We like our comfort zones and strongly resist anything or anybody that will challenge or upset them.  We want our routines of everyday to stay more or less the same and tonight when we get home from work for example (for those who go to work!), we want to mozy into our comfy slippers, flip on the TV or stereo and get dinner cooking.

Anybody or anything, such as an unforeseen emergency or unexpected event that mess with that, and we’re grumpy and unsettled. Face it, we humans are extremely resistant to change…hate it actually.

That’s why it is so crucial to realize the hazard this resistance can pose to your business. Business is all about moving forward, but strange as it may sound, this resistance can actually slow down all your efforts toward improvement and profit.

Facing change in whatever form, inevitably confronts you with the choice of either dealing with it and gaining from the experience, or freezing and losing out. The motive behind failure/unwillingness to deal with change is mostly fear.

Three of the most common ways this fear manifests itself, are briefly discussed below. In each case, the way the fear specifically manifests, some consequences and some remedies are given.  Just note that a full treatment of the subject is impossible due to an obvious lack of space and the help of a professional should be sought if needed.

Fear of man (FOM)

Manifestation:

The thought, albeit unconsciously, “what will the people say/think/do..?” rules all else. People’s opinions /actions become the deciding factor to whether one pursues/does/says…something or not.

Consequences:

• Indecision. Decision making becomes impossible.
• Ineffectiveness. Preoccupation with what others think and losing sight of the real focus result in becoming unproductive.
• Dishonesty. People wear masks because they think it too risky to be themselves. They say/become anything in an effort to fit in and consequently live a lie.

Remedy:

Accept yourself for who & what you are and do not attempt to change anything to fit in with others. Self acceptance frees you from the controlling fear of what others may say, think or do. We can’t expect others to believe in us, if we don’t believe in ourselves.

Fear of failure (FOF)

Manifestation:

Atichyphobia, or FOF, can be very mild with no symptoms. It could also be severe with symptoms like having obsessive thoughts, bad images, chest pains and feelings of terror and can even lead to incapacitation.

It’s often linked with early childhood causes like demeaning parents or siblings, or the trauma of embarrassment resulting in heaped-up fear as childhood progresses. Perfectionism can result and “the person with atichyphobia won’t try until perfection is assured”See (1) below for more info.

Consequences:

• A drop in self-confidence & motivation

• Depression
• Inaction & Apathy – the sufferer is unlikely to try anything new.
• Becoming unproductive
• Curtailed life experience.
• Significant crippling of potential realization.

Remedy:

“The best way to treat FOF is to face the things you fear gradually, accepting that failure is necessary for success. Break the fearful activities down into small, manageable pieces and do more and more of them until you’re relatively comfortable…then move to the next larger fearful step…”  See (1) below.

Fear of the Unknown (FOU)

Manifestation:

It is a rare person that is not apprehensive of the new or unknown. It can evoke “familiar symptoms like rapid heart rate, dry mouth, trembling…anxiety attacks…”

Never forget: you’re not the first or last person to experience this!

Some thinks this fear is inculcated by the restrictions placed on us by our parents for our safety during our growing years. See (3) below for more info.

Consequences:

^“In reality…FOU is one of the most common reasons for resistance… because it stops you taking any action at all.” It goes hand in hand with anxiety, self-doubt and guilt and “operates under the radar convincing you that it’s there to protect… and keep you safe.” See (2) below for more info.

Remedy

Self help techniques are the best way to combat this fear. It can restore lost self confidence and help to build a positive mindset. For more, see (3) below.

*****

Just imagine what havoc and destruction fears like these can unleash on your business!

So, what’s keeping you back? How often don’t we really want to do something and then end up not doing it, because we’re letting fear stand in our way! Fear of what the people will say, fear of the unkown, of  failure of whatever…I say, bunkum! Deal with the fear and…well…just do it!

To great achievement without fear!

*****

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for theEntrepreneurialBusinessSchool(Pty) Ltd and also a freelance creative-, web- and copywriter.

For more info see the following resources:

1.         E-home Fellowship.  Atychiphobia-Fear Of Failure . Accessed 9 February 2012.

    http://www.way2hope.org/Illnesses/atychiphobia-fear-failure.htm

2.         Change-Management-Coach.com. Exposing fear of Change.  Accessed 13 Feb. 2012

    http://www.change-management-coach.com/fear-of-change.html

3. Morpeus Institute, Jan Heering. Do you suffer from fear of the unknown?  Accessed 13 Feb. 2012

     http://www.phobia-fear-release.com/fear-of-the-unknown.html.

Going for the jugular

You are really excited about your business idea. You really, really, want it to work out and have already done all the prelims. Everything looked good and said, nay screamed, “go ahead”.

You know the crunch though, is the figures. At the end of the day they will have the last word about what has by now become “your precious baby”. Like a pregnant fairy, you carried this idea around in you, nursed it through a rocky preliminary feasibility study and some trying marketing surveys and watched it take shape to where you are now – ready to take the final leap.

These trusty surveys revealed to you the price prospective customers are willing to pay you and from this, you settled on a final selling price that was a happy medium from all the different responses you got.

Your feasibility study showed you how big your market was going to be – you worked out your market share and decided there were enough people that would buy what you had to offer at a specific price. This you knew was critical to determine, because if you over-estimated your market, you would invest too much in capacity.

This automatically led you to realise that if your selling price is too high, people will not buy which of course could mean that your margin between production costs and said selling price, will be too narrow.

And you know that without these two crucial sets of preliminary figures of price and the number of saless, no true financial viability study would have been possible.

So, you’re all set to get your stats. Problem is, you were never the number cruncher of the class…So, what now?

Fortunately, there’s…

 …Tim.

Tim Landau is a young man with a vision. He comes from a long line of cabinet makers and “sucked wood milk” from his infancy. Now that he’s all grown, he wants to set up his own cabinet making business, starting with producing specialty chairs with woodcarving on it. He’d add other products to it later on, once the endeavour became successful.

This avid water sports lover already figured out that he’s going to work out of his garage, thereby minimising on overheads like rent, electricity etc. (also called fixed costs). All that was added to this was his monthly payback on some woodworking equipment and the operating costs of producing the chairs, like extra electricity etc.

So his fixed costs came to:

Electricity – $500

Insurance – $200

Security – $200

Payment loan for equipment – $500

Total = $1,400 per month

How to avoid busting your chops

According to his market research he could possibly sell 100 chairs per month, however, Tim knew that it was always better to start small and build up from there. Overestimation of his market could and would! lead him to invest too much in capacity and thereby risk everything because he won’t be able to cover his fixed costs. So he planned on selling at least 20 chairs per month for starters.

So, all he now had to reckon was what it was going to cost him to make every chair (also called variable costs).

So Tim listed the following materials:

Wood – $150

Varnish – $10

String – $20

Screws – $10

Glue – $10

Direct labour – $100

Total direct cost= $300

He therefore had to net more than $300 to make a profit. (Called gross profit because he must still pay the overheads or fixed costs before he can take what’s left for himself or make as profit).

It was also critical to determine the size of his market, because an over-estimation of it will lead him into investing too much in capacity. And thereby bust his chops because he won’t be able to cover his fixed costs. Unnecessary costs, trapped in capacity, would put him out of business.

