knowing you have the time helps you make the time.

From The pleasure of an open schedule By Jason Fried of 37signals. (more…)