Based on the info from the market research, he fixed the selling price per chair at $500.  Thus, his gross profit would come to $500 – $300 = $200.

However, it was clear to him from earlier calculations that he would need to at least sell 7 chairs per month to break even. Nervously the sums played musical chairs in his head:

$200 x $7 = $1,400.

So, assuming he sold his 20 chairs, he would:

Gross profit = $4000 per month (20 chairs @$200 each)

Minus Fixed costs = $1,400

Net Profit = $3600 per month

Enough to cover what he should cover. Great! Why, he’ll even survive if he had his selling price all mucked up and he had to lower it to $400.

Dreaming is essential to health

But, he considers working from his garage initially, as a mere stepping stone to his much envisioned “Ye Olde Cabinet Making Factory”.

Yet Tim was wise enough to realise one had to crawl before you could walk. Had he jumped into working from a factory from get-go, aiming to make and sell 100 chairs per month, his figures would probably have looked something like this:

Fixed Costs per month:

Electricity – $1000
Insurance – $500

Security – $200

Rent – $5000

Loan repayment – $1000

Total = $7700

In order for him to break even then, he would have needed to sell 38.5 (imagine that), in practise 39 chairs, to cover the overheads of $7700. Being able to only sell 20 chairs at a gross profit of $4000 (20 x $200 each), out his profit loss, he worked out would have been:

Gross profit ($4000) – Fixed costs ($7700) = Loss (-$3700).

Well, was he ever glad his dad taught him business savvy. Had he not exercised that, they would have hauled his rear to jail just as sure as God above made His good sun to shine on both righteous and unrighteous. Meanwhile…

…his dream was in the process of becoming. Little by little. It’s what kept him going.

*****

What keeps you going?

Until next time!

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for theEntrepreneurialBusinessSchool(Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative-, web- and copywriter.

Resources

1. EntrepreneurialBusinessSchoolManagement Course.

2. Bekker, M. Thanks Mauritz. You have the knack of making the challenging world of entrepreneurship, exiting and so much easier.

Tracy strikes out

Tracy“Smarty Pants” McKnight (51) got retrenched last year (sad story of half the world population it seems). She realised off the bat that there was little hope of her finding another job and decided there was no other way but to start her own business to support herself and her four kids (husband’s been dead and buried a long time).

She knew however, she had no hopes of making a success of anything she lacked passion for (awful images of her doing stuff she hated made her brake out in cold sweat), besides her business course taught her that only folk with a passion for what they do, really make a success of anything in the long run; so she went through a period of intense soul searching and took a hard honest look at, among other things; her strengths, weaknesses, likes and dislikes.

This made her challenge old paradigms and develop new ones, ‘cause she knew, she either had to think differently about absolutely everything or maybe die a slow merciless death while watching her kids starve and become skeletons (perhaps even before her, bless their little souls).

This in turn led to her mastering some problem-solving skills and adding the needed business management proficiency to her toolbox.

Tracyfinally decided on starting a drop and go laundry service after several preliminary feasibility checks on other likely business ideas did not pan out.

This opportunity she felt, not only had distinct money-making possibilities, but definitely lined up with her profile and the emerging social trend of “99 Lives”. It was important to line it up with what’s in vogue now said her course, otherwise it’d be like offering ice to the Eskimos. Or sand to Bedouins. Nobody would want it.

So, she proceeded to win in some real quality info to work with, test the waters so to speak by hitching the necessary gear and parking herself where there were a lot of people, like the local mall, and doing a marketing survey.

Scouting the land

But, before going all gung-ho and investing what little money she still had left on some wise cracker idea that seemed promising from the survey she’d just done, she decided to do some further investigating like her business course taught her and…

…so, taking the plunge, she took the two steps needed to kick start a full scale feasibility study. First, she took an in depth look at her market (a whole lot closer than the survey) and identified the area she wanted to serve. Like how many people lived in this area and what their demographics were. To do this, Tracy took some trips to her local library and other institutions and looked up a few sources of secondary information that could give her the specs she needed:

• Geographic – the size and numbers of customers in an area. Collected by a census survey.
• Demographic – size and numbers of customers according to their sex, income, occupation, education, age, family size etc. also collected by census survey.
• Psychographic – size or number of customers according to specific lifestyles, consumer status and buying patterns. Some organisations specialise in this kind of info.
• Business – Detailed info on the number of businesses and their details, that could help her determine the size of her market.
• Economic – showing her the income potential customers have.
• Other sources – municipalities and business chambers. Government departments like Labour, Agriculture and Education. Churches, clubs, telephone directory, libraries for specific info and of course, the online army of info at her disposal.

Slicing the cake

After gathering all the relevant info about her market, she then sat down and grouped the laundry needs within that area into some generic need markets, dividing it into the segments she felt would be interested in her offering

This she learned is called target marketing and it’s a lot like shooting with a rifle whereas mass marketing has a shotgun or ‘aim for all, hit nothing’ approach.

She concluded that single grown-ups in the middle to high income brackets would be willing and able to pay for laundry services. So market segment one she aimed to serve was:  singles.

The second set she I’d, was the married couples where both spouses worked long hours and earned insanely high salaries. Thus segment nr two:  yuppies.

Third, she ogled the high income housewives that hated doing laundry and would pay her to not dirty their fine little hands. Hence, segment nr three: lazy housewives.

Tracydecided to focus on the single and yuppie segments. This of course in no way implied that she would exclude the lazy housewives, it only meant that she’d study the other two in detail and make sure she optimally satisfied their needs.

The market research also toldTracythat the singles and married yuppies would love to drop their dirty laundry off before work and pick it up afterwards. For this she had to stay open until 20h00.

She found a fantastic site next to a garage on the main entrance and exit to the suburb. The other three laundries in the area are located in shopping malls and open at 08h00 and close again at 18h30. Which Tracyfound won’t work well for her prospects as most of them already leave for work at 6h30. (called a gap in the market which the Smarty Pants of course immediately saw).

What did she do next?

Next, she had to figure out how much money these people were willing to spend on her service.

So Tracy then (closely following what her course manual lay out) drew up a new questionnaire for her prospective customers, with questions built around the marketing mix and aimed at getting more detailed info out of them.

She found out that in an area of approximately 10 000 households, 40% were in the high income bracket with 60% as middle incomers. 40% of the high incomers would make use of her service on a regular basis and spend an average of $200 per month per household.

Of the middle incomers again, 60% indicated that they would use her service regularly and spend about $120 per month per household.

Next, she calculated the income potential for this area as ± $752,000 per month for the middle incomers (10,000 x .6 x 120) and $800,000 for the high income group (10,000 x .4 x 200).

Now from her research, Tracy saw that the singles segment would by far the most viable in size and income, so she narrowed her marketing net more and decided to focus on them, also because her location would give her a decided Unique selling Point (USP). These people seemed to be on the run all the time, and did not want to go to the hassle of driving to laundries further away.

The figures she gathered showed her that 7500 single people were spread over 5 laundries at 1500 each. Give and take, and reckoning that not all people will want to make use of her service, she calculated her expected market share to be between 200-300 people.

Her next best friend…

…was the calculator of course!

In her final step before she would go over to doing an official financial viability study, Tracy took all this info (while squatting some flies and sending a most persistent little nagger to the store) and constructed a Sales Forecast:

Units per month

Sales in Dollar per month (selling prices are: Washing @ $20 & ironing $30 per unit

Absolutely exhausted but exhilarated Tracy could not wait for the next day to officially begin the financial viability study as these figures promised big things to come. Closing her books for the night, she and her four kids went out to celebrate with pizza and a movie.

****

This was part one of our feasibility study. Stay tuned for part two still coming up.

For more information or queries, please contact theEntrepreneurialBusinessSchool. There’s a whole plethora of experts waiting to cut, dissect and dry you.

Just kidding! No, we’re rearing to help wherever we can, and for that matter…nowhere else will you find the breadth of knowledge coupled with practical experience than in the flagship Entrepreneurial Business School Management Course. Why reinvent the wheel? Give us a call (you’ll find our contact details on the webpage) and let EBS guide you to successful business start-up.

Till next time,

Elmarie

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for theEntrepreneurialBusinessSchool(Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative-, web- and copywriter.

Resources

1. EntrepreneurialBusinessSchoolManagement Course.

2. Bekker, Mauritz. As always, thank you.

3. 99 Lives Heller, Robert. Business strategies: Adjusting to the Latest Trends. 8 July 2006. Accessed 29 June 2012. http://www.thinkingmanagers.com/management/business-strategies.php

Alex bought a health food franchise a while ago. This opportunity seemed like a wonderful idea in our increasingly health conscious society and besides, he’s always wanted to do something like this, being himself very health conscious and clued up on nutrition.

Well, instead of the ROI benefits he was looking forward to, the sizeable hole in his wallet was now bringing him worry and heartburn as there were not nearly enough customers and after he’s covered all the business expenses, enable him and his family to live as well. Now’s he trying to rescue his investment from bankruptcy by investing in other related projects that at the end of the day, is eating up what little he has left, while yielding as slight a result as the first deal.

Everything looked good from Alex’s vantage point. The ideal business opportunity he had been searching for became available on the franchise network he regularly monitored, the money to go for it was accessible and he was passionate about this particular kind of venture. So why did it not go according to plan?

The difference between an idea and an opportunity

The classic mistake Alex made was to not differentiate between a good idea and a real business opportunity with money-making potential. Quite frankly, he didn’t do his homework.

You see, all business ideas are indeed based on the premise of solving a need or problem for others, but many ideas do not represent genuine business opportunities. This distinction between ideas and opportunities is so important that failing to understand that difference, can and often does, lead to great money loss.

Sure enough, a lot of factors were in place, creating the illusion that everything was in place. The opportunity was there. The money to go for it was there. The passion to make a success of such a venture was there. But one essential ingredient was missing.

Alex never asked himself the crucial question whether his idea could be implemented in a profitable and sustainable way. He neglected to make sure that enough funds could be generated to not only start his business, but keep it running until it made a profit.

And that is something Alex should have determined before plunging headlong into something without the necessary hard facts.

To determine the real business potential of an opportunity, you need to do an in-depth market feasibility and financial viability study on it. Problem is though, that kind of study takes a lot of time, money and effort.

Solution: you need a way of doing a preliminary feasibility study and viability check on an idea or ideas before going to all the time, money and effort hassle a full scale feasibility and viability study would take. A practise run in other words, to see if the real deal is going to be worth it.

So, just how do you do that?

Easy…find the answers to these questions!

Such a prelim check can be done by finding answers to the following questions:

1. Does the idea / concept match my personal vision, mission, goals, qualities and skills? – Personal alignment
2. What will the product / service (material and labour) cost to produce per unit. – Direct costs
3.  At what price can I sell it? How much would potential customers be willing to pay for my product / service? – Selling price
4. How much profit can I expect to make directly from each unit of the product / service I sell? – Gross profit
5. How many people will buy my product / service on a daily, weekly and monthly basis? – Market potential & sales volume
6. How much income can I expect to generate per month? – Turnover
7. How much will it cost me to run the business per month apart from costs directly linked to producing my product / service? – Overheads or fixed costs
8. How much net profit will I make per month? – Profitability

9. How much money will I need to implement / launch my idea? Capital   cost

• Capital to buy equipment and machinery
• Capital necessary for daily operations

10. Why will my potential customers rather buy my product / service than those of my competitors? Competitive advantage or Unique selling point (USP)

11. If this idea should fail, what will happen to me and is the risk worth the opportunity? – Risk

A simple example

Let’s assume you have the following info available:

The unit selling price = $50

The direct costs in making each unit = $10

The volume you will be able to sell per month = 150 units

The expected fixed costs per month = $3000

Now by applying the formula given above, you can calculate how much profit you’ll be able to make each month:

[($50 - @10) x 150] – $3,000

= $6,000 gross profit – $3,000 fixed costs

= $3,000 net profit

So, simply applying the above formula to any idea you might have, will enable you to scan your ideas for business potential and then take only those that pass this prelim scrutiny further for the full treatment, investing the resources such an exhaustive scale study requires.

Well, there you have a prelim device to scan your idea(s)! Next time we’ll delve into the real deal with all its bells and whistles like market analysis, calculation of break-even point and developing a cash flow forecast.

See you there!

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for theEntrepreneurialBusinessSchool(Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative-, web- and copywriter.

Resources

1. EntrepreneurialBusinessSchoolManagement Course.

2. Bekker, Mauritz. Where will I be without your encyclopaedic knowledge of all things entrepreneurial and business? A million thanks!

An amazing discovery

I was most amazed to discover just how many people have a problem to finish what they start. A simple Google search revealed many links to the words “how to finish what you start” with lots of written articles, advice and reply comments on the subject.

Countless people seem to flit between projects, having so many going simultaneously, that being able to finish any will be a miracle, let alone all of them. Others complain that they suffer from indecision and hence simply force themselves to make a choice, right or wrong, and then find down the line that they were anyhow unable to finish what they decided to start. Some start a course, or several courses, but never complete them. And on and on it goes.

Why do so many people have a problem with this? Obviously, there are countless reasons, but…

…here are just some of them:

• Some things just aren’t worth finishing (some folk discover that down the line) and so they move on to something else which they believe is better.
• A lack of self-discipline. It is for instance much easier to get great-tasting McDonalds in about 5 minutes than it is to slave an hour in the kitchen preparing nutritious food. Or watching a fun DVD rather than studying for an upcoming test.
• Our “add- and-stir” culture condition people to expect instant gratification. Any challenges or obstacles are simply too hard to deal with (they require effort), or are the cause of immediate disappointment and/or dissatisfaction, so they take the easy way out. They cop out and stop what they were doing.
• Poor time management etc…

I suspect that whatever may be the reasons for people not finishing what they start, a great many of these reasons, if not most, have to do with a lack of passion.

To make a success of any undertaking, you must be committed to it.  One of the major factors contributing to commitment is to have a passion for what you do.  To have such a passion, you need to enjoy something and be good at doing it.

And that I think is the ultimate reason so many people start something and don’t finish it. They make a decision to begin something, but that decision is not driven by a sense of inner enjoyment or passion and so after a while, their engine runs out of steam, they lose interest and the project dies, incomplete.

Now, this of course is just a very bad way to go about deciding on viable business opportunities and a sure recipe for disaster, even if an idea should prove to be quite profitable.

To choose or not to choose

So, let’s assume that you have identified a great business idea and now want to suss out whether it’s going to be worth investing all your time and money in it. Not all business ideas after all, are good ideas!

It is critically important for you to know that the distinction between a mere great business idea and an actual money-making opportunity is so important, that failing to understand that difference, can and often does, result in great money loss.

So, how do you determine whether that super-cool idea you’ve had is the real deal with a solid money-making possibility or whether it’s just that: a great idea but nothing more?

The hard question

The place to start scanning ideas for some real opportunities is with… you!

Ask yourself the hard question: apart from making a success of a business idea, will you also enjoy it and find fulfilment in it?

And be honest! Any answer here that is short of brutal candour will only short change you. Nobody else.

Why?

Because enjoyment in what you do is 80-90% of success!

Aha! So that’s why passion is important! If therefore a + b = c and ‘a’ is the project, ‘b’ is passion or the lack of it, then your sum will be either completed or incomplete projects. (Hope you could follow that. My mind went up in smoke before I could figure out that one! No joke).

Now why is this crucial when choosing a business idea? Especially when you have to scan preliminary ideas for real opportunities?

All great achievers and truly successful people will tell you: love what you do! You must be passionate about your business idea! It is key. Remember, work passion is one of the major attributes all successful people have in common, because work passion will bring energy into the equation.

It will also bring the necessary focus to bear on your efforts and that is especially important, because when things begin to press in on you, passion is the number one ingredient that will have you dig in your heels and see difficult business times through.

Remember, you’ll only have a passion for doing something if you really like doing it. Why? Because you’ll not only really like or even love your idea, you’ll believe in it!

So, start by getting married

No, not to the bright-eyed wonder next door!

Your business idea and those of your personal entrepreneurial resources – personal vision, mission, characteristics and abilities must hitch up. They must match. If you hate filing for instance and/or are forever misplacing stuff, it’s probably not a great idea to start an organizing business, even if there’s ample opportunity and finances to do so.

And remember that it makes sense to build on strengths and to avoid weaknesses. The wider the range of skills you have, the greater the chance of success. A car salesman will probably not discover a cure for AIDS, neither will a highly trained mathematician who loves jiggling numbers all day suddenly become an ace marketer. But you get the point.

Be honest with yourself and look critically at what you do well, what skills and knowledge you do, or don’t have.  You also have to think of your vision, mission and values.

For instance, why do you believe are you here? What is your mission? Or vision? The values you hold?

A visit to planet You

A quick guide to some questions about you that you have to find the answers to, would include:

• Mission(Make a difference)
• Vision (Excitement)
• Strongest values
• Career profile
  • Strongest Interests
  • Weakest Interests
  • Strongest Abilities and Skills
  • Weakest Abilities and Skills
  • Strongest Personality Traits
  • Weakest Personality Traits
  • Strongest Needs
  • Weakest Needs
  • Summary of strong areas
  • Summary of weak areas
  • Summary of life plan
    • In 10 years’ time I want to…
    • In 5 years’ time I want to…
    • In 3 years’ time I want to…

Next, do the following:

Envision yourself doing this for life

Work through the business concept you have selected (if you have more than one idea, please work through them all) and…

Imagine yourself in this business. (See it actually happening in your mind).

Now ask:

• What is my business called?
• What am I doing most of the time?
• Am I enjoying it and am I happy?
  • Will I be willing to do this for years on end?

Imagine your customers.  (See yourself actually interacting with them).

Then ask:

• Who are my customers?
• What are they buying from me?
• What are their needs and expectations about my product/service?
• What are they complaining about and how do I handle the complaints?
• Do they like my business? / Will they come back to me?
  • Will I enjoy working with such customers every day?

Imagine the place and set-up of your business.

Questions include:

• What area or community, street and building is it in?
• Under what conditions am I working?
• Am I about to do all activities needed in order to run the business OR is anyone helping me?  Who?
• What equipment do I have?
• Do I enjoy working with them day to day?
  • Am I happy working under these circumstances?

Think about the kind of business it is.

Now make a brief description of the main daily activities involved in running this business.  The following are possible examples:

• Manufacturing and selling things.
• Buying and selling ready-made things.
• Creating and providing a service(s).
• Growing and selling things.
• Repairing goods.

Then image yourself in this business – see yourself doing and managing the activities of this business every day of your life:

• Do I have, or can I obtain the necessary skills to do this?
• Will I really enjoy doing this for life, or will it bore me?
• Does it line up with my personality and emotional profile?

Finally ask yourself:

Am I still excited and happy about this business idea?

*****

It really is most critical that you first do this in-depth survey of your inner landscape and then ask these crucial questions about your idea, before we tackle that feasibility study next.

Have fun digging!

Until next time

Elmarie

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for the Entrepreneurial Business School (Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative writer, web writer and copywriter. Email her at ebouwer@ebschool.com

Resources:

1. EntrepreneurialBusinessSchoolManagement Course.

2. Bekker, Mauritz. Your knowledge and advice is as always, invaluable. Thanks Mauritz. You’re the greatest!

Suddenly he hears the snap of a twig on his left. Immediately he crouches and scans the surrounding area, rifle on his shoulder, eye to the telescope.

Then he sees it! A spotted deer fills the rifle telescope, apparently blissfully unaware of impending danger. He almost feels sorry for it, it is so beautiful. But heck no, he’s tired; been tracking game all day, so…

…carefully he aims, making sure that the crosshairs in the scope’s lens are dead centre, pulls the trigger and…misses. Damn!!

Then it slams him! He forgot to have his telescope’s boresight setting adjusted, so no shot would anyway go where directed, even if he was to try again later. Tired, irate, hungry and miserable he drags himself home.

Are you tired?

Feel like that hunter?

Been trying to identify money making opportunities, but for the life of you just can’t see them? Or, if you did identify and exploit them, still very little or nothing you had done ended up in you bank account?

If that sounds like you, then that rifle scope has a lot to teach you.

A telescopic sight is like a super magnifying glass that sits atop a rifle and is a sighting device that helps the hunter aim accurately at a target. It enlarges the target many times, thereby making it much more visible while the crosshairs in the lens allow the huntsman to precisely align his aim before he shoots.

Last time I spoke about looking at your talents and skills to see what you had in the way of using them to make an economic difference to your life. But why stop there, unless you want to?

Also look outside yourself to life in general when searching for opportunities. But from different angles or points of view. This will allow you to see much more that you couldn’t previously and can bring surprising rewards in terms of identifying problems people experience. And solving people’s problems is the bedrock of business.

In this post I’d like for you to come along as we take a look together at some of those angles, but unlike the hunter in the story, we’ll have our telescope’s boresighting adjusted beforehand, to not only magnify what we see, but also aim at specifics. Why?

Because it is absolutely useless knowing that the herd is out there, but you don’t know at which deer to aim. Then it was a waste of time writing this post and you’ll waste your time reading it.

However, if you look through a super magnifying glass like a rifle scope, you’ll be able to identify detail, not just generalities. Will hone in on specifics, be helped better in identifying some real opportunities…

So, get your gun and scope and join me as we go hunting for those opportunities and zoom in on them. But before we do that, you first need to do something else.

Searching for lucrative business opportunities is a lot like hunting game. In both pursuits, the physical position you assume during the process is critical. So before we set out on the expedition, we first need to work on our position.

Position…aim…!

Imagine yourself belly crawling on the wet, muddy forest floor as you hear a snort on your left, but cannot see much. So you shift your legs to a somewhat better position, one that will actually enable you to see past some foliage obstructing your view.

Looking from this different position or angle, you can see a spotted deer a short way from you, and as you move sideways even more (carefully, so they don’t hear you) an unbelievable, out of – this – world scene suddenly pops into view that seconds before was not there:

A whole herd of deer, chomping on grass!

In like manner, there can be a whole herd of business opportunities skulking out there among the foliage of life; you’ve probably just been unable to see them!

Maybe because you did not know quite where to look.

So, if you’ve been unable to spot them, it’s just a matter of looking from a different angle.

But apart from this, it’s absolutely impossible to fire off a well aimed shot from anything other than a secure position with your eye firmly trained on your target.

So, take off the eyepieces you usually wear (meaning the way you usually look at things) and put on a whole different set of blinkers, wear a different set of goggle – call it what you will – when looking at these angles.

This is the secret to success in seeing them. Keep those specs on. Even after you’re done reading here. You might be surprised at what you actually see.

So, pick up your rifle scope and snap on your goggles please. We’re going to hone in on specific parts of our money making forest and see what materializes in our crosshairs.

The different angles of the money making forest

These parts of our forest are called angles and there are seven in total. I will discuss the first three in this post and the last four in part two (coming next week. Be sure to watch for it)

I’ll start off each time with a brief overview of the angle in question and when the icon of a hunter appears, that’s when we’ll zoom in with our scopes to some specific areas within that angle where opportunities may lie hidden. Ready?

1. The Angle of Direct Problems and Frustrations People Experience.

In a sophisticated economy, problems can usually be found in areas such as administration systems, production bottlenecks, repairs and maintenance areas. There are also usually problems present in the limitations of existing products / services and their production systems.

   Admin systems: Small companies cannot always afford an adminclark. You could start a business doing admin services for small businesses. Who knows, if you’re good at what you do, word of mouth and advertising might even land you bigger clients some day than what you started out with.

Production bottlenecks: You could identify the bottleneck and create an outsource solution. Depending on the problem, unemployed labour could solve it. American engins for example, are sometimes assembled inChinato solve bottlenecks in their production processes.

Maintenance and Repairs: E.g. Companies with car fleets will outsource the maintenance and repairs to an entrepreneur who performs this service for more than one company.

2. The Angle of Unsatisfied Needs.

Certain needs must be met for humans to be able to stay alive and enjoy life. Go figure! Now some needs are more important than others so they can actually be grouped in a hierarchy. Here is one by a man called Abraham Maslow.

At the bottom of the hierarchy is the need for the very basic things in life, like food, water and shelter.  On the second level, the needs for safety and protection.  The third represents the need for social interaction and recreation.  The fourth, the need to be recognised and respected, also called the “ego need” and the final level represents the need for self-actualisation.

A need is anything human beings need to make their lives easier and more meaningful.  Once a person perceives that he/she has a need, but can’t satisfy it because of some obstacle, a problem is created.  If you can solve this problem for the person at a fair price, he/she will be willing to pay for the solution, and then you’re in business!

How much this person would be willing to pay will depend on how strong the urge to satisfy the need is.  To satisfy a need, implies that the obstacle has to be removed – this is the solution. The gap between a need and the satisfaction thereof is therefore created by an “obstacle”, which in turn causes a “problem”. Solve this and you’re golden.

Physiological:  E.g. Health foods and going natural versus fabricated. Home made sweets for example are free of the additives and colourants avoided by mothers with kids who suffer from ADHD and you can make them and successfully market them as such.

Safety: Offer for example to computerize  people’s homes to make them safer etc…

Social: Social media for instance is BIG. But time is very limited and busy small business owners have a hard time managing social media marketing themselves. Offer your services in this regard, stating the importance of the issue and how you can help the company  make a success of the marketing endevour by their outsourcing this function to a guru – you.

Ego: Yep. We all have one, so capitilize on it!  Apart from brand products and unique cuts in clothing, see where you can make things personal and exclusive. Unique and personlized handbags, stationery, paintings, gift cards, shoes, bedding etc…

Self-actualisation: A great commodity to promote here is self study programmes that will empower people’s lives and dreams.

3. The Angle of Wants

As soon as our needs are fully met, they tend to expand into all kinds of related wants. As man’s standard of living improves and becomes more sophisticated, the want for new things appears.  The effect of this improving lifestyle is that new needs appear along the way all the time.

If a want becomes strong enough and is satisfied, it often changes into a need.  Due to human nature, the urge to satisfy a need is much stronger than the urge to satisfy a want.  So a want could therefore also be described as a weaker form of an unsatisfied need.

For example: You live in a small apartment. But soon, wifey says she’s no longer satisfied with it and now wants a nice little house instead. So you buy the nice little house, pack up and move. But lo and behold, not long and she’s up to her tricks again (when’s it gonna end!), so once again, you buy a bigger house and do the whole trek thing again, wishing fervently it’s the absolute last freakin’ time.

Nowadays, man perceives not having a nice house as an unsatisfied need, and possessing a mansion as a want.  Social trends play an important role in people’s wants.

The higher the level of economic development, the more new problems and consequently opportunities emerge.  This can be illustrated by the simple fact that people in poorer communities are inclined to personally perform maintenance jobs on their cars, but in the wealthier communities this is seldom the case.  It becomes a situation of the more a person has, the more he/she wants.

This is good news, because the bigger the demand for services/products, the more business opportunities you’ll have!

The sky’s really your limit here. Look at people’s wants with new eyes, they’re emerging all the time. Listen to them as they talk about what they still want to do or have (their bucket lists, you know as in the movie “The Bucket List)), read the media with a focus on this angle, soon you’ll notice waaaayyyy more wants and desires than before.

Now, climb in there and cater to some wants. You’re sure of the money.

Well, that’s all for now. Watch this spot next week for part two of the discussion on looking from different angles for money making opportunities.

See you there!

Please leave a comment, telling us about your experiences in scoping for business opportunities! We always answer queries and reply on all comments.

Resources

1. Bekker, Mauritz. Entrepreneurial BusinessSchool. Email him at mbekker@ebschool.com

On top of that, junior wants to go on his hockey team’s Antarctic – for – the Uninitiated trip that costs more money than you make in a year, and to break his heart again…well, that just breaks your heart.

Also, your wife is nagging again to visit her family from out of state; but once more you tell her, she above all people should know that’s just not possible right now. The look on her face tells you just what she thinks.

So once more you crawl into your car to the job you’ve done forever and hated forever.

Sound familiar?

To many of us, it’s a depressingly familiar scenario even if the details may differ.

Or, worse than that, there may actually be no job to crawl to. In which case, such a scenario becomes infinitely more horrible.

But what if…

… that scenario can be turned around? What if you can start making more money today than you have right now?

No, really…I mean that.

What if, in a while, that wife really could visit her family and junior could go on that trip and you could, without worry or guilt, enrol for that coveted course or buy that piece of electronic equipment or whatever, after you’ve paid all your dues? Wouldn’t that be great?

You bet.

And it’s possible. For you. For everyone.

But before that…

…becomes possible, you have to give something away…

You have to give your talents away. And talents here do not refer to the Roman money unit. No, it refers to your natural aptitude or marked inborn ability for accomplishment of any kind.

We have been wired in such a way that all of us (by last count, about 8 billion of us), has something to offer (talents and skills) in the way of solving someone else’s problem or need.

A need is defined as anything human beings need to make their lives easier and more meaningful.  Once a person perceives that he/she has a need, but can’t satisfy it because of some obstacle, a problem is created.

And the beauty of it is that you can get paid for the solutions you offer.

The problem, however, is…

…many of us don’t realise the spade with which to dig wealth, lies not in something outside us, but inside. It lies in our minds.

No wonder Napoleon Hill wrote a book called “Think and Grow Rich”. ¹

This problem is compounded by the fact that we feel trapped by so many things; low paying jobs, bills, an inability within ourselves to break free from such constraints etc. The reality on the outside somehow moves inward and becomes a paradigm² that forms the metal bars that imprison us in a cage of hopelessness.

All of it totally unnecessary. And reversible.

Mmmmm… (Doubt not. I kid you not.)

Ok… how?

The mechanics

Start looking at the talents and skills you have. And in the next post, we’ll also look at other places together that can reveal more possible problems for you to solve.

Say for example you can make beautifully crafted models of war implements used during the middle ages. You can advertise them, offer them to hobby shops, go on road shows with them, and sell them at craft markets. Sooner than later, word will spread and you’ll be making money out of your skill.

Somewhere, someone will want what you can offer and pay you for it. Because it will solve a problem / need they have. Collectors will pay to have such models.

Easy eh? Then why is it so hard sometimes?

Either because you just can’t believe it can be that simple (see no. 2 above again) or because you’re looking in the wrong place.

Well, it really is that simple because wealth is not created by mineral or other resources, but by trading solutions (or products and services) to problems. Solve a problem for someone and hey presto! you’re in business. Just think about it and you’ll realise it to be true.

You can also miss spotting where there are problems you can solve. In the next post, we’ll specifically look at different angles you can inspect up close to see if there are problems you can solve and in the process earn an income.

The more quality “solutions” you put into the economy, the more you’ll be able to sell and the more money you’ll be able to make. Now, it does not matter in what position you find yourself currently. If you’re in a job, you can still look for problems, solve them and make money. You just have to work out the when, where and how.

And if you’re currently unemployed, you just have much more time on your hands for the same action, but maybe more impetus to actually make it work for you.

And the result …

…of using our unique abilities to benefit one another?

Well primarily…

• A more fulfilled you.
• And a higher standard of living for you and everybody else

A  secondary upshot of this will obviously be less poverty, crime, social ills etc.

We need each other. In the words of the poet John Donne:”No man is an island unto himself”.

And the beauty of giving yourself, is that you’ll be getting far more out of the deal than mere money. You’ll get fulfilment. Now what possible price tag could be on that?

So, the long and short of it all… you have to give to get!

 ****

 Don’t miss our post next week on some possible places where you can find problems to solve and turn them into money spinners.

See you there!

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for the Entrepreneurial Business School (Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative writer, web writer and copywriter. Email her at ebouwer@ebschool.com

Resources

1. http://www.amazon.com/Think-Grow-Rich-Napoleon-Hill/dp/0449214923
2. http://ebschool.com/2012/04/locked-in-a-paradigm-prison-that-paralyses-your-world/
3. Bekker, Mauritz. Entrepreneurial Business School.

So now you want to do that. You want to make that difference. Because you want to “get” in the process.

But you don’t know how. Besides, the last time that we talked, we talked about how you’re supposed to find out what your customers wanted if you have any hopes of sales success. And you simply cannot see how “giving to get” has any relevance to what is called a “marketing survey” or finding out what your clients want.

Well, it’s quite simple really.

To be able to give in such a way that it will be perceived as valuable and therefore will be bought, you have to find out what to give. And to be able to give the client what he wants, you first have to determine precisely how that “what” will look.

If the “what” is what the client wants, it will be perceived as valuable, he will then buy it and you will get.

So, giving is getting!

Ok, so if you want to get inside your customers’ heads, you obviously already know who they are. This presupposes an existing client base, or in the absence of an already existing one, a target market which you have identified on the basis of proper market segmentation. You have also determined this segment’s buying power and know there is money out there.

Of course, it could also be possible that your existing clients are buying quite well, but that you have since the start of your operation developed a new product / service you want to test drive and unsure about how customers will react.

Whatever the case, you need to know what’s going on in their heads. The niftiest tool for collecting that kind of data is the survey.  

This trusty steed usually takes different forms and delivers different kinds of results and successes. Each has its pros and cons and small business entrepreneurs are probably not going to make much use of methods that tend to be capital intensive like telephone and postal surveys.

•  Telephone surveys are used when the contact period is short, time is limited and funds limited. Pros are the fact that it is quick and any problems / questions can be discussed directly. Cons are that it is easy to lie over the phone and only folks with phones can be contacted.

• Postal surveys are sometimes better than telephonic ones in that most people don’t like giving their opinions directly and the geographical area might also be too big. The contact person also cannot influence the situation and the individual does not have to react immediately. But, they require clear instructions and their reaction rate is normally low and slow.

• Personal surveys involve a face – to – face situation. Pros are that more questions can be put and answered. Questions can also be customised for individuals. If the person okays it, tape recorders can be used. However, this method is time consuming and labour intensive.

• Observation can also be used as a data collection tool. Researchers can try and observe the behaviour of the consumer. Or mechanics / and or electronics like computer scanners at check out counters are used collect very specific and useful information. But a big con of this method is the fact that you can observe what people do, not why they do it.

• A favourite with researchers nowadays, is the focus group method. Typically the survey entails inviting about ten people to a specific venue where selected topics are discussed in depth. Some researchers will ask specific questions which the customers will answer. Other researchers will merely act as observers and make copious notes of the proceedings. Sometimes tape recorders are used to observe things like body language and tone of voice.

Okay, now you know what kinds of surveys are in the stable, so next up we need to lay out how you actually go about constructing one. You need to formulate a basic questionnaire that includes all four P’s of the marketing mix, namely questions about your product, its price, distribution and promotion.

Take for example a fast food business. You could ask the following:

Q1 (Product / service related question):  If a new fast food outlet opens in your area, which types of food(s) would you like to buy?

Q2 (distribution related question):  If we have a delivery service, will you make use of it at an additional cost?

Q3 (Price related question):  1.Are you prepared to pay $5 for a hamburger?

If the answer is no, then ask:

2. How much are you prepared then to pay for it?

Q4 (Promotion related question):  If you had to advertise a new fast food outlet, which media channel would you use?

And when developing a questionnaire, you must consider the following about the questions you’ll ask:  the type of question, question format, wording and sequence of the questions.

So, now that you that you have your questionnaire in hand (copied some x amount of times); do you go down to the mall and pester the daylight out of some poor unsuspecting souls traipsing through the shelves, trying their best to do grocery shopping?

Heck no.

Not without knowing exactly how big the representative sample size of your target market must be. Because then the data you collect will reflect an inaccurate picture of the market you wish to cater for and should you proceed with plans on the basis of that skewed picture, you’ll run the danger of wasting time, money and effort on air.  No, your sample size must represent the target population as accurately as possible.

And you won’t do any pestering either, because sensitivity to people’s needs and time constraints might have you initially only asking two marketing related questions, namely whether they will buy your product and what they will pay for it. You can always tackle the other questions later, thus preventing customer irritation by not holding up potentially harried and hustled types.

But here’s the big thing. The selection of your samples must be random.

But how do you do the random thing?

Okay, here’s the short version:

Draw 2 random samples of 15 people in each of your target markets (if there’s more than one obviously). For example, interview the first, fourth and eighth prospect according to the random number you draw from a random number table. (See fig 1 below)

Fig.1 Example of a random number table.

Summarise the results of each and compare stats. If the results have a less than 20% deviation and correspond in 80% of the answers given, you can assume your sample size is big enough.

If not, you have to double the number of correspondents by drawing 2 new samples of 30 respondents each and then compare results. As soon as there is an 80% match, you can stop.  So you keep doubling up until the 80% matching point.

Easy peasy.

Going down to the mall to do market research, is also just an example. You can be as creative as needs be with the methods you come up with to get the data you need.

Go to someone’s home. Or a football match. Whatever. You’re in charge and you get to say what you’re going to do to get what you need. Short of illegal of course.

Delivering what customers want is a win-win situation. They get what they want and so do you. Everybody gets to go home happy.

Till next time

Elmarie

Elmarie is a wordpreneur for the Entrepreneurial Business School (Pty) Ltd and a freelance creative writer, web writer and copywriter. Email her at ebouwer@ebschool.com

Resources:

1. Mauritz Bekker. Marketing management. EBS 2009.

You’ve been doing everything you know to do. Your SEO efforts are paying off and enough people visit your site. You’re regularly writing killer posts and guest blogging and getting some pretty cool comments. You’re building hard at that tribe and your following is coming along nicely…

But…

Nobody is buying your stuff!! You do have stuff for sale, don’t you?

Why is that you ask?

(Definition of stuff: products and / or services)

To give one possible answer that question, I need to build a case; so allow me to give you some illustrations. This post might be a bit lengthier than some others, but buckle up and hang in there please.

It just might answer your question about why nobody is responding to your marketing efforts, relationship building, heck most everything that makes up an on- or offline business!

Illustration no 1:

Imagine you lying on an operating table and the doctor walking in and snapping on some latex gloves. You’re booked for an appendectomy (eh…that’s removing your appendix surgically if you didn’t know that) and feeling very apprehensive and nervous.

You sure hope the doctor knows what he’s doing, given all the mal practise suits taking place in the world and the oceans of gripes from people complaining about the wide incompetence of the medical profession in some places and all.

After he’s snapped on the gloves, he reaches for a bottle of Vodka on the table behind him (what! In an operating theatre??!!!!…), then turns to you and forces your jaws open. Then, with the help of his assistant, pours it down your throat while you can do all not drown in the gushing torrent of burning liquid.

Gulping like mad, you wonder why he wants to sedate you in this archaic way and whether he’s ever even heard of anaesthesia. Your alarm and anxiety bells notch at max.

Still spluttering and coughing, you see him turn to a satchel next on the counter, standing close by the now virtually empty bottle while he plucks out an insanely thick text book and starts paging furiously. Your alarm and anxiety bells, previously at max, now boom off the chart, as you hear him say:

“Now lemme’ see, just  how do we do this procedure again?”

Absurd huh?

Yet, this is the tack many entrepreneurs take when confronted by knowledge that to them is boring or that they think is irrelevant to their business, but actually turns out to be critical to success.

Like that doctor who should have mastered an accurate understanding and practise of key knowledge before he tried to operate, some entrepreneurs have a hit and run attitude where they touch only on some issues like marketing and the study of keywords, then they close their eyes to everything else out there because it’s all too overwhelming and just hope for the best.

Know anybody like that?

Well, I do.

I was like that.  

Sure, I understood concepts like SEO and the use of long tail keywords etc, marketing and the absolute necessity of learning copywritingand many others and I could practise most of them. But please, never came to me with knowledge about the workings of the economy (economy savvy über führers don’t shoot me! I amended my ways since then!), because that bored me to distraction.

Yet, I was trying to perform an appendectomy from a textbook, only focussing on some parts in said textbook while ignoring the rest and hoping for the best.

And here I was, wondering why nobody was really interested in what I had to offer!

Now, lest you think I’m advocating an A-level study of economics, I’ll hasten to add: anything but!

 No, all I’m saying is that it is often part of the problem you have when your focus is not wide or inclusive enough. Well, I’m still building that case, so let’s get on with it.

 Illustration no 2:

In the beginning, Mr Caveman realised at some point that he needed help. Mr Grotto, his neighbour who slept quite close to him on the cosy bat shit, could make spears for hunting a lot better than what he could. So he decided to make a deal [always comes down to that, doesn’t it].

If he did the hunting (which he was better at anyway), and Mr Grotto made the spears for him to use, they could get to share the meat equally.

And so it was.

But that didn’t solve the problem they always had with available water. The closest stream was high in the mountains and it took most of the day just to get to it. Which was a problem, because that left very little day light for hunting.

Until Mrs Pless of the neighbouring cave one day showed up and asked whether they were interested in the water she wanted to trade with them for meat. She couldn’t hunt very well and her kids were always hungry. For that matter, so was she…

She told them she managed to build a canal from the spring up in the mountain down to the bottom close to them. All they had to do, was give her some meat and she would give them some water.

And so it was.

The biggest problem Mr Caveman now faced, was how on earth was he going to kill enough meat daily for three people plus some kids?

Obviously he needed more people. What to do? What to do?

  Mmmm…Aha! Mr Neanderthalus is also good at hunting! Maybe he’ll also be interested in the trade-off, so he’ll just ask him!

And so trading began. And networking. Based on the timeless principles of supply and demand.

Economics 101: The simple version for dummies, idiots and other nerds

 Fast forward many 1000’s of years, and you still see that simple action taking place all over the globe, just magnified gazillions of times.

It’s still as simple as solving people’s problems (hallo! that’s what business is: solving problems!) and trading those solutions (your products/ and or services) where demand and supply determine the values of these solutions. It’s still about I give you something you want and in return you give me something I want at a price we’re both satisfied with and then we’re both happy…

Of course, the whole economic process globally is vastly more complicated than that, but at heart, that’s precisely what it comes down to. People helping each other by offering their talents and skills, (you variously know this as solutions or as services and products) in exchange for payment.

That’s the economy in a nutshell.

 Great, you say, “BUT WHAT DOES THIS HAVE TO DO WITH ME!!?”

 Ok, ok!! Getting to the point right now!!

 Remember that wide all inclusive focus I referred to earlier? Well, I want you to adopt one now if you haven’t already.

Say for example many people are looking for products that will solve their SEO problems, but you’re offering your services as an orange A4 paper origami artist. If that describes you, you might as well close up shop.

It’s fatal! Because you’ll be shouting at the deaf.

See, if your customers ask for water, they’re not going to be interested in meat.

Or maybe you’re offering what some people want, but not enough people. Enough people must want what you offer for your efforts to be viable.

Jon Morrow of Copyblogger says that “you have to know what keeps your customer awake at night.”  Meaning, you have to know your customer intimately. And then ply your stuff around that.

If you’re out of feeling with what your customers want, nothing will help your plight and make the pain go away. Not even awesome sales copy. Like master marketer Doberman Dan Gallapoo told Ben Settle “Brilliant copywriting won’t sell a turd”.  Meaning if nobody wants what you’ve got, your business is toast.

First figure out what the customer wants. And whether enough people want it. Then market that and you’ll have the bees fighting each other for the honey. Don’t try and market what you think they’ll be interested in. Most businesses that struggle, lose the plot right there.

It’s as simple as that.

Aren’t you perhaps offering a product / service nobody is interested in?

Find out what they want, and give them that. Nothing else. Nothing less.

Which then begs the question: how do you find out what they want?

We’ll explore that answer together next time.

See you then!

Elmarie

PS. You have to admit that it all was necessary to make the point. The illustrations, talk about demand and supply…yep…all of it. Thanks for sticking it out!

Raw intense fear pricked his skin and fissured up his back. He had to will his heart to slow down its wild beating, much like when he’s outmanoeuvring a wild animal, intent on his demise.

“Hey”, the pale young man on his left babbled in that strange tongue, “you look like you’ve seen a ghost! It’s only another honking bleedin’ horn…!” He slapped him on his often painful shoulder while laughing.

Since he’s come here yesterday with these strange men, he found himself in an alien world that he understood very little of. He could not figure out its towering temples [high rises for living and trading], hard unfriendly roads [tar] and non-living moving things [vehicles and ships].

But the worst was the awful racket. It kept him leaping with fright! The sounds were even more terrifying than anything else he’s had to endure so far. Back home was nothing like this place. Nothing.

Suddenly he saw a man pushing a strange thing full of bananas. He couldn’t believe his eyes! How could one man carry so unbelievably many bananas?

“That’sh a wheelbawwow with bananash”. The pale one again, muttering with a mouth full while pointing at a vendor pushing a cart with a yellow mound of bananas on it.

Since this was the first time he understood anything really, he was eager to communicate that. Excitedly his head bobbed up and down. Yes, now he’ll have something to tell his village! ¹

 *****

 All he could remember back home in the Malayan mountains where he was the tribal chief of what resembled a stone-age village, was the huge number of bananas one man could transport.

*****

Paradigms. What are they?

 Many definitions exist, but it’s basically how you think and why you think like you do.

It’s the composite structure framed by the totality of your beliefs, good and bad, that directly influence how you perceive the world

The truth of how paradigms influence our view of the world, is amply illustrated above by Arie de Geus’s story in “Living Company” [slightly…ahem… edited] in which an intelligent tribal chief from an isolated, near stone-age village in the Malayan Mountains, was taken out of his home turf and plonked into the concrete jungle of Singapore with its high rises, tarred roads and vehicular and naval traffic as part of an experiment.

Our chief couldn’t understand much of anything he observed since there was no previous experience in his mind to tack new incoming data to. The only image he could relate to was that of bananas since his paradigm was that of village life in a primitive setting. Even after being back in his village for three weeks, the only thing he could remember was the banana incident. He could only see what he knew!

It seems that the human mind cannot comprehend what it has not experienced before. Even though only a theory, this view seems credible and experience shows this to be true in the examples I’ll quote later on. Our chief certainly bears this out.

The good, the bad and the downright ugly

Paradigms can be both good and bad. And become ugly.

Good ones give you an easy recipe to order your life by and solve problems that regularly occur within set parameters. They allow you to develop positive expectations about your world based on prior assumptions and experiences.

But when fixed paradigms cause mental blocks that restrict you from assimilating or even seeing new information or solving some gritty problem, they are bad and can become dangerous. Bad ones keep you from seeing important truths or reality like it really is. When they withhold you from seeing changes in your environment you must react to, they’re not only bad, they become ugly.

You see, once you have a vested paradigm (a.k.a. your mind so damn well made up about something), you will automatically ignore information impulses beyond this set of beliefs. That was our chief’s experience. And not only his, but every person’s who has failed to see to see the new and adapt to it if needs be.

Don’t believe me? Read this…

 Somewhere in the 1940’s, a guy demonstrated a new photographic process to a major photographic manufacturer in America. There was no camera or film in his demonstration, but rather a box, charging device, light bulb and black powder instead. The idea behind the invention was that it allowed one to make an exact reproduction of the original image.

The picture his crude “tools” reproduced was dim, but traceable.

The manufacturer could not see the sense of this invention as this did not really square with his idea of photography, and coldly declined interest. So he became one of many firms that passed up the opportunity of what would eventually become the multi billion dollar photocopying or xerography industry.

Why did he pass up such an unbelievable chance?

 Because he could not see past his own frame of reference, made up by the established modes of photography. His mind was so set by the accepted way of doing things he simply could not see the great opportunity glaring at him.

He could not see or accept new data (like our chief), because it fell outside his paradigm. This is called the paradigm effect and when that is so strong that you are unable to see what’s under your nose, you are said to suffer from paradigm paralysis.

 And examples of paradigms preventing people from moving ahead and moving onto the new (and sometimes better!) abound. Just take shopping for example.

In the 90’s, Jeff Bezoz founded Amazon and online shopping was born. But the concept also required an EBay and the Social Media platforms to catapult it into the wider public’s frame of reference before a significant shift in thinking started taking place and more and more people began shopping online. Now, it’s part of a global culture.

It was just unthinkable that you could shop outside of a shop that you did not drive or walk to!

Now, this bound to happen again and again. To you and me…

 Unless…

 Unless you consciously change it. Shift the rails your paradigms glide on without losing any data already programmed in your thinker. When that happens, that you are able to change a current paradigm to a new one, it is referred to as a paradigm shift.

Time for new treads

Okay, you see the need to change or broaden some of your paradigms, but how do you do it?

There are many ways, but I like the one detailed by Mauritz Bekker of the Entrepreneurial Business School (EBS). He says though that it’s important to realise that paradigm shifting is a process that’s not going to happen overnight.

He sees this process as taking place in the following phases:

• Phase 1: Start to challenge existing paradigms with contradictory facts.
• Phase 2: You begin to see a discrepancy between what you believe and what you   experience.
• Phase 3: By asking the question ”Why must I stick to something if it doesn’t work for me?”, you’ll manage to disconnect from the existing paradigm.
• Phase 4: The actual paradigm shift takes place as you keep focusing on a new desired outcome / new knowledge.
• You can now use the extended  / new paradigm to recognise & solve any problems you might have.

Actions that will jumpstart and accelerate this process, include:

• Adding new knowledge to what you already know. Never stop learning.
• Always asking questions and never accepting mediocre explanations.
• Observing with the aim to learn. Focus on what interests you. This way, you’ll perceive things others will miss.
• Zoom in on new inventions / or research findings.
• Sharpen your ability to perceive with all five senses.
• Develop your intuition.
• Challenge your current beliefs. ²

 Are you an inmate in Prison Paradigm without knowing it?

Resources

1. A free retelling of Arie de Geus’s story of the tribal chief in “The Living Company”.
2. Bekker, M. The Successful Entrepreneur, 2009. p.54.